On HIV/AIDS awarenss for Dec 1 - World AIDS day

Here is a short article I wrote on HIV Awareness and the present situation with respect to finding etc on HIV/AIDSMarching towards zero AIDS and zero Stigma

Insights into railway accidents of 2010

Here is a paper that discusses how accidents take place and what are the most risk-prone zones in Indian Railway. Scientists from IIT Kharagpur analyse the 2010 Indian Railway Accidents. My report about the same in The Hindu today Click on this to read the article

And if you have a bit more time to read at leisure, here is a longer version...
 

 

There are many things going on around us that we seem so sure about and yet many times it remains a gut feeling only. For instance the changing of seasons – everyone observes this but we do not seem to have any scientific study that quantifies this change.  Similarly comments about the growing traffic on railways are rife yet many of these comments remain at a subjective level. However, there is news on this front. Moved by the spate of railway accidents that took place in 2010 in India – 19 in all of which 11 were due to derailments or collisions between trains or some sort of failure of the railway system itself (as opposed to fire or faults in the train  or some other reason), Saptarshi Ghosh, Avishek Banerjee and Niloy Ganguly of Complex Network research Group (CNeRG), IIT Kharagpur have taken it upon themselves to analyse this phenomenon.

Published in Physica A, this year, their results are twofold – first, they identify zones of heavy traffic and the reason for accidents as the fact that the number of trains has grown over the years whereas the railroads and routes have not proportionately been scaled up. Second, they identify serious flaws in the scheduling of trains on some routes. They find that if on these routes trains were to run as per the Indian Railways schedule, the system would not be able to handle the traffic. In reality, this is managed by making trains wait at signals because of which there are long delays in runtime of trains.  The second is an alarming result because it holds in its heart the possibility of human errors leading to accidents – what if the signals malfunction or if the driver fails to respond to the signal or some other such disaster? 

The year 2010 was grim in this aspect – there were 19 accidents in all of which 11 fell into the category the authors consider. It had the feature that eight of the eleven shortlisted accidents took place in a zone which they call the Indo Gangetic Plain – a north eastern belt of India.  Noting this, the authors identify statistical parameters to measure this phenomenon and do a statistical analysis of the existing Indian Railway (IR)  express train routes. They find that the Indo-Gangetic Plain hosts some of the most traffic intensive segments of rail routes (7 out of the 20 that they consider high-traffic). Comparing data gathered from 1992 to 2010 from Trains at a glance, they conclude that this is because the infrastructure such as railway lines and tracks have not grown over the years, whereas the number of trains has increased many times. They identify the most risk-prone “trunk segment” as the Delhi-Tundla-Kanpur one and identify the Vishakhapatnam-Vijayawada trunk segment from the southern zone as the “safe standard” owing to the empirical evidence that it has not had any accident so far.

Another parameter is the headway, or time lapsed between two trains as they cross the same point. As the headway reduces, the chance of two trains coming dangerously close to one another increases. On analysis, two segments clearly come out as risk-prone segments The Delhi-Kanpur segment  and the Ahmedabad-Surat segment. The Vishakhapatnam-Vijayawada segment has a much higher headway and therefore is safer, relatively speaking.  Of the two segments with low headway, the Ahmedabad-Surat segment has trains with low headway running throughout the day, whereas in the case of Delhi-Kanpur segment, they are bunched up in the early hours. This once again points out the latter as more unbalanced.

Runtime delays of trains on these segments were also studied and it was found that 20 percent of the trains on the Delhi-Kanpur segment were delayed by more than one hour, whereas about 3 percent of the trains on the Vishakhapatnam-Vijayawada segment were delayed to that extent. The delays reflect the high degree of congestion and frequent waiting of trains at the signals  - which again as pointed out earlier implies a high probability of collision due to malfunctioning of signal or driver failing to react to signal.

To analyse the congestion of traffic at a fine-grained level, a simulation of the traffic flow according to the IR schedule was done. The authors modelled the “block system” followed by Indian railways. A railway track is divided into block sections (of about 4 km to 8 km) such that when one train is occupying a block, no other train is allowed to enter that block on the same track.  At the end of the block, there are signals or stations which control the traffic entering the block.

