Me and IISC: A Farewell  

Created by Rakesh Prabhakara



Like said, you fetch Apples only from the orchards, Grapes from the vineyards and Honey from the hives, you sure fetch Excellency from the Indian Institute of Science (IISC). The aroma of sophistication surely influences your genes unless you wish to grow strawberries out of pine trees. Brewed with the rainwater splashing over my raincoat during my Kindergarten and school days, with the tears of joy of having my first video game and with sweet memories of finches tweeting and singing the spring songs during the Aprils, My 24 years of stay here has injected in me an everlasting aura of benignity, honesty and formidability: Being an IISCian is a legacy, a class, a certification.

Before you deploy yourself off to an alien world outside, just a compound aside or an outsider beside, you still have soil of ages stuck in your roots and this soil shall last till you perish into the abysmal complicacy of the modernization which is an axiomatic proposition: an entrapment of unavoidability. This is due to the variation in the cognition spectrum of the clusters of people living within and outside the campus and your relatives are no exceptions. Besides, you are weaponed with tough shields of intricate Sentiency that only you can feel and never fall for falsely jetted professionalisms and IISC shall assure you of that: you feel like an Iron Man.

IISC is nature in its purest form: Exigency is not the schema of progress here. Of course external world has subsetized certain parts of the campus but if you take Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology, you will see bright yellow amber gums glued to the old British walls of the respective Departments with the DNA of pureness trapped within them, with absolutely no external influences. In fact when you go near these Departments, you get Goosebumps for sure. Do visit it as it is a temple of perpetual mightiness.



Few IISCians that I would like to mention have been highly influential in my life:

1. Mr. Nagendra who was working on genetic coding of groundnuts in the Department of Molecular Biology and who also thought me Vedas after my thread ceremony. I was influenced to music, violin and mrudhangam during this time.

2. Prof. Bhat, the then chairman of Physics Department, who educated me of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and Nanotechnology when I approached him to do my 12th standard Physics Investigatory project on Superconductivity. I had burnt my index finger with Liquid Nitrogen there.

3. Prof. Sharma of Ecological Science department who explicated to me the importance of Bio-diversity with stunning images of his research work on Elephants in the Bandipur National Park. I was the head scout, I guess during my 7th standard.

4. Mr. Ravi Kumar Nair, My Mathematics teacher who bestowed me confidence and courage during my school days; The days of Half-Life 2.

5. Prof. S. Mohan of Instrumentation Department, who enlightened me of the six sigma rules of life, ways to deal with administrative bureaucracy, and ways to focus on the subjects of one’s passion in life.

6. Prof. Ananthasuresh of Mechanical engineering, an M.I.T PostDoc who influenced me when I used to attend his seminars and casual talks. I learnt the following “The four quadrants of life”, “Viswamitra - Nakshatrika system”, “compliant mechanics in autonomous robots” and of course the “Pipe crawler” for which I did some Microcontroller coding.

7. Prof. Patnaik of CEDT who offered me an 8085 board which looked like a jewel box. I tasted the misti-doi (sweet curd) during Durga Pooja with him besides me after I completed my 4th semester summer project under him. I learned a lot about digital electronics under him. He is long retired.

8. Prof. Rudra Pratap, the MATLAB guru of IISC. I met him during the Minnesota bridge collapse incident and he told me that the collapse was due to failed sensor telemetry. He explained the Ubiquitous Sensor Networks (USN) and importance of Analog Integrated Circuits integration with sensors. I happened to watch a firsthand video of astounding Microfab facility, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland that he captured when he was on Sabbatical to EPFL.

My last month of stay in the campus and only I know the pain. A very sacred relationship that we had needs to be terminated on the judgment day being 8th of August on which I shall be leaving to Sacramento. These are some of the things that can’t be explained. Recently when I attended the IISC centenary conference, I saw alumnus who stayed here for more than 50 years and I could hear faint white noise jetting out of them and spreading all over the auditorium of their inexplicable attachments with the IISC. The nostalgia of her beauty, serenity and attire of nihilistic delusion where lectures from great minds would sound like vedic chants of ages, shall haunt me for eternity.

