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Transcript of INQUISTE
The InquISTE
this issue
P4. How two amateurs built an A-Bomb
P2.forget about glass houses, now
transparent ce-ment is the way...
P2. InFocus
How to
build your first Robot
3D
Printing
We believe in destiny.
We believe in seeking the roots of our science.
When the world’s best minds come forth from the corners of the earth,
We believe in proclaiming their vision.
We share their delight, revel in their passion
and think alongside their thoughts.
New hopes… .
...new challenges.
...One undying spirit ISTE enters the new academ-ic year
…600+ participants
….5 papers of option….1 hour An epic journey to find the brightest new minds in campus ….7.5 K prize money en-dowed Abdul Kalam Scholarships!!!
Congratulations to our AKS
Winners
Govind R Thomas Mathew Parayil Archana Radhakrishnan
An engineer’s saga...
4 years>> Placements>> intern-ships>> GD’s>> GRE >> GATE >> CAT >> Civil Services >>….
Career workshop conducted
…a quarter year into the
making, we present to you..
Oracle
ISTE interviews our own
campus IAS Top Ranker
ISTE conducts mock GRE
Entrepreneurship workshop
in collaboration with NTA conducted
Techgroups to be launched
shortly after Tathva !!!
Please spare a moment to fill
our feedback form
P2.Robotics Tips P7.The man behind the Rank... Exclusive
interview
Gokul G.R. IASGokul G.R. IAS
A s we humbly start this venture, with the same passion of spirit that led centuries of
men knocking at the portals of Gyan, Vigyaan and Pragyan, with unnerving hope
that one day, each new inspiration, by inspiration, we’ll take our campus, our society and
ultimately our world to greater heights of knowledge, awareness, skill, enterprise and devel-
opment. With the debut issue of oracle, we take our first infant steps towards our collective
goal, with confidence that one day the sparks of inspiration set alight from these pages shall
gather momentum, and energy to ignite the minds of one and many.
We Believe. ~ Editors, Amala Maheswari, Jibin Rajan Varghese
FACULTY IN CHARGE’S MESSAGE:
It gives me immense pleasure to see ISTE NITC Students’ Chapter flourish in its mission of
educating students of NITC with developments in the sphere of technology. InquISTE, the
newsletter of ISTE NITC Students’ Chapter is a testimony of the Chapter’s efforts to accom-
plish this mission. As Faculty-in-charge of the Chapter, I’m glad to have supported the devel-
opment of InquISTE and gratefully acknowledge its esteemed contributors & wonderful team.
I look forward to the continued input of the broader community of NITC Faculty, staff and
students to advance InquISTE to greater heights ~ Sreeram Kumar Sir
CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE: As we look around and observe the world, we see plethora of developments in the realms of
science and technology. So fast they happen, it gets difficult to capture them unless we race
against time. ISTE NITC Students’ Chapter has always attempted to appreciate these develop-
ments and discover new paths to disseminate the associated knowledge. This perpetual mis-
sion has recently attained unprecedented momentum. InquISTE is one such attempt of ISTE to
put into perspective the new trends and practices in science and technology taking roots
globally. I welcome the faculty, staff and students who are an integral part of NITC community
to this initiative and hope that together we will be able to enhance the newsletter InquISTE
through our contributions and make it more enlightening. ~ E.S.S. Surya Teja
ISSUE 01 NOVEMBER 2011
Journal of the Indian Society for Technical Education N I T - Calicut Students’ Chapter
“3D Printing”: a mission Impossible
I magine creating a solid 3D
object – a toy, a gift to your
buddy, the components and circuit
boards for your next cool project or
perhaps robot parts, with just a
mouse click! Well, this is not just an
impossible concept popped out in
Star Trek. Printing has acquired a
new dimension. With the Rapid
Prototyping/ 3D printing technolo-
gy, it is possible to transform a 3D
model from CAD software into a
real solid object by building up the
model layer by layer. With this, you
can simply run your own factory
and see your models materialize
right in front of your eyes! You
needn't go anywhere else to make
the stuffs you want.
