Nobel Prize Winners 2017

Physics – The physics prize was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves. The received the prize for the discovery of gravitational waves released in the world by violent events in the universe such as the mergers of black holes. Weiss, professor emeritus of Physics at MIT, along with Thorne and Barish, California Institute of Technology Physicists, pioneered LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, the scientific project that made gravitational wave detection possible.

Chemistry – The chemistry prize was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Richard Henderson and Jaochim Frank for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution. Cyro-electron microscopy is a technique that takes accurate and detailed pictures of living things at atomic scales. This is assisting scientists make high resolution, 3D images that can help in cancer drug research and better understanding of the Zika virus. Jacques Dubochet is a retired biophysicist of Lausanne in Switzerland, Joachim Frank, a professor at Columbia University in New York and Richard Henderson is a scientist at the British Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

Physiology – The 2017 prize was awarded jointly to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm. The award celebrates the study of the tiny biological clocks in every living thing. The three American Scientists were able to peek inside our biological clock and elucidate its inner workings. Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the Earth’s revolution.

Literature – The Literature prize was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world. The author of seven novels, a short story collection and screenplays, Ishiguro was born in bomb-hit Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England at the age of 5.

Nobel Peace Prize – The Peace prize 2017 was awarded to International campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic, humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground breaking efforts to achieve a treaty based prohibition of such weapons. The group formed by Geneva based coalition of disarmament activists is behind the first treaty to prohibit nuclear arms. 

Economics – The US Economist Richard Thaler was awarded the $1.1 Million Nobel Economics Prize for his contributions in the field of behavioral Economics. The award giving body said that Thaler contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision making.

Remembering Bhagat Singh

Born 110 years ago in a small village in Lyallpur district (now Faislabad in Pakistan) of undivided pre-independence India’s Punjab Province, Bhagat Singh went on to etch his name in the history books for his invaluable contribution to the Indian Freedom struggle. On this 110^th birth anniversary, let’s revisit few facts of the iconic freedom fighter, who was executed on March 23, 1931, when he was just 23 years old.

Bhagat Singh left home for Kanpur when his parents tried to get him married, saying that if he married in Slave India, “my bride shall only be death” and joined Hindustan Socialist Republic Association. Bhagat Singh along with Sukhdev planned to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai and plotted to kill the Superintendent of Police James Scott in Lahore. However in case of mistaken identity, John Saunders, the Assistant Superintendent of Police was shot.

Although a Sikh by birth, he shaved his beard and cut his hair to avoid being recognized and arrested for the killing. He managed to escape from Lahore to Calcutta. On April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh, along with freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, hurled two bombs inside the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi to protest against an unfavorable bill. Interestingly, their actual intentions behind this defiant act were to get arrested and to use the subsequent court appearances to further the cause of their organization Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) for India’s Independence.

Along with the bombs, Singh also threw in copies of a leaflet in the assembly that quoted a French anarchist as saying, “It takes a loud noise to make the deaf hear”, and signs off with the now epochal statement, ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ or ‘Long Live the revolution’. He did not resist his arrest at this point. At the time of his trial, he didn’t offer any defence, rather used the occasion to propagate the idea of India’s Freedom.

In his famous article titled “Why I am an atheist?” written in jail in early October 1930, he wrote he found fulfillment through serving humanity and liberating it from sufferings and distress. Apart from Freedom from the British, his goal was to build an India where poverty, socio-economic disparity and exploitation did not exist.

Koovagam: Transgender Festival of India

Transgenders, otherwise called 'Hijaras' in India, have been always been a part of the society. But till today, they have failed to gain acceptance into mainstream society and live on the fringes of it. Reduced to begging and forced prostitution to somehow make a living, the transgender community has always been scorned and looked down upon. While that is the general perception around the country, there is a village in south India which cherishes and celebrates the transgender identity.

Every year, between April and May, thousands of transgenders from across the country celebrates the transgenders festival in Koovagam, a remote village in Tamil Nadu. This festival is celebrated in the Koothandavar Temple of Koovagam and has its roots in Hindu Epic Mahabharata.

