ASTROSAT MISSION

ISRO’s VIEW TO THE INVISIBLE UNIVERSE:

“I am confident that when it comes to India's space programme, the best is yet to come.”

              -Hon. PM Shree Narendra Modi

In this blog, we feel delighted to present you the insights from ISRO’s ASTROSAT MISSION, the first dedicated Indian astronomy mission aimed at studying celestial sources in X-ray, optical and UV spectral bands simultaneously launched in 2016.

The scientific objectives of AstroSat mission are:

1) To understand high energy processes in binary star systems containing neutron stars and black holes;

2) Estimate magnetic fields of neutron stars;

3) Study star birth regions and high energy processes in star systems lying beyond our galaxy;

4) Detect new briefly bright X-ray sources in the sky;

5) Perform a limited deep field survey of the Universe in the Ultraviolet region.

Mentioning the most unique features of this mission is that it enables simultaneous multi-wavelength observations of various astronomical objects with a single satellite.

This is a five years mission in which the satellite observes the universe in the optical, Ultraviolet, low and high energy X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

ASTROSAT Configuration:

The cuboidal shaped AstroSat has two solar arrays consisting of Triple Junction solar cells that generate 2100 Watt power. Sun, star and gyroscope sensors have been used for orientation reference of the satellite. The Attitude and Orbit Control System [AOCS] of it accurately maintains the orientation by reaction wheels, magnetic torquers and thurtsers. Special thermal control schemes have been designed to manage typical payloads.

After successful injection into the orbit, the two solar panels of it are automatically deployed in quick session and the spacecraft control centre at Mission Operations Complex [MOX] of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network [ISTRAC] at Bangalore manages the satellite during its mission life.

The science data gathered by FIVE Payloads of AstroSat are telemeterd to the ground station at MOX. The data is then processed, achieved and distributed by Indian Space Science Data Centre [ISSDC].

AstroSat Salient Features:

AstroSat Payloads:

1) Ultra- Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT):

The Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope, or the UVIT, is a remarkable 3-in-1 imaging telescope. Weighing all of 230 kg, the UVIT can simultaneously observe in the visible, the near-ultraviolet (NUV) and the far-ultraviolet (FUV). UVIT comprises of two separate telescopes. One of them works in the visible (320-550 nm) and the NUV (200-300 nm). The second works only in the FUV (130-180 nm). Remember that the famous Lyman-α line of Hydrogen is at 121.6 nm, at the far end of the FUV, and even beyond that is the X-ray band for which AstroSat has four different telescopes.

2) Soft X-rat Telescope (SXT):

SXT is an X-ray focusing telescope operating in the energy range 0.3-8.0 keV (X-rays are often again detected as individual photons. They are quantified in terms of their energy rather than their wavelength, purely due to initial development of X-ray detectors without optics. 1 keV photon is approximately 1.2 nm (for comparison, a blue light photon has an energy of about 3 eV).

3) Large Area X-ray Proportional Counters (LAXPC):

The special feature of the LAXPC instrument is its ability to measure X-ray spectra at very short time scales. Not only can these spectral measurements be made over periods as short as few milliseconds if the source is bright enough, up to few hundreds of seconds, but these spectra can extend over a large range of energies viz. 3-80 keV. The LAXPC can even look at how the brightness of a celestial source varies over tens of microseconds! Hence, this is the perfect instrument to study a wide variety of celestial objects that undergo sudden outbursts.

4) Cadmium- Zinc- Telluride Imager (CZTI):

Cadmium - Zinc - Telluride Imager (CZTI) is truly a hard X-ray imaging instrument in the energy range 10-100 keV with a collecting area of 976 cm2. This is a solid state detector and the entire detector assembly is divided into four identical and independent quadrants.The exact position of the source above the detector can be determined from the pattern of the shadow that it casts. CZT modules perform best in the temperature range 0-15 degree celsius and hence the heat generated by the detector assembly is drained out continuously by a radiator panel assembly.

5) Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM):

The Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM), as the name indicates, is to scan the portion of sky away from sun to look for any transient behaviour in X-ray sources.  In any space mission such an instrument is mandatory because it can scan a large portion of the sky in a few hours. Hence, the SSM is good for detecting and locating any transient event in out bursting phase in the energy range 2.5-10 keV.  Also, at the output of SSM, if some  interesting source is found in a particular location, other instruments on-board AstroSat as well as ground based observatories can be alerted  to conduct detailed observation towards that position. Hence SSM needs to have large field of view (FOV) and good angular resolution.

In addition to these, a Charged Particle Monitor (CPM) has also been used to detect charged particles.

