An Indian engineering graduate, Pulkit Gaur, has developed a robot that can go underwater and clean water or chemical tanks. This project is developed by Gridbots, an entrepreneurial venture by Gaur, this low-cost robot will remove any sludge particles in water. "This compact machine has tracks fitted for movement. It has a drive system on the front side to which a brush mechanism is attached to scratch dirt from the tank walls. We are also considering using a filter," said Gaur to Bangalore Mirror.

This robot is available for consumers as well. This robot is available at Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 20,000, and is a consumer version of SaUsR, the robot that is already in use in medicine industries. These robots are targeted at those who make medicines. They employ them to prevent sludge formation in tanks. "SaUsR carries out underwater operations with ease and lets you use this robot as a sophisticated underwater cleaning unit. It has on-board intelligent electronics that lets it navigate in fully-autonomous mode. With a high resolution on-board camera having pan-tilt capabilities, it can spot even minutest details of your water/chemical tank," said Gaur.

Gaur is a production and industrial engineer from MBM Engineering College in Jodhpur. He graduated in 2004 and since then has been pursuing his childhood passion. "I have been working on these robots since school days. Earlier, it was all about taking part in competitions. I soon realized robotics was in its nascent stage, and a lot can be built on it," he said. His resume goes up to 17 pages and was appreciated by former President A P J Abdul Kalam for his efforts.

Gridbots was a start-up that took shape through his passion for robotics. "I wanted to start a venture that would come up with innovative products that run on intelligence. I wanted to do something more than the assembly of robots. It had to be a multi-purpose product for my client," he said. Gridbots started two years ago in Ahmedabad and presently employs 15 people. It plans to recruit 35 more by this year-end.

Gaur already has many plans chalked out for his company. "We are working on developing defence robots, and also a surveillance robot that can be controlled via mobile or the Internet," he added. Few of his other creations include an image- understanding technology and a consumer robot that does household chores.

========================================

The Grid Coming To A Computer Near You

CERN (Geneva): With domain names in Hindi, Arabic and Chinese set to become a reality on the web, the pundits in this science hub of Switzerland, where the internet was arguably invented, claim the next giant leap towards internationalisation will be the grid, which is just weeks away from powering up. The grid, made of thousands of desktops, laptops, supercomputers, data vaults, mobile phones, meteorological sensors and telescopes, will start work when proton beams collide in the world’s biggest experiment ever inside a deep tunnel here on the French-Swiss border.
It is a revolution, say scientists of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) because it uses the internet but is not the internet. Using cloud computing, the grid will combine the computing resources of more than 100,000 processors from more than 170 sites in 34 countries and will be accessible to thousands of physicists globally. The scientists claim it will change the way the information superhighway works.
Small computer grids similar to power grids have been in operation for some time, but CERN’s will be the biggest one of them all and will become a reality when its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) becomes operational this month.
Maarten Litmaath, the Dutch physicist who heads CERN’s computing centre, told TOI, “When it begins operation, the LHC will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes or equivalent to storage capacity of 20 million CDs) of data annually which thousands of scientists around the world will access and analyze.”
Grid: The Future of Science
The Web just shares info on computers, the Grid also shares computing power and data storage capacity Scientists can log on anywhere in the world, processing on machines across the planet CERN needs the Grid to store 15 pentabytes — equivalent to a 20-km high stack of CDs
Grid computing can help drug discovery by speeding up the computer-based screening and testing process Grid to be ‘global computer’
Our grid will make it possible for scientists around the world to access this data real time.’’ Till now, a giant grid was considered something of a pipe dream, says Litmaath. Its implications, he says, are enormous. “Imagine several million computers from all over the world, and owned by thousands of different people. And imagine if these PCs, workstations, servers and storage elements can all be connected to form a single, huge and super-powerful computer. This sprawling, global computer is what the grid will be.’’
CERN says it is only right and proper that the giant grid be developed in the place where the world wide web was invented.
Although there are several claimants to the internet’s authorship, it was here that British software whiz Tim Berners-Lee and other scientists set the stage for the internet explosion in 1990. At the time, Berners-Lee’s boss at CERN offered the measured response—“vague but impressive’’—to the scientists’ proposed system that would allow scientists around the world to swap information on research.
It was in that proposal, written in a small room in a CERN building, that the terms “http’’ (global hypertext language) appeared for the first time. A small placard saying ‘The web was invented here’ still hangs on the door of the room where Berners-Lee and the other scientists developed the first blueprint of the internet.
The web changed the world forever and now CERN expects great results from grid computing, which, Litmaath says, will power science around the globe—scientists can share data, data storage space, computing power, and results. Together, researchers can tackle bigger questions than ever before: from disease cures and disaster management to global warming and the mysteries of the universe.
CERN already has at least three centres in India with which it shares data and expertise on a regular basis, something that can only grow exponentially.

