World’s First ATM celebrates its 50th Birthday

The world’s first ATM (automated teller machine) celebrates its 50th anniversary. In the past five decades, ATM machines have heralded a transformation in the way people obtained and used cash.

The ATM machines were the brainchild of Scottish inventor Shepherd-Barron. The first ATM was opened on June 27, 1967, by Barclays Bank in Enfield, north London. English actor Reg Varney became the first person to withdraw cash from the first ATM machine. At present, there are over 3 million cash machines across the globe. Around 70,000 cash machines are present in the UK alone. The World’s most northerly ATM machine is present at Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway. The most Southerly ATM is situated at the McMurdo station of the South Pole. To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Barclays Bank has transformed the first ATM that it commissioned at its Enfield branch into gold.

Fine Arts New Arrival Magazine

Design New Arrival Magazines

Architecture New Arrival Magazine/Journals

New Arrival of Central Library

                                                      !!Thought of the Day!!

Astronomers Measure the Magnetic Field HAT-P-7b

New magnetohydrodynamic simulations of HAT-P-7 b reveal variable winds and a corresponding variability in the position of the hottest point in the atmosphere.

Studying a class of planets known as ‘hot Jupiters’, experts from Newcastle University, UK, have shown the planets’ magnetic field is responsible for the unusual behavior of the atmospheric winds which move around it.

Instead of moving in an eastward direction as has always been assumed, new observations have shown the winds varied from eastward to westward on the hot planet HAT-P-7b.

Using this observation, Dr Tamara Rogers, from Newcastle University, was able to estimate the magnetic field strength of this far-off planet.

Publishing her findings this month in the leading academic journal Nature Astronomy, Dr Rogers says this new understanding of the magnetic fields of these far-distant planets will help astronomers understand their formation, size and migration paths and ultimately help us understand the formation and evolution of our own solar system.

“The extreme temperature of these unusual planets causes metals such as lithium, sodium and potassium to become ionized and this allows the magnetic field to be coupled to the atmospheric winds,” explains Dr Rogers, who is based in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Newcastle University.

“These magnetic forces are able to then disrupt the strong eastward winds, leading to variable and even oppositely directed winds. This then allowed us to estimate the magnetic field strength of the planet.”

The “roasted” planets

Modern astronomical research investigates not just stars and galaxies but also the planets around distant stars, termed “exoplanets”, often thousands of light years from Earth.

The best studied of these exoplanets are called hot Jupiters – Jupiter-sized planets that are very close to their home stars. Because of their size and temperature, hot Jupiters are an extreme class of planets which test modern theories about gas dynamics.

In December 2016, observations were made by researchers at Warwick University that implied variable winds on HAT-P-7b.

HAT-P-7b is nearly 40 percent larger than our own Jupiter and orbits its star every couple of days. It is so close that its dayside temperature may be up to 2500oC with a night side temperature of 1400oC.

“Astronomers were able to trace the brightest point – the ‘hot spot’ – in the planet’s atmosphere,” explains Dr Rogers. “The extreme day-night temperature difference drives strong eastward winds in the atmosphere and shifts the hot spot away from the point directly beneath the star on the dayside.

“However, we saw this hot spot shift significantly over time – even ending up on the west side of the sub-stellar point. This shows that the winds are also varying significantly and even completely changing direction.”

Dr Roger’s paper “Constraints on the magnetic field strengths of HAT-P-b and other hot giant exoplanets” appears on the front cover of the June issue of Nature Astronomy.

This work was funded by an award to the Planetary Science Institute, US from the NASA Astrophysics Theory Program. Further research on this topic has recently been funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Fact Box: James Webb Space Telescope & its First Targets

Mission officials for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have announced the initial science targets for the James Webb Space Telescope. The JWST has been scheduled to look at a large number of things in the universe including icy moons, distant exoplanets and galaxy clusters. It will look at very first galaxies after the Big Bang, search for fingerprints of life on Enceladus, Europa, and exoplanets like TRAPPIST-1e etc. As a part of the initial observations, 2100 observations has been planned for the JWST by the mission handlers. JWST, being the most powerful telescope designed and built on Earth is scheduled to be launched in October 2018 on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana.