“Bless me oh Mother IISC ! for I shalt bow in front of thee, with hopes and faith".

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My Ten Wishes  

Created by Rakesh Prabhakara

Ever since I hit my puberty and started snuffing through Science magazines, I have dreamt of being a super-human being. I lit two match-box rockets during my school days and both failed to defy the gravity and not only that, they fumigated the entire neighborhood . I messed up my room with an innovative pulley system that could transport coins from one corner to the other with ease. I glued a tethered cork ball to a ceiling fan to see it rotate fuzzily. But with upgradation in imagination, we would want to see "more than that meets the eye".

I shall pen down ten such vague imaginary ideas that i would wish to see, to have, to rule. In the past, when cell phone was introduced into the market, it was a toy for the super-riches, but now it is owned by more than half the population on this planet. The same applies to music record systems which are now found in every pockets. Crystal-ball gazing is a fraught endavour, but I have decided to take the plunge. Here i begin:

1. Super-Vision

Who could ever pass up the chance to try on a pair of real X-ray specs? You may not always like what comes into view, but endowed with Superman-like vision, you would be able to see through solid walls, peer in at your neighbours or keep a watchful eye on your kids upstairs. Unfortunately, they still don’t exist, despite what those flummoxing scenes from the Super-Man movie suggest. Yet there are some technological tricks that can give you the next best thing. Unlike visible light, radio waves can pass through solid materials. In 2006, engineers at Cambridge Consultants in the UK announced they had built a briefcase-sized system called the Prism 200 which can detect people through a brick wall by firing off pulses of ultrawide-band radar and listening for returning echoes.





According to the company, these pulses can pass through building materials over 40 centimetres thick, and spot activity over a range of up to 15 metres. The device could be used to track people in hostage situations, the company suggests, but it has a crucial weakness. To avoid being blinded by walls and other fixed structures, it is designed to only register objects that generate rapidly varying echoes. In other words, it can only detect people when they move. Even human statues would be hard pressed to avoid detection by radar sensor, however. A research team at the Technical University of Munich in Germany has built a device that can pick up tiny motions like breathing, or even a beating heart, through a closed door. His team found that radio waves at between 433 megahertz and 24 gigahertz can pass through skin and bone but are partly reflected by the fatty layer surrounding muscles such as the heart. The team has exploited this by using the Doppler effect to pick up sub-centimeter changes in movement caused by a beating heart or the motion of the lungs. Lets hope to see one such in the near future. Now comes the second one.

2. Disappearing Act

Few dreams have flipped from science fiction to fact as quickly as “invisibility cloaks”. The first , which worked only for microwaves, was unveiled in 2006. Since then the field has been inundated with attempts to make cloaks to rival Harry Potter’s. Cloaking makes an object disappear by steering electromagnetic waves around it – as if the waves had simply passed through. So far, the only way to do this is with “metamaterials”, which are made of electronic components designed to interact with light and direct it in a controllable fashion . The goal is to create a cloak that works for a broad spectrum of visible frequencies. Making these components isn’t easy. They have to be tiny – smaller than the wavelength of light they are designed to interact with. Last year, a group at the University of California, Berkeley , constructed a material that was able to bend – rather than reflect – visible light backwards for the first time.

Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews, UK , has shown how metamaterials could work over a range of frequencies. Even more mind-boggling, a team from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in China has worked out how to cloak objects at a distance . They suggest using “complementary materials” which have optical properties that cancel each other out. A wave polarised on a single plane passing through one material will become distorted, but this distortion is cancelled out as the wave passes through the complementary material, making it look as if neither material is there.

