I,We & WeChat

So that was just another day which was about to end in just another night. Nothing new throughout the day except for a few more hits on the blog, a few quirky tweets on twitter, a little bit of wayward chatting on Facebook and the latest post which I published on the topic that I always find inquisitive - Artificial Intelligence(AI). As it turned out, I was once again able to muster all my ramblings in one single post and was able to publish my ideas about a future would be very much different from what we live in. A future which seems ludicrous, I mean with your washing machines walking to the clothes,picking them up and soaking them on their own, to your very smartphones hovering towards the nearest electrical socket to get some, what I'd say, Fresh Air ! Whenever I think of AI, I think of the magic that is hidden in computing, but which is unveiling only in paltry parts. I imagine things, I envisage the enigma of those futuristic times, I even savor the delectable magnificence of that ultra modern life, but I fail to do anything when it comes to doing my bit in turning it into reality or at least evangelizing people in believing that such a reality may even exist someday. It was 0120 hours and somnolence was about to engulf me in its mellifluous bliss. And that's when it all started.

The great inventor Graham Bell.

It was a notification on my cellphone. A notification from what I think of as my Complete Communications Center(CCC) - The WeChat App. It was a Look Around request from someone who was either in my apartment or in some nearby place. Look Around is a spectacular WeChat service that allows you to connect with new nearby friends who are present on WeChat. So, this particular request was from some guy whose name was "Bell, Graham". And not surprisingly, he was using a picture of the great and erudite innovator who changed the way we communicate.

A snippet of WeChat's Look Around feature.

I simply knew that this was an attempt of a posthumous impersonation but still, courtesy of my joviality, I accepted this request and allowed this guy to communicate with me. He immediately started a chat with me whose transcript goes as follows :

                                               --------------------------------------------------------

Bell, Graham : Hey, hows you doing pal ?

Me : Well, killing time. What else to expect from someone awake at this hour of the night ?

Bell, Graham : Well, I used to experiment with the my models of telephone voice signal transmission during the nights only. I am a nocturnal innovator, you know ?

Me : Kill the buck man. This is too much. 

Bell, Graham : So, you believe I'm not the real Graham Bell ?

Me : Your monomania has certainly taken over you :D

Bell, Graham : Feels funny, no ? Check your mail and then do what your instinct demands you to do. Feel free to ignore all that has ensued and revert back to your old times. But remember, this is your last chance. 

                                             --------------------------------------------------------

I was about to issue a diatribe but then I let it go. And as usual, I moved towards my system to check my mails. Even though I receive more spam than mail, I still do that for a reason not apparent to me. So, the first mail was sent a few seconds ago. And what it contained was somewhat bemusing for this time of the night. It was a WeChat Group Chat request with the QR code of a group. WeChat allows users to create a unique QR code for a Chat group and then invite new friends to the Group by sharing the QR code with them. It can be shared via email as well. The new entrant just has to scan the QR code and then connect with the group.

WeChat's Group Chat QR code feature.

WeChat's Web WeChat feature.

So, ostensibly this request came in from the guy who discovered my presence on WeChat moments ago. I was a little reluctant to join this group. Although new WeChat groups have been fun but this one had an eeriness, skepticism and notoriety associated with it. But there was still something enigmatic about it. I opened Web WeChat on my system. Web WeChat allows users to bring WeChat from their smarthphones to their browsers and allows them to benefit from the system's accessibility. I straightforwardly scanned this Group QR code and joined this new group.

         Connecting to a new WeChat group.

 

So this new group appeared to be a reminiscent of our history. All the members had black and white photographs. And not surprisingly, all these snaps belonged to some of the greatest inventors of all times. The group had 8 guys in total and all of them seemed to have formed a canny WeChat group which supposedly mimicked discussions  between these noble gentleman. I joined the group and the one to commence the chat was Bell again.

                                        -----------------------------------------------------------------

Bell, Graham : I'm glad your alacrity helped you to connect with us. You will be a changed man after this session consummates. 

Me : Haha. Yeah, Why not. :P

Guglielmo Marconi

Marconi, Guglielmo : Hey there pal. Glad you joined us. 

Me : haha. So we have the inventor of wireless transmission as well. I mean you guys are so very wow. 

 

Marconi, Guglielmo : Yeah. Radio and everything was cool you know, but I also enjoyed being an Italian Senator :D

Me : Yeah. Would've been quite cool you know.  :)

Marconi, Guglielmo : Hey, in case you want to know more about my ingenious Marconi's Laws and everything, I'll tell you. Books don't teach things as easily as the law's very patriarch can explain, you know. :D

Philo T Farnsworth

Me : I'd be obliged :)

Farnsworth, Philo : Hey Marconi, these young lads know nothing bout our methods. I bet this guy doesn't know how his own TV works. And I'm pretty certain he has no idea how brilliant is the pristine picture tube in his TV,  which is more or less an imitation of that made by me :D :D

Me : I know that for sure, Sir. I know how impeccable was the first TV you developed.

Charles Jenkins

Jenkins, Charles : Hey, dun you take all credit for the TV. 

I too made a TV, so what if mine was more mechanical than  electrical. It was a TV, nonetheless. And I was also the first person to run a motion picture on a projector. My own indigenous projector :D

Farnsworth, Philo : Relax dude. I never took all credit for it. This wackymedia thing still portrays both of us as inventors of television so just chill. But as you know, I also made the first video camera tube and I devised my own nuclear fusion device as well. Feels like god, you know :D

Jenkins, Charles : It's wikipedia actually :P

Charles Babbage

Babbage, Charles : Stop it you two, please. Let the lad interact with others who form the constituents of this invincible group. Hi, I'm Charles, the inventor of the difference engine, the first mechanical computer, if you may call it :D

Me : Oh C'mon. Everyone knows you and I'm a computer engineer after all. You have evangelized so many souls to take up computing and to improve it generation by generation :)

George Eastman

Eastman, George : Computers may be cool but what's life without a camera ? Hi, I'm George, not really the inventor of the camera in the conventional sense, but the one who made cameras become a common thing. World would have been so dull without them, won't it ?

Me :  Yeah. It certainly would have been banal. But don't just shy away from saying that you were also the co-founder of the Kodak company. Inventor + Successful entrepreneur. Lethal combo :D

Alessandro Volta

Volta, Alessandro : Oh C'mon, now. His cameras would've been futile if I hadn't invented the electrical cell. Who would have used a camera that would connect directly to the socket and which cannot be carried anywhere. LOL.  Imagine people using a long wire that they would connect to their home socket and carry the cable all the way with them. A world full of wires. I'm legend. :D \m/ \m/

Nikola Tesla

Tesla, Nikola : Bitch Please. And what would have been your cells if there wasn't anyway to transmit electricity. You would have charged them from the power plant itself :P Hi, I'm nikola. The, or shall I put it this way, "The" inventor of the electrical transmission system and a gargantuan pioneer in the field of radio,induction motors, X-ray and a plethora of other things. I have the power, literally :D

Bell, Graham : Oh please, don't brag about your legendary inventions which this guy would have studied of in a multitude of books. Let's come to the point and help this lad with his life and future. 

