Autumn 2014
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contents
cover story Competetive Psychology
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interviews
psychology
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Dr Brijesh Kumar (Organic Devices)
Ode to the Slug 21
Atulya Yellepeddi
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Liar Liar !! Enigmagic
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technical Analyzing Data Industry 08 Tailor Made Tech
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Piecing Pyramids
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editorial Backseat Braniacs 06 09 Right of Forget
GEEK SPEAK Our mind is the most complicated object in the universe.The rules that govern it are mysterious and elusive. Maybe our brains just aren’t complex enough to understand their own complexity.But that is not going to stop us from trying. The formal definition of the word ‘psychology’ has evolved over several decades and today, we can safely call it the science of behavior and mental processes which forms the theme of this edition of Geek Gazette. The cover story of this issue focuses on competitive psychology – the tendency to self-evaluate by comparing ourselves to others. The articles on Lie Detection and Brain Magic give you an insight on how powerful our brains really are. The big story, The Future of Free Internet, attempts to answer the question, ‘Is the internet moving in the right direction?’ Around 1915, editors were the gatekeepers of information and decided what the world read about. They are being replaced by algorithms. Is this a good thing? Turn the pages to find out the answer! To keep you up to speed with what the IITR Junta is cooking in their Tech Labs, we have introduced a new, regular section, “Project Files”. This will cover the coolest and the geekiest student research projects on campus. Following our sutra of promoting science and technology by keeping ‘Brain over Bakar’, we bring you the story of Atulya Yellepeddi, an IIT-R alumnus, who is currently doing his PhD at MIT. We have Dr. Brijesh Kumar from Electronics and Communication department explaining organic electronics and expressing his views on the curriculum in IITR. Our website portal http://gg.ieeeiitr.com/ is up and running. It has all the unabridged articles and lots more! With this, we thank our mentor for his continued patronage, acknowledge the support we have from the readers and our sponsors which has enabled us to come with full-colour issues. Our critics are always welcome to send their valuable feedbacks and suggestions to teamgeekgazette@gmail.com. Yours endearingly, Team Geek
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TEAM
SCIENCE
Quantum Computing It all began in 1980 - when Yuri Manin, a Russian Mathematician first introduced the field of Quantum Computing. It was re-introduced in 1982, by one of the legends in the world of quantum physics – Dr. Richard P. Feynman after doing some advanced research. Quantum Computing is different from digital computing in many aspects. In Digital Computation, data is stored in the form of binary numbers or in the form of bits. Whereas, in quantum computation, data is to be stored in Qubits – Quantum Bits. Quantum Bits are a super position of some quantum states. Qubits are basic units of information that can be a 0 or 1 simultaneously, unlike classical bits which can only store data as either 0 or 1. In theory, a quantum computer of 300 Qubits could hold 2 to the power of 300 values simultaneously, which is more than the number of atoms in the known universe. This tiny computer could perform an incredible amount of calculations simultaneously. The concepts of quantum computing are similar to probabilistic automation. Recently, a couple of spectacular researches have been done by the scientists of RIKEN, Japan which is very exciting for the people in the field of Quantum Computing. One is about the practical proof of quantum nature of the electron. The vortex beams of electrons have been used in magnetic field to observe the motion of electron. It has been observed that unlike the classical mechanics, there are three different frequencies of electron during its motion in this magnetic field. They correspond to different quantum states of electron. This research was not oriented to explore the quantum computation but the results obtained are promising for the development of the same. Now, the quantum mechanical experiments will be more precise and the quantum states of electron will be practically recognized. Some physicists believe that this will
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help in developing the Qubits for quantum computing which will be based on different quantum states of electron and their superposition. Another research is about Arrays of electrons trapped in Nano-scale circuitry could form the basis for future scalable quantum computers. A single electron trapped in a semiconductor nanostructure can form the most basic of building blocks for a quantum computer. Both of these researches when put together can really be a great step towards realization of Quantum Computing. In order for a quantum computer to show its superiority, it needs to use new algorithms which can exploit the phenomenon of quantum parallelism. An example of one such algorithm is the quantum factorization algorithm. The algorithm tackles the problem of factorizing large numbers into its prime factors. This task is classically very difficult to solve; in fact it is so difficult that it forms the basis of popular encryptions. Therefore, developing a powerful Quantum computer will break most of the current forms of public key encryption, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets! On the downside, Quantum mechanical principles have to be applied and understood precisely to be able to develop these supercomputers. Another problem that deter their development is generation of Qubits; it has to be done in accordance with the Quantum mechanical algorithms, efficiently. Quantum computers could one day replace silicon chips, just like the transistor once replaced the vacuum tube. But for now, the technology required to develop such a quantum computer is beyond our reach. Most research in quantum computing is still very theoretical. And the discovery revealing facts about quantum nature of electron has excited quantum researchers to turn the tables.
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EDITORIAL
TRIBUTE TO THE BACKSEAT BRAINIACS Time and again has the world been astounded by the sheer genius of individuals who have defined excellence in their respective fields of work. People who make their very competition sound awfully mediocre and are synonymous with perfection. But individualistic efforts can only take you so far. It is solely through collaboration and expert guidance that the mammoth undertakings they have to their name bear fruit. Widely regarded as one of the greatest forwards’ in football, Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal scoring exploits are no news. His uncanny knack for scoring goals complemented by a plethora of jaw dropping one to one skills has resulted in a goal scoring record rarely paralleled. Hailed as ‘the complete forward’, his obsession for perfection along with an indomitable will has made Ronaldo what he is today. But what does not come to the fore is the man who cultivated this winning mindset. Enter Rene Meulensteen.
RENE MEULENSTEEN Meulensteen took over as first team coach in 2008. Prior to Meulensteen’s arrival, Ronaldo insisted on scoring ‘beautiful goals’. Ronaldo played for the limelight and thus his goal scoring record (23 in the 2006-07 season) failed to project the true extent of his abilities.
the opposition defence at will. Goals came flying in. Goals that were both ‘ugly’ and ‘beautiful’. Ronaldo scored an amazing 42 goals that season, a huge improvement over his previous tally. He won the prestigious Ballon d’Or for the first time in the 2007-08 season along with many other accolades.
It was Meulensteen’s maxim – “It doesn’t matter how you score, where you score, as long as the ball goes into the back of the net.” This was in stark contrast to what Ronaldo previously aimed at. The Dutchman tasked United’s No.7 with setting a goal target of over 40 goals that season. Then they worked on positions, types of finish and most importantly his mindset while approaching the goal.
Without Meulensteen’s guidance the exemplary No.7 could never have been the paragon of excellence that he is now. The elusive ‘obsession for perfection’ could simply have crippled Ronaldo had it not been for Rene Meulensteen.
With this new-found attitude and the astonishing skill set that he already possessed, Ronaldo dismantled
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What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the name - Michael Jackson? Is it the moonwalk, the virile zipper-bedecked red leather jacket, the dance routines or is it his hybrid pop-cumsoul-cum-funk-cum-disco-cum-rock-cum-electronic
GEEK GAZETTE
EDITORIAL sound that compels you to loosen up? A ‘Thriller’ in the true sense. This story, too has a great supporting character-Quincy Jones.
