From Coding Software to Selling PaniPuri: Prashant Kulkarni’s inspiring “Chatar Patar” Story

Our startup story today of Chatar Patar is an ambitious venture which plans to brand a product that India has been consuming since aeons, but never had a single brand name attached to it. When Prashant Kulkarni was working at Infosys, he ate roadside pani-puri and fell prey to food-poisoning and could not eat his favorite fast-food, for almost four months. This, he believes, is a very long time for any pani-puri aficionado. This incident spurred Prashant to research about pani-puri offerings in the country and he discovered there was no brand that was synonmous with the product. Prashant has now launched ‘Gapagap’, India’s first pani-puri brand.

Prashant Kulkarni realized very early on that taking up a job was not his cup of tea and he set out to “create his own universe” in October 2011. A strong believer in entrepreneurship, Prashant got his million dollar idea unfortunately

Prashant Kulkarni

 through the bad experience. Today along with his team members, Aarti Sirsat and Pallavi Kulkarni, he manages the Gapagap brand and other products like 80 types of bhel, 27 types of chaats, pohas, etc, under his venture Chatar Patar. Chatar Patar sells pani-puris in 112 different flavors. Some of the famous items include Maggi Gapagap: a combination of various tastes with the regular Maggi, Masala Fries: Indian street version of French fries, Chaatizza: Chaat+Pizza, Idli fries, idli chaat, and khakhra chat. Since launch, Chatar Patar has grown rapidly. It has now, tied-up with Big Bazaar shops across states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, and has franchisees across these regions. Chatar Patar’s latest outlet opened has opened in Ahmedabad.

Chatar Patar Bhel

But this was not as easy as it sounds. Prashant is still grappling with problems of logistics and supply chain that can smoothen transfers of goods like panipuri masala, the ingredients of bhel, from Indore to various cities. He has tried a couple of options but could not find the right partner who suits his needs. And who can work within the budgets that a startup can afford.

Chatar Patar Outlet

Talking about his ambition, Prashant says, “We are a bunch of dreamers, we want to make Chatar Patar to be an international brand. After penetrating the Indian market, we would love to go abroad.” He has already received some enquiries from Australia and London, but has put them on hold for some time so that he can strengthen his foothold in India before he goes abroad. And Prashant’s dreams are not unfounded.The quick service restaurant(QSR)segment is growing rapidly in India. As per latest reports, Indian QSR industry is currently pegged at $1.36 billion in 2011, growing at a CAGR of 35% and pegged to reach $4.5 billion by 2015. Lifestyle changes couple with increase in spending power has resulted in boom in this market.

Chatar Patar might appear a tad different from other ventures, but, Prashant comes from a family of businessmen. His family business is to manufacture tubes for automobiles. After his MBA, when Prashant planned to start Chatar Patar, people close to him thought he was out of his mind, but he managed to overcome all the hurdles and today has a successful venture running. But he has managed to silence nay-sayers and has sold over 150,000 pani-puris to date. So next time you want to eat pani-puris that don’t make you sick, check out a Chatar Patar outlet near you.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/02/from-coding-software-to-selling-panipuri-prashant-kulkarnis-inspiring-chatar-patar-story/

Two Ph.D drop outs fighting it out to make a killer product aiming for the moonshot

A few months ago, we had written about Memetic Lab’s Barometer which is a real time infographicfor top Indian brands. A fascinating tool in itself, I didn’t know much about about the people behind it at that time. But now, almost 8 months later, they’ve launched their first product for the market, Airwoot which is ready to come out of beta. I got in touch with them to know about the developments and what unearthed, was much more than just a product.

Prabhat Saraswat, Saurabh Arora

Saurabh

Saurabh Arora and Prabhat Saraswat are the folks behind Airwoot. The year was 2008 and Technical University of Denmark, the place. Two young men, Saurabh and Prabhat were pursuing their masters and PhD., exposing themselves to a lot of new perspectives. Here they met and became friends and found out that they shared some common interests. “We discovered art, music and much more importantly- the power of ideas, while we were studying here,” says Saurabh.

Prabhat

After the course, Prabhat continued his doctorate in Denmark while Saurabh went on to pursue his doctorate in cloud computing architectures, at Hasso-Plattner Institute in Berlin. They were in touch on and off, but in a strange turn of events, both dropped out of their PhD’s and returned to India.