Me : You guys are still adamant in helping me. Wow, this seems surreal. All the legends are here to help me out. But wait ! Help me out on what ?

Marconi, Guglielmo : Kid, you know what's the purpose of having only us 8 in this cohort of inventors and not having all those glorious veterans who served as our counterparts in other intriguing fields ? 

Me : Nopes. No idea at all ! 

Farnsworth, Philo : Pick that smartphone of yours lying 2.4 cms from the keyboard.

Me : Hey, it's actually lying there. This isn't a WeChat video call so how do you see me ?

Jenkins, Charles : Just pick it up.

Me : Okay, I'm holding it in my hands. 

Babbage, Charles : So now it's show time.  The processor and all the computing inherent in that device was something that I dreamt of.

Eastman, George : The camera in that device is something that I envisaged.

Volta, Alessandro : The cell in your device is an advanced manifestation of my own imagination :D

Tesla, Nikola : Your phone would never run if if wasn't for my AC transmission system that brings power to your house. :)

Marconi, Guglielmo : Those GSM signals, that Wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity would never have existed if it wasn't for my scintillating laws and creations :D

Farnsworth, Philo : And that screen of your phone would never have arrived if it had no predecessor in the form of my TV screen.

Jenkins, Charles : Excuse me. It's our TV screen. :D

Bell, Graham : And last but not the least, the phone itself wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for the one I built more than  a century ago. It has evolved, but it has evolved from what I once produced.

Tesla, Nikola : All in all, we wanted to emphasize on the fact that your smartphone would not have existed if it wasn't for our ideas. Our ideas fueled our imagination and our imagination motivated us to create, and what we created is now a desideratum of humanity. 

Volta, Alessandro : It's mainly about ideas my friend, but if you do nothing about them, those ideas will die with you. Let them spawn, let them ripe. Do something about them than just refining and rectifying them.

Eastman, George : Even if you cannot turn your ideas into reality, share them with others. Your very idea may at least see the daylight that it needs to burgeon into something more comprehensive. 

Babbage, Charles : If all of us had held back on our ideas and dreams like you are at this point of time, people would have still communicated using pigeons and still used their abacuses to multiply. 

Farnsworth, Philo : You know the potential of your idea only when you give that thing a try. People get lulled with cynicism and critique, they will mock you, they will refute you, they will term you as naive and gullible, they will consider you a tyro but someday or the other, they are no longer able to resist the temptation of using your creation, and no longer able to hold themselves from appreciating your perspicacity. That is the day your idea becomes a cult, and your dream becomes a reality. 

Jenkins, Charles : You find AI inquisitive, you have your own set of ideas to do something in that realm. Either do those things or unveil the ensemble in front of this world. Your ideas and your contemplation should never ever go in vain. Its those niche ideas and those palpably preposterous assumptions that one day shall change this world.

 Bell, Graham : To sum it up my friend, Never ever give up on your ideas, no matter how much of an ordeal you need to go through. Let your ideas speak for themselves, let your imagination foster that cult. Good Luck. :)

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And suddenly, the once feeble sound of that door knock became more evident. It was 7:55 in the morning. I had no idea when I fell into sleep. The conditions that preceded my sleep were so soporific after all. It wasn't that comfortable a sleep, courtesy of me having slept on the computer chair itself, but I kinda felt a new surge of energy afterwards. A unique sense of indefatigableness that I never felt before. I hovered my head towards the computer screen which had went blank due to inactivity. I brought my pc out of sleep mode and tried to retrospect on all that happened during the last few hours. The post I published off late was still open in one browser tab. The other tab had Web WeChat open on it. I was simultaneously chatting with a few buddies while compiling the post so this was normal. No sign of any other peculiarities obviated the need to question on that matter. What I saw was just another whimsical yet vivid dream.

It's time to get back to work. First, lets check the WeChat Drift Bottle sea for any new messages. This adorable feature is an emulation of the ages old communication paradigm. You throw a bottle containing a message in a sea and someone would pick it up and read it. A kind of message multicast. So there are a few new messages. Some say good morning, some contain rhetorical verses which a friend of mine has an amazing avarice for reading and forwarding, and finally, here's a message from one of my developer friends. Quite some time since I heard from him. Perhaps one of the most insightful programmers I know of. Lets see what he has to say. Maybe he's got some new job. A more high paying than his last one. Let's pick up his message bottle.

WeChat's Drift Bottle message throw.

WeChat's Drift Bottle message reception.

"Hi friends. As you know I've gone freelance after quitting my last IT job. Needed some partners to startup a venture. We won't be going towards conventional computing and simple app building, we'll instead concentrate on new subjects. Machine Learning, Knowledge Bases, Expert Systems. In short, we'll work on AI."

This contest was written towards Indiblogger's WeChat #WeChatNow blogging drive. 

                      To know more about this enthralling blogging drive, visit this link :

                                           Indiblogger's WeChat blogging drive

               To know more about WeChat and its engrossing capabilities, visit this link :

                                                   WeChat's YouTube Channel

And in case you want to download WeChat and know more about its scintillating features, here's a link to their website :

                                                          WeChat's Website

Making the deaf hear : Cochlear Implants

We always believe that technology and science always go together. Whereas science keeps coming with new ways and burgeoning theories on how to tackle existing problems, technology goes side by side to work its magic and manifest the new principles laid down by science. When it comes to medicine, the sync between these two has been all the more prevalent. Be it the concept of the pacemaker, the artificial kidney and the artificial heart, be it the simpler concept of using Lasik technology to correct eye defects, or be it the introduction of MRI and CT Scan which have helped medical science in gargantuan ways. Technology has always quickly followed up with the findings of science and has presented astonishing ways of treating or diagnosing ailments whose treatment was once not even anticipated. While all these processes have now very well established themselves as the niche means in their respective arenas, there is one technology that is relatively new and which has already brought wonders to the lives of a multitude of people. We're talking about Cochlear Implants.

There are a lot of reasons why people lose their hearing ability. Although it's mainly because of age, in a lot of cases it can also happen because of accidents or appear as a congenital defect. The reasons may vary but hearing defects can pose a lot of problems because hearing is one activity that substantially affects the way we live. Although several external techniques exist for correcting them, they are not deemed very effective because most of them eventually work just by increasing the sounds in magnitude. That does not help that much. A much more sophisticated and logical way of allowing such people to savor the sounds of this world, is the revolutionary technique called Cochlear Implants.