From the simulation, it transpires that if all trains were to keep to the schedule and not stopped by signals etc, then for trains in the Indo Gangetic plain (IGP) there would be more than two (or three) trains in one block quite frequently. Now, while some blocks have three tracks, most of the IR blocks have only two tracks and so can accommodate at most two trains. So this indicates that the infrastructure is not sufficient to handle the traffic and this is only being managed by stopping trains and delaying them beyond the schedule. This is an alarming result because it implies that if the trains ran as per the schedule, for the IGP trains, the infrastructure would not be able to accommodate all of them. This is a result that begs for proportional improvement of infrastructure.

Do they have an alternate method for scheduling trains which may be safer? Niloy Ganguly replies, “We would like to do a study on better scheduling of IR trains, but it will only be meaningful if we get to know the present infrastructure accurately, e.g., the traffic handling capacities of different routes, etc…  we had requested the IR authorities for these information, but are yet to receive any favourable reply from them.”

How sound is the rationale behind keeping the south zone route as a safe standard? Is it not better to keep an absolute value on safety?  The author says, “It will definitely be better to use an absolute standard, but we do not know of any such standard for IR…. Note that there have been derailment / collisions even in south India in 2012. Hence, some segments in south India also seem to be nearing the risky zone. However, this means that the condition of IGP is even worse than what we had estimated in our paper (since the safe standard itself is no longer very safe)”.

Thulir Magazine completes twenty-five years

Thulir a children's science magazine that runs completely on volunteer efforts completes twenty five years of circulation... my report on the celebrations

Click here to read the article

Not just for the scientists - Citizen Science in India

This is a link to my article on Citizen Science in India ...


Citizen Science Initiative

Please add your constructive comments below...

And the Winner Is ....

 An article on the 2012 physics Nobel Prize, written for 12-13 year olds...

 
Who won? Serge Haroche and David Wineland for “ ground-breaking experimental
methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum
systems.

What does that mean? When you go down to very small distances, you see
matter in the form of atoms. Similarly light also is made up of particles
called photons. These are not “classical” particles like a ball or a book,
but they are “quantum” particles. They have some very strange properties
that make it very, very difficult to isolate them and measure their physical
properties like momentum or position, energy or angular momentum.


In Wineland’s lab, using electric fields, ions were trapped in a small area
and then excited using laser pulses. It is a great feat to isolate
individual atoms and to put them in specific quantum mechanical states.


Haroche and coworkers trapped photons in a cavity made of special reflecting mirrors and then by sending in specially prepared ions one by one into the cavity, inferred the presence or absence of photons there and measured their quantum state.


Why does it matter? You may have heard about atomic clocks. They are a way
of measuring time using the oscillations of a caesium atom. Now you can have an optical clock which consists of just one ion or two ions in a trap. One ion’s oscillations are used to keep time, and the other ion is used to read the first one without destroying its quantum state. These clocks will be a hundred times more accurate than the caesium atomic clocks.


Another application is in building quantum computers.  Classical computers
work on binary logic, that is, their basic building blocks are bits that can
exist as 0 or 1. Now you have a quantum system that can be in a mixture of
states, a 0 and a 1 at the same time. A basic logic operation has been
demonstrated with these quantum particles and so we may have quantum
computers that work on quantum bits or q-bits in the future.
Complicated? But then who ever said getting the Nobel prize was easy?

A rose by any other name

The latest crib is about my name... wish it was smaller - my brother-in-law once said there cannot be a woman who wouldn't be happier thinner and richer. Well here's one that conforms to his idea, but wishes not only were she thinner but also that her name were smaller. Reason - why it's simple - only if it is shorter would my readers - already tired and world weary - would get up, open their email and type the letters and respond to my articles by sending in readers' comments...

Well, I am joking at least partly on the above. Names are always a pain, at least your own are always. they are too bland, too boring , too, long or too short or some such thing... after all not everyone can be a Mimusops Elengi or an Erythrina indica or an Azotobacter or an Anthurium... 

One thing I am glad about is my name being long allows a half-length shortening which sounds adorable. Well not by itself but it sounds adorable because its a half-length shortened form... sort of friendly like..