Quincy Jones As an American record producer, Jones was endowed with 31 Grammy Awards in 79 nominations, 7 Academy nods and a Primetime Emmy. He first met MJ on the sets of the musical, The Wiz. The two then recorded the song ‘She’s Out of My Life’, one that Jones had been initially saving for Sinatra. This collaboration resulted in an emotional bond that culminated into friendship. Unlike other producers of his time, Jones wasn’t afraid to experiment. For instance, Jones had Michael sing vocal overdubs through a six-foot-long cardboard tube, and brought in jazz saxophonist Tom Scott to play a rare instrument, the lyricon. Likewise, Quincy made sure that sufficient amount of research and hard-work went into every song to complement Michael’s vision and talent including getting Van Halen to play for ‘Beat It’. Not only did Jones believe in Michael’s idea for Thriller, he invested a staggering half million dollars, making the video the most expensive of its kind at the time. The 14 minute long video broke all previous records and became the most successful and culturally important video in history and has remained unparalleled since. In 1984, Jones won the Grammy for the producer of the year. Michael won 8 Grammy awards (solo) while the album won a total of 11. This brought an end to a meaningful association. With Thriller, Michael had achieved global fame and became widely regarded as ‘THE KING OF POP’. Quincy went on to guide many young artists and is still contributing to music despite being in his mid-80s. In this fickle world, records get broken every day but it is the magic of each moment that lives on in the hearts of the people. This renders immortality to anyone who has truly given his everything to an art-form, to creating something that cannot be recreated. It’s for everyone to realize that only a select few can spot that opportunity when it passes us by like a runaway train speeding its way in and out of our lives. On a funny day in 1978, two men caught it, they hopped on it and met each other, and then ‘Magic’ happened.
imbibing artistic design with impressive functionality. This is exactly what Steve Jobs has strived to add to the very fabric of his company – aesthetic minimalism combined with futuristic technology. Apple has sparked and led a resurgence of craft, working tirelessly to create something perfect and beautiful that breaks away from the existing norms set by its competitors. Accompanying Jobs is a lesser known – Jonathan ‘Jony’ Ive, the senior vice-president of design at Apple who has played an instrumental part in most of Apple’s contemporary endeavors.
Jonathan Ive Jonathan Ive joined Apple in 1992 a time when Apple was nearing bankruptcy and constantly moving away from what it had once stood for. Ive was on the verge of resigning if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs who returned to the company in 1996 to revive its dwindling fortunes. Jobs once said “Ive has more operational power than anyone at Apple, except me”, something that speaks volumes about the impact he has had on the design and working of Apple. Ive avoided publicity partly because of his extremely coy nature and also because of the super secrecy bordering on paranoia that Jobs liked to have with his products and employees. Ive operates from a design studio at Apple’s Cupertino based headquarters. The glass of the studio is opaque and no-one other than Ive, his core team and top Apple executives are allowed in! There you may find precisely everything that Apple is working on. The lab also has a lot of CNCS’s(Computer Numerical Control Simulator) – machines used to make prototypes – because Ive wanted to “feel” every product. I've seeks advice in unlikely places. He worked with confectionery manufacturers to perfect the translucent jelly-bean shades of his first big hit, the original iMac! He travelled to Niigata in northern Japan to see how metalworkers there beat metal thin, to help him create the titanium Powerbook, the first lightweight aluminum laptop in a world of hefty black plastic slabs. Although being wildly over-priced, Apple products continue to sell like hot cakes with a margin that make its competitors weep. So much for being a designcentric company.
Apple Computers has few parallels when it comes to
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technical
analyzing the data industry A bizarre and wonderfully new industry where data is a commodity and might even become a currency of the future
Eliyahu Goldratt’s book, The Goal, introduces three simple parameters - Inventory, Operating Cost and Throughput, which can be used to analyze even the most complex businesses. The primary aim of principles of management is to cut down costs and improve efficiencies. However, with time, parameters used to evaluate the performance of a business has turned quite complex. Nonetheless, the 3 mentioned parameters are enough to analyze a business completely. Applying these same parameters to the Data Industry lends to a lot of interesting results. Data has its aura everywhere. Big data analytics and other related areas have influenced almost all spheres of industries like marketing, stock market etc. Data mining has fueled ecommerce by using fragments of data generated while browsing, properly structure and refine it and then extract meaningful information out of it to target potential customers. Government, research institutions and other national or private agencies are data manufacturing industries and generate a large amount of data. They generate research papers, reports and so forth on a very large scale. Time invested in the research, money invested to buy the necessary equipments, salaries paid to researchers and other employees etc. are all operating cost involved. What is the outcome of this? A truck load of raw data! This data is the inventory generated. A common perception held is that the goal of these research institutions is to publish more and more research papers; but as we deploy more of our human resource on this, the inventory grows bigger which is more of a liability than an asset. It‘s like spare parts sitting in warehouse to be assembled. Publishing more papers may make the system (or any individual part of the system) more
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efficient but not productive. The problem reducing the productivity of these systems is that the inventory (in the form of research papers) is not processed further and this stage can fairly be treated as the bottleneck. To deal with this bottleneck of assembling data and drawing information out of it, we need to subordinate it to increase its individual efficiency. In other words, we need to make sure that good number of researchers are working to draw some meaning out of this generated data and process it further to convert it into usable information. Consequently we need to allocate a larger amount of workforce in this area. This may reduce individual efficiencies of stages of data generation and may increase cost; however, overall throughput in such a scenario will be significantly more, making the system more productive. For example, in accordance to demand in an agrarian country like India, more emphasis needs to be given not only to generating data in the fields of agriculture, but also to processing this data with special input efforts on it to convert it into finished goods in the form of viable and feasible technologies Hence the need of the hour is to devise strategies for reallocation of our resources in the data manufacturing chain, to generate data products as per demands, to reconsider the proportion of production of data and to boost up the data assembly stage. This makes sure that every bit of data generated is in accordance to demand, well processed and converted into a finished good. Data is no longer just like any other resource. It is the center stage of a very fast growing industry with a plethora of great new possibilities and opportunities that only remain to be tapped into.
GEEK GAZETTE
EDITORIAL
RIGHt To FORGET Recently, Mario Costeja Gonzalez sued Google and asked it to remove the links to a set of 36 words from it's search results. In 1998, Mario had auctioned a property to get over his financial problems, but even after 16 years and a repossession of the property, the 36 words that mentioned the auction remained to be a prominent part of the search result to his name. The internet has a vast amount of knowledge stored and this is open for access to any and all. On the other hand, quite ironically, it also grants the ability of every user to maintain a cyber identity with personal information whose privacy can be regulated. However, what happens when some of your private content end up in the public domain? What happens when a particular piece of publicly available information is damaging to your reputation or is simply irrelevant and yet is a prominent result when you google your name? The unforgetting memory of the internet would make it hard for an ex-convict to land a decent job without previous legal troubles meddling in. An auction that happened 16 years ago, as in the case of Mario, might continue to haunt one even today. The Right to be Forgotten was introduced to counter these very problems. Earlier this year, a court in Europe ruled in Mario's favour and made this case a major precedent to the Right to be Forgotten. It can enable a user to seek deletion of some content from a particular service provider.
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The provider is obliged, by law, to remove the “offending� content, at least in the nations that implement this right! It has been implemented in various nations, especially those in Europe; but that has not stopped people all over the world from voicing their concerns over its implications. The Right to Information and Freedom of Speech are widely considered as more fundamental rights and the Right to be Forgotten can be seen as a violation of these. The same situations that advocate the Right to be Forgotten, when viewed from a different angle also provide an argument against it. For instance, as an employer you'd certainly like to know an applicant's full criminal history before you decide whether or not you can overlook his past. Forgetting something untrue makes sense, but should something that is true yet embarrassing be forgotten? Can something even be really forgotten on the internet? Leaked photos of celebrities keep resurfacing no matter what measures are taken. The more you try to hide something, the more attention you call to it, thus guaranteeing that it is never forgotten - the Streisand effect. Forgetting can be a good thing, but should we really try so hard that it becomes memorable instead?
