Casual Technology | प्रासङ्गिक प्रौद्योगिकी॥

ACREX 2011

2011-11-09T13:42:00.026+05:30

Some things that caught my fancy at ACREX 2011.

The entry.

Too many exhibitors..

A Green Chilling Machine by International Coils Ltd., (chills water that is supplied to a building, used to cool the building air using Air Handling Units.)

Ducts for carrying cold air, made of fabric. They have excellent noise reduction properties, put little weight on the building skeleton, and can be removed and washed.

A manufacturer has introducted an internal skeleton for fabric ducts, so that they won't collapse if suction pressure, pressure that can cause implosion, is applied. Skelecore™ by Ductsox

Fabric duct interfaced with a fan. They have been used for industrial applications too.

---BEGIN NET ZERO---

The "Net Zero" house, aims to consume only as much energy it produces. In the following demonstration, energy is produced using Solar Cells you see on the roof. It has the provision to store energy that is in excess of its requirements.

Schematics of the Net Zero demo house..a small garden in the central courtyard provides cool air to the rooms through evaporative cooling; as well as diffused natural light.

The well insulated walls and roof and special frames, glass, reduce the heat gain by the house in summers, which reduces the cooling necessary.

Orientation too is important for reducing heat gain.

More schematics of Net Zero demo.

Photo of the central courtyard of the Net Zero demo. The greenery provides evaporative cooling. And diffuses light into the rooms.

More photos of the central courtyard of the Net Zero demo.

Bathroom of the Net Zero demo, tends to rely on natural lighting, during the day.

Art outside the Net Zero house demo, made entirely out of waste materials.

Garden surrounding the "Net Zero" house demo. Solar powered garden lamps.

---END NET ZERO----

Wireless Data Monitoring system, interfaces between devices and human controllers. What a relief it would be, to get rid of all those wires...

An Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) control device from Continental Engineers..it has a Carbon dioxide sensor attached to an exhaust fan mounted on a volume control damper.

When the Carbon dioxide level in the air conditioned space increases beyond a point, the sensor switches on the Exhaust fan.

Discontinuity

2011-10-05T16:39:00.009+05:30

Firstly, the "Dichotomy Paradox" as highlighted by Aristotle.

The dichotomy paradox

“That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.”

—Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b10

Now, let us define a system.

System = Anything that moves or vibrates.

Now let us come to DISCONTINUITY.

Let us assume that SYSTEMS flow in a smooth, continuous manner, assuming every possible numeric state while transiting from one state to another.

Now let's look at the following:

Notation: ≈N means "Approximately number N"

Assume that the continuous system moves from ≈1 to ≈2.

To move from ≈1 to ≈2, it has to pass through 1.5

To move from ≈1 to ≈1.5, it has to pass through 1.25

To move from ≈1 to ≈1.25, it has to pass through 1.125

To move from ≈1 to ≈1.125 it has to pass through 1.0625.

AD INFINITUM.

Statement A:

"The SYSTEM passes through infinite physical states as it changes configuration."

Observation:

For passing through an infinite number of physical configurations, a system would take infinite time. You cannot have a system that can undergo infinite changes in state in finite time.

i.e., the above mentioned system cannot move at all.

The system can only move if it JUMPS and if it jumps it misses certain points. And that means it is NOT CONTINUOUS.

Moving further......

There cannot be any fixed pattern as far as the length of the jump is concerned.

The system can make only random jumps while changing configuration.

The system might jump from ≈1 to ≈1.2 to ≈1.4 to ≈1.9 to ≈2.

There is no law that it has to move in an increasing manner either.

It could jump from ≈1 to ≈1.4 to ≈1.9 to ≈1.3 and then wham ≈2.1.

It cannot cover all the numeric states between ≈1 and ≈2.

Nor can we ever predict how many jumps it will take before it reaches ≈2.

The following text is from "CHAOS: Making a New Science" by James Gleick, page 92-93.

The Noah Effect means discontinuity: when a quantity changes, it can change arbitrarily fast.

Economists traditionally imagined that prices changed smoothly - rapidly or slowly, as the case may be, but smoothly in the sense that they pass through all the intervening levels on their way from one point to another.

That image of motion was borrowed from physics, like much of the mathematics applied to economics. But it was wrong.

Prices can change in instantaneous jumps, as swiftly as a piece of news can flash across a teletype wire and a thousand brokers can change their minds. A stock market strategy was doomed to fail, Mandelbrot argued, if it assumed that a stock would have to sell for $50 at some point on its way down from $60 to $10.

Further reading:

1. "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

2."Differentiating the Discontinuous" by Mark Buchanan, Nature Physics 7, (2011)

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The Pressure Regulating Valve

2011-10-02T15:36:00.004+05:30

Very easy to understand video on how a Pressure Regulating Valve works.

Decision Making.

2011-07-24T02:42:00.017+05:30

The following graphic was made by a professor at MIT. To highlight how easy it is for the senses to be fooled.

On to the graphic...

The squares marked "A" and "B" are the same shade of grey.

i.e., THEY ARE OF IDENTICAL COLOUR.

A≡Colour Code RGB(120, 120, 120).
B≡Colour Code RGB(120, 120, 120).

EVIDENCE:

QUESTIONS:

As we go about our lives everyday, is the reality of what we perceive always what we think it is?

Or is our perception of the daily environment a bit like the squares A and B story?

UPDATE

Indeterminism is the concept that events (certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or not caused deterministically (cf. causality) by prior events.

In light of the above, the elusive nature of perception, and Indeterminism, how should we change our approach to decision making?

1. If causation is weak and the future is indeterminate, should our complete focus be on fortification of current assets and reduction of current bad liabilities, instead of future projections?

2. If perception is elusive, which it certainly is, should this totally alter the way we have been taking decisions till date? The only answer that comes to my mind currently is "Do not tamper too much, too suddenly."

