HAIRMAN’S MESSAGE
 |
P.Suresh
Chander Pal suresh372001@yahoo.co.in |
New Year 2005: I wish all our members, a happy, prosperous and an eventful New Year. I am sure, you would agree, that the Year that has gone by was marked with probably, the highest number of activities, besides growth and significant development, in IEEE Madras Section, in a year, so far. Our Technical and Societal Meetings and the expansion of our Student Branch activities, have contributed substantially to the health of our Section. The quality of hospitality and programs also played a significant role, in sustaining the members’ interest and continued growth. IEEE President’s Visit: The visit of our 2005 IEEE President, Mr. W. Cleon Anderson, to our Section, on 16th January 2005, along with his gracious lady, Mrs. Dixie Anderson and Mr. Kumar Shah, IEEE Senior Member from U.S., has provided an occasion for us to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of our Section, in a grand manner, at the Vivekananda auditorium, at the College of Engineering, Anna University, Guindy. Our President gave an inspiring address on “IEEE: Membership Advantages” and it was an opportunity for our members, the Student Branch Councillors, SB Officers & the Student members, to interact with him personally and clear their doubts. Our President presented the mementos to our longstanding & valued members, who are members, in our Section, from its inception, that is, 25 years & more. We know that they have many success stories & experiences to share with us, on the impressive strides made by the Section, in the past years. These Valued members along with the past Chairmen and their teams, have their own distinct backgrounds & contributed well to the organization. Professor B. Yegnanarayana, our Execom member, spoke on “25 years with IEEE” & shared his experiences on IEEE benefits. Our
plea: During the interactive session, the Student members
made a strong plea to the President, which was endorsed by the Section
Chair, for reduction of membership fee & charges
for access to the IEEE’s Digital Library. The Section Chair
requested President to consider and approve setting up of an administrative
center at Chennai, preferably, or at Mumbai, to monitor the Student
activities, as there are 256 SBs, at present, in India and Madras
Section has, 95SBs, which is the largest, in the World. The administrative
costs can be reduced with this arrangement. We shall increase the
no. of SBs to hundred, very soon. We need tools to quantify the
IEEE membership benefits. Our Section membership is the second largest
in India, which is the sole contributor to Region 10’s highest
membership, in the World, excelling that of Regions 1 to 6,in U.S.
for the first time, now. Get-together Dinner Meeting: There was also interaction, socially, with the special invitees from the academia, industries, sister institutions etc., at the get-together dinner meeting at IIT, Madras, on the evening of 16th Jan.’05.There was wide coverage of the news, in the in the local Newspapers and a press interview, by The Hindu. I thank our Execom Members for their co-operation, involvement & team-work and all our members, for their unstinted support and encouragement, for the activities, carried out, in our Section. Our President, his spouse & Mr. Kumar Shah were quite impressed with our hospitality, Section activities and the fabulous arrangements made, to the minutest detail, and thanked us for making their visit, a memorable one. IEEE offers a distinction, which we, have enjoyed for thepast many years and which will remain, as one of our most lasting legacies to future generation. You made our Day and may God bless us all! FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK -
Auxilia Jansi Rani Welcome back to Link and wish you all a very happy and a prosperous New Year! “We
make a living by what we get.
The year past ended with nature unleashing its fury on mankind.
It’s time for us to act on above words by Churchill. Madras
section pitched in with the relief efforts in the aftermath of Tsunami
and you can find the details in the section on Nature’s Fury.
The New Year started off wonderfully for our section with the visit
of 2005 IEEE President, Mr. W. Cleon Anderson
and the Silver Jubilee celebrations. There are more details and
photographs of the gala in the newsletter. Dr. R. Devanathan from
Hindustan College of Engineering has contributed an exciting paper
on the “The Small World Phenomenon” to this month’s
issue. I am sure that you will find the Six degrees of separation
concept very interesting. We have also published a paper on Brain
Finger printing by students of Vellore Institute of Technology.