B’lore scientists to build largest telescopes

Bangalore: It’s a marriage of astronomy and software. Bangalore scientists and software engineers will get together to help build three of what could be among the world’s largest telescopes. This will be in collaboration with US and European scientists in a telescope project being co-ordinated by the Union ministry of communications and information technology.
While the US is building two telescopes, Europe is building one. The project could involve an initial cost of Rs 500 crore.
Scientists from Raman Research Institute and Indian Institute of Astrophysics will be involved in the project along with software engineers, who would be chosen from among top 10 companies in the country.Bangalore scientists will be joined by scientists of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics,Pune,and a Nainital-based research centre in building the American and European telescopes.
Scientists from the four institutes will submit a proposal to the Union government to secure funding to become partners in the project. “The idea is to pick up a stake in the construction of these telescopes. The government has indicated that the partnership should involve providing goods and services from India,” said a scientist involved with the project.
The goods and services offered will be in the form of infrastructure and software for the three telescopes. Infrastructure essentially involves development of optics for the instruments. The experience, scientists say, will eventually help India develop its own intermediate-class telescope.
Development of software for the project is a major activity and research institutes will partner with software companies to get this part of the job done. Bangalore being a major software development centre is a big plus for the project as it can offer hi-technology solutions.
“The process of participating in large telescopes gives you a lot of confidence on both technology and software development fronts. These are new technology telescopes and Indian companies actually get a wonderful chance to participate in development of technology as well as operationalization of the telescopes,” the scientist added.
“To look from the edge of the universe, you require the biggest instrument. That’s where these telescopes come in. It’ll also make a very important impression on the young mind when you have access to the biggest instrument,” a Bangalore-based scientist said.
MIRROR MAKING
Astronomers and astrophysicists say India has not gone into the making of large mirrors till now
The three telescopes will be built out of hundreds of mirror segments each 1.5 m in diameter
This experience of putting together large mirrors will be almost first of its kind

=============================================

Live to a 100 with body of a 50-yr-old

£50 Million British Project Aims To Stop Body Clock With Parts That Never Wear Out

London: British scientists are working on regenerative therapies that could help centenarians have bodies of 50-year-olds in the future.
Researchers at Leeds University will be shelling out £50 million over five years to come up with solutions to pull off “50 active years after 50” by providing pensioners with longer lasting replacement body parts.
They plan to provide pensioners with own-grown tissues and durable implants. New hips, knees and heart valves are the starting points, but eventually they envisage most of the body parts that flounder with age could be upgraded.
The university’s Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering has already made a hip transplant that should last for life, rather than the 20 years maximum expected from current artificial hips.
Professor John Fisher revealed the “combination of a durable cobalt-chrome metal alloy socket and a ceramic ball means the joint should easily withstand the 100 million steps that a 50-year-old can be expected to take by their 100th birthday”, says a report.
Meanwhile, colleague Eileen Ingham and her team have been working on making transplantable tissues, and eventually organs, that the body can make on its own, to tackle the fear of rejection.
So far they have managed to make fully functioning heart valves using the technique. It involves taking a healthy donor heart valve — from a human or a suitable animal, such as a pig — and gently stripping away its cells using a cocktail of enzymes and detergents.
The inert scaffold left can be transplanted into the patient without any fear of rejection — the main reason why normal transplants wear out and fail. Once the scaffold has been transplanted, the body takes over and repopulates it with cells. Trials in animals and on 40 patients in Brazil have shown promising results, says Ingham.
The NHS is already looking into using the method on donor skin for burns patients.
Christina Doyle of Xeno Medical, the medical device company that is developing the technologies, said: “To replace all donor tissue using this technology will take 30 to 50 years. Each single product will need to be designed and tested individually.”
Doyle said experts elsewhere were also working on similar regenerative therapies, but grown entirely outside of the body, to ensure that people can continue being as active during their second half-century as they were in their first. Doyle adds that the holy grail was to remove the heavy reliance on donor organs. AGENCIES ============================================

Software to grade personality

Mumbai: How do you grade personality? That’s a question that many educationists are grappling with after the CBSE’s new system of continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) talked of grading aspects of a child’s personality, such as attitudes and life skills. A CBSE school in Mumbai is working on a software that could solve the problem.
“We are trying to design a software in order to reduce the element of bias involved in the process of teachers grading a child’s personality. With the help of this software, teachers can simply key in their observations of a child into the computer, and the software will generate a grade based on what several teachers have to say about a child. In case one teacher rates a child higher than another teacher does, the child will get the higher of the two grades. We want to give children the benefit of the doubt, so if even one teacher feels a student is worthy of a high grade when it comes to testing personality, the child gets that grade,’’ said Avnita Bir, principal of RN Podar School, Santa Cruz.
Computer science teachers at RN Podar are working on the software. “We hope the system will be ready by next week,’’ said Bir. Incidentally, RN Podar was one of the schools involved in the first phase of training for the new CBSE syllabus, which took place in Delhi earlier this month. Podar will now be the nodal centre for the second phase of training, where the school will pass on the training it has received to other schools in the area.
A number of principals who attended the CBSE board meeting in Delhi felt that attitudes were difficult to measure. They also felt that there was the danger of bias, unless data was collected scientifically.
Educationists in Maharashtra have pointed to the fact that attitudes should be assessed as favourable or unfavourable, but should not be graded. Others, though, feel that anything that is not graded is not treated seriously by parents.
According to the new policy, there will be a three-point grading system with which to assess attitudes, ranging from A+ to B. And there will be a fivepoint grading system for life skills, ranging from A+ to C.

================================================

Future Of The Web? Thoughts, Images Can Be Transmitted To Minds Without Using An Interface

London: Ever wanted to communicate your thoughts without speaking a word? British scientists have created a system for “brain to brain communication”, a development researchers claimed will allow people to send thoughts, words and images directly to the minds of others.
The system, developed by the researchers at the British University of Southampton, has been hailed as the future of the internet, which would provide a revolutionary way to communicate without the need for keyboards and telephones.
It was claimed the technology, the first of its kind, would allow people to send thoughts, words and images directly to the minds of others, particularly people with a disability.
“This could be useful for those people who are locked into their bodies, who can’t speak, can’t even blink,” said the lead scientist Christopher James.
However, he cautioned that his experiments were “the first baby steps” towards technologies that would allow people instantly to send thoughts, words, and images directly into the minds of others.
Scientists used “brain-computer interfacing”, a technique that allows computers to analyse brain signals, that enabled them to send messages formed by a person’s brain signals though an internet connection to another person’s brain miles away.
According to James, during transmission two people were connected to electrodes that measure activity in specific parts of the brain. The first person generated a series of zeros and ones, where they imagined moving their left arm for zero and right arm for one.
After the first person’s computer recognises the binary thoughts, it sends them to the internet and then to the other person’s computer.
A lamp is then flashed at two different frequencies for one and zero. “It’s not telepathy,” James said. e added: “There’s no conscious thought forming in one person’s head and another conscious thought appearing in another person’s mind.

“The next experiments are to get that second person to be aware of the information that is being sent to them. For that, I need to get my thinking cap on, so to speak.” AGENCIES

===============================

Tony Buzan

Good evening; welcome everybody!

MSO_Admin

Yes, hello and welcome!

Tony Buzan

Welcome to the end of this year, decade, century and millennial discussion on the human brain. Welcome in advance to the new century and the new millennium, which have been declared by the Brain Trust charity to be the Century of the Brain and the Millennium of the Mind. I am ready to take questions and looking forward to what you have to say!

MSO_Admin

Welcome one and all and especially Tony Buzan! We would like to thank Mr. Buzan for taking this time to chat with us.

Book

What has been the most useful mind techinque for you and why?

Tony Buzan

Let me answer that question by giving a little history of my own mental skills development. When I was 13, I was given a speed reading test and scored 213 words per minute which was second in my class. The top student, a girl, scored over 300. I immediately, of course, asked my teacher how I could improve my own reading speed and was told that I could not. As I had already been able to improve my muscular strength and physical speed it seemed to me absurd that I was being informed that I could not improve a physical/mental skill such as speed reading.

I immediately began training my eyes and brain to accelerate the rate at which I absorbed written information and within a fairly short period of time was able to read at over 400 words per minute with good comprehension. This was my first realisation that my brain was indeed somewhat like a muscle, and that its strength could be increased. Speed reading showed me the way and must therefore be considered as one of my most important mental developments.

It enabled me to get through all my school and university studies at over twice the rate that I would have taken previously. In addition, during my first year at university, a kindly professor introduced me to the tantalising and fascinating world of mnemonics - the memory systems developed by the Greeks at the height of their renaissance. In literally one day, I was able to magnify the power of my short- , medium- and long-term recall by a factor of ten. I was staggered and immediately began to try this new mental skill for the memorisation of all my studies enabling me to maintain my marks in a fraction of the time. I was thus able to spend a lot more time on athletic, social, mind sport and other pursuits.

Over the years, my fascination with mnemonics led me to the development of my third major mental tool, the Mind Map. This tool, initially invented as a multi-dimensional memory technique, I soon discovered with the help of my brother, Professor Barry Buzan, was like a Swiss Army Knife for the brain and could be applied to literally any area of mental activity, including memory, creative thinking, planning, decision-making, communication, and writing etc. Indeed, the Mind Map Book written with my brother was entirely planned by Mind Maps. In summary, then, the main three tools are speed reading, memory systems and the Mind Map.

Book

Thank you for an excellent answer.

Tony Buzan

Thank you!

Janus

How does the Mind Mapping at MSO work?

Tony Buzan

In the Mind Mapping competition at MSO, and you are encouraged to enter the next event in August 2000, the participants are given different tasks, that they are asked to Mind Map. In one test, they are provided with a magazine and are asked to Mind Map their summary of the entire periodical. They are given adequate time for this, to both read and Mind Map, although speed reading does help! In another test, they are given a 15-minute to 30-minute lecture, which they Mind Map "live".

In the third task, they are asked to choose their own topic and to produce a particularly original mind map. The mind map judging panel marks on the basis of clarity, adherence to mind mappping principles, originality, creativity, depth of thought, and the global aesthetic value of the Mind Map. I look forward to seeing Janus's Mind Maps! For further information on Mind Mapping, contact the Buzan Centres at +44 1202 674676 or +44 1202 674776, or by e-mail to buzan@mind-map.com.

Book

Have you ever noticed negative affects in using these techniques?

Tony Buzan

No. Let me just expand on that a bit; people often assume that if you read fast you lose comprehension. The opposite is true. The faster you are able to take in material in meaningful groups of words, the better your understanding, comprehension and concentration become. Again, people often think that using memory systems somehow disconnects the information in your memory banks and also endangers you of "filling up your brain". Both of these are complete misconceptions. The memory systems actually help you organise, structure and network the information in your brain.

The capacity of your brain is so gigantic that if you were to fill it with a thousand pieces of information every second it would not be nearly full after a thousand years. Mind Mapping involves the use of both the left and the right cortex and all the major memory principles. It has no disadvantages and only enhances the way in which the brain can think or feel.

MSO_Admin

If there are no other questions I would like to ask one. Professor Steve Jones, leading geneticist at the University College of London has suggested in the Sunday Times today that human physical evolution has come to an end. Other genetic scientists believe that our brains will go on evolving even if our bodies do not. What is your view on this?

Tony Buzan

My view is that evolution will continue to evolve! If one takes the current scientific view of the history of evolution and intelligence, a fascinating numerical pattern becomes apparent.

The life of the universe is estimated to be 12 billion (12,000,000,000) years. Our planet is 5,000,000,000 years old. Life evolved an incredibly short time after the formation of the planet - 4,500,000,000 years ago; astoundingly, homo sapiens appeared only 3,000,000 years ago. The modern brain, the one with which you are engaged in this conversation, is a mere 50,000 years old - you have the latest model! Civilization (if you believe civilization has ever existed!) has existed for only 10,000 years. 90% of the information ever discovered about the internal workings of the human brain has been discovered in the last 10 years!

That information we know comprises less than 10% of what there is to be known. In addition to this, there is also the fact that in the 1950s, it was estimated that we use only 50% of our brain's capacity. By the 1960s, it had been reduced to 40%; by the 1970s, to 30%; by the 1980s, to between 10% and 20% and in the 1990s, to less than 1%! This looks like a very depressing statistic when in fact it is the opposite; it shows that although our "use" has been constant, our awareness of the potential has grown to gigantic proportions. We realise that the equipment between our ears is many, many, many times greater than we had previously thought.

Coincidentally, we are aware at the turn of the century and millennium that an evolutionary turning-point in the development of intelligence. The instrument (the brain) which for tens of thousands of years had focused on the external environment by splitting the atom, learning to fly, building the world's great edifices, inventing the engine, medicine, the sciences and the arts and exploring to the ends of the universe with both vehicles and eyes that can see 15,000,000,000 light years has suddenly began to focus attention upon itself. The consequences will be inevitably dramatic and amazing and will dwarf anything that the human race has accomplished so far.

We are literally at the beginning of the dawn of intelligence and the evolution of that intelligence will accelerate at a rate far greater than it has ever done before. Taking the inverse pyramid of the previous numbers, the funnel of the final second of this century and millennium will lead us through a great "wormhole" of evolution into an explosive new renaissance; by the size of which, the flames of the Greek and Italian renaissances will look like the flames of a candle compared to the plasma loops of our own sun.

That is why the Brain Trust charity has declared the next century to be the Century of the Brain and the next millennium to be the Millennium of the Mind. Because of this, from midnight on New Century and Millennium Day, we will be welcoming around the world all those who wish to launch with us this major new initiative in the development of and promulgation of information about intelligence. Come and join us!

Book

I'm interested in learning new languages, like Esperanto. What techniques are most useful for that?

Tony Buzan

I'm delighted you asked that question, as the learning of new languages has become a recent passion of mine; in the New Year, I shall be applying all my knowledge of the brain and its workings to the acquisition of Spanish. Current feeling is that once a person is over forty years old, that person's language-learning days are over! It is also generally held that a three-year-old infant can learn a new language at a much more rapid rate than any adult. I'm going to attempt to disprove all this!

My recommended approach, and do please follow me on this web site in the coming year as I conduct this experiment on myself, is the following:

1) Realise that all languages in their spoken form involve people in the use of only between 1,000 to 2,000 words. This is far less than the tens of thousands of words people *think* they have to learn.

2) In view of the above, apply memory systems to the acquisition of this new vocabulary and the task already begins to seem surprisingly easy and simple.

3) Mind Map all new vocabulary words combining these with the images appropriate to them. In this way, you will be linking this language to itself and to its images rather than using the more cumbersome method of linking every foreign word to a word in your own language and then having to translate them into their own semantic and language form.

4) Learn the accent! Most people are afraid to make fools of themself. This is a dangerous impediment to good language learning! When learning a new language, whatever language it is, study the accent and in your own learning accentuate it as a mimic would. This will allow you to become deeply sonically familiar with the music of the new language.

5) Read books in the language. Do not immediately try to read encyclopaedic tomes; buy very young children's books in the new language. These books will contain the basic key words you need and will be liberally sprinkled with images which will again enhance your learning ability. A picture really is worth a thousand words in these instances!

6) I've hinted at before; feel free to make mistakes. Mistakes are fun, natural and a wonderful way to learn anything.

7) Find good teachers in the language and make sure you study with them in a serious and playful way. Very often the best teachers are children under the age of 10!

8) If possible, go to the country where the language is spoken and totally absorb yourself both in the language itself and in all aspects of the culture.

9) Study the way in which a baby learns language. Babies are by far the best language learners on the planet, not because they have better brains than us but because they have not been taught to use their brains in ways that are counter-productive. We have! Therefore, mimic everything you see babies doing in learning languages including happily making mistakes observing intently with all their senses the language figures around them and persisting in the way that great geniuses do.

Book, keep me posted of your own progress and any useful techniques that you develop while pursuing Esperanto or any other language; I will similarly keep you posted of my own Pilgrim's Progress! It is my firm belief that with appropriate techniques applied to the process of learning any language a new language can be acquired comfortably within three months. Let the games begin!

Book

Thank you for an excellent answer again! I have followed many of the pieces of advice in my studies. But how to choose the 1000 words? You already touched that a bit, with children books.

Tony Buzan

In any language, the one thousand words that I mentioned will make up nearly 100% of any standard conversation. Amazingly, the first 100 of that 1000 make up 50% of all conversation. The basic question-words and fundamental pronouns are obviously included. In my book, "Master Your Memory", I give you the first 100. (Those which make up 50% of conversation.) The remaining 900 you can fairly easily make up yourself by scanning common nouns such as house, hat and sky etc., by including primary scientific information, such as the colours of the rainbow, by getting down such basics as numbers, days of the week and months of the year and by including the major foods that are important to you.

Another additional and delightful piece of information is the fact that many European languages one could easily argue, are in fact not different languages at all but pretty much the same language spoken with a different accent. For example, in English, French, Spanish and German, well over 200 of the basic 1,000 words are virtually identical and simply pronounced differently. One easy example of this is the word "excellent"; all the modern computer and electronic vocabularies which are global and are incorporated into the language with the particular accent of that particular language.

In fact, I am getting so encouraged by my own answers that I think I may have to reduce that period of learning a new language from three months to two!

Book

Thanks for the encouragment! We are emphasizing the human brain here. What value has a computer in enhancing the learning process?

Tony Buzan

Consider the computer to be like a loved pet. In comparison to the human brain, the following comparison can be made: if we take the world's most powerful computer and say, for the purposes of the metaphor, that its power is represented by a normal house, what size building would we need to construct in order to compare the capacity of that most powerful computer to the capacity of the human brain? Would it be a doll's house? A single room? A house the same size as the computer house, or something bigger? In fact, it would be a skyscraper ten blocks square at the base and reaching to the moon!

So when learning a new language, primarily use your own super bio-computer and its massive powers to take in information, store it, retrieve it, use it and create from it. Use the computer and the Web to research and store data about the language itself and about the culture from which that language emerges. Also use the computer as a testing agent, much like a good coach. You can devise your own memory and other games to your own satisfaction.

MSO_Admin

A bit of a technical glitch there. Are we all back and functioning?

Book

You have coached the British Chess Team. How have people who have used their 'own' tehcniques to reach Grand Master level been able to benefit from new techniques, and how have they accepted them?

Tony Buzan

The popular conception of mind sports, especially chess, is that they are entirely left-brained pursuits involving the use of logic, linear thinking, logical thinking and numerical analysis. Indeed, this belief is so pervasive that when Raymond Keene was in school and was already manifesting a prodigious chess talent that he would necessarily be top of the class in mathematics and physics and not so skilled in the other subjects. In fact, exactly the opposite was true - Ray being top in all other subjects and not, at that stage of his life, particularly inspired by mathematics and physics.

The truth, of course, is that chess and all other mind sports are "whole-brain" activities involving, as they must, logic and numerical and calculative thinking and also the "right-brain activities" of imagination, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness etc. In addition to these necessary skills, it is also important for the mind sports player to realise that as his or her brain gets older it will get better if it is trained appropriately and only worse if it is trained inappropriately. Another brain principle I emphasise when coaching chess players is that of persistence and the ability to learn from mistakes. All great champions exhibited phenomenal "stickability" and always moved on from lost or ruined games.

Yet another point to emphasise is that the Mind Sports Olympiad motto "mens sana in corpore sano" - a healthy mind in a healthy body, or a healthy body in a healthy mind. Garry Kasparov, the World Chess Champion, realised this early in his career and as a result, when preparing for a World Championship match, devotes nearly as much attention to his physical health as to his mental preparation. The six-times World Memory Champion, Dominic O'Brien, trains physically for two hours a day before any major memory championship.

Ron King, the world draughts champion, is a superb athlete and runs ultra-marathons plays marathon tennis and table-tennis matches and deep-sea dives, all for the purpose of honing his mental sharpness. He claims that it is his supreme physical fitness that is a primary cause of his dominance in the field. The reason why physical fitness helps so much in mental sport is that it produces one pint more of blood in the body and that each pint of blood carries a far greater volume of oxygen to the brain than does unfit blood. All the mental athletes I have coached found that the points I have mentioned in this answer have been of great benefit to them.