This has been done because the satellite spends a considerable time (15-20 minutes) in South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) Region, which has high fluxes of low energy photons and electrons.The high voltage will be lowered or put off using data from CPM when the satellite enters the SAA region to prevent damage to the detectors as well as to minimize ageing effect in the Proportional Counters.

AstroSat Observations:

1) Talking of WLM: Forming Stars efficiently in grand association, located in the constellation Cetus, 3 Million light years away, is a faint dwarf galaxy, Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte, or WLM for short. It is relatively isolated, lying in the outskirts of our Local Group of Galaxies. It has a mass that is thousands of times less than the Milky Way and a metallicity that is only 13% solar. Lower metallicity implies less heavy elements, which in turn hinders forming new stars. So why did AstroSat even look at this galaxy? WLM is a dwarf irregular galaxy with a low mass and metallicity and exists in solitude. Nevertheless, it manages to form new stars extremely efficiently. Adjusted for their respective masses, WLM forms stars at a rate that is 12 times higher than our own Milky Way! Astronomers are still not sure as to how WLM does this.

2) While the mission still continues, there are a lot of results yet to come. For more results and observations please keep visiting https://www.isro.gov.in/

AstroSat Self Model:

We can also make a self AstroSat model following this:

As ISRO completes 50 years, marking 50 years of India in Space and continuously making us proud, we at IEEE feel elated to celebrate National Space Day and mark this week of our activities dedicated to India in Space. A gentle reminder to all our readers, ANTARIKSHA 1.0 – An online quiz on ISRO and India’s achievements in Space to be conducted on May 1, 2020 at sharp 5:00 PM at our website http://ieee.nitp.ac.in/new/index.html

Forget not, winners get IEEE goodies such as T-shirts, stickers and pens!

A note for the readers:

You can find more details of the ASTROSAT Mission at ISRO’s official website, a book on AstroSat has also been released, with its e-copy available at the website and also a review article on "ASTROSAT -- Indian Multiwavelength Astronomy Satellite to View the Invisible Universe" by Prof. P.C.Agrawal has been published in Physics News, July -- December 2016 issue also available at ISRO’s website.

Further we really hope for the safety of our followers and their well-wishers. We all stand together in these tough times and stay home to stay safe.

Keep reading! Do drop your comments if you liked it and suggest more topics for upcoming Tech Thursdays. 

NOTE: The entire source of this article is as per the information available at https://www.isro.gov.in/

Further attaching more pictures for reference.

HER DIARY

A lonely 50 year-old. That's what the world thinks of me. That’s what I think of myself, a lonely 50 year-old.

After the death of my wife, 5 years ago, I started my journey into alcoholism, anxiety and depression. I know, doesn’t sound very positive of me but that’s how it is when you’re fucked up in the head. I broke apart after her death. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. In a desperation to reconcile with her, I even attempted suicide.

Luckily, or unluckily, I was saved. I was in the hospital and my sons came to visit me and get me out of the hole that I was in. They couldn’t help me however hard they tried. I always wanted to protect them from the darkness inside my head. They lived far away and had stressful jobs, I didn’t want to be a burden for them.

They in the process of understanding me better or maybe out of sheer desperation to get me better, tried on some new technology. 

I being the technologically-illiterate, didn’t understand what it was about, I had no idea about the specifics of this chip. This chip was surgically inserted in my forehead. It supposedly monitored my emotions, like that’s even possible.

I tried to get them to tell me what it did but what they spoke was too technical for me to understand, they just said it would be my constant companion in times of distress.

Days after getting discharged were great, I spent time with my loving sons and their wives. It was almost therapeutic. They had to leave surely, and they did one day. I felt sad, naturally. I heard a calm voice going in my head, “Is everything okay? You seem sad.”

That was the beginning of my ‘reflections’ as I would like to call it. I reflected on many aspects of my life, including my alcoholism and depression. I was getting better, I could see the change within myself as I now had more control over my feelings than before.

It was going well. One day, while cleaning out my closet when I found a book. It was my wife’s diary. It was her handwriting. One of the kids must have found it and left it there. I was shocked. All this while, I never thought about my wife and that helped me heal better. 

But right now, holding in my hand, an object so close to her I could feel the panic rising as all the emotions flooded in again. I felt as though everything was blurred in front of me. I didn’t have control. 

But then something cleared up my head, and I heard a calm tone,

“Is everything alright?”

Thanks for reading. IEEE SB NITP would like to once again remind its readers to obey the guidelines as issued by the Government and WHO. Stay home and stay safe. Please drop your views in the comment section.

Carbon Capture Technologies

April 22nd, 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Every year, activities focused on environmental issues are organized all over the world. Although this year all the events will be online (You know the reason, right?). But you know, days come and go. And who cares about the environment anyway? Or probably they think that we live in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where heroes will come and save us.