3. Hands-Free Healing

Modern cellphones may do more than a Star Trek “communicator” can, but Doctor “Bones” McCoy’s portable medical scanner, which revealed internal injuries in an instant, is taking longer to appear in the real world. When it does, it may go a step further: engineers are developing a portable scanner to not only spot internal injuries like torn arteries, but also heal them in a flash. The secret of this device is high frequency sound waves. Medics already use these ultrasound beams to examine babies in the womb. But turn up the intensity and focus the beam into a spot and it can generate enough heat to cook tissue. Lawrence Crum at the University of Washington in Seattle has shown that high-intensity ultrasound can cauterise bleeding arteries. His company, Ultrasound Technology, has developed a hand-held device that allows surgeons to cut through blood-rich organs and cauterise the cut at the same time. Crum hopes to test it in humans this year. Weak ultrasound beams can also be used to spot the fast flow of blood characteristic of a bleeding artery.

The US government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a project to combine the two ideas, which will result in the Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation system – a portable device that uses ultrasound to both spot and seal bleeding blood vessels. The device will consist of an array of ultrasound transceivers built into a cuff that can be wrapped round an injured limb. Transceivers emitting low power ultrasound will scan for reflections from damaged arteries. If they spot a leaking blood vessel, the transceivers zap it. To avoid damage to healthy tissue, several beams are carefully focused to meet inside the body where their combined heat will seal the tear.

4. Spider vs gecko

Peter Parker makes it look easy, but replicating his rooftop antics is so difficult it has had researchers climbing the walls for years. The problem is clear: the gloves and shoes of any Spider-Man suit must be able to support the weight of an average person while dangling from the side of a skyscraper. And of course hands and feet must also peel off easily when required – superglue is not an option. For inspiration, researchers have turned to geckos rather than spiders.



In 2003, Andre Geim at the University of Manchester, UK, designed a material with microscopic hairs that mimic those found on geckos’ feet . Intermolecular van der Waals forces, which take effect on tiny scales, encourage each hair to stick to the wall and, because a gecko’s feet are coated with millions of these hairs, the result is a powerful force of attraction. Geim’s material has hairs made from a substance called kapton, and 1-centimetre-square of it, if pressed hard against a vertical surface, can support 1 kilogram. But there may be problems scaling the materials up to a useful size. For example, the hairs need to be longer to provide a large enough surface area to support a person, and long hairs tend to tangle. Nicola Pugno at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy might have the answer. In 2007, he came up with a fir tree-like design , with long carbon nanotubes forming a trunk while shorter nanotubes branched off sideways. He has now made gloves that can support around 10 kilograms each. Nature still has the upper hand, however. Dirt among the artificial hairs would compromise sticking ability. Geckos feet are self-cleaning, a trick way beyond current designs.

5. YOU power your devices

Your cellphone is a marvel of the modern age. Yet no matter how sophisticated it is, it’s useless the moment it runs out of juice. But what if you could dispense with batteries and simply gather all the energy your gadget needs from the world around you? For a start, you could plug it into your shirt. In 2008, Zhong Lin Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta wove a fabric made from zinc-oxide nanowires grown on strands of Kevlar. Each time the material is bent or squeezed, it generates a tiny current. Wang and his team found they could harvest it by coating each fibre with a film of metal.

Gadgets implanted inside your body, such as pacemakers, could be powered by you. David Tran’s team at Stanford University, California, have devised a heart-powered electricity generator . The gadget produces electricity by forcing a small magnet back and forth through a tiny wire coil. The magnet is housed in a liquid-filled silicone tube with a balloon attached to each end, and the whole device is placed within the heart. As the heart beats, the balloons are squeezed in turn, forcing the liquid – and the magnet – back and forwards through the tube. Adam Heller at the University of Texas, Austin, has built a fuel cell that can be implanted in an artery and which uses glucose in the blood as fuel.

6. Jet Packs

Personal jets occupy a curious position inthe world of dream machines becauseengineers have been building and flyingthem for decades. Rocket belts , as they aremore accurately called, famously featuredin the James Bond movie Thunderball in1965, at the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, California, and in the pages of New Scientist in 2005 . It is 40 years since the first rocket belt flew, but all these machines work in the same way – and suffer from the same fatal limitation. Rocket belts generate thrust by catalysing the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide into rapidly expanding steam and oxygen. The trouble is that each machine can carry only enough propellent for about 30 seconds of flight.