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big story
THE FUTURE OF FREE INTERNET
The internet began as a network for sharing information freely, without any restraints. This was a way to go against the slow methods of sharing information that existed in the day. The idea was that, if information is shared freely, we could get a holistic picture of what is going on in the world related to any topic we wished to know about. However, over time, as the amount of information
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grew, it became essential to be able to search through it and to index it. Searches soon required to be ordered in new, more logical ways to promote easier and faster access to relevant information. This was the birth of the famous PageRank algorithm that Google created. Soon, people were able to get good information easily. With the advent of social networking, this phenomenon of prioritization and personalization of information grew exponentially. Posts with more "Likes" or "+1s" were bubbled up whereas others were pushed down. Posts related to what you liked more were given a higher preference over other posts.
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Not all information is equally easy to access any more. At times, it even feels like Facebook or Google know more about you than you yourself.
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Is the internet what it used to be anymore? With such a huge overload of knowledge, it is no wonder that we need sophisticated techniques to figure out what to read or look at next. With the hundreds to thousands to millions of status updates, photos, links, likes, web pages, articles, blog posts and videos coming out on the internet all the time, it is almost certain that we will never be able to look through everything; and hence, we rely on prioritizations done by big companies like Google, Facebook, and other large information dealers. However, is this the right direction to move in?
GEEK GAZETTE
big story Soon, one started to see that everyone was getting more and more search results related to what they loved. Websites soon started to get personalized and targeted to individuals. Even searches started to get more personalized. A very extreme example of this was when the protests in Egypt were happening. A simple Google search for "Egypt" gave differing results ranging from travel websites to the pyramids to the news of the protests. There is no "standard� Google search anymore. Not all information is equally easy to access any more. It looks like we are repeating history again, just in a more destructive way. Around 1915, editors were the gatekeepers of information and decided what the world read about. Nowadays, they are replaced by algorithms. However, these algorithms have no sense of ethics and cannot objectively differentiate what is really important and what is just for casual reading. Also, editors just chose what people as a whole read, but nowadays each person is wrapped in his/her own "Filter bubble". Very few notice this, but to those who do, this is downright scary. At times, it even feels like Facebook or Google know more about you than you yourself. In one's own filter bubble, nothing that goes against one's viewpoint ever enters into the knowledge stream. It almost feels like the whole world agrees with what you say. This is a very
dangerous situation, since as internet activist Eli Parser said, "A world constructed from the familiar is a world in which there’s nothing to learn ... (since there is) invisible auto-propaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas." Ever since people realized that there was so much tracking and tailored-made content being delivered to us, many services have come up over the past few years that help break past the bubble. DuckDuckGo is one such service that helps you search the web without the biasing done based on your past history. However, this is but a solution only for searches. What about the rest of the web? The solution to this might be more complex than imagined. A decision of ethical standards needs to be made that allows for more diverse information to be shown. Users should have a say in what is shown and what is filtered out. More "aware" techniques that figure out the real importance of information (rather than just the connection to the user) need to be developed. All of this requires tremendous amount of thinking and research in many different fields of science, technology, humanities and their interlinks to truly create a more useful and productive world wide web. We have have broken out of the censorship of the 1900s, and it is only certain that we need to break out of this century's too.
PUZZLE CORNER Team Geek has a task for you. Find an assignment of digits 0 to 9 for the letters that make the summation below, in order to make the arithmetic work correctly. TEAM + GEEK -----------------TASKS Gunning for a tougher question? Geek Gazette has one more for you to solve. GEEK + GAZETTE -----------------GUNNING Send in your answers to teamgeekgazette@gmail.com
Visit us at: gg.ieeeiitr.com Autumn 2014
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DELIGHT
ELECTRONICS
the BLUE nobel What would you try to make if you wanted to win the Nobel Prize? A time machine, a teleporter maybe; but definitely not a blue LED! On 7th October 2014, fellow IEEE members Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura won The Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the blue LED. But why does the blue LED, specifically gets the prize, as opposed to red or green LEDs? Well, the Red and the Green LEDs were already developed in 1960s, but the making of blue LEDs was a totally different story altogether. In fact, many scientists had considered it an impossible task until 30 years later, when finally these three Nobel Laureates surprised the scientific community with the invention of the blue LED. The reason it took so long to produce this color of LED was the lack of technology and materials until the 90s. The key to building any LED is to find the right material to serve as the semiconductor ‘die’ in the diode. While many materials emitted red, green and yellow, the blue was elusive. Before the invention of blue LEDs, it was impossible to make white LEDs which prevented use of diodes in households, even though they are more efficient sources of light. White LED lamps convert about 50% of available electrical energy into light compared to the 2% for incandescent light bulbs. The result is that LEDs last for about 100,000 hours, which is 100 times longer than your average incandescent lights and 10 times
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longer than fluorescent lights. Now, LEDs have countless applications ranging from lighting to smartphone and television screens. Okay, so what led to the success of these fellows? Despite all trials and tribulations, it was the persistence and will power of Shuji Nakamura that kept him going. After supporting his research for a few years, Nichia (The world’s largest supplier of LEDs) stopped his funding, citing it was consuming too much time and money. A lot of big companies really tried to do this and they failed badly. But, he continued the research on his own and his hard work finally paid off when he succeeded in making the device in 1993. Many great inventions like cellular phones, televisions or even the airplane never helped anyone to The Nobel Prize. It might seem surprising that tiny inventions like transistor or IC and now blue LED can have such an impact on the world. Alfred Nobel wrote in his will that the Nobel Prizes should be awarded to only those inventors who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind." He certainly would be pleased with the decision.
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PSYCHOLOGY
LIAR LIAR ! If we were to believe Cal Lightman, we lie at least three times in a ten minute conversation excluding of course, the conversations with parents and professors. This fact doesn't excite us that much, does it? Some of you might have even expected this number to be higher! Most of us aren't astonished by our own frequency of lies. However, there is one thing that fascinates us all. The ability to detect lies. We all have had an experience where we know that we're being lied to. We even sometimes play along with the act just to see how it unfolds. There is an immense satisfaction in knowing what people around us are really thinking. Imagine being a perfect lie detector. If only, you could manage to trump secret agencies like S.H.I.E.L.D while they try to pool you in to help them in their pursuit of world 'peace', it would be an almost perfect life. The only downside would be being banned from Poker tables. Dr. Paul Ekman, the greatest human lie detector in the world, along with Dr. Wallace Friesen and Dr. Joseph Hager developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) in 1978 to taxonomize human facial movements. Years earlier, Ekman's mother had died of mental illness when he was very young. In his pursuit of helping others like her, he made giant leaps in this field in a career spanning more than half a century.
What the FACS? Using an 'Action Unit (AU)' as the basic unit for measurement of facial movements, this system describes facial expressions. This is known as FACS coding. Example:
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The numbers after 'AU' represent unique muscle movements which might result in different emotions. FACS coders face the mammoth task of inferring muscle movements by changes in facial appearance.