You would have seen a lot of examples of how industrialization and development of human civilization have affected our home. But today we will give you a new example.

The picture you are seeing is the picture of Peppered Moth before and after the industrial revolution began in England. Initially, the black colored one was rare, but human's influence on the environment grew, so did their numbers. After 80 years since they were first sighted, 98% of the Peppered Moths in Manchester were black.

Now you will say, "Ok. So, what are the solutions to this problem?" Well one of them is Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies.

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released its special report on global warming in October 2018 which stated that some form of carbon dioxide removal is needed in order to keep the global temperature below 1.5-degrees celsius and also to avoid the worst effects of climate change. IPCC also estimates that carbon capture and storage has the potential to make up between 10% and 55% of the total carbon mitigation effort until the year 2100.

So, today we will look into some of these Carbon captures and Storage Technologies and how they will shape our future.

The Carbon Eating Fuel Cell

At an Alabama power plant, FuelCell Energy and ExxonMobil aim to capture 90 percent of the CO2 emissions. And they are doing this with the help of fuel cells.

In a molten carbonate fuel cell, carbon is an integral part of the equation. At the cathode—also known as the air electrode—carbon dioxide and oxygen are fed to the cell, and they react to form charge-carrying carbonate ions suspended in a molten salt electrolyte. The ions migrate through the electrolyte to the anode— or fuel electrode—where they react with hydrogen (which is formed from a hydrocarbon fuel like natural gas or biogas) to produce water, CO2, and electrons. The electrons then go into an external circuit to do useful work before returning to the cathode, while the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction gets recycled back to the cathode. The high temperature makes them less susceptible to poisons like carbon monoxide (created by processing carbonaceous fuels), which can damage the innards of lower-temperature fuel cells.

Against the backdrop of climate change, the company’s engineers realized that the fuel cell’s pumping action could be used to concentrate and collect carbon dioxide at the anode. To replenish the carbon dioxide needed to keep the fuel cell running, they could use pollution— industrial exhaust, that is. The concentrated CO2 can be stored deep underground or used as an industrial feedstock.

Unlike the conventional amine-based method of carbon capture, which consumes electricity, the fuel cells will generate their own electricity to drive the process.

The Power Plant that runs on CO2

The natural-gas-fired plant’s novel design, from Durham, N.C.–based NET Power, uses a fuel mix that is 95 percent carbon dioxide at the point of combustion. What’s more, it captures and sequesters carbon dioxide at virtually no additional cost. According to NET Power’s calculations, once the company scales up and rolls out the technology commercially, its plants should cost no more to construct and operate than a traditional natural-gas plant, which simply vents its exhaust into the atmosphere.

Above a certain temperature and pressure—31.1 °C, or a summer day in Phoenix, and 7.39 megapascals, or about 80 percent what you find on the surface of Venus— carbon dioxide turns supercritical. In that state, it can expand like gas and yet still move with the density of a liquid; it can even dissolve things the way a liquid can. (In fact, it’s used to decaffeinate coffee.) Supercritical CO2 can be pumped, compressed, and driven to spin a turbine with an efficiency that steam may never reach. Consequently, supercritical CO2 has been proposed and developed for decades as a credible replacement for steam in all sorts of power generation, including nuclear power and concentrated solar towers.

• An air separation unit strips oxygen from the air and sends it to the combustor.

• Natural gas combines with oxygen and hot, supercritical carbon dioxide to burn in a combustor. 

• The resulting in very hot CO2 and water drives a turbine to generate electricity. 

• A heat exchanger extracts energy from the turbine’s hot exhaust and delivers it to the stream of supercritical CO2 further down the cycle. The cooled water drains away. 

• The cooled CO2 is pumped and compressed up to high pressure.

• A fraction of the CO2 is siphoned away to be sequestered or used to pump oil out of wells. 

• Energy from earlier in the cycle heats the high-pressure supercritical CO2 for a return trip to the combustor.

After almost a decade of development, NET Power is putting the finishing touches on its US $140 million, 50-megawatt power plant there. The grid-connected plant is being tested this year, and its backers hope to scale up to commercial deployment by 2021.

Methanol-fueled cars could drive us toward an emission-less future

Carbon Recycling International (CRI), whose engineers have developed a novel method of using renewable energy to produce methanol fuel from waste streams of CO2 and electrolyzed water. Methanol generated this way, CRI is betting, could have a real impact on climate change. Over the past decade, CRI engineers have been refining and vetting their process at the plant, which is named for the late Nobel Prize-winning chemist George A. Olah. A pipeline carries about 5,500 metric tons of CO2 per year from Svartsengi, which also supplies the electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen and CO2 are then combined to form water-laden methanol, which is distilled into pure methanol. Opened in 2012, the plant now produces 4,000 metric tons, or 5 million liters, a year.