Who would want one of those? In1999,a company called Millennium Jet based in Santa Clara, California, built a personal flying machine with two vertically mounted rotors powered by a piston engine. Although promising, the machine crashed during a test flightand the company wound up operations in 2003. And that might have been that, were it not for the Martin Aircraft Company of Christchurch, New Zealand, which last July launched an entirely different kind of jet pack . Its machine is powered by two turbo jet engines, rather than a rocket engine. So it is a bonafide jet pack. The turbojets turn two vertically mounted rotors that provide lift. The machine runs on standard auto fuel and it can fly for 30 minutes on the single tank, with a range of roughly 50 kilometres. It is fitted with a parachute in case of emergencies. The downside is that they cost about Rs.50 Lakhs , the same as a high-end car. The company is already taking orders and hopes to deliver the first production machines in the second half of 2009. “I’d imagined it would be a rich boy’s toy but we’ve had interest from the military, search - and- rescue, and all kinds of groups,” says company founder Glenn Martin. The Martin Jetpack is a little on the large side – it is not so much strap on, as walk into – but if you have always wanted to commute to work with a jet pack, its time to start saving.

7. My other car is a spaceship


Fancy feeling the freedom of weightlessness or watching the sun set from orbit in your very own spaceplane? The prospect of zipping into space whenever you choose may not be as ludicrous as it seems. The biggest hurdle is to find an affordable way to launch a craft into space. The usual approach – essentially stuffing a metal tube full of high-energy fuel and lighting one end – can cost as much as 500 crore Rupees a shot. One way to reduce this is to add wings: the lift these generate helps a craft climb up through the atmosphere, reducing the amount of fuel needed, and thus the weight of the craft. This is the strategy adopted by two private companies, Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace, which are developing craft to ferry paying passengers into space. When it begins operations in 2010, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo will be carried to an altitude of 15 kilometres by a launch plane. At that altitude the spacecraft will detach and its rocket will take over, blasting it into space. XCOR’s smaller Lynx spacecraft will fly the whole way itself, taking off and landing like a plane. The company recently announced it will be charging around 45 Lakh Rupees per ticket – about half the price of seats on SpaceShipTwo. The Lynx, however, will only travel to an altitude of about 61 kilometres and so will not officially reach space – classed as 100 kilometres and beyond – as SpaceShipTwo is intended to do.





Alternatively, why not dispense with on-board fuel completely? According to Leik Myrabo, an engineer at Lightcraft Technologies, your personal spacecraft could fly into orbit on a beam of microwaves shone upwards from the ground . Myrabo has spent a decade developing small spacecraft that are pushed upwards by a ground-based laser. The beam generates an explosive plasma when it strikes the underside of the craft, creating thrust that pushes it skywards. He has now devised a system that uses microwave beams which he says could carry a crewed “lightcraft” into low Earth orbit by 2025 . Myrabo reckons he could power 1000 launches for the cost of a single conventional launch. “I can imagine personal spacecraft taking off within the next 50 to 100 years,” says Patrick Wood from space technology company EADS Astrium, based in Stevenage, UK.

8. Breathe Underwater

Even with scuba gear, you can only stay underwater for as long as the meagre air supply on your back allows. Yet the ocean contains oxygen, so why can’t we swim around like fish, extracting the gas from the water as we need it?

In 2002, a diver spent half an hour submerged in a swimming pool doing just this, breathing oxygen extracted from the water by an artificial gill . The device was built by Fuji Systems of Tokyo, Japan, using high-tech silicon membranes. These are permeable to gases but not liquids, so oxygen can diffuse into the breathing air from the water, while carbon dioxide diffuses out – just like the gills of a fish. But you won’t see divers using artificial gills any time soon, because simple diffusion gills produce dangerously low levels of oxygen.