GEEK GAZETTE
PSYCHOLOGY HUMANS VS. MACHINES
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interview
into the future
organic devices Dr. Brijesh Kumar Assistant Professor, ECE Dept. IITR An IIT Delhi alumnus with PhD from University of Minnesota and industrial experience with Cypress Semiconductor in Minnesota. Rollable 80 inch HDTVs, cloth based displays and seethrough 3D displays! These devices may actually be possible in the near future with the help of recent developments in organic (carbon based compounds) electronic devices such as OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes).The majority of present-day devices based on semiconductors use inorganic crystalline materials, with silicon dominating by about a factor of 1000 compared to other materials. Despite the advantages of singlecrystalline inorganic semiconductors like high mobility and high stability, these materials are less suitable if applications require low cost and large area. As an alternative, organic materials have recently gained a lot of attention and have been a subject of research since their inception. Organic semiconductors have unique physical properties and several advantages over the conventional semiconductors. They offer the possibility to prepare very thin film photodetectors and photovoltaic cells and there is a wide variety of chemical compounds available which enables us to tailor materials according to our needs. The production processes are much simpler, cheaper, less time consuming and environmentally friendly than silicon wafers which involves hundreds of steps for its production. You can have roll to roll printed or solution processed electronic devices. This invokes a huge potential in line with ‘Make in India’ concept. India doesn’t have a single silicon fab till this date. Many of our ICs are designed in India but are, eventually, imported from Korea or China. Part of the reason is the million dollar investment required and high level of technical intricacies. However, for organic electronics, either printed or solution processed, the fab facilities required
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are much cheaper, so can be easily setup in the present Indian scenario. The most well known application of organic semiconductors is organic LEDs. They are diodes based on organic materials that produce light on application of electricity. The interesting factor with organic LEDs is the potential for depositing or printing them on flexible plastic substrates. They also refresh way faster than LCDs – almost 1000 times faster – which enables the display to change information in the real time. A whole new era of new flexible devices is opening, and the day might not be far when we might have the Opening a whole new era of flexible display devices, we may even have Harry Potter fame newspapers in upcoming years! Also, OLEDs offer wide viewing angles (170°) which will be the perfect display to show movies and other visuals in front of a large audience. As much as it seems to be promising and technology of the future, it also suffers many setbacks which include non-uniform properties over wide area, low mobility, traps at interfaces and challenges in compact packaging. Dr. Brijesh Kumar in electronics and communication engineering department is working in the field of organic electronics and nanotechnology. An IIT Delhi alumnus with PhD from University of Minnesota and industrial experience with Cypress Semiconductor in Minnesota, Dr. Brijesh is one of the four young and dynamic professors who joined Electronics Department this year. Here are the excerpts from his talk with GG related to IITR Culture of working and over his plans for research work.
GEEK GAZETTE
interview GG: You’re quite new to the institute. How you do like Roorkee and what do you think of the students here? BK: I like the campus and the students are talented here; I do appreciate the aptitude of the students, but it’s really a misfortunate that students who are being taught engineering disciplines, see it fit to join some “finance/banking“ based agency. That’s four years down the drain. We are in fact subsidizing the hiring process for these companies. To get the best brains of India, they just come to IITs and they don’t even have to work hard to find good people to work for their companies. GG: What do you think of the curriculum here at IIT R? Do you think anything has to be changed? BK: Yes. I wish there were more electives. IITR is currently having a rigid system of allotment of electives, that too from a relatively limited list of not more that 5- 6 courses and the allotment procedure too is dependent upon CG order, which impedes the growth and learning desire of the student. I remember in IITD, we had once a choice of 34 open category credits from the institute, where we could choose any course from any technical department (either UG or PG). That fluidity is required in IITR. Apart from that the scheduling of time-slots efficiently in the timetable can be done to allow students to attend courses offered by other departments. GG: A very good and practical solution sir! GG: Kindly shed some light on the improvements you would like to see on the Bachelor Thesis Projects. BK: In my domain of observation, compared to IITD, students here seem to be putting less sincere efforts in their BTPs. Also the structure of BTP requires some changes. It should not be made absolutely mandatory to do a BTP in one’s own department. In today’s multidisciplinary world, BTP from other departments should be facilitated for those who wish to do their higher studies in the mixed disciplines. GG: You did your PhD from University of Minnesota. Why do you think Indians prefer to go out to US to pursue research? Apart from funding and equipment issues, can you think of any particular reason why India has not been able to retain/attract students? BK: We Indians do get enamoured by the lifestyle and the social order of white people. Our colonial mindset has led us to believe that everything they do is superior. Hence, this inclinational towards the west is seen in Indian students. I must point out actually that there are things with America that aren’t good. However, turning to the research environment in India, we see that we don’t have the necessary resources and motivation to do a PhD. It’s not that the faculty is bad, PhD Scholars simply lack the
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motivation and vision to carry out research. Hence, this poor cultural ecosystem fails to attract the academically bright to stay back. GG: We would like you to know about your research interests and the course of work you plan to undertake. BK: I have just started my work here. My focus is on construction of functional optoelectronic devices incorporating nanostructured semiconductors as the active layer in parallel with the modeling and computational part. Apart from organic stuff, am also concentrating on the stacked high efficiency solar cells – made from quaternary semiconductors. I am also planning to take up collaborative projects with my PhD supervisors from US. GG: How do you see the Organic electronics industry 10 years from now? And will organic electronics surpass the dominance silicon based electronics presently enjoys in the market? BK: Organic electronics are cheaper to process and easier to manufacture and has less industrial waste (compared to silicon, because of much fewer processing steps) which makes it a very good alternative semiconductor platform both from economic and environmental point of view. As for whether silicon Industry can lose its traditional market monopoly to the organic electronics industry; no, it won’t. The silicon industry is in quite an advanced stages where we have more than a billion transistors in chips 1 square inch in size, so as of today, organic electronics cannot compete with silicon on a large scale but for specialized applications like displays, it can. In the coming years, we might see the introduction of small scale production lines for these organic electronics especially in display and sensor area. Silicon and organic electronics may however, complement each other, rather than compete with each other. GG: Thank you Sir for your valuable time. GG readers will surely love this piece. Wish you all the best in your future endeavours. BK: The pleasure is all mine. To read more about his work, you may follow him at: brijeshkumar.com
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competitive Psychology
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COVER STORY
F
rown on your face, head thrown down in disappointment and brain bombarded with questions like “How could I have committed that silly mistake?”, or to put it bluntly, “Will I pass?”. Sounds familiar? Yeah, that is many of us when we leave the Lecture Hall Complex every time in midNovember or mid-September. Interestingly, a branch of psychology accurately explains what happens in your brain when you are enclosed in that four-walled hell hole or, as some nerds call it, examination hall. Competitive psychology strives to reason out the basic human behavior in competitions or competitive environments spanning every field be it sports, academic or entrepreneurial and it also further predicts what ought to happen when the factors governing the same change. The logic that lies in the core of this subject, that drives us to rivalry, is the human tendency of social comparison. We, humans, compare ourselves to others all the time. Why does his profile picture has more likes than mine? Why does she have a better spouse? Why can't I get grades better than them? It seems like we have nothing else to do in our lives (no wonder Jesus wouldn't show himself again!), yet these comparisons are the triggering point of competitions in our lives. Examinations are ubiquitous yet they are the most hated things. Due to recent advancements in competitive psychology, it's now easier for professors to set more difficult papers (As if our MTEs and ETEs weren't difficult enough!). How? Well it's the “Einstellung Effect”, which states that, when faced upon a problem never seen before, the human brain attempts to solve it by a method used previously by it even though a better and easier solution exists. That, right there, is over which the world's best competitive exams like JEE are based upon. It's time we realized JEE is not a selection procedure but an elimination one. The questions are actually pseudo strainers set by professors to filter out particular type of students! Since people studying psychology seem to have a lot of time on their hands, they also studied the behavior of competitiveness as the number of competitors changes! Known by the not-so-obvious name, the N effect, it basically says that increasing the number of competitors can decrease competitive motivation. So, the next time you leave
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your room to face the ETE you studied for the night before, hope that half of the class doesn't show up! What better example than sports to study competitive psychology in a team? So what is this 'form' that sportspersons so often tend to lose? How are they all of a sudden plunged into such bad runs of their Inter-IIT career? What is it that separates 'great players' from 'good players', when they seem equally skilful? The answer lies in their cerebral cortex. Sports are fun but even fun without some sort of competition, is a useless waste of energy. Any team sport requires co-ordination and understanding. Slackening on the part of any player may prove disastrous. Group competition necessitates that the individual must forget his own individual identity and merge it with that of the team. In-depth analysis of the behavioural pattern of students going to Inter-IIT leads to very interesting results. When an athlete, at any level, competes in an event seriously, he is highly motivated. He becomes more aggressive and his total energy is mobilized in such a way that he is ready to 'kill' the opponent so as to excel or over-power him. Moreover, nowadays so much emphasis is put on winning that unfair methods have become a common practice to get desired results. 'Prize, praise, prestige and privilege' have become the driving factors. Anticipating your opponent's performance is another major aspect of competitive psychology. Malinga's yorkers may be increasing in their accuracy but are surely losing their effectiveness. Goalkeeper's have their hearts in their mouths whenever Ronaldo takes a penalty. This is because our brain has become accustomed to expecting an exemplary performance from the opponent. We tend to underperform in such situations only because we don't expect ourselves to outperform our counterpart. No wonder FIFA 15 decided to include goalkeeper AI based on its studies! The brain is a complex entity and it works in ever so wondrous ways in a competition. Studying the same resulted in advancement of two extremely different things, the absolutely loathed and vicious examinations and our beloved game FIFA, which we spend countless hours on when we should be studying for the former. Who knows what further unravelling of the brain holds in store for the campus?
