Miracle pill or cheap gimmick?

With his raised right fist pointing to the sky and the shining gadget in his left hand, as Kapil Sibal unveiled the world's cheapest tablet computer, Aakash, on Wednesday, it was difficult not to ask this one question: whose brilliant idea was it to give the tablet the same name as that of a nuclear capable surface-to-air missile that is going to cost the Indian taxpayer Rs 23,000 crore? That apart, the tablet raises more questions.

Be that as it may, but as the human resources development minister distributed the Rs 1,750 tablet to 500 students, he made a huge promise to the country's digital have-nots: sky is no longer the limit when it comes to hitching a ride on the information superhighway.

It's a promising gizmo. It's features - a resistive touchscreen, an SD card slot fitted with a 2GB card and supporting up to 32GB capacities, two USB ports, Wi-Fi, video conferencing, 3-hour battery life, 600MHz processor, 256MB RAM and Android 2.2 - are enough to dazzle the India on the wrong side of the digital divide. "This is for all of you who are disempowered. This is for all of you who have no access. This is for all those who are marginalized," Sibal said at the launch as eager applause followed. "Our goal was to break the price barrier for computing and internet access," he said. "The Aakash is proudly made in India, and is destined to revolutionise computing and internet access for the world."

No doubt, India has beaten the world in creating the world's cheapest tablet. No doubt, Aakash has the potential of being a game-changer as it can empower India's poor - just the way the PC did in the 1980s in the West. But it will be a big mistake to confuse potential with performance. "It's rather silly to confuse investment in technology with investment in education. Access to internet is not going to revolutionise the Indian educational system which is falling apart. Even Steve Jobs didn't over exaggerate the importance of his gadgets like Sibal is doing," says sociologist Shiv Visvanathan. "What about investment in teachers, what about investment in rural schools?"

The government has to worry about investment in many other sectors such as rural electrification and Wi-Fi connectivity to make Aakash work. With even the Capital's satellite towns facing power cuts, it's anybody's guess how the tablet with just 3-hour battery can be re-charged in villages that get power for a couple of hours a day. "No thought has been given to this issue. Among the emerging economies, India has the worst per capita power consumption. There are thousands of schools without electricity. How will the students recharge their tablets," says an official in the ministry of science and technology. "You just can't dump technology on rural communities and hope it will work."

The fact that the tablet connects to the internet with Wi-Fi alone could be a bigger problem. Even big cities in India have few Wi-Fi hotspots and outside them, the service vanishes. So, the students in the villages will have to wait till India moves to 4G technology that will offer wireless internet the same way mobile phone operators provide wireless telephony services. But that will raise the question of billing as the 4G business model hasn't been made public as yet. "The tablet may cost as little as Rs 500 but what about the monthly Wi-Fi bill which may go up to Rs 1000? Can the poor pay so much? Is the government going to provide free Wi-Fi in villages? Or this is just a plan to provide captive customers to 4G operators," asks the science and technology official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the hype surrounding the Aakash launch, many important questions have been ignored and that has raised doubts about its success, particularly when the government is yet to come out with the way the tablet will be distributed. "Distribution of technology is not a solution of problems rural India faces. It seems it's just a tool to create migrant workers for urban areas. You are connecting them to a world they don't need to know and what they need to know is being ignored," says Vibha Gupta of Rural Women Technology Centre, an NGO in Wardha. "Just like mobile phone hasn't helped the agriculture sector, this tablet too will not help the villages. It may help the sale of computer games."

If activists are skeptical about Aakash, they have strong reasons to be so. In May 2005, a Rs 10,000 mobile computer, called Mobilis, was launched amid much fanfare. "This marks India's leap into the future of PC technology...," Sibal, then minister for Science and Technology, had said at that time. Today, nobody knows about Mobilis. Earlier, in 2002, a handheld computer called Simputer was launched to "give the villagers access to computing power". Simputer, too, is history now. To make sure that Aakash doesn't end up in a trashcan, the government has to do more than just make it sound like a deadly missile.

