Lab Rats

Lab Rats has moved

sadmin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:21:00 GMT

Lab Rats, along with all of Livemint's blogs has moved to a new Wordpress platform. Visit http://blog.livemint.com/lab-rats for more posts on science simply click here. Also don't forget to update your RSS feed readers and tell all your friends!

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Was our response to swine flu alarmist?

Seema Singh — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:50:00 GMT

Now that the media have somewhat stopped counting the A/H1N1 deaths, and there seems to be a sense of relief in the society, it's time to see how the public health measures taken in response to the swine flu spread actually measure up.

A research paper in the latest issue of British Medical Journal by Peter Doshi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says the public health response to the swine flu outbreak can be seen as "alarmist, overly restrictive, or even unjustified". Doshi's argument is based on the thesis that the response largely took into account the worst case scenario (as has been happening in the last four years), considering H1N1 as an unfolding disaster.

Some countries erected port of entry quarantines. Others advised against non-essential travel to affected areas and some closed schools and businesses.

Pandemic A/H1N1 is significantly different than the pandemic that was predicted, says Doshi. Pandemic A/H1N1 virus is not a new subtype but the same subtype as seasonal H1N1 that has been circulating since 1977. Moreover, a substantial portion of the population may have immunity.

The high public attention, low scientific certainty and the emphasis on lab testing for the virus in the first few weeks itself of the outbreak made the perceived risk look gigantic, he says.

Since the emergence of H1N1, the WHO has even revised its definition of pandemic flu.

If the 2009 influenza pandemic turns severe, early and enhanced surveillance may prove to have bought critical time to prepare a vaccine that could reduce morbidity and mortality, says Doshi. But if this pandemic does not increase in severity, it may signal the need to reassess both the risk assessment and risk management strategies towards emerging infectious diseases.

He suggests that future responses to infectious diseases may benefit from a risk assessment that broadly conceives of four types of threat based on the disease's distribution and clinical severity.

For example, the 1918 pandemic was a type 1 epidemic (severe disease affecting many people), while SARS was a type 2 epidemic (infecting few, mostly severe disease), and the H1N1 pandemic may prove to be type 3 (affecting many, mostly mild).

"Public health responses not calibrated to the threat may be perceived as alarmist, eroding the public trust and resulting in the public ignoring important warnings when serious epidemics do occur," he warns.

In the Indian context, what the public health agencies can surely learn from this outbreak is that investment in scientific and technical expertise shouldn't be a knee-jerk response but a sustained effort, with long-term planning at building capacity and data.

Hopefully the wisdom of some of the govt's responses will be debated in near future and the officials will realise that successful public health strategies are as dependent on technical expertise as on media relations and communications.

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Why do journalists in India not write books?

Seema Singh — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:59:00 GMT

Well, I am not asking this (for, to some extent, I know why) but the versatile historian and sociologist Ramachandra Guha is.

Last Friday, at the Bangalore launch of the book The Long Revolution-The birth and growth of India's IT Industry by Dinesh C Sharma, science editor at Mail Today, Guha spoke passionately (as he always does) about the conspicuous absence of books by journalists, particularly beat reporters.

And he has put money (and energy, his as well as Nandan Nilekani's) where his words are. As one of the two managing trustees of New India Foundation which gives book-writing grants to scholars and journalists, he is trying to inspire journalists to take up book writing. (I haven't read Dinesh's book yet but you can read about it at this blogpost.)

Why don't you folks write? ------------------- Pix: Hemant Mishra

Guha has a point; or maybe two. India has fascinating stories, and we journos do an awful job of telling them. Journalists in India (excluding political editors/writers), hardly write books, whereas in many other countries, particularly in the US, book contracts are sought and given more liberally. In fact, I have seen writers clinching book contracts soon after they have published a series of news reports or features in their newspapers or magazines.

I think the absence of series or long-form writing in Indian media is one reason why journalists don't think of books. With hardly any training and on-the-job experience of writing well-researched long narratives, they are stuck in the 350-500-word-news cycle.