In Rapid prototyping technology,
you first create a blueprint of the
3D object you want to make, in
CAD software. The interface
between the machine and the
software is the STL file format.
Converting the model to STL format
will transform it into a number of
thin horizontal slices which is then
fed to the prototyping machine.
This process of creating 3D objects
by laying successive layers of the
material is called additive manufac-
turing.
There are a large number of RP
technologies in use- Stereo
lithography, Fused Deposition
Modeling, Laminated Object
Manufacturing, Selective Laser
Sintering etc. Though these have
complex names they are all based
on the same theme, with variations
in the methods and materials used.
They build models out of different
materials like epoxy resins and
other polymers, ABS plastic,
plaster, paper and even metals.
The 3D printing technology spans
several industries and applications.
You can print a wide range of
consumer products, architectural
models, medical diagnostic
equipment, prosthetic limbs,
automotive materials and many
other complex parts. Other
applications include reconstructing
fossils, replicating ancient artifacts
etc. It is also being studied by
Biotech firms and academia for its
possible use in tissue engineering.
This technology has been around
for some 30 years. But it started
penetrating in India and other
Asian countries only recently.
What's more, 3D printing has gone
open source. One such open source
3D printer is the RepRap, devel-
oped by Adrian Bowyer at the
University Of Bath, UK. It is a self
replicating printer that spawns
new, improved versions of itself.
3D printing offers immense
possibilities. The ways in which
Rapid Prototyping technology could
change future manufacturing and
industrial engineering are amazing.
With 3D printing leaping forward,
you can imagine a future in which
there is a 3D printer in every home-
in the list of consumer's 'must
have' home gadgets.
Now the art of printing enters the third dimension...
@ Arun M, Suparna S Nair & Dileep R
ADDSPACE
>>
“TRANSPARENT CEMENT: forget about glass houses, now transparent cement is the way... @ Amala Maheswari
I n the general sense of the word
cement is a binder that sets and
hardens by itself. It is one of the
basic and essential materials in con-
struction. In a recent breakthrough
Italian architects have developed a new
transparent cement. It will enable
daylight to flood in and make the walls
appear like giant windows.
It was created by researches at Italce-
menti group, by bonding special resins
in a nex mix. The material called I. Light
has dozens of holes and thereby lets
light through. However it is very well
capable of retaining the structural
integrity.
On a sunny day it creates an effect
similar to light mesh filtering light
coming in. This has so far been used
only in one building, the Italian pavilion
at last years Expo in Shanghai.
It is believed that the usage of transpar-
ent cement could save considerable
amount of electricity that
would be required for
daytime lighting. Similar
effect is generated using
fibre optics cable through
concrete. However the
transparent cement made
from plastic resins is much
cheaper than one made
from optical fibres.
So friends, what's your
choice of concrete ??
Why build a robot? What are your motivations?
Do they look cool? Want to join a robotics contest
such as those in Tathva? Robotics can teach you
so much. Irrespective of your branch, you will
learn skills from electronics, mechanics, control,
programming, and even as broad as understand-
ing animal behavior and human psychology.
Following are tips from some of the experienced
pros (on and off campus)
The first robot is always the hardest. So
take KISS approach: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Don't reinvent the wheel! Search the web for
how other people did things, and copy them!
It may be unoriginal, but on your first robot,
don't expect to develop the theory of
relativity on your first try.
Ok I am ready, what do I need to start?
Obviously the first is MONEY. Robots can get
expensive. Expect a decent budget of Rs. 5 to
6K, so form a group…(You may also approach
us @ ISTE)
The basic parts in a robot are: Body,
Microcontroller, Motors, Servos,
sensors and Wheels, Batteries etc.
Ok now you got all this stuff, but still no robot.
Now it is time to DESIGN, THEN BUILD, a robot
chassis. Every hour spent on design is one less
hour spent on construction.
This article is to be continued...
“Robotics”: tips
Tips on building your first robot
@ Jibin Rajan
Tech @ campus.
Tathva11, the annual techno management fest of NIT-C proved to be a fine blend of technology and creativity. It was inaugurated by Dr. PP Chandrachoodan, a senior scien-tist at BARC.Tathva11 had a series of lectures by eminent personalities on a variety of topics. Lecture by Dr Tessy Thomas, the missile woman of India was a crowd puller.
