An Experiment With The History Of Internet

Come November, the focus shifts to the internet ─ the great significance this month has in the history of the World Wide Web. It was in November 1990 the British-born Tim Berners Lee submitted the final project proposal entitled WorldWideWeb: Proposal for the HyperText Project to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which led to the discovery of World Wide Web or simply Web, the way of accessing information over the medium of internet. The Web uses hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP) to transmit data and services over the internet. In this backdrop, I would like to share here my first experience with the internet and the World Wide Web. Although I worked with computers since 1988, starting with the fourth generation IBM XT 286 computers during my post graduation till the most modern ones today, my real sojourn with internet began sometime in mid 1995. It was in 1995 when I was doing my Ph. D. at a university in India. Those were the days; the internet was just beginning to take shape in the select few universities and academic institutions in India. Being a top-rated university in India, University of Hyderabad has been chosen to host one of the regional hubs for internet access, a privilege very few centers of excellence enjoyed at that time. I still vividly remember how I used to type simple text commands on a UNIX-based Sun Microsystems computer to browse the internet only to see a lengthy text in return at snail’s pace because of the prevailing low bandwidth at that time and also the images/graphics were not prevalent as they are today. Lot of browsing went with texting instead. It was an amazing experience indeed! Later on, I started to communicate through email, which came into being in late 1995. Since, we, students did not have the email facility at that time as it was just evolving; I used my mentor’s address initially to communicate with my peers in the field to exchange ideas and/or research data during my thesis phase from both within and outside the country. I don’t exactly remember what my first email communication on the internet was, but vaguely, it was something to do with a business mail, a symposium-related one that I was replying to the organizing committee thanking them for accepting my presentation at the conference organized by the Indian Academy of Sciences in Bangalore, India. In that sense, I didn’t have much privacy those days because the mails were to and from my mentor’s address and I get a copy of the print out whenever they concerned me.

Bletchley Park – the birthplace of world's first electronic computer. 

Image credit: Draco via Creative Commons.

It was in Oxford, UK that I got my first official email when I moved there as a postdoctoral at the University of Oxford in 1996. It was a great experience indeed! It was here in Oxford, my exposure to the full-fledged internet came into being. It was in the historic Dyson Perrins Laboratory building (1916-2004, Department of Organic Chemistry) at the University of Oxford that I accessed for the first time some of the oldest, largest, and most modern chemical databases and journals on a daily basis on the internet in pursuit of my larger research interests. Though I visited Cambridge and London several times during my stay in England attending conferences or on collaborative work meetings, what I didn’t know at that time was the significance of Bletchley Park near Cambridge, which played a key role in the victory of Allied forces and the birthplace of world's first electronic computer.  It’s really amazing to know that the entire Bletchley Park laboratory (close to where I worked 50 years later) was set up to decode wartime messages from German forces during the Second World War and the father of computing Alan Turing broke some of the highly secretive codes of German Enigma, which subsequently laid the foundation for one of the major discoveries the world has ever seen, i.e., the internet, and the World Wide Web almost fifty years later by Tim Berners Lee and Robert Calliau from CERN, Geneva ─ the Mecca of experimental Physics I would say, where Physicists from all over the world would love to visit, work, and collaborate with and while doing so they tend to make some of the best discoveries; a case in point being the discovery of ‘God Particle,’ Higgs Boson in 2012, which fetched this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for Peter Higgs and Francois Englert ─ virtually transforming the world and the way we conduct our lives today. No surprise, World Wide Web would remain as a feather in CERN’s cap.

Internet users per 100 inhabitants based on data from International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Internet users 2001-2011 and Key Figures 2006-2013. Image credit: Jeff Ogden via Creative Commons.

