"The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course the world itself...!!! "

2011-12-16T17:07:00.000-05:00

I knew it from longtime and it was decided that we were going to visit Jamaica for our honeymoon. Since it was our first time vacationing out of country we chose staying in all-inclusive resort than renting.

It was beachfront property named Sunset beach, with 4 different beaches and 6-8 internal restaurants. Pools were amazing. Here is a picture i took on the very first evening we arrived there. All in all I am very satisfied with my first visit to Caribbean.

Toronto Downtown from CN Tower - Tilt Shift version

2010-02-16T12:28:00.001-05:00

Toronto Downtown from CN Tower - Tilt Shift version
Originally uploaded by Tarun Parmar

MIT’s Digital Food Printer Creates Nutritious Meals

2010-02-01T14:22:00.000-05:00

Cornucopias’ printing process begins with an array of food canisters filled with the “cook’s” foods of choice. After a meal selection has been made using the device’s multi-touch translucent screen, users are able to see their meal being assembled while simultaneously manipulating real-time parameters, such as calories or carbohydrate content. Each ingredient is then piped into a mixer and then very precisely extruded, allowing for very exact and elaborate combinations of food.
Once each ingredient has been dropped, the food is then heated or cooled by Cornucopia’s chamber or via the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. In fact, the ability to hyper-localize heating and create rapid temperature changes also allows for the creation of meals with flavors and textures that would be impossible to replicate with present-day cooking methods
While we can’t vouch for the final taste, the printer does benefit from a compact shape and provides the user with ultimate control over the origin, quality, and nutritional value of every meal, with no packaging or excess food waste — a prospect which could appeal to locations or organizations struggling with ways to provide adequate and well-balanced meals to their populace.

{Ref: http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/01/20/mits-digital-food-printer-creates-nutritious-meals/}

Clouds passing over Sid's Balcony

2010-01-25T15:46:00.001-05:00

Clouds passing over Sid's Balcony
Originally uploaded by Tarun Parmar

The weather was superb today and sparse white clouds passing through the blue sky. I thought of experiment with the Time Lapse and took about 500 shots with 10 - 15 second intervals from Sids balcony. Blended all the shots in Windows Movie Maker with picture duration of 0.125 seconds and transition duration of 0.25 seconds making it a 5 second video. I has plans to take more shot but unfortunately forgot my tripod in Rochester.

If New York were a small planet

2010-01-17T07:15:00.000-05:00

Polar Panoramas :
A panorama captures great width, but a Polar Panorama adds an interesting twist to your photos. I will help you learn how to create these funky-looking panoramas. These are also called "Stereographic Projection", you can learn more about the mathematics about it on Wikipedia. Also, I have sometimes seen people call it "Tiny Planets".

What is Panorama?
Panorama is a hugely wide-angled photo which is created by joining a number of photographs together. This kind of photograph gives you a view which has a span as wide as that seen by the human eye.

What is a Polar Panorama?
A Polar Panorama can make a panoramic view appear to be a separate planet. The “Polar Panorama Effect” is one of my favorite ways to process photos into unique pieces of art. It takes a panoramic (or landscape) photo and uses the Polar Coordinates filter of Photoshop CS or The Gimp to create a circular image that seems to wrap the panorama around a planet.

How do I create Polar Panoramas?
Step 1: Resize and rotate. The first thing you need to do is prepare the image for the Polar filter. You do this by stretching the height of the image so that the image is a perfect square.

Select Image>Image Size from the menus. Uncheck “Constrain Properties” and set the “height” to the same value as your “width”. Next, rotate the image 180 degrees (Image>Rotate Canvas>180).

Step 2: Apply the polar filter. Choose Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates from the menus and in the resulting dialogue box, select the “Rectangular to Polar” setting. (If you’re using The Gimp the command is Filters > Distorts > Polar Coords.)

Step 3: Rotate and clean up. The rest is just a little digital darkroom work: rotate the planet to your liking, adjust the contrast and colours, and clean up the sky and the edges where the left and right borders of the image came together (the clone stamp and healing brush may be handy here). That’s it, you’re done!

If New York were a little planet

Dos and don’ts
Selecting a source photo for Polar Panorama

When selecting a photo to start with, keep the following things in mind:

- Panoramas or landscapes cropped to have an aspect ratio of at least 2:1 (the width should be at least two times the height) work best. Wider photos are better.
- The bottom area (bottom 25% or so) of your photo should have very little detail (e.g. sand, asphalt, water). This area will become the center of your planet and will be distorted the most.
- The upper area (upper 25%) of your photo should also be light on detail – preferably just one colour (e.g. blue sky or night sky).
- The left and the right edges of your photo should match, or come close to matching, each other (always the case for a 360 degree panorama).
- The horizon must be exactly horizontal. Since the left and right edges of your photo will be joined, if they are at different heights your planet will have a big crack in the surface. (Again, not an issue for a properly executed 360 degree panorama.)

Credits:
Planet Stockholm by Soumitra

Selective Coloring

2010-01-15T15:14:00.000-05:00

I find that selective coloring of an image can be useful to highlight a particular item or to suppress a 'messy' background. I also like to use the technique create a black and white photograph with only key elements retaining their color.

Open the image in Photoshop. I've chosen this photo of a tiny flower taken in a Zoo at

Cincinnati. I am trying to show you the before and after of that shot. The one right below is the original.