In fact while Guha thought aloud about the reasons that day, Sadagopan found it a good opportunity to give back to his "journo friends" his little piece of mind (of course sugar-coated) on how they rush from one soundbite to another, not even remembering their own previous reports, and often tossing the context and facts to the wind.

Needless to say I was squirming in the plastic chair at Crossword (at least I haven't done that kind of journalism in a long, long time) and so were some others but then receiving such comments is part of the profession.

But next time I meet Guha I'll ask him, even if journalists get grants from organizations like NIF, will they get their job if they go back after a year of book writing leave? Shouldn't NIF also educate editors (or top managers at publications) that letting journalists work on books is a long-term investment which will give them handsome payback?

In fact, curious how Dinesh managed to write such a well-researched book while working at Mail Today, I asked him the secret and the alacrity with which he said: "Oh...I had finished my work before joining Mail Today in late 2007", said it all!

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Chandrayaan-I comes to an end

Seema Singh — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:17:00 GMT

As was feared on July 17, 2009 (when a star sensor malfunction in Chandrayaan-1 was first revealed) India's first lunar expedition came to an end today.

A rather sad day for Indians who have associated national pride and Indian technological prowess with this mission, even though ISRO has been launching several important communication and remote sensing satellites for years now.

However, unlike last announcement, which was first made to a TV channel exclusively and then when the media pestered the space agency for details, it hurriedly called for a press meeting, this time a statement has been issued promptly.

Late in the afternoon ISRO said: "Radio contact with Chandrayaan-I spacecraft was abruptly lost at 0130 Hrs (IST) on August 29, 2009. Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore received the data from Chandrayaan-I during the previous orbit upto 0025 Hrs (IST). Detailed review of the Telemetry data received from the spacecraft is in progress and health of the spacecraft subsystems is being analysed."

For all practical purposes, the mission is over even though the agency says it's due to on-board electronics failure and it is trying to revive the spacecraft. So far the spacecraft is still in orbit but might drift.

ISRO insists that most of the objectives of the mission have been achieved. But it's hard to believe that the mission has achieved in about 10 months what it purported to achieve in 24. Even if it was to build redundancy in data, in a scientific enterprise that is very significant.

On July 17 ISRO chairman said that the satellite's life would be shortened not because of the sensor failure but due to likely completion of its mission objectives ahead of schedule. At the same time he said the gyroscopes would perhaps substitute the star sensors and keep the mission alive for the remaining intended duration. Today, it says more electronics have failed.

So, there are technical glitches galore. If the star sensor failed due to excessive solar radiation, what about the set of other electronics? Is the failure also due to the harsh space environment?

The problem is ISRO's international partners in this mission are not yet commenting on the abrupt end. The space agency, at least so far, refuses to clearly answer what precisely would be lost if the mission is curtailed by more than a year. (But then no such orgnaization does, not so early.)

As is the ISRO practice, it will come out with an internal report analyzing the failure, and what it would do in future to prevent it. It'd be fair if ISRO also speaks about the possible setbacks in the experiments and their outcomes.

That said, let's remember that ISRO did have a text-book launch and this failure is not because the agency cut cost or corners. Technical glitches are part of space launches, as even with high-powered simulation, there's only so much that scientists can simulate, and predict. Of more than 85 lunar missions since the first one in August 1958, some 40 have failed or been a partial success for one reason or the other.

Let' hope Chandrayaan-II is pursued with renewed vigour. Even its progress will be keenly watched, this time by the entire nation.

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How about handwriting for lie detection?

Seema Singh — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:36:00 GMT

I don't know about you but I've had mates in school and college who used to dabble in "handwriting analysis" and would often show-off by critiquing the way we dotted our "i's" or crossed our "t's", whether our "l's" were slanting or straight, whether the loop in "h" was constricted or rounded... it just went on.

I thought most of those comments were from common sense rather than from any scientific study. After all, isn't it commonsensical to tell a person with a neat hand -- you are organized and think logically?