There was a rush once among parents to name their child something beginning with an A... suddenly you could see little Adityas and Akilas and Anands and Aditis frolicking in the playgrounds merrily... no doubt with the subtext that the race had begun and there was only room for the alphas... My parents thankfully gave me a lethargic S as an initial... It was an S that shaped my whole life and attitude no doubt. Come to think of it the Anands and Aarathis (spelt correct believe me) in my life were just that weeny bit more aggressive -
(no that's a lie -- they were much much more aggressive than that)...

There seems to be no way out of this I am committed to a long set of names...  in practice. However there is a way out in principle - I have all these characters I write about - what a lot of names to name. I can exercise every idea in my head and satisfy every longing too by naming my characters as I please.
Don't be surprise next if you come across a story about a Mimus or a Rina or an Anthuria...

Good Day!

Thirty Rupees Taramani to Adyar

I read in a news report that auto rickshaw fares in Chennai have shot up to such a level that they are more expensive than even flight charges ...I was totally impressed. Do you mean to say I am actually living the life of a princess - taking the equivalent of an expensive flight to office everyday?

The autorickshaw drivers of Chennai are a unique breed.  In every other city I am told they fall in line with the government's order of following a meter rate. I am intrigued by the fact that the Chennai guys alone manage to thwart the government's ideas to impose a check on them. Is it because they have a strong union or is it because they enjoy the patronage of the middle class? I am rather inclined to believe that it is the latter that protects them and makes them so resilient and resistant to change.

I have lived in this city ever since I can remember - I should say that's long enough for me to forget exactly how long - and one way of marking time for me has been the changing auto rickshaw fares. I remember travelling from Radhakrishnan road in Mylapore up to nanganallur and back for just fortyfive rupees. That is a memory from my childhood to be cherished now.

Much later when I was doing my PhD in Matscience, I used to go to my aunt's house in adyar very often - paying the grand sum of thirty rupees, of course haggling over one or two rupees to reach there  - highly hassled and entertained - One day, I was cross with my aunt for some reason and I had with me a fifty rupee note that she had gifted me - so cross that on that day when the autorickshaw dropped me at Taramani, instead of the usual thirty or so rupees I chucked the whole fifty at him and said - Go man  - (though not quite in the same way that Gautami does, rather more famously, in Devar Magan - The bloke was stunned. For a whole minute he looked. First at the fifty, then at me and then in front and started his auto with a vengeance and drove off at top speed before I could change my mind... God knows he must have thought there was something the matter with me...

There are many such auto stories - If I had the talent of R. K. Narayanan I would be able to write an amusing and perhaps even moving account about autorickshaw drivers... but this is all I can do and so let's wait until inspiration really strikes until I can pen down a better story....

The Kudankulam crisis

The crisis at Kudankulam is an example of what can happen if one section is allowed to remain uneducated and under developed. The government is facing this crisis only because it never included these people in the decision making right from the start. In other words the time for nuclear power has not yet come to India.

At this juncture the government is morally bound to stop its development and growth agenda and change the politics drastically to focus on development of backward people and equity and only then can it continue with "Growth plans"...

ISRO and Idinthakarai - a prayer

It is a week of celebrations on the one hand. The Madras High Court completed 150 years yesterday and with the president and law minister and justices of the supreme and high courts coming in it was no small fete, as the size of the invitation card would have you believe...

Today ISRO is going to have its 100th launch... after the recent furor over the Antrix deal and so on this is a welcome celebration for them. Apparently the chairman of ISRO went to tirupati and placed the model of the vehicle that is going to be launched at the feet of the deity for good luck. Anyway, it is clear that the ISRO is very nervous about the launch and wants it to go off successfully... There aren't even any telecasts of the launch from any of the hundreds of TV stations...

But at Idinthakarai it is a totally different story. the people of the village plan to lay siege to the Kudankulam Nuclear power plant and stop the fuel reloading that is planning to take place there today.  Police have warned that they will even resort to force to get the thing done...

Shall I fly to Tirupati to pray that all will be well?

But the Lord there is over busy... individual pilgrims get no chance to even get a glimpse of the deity leave alone stand and pray extensively. The occasional ISRO chairman is who will get some time at the sanctum...
Will He have time to turn and glance at the protestors and avert any disaster from taking place?