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TECHNICAL
tailor made tech Computers, initially, were supposed to be the tools meant for the use of scientists and corporates. But then came the Mac in 1984, a product that revolutionized and spurred on the information technology age. Computing went to a totally new paradigm. For the first time there was a computer one could use as a personal assistant. And it did not stop there, invention of GUI, USB drives, better processors and better operating systems have just made our lives better. And then, very soon came the mobile phones, another major milestone in personalizing technology. From using PCO’s to having your own phone number, synonymous with your identity, took personalization to a whole new level. But man always wants more. The industry saw one of the fastest revolutions. Smartphone’s were developed which were supposed to modify and customize themselves based on the use of the consumer. For instance Motorola’s Moto X comes in 2000 different combinations in the U.S.! The whole idea behind the android or iOS platform was to make the mobile phone “customizable”. The user could use apps and features of choice. Technology is changing at a very rapid pace. Google in 2011 announced that it was working on a modular phone codenamed Project Ara. . Ara phones are built using modules which serve different purposes. For example, a module can not only be a camera or speaker, but could also provide more specialized features like laser pointers, gaming controllers and medical devices. Google aims to provide an open platform for every phone company in the world through Project Ara. The first modular phone is said to be released in the first quarter of 2015 at a price of 50$. Google has invested a lot of resources into personalization. Custom search results are the new rage. Moleskine, an Italian company based in Milan, is
such an example. Moleskines are durable notebooks which come in various styles and sizes. These notebooks wear out very well and they really adapt to a person, as if it were a custom tailored suit. The books being rigid give a superior feel and a good support for writing. It has already become a hit in the western world and a lot of people are switching over to moleskins. The rigid cover gives a special feel to it and also provides good support for writing.Mass customization has evolved over the years with the help of 3D graphic computing; customers get a real feel of how their product looks like and are also ready to pay premium. One can find websites like (www.mixmyown.com), (shoesofprey.com), (at60inches.com) where you can get your own unique cereal, footwear and paintings respectively! More and more fields are coming into the fray of individual customization. Healthcare is getting tailored to our needs and necessities. The human genome project, a project started by the U.S. government in 2003 has helped create what doctors now call ‘genome medicine’.Personalized medicine can be very easily designed for newborn babies by preserving their umbilical cord for genetic testing. The best part where customization could come handy is food! Personalized Ice Cream flavours and pizzas have become mainstream! Youbars.com is a food network that makes personalized protein bars. And of course the food list just keeps going on. These are just a few success stories of the customization revolution that has taken the global manufacturing industry by storm. The aim of technology has been to increase capabilities and reduce effort. But it has not been unique to an individual. Always scientists and engineers have tried to cater to the masses with their prodigious brainchilds, and they have been successful. Makes us wonder what’s next?
EASTER EGGS... The Konami Code (if you don't know it, then shame on you!) has long been a part of geek lore. But now, it is a part of your work day too: there exists a prankastic easter egg on Google Now. Just open Google voice search on Android and say “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right”, and behold. I was kind of hoping for a Contra emulator, but oh well—still neat!
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GEEK GAZETTE
PSYCHOLOGY
Ode to a Slug Hello? Hello? Hello? Is anybody in there? With these immortal words by Pink Floyd, we bring you the most unspeakable evil article of all time - the dark and the despised- the ever mourned- nightmare since big bang, a tale of slow internet in campus. Yes, you heard it right, people of Govind, Ravindra and Jawahar. And you too, the one who holds this magazine in front of chrome’s ever spinning circle of life. Turning your face down in shame and agony won’t let you evade from this discourse of disgrace. Let us all together burn ourselves today, for today we give an ode to the slow (read non-existent) internet. Let us mourn once and for all. Let our laptops gently weep. Just give a nod if you hear us. Is there anyone at home? As somebody with a heavy voice puts it, every great magic trick consists of three parts- the pledge, the turn and the prestige. Similarly every slow internet withdrawal symptom consists of three parts –the denial, the acceptance and the oblivion. Yes, it is denial- the stage one, when you are deluded by so much of reality around you that you unconsciously keep pressing 'ctrl+z' every time you feel the absence of internet in your life. It is when you keep ignoring the little black dinosaur’s message ‘unable to connect to internet’ and keep pushing your keyboard to the 5th function- you know, you could have done everything for Jim to be dead instead. Such is the blasphemy of situation. Unspeakable evil it is. Just the basic facts. Can you show us where it hurts? Some faceless guy in the canteen told you the reason for your pain is the failure of some Nation Knowledge (NKN) Line. But you know it’s not true: it is Satan, the one between your birth right and you. It is some conspiracy on cosmic scale as guardians of universe of are trying to take away from you- what was yours since the beginning of time, since the big bang. And this hurts, as all acceptance does. It hurts that you are puny and insignificant in front of forces that control this universe. It hurts to see that you are not the chosen one – the one destined to bend the rules of the Matrix. I can't explain, you would not understand. This is not how I am. Sad it is, but it is the truth. For you are now left only with an oblivion- a hollow sphere of worldly desires crowded with a million blatant eyes. And as if this was not enough, the neural cavities above those eyes have come up with theories trying to rationale out your apparent anhedonia. One of them, Empty nest syndrome comes from loosening of child-parent relationship. It says when a child (you) leaves its nest (the web) for worldly affairs, it often becomes impossible for parents and the child to cope up with all the challenges. Maybe it is right, maybe you were the child destined to leave your nest and perish or maybe not. The otherrather a famous one- describes a set of persistent impairments that occur after withdrawal from alcohol, opiates and in this case ‘the internet’. Several extremists call it PAWS- Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome. But it doesn’t matter what these second grade pseudo intellectuals think about you. Not after knowing that they engage themselves in inane activities such as bakar, chapo -no, not at all. But it’s all gone. The nest, the alcohol, the guardian fairy or your birth right whatever you call it. There is no more google to help you out in your search for meaning of life. There is no more Facebook to update your recent location, or Instagram to update your latest duck-face selfie. You are plunging deep into the abyss of reality. And you are so out of your luck this time. The dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb.
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SCIENCE
Three parent babies Are we ready for them?
I
n a few weeks, the UK is likely to become the first country to allow the creation of babies from two women and a man (Three parent babies). The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is backing this procedure. Under the technique, parents will be offered donor DNA to mend genetic flaws so as to reduce disabled progenies.
affected DNA by the donor's DNA. Then, it proceeds in the same way a normal IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) would. Thus, the baby would carry the entire DNA from the parents except the mitochondria, which would be from a donor. The new technique has already been tried on monkeys, mice and houseflies. The technique could be ready in a couple of years from now.
The diseases are caused by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA. These are inherited by up to 4000 children per year in the USA; about 1 in every 4000 children in the USA will develop it by the age of 10. Some of the symptoms include diabetes, poor growth, loss of muscle coordination, visual problems, and other neurological and functional impairments. Some of the babies die shortly after birth. Others live a disabled life.
