India to commission third research station in Antarctica
Nearly 28 years after it set up the first permanent research station in the South Polar region, India is all set to commission and occupy a third such station in Antarctica by March next year.
After the station named ‘Bharti’ becomes operational, India will join the league of select nations that have multiple operation stations in the region.
Director of the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) Rasik Ravindra said that the new station is located almost 3,000 km away from the existing ‘Maitri’ station which is serving the nation since its inception in 1988-89.
“The construction of the new station is going on at a hectic speed. The current Indian Antarctic Expedition that sailed off from Cape Town on October 26 under the leadership of Rajesh Asthana will complete the project in this Antarctic summer itself, hopefully by March 2012,” Mr. Ravindra told PTI.
“We will occupy it soon thereafter,” he said.
The scientists associated with NCAOR had earlier carried out a comprehensive environmental evaluation (CEE) of the project for the new station at Grovnes promontory in the Larsemann Hills on the eastern part of the South Pole.
Indian scientists will undertake cutting-edge research on geological structures and tectonics at the centre from the next year, he said.
‘Bharati’ station is a self-contained double-storey structure on stilts and is designed to have a life span of 25 years. It will accommodate 25 people during summer and 15 people during winter.
The setting up of this station was taken up in two phases. Phase I materialised during summer of 2010-11 and Phase II in the successive summer.
As per the CEE, minor and transitory impacts on the Antarctic environment are likely due to construction of the ambitious project.
Although ‘more than minor and transitory impacts on the Antarctic environment’ are expected due to construction, the impacts are expected to be minimised with measures like use of combined heat and power concept for heating and renewable energy sources, low sulphur fossil fuel, optimisation of vehicle movement, efficient treatment of effluents, bringing back hazardous and sanitary wastes to mainland for disposal and others, Mr. Ravindra said quoting the CEE study.
The proposed location is of interest on account of scientific and logistic reasons, ice—free terrain and easy access from the sea.
“This area, including the islands and promontories, offer an excellent scope for extensive studies on geological structures and tectonics with special reference to Gondwanaland, palaeoclimatology, solid earth geophysics, space-weather and meteorology, oceanography, marine biology, microbiology, environmental science,” Javed Beg, a senior NCAOR scientist said.
“To facilitate the planned scientific studies, including environmental monitoring, the station will have state—of-the-art laboratory facilities,” he said.
The station is designed to withstand extreme environmental conditions prevailing at Larsemann Hills and is compliant with the environmental standards under the Madrid Protocol, Mr. Ravindra said.
The Larsemann Hills area is marked by persistent, strong katabatic winds that blow from east to southeast during austral summer. Extreme minimum temperature recorded in the region so for is -40 C, though the daytime mean monthly temperatures during summer drop to around 0 degree C.
India had in the past established Dakshin Gangotri (1983) and Maitri (1988-89) stations in Antarctica. The former has since been decommissioned after it got buried under ice and has been marked as an historic site.
Miss World crowned amid protests
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The most enduring image of the last Miss World pageant held in London 40 years ago is of angry feminists storming the venue and pelting the celebrity guests with eggs and rotten tomatoes.
Forty years on, the protest was more muted as Venezuela's Ivian Sarcos, a 21-year-old human resource graduate and wannabe social activist, was crowned Miss World on Sunday amid the usual razzmatazz at a song-and-dance event here.
‘Objectification' of body
A group of women gathered outside Earl's Court in West London to protest against the “objectification'' of the female body, They raised slogans and waved banners, one of which read “We're not ugly, We're not beautiful, We're angry.'' Another said “Miss World is the jewel in the crown of rape culture.''
As guests, who had paid up to £100 and some looking slightly sheepish, hurried their way in, one protester screamed: “Shame on you.”
Among them were some from the famous 1970 protest — now much mellowed but still angry that women should be judged by their looks alone.
Pressure on women
“You'd think after 40 years things would have changed, wouldn't you? Look what happens — what society expects from young women. There is terrible pressure put on them to look a certain way,'' said Jo Robinson, who led the 1970 protest and spent a night in prison.