 Of course, in an ideal low-carbon world, the roads would be filled not with methanol cars but with electric vehicles charged by renewable energy. We’re still well short of that goal, however. Today, EVs make up a tiny fraction of cars in every country where they’re sold. Even under the most optimistic assumptions, it may be a mid-century before a majority of cars on the road are all-electric. In the meantime, methanol is among the most promising alternatives for significantly shrinking our cars’ carbon footprint.

If you power a methanol plant with a renewable energy source and capture the CO2 coming from the exhaust of, say, a steel plant, you can halve the total carbon being released into the atmosphere. So even though burning methanol in a car’s internal combustion engine does release CO2, along with some water vapor, you’re first capturing CO2 from the steel plant. That is, you’re basically recycling the carbon and extracting some useful work before it gets released. In contrast to carbon capture and storage, which aims to permanently sequester CO2 deep underground, this type of cycle is known as “carbon capture and utilization.”

Carbon Engineering

In Squamish, British Columbia, there’s a company that wants to stop climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It’s called Carbon Engineering, and it uses a combination of giant fans and complex chemical processes to remove carbon dioxide from the air in a procedure known as Direct Air Capture.

Direct Air Capture isn’t new, but Carbon Engineering says its technology has advanced enough for it to finally make financial sense.

This type of direct air capture starts with an air contractor, where the air is sucked in at high volumes. This structure “wet scrubs” the air by using a strong hydroxide solution to capture CO₂ and convert it into carbonate. The hydroxide solution reacts with carbon dioxide to form carbonate ions(CO32−) This occurs within a structure that is much the same as an industrial cooling tower.

The next step involves a “pellet reactor” where the carbonate ion reacts with calcium(Ca2+) to form calcium carbonate, in the form of dried pellets. Then, a circulating fluid heats the calcium carbonate pellets to decomposition temperature, breaking them apart to release the carbon dioxide as a gas and leave behind calcium oxide (CaO).

Finally, the carbon dioxide is combined with hydrogen and converted into liquid fuels, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, using the Fischer-Tropsch process. This is a process where a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen are converted into liquid hydrocarbons. These reactions occur in the presence of metal catalysts and typically at temperatures of 150–300 °C.

This means the company can produce carbon-neutral hydrocarbons, meaning if you were to burn this fuel in your car, you would release carbon-dioxide pollution out of your exhaust and into the atmosphere. But because this carbon dioxide came from the air in the first place, these emissions would not introduce any new carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and no oil would need to be extracted from the earth to power your car.

The company has tested the technology and has proved that it will cost between 92 dollars to 232 dollars to convert a single metric ton of carbon dioxide which is much less than the estimated 600 dollars per metric ton of carbon dioxide.

The company is backed by Bill Gates and also by the oil giants Chevron, BHP, and Occidental. These partnerships will bring Carbon Engineering’s tech to market by using the captured carbon to make synthetic fuels and help extract more oil from the ground.

Our world is developing everyday. New inventions and research every other hour and we are getting laced with technologies but as it is always said, “Every coin has two face”. If we are gaining, we are losing too but we can’t afford our coming generations to lose nature completely in a distressed form. That's why we need technology to coexist with other technologies so that we can grow without losing our environment, just like the concept of Sustainable Development. Our Earth is our mother and we are her sons and daughters and it is our responsibility only to take care of her. Let’s pledge to take care of her from today!

Thanks for reading. IEEE SB NITP would like to once again remind its readers to obey the guidelines as issued by the Government and WHO. Stay home and stay safe. Please drop your views in the comment section.

A-eye

“A-eye” 
That was the name of my app. One idea that had germinated in my head since my college days, I finally took the plunge and made it. It was inspired by my blind grandmother, she always had trouble doing things due to the blindness. May she rest in peace. 

I had done years of research, I wanted to make a portable kit that people could carry and use easily. I had made a pendant, it had a 180 degree wide lens fitted in it, and usually gave good insight. The idea was that the pendant paired with earphones and a mobile app, when triggered would find a random person who would volunteer to be the “eyes’ of the person. They would help the blind in basic tasks like shopping and stuff.

I had made the app, it was in trial phase. We definitely had a positive response from the general public with a lot of people volunteering to be the eyes of people in need. It was pretty wholesome.

We started out by giving few of the pendants out for free to some elderly citizens. It was going well, until one day I wanted to try the app out for some testing related purpose. 

