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Faster than the speed of flight:Bloodhound Supersonic Car

World Hi-Tech Forum:Focus UAE

China Goes Global

eCall: Smart Carsto Save Lives?

Arts round-up:Exhibitions &Book Reviews

Plus latest research:Satellite TrainingMobile Commerce

Transaction Scheduling

Issue 6 - Spring 2011

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eBritain Magazine is published by the British Institute of Technology & E-commerce Avicenna House, 258-262 Romford Road, London E7 9HZ, United Kingdom

eBritain Spring 2011

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Dr Peter Robinson

Editor, BITE

Associate Editors:Dr Mutsuhiro Arinobu

Toshiba

Prof. Gilles Richard

University of Toulouse

Dr Ognjen Arandjelovic

University of Cambridge

Dr Birgitte Andersen

Birkbeck CollegeUniversity of London

Prof Jiang Yu

University of Cambridge Royal Society Program

Dr Toshitaka Tsuda

Fujitsu Laboratories ltd

Prof Katsumi Inoue

National Institute of Informatics

Dr Melvyn A Sydney-Smith

KGSJ, Adjunct Professor (Nutrition Medicine), Australia

Dr Pervez Mustajab

Aligarh Muslim University

Prof Des Mapps

University of Plymouth

Professor K. David Young

The Hong Kong University ofScience and Technology

Nick Richards

Production Design

As the financial crisis deepens the cutbacks in technological research could have long-reach-ing effects on the UK's leading role in many areas. The BBC reported that the UK sciencebudget has been frozen in cash terms which amounts to a fall of around 10% over four

years. For example under cuts proposed by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences ResearchCouncil (BBSRC), around 30 neuroscience research groups are expected to be wound up.

We all know that we have been lumbered with the results of mismanagement in the financial sec-tor and government failure to sufficiently regulate the industry. But the brightest element on thehorizon is our technological prowess and the knowledge economy. Our universities, science parksand technology-based businesses are respected worldwide.

In these pages we report on the UK's holding of the land speed record and our bid to go for arecord breaking 1,000 mph. Richard Noble OBE, the project director of Bloodhound outlined at ourWorld Hi Tech Forum at The Dorchester how, through the internet, this project is inspiring schoolchildren and could influence many to go into engineering. It was one of the most inspiring speech-es at the Forum and I realised how apposite the title of that speech was "21st Century Solution:Supercharged education for our Industries." That is exactly what we need.

Looking around at the exhibits at the Science Museum in the "Making the Modern World" hall dur-ing our Forum gala dinner that evening, with everything from Stephenson's Rocket to modern aero-planes on display, I was struck by the range of technological innovation of the past and how we areclearly continuing in that vein today. Ideas and their fulfilment in technological terms is somethingwe are good at and can benefit all areas of society in terms of jobs and creating efficiencies. Itwould be disastrous to lose those benefits due to the activities of a few unscrupulous bankers.

Dr M Farmer

Editor-In-Chief

Supercharged 21st century

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Contents 06 - Bloodhound Project

Richard Noble OBE reveals the new Supercar

10 - World Hi-Tech Forum 2010: Focus UAEA round-up of the speeches and awards, plus photo gallery

14 - Universal Grammar

Mariana Gotseva argues for its existence

18 - Every Cloud has a Storage Lining

Wes Perdue reports on the growing Cloudscape

20 - Casio Bluetooth Low Energy Watch

Communicating with Smartphones

21 - Employees Ease Work Woes by Shopping Online

Get an Invisible Hand

22 - Global Partnership During Economic Crisis

Dr Muhammad Farmer talks about transforming business

24 - China Goes Global

Dr Lawrence Akwetey examines the rise of China

28 - Advancing Telecare Research and Development

Dr Ying Lui on independent living for the elderly

30 - eCall: Smart Cars to Save Lives?

Graham Jarvis puts the question

34 - The Impact of Nanotechnology on the Construction Sector

Dr Alan Smith and Yakub Ahmed take a close look

38 - Financial Planning

Dr Joy Joseph gives advice on managing your finances

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arc

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52 - The U.A.E. in the Global Satellite Training Dynamic

Martin Jarrold & Mazen Nassar

56 - A Study of the Underlying Technologies and Design Principles of

Mobile Commerce

Jameel A Qadri, Dr M Farmer, M T Banday

60 - A Study on Transaction Scheduling in a Real-Time Distributed System Y Jayanta Singh, Prof Hasan Al-Saedy, S C Mehrotra

06 - Bloodhound Project

28 - China Goes Global

43 - Restaurant Review: Lamb Inn, Burford

56 - Mobile Technology

41 - Sudoku

42 - Crossword

43 - Cotswolds Restaurant Review Hélène Maurice

44 - Marlow, a Weekend Away Hélène Maurice

45 - Book Reviews: Hancox - Hélène MauriceDan Dare, Aviation, Churchill - Mark Winfield

48 - Cezanne’s Card Players: Courtauld GalleryDr Peter Robinson

50 - Victorian Drawings & Watercolours: Courtauld GalleryDr Peter Robinson

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10 - World Hi-Tech Forum: Focus UAE


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features eBritain Spring 2011

Faster than the speed of flightRichard Noble OBE, Project Director of the Bloodhound project,

which aims to top 1,000 mph next year

Whether you drive a Bugatti or a Toyotayou most probably had a few moments ofexcitement when you and the car weretravelling fast; you may have wondered justhow fast a car could be persuaded to goand what it might be like to drive really fast.It’s happened to most people and it hap-pened to Compte Chasseloup Laubat in1898; he went on to establish the firstworld land speed record at 39mph/ 62kphon a Paris road. The performance wasactually a disappointment because thebicycling record was faster but you have tostart somewhere.

Shortly after the World Land Speed Recordtook hold as an incredible internationalcompetition requiring extreme design inno-vation and courage from the drivers. In the1920’s the cars were travelling faster thancurrent fighter aircraft and the drivers wereelevated to the status of the 1960’s astro-nauts. The power requirement varies as thecube of the speed and the run site requiresa smoothness and length that could only befound on beaches and dried desert lakes,so the cars required aero engines and tyresthat would somehow hold together as vehi-cle and wheel rotational speeds increaseddriven by intense international competition.There was very little in the way of instru-mentation and so the drivers were takinghuge risk driving their cars into theunknown and rightfully claiming the gloryfor great personal accomplishment. By1947 the record had been raised to394mph and then 403mph in 1964. Thissignalled the peak of British wheel drivenachievement and for a while the British lostinterest as the Americans introduced jetand rocket cars which cost less to createand could accelerate four times faster. TheAmerican influence took the record to622mph by 1970 but with the moon land-ings now drawing the global attention, thereit stuck. It seemed very much a side showwhen compared with NASA’s monumentalachievements.

It took the Thrust 2 team 6 years to recov-er the World Land Speed Record for Britainin 1983. The Thrust2 programme startedfrom just £175 and using a 30 year oldRolls-Royce Avon 302 engine and after-burner from a BAC Lightning Mach 2 fight-er the record was raised marginally to633mph with the car peaking at Mach 0.84.Again there was only primitive instrumenta-

tion and so it wasn’t until that evening cele-brations when the limited data finallyemerged – it showed the car was within7mph of involuntary flight and with a powerto weight ratio greater than of any jet fight-er the potential control less flight wouldhave made very spectacular mediafootage. But one factor was clear - Thrust 2was almost unique among land speedrecord projects in achieving its designspeed of 650mph.

But there was something about the Thrust2effort which generated enormous globalmedia coverage; the moon shots had fin-

ished and there was a shortage of interna-tional derring do and challenge. The pointhad been well and truly made – the WorldLand Speed was within an ace of the speedof sound- and this was a high technologyWorld First what ought to be challenged.Three teams took up the challenge- theMcLaren Formula1 team had the money,the Spirit of American team had money andreputation, the ThrustSSC team (SSC =supersonic car) had no money but they hadthe aerodynamicist. The ThrustSSC projectadvanced through its research phase usingfor the first time CFD to evaluate the tran-sonic aerodynamic performance and then


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confirming it with rocket model testing onthe long test track at Pendine S Wales. Bygood fortune an almost perfect correlationbetween the rocket test and the CFDresults emerged, thus calibrating the CFDand proving the validity of the ThrustSSCcar design. The huge achievement shouldhave led to considerable industrial support

from Britain’s large corporate community,but because of scepticism and culturechange it never happened – and the 15person team had to finance its efforts fromits 5,000 supporters and the web. And forthe first time the web interest was able todisprove the British media’s chronic andlong held belief that the public had no inter-est in high technology. The McLaren projectnever made it into the build and the Spirit ofAmerica turned on its side at Mach 0.9when the trailing shocks lifted the tail and acrosswind did the rest. The Thrust SSCpowered by two Rolls-Royce Spey 202

units from an F4 Phantom made 5 super-sonic passes, eventually including themandatory two supersonic passes withinthe hour, to gain the current World Recordat 763.035mph Mach 1.02, driven by thevery brave Andy Green RAF.

The ThrustSSC record was famous for itsWorld First, but there were other greatachievements. Prior to the web, sponsorscould only judge the public reaction to asponsored event by media coverage levels.But there was a flaw: there was no way inwhich the sponsors could be sure how theindividual consumer actually reacted to allthe exposure. With the internet this nowbecame possible and the huge global inter-est became apparent when the ThrustSSCwebsite peaked at 17 million pages a day,59 million visits in the year (equivalent to300 million pages) which made it 30 times

the size of 2010 Formula 1 team. The otherkey point was that for the first time it waspossible to get quality performance datafrom the car – thus enabling engineeringprediction and protection for the driver. TheLand speed record driver was still takinghigh personal risk but that risk was reducedby the ready availability of quality data. The

land speed record driver was no longerdriving into the unknown and hoping tomake it through by personal endeavouralone. The Land Speed Record hadbecome much more interesting and muchsafer.

In 2005 it looked as though the Americanswere to mount a challenge to the Britishrecord and it was decided to build onemore car – to be the very best ever. Thechosen power was to come from a combi-nation of jet and rocket, enabling fineadjustment of thrust together with minimal

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jet intake area. A key moment came whenGreen and Noble approached LordDrayson Minister for Defence Equipmentand Support. The idea was to encouragethe minister to make an earlyEJ200Eurofighter engine available. Thesuggestion was received badly and themeeting was decaying to a close when theMinister made an unexpected request. Heexplained that the Ministry of Defence’smain problem was the shortage of engi-neers –and he had a radical solution.

Remembering the fanatical interest amongschoolchildren in the frantic developmentof prototype military aircraft during the ColdWar, he asked Noble and Green to createan iconic project and run it through all theschools. Hoping this would lead to theEJ200 Noble and Green eagerly accepted.

The education research threw up fascinat-ing facts – the Leitch Report of 2005showed that the UK skilled workforce wasprimarily in the 40-60 age range and that inthe next 20 years 60% would be lostthrough retirement. The 25-40 age range

had poor skills and could not replace the40-60 range so consequently a vast num-ber of apprentices would be requiredimmediately. A study of the Apollo effect ofthe 1962-72 manned space programmeshowed that the US PHDs conferred hadspectacularly increased from 12,000 a yearin 1962 to 30,000 in 1972. The curve coin-cided with the NASA manned space pro-gram thus suggesting that a high technolo-gy project could deliver cultural change.But the project would have to iconic - air-

craft and space travel was out due to highcosts and certification requirements – so itwould have to be another car.

The shortage of engineers seemed to besomething of a British problem – for yearsthe UK media had been concentrating onits own territory, music drama and televi-sion stars and neglecting engineering.There was thus limited encouragement forschool children and it didn’t help that thethen current culture was promoting a postindustrial economy where engineering andmanufacture had been consigned to the

past. Because there was no media promo-tion of engineering and not much in theway of spectacular engineering takingplace in Britain the unfortunate STEMteachers were having a hard time excitingtheir classrooms about science and engi-neering. The whole country was losing itsability to design and manufacture. Whenthe financial crash of 2008 came it becamequite clear that the bloated financial servic-es industry had blown its credibility and thatthe country would have to return to design

engineering and manufacturing. But thecountry was only producing round 24,000graduate engineers a year - 30% of whomwere diverted into banking financialServices and the BBC.

The key to the whole Bloodhound conceptwas the FIA land speed record design ruleswhich in an effort to encourage unlimitedracing and avoid liability from prescriptivedesign restriction resulted in minimaldesign rules – simply that the car musthave four or more wheels and be controlledby the driver. Because all land speed


record have to be innovative to achieveultimate performance, the lack of tightdesign rules means that all competiotorcars are substantially different. This beingthe case then all the project technology canbe made available without fear of aiding acompetitor for the simple reason that thecompetitor will have its own ideas – andhave no means of knowing whether import-ed experimental technology will work in aits application. The new Bloodhound proj-ect is making all its technology available

live on the web as the project develops –this enabling legions of followers to under-stand how the project is progressing and inthe process producing a new form of edu-cation-education by stealth! But for theclassroom STEM teachers Bloodhoundprovides what they have been looking for -a live high profile high technology with allthe data made available live as the projectdevelops.

The Bloodhound project started informallyin 2007 and the gestation was particularlydifficult. The design speed was set at

1050mph. Since ThrustSSC had peaked atMach 1.03 there was the small matter of aMach 0.37 increment to tackle. Eachdesign iteration became a nightmare,requiring the car to be designed to a finetolerance before the CFD could be initiat-ed. The design had to go through threeyears and 10 design iterations at a cost of£3m before with substantial help from theprojects IT partner INTEL Corporation andRolls-Royce plc a truly outstanding aerodesign was achieved featuring neutral lift

from 0 to Mach 1.3. In parallel the projects27,500lbs thrust hybrid rocket had to bedeveloped from scratch involving 10 devel-opment firings to develop the catalyst packand define fuel grain regression. Thefullscale rocket was fired for the first time inNovember 2009.

At the time of writing the project is pro-gressing to build with the target of achiev-ing rollout early next year. Three obseleteEJ 200 engines with unused flight hourshave been loaned by the Ministry ofDefence and 220 companies are taking

part in the programme. The objective is toundertake first runs on a runway in the UKin Q1 2012 and then high speed runs onthe Hakskeen Pan in South Africa wheredesert preparations are already underway.

The projects education programme isdeveloping strongly with 3,800 UK schoolstaking part – and this expected to increaseto 7,000 schools by end 2011. Overseasthe project is proving popular with a further440 schools taking part. Towards the end of2010 INTEL Corporation plan to link uptheir global education programmeSKOOOL with Bloodhound – thus takingBloodhound to a further 6 million teachers.In the meantime the Bloodhound teamhave to recruit a further 600 educationambassadors in order to support the UKschools and in parallel develop a tailorede-learning process so that web followerscan be brought up to education levelswhere they can interpret the data flowingfrom the cars 450 data channels when itstarts to flow in Q1 2012.

As the project education develops it finds itis being driven by demand and a numberof the UK engineering education acade-mies now wish to establish localBloodhound centres. The project isresponding by creating a franchisearrangement to enable to centres to havetheir own Bloodhound show cars and pre-sentations.

The next months of the project are likely tobe the toughest as the build programmehas to adher to a very strict plan in order tokeep costs and delivery tightly under con-trol. The reciprocal part of the programmeis the funding machinery which has todeliver the funds from sponsorship just intime in order to maintain financial pace withthe build.

In short the entire project represents a neweducation process which is already stimu-lating education in UK and overseas.There is still a very long way to go – but itmight just be that the World Land Speedrecord will have a very considerable futurein education – to prove it all we have toachieve is the 1000mph record.

And there is one last point, the BloodhoundSSC car will travel faster than a EurofighterTyphoon at the car’s operating level of3,000ft. Land speed record cars will onceagain travel faster than planes.

See page 11 for Richard Noble’s WHTF speechand page 13 for his BITE "Championing of

Technology" award.

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World Hi-Tech Forum:Focus UAEDr Peter Robinson presents a précis of some of the key speeches at last year’s Forum held at The Dorchester

Baroness Neville-JonesMinister of State for Security and CounterTerrorism

Security and TechnologyTechnology can be an enabler for us in meetingsome of the most important security chal-lenges. It is also important because the securi-ty and defence industries are contributing to themodernisation and expansion of the UK econo-my. The cyber and security industries are animportant means of seeking to close our vul-nerabilities, defeat enemies and working withour allies.

We face challenges in security and defencehere and overseas and those old distinctionsbetween foreign and home policy are breakingdown since in counter terrorism all parts of theglobe are involved. In the UK we are facingfinancial stringency at the moment. Technologyis neutral it is what you do with it that is impor-tant. Improperly used it can be oppressive andintrusive to privacy, well used it can be liberat-ing and unobtrusive. We are faced by a tech-nology arms race with a skilled enemy of ter-rorists involved in asymmetric warfare.Intelligence is a key element in our responseand technology generates intelligence. Youcan never win unless you know what is goingon around you whether in Afghanistan or ter-rorism at home. Technology leads to the devel-opment of new techniques and becomes a driv-er for the tasks we have set ourselves. Thereare new analytical tools, visualisations, com-plex information displayed more simply and wecan be more effective in our responses. Wehave to constantly move on, technical innova-tion does not stop, there is a permanent state ofchange.

We have to deploy technology for human secu-rity, to protect our national infrastructure and toensure business continuity. There must be nor-mality even when under attack, business asusual even in a crisis through well protectedbackup systems. A good national security poli-cy involves prevention and deterrent, not just

cleaning up after incidents have occurred. A lotof important work lies in developing resiliencein everything on which the country depends.However, many services are in private handsand they must ensure resilience.