There is a set of sensory receptors inside our ear. These receptors comprise of an extremely sophisticated type of hair. Then there is a set of parts associated with these receptors, and finally there is a set of tangled nerves that connects the ear to the auditory section of the brain. The receptors pick up sounds from the environment,the system of parts connected to these receptors processes these sounds and converts them into electrical signals. Further, these electrical signals are transferred to the brain via the set of nerves connecting the ear to the brain. The brain uses these signals to interpret the sound and make us hear it. People who experience a loss of hearing mostly have complications in either the sensory receptors, or the processing parts connected to it, or the system of nerves that connects the ear to the brain. For those cases when the auditory section of the brain is not functional, different and much more advanced procedures may be needed. However for persons with the aforementioned kind of deficiencies, Cochlear Implants may be the ideal solution.

The overall system of an Cochlear Implant is divided into two parts - One portion is external and lies outside the ear,attached to it, and the other component is planted beneath the skin and bone under the ear. The external portion consists of a microphone, a speech processor and a system of transmission. The internal portion consists of a Receiver & Stimulator and a system of small electrodes. The microphone serves the purpose of picking up the sounds that come to the ear. The speech processor processes the sounds that come to the microphone and filters and/or magnifies those sounds according to the specific cases in which it may be used. Then, the speech processor passes these filtered sound signals to the transmitter. The transmitter takes it from there and transmits these sound signals to the internally planted Receiver & Stimulator. The internal Receiver & Stimulator serves to convert these sound signals into a set of electrical impulses. These electrical impulses are then relayed from the Receiver & Stimulator to the system of electrodes which connect to different places of the system of nerves that connects the ear to the auditory section of the brain.

The overall system works to mimic the functionality of the ear in all aspects. Even in our ears, sound signals are picked up, converted to electrical impulses, and then transmitted to the system of nerves and then towards the brain. Generally, complications arise in the sensory receptors and the system of processing parts which is associated with them. The ear either fails to pick up sounds from the environment or it fails to properly process these sounds and relay them to the auditory section of the brain. The beauty of Cochlear Implant lies in its Receptor and Stimulator, which properly comprehends the external sound signals and then converts them into electrical impulses which are of the same type as those transmitted by a real ear to the brain. Hence all in all, the cochlear Implant serves to help the ear pick up what it earlier couldn't and then transmits those impulses to the brain.

Cochlear Implants have been very very successful in most of the cases. They provide much better quality of sound than what external sound magnifiers do, but it's a fact that they still fall short of the natural hearing quality and this is quite acceptable. After all, there is no replacement for the marvels of nature. But for people who were unfortunate enough to bear the blunt of deafness, this technique can virtually open new possibilities. The best thing about this technique is that it makes an attempt of simulating the whole functioning of ear and this is what results in its exorbitant efficacy. However, the same thing also means that this technique is irreversible. It, in one way, eliminates any remaining natural hearing, and replaces the same. This happens because natural and artificial hearing can not be synced with each other and can lead to complications. Having said that, this technique is a real boon for those who lost most or all of their hearing ability. Its use can bestow tremendous gleam to their lives.

Quite a lot of Cochlear Implants have been successfully deployed all over the world. While most of these were the ones in which they were deployed in one ear, a lot of implants have been performed on both the ears as well. Even in India, the top notch players in health care have transformed the lives of a plethora of people by using this ecstatic technique. This technique, though quite well established, has still not attained the prowess and efficacy it is likely to acquire someday. Most of the research is being done on producing variants with minimal parts and on improving the proximity between the electrical impulses produced by this device and those produced by a natural ear. Some day, the quality of sound may nearly become an exact emulation of that produced by a natural ear. In a nutshell, the process is improving and has already transformed the lives of quite a lot of people and with time, things will only improve. Once again, technology and science have come together to mankind's rescue. With such feats, our future can only be better, our future can only be perfect.

This post was written as a part of Apollo Hospitals' #ApolloTouchingLives campaign. It is an initiative to engage bloggers in blogging about how modern health care is touching lives. To know more about the campaign, visit ApolloTouchingLives.

To know more about Apollo  Hospitals and their cutting edge health care, visit
Apollo Hospitals.

irctc.com : Inside the most impeccable portal on the planet

A few days back I came a cross a rather peculiar piece of news which sardonically described the toil that any regular visitor of this website has to go through in order to book what I consider a fourth desideratum of any Indian - a railway ticket. Whereas there is a plethora of melancholic posts elucidating the struggle that one registers to get the most priced possession in one's entirety, I tried to look at things from a different viewpoint and have come up with this post in an attempt to evangelize people to look at the positives of what I assume to be a website that beats Facebook's traffic stats every single day.

Although this is by no means an exhaustive account of the angelic prospects associated with the most luscious of automations, this is an honest attempt to char the predispositions and apprehensions which people bagged by reading about the web portal on a multitude of sources. Please feel free to share this account in case you find it worthy enough for that.

1. The most advanced firewall

Citing what some of irctc's internal sources term as the most advanced cyber security system on the whole Internet, let us present to you what is conceived as the single most powerful firewall that is capable of not only quashing malicious accesses and intrusions but it also prevents the cloaked stealing of data. Irctc has deployed the most strongest and the most lucid mechanism on their gateways to avoid what can be avoided. It's almost impossible for even a legitimate user to login to the portal so just imagine how painstaking would it be for a hacker to say, steal credentials of someone. In fact the servers that host the internal databases are not servers in the usual sense. They run on Intel Pentium 3 processors with 128 MB of RAM, a revelation in server technology, and run the most advanced database server of all times - Sql Server 2000. Hence, by rejecting 99 of the 100 requests that hit the database server, the implicit technological hierarchy ensures that the probability of a hacker breaking into the system is reduced to a paltry number. The security advisor at irctc says "If only 1 request per every 100 requests is entertained, then given the amount of legitimate users that are logged into the system, the probability of a legitimate user's login request finally getting access to the database is very high. And on the other hand, given the fact that hackers are woefully outnumbered at any occasion, it's enormously improbable that the one request that scrapes through our Do Not Allow(DNA) firewall technology belongs to some hacker, thereby rendering the barrier of the system extremely robust and secure.". The security consultant who seems to be a chauvinist about irctc further added "Courtesy of our vehement strategy of preventing information leaks and cyber attacks, the website in itself is hosted on the most advanced architecture conceived till date. A pentium 4 processor with a 'humongous' 1 GB of Ram.". He further added "Can you beat that !". When asked if such obsolete and incapable systems may be the reason behind  the phenomenon of the site getting down while users make an attempt to login, he replied "That's a deliberate move. And how dare you call our systems obsolete. They're the most advanced one gets.". Hence the DNA firewall and the strategy of hosting the site on an obsolete architecture gets a thumbs up from us on this aspect.