It was 2011 by now and Saurabh was working for a digital media company (Fluid Digital) while Prabhat was backpacking all over India. Once again by chance they met each other and attended a few hackathons from November 2011 to February 2012. Brain jamming together, they set up Memetic Labs 

where they implemented a couple of ideas:

1) An android app which can listen to any live music and generate guitar tablatures

2) A social reading app which finds out who is reading what by listening to public twitter feeds

And then the idea evolved…

While playing around, the duo started algorithmically mining consumer buying intentions from Twitter — to predict the next money spent. “While, looking at the data, we realized more consumers were in fact complaining about the product than accepting and endorsing the product,” says Saurabh. They started tracking 35 most active international brands on Twitter, as a result of which Barometer (barometer.airwoot.com) was born.

Barometer is a realtime infographic to gauge a brand’s social customer care practices. Barometer listens to conversations between users and brands as they happen on Twitter and visualizes them in realtime. “We wanted to spread awareness of social customer care as a practice, that brands should follow as a defined business process,” says Saurabh about Barometer. This was also their platform for the launch of Airwoot — a social customer support helpdesk.

About Airwoot

Here’s what they’d write on the ‘About Us’ page: Airwoot is a New Delhi based social media listening and analytics startup that helps businesses to engage with their customers on social media and provide real-time customer support.

For the novice, Airwoot is for brands who’re having a tough time listening to what users are throwing at them on social media. There are appreciations, complains, rants, SOS calls by thousands of social media citizens! Manual sieving is not possible and this is where Airwoot intends to help by providing the brand with support so that it can prioritize and take the necessary action in real time.

Currently piloting with some of the top brands in India, they plan to come out of beta by late April. A knowledge-based product with the vision to change how customer support is done, the duo is aiming for a moonshot – a 10x gain.

The Fight

Aiming for the moonshot is all hunky dory but who’s paying their bills for the rocket fuel? “Raising funds is one of the most challenging parts to break into the entrepreneurial world. It is hard and there is no question about it,” shares Saurabh. Surviving on a shoestring budget, the duo hasn’t got it all on a plate. Looking for funding, they tried going the accelerator way and found home with The Morpheus – a Chandigarh based accelerator founded by husband-wife, Sameer and Nandini.The Morpheus is in it’s 9th batch currently and has more than 70 companies in their portfolio.

“We (At Morpheus) love the passion and craziness with which these guys have been working towards building a product that we believe will change the way brands interact with their customers, build public opinion about their brand or increase revenues for themselves,” says Nandini.

The Morpheus had put in Rs 5 lakhs which has given them more time to develop the product and undergo the beta test. Now, they’re in talks with investors to scale up the product and team. So far, it’s only been Saurabh and Prabhat who’ve been running the show along with a developer they hired.

So, will it be all worth the effort?

Going by the indications, social media is here to stay and the biggest brands have realized the potential social media holds. If you give them a product that’ll let them manage their social media real time, they’ll surely be interested. Airwoot hasn’t finalized the pricing as yet but it’ll be a SaaS product that can be bought as a package. For instance, a brand can buy a package that can be used by 4-5 agents for around $400 per month.

Brands have shown interest in the product and if Airwoot is able to tap the right channels, there is surely scope to achieve the moonshot. The journey might still have more obstacles but customer support is surely a problem that requires better solutions and with a passionate team shaping the company, Airwoot has a better chance at shooting for the stars.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/04/two-ph-d-drop-outs-fighting-it-out-to-make-a-killer-product-aiming-for-the-moonshot/

Oravel founder Ritesh Agarwal selected for the final round of “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellowship

19 year old Ritesh Agarwal has quite a story. Internet and technology doesn’t care for age and this youngster having found a penchant for how the web works, started working very early in his life, at a tender age of 13. And by 17, he had started his first company- Oravel. Oravel started as an Airbnb clone but the model has undergone a twist and post receiving a seed round from Venture Nursery, the company will be out with its new model soon.

This youngster has been selected for the “20 under 20” Thiel Fellowship which makes him one of the very few Indians to have been shortlisted. Currently amongst the top 1% of the candidates that applied, Ritesh will be making his journey to the States for a 20 day stint post which he’d come to know whether he has been selected amongst the 20.

The Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program wherein fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors and scientists (this includes the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Elon Musk and obviously Peter Thiel).

The Fellowship was established by venture capitalist Peter Thiel to give people under age 20 an alternative to college for pursuing innovative ideas in science and business. In majority of cases this means dropping out of school but there are bigger things in store for these candidates. Ritesh went to college for a very short duration and never turned back; to be precise, he attended college for 2 days.

Ritesh has been selected after a rigorous process of 4 rounds – first screening, 2 rounds of applications, communications with the Foundation Jury and a long interview with a Thiel Foundation Mentor from a senior Management at Facebook.

As a company, Oravel has grown by leaps and currently lists 3,500+ Places on its marketplace from across the country. The site is currently under maintenance but will be launching around the 15thof April with an added inventory model and more.

Ritesh will be leaving for the US for a Thiel Foundation sponsored trip on the 10th of April’13 for a 3 week period which will help Oravel to make a lot more headway.

Read more about the Theil Fellowship and follow Student Story to keep up with all that is happening in the student entrepreneurship space in India.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/04/oravel-founder-ritesh-agarwal-selected-for-the-final-round-of-20-under-20-thiel-fellowship/

How does Failure Teaches Us To Win Battles of Life

teachings from failures are never forgoten and pays back in life

Failure as we call it, is nothing but the stepping stones to Success.

Converting the failures in your favor is something that if learned can make you successful in your life. Yes the real success is not the money or the frame or the last thing you want to do, it is the knowledge that you have after you have faced the failure.

Many people have the belief that a person who failed in his carrier is useless and cannot accomplish his goals. But they forget that now that very person knows that how can you avoid failing next time. He can teach a new person how to succeed in one attempt. While the person who didn’t fail have only limited knowledge since he didn’t worked the second time on the same subject.

Every person has to taste the harsh failure once in his life. It is upon him how he looks towards his goals and ambitions after that failure. He may choose to change the aim, may get depressed and may lose hope, or he may fight back with more efforts and knowledge. Failure is a way life teaches us the various important lessons that will help you survive in the near future when the others won’t be able to. There is always a reason why you fail. Find out that reason and nobody can stop you from winning the next time. No one is perfect so some fails at early stages while some at the later. It is fine to fail early and try harder to get success the next time, but if fails on a later stage it is difficult to recover. So never get disappointed and depressed with the fact that you failed. Start it over again with more thrust and energy and let the success reach you.

courage to start again is what you need to get success

The taste of success is sweeter when it is achieved after failure. The struggle you do to reach your goal and achieve the very prize you wanted is something that doubles your celebrations.

If the success was achieved in one go then surely the aim was not the correct aim. Yes it means you are meant for something bigger than this.

Imagine a life without failure. You asked for something and you got it in first attempt. Would you value such a possession? Would you celebrate it? NO because you knew you will achieve it. There is no point celebrating it. Moreover we value those things which are achieved with great difficulty and hard work.

Never bounce too much on success and never get too depressed with failure. With time everything changes. It is just a matter of time that you are on the other side of the bridge.

At some point of time in life you will realize that the failure that happened with you was for a reason and that very reason make you alive today.

Once failure has hit you hard, you can then make more firm decisions and lead a life more confidently because you know that at any moment of life you can start your carrier again and nothing can stop you since you have already tasted the failure and you know your week points which you won’t repeat again.

Failures shape you in some way or the other. Polishing your skills make you better and improves your intelligence.

Face your failures. Don’t try to run away from it. People start smoking, alcohol and many other addictions that soon destroy their entire life. Everyone goes through this phase of depression at some point of time in his life. Rather than going into depression for a long time start chasing your dreams again, even if you fail the first time. The value of diamond increases when it is better polished. Increase your value the same way.

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/3663/how-does-failure-teaches-us-to-win-battles-of-life/#.Vq7X6tJ97IU

“Brain-to-Brain connection in Indian city of Kerala” The Future of Telepathy is no more a science fiction

It seems like we are soon going to talk via brain. Yes its true and believe it or not but having a live example tells us that future of telepathy is near . Experimentation has already begun on the one and only working model of the system that allows humans at long distances to share there thoughts via brain waves or in simple words “Telepathy” .

just in case if you don’t know what is telepathy :- Telepathy is one of the most beautiful Psychic Powers. It is known as mind to mind communication, (Tele means- distance and pathy means- feelings) which is feelings exchanging between two minds and in an advanced stage this can be done between multiple minds.