According to legend, during the Mahabharata war, on the 18^th day there came a scenario where the Pandavas had to sacrifice someone from themselves to Goddess Kali to win the battle. Aravan (the son of Arjuna and Ulupi, the Naga Princess) offered himself to be sacrificed for his clan to win. But he asked Lord Krishna for one last wish to be fulfilled, to be married before his death. With just one day’s marriage and a lifetime of widowhood ahead, no woman was willing to marry Aravan. So Lord Krishna took his ‘Mohini’ Avatar and became Aravan’s bride. As promised, Aravan offered himself as sacrifice the next day.

In this festival, thousands of transgenders who came for the annual event consider themselves the brides of Aravan. They celebrate this festival with songs, dances, games and even a beauty pageant. The winner of the pageant is crowned ‘Miss Koovagam’. On the 17^th day, these transgenders dress up like brides and tie mangalsutra around their necks, acts like Mohini and on the last day i.e. 18^th day, acts as widows and mourn the death of Aravan by breaking their bangles and mangalsutra, symbolizing the end of their one-day marriage. 

History of Sardar Sarovar Dam

The Sardar Sarovar project was a vision of the first deputy prime minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. It is one of the largest dams in the world, having a length of 1.2 kms and a depth of 163 metres, the dam is expected to be shared among the three states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Four crore Gujaratis will get drinking water and 22,000 hectares of land will be irrigated.

The foundation stone of the project was laid out by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on April 5, 1961 after carrying out a study on the usage of the Narmada River water that flowed through the states of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and into the Arabian Sea. A project report prepared for the dam led to much dispute over the means of distributing the Narmada water among the three states – Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. As the negotiations bore no fruit, a Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal (NWDT) was created in 1969 to decide the fate of the project.

After having studied a large number of reports and studies made by the three states, the NWDT gave its verdict in 1979. Accordingly, the 35 Billion cubic metres of water available for consumption from the dam, Madhya Pradesh would receive 65 percent, Gujarat 32 percent and Rajasthan & Maharashtra would be eligible for the remaining 3 percent. The Planning commission finally approved the project in 1988.

As the planning of the project was on its way, though, it soon caught the attention of social activists who found that the dam did not meet the required environmental and social conditions as meted out by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Foremost among those who raised voice against the project was Medha Patkar who first visited the site of the dam in 1985. The consistent struggle to dismantle the project built a huge amount of pressure on the World Bank and a bank commissioned panel was set up to review the project. On concluding the fact that inadequate assessment had been made by the Indian government and the World Bank prior to sanctioning the project, the government on March 31, 1993 cancelled the loan authorized by the World Bank.

After several years of much deliberation, however, the Supreme Court allowed the construction of the dam to proceed, provided it met with certain conditions. The foremost condition placed by the Court was that all those displaced by the increase in height of 5 metres be satisfactorily rehabilitated and that the process be repeated for every five metres increase in height. The project has the potential to feed as many as 20 million people, provide domestic and industrial water for about 30 million, employ about 1 million, and provide valuable peak electric power in an area with high unmet power demand. Currently the height of the dam has been raised to 138.68 metres with a usable storage of 4.73 Million acre feet of water.

How Startups can use Programmatic Television Advertising

Marketing and Promotion is all about taking your product or service to the right target audience at the pre-decided time, and in an efficient way. How cool it would be if this bang-on strategy could work as well for startup companies like it does for the established ones. The big positive differentiator for the large and well-known brands is that they are already empowered with huge resources and can strike gold relatively faster and far more easily than their smaller counterparts.

On the other hand, it’s really a roughhouse for the startups as they scramble to arrive at the right strategy and media plan because they are restricted by limited resources in terms of effort, finance and time. Things are changing now, by new technology called Programmatic TV (PTV), which is the automation of TV advertisement buying/selling process, based on audience preferences. Now we have a data driven media buying process already accepted in the digital media – that brings buyers and sellers on to an automated marketplace, making the experience simpler and more efficient. PTV ads are placed intelligently based on audience data to help you reach your target audiences.

