Green Computing---- Go-Green

When cries about the environmental care is increasing day by day, we are chalking out many causes for environmental pollution. But very sadly, one field remains unnoticed. That is nothing but Computing.

I have compiled 5 astonishing facts that you might have rarely heard of.

1) Computing contributes to 2% of total CO2 emission, which is equivalent to the CO2 emission by aviation industry.

2)Computer Wastes(e-waste) are used as land fills which is very dangerous.

3)Many western countries have banned usage of e-waste as land-fills. So it is illegally exported to Asian countries.

4)If 12 people run their computers in POWER SAVER MODE, for an year, then its equivalent of removing an average running vehicle from road.

5)If left on 24x7 for one year, a computer will consume 1,270 kilowatt hours of electricity—that’s enough to release 1,715 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the equivalent of driving 1,886 miles in the average car!

Now a quick look at what we can do to protect it.

1) Upgrading the computer is the best choice. How-ever green, the newer computer claims to be, it is always better to upgrade a PC, than going for a newer one. In western Countries, the average life span of a computer is not more than 1.5-2 year. A bold and greater step has to be taken to increase this period.

2)If you are going for a new computer, analyse different computers in market and then go for greener computer. Now a days MAC PCs are generally green computers.

3)Use computers only when necessary. It is predicted that the usage of computers might double in next 4 years.

4) Appreciate and take the best use of certain initiatives like "Intel ATOM" processor etc.

5) I would like to mention about iYogi Computers, which was a very brave initiative of an Indian company, that thought of a centralized computing environment, where resources are shared and each house will be having only a monitor and a keyboard, rest all will be centralised.

Such small but great initiatives from all of us might be very handy in turning down the percentage of environmental harm caused due to computers. It is very well accepted that, without computers, life has almost become impossible. So when computers are an integral part of our, when they are just like our family. It becomes very important for us to see to it that, our family members don't be a black mark to the society.

Spread the word... GO GREEN............

MediTech

This post is solely dedicated to one of my friends, who is doing his MBBS and is a quite passionate about technology. So here is an article that concerns both technology and medicine.

We do see that technology has a greater inpact on medicine these days. Starting from medicine productioin to complicated surgeries without the help of technology might well prove to be very tough.One such usage that really fascinated me is CAPSULE ENDOSCOPY. As of today in many hospitals we find a normal methodology of endoscopy being followed,hich is a long, thin tube inserted into the rectum and transversed through the colon or, alternatively, through the mouth and into the stomach and small intestine as a means of mechanically-assisted visualization of these structures. It becomes very tidious task and even the patient has ro suffer a bit. But the technology i am writing about, simplifies this task and does endoscopy a simply procedure. In Capsule Endoscopy(CE) uses a small capsule sized device with a camera fitted at the apex which does the photographer's job. An intestine is usually very long(around 25-30 mtrs). As per today, no scope is available which will cover the whole of intestine. This is where techiqueof CE scores above the others. Because the capsule is swallowed and travels through the digestive system, capsule endoscopy takes a longer amount of time than traditional endoscopy. The images are of good quality, comparable to those from scopes. The test carries a high sensitivity and specificity for detecting lesions. Early research has shown that capsule endoscopy can detect evidence of disease in some cases that traditional endoscopy cannot. The technology is used by gastroenterologists to detect diseases such as Crohn's disease, gastric ulcers, and colon cancer. At the present time, the capsule camera is primarily used to visualize the small intestine. Whereas the upper gastrointestinal tract (esophagus, stomach, and duodenum) and the colon (large intestine) can be very adequately visualized with scopes. 
There are a lot of recent activities going on in this field. Ongoing research is continuing in the United States, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and United Kingdom to improve capsule endoscope technology. Sayaka Capsule by RF System of Japan is an advanced capsule with power supplied wirelessly from an external source. In Japan, capsule endoscopy is now approved for use in the small bowel and in Europe, capsule endoscopy is being used for several areas including colon screening since July 2007. The next major development is to enable the capsule to do other functions that are possible with current traditional endoscopes, besides just imaging with a camera. These include multiple therapeutic and diagnostic operations such as ultrasound, electrocautery, biopsy, laser, and heat with a retractable arm.

Let us hope that this technology develops soon.........

New Programming Language - GO

High rate of development in Computer hardware and application but no significant changes in programming techniques became the reason for google to develop a new programming language GO. It was released on Nov 10 and  serves a the task that a C and C++ programming languages do today and has its speed almost same as that of a C/C++ compiler. The best of GO is that it supports instant compilation. It feels like we are using an interactive programming language. The users of ".net" might be well aware with the advantages on instantaneous and interactive programming.Google developed this programming language under a group 20% project( Google workers can constructively utilize 20% of their work time for developmental works other than their normal routine official work) nearly 2 years before this date. Since there is no IDE as per now for GO programming, Google has decided to market GO as an OpenSource hoping the open source community would come up with better tools for this language. Pike, Robert Griesemer, Ken Thompson, Ian Taylor, and Russ Cox, all being Google engineers are the top contributers for the outcome of this highly effective programming language. The learning curve of this new programming language is compared to that of JAVA. Pike, one of the developers feels that if people can learn JAVA out of the box, they wont find and difficulty in learning GO. GO though not seen in development of any major Web applications at present, it is known from google employees that Go has played an important role in many internal developments of GOOGLE. For example GOOGLE WAVE can provide an enhanced performance if both Front and Back end is designed using Go, instead of the present combination of JAVASCRIPT and C++ sever code. Pike also revels that Go has an important role to play in the forth coming OS Google Chrome. 

Google engineers are seeing it as a future tool of programming, but whether a programmer can come out of the adjusted C/C++ coding is yet to be seen.