2.The timeout strategy

And as if complementing the strategies mentioned in the first point, the website is so lucratively designed that no user is capable of staying logged in for more than a random amount of time. The senior software engineer at CRIS, the body that maintains and builds future versions of irctc, told us that the sessions of the website are purely dependent on the amount of users logged in. The session timing is in a way directly proportional to the number of users currently logged in. He said this is a move which makes sure that no intruder can stay logged in for so long that he may be able to mess up in any way with the system. When we asked him that the same move ensures that no user as well could not stay logged in longer enough to book a ticket,he ridiculed us and said such blatant and baseless allegations are very egregious and mar the image of the symbolic portal. He further added that users are not their priority, it's saving the website from attacks. He said that the users can anyways book tickets from stations. He said "I don't see the point in buying tickets online. This evades the fun one derives while standing in a queue for a day and a half, savoring the delectable aroma that arises from the filth and lack of mopping". He said that the joy one gets while booking a ticket after going to a railway station is simply unmatched. When we told him that some irctc users feel as much of joy after booking an online ticket as well, he bellowed at us and threatened to put us on Chambal Express. But we just have to say that this peculiar strategy has worked to the extent of keeping intruders from breaking in. Some sources say that since 1995, a total of 1298 reported suicides have been committed by personnel who were trying to break into the system. A few of them were also found heaving in monasteries and some others have either taken an exile or have started working in the railways itself. All in all, this strategy as befuddling as it may seem, has worked perfectly.

3.The safest,securest payment gateway

And as if being placed as a move to consummate the literally invincible portal, there is a third layer of protection which ensures that most of the monetary transactions are chewed away in an attempt to protect the system. The monetary partner of irctc,Maangeram and Payaarelal pvt. ltd,  one which handles the payment gateways and hence all the payments made at the coveted portal, entertained us by showing a chart which had a breakup of all payments received on that day. The chart had 3 sections - deliberately denied,mistakenly denied and ambiguous. When we asked about what this "ambiguous" means, he explicated that they make sure that no transactions get processed but at times a few unlucky transaction requests scrape through. They added "And courtesy of the hunger that our banks have for such transactions to take place, once the transaction gets forwarded from our side, the users unfortunately get their tickets. We're working to solve this problem, day and night". When asked about the refunds which sometimes take some millenia to get processed, they said "The government takes good care of the money and invests it in places where they could get some good interest. And by the time the user has lost the propensity and perhaps lost track of the amount having being debited from their accounts, we pay them back to exhibit our egalitarianism and our devotion to mankind". The personnel wiped out the copious tears tingling on his eyes after speaking this. And when we asked where does the government invest this money, his chest swelled with pride and he said "Switzerland". To sum up this aspect, we just have to say that the third system at irctc literally savages any possible threat to the system.

4.Secure Third Party Transfer

After fathoming the security aspects, we tried to delve a little on the emphasis which irctc lays on it's customer. We asked them if they have any Customer Relationship Management(CRM) system, of whose absence they immediately admitted to. However, they fanatically retaliated saying that they do have a DARM which is much smaller than a prospective CRM and satiates the need of laying emphasis on individual customers. When asked for an expansion of the abbreviation, they said it's Dalal and Agent Relationship Management, the path-breaking thing according to them. They further elucidated that DARM is a way of keeping all the railway agents and more importantly Dalals in close loop so that customers always get the tickets on time. When we asked about the vicissitudes of this system and about the extra amount levied on users for getting a ticket through the unfair means of Dalals, they said Dalals are the traditional means of obtaining railways tickets and terming their involvement as unfair is utterly "blasphemous". They let their exasperation subside and told us that Dalals are a fully funded subsidiary of Railways but the relationship is so tacit that no one is needed to admit to that. They further added that Dalals today are the primary reason why people get tickets during the tatkal window. According to them, the robust irctc portal and station ticket counters will never be able to suffice for what Dalals do. "They are the pillars of irctc" they said.

5.The perfect plan

In an attempt of adding an extra amount of tinge to what railway personnel described as the most impeccable automation on the whole planet, they finally arranged a meeting of ours with an official of some higher authority. The official was a little busy on phone when we entered his exorbitant room. There was a pile of bloodstained letters laying aside his table. He pointed to them and said "With love from the people". He was a very convivial person and even offered us the half cup of stale tea left by the former visitor. We refused it only to see him gulping it afterwards. He then finally started the discussion. He said "My comrades must have already briefed you about the concepts which have now become the doctrines of irctc". We nodded. He then engrossed us for the next 20 minutes. This time has literally filled our hearts with respect for the man and for the irctc. The man told us that the railways works on a very well laid out plan. It is believed that the user's comfort and user's travel only comes after user's security. He also said that there are certain underpinnings behind why the system works the way it works. He told us that people are denied tickets on railways so that they could save money and use it for better and more productive purposes than traveling. When we asked about the losses incurred to working class when they fail to travel by trains, he suddenly jolted out of his seat and said that he won't tolerate such officiousness again. We sought pardon and he was on his seat again. He said that railway makes sure that the working class that matters the most always gets its tickets on time. When asked about the circle of employees in this class, he replied "politicians and other top level bureaucrats". He then said that there is also a bold strategy behind keeping refunds at abeyance. He said that the government knows better on how to spend the money than the people to whom it belongs. Hence they use that money for better purposes than the uses to which the users would have put it in case it was refunded on time. We managed to veil one of those papers and when we left his room, he opened it and read it. To our surprise, the letter was written in blood, pure blood, as if out of rage. And what was written was even more astonishing. "Tried to book a tatkal ticket. The anger that came out of the repeated session timeouts and other failures compelled me to hit so hard at the keyboard that my fingers crunched into the assembly and they started bleeding. Have written the letter with the same blood so that it could serve as an anathema."

After mustering all this information from a pied of resources, we feel that it was very bad on our part to keep disparaging the portal for things that always had a good motif behind them. As it is, this is indeed the most impeccable portal on the Internet.

Using AI to Combat Cyber Crime

Artificial Intelligence has, for quite some time now, been used for combating credit card fraud. Data Mining, which is in a way an application of AI, is used to detect credit card frauds by using various mechanisms. In the most general scenario, a pattern of the user's credit card usage is drawn by making use of his credit card transaction records and all the future transactions are inserted in the pattern only after conforming to this pattern itself.Whenever a transaction or a pair of transactions that violates the pattern is noticed, the system prompts the surveillance personnel to check in. Then its upon the discretion of the personnel to see if the transactions are to be investigated or to be entered in the system and inculcated in the ever changing pattern.In a more advanced form,the normal credit card usage pattern of the user is used along with a pattern of the usage seen in the credit cards of the whole group to which the user belongs. This group may be created on the basis of income,credit card category(gold,silver etc.) or even the company to which the user belongs.This scheme is more robust and more resistant against single high value transactions that may appear to drift away from the pattern but are actually genuine.

The above approaches have been quite effective in combating credit cards frauds to some extent, and as a result, agencies all over the world have started looking at AI for combating other forms of electronic/cyber crime.They sought to AI because of the fact that due to the humongous number of transactions, its utterly impossible to employ humans to track movement over the internet. They need a machine to do that and in fact they need a machine that's smart enough to match the wits of a human expert.The intelligence may either be embedded in the individual application servers, just like spam filters used by mail servers or the intelligence may be implemented at the firewalls at the gateways. The advantage with embedding it into the individual servers is that the logic related to the specific application can be embedded. E.g a traffic pattern may be acceptable if destined for mail server but not for some office application server.In fact the best approach is to divide the intelligence amongst the two places. General intelligence is embedded at the firewalls and the application specific intelligence is embedded in the individual servers.