Expanding your question a little, the same has been true in reverse; the physcial athletes I have trained have found that mental training, including mind sports, helps in their physical performance. It is interesting that tonight Lennox Lewis easily won the BBC Sportsman of the Year award. Lennox is renowned for his playing of chess as a method for helping him strengthen his strategic thinking capabilities for his next championship bout. He credits chess for enabling him to be a far better thinker than other boxers and in the ring to literally outthink them in the heat of combat.

MArkL

How do you explain idiot savants - and is Marilyn vos Savant one of them! :-)

Tony Buzan

A clever question! Idiot savants are those people who have one extraordinary ability with an apparent lack of ability in other areas. Two of the most common examples of this are in specific memory and in calculation. One of the most famous neo-idiot savants was the Russian Shereshevsky, known as "S", who was able to remember literally anything that he had seen or heard, but was not considered a success in other areas.

From my own study of this area, I would suggest that psychology has often misunderstood the idiot savant and because of their extraordinary capacity in the known area has tended to let their amazement at this specific "shining star" blind them to other skills that the idiot savant actually has. Shereshevsky, for example, was actually able to use the phenomenal powers that drove his memory to solve very complex essential problems simply by visualising them. He was also an extremely interesting conversationalist and visionary.

Vos Savant is not an idiot savant! She simply has an unfortunate name in the context of her own particular skill, which is IQ. Marilyn took an IQ test at a very early age, where distortion of the scores is much more common, and emerged with an IQ of over 200 one of the highest ever recorded. She is now a journalist and agony aunt in American newspapers and is, in addition to all this, an attractive individual with a witty and charming personality.

Book

Was he the same Shereshevsky who wrote chess endgame books?

Tony Buzan

No. I didn't know there was a Shereshevsky who wrote chess endgame books and wonder whether Book is referring to Reshevsky? Let me know, Book!

Book

M.I. Sheresevsky.

Tony Buzan

Just to check on that, Reshevsky was the American chess champion.

Book

He is not the same as S. Reshevsky.

Tony Buzan

I do not know that author and will refer the question to Grandmaster Raymond Keene, who definitely will know. Perhaps they are related!

Book

How much have idiot savants been useful in developing mental mapping and other similar theories?

Tony Buzan

Idiot savants have helped enormously in our understanding of the potential of the human brain and they have shown that in certain areas such as memory the brain has a vast, approaching infinite, potential. The work that Professor Alexander Luria did with Shereshevsky was part of the background work that helped me realise the potency of mnemonic and memory techniques and the incredible significance of imagination and association in all learning, thinking, memory and creative skills.

It was imagination and association that formed the basic foundation stones of Mind Mapping theory. The Mind Map can be seen, from one perspective, to be an associative network of multi-sensory images including words. It is my recommendation that everyone in the room studies all "brain stories" as there are an increasing number reported in the popular press these days - that is, well over 10,000,000 so far this year (!) - and each one of them tends to contain at least one gem that can be applied to the brain of the individual who is reading the story.

MSO_Admin

I believe before the server crashed I started to ask if either aging or alcohol killed brain cells?

Tony Buzan

The popular assumption is that both do! The average estimate of the number of brain cells lost per day is between 10,000 and 1,000,000 and the number lost per intake of alcoholic beverage similarly 10,000 to 1,000,000. I have three pieces of good news for you!

First, the scientific community is increasingly reporting evidence to the effect that continuing mental activity - in other words, an active mental life - especially mental activity which includes mind sports, produces an aging brain that both retains all its brain cells and increases the interconnectivity between those cells.

Second, it now appears that individual brain cells when alcohol is deluging the brain, act very much like attacked octopuses and "draw in". In the cases of severely alcoholic individuals who have been brain scanned with "small brains" at the height of their addiction, later scans, after rehabilitation, show their brains back to normal size. It appears therefore that even in severe cases the brain survives. Normal intake of alcohol apparently kills no brain cells. It just feels the morning after as if you've lost a few hundred million!

Third, and this is revolutionary news, recent research has confirmed the destruction of another global misconception, that the human brain cannot generate new brain cells. The new evidence suggests not only that it can but that it does and does so every day of your life. Floreant dentriti! (May your brain cells flourish!)

Book

What is your favourite pastime?