This technology based platform empowers the media planners and buyers by automating the optimization and execution process for traditional TV Advertising. The traditional TV buying process, like all long-established ones, is well institutionalized in the industry, but over time, has gotten into a lapse and so and now has its challenges. In addition, it offers only an approximate plan to reach the desired target audience, which means the ad may or may find the bull's eye before considerable money has already been spent. This is particularly painful for startups as they struggle to find their feet in a crowded and competitive market and have to smarten up.

Currently, media buying professionals are using their precious time and energy in manual work and processes such as request for proposals, order for ad insertions and waiting for confirmations. This is usually done through scores of emails, faxes and spreadsheets. With the entry of PTV, media buyers will have access to the convenience of a scientific approach that helps do away with the time-consuming, laborious and often less-efficient ways of the manual TV advertising buying model.

So, when they opt for programmatic buying, it helps create a customized dashboard for each product/service that their marketers want to promote and enables them to track the campaign’s performance for the desired target audience and other performance metrics that are relevant to the marketer. It’s all about getting the right inventory in a way that ensures optimization of the ROI from the advertisement.

Traditional TV advertising involves shifting through huge and complex number of choices of channels and programs. PTV comes with the technology to filter the massive data mining and analytics and aids strategic decision making. With an automated buying and scheduling, marketers/advertisers can effectively target their existing and potential customers while also saving a lot of time and effort. PTV creates a marketplace where media buyers and sellers interact in an open and transparent manner.

Getting the right inventory through PTV is not just a boon for startups or small companies, but also for established brands. Given the large quantum of ads that big players are releasing to promote their products/services, it’s important to assess which ads are effective in influencing the target customers rather than running those which do not help in moving the needle. Today, most small companies, including startups, start reaching out their target customers through the digital advertising medium across social media, websites and online ads.

Smart phones have made this easy, enabling easy reach to new customers and this explains the rise in interest for digital advertising, especially among small businesses. As Business grows, companies feel the need to shift to the television medium. This is where PTV attempts to make a difference. It brings the sophistication and convenience of digital advertising to the popularity and reach of the TV medium.

PTV promises to change the dynamics of TV advertising as it works on making the processes simpler and cost-effective. The platform gives advertisers a range of options in audience buying, thereby maximizing the value of TV ad spots. With such time-consuming, chaotic processes out of their way, marketers can focus more and better on reaching the target customers. If a startup can learn the ropes of effective advertising on television through programmatic TV, they will be better positioned to speed up their scale up process even after they make it big.

Book Review: India Unbound

India Unbound is mainly about the transformation of India from (1942) to (1999). The book details about the Indian politics and the economy of India. India Unbound is the riveting story of a nation’s rise from poverty to prosperity and the clash of ideas that occurred along the way. Gurucharan Das examines the highs and lows of independent India through the prism of history, his own experiences and those of numerous others he has met – from young people in sleepy UP villages to chiefs of software companies in Bangalore. Defining and exploring the new mindset of the nation, India Unbound is the perfect introduction to contemporary India.

This book is not just about India - it is really about the economy, political ideologies, business, globalism, entrepreneurship, governments, the future, and much more. I found myself wanting to highlight the entire book! That’s because these complicated topics are explained with such simplicity (using India as the main case-study) that it all made sense. The book includes author personal stories, history of Indian politics and world lessons from other countries, and many of the rollercoaster downs and ups associated with good storytelling. Despite the mistakes and bleak past, the book is ended with the most excitement, passion, and energy for the future.

The book is categorized in three major parts: Our Spring of Hope (1942-65), The Lost Generation (1966-91) and The Rebirth of Dream (1991-99) or we can say it is divided into Pre-Independence Era, Post-Independence Era and Post-Liberalized India.