Before

It's very simple 3 step process.
1st Step:
Click on 'Quick Selection Tool (W)' and select any area of the picture you want to select. Like in above shot I selected the flower in center.

The selected object then shows a glittering margin around the selection.
[Note: You can drag onto the object you want to select with the Quick Selection Tool. If you over do the selection, you can remove the over done part by simultaneously pressing Alt key and then click the area]

2nd Step:
This step is tentative and depends on the object of your choice. Like in the above picture I wanted to keep color in the flower and thus isolate it from the background and make everything else black and white. Hence I would right click on the selection and click "Select Inverse", you will notice that the glittering margin now surrounds image border and the object you selected.

3rd Step:
At this point, I simply go to Image>Adjustments>black and White and I am done with this shot.

Full of Color

I could have made the selected flower Red, Orange or any color. But I wanted to look it original.
Similarly you can try apply different effects. I am sure you have got a lot many shots in your collection which could make great pictures with above technique.
I remember one of my friends told me that he would really want the above picture framed and hang it in his living room. I said Wow...!!! :)

My next post would be on Stereographic Projection or what some people call it "Small Planets". Till then, Keep Clicking.

Creative use of Depth of Field (DoF)

2010-01-13T17:37:00.002-05:00

Control of depth-of-field is one of the most creative tools photographers and DSLRs have.
But what exactly is depth-of-field?
In the most basic terms, it's the distance in front of and beyond the subject that appears to be in focus.

Choose your subject—that rose flower in your garden, for example—and focus on it. Depending on what you decide now, you can make the grass in front of that bush sharp or soft; likewise, the fence behind the bush.
Choose to let the foreground and background go soft and you've effectively isolated your subject and called specific attention to it. Choose to have the foreground and background sharp, and the rose bush becomes an element in the overall scene.
The key to using depth-of-field to isolate or blend your subject is lens aperture. Wide apertures, such as f/2.8 or f/3.5, provide shallow depth-of-field: your subject is sharp, but little else is.

Kishika, My Niece

A Tiny Flower

Narrow apertures, like f/16 or f/22, provide a much greater depth-of-field, so that the territory in front of and behind the subject will be in focus. I haven't shot anything like that yet but, I have shot enough landscapes where you want to get everything in focus.

Sunrise at Liberty International Airport, Newark, NJ

War Memorial at Washington DC

Simply, the smaller the number, the shallower the depth-of-field; the greater the number, the greater the depth-of-field.

Selective Focus
I primarily shoot nature landscapes, skylines and depth-of-field, along with light, helps me create depth, texture and dimension in my pictures. I took Image 1 [Kishika above] with a my 18-55mm kit lens, and I shot wide open—meaning the lens aperture was at its maximum opening, f/4. Small number, shallow depth-of-field—which is exactly what I wanted. I really loved the glare in her eyes, and I wanted to accentuate the face details [nose and lips] as much as possible.
By selecting the wide open aperture, I was choosing to have only a eyes, nose and lips in focus while everything else went soft [notice the ears and earings?]. This process is called selective focus, and the result in this picture is that the eyes really stand out—and your eye is directed to exactly what I want you to see.
Another example of how I use selective focus is Image 2 [Tiny Flower], which was taken with an same lens. As I photographed this flower, I thought the edges of the petals were stunning. I chose to make one of the flowers jump out of the frame by carefully composing the image, focusing on the flower and shooting at f/4—again, wide open. By using depth-of-field in this way, I created an image that has more impact than one taken at, say, f/5.6. The falloff is dramatic, and there's no doubt about my intended center of attention.
As you've probably realized, when you're shooting wide open, or at any wide aperture, focus is critical. If you're using a Nikon digital SLR, focusing sensors are located in several different areas of the viewfinder. When you're composing the image, make sure to select a focus point that corresponds to the location of your subject in the viewfinder.

When depth-of-field is going to be a critical part of your image, it's vital that you choose to shoot in aperture-priority mode—meaning that you choose the aperture and the camera automatically sets the shutter speed. Depth-of-field control means control over aperture.

Test Run
With a digital camera, you can easily and rather quickly get an understanding of the effects of depth-of-field simply because you can see the results almost instantaneously.
Try this: Pick a subject that has a distinct foreground and background. Focus carefully and using aperture-priority shoot a frame or two with a wide open aperture. Then continue to change the aperture setting until you're near the other end of the scale, say f/11 or f/16. Examine the images and notice how your aperture settings affected the images as the depth-of-field increased with every different setting (each time you close down the aperture one full stop, you actually double the depth-of-field).
With practice, you'll soon be able to anticipate what an image will look like at specific aperture settings. And experimenting with depth-of-field is also a great way to train your eye to see three dimensionally.

I will come up with a selective coloring tutorial next.

Long Exposure Photography

2010-01-13T00:57:00.015-05:00

One of the areas of photography that people get wrong is night photography, most people assume that you just use the flash and everything is fine. OK, this is fine for the odd snap shot of your friends or on a night out. But, if you want to get creative and make stunning images at night you’re going to have to do a lot more than just turn the flash on, when you have finished reading this you’ll be able to create images like this:

Toronto Downtown Eastview from CN tower

Space Needle from Kerry Park

Toronto Downtown Northview from CN Tower

In this article I am going to show you how to use a technique called Long Exposure. Say good bye to harsh lighting and dark backgrounds. Sort of. This article will show you how to take pictures of night scenes with no moving objects. Night photos of people I will show you later on in another article as that is another kettle of fish.