Defending the pageant, Angie Beasley, Director of Miss England, described it as much more than “just a bikini parade”. The contest, she claimed, had also “changed with the times.”
‘Protesters bullying us'
“These people should give it a chance instead of thinking it's just a bikini parade. I'm all for women standing up for what they believe in, which is why I run Miss England, but I'm fed up of these protesters trying to bully us and push us around. We live in a free society where women have the right to choose. The contestants in Miss World are quite capable of making up their own minds if they want to enter or not and protesters shouldn't keep criticising the same decision,'' she said.
A billion viewers
The event was watched by nearly a billion television viewers around the world, according to the organisers, but not telecast by any major broadcaster in Britain.
Ms. Sarcos, who was chosen from among 122 contestants, became the 61st winner of the contest first held in 1951 and apparently conceived as a one-off event to market the Festival of Britain. She will spend a year visiting and endorsing charity projects sponsored by Miss World's organisers.
Rosaiah calls for comprehensive cancer prevention plan
The nation is in need of a comprehensive plan to prevent cancer, and specialists in the field of oncology and non-governmental organisations should work towards stepping up awareness among the people of risk factors, Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosaiah said here on Monday.
Inaugurating the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Kovai Medical Center and Hospital (KMCH), he said: “We need to put in joint efforts to create awareness of cancers and sensitise people to prevention. Cost-effective intervention and preventing smoking and consumption of alcohol is the need of the hour.”
What necessitated such measures was the fact that India ranked high in the deaths caused by non-communicable diseases such as cancer and cardio-vascular problems.
Cancer was a leading cause of death across the world, accounting for 7.6 million deaths every year. As much as 30 per cent of these were caused by dietary habits, use of tobacco and alcohol. And, it was alarming to note that 70 per cent of cancer deaths occurred in low and middle-income families. The prediction that the cases might rise to 11 million by 2030 called for concerted efforts for prevention, the Governor said.
Presiding, Chairman of the Sakthi Group N. Mahalingam said emphasis must be laid on promoting Indian systems of medicine such as Siddha and Ayurveda. Mr. Mahalingam said he would provide space in the educational institutions run by his group to establish departments for such courses in the systems if Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University promoted these.
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Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu N. Ram said corporate hospitals would have to face the test of providing equitable healthcare as there was a staggering burden of chronic diseases on the nation. These diseases — such as cardiovascular problems, diabetes, cancer, mental illness and metabolic disorders — cast a long shadow on the economic development of the country. The Central and State governments introduced schemes for diseases prevention, but implementation was poor. The spending on healthcare should be increased from the current one per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. A state-of-the-art cancer centre was a big investment. It involved investment in modern equipment, medical specialists and nursing and paramedical staff for comprehensive care. There should not be any compromise in the form of backward characteristics. But the test lay in equitable health care. Stating that the KMCH's growth into a large multi-speciality hospital and its goal of maximising patient satisfaction were commendable, Mr. Ram said Coimbatore had grown into an eminent medical centre, serving people from its region and from abroad.
Dr. MGR Medical University Vice-Chancellor Mayil Vahanan Natarajan appreciated the KMCH for being involved in all the core areas of medical science — clinical services, teaching and training and research.
Chairman of the hospital Nalla G. Palanisamy narrated how it began as a 150-bed hospital and had now grown into a 700-bed tertiary centre, with 200 of the beds for cancer patients alone.
Chairman of the PGP Group Palani G. Periasamy, Secretary of the GRG Institutions Nandini Rangaswamy, Chairman of the Poppy's Group A. Sakthivel, Vice-Chairman of the KMCH Thavamani D. Palaniswami, Director of the cancer centre V. Kannan and chief of interventional radiology and imaging Mathew Cherian participated.
Thailand floods: Toll rises past 500
The nationwide death toll from flooding in Thailand climbed past 500 on Sunday, as the polluted black water continued its march through northern Bangkok, pouring across major intersections and a road underneath the capital’s elevated train line.
Floodwaters were also approaching a main road near the city’s Mo Chit bus terminal, a major gateway to northern Thailand. But the bus station remained open, traffic police chief Uthaiwan Kaewsa-ard said.