In Pre-Independence, British Raj did harm India, the reason that Indian handicrafts lost to machine driven goods is also significant. Hand looms all over the world were impacted by emergence of technology and since India was largest textile maker in the world, it got impacted the most. Emergence of “Brown Sahib” in British Raj: Primarily Brahmins learnt English and took up the clerical and managerial job for Britishers. Indians prefer vertical over horizontal relations, on numerous instances from wars to running industries.

In Post-Independence, most western nations were going through a phase of emphasizing wealth distribution. Unfortunately, many of the Indian bureaucrats trained in these nations forgot that India needed wealth creation first. Among common man, trade was not seen as positive outcome game, but it was perceived as zero sum game. While socialism was popular during Nehru’s era, it has lost most of its charm in a couple of decades, but during Indira’s rule, controls were further tightened. Several state-owned enterprises emerged during this era which was not profitable and it was illegal to close them. By 1980, 75% of state-owned companies were in losses and 14 banks were nationalized and in a decade, most of them were bankrupt.

In Post-Liberalized India, being short of foreign exchange reserves, India asks for a loan from IMF and starts economic reforms in parallel. Author praises Narsimha Rao (PM), Manmohan Singh (FM) and P Chidambram (Commerce Minister) for their role in liberalizing Indian economy. Several examples like Zee TVs Subhash Chandra, NIIT’s Rajendra Pawar has been given to illustrate first generation millionaires created by liberalization.

There are three ways to compete – superior [lower] prices, superior product and superior service, as of now, Indian industries follow superior prices and they should move to superior service now, the growth of middle class is one of the most significant consequence of liberalization. A major area where reform has still not occurred is education and nation is in a dire need of it. India missed Industrial revolution, IT revolution is therefore, critical for India. While some people fear that Indians is westernizing, author believes India is “modernizing” and the “spiritual component of life” is here to stay in Indian life.

International Literacy Day

The first International Literacy Day was celebrated in 1967 and this tradition has been held annually for 50 years. The idea of celebrating International Literacy Day was first discussed during the World Conference of Ministers of Education in Tehran, Iran on September 8 to 19 with the objective to end illiteracy.

While the UNESCO has noted positive trends of growing literacy rates among children, the drop in the illiteracy rate has not matched the increase in population. Between 2001 and 2011, the population above the age of 7 grew by 18.65 crore but the decrease in the number of illiterates is just 3.11 crore.

2015 UNESCO report said that in terms of absolute numbers, India – with 28.7 crore illiterates – was the country with the largest number of adults without basic literacy skills in 2010-11 compared to 2000-01 when it had 30.4 crore illiterates.

According to UNESCO, “literacy is now understood as a means of identification understanding, interpretation, creation and communication in an increasingly digital, text meditated, information rich and fast changing world”. According to UN’s International Telecommunications Union suggest that, in 2016, 53% of the world’s population does not have access to Internet. Nearly two billion people did not use Mobile phones and almost a half billion lived outside areas with mobile connectivity.

Despite the significant literacy progress made in the past decades, the world was still home to 758 Million illiterate adults and 263 Million out of school children of primary and secondary school age in 2014.

What is Beacon Technology?

Beacons have been generating buzz since 2013, when Apple first introduced iBeacon Technology. And while it may have appeared for a time that this new way of connecting with customers might be slow to catch on, today it’s catching fire. According to a report, Beacons would be driving $44 Billion in retail sales by 2016. While there’s been a lot of hype around Beacons, they haven’t necessarily been very well understood.

Retail is probably the most often cited example of an industry employing Beacons, with heavy hitters like Lord and Taylor deploying them in their stores. Starwood Hotels is running a pilot program to replace hotel room keys with Beacons. Major league Baseball is using them to reach out to fans in stadiums to offer them seat upgrades. American Airlines is one of a growing number of airlines leveraging Beacon technology to improve connections with customers in airports.

Apple explains iBeacon Technology to consumers as the enabling technology for Apple devices to alert apps or websites when someone approaches or leaves a location. In other words, retail or other venues that have Beacons in place can detect where a customer is at any given moment. This is the key part as the retailer or other business can push timely messages to that customer promoting products or providing other useful information.