When I moved to Germany in ‘97 on an “Alexander Humboldt Fellowship” at the University of Saarlandes, Saarbrucken situated next to French border; my association with internet grew further just as the internet itself. Those were also the times internet was literally growing at astronomical speeds. More and more businesses went online and so are publishers, electronic journals etc., and the way we publish our books and research articles became as simple as the click of a mouse. What was a single server when Tim Berners Lee invented World Wide Web in late 1990 has grown into quarter-million servers by mid 1996 and this unparalleled growth of the World Wide Web also triggered the rapid rise of stock markets and economic growth during late 90s and early 2000 that's when the proverbial dot-com bubble or internet bubble or information technology bubble began to burst, which lead to the crash of global markets. I still vividly remember one of those weekly group meetings where we used to exchange ideas primarily of Chemistry; one of my mentors even brought up a discussion on the internet and how fast it was growing and the total number of web pages of information internet already boasts, etc. Well, a bunch of chemists discussing about the progress of internet – internet has come of age! Another connection comes to my mind in this saga of internet and the World War II as they are intertwined in a way (vide supra), my own visit to the city of Nuremburg during my stay in Germany. The city is famous for Nuremburg Trials, military tribunals held by the Allied forces for the prosecution of prominent members of the political and military leadership of Germany. From here on, internet has virtually revolutionized the way I conduct research and many other activities (blogging, http://www.drsirish.blogspot.com/) on a daily basis just as it did to the rest of the world. I just can’t imagine a day without the internet today and in a way, it has transformed the entire society for the better. As an aside, the indexed web contains at least 4.13 billion pages as on Sunday 27 October 2013 (http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/). As per latest estimate, 39% of world population use internet. While 75 out of 100 Europeans surf the web, this number is followed by 61/100 for North America, 32/100 for Asia & Pacific, and only 16 out of 100 for Africa. 

Shiller, Hansen, and Fama 'Shares' 2013 Economics Nobel

The 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded jointly to Eugene F. Fama and Lars Peter Hansen of of University of Chicago, IL, USA, and Robert J. Shiller of Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA "for their empirical analysis of asset prices," said Nobel Committee in its press release. The trio will share the coveted 8 m Swedish Kroner ($1.2 m) prize money for their pioneering discoveries on predicting the asset prices using empirical models, which provide greater understanding of how financial markets work and stock prices react over a longer periods of time, say 3-7 years horizon. Fama and his colleagues studied short-term predictability of asset prices from different angles and found that the amount of short-run predictability in stock markets is very limited. This has had a profound impact on the academic literature as well as on market practices.

Source: Adapted from "The Prize in Economic Sciences 2013 - Popular Information". 

Nobelprize.org, and citations therein.

Robert Shiller discovered in the early 1980s that stock prices fluctuate much more than corporate dividends, and that the ratio of prices to dividends tends to fall when it is high, and to increase when it is low. This pattern holds not only for stocks, but also for bonds and other assets. Hansen made fundamental contributions first by developing an econometric method – the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), the findings of which broadly supported Shiller's preliminary conclusions that asset prices fluctuate too much to be reconciled with standard theory, the so-called Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM). Together, the three Laureates have laid the foundation for current understanding of the asset prices. When asked about his first reaction over telephone by one of the committee members, Professor Shiller expressed his disbelief and replying to a question about the predictability of asset pricing, he felt that there's an element of uncertainty and irreducible human element in predicting what asset prices will do and that's part of the reason why the field of finance will never completely understand asset pricing movements.

Chemical Weapons Watchdog Chosen for 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2013 has been awarded to the chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in The Hague, The Netherlands, OPCW with its 189 member states is the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the use, but not the production or storage of chemical weapons. Through inspections, destruction  and by other means OPCW has been playing a buoyant role in implementing the 1925 Geneva Protocol including the most recent and ongoing inspections in Syria.

The OPCW Inspection Team leaving for Syria on 30 September. 