Electric cars for the Lone Star state

The oil and gas capital of the United States is also aiming to be the capital of sustainable energy, at least according to Houston mayor Annise Parker, who just launched the Houston Drives Electric program.
The city opened four public eVgo electric charging stations in September, and plans to install 21 more in 2011. An additional 25 are planned for 2012, along with 35 in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. You can see the map of planned locations here.
This means Houston will have more public charging stations than any city in the United States. The stations have a two-car capacity, with both a 480-volt fast charger and a 240-volt charger, but you don’t pay as you would at a gas station. Users sign up for a monthly plan that can encompass their home-use charges as well.
Other states are also adding electric charging stations. Sixteen states, including California, New York and Hawaii, have received a total of $8.5 million in federal stimulus money through the Department of Energy’s Clean Cities initiative to support infrastructure and plug-in stations for EVs. Charging stations from AeroVironment have opened in hotels in Waikiki and more are planned for Maui — Hawaii has plans for 250 stations. If everything is bigger in Texas, with only 85 stations in the pipeline, the Lone Star state will have to stay charged up if they want to stay ahead of the no-emissions pack.

Human 'cloning' makes embryonic stem cells

A form of cloning has been used to create personalised embryonic stem cells in humans, say researchers.

Genetic material was taken from an adult skin cell and transferred into a human egg. This was grown to produce an early embryo.

Stem cells have huge potential in medicine as they can transform into any other cell type in the body.

However, the stem cells formed contained chromosomes from both the adult and the egg cells.

The technique used - somatic cell nuclear transfer - shot to fame in 1997 when Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, was unveiled to the world.

A South Korean scientist, Hwang Woo-suk, had claimed to have created stem cells from cloned human embryos, but was found to have faked the evidence.

The lead researcher at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory, Dr Dieter Egli, said there was "a great question mark" about whether the cloning technique could be reliably used in humans.

He said other "groups had tried before, but failed".

Writing in the journal Nature, he said his group had also failed using traditional techniques.

When they removed the genetic material from the egg and replaced it with the chromosomes from a skin cell, the egg divided but failed to go past the 6-12 cell stage.

However, when they left the egg's own genetic material in place and added the skin chromosomes, the egg developed. It reached the blastocyst stage, which can contain up to 100 cells and is the usual source of embryonic stem cells.

Late Nobel medicine laureate Ralph Steinman keeps award

Canadian scientist Ralph Steinman will keep his Nobel prize for medicine, the Nobel Foundation has said, after his death on Friday threw it into doubt.

The rules state "work by a person since deceased shall not be considered".

But the foundation said it was unaware of Prof Steinman's death from pancreatic cancer and that the award had been made "in good faith".

Prof Steinman was announced the joint winner on Monday, along with Prof Bruce Beutler and Prof Jules Hoffman.

Prof Steinman received the award for revolutionising the understanding of the immune system.

He discovered the dendritic cell, which helps the body fight off infection.

A statement on the Rockefeller University website, where Prof Steinman worked, said the scientist had died on 30 September at the age of 68.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago.

The foundation said in a statement: "The events that have occurred are unique and, to the best of our knowledge, are unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize.

"According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, work produced by a person since deceased shall not be given an award. However, the statutes specify that if a person has been awarded a prize and has died before receiving it, the prize may be presented.

"An interpretation of the purpose of this rule leads to the conclusion that Ralph Steinman shall be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine."

It said the award had been made "in good faith, based on the assumption that the Nobel Laureate was alive. This was true - though not at the time of the decision - only a day or so previously".

Ahead of the foundation's statement, Rockefeller University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne said it was "delighted that the Nobel Foundation [had] recognised Ralph Steinman for his seminal discoveries concerning the body's immune responses.

"But the news is bittersweet, as we also learned this morning from Ralph's family that he passed a few days ago after a long battle with cancer.

"Our thoughts are with Ralph's wife, children and family."

Prof Steinman was being treated with a dendritic-cell based therapy which he designed himself.

The Nobel Foundation expressed "deep sadness and regret" and said that "our thoughts are with Ralph Steinman's family and colleagues".

Ralph Steinman was awarded for his discovery of the dendritic cell

In 1931, Erik Axel Karlfeldt was posthumously awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but the rules were changed in 1974.

In 1996 William Vickrey died between the announcement and the prize ceremony.

Three pioneers of the immune system shared this year's award for medicine.

Prof Beutler and Prof Hoffman discovered how the body's first line of defence was activated.

The Nobel prize committee said: "Together Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman have revolutionised understanding of the immune system by discovering key principles for its activation.