The woman I had volunteered for was going to the store, she wanted a person to guide her through the process. She went inside, and suddenly everything was chaos. I saw a man, wearing black, carrying a gun right in front of her. He suddenly fired up in the air and asked everyone to hand over their phones as they were going to keep hostages and did not want police knowing about it.

My mind started racing, I could hear everything, I wanted to reassure her knowing that she could hear me, I told her to keep her calm. It was a jewelry store and they could potentially take goods worth millions. I called the police. I told them about the situation inside the store. 

They wanted to intervene, but decided on the contrary due to the presence of hostages. They were not eager to face the robbers as it would mean putting the life of the hostages in danger. It was looking hopeless when I explained the situation, I told them about the woman with the camera. I suggested sending in some men without being noticed. They made a plan to rescue the ones inside. They had constant access to the pendant-camera that the woman had, and through the airpods, we gave instruction to her. She provided us with the perfect view and helped determine the location of robbers. 

After a lot of speculation, we went ahead with the plan. It could be executed perfectly only because we had that one blind woman by our side. That one brave woman who didn’t lose her calm even in the times of crisis.

Well, who knew that even the blind could guide the way for better.

VIRTUAL REALITY

Our childhood nights had been full of dreams, different worlds, different creatures, etc and dreams are still part of us and will be forever. Dreams make us vision a different environment designed by us only and we have often thought, “I wish it could be true”. Technology is the weapon of humans which makes us realize our dreams. We dreamed of communicating to our far away, we invented telephones, mobiles, and video callings. We dreamed of reaching far away paces in minimal times, we created trains, bullet trains, airplanes, and jets. The topic which we are going to make you aware is one of those realizations of our dreams.
                                                 
Virtual Reality is the use of computer technology to create a simulated environment. It places a user inside an experience. Users are immersed and able to interact with 3D worlds. By simulating as many senses as possible, such as vision, hearing, touch, even smell, the computer is transformed into a gatekeeper to this artificial world.

Virtual Reality’s most immediately-recognizable component is the head-mounted display (HMD). Human beings are visual creatures, and display technology is often the single biggest difference between immersive Virtual Reality systems and traditional user interfaces.

Digging the history, we found that the perspective in Renaissance Europe created convincing depictions of spaces that did not exist, in what has been referred to as the "multiplying of artificial worlds”. Other elements of virtual reality appeared as early as the 1860s.

During the 1950s, Morton Heilig wrote “Experience Theatres” that could adequately encompass all sorts of senses thus drawing the viewer inside the onscreen activity. He built a prototype of his vision dubbed the Sensorama in 1962, along with five short films to be displayed in it while engaging multiple senses (sight, sound, smell, and touch).

This way, as years passed by, different scientists came with a newer and better technical development of Virtual Reality. The LEEP(Large Expanse, Extra Perspective) optical system developed by Eric Howlett in 1979 is the basis of most of the modern virtuality headsets. Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of this field founded VPLResearch which has developed DataGlove, Eyephone, and the AudioSphere.

The 1990s saw the first widespread commercial releases of computer headsets. The Sega VR headset for arcade games and the Mega Drive console used LCD screens in the visor, stereo headphones, and inertial sensors that allowed the system to track and react to the movements of the user's head. By 1994, Sega released the Sega VR-1 motion simulator arcade attraction, in SegaWorld amusement arcades. It was able to track head movement and featured 3D polygon graphics in stereoscopic 3D, powered by the Sega Model 1 arcade system board.

In 2010, Palmer Luckey designed the prototype of the Oculus Rift. This prototype, built on a shell of another virtual reality headset, was only capable of rotational tracking. However, it boasted a 90-degree field of vision that was previously unseen in the consumer market at the time.
In 2012, the Rift is presented for the first time at the E3 video game trade show by Carmack. In 2014, Facebook purchased Oculus VR.

By 2016, at least 230 companies were developing VR-related products. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and Samsung all had dedicated AR and VR groups. Dynamic binaural audio was common to most headsets released that year.

In 2016, HTC shipped its first units of the HTC Vive SteamVR headset. This marked the first major commercial release of sensor-based tracking, allowing for free movement of users within a defined space.

With a multiplicity of emerging hardware and software options, the future of wearables is unfolding but yet unknown. Whoever comes out ahead, the simplicity of buying a helmet-sized device that can work in a living room, office, or factory floor has made HMDs center stage when it comes to Virtual Reality technologies.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are two sides of the same coin.

Augmented Reality is a VR with one foot in the real world: Augmented Reality simulates artificial objects in the real environment. In Augmented Reality, the computer uses sensors and algorithms to determine the position and orientation of a camera. AR technology then renders the 3D graphics as they would appear from the viewpoint of the camera, superimposing the computer-generated images over a user’s view of the real world.