Firstly, let’s pick a subject. For this article our subject will be a lake. That is easy, it doesn’t get too much more difficult. I promise. Now you have your subject, you’ll need to get your equipment setup. For this article, I’ll use my equipment to show you what is needed.

Equipment Required

The following list links to the equipment that I recommend and use.

Digital Camera
Tripod
Remote / Cable Shutter Release
Something to do while exposing your shot (for the ones which are really long, may be an hour sometime)

Now let’s get down to business. First, set your tripod up at the desired height, to save you any trouble later on make sure your tripod is level. You will thank me. Now, mount the camera on the tripod making sure it’s secure.

Setting Up Your Shot

Switch your camera to manual. OK, you’ve got this far it’s going good, time to set up the shot. Don’t bother composing your shot just yet as we have to sort some other things out first. Set your camera to auto-focus or AF. This may not work depending on the conditions but most of the time it will work just fine. Zoom in all the way and find a light source or light area that is the same distance away as the subject you want in focus, press the shutter half way down. Once the camera has focused on the light source or light area zoom all the way out (or however far out you want when you compose the shot, you can zoom in or out as far as you like it will always stay in focus) and make sure, without touching the shutter or the focus ring switch back to manual focus. Be sure you’re not touching the focus ring when you compose.
Now you have the camera focused you can proceed to compose the shot. This is something that no tutorial can tell you how to do, this is in the eye of the photographer. Be creative and show off your creative eye.

Tip: Wide angles create a bigger impact than longer focal lengths.

Setting The Correct Exposure

You’re almost there, the next major part is getting the exposure right, this is easy if you know how. The best way to expose your shot manually is to use your camera’s built in light meter as a rough guide, but not as a precise judge. When you first start you will need to follow it tightly but as you gain more and more experience you won’t need the meter at all.

Change the camera to AV mode(Aperture priority) Now, set the ISO to 1600. As a rough guide I recommend you stop down the aperture to f/8 to achieve maximum sharpness when using the 18-55mm kit lens but you may need to keep it at f/3.5 depending on the conditions. I sometimes or almost all the time shoot landscapes and skylines in between F/11 and F22 as this gives better DoF and everything is in good focus {I will post another important concept of Dof i.e. Depth of Focus tutorial soon}.

Now, press the shutter half way and you will see the light meter, it’s a line with a small arrow, this will move around as you change the aperture. Adjust aperture accordingly so it makes the line stay in the middle. Once it is in the middle, press the shutter down half way. The camera will give you the shutter speed that you require, make sure you remember this number as you will need it to work out how long your final exposure will be.
For this next part you may need a calculator, depending on how good your mental arithmetic is. In my case I usually need to use the calculator on my phone, maths is not a strong point for me. Now we need to calculate how long we need to keep the shutter open for. As an example we will say the camera gave you a shutter speed of 10 seconds when we used the light meter, keep this number in your head. Now set the ISO to 100. Take your number (In this example 10 seconds) and multiply that number by 16. This gives us 160 seconds, Divide this by 60, this gives us about 3 minutes.
Now plug in your remote shutter release, set the camera to BULB mode (move the shutter down past 30 seconds). Get a timing device (Phone, stop watch or similar) and get it prepared to begin. Press the remote shutter release and lock it on. Start the timer.
If you want to be certain of good exposure then you can round it up to the nearest minute (In our case 3 minutes). Once you have reached the target time, unlock the remote shutter release and wait for the camera to proceed with noise reduction.
The end result will be a nicely exposed picture. The things I haven’t covered in this article are white balance and shooting in RAW format. I will be writing articles for this later on.

Keep reading and feel free to comment. I will welcome queries and suggestions. Keep Clicking...!!!

Space Needle from Kerry Park

2010-01-12T01:45:00.006-05:00

Space Needle from Kerry Park
Originally uploaded by Tarun Parmar

Camera Model: Nikon D40
Lens's focal length: 18 - 55 mm
Photo Focal length: 55 mm
Aperture: F 5.6
Exposure time: 8 seconds
ISO: 200

I shot this one from Kerry Park, which is located on the south slope of Queen Ann Hill in Seattle, Washington, located at the corner of 2nd Avenue W. and W. Highland Drive.

The Space Needle is a tower in Seattle, Washington, and is a major
landmark of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and a symbol of Seattle. Located at the Seattle Center, it was built for the 1962 World's Fair, during which time nearly 20,000 people a day used the elevators, with over 2.3 million visitors in all for the World Fair. The Space Needle is 605 feet (184 m) high at its highest point and 138 feet (42 m) wide at its widest point and weighs 9,550 tons.

When it was completed it was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River. The tower also has 25 lightning rods on its roof to prevent lightning damage.

Getting serious on Photography

2010-01-11T15:19:00.005-05:00

After spending enough of time (about more than a year) with my Nikon D40 dslr, I think I have now got enough collection of good interesting images on Flickr.
I am now thinking about getting serious on these efforts and has put some of the best shots from my collection on Imagekind. I am still learning the pricing options of the site. I think it's kinda too pricy. Will be spending sometime ot go through this and will come up with better value options that one would definitely want to buy the art for.
Do revert back with your opinions. You comments and support is all I need. Thanks. -TP

Flickr

2009-05-11T01:38:00.001-04:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Beer That's Good for You

2008-11-09T21:53:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Beer That's Good for You

Students in Texas are trying to create a brew that includes red wine's antiaging compound.

