for_sv's blog

India special: The next knowledge superpower

Was there ever a doubt!

- India special: The next knowledge superpower
In just a few years, more than 100 IT and science-based firms have located R&D labs in India. Big changes are making the country a centre of innovation.

- India special: Space programme presses ahead
While detractors say India cannot afford a space programme, Indira Gandhi believed it was vital for India's development - the Moon is on the agenda.

- India special: The silicon subcontinent
Some of the biggest names in IT are heading towards Bangalore once more, but now it's the brightest minds they seek - not cheap labour

- India special: Millions get mobiles
The country is becoming connected as never before, and the consequences could be dramatic

- India special: Making science pay
R A Mashelkar is running a one-man campaign to create an enterprise culture in India: to bring science and industry together to benefit the country.

- India special: Vaccines for pennies
An Indian husband and wife team risked everything to build a facility producing the hepatitis B vaccine for just 28 cents per shot

- India special: Radio telescope offers dishes to savour
Why astronomers are flocking to India's wine country.

- India special: Closing the door on generic drugs
Recent changes in India's unusual patent laws mean the country's recently booming drugs industry is risking everything to stay afloat.

- India special: The returning scientist
Physicist Shobo Bhattacharya spent decades in leading US labs before returning to India to direct the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai.

- India special: The IT pioneer
In 1981, Nandan Nilekani was one of seven engineers who scraped together $250 to start a software company in India - annual sales now exceed $1 billion

- India special: Welcome to the global village
The internet has arrived in Pinjavakkam - a village with only 500 residents, intermittent electricity and five telephone lines.

- The mystery of disappearing gravity
Gravity is a force unlike the other fundamental forces of the universe - and it might be leaking into other dimensions. Bruce Schechter follows its trail.

- India special: Bold plans for the nuclear future
India's energy needs are set to soar over the coming decades and the nuclear option is embraced as the key to meeting the demand.

- India special: Sight for sore eyes
An Indian charity hospital is pioneering an innovative stem-cell-based cure for blindness - its success rate is impressive.

February 19, 2005 in Reality, World News | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 18, 2005

A Painting a Day

Some of us have a hard enough time just brushing our teeth and watering the plants each day, let alone undertaking anything as ambitious as creating an entire work of art. But that's just what Richmond, Virginia, artist Duane Keiser is attempting. Since early December, he's been a-paintin' and a-postin' postcard-sized oil sketches daily, and they're really quite lovely. Some are still lifes of food or common everyday objects. Others are scenes of nature or common things seen in a new light. Check out the December and January archives to survey his entire oeuvres. If we only had a nickel each time he posted...

Check Duane Keiser's homepage too.

February 18, 2005 in Art | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 17, 2005

John Maxwell Hamilton: Vietnam fights for liberty after WWII

I take great pride in being the first one to bring this best seller novel to the world through my blog (January 14 2005) and now the world is talking about it!

Published on Sunday, January 30, 2005 by John Maxwell Hamilton Special to The Plain Dealer. Hamilton is dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University.

Write about what you know." No one better exemplifies the wisdom of this admonition to writers than veteran newsman Seymour Topping.

The setting of Topping's historical novel is Vietnam at the end of World War II, not long before he became the first American correspondent stationed in the country. The central issue is the fate of the Vietnamese people, who yearn for independence rather than a return to French control.

Fatal Crossroads: A Novel of Vietnam 1945 by Seymour Topping

The French and Vietnamese, both of whom have vying factions, are not the only ones to figure in this fateful story. The defeated Japanese, who have yet to completely surrender in Vietnam, do not want to see Westerners rule an Asian country. The British, whose job it is to disarm the Japanese, favor preserving colonization. The Chinese commu- nists and the Soviets have their interests -- and intrigues. And there is the United States, which in the end fails by not playing a strong enough role at this "Fatal Crossroads" in history. Topping's tragic hero is Travis Duncan, a U.S. foreign-service officer who is detailed to the Office of Strategic Services or OSS, the wartime forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency. Duncan's mission is to link up with nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, who is hiding in the countryside, and report back on his aspirations. Duncan's mission is complicated -- and abetted -- by love interests with a Vietnamese woman he had known when stationed in Saigon in the 1930s and with a Frenchwoman who works for France's M.5 intelligence service while posing as a journalist.

Duncan finds Ho a contradictory figure, at once unwilling to rein in his brutal general, Vo Nguyen Giap, and yet interested in democratic ideals. Ho asks Duncan for a copy of the Declaration of Independence and incorporates language from it in the speech he gives upon entering Hanoi.