Israeli inventor Alan Bodner has tried to get around this problem with a gadget that exploits “the champagne effect”: gases dissolved in water bubble out when the pressure cfalls. Bodner has shown his method can produce a breathable gas. Problem solved? Unfortunately not. We need a lot of oxygen and there just isn’t that much dissolved in a litre of seawater. So no matter how efficient the extraction method is, you would have to pump a huge volume of water through it to get enough. And while you do not need to carry air, you do need batteries and the means to make air, which means much more to go wrong. Artificial gills may have a rosier future for other applications, however. Underwater robots powered by fuel cells could use gills to obtain oxygen. They are also likely to be used to get rid of excess carbon dioxide from submarines and underwater habitats, perhaps boosting the oxygen supply at the same time.

9. You speak, it translates

In "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams imagined a small yellow fish, called a Babel fish. When popped into one’s ear, it would use brainwave energy, unconscious mental frequencies and something called a “telepathic matrix” to achieve real-time language interpretation, making conversations with aliens effortless. Well, it’s not yellow, and it doesn’t fit in your ear, but US soldiers in Iraq are using a device that could become a universal interpreter. The soldiers use a system called IraqComm , developed by SRI International in Menlo Park, California, which consists of a laptop loaded with speech recognition and translation software. Speak into the microphone in Arabic and the software turns the phrases into written Arabic, before translating it into English. After the person has finished talking, a computer voice speaks the translation. IraqComm’s software, and other programs like it, learned to translate much as a person would – by studying conversations. The software searches for statistical connections between a series of Arabic statements and English translations. For example, when the Arabic word “haar” appears, so does the word “hot” in the English version (the correct translation). If this occurs frequently enough, the program concludes that they mean the same thing. Given enough examples, the software can learn grammar too. A similar system running on a hand-held PDA, called the Speechalator , was developed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Do not expect these programs to cope with free-flowing language just yet. The IraqComm works well because it focuses on around 50,000 words soldiers need. The broader the subject matter, the harder it becomes for the software to distinguish the alternate meanings required in different contexts. “We’ll get there,” says SRI’s Kristin Precoda.

10. Smell-o-Vision

Whether it is the mouthwatering aroma of a roast dinner, the intoxicating perfume of a woman or the sulfurous smell of gunpowder in the heat of a battle, scent is a powerful force. So imagine the impact of TV and video games if scenes were accompanied by their aromas. That is the idea behind smell-o vision: giving TVs the ability to produce smells that fit the scenes they are displaying. We still don’t know why we perceive certain molecules to have particular scents and so cannot predict the scent of a novel molecule, nor manufacture a novel molecule to have a particular scent.



However, recent advances mean some of these scientific hurdles can be side-stepped, and suggest “smell-o-vision” may become a reality even before we truly understand how olfactory works. We group scents into about three-dozen categories, such as woody, grassy, fecal, floral and so on, says Avery Gilbert, an olfactory scientist who worked with DigiScents, a now-defunct company that developed smell-o-vision technology in the late 1990s. DigiScents built a prototype device that could generate most everyday odours. The smells were not perfect replicas but they were recognizable, says Gilbert. The silver screen is no stranger to smell-o- vision. It began in crude form in cinemas in the 1950s and has recurred periodically ever since. Most recently, in various scenes in select screenings of the film The New World. If it was not difficult enough already, emitting aromas for smell-o-vision has further down sides. How do you prevent the scents you release mixing into an unintended cocktail, or lingering longer than the scene requires? Researchers at Sony may have the answer: avoid the nose completely and go straight for the brain. The company’s plans were revealed in a patent application which described the idea of using ultrasound signals to directly stimulate selective parts of the brain to induce scents in a viewer’s or game player’s mind. Unfortunately, to date there has been no whiff of Sony producing the hardware required.

So, here were my ten wishes. Of course you too would have wished for the same and let me tell ya; it ain't far from reality and one day we shall be wearing such gizmos around. Thank you and I hope you enjoyed this article.

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The Iron Man Demystified  

Created by Rakesh Prabhakara



Six months before the release, when I watched the trailer of the Movie “The Iron Man”, I was knocked out by the special effects and the CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). The conception and the storyline deserved no criticism. Unlike other Hollywood movies likes Terminator Salvation, Star Trek and X-Men Wolverine, there wasn’t much of blood and gore, the movie was straight forward, urbane and joyous. However, hidden amongst us are exemplary critics who would want to go a step further in order to make sure the movie is worth their silence after leaving the theatre room. To add to that, I happened to find revealing images of the Iron Man Suit.

