How the space smells??

The most amazing result from NASA is that the space smells like fried steak, hot metal and the most interesting, welding of a motorbike!! A steak is nothing but meat or fish that is cooked quickly! NASA is using these findings now to simulate a condition that is akin to the space which would prepare the astronauts for the space conditions. NASA has commissioned a research project with the help of a chemist Steven Pearce, who will be simulating the lab conditions that would have the smell of space as described above. At last, mankind is successful in smelling the space!!

The US Hegemony

The world has witnessed some 40 years of US hegemony (dominance). They have been dominating almost every commercial field ranging from food, agriculture, medicine, engineering and many other fields not only in terms of quantity but also in quality. US has been the pioneering nation in taking the first step towards a novel field. Of course, in the case of space exploration it was the Russians who took the lead but the Americans quickly caught up and now they lead the research in exploring the space and beyond. When it comes to engineering, the premier engineering institutes are located in the American states, MIT, Stanford, University of California-Berkley ( Which pioneered in creating the socket concept used in Internet programming) are to name a few. Not to forget the mind boggling basic sciences research at Harvard!


The Film industry of the US based at Hollywood rocks the World with its awesome movies that keep the people dumb struck for ages. The music bands that originate from this Western country have got fans larger than any personality in this world! I can hear you readers grumbling as to why I am iterating the points that everyone knows! rite? Well the scope of this post is to analyze the cause for US' success and to discuss the possible measure that we could take as Indians to rise in par with this country.


To start with, lets analyze a common man's attitude. Every single person on this earth wants to do only things that interest him. When he is forced to do something that doesn't rejuvenate him, he naturally produces a bad result and this would invite poor impression on the person from his superior, be it in school, college, work place or sport coach. Now, in the US nobody does that doesn't interest them. A swimmer in the US is never forced to take up a course at Stanford rather he is advocated to take part in World Aquatics Championships, a rock star finds his way by producing albums that mesmerize the crowd, by the same token a math student finds his way into top notch institutes only because he does what that "interests" him.


Now the problem with Indian educational system is that we look upon education as a lucrative and a easy option to earn money. The success rate as a sports person in India is much lower when compared to an engineer in India. A gifted singer has to struggle through unbearable hurdles to project himself to the selectors. Education in India is looked upon as a mandatory asset to everyone which is good from one point of view but at the same time it deters the hopes of children gifted with some other talents. A child with some other talent like painting, is not encouraged to pursue it as his career rather is asked to keep it as an extra-curricular talent and study some blah blah degree course. The pain of not being allowed to paint through his life will reflect on his studies where the dissatisfaction will lead to poor grades and ultimately he will perform sub-optimally.

The only way to alleviate this delicate problem that has crept into our intellectual society is to allow children to pursue their ambition right from their childhood. The US dominance clearly teaches us this lesson. The people in every department in the US are those who have pursued their passion as their career. Some examples from multifarious fields include Michael Phelps, Pete Sampras, famous music bands like Blue, Backstreet Boys, Beatles, Pink Floyd, educationists like Paul Krugman, inventors like Charles Babbage, entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet to name a few. I accept that our country too boasts of people who have anchored their names in many fields but there would have been many such ones had our people be allowed to pursue the song of their heart, their passion. So, lets think on this and bring in a intellectual revolution that would surely put India far ahead of its competitors.

Attitude

This post discusses the most vital virtue needed for almost every human being in this world. That virtue is none other than, "attitude". The education that we acquire at schools and colleges will give you an insight into what our forerunners have done exploring this nature. There is yet another feature unique to every individual in this earth and that is "talent". Whatever endevour we undertake, talent and education lend us a helping hand in tasting success. But, the noblest quality that takes us even beyond is our attitude
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There may be people who might haven't had a formal education. Those people would not know how to go about in life in earning money and to rise high in their lives. But, there would be some urge inside their hearts that keeps on telling them that they need to surge ahead, that they need to prove their worth! Thats none other than their attitude. This positive attitude of theirs will keep their efforts going on, will keep their optimism evergreen and finally take them atop the victory podium in their life.



Attitude not only helps us in tasting success, but also helps us in making a better living. Looking at things with a positive attitude gives us a peace of mind and motivates us to do things that are beyond our capacity! Many of us would have experienced this phenomenon. When you lack this positive attitude towards life, everything looks unwanted and everyone will look fiendish to our eyes. We tend to hate others and lose hope in ourselves and finally fall into a wistful life, longing for sympathy and mental calmness!



Right attitude at the work place is also a key to earn better positions in an organisation and also will motivate our colleagues. Always try to do the best out of available resources and don't grumble on the nonavailability of suitable materials to achieve a task. If at all we aren't capable of doing a job, its better not to comment on people who do the job with fullest dedication. This kind of teasing will not only harm the doers but also instill a negative attitude into our minds thereby our mind gets rusted, refusing to take up any innovative jobs! I have seen people who just sit back and comment on people who try to turn the tide. So, to conclude keep your mind free of unwanted thoughts, keep your optimism high and always wish to rise in life along with others rather than rising alone!

Concept Vs Syntax

Having done 3 1/2 years of engineering, it looks very obvious to me that many of us concentrate on getting the syntax right rather than absorbing the concepts. Concepts are implemented using programming language syntax, which are of course necessary. But, students tend to give more importance to syntax rather than the concepts that these syntax statements emphasize. This is not the consequence of the students' interest. The laboratory examinations of engineering colleges focus mainly on programs that are strongly syntax oriented. In the earlier years, lab examinations were conducted with the questions being provided on the spot. This made the students' mind to do some brainstorming and get the problem solved. The case is entirely different in our colleges, where the same programs would be provided and the one with the best memory passes out clean!