Say someone is walking past a retail store, if they’ve downloaded the retailer’s mobile app, the company can use Beacon messages to capture their attention as they go by, enticing them to enter. Once inside, Beacons can be used to make personalized offers, speed checkout processes and pretty much anything else the retailer can dream up.

Apple doesn’t actually make Beacons, it has developed iBeacon standard around which Beacons can be built. Google has its own Beacon standard, Eddystone. There are a number of players in the Beacon manufacturing space – not only Kontakt, but also BlueSense, Gelo, Estimote and others.

Beacons employs Bluetooth low energy (BLE) wireless technology to pinpoint the location of customers in stores and other places and to deliver messages to their mobile devices. Specifically, a Beacon emits a BLE signal that a retailer’s or other company’s app on a smartphone coming within range of that signal can pick up on. A big differentiator between Beacons and RFID is that Beacons are far more private because it gives users control of the apps that leverage the Beacon. Beacons are authenticated and with user permission, which can ultimately lead to tremendous experience as a result.

Beacon will overcome the major hurdle for companies that want to engage with customers in a more personalized way.

Five Important Features of Android Oreo

Until now, the Oreo was a favorite among the cookie treats. This fondness is set to transpire into the smartphone segment as well, with the introduction of the Android 8.0, the latest release of the platform that is smarter, faster and more powerful than ever. The latest update from Google comes with a host of new features that will make using your phone faster and more delightful than ever. Plus, it’s got stronger security protections and speed improvements that keep you safe and moving at lightspeed.

Here are five features that give Android Oreo a cut above the rest. Picture in Picture: With Android Oreo’s picture-in-picture feature, users can see two apps at once, thus catering to the multi-taskers. Notification Dots: With Android Oreo, notification dots let users tap to see what’s new in their apps like important ones that feature on the home screen and then take action on that notification quickly.

Strong battery and security life: Android Oreo is more secure with Google Play Protect built in, security status front and center in settings, and tighter app install controls. It also helps minimize unintentional overuse of battery from apps in the background; these limits keep your battery going longer.

Blazing Speed: With Android Oreo, users can get started on tasks more quickly than ever with a faster boot speed (up to twice as fast on Pixel). Once powered up, Auto fill on Android Oreo remember things like logins to quickly get users signed into their favorite apps. Plus, support for Android Instant Apps means new apps can be fired up with no installation needed.

Extraordinary images: Android Oreo brings along a team of fully redesigned emojis, with a superhero segment as well. While the Pixel and Nexus 5X/6P have begun career testing of the Android Open Source Project (ASOP), Pixel C and Nexus Player are also expected to enter the bandwagon. By the end of this year, hardware makers including Essential, General Mobile, HMD Global Home of Nokia Phones, Huawei, HTC, Kyocera, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp and Sony are scheduled to launch or upgrade devices to Android 8.0 Oreo. Any devices enrolled in Android Beta Program will also receive this final version.

What is Wayback Machine?

Governments all over the world have, from time to time, strong armed telecom operators to block a number of websites, search engines and social media platforms. The Chinese government has restricted access to Google and Facebook while Twitter is blocked in Iran. Various Torrent and Porn sites were red-flagged by Department of Telecommunications in August 2015 and were subsequently blocked by Internet service providers.

In what is believed to be another case of internet censorship, DoT has reportedly asked ISPs to block an online archive called Wayback Machine, also known as archive-it.org, to prevent piracy of recently released Bollywood movies “Lipstick under My Burkha” and “Jab Harry Met Sejal.” The non-profit organization which runs Wayback Machine, two recent orders by Madras High Court were behind the block. The court orders identified a list of websites which includes Wayback Machine to be blocked for hosting a pirated copy of the two Hindi movies. However, it appears that the ban is yet to be enforced by all ISPs. 

Wayback Machine or archive-it.org is an online library of webpages, ebooks, videos, audio, games and software. It was founded by a non-profit organization called Internet Archive in 2006. As of now, it has 15 petabytes of data in the form of 273 billion webpages from over 361 million websites. It was developed to preserve digital content for research, educational purposes, and for the general public to access previous versions of an important website where a webpage which may have been changed or deleted by the publisher. 