JWST is a joint project of the NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore will conduct Webb science operations. The JWST will be the successor of 26-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. JWST is 100 times powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope and will be the largest telescope ever sent into space. JWST will have a very large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror. Its sun shield is 22 metres which is roughly the size of a tennis court and has a mirror 6.5 metres which is over twice the size of the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST is named after the former NASA administrator, James Webb. JWST was formerly known as the “Next Generation Space Telescope” (NGST). In November 2016, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had completed the construction of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) after more than 20 years of work. Instruments of JWST include Cameras and spectrometers that are able to record extremely faint signals. NIRSpec having programmable micro-shutters for observation of up to 100 objects. Cryocooler for cooling the mid-infrared detectors.

A Wall of Fans Cleans Air

Sometimes a new technology doesn’t have to be super-complicated. For example, Carbon Engineering is designing “air-capture plants” that use walls of fans to strip carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby reducing levels of this greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

These plants will be scalable and can be built anywhere in the world to help reduce global concentrations of CO2, in such places as unpopulated areas like deserts. They would also be beneficial in urban areas for capturing CO2 released by cars and trucks.

"Only about 40 percent of our total emissions comes from large flue stacks, and the other 60 percent results from what we call 'diffuse and mobile' sources that can be difficult to tackle at source," says Geoff Holmes, Carbon Engineering’s business development manager. "Capturing them back from the atmosphere may be a key way to help manage these diffuse emissions."

Air-Stripping Technology

Carbon Engineering’s CO2-stripping technology integrates two processes: an air contactor and a regeneration cycle. These two processes work together to enable continuous capture of CO2 from atmospheric air, with energy (and small amounts of make-up chemicals) as an input, and pure CO2 as an output.

Fans draw atmospheric air into the air contactor, where it is combined with a CO2-absorbent capture solution. Once the CO2 in the air has been naturally absorbed by the solution and converted to a salt, it is sent to a regeneration cycle.

The regeneration process involves several processing steps. Carbon dioxide is extracted while regenerating the original chemical solution for re-use in the contactor. The extracted CO2 is combined with all the CO2 from the systems energy use, and both are delivered as a high-pressure pipeline-quality product. This cycle is an innovation based on a 100-year-old industrial process developed from existing technology. The CO2 can be stored or combined with hydrogen to make more fossil fuels.

Carbon Engineering has built an air-capture demonstration plant in Squamish, British Columbia, that is in full operation, removing about one ton of CO2 from the air every day. The CO2 is processed through all the major subsystems that will be required to operate a future full-scale commercial plant.

The air-capture plant is surprisingly quiet; about 80 decibels only one meter from the structure.

Currently the demonstration plant is capturing the equivalent of combined emissions from about 14 or 15 vehicles. At full scale-up (perhaps 20,000 times the size of the demonstration plant) the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere will be roughly equivalent to capturing the emissions from 300,000 cars every year.

“We will take the data from the Squamish operation and use it to create a very precise, accurate final design for large-scale equipment,” says Holmes. Carbon Engineering plans to build a first-of-its-kind commercial plant in 2017 or 2018 that will produce 10,000 barrels of synthetic fuel in a year.

Clean-Tech Future

Captured CO2 can be stored underground or used to make low-carbon fuels. There is a growing market for liquid fuels with low life-cycle carbon-intensity. California has a low-carbon fuel standard in effect, and similar initiatives are under way in other states, Canada, and Europe.  

"These fuels have the same chemical make-up as fossil fuels, but are sourced from air and sunlight rather than from crude oil," says Holmes. "Air capture plus fuel synthesis is potentially one of the few truly scalable ways to power transportation in a way that’s carbon-neutral."