The general model suggests that some traffic analysis technique be used. This technique would differ according to the networks. Traffic could be analyzed at one or all levels. Either only the datagarm traffic could be analyzed or the ip level traffic or both. The traffic is again matched with the general pattern of traffic just like pattern matching in credit card fraud detection. At the firewalls, the overall traffic pattern is analyzed, and at the individual servers, the application level and session level traffic is analyzed. At the application level, once again two patterns could be used - a user pattern and a group pattern. At the firewalls however, a single pattern has to be used.In fact, the system may keep different patterns for different days or different times instead of a single pattern, and these different patterns may then be used accordingly.Like every cognitive learning mechanism, these patterns would also improve with time. The system would match actual pattern with the stored pattern and also keep changing according to the patterns that it analyzes. For example, if the system reported an anomaly and the network admin thinks its normal traffic, the system would inculcate this in the traffic pattern model and would improve itself. Hence, with time, the system will become more and more effective. 

I Have A Dream

I bet you must have not just once but many a times wondered why you dream. This post will describe a theory that takes some ideas from the domain of technology. Remember, we talked about the enormous network of brain neurons in an old post. We will visit that subject again. Just to tell the novice, the brain is composed of a massive network of countless neurons and its in these very neurons where the information gets stored. Every neuron would store some part of the info and when the brain needs to retrieve the complete information, it will pass a signal through a known and structured pattern of neurons and all the info in these neurons gets combined to give the complete information.The neural network concept, which is used to store information in artificially intelligent systems, uses a similar approach to organizing information. It was only after some research on these synthetic neural networks, that a very brittle, yet intriguing idea emerged on why would a human being dream. Here's a brief explanation of the same.

A network of neurons

While we are sleeping, most of our body parts get engaged in routine maintenance tasks. The brain takes up this diagnosis and correction task and checks if all organs are functioning properly. It sends signals to these organs and they would do tasks like pumping some extra blood, disposing something in the impure blood and some other similar stuff. The brain also sends some check signals to itself. Tough Job, I must say ! The primary maintenance job it assumes is to free neurons which don't have valid information or information which may no longer be needed. But its the Brain and for its being so intelligent, you wont expect it to delete the info in these neurons straightaway. In fact, the brain checks to see if this info is useful and has to be retained.

The brain tries to see if these neurons have any useful information by sending random, yet organized, signals to them. These signals are similar to the information retrieval signals introduced in para 1 but, these signals are sent while you are wild asleep. These signals are sent across the neurons and the information in them is combined. This information gets played back while you are dreaming. The dreams are in a way a complement of the information you retrieve while you are awake. Now, these neurons had random pieces of information and they are combined randomly by some random signals. That's why the dreams we see often don't follow any specific flow of thoughts and we keep swinging from one place to another and combine people whom we met in different nations. In fact, the brain passes its own inputs to make the dreams more meaningful because it assumes that it has to supply any missing information to fill any gaps. The brain may supply commonsense knowledge that one has acquired or knowledge regarding the places you have visited or the people you know or have met at any time in your life. That's the reason why while dreaming, you end up combining several places into one and meet 10 people from 10 different houses in your own.

That's how it all happens. In cases, when the brain is unable to get an ending for the dream, it just hangs up and waits for some real life event. The real life event like ringing of a bell, or yours falling on the ground, is combined in your dream so as to get an ending. And you wonder why you were dreaming of something that actually happened.After the dream gets over, the brain deletes all the information that was saved in those neurons. However, the dream that was generated is a new information in its own. Now its upon the brain to decide on whether the dream has to be retained or deleted. That's why at times, you remember what you dream't and at times, you don't. One more thing to this is the fact that while generating some dreams, the brain spends a lot of effort as the neurons it tries to combine don't have structured information and the brain has to put in a lot of stuff to make it meaningful. That's why the brain decides to break the dream and awake you. Or if the brain succeeds in finally generating some information, it lets it stay there and won't break the dream. But the next day when you get up, you wont feel fresh as your brain had been working a lot while you were asleep just to get the dream ticking.

This was a very different theory and that's why I felt like sharing it with you. And since we've went a little off the track for this one, I will also like to thank an all time contributor to these posts - Tzinga Health Drink. I get all my ideas on posts and how to present them while I'm on my cycling spree every morning and the spree lasts for 80-100 minutes. The time I spend makes me feel refreshed and gets my ideas ticking but it also demands a lot of energy from me. So one of my pals told me to have this awesome health drink called Tzinga. This health drink comes in three irresistible flavors - Mango Strawberry,Lemon Mint and Tropical Trip and I feel that this is the only health drink which also gives a really refreshing taste to your taste buds apart from giving some serious charge to your body.When the other drinks demand you to put some clip carrier to your bicycle for holding them, you can carry Tzinga straight in your pockets and with a sipper like outlet, you can easily take a sip as an when you need it. A pack of Tzinga contains some serious energy so please be careful while using it. 

Okay, now lets get back to the topi  and have some sort of a conclusion. This theory is one amongst those 100 theories on dreaming. Some of them tell that its the subconscious mind and some tell that its some other complex mechanism related to the locomotion of the body. But whatever it may be, this one actually explains most of the phenomena related to dreams and I personally believe, this one might be the real reason.Please tell me if you agree with me or if you have some different idea or any knowledge regarding this. I'm on this thing now !!!

Artificially Intelligent Caching

The first two paras are only for those who have very little or no knowledge on caching.

The Cache is considered to be the most expensive and the most important resource that a computer possesses. Cache is the memory which CPU can access in the least amount of time and hence, cache access takes place at a much faster rate when compared to other memory accesses.Whenever the CPU needs some data, it checks the cache first and only if the cache doesn't have the data, it begins searching for data in other memories.The size of cache is limited due to architecture constraints as well as the fact that cache is made up of highly expensive SRAMs. Now the jinx is that an access to cache takes the least amount of time, but the cache can store only some part of information that a computer holds and needs. So, Operating Systems use replacement policies for replacing existing data in cache with other data from higher level memories(RAM and secondary storage). Its this very replacement policy that decides the fate of the OS. If the replacement policy is such designed that in most of the occasions the data the CPU needed was there in the cache(a cache hit), then the overall system would be fast and performance will go up. On the other hand, if the CPU couldn't find the needed data in the cache(a cache miss), then the performance will go down.