TechNites composed of robo-shows, dance shows, musical nights, hand shadowgraphy and head banging rock concerts awed the audience with their unprecedented charm. Tathva11 put forward a plethora of events like transporter, dirt race, contraption, B- Aptist , Koderkombat etc. It can be undoubtedly said that tathva11 provided a relevant platform for budding engineers to hone and exhibit their skills.
Discussions: …our portal to discuss science
From now on, every issue of oracle will feature a scientific
discussion on topics, wherein the readers could send in their
views in not less than 50 words. The best entries will be
published. This time for instance we have taken a sample of
discussions from
www.absoluteastronomy.com/discussionpost/
Is_time_travel_possible_353 .htm
We're all time travelers, of course. We're all
traveling forward in time at the same rate - the question is-
is it possible to travel a lot faster or slower than this rate?
Theoretically it is possible by use of worm holes
in space , which are allowed by Einstein's theory of special
relativity...of course none have been found till now but once
upon a time black holes were ridiculed as science fantasy
hype
I think it is reasonable to assume that since we
have not been visited by time travelers from the future - time
travel will never be possible.
<you get to continue this discussion in the next issue guys>
The Google - ies
Wondering what this is all about?
You are seeing one of the first 3D generated world population
maps projected demographically onto the surface of the planet!
Powered by groundbreaking research into the new WEB, This
Google development app is an amazing presentation tool for
software developers, college students and researchers alike to
add some 3D spice to their presentations. Sources at Google
have confirmed that the source codes of the app have been
made available OPEN SOURCE for such purposes, as with other
open source offerings available from Google labs. Visit the above
website with Google ‘s Chrome browser for the complete
Web2.0 experience.
Googlies: http://data-arts.appspot.com/globe
EyeOnIt: What's technically going on behind the 2G spectrum
A series of scams had hit our govt in the recent
past. The 2G scam being one of the prominent
ones. We bring you the latest from the field of
spectrum
allocation.
The union
communica-
tion and IT
minister
Kapil Sibal
has put
forward the
National Frequency Allocation Plan-2011 (NAFP)
that will improve spectrum management. An
important element of this plan is the allocation
of S-band, falling between 2.5Ghz and 2.6Ghz
for broadband services. This region is currently
being used for satellite based services. Another
important aspect of the allocation plan is
attributing the entire 700 Mhz band for mobile
broadband services, disproving the speculations
that the band
would be taken
over by mobile
TV services. The
NFAP-2011
contains
spectrum
allocation for
various radio
communication
services and
applications in different frequency bands. It will
provide the basis for development for both govt
and private sectors. If implemented properly the
plan can considerably boost the broadband
coverage.
@ Amala Maheswari
Kepler Mission: Quest for earth like planets. @ Amala Maheswari
Named after German astronomer Johannes
Kepler, Kepler mission was launched by NASA on
March 7, 2009. It has a mission lifetime of 3.5
years.
It is a space observatory designed to discover
Earth like planets orbiting other stars. It monitors
main sequence of stars (about 145000) in a fixed
field of view. The photometer attached takes
note of the periodic fluctuations in brightness of
these stars. This indicates the presence of planets
that cross the face of these stars. This is how the
study on extra solar planets is carried out.
Kepler 10b
Kepler 10b is the first rocky planet that was
discovered outside solar system. The discovery of
this planet is based on more than eight months of
data collected by Kepler spacecraft from May
2009 – Jan 2010. NASA said that as of now we
know little about the planet. Most of the
knowledge was gathered from he star it orbits
i.e., Kepler 10. The high frequency variation in the
star’s brightness generated by stellar oscillations
or star quakes was studied. Further analysis
shows that Kepler 10b is a rocky planet with a
mass 4.6 times that of earth with average density
of 8.8 grams per cc. However Kepler 10b is more
than 20 times closer to its star than mercury is to
our sun hence is not habitable.
Kepler is NASA’s 10th Discovery mission and is
funded by NASA Science Mission Directorate. It is
a mission under NASA’s Discovery Program of low
cost, focused Science missions.