In Virtual Reality, the computer uses similar sensors and math. However, rather than locating a real camera within a physical environment, the position of the user’s eyes are located within the simulated environment. If the user’s head turns, the graphics react accordingly. Rather than compositing virtual objects and a real scene, VR technology creates a convincing, interactive world for the user.

Virtual reality and augmented reality accomplish two very different things in two very different ways, despite the similar designs of the devices themselves. VR replaces reality, taking you somewhere else. AR adds to reality, projecting information on top of what you're already seeing.

Apart from the gaming industry which is being heavily dominated, Virtual Reality has proved to be a great aid in other fields.

● Virtual Reality has benefitted scientific and engineering visualization in a great way. In comparison to conventional methods, immersing ourselves in the data, advantages of the greater space on offer can be easily taken, leading to more natural interactions, and viscerally analyze multi-dimensional data.

By living in a world of data rather than being a spectator in it, studies have shown that the effectiveness of the visualization is multiplied. This leads to ‘demonstrably better perception of a data scape geometry, more intuitive data understanding, and better retention of the perceived relationships in the data.

● In aviation, medicine, and the military, Virtual Reality training is an attractive alternative to live training with expensive equipment, dangerous situations, or sensitive technology. Commercial pilots can use realistic cockpits with VR technology in holistic training programs that incorporate virtual flight and live instruction. Surgeons can train with virtual tools and patients, and transfer their virtual skills into the operating room, and studies have already begun to show that such training leads to faster doctors who make fewer mistakes. Police and soldiers can conduct virtual raids that avoid putting lives at risk.

● Speaking of medicine, the treatment of mental illness, including post-traumatic stress disorder, stands to benefit from the application of Virtual Reality technology to ongoing therapy programs. Whether it’s allowing veterans to confront challenges in a controlled environment, or overcoming phobias in combination with behavioral therapy, VR has a potential beyond gaming, industrial and marketing applications to help people heal from, reconcile and understand real-world experiences.

Albert Einstein once quoted, “Logic will take you from point A to B; Imagination will take you everywhere” and Virtual Reality is the best example to prove that.

Therefore folks, stay tuned for more blogs and till then “Happy Imagination”!

Thanks for reading. IEEE SB NITP would like to once again remind its readers to obey the guidelines as issued by the Government and WHO. Stay home and stay safe. Please drop your views in the comment section.

THE WASP

RH. That was all that was written in README.md of that program. All that was available. 

RH. 

It was one of the most complex AI programs I had ever seen. I consider myself fairly good at development of codes, but this code was almost like a piece of art. I began poking around in it.

I had stumbled upon the program when I was browsing the dark web. I have an online alias, I'm known for writing algorithms and programs modelling AI. My alias was named 'Wasp.'

One day I got an anonymous message, which contained only a link. I followed up to it. What at first look seemed like an add-on to payment apps was much deeper than that. Five sleepless nights and I felt frission! What I found was both exciting and scary at the same time.

When I got in after such a tiring reckless hacking, I could see this AI was not dormant, it had been active and doing lots of work, without even prompting. A realization dawned on me, it had become self-aware.

I still couldn't figure out RH. It roamed around in my head and I dismissed it as maybe initials of the creator.

The AI had been getting all the details of the account through which payments had been made. It also had a huge database, which after some research and online stalking turned out to be broke college students, single moms, and homeless men. There were several payments made to them, small amounts, but enough for them to get through a particularly tough and a pathetic situation.

Little by little, I found many such acts of charity...if you call it charity. Money, coupons, donations, anonymous help basically. These people were being helped. The loss was just being suffered by the so called giant corporations, some of them which were known to exploit their employees. It was maybe a weird sort of justice that was being done by the creator, or maybe he had a personal vendetta with capitalists, or maybe a Marxist. I was confused.

Was this ethical? Even if it wasn't, I couldn't really bring myself to report this AI. I had seen some of the people they helped, it was almost like a miracle of God for them. In my entire life, I have never seen such a beautiful use of technology, and I will say it again, if you find it beautiful. Or I will just add as the twenty first century Robin Hood. 

Then suddenly it clicked, RH is short for Robin Hood. Happiness! 

Thanks for reading. IEEE SB NITP would like to once again remind its readers to obey the guidelines as issued by the Government and WHO. Stay home and stay safe. Please drop your views in the comment section.