Intellectual development is an important partand we are supportive of the links between gov-ernment, the security industry and academicinstitutions. Our intellectual innovation is aheadof the game. But we need rationalised govern-ment procurement and the security industry isfragmented. There could be greater consolida-tion and partnerships with government creatinga bigger approach. Government must also be achampion of small and medium sized compa-nies as this is where innovation often comesfrom.

International relationships like those with theUAE and all of the GCC which this Forum rep-resents are important. Public private partner-ships will continue in security as in defence.The Government and private industry mustdevelop long term relationships across theworld and particularly in the Gulf. Our educationinstitutions are participating in this. We mustconsolidate relationships such as the recentsecurity partnership signed between the gov-ernment and Kuwait covering shared objectivesin fighting counterterrorism and crime. ThisForum is a valuable tool in this process and our

hopes for the future.

Sir Paul Stephenson QPMCommissioner of the Metropolitan Police

Delivering SecurityThe opportunity to work with international part-ners to share our expertise in security is invalu-able since terrorists have increasingly complexcapabilities. Anti-terrorism was mainly aboutsweeping up after bombings looking for tracesthat would give us evidence to bring charges

and prevent further atrocities. Now CCTV pro-vides the earliest scientific evidence and recog-nition which can deliver outstanding results.The 7/7 bombing trials saw graphic securityimages of the terrorists involved in the bomb-ings demonstrate the value of CCTV.

Seizures of suspected terrorist personal com-puters is also an important area. Less than adecade ago just two constables in an office inScotland Yard were involved. This quickly grewinto a team of over 20 hi tech forensic examin-ers supplemented by 32 computer viewers.These teams are supported by the counter ter-rorism unit which specialises in the internet andthe telecommunications intelligence unit whichanalyses complex telephone data. When weseize a PC, lap top or smart phone we can gothrough everything a terrorist suspect haddownloaded, emailed, saved or generated. Thishas added a whole new dimension to our terror-ist investigative practices. Storage capacity onPCs has become cheaper and grown fromaround 340 megabytes in the nineties to 1.5terabytes. Terrorists use computers for postinginflammatory propaganda promoting acts ofextreme violence, planning attacks using inter-net based mapping systems and raising funds.

When using technology for these clandestineactivities they try to conceal incriminating evi-dence using trade craft. We have to rise tothese technological challenges. It is not justabout the numbers of police officers involved.Our counter terrorism command hi tech unithas become a policing centre of excellence forforensic recovery and examination of computerstorage and hard drives engaging in numerouspartnerships domestically and internationally todeliver community safety. In 2008 we set up adedicated viewing unit, the first of its kind in theworld, which is cataloguing all their findings andthese dedicated viewing techniques are nowbeing exploited internationally.

Beyond terrorism, computer-based policing isused against crime, credit and debit card fraud,passports fraud and compromised credit cardnumbers. International crime can now beorchestrated from a lap top in a teenagers bed-room. Advances in technology will continue totest our resilience and innovation. Advancedtechnology in the wrong hands presents a sig-nificant threat and we must use technology togain the advantage and deliver the security ourcitizens deserve.


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Richard Noble OBE

21st century solution: supercharged

education for our industriesThis Forum is all about global partnering, diver-sification and structural change. In the UK wehave been going through a serious recessionsimilar to many countries. We have seen thatthe economic structure is wrong and we needto press the reset button just as the UAE hasbeen moving from dependency on oil toembrace technology. To rebuild industries weneed a fundamental change in our educationalsystem starting right at the bottom at primaryschools. The primary agent for this rapid

change and change in behaviour is the internet,the most powerful weapon we have ever had.

I specialise in high technology start-ups, andwe are probably best known for high speedthrust land speed record cars. These are justone example of engineering excellence, creat-ing cars that accelerate faster than a jet fighterusing Rolls Royce engines. The land speedrecord in 1983 of 633 mph which we got backfrom the Americans with my car, Thrust 2, hascome to symbolise the engineering challenge.We built the first ever supersonic car. Thepower of the internet was demonstrated by the1997 project. About 250,000 gallons of fuelwere needed for this project and so weapproached followers on the internet to buy it.Our website has 300 million page views. In1997 we took on the first supersonic car with763 mph hour recorded which has never beenbeaten.

The Ministry of Defence were having troublegetting engineering graduates so they asked usto start an iconic engineering project and run itthrough the schools. They found that 25-40year olds do not have the engineering skills theUK needs. Engineering Phds in the US havebeen growing and contributed to the success ofthe space programme then a huge IT industry

which changed America before the advent ofthe internet. We started with another car, aniconic car with the goal of a speed which wouldseem impossible, 1,000 miles an hour, a 30%increase on the existing record. In schools itstarted grabbing the attention of teachers whosaid that there had been no exciting projects toreference for their pupils. A new generation hadnot been encouraged to enter engineering, theclassroom has to compete with video games.We found the sweet spot, a live project theycould follow. While the space and defenceindustry cannot give out their information, allthe data on this car is live as it happens. It is agigantic educational software game, an engi-neering adventure with £3m in research and 3years to get the car right. There have been 10changes now we have the right design.

We have developed our own rocket motor, aEurofighter engine with a booster rocket motor.It has the equivalent output of a formula one carjust to drive the fuel pump. The project has ahuge public following, with 400 schools usingour lessons and followed in many other coun-tries. In December 2011 we will complete thecar and in June 2012 will be in South Africa forthe record attempt. We aim to undo the neglectin UK education in classrooms using the inter-

net as the driver.

David DelpyChief Executive, Engineering and Physical

Sciences Research Council

Energy Research ProgrammesWe are part of seven Research Councils rang-ing from engineering to the arts and can tackleproblems across the spectrum with a budget of£3 billion. The Physical Sciences ResearchCouncil has a budget of £800m a year for engi-neering and physical sciences. The Councilsbring together major national and international

programmes. We make sure academic ideasget used through partnership so that there aregenuine impacts in products, ideas and the arts.

We work with many companies including 2,500SMEs in the UK and international companies.About 40% of this research takes place in uni-versities with partnerships with end users. Part-nership is the key to success and UK academiais good at translating research through to prod-uct or making sure it is picked up by relevantusers.

In the UK, energy is funded through an enor-mous number of agencies. The research coun-cils fund at the beginning and the hope is topass over to other energy funding agencies lateron and then companies and venture capitalists.Hopefully there is seamless support from thebeginning to the end in the product, idea or pol-icy change. We also help provide trained man-power.

Energy funding has grown tremendously since2002. The energy programme now supports the

full spectrum of energy research delivered inpartnership, internationally and nationally. Mem-orandums of Understanding have been signedwith China, India, Japan and Europe. We areworking together on cleaner fuels, solar energyand joint training. The delivery mechanisms inthe UK by the Energy Research Centre isthrough Imperial College and Oxford Universitywhich fund a consortia of academic and busi-ness partners.

A future emerging theme for the Council lies inreducing home energy consumption and de-mand. We must consider the problem of solvingthe social problem of changing people's behav-iour and use of energy. It is a challenge to theacademic community to reduce energy con-sumption in the home. There is also speculativework being carried out in considering energy op-tions. We are involved in accelerating energypartnerships and using the deployment of energytechnologies we already have. We are also en-suring more doctoral training with more Phds inthe energy community and every Council islinked into this work.


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Peter Ripley

Managing Director of ACWA Services

The Middle East water sectorCompanies looking to do business in the waterand sanitation sector in the Middle East areundoubtedly joining the market at an interestingpoint. While the market has been to an extentconstrained by the economic downturn, thebackground need for sustainable, intelligentwater and wastewater solutions means that for

those that can meet the region’s high expecta-tions there are significant opportunities.

The Middle East as a whole faces considerablewater and sanitation challenges, and the scaleand required pace of development mean thatwater is a key area that is receiving specialfocus from governments across the entireregion.

There are a number of issues that provideimpetus for growth despite the weak globaleconomy. The area is characterised by acutewater shortages exacerbated by the consider-able challenges in providing adequate econom-ic signals to restrain water use (given that in anumber of countries water is provided free ofcharge). The statistics underline the challenge:while the Middle East is home to 5% of theworld’s population, it has just 1% of the world’srenewable fresh water.

Environmental and health hazards surroundingthe disposal of untreated effluent, marine pollu-tion and deteriorating ground water quality areseen as not only key challenges but market

opportunities in the region. Some large, privatedevelopers are using advanced wastewatertreatment technologies, and wastewater treat-ment and reuse is likely to be widely adopted inthe region.

The market is also seen as highly price sensi-tive, with profit margins for low-tech productscoming under increasing pressure according tomarket analysts Frost & Sullivan. Componentsuppliers face competition from low-cost prod-ucts from nations such as India and China. Thereport suggests that the onus is on technologyproviders to produce increasingly cost-effectiveproducts in challenging market conditions.

However, the potential benefits of success areconsiderable - the region is set to spend morethan $120 billion on water investments in thisdecade, which experts believe is required toavoid severe water shortages by 2050. Water isalso vital to support tourism, and building proj-ects also inevitably consume large quantities ofwater, placing further pressure on groundwaterreserves and existing desalination capabilities.

Professor Leslie Hobson OBE,

Deputy Principal, British Institute ofTechnology and E-commerce

Technology and EducationWhen one thinks of the United Arab Emirates ,one usually thinks of energy and oil resources

in particular. In recent years the more forward-thinking leaders and politicians have realisedthat the key to the long term future of countrieslike the UAE is not only oil but how well theircountry can embrace the challenges of educa-tion.

It is well understood that all countries must beable to keep in touch with the latest technolo-gies and to have a University or higher educa-tion sector that is on a global level is a must forthe future development and prosperity of thatcountry. The British Institute of Technology andE-commerce has a great track record of globalpartnerships which specialise in keeping in withthe latest innovations in technology and exploit-ing them in ways best suited for the partnercountry.

Leadership and Management Education is vitalbut creating the leaders and managers to

exploit technology is often neglected. TheBritish Institute of Technology and E-commercehas one of the largest MBA programmes in theUK and specialises in innovative Managementand leadership. This has proved to be a greatboost for countries who have engaged with ourprogrammes and many of our graduates havemoved on to positions of great influence in theirhome countries.

The education which produces the skills andaptitudes needed to produce goods and servic-es is required all over the world but especiallyin countries like the UAE. At the British Instituteof Technology and E-commerce we can carryout a needs assessment of the existing educa-tion provision and install staff development pro-grammes to " Train the trainers " which hasproven to be a great success in improving theprovision of the right type of skills required byvarious countries.

The 3rd World Hi-Tech Forum (WHTF) last

year focused on the UAE and was held at The

Dorchester hotel, followed by the Gala dinner

and Awards at the Science Museum in

London on October 14th 2010.

It was a resounding success and attracted theattention of chief executives, directors,ambassadors and parliamentarians. The Forumconcentrated on promoting British companies tostrengthen their relations with UAE and GCCcountries, identifying new areas of cooperationand global partnership. The forum brought the UKand UAE business community together tofacilitate technological and business partnerships.

The Minister of State for Security and CounterTerrorism Baroness Neville-Jones highlighted therole of the World Hi-Tech Forum in promotingglobal partnering and technology transfer. TheForum was opened by Lord Ahmed ofRotherham, chairman of the All-PartyParliamentary group on Entrepreneurship and

welcomed around 300 delegates. Nicholas Owenthe BBC journalist was MC of the event.

The themes of the role of the government; theinnovation process; innovative manufacturing;transformation technologies, global partneringand the latest internet developments werecovered. The thrust of the forum this yearhighlighted UK strengths in the Civil Nuclear,Aerospace, Defence, Security, Automotive, Waterand Finance sectors. There was a broadspectrum of organizations and companiesrepresenting both the public and especially theprivate sectors inclusive of sponsors, strategicand media partners.

At the gala dinner in the evening at the ScienceMuseum, BBC television presenter Nick Rosspresided over awards to leading internationalcompanies including Khalaf Ahmed Al Habtoorchairman of the Al Habtoor Group; TonyWeeresinghe of the London Stock Exchange and

Richard Noble’s Bloodhound project. See photohighlights on facing page.

This year the project management and team wasexperienced and streamlined. This ensured thatthe WHTF was presented as a world-class eventlogistically and organisationally. With moreadvanced forward planning and acommercialisation strategy the WHTF is beingreviewed to take on the global stage beyond aLondon-centric approach. In terms of respondingto the rapidly changing global economy the nextWHTF is envisaged to go global and have aGlobe trotting circuit which is responsive torequirements of focus countries.

The forthcoming WHTF will be built on building-block events planned for the BITE St.James'sseminars and Shrublands residential summits in2011.

Moeen Yaseen

Head of Strategic Relations


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from top, left column: “Outstanding

Business Leadership” Award -Khalaf Ahmed Al-Habtoor, presented by

Lord Ahmed

“The Most Innovative Trading

System” Award - Tony Weeresinghe,presented by Mike Woodward, KPMG

"Promotion of Open Innovation,

Academic Research and Education"

Award - Khalifa University of Science,Technology and Research (KUSTAR),

UAE, presented by Ivan Boyd, BT

right: "Best MBA Dissertation" Award

- Nivethitha Sivanandan, presented byMike Woodward, KPMG

from top, right column:"Championing of Technology"

Award - Richard Noble, BloodhoundSupersonic Car Project, presented by:Ric Parker, Rolls-Royce Group

"Security Innovation" Award - Dr.Ali M. Al-Khouri - Emirates IdentityAuthority, presented by Naser Ziadeh,Microsoft

"Best MSc Dissertation" Award -Evgenia Korsukova, presented byNaser Ziadeh, Microsoft

WHTF Awards Ceremony at the Science Museum


14

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR: A few arguments for its existence

Mariana Gotseva

In the contemporary globalized worldEnglish tends to be the main language forbusiness communication, education andcultural collaboration. Hundreds of peopleof different age learn English in order to besuccessful in their endeavours. Therefore,it might be interesting to know a few factsabout the nature of language acquisitionand the theories behind the process ofacquiring and learning a language.

This article focuses on Universal Grammar(UG) as formulated by Noam Chomsky andhis followers, using the cognitive approach.UG is seen as a linguistic theory, whichpostulates principles of grammar, sharedby all languages and considered to beinnate to human beings. Chomsky propos-es that there is a set of grammar rulesresponsible for organizing the languageand explaining the process of children’slanguage acquisition. This set of rulesbelongs to the Universal Grammar.

The article presents a few arguments forthe existence of Universal Grammar,namely: the Structure-dependency and theProjection principle which explain the struc-tural relationship within the sentence andthe close interdependency between syntax, lexical information and phonetic represen-tation. The variety of languages can beexplained with the existence of universalparameters, which are set differently in dif-ferent languages. The process of settingthese parameters has been studied byChomsky’s Principles-and-ParametersTheory and is closely connected with chil-dren’s first language acquisition.

What is Universal Grammar?

Chomsky has defined UG as “the systemof principles, conditions, and rules that areelements or properties of all human lan-guages” (Chomsky, 1976, p.29).Thismeans that a native speaker of a languageknows a set of principles that can beapplied to all languages and parametersthat vary from one language to another.

Contrary to the taxonomic approach of tra-ditional grammar, Chomsky takes a cogni-tive approach to studying grammar as, inhis view, linguistics should discover whatknowledge enables people to speak andunderstand their native language fluently,and therefore, it is just a part of the muchwider study of cognition – what human

beings know. It is a fact that native speak-ers have tacit knowledge about their nativelanguage grammar: i.e. they know how tocombine words together to form sentencesand how to interpret sentences without anyformal learning. They also have the abilityto judge sentences’ grammaticality.

Language has been characterised byChomsky as “a perfect system which hasoptimal design” (Chomsky, 1998, 1999,2001, 2002) and which interfaces perfectlywith humans’ speech and thought. Thegrammar of a language contains a fewcomponents: lexis (all the words or lexicalitems of the language with their linguisticproperties) and syntax (the combination ofthe lexical items into syntactic structures.Syntactic structures then, as seen byRadford (2004) find input into two furthercomponents of grammar: the semanticcomponent, which “maps or converts thesyntactic structure into a correspondingsemantic representation of the linguisticaspects of its meaning” and a PF compo-nent, which in its turn, “maps the syntacticstructure into a Phonetic Form representa-tion, telling us how each word is pro-nounced” (Radford, 2004, p. 5). InRadford’s model below it can be seen thatthe semantic representation interfaces withthe systems of thought and the PF repre-sentation – with systems of speech.Radford (2004, p. 5).

Fig. 1 Radford’s model

The Universal Grammar Model and

language acquisition

The early Universal Grammar Model(Chomsky, 1964) gives an idea how the UGmodel works:

Fig. 2 Early UG model

Following this model, the process of lan-guage acquisition includes data going intothe Language Acquisition Device (LAD)and coming out as a formed grammar.

Universal Grammar enforces the formwhich the grammar of a certain language

can take. But this does not happen by pro-viding ready-made rules for a child to incor-porate them into his grammar. UG rathersets parameters which are fixed accordingto the input a child receives. These rulesconstrained on the child’s grammar arecalled “the core grammar or core rules” ofhis language (Ellis, 1985). Apart from them,there are other rules which are not coreand are not enforced by UG. They arecalled periphery rules. Cook (1985) definesthe periphery rules as ones either derivedfrom the history of the language or bor-rowed from other languages. They have tobe learnt without the help of UG.

