Gravity

Alrighty then... time for an introduction to another topic in physics - gravity.

I am not going to start with the story of the apple falling on Newton's head. The previous statement should not have been the first!

So, Newton explored the concept of gravity and explained it as a force that attracts two bodies to each other. He also provided a mathematical relationship between this gravitational force and the distance between the bodies in question. For most non-relativistic physics, Newton's theory of gravity seems to suffice. For example, the orbits of almost all planets in the solar system seemed to follow the trajectory Newton's equations predicted. Almost! Mercury's orbit seemed to deviate slightly from Newton's predicted trajectory. There really was no explanation for this discrepancy for a while.

Then came Einstein with his theory of general relativity. In this theory, he postulated the concept of the curvature of spacetime - a concept I wish I could visualize. As per this theory, Einstein stated that the planets and stars are just following straight paths along the curvature of spacetime. So, they are not moving due to a force of attraction/repulsion, but due to inertial motion. These straight paths are called 'geodesics'. The theory of general relativity successfully accounted for the deviation of Mercury from Newton's predicted orbit.

Check out this video to get a glimpse into how gravity is a consequence of spacetime curvature - gravity in terms of space-time .

Antimatter

I must first say that the original intent of this blog seems outdated - I have grown (or shrunk) from that mindset. I want to just use this space to put down anything I find interesting which I feel is worth the public's time.

The concept of antimatter has come up a few times in the last few days. There was an article on BBC's website stating that thunderstorms generate antimatter. A photograph showed magical arc-shaped yellow beams above the swirling clouds of a thunderstorm. An antimatter halo, almost. And then, Ed Witten brought antimatter up while discussing the history of string theory. So, what really is this antimatter?? It definitely seems to have caught the interest of all physicists around the world.

The first sentence in Wikipedia's definition of antimatter explains that antimatter is the 'antiparticle' to matter. That raises two questions really - what is the antiparticle? what is matter? A common way of defining matter is anything that has mass and volume. The antiparticle consists of the same mass and OPPOSITE electric charge of a particle. Alright, sounds good.

So, what happens when matter meets antimatter? KABOOM. Both matter and antimatter are annihilated, giving rise to either gamma rays or other particle - antiparticle pairs. This brings up another interesting idea - that radiation, matter and antimatter are three forms of 'existence' of particles. You can get matter and antimatter from radiation and vice versa. With absolutely no idea of experimental observations made on this front, the idea of antimatter is very much like science-fiction to me. Apparently, we have mainly observed just matter - we do not see much antimatter around. As nature seems to like symmetry, there is considerable aversion to the idea that there is so much more matter than antimatter. So... physicists are out to find antimatter.

The Large Hadron Collider was able to generate some antimatter. Stunning project, the LHC. It was able to create antihydrogen - the antiparticle to hydrogen. Understandably, it is very difficult to set up experiments with antimatter as 'explosive annihilation' occurs once they meet matter.

Some scientists propose that there might have been a slight asymmetry between matter and antimatter at the time of the Big Bang with the amount of matter being greater than that of antimatter. Imagine - we are talking about an event close to 14 BILLION YEARS AGO. And we, little specks of mass with life, having an average individual life span of 50 years, are trying to understand the universe. This is exciting. Of course, without sufficient impetus of our species to understand it all in the first place, we are reaching this understanding at a snail's pace.

Water Wand

I came across this nifty invention in Popular Science online (www.popsci.com). Its called the SteriPEN and it really does sound like a dream companion for those who fear the purity of the water they drink. Dip the 'pen' in your glass of water and let it take care of the bacteria and protozoa floating around. It uses ultra-violet rays to do the trick. Check their website out for details on their products: http://www.steripen.com/emergency/index.html.

Kick Start, Practical Action

Hello hello...

Time to talk about a couple of other organizations that do interesting stuff.
Lets 'kick off' with KickStart - this non-profit organization focuses on developing products that can help pull poor families out of poverty. They have developed water pumps, presses for soil and cooking oil keeping in mind the following requirements for every product that they come up with:

Part of a highly profitable business model
Affordable
Safe and efficient
Portable and storable
Easily installed and repaired
Useable without training
Strong and durable
Made from common materials
Culturally appropriate
Environmentally sustainable

You can find out more about them by following this link: http://www.kickstart.org/what-we-do/

Another organization that caught my eye is Practical Action. Their projects and programs are in a variety of areas: energy, shelter, transport, water & sanitation, food & agriculture, disaster mitigation, climate change etc. Again, it concentrates on using technology in these areas to raise people out of poverty. Their website: http://practicalaction.org/?id=home.

Thats some new info - opinions later.

Low tech solutions for developing countries

I will make up for the lost blog posts - I promise.

Upon looking for examples of low tech solutions that have been developed for those surviving on a few dollars (if at all) a day, I came across Amy Smith, a lecturer at MIT.

She is actively involved in developing simple solutions for those in the third world. She is a co-founder of the IDEAS competition at MIT, where students are encouraged to come with a technological innovation to address the issues of our day. She founded the D-Lab at MIT presents the technological, social and economic problems that people who live below the poverty line face. She is also an organizer of the International Development Design Summit, which brings together people from around the world to come up with technological solutions to address these problems.