Stock still: Undergraduates are brewing beer in a Rice University lab as part of a project to create "BioBeer" that contains resveratrol, a compound found in red wine. Animals given resveratrol live longer, healthier lives.
Credit: Taylor Stevenson, Rice University

Since headlines began trumpeting the antiaging effects of red wine a couple of years ago, the traditional toast to good health has become more meaningful. But students at Rice University, in Texas, think that beer drinkers shouldn't be left out. They're trying to engineer a yeast that produces the antiaging chemical found in red wine--resveratrol--and use it to brew "BioBeer" with a health boost.

"It's not going to prevent you from getting a beer gut from drinking too much beer, or from getting cirrhosis of the liver," says Taylor Stevenson, one of six undergraduates working on the project. "But people are already drinking beer, so why not make the activity a little healthier?"

Resveratrol was discovered in red wine in the 1990s, prompting scientists to wonder if it might explain the "French paradox"--the fact that the French have a relatively low death rate from heart disease, despite a diet relatively high in saturated fat. Resveratrol is now known to extend life span in various organisms, including fish, flies, and yeast, and aging mice fed high doses of the chemical are healthier in their old age. It's not known whether resveratrol has the same effects in humans.

The BioBeer project is an entry in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition being held this weekend in Cambridge, MA. The event showcases student work in the field of synthetic biology, in which researchers string together blocks of DNA--whether artificial or naturally occurring--in order to build useful new organisms from scratch.

Many of the blocks of DNA identified by synthetic-biology researchers have been recorded in the open-source Registry of Standard Biological Parts at MIT. Participants in the iGEM competition submit their own DNA blocks to the registry, and they may use parts from the registry in their projects. The BioBeer team will submit 16 blocks to the registry, Stevenson says.

Other researchers have engineered yeast to produce resveratrol under aerobic conditions, but that's of limited use, since resveratrol is deactivated by exposure to oxygen. The Rice students are trying to create a yeast that produces the chemical during fermentation. They say that the method could be used to introduce other air-sensitive pharmaceuticals into beer, which is the most popular alcoholic beverage in the United States.

"I think of it as a drinkable bioreactor," says Thomas Segall-Shapiro of the BioBeer team. "It's completely ready to go once it's brewed."

The BioBeer team has equipped yeast with two genes that code for enzymes required for resveratrol production. The first enzyme converts the amino acid tyrosine into coumaric acid, and the second turns that into resveratrol.

Resveratrol is found in low levels in hops, the raw ingredient of beer. "We're just trying to enhance something that's probably there at very low levels," says Jonathan Silberg, faculty advisor for the BioBeer project at Rice. "We're not trying to undermine wine's little niche in any way. It's a different market."

"I'm sure there would be people interested in drinking resveratrol in beer rather than wine," says Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging, who has studied the effects of resveratrol. But "you can add resveratrol directly to the beer," he says. "You don't need to make a yeast that will make resveratrol."

[read more...]

Keep the Spark

2008-07-24T09:26:00.002-04:00

Inaugural Speech for the new batch at the Symbiosis BBA program 2008

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old twin boys have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they will cut their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks. But when I see older people, the spark is difficult to find. That means as we age, the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost. So how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house.

Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big achievement.

But it isn't the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr Ambani would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not dance anymore. Steve Jobs won't be working hard to make a better iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they do it? What makes them come to work everyday?

They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that.

I must add, don't just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes - Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school. Where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said - don't be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I've told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don't go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you.

But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's where you want to be.

Disappointment's cousin is frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don't know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release.

Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts , having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you.

In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty darn lucky by Indian standards. Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok. I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your spark.

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I've told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, you eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of a billion sparks.

Higher-Density Data Storage

2008-07-11T09:19:00.001-04:00

Higher-Density Data Storage

A novel nanolaser could cram more data onto a hard disk.

By Prachi Patel-Predd

Spot light: To make a laser that focuses nanowatts of power into a 30-nanometer spot, researchers cover a semiconductor diode with an aluminum film etched with different nanoscale apertures. A scanning near-field optical-microscope image shows that the most laser light comes out from the C-shaped aperture.
Credit: Rabee Ikkawi, University of California, Riverside

A laser that focuses light into a 30-nanometer-wide spot could be an important advance toward ultra-high-density hard disks. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), and at the University of Houston, in Texas, who have developed the nanolaser, say that it could lead to hard disks with 10 terabits of data packed into a square inch.

Today, hard disks can carry up to 200 gigabits per square inch. Data is stored magnetically. Using existing technology, manufacturers could increase a disk's capacity to at most one terabit per square inch. The nanolaser is an important step toward a disk-writing system that many researchers are currently working on. Such a system would use both light and magnetic fields to store data on a disk, packing up to 50 terabits per square inch of data.

The smaller the light spot of the laser, the smaller the bit size, which means more bits per square inch. Right now, the laser can concentrate 250 nanowatts of power on a 30-nanometer-wide spot. "Our technology can be scaled down to 5 to 10 nanometers for sure," says Sakhrat Khizroev, an electrical-engineering professor who is leading the work at UCR. A 10-nanometer spot size should be small enough to get a density of 10 terabits per square inch.