Later, Chomsky gradually abandons theLAD model of acquisition in favour of theparameter-setting model. This improvedmodel of language acquisition claims thatUniversal Grammar exists in the child’smind as a system of principles and param-eters. Influenced by the surrounding envi-ronment, the child creates a core grammarthat sets values to all the parameters of acertain language which he speaks asnative. Cook (1988) sees the UG principlesas “principles of the initial state” and theProjection principle, Binding, Government,and so on, as “the building structure of thelanguage faculty in the human mind”(Cook, 1988, p.56). The child does notactually acquire certain grammar rules butrather settings for the different parameters,which combined with the system of princi-ples, form the core grammar. This means,that acquiring a language is mainly settingall the UG parameters appropriately. Apartfrom that, a child learns a huge amount ofvocabulary items, together with their pro-nunciation, meaning and syntactic restric-tions. So, apart from setting a few parame-ters, a child has to learn the lexicon of hisL1, together with rules which are not corebut “peripheral”. To summarise, usingChomsky’s idea, “what we know innately”are the core grammar principles and theparameters associated with them; what wehave to learn are “the values of the param-eters and the elements of the periphery”(Chomsky, 1980b, p.47).

Arguments for the existence of the

Universal Grammar

The hypothesis that the process of lan-guage acquisition depends on an innatelanguage faculty is called the innatenesshypothesis. The innateness hypothesis,


put forward by Chomsky, claims that theprocess of language acquisition is geneti-cally predetermined by an innate languagefaculty. This language faculty incorporatesa set of universal grammatical principlesthat influence the way grammatical opera-tions work.

However, some linguists like Carnie (2002)have a different view on the innatenesshypothesis. Looking at language from alogical perspective, he argues that “an infi-nitely productive system like the rules ofLanguage cannot have been learnt oracquired” as “infinite systems are bothunlearnable and unacquirable”. So he sug-gests that “it is built in” (Carnie, 2002,p.13). Carnie also claims that the reasonfor infinite systems to be unlearnable is theinput you receive can never be sufficient tomake sure you have all the relevant facts.This is the so-called ‘logical problem of lan-guage acquisition’. Generative Grammargets around this logical problem by sug-gesting that a child who acquires his moth-er tongue relies on Universal Grammar inconstructing his knowledge of language.UG actually restricts the number of the pos-sible functions that map situations to utter-ances, thus making language learnable.So, finally, this fact supports the existenceof the Universal Grammar.

Another argument for the existence of theUG concerns the ability of L1 speakers tojudge the grammaticality of sentences.Nobody has ever taught them what is andwhat is not grammatical, nor can they drawa conclusion from the data they haveheard. The conclusion is that they wereborn with this knowledge. This argument iscalled the underdetermination of the dataargument.

There are also typological argumentswhich support the existence of an innatelanguage faculty. As Carnie (2002) puts itdown, it is a fact that all the languages inthe world share certain properties. Theseare called universals of language. Heexplains their existence as a result of thefact that “all speakers of human languagesshare the same basic innate materials forbuilding their language’s grammar”(Carnie, 2002, p.18). A proof for this claimis that children “go through the samestages and make the same mistakes whenacquiring their language, no matter whattheir cultural background”. Finally, Carniepoints out a few biological arguments infavour of UG. He characterises Languageas “both human-specific and pervasiveacross the species” (Carnie, 2002, p. 18).Every human being, unless he has somephysical impairment, seems to haveLanguage. This points out to the fact thatLanguage must be “a genetically endowed

instinct”. Research in Neurolinguistics hasalso confirmed that certain parts of thebrain are linked to specific linguistic func-tions.

The ability to speak and acquire languagesis unique to human beings and natural lan-guages abide principles which are uniqueto humans and reflect the nature of thehuman mind. What is more, languageacquisition is an ability which all humanspossess independently of their intelligence.An interesting fact which deserves atten-tion in the process of language acquisition,

as noted by Radford (2004) is that “the uni-formity in the types of grammars developedby different speakers of the same languagesuggests that children have genetic guid-ance” in constructing their L1 grammar(Radford, 2004, p. 7). The rapidity of L1acquisition points out to the same fact. It isalso difficult to explain children’s L1 acqui-sition only by the input they are exposed toas very often it is imperfect or evenungrammatical. And, at the same time, it isa fact that any native speaker can judgecorrectly the grammaticality of a sentence,i.e. human beings are genetically predis-posed to do that with their native language.Fromkin and Roadman (1998) also pointout to the fact that “grammaticality” is notbased on anything taught but rather on “therules constructed unconsciously as chil-dren” (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998, p.106).

This “grammatical judgement” is alwayscorrect and does not depend on whetherthe child has ever heard the sentencebefore. Neither does it depend on whetherthe sentence is meaningful or not; orwhether it is true or not. For the authors theexplanation is that “unconscious knowl-edge of the syntactic rules of grammar per-mits speakers to make grammatical judge-ments”.

All the evidence for UG mentioned so far isquite convincing. But still, there are somany different languages around the

globe., and they differ in terms of wordsused in them, so vocabulary is somethingwhich has to be ‘learnt’ or ‘memorized’.Other differences between languages con-cern the basic word order of the sentences,which has to be acquired. This process isusually described as setting certain innateparameters by selecting among possiblevariants. Language variation is thusreduced to learning the correct set of wordsand to selecting from a predetermined setof options. But, first of all, which are theseUG parameters?

UG parameters

While principles of UG “define the structur-al architecture of human language, varia-tion between particular languages isaccounted for by a small number of param-eters of variation allowed within the overall

15


16

design defined by the principles” (Hawkins,2001, p. 13). It is not possible that allaspects of the grammar of languages areuniversal; otherwise all natural languageswould be the same and there would be nonecessity for grammatical learning involvedin language acquisition. With the situationas it is, grammatical learning should notinclude learning those aspects of grammarwhich are universal (i.e. determined by uni-versal grammatical operations and princi-ples). It would only involve learning the lan-guage-specific parameters and the rangeof parametric variation which can be foundin natural languages.

A type of parametric variation across lan-guages can be demonstrated by using the following sentences in two languages:English and Italian.

(a) Marco parla italiano.(b) Parla italiano.(c) Marco speaks Italian.(d) *Speaks Italian.

What we can see from the examples aboveis that in both languages the verbs can takean overt subject and object. But while inItalian the verb might be used without anovert subject (or it has a null subject), inEnglish the verb speaks cannot exist with-out an overt subject. So, sentence (d) isungrammatical. In conclusion, we can saythat Italian is a null-subject language, whileEnglish is not.

This is a clear example that apparently,there exists a parametric variation betweenlanguages concerning whether or not theyallow finite verbs to have null subjects. AsRadford (2004) points out, the Null-SubjectParameter is a binary one: it only has twopossible settings for a particular language:it either allows or does not allow finite verbsin this language to have null-subjects.

An interesting question raised by Cook(1988) concerns principles which are notfound inall languages, namely, the conceptof movement which is widely employed insome languages like English to explainconstructions such as passives or ques-tions. However, certain languages do notshare this necessity of movement as a syn-tactic structure. Japanese, for instance,uses a completely different mechanism forconstructing questions and does notrequire a syntactic movement. Therefore,Cook considers the presence or absenceof syntactic movement to be a parameter ofvariation between languages. Such param-eter of variation between languages con-cerns the word order in wh-questions.Therefore, it is called Wh-parameter.Radford (2004) gives convincing exampleswith sentences in Chinese and English to

prove that these languages differ in therequirement to front a single wh-word inEnglish but does not have to move to thefront of the sentence in Chinese. Again,this is a binary parameter: a languageeither does or does not allow a wh-move-ment.

Still another variation concerning the possi-ble word order within a phrase is the posi-tion of heads and complements. In Englishthe head normally precedes the comple-ment, no matter whether the head is anoun, verb, preposition or an adjective, soit is a head-first language. However, a lan-guage like Korean, for example, is a head-last language and the phrase head takes apostposition: it follows its complement. Thisis an example of the Head-PositionParameter, which, as Radford (2004)points out, is “within narrowly circum-scribed limits” as there are lots of possiblevariations of the position of the comple-ment, depending on the nature of the verbwithin the phrase.

Hawkins (2001, pp.14-15) though, speci-fies that “the structure of every phrase inevery human language is of the sametype”. It always consists of a head X (whichstands for any of the categories N, V, A, P)that projects to a phrase consisting of thehead and its complement, or X’ = X-bar.So, a N’ means a phrase, consisting of anN and its complement; V’ – a phrase con-sisting of V and its complement and so on.The “maximal projection” of all these phras-es is XP (a phrase of the type X) and theX’-theory is actually a hypothesis about aprinciple of UG. As the author describes it:“phrases in all languages are projectedfrom head categories, and optionally con-sists of two higher levels of structure: X’and XP”. Different languages, however, optfor different settings of these parameters.For example, in English specifiers normallyprecede and complements follow the head.But in Japanese both typically precede; inMalagasy both follow, and so on.

All the examples so far prove that there areuniversal constraints on the parametricvariation of certain language properties.The theory of parametric variation explainsthat with the existence of the language fac-ulty which “imposes genetic constraints onthe range of parametric variation permittedin natural language grammars” (Radford,2004, p. 16). What is more, in most casesparameters constrain the variationbetween languages to the simplest choicepossible: to a binary one.

As for the question whether a principle isuniversal if it happens to be present only in some or one single language, Cook refersto Chomsky’s words: “I have not hesitated

to propose a general principle of linguisticstructure on the basis of observations of asingle language” (Chomsky, 1980b, p.48)and further hypothesises that aspects ofthe theory of UG are “disprovable”, and aprinciple might have been attributed to UGand turned out later to have its peculiaritiesin languages like Chinese or English or tobe breached by a certain language but thisis the normal situation with any scientifichypothesis.

If we compare UG principles and UGparameters, we can say that the formerenforce a set of requirements which haveto be met by any human language, whilethe latter cater for the syntactic variationbetween languages. Any particular lan-guage then has specific settings for the UGparameters. As Chomsky puts it down:“The grammar of a language can beregarded as a particular set of values forthe parameters, while the overall system ofrules, principles and parameters, is UGwhich we may take to be one element of human biological endowment, namely the“language faculty” ‘(Chomsky, 1982a, p.7).

Parameter Setting

The theory of parameters has significantimplications on the theory of languageacquisition. In the process of L1 acquisi-tion, a child has to construct a grammar ofhis language. The innate Language Facultyenforces a set of universal grammaticalprinciples and a set of grammatical param-eters or constraints on the language inquestion. If grammatical variation containsa lot of binary parameters, it makes theprocess of acquisition much simpler andeasier as a child only has to find out whichof the twoalternative parameters is theappropriate one for his native language.Certainly, an L1 learner also has to acquirehis native vocabulary, the range and com-bination of words. In other words, he has toperform the task of lexical learning, apartfrom the grammar parameter-setting. So,these two tasks are the focus of thePrinciples-and-Parameters Theory (PPT),developed by Chomsky at the beginning of1980s (Chomsky, 1981).

The PPT model hugely facilitates theacquisition process as the universal gram-matical properties do not need to be learnt.Only the ones which are subject to para-metric variation across natural languageshave to be learnt and in most cases thislearning process is simplified to a binarychoice. This leads to the assumption thatgrammar acquisition involves a series ofsimple settings of binary parameters andexplains the fact why it is so fast and error-free with young L1 learners.


17

The Government/Binding Theory

In his later works, Chomsky (1981a) devel-ops the Government/Binding Model whichexplains the connection between “soundsand meanings”, a connection betweenapparently unrelated aspects of language.On the one hand, “sounds are the physicalform of speech, meaningless in them-selves” as Cook (1988, p. 28) definesthem. On the other hand, meanings are“abstract mental representations, inde-pendent of physical form”. It is a fact thatone and the same abstract notion isexpressed in different languages by a total-ly different string of sounds. Describing asentence from a grammatical point of view will include not only how it is pronounced(the string of sounds, stress, intonation andso on) but it should account for its meaning(the semantics), as well as the syntacticstructure which connects them. Cook(1988, p.29, Figure 2.1) presents a modelin which it is clear that “syntactic structureplays a central mediating role betweenphysical form and abstract meaning”:

Fig. 3 Cook’s model a

However, Chomsky’s Government/Bindingtheory (GB) presents a slightly differentconnection between “phonetic form” (PF)and “logical form” (LF) as “representationsof syntactic meaning, mediated throughsyntax” (Cook, 1988, p. 29, Figure 2.2):

Fig. 4 Cook’s model b

As seen in this model, PF and LF form therelation between grammar and other areas.“PF and LF constitute the interfacebetween language and other cognitive sys-tems, yielding direct representation ofsound on the one hand and meanings onthe other as language and other systemsinteract”(Chomsky, 1986, p.68). However,Cook (1988, p.30) argues that Fig.2.1 is aclearer representation of the fact that syn-tax functions as a “bridge” between soundsand meanings, claiming that what a childacquires in his L1 is “the syntactic interfacerather than phonology or meaning”.GB the-ory further elaborates the syntactic repre-sentation, presenting the idea of deepstructure (“at which all the elements in thesentence are in their original location”) and

surface structure (“at which they have beenmoved”) as Cook (1988, p.30) puts it down.

So, the d-structure contains the essentialstructural relationship between the sen-tence elements, which, through movement,are represented in the s-structure. The s-structure still indicates the original locationof the sentence elements through “traces”. As Cook (1988, pp.31-33) puts all thestrings together, d-structure accounts forthe phrase structure through the X-bar the-ory, which in its turn, “sets the value for thehead parameter”. The Projection Principlethat projects the lexical meaning onto syn-tax, connects the d-structure to s-structureand “LF to the lexicon by specifying thepossible contexts in which a particular lexi-cal item can occur”. Syntax also accountsfor the functional roles of the sentence ele-ments, called θ-roles by GB. By interactionwith the X-bar parameter and the projectionprinciple, θ-roles are assigned to sentenceelements.

These roles express “a type of meaningdirectly relevant to the LF component and indirectly to the semantic component” andsatisfy the θ-criterion. The movementbetween d-structure and s-structure isrestricted by the Structure-Dependencyprinciple and by the Bounding Theory,which limits the distance an element canmove. One more sub-theory, the CaseTheory (which caters for the “assignment ofparticular ‘cases’ to Noun Phrases in thesentence” and for the difference betweencertain surface forms like she, her, hers, etc.) can be linked to d-structure and s-structure, thus coming to the complexCook’s model (Cook, 1988, p.33, Figure2.6), which elaborately matches syntax toPF and LF components:

Fig. 5 Cook’s complex model

In conclusion, we can say that all theexamples presented in this article proveconvincingly the existence of the UG as asystem of universal principles and rules, present in all human languages. UG princi-ples and parameters are of significant importance for structuring the grammars ofthe existing human languages. While the principles are universal, parameters mightopt for different settings, hence the varietyof grammatical rules. The examples also

demonstrate the close link between appar-ently independent aspects of language,such as syntax, lexis and phonetic form.However, the article does not claim to havecovered all the aspects of UG or the varietyof parameters and their different settings inmany different languages.

It does, though, present a few argumentsfor the existence of Universal Grammarand throws some light on the universalprinciples to which all human languagesabide and universal parameters, set differ-ently in different languages, which explainthe variety of existing languages.

Bibliography

Allen, J.P.B. & Van Buren, P., 1971. Chomsky:Selected readings. London: Oxford UniversityPress.

Carnie, A., 2002. Syntax: a generative introduc-tion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Chomsky, N., 1968. Syntactic structures. 7th

Printing. The Hague.Paris: Mouton.

Chomsky, N., 1969. Aspects of the theory of

Syntax. 2nd Printing. Cambridge (MA): TheM.I.T. Press.

Chomsky, N., 1981a. Lectures on governmentand biding. Dordrecht: Foris.

Chomsky, N., 1981b. Principles and parame-ters in syntactic theory. In N. Hornstein and D.Lightfoot, eds. Explanations in linguistics. Lon-don: Longman.

Chomsky, N., 1995. The minimalist program.Cambridge (MA): M.I.T. Press.

Cook, V.,1988. Chomsky’s Universal Gram-mar: an introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publish-ers.

Fromkin, V.,1998. The sentence patterns oflanguage. In Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R., eds.

An introduction to language. 6th edition. Or-lando (Fl): Harcourt Brace College Publishers.Ch. 4, pp. 105-56.

Fromkin, V., ed., 2000. Linguistics: an intro-duction to linguistic theory. Malden (MA): Black-well Publishers Ltd.

Hawkins, R., 2001. Second language syntax: agenerative introduction. Malden (MA): Black-well Publishing.

O’Gradey, W., Dobrovolsky, M. & Katamba, F.,1996. Contemporary linguistics: an introduc-

tion. 3rd ed. London: Longman.

Radford, A. 1997. Syntactic theory and thestructure of English: a minimalist approach.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Radford, A., 2004. English syntax: an introduc-tion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


18

Every Cloud has a storage lining

Cloud Computing is positive for storage.It’s good for the storage service providersand for the storage infrastructure suppliers.As more and more applications are devel-oped and computing resources demandedmore storage is created. According to IDC,storage is the fastest growing Cloud serv-ice, growing from 9% of all Cloud servicerevenues in 2009, or $1.6B, to 14% in 2013or over $6B of Worldwide IT Cloud servic-es revenue . The arms dealers providingstorage hardware, software and profes-sional services to the Cloud serviceproviders raked in $2.9B in Cloud storageinfrastructure revenue in 2009, accordingto IDC .

This growth will continue as an increasingnumber of enterprises experience the abili-ty to deliver more value with fewerresources while keeping up with constantchange, one of the many benefits providedby Cloud Computing. Due to the Cloud’srapid elasticity of compute resources andlower cost structure, Cloud Computing willdrive more applications and computingdemand that will result in a higher demandof storage across all enterprise storagetiers. In addition to the shear growth ofstorage driven by Cloud Computing, thereare opportunities to provide new storagedevice solutions that will help solve Clouddata center cost challenges and opera-tional inefficiencies.

It is easy to become carried away in all ofthe hype and excitement brought on byCloud Computing, but it is delivering realvalue to enterprises, SMBs and con-sumers. Cloud Computing and Storage isreal, it’s sustainable and although it’s rela-tively a small percentage of the overall ITmarket today, it is becoming a disruptiveand significant opportunity. Although anincreasing number of commercial and largeenterprise companies are benefiting fromCloud Computing today, we believe it willtake 3-5 years for broad-scale Cloud adop-tion.