ஹிக்ஸ் போஸான் பற்றி எனக்கு தெரிந்தவை- பகுதி - 1

ஜெனீவாவின் CERN நிறுவனத்தில் கொண்டாட்டம்தான் – 60 வருடங்களாய் ஆராய்ச்சி செய்ததன் பயன் – அவர்கள் தேடிக்கொண்டிருந்த ஹிக்ஸ் துகளை கண்டுவிட்டதாய் கிட்டத்தட்ட ஊர்ஜிதம் செய்தார்கள். இந்த ஹிக்ஸ் துகள்தான் நாளடைவில் கடவுள் துகள் என்றெல்லாம் பெயர் பெற்றுவிட்டது. கடவுளை தேடுவதுபோலதான் இந்தத் துகளை தேடினாலும் எளிதில் கிடைக்கவில்லை. சரி இந்த ஹிக்ஸ் துகள் என்பது என்ன என்று பார்ப்போம்.

1960களில் பீட்டர் ஹிக்ஸ் என்பவர் தான் இந்தத் துகளின் இருப்பைப் பற்றி எலெக்ட்ரோ-வீக் கோட்பாட்டில் வருவதாய் தன்னுடைய ஆராய்ச்சித் தாளில் எழுதினார். இந்த கோட்பாட்டுடன் நெருக்கமான தொடர்பு கொண்டது ஸ்டாண்டர்டு மாடல் எனப்படும் கோட்பாடு. இவைகளைப் பற்றியும் ஹிக்ஸை பற்றியும் புரிந்து கொள்ளவேண்டுமானால் நாம் முதலில் இயற்பியலின் அடிப்படை தேடலை பற்றி தெரிந்து கொள்ள வேண்டும். இயற்பியலின் அடிப்படை கூற்று இது தான் – உலகில் உள்ள எல்லா விதமான செயல்பாடுகளும் நான்கு வகையான விசைகளிலிருந்து தான் உருவாகின்றன – அவற்றை – Strong Force (வலிய விசை), Electromagnetic Force (மின் காந்த விசை) , Weak Force (மெல்லிய விசை) , Gravitational Force (ஈர்ப்பு விசை) என்று அழைக்கிறோம். இதில் முதல் மூன்று வகை விசைகளையும் சேர்ந்தார்போல புரிந்துகொள்ளக்கூடிய கோட்பாடே  Standard Model எனப்படும் கோட்பாடாகும். ஈர்ப்பு விசை மற்ற மூன்றிலுமிருந்து சில வகைகளில் மாறுபட்டது. அதிலும் மிகவும் மெல்லியதானது. அதனால் அதை சேர்த்து ஒருங்கிணைந்த கோட்பாட்டை யாராலும் உருவாக்க முடியவில்லை. இன்னும் சொல்லப்போனால் ஈர்ப்புவிசையை முழுதாகப் புரிந்துகொள்ளக்கூடிய ஒரு கோட்பாடே இன்னும் உருவாகவில்லை – String Theory இந்தப் புரிதலை கொஞ்சம் நெருங்கியிருப்பதாய் சொல்லலாம்.

சரி, இந்த ஹிக்ஸ் துகளுக்கும் மேலே சொன்ன கோட்பாடுகளுக்கும் என்ன ச்ம்பந்தம்? 1960களில் மின்காந்த விசையையும் வீக் விசையையும் இணைக்கும்போது அந்தக் கோட்பாட்டை முழுமை செய்ய ஒரு கனமான துகள் தேவைப்பட்டது. இந்த துகள் உடைந்து மின்காந்த விசையின் விசைத் துகளான ஃபோட்டான்களுக்கும் மற்றும் வீக் விசையின் விசைத் துகள்களான W, Z போசான்களுக்கும் அவைகளுக்குண்டான நிறையைத் (Mass) தருகிறது. இந்தக் கோட்பாட்டை பற்றி முதலில் பீட்டர் ஹிக்ஸ் என்னும் விஞ்ஞானி 1964இல் ஒரு ஆராய்ச்சித் தாள் எழுதி Physics Letters என்னும் பத்திரிகைக்கு அனுப்பினார். அதன் ஆசிரியரான யோசிரோ நம்பு என்னும் ஜப்பானிய விஞ்ஞானி, அதை பிரசுரிக்காமல் திருப்பி அனுப்பினார். அதற்கு அவர் சொன்ன காரணம் என்னவென்றால் இந்தக் கோட்பாட்டின் இயற்பியல் கோணங்களை கொஞ்சம் விவரித்து எழுத வேண்டும் என்பதுதான். பீட்டர் ஹிக்ஸ் ஒரு சில வரிகளை இணைத்தார் - அவற்றில் இந்த கனமான துகளுக்கான தேவையை பற்றியும் விவரித்தார். ஆனால் அதை வேறொரு பத்திரிகையான Physical Review Lettersக்கு அனுப்பி வைத்தார். மற்ற சில விஞ்ஞானிகளும் இந்தக் கோட்பாட்டை முன்னிறுத்தினார்கள். இருந்தாலும் இந்தத் துகளுக்கு ஹிக்ஸின் பெயர் வழங்கப்பட்டது. 