Present-day magnetic storage technology has doubled data density on hard disks nearly every year for the past three decades. But now the technology is approaching its limit. On a hard disk, each bit is a tiny area in which the material's crystals all have their magnetic fields aligned in the same direction. As more data is recorded on a disk, bits get smaller and comprise fewer crystals of the material. At about one terabit per square inch, the bit areas become so tiny that the crystals do not have enough energy to keep their magnetic fields aligned, and the bits end up losing their information.

Hard-disk manufacturers such as Seagate are now looking at a new method to store more data on disks. The technique, called heat-assisted magnetic recording, involves using a tightly focused light spot to heat up the bits when they are being recorded. This gives the magnetic crystals energy to retain their magnetic-field orientations. "There are various ways one could imagine bringing light on the disk," says Mark Kryder, an electrical- and computer-engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University. "The most elegant way would be to use a nanolaser."

So far, the challenge has been to make a laser that delivers sufficient energy into a small enough light spot. With previous lasers, Khizroev says, "the light, when focused on a 30-nanometer spot size, has energies that are a fraction of a nanowatt." He and his colleagues make their 250-nanowatt laser by depositing a very thin layer of aluminum on the emitting side of a semiconductor diode laser. Then they focus a beam of positive gallium ions on the aluminum to etch tiny nanoscale apertures. As predicted by physics theory, a C-shaped aperture lets the most energy come through into the smallest spot size. Khizroev says that his colleagues are now trying to engineer the laser with an even smaller spot size of 5 to 10 nanometers.

Ed Schlesinger, head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon, says that the new nanolaser is "an important aspect of making heat-assisted magnetic recording a reality." But he cautions that there are many engineering challenges to solve before the technology can be brought to market. They include mounting the laser on a slider so that it can move to various areas of the hard disk to record data, designing a new disk material that works with heat-assisted recording, and making disk lubricants that can handle the high temperatures during the heat-assisted writing process.

"Heat-assisted magnetic recording is a real systems problem and requires development and progress on a lot of fronts simultaneously," Schlesinger says. "The nanolaser is a nice step forward and brings the technology closer."

Researchers Pencil In Graphene Transistors

2008-07-07T23:10:00.001-04:00

Graphene's weird electrical properties allow for smallest transistor yet.

IMAGE: Anna Demian/Randi Silberman

Pushing Pencils: Graphene, found in pencil marks, is a candidate material for making future transistors. It's extracted from graphite crystals [right] using sticky tape.

The little smudges you leave behind whenever you use a pencil could be the key ingredient of the next revolution in computer circuitry, according to experts around the globe. Part of what shears off from the graphite in a pencil is a substance known as graphene, a one-atom-thick crystal with remarkable electrical properties that may overcome the physical limits silicon faces as transistors shrink to ever-smaller sizes.

Silicon's remarkable run as ruler of the chip world may be nearing an end as engineers eventually lose the ability to make faster silicon transistors by making them smaller. In the hunt for what comes next, carbon nanotubes have gotten a big chunk of the attention, but if the current explosion of research activity is any indication, it may be graphene that wins in the end. This spring saw a flurry of breakthroughs surrounding graphene, culminating in the creation of what may be the smallest transistor ever made—one atom thick by 10 to 50 atoms wide.

Like carbon nanotubes, graphene is a crystal structure of carbon atoms but arranged in a flat plane instead of a cylinder. The electrons in graphene behave as if they have no mass. Like photons—but unlike electrons in other materials—the electrons move at a constant speed, regardless of how much energy each one has.

A transistor built out of graphene, therefore, should operate much faster than a comparable one made from silicon. Michael S. Fuhrer, a physicist at the University of Maryland's Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, recently showed that at room temperature electrons in graphene move at 200000 centimeters per second for every volt per centimeter of electric field, 100 times faster than in silicon. “All other things being equal, that would translate into a 100 times faster transistor,” he says.

Graphene has been known for decades as a single plane of graphite, but it was only in 2004 that Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov of the University of Manchester, England, were able to isolate it by the simple act of pressing a piece of tape to a graphite crystal and placing it on a silicon substrate. In April, the two researchers described their transistor, 10 to 50 atoms wide and built by etching a pattern into graphene. [read more]

IBM developing miniature pipes of water for chip cooling

2008-06-05T23:52:00.000-04:00

Since a computer microprocessor is veined with electric circuitry, it might seem like a bad place to put water. But IBM Corp. researchers believe that sloshing water through hair-thin pipes inside chips will solve a vexing problem facing next-generation computers.

That problem is heat.

As chips get smaller and smaller, cramming more processing power into ever-tinier spaces, the heat thrown off by the miniature circuits becomes harder to manage. Cooling measures used now to avoid chip meltdowns, including "heat sinks" made from heat-absorbing materials, might not work on tinier scales.

In fact, in a future microprocessor design IBM is exploring -- in which chips are stacked vertically to save space and enhance performance, rather than arrayed next to each other -- the heat-to-volume ratio exceeds that of a nuclear reactor.

To address that, IBM researchers say they could pipe water in between chips that are sandwiched together. The system, which IBM planned to explain Thursday at a technical conference, uses pipes that are just 50 microns wide -- 50 millionths of a meter. The tiny tubes are sealed to prevent leaks and electrical shorts.