@ Jibin Rajan
Upcoming Events to watch out for ...
ISTE Photoshop Techgroup : www.facebook.com/Techgroups
Follow us on Facebook : ISTE NITC Students’ Chapter
November 2011 M Tu W Th Fr Sa Su
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30
2G ... and beyond!!!!
SCISTORY: How two amateurs designed an A bomb
To design an A-bomb from scratch would seem a Herculean task, but amateurs did it, 45 years ago...
D ave Dobson, now 75, is a modest
man, and once he had discovered
his vocation - teaching physics at
Beloit College, in Wisconsin - felt no need
to drop dark hints about his earlier life. You
could have taken classes at Beloit with
Professor Dobson, until his recent retire-
ment, without having any reason to know
that in his mid-20s, working entirely as an
amateur and equipped with little more
than a notebook and a library card, he
designed a nuclear bomb.
"It's a very strange story," says Bob Selden
co-partner , then a novice soldier drafted
into the army and wondering how to put
his talents to use, when he received a
message that Edward Teller, the father of
the hydrogen wanted to see him. "I went to
DC and we spent an evening together. But
he began to question me in great detail
about the physics of making a nuclear
weapon, and I didn't know anything. As the
evening wore on, I knew less and less. I
went away very, very discouraged. Two
days later a call comes through: they want
you to come to Livermore."
Today their experiences in 1964 - the year
they were enlisted into the Nth Country
Project - suddenly seem as terrifyingly
relevant as ever. The question the project
was designed to answer was a simple one:
could a couple of non-experts, with brains
but no access to classified research, crack
the "nuclear secret"? In the aftermath of
the Cuban missile crisis, panic had seeped
into the arms debate. Only Britain,
America, France and the Soviet Union had
the bomb; the US military desperately
hoped that if the instructions for building it
could be kept secret, proliferation - to a
fifth country, a sixth country, an "Nth
country", hence the project's name - could
be averted. Today, the fear is back: we
cling, at least, to the belief that not just
anyone could figure out how to make an
atom bomb. The trouble is that, 45 years
ago, someone did.
Livermore was the Livermore Radiation
Laboratory, a fabled army facility where the
institution's head offered them a job. The
work would be "interesting", he promised,
but he couldn't say more until Dobson and
Selden had the required security clearance.
And they couldn't get the clearance unless
they accepted the job. They only learned
afterwards what they was expected to do.
"My first thought," said Bob, with charac-
teristic understatement, "was, 'Oh, my.
That sounds like a bit of a challenge.'"
And thus, on April 1964, the duo—Dave
Dobson and Bob Selden were enlisted into
the A-bomb project.
They would be working in a murky limbo
between the world of military secrets and
the public domain. They would have an
office at Livermore, but no access to its
warrens of restricted offices and corridors;
they would be banned from consulting
classified
research
but, on
the other
hand,
anything
they
produced
-
diagrams
in
sketch-
books,
notes on
the backs
of envelopes - would be automatically top
secret. And since the bomb that they were
designing wouldn't, of course, actually be
built and detonated, they were to explain
at length, on paper, what part of their
developing design they wanted to test, and
they would pass it, through an assigned lab
worker, into Livermore's restricted world.
Days later, the results would come back -
though whether as the result of real tests
or hypothetical calculations, they would
never know.
The operating rules read — "A working
context for the experiment might be that
the participants have been asked to design
a nuclear explosive which, if built in small
numbers, would give a small nation a
significant effect on their foreign relations."
Dobson's knowledge of nuclear bombs was
rudimentary, to say the least. "I just had
the idea that *to make a bomb+ you had to
quickly put a bunch of fissile material
together somehow," he recalls. Bob Selden
found a book on the Manhattan Project
that culminated in America's development
of the bomb. "It gave us a road map,"
Dobson says. "But we knew there would be
important ideas they'd deliberately left out
because they were secret. This was one of
the things that produced a little bit of
paranoia in us. Were we being led down
the garden path?"