I would also like to congratulate Shrutisagar on winning the IEEE
RAB Larry K Wilson Award Regional Student Activities Award. Congratulations
Shruti! We have continued with all the usual features on the Madras
Section activities of the past month. So, keep sending your contributions
to IEEE_news@yahoo.com. EDITORIAL TEAM:
IEEE
MADRAS SECTION:
2. A Brochure on the salient features of IEEE,
requirements for establishing Student Branch,Student services support,student
eligibility, S.B.benefits, roles of 3. The Workshop on “Electricity Act 2003—Retail Tariffs— ARR issues”, organized by the Engineering Staff College of India,Hyderabad,on 25th November’04, jointly with the Institution of Engineers(India),Tamil Nadu State Centre and co-sponsored by IEEE Madras Section,was chaired by Mr.P.Suresh Chander Pal, Section Chair,at its Technical session and there was very useful interaction between the distinguished Speakers from State Regulatory Commissions, Power Utilities and the participants, representing different States in India. 4. The Second National Conference on “Automotive Infotronics” was organized by the SAE India, Southern Section, on 10th &11th December2004, at IIT Madras. IEEE Madras Section joined hands with SAE INDIA,on their request, with a Golden Handshake,for the first time in Chennai/India, following their convergence,which had taken place already in U.S.,at the International level. Mr.Suresh Chander Pal,participated in the Press Meet, on 8th December’04,at Park Hotel and the Conference on 10th & 11th Dec.and it was a tremendous success, with wide coverage in the Press. 5.
IEEE Madras Section has supported the TIMA - 2004 (International
Conference on Trends in Industrial Measurements and Automation),
organized by CEERI 6. Mr.P.Suresh Chander Pal, Section Chair, attended the India Council Execom Meeting, on 20th Dec.’ 04 and the first IEEE(India) Annual Conference (INDICON-2004), on 21stDec.’04, at Kharagpur. The Conference was organized by IIT,Kharagpur Section jointly with IEEE India Council.This is the 30th Annual Conference of IEEE in India (erstwhile ACEs). In this Mega-event,there were pre-conference Tutorials,for Student participation,on 20th,besides invited talks & contributory paper presentations, rich in technical content, on Computers, Control, Communications, Signal Processing, Micro-electronics,VLSI,Power& Energy, MEMS and Nanotechnology, I.T., Bio-infomatics and other areas wihin the scope of IEEE, on 21st & 22nd Dec.’04. A National level Students’Design Contest was also conducted to make it more accessible to the Student community. The technical sponsors were IEEE .The Conference proceedings were in the IEEE approved format and listed in the IEEE Explore. Mr.Rajib Mall, IIT Kharagpur Section Chairman and Mr.R.Muralidharan, Chairman, IEEE India Council, were the General & Co-Chairs, Mr.Ajit Pal & Mr.S.L.Maskara, Programme Chairs and Mr.Amit Patra, Organising Chair. Large efforts have gone into the planning and preparation for the INDICON-2004 and the mega event was a big success. IEEE Madras Section will be organising INDICON-2005, in December’05, at Chennai, in assocition with the IEEE India Council. I invite volunteers to contact us and lend support and give suggestions,for making this event, a truly memorable one. 7. Thirteenth National Power Systems Conference (NPSC-2004), was organized by the Electrical Engineering Department, IIT Madras, from 27th to 30th December’04 and IEEE Madras Section was one of the main Sponsors.There were 211 interesting papers,presented on the theme of “Meeting the Challenges of the Indian Power Sector” with focus on academia-industry-utility interaction and oral sessions spread over 3 days (Dec.28 to 30), preceded by one full day special Workshop & two half day Tutorials, on 27th Dec.Section Chair participated in the Conference & there was useful interaction with the IEEE student members. 8.