But lay people as well as experts have been trying to crack the code of handwriting characteristics, but the field has largely gone the way of pseudoscience. Now, putting computerized tools to this, researchers are discovering that it's possible to measure the physical properties of a person's handwriting, which are difficult to consciously control. For instance: the duration of time that one holds the pen on the paper versus in the air, the length, height and width of each writing stroke, the pressure implemented on the writing surface.

Israeli researchers from the University of Haifa report this in the November issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology. Gil Luria and Sara Rosenblum have found that these handwriting characteristics differ when an individual is in the process of writing deceptive sentences as opposed to truthful sentences.

So, can it be as good (or as bad) as polygraph? People working in this area argue that the handwriting tool has the potential to replace, or work in tandem with polygraph (verbal-based) to ensure greater accuracy and objectivity in deception detection, especially because polygraph is considered intrusive, and sometimes inconclusive.

The group has presented some papers at international conferences. More details about that here.

But I wonder with the computer becoming ubiquitous, leading to visible changes to our handwriting (at least mine has gone for a toss), how accurate can handwriting study be? Maybe computers themselves have the answer for this -- can detect the distortion their keyboard has brought to the original hand? What do you think?

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Modern day search for 'Sanjeevani'

Seema Singh — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:17:00 GMT

So is there, rather was there, a miracle plant called Sanjeevani? If yes, could/can it resurrect life as different versions of the epic Ramayana tell us?

Interesting questions even today, aren't they?

Pulled by many such intriguing questions a team of researchers set out on their own "search for Sanjeevani". The full account can be found here, in today's issue of Current Science.

They started out by logically eliminating the following hypotheses, one by one.

1. It refers to a specific plant, either extinct or extant, with a strong potential for resurrecting life.

2. It is merely a conceptual term referring to a specific group of plants with a potential for invigorating the

dying health.

3. It is a metaphoric term for any plant(s) with a good medicinal value.

4. It is simply an imaginary plant that never existed.

So what did the trio find? It seems they decided, wisely, to not address the issue of whether or not Sanjeevani exists (or existed), rather they proceeded on the assumption that "if it be true", we shouldn't miss out on such an important resource. They were also guided by the logic that the cost of searching is worth even if they fail in their attempts.

"Further, we are aware that our search may not be complete and our approach may not be the best; there may be other, better ways of searching which we think are worth attempting. However, with the criteria and we set up for the search, it appears there are at least two species, viz. S. bryopteris and D. fimbriatum as potential species representing Sanjeevani, on which more work could be attempted," they write.

Pix of S bryopteris; the dry, dead-looking material on the left almost comes alive when watered.

Somewhat deflating, isn't it? But at least there's a semblance of Sanjeevani, in these species, though the wait for the real test of merit could be longer.

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Home-grown tech for cancer care

Seema Singh — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:45:00 GMT

India can hardly boast of any biomedical new technology that can withstand global scrutiny. (Of course there could be exceptions).

So now when I learn that Cytotron (a machine for non-invasive treatment of cancer and arthritis), developed by a Bangalore technologist Rajah Vijay Kumar, has been certified by the world's leading and a century-old product safety certification body Underwriters Laboratories, followed by the European regulatory agency's CE certification for popular use, I feel delighted. And to some extent vindicated, as I've followed the team develop this for years, having first written in Newsweek (convincing the editor that it wasn't snake oil), and then in Red Herring.

To see it come this far is very reassuring; in this case, more for cancer care than for anything else. (You can read how it works in my earlier stories.)

The man and the machine: (Though the pix is three years old, but both look pretty much the same).

Kumar has been working on it for over two decades, and needless to say, against many odds and skepticism. His machine is based on Rotational Field Quantum Nuclear Magnetic Resonance which basically alters the voltage difference between the inner and outer cell membrane. Today he holds worldwide patents and expects to install over 1000 machines across the world by 2015. He says approximately 140 terminal cancer patients have undergone treatment so far. (The Indian regulatory agency allows only terminal patients for such experimental trials and hence the outcomes need to be seen in that context. These folks say if certain cancer cases can be taken in the initial stages, cure or survival rates would be much better.)