They faced one key decision, Dobson says:
whether to design a gun-style bomb, like
the one dropped on Hiroshima, that used a
sawn-off howitzer to crash two pieces of
fissile material together, or a more complex
implosion bomb, like that dropped on
Nagasaki. By now they were beginning to
enjoy the challenge, so they went for the
harder, more impressive option. "The gun
device
needed a
large
amount
of
material,
and
didn't
make a
very big
bang,"
Dobson
says.
"The
other
one was more bang, less material."
Dobson and Selden assumed that their
fictional Nth Country had already obtained
the requisite plutonium (the rules weren't
as strict then) by some means . "But the
process of designing the weapon - I'm
always careful to point out that many
people overstate how easy it is. You really
have to do it right, and there are thousands
of ways to do it wrong. You can't just
guess."
The two amateurs were ironically aided by
information published as part of President
Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace"
program, which spread word of the
benefits of non-military nuclear power
around the world.
Eventually, towards the end of 1966, two
and a half years after they began, they
were finished. "We produced a short
document that described precisely, in
engineering terms, what we proposed to
build and what materials were involved,"
says Selden. "The whole works, in great
detail, so that this thing could have been
made by Joe's Machine Shop downtown."
Agonisingly, though, at the moment they
believed they had triumphed, Dobson and
Selden were kept in the dark about
whether they had succeeded. Instead, for
two weeks, the army put them on the
lecture circuit, touring them around the
upper echelons of Washington, presenting
them for cross-questioning at defence and
scientific agencies. Their questioners,
people with the highest levels of security
clearance, were instructed not to ask
questions that would reveal secret
information. Finally, after a valedictory
presentation at Livermore attended by a
grumpy Edward Teller, they were pulled
aside by a senior researcher, Jim Frank.
"Jim said, 'I bet you guys want to know how
it turned out,'" Dobson recalls. "We said
yes. And he told us that if it had been
constructed, it would have made a pretty
impressive bang." How impressive, they
wanted to know. "On the same order of
magnitude as Hiroshima," Frank replied.
"It's kind of a depressing thing to know,
that it could be that easy," Dobson says.
"On the other hand, it's far better to know
the truth." And the truth today, he is
certain, is that for terrorists, obtaining
sufficiently enriched fissile material could
be difficult but, when it comes to creating
the bomb, "It turns out it's not overwhelm-
ingly difficult. There are some subtleties
that are not trivial ... but an awful lot has
been published. If you were a grad student
today, and you reviewed the literature, a
lot of pieces would fall into place."
It was, relatively speaking, easy - so easy
that both Selden and Dobson seem to have
emerged from the Nth Country Experiment
deeply troubled by their own capacities.
Selden stayed in the military, and he has
since been closely involved in planning how
the US might respond to a nuclear terrorist
incident. Dobson, meanwhile, felt so
uncomfortable that he left the sector
entirely
Einstein was famously said to have
commented that if he had only known that
his theories would lead to the development
of the atom bomb, he would have been a
locksmith. Dave Dobson, having designed
one, got a job as a teacher.
Einstein said that if he had only known that his
theories would lead to the development of the atom
bomb, he would have been a locksmith.
Dave Dobson, having made one, got a
job as a teacher.
@ Jibin Rajan
To kill their own kind…
Scientists have developed a new weapon in the battle against mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever and malaria, which afflict millions of people a year, killing many. The weapon is the mosquitoes themselves — genetically modified. Engineered male mosquitoes are made to contain a deadly gene that, when passed on to their offspring, kills them before they reach adulthood. If enough of these mosquitoes are released into the wild and mate with females there, their proge-ny (or at least most of their progeny) won’t ever reach adulthood or mate — and that would spark a population collapse. The only question that remains is whether there are any side effects to the experiment...
Spotlight: Todays emerging technologies , innovations and discoveries
Hearing the Bang
T he ‘echo of the big bang’ is
not audible on a normal radio, cosmic
microwave background radiation peaks
at a frequency of 160GHz ,which
corresponds to a wavelength of 1mm.By
comparison .the VHF band has a
frequency of 100MHz and wavelength
of3m ,ordinary radio aerials are not at all
suitable for receiving the Big Bang’s
residual radiation.