There were no scientific evidence that telepathy is a real phenomenon. Many studies seeking to detect, understand, and utilize telepathy have been carried out, but no replicable results from well-controlled experiments existed till today , but now this is not the case . we have actually made this a real phenomenon.

Nearly 5,000 miles away, at a research facility in the Indian city of Kerala, a young Spanish man called Dr Alejandro Riera pulled on a tightly fitting hat, placed a laptop computer on a white table, and also began to think.

Over the course of the next hour, on March 28 this year, the 51-year-old Dr Berg and his faraway counterpart would attempt something that had only previously occurred in the exotic realms of science fiction.

In simple terms, means they carried out the first scientifically documented telepathic conversation in human history.

The researcher, attached to a brain-computer interface (BCI) in India, successfully sent words into the brain of another researcher in France, who was wearing a computer-to-brain interface (CBI). In short, the researchers have created a device that enables telepathy. In the future, rather than vocalizing speech — or vainly attempting to vocalize your emotions — your friend/lover/family member might just pluck those words and thoughts right out of your head.

Last year, Harvard scientists made a rat’s tail twitch when its brain was connected electronically to a man who thought about the tail twitching. In August, wonks at the University of Washington executed a human brain-to-brain communication when a man moved another man’s hand by thinking about it.

A way from the field of medicine, soldiers may one day be able to use telepathy to speak across a noisy battlefield, without having to rely on radio or satellite equipment that could break, or be intercepted by their enemies. Families could use it to have conversations without needing a telephone.

How the brain-to-brain system works

On the BCI side of things, the researchers used a fairly standard EEG (electroencephalogram) from Neuroelectrics. For the CBI, which requires a more involved setup, a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) rig was used. TMS is somewhat similar to TDCS, in that it can stimulate regions of neurons in your brain — but instead of electrical current, it uses magnetism. The important thing is that TMS is non-invasive — it can stimulate your brain (and thus cause you to think or feel a certain way) without having to actually cut into your brain and use some electrodes (see: deep brain stimulation).

The BCI reads the sender’s thoughts — in this case, the sender thinks about moving his or her hands or feet. Thinking about feet is equivalent to binary 0, while hands is binary 1. With a little time/effort, whole words can be encoded as a stream of ones and zeroes. These encoded words are then transmitted (via the internet or some other network) to the recipient, who is wearing a TMS. The TMS is focused on on the recipient’s visual cortex. When the TMS receives a “1″ from the sender, it stimulates a region in the visual cortex that produces a phosphene — the phenomenon whereby you see flashes of light, without light actually hitting your retina (when you rub your eyes, for example). The recipient “sees” these phosphenes at the bottom of their visual field. By decoding the flashes — phosphene flash = 1, no phosphene = 0 — the recipient can “read” the word being sent.

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/3319/brain-to-brain-connection-the-future-of-telepathy-is-no-more-a-science-fiction/#.Vqw3DNJ97IU

Records with Rubik’s cube in 40 years & learn to solve Rubik cube

The Amazing Rubik Cube

Google Celebrated the 40th Birthday of Rubik cube with a Doodle . When a visitor clicks on the logo, the Rubik’s Cube will spin and grow into an interactive version of the 3-D puzzle. Players click the mouse to twist horizontally, while clicking and dragging down twists vertically.

The rubik cube is not at all easy to solve unless you have great practice on it . It is a good brain exercise and helps in increasing IQ and Memory.

What makes its success all the remarkable is that it did not start out as a toy. The Rubik’s cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian architect, who wanted a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry. You can always learn few algorithms and methods to help you solve rubik cube . Click here to learn how to solve Rubik cube :- Learn to solve Rubik cube

You can also try here :- Methods to solve Rubik cube .

There are only a handful of toys that last more than a generation. But the Rubik’s cube, which celebrates its 40th birthday (and features on Google with a Doodle), now joins the likes of Barbie, Play-Doh, Lego and the Slinky, as one of the great survivors in the toy cupboard.