Of these, the one-year survival rate was 52% while 92% of the patients had improved quality of life, for whatever period they lived, as assessed by accepted quality of life assessment protocols. The technology has a proven track record and 52% of the end stage cancer patients, who were expected to live for a month or two have survived more than a year. The three primary aims we are looking with this technology are arrest cancer growth, stop its spread from organ to organ and provide better quality of life, he says.

Having closely watched some patients (some even cured), I can at least vouch for the quality of life; patients have significantly reduced doses of morphine (or other pain killers), some even going off such drugs altogether.

Given what an uphill task it is to garner money, regulatory support and overall the ecosystem for tech development in this country, hope this device goes from strength to strength. At least the rising cancer cases (20% per year) in the country and world over, can have some palliative care that is cheaper and harmless.

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IITs finally getting close to medical science

Seema Singh — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:22:00 GMT

It's great to see the first and the oldest of all IITs to make a move towards medical education and research. IIT Kharagpur has signed a unique partnership with the University of California San Diego Health Sciences to set up an International Academic Medical Center at IIT-K.

IIT-K Director Damodar Acharya believes this collaboration to be among the first between an IIT and a public US university in the field of medical education and research. In addition to IIT's strong education and research focus in engineering and the sciences, we also are keenly interested in medical science and technology, including biotechnology, imaging, drug development and other important areas of medical research, he says.

The agreement describes the two institution's collaborative plan to build a 300-bed, state-of-the-art hospital on land provided by IIT, Kharagpur. The IMC will include a research and development center, as well as an infrastructure for the training of health care providers.

"The long-term goal is to enable IIT to provide health care services to patients from the States of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa as well as low-cost care for medically underserved populations, including tribal groups of the region," said Acharya.

UC San Diego will partner in developing the IMC, providing leadership and training in such areas as nursing, hospital administration, health information systems, pharmaceutical practices, telemedicine, quality assessment and safety, among others.

This was so badly needed. I really hope all our top engineering institutions have a wing/centre devoted to medical sciences because that would change how we do biomedical, and engineering, innovation in this country.

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Indian tigers key to global tiger recovery?

Seema Singh — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:58:00 GMT

Indians have always taken pride in their tigers. So every time the dwindling tiger count comes to the fore, there's a national uproar. But now there's one more compelling reason to save Indian tigers.

New research in today's issue of the open source journal PLoS Genetics shows that tigers in the Indian subcontinent retain 60-70% of global genetic variability, despite evidence of a relatively recent and potentially human-induced population crash 200 years ago. The findings suggest the subcontinent tigers may be a worthy focus of conservation.

The research has been done by a team from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York and Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bangalore.

Tigers are a globally threatened species with only around 3,000 surviving in just 7% of their historical range.

The genetic tool , which Mint reported earlier, has been pioneered by Uma Ramakrishnan and her team who collected non‐invasive fecal samples from 73 individual tigers across varied habitats in the Indian subcontinent to obtain genetic data. The comparison of genetic diversity within and outside the Indian subcontinent revealed that Indian tigers retain more than half of the extant variation. The authors attribute this high genetic diversity to a historically large population size of about 58,200 tigers for peninsular India south of the Gangetic plains.

In the global context of tiger conservation, these results suggest that tigers in the Indian subcontinent are critically important for the future survival and recovery of the species.

Pix courtesy: Ullas Karanth, noted tiger researcher and one of the authors of PLoS paper

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IISc is India's top ranking engg/tech institute

Seema Singh — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 06:22:00 GMT

...Among the 67 engineering and technological institutes which have a publishing record.

Comparing this record between 1999 and 2008, Gangan Prathap and BM Gupta report in Aug 10 issue of Current Science that IISc ranks No. 1, followed by some IITs. (list below).