The webpages can be archived by any users by typing the website URL and browsing to specific page they want to be saved. The right to archive videos or other content is available only to partner organizations and paid subscribers. The website has tie-ups for content with over 400 organizations in 16 countries and it includes university libraries, state archives, historical societies, NGOs and museums. 

Blocking it will affect researchers or students who rely on the vast library of research work available on it. It is also a valuable tool for activists who want to archive articles, circulars, or government documents so they will remain available forever, even if the source webpage or link to it has been taken down.

Nine YouTube hidden features

YouTube is normally the first choice for a majority of users when it comes to viewing or sharing videos. Google is always adding features to the service to improve functionality and performance. Here is what you can do to get the best YouTube.

It’s easy to make an animated GIF from a portion of YouTube video. Open the YouTube video of your choice and in the address bar of the browser, add the words ‘gif’ before YouTube (it should be gifyoutube.com). The site will redirect you to another page where you can select up to a 15 second clip from the video to convert to GIF. Once you have selected the animation time, a new page will give you the option to add, text effects and stickers. Once done, you can download the GIF to your computer.

You can share a video with playback starting at a set time. When sharing, look out for the “Start at” box. Check it and enter time. Or you can just add ‘?t=2m10s’ to the end of a short URL (for playback starting at 2 minutes and 10 seconds, in this example).

Karaoke YouTube is a great Karaoke companion. There are loads of music videos that come embedded with lyrics as subtitles. To use it as a Karaoke machine, you can connect your phone or laptop to your TV and use a mixer to attach external speakers and a microphone. If the lyrics are not present or not good, get a free browser extension called YouTube Lyrics – it will show you lyrics right next to the video. Change Caption styles if you enable subtitles closed caption on a video, you can press B on the keyboard to cycle through different colors and styles for better visibility.

YouTube has a full screen TV mode available if you want to watch videos from a distance. Just type http:www.youtube.comtv in the browser to launch the TV mode. TV mode can easily be controlled using your keyboard and has a dark theme so that it’s easy on the eyes in a dim room. You can browse through various categories as well as search for videos.

Many videos have background music. Head to http:www.mooma.sh, and then you can identify the background track using MooMa search function. Copy and paste the YouTube video link on MooMa and it will scan through its database of millions of songs to identify the song in less than a minute.

Magic Actions is one of the most feature rich browser extensions for YouTube. Once you added the extension, it opens a settings page where you can enable a lot of handy features including volume control using your mouse scroll wheel, force HD or 4k video playback, hide ads, bypass country restrictions, enable cinema mode as well as a speed booster for faster video loading.

While the desktop browser version does not offer an option of saving videos for offline play back, the YouTube app for iOS and Android has this option. For any video, you want to save for offline viewing, simply tap on the button that says ‘Add to offline’ and the video will be downloaded and saved to the My Videos section of the YouTube app. These can be viewed later without Internet connectivity.

Playing a 360 degree on YouTube is simple. Given the availability of cheap VR headsets, it’s only natural for YouTube to offer 360-degree video. To upload 360 degree video you first need to download and install the 360 video metadata app from http:www.github.comgooglespatial-mediareleases. In the app, open the 360 degree from your computer and check the box that says Spherical. 

Facts about Giza Pyramids

One of the most interesting Giza Pyramids facts is that the Great Pyramid held the record as the tallest structure in the world built by man for almost four thousand years. It was not until the Eifel Tower was built in Paris, France. All Pyramids in Egypt, including those built on the Giza Plateau are situated on the west bank of the River Nile because that is where the sun sets every evening, symbolizing the realm of the dead.

Inside the main chamber of the Great Pyramid lies a granite coffer that is far too large to have fit down the narrow passageway at the entrance. This realization has led historians and archaeological to believe that the Great Pyramid was built around the coffer rather than it being brought inside. The Pyramids of Giza were once covered in a white casting made of glimmering limestone which was so polished that it would reflect the sun rays. The original pyramid with its casing stones would act like gigantic mirrors and reflect light so powerful that it would be visible from the moon as a shining star on Earth.