3D PRINTING

3D printing technology is already changing the way we produce objects from tools and toys to clothing and even body parts. The 3D printing process builds a three-dimensional object from a Computer-aided design (CAD) model, usually by successively adding material layer by layer, which is why it is also called additive manufacturing. It allows designers to create complex parts for machines, airplanes, and cars at a fraction of the cost and time of standard means like forging, molding and sculpting. As the COVID-19 panic continues to spread across the world, engineers and scientists are working hard developing high tech protective masks, face shield, Venturi valve respirator, hands-free door openers, etc with the use of 3D printing to cope up the shortage. 

So, today we will see how 3D printing can change the world of manufacturing, construction, healthcare, etc. But first, we will go through 3 most used 3D printing technologies across the globe.

Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM)

It is the most widely used method for 3-D printing (46% in 2018 acc. to Statista). The thermoplastic filament which is a modeling material like acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polycarbonate (PC) or polyetherimide (PEI) is present inside an FDM printer is heated to its melting point and then extruded, layer by layer, to create a three-dimensional object. During printing, these materials take the form of plastic threads, or filaments, which are unwound from a coil and fed through an extrusion nozzle. The nozzle melts the filaments and extrudes them on to a base which is controlled by a computer. This technology is used to produce LEGO bricks, whitewater canoes, end-use parts- particularly the small detailed parts specialized in manufacturing tools as well as in food and drug packing.

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)

 It is the second most used 3D technology around the world (38% in 2018 acc. to Statista). It involves the use of a high power laser (for example, a carbon dioxide laser) to fuse small particles of plastic, metal, ceramic, or glass powders into a mass that has a desired three-dimensional shape. The laser selectively fuses powdered material by scanning cross-sections generated from a 3-D digital description of the part on the surface of a powder bed. After each cross-section is scanned, the powder bed is lowered by one layer thickness, a new layer of material is applied on top, and the process is repeated until the part is completed. It is a rapid prototyping technology with a range of applications, including those with snap fits, living hinges, and other mechanical joints.

Stereolithography (SLA)

It comes third on the list of most used 3D printing technologies (33% in 2018 acc. to Statista). SLA Production Printers build accurate parts directly from 3D CAD data without tooling by converting liquid plastic (photopolymer) into solid cross-sections using an ultraviolet laser. The part is created layer by layer, with each resin layer built on top of the next until the part is complete. This process is also known as Photopolymerization. It is particularly used for creating highly precise 3D printed casting patterns from small to very large scale, quickly and inexpensively.

Hope you understood how 3D printing works. Let's take a look at its applications in different sectors but first, we will find how it is being used to tackle the COVID-19 situation.

3D printing for COVID-19

The 3D printed add-on can convert standard equipment that is already available in most hospitals into a non-invasive PEEP mask (NIP) that can be connected to the oxygen supply. This device facilitates breathing for COVID-19 patients and it gives them an extended period of time before mechanical ventilators are required for treatment. Also, to perform COVID-19 tests successfully, nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs needed to collect samples, can be now 3D printed using Digital Light Processing (basically it's like SLA but the light source is replaced with a projector screen which flashes the image of the layer). Engineers are also working to develop a 3D printed ventilator prototype in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethereal Machines, a Bengaluru-based start-up, is addressing the problem to some extent by enabling the existing ventilators to cater to the different requirements of multiple patients with the use of 3D printed Splitters. For example, the 30-70 split ratio can be used in cases where one patient is healthy and another's condition is deteriorating. In Spain, Airbus, one of the largest airline manufacturer in the world, has dedicated more than twenty 3D printers to produce visors (face shields) from which more than 100 have already been dispatched.

3D printing in Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry is always looking at new and innovative ways of working and in recent years, 3D printing has been at the forefront. Advancements in the 3D printing technology, equipment and materials have resulted in the costs being driven down, making it a more feasible option to general manufacturing use. If we take a look at this technology in production, IDAM (Industrialization and Digitization of Additive Manufacturing for Automotive Series Processes) project has addressed the lack of standardization in AM processes and material properties and expected to result in 50,000 mass-produced automotive parts and 10,000 spare parts being printed in 2020.

3D printing in Construction

3D printing allows for the creation of products using a quick and cost-effective process. This has opened the gates to new construction methods both on the commercial and consumer side of things, better construction techniques, and even safer construction methods. An Austin-based startup Icon can build a house nearly 200 times faster. The company is building houses that max out at 800 square feet, but that’s not the limit. The hyperspeed fabrication is the work of a mega-size 3D printer named the Vulcan. Engineers run digital blueprints for the home through Slicer software, which translates the design into the programming language G-code. That code determines where the printer moves along its track, extruding 3⁄4-inch-thick layers of concrete-like icing on a cake. The base material—a finely calibrated mix of cement, sand, plasticizers, and other aggregates—gets poured into a hopper at the top of the printer and flows onto the rising walls below. 