Data enters the cache when its accessed for the first time. Suppose CPU needed some data that resides in secondary storage. First the data goes from secondary storage to RAM and then from RAM to cache. The next time CPU needs that data, it will see if the cache still has it. If the cache doesn't have it, a miss occurs and the RAM and secondary storage are searched in that order. Once again, after the data is found, it gets transferred to cache. The replacement policy comes into action after some fixed time period or after the number of misses has crossed some threshold. The replacement policy tries to predict the future and tries to remove the data from cache which is least likely to be accessed in the future, and store new data from higher memories that is most likely to be accessed in the future. Its this very future prediction capability which results in success or failure of the replacement policy. The most popular replacement policy is LRU(Least recently used) where data that was accessed least recently is removed and data that was accessed most recently is retained.

LRU is driven by heuristics(history of data usage where time of access is the primary driver) and it is obviously not perfect. Given the amount of impact the replacement policy can have on the performance, one has to strive to improve the future prediction capabilities of the replacement policy. This is where researchers believe that AI can be put to some good use. AI has been a good predictor in several domains and this domain is very likely to be another one where AI can be successful. For replacing existing data in cache with data that is more likely to be accessed, one would need heuristics(which is already put into good use by LRU) and some other predictor.

All data of a computer system is organized as a file system. Modern file systems use tree architectures to organize files. For adding up to the heuristics, the system needs to explore the most likely patterns in which data can be accessed. Its not just about the times at which data is accessed but also about the pattern in which data is accessed across the file system tree. So our proposed replacement policy would be striving to find the most probable patterns in which data might be accessed in the future. It can predict these patterns by utilizing the metadata information from the file system and by storing data access patterns and constructing new patterns by following some logic.

Basic patterns can be generated using file access times and frequencies(something which most modern file systems store). These patterns can be compared to some real file access patterns that were observed in recent history(these patterns would be stored in some separate dedicated memory).This comparison can be used to eliminate certain patterns. Finally, a probable set of file access patterns would be generated. During the policy's operation, this set of patterns is combined with heuristics(same as the ones used in LRU) and the replacement is done on the basis of the most probable data access pattern that was chosen by the replacement policy. The number of misses and hits while using the set of patterns can be used to make changes to the set of patterns itself as well as switching to the next most probable pattern from the pattern set. This will correspond to a kind of feedback which is the core of learning in AI systems.

Its pretty clear that such a scheme would need some extra memory and logic for computing these patterns and then storing and changing them. But these patterns would take up very small space and the processing can be done during certain free CPU cycles. In an overall context, the approach would be more beneficial as the cache hit ratio is very likely to increase. Such an approach is useful for general computer systems where both files and file data, are accessed in structured patterns. For example, certain applications always read some files before the others. This approach can also be put to very good use in servers(both database and web) as even in these systems, the users are very likely to view some specific data/webpage before others. However, the approach may breakdown in cases where usage is highly unpredictable.The file systems won't be needing any drastic changes but additional logic for pattern prediction and updation would be needed.

As all other AI systems, even this system will become better with operation. Initially, the system would generate file patterns on the basis of metadata that it gets from file system. As the system is put to operation, it would refine these initial file patterns on the basis of patterns that were actually observed. Finally, the patterns would be further refined after these patterns were put into operation and feedback was incorporated into the patterns. One may also think of some other prediction pattern for file usage but the core concept still remains the same- the system has to predict which files or data would be used the most at a point of time. And its pretty obvious that even this approach would be using AI to serve its purpose.That's the power of AI !

3D Printing: you may have one in future

3D printing or Additive Manufacturing is a technique which is improving day by day. As the name suggests, 3D printing refers to the technique of manufacturing solid objects by supplying a digital pattern. Just like a 2D printer prints text or photos sent to it by the computer, a 3D printer reads in computer designs and manufactures the products implied by those designs. A 3D model of the object is supplied to the printer. Such 3D models are developed using Computer aided Design(CAD) tools.

A small statue of Mario generated using a 3D printer

Unlike traditional object manufacturing(pottery,shoe making,clay modeling and what not), where objects are created by taking initial building material and then removing parts from it to get the final object(in short, Subtractive modeling), in 3D modeling, objects are built by adding small quantities of the building material(Additive modeling). The 3D design of the object is broken down into cross sections of different thicknesses.This thickness depends upon the object to be created as well as the technology to be used for 3D printing.The 3D printing device takes this design and then produces every cross section as suggested by the design and creates the final object by adding the next cross section to the previous. Hence, the overall object is built by building single layers of the object and adding them to each other as they are built. These layers of the manufacturing process correspond to the cross sections specified in the design.

The aforementioned process is the core of all 3D printing technologies but the manner in which the layers are produced and how the layers are added to one another distinguishes the various technologies.A broad categorization of the techniques goes below:

Molten Polymer Deposition : Uses a molten polymer and beads of some thermoplastic material. A movable nozzle, whose movement is controlled by the Computer Aided Manufacturing(CAM) software, is used. The nozzle releases the thermoplastic beads to produce the layers. These beads harden immediately after the nozzle deposits them. The movable nozzle deposits these beads in the way the layer should be formed and then releases molten polymer to seal this layer to next layer that will be built upon it. e.g: Fused Deposition Modeling(FDM) technology.

Granular Materials Binding: Small granules of the building material are fused together by heating them. When one layer gets built up, another layer of granules is fused on to the first layer and hence no need of layer binding here. e.g : Electronic Beam Melting(EBM) used for making metal parts, CandyFab for making confectionery and inkjet 3D printing used for making colored 3D objects.

Photopolymerization : A liquid polymer that turns solid on getting exposed to some light, is used. The liquid polymer is kept in a container and is exposed to the light in a controlled manner.A build plate is used to separate a cross section of the polymer from the rest of it. The light projector's position and coverage area are controlled so that only desirable portion of the polymer over the build plate gets exposed. In this way, a layer gets formed. Then the build plate moves downwards and another layer is formed similarly. At the end, the remaining liquid polymer is released from the container and the object is acquired.e.g : Stereolithography (SLA)

A model of a sport shoe generated using 3d modeling

3D printing is used for prototyping, where a small model of actual object is made, or for creating artifacts that will actually be put into use.3D printers can be used to produce jewelery,artwork,metal models, artistic confectionery etc.  The 3D printer generates an object which is exactly similar to the 3D model supplied. Hence the printer allows one to create multiple similar copies of same design. 3D printing is perfectly complemented by 3D scanning. Hence, instead of creating 3D models of some real life object manually, one can simply use a 3D scanner to create a 3D model of  that object and once you have the model, just imagine how easy it is to build multiple copies of the same.

A bicycle model generated using 3D printing

Can u smell what ur computer's cookin ???

Many of you might be knowing this and many of you might not be knowing this that apart from the general computer peripherals, there is a peripheral which can actually produce smell. Yes, in fact its been quite some time since such gadgets were developed. These gadgets are based on the concept that certain limited number of scents can be combined to produce other scents. These gadgets have these basic scents in form of cartridges or plain liquid containers. While operating , different quantities of these basic scents are combined in different proportion just like it happens in RGB or any other color model. And what results is an array of scents that imitate naturally available scents. Scentcom and certain other vendors are already into manufacturing different devices that exploit this mechanism. These devices are primarily used to enhance multimedia experience by adding another sense to computing.