Three months of intense rainfall have fuelled Thailand’s worst flooding in half a century, swamping much of the country since July and leaving 506 people dead, according to the government. Floodwaters have begun receding in some provinces north of Bangkok, but they have built up around the city, which stands in the way of the water’s natural flow south toward the Gulf of Thailand.
So far, authorities have ordered evacuations in eight of Bangkok’s 50 districts, while seven others are either heavily or partially flooded.
On Saturday, floodwaters began lapping at Bangkok’s largest outdoor shopping zone, the famed Chatuchak Weekend Market, a major tourist attraction north of the city’s central business district. Water was flowing past the market’s eastern side.
In the last few days, it has also begun moving southward in adjacent Lad Phrao, a district studded with office towers, condominiums and a popular shopping mall.
Since late Saturday, water had also inundated a two-lane road underneath the Mo Chit Skytrain station, an elevated train platform that is part of one of the city’s mass transit systems. The road was still passable. Subway service has not yet been affected.
Hoping to divert some of the mass of water still piled up in northern Bangkok, workers Friday night completed a 3.7-mile (6-kilometer) flood wall made from massive, hastily assembled sandbags. But Bangkok will have to rely on its existing drainage system to fight water that was already beyond the wall and just a few miles (kilometres) from the central business district, city spokesman Jate Sopitpongstorn said.
Over the past two decades, the city’s much enlarged and improved drainage system has been able to effectively siphon off water during monsoon seasons with average rainfall. But it will be put to a severe test given the volume of water not seen in Bangkok since perhaps a great flood in 1942.
Sound predictions are difficult because various government officials, including Bangkok’s governor and Thailand’s prime minister, have given often widely different versions of what city residents can expect.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told a radio audience that a plan to be put before the Cabinet on Tuesday would allocate 100 billion baht ($3.3 billion) for post-flood reconstruction.
“I admit that this task has really exhausted me, but I will never give up. I just need the public to understand,” Ms. Yingluck said.
While some roads out of the capital are still passable in every direction, the two major safe corridors from the city run to the south and the east, where Bangkok’s international airport is located. Officials maintain they are confident that Suvarnabhumi Airport the city’s only aerial gateway to the outside world will remain open. Bangkok’s second airport, used for domestic flights, is already underwater and remains closed.
Green innovations for data centres
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What has ‘green' energy got to do with information technology? Plenty, if you ask P. Gopalakrishnan, vice-president, India Software Lab, IBM.
Globally, data centres, which house large stacks of storage and computing power, are one of the fastest growing power consuming segments and, so, they are a prime candidate for a concerted attempt at energy saving, Dr. Gopalakrishnan says.
Based in Bangalore, the lab has spearheaded some of the company's key innovations in energy in the last 10 years, not only in-house but also at its clients' locations worldwide. The lab recently announced that it has deployed an array of solar panels on the rooftop of its facility in Embassy Golf Links in Bangalore.
Dr. Gopalakrishnan says a part of the lab's mandate is to address energy efficiency issues.
“We have two objectives: to drive operational efficiencies and to integrate technologies and showcase them to demonstrate the art of the possible.”
Energy efficiency is not just a matter of use of electrical energy, but also of space in buildings and many other dimensions, he adds. Last year, IBM announced that it delivered a water-cooled supercomputer to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
THREE-PRONGED SOLUTION
The lab has been working on the ‘green' energy data centre for about two years. Dr. Gopalakrishnan says there are three major dimensions in reducing energy consumption, not all of which are about the quantum of power that is drawn from the grid. The first aspect of this is the constant endeavour to use technologies that help reduce the “sprawl” of data centres. “When we started, we had about 30 data centres, but we have consolidated them into a dozen centres in the country now. This has been achieved by innovations in server technologies, which made them denser,” he says.
Automation in data centres is the second prong of the strategy to reduce energy consumption. Real-time monitoring enables data centre administrators to find out which part of the IT infrastructure is being used at what time. While virtualisation helps in doing more with less in terms of hardware, automation makes it possible for the administrator to power down parts of the unutilised infrastructure.