After designing the “magic cube” as he called it (twice the weight of the current toy), he realised he could not actually solve the puzzle. The more he moved the coloured squares, the more mixed up they became. “It was a code I myself had invented!” he wrote. “Yet I could not read it.”

The cube, made up of nine coloured squares on each side, can be rearranged in 43 quintillion different ways. That is 43,000,000,000,000,000,000.

After a month, and using a method of rearranging the corners of each side first, he finally solved the puzzle.

Being from Hungary, then behind the Iron Curtain, it meant that Rubik took a few years to market the cube as a toy. It was shown at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1979 (a toy fair which has seen many great toys be launched, such as Playmobil in 1974), and was spotted as a potential hit. It was licensed to the Ideal Toy Corp in 1980 and, by January 2009, more than 350 million units had been sold worldwide, making it the biggest-selling toy of all time.

Know it here :-

One in seven people have played with a Rubik’s Cube.

An estimated 350 million cubes have sold to date.

It was little known until 1980 when it got a global release.

Mr. Rubik once said, “If you are curious, you will find the puzzles around you. If you are determined, you will solve them.”

Its heyday was in the early 1980s – it won Toy of the Year in the UK in both 1980 and 1981 – even though the great majority of children could not solve the cube and resorted to cheating by peeling off the coloured stickers.

It then fell from fashion, but never completely disappeared, thanks in part to “speed cubing” competitions, where people tried to solve the cube as quickly as possible. The current world record is held by Mats Valk, a Dutch teenager, who managed to solve it in 5.55 seconds.

Robots, however, been able to solve the Rubik’s cube even more quickly. The Cubestormer III robot built from Lego kits and powered by a Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone solved it in 3.25 seconds in March this year.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, was once asked whether he had a hidden talent. He answered: “I can do a Rubik’s cube in one minute and 30 seconds.”

Some Records with Rubik’s cube

Single time: The current world record for single time on a 3×3×3 Rubik’s Cube was set by Mats Valk of the Netherlands in March 2013 with a time of 5.55 seconds at the Zonhoven Open in Belgium.

blindfold, fastest time (including memorising): 23.80 seconds, Marcin Zalewski (Poland) at the Polish Nationals 2013 . The record for blind solving is held by Marcin Zalewski of Poland, who solved a cube blindfolded in 23.80 seconds (including memorization) at the Polish Nationals in 2013

A time of 9.03 seconds was made by Feliks Zemdegs at the Lifestyle Seasons Summer 2014. Antoine Cantin, from Clarence-Rockland, ON averaged 12.56 seconds over five cubes at the Toronto Open Spring 2014

The best known algorithm for solving the cube needs only 20 face turns.

The youngest person who solved a Rubik’s Cube in a competition was Ruxin Liu (China), who was 3 years 118 days old when she solved the cube in 1:39.33 at the Weifang Open on 14 April 2013

The smallest working Rubik’s Cube is 8 mm wide. It was created using a 3D-printer by Evgeniy Grigeriev (Russia).

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/3249/records-with-rubiks-cube-in-40-years/#.VqrjV5p97IU

Ultimate Facts about 3D Printing, Things You Didn’t Know

The future is coming, and it’s going to be manufactured in a whole new way.

3D printing is revolutionizing manufacturing, so GE decided to give it its own holiday: 3D Printing Day. They’re celebrating by designing and 3D-printing holiday gifts for their fans all day on December 3. After all, even elves deserve a break for the holidays, right?

But what exactly are 3D-printed things made of, and how will the process influence the way manufacturers work? Take a look at seven things you probably didn’t know about 3D printing, and join the 3D Printing Day celebration with the hashtag #3DPrintMyGift.

1. 3D Printing Started With Lasers

The early days of 3D printing were the 1980s, when computers would trace a pattern that was submerged in a liquid polymer. The traced pattern hardened into a layer, thanks to the laser, and that was how you built an object out of plastic. The term “stereolithography” refers to creating 3D plastic objects through this layering, or “additive,” technique.

2. Modern 3D Printers Work Like Your Inkjet

There have been a number of incarnations between the days of stereolithography and now, but in 2013 a newer method of 3D printing is called material extrusion. By this method, a printer builds up an object out of matter that is pushed from a mechanical head, in some ways just like your inkjet produces text on a page by extruding ink onto paper.