The ethical concerns of this procedure are also under the scanner. It’s being argued whether this could lead to ”designer babies” — those with traits like eye color, height and intelligence customized by parents. Biological faults introduced in the baby might be transmitted to future generations inviting further mutations. And of course, religious organizations are accusing scientists of playing god.
More than 15 years ago, a private fertility clinic in the United States implemented a procedure on 17 babies involving the mixing the two eggs. Lack of proper monitoring led to closure of the programme. The new technique involves switching out the
Whatever be your own take on this, this is surely the news to watch out for. The procedure would be a boon to the affected parents, if successful. And it will signify new heights scaled by mankind towards perfecting favourable biological inheritance.
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GEEK GAZETTE
PSYCHOLOGY
ENIGMAGIC “ Magic is all about directing attention. You look, but you do not see. ” There is no one more powerful than someone who could control your attention and manipulate it for his own benefit. That said, you can easily assume that magicians and deception artists are the second most powerful people you could meet (the first being your girlfriend, of course!). Now, since we know for a fact that Harry Potter was just a book and Santa isn't actually real, one might wonder how the gorgeous assistant of the magician changes her gown in a matter of seconds or where does the ball he threw in the air actually go. The answer simply is that you did not see. You looked, but you did not see. Magic is all about directing attention. Neuroscientists have long known that attention plays a key role in perception. Of what we look we actually see or perceive only a fraction of it. You have experienced this phenomenon yourself. Your brain is constantly bombarded with stimuli, and it is impossible to pay attention to them all. When our attention is focused on one thing, which fancy people call attentional spotlight our ability to perceive objects outside this area is compromised. For instance, if you are reading this article with enough concentration, you won't notice the colors of the adjacent page change (if it could duh!) even though it's in the coverage of your sight at all time. Almost all magic tricks takes advantage of loopholes in our attention, that too while you think that you are paying close attention. So, next time when you watch a magician perform, know that the sly hand movements, lively banter and those jokes are to move your attentional spotlight elsewhere. Magic shows us how easily the mind can be fooled but it isn't just visual perception and attention that the magician plays with, but also memory and decision making. Many magic tricks also take advantage of the ability of the mind to be readily distracted with false information. In thinking about a trick you will try to jog your memory, to remember where you got distracted and missed something, but, in actuality, because the artist
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skillfully used these same attentional sleights of mind to manipulate your memory systems, you will only be able to remember what he tricked you into seeing. Our brain is a proud little thing, if it notices an empty space in your order of events it will fill it with the most logical experience that could explain the following event and then would believe in it without any trace of doubt making it impossible for you to realize if it actually happened or not. When we talk about magic and deception, a person worth mentioning is an Irish born Mentalist, Hypnotist and Magician Keith Patrick Barry. You might know him from his TV series called Deception with Keith Barry that aired on Discovery Channel. He is considered by many as one of the best artists in his field. His TED talk is among the 12 most viewed talk of all time. Where he, dressed unlike any contemporary magician, in his shining shoes complementing his striking black suit showed the audience how our brains can fool our bodies and stated that “If you can access the subconscious, then you can reprogram it. Period!” Keith trained actor Woody Harrelson in the art of mentalist and magic for his movie Now You See ME. Barry is said to be able to hypnotize even large crowds at once with great efficiency. Now, to give you a quick glimpse into what this articles has been talking about. Without looking at the above paragraph again, Can you recall the colour of Barry's shoes when he gave the famous TED talk? Don't remember? Maybe your brain filtered it out or maybe did not even pay attention to it. And if you remember they were black, think again, your brain might have filled the gap! *wink*
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speculative
superhero science raiden With the name that literally means “lightning and thunder,” Raiden is the thunder god of the Mortal Kombat universe. A protector of the Earthrealm and an immortal, he commands control over lightning, can teleport and even fly. "A n y s u f f i c i e n t l y a d v a n c e d technology is indistinguishable from magic," said Arthur C. Clarke and Raiden's powers may be none but an example of this. Lightning and electric sparks are phenomena made from plasma and plasma has an extremely interesting property that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields. With a sufficiently advanced way of manipulating magnetic fields and a way of creating a large number of electric sparks, it would seem to any mortal that it is lightning and electricity that is being controlled. Magnetism and magnetic fields can easily be created by current loops and electric sparks can be created by just a large enough voltage to cause
a dielectric breakdown of air; hence, all one would need to be able to control lightning would be to make a tiny but very powerful battery and a way of switching or moving circuits very quickly so as to seem fluid. However, doing just this, it is quite easy to see how Raiden gets his other powers too. Being able to control magnetic fields, he can cause extremely fast alternating direction of fields that could be controlled to seem to be anti-gravity. Also, levitation using plasma has been shown by scientists already. Extremely fast movement is indistinguishable from teleportation by the human eye, and if one could figure out a way to pack so much energy in such a small battery, wouldn't it be obvious to use the energy to cause a great increase in kinetic energy and move very quickly? Who else better to learn about this from than Gambit?
gambit Remy Etienne LeBeau, better known as Gambit, with his red irises on black sclera, flowing auburn hair and striking sharp looks, is one of the most badass X-men character of all time. A mutant, Gambit can mentally create, control and manipulate pure kinetic energy to his every whim and desire. He is also incredibly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, the use of a bō, and of course, card-throwing. An effortless ladies' man, Gambit also possesses an unusually strong and irresistible hypnotic charm that allows him to exert a subtle
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“I will neither confirm nor deny any explanation given for my potwers”
GEEK GAZETTE
speculative influence over sentient beings, leading them to believe what he says and agree with his suggestions. Gambit can charge objects with physical touch, making them explode after a while; this can be achieved by making the object unstable enough to undergo nuclear fission under normal conditions. In an interview with one of his close associates, Team Geek found out that this power is a result of him secreting a sufficiently unstable fluid over the object to be charged, through his sweat pores. The secretion then triggers a chain reaction making all the atoms in the mass of the object unstable and
eventually explode. A gambler by heart, it is only obvious that he uses charged cards as his weapon of choice. Being a mutant, gambit's body regenerates continuously avoiding and, at the same time, containing any harm due to mentioned radioactive bodily fluids. These fluids, if taken in appropriate amounts can be used to convert the stored potential energy of desired objects into kinetic energy by virtue of little directional explosions acting as thrusts. His ability to control kinetic energy clubbed with constant regeneration also grants him incredible superhuman physical
abilities like strength, speed, reflexes a n d re a c t i o n s , b a l a n c e , a n d endurance. Due to his hypnotic abilities, acquired while being raised among thieves, he can seemingly even control another's thoughts. Too bad for everyone else in this universe, it seems as if his death would result into an uncontrolled nuclear explosion due his radioactive nature. For the love of at least the rest of the X-men, let's hope he gains immortality too. Talking of immortality, let's see what Deadpool has to say about his powers‌
deadpool Who dares summon the master of glib, the deliverer of one-liners and the shogun of sarcasm? Ah! It is you, Team Geek. Don't tell me you're still after knowing how my super badass powers make sense. Okay, here it is, once and for all. The day my father Odin banished me from Asgard, I was bitten by a vampire and had radioactive waste dumped into my eyes. To make matters worse, my mutant ability to control weather activated just as I was hit by a blast of gamma radiation. Nah, actually, I got this way by volunteering for the Weapon X program. They promised to cure my cancer. And they cured it all right, by giving me an outrageous healing factor. Then they labeled me psychotic and tossed me into a prison lab. So I escaped and became what some people might call a 'mercenary'. I prefer the title 'cleaner of the gene pool'. I THINK WHAT THEY WANT TO KNOW IS HOW WE KEEP COMING BACK TO LIFE?
AND HOW WE ARE KEPT AWAY FROM THE BEAUTIFUL SWEETHEART,
DEATH.