"David Hume - Causation & Habit" by Marc O'Brien

2011-05-22T12:01:00.020+05:30

Introduction:

Observation of the environment is the primary catalyst to knowledge; reasoning is not really too helpful. 

Very elusive, in fact. 

An alien from a distant galaxy - who has seen parts of the human body, but has never seen or interacted with a human being - can he ever, through reasoning, figure out what human life is all about?

Can he, through reasoning, figure out human indulgences/qualities like laughter, dance, music, money, movies, religion etc. Impossible.

The following article on habitual expectation versus the actual flow of events, reminds me of the 'Noah Effect' and the 'Joseph Effect' from page 92-93 of James Gleick's book, Chaos.

"Mandelbrot described both the "Noah effect" (in which sudden discontinuous changes can occur) and the "Joseph effect" (in which persistence of a value can occur for a while, yet suddenly change afterwards." - Wikipedia.

______________________________________________

"David Hume - Causation & Habit"
by Marc O'Brien

When David Hume said we do not know anything of the essence of causal relations but rather that we merely develop habits he sort of means that because we utterly fail to see what happens between billiard balls when one hits the other, we merely see one hit the other and describe such abstractions as a conservation of momentum, but we have no way of knowing whether what we see is necessary, we know not why, for example, the second ball doesn't turn into a frog on impact, thus we cannot reason to the results and instead we simply, and quite primitively, develop habitual expectations.

Reason told man for centuries that heavier objects fall faster than light objects. Experiment discovered different. (Although Epicurus seems to have actually known this) But since our post Epicurean experiments we now expect that all masses in a vacuum fall at the same rate of acceleration but we still do not know why - we so far can only describe the way things fall - thus what we expect to happen is only expected by habit of mind and not because we can predict what happens by simply looking first at objects to be dropped and then second at the planet or moon etc nearby.

And because we so far do not have knowledge of any such causal phenomena we cannot know whether it is possible for something to come from nothing.

If we could pick up two billiard balls after having been just come into being - say having just been created - where we so far have no experience of objects of any sort - we could not look at the two billiard balls and simply from their appearance reason to what happens when they collide on a billiard table. If we were able to reason such we would also have been able to reason precisely to what happens if the double split experiments, of all kinds, are carried out.

But instead we are surprised to see what happens when we carry out the double split experiment - but also despite us not understanding why what happens does happen we thereafter the first double split experiment, by pure habit, go onto to expect what happened in the first experiment to go on happening in subsequent experiments. But our expectations are of habit in nature and not of understanding in nature.

When I imagine the double split experiments now, firing one electron at a time at double splits, I fully expect an interference pattern to occur on the wall behind. My mind has so come to expect this that if something different would happen I would be surprised all over again. But without reason to explain why what happens does happen my expectations are nothing but habit.

The Corporation (Full Documentary)

2011-04-10T19:18:00.028+05:30

The corporation is a legal person. Enjoys all the rights of a living person, legally.

Under the law, the corporation is NOT a group of people. It is a legal person.

Enjoys all the rights of a living person.

These artificial persons are members of our society. They live among us, do business between themselves, and with us, i.e. human persons.

The corporation has the personality of a psychopath.
It is concerned only with the interest of its shareholders and NOT concerned about the human community. This flaw in the corporation's personality has inflicted huge damage on human society.

The corporation has no ethics, no morals, no philosophy, and its philanthrophy is just an eyewash. Many corporations are using you and programming your mind to purchase more and more by generating in you a want for things you don't need.

The corporation is fixated. On the bottomline. Human life and well being have no value for this artificial person.

This documentary goes very deep into the henious nature of corporations today. A must watch, especially if you liked Fritjof Capra's "The Turning Point" and MindWalk(1990).

____________

All those who understand and feel deeply about how corporations have damaged society, please contribute to these filmmakers' efforts.

The Dark Side of Nuclear Power with Fritjof Capra

2011-04-03T20:25:00.024+05:30

Fritjof Capra is the author of "The Tao of Physics" and close associate of Werner Heisenberg, considered to be one of the fathers of Quantum Physics.

The movie "MINDWALK" is based on Capra's book "The Turning Point", from which the following text has been taken.

This book was published in the 1980s but the core issues it raises are still very valid.

The Dark Side of Growth, Chapter 8

Any realistic discussion of the 'energy crisis' has to start from a broader perspective than this, one that takes into account the roots of the present shortage of energy and their connections to the other critical problems facing us today. Such a perspective makes apparent what may at first sound paradoxical: What we need, to overcome the energy crisis, is not more energy but less. Our ever increasing energy needs reflect the general expansion of our economic and technological systems; they are caused by the patterns of undifferentiated growth that deplete our natural resources and contribute significantly to our multiple symptoms of individual and social illness. Energy, then, is a significant parameter of social and ecological balance. In our present, highly unbalanced state, more of it would not solve our problems but would make them worse. It would not only accelerate the depletion of our minerals and metals, forests and fish, but would also mean more pollution, more chemical poisoning, more social injustice, more cancer, more crime. What we need to overcome our multifaceted crisis is not more energy but a profound change of values, attitudes, and life styles.

Once these basic facts are perceived, it becomes evident that the use of nuclear power as an energy source is sheer folly. It surpasses the ecological impact of large-scale energy production from coal, which is already devastating, by several orders of magnitude, threatening not only to poison our natural environment for thousands of years but even to extinguish the entire human species. Nuclear power represents the most extreme case of a technology that has got out of hand, propelled by an obsession with self-assertion and control that has reached highly pathological levels.

In describing nuclear power in such terms, I am referring to both nuclear weapons and reactors. It is an intrinsic property of nuclear technology that these two applications cannot be separated. The term 'nuclear power' itself has two linked meanings. 'Power' has not only the technical meaning of 'source of energy,' but also the more general meaning of 'possession of control or influence over others.' In the case of nuclear power, these two kinds of power are inseparably connected, and both of them represent today the greatest threat to our survival and well-being.