3. You Can 3D Print Almost Anything (Even Chocolate!)

3D printing can now create things out of concrete, synthetic stone, ceramics, even chocolate and cheese. Some 3D printers are pushing the envelope with substances such as metal — laying down fine layers of stainless steel or aluminum, and then using a laser or an electron beam to “glue” them together. “We are already seeing custom body implants and ready-to-wearfashion and housewares,” Lewis says. “Add to that 3D-printed organs, bone scaffolding and the next generation of jet engines. We believe that the barrier to what 3D printing will do is generally imposed by the limits of our imaginations.”

4. 3D Printing Means Less Waste in Production

In the past, to make something, you drilled, cut, and filed away what you needed from a quantity of base material. That meant a heap of leftover scrap material. With 3D printing, it’s an additive process: You build up an object from the base material. Think about the implications. The factory buyer should see a difference in the amount of waste associated with each manufactured part.

5. Manufacturing Risks Less With 3D Printing

With 3D printing, the whole equation of scale changes. Instead of attaching a different mold to every machine for every object, the 3D printer switches what it makes, in most cases, by dint of what the computer is telling its extrusion head to do. And so, one no longer has to make thousands of a product to reap the benefits of setting up a facility to make the piece. Manufacturing becomes more nimble and less financially risky.

6. Everybody Gets What They Want

A car manufacturer could create even the most niche component for a dash or cabin without having to justify the part by the volume of orders. A home goods maker could craft offerings to particular regions, climates, and lifestyles without having to convince their board or partners that millions of buyers are ready to pay. “More and more we want to pick products that speak to us as individuals, and to stay relevant more and more companies are looking to break out with custom or personalized products that they create or can be co-created with the consumer,” Lewis says.

7. 3D Printing Could Mean Stronger Local Business Models

Manufacturing, says Lewis, could become a regionally focused idea because of 3D printing. “The next 10 years are going to be about localized actions, including manufacturing,” she says. “While this trend will not totally eliminate manufacturing as we know it, it will disrupt and transform the manufacturing paradigm and allow us to selectively re-localize and enable us to manufacture the future.”

All of this without a mention of what home 3D printing might do for individuals so inclined. One day, the discussion may not be about where our printed products were manufactured; the question will be, in which room of our house did we download and create the things we want?

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/457/3d-printing-things-you-didnt-know/#.VqmRipp97IU

Male and Female differs in their Hard wiring Brain Structures

There is biology behind the gender gap, a study suggests. Male brains, above, show more connections within hemispheres, in blue, while inter-hemisphere connections, in orange, were more prevalent among females, below in the picture above.

A map of the human brain may in fact be a two-volume edition, divided by gender, according to a new study that found significant differences between how the male and female brains are hard-wired.

Males tended to have have stronger front-to-back circuits and links between perception and action, while women had stronger left-to-right links between reasoning and intuition, according to University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine researchers who imaged the brains of 949 adolescents and young adults.

hard wire differences

Their maps of the brain’s so-called connectome, published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, matched observed behavioral differences between the sexes. Women did better at tests of attention, word and face memory and cognition. Men did better on spatial processing, motor skills and sensorimotor speed.

The results lend weight to growing evidence that humans have formed strong adaptive complementarity, suggesting that biological evolution predisposes the species to divide gender roles. That implication is sure to fuel debate over the roles of nature versus nurture and the interplay of function and structure within the human brain. But they also could inform treatment of neurological disorders known to vary by age and sex, such as autism and schizophrenia.

“There is biology to some of the behavior we see among men and women,” said Ragini Verma, a University of Pennsylvania biomedical imaging analyst and lead author of the study.

“In the population, men have stronger front-back connectivity, and women have inter-hemispheric or left-right connectivity more than the men. It’s not that one or the other gender lacks the connectivity altogether, it’s just that one is stronger than the other,” Verma said.

That means men may be quicker on the perception-action path, while women better integrate the analytic side of the brain with the intuitive and social side.

“So, if there was a task that involved logical and intuitive thinking, the study says that women are predisposed, or have stronger connectivity as a population, so they should be better at it,” Verma said.