Even these micro amounts of water can handle prodigious cooling chores, because water is much more efficient than air at absorbing heat. That is why some high-end computers long have used water cooling. The new trick here is that IBM expects to do it at the miniature scale, inside chips.

"It's never been applied this close to the heart of the matter," said analyst Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group.

Yogendra Joshi, an engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said aspects of IBM's approach already have been shown by other researchers. But he said the company deserves credit for trying to push the idea toward commercialization.

"There has been a great aversion to piping liquids through electronics," Joshi said. "That's understandable."

However, IBM's tiny pipes aren't out of the lab yet. They're at least five years from becoming available.

[Source: Technology Review, Published by MIT]

The Hunt for the Kill Switch

2008-05-30T18:39:00.001-04:00

Are chip makers building electronic trapdoors in key military hardware? The Pentagon is making its biggest effort yet to find out

Last September, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear installation in northeastern Syria. Among the many mysteries still surrounding that strike was the failure of a Syrian radar—supposedly state-of-the-art—to warn the Syrian military of the incoming assault. It wasn't long before military and technology bloggers concluded that this was an incident of electronic warfare—and not just any kind.

Post after post speculated that the commercial off-the-shelf microprocessors in the Syrian radar might have been purposely fabricated with a hidden “backdoor” inside. By sending a preprogrammed code to those chips, an unknown antagonist had disrupted the chips' function and temporarily blocked the radar.

That same basic scenario is cropping up more frequently lately, and not just in the Middle East, where conspiracy theories abound. According to a U.S. defense contractor who spoke on condition of anonymity, a “European chip maker” recently built into its microprocessors a kill switch that could be accessed remotely. French defense contractors have used the chips in military equipment, the contractor told IEEE Spectrum. If in the future the equipment fell into hostile hands, “the French wanted a way to disable that circuit,” he said. Spectrum could not confirm this account independently, but spirited discussion about it among researchers and another defense contractor last summer at a military research conference reveals a lot about the fever dreams plaguing the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

Feeding those dreams is the Pentagon's realization that it no longer controls who manufactures the components that go into its increasingly complex systems. A single plane like the DOD's next generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, can contain an “insane number” of chips, says one semiconductor expert familiar with that aircraft's design. Estimates from other sources put the total at several hundred to more than a thousand. And tracing a part back to its source is not always straightforward. The dwindling of domestic chip and electronics manufacturing in the United States, combined with the phenomenal growth of suppliers in countries like China, has only deepened the U.S. military's concern.

Recognizing this enormous vulnerability, the DOD recently launched its most ambitious program yet to verify the integrity of the electronics that will underpin future additions to its arsenal. In December, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's R&D wing, released details about a three-year initiative it calls the Trust in Integrated Circuits program. The findings from the program could give the military—and defense contractors who make sensitive microelectronics like the weapons systems for the F‑35—a guaranteed method of determining whether their chips have been compromised. In January, the Trust program started its prequalifying rounds by sending to three contractors four identical versions of a chip that contained unspecified malicious circuitry. The teams have until the end of this month to ferret out as many of the devious insertions as they can.

Vetting a chip with a hidden agenda can't be all that tough, right? Wrong. Although commercial chip makers routinely and exhaustively test chips with hundreds of millions of logic gates, they can't afford to inspect everything. So instead they focus on how well the chip performs specific functions. For a microprocessor destined for use in a cellphone, for instance, the chip maker will check to see whether all the phone's various functions work. Any extraneous circuitry that doesn't interfere with the chip's normal functions won't show up in these tests.

“You don't check for the infinite possible things that are not specified,” says electrical engineering professor Ruby Lee, a cryptography expert at Princeton. “You could check the obvious possibilities, but can you test for every unspecified function?”

[read more]

Post-FET future discussed at IEDM

2007-12-20T18:23:00.000-05:00

Silicon-based CMOS FETs will still be used in commercial ICs in twenty years, but it’s likely that completely new devices will also be in production. It seems highly likely that nMOS and pMOS FET “switches” will be used for mainstream logic and memory until 2015-2020, when such things as cross-bar architectures and quantum diodes may be needed. This is the group opinion of the world’s leading IC fab researchers, as discussed in a 2007 IEDM evening panel discussion moderated by Prof. Dimitri Antoniadis of MIT: “Looking Beyond Silicon -- A Pipe Dream or the Inevitable Next Step?”

The industry will reach the practical limits of scaling planar bulk CMOS at different nodes for high-power logic, low-operating power logic, low stand-by power (LSTP) logic, and memory applications. “Transistor pitch scaling will be increasingly difficult due to stronger impact of parasitics and less effective stress engineering. Even if we can do it, power might limit what can be exploited," opined Wilfried Haensch of IBM. Vertical scaling may be required to minimize parasitic capacitance, and high-mobility channel materials must provide the same or better density scaling potential as silicon devices to be attractive. Inherent variability in sub-22nm node devices will be daunting: pattern variation, random discrete dopants, the number of charges per unit device, and interface roughness (poly grain boundaries, high-k morphology, impurity scattering, etc.).