Cyborgs already exist…
S o far, half man, half machine
creatures, such as the TERMINATOR, or
the Borg from the television serial STAR
TREK ,are still the stuff of science fiction.
However , advances in modern pros-
thetics are pointing the way for-
ward ,with mechanical limbs controlled
by brain waves already boosting the
mobility of amputees. However ,cyborgs
of an entirely different type have already
seen the light of day in a German
laboratory .Peter Fromherz of the Max
Planck Institute for biochemistry
combined living snail cells to a silicon
chip .It is possible for electric impulse to
be transmitted between this two
worlds ,and work such as this is laying
the foundations for great improvements
in prostheses.
Human IQ can Rise or Fall signifi-
cantly during adolescence.
I Q, the standard measure of
intelligence, can increase or fall signifi-
cantly during our teenage years,
according to research funded by the
Wellcome Trust. This interesting study
highlights how 'plastic' the human brain
is. The findings may have implications for
testing and streaming of children during
their school years. The question is, if our
brain structure can change throughout
our adult lives, can our IQ also change?
And the guess is yes. There is plenty of
evidence to suggest that our brains can
adapt and their structure changes, even
in adulthood.
Other studies from the Wellcome
Trust Centre for Neuroimaging and other
research groups have provided strong
evidence that the structure of the brain
remains 'plastic' even throughout adult
life. For example, other studies showed
recently that guerrillas in Columbia who
had learned to read as adults had a
higher density of grey matter in several
areas of the left hemisphere of the brain
than those who had not learned to read.
Professor Eleanor Maguire, from the
Wellcome Trust Centre, showed that part
of a brain structure called the hippocam-
pus, which plays an important part in
memory and navigation, has greater
volume in licensed London taxi drivers.
@ V Ruthvik
rea
lise
tha
t n
o m
agazin
e ca
n b
e c
omple
te w
ithou
t a
res
olv
e to
kee
p o
n i
mpro
vin
g, an
d l
end
ing a
n o
pen
ea
r to
su
gges
tion
s,
com
men
ts a
nd
cri
tici
sms.
Mu
ch l
ike
the
mes
sage
tha
t bel
ongs
not
to
the
mes
sen
ger
, O
racl
e is
mer
ely
the
med
ium
of
our
expre
ssio
n; th
e so
ul
resi
des
in
the
com
bin
ed m
ind
s of
its
est
eem
ed r
ead
ers.
Hen
ce, as
we
in I
STE
NIT
C S
tud
ents
’ Chapte
r, b
rin
g f
orth
this
ven
ture
, w
e a
dm
it t
ha
t th
ough w
e p
ut
in s
ince
re e
ffor
t in
try
ing t
o le
av
e n
o le
af
un
turn
ed, ou
r w
ork i
s n
ot a
n e
nd
in
its
elf,
at
lea
st n
ot
un
til
our
voi
ce h
ears
a v
oice
fro
m y
our
side
. T
oget
her
, in
an
ea
rnes
t ef
fort
to
por
tra
y th
e w
orld
aro
un
d u
s, t
he
why
, th
e h
ow a
nd
the
who,
we
nee
d y
our
va
lua
ble
opin
ion
. K
ind
ly d
o u
s a
fa
vou
r a
nd cu
t th
is t
ear
out
, a
nd w
rite
you
r v
alu
able
com
men
ts, pos
itiv
e o
r n
ega
-
tiv
e op
inio
n a
bou
t su
gges
tion
s a
bou
t an
y a
rtic
le/c
olu
mn
/in
fo w
ha
t y
ou f
eel w
ith f
ull
fre
edom
an
d a
non
ym
ity
. W
e lo
ok f
orw
ard
to
hea
r-
ing f
rom
you
, an
d t
o im
pro
ve
Ora
cle
furt
her
, to
ser
ve
our
rea
der
s bet
ter
an
d t
o em
bod
y n
ot j
ust
the
voi
ce o
f IS
TE
, bu
t th
e tr
ue
un
dy
ing
spir
it o
f ou
r ca
mpu
s.