"I'm first a nationalist and then a member of the Communist Party," Ho tells Duncan. "Independence is my paramount goal." Accordingly Duncan argues the United States should press France's new leader, Charles De Gaulle, to establish phased-in independence for the Vietnamese.

Our hero maintains this point of view despite the danger of being labeled soft on communism, an issue that is becoming political at home. He is equally courageous when sent to Saigon ostensibly to repatriate American prisoners held by the Japanese. In reality, he is there to work behind the scenes to avert a French takeover, which he correctly foresees leading to protracted bloody fighting.

Duncan's French lover is also disillusioned with her country's Vietnam policy. When the British declare him persona non grata and he must leave Saigon, Duncan and his lover agree to reunite soon. That is not to be.

Topping, whose career includes stints abroad for The New York Times, for which he served as managing editor, is one of our country's most distinguished journalists. OSS involvement with Ho, which Topping learned about while a correspondent in Saigon, has been substantiated in memoirs that he has drawn upon. This is Topping's second historical novel and an engaging story that is well told. After years of reporting, Topping's strength quite naturally comes more in providing facts than, say, in writing clever dialog. In fact, he uses every inch of the story, including much of his characters' conversations, to fill in facts related to this complicated history. The virtue of this historically careful approach is that it delivers more than a good story. Duncan vividly and poignantly personifies what could have been right with U.S. policy but was not.

Vietnam did not command much attention from American policymakers in those fateful years. Consumed with countering the threat of the Soviet Union in Europe and not wanting to alienate De Gaulle, U.S. policymakers ignored Ho's overtures. As Topping suggests, more attention could have prevented the tragic war that consumed so many American lives.

Hamilton is dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University.

February 17, 2005 in Books, Columnists | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 16, 2005

Tsunami throws up India relics

The deadly tsunami could have uncovered the remains of an ancient port city off the coast in southern India.

Archaeologists say they have discovered some stone remains from the coast close to India's famous beachfront Mahabalipuram temple in Tamil Nadu state following the 26 December tsunami.

They believe that the "structures" could be the remains of an ancient and once-flourishing port city in the area housing the famous 1200-year-old rock-hewn temple.

Three pieces of remains, which include a granite lion, were found buried in the sand after the coastline receded in the area after the tsunami struck.

February 16, 2005 in World News | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 15, 2005

Fireman use snowballs to quench flames

Romanian firefighters managed to put out a fire in an apartment by throwing snowballs through the window.

They used snowballs because they could not got their fire engines close enough to the building in Sibiu.

Fire crews arrived within minutes of the alarm being raised by neighbours of the elderly woman who lived in the apartment.

But icy roads prevented them from getting close enough to the building to use their hoses so they resorted to desperate measures.

Chief firefighter Florian Chioar told National newspaper: "We had to do something because our cars couldn't get near that building. So we used the snow and put out the fire in about 30 minutes."

February 15, 2005 in Info | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 14, 2005

women are too intelligent

A woman goes to England to attend a 2-week, company training session. Her husband drives her to the airport and wishes her to have a good Trip. The wife answers: "Thank you honey, what would you like me to bring for you?"

The husband laughs and says: "An English girl!!!"

The woman kept quiet and left.

Two weeks later he picks her up in the Airport and Asks: "So, honey, how the trip was?"

"Very good, thank you." "And, what happened to my present?"

"Which present?" She asked?

"The one I asked for- the English girl!!"

"Oh, that" she said "Well, I did what I could; now we have to wait a few months to see if it is a girl!!!"

Moral of the story: "Don't tempt a woman, they are too intelligent"

February 14, 2005 in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Solar Cell implant for the blind

Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair. Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is scheduled for a later date.

Rush principal investigator Dr. John Pollack performed the surgeries with Dr. Kirk Packo, Dr. Pauline Merrill, Dr. Mathew MacCumber, and Dr. Jack Cohen. All are members of Illinois Retina Associates, S.C., a private practice group and are on the Rush faculty. Patients leave the hospital the same day and will be followed for two years as part of the study, and then indefinitely.

The patients were recruited from a pool of about 5,000 applicants.

The implants are designed for people with retinal diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, which cause blindness and vision impairment in about 10 million Americans. More than one million of these people are legally blind.

Continue reading ...

February 14, 2005 in Tech/Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 13, 2005

Monkeys pay per view

In a study titled "Monkeys Pay Per View," neuroscientists at Duke University discovered that rhesus monkeys will give up a portion of hard-earned perks for a peek at pictures of the dominant leaders and nubile females in their troop. But they won't pony up to look at faces of subordinate simians.

"People are willing to pay money to look at pictures of high-ranking human primates. When you fork out $3" for a celebrity magazine, [said one researcher], "you're doing exactly what the monkeys are doing."

February 13, 2005 in Info, Reality | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack