Indian students win NASA contest

Jul 11, 2009, 07.57AM IST PTI

WASHINGTON: An undergraduate team from the Sardar Vallabhai Patel Institute in Gujarat has been declared runner-up in the non-US category of a NASA competition to design a supersonic airliner.

Named "Rastofust", the design of the supersonic airliner was designed by Sahaj Panchal and Dhrumir Patel, NASA said yesterday while announcing the result of its contest.

The top slot in the non-US category was grabbed by students from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

College students from the US, Japan and India researched technology and created concepts for a supersonic passenger jet as part of a competition sponsored by the Fundamental Aeronautics Program in NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA said.

The participants were challenged to design a small supersonic airliner and submit a research paper limited to 25 pages. Designs had to be efficient, environmentally friendly, low sonic boom commercial aircraft that could be ready for initial service by 2020.

A team of undergraduates from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and a team of graduate students from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta tied for first place in the US division, it said.

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In His Own Words: Bill Gates Dishes on Computers, Religion and Being Smart [Excerpt]

In Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates in His Own Words readers get a glimpse of the visionary Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist's philosophy on business, technology and life via some of his most memorable quotes

By Lisa Rogak

Image: Reprinted with permission from Impatient Optimist by Lisa Rogak, Agate B2, September, 2012

Editor's note: The following excerpt is reprinted with permission from Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates in His Own Words, edited by Lisa Rogak and published September 2012 by Agate Publishing: B2 Books.

Love him or hate him, Bill Gates has been a venerable worldwide business icon for more than three decades, ever since the first mass-produced personal computer debuted in 1981. Alternately described as an ingenious visionary and a tyrannical, sometimes less-than-scrupulous businessman, he has been all but impossible to ignore. But despite one's opinion of Gates, even his most prominent naysayers have no choice but to admit the obvious: He helped to spearhead one of the greatest revolutions in modern history by turning the inaccessible computer technology of the 1970s into an invaluable and easy-to-use tool for the masses, while also providing jobs and wealth to many along the way.

Gates has consistently been ranked as one of the world 's wealthiest men—as well as one of the most controversial founders and CEOs in history—and businesspeople of all stripes have taken their cues from him, using his words and business strategies to help create and grow their own companies. And in contrast to his hard-nosed reputation, after he left running the day-to-day operations of Microsoft in 2008 to devote himself full-time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a kinder, gentler side began to emerge. As a result, people who are actively involved in their own philanthropic efforts, whether in a professional or part-time capacity, have begun to take a second look at the man.

Despite the fact that he's no longer at the helm of one of the world's most powerful companies, Gates has steadfastly remained in the news. His friendship and philanthropic partnerships with U2's Bono and investing titan Warren Buffett attract the attention of both the media and public, which only helps to gain more attention for his charitable acts, whether he is testifying with former President Bill Clinton about increasing federal aid to earthquake-ravaged cities and villages in Haiti, or making the rounds at the Sundance Film Festival to promote the topic of public education reform. And unlike Gates's days at Microsoft, where he was entrusted with protecting a bevy of corporate secrets, today his life is virtually an open book, featuring regular updates on Facebook and Twitter and blog posts at TheGatesNotes.com.

Bill Gates's second act is no less compelling than his first. Anyone interested in his personal life or looking for inspiration to drive forward his or her own business endeavors can find enlightenment through reading Gates's own words.

"If a kid if addicted to a personal computer, I think that's far better than watching TV, because at least his mind is making choices."
Programmers at Work, 1986

"Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things."
The Road Ahead, 1995

"I've never done anything solo, except take tests."
Working Together, 2010

"I think short of the transporter, most things you see in science fiction are, in the next decade, the kinds of things you'll see. The virtual presence, the virtual worlds that both represent what's going on in the real world and represent whatever people are interested in. This movement in space as a way of interacting with the machine. I think the deep investments that have been made at the research level will pay off with these things in the next 10 years."
D5 Conference: All Things Digital, May 30, 2007

"If being a nerd means you're somebody who can enjoy exploring a computer for hours and hours late into the night, then the description fits me, and I don't think there's anything pejorative about it. But here's the real test: I've never used a pocket protector, so I can't really be a nerd, can I?"
The New York Times Syndicate and News Service, August 5, 1996

"I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn't that complicated. I wouldn't want to put it on my business card. [I'm a] scientist. Unless I've been fooling myself. When I read about great scientists like, say, Crick and Watson and how they discovered DNA, I get a lot of pleasure. Stories of business success don't interest me in the same way. Say you added two years to my life and let me go to business school. I don't think I would have done a better job at Microsoft."
Playboy, July 1994

"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."
Time, January 13, 1997

"There are one hundred universities making contributions to robotics. And each one is saying that the other is doing it all wrong."
The World Is Flat, 2005

"Humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity, reducing inequity is the highest human achievement."
Commencement address, Harvard University, June 7, 2007

"Smartness is an ability to absorb new facts. To walk into a situation, have something explained to you, and immediately say, "Well, what about this?" To ask an insightful question. To absorb it in real time. A capacity to remember. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first."
The Rich and How They Got That Way, 2001

"Everybody should watch chemistry lectures—they're far better than you think. Don Sadoway, MIT—best chemistry lessons everywhere. Unbelievable."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 23, 2008

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Auto-Immune: "Symbiotes" Could Be Deployed to Thwart Cyber Attacks

Running on CPUs to detect malware targeting embedded computers that run car system and utilities, symbiotes may not only serve as immune systems for their devices, but also help reveal a previously unseen ecosystem of malware

By Charles Q. Choi

PRINTER DANGER: In 2011, computer scientists revealed they could hack into printers and break into every computer linked to these printers. Image: Flickr/James F Clay

Anti-hacker defenses have long focused mainly on protecting personal computers and servers in homes and offices. However, as microchips grow smaller and more powerful, new targets for hackers are becoming widespread—embedded computers such as the electronics handling car engines, brakes and door locks; the routers that form the Internet's backbone; the machines running power plants, rail lines and prison cell doors; and even implantable medical devices such as defibrillators and insulin pumps. Many of these embedded devices can now link with other computers, putting them equally at risk to intruders. Indeed, in October, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned that the U.S. faced the threat of a "cyber Pearl Harbor" if it failed to adequately protect these systems, echoing a warning CIA Director John Deutsch gave to Congress in 1996 about an electronic Pearl Harbor (pdf).
Now computer scientists are devising guardians they call symbiotes that could run on embedded computers regardless of the underlying operating systems. In doing so, they may not only help protect the critical infrastructure of nations and corporations but reveal that warfare against these devices may have been going on unseen for years, researchers say.
The problem is worse than you might think. Already research has shown that a vast number of machines lie completely open to attack. For instance, in 2011, after scanning large sections of the Internet, computer scientists Ang Cui and Sal Stolfo at Columbia University identified more than 1.4 million publicly accessible embedded computers in 144 countries that still had factory default passwords that would give anyone with online access total control over the machines. These devices, which make up about one in five of the embedded computers they found (pdf), included routers, video-conferencing units, cable TV boxes and firewalls used to defend computer networks.
These vulnerabilities pose a host of dangers. In 2011 Cui and Stolfo revealed they could hack into printers (pdf) made by Hewlett–Packard with infected documents or by connecting to them online, allowing them to spy on everything printed with those machines and to break into every computer linked to the printers. (HP has since fixed this vulnerability.) Cui also explains it could be easy to develop malicious software or malware that would allow hackers to shut down infected routers just by pinging them an innocuous data packet.
Attacks against embedded system aren't the kind "where criminals are trying to get credit card data," Cui says. "They're more stealthy. More sophisticated. This is corporate espionage–level stuff. Cyber war–level stuff. The people looking to target these systems aren't out to make a big splash, but might aim to take down a country's critical infrastructure."
One problem researchers face in designing safeguards for these vulnerabilities is the incredible diversity found in the programs running embedded computers. For instance, Cui notes that routers made only by Cisco possess about 300,000 different firmware images—the operating systems of embedded computers and their accompanying programs.