Over the past two decades the U.S. Defense Department and the military industry have succeeded in creating a series of public hysterias about national defense in order to be granted regular increases in military spending. To do so military analysts have perpetuated the myth of an arms race in which the Russians are ahead of the United States. In reality the United States has been leading the Soviet Union in this insane competition, ever since it began. Daniel Ellsberg has shown convincingly, by making available classified information, that the American military knew it was vastly superior to the Russians in strategic nuclear weapons throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.⁵ American plans, based on this superiority, contemplated first use of nuclear weapons - in other words, initiating a nuclear war - and several American presidents made explicit nuclear threats, all of which were kept secret from the public.

In the meantime the Soviet Union has also built up a massive nuclear force, and today the Pentagon is again trying to brainwash the American people into believing that the Russians are ahead. Actually there is now a balance of power; equivalence in armament is a fair description of the current situation. The reason why the Pentagon is again distorting the truth is that it wants the American military to regain the kind of superiority it had from 1945 to about 1965, which would enable the United States to make the kinds of nuclear threats it was making then.

Officially the American nuclear policy is one of deterrence, but a closer look at the present American nuclear arsenal and at the new weapons being designed shows clearly that the Pentagon's current plans are not aimed at deterrence at all. Their only purpose is a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. To get an idea of the American force of deterrence-it is sufficient to consider the nuclear submarines.

In the words of President Jimmy Carter:

Just one of our relatively invulnerable Poseidon submarines - less than two percent of our total nuclear force of submarines, aircraft, and land based missiles - carries enough warheads to destroy every large and medium-sized city in the Soviet Union. Our deterrent is overwhelming.'⁶

Twenty to thirty of these submarines are always at sea, where they are virtually invulnerable. Even if the Soviet Union sends its entire nuclear force against the United States, it cannot destroy a single American submarine; and each submarine can threaten every one of its cities. Thus the United States at all times has the power to destroy every Russian city twenty to thirty times over. Seen against this background, the current increase in armament clearly has nothing to do with deterrence.

What American military designers are now developing are high-precision weapons, such as the new cruise and MX missiles, which can strike their targets from a distance of 6,000 miles with highest accuracy. The purpose of these weapons is to destroy an enemy missile in its silo before it is fired; in other words, these weapons are to be used in a nuclear first strike. Since it would make no sense to aim laser-guided missiles at empty silos, they cannot be regarded as defensive weapons; they are clearly weapons of aggression. One of the most detailed studies of the nuclear arms race which comes to that conclusion has been published by Robert Aldridge, an aeronautical engineer who formerly worked for the Lockheed corporation, America's largest producer of weapons.⁷ For sixteen years Aldridge helped to design every submarine-launched ballistic missile bought by the U.S. Navy, but he quit Lockheed in 1973 when he became aware of a profound shift in American nuclear policy, a shift from retaliation to first strike. As an engineer he could see a clear discrepancy between the announced purposes of the programs he was working on and their intrinsic design. Since then Aldridge has found that the trend he detected has continued and accelerated. His deep concern about American military policy led him to write his detailed report, which ends with these words:

I must reluctantly conclude from the evidence that the United States is ahead now and is rapidly approaching a first-strike capability - which it should start deploying by the mid-1980s. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, seems to be struggling for a second best. There is no available evidence that the U.S.S.R. has the combined missile lethality, anti-submarine warfare potential, ballistic missile defense, or space warfare technology to attain a disabling first-strike before the end of this century, if then."

This study, like Ellsberg's, shows clearly that the military's new weapons, contrary to what the Pentagon would make us believe, no longer increase American national security. On the contrary, the likelihood of nuclear war becomes greater with every weapon that is added.

In 1960-61, according to Ellsberg, there were American plans for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union in case of any direct military confrontation with the Russians anywhere in the world. This was the only, and inevitable, American response to direct Russian involvement in some local conflict. We may be sure that such planning is still going on in the Pentagon. If it is, this means that in response to some local conflict in the Middle East, in Africa, or anywhere else in the world, the Defense Department intends to initiate an all-out nuclear war in which there would be half a billion dead after the first exchange. The entire war could be over in thirty to sixty minutes, and almost no living thing would survive its consequences. In other words, the Pentagon is planning to extinguish the human species as well as most others. This concept is known in the Defense Department as 'mutually assured destruction', its acronym, very appropriately, is MAD.

The psychological background to this nuclear madness is an overemphasis on self-assertion, control and power, excessive competition, and an obsession with 'winning' — the typical traits of patriarchal culture. The aggressive threats that have been made by men throughout human history are now being made with nuclear weapons, without recognition of the enormous difference in violence and destructive potential. Nuclear weapons, then, are the most tragic case of people holding onto an old paradigm that has long lost its usefulness.

Today the outbreak of a nuclear conflict depends no longer on the United States and the Soviet Union alone. American nuclear technology - and with it the raw materials to make nuclear bombs - is being exported all over the world. Only ten to twenty pounds of plutonium are required to make a bomb, and each nuclear reactor produces four hundred to five hundred pounds of plutonium annually, enough for twenty to fifty atomic bombs. Through plutonium, reactor technology and weapons technology have become inseparably linked.

Nuclear technology is now being promoted especially in the Third World. The aim of this promotion is not to satisfy the energy needs of Third World countries, but those of multinational corporations extracting the natural resources from these countries as fast as they can. Politicians in Third World countries often welcome nuclear technology, however, because it gives them a chance to use it for building nuclear weapons. Current American sales of reactor technology abroad guarantee that by the end of the century dozens of countries will possess enough nuclear material to manufacture bombs of their own, and we can expect those countries not only to acquire the American technology but also to copy the American patterns of behavior and use their nuclear power to make aggressive threats.