Image credit: opcw.org

Canadian Author Alice Munro Wins 2013 Literature Nobel

The Nobel Prize for Literature for 2013 has been awarded to Canadian author Alice Munro for her contributions in the literary field, what the Norwegian Nobel Committee termed as  “master of the contemporary short story”. Born in the Canadian Province of Ontario, Munro is primarily known for her short stories and has published many collections over the years. Her works include Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), Runaway (2004), The View from Castle Rock (2006) and Too Much Happiness (2009). The collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) became the basis of the film Away from Her from 2006, directed by Sarah Polley. Her most recent collection is Dear Life (2012). 

Karplus, Levitt, and Warshel bags 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded to three American Scientists of varying nationalities ─ Martin Karplus (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, and Université de Strasbourg, France; born in Austria; US and Austrian citizen) Michael Levitt (Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA; born in South Africa; US, British, and Israeli citizen) and Arieh Warshel (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, born in Israel; US and Israeli citizen) for their pioneering discoveries, which laid foundation for the powerful programs that are used to understand and predict chemical processes. Computer models mirroring real life have become crucial for most advances made in chemistry today, opines Nobel Committee in its press release.

Modelling of an  Enzyme-DNA complex depicts the molecular interactions  at play.

Molecular modelling plays a vital role in our understanding of chemical processes 
in real life. Image credit: Zephyris via creative commons.

‘God Particle’ Fetches Nobel for Higgs and Englert

Peter W. Higgs (left) and Francois Englert (right). Simulated experimental data showing the collision of two protons producing the God Particle, Higgs Boson, which decays into two jets of hadrons and two electrons. The bright orange lines represent the possible paths of particles produced by the proton-proton collision in the detector (Center). Image credit: Lucas Taylor via creative commons.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2013 jointly to a British-born Peter W. Higgs of University of Edinburgh, and a Belgium-born François Englert of  Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, for their pioneering research on the theory of how particles acquire mass. The theory, originally conceived in 1964 by the duo independently of each other was later confirmed in 2012 by the discovery of a so called God Particle, Higgs Boson at the now famous CERN’s subterranean laboratory, Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located just outside Geneva, Switzerland. The duo was awarded the coveted prize “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider” said Nobel Committee in its press release.

CERN's main site, from Switzerland looking towards France (Image credit: Brucke-Osteuropa via Creative Commons). Did the Nobel Committee overlook CERN ─ Europe’s and world's leading particle physics laboratory, the very organization that is instrumental in finding out the existence of Higgs boson in 2012 after a series of experiments conducted at its LHC, a particle accelerator ─ while awarding this year's prize? 

“Cell Transport & Delivery System” Fetches Medicine Nobel for 3 Scientists

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to two Americans, James E. Rothman (Yale University), Randy W. Schekman (University of California at Berkeley), and a German, Thomas C. Südhof (Stanford University) for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells. The three will share the coveted 8 m Swedish Kroner ($1.2 m) prize money for their independent work on how tiny membrane-bound sacs called vesicles pass through the cell compartments and deliver the cargo of chemicals to the right address. Vesicle transport throws insight into disease processes. “The three Nobel Laureates have discovered a fundamental process in cell physiology. These discoveries have had a major impact on our understanding of how cargo is delivered with timing and precision within and outside the cell,” the Nobel Committee said in its press release. Randy W. Schekman discovered genes encoding proteins that are key regulators of vesicle traffic.  James E. Rothman discovered that a protein complex enables vesicles to fuse with their target membranes. Thomas C. Südhof studied how signals are transmitted from one nerve cell to another in the brain, and how calcium controls this process.

It's Official Now - Telangana Is Born!

Nearly two months after Congress Working Committee (CWC) unanimously voted in favor of bifurcating South India's largest state of Andhra Pradesh, Indian Cabinet formally okays the proposal on Thursday's cabinet meeting thus formalizing the birth of a new state of Telangana with Hyderabad as the capital amidst serious protests from the people of Seemandhra, who are fighting for the United Andhra Pradesh. The city of Hyderabad however will act as the joint capital for 10 years after which new capital will be identified for the rest of Andhra Pradesh. Image credit: Rajesh Dayanchal via Wikimedia Commons.