The second International Conference on Intelligent Sensing
and Information Processing (2005) ,was organized by the
University of Melbourne, Australia The Conference comprised of technical program, tutorials and plenary talk,highly enjoyable and beneficial. It featured Micro & Nano sensing Technologies (Sensor Networks) and advanced information processing tools, which has been recognized to be one of the key five technologies, poised to shape the modern society,in the next decade. The potential long term inspirational applications included collaborative Unmanned Vehicles, snakelike robots, sensor systems for bush fire detection, sensor web for eco health, smart cars with global navigation, roborats & pervasive medical applications.In the context of heart rending situations, on the aftermath of recent earth quake and Tsunami, there is need felt to provide warning devices and develop expertise with strong remote sensing and information processing capabilities. 9.
Silver Jubilee Celebrations in IEEE Madras Section,on 16th January
2005: THE SMALL WORLD PHENOMENON
Dr R. DEVANATHAN, Many of us may have experienced the curious phenomenon of having travelled half way around the globe only to meet someone whom we could relate to our common friend or friend’s friend or in some way linked to us in not too many steps. We rationalise it by saying “It is a small world”. Two
Cornell University mathematicians have shown that
the above phenomenon may not be a matter of pure coincidence. In
fact, a systematic framework can be The small world phenomenon is the theory that everyone in the world can be reached through a short chain of social acquaintances. The concept gave rise to the famous phrase of ‘six degrees of separation’ after a 1967 small world experiment by psychologist Stanley Milgram. In his experiment, Milgram sent 60 letters addressed to a particular person to various recruits across the United States. The letters are to be passsed only by hand through acquaintances. After a series of refinements of the initial experiment, it was concluded that a mean number of 6 intermediaries are required to reach the target thus lending support to the “six degree of separation” theory. In the case of the graph of film actors, the distance between any two actors is found as follows: if the two have acted together, their minimum distance is one. If they have not co-starred together, but have both co-starred with the same actor, their distance is two, etc. The game of ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’, attempted to find the shortest path from any actor to Kevin Bacon. There is also the Erdos number for scientists. If a scientist has published an article with the famous Hungarian mathematician Erdos, their number is 1, if they’ve published with someone who’s published with Erdos, their number is 2 and so on. Small world network lies between the two extremes of network topologies of random graph and the regular graph. Random graphs (where each node or vertex is randomly wired to any other node) are not clustered and have short distances, while regular graphs (where each vertex is connected in a fixed pattern to an identical number of its neighbouring nodes) tend to be clustered and have long distances. Watts and Strogatz of Cornell University have shown that the addition of a handful of random links can turn a regular network into a highly connected one. In the case of the graph of film actors, the distance between any two actors is found as follows: if the two have acted together, their minimum distance is one. If they have not co-starred together, but have both co-starred with the same actor, their distance is two, etc. The game of ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’, attempted to find the shortest path from any actor to Kevin Bacon. There is also the Erdos number for scientists. If a scientist has published an article with the famous Hungarian mathematician Erdos, their number is 1, if they’ve published with someone who’s published with Erdos, their number is 2 and so on. Small world network lies between the two extremes of network topologies of random graph and the regular graph. Random graphs (where each node or vertex is randomly wired to any other node) are not clustered and have short distances, while regular graphs (where each vertex is connected in a fixed pattern to an identical number of its neighbouring nodes) tend to be clustered and have long distances. Watts and Strogatz of Cornell University have shown that the addition of a handful of random links can turn a regular network into a highly connected one. This has both positive and negative implications.On the positive side, we see that that adding just a few connections to something like a cellular phone system or perhaps even the Internet might greatly speed up communication. The negative side is that speeding up connections might cause overloads, and just a few extra connections between people might greatly speed the spread of disease. The question arises why is the small world networks so commonly found. It turns out, as shown by Mathias and Gopal, that one of the reasons could be as a trade-off between connectivity and wiring cost. That is, small world network could result in an effort to obtain maximum connectivity at minimum wiring. Several engineering disciplines have already started to exploit the small world effect in order to improve the existing mechanisms relating to their