Some of the inventions that have come out of her efforts are a screenless hammermill, solar water disinfectant, low-cost water tester, phase-change incubator and sugarcane charcoal. I encourage you to take a look at the D-Lab project portfolio, which describes these solutions in more detail.

More later. Guaranteed :-).

Social entrepreneurship

It has been a while, but now I plan to write at least once a week.

I was just looking at the 'Ashoka' organization. This is a place for social entrepreneurs. They help social entrepreneurs by providing them resources to get an initiative going as well as by supporting them financially. The people in this organization must be stellar entrepreneurs who want to change the world for the better. Upon looking at the definition of ‘Junior-level entrepreneur’ - "As a junior entrepreneur, you have just finished university, and you have a track record of starting ventures and a commitment to social change" - I do not think I fit the bill yet! Those who make innovative contributions to society are often granted the privilege of being an Ashoka fellow as long as they apply for a fellowship. This is very beneficial to social entrepreneurs who are in most cases heading an initiative without enough financial resources to expand faster.

Another organization that provides financial and professional resources to social entrepreneurs is 'Echoing Green'. Both of these organizations have been around since the 1980s and have extremely mature infrastructures. Other organizations that I found are Avina Foundation, Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, Social Venture Partners, New Profit, Inc., New Schools Venture Fund and Omidyar Network. Its definitely worth checking out what they have to offer and what the fellows/partners of these organizations are currently doing. Innovate, help, expand!

Simple solutions to save the poor

Here is an article that found online that highlights the impact of a simple solution on the lives of thousands of people in need:

Ray Avery's voice is hoarse. He's spent the past day yelling instructions on a building site, and there's not a lot of shout left.

The 57-year-old Aucklander is in Nepal with Medicine Mondiale, the non-profit organisation he founded to address some of the world's most pressing problems.

Working with the Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital, he is building a centre of excellence for cancer treatment in Nepal to give the thousands of Nepalese cancer sufferers who currently have no access to free treatment a far greater chance of survival.

It is just one of the projects Medicine Mondiale has on the go, and one of them has been nominated for the Saatchi & Saatchi Changing Ideas Award.

Medicine Mondiale's Acuset IV Flow Controller allows a simpler, cheaper alternative to the tricky and ineffective IV flow devices that result in the deaths of countless people in the developing world each year, either through the under-administration or over-administration of medicines.

Mr Avery was determined that no more people should die simply because they had no way of controlling the flow of crucial intravenous drugs into their bodies.

Now, the man who started life in the orphanages and streets of London is being recognised for attempting to make a significant difference to the world.

"I suppose I had quite a high chance of being a social reject, and it's nice to come out of that and be nominated for an international award," he says. "It just meant thinking of how to use our skills to make a difference in the world."

Mr Avery, a pharmaceutical scientist by trade, spent many years working for the Fred Hollows Foundation, which works to eradicate blindness in some of the world's poorest countries, and established Medicine Mondiale to develop broader technologies that would help to improve the lot of the world's poorest people.

That has included two state-of-the art intraocular lens laboratories in Eritrea and in Nepal to reduce the number of people going blind because of the high costs and low availability of intraocular lenses.

Medicine Mondiale has also developed a range of nutritional products for babies, to treat dehydration and malnutrition on a global scale and address the most common cause of infant death in the Third World.

The low-cost infant incubator is also intended to improve infant mortality by reducing the number of babies who die from low birth weight or infections.

Mr Avery says he set out to examine the root causes of some of the world's most common problems, such as infant mortality and the inefficient use of medication, and he is frustrated by the lack of global progress made on some of those issues.

"Science has largely abandoned the developing world and doesn't apply the technology that is needed. No NGOs are developing things or looking for solutions," he says.

"They spend so much money doing surveys and telling us what the problems are, and that money could be much better used actually going out there and fixing things.

"We haven't got these cheap, elegant solutions for every problem, but with this one we think we can improve medical care at every hospital worldwide."

Often, solving the problems of under-privileged masses does not lie in the lack of funding for them, but in the lack of solutions available. The money spent on technology is not exactly placed in the right sectors for a worldwide impact. How much is the world going to improve with a million-dollar research project on cosmetic surgery for noses? Often, the justification for placing billions of dollars in research for defense purposes, is that lot of the technology that we use nowadays have spun off their projects. A very popular example of this is the internet itself.

To be honest, all I take from it is that large sums of money aid in research and development. If the projects were targeted at humanitarian and social initiatives, I think we would be much closer to solving the problems of hunger, poverty and disease.

There are research projects in universities around the world that address this problem. One of them is 'TechBridgeWorld' which was spawned at Carnegie Mellon University. They have a few projects that address the need for education in developing countries, and they strongly push for technological solutions for the poor and needy. Here is a link to their website: TechBridgeWorld .

Other simple solutions I have across are with respect to farming. Drip irrigation techniques, using a bicycle for rice threshing and water pumping, and food fortification methods are among those I found. So, DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPACT OF A SIMPLE SOLUTION - it could be the key to someone else's happiness.