How I keep coming back to life is kinda a mystery to me too, but as far as I know, it has got to do something with them getting rid of the aging factor in my genes and rewriting the DNA to heal destroyed cells at an awesomely fast rate. Now I'm better at whatever Wolverine does! OR MAYBE IT IS JUST THE NOPE, THAT DOESN'T MAKE CHIMICHANGAS. SENSE. LOTS OF PEOPLE EAT BUT NEVER AS MUCH AS US. CHIMICHANGAS. Oh, and my multiple voice thing? Well, I might be crazy, but I'm not karaaazy. While fighting guys, the dissociative identity "disorder" just makes me an extremely unpredictable opponent. Cool right? Anyways, I got to go now. I have a date with Death. (Shoots self in the face)
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ALUMNI CORNER
Q&A WITH ATULYA YELLEPEDDI “A student, an innovator, a teacher and yet a child at heart! An ECE alumnus (graduated in 2010), Atulya Yellepedi has been pursuing his Ph D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after successfully completing his M.S. there. He won an Institute Gold Medal for academic excellence, and a best undergraduate project award at I.I.T. Roorkee. He maintains a perfect 5.0/5.0 GPA at MIT. Despite his very tight schedule, Geek Gazette had the pleasure of being able to interview him.” GG: What comes to your mind when we say 'life at IIT Roorkee'? Atulya(sighs reminiscently): Life was definitely awesome in Roorkee. College life is a surreal experience. It's the first time you leave home, the first time you get to learn on your own, learn how to manage your work and life for your own. It's the first time you really grow. You won't get these years back.
Also the professors. There were some really good professors in the ECE dept. of IITR. But not everybody was as good, as there was no real feedback. Feedback is taken serious as shit here. 2-3 semesters bad review, class gets terminated. This just wasn't there. It is important that feedback becomes part of tenure process. The culture there is that of seniority which is not conducive to attract good talent! Relevant review system also boils down to students being more responsible.
GG: You have been studying at MIT for the last 4 years, after 4 years at IITR. What's the major difference you see in these 2 colleges? A: Well people work here because they love working. The lectures here go into various depths. The professors and researchers just love what they do. And the style of thinking in MIT is different compared to other good institutions. MIT is focused on understanding stuff at an intuitive level rather than a mathematical level. And that for me has been very helpful for understanding various problems, and that was something I didn't learn at IITR. This according to me is one of the major differences, our style of thinking and work differentiates us.
GG: Undoubtedly you were one of the most brilliant people on campus. You were the Gold medalist. You had the best BTP. What did you do differently? What was your mantra? A: I tried to not worry about the result. I think worrying is the one trap most of us fall in and this could be related to the JEE preparations. I mean it is important to get marks and have goals but then the learning for knowledge part fades away. It is important to prepare for exams but it's also important to understand the material too, it is your branch after all. I made sure I learn the material out of interest and that principle has helped me get into MIT.
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GEEK GAZETTE
ALUMNI CORNER GG: Many people here don't know much about research. What should be their first step in this direction? A: I don't necessarily think such a career is good for everyone. Or even for many who walk in the door of an IIT. I know most people are intelligent but intelligence manifests in many ways. That's perfectly fine. Don't completely close your mind to the possibility that there might be something you might be interested in. Professors are always helpful and it's important to find professors who are doing good research in the field you are interested in. And it's also important to find alumni who are interested in the broad area that you are interested in. They are very helpful because they can point you towards directions to look in. That is something very difficult to figure out on your own. So, basically, it's important to find good professors and alumni. And surrounding yourself with people who are research oriented will incline you more towards research. GG: IITR to MIT. A roadmap. A: Okay, I have answered it in bits and pieces throughout but I'll elaborate. Make the PhD/research program much more relevant. Profs can only do so much research. Here most of the research is done by PhD students who are guided by professors and given full independence in choosing their field of research. Now this also helps the undergrads a lot. For example, there are parts of my job right now which I would love a bunch of undergrads to do for me. I would give them a paper and ask them to read it and give me a system that I can compare to what I'm doing right now. I mean there are things which are not my fields of research but I still have to look into them for the purpose of comparison and I would love undergrads to do them for me. And that will save me two months of work at the same time helping the undergrads a lot as they get to see what I am working on, they get to see the names of papers, they get experience working. So once you have PhD students doing real research and the undergrads who can help them and learn from them, then you have in the making
something this big! GG: Something about your current field of research… A: I am sure you'll understand. There are a number of things happening in the real world where you have some property that is changing with time. What I am trying to do is learn to crack that property. Now what you see coming out is totally different. You see something that is probabilistically related to that property but not exactly the property, some error or something. The observations that we get are also related to one another in a statistical way. For example, if you have 10 different observations, the 1st one is strongly related to the 2nd one, weakly to the 4th and unrelated to the 3rd, the idea is to capture that dependency structure in some way that will help you to learn what is causing that structure and then track it over time. You have a communication channel. Now the channel is changing with time. What you observe is not quite what you are transmitting. The transmission got messed up by the channel and the noise. But if the channel has some meaningful structure, which all real world channels have, then you can exploit that structure in a reasonable way to learn that channel. The same is for stock market prediction. Like the stocks of Shell are going to be much more dependent on Exxon Mobil than on that of Google. The main idea is to exploit the dependency structure. GG: Any final advice for our readers? A: Lots but most importantly, if you find something interesting, explore it. Talk to professors, talk to alumni but go on to know more about it even if it doesn't lead to you doing research. Don't just leave something you find interesting on the table because you don't know where it'll lead. Get involved, keep your professors engaged, keep us engaged and do enjoy yourselves! Also, I went through your latest edition on your website the previous night! You are doing some great work!
“How is the course structure of MIT different from IIT Roorkee?” “Is Ph.D after B.Tech a good option for budding researchers?” “What does MIT want from its aspirants”…. Find out what Atulya has to say on Geek Gazette website: www.gg.ieeeiitr.com
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FEATURED
information entropy Everyone compresses data using software like 7-Zip, WinZip or WinRAR; but how many actually try compressing the archive that comes out of the compression program in hopes of making it take even lesser space? If you've tried this, you'll know that ironically, in most cases, it takes even more space. The reason for this seemingly bizarre occurrence lies rooted deeply in a concept of information theory first analyzed by Claude Elwood Shannon.
If you've tried this, you'll know that ironically, in most cases, it takes even more space. The reason for this seemingly bizarre occurrence lies rooted deeply in a concept of information theory first analyzed by Claude Elwood Shannon. When analyzing how much data (or information) a message contains, Shannon came up with a measure that was very useful in quantifying it. He realized that the amount of information in a message is directly related to the uncertainty in it. The more uncertain an event, the more value its information has. For example, knowing that Monday comes after Sunday is nothing new and so has low amount of new information; however, knowing the outcome of a football match has a lot of information due to its higher uncertainty. It is said that, when Shannon was deciding what to call his new measure and fearing the term 'information' was already overused, von Neumann told him firmly: "You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function
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has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.� Entropy in information theory is related strongly with how many bits are required to represent each character/symbol on average, in a given message. Given N symbols with probability p1,p2,p3...pN, the message has entropy . The most commonly used base for the logarithm is 2 and gives the entropy in a unit called shannons. Other units like nats (base e) and hartleys (base 10) are also frequently used. If one tried to calculate the entropy of any English message, then one would find that it has entropy of 0.6 to 1.3 bits per character. This means, that the actual information of any message is only approximately 1 bit per letter and not 8 bits that ASCII makes you use. This is the main basis of many
GEEK GAZETTE
FEATURED compression algorithms. Entropy compression techniques take a generalized version of this main idea and use it to compress data. Since entropy is the average amount of information in a symbol, the total information is the entropy multiplied by the length of the message and this is, roughly speaking, the best a lossless compression scheme can compress the data to. Shannon's source coding theorem just says this more rigorously. But how does all this connect to not being able to zip a file twice? Whenever we compress a message, we are essentially writing a bijective function (to have lossless decompression). Hence this function needs to be one-one. However, if some messages come out smaller, at least one must come out larger due to the pigeonhole principle. This is usually not a problem practically in compression schemes since we are usually interested in only compressing certain kinds of messages such as English documents or photographs as opposed to gibberish text or noise. Hence, it is unimportant if the scheme makes some unlikely or uninteresting sequences larger. However, once a file is compressed, it is essentially as random as it can be.