networks. From an algorithmic point of view, it is an interesting question to understand the structure of networks in which the “small world” phenomenon emerges in which message-passing with purely local information can be efficient. Algorithmic work in different settings has considered the problem of routing with local information, such as, for example the problem of designing compact routing tables for communication networks and the problem of robot navigation in an unknown environment. Small world networks are promising candidates for communication network since data flow pattern show a large amount of clustering with a small number of long distance communication links that need to be accomplished efficiently. Mobile adhoc networks, such as, among soldiers in a battlefield, network of notebook computers in a conference or campus, space exploration, undersea operations etc are being studied using the concept of the small world phenomenon. In a country like India connecting remote villages through an efficient communication network can utilise the concept of small world network. The small world network concept can also be exploited in the design of efficient power system grid networks giving maximum connectivity at minimum cost. Finally, the neuron network in the human responsible for short term memory has been found to form a small world network. This is expected to help scientists to understand how the human brain works. NATURE’S
FURY: We lost many lives due to its onslaught,on the coastal areas of TamilNadu and other places in Srilanka,Indonesia, Malaysia,Andaman, Nicobar islands etc., IEEE Madras Section has sent relief supplies viz,Blankets,Biscuits, Disposable Syringes etc,worth Rs.10,000,to the needy people, affected by Tsunami,in 6 villages in Nagapattinam,thro’ the good offices of our Execom Member,Dr.Krishna Prasad.We are planning for organizing a meeting with experts on “Tsunami:Disaster Management & Mitigation”, with the assistance of another Execom Member, Dr.Yegnanarayana, Professor, IIT Madras. Membership Statistics,as on 31st December 2004:
IEEE
Madras Section—Silver Jubilee Celebrations:
Our Salutations to you for your sustained interest, in our professional organization,from the inception of our Section .We request you to kindly share your success stories & experiences with us,for publication in our Newsletter, on the impressive strides made in the Section,in the past years. IEEE Madras Section: Started as Sub-Section at Bangalore in 1973,attained Section status on 28th April,1978. The Leaders,who led us are…
BRAIN FINGER PRINTING: A SCIENTIFIC SOLUTION TO TIMELESS PROBLEMS -
S. Vijay Sundar & Uppala Rakesh, Brain
Fingerprinting (BFP) testing is a major, new, highly accurate, scientific
method to assist authorities to: How
BFP works? The
application of BFP testing in a criminal case involves four phases. Scientific
Procedure of BFP # Targets: Consists of information known to the suspect, which will establish a baseline brain response (MERMER) for information known to be significant to this suspect in the context of the crime. # Irrelevant: Most of the non-target stimuli are irrelevant. These do not elicit a MERMER, and therefore establish a baseline brain response for information that is not significant to this suspect in the context of this crime. # Probes: Some of the non-target stimuli are relevant to the situation under investigation. These relevant stimuli are referred to as probes; information relevant to the crime. The subject is given a list of the target stimuli and instructed to press a particular button in response to targets and another button in response to all other stimuli. For a subject with knowledge of the investigated situation, the probes are noteworthy due to that knowledge, and therefore the probes elicit a MERMER, indicating “information present” i.e. information stored in the brain. For a subject lacking this knowledge, probes are irrelevant and do not elicit a MERMER, indicating “information absent” – information not stored in the brain. When the information tested is crime-relevant and known only to the perpetrator and investigators, then “information present” implies participation in the crime and “information absent” implies non-participation. BFP testing does not measure guilt or innocence, nor does it measure participation or non-participation in a crime. It simply detects the presence or absence of information stored in the brain. The question of what weight specific is given by the investigator of fact in determination of participation in crime related events is not a scientific question, but rather a legal question to be deduced by judges and jurors.
Benefits of BFP
IEEE
AWARD WINNER I’m sure that this award is a macro indicator of the vibrant nature of IEEE in India as a whole, which means that it is certainly possible for us to bag it repeatedly in the years to come. I would encourage all the student members of IEEE to participate wholeheartedly in their Branch Activities and events of national and international calibre hosted under the banner of IEEE, for these are opportunities that are available only during one’s college life. Go on, go forth and grab them with both hands and awards such as these will follow automatically. However, at the end of the day, what matters most of all is contentment – a sense of fulfilment that we have become better engineers and humans along the way.
Shrutisagar Chandrasekaran |