கோட்பாட்டளவில் ஹிக்ஸ் துகள் 1960களிலேயே நுழைந்துவிட்டாலும் அதை ஆராய்ச்சிக்கூடத்தில் கண்டெடுக்க படாத பாடுபட்டார்கள். புரோட்டான்களை மிகுந்த வேகத்துடன் மோத விட்டு அதனால் ஏற்படும் துகள்களில் தேடி பார்த்தார்கள், ஆனால் இதுதான் ஹிக்ஸ் என்று தீர்மானமாய் சொல்லக்கூடிய வகையில் எந்த முயற்சியும் கைகூடவில்லை. கிட்டத்தட்ட 50 வருட தேடல்களுக்கு பின்னால். இப்போது 125 கிகா எலெக்டரான்வோல்ட் நிறை கொண்ட ஒரு துகளை கண்டுபிடித்திருக்கிறார்கள். இது தான் ஹிக்ஸ் என்று உறுதிப்படுத்த இன்னும் சில பரிசோதனைகள் செய்ய வேண்டியிருக்கிறது.

ஹிக்ஸ் துகளைப் பற்றி இன்னும் ஒரு சுவாரசியமான செய்தி உண்டு. இந்த துகள் போஸான் என்னும் வகையான துகளாகும். இந்த போஸான் வகைகளின் பெயர் இந்திய இயற்பியலாளரான சத்யேந்திர நாத் போஸின் பெயரிலிருந்து வந்தது. அவர் மேற்கு வங்கத்தை சேர்ந்தவராவார்.

போஸான் துகள்கள் சத்யேந்திரநாத் போஸ் கண்டுபிடித்த போஸ்-ஐன்ஸ்டெயின் புள்ளியியலின்படி நடந்துகொள்பவை. சத்யேந்திரநாத்துக்கு இதற்கான பாராட்டை வழங்கவேண்டும் என்று ஐன்ஸ்டெயின்தான் இந்தத் துகள்களுக்கு போஸான்கள் எனறு பெயர் வழங்கினார். 

My take on unravelling the Higgs Boson...

It was grand day at CERN in Geneva when the physicists announced the discovery of the by now famous particle known as the Higgs Boson. Over time this has been come to be known as the God Particle. Like a search for God, this particle has been a very elusive customer – is that why perhaps it has been so called? In any case, this is a very important discovery for the Standard Model of Physics which is a model of how all interactions take place in nature. All the particles predicted by the Standard Model have been seen in experiments except this one, that is why it becomes such an important discovery. 

What is the Standard Model? To understand that, we have to know that physics is based on the concept that there are fundamentally only four forces in nature – Electromagnetic, Strong, Weak and Gravitational. The aim of physics is to construct a theory that will explain all of these forces completely. The theory that describes three of these interactions is known as the Standard Model. It describes Strong, Weak and Electromagnetic interactions and attempts are on to unify this with a theory of gravity.

In the 1960s, during the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interactions,the theory demanded that there should be a heavy particle which decays to give the other particles their mass. This was the theory of the Higgs. The theory predicted the mass of the Higgs particle. This particle would differentiate between the photon, which is massless and the field particle of the electromagnetic field, and the W and Z bosons, which are heavier and correspond to the weak field. In the standard model, the strong interactions are also unified and the quarks and gluons, which are the fundamental particles involved in strong interactions come into the picture. So it came about that the Higgs particle when it interacts with other particles, gives them a mass in proportion to the strength of its interaction.