One would wonder then that why these devices never gained any major recognition. The primary reason for that is the limited number of scents that can be produced. Although the number that can be produced is very large but only some of them are meaningful and a lot of naturally available scents may be difficult to produce by this mechanism. But the major problem is that all of this scent reproduction to imitate the reality is done manually. Someone will have to manually make a guess at what proportions might be correct to produce the kind of scent which is desired. Here is where a major scope for improvement comes in.

Currently, one has to manually generate these scents but wonder what would happen if one could actually record a scent composition and then use the composition data to reproduce the exact scent as and when needed. Just imagine what would happen then. You and your friend have this peripheral and you two are chatting. And while chatting, you can actually smell what your friend is cooking !!! 

Now this major breakthrough would come only when a more advanced scent generation mechanism is created - One that is capable of producing almost all the possible scents. Such a mechanism would concentrate on combining the core chemical compounds instead of combining scents. And the recording device will actually have to break the scent down into respective compounds and record the same for reproduction at the receiver's side. I don't have to tell you how sophisticated this future scent machine needs to be but just imagine what a revelation it would be. It will just go on another mile to make your multimedia experience lifelike.

The Future Of Wired Communication

Natural Plant Fiber, which is found abundantly almost everywhere in the world, has some unique refraction,X-Ray diffraction and a host of properties that have gained it wide acceptance as replacement in certain fields. On one hand, it is used in natural composites to add more strength to the surface soil and on the other hand, it is used in certain components of automobile engines to capture particles that can render the air polluted. Another use of it has been anticipated.

Plant fiber from a few categories of plants has optic properties that are pretty similar to those we find in Synthetic Optic Fiber made of glass. The only desirable property though which is absent in these natural Fibers, is the mechanical strength needed to work as a long distance communication medium. This property is needed as we need to splice and merge fibers as the distance increases. However, what compels us to move ahead and use these Natural fibers as replacements of the Optic fibers is the extremely low cost that such fibers would fetch. Hence, biotechnology scientists have already started working on advancing such species of plants so that the fibers become more strong. In fact, certain other fibers derived from other plants are indeed very strong but they lack the optical properties which are needed. Hence, bio-technologists are striving to make a combination of the two. It is also believed that if such fibers are made, they would perform even better than synthetic fibers because of their tissue structure which provides better refraction than synthetic fiber.

we cannot say if we'll actually see such fibers in future but the move towards it would certainly complement the philosophy of intelligent technology. 

Predicting Earthquakes In Advance

Surprised after reading the title of this post ? More than that, you might be wondering if it is possible. Well, this may turn out to be a reality in the near future.Earthquakes, are perhaps one of the most devastating forces of the nature. Earthquakes, ever since the inception of civilizations, have claimed countless lives and have resulted in heavy damage to property. Whereas, damage to property can be controlled by making earthquake-resistant structures, loss of life can be ensured by both, making stronger structures and finding ways of predicting the earthquakes, well in advance.

Now, the questions is, how ? Earthquakes are of two types - shallow ones and deep ones. Shallow earthquakes are the ones that originate within a depth of around 300 KM beneath the surface of the planet, and Deep earthquakes are the ones that originate at larger depths. The reason behind the shallow earthquakes is very well understood, however, there is no clear-cut explanation for the Deep Earthquakes. Hence the concept that will be used to predict earthquakes is applicable only in the case of shallow earthquakes. Moreover, shallow earthquakes cause more loss and wreaken more havoc than the deep ones.

Now, the principal point is that, the shallow earthquakes have got a definite relation with seismic activity and seismic waves.They are basically the waves which originate because of the movements inside the Earth.The seismograph shows more activity in case of actual earthquake and the Richter Scale measurement of Earthquake magnitudes, is actually the magnitude of largest variation on seismograph recorded during the Earthquake's span.The monitoring centers throughout the globe, keep recording the seismograph of corresponding zones, and this seismograph easily tells when we had an earthquake.The monitoring centers are placed after analysis of tectonics(There are several tectonic plates inside the earth and the shallow earthquakes are related to the collision and other interactions amongst the tectonic plates. This is tectonics).It also gives us information about the various parameters regarding the geographical area to which they pertain. Like, you must have heard about the danger zones, in terms of probability of occurrence of an earthquake. Countries and states are divided into seismic zones.Some zones have a high risk of seeing an earthquake than others and some zones are also likely to see more powerful earthquake than others. This zonal distribution turns out to be very useful during planning . Such zones are made after analyzing the seismic activity over a long period and also after analyzing the tectonics of that place. Like places that are closer to the meeting point of two tectonic plates are at a higher risk .

So, the question is, can't we make better use of the seismographs and use them for better things than just planning zones? Well, seismographs may turn out to be the biggest boon for mankind Seismographs are formulated by measuring the strength of seismic waves and they are analyzed across various parameters.Seismographs are recorded at all times, and most of the places in the world will have a large database of seismographs by now. Now, there are two suggestions for making use of these seismographs in predicting future earthquakes - A statistic-based philosophy and a Data Mining based philosophy. The statistic-based philosophy is a conventional one.The seismographs of all the years till now are analyzed and the values of various parameters are calculated. The values during the earthquakes are given higher weights while compiling a area-based formula that can be used for predicting earthquakes. The current values of the formula's application help us in finding out if we are nearing an earthquake. Now, the disadvantages of this approach are :

1. values in future may be similar to the past values just by chance and hence may turn out to be false predictors, in the end.

2. the approach might predict an upcoming earthquake, but it will not predict it well in advance and the authorities may not get the required time for letting people know of the same.

3. every statistic approach has its own disadvantages.

4. if there were heavy variations in parameter values during earthquakes, then the formula for that area would be very fragile.

5. The process used for computation of the formula is based on knowledge of a subject that is not well understood. So, the approach is not perfect.

The second approach though, is the one that should interest us the most. It is based on Data Mining. Data Mining is basically a phenomenon, in which tonnes and tonnes of existing data is analyzed by a data mining program and the attempt is to find out some hidden and potentially important information. This information may be in terms of hidden relationships between different items or may be anything else that holds a lot of value for the organization to which the data belongs.Data mining can only be done when you have tonnes and tonnes of data to mine. Just to give you an example, consider a Departmental store. The departmental store sees tonnes of visitors everyday and all information regarding all the billing gets stored in their databases. When the database grows large enough, it is combined with the even older databases and all the billing information stored till date is moved to a Data Warehouse(it is just like the Data Archive of a organization). Now, the departmental store wanted to find out any hidden information from this archives(since the archive is humongous, manual mining is not an option).They run a data mining tool on this data and they find out that about 50 percent of the users who brought bread of A brand also brought cheese of B brand. This is a very value information in this context. The store may give an offer, where a combo of A brand bread and B brand cheese is given. Now since, 50 percent of the users were already loving this combination, a great percent of those who haven't tried it yet, will also have an urge to try the new combo. The store can reap in huge profits like this. That is Data Mining for you.