What is the Cloud?

The Cloud has become such a popularterm that its meaning has been adapted fora wide variety of services and applications,so it’s necessary to outline the Cloud as wesee it. Essentially, the Cloud is a newmodel for delivering and consuming ITresources, such as, computer (server)

resources, data storage, network band-width, and even applications. The modelincludes characteristics such as on-demand, self-service; rapid elasticity;measured service (pay-as-you-use);resource pooling and broad networkaccess.

There are three well-known Cloud servicetypes: Software as a Service (SaaS),where a customer uses a serviceprovider’s application over a network;Platform as a Service (PaaS), where aservice provider’s platform is used todeploy a customer-generated applicationto the Cloud; and Infrastructure as aService (IaaS), where customers pay forthe usage of processing, storage, networkbandwidth and other IT resources. Thereare four kinds of Cloud deployments includ-ing Public, which are typically mega-scaleinfrastructures used and shared by multiplecustomers; Private, which are owned orleased for use by an individual customer;Community, which is a shared infrastruc-ture by customers who have a commoninterest, such as medical centers; andHybrid, which is a composition of two ormore Clouds.

Why Clouds form

Although many different surveys are beingconducted to examine the perception andadoption of Cloud Computing, they arefinding similar results. While security andintegration issues are the biggest concernsabout Cloud Computing, these concernshave not dissuaded companies from adopt-ing Cloud Computing. Furthermore, forthose companies that are already usingCloud Computing, there is a very high sat-isfaction level. 70% of those that are cur-rently using Clouds plan to move addition-al applications within the next 12 months.Cloud Computing is becoming a perma-nent part of the IT discussion and strategy.

So what is drawing companies to adoptClouds? Although there are many drivers,cost savings and agility are the two biggestreasons companies are adopting CloudComputing. The pay-as-you-use costmodel and CAPEX reductions that Cloudenables is one of the top reasons that com-panies are adopting Cloud. Also, thedynamic scaling to quickly provision andde-provision IT resources that CloudComputing provides adds tremendous

business value to new programs and initia-tives that companies need to launch in atimely manner. Below is a chart thatbreaks out the driving factors for adoptingCloud Computing.

Companies are deploying several cate-gories of business applications that aredriving rapid data growth and require amore dynamic storage infrastructure toaccommodate this growth. Given thosedeployments and today’s dynamic markets,companies need an IT infrastructure that isdynamic and can respond quickly to chang-ing business needs. Cloud Computing pro-vides the dynamic elasticity required toachieve their business objectives. Thechart below illustrates the range and popu-larity of reason why companies favourCloud Computing:

The big hitters in terms of applications thatare being moved to the Cloud include: E-mail, Archiving, CRM and Storage. Someindustries are moving faster to the Cloudfront than others. The top 3 industriesadopting Cloud Computing are Technology,Financial Services and Legal/ProfessionalServices .

What makes Clouds different

There are fundamental design differencesthat make Clouds different from traditionalon-premise data centers. ServiceProviders perspective on their data centeris one of a value or revenue generatingasset. A traditional on-premise data centeris typically viewed as a cost center. Thisdifference is one of the key reasons whythe two environments are architected dif-ferently. Many of the large internet datacenter companies’ philosophy on architect-ing a Cloud environment is based upondeploying low-cost, scalable, commodi-tized hardware with a software layer thatglues the inexpensive hardware together tocreate a more scalable model.

Clouds are also based upon a self-servicemodel, multi-tenancy enabled in part by vir-tualization, and a high level of autonomicsand homogeneity. A traditional on-premiseenvironment is typically a heterogeneous,shared-service model with less automationand manages assets independently foreach user or application. A Cloud’s deploy-ment model is distributed as opposed todecentralized with a client-server model.

Seagate’s Wes Perdue, Cloud Strategy, Enterprise PLM, explains how the Cloud’s growing traction with enterprisespresents opportunities for storage players


Another very important difference is thatClouds are designed for failure instead offailover, which aligns well with their utiliza-tion of replication as the primary model fordata protection due to its simplicity andmassive scalability.

Finally, open-source software is common inCloud Computing driven by a symbioticrelationship. While massive data centersbuilt on low-cost commodity hardware andvirtualized operating environments providethe technical foundation for global, cloud-based services, open-source softwareenables global, service-based businessmodels. These differences enable Cloudsto achieve lower service costs throughgreater resource sharing, greater

economies of scale, greater levels of archi-tectural standardization, greater processoptimization and automation, and the abili-ty to modify the usage of those resourcesmuch more quickly than traditional IT envi-ronments.

The Cloud is demanding

Of course, any new technology presentschallenges and Cloud Computing is noexception. As Cloud Computing datacen-ters are architected based upon a simple,“design for failure” infrastructure model, it isnot practical to purchase off-the-shelf sys-tems designed for the traditional mass ITmarket. These products are too expensiveand include features that do not meet theCloud’s unique data center environmentand application requirements. Clouds uselow cost, purpose-built, scalable solutions;including, purpose-built servers, storagesystems and networking products, whilestill utilizing standard delivery models andmassive economies of scale.

Cloud Computing has established newrules that require change. The Cloud

ecosystem operates under a different busi-ness model than the traditional on-premiseIT ecosystem, employing a deal or RFQmodel for procuring server, storage andnetworking infrastructure. Large storageOEMs have reorganized the need forCloud-focused business units, and havealigned their business models with theCloud service providers; responding in astreamlined, transparent manner to RFQsand delivering purpose-built solutions thatmore exactly meet the needs of the Cloud.

What does this all mean for storage?

Applications drive the workload, reliabilityand performance needs of any system.Applications in Cloud data centers run24x7, have high workloads and run in high

vibration environments that require enter-prise-class storage devices, such as,HDDs and SSDs. Enterprise-class drivesare designed for a multiple drive systemenvironment such as servers and externalstorage systems that operate 24 hours aday, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Non-enterprise class or personal storage drivesare designed for a single drive environmentand have a much lower design usage,lower duty cycle and a simpler, lighterworkload. To ensure success withdemanding Cloud applications, it is highlyrecommended to use enterprise-classdrives that are designed for enterpriseapplications that run in a Cloud data centerenvironment.

Storage architecture needs to be wellaligned with the Cloud architecturalapproach to increase simplicity, lower costsand achieve greater scalability. It’s impor-tant to provide a unified approach thatreduces complexity and optimizes energyefficiency and performance footprint for thedata center. By simplifying around a singleinterface and form factor, and upon a single

foundation for security, a unified storageapproach promotes sustainability and cre-ates a foundation of powerful, yet simpleenterprise-class storage solutions for thedemanding and multiple array of differentapplications in the data centers.

There is a massive opportunity for storagecompanies that have a broad enterpriseportfolio of drive products, specificallydesigned for each tier of storage and foreach type of application and quality of serv-ice level in a data center. To a largedegree, the application’s workload deter-mines the type of physical resources,including type of drive, but as enterprisesneeds change they need a storage suppli-er that can integrate seamlessly.

How the Clouds will form

In summary, we believe that the Cloud willcontinue to evolve and expand drivingmore applications, more computingdemand which will in turn, drive more stor-age for the data centers as well as morelocal storage.

However, the Cloud will wholesale replaceenterprise data centers. We believe thatmany companies will move from an internalIT model to an outsourced Cloud model.Most of these will be the small-to-mid-sizecompanies. The larger enterprise compa-nies will migrate their non-critical applica-tions and data to the Cloud, and some willmigrate and outsource their entire IT oper-ations. However, many larger companieswill keep their critical applications and datainternally, behind their firewall. Many larg-er companies will also adopt a hybridmodel, utilizing the Cloud for providing cer-tain IT services while at the same timemaintaining other internal IT services.

We estimate mainstream Cloud adoption tobe in the 2012-2013 timeframe. To thedegree that companies will adopt Cloudservices for their diverse set of applicationsboils down to many factors; one of themore important of these is trust. Earningthis trust will take some time.

19

References

1. IDC eXchange, IDC’s New IT CloudServices Forecast: 2009-2013,(http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=543)

2. IDC, Worldwide Cloud Services StorageSpending 2009-2013 Forecast: Storage forthe Cloud, Doc #221368, Dec 2009

3. Mimecast, Feb 2010

4. Mimecast, Feb 2010

Source: www.mimecast.com 2010


20

Casio Bluetooth Low Energy Watch

Communicates with Smart Phones

Casio’s prototype features wireless

technology for short-range communica-

tion.with very low power consumption.

A prototype of the watch was exhibited

at the International Consumer

Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Taking advantage of the low power con-sumption of the new Bluetooth technology,the new watch powers functions with a sin-gle button-cell battery, the same kind usedin small devices and watches. It does thiswithout losing any battery life compared toconventional wristwatches. The battery lifeis estimated at approximately two yearsbased on the prototype model, assumingthat the Bluetooth® wireless communica-tion function is used for 12 hours per day.This means that users can wear it every-day just like a wristwatch, without the both-er of the recharging required by typicalmobile devices.

Casio’s new prototype can communicatewith smart phones equipped with BluetoothLow Energy Wireless Technology, whichwill be available in the near future and beable to connect to networks of variouskinds of devices. The prototype demon-strates how to expand the ways people usetheir watches, unlike anything ever seenbefore, as new applications are developedfor smart phones to enable communicationbetween watches through smart phones.

Casio will manufacture its first BluetoothLow Energy Watch later this year.Meanwhile, Casio will call for partner com-panies to develop applications compatiblewith smart phones and other householddevices in such areas as sports, health,home entertainment, security, and commu-nication with family members and friends.

Overview of Casio’s prototype

Bluetooth® Low Energy Watch

Main features:

• Wireless communication is powered bythe button-cell battery used in smalldevices and watches

• Battery life with the communication func-tions is the same as previously releasedwatches

• The size of the watch case is a comfort-able 53.4 (D) x 44.4 (W) x 12.8 (T) mil-limeters

Main functions:

• Accurate time information can be trans-mitted from a smart phone to the watch toensure correct time

• The watch includes an alert signal to noti-fy of incoming calls and e-mail messagessent to the user’s smart phone

• A smart phone’s ring alerts and vibrationcan be stopped by tapping the watch

• Alarm and vibration functions of a smartphone can be activated using a watchbutton.

CommunicationSpecifications

Data Transfer Rate 1 Mbps

Signal Strength 0 dBm (1mW)

Signal Range 2–5 m (may differ depending on surroundingconditions)

Encryption Method 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Communication Functions Time Correction The watch can be synchronized with timeinformation transmitted from a smart phone

Incoming Call andE-mail Alert

The watch alerts users of incoming calls ande-mail messages sent to a smart phone

Finder Function Alarm and vibration functions of a smartphone can be activated using a watch button

Watch Functions Alarm 5 independent daily alarms; hourly time sig-nal; vibration function

Stopwatch 1/100-second; measuring capacity:23:59’59.99”; split time

Countdown Timer Measuring unit: 1 second; Input range: 1minute to 24 hours

World Time 100 cities (35 time zones, daylight savingon/off) and Coordinated Universal Time

Light Electro-luminescent backlight with afterglow

Other Full auto-calendar, 12/24-hour format; sleepmode

Power Source CR2032

Approx. Battery Life(Based on Prototype Model)

Approx. 2 years (assuming the communica-tion function is used for 12 hours per day)

Size of Case 53.4 × 44.4 × 12.8 mm

Total Weight Approx. 50g

Main Specifications of the Prototype Bluetooth® Low Energy Watch


21

• 4pm on Wednesday is the peak-time forworkplace shopping

• Post-lunch fatigue sends workers onlineto shop

• Online shopping surges by 52% at 4pmduring the working week

• InvisibleHand’s real-time pricing technolo-gy has identified almost £20 million insavings for UK online shoppers

• Download and use InvisibleHand for freeat www.getinvisiblehand.com

Employees are hitting the online shoppingaisles during office hours to get away fromwork pressures, according to researchfrom real-time online shopping toolInvisible Hand.1

Workers hit a post-lunch slump and as aresult head online for some retail therapy,as data shows an 11% increase in the num-ber of online shoppers at 2pm, comparedto midday.

2pm isn’t the only time workers whip outtheir plastic to pass those work hours by, asresearch shows the largest surge of online

shopping during the working week is at4pm. Figures from Invisible Hand showthere is an average 52% increase in onlineshopping compared to the morning.

The largest shopping rush comes whenemployees are celebrating the 'hump' ofthe week seeing a 75% increase of shop-ping at 4pm on Wednesday.

Pre-Monday work blues means that mid-night shopping on a Sunday is the mostpopular midnight hour for spending onplastic, with a 27% increase from the low-est level of the week.

Robin Landy, founder of InvisibleHand,says: “With work providing a number of

stresses and problems, there's little won-der people head online to spend money.Whether it is for yourself or someone else,browsing the online stores offers light reliefat work and at home.

"Whenever people are shopping onlinethey should make sure they are not payingover the odds for products. Rather thanshopping around and visiting a number ofsites, often with out of date prices, InvisibleHand will automatically notify a consumerof the cheapest price without them everhaving to leave the site they are on."

InvisibleHand is free to download in lessthan a minute via the website, www.get-invisiblehand.com.

Employees Ease Work Woesby Shopping Online

% increase in onlineshopping Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Average

From To

12pm 2pm 11% 27% 3% 3% 12% 11%

9am 4pm 53% 42% 75% 36% 52% 52%


Global Partnershipduring Economic Crisis

Dr Muhammad Farmer, Principal of the

British Institute of Technology and

E-commerce, spoke at a Forum on

Partnership in Chennai, India .

“O mankind! We have created

you from male and female and

have made you into nations and tribes,

that you may know one another. Indeed

the most noblest of you with Allaah is

the one who has the most piety.”

The Quran

Ithank you for inviting me to this importantPartnership Summit. The ideals of thisannual event are close to my heart for in

the UK the organisation, which I head, theBritish Institute of Technology and E-com-merce (BITE) holds a similar annual event,the World Hi Tech Forum in London whichbrings the global community together tofacilitate technological and business part-nerships. Speakers and delegates fromorganisations around the world meet to dis-cuss partnerships based on developingtechnology and high-level, shared learning.

I cannot emphasize enough the importanceof international dialogue like this. Throughit we make new friends and contacts. Eventhose who seem to have opposed ideascan find that their differences melt or atleast they can gain new perspectives onproblems when they meet regularly todecide how they can work together. It is apity that there often has to be a problem forus to work together. In this world of rapidglobal communications we should be doingit as matter of course.

Throughout the year we also hold ad hocseminars to discuss current events such asour Leadership in Times of Crisis seminarlast year where one of our guest speakers,the former Malaysian Prime Minister, TunDr Mahathir considered lessons we canlearn from the Currency crisis of 1997-98 -because history does seem to repeat itselfand we can learn from our mistakes.

World economy

The world economy has gone into an era ofde-coupling of the emerging economiesfrom the traditional powers. This has cre-

ated two new economic landscapes oneled by United States and its allies and otherby the collection of countries known asBRIC. Despite the largely touted word ofinterdependence both economically andpolitically the countries such as those mak-ing up the BRIC block are fast emerging aseconomic locomotive of the 21st Century.

In an address to bankers Mervyn Kingcalled attention to the, “extraordinarily sud-den, severe, and simultaneous downturn ofactivity and trade in every corner of theworld economy.”

The governments steering of low interestrates in the UK has been welcomed bybusinesses, however banks have beenunable to make this available to their cus-tomers. The banks which have assuredgovernment they will widen their lendingare proving recalcitrant with only the rela-tively safest borrowers often succeeding ingetting loans. Banks have shown littleimagination, or some would say resolve insharing some of the benefits derived fromthe government’s wise interest policy.

Major regulatory failures were at the veryheart of the crisis. But with the successionof reports of the bonuses those working infinancial institutions are still receiving evenwhen their banks have been backed bygovernment has left the public suspicious.Many governments have promised to takeaction to build a stronger, more globallyconsistent, supervisory and regulatoryframework for the future financial sector,which will support sustainable globalgrowth and serve the needs of businessand citizens. But the question the PrimeMinister, Gordon Brown and other leadersmust surely answer is how to draw the les-sons out of what has proved to be a nearcataclysmic financial and socio-economicconjuncture.

To tackle the financial and economic crisisthat spread across the globe in 2008, the G-20 members were called upon to furtherstrengthen international cooperation. TheG-20 has already delivered a number of sig-nificant outcomes. For example, it commit-ted to implement expansionary macroeco-

nomic policies, including the fiscal expansionof US$5 trillion, significantly enhance finan-cial regulations, notably by the establish-ment of the Financial Stability Board(FSB);and substantially strengthen the Interna-tional Financial Institutions(IFIs), includingthe expansion of resources and the improve-ment of precautionary lending facilities ofthe IFIs.

The question is whether the new strategy isa practical solution to the present crisis.The G20 plan is based on the belief thatgrowth, to be sustained, has to be sharedand that the global plan for recovery musthave at its heart the needs and jobs of fam-ilies, not just in developed countries but inemerging markets and the poorest coun-tries of the world. The G20 leaders believethat the only foundation for sustainableglobalisation and rising prosperity is anopen world economy based on market prin-ciples, effective regulation, and strongglobal institutions. But the question is, canworld leaders of diverse economies worktogether on a common plan which they canactually implement when budgets aretight?

Also while the G-20 is committed to deliverthe scale of sustained fiscal effort neces-sary to restore growth, nobody knows towhat extent this package will create a sig-nificant surge in employment or if it will justburden fragile economies with more debt.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is usually one of the mainsectors hit during recession so I would liketo consider how global partnerships canhelp spread the risk and ensure that tech-nologies continue to be developed.Manufacturing is increasingly involvingclose international partnerships coveringthe whole product evolution process fromconcept to production. One of the signifi-cant factors in success in the future will bea clear vision of the whole process fromtechnology to market. Entrepreneurs mustconsider the global picture in all aspects oftheir planning, whether it is technology cre-ation and development, production or mar-keting. Innovation is essential, whether it isin the form of new technology or in the

22


approach to business development andpartnering.

A key consideration is the rapidly changingbalance of research, technology and man-ufacturing between developed and devel-oping nations. It is no longer enough todevelop a product and then look for ‘cheapmanufacturing’ elsewhere. Developingnations have expertise in all stages of theprocess, and this must be harnessed effi-ciently.

Our first World Hi Tech Forum focussed onIndia. India is increasingly a favoured des-tination for manufacturing. Why? A welleducated, motivated work force, willing totake the initiative and fluent in English anda move to break some of the bureaucraticsystems which have hampered it in thepast. In the longer term, close partnershipscovering the whole product evolution fromconcept to production will become thenorm, but there is no doubt that productionwill still form a key part of the partnership.

The sectors affected are wide, includecommunication, aerospace, automotive,information technology, electronics andprinting. Key aspects include Design andFuture-proofing in prototyping; Evolutionfrom Manufacturing to Service Models;Aligned buyers and sellers in ServiceSystems; Energy recycling in Electronics;Closed loops, recycling and Polymers andClosing loops for mobile phones.Areas of concern are skills development,training, informing and consulting.

Partnerships

In considering partnerships, let’s look firstat the role of Government. BITE has beensuccessful in training government and cor-porate departments. The current financialturbulence has created the need for devel-oping countries to undertake training toraise their staff skills to the level of thedeveloped nation in order to interact andbetter facilitate business development.BITE’s re-skilling and training is based firm-ly on client objectives and cultural andsocial background, rather than any genericapproach. The importance and complexityof technology creation and its utilisation iscommon to many nations all around theworld, with varying degrees of support fromgovernments. The adoption of e-Government practices is a sign of a com-mitted government.

Governments have a prime need to fosterscience and technology, not only for thenation’s reputation but also for their ownneeds (as in defence) and for the econom-ic strength of the nation. The success ofhigh-technology industry will often dependon government backing and a regular sup-

ply of new developments to achieve andmaintain a global lead. We need to haveseminars such as this to hear from bothgovernments and industry about best prac-tice, in both the support and exploitation ofresearch and considerations of intellectualproperty protection.

A planned Innovation Process is crucial. Intoday’s world, new inventions and their usein innovative products and services are thebasis for many new businesses. An essen-tial pre-requisite is thus the existence of astrong science base, whether national orinternational. Business success usuallygoes to the first to identify and utilise thesenew discoveries for benefit to business andthe economy. One key aspect of this suc-cess is the ability to identify relevant newtechnologies at a very early stage and toacquire them for business benefit. In the‘global economy’, these discoveries couldarise anywhere, so a truly world-wideapproach is essential.

Whilst it is not possible to predict everydevelopment in technology, and certainlynot new fundamental discoveries, the suc-cessful organisation will have the ability toidentify and assess new discoveries anddevelopments as they emerge. Relevanceto the operation of the organisation mustbe judged, and decisions taken whether to monitor or actively pursue these matters.

Transforming business

Throughout the history of technology, therehave occurred new developments thattransform business environments, present-ing major opportunities to adopters, andmajor threats to established suppliers.Think back in time to the advent of the tele-phone, steam engine, air travel, computersetc. They changed the world as we knowand how we live and work in it. Make nomistake, future technological inventions willmake even more radical changes to howwe live and work, let’s make sure thesechanges benefit all of us and enhance thequalities of our lives.

The research community is truly world-wide. In seeking innovation and competi-tive advantage, whether for a company or anation, it is essential that a global view istaken. In particular, the rapidly changingbalance of research, technology and man-ufacturing between developed and devel-oping nations must be taken into account.Equally, the resources needed for develop-ment and production are available in manynations. The successful organisation willconsider this in all aspects of their plan-ning, whether it is technology creation anddevelopment, production or marketing, andform global partnerships to their mutualbenefit.

There is a clear need to improve on aninternet infrastructure which is as inherent-ly fragile, in business security terms, as thepresent one. It is essential that we look atways to optimise and render safe the cyberbusiness world. There is need for a con-certed effort by heads of government toreach a common agreement on establish-ing a regulatory body who will take chargeof the security, standards, technology andmanagement. In achieving this, the eco-nomic powers of the world must supportthe developing countries in a shared initia-tive if they wish to realise the potential of acommon global ‘enhanced internet’ to workfor the benefit of all.

Finally let me consider world trade andeducation. Growth has underpinned risingprosperity for half a century. But it is nowfalling for the first time in 25 years. Fallingdemand is exacerbated by growing protec-tionist pressures and a withdrawal of tradecredit. Reinvigorating world trade andinvestment is essential for restoring globalgrowth. We must not repeat the historicmistakes of protectionism of previous eras.

I firmly believe that amidst all this changewe must never lose sight of the moraldimension. In a global society our respon-sibility is not just to ourselves our familiesand our country but to everyone on thisplanet through partnership. For if we takethe selfish route of simply attempting toenrich ourselves, this will come back tohaunt our children through global crises infuture generations. In all we do we have aglobal responsibility to all humanity.

Higher education plays an essential role insociety, creating new knowledge, transfer-ring it to students and fostering innovation.Institutions throughout the world are work-ing to modernise, both in terms of thecourse they offer and the way they operate.The British Institute of Technology & E-commerce is one such organisation.

Many today perceive the excellent Britishpedagogic system as the best amongst thedeveloped nations. It is therefore not sur-prising to know that education has overtak-en the banking sector in the UK and thenon-domestic student population con-tribute no less than twenty billion poundsannually.

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24

China Goes GlobalTopics: Socio-Politico-Economic Influences; Effects of The Business Environment (Developed & EmergingEconomies); Competing with US for Eco-politico-business leadwership; Critical Success Factors; Western Eco-political theories and models and China’s trajectory on Macro & Micro levels.

Dr Lawrence M. Akwetey

Introduction

CHINA SHAKES THE WORLD - JamesKynge (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £18.99)'Let China sleep, for when she wakes, shewill shake the world.' NapoleonBonaparte's words seem eerily prescienttoday as the shock waves from China'sawakening reverberate across the globe.James Kynge explores the way we areincreasingly dependent on China's prod-ucts and markets and the way the slightestchange in the Chinese economy quicklyreaches our doorstep. He explains how thisspectacular change has occurred and whatit will mean in the 21st century

China has taken over from the US as thelargest exporter to the Middle East, withtrade between the region and Asia growingmore than five times between 2001 and2008, rising from $110bn to $600bn,according to HSBC.

When the Industrial and Commercial Bankof China became the first Chinese bank toopen a subsidiary in the Middle East, it wastouted as a significant step towardsexpanding overseas and promoting an“internationalisation strategy.

ICBC’s loan book grew from zero to about$500m last year, while off-balance sheetactivities, mainly letters of guarantee, werevalued at about $1bn, Mr Tian says. Its netprofits for the year were approximately$3m. The bank expects to open a branchsoon in Abu Dhabi, the wealthy capital ofthe United Arab Emirates, to go with thoseoperating in Qatar and Dubai, and Mr Tianhopes to double business this year.

And Chinese companies are “knocking on”ICBC’s doors in search of informationabout Arab markets, says Mr Tian.

Social Influences

• Corporate social responsibility and thebest strategies to pursue acceleratedeconomic development.(in Africa-Emerging Economies)

• Extractive Industry Transparency Initiativefor Africa and the emerging economies(Leon H. Sullivan Foundation)

• How companies can contribute to eco-nomic and social development in Africa(After the partition and exploitation of Africaby the Colonial powers).

• Taking over ailing and heavily misman-aged/non-performing companies

• Energy in Africa is big business. Thesource of vast amounts of energyresources and often times similar amountsof political turmoil, Africa is home to one bil-lion potential consumers whose growingdemand for energy is greater than any-where else in the world. Despite Africa'swealth of resources

• Low emissions give most African nationssurprising leverage when it comes to glob-al carbon markets, which remain a largelyuntapped source of capital for developingnew energy projects on the continent.

US Conditions

• Political goodwill, positive encourage-ment, constant support for civil societyand the principles of democracy

• Constant dialogue with those that are partof the political elite. Support for civil soci-ety and an independent press. And a will-ingness to put our resources and moneyon the table to help reform - institutionalreform that will strengthen democracy.


• If we see people not doing the rightthings, people who are undermining thevalues of democracy, people who are cor-rupt, we should not only step back, but weshould criticize in a principled fashion

Economic Influences

• Africa has unrealized potential as a pio-neer in the new global energy economy

• Skyrocketing demand and relatively littlelegacy energy infrastructure make Africaripe for the expansion and developmentof green energy like wind and solar.

• Potential opportunities that Africa has todevelop a green energy infrastructure

• Global shift in energy production towardsthe African Continent

• China’s carbon-based energy technolo-gies gles to expand electrification to themasses in Africa.

Political Influences

• In less developed countries (e.g. inAfrica), weak governments and political tur-moil (Business Exchange, 2010)

Globalisation’s Effects on the Business

Environment of firms in Developed

/Emerging Countries/Africa

• China's investments in Nigeria are worth$7.24 billion, its Economic andCommercial Counsellor in Nigeria , MrRong Yanson, has said

• "The Chinese enterprises have madegreat contributions to Nigeria's economyand they have enjoyed sound businessrelationship with Nigerian firms,"(DailyTrust, (22-02-2010).

• No fewer than six Chinese firms hadsigned trade cooperation agreement withthe Kaduna State Government

• In 2007, Industrial and Commercial Bankof China made Beijing’s biggest directinvestment in Africa when it bought 20 percent of South Africa’s Standard Bank for$5.5bn

Developed Countries:

• The rise of Chinese manufacturing is nocause for hysteria; while it poses somechallenges, the good news far outweighsthe bad. Nowhere is this more so than inChina itself: millions of people are beinglifted out of poverty each year by thecountry’s rapid economic growth, a storyof human progress too rarely acknowl-edged by those who fear China. Yet citi-zens of the developed world also benefitfrom the “China price” as consumers (FT11 August 2008)

• The news that China is poised to overtakethe US as the world’s largest producer ofmanufactured goods would cause alarmin some quarters –were it not for the factthat the people likely to be alarmed aboutforeign competition tend to assume thatChina overtook the US 15 years ago. (FT11 August 2008)

USA

Most people in the US Treasury would sub-scribe to the view that the Chinese don’thave much choice,” said Nicholas Lardy ofthe Peterson Institute for InternationalEconomics, a Washington think-tank. “Sothey probably won’t give them too muchcredit for this announcement. For thosewho think China doesn’t have much leewayto diversify, this just states the obvious.”

He added, however, that “on the margins”this could make the US Treasury less like-ly to cite China as a currency manipulatorin a report expected next month. Accordingto most analysts and government officialsin both countries, China does not have theoption of wielding foreign exchange pur-chases as a weapon in bilateral relations.

“China can diversify a bit on the marginsbut when it comes to investing the $30bn-$40bn (€22bn-€29bn, £20bn-£27bn) amonth Beijing is accumulating in foreignexchange reserves, there are only twomarkets deep and liquid enough – the USand eurozone government bond markets,”according to Stephen Green, head ofresearch in greater China for StandardChartered Bank. “The euro market hasshown brilliantly in recent months that it isnot exactly risk-free.”

The prospect of China dumping dollarscaused a flurry of excitement last monthwhen the US Treasury published prelimi-nary data showing that China cut its hold-ings of Treasuries by $34.2bn inDecember. Total holdings, according torevised figures, stood at $895bn at yearend.

US monthly Treasury data is notoriouslyunreliable at showing exactly how muchChina or other countries are investing inUS government bonds. One reason is thatmonthly surveys are unable to determinethe ultimate buyer of Treasuries if they usethird parties or subsidiaries in financial cen-tres such as Hong Kong and London tomake purchases.

China’s State Administration of ForeignExchange (Safe), which manages thecountry’s $2,400bn in foreign exchangereserves, is known to route purchasesthrough its offices in these two cities.Taking this into account, Standard

Chartered estimates that China’s USTreasury holdings actually stood at about$1,020bn at the end of 2009.

“Overall, it looks like China’s US holdings,as a ratio of its total holdings, are still with-in the normal historical range” of about 68per cent of its total reserves by the end of2009, Mr Green said. “In other words, therehas been no abnormal break with the dollarso far.”

(FT March 10, 2010)

• Historically unique financial symbiosisthat had developed between China andAmerica.

• This paradox could mark the end ofanother attempt to make the world safefor global finance

US & China

Yet the accumulation of large war chests offoreign reserves through currency interven-tion carried negative externalities. Thearrangement opened a Pandora’s Box offinancial distortions that eventually came tohaunt the global economy. The glut of sav-ings from emerging markets has been akey factor in the decline in US and globalreal-long term interest rates, despite theparallel decline in US savings.

Lower interest rates in turn have enabledAmerican households to increase con-sumption levels and worsened the imbal-ance between savings and investment.And because foreign savings were pre-dominantly channeled through government(or central bank) hands into safe assetssuch as treasuries, private investors turnedelsewhere to look for higher yields. This ledto a repricing of financial risks andunleashed the ingenuity of financial engi-neers who developed new financial prod-ucts for the low interest rate world, such assecuritised debt instruments.

This is not to say that reserve accumulationwas the only cause for the current crisis.Yet the core issue remained the Chinesewillingness to fund America’s consumptionand borrowing habit. Without this support,

25


26

interest rates in the US would almost cer-tainly have been substantially higher, act-ing as a circuit breaker for the developingdebt-consumption bubble.

Beijing and others cannot be blamed forreckless lending into the housing bubble orleverage in western financial institutions,but it is clear that a vast amount of capitalwas flowing from a developing country witha per capita income of one tenth of thewestern world to one of the richesteconomies in the world. Water was flowinguphill in unprecedented amounts.

Critique

Moreover, the past years have shown thatcapital outflows from emerging markets,including China’s reserves accumulationwithin the constellation we calledChimerica, have themselves contributed tothe build-up of macroeconomic imbalancesand financial risks that brought the globaleconomy to its knees. After the dust hassettled, members of the economics profes-sion will have to think hard about what theright policy advice drawn from financialglobalisations 2.0 and 3.0 should be.Neither model has passed the practice testwith flying colours.

China

To a large extent, Chinese industry is dom-inated by low-productivity, labour-intensive

manufacture. The bargain that the Chineseelite has struck with the population inexchange for political legitimacy rests onthe ability of the economy to generateenough jobs to absorb the continuousstream of workers flocking to the cities. Ashas been noted by many commentators,the Chinese job-generation machine pro-vides high headline figures of economicgrowth, but hides much waste and ineffi-ciency. Further down the line, there is thespectre of a glass ceiling to Chinese com-petitiveness. To move from a manufactur-ing model that is integrated into the supplychain of WalMart and the production linesof more advanced industries in the devel-oped world to one that challenges thedeveloped world for dominance is a stepthat may not be so easy to take. It is easyto compete with Mexico for access to USmarkets, but harder to compete with SiliconValley

Financial Times : Common goals for

China and the US

The biggest challenge the world confrontsis coping with the rise of China. Relativelystable world orders do not easily adapt tothe emergence of new powers. There arepainful dislocations at best; catastrophictragedies at worst. In so far as the currentglobal financial and economic crisis partlyoriginated in imbalances generated byChina's enormous trade surpluses – some-

thing Beijing disputes – the potential scaleof such disruptions is already clear. Thesame applies to China's ambitions to proj-ect diplomatic and military power.

But handled correctly, the task is notintractable. One does not need to be amodern-day Neville Chamberlain to recog-nise that it is only natural for China to seekincreased military muscle to match itsgrowing economic clout. Japan provides atelling example of how, without credible mil-itary projection, even economically potentstates struggle to gain influence.

Two decades of double-digit spendinghave transformed Beijing's military capabil-ities: it now possesses a large and increas-ingly sophisticated submarine fleet, aRussian-built air force, and vastly improvedballistic, satellite and cyber-warfare capa-bilities.

The trick for the US is to ease China intosupporting common goals, which is, afterall, akin to Beijing's stated ambition ofpeaceful emergence. In that context, theresumption of a high-level US-Sino militarydialogue – suspended because of Beijing'sanger at US arms sales to Taiwan – is verywelcome. Childish rhetoric about Taiwanmust now be put aside.


The two should talk about more importantthings. Dialogue is necessary first to pre-vent accidents from spiralling into crisis.It should also be used to address legitimateWashington concerns over Beijing's lack oftransparency in military spending, its sup-port for repressive regimes and its efforts atespionage, often against the US itself

But the agenda should be more forwardlooking than that. It is time to engage Chinamore formally in international effortsagainst piracy and terrorism. More thoughtshould be given to China's developing rolein peacekeeping operations.

There are plenty of pressing diplomaticissues – from North Korea to Pakistan-Afghanistan – where US and Chinesegoals at least superficially overlap. Byseeking to formalise some of these con-cerns – six-party talks on North Korea werea promising start – trust can be graduallybuilt. The gap between US and Chinesemilitary power will shrink. That is inevitable.Conflict is not.

Washington Post: China Passes

Germany With 3rd Highest GDP(01/20/09)

BEIJING, Jan. 14 -- China leapfrogged overGermany to become the world's third-largest economy in 2007, sooner than pre-dicted, underscoring how quickly the con-centration of global economic power hasshifted.

While earlier estimates had put growth ofChina's gross domestic product that year at11.9 percent, revised figures released bythe government statistics bureauWednesday show that its economy actual-ly expanded by 13 percent to $3.38 trillion.That compares with Germany's 2007 GDPof $3.32 trillion. "It was inevitable," saidTing Lu, a Merrill Lynch economist based inHong Kong.

Whether the growth trajectory will continue,however, has been complicated by theglobal recession, which has alreadyprompted massive layoffs and waves ofcompany closures, especially acrosssoutheastern China, the heartland of itsexport-driven economy. If China were tocontinue to grow at its current rate, econo-mists say it could surpass Japan in as soonas three years and the United States in 18years to become the world's No. 1 econo-my.

In 2007, the United States remained theworld's largest economy with a GDP of$13.8 trillion and Japan the second-largestwith a $4.38 trillion GDP, according to cal-culations based on an annual average ofdaily exchange rates by Merrill Lynch.

China is one of the few major economiesthat is on track to have positive GDPgrowth this year. Merrill Lynch calculatesthat China will have a GDP growth of 8 per-cent as compared with a 2.8 percentdecline for the United States, a 1.3 percentdecline for Japan and a 0.6 percent declinefor the European Union.

"In 2007, the gap between the growth ratesof China and other big countries was huge.Actually in 2009 the gap between will beeven bigger," Lu said.

But even if China achieves a projected 8percent growth rate this year, that may beinsufficient to stop the wave of companybankruptcies and layoffs that have alarmedChina's leaders. Economic data releasedthis week added to the pessimism: Exportsdropped 2.8 percent in December from thesame month a year ago, the sharpestdecline in a decade.

In the early days of the global economic cri-sis, some economists had debatedwhether China would serve as an enginethat would keep Asia from being pulled intothe turmoil. Pakistan, which was sufferingfrom a balance-of-payments crisis, evencame to China looking for a loan. But thisfall, China found its own economy coolingso fast that its leaders issued statementssaying the best thing it could do to help theworld economy was to help itself.

Coming into this global slowdown, 30 yearsof capitalist-style reforms pioneered byChina's then-supreme leader DengXiaoping had transformed China from anisolated and impoverished nation into oneof the world's great economic powers.Years of white-hot, double-digit growthdriven by exports and investment wenthand in hand with achievements in politics,science, engineering and the arts.

Huang Yiping, chief Asia economist forCitigroup, said China grew so quicklybecause it had the "advantage of back-wardness. As China used to be a verybackward country, there was huge poten-tial for the economic and technologicaldevelopment."

China has trumpeted its achievements,especially in the past few years: It hostedthe Olympics, pulled off its first spacewalk,and native sons and daughters such as JetLi and Zhang Ziyi became Hollywood dar-lings. Its engineers have created theworld's largest building (the Beijing airportterminal), the longest transoceanic bridge(connecting Shanghai to Hangzhou), thelongest plateau railway (to Tibet), thefastest train (Shanghai's "maglev") and thelargest dam (Three Gorges).

China has been using its increasing wealthto buy political clout by investing in underde-veloped parts of Asia, Latin America andAfrica. It is gaining influence in global eco-nomic institutions such as the Group of Eightand the International Monetary Fund, whichhave long been dominated by Western pow-ers. It is the biggest holder of U.S. Treasurysecurities.

Economists said that despite all the wealthimplied by such a large GDP, China shouldstill be considered a poor country.

Yi Xianrong, a researcher at the ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences, a government-affiliated research group, emphasized thatwidespread unemployment and rural povertyare still major problems. China's 1.3 billionresidents have a per capita GDP of about$2,500 while Germany's 82 million inhabi-tants enjoy a per capita GDP of $40,400.

"If we look at the per capita figures, we stillhave a long way to go," Yi said.

27

References

Moritz Schularick is a visiting scholar at theUniversity of Cambridge and teaches eco-nomics and economic history at the FreeUniversity of Berlin

Martin Feldstein (1999), “A Self-Help Guidefor Emerging Markets,” Foreign Affairs,March/April 1999 issue, Vol. 78

Data come from the International MonetaryFund (2009), World Economic OutlookDatabase, January 2009.

See Ben Bernanke (2007), “GlobalImbalances: Recent Developments andProspects”, Bundesbank Lecture, September11, 2007; and the discussion in Chris Hunt(2008), “Financial Turmoil and GlobalImbalances - the End of Bretton Woods II?”,Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin,Volume 71, September 2008; and Martin Wolf(2009), Fixing Global Finance, New Haven:Yale University Press. A related argument canbe made on the global level where increasedreturns on capital coincided with a lower costof capital - see Niall Ferguson and MoritzSchularick (2007), “Chimerica and the GlobalAsset Market Boom”, International Finance,10(3).

Economic Report of the President (2009),Washington D.C., January 2009.

Setser, Brad (2009) “Debating the global rootsof the current crisis”, blog on www.vox.eu,January 28, 2009.

Olivier Jeanne (2007), “InternationalReserves in Emerging Market Countries


28

Advancing Telecare Researchand Development:

How Technology Can Improvethe Quality of IndependentLiving for the ElderlyDr Ying Lui

The world’s population is aging and seeingrapid changes in the social and living envi-ronment. Reportedly, the number of elderly(aged over 65) is increasing by 8 millionper year1; By 2025 in UK, more than a thirdof the population will be over 552. But in liv-ing longer, not everyone is staying activeand healthy in the later life.

“[In the UK] Aging combined with anincreasing burden of chronic diseasethreatens to make current models ofhealthcare unsustainable within a fewdecades. … The costs would start to rise in2010 and by 2050 delivery using currentmodels could cost four times what it doesnow”3.

Recent R&D (research and development)shows that advanced telecare technologymay hold the keys to solutions to theseproblems. Telecare is referred to as beingthe delivery of health and social care serv-ices at a home setting by the use of sensor,information and communication technolo-gies (ICT). But to what extent can the newtechnology improve the quality of elderlypeoples’ lives? In this article, we share ourresearch experiences, highlight some ofthe most promising aspects in the nearfuture, as well as the significant barriersand challenges we currently have in suchdevelopment.

Living Alone but always in touch

Lets consider the following scenario.

Helen is 67 and lives alone. She has dia-betic retinopathy (a side effect of diabetesthat is a leading cause of blindness amongthe working-age population). Because ofher poor health, she needs to see her doc-tor regularly. Helen has heard about theTelecare services that install a computerand wireless kit in her home. The device

provides access to social services withtone-and-shaped touch buttons and recog-nises Helen’s face and finger print, sonobody else can unlock and use it. She cantalk to her carer about her situations; thegadget updates her records with real timeinformation, and reports to her surgerywhenever it is necessary. The gadgetcomes with a supply of wearable sensors.She can attach the sensors supplied to herbody and wear them to get her health con-ditions checked: blood pressure, weight,pulse and blood glucose levels. The gadg-et wirelessly collects and transports thedata to the medical centre to be analysed.The gadget also reminds her regularly tocheck a number of times a week at specif-ic times. If she is not at home, the gadgetstores the data temporarily and remotelytransmits these to her surgery.

Investment

There is a considerable amount of invest-ment and research effort for advancinghighly portable systems that monitor thehealth status of people with chronic (e.g.diabetes and asthma) and degenerative(e.g. respiratory and cardiovascular) dis-eases. Googling on the Web with key wordsuch as “Telecare,“ “Body SensorNetwork,“ “Ubiquitous Healthcare,““Pervasive Healthcare,“ “Assisted LivingTechnology“, one can easily find the largevariety of healthcare and medical applica-tions of wireless networks. Many of theapplications also are fielded, e.g., commu-nity based integrated screening, a use ofmodern transmission of glucose values toreduce the costs and need for clinic visits;a multi-site emergency based telemedicineservice; a use of 3G mobile phone links fortelecom consultation between a movingambulance and a hospital base station.Even though significant research and field-ed work toward the telecare advancementhas been done, there is a dearth of desir-able service products.

Typically, as Figure 1 shows, advancedtelecare services must underpinned by ICTinfrastructure at the back-end, and bydevices at the user front-end that measurephysiological status and other data. Thenetwork elements transmit data to a serv-

ice centre and then to a health profession-al (e.g. physician) for review; It also hascomponents that enable the “right” medicaland healthcare professionals to access thepatients’ data records, or appropriatelyspeaking Electronic Health Records(EHR), and present any feedbacks to indi-


29

vidual users. All this must be done in atimely, secure, trusted and reliable manner,and this imposes a great challenge to pro-visioning a large scale of Telecare Servicesin real world communities. For instance,ubiquitous EHR cannot be interoperated inabsence of what, where, who and how wepropose the systems to be used.

“If you have devices receiving data and youdon’t have EMR in place, then you don’thave the ability to monitor exceptions fromcare guidelines.”4

The role of communication in patient safe-ty must be envisioned. This has been evi-denced by efforts constantly made forimproving the effectiveness of communica-tion among EHR and health/medical careprofessionals. High risks of market failuresdue to “design-reality gaps” are inevitable.Ineffective and insufficient service provi-sioning may frequently cause preventableharm to patients, or result similar failures inhealth information systems.

What also must be noted is that barriersexist in users’ access to telecare. Whendevices add new features, the relevantservices may have to adopt the changes,e.g. incorporating vibration-tones anddownloadable information in Braille for-mats. There is a strong correlation betweendisability and age: up to one-third of thepopulation aged between 50 and 60 have adisability. This also means that the preva-lence of disability in society is set to growwith predicted demographic changes in the

population. They may have difficulty walk-ing or climbing steps, a hearing or visionloss, dyslexia or other reading-related dis-ability. Thus, despite the ethical issues con-cerning trust, privacy, security and reliabili-ty, which have been long debated, manyusers’ contexts may be more difficult tounderstand, and can be inadequately rep-resented in a phase of device specialisa-tion. It is necessary to know how the vari-ous devices’ special properties may func-tion in many alternative use cases, so as tomake bespoke solutions feasible. A serviceplatform is needed to allow devices to“plug-and-play” to meet the specific needsof the various users.

In summary, rapid deployment of wirelesssensor technologies, together with hand-held and ubiquitous computing, sensor net-works, data communication networks,mobile and wearable smart devices, makeit possible to provide services for smarthomes or remote healthcare monitoring.Whilst advanced telecare technologiesoffer new potentials to support elderly’sindependent living, the technologies alsocan give rise to new problems. The tech-nologies will have a profound impact on thetype, content, location, operation and func-tionality of care products and services. Aninnovative approach is required so that theincreasingly specialised devices can besupported by a flexible architecture fordynamic, non-text reading services, and allthis must be integrated with the earlierservices. The management of emergingtechnologies must be sustainable andcoordinated, and this cannot depend only

on applied research dedicated to thepreservation of the technologies or, moresignificantly, on an organisation dedicatedto changing services as technologiesimprove. A service architecture must beable to incorporate a new technology,upgrade a service, or create a new one.

References

1. Bloom, D.E., Canning, D. and Fink,

G (2008) “Population aging and eco-

nomic growth”. HIGH Harvard Initiative

for Global Health.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pgda/Wo

rking%20Papers/2008/PGDA_WP_31.p

df [Accessed by 26 January 2009].

2. Travis, A (2008) “Aging Britain:

Pensioners outnumber under-16s for

first time”. Guardian, Friday 22 August.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008

/aug/22/population.socialtrends

[Accessed by 26 January 2009].

3. _, “Bainbridge Warns of Need for

Telecare”. E-Health Insider, 23 June

2008.

http://articles.icmcc.org/2008/06/23/b

ainbridge-warns-of-need-for-telecare/

[Accessed by 26 January 2009].

4. Holt, M (2006) “Continua health

alliance: a new coalition to standardize

remote monitoring”. Health IT World

News, Cambridge Health-tech Institute,

June 15, 2006.

Figure 1: an illustration of telecare infrastructure


30

eCall: Smart cars tosave lives?Graham Jarvis takes a look at how

mobile telematics in the form of the

European Commissions’ Emergency

Call (eCall) project could help to reduce

road accident fatalities.

The European Commissions’ EmergencyCall (eCall) project could reduce roadinjuries by up to 15%. According to the

European Commission, there are at least38,000 fatalities on Europe’s roads eachyear. Some 2005 statistics suggest thatwith the enlargement of the EuropeanUnion (EU) this figure increased to about48,000 deaths involving motor vehicles.Even so, the EU says that more than 1.6million people are also injured in road acci-dents each year.

The equally sad thing is that the massadoption deadline is likely to be overshotby at least a year or two, and that’s eventhough the eCall type of system has beenaround for more than a decade.Independent business consultant, JohnArcher, thinks that even this prediction isoptimistic. “You are talking about 12-18years to get to 80% market penetration ofall cars”, he says while predicting that only

8% of all vehicles will have the systeminstalled by 2011. This represents a lostopportunity to more immediately reduceroad accident fatalities and injuries, involv-ing cars and other vehicles, by at least15%.

How can eCall save lives?

Well, imagine that you are stranded after abreakdown or an accident somewheredeep into the countryside, and with veryfew people around. It could take hoursbefore someone finds you and then callsthe police, fire or ambulance services todeal with your injuries or situation. Thiswould reduce their chances of saving yourlife or the opportunity to minimise the

Back on the UK agenda

“The subject of eCall is very much backon the UK agenda. My colleague, PeterBourke is currently investigating with theBritish government and British Telecomhow we can bring this safety feature toBritain for the benefit of our customers inthe UK.”Stuart Anderson, PSA Peugeot

Citroen, Corporate Communications


31

impact on your injuries, leading to longerconvalescence periods.

In contrast a car fitted with an eCall systemcan automatically send an SMS or dial tomake a 999 or 112 emergency call to astate regulated or private contact centre (aPublic Service Answering Point - PSAP),alerting the emergency services in aninstant. Through eCall the contact agentsreceive information called the minimumdataset (MDS), giving data about the loca-tion of the vehicle, the time, the severity ofthe incident, and specific details about thevehicle (type, registration number, colourand so on) to make vehicle identificationmuch easier – speeding up the ability of theemergency services to locate it and savelives.

Work to be done

The trouble is that there is still some workto be done to create common communica-tion protocols, infrastructure standards andhuman-related processes, to make thepublic more aware of the system and itsbenefits than it is presently, and there arequestions about whether mass adoptionwill only occur through increasing marketdemand for the systems, or as a result ofnew legislation being introduced. The lattermight become an absolute imperative if theEU is really to meet its own road safety tar-gets. That’s simply because different vehi-cle manufacturers offer different marketingand technological approaches to eCall, anddifferent countries do too. So the other keysuccess factor is about making sure thesystem becomes truly pan-European, bothintegrated and standardised to enable aneCall to be received by any PSAP withinthe EU. Surely this requires pan-Europeanlegislation to achieve? Leaving it to be justan add-on option to a new car won’t help toenough save lives, nor will a lack of overallsystems and process integration. Can werely on market demand alone to achievethe European Commission’s targets?There’s evidence that it needs more of a

push than a pull to make sure that eCallbecomes a standard fitting in all new andused vehicles.

“When regulation is implemented, the vol-ume of new cars equipped with eCall willgrow considerably, ad we will see higherlevels of market penetration”, says JoostVan Den Bosch, Global Extended OfferManager of Volvo Cars. He also highlightsthe key problem that the vehicle manufac-turers have in terms of stimulating demand.When asked most people think that thesystem is a good idea, but there’s a totallydifferent reaction when you ask them howmuch they would pay for it to be installed intheir cars. “They say nothing as they feel itshould be part of the car, and so manufac-turers need to add other services that youcan charge customers for, and vehicletracking is an example of this”, he adds.

Increasing awareness

Volvo has an integrated system, which iscurrently being sold in 12 European mar-kets. Sales volumes vary between the dif-ferent countries, but its eCall sales stand atabout 2-5% of its total sales. The UK hashad prior exposure to telematics systemslike vehicle tracking, so as a market it isahead of rest. There is still some work to bedone to increase people’s knowledge,awareness and understanding of whateCall is all about. Note too, that the manu-facturers often give their own eCall solu-tions different product names – which couldadd to any potential confusion.

Renault made an Emergency Call systemavailable to its customers back in 1998,which was called Odysline and available on

2 cars. “It was not so well understood byour customers and it was too expensive”,says Christian Rousseau, DirectorDelegate of Transport Policy Department,Renault SA. So the idea behind eCall is notnew, but it’s essentially a EuropeanCommission project for the pan-Europeanstandardisation of the system. “There areno systems out there that qualify as beingpan-European”, says Archer before addingthat it “almost died.”

Customers view eCall systems as being amatter of “public due services”, saysRousseau, Director Delegate of TransportPolicy Department, Renault SA. This againseems to supports the view that demandwill only increase if legislation plays a rolein making it a standard fitting with all vehi-cles rather than just offered as an option.Although the company is committed to the

project, Renault’s prior experience is mak-ing it tread cautiously with eCall. LikeToyota, eCall is not currently being fittedinto Renault’s new vehicles. David Crouchfrom Toyota’s press office says, “First weneed clear technical standards and aninfrastructure that can support eCall.”

No demand, no eCall option

“We are not offering eCall as an option atthe moment, because customers aren’trequesting it enough and its adoptionhas to be market driven. However, weare working towards developing a lowcost eCall option, and have taken thischallenge to the European Commission.

Renault is also ready to sign an agree-ment with all of the original equipmentmanufacturers (OEMs) to launch suchan option as this…”Christian Rousseau, Director

Delegate of Transport Policy

Department, Renault SA

Examples of eCall Module Vendors

WavecomTelitInfineonCinterionDelphiAutolivMagnetti MorelliBoschContinentalFlextronics


32

Slow progress

Progress is slow, and negotiations are con-tinuing. Apparently there has been someagreement about which transport protocolswill be used to send and receive the data.“The rest of the standards are up in the air,and so there is still a lot of work to do withstandardisation”, explains Archer.