The potential of global destruction through nuclear war is the greatest environmental threat of nuclear power. If we are unable to prevent nuclear war, all other environmental concerns will become purely academic. But even without a nuclear holocaust, the environmental impact of nuclear power far exceeds all other hazards of our technology. At the beginning of the so-called peaceful use of atomic energy, nuclear power was advocated as cheap, clean, and safe. In the meantime we have become painfully aware that it is none of those. The construction and maintenance of nuclear power plants is becoming ever more expensive owing to the elaborate safety measures imposed on the nuclear industry by public protest; nuclear accidents have threatened the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of people; and radioactive substances continually poison our environment.

The health hazards of nuclear power are of an ecological nature and operate on an extremely large scale, both in space and in time. Nuclear power plants, and military facilities release radioactive substances that contaminate the environment, thus affecting all living organisms, including humans. The effects are not immediate but gradual, and they are accumulating to more dangerous levels all the time. In the human organism these substances contaminate the internal environment with many medium- and long term consequences, Cancer tends to develop after ten to forty years, and genetic diseases can appear in future generations.

Scientists and engineers very often do not fully grasp the dangers of nuclear power, partly because our science and technology have always had great difficulty dealing with ecological concepts. Another reason is the great complexity of nuclear technology. The people responsible for its development and applications are all used to a fragmented approach and each group concerns itself with narrowly defined problems. They often ignore how these problems interrelate and how they combine to produce a total impact on the global ecosystem. Besides, most nuclear scientists and engineers suffer from a profound conflict of interest. Most are employed by the military or by the nuclear industry, both of which exert powerful influences. Consequently the only experts who can provide a comprehensive assessment of the hazards of nuclear power are those independent of the military-industrial complex and able to adopt a broad ecological perspective. Not surprisingly, they all tend to be in the antinuclear movement.⁹

In the process of producing energy from nuclear power, both the workers in the nuclear industry and the whole natural environment are contaminated with radioactive substances at every step of the 'fuel cycle.' This cycle begins with the mining, milling, and enrichment of uranium, continues with the fabrication of fuel rods and the operation and maintenance of the reactor, and ends with the handling and storage or reprocessing of nuclear waste. The radioactive substances that escape into the environment at every stage of this process emit particles - Alpha particles (Alpha particles are compounds of two protons and two neutrons), electrons, or protons - that can be highly energetic, penetrating the skin and damaging body cells. Radioactive substances can also be ingested with contaminated food or water and will then do their damage from within.

When considering the health hazards of radioactivity, it is important to note that there is no 'safe' level of radiation. Contrary to what the nuclear industry would have us believe, medical scientists now generally agree that there is no evidence of a threshold below which radiation may be said to be harmless;¹⁰ even the smallest amounts can produce mutations and diseases.

In everyday life we are continually exposed to low-level background radiation, which has been impinging on the earth for billions of years and which also comes from natural sources present in rocks, in water, and in plants and animals. The risks from this natural background are unavoidable, but to increase them means to gamble with our health.

The nuclear reaction that takes place in a reactor is known as fission. It is a process in which uranium nuclei break into fragments - most of which are radioactive substances - plus heat, plus one or two free neutrons. These neutrons are absorbed by other nuclei which, in turn, break up, thus setting in motion a chain reaction. In an atomic bomb, this chain reaction ends in an explosion", but in a reactor it can be controlled with the help of control rods, which absorb some of the free neutrons. In this way the rate of fission can be regulated. The fission process releases a tremendous amount of heat that is used to boil water. The resulting steam drives a turbine that generates electricity. A nuclear reactor, then, is a highly sophisticated, expensive, and extremely dangerous device for boiling water.

The human factor involved in all stages of nuclear technology, military and nonmilitary, makes accidents unavoidable. These accidents result in the release of highly poisonous radioactive materials into the environment. One of the worst possibilities is the melt-down of a nuclear reactor, in which the whole mass of molten uranium would burn through the container of the reactor and into the earth, possibly triggering a steam explosion that would scatter deadly radioactive materials. The effects would be similar to those of an atomic bomb. Thousands of people would die from immediate radiation exposure; more deaths would occur after two or three weeks from acute radiation illness; large areas of land would be contaminated and made uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Many nuclear accidents have already happened, and major catastrophes have often been narrowly avoided. The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harris-burg, Pennsylvania, in which the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of people were threatened, is still vivid in our memory. Less known, but not less frightening, are accidents involving nuclear weapons, accidents that have become more and more frequent as the number and capacity of those weapons have increased.'³

By 1968 there were more than thirty major accidents involving American nuclear weapons that came close to an explosion. One of the most serious occurred in 1961, when an H-bomb was accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina, and Five of its six safety devices failed. That one safety device protected us from a thermonuclear explosion of twenty-four million tons TNT, an explosion one thousand times more powerful than that of the Nagasaki bomb and, in fact, more powerful than the combined explosions of all the wars in human history. Several of these twenty-four-million-ton bombs have been dropped accidentally over Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world, and these accidents are going to occur even more frequently as more and more countries build nuclear weapons, probably with much less sophisticated safety devices.

Another major problem of nuclear power is the disposal of nuclear waste. Each reactor annually produces tons of radioactive waste that remains toxic for thousands of years. Plutonium, the most dangerous of the radioactive byproducts, is also the most long-lived; it remains poisonous for at least 500,000 years. (The half-life of plutonium (Pu-239) - the time after which one-half of a given quantity has decayed - is 24,400 years. This means that if one gram of plutonium is released into the environment, about one-millionth of a gram will be left after 500,000 years, a quantity which is minute but still toxic.) It is difficult to grasp the enormous length of this time span, which far exceeds the length of time we are used to contemplating within our individual lifetimes, or within the lifetime of a society, nation, or civilization. Half a million years, as shown on the chart below, is more than one hundred times longer than all of recorded history. It is a time span fifty times longer than that from the end of the Ice Age to the present day, and more than ten times longer than our entire existence as humans with our present physical characteristics.(The ancestors of the European races are usually identified with the Cro-Magnon race, which appeared about 30,000 years ago and possessed all modern skeletal characteristics, including the large brain.) This is the length of time that plutonium must be isolated from the environment. What moral right do we have to leave such a deadly legacy to thousands and thousands of generations?