Shot primarily in California, unlike in New York which has been the home ground for numerous super heroes, the director aimed for a more naturalistic feeling in lieu of the background effects being Skyscrapers and swish locales, with stunning locations like the Hill top Malibu house, vehicle assembly building at Kennedy Space Center, Edward Air Force Base, Caesar’s Palace at L.A and many more.

Following are the artistic imprints of the interiors and exteriors of Malibu House:













The main character being Anthony "Tony" Stark/Iron Man is a billionaire industrialist, genius inventor, and consummate playboy, CEO of Stark Industries and a chief weapons manufacturer for the U.S. military. The son of a Manhattan Project engineer, Howard Stark, he is an engineering prodigy, having built a circuit board at four years old and an engine at six, as well as graduating from the M.I.T summa cum laude at the age of 17. He takes charge of Stark Industries at the age of 21 from Stane, who had been in control of the company since Howard's death.

MARK I or MK I:



Let me maneuver towards his “Iron Man Suit” models: Iron Man's armor is the fictional powered exoskeleton worn by the character Tony Stark when he assumes his superhero role of Iron Man.

The Mark I design was intended to look like it was built from spare parts: particularly, the back is less armored than the front, as Stark would use his resources to make a forward attack. The armor was also designed to only have its top half worn at times. The Embassy Visual Effect created a digital version of the Mark I. The following image is a slightly modified version of MK I which was later wore by the Villain himself to fight the Iron Man.



MARK II or MK II:



Slightly modified version of the MK I armor of painting it in gold to make its appearance not as creepy when Stark realized that the MK I's appearance was frightening to everyone around him. His date Marion who went with Stark at a circus suggested the armor be painted gold like a knight in shining armor which Stark conveniently did.



The computer setup that Tony slogged on most of his times:



MK II was armored with the features like Repulsors, functional uni-beam or monobeam ( It functioned chiefly as a spotlight but could be adapted for a heat ray or a "proton beam"), Electricity could now be run through the armor's surface.

After a not-so-successful performance of MK I, Stark decided to make few upgradations: Power systems were improved. An internal air supply was added. Boot Jets were improved. Jet-powered roller skates and a propeller for use in water provided enhanced mobility. The armor's magnetic effects were also boosted. Of note is a beam that could deflect energy. An impact control switch was used to brace the armor. Mirrors were used for the first image inducer. The armor possessed various gadgets: Diamond-edged digging tools, a loudspeaker, "jet stream" discs, Freon tablets, tear gas bombs, even a sledgehammer. Radar and a fluoroscope were used as sensors. Radio communications were enhanced by an antenna and a recorder. After the initial armor was damaged by streaming bullets and grenades, a variant of the armor was used with an aluminum coating.

MARK III or MK III:

Here's the Mark III assembly video:





This armor is the first to implement the trademark red and yellow color schemes. Two main helmets were used with this model: the "horned" mask and the riveted helmet.




Repulsors and the uni-beam became standard weapon. A sonic emitter was also added. In addition to radar, the armor also had sonar, a magnetic repellor, and an energy detector.



Unlike other Action Figure movies in which the hero isn’t some angsty teenager or a borderline underwear model, Tony Stark is a mature man, with deep rooted flaws. My hope is that with this as a setup, we’ll get more of the screwed up egomaniac lurking inside Tony Stark’s helmet, and maybe even a more worthy, creative villain as well. The film is filled with all sorts of geeky references hinting at things to come. Iron Man is good enough that you’ll look forward to seeing them brought to fruition in whatever sequels drop from this tree..........


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I am the legend! am I?  

Created by Rakesh Prabhakara


Heck! I Think

While I was cogitating about this issue sitting at the corner of the class room listening to the brainies bragging about their report cards, I felt low, I felt sad. Had I known that there were few people around the world slogging nights, trudging between labs trying to find a neural theory of everything, I probably would have solaced myself, giving the braggerts the finger.