"They have opened up new avenues for prevention and therapy."

'Minor' radioactive leak at Dounreay nuclear plant

Radioactive material has leaked at the site of the former Dounreay nuclear power station in Caithness, it has been confirmed.

Radioactive liquid effluent is understood to have leaked inside a treatment facility.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) said the leak was minor and did not get outside the plant.

Sepa has launched an investigation. Dounreay is currently undergoing a £2.6bn decommissioning process.

Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) said that nobody was put at risk by the incident.

The local SNP MSP praised the staff dealing with the leak, but repeated his opposition to nuclear power.

Rob Gibson, who represents Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, said: "Thankfully, no staff from Dounreay have been harmed in this incident and I trust that the investigation will assure the public that the surrounding area will not be affected.

"These events underline both the complexity of the decommissioning processes and the possibility that errors may still be made.

"Nuclear energy has no place in a safe Scotland."

Waste liquid
Dounreay was constructed in the 1950s as an experimental nuclear power complex, but has not generated electricity since 1994.

Radioactive liquid effluent occurs when a reactor and its equipment are cleaned.

The treatment plant at Dounreay removes some radioactivity from the waste liquid as part of the process.

A section of the treatment plant has been shut down for investigations.

DSRL is in the process of dealing with 100 tonnes of breeder reactor material.

The fuel is being stored securely while the dismantling of the site continues.

Venus springs ozone layer surprise

Scientists have discovered that Venus has an ozone layer.

The thin layer, which is hundred of times less dense than the Earth's, was discovered by the European Space Agency's Venus Express craft, researchers report in the journal Icarus.

Until now, ozone layers have only been detected in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars.

The find could help astronomers refine their hunt for life on other planets.

The European spacecraft spied the ozone layer when focusing on stars through Venus' atmosphere.

The distant stars appeared fainter than expected, because the ozone layer absorbed some of their ultraviolet light.

The paper's lead author Franck Montmessin, of the LATMOS atmospheric research centre in France, explained that Venus' ozone layer sits 100km up; about three times the height of our own.

The ozone - a molecule containing three oxygen atoms - formed when sunlight broke down carbon dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere to form oxygen molecules.

On Earth, ozone, which absorbs much of the Sun's harmful UV-rays preventing them reaching the surface, is formed in a similar way.

However, this process is supplemented by oxygen released by carbon dioxide-munching microbes.

Ozoning in
Speaking of the international team's find, Hakan Svedhem, ESA project scientist for the Venus Express mission, said: "This ozone detection tells us a lot about the circulation and the chemistry of Venus's atmosphere.

"Beyond that, it is yet more evidence of the fundamental similarity between the rocky planets, and shows the importance of studying Venus to understand them all."

Some astrobiologists assume that the presence of oxygen, carbon, and ozone in an atmosphere indicates that life exists on a planet's surface.

The new results negate that assumption - the mere presence of oxygen in an atmosphere is now not enough evidence to start looking for life.

However, the presence of large quantities of these gases, as in the Earth's atmosphere, is probably still a good lead, the scientists said.

"We can use these new observations to test and refine the scenarios for the detection of life on other worlds," said Dr Montmessin.

Car-free Sunday for smog-struck Milan

The northern Italian city of Milan is banning all traffic from its streets for 10 hours on Sunday in an attempt to reduce smog.

The measure, first imposed on a trial basis in 2007, is triggered whenever pollution exceeds the statutory limit for 12 consecutive days.

Satellite imagery shows Milan to be one of the most polluted cities in Europe.

An estimated 120,000 vehicles will be affected by the move, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The most polluting vehicles have been banned from driving through the city centre since Thursday.

But on Sunday, there will be no traffic at all permitted between 0800 and 1800 local time (07:00-17:00 GMT).

The ban is imposed when pollution exceeds 50 micrograms of particulates per cubic metre of air over 12 days. The last time the full ban was in force was in February.


The move is not popular with all environmentalists, who argue that the city's public transport system should be improved to discourage people from using their cars.

Local Green Party councillor Enrico Fedrighini said cars with three or four people inside should be offered free parking, for example.

"One or two car-free Sundays each month won't do anything to tackle the smog crisis," he told Corriere della Sera.

Public transport will be bolstered during the day, with an extra metro trains and buses operating.