No human technology can create safe containers for such an enormous time span. Indeed, no permanent safe method of disposal or storage has been found for nuclear waste, in spite of millions of dollars spent during three decades of research. Numerous leaks and accidents have shown the shortcomings of all current devices. In the meantime, nuclear waste keeps piling up. Projections by the nuclear industry anticipate a total of 152 million gallons of intensely radioactive, 'high-level' waste by the year 2000, and while the precise amounts of military radioactive waste are kept secret, they can be expected to be enormously larger than those from industrial reactors.

Plutonium, named after Pluto, the Greek god of the underworld, is by far the most deadly of all nuclear waste products. Less that one-millionth of a gram - an invisible dose - is carcinogenic. One pound, if uniformly distributed, could potentially induce lung cancer in every person on earth. Given these facts, it is truly frightening to know that each commercial reactor produces four hundred to five hundred pounds of plutonium per year. Moreover, tons of plutonium are routinely transported along American highways and railroads and are flown into airports.

Once created, plutonium must be isolated from the environment virtually forever, since even the tiniest amounts will contaminate it for eons to come. It is important to realize that plutonium does not simply vanish with the death of a contaminated organism. A contaminated dead animal, for example, may be eaten by another animal, or it may decay and rot away; its dust scattered by the winds. In any case the plutonium will remain in the environment and will continue its lethal action, on and on, from organism to organism, for half a million years.

Since there is no hundred-percent-safe technology, some plutonium inevitably escapes when it is handled. It has been estimated that if the American nuclear industry expands according to projections made in 1975, and if it contains its plutonium with 99.99% perfection - which would be something of a miracle - it will be responsible for 500,000 fatal lung cancers per year for about fifty years following the year 2020. This will amount to a 25 percent increase in the total death rate in the United States.¹² In view of these estimates, it is difficult to understand how anybody can call nuclear power" a safe source of energy

Nuclear power also creates many other problems and hazards. They include the unsolved problem of disassembling, or 'decommissioning' nuclear reactors at the end of their useful lives; the development of 'fast breeder reactors,' which use plutonium as a fuel and are far more dangerous than. ordinary commercial reactors; the threat of nuclear terrorism and the ensuing loss of basic civil liberties in a totalitarian 'plutonium economy'; and the disastrous economic consequences of the use of nuclear power as a capital- and technology-intensive, highly centralized source of energy.¹³ The total impact of the unprecedented threats of nuclear technology should make it abundantly clear to anyone that it is unsafe, uneconomical, irresponsible, and immoral: totally unacceptable.

If the case against nuclear power is so convincing, why is nuclear technology still promoted so heavily? The deep reason is the obsession with power. Of all the available energy sources nuclear power is the one that leads to the highest concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a small elite.

Because of its complex technology it requires highly centralized institutions, and because of its military aspects it lends itself to excessive secrecy and extensive use of police power. The various protagonists of the nuclear economy - the utilities, the manufacturers of reactors, and the energy corporations ('Energy corporations' is an appropriate term used by Ralph Nader to describe the oil companies which have extended their business into all branches of the energy industry, including (he supply of uranium and plutonium, in an attempt to monopolize energy production.) - all benefit from a source of energy that is highly capital-intensive and centralized. They have invested billions of dollars in nuclear technology and continue to promote it vigorously in spite of its steadily growing problems and hazards. They are not prepared to abandon that technology, even if they are forced to ask for massive taxpayer subsidies and to use a large police force to protect it. As Ralph Nader says, nuclear power has become in many ways Americans "technological Vietnam.'¹⁴

The Asset Allocator

2011-02-13T20:22:00.010+05:30

Fritjof Capra (born 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist, systems theorist, and author of five international bestsellers. Capra is a founding director of the "Center for Ecoliteracy" in Berkeley, California.

In his book "The Turning Point" (1982), Capra talks of Living Systems.

A system of people for example, is a Living System.

Let us now consider the FINANCIAL PORTFOLIO. This portfolio has our emotions invested in it and therefore can be called a Living System. And a Living System cannot function properly if its body parts are out of synch. with each other.

Financial Portfolio as a Living System:

Finances are an emotional affair. They cannot be anything else. There are heavy emotions associated with each occurrence of profit, or loss.^a

A person handles finances according to his personality, therefore his/her financial status mirrors his personality.

^aGreg Schnell of STOCKCHARTS writes:

One of the major traits of a bear market is the whipsaw of emotions that one experiences when in a bear market. Gut wrenching drops with sizzling rallies. The market rallies on bad news, it rallies on good news, it falls on good news, it falls on bad news. It seems almost chaotic.

___________________

And now some basic asset management approaches:

Do not time the market without the help of refined tools and considerable understanding.

It is very difficult to time the stock market, otherwise it would be too easy to make money. However, there are well defined disciplines to investing that over the long run of the market can provide reasonable returns.

Proper asset allocation could optimise returns.

For example, the ICICI Asset Allocator.

More details on Asset Allocation: Get Rich Slowly.

MoneyControl Asset Allocator: Asset Allocator.

Here is another Asset Allocator: Asset Analysis.

Article on Market Pressure & Risk Management: Safe Haven.

Here is what MPT (Modern Portfolio Theory) -- has to say:

"The fundamental concept behind MPT is that the assets in a portfolio should not be selected individually, each on their own merits. Rather, it is important to consider how each asset changes in price relative to how every other asset in the portfolio changes in price."

This would suggest that the healthy financial portfolio is one in which a decision depends entirely on what the portfolio needs to stay healthy, and not on the attractiveness of the individual instrument.

The ideal portfolio is one in which not every instrument pulls in the same direction at the same time.