“For men, it says they are very heavily connected in the cerebellum, which is an area that controls the motor skills. And they are connected front to back. The back side of the brain is the area by which you perceive things, and the front part of the brain interprets it and makes you perform an action. So if you had a task like skiing or learning a new sport, if you had stronger front-back connectivity and a very strong cerebellum connectivity, you would be better at it.”

Researchers used diffusion tensor imaging, a tool that can indirectly outline the path of myelinated axons, the “wire” section of neurons that facilitate long-range conduction of electrochemical signals and are part of the brain’s white matter. They looked at the brains of 428 men and 521 women, ages 8-22, who are part of a larger, long-term study known as the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, conducted with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

In the upper parts of the brain, the men had greater connectivity within hemispheres, while women had greater connection between sides, the study found. Women also tended to have more connections among smaller-scale “modules,” while men had stronger connections within those subregions.

In the lower part of the brain, the cerebellum, men had stronger connections between hemispheres, giving them a possible edge at translating perception to motor skills. Women had more interconnections across the frontal lobes, the study found.

The differences in the connectome have come to be called the hunter versus gatherer divide by two of the study’s main authors, the husband-wife team of Raquel and Ruben Gur. And the data jibe with findings from a 2011 UCLA study of twins that found women had stronger inter-hemispheric connections in several subregions of the frontal cortex.

“They confirm a couple of our findings, which is very exciting,” said Neda Jahanshad, lead author of the UCLA study, who is now working at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. “This is interesting on a variety of levels because there have been sex differences noted among those with autism, for example.”

Men outnumber women by a 4-1 proporton among those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

Although such sex differences are important to the study, the Philadelphia cohort, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, was aimed predominantly at studying how brain maturation affects psychiatric disease.

By age, differences between male and female brains become sharp around adolescence but abated somewhat in young adulthood, the study found.

Researchers cautioned that the imagery is an indirect measure of axons, not a cell-by-cell census and map. And the results are strictly statistical averages, although in a very large sample.

Individuals can vary widely by gender, something that Verma said she knows well. She earned several advanced analytical math degrees, a heavily left-brained accomplishment. But she has a rough time navigating by cardinal directions, relying instead on memory and landmarks.

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/121/strong-brain-hard-wire-differences-between-male-and-female-study-suggests/#.Vqg9jpp97IU

Harvests Light From The Sun,Moon and Clouds!

In 2012, Inhabitat featured an invention that promised to turn the world of solar power generation upside down. Rawlemon‘s spherical solar energy-generating globe looked a lot like a giant glass marble on a robotic steel frame, but there was nothing raw about what it achieved: the sun-tracking device was capable of concentrating sunlight (and moonlight) up to 10,000 times–making it 35 percent more efficient than traditional dual-axis photovoltaic designs. Bolstered by the incredible enthusiasm for their first design, the scientists at Rawlemon are back with an updated version–behold the Betaray!

André Broessel, a German architect involved with Rawlemon, told Inhabitat in an email that “…our first prototype, the Micro-track, was studied in the german laboratory Zentrum für Sonnenenergie-und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Württemberg and the results are more than optimistic.”

The initial globe design harvested up to 70% more solar energy than photovoltaic panels by using dual axis tracking. The sphere can be used to harvest sunlight for electricity or thermal energy, it can be fully integrated into the walls or ceilings of a building, and it suffers no weather impact. And, because it’s basically just a big crystal ball, it guarantees at least 99 percent transparency.

The solar sphere was a finalist in the World Technology Network Award 2013, which gave the Rawlemon team motivation to keep investigating, and now they’ve produced a second iteration, the Betaray, that’s even more polished than the last. The Betaray is designed to concentrate diffuse light and generate a powerful beam of solar energy. The Betaray can harness solar energy from the sun, the moon, or even the gray sky of a cloudy day, whereas conventional PV collectors need 4 times more incoming light before they start producing power.

Rawlemon’s New Betaray Crystal Ball 

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/677/crystal-ball-that-can-magnify-solar-energy-10000-times/#.VqWcE5p97IU

10 Innovative Technologies going to be a part of Near Future

1. Portable laser pens that can seal wounds

Imagine you’re hiking fifty miles from the nearest human, and you slip, busting your knee wide open, gushing blood. Today, you might stand a chance of some serious blood loss — but in less than a decade you might be carrying a portable laser pen capable of sealing you back up Wolverine-style.