The size of the Great Pyramid of Giza is enormous measuring 756 feet at its base and 455 feet in height. In fact, the pyramids are so big that can be visible from space on clear days. No other man made structure in the world can boast this incredible fact. The quarry of Aswan, about 525 Miles upriver, was the site for the stone used to make the massive blocks that comprise the pyramid and it has been suggested that there are enough blocks in the three pyramids to build a 10 feet high 1 feet thick wall around France.

Modern Egyptologists now believe that the pyramids were built by thousands of skilled workers rather than slaves. It is known that Pharaon Khufu’s nephew Hemiunu was appointed head of construction for the Great Pyramid and that Khufu provided good food and clothing for his workers. The Great Pyramids of Egypt now stand a full 3 miles south of the spot where they were originally built. That’s how much the earth’s surface has shifted in the last 4500 years. The Great Pyramid’s base is a perfect square and each side of the square measuring 756 feet. The base spans over 13 acres of land and is big enough to accommodate nearly 10 football fields.

200 Years of Cycling

Much to the chagrin of amateur history Claude Reynaud, the 200^th anniversary of the invention of the bicycle is likely to pass by with little pomp or fanfare as millions of pairs of eyes gaze at television screens or from the roadside to watch Chris Froome and his rivals battle for yellow jersey glory.

Billions of people use bicycles, many on a daily basis, and yet few are aware of this important milestone. Reynaud has fought a 50-year battle to defend the memory of the invention of the bicycle. He even houses a museum in its honor at his chateau in Domazan, in the Occitanie region of France. Reynaud said it was on June 12, 1817 that “for the first time, a man took a two-wheeler and went on a road” in the Mannheim region of what was then the Grand Duchy of Baden, now part of Southwest Germany.

Baron Drais’s “velocipede” (nicknamed the ‘dandy horse’) had no petals or a chain and required the rider to propel his “Laufmaschine” (running machine) by pushing off the ground with his feet. But the Baron’s genius was that “he discovered balance on two wheels”. “Like all ingenious inventions, it seems obvious, but someone had to think it. He invented the two-wheeler!”

However, the running machine was far from a resounding success and had its faults, notably proving difficult to control on bumpy surfaces. When Drais organized a demonstration of the velocipede at the Jardin de Luxembourg Park in Paris in 1818, “it was a disaster”. At first, it didn’t work; he couldn’t sell it, people made fun of it. But the idea had taken root and was soon being copied, particularly in France, although many draisines were adorned with horse’s heads. In 1866, Pierre Lallement attached pedals to the draisine and invented a pedal-powered velocipede.

The next stage in the development of bicycle saw a huge front wheel attached with a small rear wheel, but it was a machine that was far from stable and resulted in some spectacular crashes. It wasn’t until 1885 that two similar-sized wheels were attached to the velocipede. After that it was just a case of technical improvements, but all the ideas already existed – brake cables, pedals, chains. The bicycle enjoyed an exponential success, especially from 1890 with the invention of the tyre. Reynaud Chateau de Bosc welcomes 6,000 visitors to its museum but the amateur historian’s greatest regret is that he doesn’t own an original Laufmaschine to put on display.

Book Review – The Ocean of Churn

History is the art of researching facts well and building compelling narratives based on the said facts. Few modern scholars do this better than Sanjeev Sanyal. Asian histories have been rendered in a biased manner since time immemorial. As a famous saying that goes, until an animal has its own history, the history of the hunting will always glorify the hunter. If we take any history curriculum in Indian Education system, we can read leaps and bounds of Mughal Empire, the British regime, the Sultanates and such similar accounts.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to read the histories of Cholas, Pandyas, Pallavas in greater detail and their glories have been limited to few pages here and there. This book, one of a kind in its genre, breaks that stupor and gives us a riveting account of how the Indian Ocean has shaped the human history. Indian Ocean is itself a big mystery. It holds many unresolved or undiscovered history that is hidden deep into its core. Author Sanjeev Sanyal tried to uncover this in this vast researched and well-articulated book and succeeded in satiating his readers.