Summary
The financial portfolio is like a living organism which should not be fed too much of any one thing.

A complete, healthy organism has all types of body parts, and requires all kinds of food, tasty or not. The healthy financial portfolio has all sorts of aspects, even the slow ones.

Just like a living organism, the financial portfolio may require very bitter medicines...or amputation, when it starts falling ill. Bad instruments must either be treated, or be done away with, as quickly as is possible.
There is a growing belief that for the average person, focus should be correct asset allocation, and nothing else.

The Portfolio as a "Living System" continued...

Every well diversified financial portfolio could be said to be the microcosm of the entire world economy. Its big picture will be the big picture of the entire world economy. Which may not be too good - but it is certainly more balanced than an imbalanced portfolio that is focused on 'too much of any one thing'.

The Investment Portfolio as a "Living System" would mean that it would follow the 'Self Organising Principle'. As long as the owner of the portfolio keeps a track of things, and balances it periodically. Keeps it dynamic.

The following is from Wikipedia:Self-Organisation:

In economics, a market economy is sometimes said to be self-organizing. Paul Krugman has written on the role that market self-organization plays in the business cycle in his book "The Self Organizing Economy". Friedrich Hayek coined the term catallaxy to describe a "self-organizing system of voluntary co-operation," in regard to capitalism.

Market Pressure

2011-01-17T05:55:00.000+05:30

An interesting graphic on Market Pressure...sign of the times...

You can read the rest of the analysis at: Safe Haven.

Another interesting analysis: Oil Price as predictor of recession.

A look at 'Green Buildings'

2010-07-08T16:07:00.000+05:30

WHY GREEN CAN BE WASH.
Joseph W. Lstiburek
Ph.D., P. Eng.
(ASHRAE Journal.)

Many “green” buildings don’t save energy.

Why? They have too much glass, they are overventilated, they are leaky to air, they are fraught with thermal bridges and they rely on gimmicks and fads rather than physics.

Basically, the current green and sustainability craze can be summed up as architects and engineers behaving badly. The good news is that most of this nonsense can be easily remedied.

The bad news is that the failures are beginning to bubble to the surface, and we are in danger of ruining the “green brand.”

Before you can have a “green” building, you need a building that can stand up, not be blown away in a hurricane, not fall down in an earthquake, not burn, not leak rainwater, not be moldy, not rot, not corrode and otherwise be able to meet applicable building codes such as having a basic provision for ventilation like that specified by Standard 62.1.

So what’s with all these “green” programs providing “points” for “durability” and “indoor air quality?”

I mean it’s pretty pathetic if we have to reward architects and engineers when they provide details and specifications that should be basic to fundamental practice. If you design and install a controlled ventilation system that meets Standard 62, you get points. You get more points if you keep the rain out and design the building to dry if it becomes wet. And, you get still more points if the occupants are actually comfortable. Aren’t these code requirements?

Shouldn’t these be “the standard of care?”

Have we architects and engineers sunk so low that we now get points if we meet basic building requirements that all buildings should meet to be called buildings?

Green programs waste a lot of time and money on stuff that is obvious and more time and money on stuff that is irrelevant or unimportant.

How about focusing on stuff that is important? It’s become all about the points and the important stuff gets ignored.

Chasing “green points” doesn’t get you good buildings that are truly green. You can get a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® (LEED) rating and not save any energy compared to traditional buildings. How can that possibly be green?

The rest of the text is available at SMACNA.

Further Reading:

1. Wiki: Green Building.

2. Wiki: LEED.

3. USGBC: LEED.

ACRECONF 2010

2010-01-11T23:00:00.005+05:30

ACRECONF is a periodic Building Technology & Services seminar organised by DCISHRAE where technical papers are presented and different equipment manufacturers demonstrate their products.

I attended the conference at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on the 8th and 9th of January 2010.

Some technologies/concepts that caught my fancy were:

1. FABRIC DUCTS:

Traditional metal ducts are a headache. Fabrication, Installation, maintenance - all a huge headache. And duct fabricators are difficult people.

A ducting system made entirely of fabric would be easy to install. Duct cleaning would involve unzipping the fabric duct to dismantle it, washing it, and putting it back again.

Fabric Ducts have been used in INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS.

They also have good NOISE REDUCTION properties.

Images ctsy. DUCTSOX.

2. Sustainable Fire Engineering:

I also saw an interesting presentation on 'Sustainable Fire Engineering' by C. J. Walsh, Architect, Fire Engineer & Technical Controller.

Sustainable Fire Engineering is a facet of "Sustainable Design".

Sustainable Design is a concept that is alien to most. Entails altering your entire approach to design of buildings and building services.

Standard practice is that building designers design from the point of view of 'merely satisfying building code requirements'.

But building codes are USUALLY VERY BASIC AND INADEQUATE.

The collapse of the WTC, New York, for example, points to bad design, and the attitude of 'merely satisfying building codes'...it also points to severe flaws in current building codes and safety practices.

Readers may not be aware that a B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire States Building in 1945, but it did not fall - because it was well designed, unlike the WTC.

Here's an interesting passage from C.J. Walsh's corporate website Sustainable-Design, that points to a certain philosophy that the building designer must inculcate:

"Ethical Design demands a high level of horizontal integration and co-ordination, on the part of a Designer, across a very wide range of environmental, social, economic, institutional and political performance, before a 'design synthesis' can be properly expressed in reality. This is, perhaps, one of the biggest challenges posed by the concept of Sustainable Development.

Design Solutions must be appropriate to local geography, climate, economy, culture and social need, and be ......
'person-centred' ;
'reliability-based' ;
conform with the principles of 'SEED' (an acronym we introduced in 1995), i.e. Sustainable, Environment-friendly, Energy-efficient, Development ;
and
also conform with the principles of 'TEEN' (an acronym we introduced in 2004), i.e. Technically-feasible, Economically-viable, Ethically-informed, Need-demonstrated.