These institutes together have published 75,166 papers during this period, according to publication data downloaded from the SCOPUS International multidisciplinary bibliographical database. Put together, this is more than the output of the university sector (59,685 papers) and constitutes nearly 23% of the total cumulative research output from India during 1999-2008.

You can see the full report here.

The ranks are not surprising, though it will surely cause some heart-burn among non-IISc researchers, esp those in the Universities (Central Universities in particular who are better than other universities) who constantly gripe about IISc's ‘ivory tower' position.

But what is disappointing though is the output of National Institutes of Technology, or NITs who have been around for a long time (earlier known as RECs) and have been upgraded to deemed university or NIT status.

This report shows many Indian engineering and technological universities and private institutes are doing comparatively better in terms of performance.

There's a heated debate among the academics, National Knowledge Commission members and policy makers on how to improve the quality of sci-tech education in the country, which hinges very much on research and publication, a habit which most universities have almost given up. Earlier in this series in Mint and blog, we have explored this subject.

The present ranking gives one more set of data to assess where our educational institutions are.

Below is a list of top 30 institutes, followed by their number of publication and a newly proposed performance index (or p)

1 IISc, Bangalore; 12951; p - 50.17

2 IIT Kanpur; 6234; p - 39.27

3 IIT Bombay; 7228; p - 36.73

4 IIT Kharagpur; 7370; p- 35.37

5 IIT Delhi; 6520' p- 32.51

6 Jadavpur University; 4807; p- 30.30

7 IIT Madras; 5715; p- 29.09

8 IIT Roorkee; 3471; p- 25.93

9 Anna University; 3687; p- 24.54

10 IIT Guwahati; 1596; p- 19.36

11 Cochin University of Science and Technology; 1625; p- 18.67

12 BITS, Pilani; 867; p- 18.33

13 Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai; 652; p- 18.12

14 IT BHU, Varanasi; 878; p- 13.28

15 Bengal Engineering and Science University Howrah; 891; p- 12.44

16 College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai; 1000; p- 12.34

17 Harcourt Butler Institute of Technology, Kanpur; 425; p-10.61

18. Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad; 738; p- 10.20

19 Maulana Azad NIT, Bhopal; 155; p- 9.85

20 NIT/REC, Rourkela; 557; p- 9.46

21 NIT/REC, Warangal; 388; p- 9.31

22 NIT/REC, Trichy; 745; p- 9.31

23 Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology, Sangrur; 324; p- 9.12

24 PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore; 803; p- 9.09

25 NIT, Jamshedpur; 817; p- 9.02

26 Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala; 422; p- 8.91

27 Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi; 326; p- 8.58

28 Delhi College of Engineering, New Delhi; 279; p-8.50

29 BITS, Mesra; 472; p- 8.36

30 S.J. College of Engineering, Mysore; 241; p- 8.36

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India-Australia education ties still strong

Seema Singh — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:32:00 GMT

Despite the souring of ‘education' relationship between India and Australia, in the wake of recent attacks on Indian students there, institutional ties remain intact.

The first plans of the $10 million IITB-Monash (University) Research Academy, to be built at IIT in Mumbai, have been released. The Academy is expected to be ready for occupation in early 2011 and will have nine labs and can accommodate 350 researchers, though it has already begun taking students.

Acting CEO of the Academy Mohan Krishnamoorthy says there was strong demand for entry to the academy --1500 applications were received for June 2009 intake. Twenty-two researchers were finally selected.

It's great to learn that so many students want to do PhD. The joke in the academic community is that in many subjects, the number of PhDs produced in India is about the same as produced by ONE university in the US. We are talking numbers here, not quality!

But here students have a supervisor in both institutions, must study in both Australia and India and receive a dual PhD from Monash University in Melbourne and IITB in Mumbai. It's hoped the academy will support 350 research projects by 2015, says Krishnamoorthy.

