NON-ENGLISH DOMAIN NAMES ON WEB

In its four-decade history, the Internet is set to undergo a biggest change with the expected approval this week that the international domain names or addresses can be written in languages other than English. Domain names are the monikers behind every website, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.

"This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented 40 years ago," said Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board, calling it a 'fantastically complicated technical feature.' ICANN, the non-profit group that oversees domain names is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. It is expected that the board would grant approval on Friday, which is the conference's final day.

One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board is whether to allow for the first time the entire Internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters.

Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's new President and CEO, said that if the change is approved, ICANN would begin accepting applications for non-English domain names and that the first entries into the system would likely to come in mid 2010.

Enabling the change, Thrush said that it is the creation of a translation system that allows multiple scripts to be converted to the right address. "We're confident that it works because we've been testing it now for a couple of years. And we're really ready to start rolling it out."

However, Beckstrom recalled that 3-5 years ago many people had said that using non-Latin scripts for domain names would be impossible to achieve. "But the community, the policy groups and staff and board have worked through them, which is absolutely incredible," he said.

GENERATING ELECTRICITY THROUGH RUNNING TRAINS

An Indian entrepreneur has proposed a project to Indian Railways which will allow it to generate electricity through air pressure from running trains. Santosh Pradhan, who runs a bunch of engineering and mechanical units, has almost two decades of experience in manufacturing engineering tools.

"When a train runs at a full speed of 110-120 km, it creates an air pressure in opposite direction and no one has ever thought to utilize this huge air pressure which is freely and easily available," Pradhan told PTI. As per his technology, a small impeller is fixed at the front portion of railway locomotive and similarly on top of each coach of a train. "When the train is running, it will produce huge quantity of compressed air due to high velocity of the wind and by accumulating this compressed air in big fabricated tanks on either side of the track, we can run turbines or air turbine motors which can produce a considerable amount of electricity," he explained.

Pradhan has registered 20 patents with the government of India about his technology so that he remains the sole person to further develop this technology. He has now approached the higher railways authorities to seek permission for prototype and a subsequent demonstration of this technology which he says is 'eco-friendly and cost effective'.

Pradhan said about 14,300 trains were running on 63,028 route KMs in the country and about 20.89MW electricity can be generated per km with the use of air power technology. Thus approximately 14,81,134MW of power can be generated by using the entire railway track, according to his statistics and calculations. Pradhan says that the Indian Railways was spending 17 percent revenue on the fuel head which is roughly Rs. 15,000 crore (Rs. 150 billion) per annum. He also claims that the technology can save 2,586 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission in the country.

However, it all depends on the Indian Railways to allow additional fabrication of parallel wind pipes over the over head electric lines to pass on high velocity wind to reach tanks on either of side of track, Pradhan added.

GOOGLE OFFERS $10 MILLION FOR IDEAS THAT CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

New Delhi: Google has launched a project called, 'Call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible,' and it is offering $10 million for the implementation of the best five ideas that can change the world. The company has already shortlisted 16 ideas that have the potential to help the most number of people.

The 16 ideas such as building a real time, user-reported news service and making educational content free online were shortlisted from thousands of ideas submitted by people from different parts of the world.

As per descriptions available on the website, the user-reported news service would help people find and report timely, important local information. "Implementation of this idea would involve creating a system that enables ordinary citizens to easily report news that's happening around them, from meaningful local events to important global stories," the website said.

Other ideas include:

1. Creating genocide monitoring and alert system,
2. Promoting health monitoring and data analysis 
3. Building better banking tools for everyone. 

The public can vote on these ideas till October 8.

INDIAN SCIENTIST DEVELOPED 40 % FASTER ENCRYPTION

An Indian scientist has developed the fastest method to encrypt the hard disk of a computer. Encrypting helps in keeping the data on hard disk secure even from an attack by hackers. "From a practical point of view, the requirement is actually to achieve both speed and security. Otherwise, encryption and decryption may take so much time that software which runs on computer become unacceptably slow. And, in the current state of the art, this work provides the fastest known algorithm for disk encryption," claims Palash Sarkar, creator of this unique algorithm and Professor at the Indian Statistical institute[ISI], Kolkatta.

The new algorithm encrypts the data 30-40 percent faster than the previous ones. The results of the research will appear in October 2009 issue of the 'IEEE Transactions on Information Theory', one of the top research journals in the field of transmission, processing and utilization of information.

Sarkar claims that this is the fastest method to encrypt hard disk and says that he has scientific evidence to prove it. "One has to see this in the context of the anonymous and strict review process of the journal 'IEEE Transactions on Information Theory'. The reviewers allowed this claim to stand because I could scientifically justify it in the paper. A hollow claim would have been struck down by the reviewers," he added.

ROBO - THE NEXT DOCTOR

Bangalore: Just when the burden of future health care seems to be looming large, it is robots that might be the answer to this growing crisis. Robots are becoming part of a broader 'telehealth' program in which a combination of electronics and communication can let doctors examine patients remotely or enable people to stay in touch with patients confined to their homes, reports Forbes.

As part of the U.S. Congress' ongoing health care debate, the House of Representatives has introduced language into its bill to establish an advisory committee on telehealth. The committee is to consider whether such procedures would be covered by Medicare and Medicaid - something that could be a giant step forward for robotics solutions.

"If we can virtually connect doctors to patients who need it most, wirelessly monitor our aging population and keep patients healthier at home, we can dramatically reduce our nation's health care costs," says Tandy Trower, Microsoft's robotics group's Director.

Although, robotic-assisted surgery has been going on for years, increasing number of companies are offering more technologies aimed at helping doctors ply their craft over great distances, particularly in rural areas.

Corporate giants including GE, Intel, LifeSize and Cisco are entering the health care market. In April, GE and Intel announced a quarter of a billion-dollar joint venture to develop home medical monitoring technologies. Recently, Cisco introduced "HealthPresence," a patient care technology that lets doctors and patients interact in much the same way as people engage in a videoconference.

"Companies use videoconference calling all the time; why shouldn't doctors?" says Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, suggesting that remote diagnostic technologies or 'telerobotics' could let doctors interact with patients even if they are home in bed. A robot equipped with vital sign sensors - such as a stethoscope and a blood pressure monitor - could wirelessly convey that data to a doctor.

Microsoft and Google offer online health care accounts aimed at helping patients take better control of their own health records. There are also private practice doctors who are using all available social networking tools to stay on top of their patients' care.

Parkinson, who is an advocate for online medicine, cautions that there are side effects. "It's hard enough for doctors to encourage people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Doing it remotely gets even harder," he says. Also there is the issue of reimbursing doctors for their time. As a result, Parkinson believes telehealth will be a good way to augment care between in-person visits but doubts if it will ever completely replace in-office visits.

But, Microsoft's Trower believes that the next step in telepresence health care technologies will put a personal care robot in your home. "Imagine a robot in your elderly parents' home," Helen Grenier, Co-founder of iRobot and CEO of DroidWorks writes, "allowing you to virtually visit by means of video, or one that can deliver a drink and important medication at the right time, letting the aged remain independent longer."