Predicting Mechanical Failure in Hard Disks

2009-10-21T13:11:00.000+05:30

There's many kinds of failure in Hard Disk Drives, but I want to simplify the discussion here. So let us define two basic types of failure.

Type 1: Software Failure: A relatively simple problem, will not be covered on this blog.

Type 2: Mechanical Failure: When the motor or bearings or the read/write head of the Hard Disk fail.

Image Ctsy. LapTopRecovery.Net

We will cover only Type 2 failure here.

Every drive has an inbuilt mechanism. Known as "S.M.A.R.T."

This mechanism is an 'early warning mechanism' that informs you of the mechanical health of your drive. And can inform you if your drive is about to fail, mechanically.

There's many S.M.A.R.T monitoring programs available. But not all function correctly for some reason.

I found that the free version of the following program informed about drive health successfully. I used it on healthy as well as failing drives at my office.

1. HDD Sentinel.

Interpreting S.M.A.R.T can be difficult at times. I found HDSENTINEL to be easiest to understand as far this is concerned. It explains each parameter in simple terms. It also has the ability to monitor S.M.A.R.T. on external drives, which other softwares don't.

This software will also show you your Hard Drive Temperature.

It is vital to keep the hard disk cool and free from dust and moisture.

Please refer to your Hard Disk Manual for the acceptable temperature/humidity range for your hard disks.
________

If you want to monitor your Hard Disk health more effectively, then monitoring the voltages that are being fed to your PC internals is not a bad idea. A free software for doing this is:

1. SpeedFan.

This software can monitor many internal parameters. But it is NOT recommended to be used to monitor S.M.A.R.T. Though it has the ability. I found its S.M.A.R.T. monitoring to be vague and therefore useless.
________________

Lets Get Electrical - 2

2009-10-19T10:14:00.000+05:30

Some more examples of how Electrical Noise can be dealt with.

There are NO 'RIGHT' or 'WRONG' solutions. All depends on the situtation. Please do not try to implement these solutions without the help of an electrical engineer who has surveyed your premises.
____

In Diagram 2, the delicate electronic devices circuit is completely cushioned from its surroundings via an Isolation Transformer.

In Diagram 3, the Online UPS has also been isolated from the surroundings.

Fixing a Hole Where the Rain Gets In

2009-10-17T10:17:00.000+05:30

Recently helped a friend fix his DAMAGED & LEAKY UNDERGROUND WALL due to which water was leaking into the basement when it rained heavily.

We were in a hurry....

We did not want it to rain and flood the pit we had dug, that would have been catastrophic...would have drowned the basement and destroyed expensive equipment.

Time for completion of work: 55 hours...and LOTS OF PRAYER.

Drawing of the cross section of the damaged wall. Dotted vertical lines show the missing part of the wall.

The damaged wall, as seen from outside. We had to dig 9 feet deep.

Horrible condition...An old tree’s roots (now no longer existing) can be seen entering the basement wall. Holes in the wall are huge and visible.

Work In Process...below.

Leak discovered in public drainage system. When water comes through such leaks during monsoon clogging of drains, it comes with ‘hammering’ and considerable back pressure.

Filling up the broken underground wall...and re-inforcing with stone...

Finished, Totally Re-inforced, Leak Proof Wall....Underground rain water cannot leak in anymore!

Download the detailed PowerPoint presentation of the above process HERE -- Case Study

Lets Get Electrical

2009-10-02T11:48:00.000+05:30

This blog entry can be used by the SOHO segment user to take care of sensitive electronic devices in his/her premises.

The objective is to provide CLEAN NOISELESS POWER* to sensitive electronic devices.

It is highly recommended that an audit of the premises be done by an expert before any suggestions in this blog entry are implemented.
____________

* Clean, noiseless power is power that is free of voltage spikes, surges, and miscellaneous distortion.

Noisy power has potential to cause huge damage, especially to delicate electronic devices.

Slow damage that is not easy to attribute to noisy electricity.
___

Measurement of Electrical Noise:

1) In terms of "TOTAL HARMONIC DISTORTION OF THE WAVEFORM."
2) In terms of Decibels.

________________

Diagram 1 is an example solution to the problem of noisy electricity in the small-medium office/home segment. It is not the only solution. Can be used as a guide though. The solution that is right for you depends on many things, and a power audit by a professional is necessary.

The devices shown in Diagram 1 are.

1) Voltage Stabiliser for stabilising voltage from Electric Company.

2) Isolation Transformer - Acts as an electrical cushion around your building to save it from electrical noise from the neighbourhood. It does this by ISOLATING your building, electrically. Also purifies and filters power.

3) Earthing Stations - For getting rid of leaking electricity. Electrical trashcans. Very important, to keep the quality of power good.

4) Online UPS - A device that purifies power to ensure that only high quality, clean, noiseless power reaches the devices connected to it.
_________________

Diagram 1

Photo of a simple Earthing Station. (Rod/Stake Type)

Image Ctsy. http://www.rcoombs.co.uk/safety.htm

People very often neglect the earthing in their building. This is a very wrong practice. Will be covered in a separate blog entry.

Zen and the art of Truck Rescue

2008-09-30T12:46:00.000+05:30

A recent experience of mine...

On rescuing a truck from a pit at one of my work sites, when a crane could not reach the truck to pull it out.

The Situation:
The truck's rear right tyres were stuck in a pit, and the rear left tyres were lifted off the ground.

The reader can use this technique (or a modification as is necessary) to rescue cars (or trucks!) when cranes are not available.
__

..it was 1:00 AM...and we had to hurry up...

(All photos by me.)

The underside of the stuck truck as seen from side-front. You can see the sunken right-rear-tyres.

_____________

The left rear tyres can be seen here.

They are lifted off the ground. (As seen from side-front).

____________________

Work begins...The right-rear tyres are lifted using a jack. Aim is to add traction under and around these tyresl, using bricks, before starting the truck engine and accelerating to pull out of the pit.