The book opens up by a fascinating tale of how the Pallava dynasty has traced an heir to their kingdom when the erstwhile King, Parameshwara Verman II died in 731 CE. A delegation of Brahmin scholars, which travelled across the Indian Ocean to the far ends of Cambodia and got back an heir that traced his roots to the Pallava dynasty from five long generations ago and reign of Nandi Verman II has started.

The Ocean of Churn begins its journey even before the formation of the Indian Ocean. It talks about the super continent called Gondwana that existed more than 270 Million years ago and the mighty Saraswati River and how it dried up due to the tectonic plate shifts, how the Himalaya has been formed, and how the races have been migrated from India to outside world. This book traces the history through the Ocean way. How people set up its civilization, how their trade hub got established, what was their commercial aspects, how they dealt with various traders inside and outside their territory and so on.

From Harappan times, Indians have been trading with the world in many ways. Maritime trading is the major aspect during those times when land routes were hardly discovered. The powerful Chola king, Rajendra Chola made a naval attack on the Sri Vijaya Kingdom of Sumatra by 1025 is one such example. Chola Empire was one of the powerful empires in the entire South Asia region during that time. There were a major geo-political-economic alliances or rivalries between Indians, Chinese and the Sri Vijaya Kingdom.

Kerala being the hub of the maritime trade have witnessed a vast amount of geo-political-economic tradeoffs. As a testimony to those, even today in Kerala, we have the world’s second Mosque and India’s first mosque (Cheraman Perumal Mosque) built by the king Cheraman Perumal by the orders of Mohammed the prophet himself in 629 AD. We also get to see the memorial of St. Thomas (doubting Thomas fame), a disciple of Jesus, who visited Kerala via sea route.

Overall, this book is a well-researched one. It starts right from the origin of India Ocean due to the tectonic plate shifts and ends right at the transformation of Bombay to Mumbai with the reclamation of land over the Ocean. This book is full of rich details of all kingdoms that throve around the Indian Ocean, Indian Coastline and several islands of the Indian Ocean that also had cultural trade ties with India and its kingdoms.

Women’s Tennis after Serena Williams

Who do you expect would square off in the women’s singles final at Wimbledon this year? It’s comparatively easy to predict the men’s final line-up. The top five players of the men’s tour account for 47 of 50 Grand Slam Titles since 2005. In women’s tennis, uncertainty is the dominant theme.

Serena Williams, who has won 72 singles titles, including 23 Grand Slams (a record in open era, starting 1968, and one short of the all-time record held by Margaret Court), has taken a break from the game as she is expecting a child. After Serena, who can be a new star in Tennis? Jelena Ostapenko – 20 year old Latvian won the French Open last month, she became the youngest woman to win a Grand Slam singles title since Maria Sharapova won the Wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 17.

After winning the French Open last year, Garbine Muguruza of Spain played in 19 tournaments till the event this year. Her best performances were three semi-finals finishes. World No.1, Angelique Kerber, won two Grand Slams last year. This year, the German has hardly made any statements. Of the 12 tournaments she has played so far, her best finish was in the Abierto GNP Seguros finals in April. At the French Open, she lost in the first round.

An open race to the No.1 spot could be good news for the rest of the field. World No.2 Simona Halep of Romania, after a slow start this year, Halep was the runner-up at the 2017 French Open. Karolina Pliskova, the world No.3 from the Czech Republic, is another contender for the year-end top ranking, having won four titles so far this year. Still, the field is wide open.

Of the 33 tournaments played this year till 26 June, only Elina Svitolina from Ukraine has won four titles. Three others – Karolina Pliskova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Johanna Konta – have won two titles each and a staggering 23 women have won a title each this year. The return of Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azerenka from Belarus and Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic could help the WTA Tour.