He feels there is too much talk and notenough action to drive the project’s imple-

mentation forward. He says there was ameeting recently to set up another newcommittee to “look at how to move eCallforward, and they gave the chairmanship toErtico.”

While some are confident about all of thestakeholders coming together, from thevehicle manufacturers and insurance com-

panies to the telecommunications compa-nies and the eCall module vendors, hebelieves that it will not be possible to “moveall of the parties with different interests intoa single direction.”

Rousseau is more hopeful and less scepti-cal about the progress that is being made.“Renault is waiting for the approved stan-dards to create an efficient and relevanteCall service, and we hope this will be

100% achieved by the middle of 2009”, hesays.

Whether or not this target is reached, andeven demand plays a role, Archer believesthe Commission has to grab hold of the ini-tiative and make it a legislative issue. Goodwill and partnership, in his view, is notgoing to be sufficient make eCall common-place in every vehicle – new and old - in theEuropean Union.

“Mass adoption of eCall may happenthrough demand, but it won’t be pan-European as specified for all makes ofcars”, he says before adding that “theremay also be pressure from consumer bod-ies and insurance companies in its favour.”

The use of seat belts, for example, wasonce an option but now in the UK at leastit’s a legal obligation. Wearing a seat beltsaves lives. If eCall can too, then whyshould it be left as an optional extra?

eCall costs are prohibitive

Unfortunately, as things are, the EuropeanCommission’s stated aim of having itinstalled in all cars is likely to not happen –or least not for a while yet. Beyond thetechnical and infrastructure-related factors,the cost of the systems themselves is seenas prohibitive. An eCall system can costcustomers up to and over £918 (1,000euros) for an integrated system (one that isfitted by the factory into the vehicle, and

works when the airbag is engaged). Thedrivers of low end market vehicles may notbe able to afford eCall, and that’s eventhough they are potentially more vulnerablethan someone driving a BMW 7 Series car.

If you were to compare the retail price tagto what eCall costs the automobile manu-facturers, you’d probably wonder what thefuss is all about. John Archer reckons thatVolvo’s integrated system, which is avail-able for about £918, probably costs thecompany no more than £183 (200 euros).He says he’d be very surprised if it were tobe more expensive than this. An eCall TCUcosts between £55-65 (60-70 euros).

On the face of it eCall doesn’t look thatcostly, but it all adds up and it’s not seen asvery profitable. So the car manufacturersare looking for compensation from theEuropean Commission in order to keepprices down and to give them a small prof-it margin. Unfortunately, the Commission is

The vehicle manufacturer’s dilemma

“I think eCall is never going to be astandalone service. They will packageeCall with other telematics service toallow them to create a revenue streambecause eCall is pure cost. It doesn’tcreate a revenue flow back to the manu-facturer. You either just break even, interms of awareness and perception ofbrand quality or you offer other serviceson a pay per use basis – which wouldmake them money.” John Archer, Independent Business

Consultant


33

unlikely to accept this proposal though.Herein lies another potential blockage tothe eCall project.

Look at the after sales market first?

“If you want to be innovative, I have alwayssaid you have got to go for the aftermarketfirst”, says Archer. This is because oldervehicles are more likely to crash, andtherefore they would benefit the most fromhaving an eCall system. There is consen-sus that the old cars represent a significantopportunity, but most of the focus is morelikely to be on new vehicles to begin with.Cost remains a potentially limiting factorhere too. “Renault has to think about theaftermarket offer; one that can be adaptedto for use in old cars, and at the cheapestprice”, says Christian Rousseau who seesthe eCall aftermarket as a commercialissue, dependent on customers demandingthe systems.

Joost Van Den Bosch says that aftermarketsolutions are not fully integrated, and as aresult they won’t activate automaticallywhen the airbag is released. Instead thiskind of standalone eCall system is activat-ed by a shock sensor upon impact in acci-dent. Although available as an option, incomparison Volvo’s eCall system is said tobe able to provide more information than anon-integrated aftermarket solution can do,and he says that Volvo’s system can offer

additional services in conjunction withtelematics provider WirelessCar. “When acrash occurs our system sends a lot of datato the call centre, whether the engine isrunning, battery status, doors open orclosed. You can send information abouthow many people are in the car”, he says. He adds that Volvo’s eCall system doesn’tquite send all of this data yet, but stressesthat there is an enormous differencebetween the two offerings. Volvo’s systemwill soon enable the sending of informationabout how many people are in the car tothe emergency contact centre. Like theother vehicle manufacturers Volvo is in“Discussion with the emergency servicesabout what is important and what is not.”Volvo is very keen to profit from eCall inorder to maintain its brand image, that ofproducing some of the safest cars on theroad though innovation. Its system is simi-lar to BMW’s offering, which is also fullyintegrated into its own cars.

“Volvo are not fans of pan-European eCall”,claims Archer, “because they would have toadapt their system to every market”. Hesays that Volvo’s system in not line with thenotion of being pan-European, because itdoesn’t yet use the same technologies thatare required to make it so. However, it doesmuch the same thing and Volvo are “claim-ing to be ahead of everyone else”, heexplains.

But is eCall Big Brother?

“It’s not a case of Big Brother watching you,because It’s only activated when the cus-tomer decides – only be people within thecar, or when an accident occurs”, says VanDen Bosch. He has found that customerslike it.

Smarter Cars

In the near future we will have systems thatallow us to speak to other drivers in theircars or receive information from a modulethat updates us about the traffic ahead.Volvo also has a system that uses radartechnology, automatically breaking when itdetects an object – whether a person orotherwise – and prevents an accident fromoccurring. Accidents caused by blind spotscan also be prevented by having rear-fac-ing cameras, which warn you when over-taking if another vehicle is in your blindspot.

Some manufacturers are also offering anight vision system, allowing you seewhat’s ahead when your vision as a driveris impaired. Most of these innovations aredesigned to make cars safer, to preventaccidents. In contrast eCall is essential forsaving lives once one has happened, andthat’s why we need the appropriate legisla-tion now. When it comes to life there should

be no gamble, and eCall shouldn’t just bean option but an obligatory system that’s fit-ted into each and every car. It’s time to getsmart!

Further reading and information:

eCall Safety Video, European Commission,2007:http://212.68.215.195/esafety/ecall_hq_2b.wmv

About eCall, Wikipedia –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall

The European Union’s ‘Intelligent Car Initia-tive’: http://ec.europa.eu/information_soci-ety/activities/intelligentcar/index_en.htm

The European Union’s Intelligent CarBrochure: http://ec.europa.eu/information_so-ciety/activities/intelligentcar/docs/right_col-umn/intelligent_car_brochure.pdf

BMW ConnectDrive Website:http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/tech-nology/connecteddrive/overview.html

Volvo On Call:http://www.volvocars.com/uk/salesandser-vices/Volvo%20on%20Call/Pages/default.aspx

Renault: http://www.renault.co.uk/

At Enterprise Forum 2009, Alcatel-Lucentdemonstrates a next generation integratedsolution for emergency call handling, basedon PSA Peugeot Citroën eCall system:http://www.alcatel-

lucent.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLd4x3tXDUL8h2VAQAURh_Yw!!?LMSG_CABINET=Docs_and_Resource_Ctr&LMSG_CONTENT_FILE=News_Releases_2009/News_Arti-cle_001476.xml

ACEA - European Automobile Manufactur-ers‘ Association: http://www.acea.be/

eSaftey Forum: http://ec.europa.eu/informa-tion_society/activities/esafety/forum/index_en.htm

eSafety Support:http://www.esafetysupport.org/en/esafety_ac-tivities/esafety_forum/

ERITCO:http://www.ertico.com/en/activities/safety/esafety_forum.htm

eCall initiative status, André Vits:http://www.simbaproject.org/download/Rus-sia/PDFs_presentation_Russia_22_Oct_08/eCall%20Andre%20Vits%20-%20simba.pdf

ETSI: http://www.etsi.org/WebSite/home-page.aspx

BMW case study: not just eCall

Emergency 999 Call (eCall)Manual: to summon help for you andother road users with the SOS button.• Automatic: in the event of an accident,

the exact vehicle position is forwardedto the 999 Emergency Service Centre.

• Excellent reliability in an accidentthanks to an embedded SIM card.

Breakdown Call (B-Call)• Intelligent roadside assistance.

Information Plus• Telephone enquiry service: personal,

free-of-charge assistance with directtransfer of addresses to the navigationsystem, or telephone numbers for usewith a paired Bluetooth telephone.

My Info with Google Send to Car• Search and send business listings or

residential addresses from GoogleMaps.

Remote Services• Remote door locking and unlocking viathe BMW service centre.• Intelligent roadside assistance.

Source: www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/con-

necteddrive/0,,___,00.html?siteID=1312


34

The Impact of Nanotechnology onthe Construction SectorDr Alan Smith and Yakub Ahmed

Nanotechnology is attracting a lot of atten-tion in many quarters, and we are alreadyseeing nano-based products arriving in ourhomes. Technology roadmaps for the con-struction industry herald the impact thatnanotechnology will have on the sector.

‘Nano’ is derived from the Greek for dwarf,and nanotechnology refers to the technolo-gies that result from being able to exploitthe very different properties that occurwhen one is working at extremely smalldimensions. One nanometre, by the way,is one millionth of a millimetre, and 80,000nanoparticles in a row would still only bethe diameter of a hair from your head. Ifyou take a cubic metre of a material, thesurface area is 6 square metres. If yougrind that cubic metre down to nanometrecubes, the surface area would increase to6,000 square kilometres; London occupiesonly 1,500 square kilometres! For the con-struction industry it is these nanoparticlesand nano-films that will provide differentand beneficial properties for just aboutevery aspect of what we find in our homes.No wonder nanotechnology has beendescribed as the next industrial revolution.

Nanotechnology has been highlighted in aTechnology Roadmap for BuildingConstruction that was produced for

Australia1., and in another one from aDanish laboratory2.

If you are not familiar with roadmapping, itis really a future strategy for a sector ortechnology, and only differs from aForesight exercise in that it emphasises

how to reach the vision. There are now avast number of roadmaps freely availableon the web, and even in the materials andchemicals area there were about 20recorded in 20033.. Figure 1 summarisesthe types of roadmaps that have been pro-

duced. Industry roadmaps have rangedfrom glass4 to the steel industry5, with thetechnology specific ones, for example innanomaterials6, being much more numer-ous. Product specific ones tend to be com-pany roadmaps, to improve a particularproduct range, and hence remain confiden-tial to the company.

The procedure for the majority of roadmapsis to gather knowledgeable people togeth-er and go through the process shown in

Figure 2. The first step of course is to knowwhere the sector or technology is at thepresent time. For the “Where are wenow?” section it is really a benchmarkingexercise – what are the trends and driversand where do we stand relative to the com-petition?

The next step is the vision for where wewant to be, which is very similar to aForesight exercise. The third stage is tolook at what is going to stop us getting tothat vision, i.e. what are the barriers stop-ping us achieving our objectives. Finally,the priorities have to be decided regardingwhat has to be done, and in what timeframe, to overcome the barriers toprogress.

There have been other studies that haveeither carried out including foresight exer-cises related to the construction industry7,and some have been more specific, cover-ing, for example, smart materials8.

Nanotechnology in the construction indus-try has received some attention in the past.The previously mentioned Nanomaterialsroadmap 6. sets out the priority productsand processes for housing and construc-tion as:

• Improved bonding and strength / tough-ness (smaller materials)

• Concrete (nanotubes or carbon fibrefillers)

• Drill bits (stronger, longer lasting)• Steel (stronger because of nanostruc-

tures).

In addition, Nanocom9, the Scottish Centrefor Nanotechnology in ConstructionMaterials has held a symposium onNanotechnology in Construction, and areport from nCRISP10. gives an excellentsummary of nanotechnology affecting coat-ings.

The Australian Building ConstructionTechnology Roadmap is more general andlooks at the house of the future and thetechnologies that will influence changes.The number of homes in Australia is pre-dicted to go up from 8 million to 11 millionby 2025, because of the demographicchanges that are occurring worldwide:

• Ageing population, increasing number ofdivorces, women more financially inde-pendent, and increased home-basedwork, will mean high-density, low-occu-pancy, flexible communities.

• Continued drive for energy efficiency andreduction of waste will influence housing

Figure 1: Types of roadmaps

Figure 2: Stages in the roadmapping exercise


design, changes in equipment and man-agement.

• Information technology and communica-tions, will be seen more in homes throughmore monitoring, connectivity to the out-side world and general automation.

The roadmaps note the following likelychanges:

Home construction and mainte-

nance

Prefabrication and off-site con-struction will increase, and therewill be more flexibility in design totake account of lifestyle changes.Maintenance and servicing will bevery different with self-cleaning sur-faces inside and out, monitoringthings such as structural defects,use of longer-life coatings, and useof online diagnostics for appli-ances.

Nanotechnology will be used forsmart windows which will incorpo-rate nanoparticles such as zincoxide for spectral selectivity andthermal control. Nano-coatings arealready being used for self-cleaningglass. Pilkingtons have a product calledActiv™, where the glass has a 50 nm layerof titanium dioxide on the surface which,with the help of sunlight, breaks down dirton the surface, and is then washed off bythe rain (Figure 3). Similarly, there isincreasing interest in the use of titaniumdioxide nanoparticles to break down theenvironmental pollutants, such as oxides ofnitrogen and sulphur. This technique was

first used on a church building in Rome,with a view to breaking down exhaustfumes from cars, but has also been foundto provide a cleaner environment by incor-porating titanium dioxide into concrete forroads11.

In addition, Samsung are using silvernanoparticles to provide anti-microbial sur-

faces for refrigerators by incorporatingthem into the plastic mouldings. Othercompanies are known to be developinganti-microbial nano-surfaces for kitchenand bathroom surfaces for stain and mouldresistance.

Also in the bathroom it is possible to pur-chase products which stop water droplets

hanging onto the surfaces in showers. Thissilica-based lotus effect which providessuper-hydrophobicity, and has received agreat deal of press in relation to clothing.The Nanocare fabric repels red wine or cof-fee and demonstrates just how disruptivethe technology will be to the detergent pro-ducers. The earlier products were good foraqueous stains but poor with oil basedspillages. However other surface treat-

ments have been developedthat repel all types of stains,which have resulted in thembeing used for upholstery.There is working going on todevelop fabrics that are cot-ton but have the feel of silkdue to nanotechnology, andsmelly socks seem to havegone out the window withrecent launches of anti-odour nanotechnology coat-ings.

Other nanotechnologyopportunities that are at anearly stage are improvedsealants and adhesives,

flame-retardant materials, and new insulat-ing materials for both heat and sound.

The final lacquer coating on some modelsfor Mercedes cars now has scratch-resist-ant surfaces that are nanoparticulate, andprovide surfaces that stay brighter. Theside-body mouldings of the ChevroletImpala are a polypropylene nanocompos-

ite. Both Toyota and Mitsubishi havereplaced metal parts under the bonnet withnanocomposites because they providelighter weight and can withstand high tem-peratures than conventional composites.The most exciting developments thoughwill come from the use of what are calledcarbon nanotubes that will provide materi-als that are 50 to 100 times stronger than

steel at one-sixth the weight –watch this space. These anti-scratch surfaces and also thelighter weight materials are likely tofind applications in the constructionindustry.

Utilities

The roadmaps go into detail aboutthe changes in how constructionand design will cope with changesin our use of water, energy andcommunications.

It is unlikely to be just an Australianproblem but the suggestion is for athird water pipe in houses that willbe used for the collection and re-use of ‘grey’ water (bath water,washing machine water, etc.) driv-en by sanctions and rewards. Here

the suggestion is that multi-functionalnano-porous filtration for removal of chem-ical and biological impurities in water willbe used. Water quality is an importantissue throughout the world and nano-mem-branes are being developed which can fil-ter out bacteria and viruses12.

Increased pressure to conserve energy willsee the increasing use of smart metering,and embedded technology to run smartappliances and automated management.This will require micro and nano sensordevelopment. Some of the more intensiveactivities involving nanotechnology are inultra thin films for solar cells. The tradition-al silicon solar cells are robust and fairlyeffective, but with the increasing demandfor silicon chips in China in particular, thecost for the single crystal silicon that isessential, has gone up dramatically. Thesearch is on for solar cells that are just thinfilms of silicon, and an added requirementis that the cells should work well in areas oflow sunlight. Other coatings being exam-ined are based more exotic combinationssuch as cadmium telluride, and copperindium gallium selenide, as well as novelorganic systems. This is a rapidly expand-ing area, incentivised by governmentsintroducing credits for those installing cellsin their own homes. There are a number ofroadmaps that focus on these photovoltaiccells for generating energy, coming fromthe US, the UK, Europe as a whole, andeven from smaller nations such as

35

Figure 3: Pilkingtons’ Activ™


36

Lithuania. For those wanting more detail,the European one is very comprehensive13.

For communications, the home will haveincreased data and connectivity capacitywith smart wiring, wireless, and self-diag-nosis of problems. Again nano-sensors willplay a major role. These are based on thefact that at the nano-scale things happenfast and more sensitively, which is alsocreating a great deal of interest in the med-ical sector where groups are working ondevices which will detect diseases beforethey have taken a hold on the body.

Office and Leisure

Houses will see an increasing use of thehome for both office and leisure activities.There will be increased use of communica-tion technology and holographic / videoconferencing. The major trend of hometheatre will flourish alongwith increased usage ofthe Internet.

