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NEWSBITS
No wires attached
Students and faculty in Pakistan have started using wireless technology for education. With a Wi-Fi enabled computer, now they can have access to classrooms and conference rooms without being physically there.
Students and teachers can access the internet, email and the powerful servers in the computer labs wirelessly from any place on the campus — the garden, the hallway, or while sitting in the car in the parking lot. All one needs is a notebook or laptop PC with Wi-Fi capabilities complying to global standards RFC:802.11b.
Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science & Technology (SZABIST) is the first educational institution in Pakistan to use the new technology for educational purpose, with both the campuses now communicating with each other seamlessly over the air.
Faculty members can now use their personal notebooks to connect to the SZABIST LAN and internet in the class rooms and project them on the white boards without physically interconnecting to a port!
Arrangement of conference rooms has become much easier with a wireless LAN (Local Area network). This mobility supports productivity and service, further expanding the possibilities in conjunction with wired networks.
The best thing about wireless LAN is long-term cost benefits in a dynamic environment where the frequent moves and changes are part of daily routine. Wireless LAN systems can be configured in a variety of topologies to meet the needs of specific applications and installations. Configurations are easily changed and range from peer-to-peer networks suitable for a small number of users to full infrastructure networks of thousands of users that enable roaming over a broad area like hospital or full fledged university campus. The possibilities are endless.
Last year, SZABIST was the first educational institute to allow its students to remotely login on to servers from anywhere around the world through the internet. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
High yield from India’s GM crops
Cotton crops in India that were genetically modified to resist insects have produced dramatically increased yields.
The farm trials also showed that the novel plants needed significantly less pesticide treatment.
The details of the research have been published in the journal Science.
This study may be especially promising for small-scale, low-income farmers in developing countries, it is claimed.
Field trials: These farmers often risk large, pest-related crop losses because they cannot afford to use the pesticides available to larger farms.
Field trials were carried out at 150 farms in three of India’s major cotton-producing states.
Scientists grew cotton that had been modified to incorporate a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).
This makes the plant tissue toxic to three species of bollworm that plague crops in India.
In the study, the BT cotton was grown next to two plots of unmodified crops. The results were dramatic.
Success: There was an average improvement in yield from the BT cotton of between 80 and 90 per cent, far more than in similar field trials in China and the United States.
The report says there are two reasons for the success of the crop.
Bollworm, and other pests, enjoy India’s sub-tropical climate, and tend to breed rapidly. There is also a much lower use of effective pesticides in India.
The researchers say the crops are not the only source of food for the bollworm.
This means it will take longer for the pest to develop a resistance to the new crop.
Martin Qaim, Assistant Professor of Agriculture at Bonn University and lead author of the report, said: “We expect the benefits to last for quite some time.”
The authors say the results are transferable to other parts of the world and to food crops which sustain similar types of pest damage.
There has been a strong lobby against genetic modification in India.
Environmentalists are concerned about the damage GM pollen could do to crop diversity if it “contaminates” the 600 or so natural varieties growing in India.
They say any short-term gains in yield from GM cotton would undoubtedly be lost as the insects developed resistance. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
IBM completes 50 years in Pakistan
Commemorating IBM’s 50 years of service in Pakistan last week, Country General Manager Mr Humayun Bashir said IBM Pakistan ia associated with all major projects in the country, and is providing leadership in key emerging technologies, and solution strategies.
He said IBM Pakistan is poised “to launch its resources and expand to meet the new business demands of this decade in terms of e-government, taxation systems, security / passport solutions, online banking and ERP, as well as governments initiative to spread use of LINUX and making LINUX servers as government standard in order to save millions of dollars in terms of use of Open Source and low cost software solutions.”
General Manager, IBM Middle East, Mr Rashid Wally said “IBM Pakistan offers state-of-the-art technology and solutions as an equal member of the global IBM team, and is a proven partner to Pakistan’s businesses and the government. IBM Pakistan has actively participated in the country’s development, relying on the strength and expertise of the Corporation’s global team and the regional support of IBM Central and Eastern Europe,
Middle East and Africa, with the main goal to respond to Pakistan’s customers’ and market requirements. In these fifty years, the team in Pakistan has also grown in terms of local authority and competence, and the scope of offerings for the local market.” — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
Geologists investigate Trojan battlefield
Homer’s description of the Trojan battlefield in his classic poem the Iliad is accurate, say scientists.
The subject of the story - the Greeks’ 10-year siege of Troy and the wooden horse they used to bring it to an end - may have been a myth, but its geography was not.
The researchers drilled sediments in northwest Turkey to map how the coastline would have looked around the city more than 2,000 years ago when Homer wrote his epic account of the war.
When they compared their findings with his descriptions of the Trojan plain, they found a match.
Explaining the study’s significance, John Luce from Trinity College Dublin, said: “It has to be taken seriously that the Homeric picture of the fighting at Troy is in close accord with the geological findings,” he said.
River deposits: The whereabouts of Troy had long puzzled scholars. In ancient Greek times, Troy was said to be very close to the sea.
Then in the 1870s, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered what were believed to be the remains of an ancient city well inland from the coast of what is now Turkey.
Homer’s tale relates to a time when a large inlet of the Aegean Sea reached towards Troy.
Scientists now believe that, over the centuries, this inlet became silted up with the deposits from rivers, pushing the coastline back to its present-day position.
Classics expert Dr John Luce said: “At Schliemann’s excavation, he took the site of the camp mentioned by Homer to be on the beach which one sees today, but in the course of 3,000 years the great rivers of [Scamander and Simois] have brought down enormous quantities of silt which have advanced the coastline by miles.”
Seashell clue: Since 1977, Dr Luce has been involved with an international group of researchers who have taken part in a systematic drilling programme in an attempt to document the landscape changes.
Dr John Kraft, from the University of Delaware in the US, carried out the geological investigations, together with Turkish colleagues, drilling out samples of sediment from well below the surface.
“We drilled for 70 metres below the flood-plain surface and we found 70 metres of marine material,” he explained.
Further drilling south on the plain revealed what the researchers believe to have been a major marine area, leading them to conclude that the sea had been pushed back to its present location by a build up of silt deposits in the delta.
“It was right in front of Troy that we were drilling a hole and seashells came out,” Dr Kraft enthused.
Back in Dublin, Dr Luce compared Schliemann’s original claims with the researchers’ findings and tested Homer’s phrases in the Iliad.
Axis of attack: Homer wrote of the Greek ships that sailed to the coastal town of Troy, starting a war that would rage for 10 years. But when Dr Luce tried to apply the account of the battle with Schliemann’s notion of Troy, he saw “that great difficulties had been raised”.
“One of the problems was that you wouldn’t cross from Troy,” he explained. “But Homer repeatedly refers to the action as swinging backwards and forwards, crossing the river in the process.”
Reinterpreting the written material led Dr Luce to “swing the axis of fighting round to a different viewpoint west of Troy.”
In so doing, Dr Luce and colleagues have shown that Schliemann’s location for Troy does agree with Homer’s accounts of the battle.
This research is described in the journal Geology. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
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