Now all was right with the theory. However the practice proved to be really difficult. Particle physicists had their time cut out trying to find this particle. They devised several high-energy proton collision experiments in which they expected to see this particle but it kept eluding them. Finally after about fifty years of search and research, at CERN in Geneva, in two separate experiments, physicists sighted a bump in the spectrum which corresponds to a particle with a mass 125 gigaelectronvolts. The mass is close to that predicted by the theory. From the frequency of occurrence of this bump in collision experiments, they have concluded it is not just a resonance, or a short lived quantum state, but a real proper particle, and that too, the elusive Higgs itself! They need to go through a few more experiments to confirm this absolutely. But to all intents and purposes, as Rolf Heuer, Director of the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) put it, ‘As a layman, I think we did it. We’ve a discovery. We’ve observed a new particle that is consistent with the Higgs Boson.’

On Cheats and Social Engineering

This is an article published in the Hindu in School. It is an article for schoolchildren on the hazards of using social media unwisely.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/article3409926.ece

About the National Tsunami Early Warning System

This is an article for school children on the National Tsunami Early Warning System, published by the Hindu in School.

 http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/article3368384.ece

About RISAT-1

This is the article on India's first indigenous RADAR imaging satellite. This was published in The HIndu In School.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/article3358235.ece

Not Faster Than LIght After All

This is an article published in The Hindu in School . It is about the debacle regarding  the faster-than-light  neutrinos:
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/article3294804.ece

Transit of Venus Part 2

Here is an article I wrote about the Transit of Venus  in The Hindu In School

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/article3487861.ece

Transit of Venus vying with the Monsoons - Part 1

We have had two chances in our lifetimes to see Planet Venus traipsing across the disc of the Sun. On 8 June 2004 came the first of the pair of transits of Venus and the second, on June 6, 2012, will be the last in this century. The next time people on earth will witness the rare spectacle of Venus moving across the disc of the Sun will be in December 2117. So this event has caused a flurry among astronomers professional and amateur.

If Venus orbits the Sun in the same plane as the orbit of the Earth we would see such transits often. But since its orbit is inclined to the Earth by about 3.4 degrees, when Venus passes between the Sun and Earth every 1.6 years, it is usually a little below or a little above the line joining Earth and Sun. We only see transits on those rare occasions when the three objects are in an inferior conjunction, or a straight line with the Sun and Venus on the same side of the Earth. When Venus passes between the Sun and the Earth near the nodes a transit occurs. The points where the orbit of Venus crosses the Ecliptic are called the Nodes.

Transits of Venus take place at regular intervals, four times in 243 years, and in pairs separated by eight years. There is such a pair, then there is a span of 105.5 years without any transit then another pair separated by eight years and then a gap of 121.5 years.

The first recorded viewing of the transit was by Jeremiah Horrocks in 1639, about thirty years after the discovery of the telescope.  Since then transits have been observed in 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882 and 2004.

In order to promote the idea of viewing the celestial event, the Tamilnadu Science and Technology Centre supported by Vigyan Prasar has held awareness camps all over the country. Workshops for teachers were held in April and May each lasting three days for about 50 people selected from schools close to that area. The last of these camps was held at Anna Science Centre – Planetarium in Tiruchirapalli between 25 and 27 May 2012,  for Post-graduate teachers; Elementary education officers and Science communicators from Kerala, Puducherry and parts of southern Tamilnadu. About 65 people participated in the workshop.

Annular Solar Eclipse over China Japan and Western USA

On 20 and 21 May, some parts of China, Japan and Western United States will witness an annular solar eclipse, or eclipse of the sun. Depending where they are on the path of the eclipse on earth, people will be able to see the sun as a glowing diamond ring. Others will be able to see the sun as a crescent.

This eclipse will sweep over a width of 240-300 km track from eastern Asia, the northern Pacific ocean and western United States. The eclipse begins at sunrise over southern China at 2206 GMT and then travel to southern Japan. Residents of Tokyo can see an annular phase for about fifteen minutes starting from 2232 GMT. Then the shadow passes over the Pacific ocean over a long stretch of 7000 km in about two hours. It touches the states of Oregon and northern California by which time it will be evening as per local time in those states.
   