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This makes it as random as noise and more likely to come out larger on further "compression". Even though we have a theoretical limit on the compressibility and it can (almost) be achieved, most compression algorithms throw in some redundancy checks to prevent data loss due to random fluctuations or transmission errors. However, new algorithms to compress data better keep coming out since entropy of data is dependant heavily on the choice of symbols used. For example, if we take a and b as the symbols for the message abababab... then it has entropy = 1 bit; however, if we take ab as a symbol for the same message, its entropy is zero (since the whole message has no real randomness). There is huge potential for research in the field of information theory and any research would have extremely wide reaching consequences. The influence of entropy ranges from areas including lossless data compression, statistical inference, cryptography and recently other disciplines such as biology, physics and machine learning too.
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TECHNICAL
Piecing pyramids
Dusty, old piles of rubble in a hot desert which are home to bandaged white walkers. This is what most of our impressions of pyramids are. What is it then, about pyramids that makes people like Zahi Hawass spend a huge chunk of their money and life over them? Is it their connections with afterlife, their subtle relationship with numbers or the beauty within? Shouldn’t they rather devote their time to study the intricacies and structure of the Burj Khalifa rather than going through piles of sands and rocks in the sweltering heat? Even now the three pyramids in Giza, that of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure stand tall, the largest being the Pyramid of Khufu. In fact, it is only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence. Think about this, the Egyptians had no k n o w l e d g e w h a t s o e v e r a b o u t "m o d e r n technology" that we have today. There were no cranes or trains for lifting and transporting the stones which constitute the 5.9 million ton Pyramid of Giza. Yet, the mortar it’s made from is stronger than what our scientists today can fabricate.
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There are many other mysteries which shroud the pyramids, like The Case of the Missing Capstone, (which is worth writing a Perry Mason book on!), or how the pyramids were actually made. Usually, when a pyramid is constructed, the capstone, the most important part of the pyramid, is the last thing to be placed on it. It is made of gold or a special stone. Yet the Great Pyramid of Giza doesn't have a capstone. It might have been looted in the past, but the chances of that are miniscule as we have no record of it’s existence in history nor is it possible to lift such a heavy capstone without attracting attention. Again the question arises, how would it have been possible to mount such a capstone during that time. Answers to some of the questions have already been found or speculated upon. Researchers at Amsterdam University have found that wetting the sand in front of the sledge used to carry the heavy stones makes it easier to move and reduces the labour by half. This is further supported by the wall painting found in the tomb of Djehutihotep.
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TECHNICAL The Egyptians might not have known about the capillary bridge and friction, but one can't deny that they had good observation skills. As for how the pyramids were built, Jean-Pierre Houdin ,an architect gave a well recognised theory that the pyramids may have been made from the inside out. Even so, common people find it hard to believe that their ancestors, the ones who they consider inferior to themselves, have achieved this feat which they couldn't have thought of. Thus their minds, choosing the easy way out, this time the paranormal way, believe that it was "Aliens" who had built the pyramids. Their argument was that "The Pyramid of Giza was made by the aliens and when humans tried to copy it, it came out as the Bent Pyramid of Sneferu." Not only this, they marvel at the exact ninety degree angles of the base, its very precisely equal sides and how its diagonals when extended encase the entire Delta of Nile. But if it is to be believed that the three major pyramids in Giza were made to align with the stars
of the Orion, the chronological order of their making proves otherwise. There is a historic account of a British inventor, Sir Siemens who had gone to the top of the pyramid and discovered that some strange phenomenon caused powerful polarisation and electro-static effect. This effect may be what people misguidedly refer to as the "great spiritual power of the pyramids ". Or it can be the other way round, it is the spiritual other-worldly energy which manifests itself in the form of electric energy. As for whether it was the aliens who built the pyramids or the Egyptians, you can decide for yourself. In our opinion, we agree with Holmes. "if aliens do exist and they really built the pyramids, we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind."
BOOK REVIEW Daemon is first installment of a two book series by Daniel Suarez originally self-published in 2006. A top quality techno-thriller about the potential power of the internet, Daemon is about what that power could do, if harnessed and exploited by someone who truly understands how virtual and actual reality intermesh; in this case, by computer gaming legend Matthew Sobol, an individual who cannot be stopped in any conventional way, because he is already dead. Sobol designs a program that runs in the background continuously without being in direct control of an interactive user (known as a “Daemon”, after which the novel is named) which gets activated after his death and starts interacting with the real world to achieve Sobol's vision which is kept a suspense for most part of the book but manages to sweep you off your feet once you grab hold of it. The Daemon begins by brutally murdering a man and as more killings follow, it becomes evident that the mass carnage is being planned from beyond the grave. The book is devilishly gripping, gets more exciting with every page you turn and the end leaves you in a position where you cannot help but frantically want to lay your hands on the next book in the series – Freedom. With its ingenious plot that is rich with heroes, villains, awesome twists and highly accurate cutting edge tech, Daemon is easily The Greatest Techno-thriller Ever. Period. Rick Klau(Google employee) rightly said that Daemon is to novels, what The Matrix was to movies.
Autumn 2014
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PROJECT FILES
Language Identification using Active Appearance Models Name: Giridharan Manivanan Branch: Electronics & Communiction, IDD Batch: 2014 A prominent member of SDSLabs Geek gazette brings you one of the coolest Bachelor Thesis Projects by one of the passouts of the batch of 2014. Manivannan Giridaran was a pass out of E&C IDD, who changed his branch from Metallurgy after first year. His campus life was filled with incessant successes as a prominent member of SDSLabs and Linux User Group (LUG) IITR. His sensational BTP titled Language Identification using Active Appearance Models is very innovative and opens new avenues of further research besides being freakin awesome;The project is based on identifying a language being spoken in a video using only the visual feed. Unique characteristics of any language are ingrained in its speech which can be broadly broken down into audio and visual components. His work focuses on the identification of the spoken language using only the features available in a video. Such work can be crucial to identification of a language in conditions when the audio may not be available or is of low quality due to disturbances in the recording. It uses a model consisting of different speech sounds which appear visually similar and which were chosen to allow a simple distinction among the languages. Giri examined the application of a language identification system that works independent of any language model. The importance of such a system can be understood in a situation where no information on the language, such as common words or even word order is
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available. The features used for classification were both the Active Appearance Model (AAM) which is a computer vision (related to processing of images) algorithm for matching an already known image to a new image and the eigenvector of the AAM themselves. For this he manually created an entire database of known images which represented the lip patterns generated, while speaking two different test languages. He then annotated these lip patterns to help the computer understand what each pattern implied for. He then proceeded to test his algorithm by running new videos against it and noting down the accuracy of the program.Addition of languages beyond the two, Hindi and English, that were initially utilized here, would also follow similar process as described. Manual annotation and lack of availability of a standard dataset were major challenges faced while working on this thesis. The future musings of this project includes a system to automate the identification of lips and their annotation in every frame of the video to improve the speed at which the language is identified. Another possible extension would be to create an audio visual database for better identification due to presence of a multifaceted data library. This project can find a wide array of applications in fields like surveillance and secret services and in many other places in the future which are not even imaginable to us right now.
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