Many of us would have heard of state-of-the-art software products like Linux and Face book which are nothing but projects that were done by two engineering students in their colleges. These two software, obvious enough, are ruling their own domains of implementation. What made these people to develop such innovative software? The primary reason that I would give is that the educational system there demands students to produce such a project to get their course completion certificate. The students would naturally put their grey cells to work and come out with a novel solution that will naturally act as a trend setter for future projects.


To sum up, unless we revert back to the method of the past, where lab questions for the end examinations would be provided on the spot, we can never expect students to do extremely great innovations in the software field. The lighter side of this issue is that, since the lab exercises are syntax oriented students pay very little heed to the instructor's words and spend the hour gleefully chit-chatting! I had been the victim of those "Don't talk!" people who eargerly await to see someone talking in the lab and hand them over to higher authority! If we have a challenging task at hand, why do we think of whiling away the time?? We can't blame the system as a whole to take responsibility for this poor situation but its also on the students' part to get the better half. This situation should change, else computer engineers will become idiot-boxes, repeating the syntax alone rather than climbing up the innovation ladder!

Infrastructure & Mathematical Libraries

India is country that has produced mind blowing Mathematicians since time immemorial who took this world on their stride. Their theorems on number theory were something that no one could imagine of! Computer Science is an applied field of mathematics, where the mathematical principles are applied to solve the problem rapidly. When this is the case, why is that we don't produce efficient computer scientists as we produced Mathematicians, when its just an application of those glorious mathematical principles? The European and American countries hold the lead in fields of Computing Sciences. Its time for us to sit back and do a little brainstorming so as to find out where the problem lies.

Colleges are places where the young Engineers are groomed for the industry. Its the place where students are being made employable. An ideal ground where the scientific principles are put into action. Ironically, most of the college labs, particularly computer science labs lack infrastructure needed for high speed computing. The fault is not only on the infrastructure but also on the care taken in keeping the software library updated with the latest in the market. Computing sciences require high end software mathematical libraries as the normal compilers do not support high speed operation on large numbers. Most colleges are not even aware of these packages and therefore the onus on the students who have to search and collect these software themselves.



Onus here refers to not only the effort taken in locating Mathematical libraries but also to the fact that most of these libraries are not freewares and therefore require an amount after which the software unlocks. The institutions must take efforts at least to fund these amounts to purchase these software on students' requests. Its a pity that most colleges lack such software where the Internet-Superhighway is extremely pervasive and information is omnipresent. This calls for an urgent improvement in the infrastructure of colleges and will also help the colleges themselves to raise to the ranks of premier institutes like the IITs.



The students have a burning passion to do high end projects in computing sciences , for which high quality software is needed. The institution on its part is required to pay heed to student requirements and provide them wit adequate facilities rather than just iterating the derogatory statements like "finish the projects within deadline". Statements like these will drive students to frustration leading to sub-optimal projects, which are projects only for name sake. I hope, in the near future a sea change in infrastructure will occur and an era in which the computer scientists from India will soon begin. I can hear some of you referring to those top positions in foreign institutes being held by Indian Engineers, but those people are from top notch colleges like IIT. The solution is as simple as this. Satisfy the students' needs and they will rise to glory!

Learn How to find things....

We are living in an era in which information is freely available. Whatever may be the area, whatever may be the subject, you get the answer in a second. The trend in problem solving nowadays is to figure out where to find the information rather than building an application from scratch. We want to solve the problem quickly rather than proving our technical expertise, when it comes to pure problem solving. We need to sacrifice our personal ambitions while trying to solve problems. Searching for an information not only requires special skills but also sufficient training in handling the information source, say the Internet.


Once given with a problem, the first thing to look for is the essential steps required to solve the problem. The second one will be look for the tools to implement them. The next step would be not to start working with the application but rather looking for an already existing tool. This not only saves us time, but gives us a confidence that the problem is half solved. Later, try to modify the tool according to your application, which is possible in most of the open source tools. This is the basic principle used with the Object Oriented System Design Methodology to write softwares.


There is yet another crisis with this Object Oriented Systems Methodology. When programmers use an already existing object in their application, their Manager often questions their skill sets!! Because, he feels that they don't have a brain of their own! This problem is somewhat difficult to tackle, because it deals with the psychology of the Manager. The programmer needs to convince his Manager of his skill and expertise. So, a sufficient trade off is required between using an existing object and writing your own applications and a clever programmer always find the fine thread connecting these two.

Educate thru interest not thru force!

Hello ppl! Back again, this time with a more controversial topic to discuss. Education and how it is being handled in India. Education is a virtue, a precious commodity and this must not become an object of business! The second aspect regarding education is, how its being brought into student minds. Its a pity that education is being imposed into young minds rather allowing them to enjoy a lovely feeling called "education". Yes, education is a lovely feeling, it has a gentle breeze in it, a feeling called "awareness". The pleasure of knowing something can only be felt!


Today's plight of education is, particularly in India, we are forced into a rigorous course called "education". Forced tests, punishments and other unpleasant treatments. Why it is being stuffed into our minds? Why is that we are not allowed to think a moment and enjoy what we learn? Why is that examination still remains as the student evaluation criterion? These remain a billion dollar question in India forever! This is not the first time a student like me is feeling for this miserable happening. Many educationists have written columns of articles and many speakers spoke volumes about this issue. But in vain.


The solution is simple. People who are really interested in educating the masses must run the institutions. Education as a business object must be a punishable crime. No rule can impose the two above said principles. Its purely subjective. One has to be true to oneself and must look upon education as a way of making people realise what the world is and make the young minds feel at ease while learning.