I came across this article in a Science magazine and would like to share with you all. The 1.4 Kg organ, called 'the Brain', is such a jigsaw puzzle that bringing the pieces of research works together is still a pending paradoxical claim.

The brain is much messier than a physical system. It is the product of half a billion years of evolution. It performs myriad functions – reasoning, memory, perception, learning, attention and emotion to name just a few – and uses a staggering number of different types of cells, connections and receptors. So it does not lend itself to being easily described by simple mathematical laws.

Dad! Am I Analog?



A computer, in the broadest sense, is a device for storing and processing information. In an ordinary digital computer, information is represented by electronic circuits that have two stable states, often denoted 0 and 1.




In a brain, information is represented both dynamically, by trains of action potentials in neurons, and statically, by the strengths of synaptic connections between neurons In a digital computer, information is processed by a small set of "registers" that operate at speeds of billions of cycles per second. In a brain, information is processed by billions of neurons all operating simultaneously, but only at speeds around 100 cycles per second. Thus, brains and digital computers are similar in that both are devices for processing information, but the ways that they do it are very different.



Computational neuroscience encompasses two approaches: first, the use of computers to study the brain; second, the study of how brains perform computation.On one hand, it is possible to write a computer program to simulate the operation of a group of neurons by making use of systems of equations that describe their electrochemical activity; such simulations are known as biologically realistic neural networks. On the other hand, it is possible to study algorithms for neural computation by simulating, or mathematically analyzing, the operations of simplified "units" that have some of the properties of neurons but abstract out much of their biological complexity.



Most programs for digital computers rely on long sequences of operations executed in a specific order, and therefore could not be "ported" into a brain without becoming extremely slow. Computer scientists, however, have found that some types of problems lend themselves naturally to algorithms that can efficiently be executed by brain-like networks of processing elements. One important problem that falls into this group is object recognition: on a digital computer, the seemingly simple task of recognizing a face in a photo turns out to be tremendously difficult, and even the best current programs don't do it well; the human brain, however, reliably solves this problem in a fraction of a second. The process feels almost effortless, but this is only because our brains are heavily optimized for it.



Other tasks that are computationally a great deal simpler, such as adding pairs of hundred-digit numbers, feel more difficult because the human brain is not adapted to execute them efficiently. The computational functions of brain are studied both by neuroscientists and computer scientists. There have been several attempts to build electronic computers that operate on brainlike principles, including a supercomputer called the Connection Machine, but to date none of them has achieved notable success.



brains have several advantages are difficult to duplicate in an electronic including microscopic size processing dimensional arrangement of and the fact that each neuron generates its own power

Uff.... I believe programming a dog is far easier and sensible than programming a nuke scientist planning to pulverize the planet. I hope you enjoyed the article.

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Prolegomena  

Created by Rakesh Prabhakara

When it comes to education system in India, the India of 3rd Century BC to pre-Independence , Three great pillars have maneuvered her to advancements in technology and sociology, all being incomplete to some degree of their establishments; Buddhism, Islam and the British. The post-independent India is 40 years short of a centenary of autonomy of the reformations and revamping of the primitive past and the progress is seconded by the facts that about a score of start-up founders and about 60-70 CEOs and COOs in Silicon Valley, California, United States are Indians .

India has been a storehouse of talents and an eye-candy for foreign investors, nonetheless, she has been a victim of shortages in talent pool within her soil. Subsistence is a natural endowment of the Indian citizens, but, in a generation dictating new constructs and making whimsical propositions, India is in a need of a Brobdingnagian upgradation in the preexistent technology and sociology in order to be visible on the ROAD (Radar Of ADvancement) of Competence.


I have two hands as usual and I promise to discommode them in all possible ways in a metaphysical and positive sense. My intention is to not to feed Gurus with banal ideas but to feed stargazing aspirers with visions of a new world order, a new India.

Thank you for visiting my Blog.

-Rakesh Prabhakara

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