2. Artificial Gills

Think Aquaman (Although, we are not quite sure how he is useful). Just like flying; the capability of breathing underwater is one of those things that we have all wanted. Israel based inventor Alon Bodner has come up with a prototype; LikeAFish (that’s one smart name) which allows humans to breather underwater by generating oxygen from the water like the gills of a fish. The current issues are that of size and weight, however, progress is being made quite rapidly to overcome these issues.

3.Insect-sized robot spies

They aren’t far off from becoming a reality, with the military currently hard at work to bring Mission Impossible-sized tech to the espionage playground. Secret weapon: immune to bug spray.

robot flies of insect size that can spy

4. Sunscreen Pills

Sun is good but too much of sun is bad and that’s why we have sunscreens. However, as is with humans we just can’t stop improvising stuff and now we want sunscreens that can be administered orally. So what we are looking for is a tablet, which we can take and then walk around in the sun while being protected. Good news folks; a study is being carried out at King’s College (London) and according to Dr. Paul Long who is the head of this three year project; ‘There would have to be a lot of toxicology tests done first but I imagine a sunscreen tablet might be developed in five years or so. Nothing like it exists at the moment.’

5. Tooth Regeneration

Going to the dentist is one of the most terrifying experiences. However, it is also one of the most crucial ones. Why is that so? Because if you damage your teeth then the damage is permanent and you’d have to live with that for the rest of your life. Yeah, that’s old new. The newsflash; scientists are working on to how to regenerate human teeth based on alligator’s system of regeneration, which comes into play when the tooth is damaged or lost. According to a study that was carried out in a lab at UTAH back in November 2012, humans can also regenerate teeth based on this alligator’s system in a lab with some modifications.

6. Light Peak

technology, a method of super-high-data-transfer, will enable more than 100 Gigabytes per second — and eventually whole terabytes per second — within everyday consumer electronics. This enables the copying of entire hard drives in a matter of seconds, although by this time the standard hard drive is probably well over 2TB.

7. Energy from a fusion reactor

It has always seemed just out of reach. It’s essentially the process of producing infinite energy from a tiny amount of resources, but it requires a machine that can contain a reaction that occurs at over 125,000,000 degrees. However, right now in southern France, the fusion reactor of the future is being built to power up by 2019, with estimates of full-scale fusion power available by 2030.

8. Holographic TV

This is more than just exciting; the future holds holographic television instead of your LEDs or extra HD TVs. The next generation of TV won’t be about the screen size and quality but rather about viewing area. MIT researchers have created a chip which is able to render a holographic display as good as real world – 50 Gigapixels per second. The cost of such TVs would be too high, that’s the general opinion, but Michael Bove, MIT’s Object based Media Group disagress; ‘The technology itself is one that’s easy and inexpensive and, as far as we are aware and Nature is aware, has never been applied to displays before.’ According to his speculations such TVs will be available in the next ten years or so.

holographic screen a reality

9. Wireless Electricity

Among many fantasies that the mankind has, wireless electricity sure has earned its place. However, you would have to give this fantasy up because this is soon going to be a reality (about a decade or so). We have seen wireless charging for gadgets and that’s proof enough to build a structure onto. A number of companies are trying to come up with electric ‘hubs’, which will be capable of powering up an entire house. The work is based upon the research done by Marin Soljacic of MIT. The idea is to make use of the fact that some particular electromagnetic waves make it easy to transfer energy and electricity can be transferred between objects that are resonating at the same frequency.

10. Ultra–High Speed Tube Trains

We’ve already covered the Maglev trains here at wonderful engineering, however, let’s take a look at them again. Japan has plans on shifting onto these trains by 2045. Since there are no wheels, hence no contact or friction and Maglev is capable of achieving a speed of 300 mph. The trains are levitated by maintaining an electromagnetic field. However, the idea being put forward by a company based in Colorado is much faster, in fact according to their idea, the travelling shall be done at a speed of 4,000 mph. The company, ET3, has put forward a concept of Evacuated Tube Transport. The track is within a vacuum tube that has been sealed and pressurized. The G-forces which a passenger experiences are comparable to that of a highway ride though. ET3 already has built a prototype capsule and is looking forward to testing it out.

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/3763/10-innovative-technologies-going-to-be-a-part-of-near-future/#.VqL295p97IU