With the advanced technology we have now, solar eclipses can be predicted well in advance. But do you know what is an eclipse and why they occur only on special occasions. As seen from earth, an eclipse of the sun can only occur on a new moon day. This is when the moon passes between the sun and the earth. Whenever the shadow of the moon falls on the surface of the earth, those areas can view an eclipse. This is the blocking of the light from the sun, so that the sun’s disc appears partially or completely blackened.

We may think that such an eclipse can occur on every new moon day, but that is not the case. This is because the moon’s orbit around the earth is tilted at five degrees to the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun.

Roughly twice a year there is a solar eclipse on earth. But these are not viewed each time. Mostly, the eclipses fall on remote areas or cover really small areas of the earth’s surface and so they go unviewed. At other times during an eclipse there are clouds that block the view and prevent enthusiasts from watching the celestial phenomenon.

People go to remote areas therefore to watch the eclipses when they happen. The best areas to view this eclipse of 20-21 May are said to be the desert areas of Nevada, southern Utah and northern Arizona.

The next time the earth will witness a total solar eclipse is predicted to be on 13 November 2012 over northern Australia and Southern Pacific. The next time there will be an annular eclipse over parts of India is 26 December 2019.

 

Restructuring of the MGNREGA in Tamilnadu for the year 2012-13.

More than 400 acres of land go uncultivated this season in Kuthambakkam village of Tiruvallur District. This village is some 40 km from Chennai, in Tamilnadu. ‘Much of this is a side-effect of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)’ says former panchayat chief R. Elango. He has been working with this scheme since 2007. ‘This is the first time I have seen fields filled with water but going uncultivated, it is a shame,’ he adds. Kuthambakkam village is only one case in point. The situation is similar in many villages in India. The reason it seems is the drifting of regular farm labour towards the alternate employment offered under the MGNREGA. However, there are changes planned from this budget year in the scheme. Tamilnadu is seeing both an increase in the allotment of funds and a reallocation of work.

The MGNREGA was introduced in the year 2005 and comes under the ministry of rural development. It is a scheme designed to support labourers in villages by offering them guaranteed employment for 100 days in a year. The work consisted of deepening water bodies such as ponds, streams and rivers in public land. Aimed at creating assets for the village communities, the MGNREGA comes as a blessing. One reason is that employment opportunities are per se scarce in villages. The second is employment on farms is itself dependent on the season. However the ministry of agriculture raised a protest that this scheme eats into farm labour by taking them away. This in turn led to a labour crisis in farms, they said. To resolve this, the minister for rural development Mr Jairam Ramesh announced that in the budget 2012, provisions will be made to build jobs compatible with agriculture into the MGNREGA scheme. These include work such as rice cultivation, soil conservation, building shelters for cattle and poultry etc.

The ensuing budget reflected these changes. Tamilnadu alone has been sanctioned 5000 crores for the MGNREGA for the year 2012-13. This forms about 15 percent of the total, which is 33000 crores. This is a large fraction of money. It reflects that Tamilnadu exhausted nearly 82 percent of the total money allotted last year. According to K. P. Munusamy, Minister for Local administration, Rs 3675.31 crores was allotted for Tamilnadu in the year 2011-12. Of this the amount spent was Rs 3000 crores, which comes to 82 percent. The reward for this efficient utilization of funds is the increased allocation for 2012-13.

In addition there are changes planned for the way to utilize this money. In earlier years, the work had been restricted to deepening water bodies in public lands. From 2012-13, the range will be extended to include farms owned privately. Minister K.P.Munusamy, speaking in the assembly (9 April 2013) said lands of 8 lakh dalit farmers, 16 lakh small farmers and 1.5 crore marginal farmers will come to be included in the MGNREGA from this year onwards. This inclusion of farmlands is expected to reduce the above mentioned crisis of land going uncultivated

The earthquake off Sumatra came and went and though it was a pretty scary few minutes when the buildings rocked, it went without giving rise to death or destruction, unlike its predecessor in 2004. It was a major relief with the Tsunami Warning Systems all in place and thankfully no Tsunami. What is going to be our stand after experiencing this tremor in Chennai. After effects of a 8.6 Richter earthquake .. what are the implications for development even in our environments and also importantly what are the implications for the Nuclear power plants planned in these regions?