Direct air capture is scalable and requires a relatively small footprint. Air-capture plants do essentially the same work as trees and other vegetation, but require for less space. Carbon Engineering hopes its technology will be part of a larger, coordinated effort in the clean-tech industry.

"No single technology or approach is enough to help avoid climate change. We need every option we’ve got, and more," says Holmes. "Air capture has the potential to be a big help in cutting emissions that are difficult and costly to reduce at source, and that will add to the momentum that’s building in other sectors of the clean-tech industry.”

Mark Crawford is an independent writer.

June 2016

by Mark Crawford, ASME.org

Work on Marine Lines-To-Sea Link Stretch to be Split Into 3 Parts

As many as 13 companies, including L&T and Reliance Infrastructure and firms from China, Japan, Korea, Dubai and Turkey, have shown interest in constructing the first phase of the coastal road, from Marine Lines to the Worli end of the sea link.

Most of these companies have entered into joint ventures with one or more partners to bid for the project, forming a total of eight groups. The BMC is currently scrutinizing their documents. After completing the process, it will ask the companies to submit their request for proposal (RFP), based on which the final bidders will be selected for the first phase of the 15,000 crore project that is to kick off in October. The BMC said it has divided work on the first phase--a 10km stretch from Marine Lines to the Worli end of the sea link--into three zones and invited RFQ for each separately.

The BMC intends to award contracts for the three zones to different bidders so that work on each can start simultaneously and the first phase can be completed within the four-year deadline.

Seven international companies have entered into joint ventures with Indian companies, including Reliance Infrastructure, to bid for the project. L&T will bid on its own. In October, the project will take off at Nepean Sea Road off Priyadarshini Park and at Haji Ali. Officials said the companies would be selected on the basis of advanced and tested technology along with past experience in carrying out similar projects.

BMC officials said the RFQ scrutiny will be completed in two months, to initiate the final stage of the tendering process. They said all the permissions are in place and they aim to start construction work in October.

Construction of the first phase--the southern portion of the coastal road--will involve 90 hectares of reclamation, for which 4.2 million cubic metres of rock will be required. BMC officials said they expect to get 0.65 miliion cubic metres of rock from the tunnel that will be constructed off the Princess Street flyover at Marine Drive till Priyadarshani Park.

New Arrival Journals- Architecture

New Arrival  Design Magazine

NASA Scientists Reveal a New Mode of Ice Loss in Greenland

A new NASA study published in Geophysical Research Letters reveals that during Greenland’s hottest summers on record, 2010 and 2012, the ice in Rink Glacier on the island’s west coast didn’t just melt faster than usual, it slid through the glacier’s interior in a gigantic wave, like a warmed freezer pop sliding out of its plastic casing. The wave persisted for four months, with ice from upstream continuing to move down to replace the missing mass for at least four more months.

This long pulse of mass loss, called a solitary wave, is a new discovery that may increase the potential for sustained ice loss in Greenland as the climate continues to warm, with implications for the future rate of sea level rise.

The study by three scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was the first to precisely track a glacier’s loss of mass from melting ice using the horizontal motion of a GPS sensor. They used data from a single sensor in the Greenland GPS Network (GNET), sited on bedrock next to Rink Glacier. A paper on the research is published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Rink is one of Greenland’s major outlets to the ocean, draining about 11 billion tons (gigatons) of ice per year in the early 2000s — roughly the weight of 30,000 Empire State Buildings. In the intensely hot summer of 2012, however, it lost an additional 6.7 gigatons of mass in the form of a solitary wave. Previously observed melting processes can’t explain that much mass loss.

The wave moved through the flowing glacier during the months of June through September at a speed of about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) a month for the first three months, increasing to 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) during September. The amount of mass in motion was 1.7 gigatons, plus or minus about half a gigaton, per month. Rink Glacier typically flows at a speed of a mile or two (a few kilometers) a year.