So, in context of Earthquakes, what has this Data Mining got to offer us? Well, it can do wonders. The thing which has long been recognized by seismographic experts, is that seismographs of most areas might show some specific behavior just before the earthquakes.Now, we don't know how long this behavior lasts or what sort of behavior it is. But we do know one thing.We have the seismic activity recorded, both in terms of graphs and also in terms of values. And we can also assume that we have a significantly large seismograph database . Now, by nature, seismographs are going to give you a lot of data. Seismographs are continuously recorded all the time.We have a sufficiently large  number of data mining tools for both, mining graphical data and mining numerical data. Hence,if there is any behavior, Data Mining will find it and tell it. In terms of graphical data mining, the tool may come up with some pattern that was experienced some time before the earthquakes or through some time before the earthquakes, and in terms of numerical mining, the tool may come up with a set of values that was seen some time before the earthquake, or may even come up with some averages.Hence, if we do have some pattern in the seismographs and we have appropriate seismographic data for some area, then an effective data mining process will always come up with this hidden behavior and experts can use this information to formulate models.In fact, Data Mining tools, also provide the lower level details behind its findings and help the experts in making detailed models.A different program may monitor seismic activity against this model and report results to experts at all the times. Now,it does not matter that whether the behavior was transient or it was prolonged.If there was a specific behavior, Data Mining will find it.The strength of Data Mining lies in the Artificial Intelligence that the various tools possess. Data Mining tools use neural networks, genetic algorithms, cluster algorithms and various other approaches to analyze the data across various dimensions and come up with hidden information.But,this approach too has a few drawbacks :

1. The behavior may not be very useful if that was exhibited just a few seconds before the earthquake.

2. The Data Mining tools take a lot of time for mining information, hence using the tool on the go, is not possible. One has to properly plan that when the latest Data Mining session has to be run and after collecting how much new data, should it be run.

3. Data Mining, at times, may come up with a lot of possible alternatives for explaining a particular piece of information. This is not the fault of the tool, this is a because of the nature of the case. In this case, experts will have to use their knowledge to reduce the number of cases to formulate the final model.

So, the best thing that we can do, is to combine the first approach with the second approach and make a combined model that can be used for predicting earthquakes. There's no doubt that a lot of capital and time will be spent, but just imagine the benefit it has for the mankind.Some research has already started in this field. A team from Indian Institute Of Technology(IIT),Hyderabad is working on a project, where several small sensors will be placed in the Himalayan belt and Data Mining will be done to predict earthquakes, a day in advance. The sensors are from Japan, so their teams too are a part of this. Teams from other IITs will also be contributing. The project will get into full flow by 2015.Some more research from other universities throughout the world, is under way. We can just hope that this research comes up with some encouraging results and gives us a model by using which, areas from all over the world, can find out if an Earthquake was approaching, and that too, well in advance. Just imagine the world then. That is what technology can do.

The Future Of Secondary Storage: Bio-Storage

We've seen floppy drives, Pen Drives, Zip Drives, SD Cards, Magnetic Tapes, Magnetic disks, Optical Storage and what not. All of them are different modes of permanent storage and all of them use different technologies and vary in the amount of data that they are capable of holding. But guess what, the future storage medium would be a living being ! Amazed ?

Yes, the future storage medium will very likely be a living being. First, scientists from Keio University ,Japan and later , a group of students from Chinese University Of Hong Kong(CUHK), have shown that how data can be stored in Bacterium. Actually, the data has been stored in the DNA of the bacterium. The more encouraging stride was made by CUHK . They were able to store the Einstein's famous equation E=MC2 in the DNA strand of the e.coli bacterium.

The logic is very simple, although the implementation is somewhat tedious. The DNA is made up of millions of pairs of Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thiamine. These are the chemical bases that pair up to form the DNA.  These nucleic acid bases pair up in different ways to give every individual his/her own unique genetic make-up. Its in this very property, where lies the secret of storing data in DNA. A mapping scheme is used to map the bits of data into these chemical bases that form the DNA. Different mappings can be done where one can assign different meanings to the nucleic acid bases of the DNA.And then a reverse mapping scheme is used to map the data back to normal form, for retrieval.

Now, the implementation is tedious because :

1. Mapping is time consuming and the equipment that will be used to do the mappings will be both costly and complicated.

2. DNA strands are humongoulsy large and hence look-up time may get very high.

3. Bacteria are very delicate, and if the bacterium culture gets infected,then the data may be lost forever.

4. Bacteria can infect human beings and hence the user should be very careful while working with such storage media.

5.Bacteria can mutate and hence change their DNA, resulting in the resident data becoming corrupt.

But the advantages of this scheme can very well outweigh the points mentioned above :

1.One can very easily make cheap copies of tonnes of data. This is because bacteria reproduce and make identical copies of themselves.So, if we had stored data in the DNA of a  bacterium and that bacterium reproduces, then the new bacterium will also get the same DNA , and hence, we will get a new copy of the original data at a very minimal cost. Data copying is somewhat costly with the existing storage media.

2.A very invincible shuffling encryption scheme is possible with this method. This is because one can use multiple mappings that yield the same meaning. Hence, it is possible to use an encryption mechanism , where instead of storing the data according to the actual map scheme, it is stored with a different map scheme and the mapping equipment can help the user get the actual data by shuffling the encrypted data.

3. Data stored in bacterial DNA cannot be hacked very easily, because the data will not be directly accessible. The data is stored in DNA of bacteria that will reside in a culture. This culture will be connected to the equipment that holds the mappings and hence this mapping equipment can serve as a firewall.One can have a mechanism, where the user will have to assign a separate passkey for accessing the equipment. Hence the storage is much more secure than the existing storage media.

4. The main benefit with this storage is that the storage space is humongous. CUHK showed that they can store 90 GB of data in 1 gram of e.coli. The conventional secondary storage technologies are nowhere near Bio-Storage, as far as the memory density is concerned. In fact, the CUHK group believes that with proper implementation, one can store 900 TB of data in one gram of e.coli. Just imagine that !





Currently, this technology has been used to store copyright information in bacterium that are discovered. This is a very small information in comparison to what can be stored. But research in this field is moving very fast, primarily because of the fact that the conventional storage technologies are about to reach their limits of density. Some people believed that the bacteria are too delicate to store data in them and they can never be as reliable as magnetic disks or optical storage. But, some bacterium can be very very resistant. In fact, the Deinococcus Radiodurans bacterium can even survive a nuclear radiation. Hence, if we store data in this, the data may remain safe for thousands of years.




Although, its very difficult to predict the exact future of this technology, but it certainly has a lot of potential. And, if the scientists take this technology a little more seriously, then you never know what they can make of it.