The third aspect of the strategy has been the development of systems using new innovations. For instance, IBM has pioneered the use of water-cooled systems in which the doors of stacks that house hardware contain pipes carrying water, which transfer heat in a far more efficient manner. Other innovations enable “finer grain control” of systems by reducing the frequencies of CPUs or voltages.
TARGETED COOLING
Atop these three dimensions is another layer, not related to a data centre's IT infrastructure per se, but which aims at the energy efficiency of the overall infrastructure. This has to do with the cooling systems, the building layout and other factors that result in lower energy consumption.
Precision cooling systems, for instance, target specific points in a data centre that result in more advanced evacuation of heat from where they are generated. “The systems are reactive in the sense that they not only target but actually vary according to real-time conditions,” explains Dr. Gopalakrishnan. “If a particular storage stack, for instance, is not generating heat, the system will not direct cooler air towards it,” he adds. Thermal mapping technologies, which enable three-dimensional mapping of data centres, provides far more accurate methods of measuring temperature flows inside a data centre.
ICING ON THE CAKE
“Building a solar-powered system was only a logical step for us, given the innovations we had made over the years,” said Dr. Gopalakrishnan. The array of panels on the rooftop of the software lab generates one-fifth of the power requirements of IBM's data centre. It is not just one technology or solution that has enabled this, he says. It is based on systems using multiple technologies, such as high-voltage Direct Current (DC) power systems, using software solutions that integrate and drive these systems, and the use of services capabilities by utilising the skill of people who understand these technologies, he says.
Because computing power in ubiquitous devices such as laptops, mobile phones or desktop computers are all powered by DC, it makes sense to use DC power rather than AC, which is meant for long-range transmission of power, observes Murali Kota, chief scientist, IBM.
“Solar power is ideally suited for a data centre because it is a natural source of DC power,” he says. It eliminates the need for AC-DC conversion, which results in a 10 percentage point gain, when compared to AC power sources, he adds. “As data centres consume tens to hundreds of MW, this saving is not small,” he points out.
A typical data centre, says Dr. Gopalakrishnan, consumes about 250 kilowatts of power.
The official machinery in seven countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region is busy working out details of bilateral meetings with India, even as they finalise their travel plans to the summit venue in The Maldives.
As it happened at a few SAARC meetings, the meetings on the sidelines between India and Pakistan, the two-nuclear powers in the region, have often overshadowed the modest agenda of SAARC.
While the meeting between Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan has evoked a lot of interest, Sri Lanka looks forward to the meeting of President Mahinda Rajapaksa with Manmohan Singh. The meeting comes in the background of a complete lack of progress on the question of a political solution to the aspirations of the Tamils in the Northern Province. It did not help that the main Tamil political formation that the government was holding talks with — the Tamil National Alliance — initially called off the talks, then came back, and is now in a process of seeking support from abroad for its cause.
TNA leaders, led by its leader R.Sampanthan, met a host of leaders and policy makers in the United States, Canada and in the United Nations over the past few weeks. This has not gone down well with Colombo, with some of the UPFA Ministers and leaders terming the move anti-national, and an effort to discredit Sri Lanka.
Even the moderate among those in the government have questioned the move, asking if it was right on the part of the TNA to pre-empt the report on the Eelam war IV and events there of, now in the final stages of preparation by the LLRC (Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission). The LLRC is expected to submit its report to President Rajapaksa by November 15.
The Manmohan-Rajapaksa meeting is expected to examine progress on sorting out issues confronting the relationship. The two leaders met on the sidelines of the U.N. summit, which essentially was built on the meeting of Foreign Secretaries last May in New Delhi.
All Heads of State will attend the two-day SAARC summit in Addu City, The Maldives on November 10 and 11. Most Heads of State, including Mr. Singh, will arrive at Addu City on November 9. The opening ceremony will be preceded by the Foreign Ministers' meeting on November 9. High-level representatives from Australia, Japan and China will participate as observers.
The theme of this year's summit is “Building Bridges” and the focus will be both on increasing physical connectivity as well as figurative political dialogue.
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