As an example of tough near-term scaling limits, for a physical gate length of 22nm (effective length 16nm), IBM saw that the extrinsic switching time depended upon the current flux through narrow raised source/drain (S/D) regions, with relatively faster switching in short and wide S/D. “There is no new switch in site,” declared Haensch. “All candidates are either non-manufacturable or they can not be wired up.” Lacking a replacement to the silicon FET, system performance will continue to increase with respect to historical trends due to architectural solutions -- i.e., we’ll have systems with many ‘light-weight’ task-specific cores.

Akira Toriumi of the U. of Tokyo gave his educated opinion -- based on first principles of manufacturing he learned at Toshiba -- as to the best directions to go for a post-silicon future. He thinks that silicon microelectronics research will end in 2015, but any new materials, processing, and devices should be simple. “A one-dimension device like a wire, I don’t believe will be a solution; finFET will be a good candidate,” he said. He also advocates the use of germanium instead of compound semiconductors for new channels. “People are talking about Ge for pMOS and III-V for nMOS," he noted, "but why don’t we challenge Ge CMOS? We can get metal S/D Ge nFETs.” For scaling we need to consider not just channel materials but also contact materials for these new channels.

We are now in a world using digital computing solutions that is "very safe and reassuring,” said Jean-Philippe Bourgoin of CEA-LETI. “If we look back at the work of von Neumann and Turing they had to understand the theory much more than we do now.” Audience member Paolo Gargini of Intel interjected that according to the theory of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle, Intel’s planned FET scaling will be limited in the year 2020. A member of Gargini’s research group mentioned the crossbar architecture under development in Stan Williams’ Lab at HP as a likely eventual replacement for the FET. (See my Jan. 16, 2007 Ed's Thread for cross-bar architecture and processing details, based on a late 2006 tour of the lab.)

The next afternoon (Session 34, "CMOS Devices -- Advanced Device Structures"), the far limits of CMOS FET technology were shown by Samsung as experimental results of uniaxially strained {110} silicon nanowire transistor (SNWT) channels using an embedded SiGe Source/Drain for greatly improved pMOS performance. Starting with either SOI or bulk silicon wafers, they first grow embedded SiGe (20-40nm thick) and then Si. After hardmask patterning and a clever sequence of etching, the bottom of the grown Si {110} has become SNW floating above the removed SiGe, but the SiGe beneath the S/D remain, and the inherent SiGe/Si lattice-mismatch compressively stresses SNW to provide 1534μA/μm for pMOS. They saw nFET performance only ~15% lower regardless of {110} or {100} orientation, so good overall CMOS results are obtainable using {110}.

Beyond FETs and cross-bar architectures lies a technology concept still mostly disbelieved by the mainstream: quantum electronics. The IEDM plenary session included a talk by Hiroyuki Sakaki, from the Toyota Technological Institute at the U. of Tokyo, on “Roles of Quantum Nanostructures on the Evolution and Future Advances of Electronic and Photonic Devices.” By controlling the electrons within nanoscale layered structures, quantum confinement results in effective two-dimensional electrons and the ability to form devices such as resonant tunneling diodes, quantum wire FETs, quantum dot lasers, and planar superlattice FETs.

However, commercial quantum electronics still remains out in the future. Use of carbon nanotubes (CNT) grown from catalyst particles shows promise, “but it has been very difficult to control the site selection, as well as other parameters,” according to Sakaki. Charge storage phenomena in quantum dots using either Si or InAs appear like the most likely near-term applications. Though if this is merely an extension of flash memory cell technology, does it really count as “quantum electronics?”

In 20 years, will we see a non-FET-based computer? The aggregate opinion seemed to be “yes,” but don’t expect people in the industry who have lived with it forever to be able to think “outside the FET” and develop something revolutionary.

The High-k Solution..!!!

2007-10-20T16:58:00.002-04:00

As you read this, two of our most advanced fabs here at Intel are gearing up for the commercial production of the latest Core 2 microprocessors, code-named Penryn, due to start rolling off the lines before the year is up. The chips, based on our latest 45-nanometer CMOS process technology will have more transistors and run faster and cooler than microprocessors fabricated with the previous, 65-nm process generation. For computeintensive music, video, and gaming applications, users will see a hefty performance increase over the best chips they are now using.

A welcome development but hardly big news, right? After all, the density of transistors on chips has been periodically doubling, as predicted by Moore’s Law, for more than 40 years. The initial Penryn chips will be either dual-core processors with more than 400 million transistors or quad-core processors with more than 800 million transistors. You might think these chips don’t represent anything other than yet another checkpoint in the inexorable march of Moore’s Law.
But you’d be wrong. The chips would not have been possible without a major breakthrough in the way we construct a key component of the infinitesimal transistors on those chips, called
the gate stack. The basic problem we had to overcome was that a few years ago we ran out of atoms. Literally.
To keep on the Moore’s Law curve, we need to halve the size of our transistors every 24 months or so. The physics dictates that the smallest parts of those transistors have to be diminished by a factor of 0.7. But there’s one critical part of the transistor that we found we couldn’t shrink anymore. It’s the thin layer of silicon dioxide (SiO2 ) insulation that electrically isolates the transistor’s gate from the channel through which current flows when the transistor is on. That insulating layer has been slimmed and shrunk with each new generation, about tenfold since the mid-1990s alone. Two generations before Penryn, that insulation had become a scant five atoms thick.
We couldn’t shave off even one more tenth of a nanometer— a single silicon atom is 0.26 nm in diameter. More important, at a thickness of five atoms....[read more]

Today was somewhat amazing day in my life....