________

You can see the bricks being added under the tyres...

________

You can see the bricks that have been added under and slightly on the side of the sunken rear-right- tyres....

The bricks will provide the necessary traction (via friction) for the truck to pull out when it is accelerated.

Without these bricks, there will be no traction because the pit has wet, loose mud and nothing else.

______

Adding bricks for support to the tail of the truck, behind the sunken right-rear-tyres. These bricks will provide support when the jack is removed, just before the truck is accelerated out of the pit.

______

The left-rear tyres again, in this picture.

They have managed to touch the ground, thanks to the jack under the right-rear-tyres...

________________

Adding traction to the side of the left-rear-tyres.

(as seen from the side-back of the truck.)

The jack is removed from under the sunken tyre slowly....and...

WE ARE NOW READY TO SWITCH ON THE ENGINE AND PULL OUT OF THE PIT!!!!

__________

The truck pulls out of the pit in the first attempt!!!

Precautions in such a scenario:

1. The vehicle must be emptied of its payload to reduce its weight.

2. The jack must be provided with a stable base, as shown in photo 3.

3. The jack must be removed from under the sunken tyre before acclerating the truck out of the pit.

4. The tyres must REST on the bricks under the tyres. If the weight of the tyres does not fall on the bricks, there will not be sufficient traction to pull the stranded truck/car etc. out of the pit.

The Secret Behind Technological Advancement

2007-08-24T15:27:00.003+05:30

Introduction: Technology evolves spontaneously. No person, race, country, or social entity is responsible. Evolution of technology comes down to iterations that happen on their own. Random social trajectories interact, iterations happen, and technological evolution happens.

Technology progresses in two ways.

1. Iterations and repetition.
2. Paradigm shifts.

Paradigm shifts are very rare. Most technological progress is due to iterations and repetition.

Research facilities iterate and repeat. They take existing technology, vary the input and input conditions slightly and study the output. They do this over and over again using Trial & Error.

This trial and error process produces a lot of useless junk......and once in a while it produces something useful...i.e. technology has evolved.

Doesn't take much intelligence to iterate.

It is paradigm shifts in technology that are worth noticing. For example, the shift from mechanical calculators to digital calculators.

(The shift from windows95 to winXP is NOT a paradigm shift, for example.)

Evolution due to iterations is spontaneous and accidental...but...even paradigm shifts in technology are spontaneous and accidental.

ξ

No conscious effort on the part of humans is responsible for paradigm shifts in technology. They did not ‘cause’ the paradigm shift. It happened through them, SPONTANEOUSLY and ACCIDENTALLY. Huge difference.

The feeling that our society, race, country, is intellectually superior to others because we progressed technologically and they could not is totally baseless.

Chaos Theory as applied to social organisation supports all that I have written above.

ξ

Recapitulation:

All progress is spontaneous and a result of complex interactions between diverse trajectories that transcend geography, culture, socio-economics, race.

No social group can take credit for technological progress. The humans involved are just tools, just conduits; progress happens through them. Not because of them.

Technological evolution is a product of the self-organisation principle in which various social trajectories (like banks, research labs. etc) interact and growth occurs. There is NO director, NO controller of the progress.

_ _ _ _ _

Height of a Building

2007-08-13T00:11:00.000+05:30

Imagine that you are on top of a building or a cliff and are wondering how tall it is.

Estimating this is very simple.

Drop a stone from where you are (i.e. top of the building/cliff etc.) and see how much time it takes to hit the ground below.

Make sure the stone is DROPPED, not thrown. And it should fall VERTICALLY.

Then calculate as follows.

Height = 5 X Time X Time (metres.)

Height = 16 X Time X Time (feet.)

The above calculations are fairly accurate.

Strength of a building

2007-08-11T09:15:00.000+05:30

The strength of a building comes from BEAMS and COLUMNS. The walls provide secondary support. In any work done on a building, it is necessary to ensure that the beams and columns do not get damaged.

Beams are always horizontal.
Columns are always vertical.

(Refer attached image. Click to enlarge.)

There are many other elements in the building skeleton, but beams and columns are the most important.

Microsoft ClearType™

2007-07-19T02:40:00.000+05:30

I love Microsoft ClearType™, so I want to inform the readers of this blog about it.

ClearType™ is a technology that enhances the readability of screen fonts. You can see the difference yourself, in the graphic below.

The first image is from a PC without ClearType™, the second image is from a PC with ClearType™.

ClearType™ is a free tool, and using it is simple. The following link explains how to install and tune ClearType™.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx

It may take your eyes about 5 minutes to adjust to ClearType™ but I assure you it is worth it. And it can be switched off easily from the control panel.

The setting I use in ClearType™ sets the possible contrast between the text and the background to maximum.

You can also enable ClearType™ by:

1. Right click on Desktop.
2. Click the 'Appearance' tab.
3. Click 'Effects'.
4. Select 'ClearType' in 'use the following.....screen fonts'.

The Basics

2007-06-16T02:31:00.001+05:30

I want to start with the basics of Engineering.

I would like to start by listing some perspectives. That help me very much in understanding machines and mechanisms, performance, etc.

You won't find what I am writing below in any engineering book.

These perspectives will remind you of 'Chaos Theory' however, if you are familiar with it.

Perspective 1:

Something moves through the machine, from the input side to the output side. It travels through different mechanisms in the machine, and manifests itself as output.**

Perspective 2:

This something can be called an impetus(drive).

Perspective 3:

This impetus is always resisted.

Perspective 4:

No two mechanisms, no matter how skilled their maker, can ever be identical in construction.

Perspective 5:

No two mechanisms, no matter how skilled their maker, can ever perform the same.

Perspective 6:

No mechanism, no matter how skilled its maker, will produce identical results at the end of each cycle of operation.

Perspective 7:

No mechanism, no matter how skilled it's maker, will follow the same path/curve in two different cycles of operation.