—
- O
racl
e T
eam
Feedback Form
Cut along these lines >>>
The shortest Sci-fiction story challenge…
Scientists make things from imagination, “Sci-Fi-ists” make imagination out of things….so, we @ ISTE throw a challenge to the limit of your imagina-
tion…. Can you write Sci-Fi shorter than this?...
"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door... “ (17 words)
“God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist." (10 words)
“That morning the sun rose in the west “ (8 words)“
“One futurewards , three returned!!! ” (4 words)
“Faster than light !!! ” ( 3 words )...”calculated 0/0”...__________________________________________________CHALLENGE : Can you make it better?
TECHTOONS: Todays emerging technologies , turned on its head
For most of us without iPhones in our pockets, Siri is a personal assistant application for iOS5 that uses AI processing techniques to
interact with humans. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform
actions automatically via web services. Siri claims that the software adapts to the user's individual preferences over time and personalizes
results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as making dinner reservations and reserving a cab. Overwhelmed with the power that such a
software could have on our daily lives, an executive of Team ISTE shared this interesting viewpoint he saw with us.
*Whacky views mentioned above are those of the contributor only, and need not represent the views of InquISTE or ISTE in particular….
PICTURESPEAK @ jibin Rajan
Techno-mix @ Amala Maheswari
Feedback Form
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Techno-mix is a fun filled scramble puzzle where the first
four questions have some highlighted letter ( grey boxes )
in the answers which when rearranged gives the last
answer which is a word or a phrase.
1.Who is the current Chief executive officer of Apple Inc ?
2.Which film is the highest grossing animated franchise?
3.Who is the chief structural engineer who designed Burj
Khalifa?
4. One of the founding members of this company predict-
ed that computers would double in power and halve in
price every 18 months, which is the company?
The real problem is not whether machines
“ “
... but whether men do…
What's the answer? To find out, read our next issue ...
<<< Cut along these lines
Opportunities
Outreach: Your portal to a successful career @ Amala Maheswari
The GRE revised General Test is coming in August!!! The GRE General Test is changing. The GRE General test has become an important step towards achieving the goals of millions of students across the world. Now with the new GRE pattern the students will have a better testing experience. Here is what you can expect from the GRE revised General Test:- A new test-taker friendly design:
The computer-based test now lets you edit or change your answers, skip questions and more, all within a section, giving you the freedom to use more of your own test-taking strategies.
Another new feature: An on-screen calculator. (Calculators issued by ETS are allowed and the scoring range for each section will be 130-170, with score increments of one point instead of 200-800 (with score increments of 10 points)) New types of questions: In the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections, questions include the real-life scenarios that reflect the kind of thinking you require in present graduate and business school programmes. All the 3 sections of GRE will be revised, (verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and analytical writing). More questions on data analysis and from reading compre-hension will be added. Analogies and antonyms will be removed from the test. Special savings of 50% when you take the GRE revised General Test.
Choosing Between the Current Test and the Revised Test:
To help you decide which of the two tests to take, start by
selecting which schools you're most interested in, then find
out when they need your scores. Different schools have
different admissions deadlines, so knowing when your
prospective schools need your scores is an important part of
making the decision between the GRE General Test and the
GRE revised General Test. If you need the scores before
November then you will have to register with the current GRE
pattern or else go for the new one as it gives you a better
testing experience.
@ Arjun R Nair When did you start your preparation for Civil Services?
I started my prepa-rations towards the end of third year. I started it in the third year End-semester vacations to be exact.
Selection of option-als is a crucial process in Civil Service exam. What did you look for while choosing an optional, or what made you choose Public Administra-tion as one of the optional subjects?
The concise and manageable syllabus was the main reason . Moreover, the optional would aid me in the career of administration too.
Another optional was physics; please tell more about that choice. What all should we take care while selecting a technical/ science topic?
Well, technical topics generally tend to lose out in the moderation stage compared to humanities. However my hard work paid off as I did well in the physics paper.
How did you strike a balance between electronics and Civil Service preparations? Did you have to sacrifice on extra-curricular activities?
I am very grateful for the support extended by my department and teachers without which things would have been difficult. I had to miss some classes
towards the end of fourth year for the preparation. However I was very active in the club activities during my college days.