The printers are large and cumbersome, have a portal design, have limits on the height of the printed building and are not easy to transport and assemble. So, we need to create a low-cost, functional 3D printer that can work in complex operating conditions as it eliminates the cost of workers, tools and processing of raw materials in factories and reduces the time as well.

3D printing in HealthCare

One of the revolutionary inventions in the field of medical science, 3D printing has made it easy and possible to offer customized healthcare solutions. This technology has enabled customizations, prototyping, manufacturing, and research. Instances like bio-printing which can create artificial living tissues can advance medical research. Moreover, patient-specific organ replicas can increase the percentage of successful complicated operations. Not only these, sterile surgical instruments which can be more precise than the conventional ones and prosthetic limbs customized to suit and fit the wearer are the major applications of 3D printing. Dubai has hospitals where the use of 3D printing is mandated liberally and they successfully operated a patient who had a cerebral aneurysm in four arteries using a 3D model of her arteries. In January 2018, a 22 years old patient was successfully practiced for kidney transplants using a 3D model of her donor’s kidneys because her father didn’t match the blood group in Belfast. US-based laboratory and research company Organovo is working on printing liver and intestinal issues for medical research and development drugs for various diseases and in May 2018, they presented their pre-clinical results for the functionality of its living tissue for type I Tyrosinemia. The Wake Forest Institute of North Carolina in May 2018 announced that the organoids they developed using 3D printing have a fully cell-based, functional blood-brain barrier that mimics normal human anatomy. It has also been working on 3D printing skin grafts that can be applied directly to burn victims. And the list is still long. According to the sources, it has been forecast that 3D printing in the medical field will be worth $3.5bn by 2025, compared to $713.3m in 2016. The industry’s compound annual growth rate is supposed to reach 17.7% between 2017 and 2025.

Either it is Manufacturing or Construction or Medical or Consumer goods, 3D printing is not only reserved to prototypes but it has gone far away from that and in the coming years, it will be a lot more than that because even though it has challenges of cost and software setups, it has a lot more advantages to overshadow them replacing the traditional methods.

Thanks for reading. IEEE SB NITP would like to once again remind its readers to obey the guidelines as issued by the Government and WHO. Stay home and stay safe. Please drop your views in the comment section.

PORCELAIN, IVORY, STEEL.

Bodies everywhere, children crying for their dead parents, mothers looking for their sons in the rubble and waste in King’s Landing, after the War of Wrath. These were the sights with which we were greeted when we arrived. 

The Congregation of the Houses, all the Lords from all around Westeros came together to decide the future of our land. Lord Tyrell, Lord Tully and several others sat down together after decades to decide who would be the next ruler. The next King of the Andals and the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.

Little Sam, I was there just as an observer, I had never seen such royalty and fancy people before. To say the least, I was very nervous. They all sat down and each of them had to put forth a name forward for the ruler of the kingdom. Lord Tyrion was the first to do so and he named ‘Sansa Stark’, everyone gasped and objected by saying that a woman wasn’t fit to be queen. Lord Tyrion defended her, he told everyone about how she had managed the North in times of Winter, prepared for war, persuaded Daenerys to come to Westeros. He told everyone about her remarkable managing techniques. The lords were impressed and declared Sansa The Queen of the Andals. 

The discussion then turned to the virus up in the North. For now, it was said to be contained beyond the wall. One of the Lords retorted, ‘What is it to us, let those wildlings die!’ Then in a rush of madness, I stood up in the middle of of all royalty in Westeros and reminded them the oath of the Night’s Watch,

“I am the sword in the darkness, 
I am the watcher on the walls,
I am the shield that guards the realms of men. 
The realms of men. Have you all forgotten that the realms of men include the wildlings? Have you all forgotten the sacrifices that Jon and all the other smallfolk in the country have made to protect them? Have you all no shame at all?” 

I don’t know where I got the courage from, I just couldn’t bear the fact that they were going to leave my people to fend for themselves. My Sam was also there, he was there fighting to keep these bastards alive. It filled me with fury.

Then Queen Sansa declared that the efforts of men won’t go to waste. They were bound by honor to protect them and they would not backoff like cowards. She sent the Shade of Qarth to the Night’s Watch along with men from Winterfell army. They went on their way a few moons ago and the Shade must have reached the wildlings by now. 

Now, all we can do is wait, Wait for news that the damned sickness is contained. Wait for my people to get better, gods be good. Wait for  happiness. Wait for when I can see my beloved Sam again…. 

We hope you liked the Crossover. Thanks for reading. IEEE SB NITP would like to once again remind its readers to obey the guidelines as issued by the Government and WHO. Stay home and stay safe. Please drop your views in the comment section and also tell us what other crossovers you would like to read.