The wave could not have been detected by the usual methods of monitoring Greenland’s ice loss, such as measuring the thinning of glaciers with airborne radar. “You could literally be standing there and you would not see any indication of the wave,” said JPL scientist Eric Larour, a coauthor of the new paper. “You would not see cracks or other unique surface features.”

The researchers saw the same wave pattern in the GPS data for 2010, the second hottest summer on record in Greenland. Although they did not quantify the exact size and speed of the 2010 wave, the patterns of motion in the GPS data indicate that it must have been smaller than the 2012 wave but similar in speed.

“We know for sure that the triggering mechanism was the surface melting of snow and ice, but we do not fully understand the complex array of processes that generate solitary waves,” said JPL scientist Surendra Adhikari, who led the study.

During the two summers when solitary waves occurred, the surface snowpack and ice of the huge basin in Greenland’s interior behind Rink Glacier held more water than ever before. In 2012, more than 95 percent of the surface snow and ice was melting. Meltwater may create temporary lakes and rivers that quickly drain through the ice and flow to the ocean. “The water upstream probably had to carve new channels to drain,” explained coauthor Erik Ivins of JPL. “It was likely to be slow-moving and inefficient.” Once the water had formed pathways to the base of the glacier, the wave of intense loss began.

The scientists theorize that previously known processes combined to make the mass move so quickly. The huge volume of water lubricated the base of the glacier, allowing it to move more rapidly, and softened the side margins where the flowing glacier meets rock or stationary ice. These changes allowed the ice to slide downstream so fast that ice farther inland couldn’t keep up.

The glacier gained mass from October through January as ice continued to move downstream to replace the lost mass. “This systematic transport of ice in fall to midwinter had not been previously recognized,” Adhikari emphasized.

“Intense melting such as we saw in 2010 and 2012 is without precedent, but it represents the kind of behavior that we might expect in the future in a warming climate,” Ivins added. “We’re seeing an evolving system.”

Greenland’s coast is dotted with more than 50 GNET stations mounted on bedrock to track changes below Earth’s surface. The network was installed as a collaborative effort by the U.S. National Science Foundation and international partners in Denmark and Luxembourg. Researchers use the vertical motions of these stations to observe how the North American tectonic plate is rebounding from its heavy ice burden of the last ice age. Adhikari, Ivins and Larour were the first to quantitatively explore the idea that, under the right circumstances, the horizontal motions could reveal how the ice mass was changing as well.

“What makes our work exciting is that we are essentially identifying a new, robust observational technique to monitor ice flow processes on seasonal or shorter time scales,” Adhikari said. Existing satellite observations do not offer enough temporal or spatial resolution to do this.

The GNET stations are not currently being maintained by any agency. The JPL scientists first spotted the unusual behavior of Rink Glacier while examining whether there were any scientific reasons to keep the network going.

Verizon Completes Yahoo Acquisition

Telecom giant Verizon has acquired Yahoo’s core business for $4.48bn (£3.51m), thus ending Yahoo’s two-decade long run as an independent company. Verizon is the No.1 wireless operator in the US.

Verizon will combine Yahoo with AOL which was bought by it two years ago to establish a venture called Oath. The Oath is a division in Verizon’s Media and Telematics organisation. Oath owns more than 50 brands such as HuffPost, TechCrunch and Tumblr. With the acquisition, Yahoo’s chief executive Marissa Mayer has resigned. Verizon has not indicated how it proposes to use the Yahoo brand which is used by millions of people worldwide. But it has stated that it will keep the names Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail and more. Yahoo’s acquisition brings to an end a long decline of its market value which peaked at $125 billion in 2000. The remainder of Yahoo which is not acquired by Verizon will change its name to Altaba Inc. It will become a holding company with 15.5% stakes in Chinese Internet giant Alibaba and a 35.5% holding in Yahoo Japan Corp. It will begin trading under the ticker symbol “AABA.” Thomas McInerney, a Yahoo board member will be made as Altaba’s chief executive officer.

New Arrival of  Central Library