Tony Buzan

Many! Mind sports are, obviously, one of my favourites. I am particularly passionate about chess, Go and the newly-discovered Arabian game of Dama / Sheikh. I also enjoy puzzles and any of the mental skills games such as memory, creative thinking, IQ, speed reading and of course mind mapping. In the physical field, my "sport hobbies" include competitive sculling/rowing, the Japanese martial arts of karate and aikido, long-distance ocean swimming, running/walking, general gymnasium workouts and dancing.

My cultural interests include theatre, music, art, and reading. In this field I am particularly involved in my own personal writing, both of fiction and poetry, and am in the early stages of my musical composing career! One of my favourite of all activities is being with my close friends. Brain-to-brain communication, to me, is ecstasy!

Book

Well that's impressive! Do you think that it is important to let the brains take a rest like in the physical athlete's world to reach for better results?

Tony Buzan

Absolutely! Although the brain has an infinite capacity to learn, remember and create it is, in the final equation, a physical organ. Astoundingly, even when it is at rest, it is working in "another gear". Even when you are in deep sleep, your brain is a minimum 80% fully active. To approach this question from another angle, consider, Book, where you are when you come up with those wonderful bursts of creative ideas and retrieved memories. Most people report that they are in the bath, in the shower, on the loo, in bed, long-distance driving, long-distance ski-ing, running or swimming, or wandering around in nature.

If you examine what all those situations have in common, you will realise that in each case the individual is in some way alone and relaxed - as top athletes put it, "in the zone". It is during rest that the brain slips into another "lower" and gigantic gear, often working out with ease the answers to questions that the normally-conscious brain was unable to fathom. One comes up with the interesting conclusion that when "you" are resting, your brain is actually working harder!

And speaking of rest, it is probably time for many of us to slip into the world of dreams - another realm where the brain works with amazing skill and vibrancy, producing masterpieces which, if they could immediately be translated to the screen, would out-Oscar Spielberg, Kubrick, Kurasawa, Hitchcock and all! Thank you all for a delightful chat and may I wish you in momentary conclusion a most wonderful Century of the Brain and a Millennium of the Mind. Floreant Dentriti! Tony Buzan.

MSO_Admin

Thank you all for your questions, your patience, and your time. Special thanks to Mr. Tony Buzan for your answers and your time. A very interesting and encouraging time. Don't forget to check back for future chats.

Tony Buzan

Thank you! I will be back in the early part of next year!

MSO_Admin

You are more than welcome any time. With that I must say thanks again to all of you. This chat is pretty much done. Good bye all.

=================================================

Only 50% of transplanted trees make it

Nepean Sea Rd’s Displaced Gentle Giants Are Struggling To Survive

Mumbai: Nearly 50% of the transplanted trees from Nepean Sea Road have died. The trees were removed as part of a road-widening exercise. In all, 74 trees were transplanted and 25 cut to widen the existing road from 60 ft to 90 ft.
“Proximity to the sea, high salt content and water-logging have resulted in a number of trees dying,’’ said Amol Vasaikar, assistant horticulturist, D-Ward (Malabar Hill).
Civic officials had claimed that a good monsoon would ensure at least a 70% survival rate but now they have had to scale down their optimism.
It was in March this year that the BMC, after 40 years and three earlier attempts, finally managed to get some high-profile residents of the area to give up a portion of their land to widen the road. But several others protested the cutting and transplantation of the trees to widen the road. Residents had even held impromptu “chipko’’ agitations to stop the treefelling. The BMC finally managed to complete the road-widening.
The horticulture department has been watering the transplanted trees daily. They even provided the roots with hormonal treatment. Former additional solicitor general Soli Sorabjee’s family had asked to be given the three Palm trees and one Frangipani standing on their land while the Gamadias transplanted their over 100-year-old Frangipani on their property itself. Another nine Palm trees were sent to the Godrej and Boyce company campus.
“All our trees have survived,’’ said B N Gamadia. Gamadia dismissed the BMC’s claims of a 50% survival rate, saying it was approximately 15%.
The civic body had transplanted some of the remaining trees at the Banganga pumping station and at the MSRDC compound, near Priyadarshini Park.
“The Canonball tree that we transplanted to the August Kranti Maidan is doing well. So is the Peepal tree at the MSRDC compound,’’ said Vasaikar. But some of the Coconut trees at the Banganga pumping station lost their canopy because of the high waves.
Bittu Sahgal, environmentalist and a resident of Nepean Sea Road, said the cutting and transplantation of trees had not solved the traffic problem in the area.