The Aacemy plan

If you are thinking why make such a song-and-dance about a research academy, read this report which says the PhD number in India is growing by 20%, but in China by 85%. And this PhD survey which says why IITians don't go for PhD.

So maybe a fancy building, a foreign tie-up and a corporate management culture (most members of the advisory council are from the industry, with Infy's NR Narayana Murthy as the chairman) will inspire more students!

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Rethinking biology, with math in tow

Seema Singh — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 12:14:00 GMT

For long, biology and math have been somewhat mutually exclusive, at least in this part of the world and in initial years of education. In any case, introducing math to biologists later in career turns out a tad too late or difficult for optimal use.

Now, a large part of the scientific community is rethinking biology education, which apparently needs to undergo mutation, one that is induced by mathematics. Computing Has Transformed Biology -- Biology Education Must Catch Up, is the title of a paper in this week's Science. The authors argue that the recent marriage of advanced computing with biological research - now known as bioinformatics - demands that undergraduate biology curricula be revamped in order to prepare students to use and understand these new tools and concepts.

They say that an additional required course, focused on algorithmic, mathematical, and statistical concepts in biology, should provide biology students with the foundation to understand more complex computation

In another paper, Mathematical Biology Education: Beyond Calculus, two authors suggest that biology students might be getting enough calculus - but not enough algebra. They say algebraic models have many of the features necessary for integrating math and science, though they receive less attention than models based on differential equations or other continuous-time models. They insist that these algebraic models, which in many cases can be simpler to conceive, develop and interpret, should be considered critical for the professional development of the new generation of biologists.

(Even if a biologist is missing the math gene, as this cartoon shows, one has little choice if a serious career in biology is to be made ;)

Back home, while there is an interesting debate going on among academics on biology as a discipline and an enterprise, I am not sure if there is any serious effort at the undergrad level to revamp the curricula, similar to what the US National Science Foundation is doing. The NSF convened a huge gathering of 500 researchers and policy makers in DC last month to chart a course for biology. Their belief: improving introductory biology is a critical step toward raising the nation's scientific literacy.

But what is heartening is to see the department of biotechnology trying to encourage more bio-enterprises. Last week a first-of-its kind contest - BEST 2009-came to a close in Bangalore. It was executed by the Association of Biotech Led Enterprises in which it received over 150 concept notes from various student teams (across the country) to start bio-enterprises, then selected 20 to attend the intensive workshop at Bangalore and picked three teams as winners. More about the winners here.

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What divorce damages, remarriage cannot heal

Seema Singh — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:24:00 GMT

Marriage and health have a close connection, whatever level - physical or metaphysical -- you may want to consider.

So, when researchers say divorce, and widowhood, have a lingering and detrimental impact on health even after a person remarries, you take notice.

To be published in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the research, intriguingly titled Marital Biography and Health Midlife, shows: "Among the currently married, those who have ever been divorced show worse health on all dimensions. Both the divorced and widowed who do not remarry show worse health on all dimensions."

Several previous studies have looked at how health and marriage impact each other, this study, claim authors from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University, is the first to examine both marital transitions and marital status on a wide range of health dimensions.

Based on genetics and other factors, people enter adulthood with a particular "stock" of health, other studies have shown. "Each person's experience of marital gain and loss affect this stock of health...For example, the transition to marriage tends to bring an immediate health benefit, in that it improves health behaviors for men and financial well-being for women." These advantages are enhanced throughout marriage.

(Seeing healthy men and 'wealthy' (relatively) women around me, can't help but agree. How about you? )

The impacts of marriage, divorce and remarriage on health are based on the ways in which the various illnesses develop and heal, researchers say.

While some health situations, like depression, seem to respond both quickly and strongly to changes in current conditions, other conditions like diabetes and heart disease develop slowly over a substantial period and show the impact of past experiences. "Which is why health is undermined by divorce or widowhood, even when a person remarries."

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This blogpost will Vanish...