2007-08-30T01:03:00.000-04:00

Lets start with some mouthwatering stuff of the day, it was my 10 day in US n god knows how i survived till today by just eating bread, eggs and junk food...coz i m a die hard diet folk.
I unpacked the huge baggage which i carried all the way long from India....the massaala's stock was all unloaded...Suddenly MTR DOSA redimix caught my eye...
and i just went ahead making the receipe preparations....
finally i landed up safely getting a couple of tutta futta dosas in my dish....i wud better prefer not to say dosa but they were similar to the UTTAPPA...heheh
so u can just guess the size n thickness of it....i do have some snaps of it...so folks who r interested do get back to me....[:D]

so folks was this mouthwatering....i hope it was....nyways it was mouthwatering for me at least...[;)]

the second best thing was i got a chance to congratulate the recently inaugurated President of our institute Mr. Destler. We had a nice chat...i remember the words he quoted were..."I am too a Freshmen like you..."...strange naa....?
but its true since it was his first time to get elected as a president and he was so energetic and his talk was also no where less as compared to our Dr. Kalam's.

the 3rd best thing was ...i cooked a spicy Dal Tadka for the first time for the dinner....its was cool experience...i know i m gonna get this same experience now probably everyday atleast for 2 years from now....

and the 4rd best thing was ....i gotta a chance for ice skiing...its was an event scheduled on behalf of fresh incoming students....we had a real blast at this event.
i did tried to rollon....but cudnt do it...bocz i was not at all able to balance my weight.
Sandeep, Dhruv, Prateek...all of them were tryin this thing for the first time even though these guys were at RIT since last year....i must be lucky that i gotta a chance to skii in the ice rink.
we do have some snaps which i hope will soon upload here on this post sooner....

Landing up in Amrikaa....

2007-08-21T12:59:00.000-04:00

After a long wait time, i finally landed up in Amrikaa [USA]..[;)]
The journey was awesome, i had a non stop journey from Mumbai to JFK[NY]
spent cool time taking snaps of atlantic in the morning hours while flying just above UK.
had to board my connecting flight to Rochester at 9.25 am but unfortunately it was delayed by 40 mins ...guess why?
bcoz my jet was in a queue of 12 flights waiting to take off

atlast landed at Roc on time 11.25 am.
the weather was pretty chilling, 16 deg C...may be it was chillin for me bcoz i had a nasty feel of a humid day in Mumbai b4 takeoff.
do check out the future posts for the snaps I took during my journey.

GRE is Changing

2007-07-28T06:29:00.000-04:00

Changes to the Graduate Record Exam

Educational Testing Service (ETS), the guys and gals who write the GRE, announced that they’re adding a few new question types to the GRE in November 2007.

These changes are minor (VERY minor) and they won’t impact your score. Here’s the deal: at most, you’ll see ONE new question. One. It could be math, it could be verbal, or you could have no new questions. The time per section and the number of questions within that section won’t change.

About the New Questions

Verbal (text completion)

You’ll have to fill in two or three blanks from separate multiple-choice lists within a reading comprehension passage.

Math (numeric entry)

You’ll have to type your answer as a number in a box, or in boxes if it’s a fraction.

It’s important to know exactly what to expect when you take the GRE. That said, this announcement shouldn’t impact your preparation or your testing plans. Certainly, if you prep with us, we’ll teach you what these questions look like so you'll be able to quickly spot these experimental questions!

Sincerely,

The Princeton Review GRE Team

Watch "Productive Nanosystems (From molecules to superproducts)" on Google Video

2007-05-16T07:24:00.001-04:00

Your friend, tarunparmar@gmail.com, has sent you the following video from Google Video and included this message:

Productive Nanosystems: From molecules to superproducts.

An excellent video demosntrating the future in NanoScience.

Productive Nanosystems (From molecules to superproducts)

4 min 55 sec - Mar 14, 2006
Average rating: (196 ratings)
Description: Visualizing productive nanosystems and molecular manufacturing is a major challenge in communicating the power of this technology. To help address this problem, Nanorex (http://www.nanorex.com ) and the Foresight Institute (http://www.foresight.org/ ) established a challenge grant to fund the production of a new computer-generated animated short film called "Productive Nanosystems: from Molecules to Superproducts". This was a collaborative project of animator and engineer, John Burch (http://www.lizardfire.com/ ), and pioneer nanotechnologist, Dr. K. Eric Drexler (http://www.e-drexler.com/ ). The film depicts an animated view of a nanofactory and demonstrates key steps in a process that converts simple molecules into a billion-CPU laptop computer.

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Go to video.google.com/?hl=en

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Add it at video.google.com/videouploadform?hl=en

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JUDGEMENT DAY

2007-05-12T10:12:00.000-04:00

This is a memorable day in my life because that I am so happy today. Because this is one of the biggest achievements in my life. I planned something, worked on the plan and finally got the expected result. All that I had to do is work promptly when its your turn and wait for the outcome.
I wont take long to tell u the reason.
I had got my most desired admit for a US university named Rochester Institute of Technology for Master's in Microelectronics Engineering. Also the news that made me feel so good was that I got 50% tuition fee waiver from the department.

Its all about me...!!!

2007-04-16T07:20:00.000-04:00

This is all about my day-to-day life. If you have time grab a Latte, pull up a chair and read all about me...!!!