Did you take the help of coaching institutes?
No I didn’t take any coaching.
How was the experi-ence in the interview?
The interview board was very cordial. We must watch out for the thin line between confidence and complacency. Be honest to the board.
How did you tackle G.S. (General Studies) which is a concern for most candidates?
G.S. syllabus is very broad. I read newspa-
per regularly giving emphasis on the relevant articles. I referred many standard books and also used Wikipedia.
What do you look forward from the job?
I am looking forward to serving the society by staying within the limits set by constitution and political elements.
Would you like to offer any advice for our juniors?
Whatever be your passion try to develop a social outlook, because at the end of the day you should serve your society.
“Whatever be your passion try to develop a social outlook, because at the end of the day
you should serve your society.”
MEET GOKUL
Meet Gokul G.R. IAS, the NITian who made us all proud by achieving the 19th rank in Civil Service Examina-
tion. An electronics and communication engineering graduate he achieved this fete in the very first attempt.
Having made his presence felt in almost all college activities during his student years; he is all geared up to
step into new shoes. He has chosen to serve the society by joining the Indian Administrative Service which
constitutes the major policy making body of our country. Oracle wishes all the very best to this 23 year old
native of Palakkad. We proudly present to our readers some excerpts from the interview with Gokul G.R.
The InquISTE Newsletter Desigp: Jibio Rajao Varghese
Journal of The Indian Society
for Technical Education, ISSUE 01
TEAM ISTE :
Last Look : We look at an interesting phenomenon from the Physics Lab
students in the physics lab, one would
have looked at the spot created by a laser pointer and wondered why it looks all sparkly? Well, the fuzzy looking light pattern created by laser beams isn’t an optical illusion, it’s an actual phenomenon. It goes by the name of speckle, and it’s really quite interesting. Firstly, consider this. No surface which you think is smooth is truly smooth. Not at small enough scales, anyway. Now, your typical Helium Neon red laser pointer has a wavelength of 635 nanometres, and being as a laser is just light, it will scatter off any surface it strikes. So if a red laser ( the lab ones in this case) is shone at any surface which has a “bumpiness” larger than 635 nanometres, all of those waves of light will suddenly stop being cleanly in phase with each other as they were in the original laser beam, and start being out of phase. Because of how they reflect off the surface imperfec-
tions in the material, they inter-fere with each other randomly, superposing and giving bright spots and dark spots in a speckled pattern, hence “speckle”. It’s exactly like acoustics and how in an empty room, some sounds seem louder or quieter depending
on where you might be standing in the room. Just on a much smaller scale. White light also does this. It’s just that regular white light has so many different wavelengths in it, that it averages out so you see no speckles. Given the right conditions though, you can. Squinting, you may some-times see speckles from your eyelashes, and we know that in the right light, you can see speck-
les from fingernails. Speckle also has an application in astronomy, as a way of cleaning up telescopic images. All light that passes through Earth’s atmosphere is subjected to speckle as it scatters
of all of the molecules that make up the air. And air is constantly moving (which is why stars “twinkle”), so it causes a single point of light from a star to blur and appear smudgy in a long exposure image (the amount of detail you can pick out with all of this going on is normally referred to as ‘astronomical seeing’). Speckle imaging takes a series (sometimes
quite a big series) of extremely short exposures instead and uses them to cancel out the effect of the atmosphere. The end result is that you have a much better image of the point of light coming from the star, without all of the atmospheric mess you’d normally have to deal with! In short, lasers are not only pretty but they’re full of interesting science Keep Discovering !!!
EDITORIAL
We, the editors of InquISTE would like to
thank all the contributors of this issue for
their valuable help and support extended
to this project. While every care has been
taken to ensure that the matter presented
here is accurate and error free, we do not
seek to provide professional services .
Various views mentioned in the magazine
are those of the contributors only, and
need not represent the views of InquISTE
or ISTE in particular. We wish all our
readers an entertaining an informative
read, and hope that this newsletter would
go towards kindling the scientific temper
of the audience at large.
Editors,
Amala Maheswari , Jibin Rajan Varghese