Seema Singh — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:17:00 GMT

...if I download this tool and choose to make it disappear from Labrats. For now, I have no such intention, but here's the story of how it could happen:

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a way to put an expiry date on electronic text. So. if any email, Facebook or chat message, blogpost or any electronic stuff (in future even images) is sent using the new system, called Vanish, then you could choose its lifetime. Literally.

Any text uploaded to any Web service through a browser can do this permanent vanishing act and become irretrievable from mail boxes (in and out), websites, or backup sites. Even the sender cannot retrieve them.

"If you care about privacy, the Internet today is a very scary place," said one of the computer scientists involved in the research, Tadayoshi Kohno. "If people understood the implications of where and how their e-mail is stored, they might be more careful or not use it as often."

The paper and research prototype are available here. The work was funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Intel Corp. It'll be presented at the Usenix Security Symposium Aug. 10-14 in Montreal.

Vanish was released on Tuesday as a free, open-source tool that works with the Firefox browser. However, for it to be functional, both the sender and the recipient must have installed the tool. The sender then highlights any sensitive text entered into the browser and presses the "Vanish" button. The tool encrypts the information with a key unknown even to the sender.

That text can be read, for a limited time only, when the recipient highlights the text and presses the "Vanish" button to unscramble it.

In the present Vanish prototype, the network's computers purge their memories every eight hours. (An option on Vanish lets users keep their data for any multiple of eight hours.)

After eight hours the message will be impossible to unscramble and will remain gibberish forever.

"In today's world, private information is scattered all over the Internet, and we can't control the lifetime of that data," said Hank Levy, a prof at UW. "And as we transition to a future based on cloud computing, where enormous, anonymous datacenters run the vast majority of our applications and store nearly all of our data, we will lose even more control."

So, contrary to the common thinking that pressing the delete button will make the data go away, many web services archive data indefinitely. Moreover, encrypting data can be risky in the long term, the researchers say. The data can be exposed years later, for example, forcibly by legal actions. More details from their website.

While I look for somebody willing to test this prototype (remember, you need two willing partners), you tell us if you could manage to make anything VANISH!

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waiting for the sun...

Jacob Koshy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Going by the amount of media space that the moon landing anniversary generated, Albert Einstein will surely be a tad jealous. Folks, it is 90 years--last May 20--since Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was proved right! Arthur Eddington, famous astronomer and supposedly the first true blue fan of the shock-haired, tongue-popping Einstein, traveled to a remote South African island to watch the total solar eclipse of 1919. Now, one of Einstein's first predictions was that gravity bends star light. Apparently, one of the practical ways to check that was to look at small stars near the sun. Such observations required a night during the day, aka a total solar eclipse.

Eddington saw that the sun indeed bent some starlight and voila, Einstein was on his way to becoming Time Magazine’s Person of the Century. Never mind that later critics accused Eddington of sexing up his observations to suit Einstein’s result. Though few doubt Eddington’s honesty, the verdict is out that his observations were of an extremely poor quality and wouldn’t make it past today’s peer review.

There’s a DVD at home called Einstein and Eddington, that I’ve yet to see.

When the moon’s shadow glides over Surat, Patna and the 3 Gorges Dam, god knows which great theory is being chiseled, fine tuned, or trashed. When astronomers tomorrow focus their lenses at the sun’s corona (the only reason why eclipses are of astronomical interest now) and we, the lesser people, marvel at the aesthetics, I wonder where the next Einstein is. (Hawking? He’s passé)

NB: Samanth adds: During yet another solar eclipse, this one in 1868, a French scientist named Pierre Janssen traveled to a tobacco field just outside Guntur, in Andhra Pradesh, to observe the solar spectrum. In it, he discovered a prominent yellow line that had not previously been observed in spectral readings. Janssen initially assumed that the line was generated in sodium's wavelength, but further investigation revealed that it was in fact an entirely new element. That same year, two other English scientists found the same line and named the new element "helium." Which was how helium became the first ever element to be detected outside Earth before it was discovered on Earth.

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