There are many exam-ples in the leisure sectorthat are already employ-ing nanotechnology toprovide improved prod-ucts. Wilson Sportshave nanocompositetennis racquets thathave enabled Federer tohit the ball even harder,and with more accuracy.The Wilson Double Coretennis ball has ananocomposite butylrubber layer on theinside that keeps the air in the ball whenFederer hits at 150 mph down the CentreCourt. We are likely to hear the call “new

balls please” less frequently.Such barrier properties arealso being used in foodpackaging to keep theflavour in and keep out UVlight that might causespoilage of the foodstuff.Wilson Staff fairway woodsutilise nanoparticulates andcarbon nanotubes to enablegolfers to hit the nanocom-posite ball further and moreaccurately.

Just as development prod-ucts are tested out inFormula 1 cars before theyarrive in our own cars, we can expect someof the developments described above tofind applications in building construction;

certainly the barrier property applicationscould be an early opportunity.

Security and Safety

Many roadmaps highlight population pres-sures and safety concerns having an effecton homes with more sophisticated, auto-mated security systems and environmentalcontrol, remote diagnostics, germ control,and fail-safe data transmissions.

Specifically, nanotechnology is seen asbeing involved in families of filters for airand water flow to control germs, bacteria,dust, pollen and pollution. By way of exam-ple, the new Dreamliner, Boeing’s 787model which is just coming into service,has silver nanoparticle based high qualityair filters to keep the air fresher during longtransatlantic flights; they kill 99.7% ofinfluenza germs.

Clearly nanotechnology will have a mas-sive impact on many aspects in the con-struction industry; it is just a case of ‘watchthis space’.

References

1. Building Construction Technology Roadmap,http://www.copper.com.au/technology_roadmap/index.html.

2. NanoByg – a Survey of Nanoinnovation inDanish Construction, http://bm.di.dk/SiteCol-lectionDocuments/Foreningssites/bm.di.dk/Downloadboks/Rapport%20om%20nanote-knologi%20og%20byggeriet%20Risoe%20DTU.pdf.

3. A Smith, Materials World, Vol. 11, October2003, pages 12-14.

4. Glass Technology Roadmap Workshop,http://campus.umr.edu/iac/iof/industies/GLASS/glass_roadmap.pdf.

5. Steel Industry Technology Roadmap,http://www.steel.org/mt/roadmap/roadmap.htm.

6. Chemical Industry R&D Roadmap for Nano-materials by Design, http://www.chemicalvi-sion2020.org/pdfs/nano_roadmap.pdf.

7. Built Environment and Transport ForesightPanel, Constructing the Future, http://www.fore-s igh t .gov.uk /Prev ious_Rounds /Fore-sight_1999_2002/Built_Environment_Trans-port/capreport.pdf.

8. Materials Foresight, Smart Materials for the21st Century, http://www.iom3.org/foresight.

9. http://www.nanocom.org.

10. nCRISP, The Emperor’s New Coating,http://www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/re-sourcecentre/publications/document.jsp?doc-umentID=113328.

11. Purging NOxious gases, Chemistry & In-dustry, 26 July 2010, page 10.

12. A Smith, Nanotechnology: An Answer to theWorld’s Water Crisis?, Chemistry International,Vol. 31, No. 4, July-August 2009, http://www.iu-pac.org/publications/ci/2009/3104/3_smith.html

13. A Strategic Research Agenda for Photo-voltaic Solar Energy Technology, EuropeanCommission, 2007, http://cordis.europa.eu/tech-

nology-platforms/pdf/photovoltaics.pdf.


37

SPIRALE

By finding 10 six letter words ending by the letter ‘E’, discover thename of a Polish physicist born in the 19th century who worked inParis in partnership with her husband.

1- Machine which squeezes water from clothes2- Wide street in a town3- To take away4- Money received regularly5- To persuade to do something by offer of pleasure6- A married pair7- To remove from cover8- To make deep, continuous sound9- In prison

10- To break free

Solution on back page Picture clue


38

FinancialPlanning

Dr Joy Joseph

In my previous article I highlighted the need for proper financial disciplineand a systematic management of money. Now I will focus on the necessi-ty of proper financial planning and control through personal accountingand budgeting.

In his study on ‘family behaviour’, B.V.Cunningham (1936) stated that even thebest kind of budget might do more harm

than good if it is carelessly planned and notaccepted by all members of a family group.Bernstein (1960), in his article ‘Self-Determination: King or Citizen in the Realmof Values’, has stated that there is a widevariety of goals from which an individual orfamily may choose.

The ultimate goal of financial planning is tosecure one’s financial security. In order toreach the family’s financial potential andmaintain the desired quality of life, onemust initiate a positive personal financialmanagement programme. This will requirethe preparation of plans and budgets thatcan act as navigational aids in plotting thecourse towards achievement of both thefamily’s short term and long term financialgoals.

“Building a sound financial plan is concep-tually similar to erecting a building.” (Gable,R.C., 1983) In both building constructionand financial endeavours, a sure founda-tion and strong framework support the fin-ished structure and help it to last.Comprehensive planning creates the foun-dation and superstructure for success.

WHERE TO START?

A systematic management of financeshould be properly recorded and docu-mented with evidence of expenditure. Wehave to start with recording our dailyexpenses and income. For the first fewmonths it will seem to be a somewhat tire-some duty, but later it will become a habit.Buy a new diary or an accounting-bookand, before going to bed, record all yourmonetary transactions and keep the billsand vouchers for them for at least one year.It may seem to be difficult for the first fewmonths and it may seem to be a waste oftime, but if you practice regular recording

you can avoid a number of financial blun-ders and reduce unnecessary tension with-in the family.

As an example I would like to highlightsome of my personal experiences. I havebeen practicing regular accounting since1983 and have saved a lot of moneythrough keeping all my bills and vouchers.By saving a receipt for £25, I have savedan overall expenditure of £1,055. Recentlywhen I moved home, I received an electric-ity bill for £1,080 instead of the £25 I hadestimated it should have been. The gas billwas then inadvertently adjusted to includethe previous tenant’s bill. By recording themeter reading from the beginning of mytenancy and keeping the receipt I receivedfor paying the initial bill, I have saved a lotof money as I was able to inform the gasboard of just how much I had used since Imoved in.

Also, after remitting the TV licence fee forone year, two more bills came, including awarning notice for the previous tenant’s lia-bility for non-payment. It was the same forthe water bill – another one cameaddressed to ‘The Occupier’ (of the samehouse where I live) for payment of the bill,threatening to disconnect the water supplyif it was not paid. By keeping a record ofwhen I had moved into the present proper-ty and being able to provide evidence ofhow much I had used and the prompt pay-ment of my own bills, I was able to clear upthe matter. It is important to keep a recordas this would otherwise be hard to explainto the utilities companies and the TVLicensing Authority.

Yet consumers are being cheated in somany ways. It is a never-ending process.Here, I would like to present a good exam-ple which tells everybody to take the nec-essary steps before taking financial deci-sions.

KEEPING THE BANKERS IN CHECK

One day I asked my bank to sanction aloan of £10, 000 to cover all my credit cards(costing more than a nominal additional30% of the initial outlay). The assistantagreed the rate of 16.5%. However, whenthe Customer Care Officer told me aboutthe insurance policy, I thought that the ratewould be an additional 1% of the loanamount (the rate of insurance agreed bythe same banker for another transaction)and it would not come to more than £100per year. The loan was for a period of 5years and, as per their calculation, I had tomake a payment of £300 per month. Eventhough I asked about the present rate ofinsurance, the officer avoided that questionand turned to another matter.

After getting a copy of the agreement, Itried to verify the insurance rate but it wasmade unclear by a staple being put in themiddle of the paper. Moreover the contractwas printed in a very low font size. I tried toopen it to check the details, but found Icould not. After closely reading the con-tract, I noticed that I was committed to pay-ing £20 000 instead of £13 000 as the aver-age interest rate was now more than 36%.I applied for a loan of £10 000. He allowedthat amount and another loan of £5000 tocover my insurance for the period, plusinterest for the second loan, at 16.5%. Thetotal came to about £ 7000 more for insur-ance. Altogether I had to pay approximate-ly £ 20 000 within five years. I was upsetabout this transaction and resolved to dosomething about it.

I immediately called the Customer CareOfficer, but did not receive any reply. Thenext day I went to the branch, but he wasnot working on that day. I was told he onlyworked on Saturdays, so I waited until thenext weekend. At the same time I also gavea written application to cancel my insur-


39

ance arrangement. Even though I told himthat I was financially sound (having also setup a direct debit for the regular paymentwithout any arrears as proof of this) andthat I had some other insurance, he statedthat, on the contrary, I did not have anyother source of finance and was not finan-cially sound. What he recorded was bla-tantly untrue!

The next time when I saw him he told methat I could not cancel within the first threemonths of signing the contract. I knew thatI could within 14 days. I showed him therelevant clause in the contract and heacknowledged his ignorance. When I triedfor an application for cancellation he toldme that the paperwork was unavailable. Itold him that I would make a written appli-cation, stating the matter clearly and sub-mit it to the Senior Manager. Then heassured me that he would arrange for anapplication. The next day I got the applica-tion form from the Senior Manager, com-pleted it and submitted it officially. Finallythey removed the insurance from my loanaccount and now I need to pay no morethan £200 per month - a saving of £100 permonth up to five years, including interest.Therefore, I was able to save more than

£7, 000. In future I will not sign any docu-ment before reading it thoroughly!

I advise readers to do the same becausethey could easily fall prey to the unscrupu-lous practices of apparently respectablehigh street banks. These institutions aredriven by the need to hit sales targetsrather than invest in the policy of providinggood advice to borrowers and they oftenachieve these through the tactics of hidingcrucial information in small print provisions.Though it perhaps should be illegal prac-

tice, there is nothing to prevent this fromhappening – apart from the diligence of theclient.

OTHER WAYS TO SAVE MONEY

The question may be asked as to how can

we achieve financial discipline and whatare the steps for an effective and systemat-ic financial management programme?Keeping a simple record of expenditure

is a good way to start.

After recording all expenses and incomefor one month the next process is to sum-

marise your expenses under the followingheadings:

1. Food

Expenses for food include amount spentfor provisions, fruits, vegetables,meat, fish, milk, food from outside, softdrinks etc.

2. Shelter

Expenses for house include rent paid (forleasehold property), telephone charges,expenses for electricity, water, gas, counciltax, insurance, maintenance, repairs, deco-ration, valuation and legal charges etc.

3. Clothing

Under this heading come amounts spentfor the purchase of new clothes includingshoes and bags, and for dry cleaning,washing, ironing, stitching etc.

4. Health

Expenses for medicine, healthcare, hair-dressing, cosmetics, beauty care, consul-tation fees, travel for health etc. are includ-ed under this heading.

5. Education

Includes fees paid, library fees, books pur-chased, internet charges, printing costs,stationary, travel for study purposes, sub-scriptions, uniforms etc.

6. Travel

Expenses for travel, for travel cards, buspasses, oyster card charges, maintenanceof car, insurance, petrol and diesel, tax,MOT etc.

7. For Social Obligations

Includes expenses for parties, family get-togethers, for special occasions, gifts,donations, charities, support to familymembers and friends and relatives etc.

8. Personal Habits

Amount spent on liquor, cigarettes, chew-ing gum, stamps, photography, pets, hob-bies etc.

9. Entertainment

Expenses incurred for music, dance,games, CDs, film, internet connection forentertainments, etc are included under thisheading.

10. Miscellaneous

Other expenses like postage, for child careand for any other items not included amongthe above items are included here.

After preparing a summary of your expens-es and income, you can also prepare asummary of your capital transactions –purchase of assets, sales of assets, loanstaken, loans paid back including interest,any investments made, any loans given,any loans given back and the final savingsyou have in hand and at the bank(s).


THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A

REVIEW

The next step is an evaluation or a review

of the transactions during the month andyou have to think whether you could haveavoided any unnecessary expenditure ornot. In the light of the above facts and fig-ures you can proceed to prepare a budg-

et for the next month. A budget is a finan-

cial plan for the future which involves theestimation of future earnings or income andestimation of expenses, savings andinvestments.

BE YOUR OWN FINANCIAL ADVISER

This process allows you to follow a sys-

tematic approach which enables you to

manage your finances properly without

any waste. A wise forecast can help you

in this. After two or three months’ prac-

tice you will become an expert in finan-

cial planning and thereby you can

achieve financial discipline.

Thus a systematic personal finance man-agement enables every family to preparefor a financially bright future. An awarenessof the personal financial principles stimu-lates every person to establish properfinancial goals, to prepare a suitable budg-et, to exploit and utilise the existing

resources and thereby achieve the finan-cial security of their family. Personal finan-

cial planning enables them to take bet-

ter decisions relating to income, expen-

diture, savings and investment and

hence to improve the satisfaction, qual-

ity and wealth of the family.

“It is true that money isn’t everything, butthe fact must be faced that money is

important. Most people need it for eco-nomic security and to share in the manymaterial things available to make their livesmore enjoyable. Earning all one can,spending it wisely, and giving generously,should help achieve a happy life.” (Willet, E. R., 1964).

Forget about the past. Plan for the

future. If we can start today, by the 2012

Olympics, the financial position of every

person, every family and every institu-

tion will improve and that will lay the

foundation for a great change in the

Global Family - the Financial Discipline

of the Global family.

In the next issue the author will focus onthe management of income and the possi-bilities of increasing income.

References

Asch, D. and Kaye, G.R (2005) FinancialPlanning, London: Kogan Page.

Bernstein, S. (1960) “Self-Determination: Kingor Citizen in the realm of values”, Social Work,vol.5, No.1, January.

Callis, S. (2007) Budgeting in 90 Minutes,New Delhi: Indiana Publishing House.

Crowther, D (2004) Managing Finance,London: Elsevier.

Cunningham, B.V. (1936) Family Behaviour,Philadelphia: Saunders.

Forgue, G.I. (2008) Personal Finance (9th edi-tion), New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Gable, R.C (1983) Investments and FinancialPlanning, Virginia: Reston PublishingCompany.

Lucal, J.B. (2001) Plan Now or Play Later,Princeton: Bloomberg.

Melicher, R.W. and Norton, E.A (2003)

Finance (11th edition), London: John Wileyand Sons.

Willet, E.R (1964) Personal Finance, Ohio:

Charles, E. Merril Books.

40


41

SUDOKU

arts & leisure eBritain Spring 2011

42

Across Down

1 Chemical reaction absorbing heat (11)5 Two adjacent nitrogen atoms between two carbon atoms (3)7 Its atomic number is 3 (2)9 Plant with big white flowers (4)10 Metal liquid at room temperature (7)11 Symbol for the element named after Einstein (2)12 Symbol for lanthanum (2)14 Substance lighter than and insoluble in water(3)15 One of the alkali metals (2)16 Element found in salt (2)19 One the poor metals in group 13 (2)20 Chemical decomposition by electric action (12)22 Charged atom (3)24 One of the noble gases (4)

25 7th Greek letter (3)27 Stationary part of an electric motor (6)30 Other name for calcium oxide: quick ....(4)32 Organic compound such as PVC (7)34 Measure of land (4)36 Its atomic number is 13 (2)37 When a solid turns directly into a gas (11)

1 Found in the periodic table (7)2 Journal (5)3 Measure the density of liquids (10)4 Amount of a substance that contains the same number of atoms asin 12g of carbon-12 (4)

5 A faintly shining shadow surrounding the human body (4)6 Tendency of solvent to diffuse through porous partition (7)8 Carbon-14 is an ....... of carbon-12 (7)9 Bronze is one (5)13 Truncheon (5)17 Graphite is one of carbon (9)18 Unit for intensities of sound (3)21 2-methyl propane is an ...... of butane (6)22 Conjugated form of ‘to be’ (2)23 Other way of saying ‘no’ (2)24 Negative answer (2)26 Caustic soda is one (6)28 Amuses children (3)29 Queasiness (5)33 Baldmoney (3)35 Symbol for europium (2)36 Symbol for astatine (2)

Solution on back page

Chemistry Crossword


An idyllic weekend in the CotswoldsHélène Maurice

The Lamb Inn

A family with a young toddler often findsthat hotels will not welcome them. Luckilythe Lamb Inn in Burford, part of a group ofhotels in the Costwolds, is not one of them.We have always found this part of Englandvery romantic with its beautiful houses andquaint little villages built with warm, veryrecognisable Cotswolds honey colouredstone.

The Lamb Inn situated in Sheep Street justoff Burford's High Street has well-propor-tioned public rooms, a bar, several verycosy bedrooms and an award-winningrestaurant. It has all the charm you wouldimagine of an old English inn with thick

stone walls, cosy rooms, open fires andsqueaky, uneven floors.

Staff

Very friendly, helpful and discreet. As ourtoddler could not seat through a threecourse meal, we wandered a couple oftimes along the corridor to the bar andeach time someone came to let us knowwhen we were about to be served. Wenever felt it was an issue.

Food

Very well presented and refined. Smalltasty extras are presented to you at thebeginning and before the desert. Whetherone is there for a romantic soirée or withfriends the set up is perfect. You have plen-

ty of time to chat, digest and enjoy a lovelyevening. One does not feel pressurised tomove on. However with a toddler the serv-ice is a little too slow. We had to entertainhim for two hours. The wine list is variedand if one prefers beer with one’s mealthey serve delicious local brews, or so saidmy partner.

Atmosphere

Cosy and warm both in both the rooms andthe restaurant. On a cold winter eveningone can forget the world outside and relaxin the glow of the fire.

☆☆☆☆☆Rating: 5 stars out of 5

43


44

Marlow: a weekend away on the River ThamesHélène Maurice

Marlow is one of those charming littleBuckinghamshire towns nestling along theRiver Thames. Less than an hour's driveaway from London, it’s a relaxing destina-tion.

You can wander around this historic mar-ket town with medieval and Georgian build-ings in an afternoon. It hosts several eventsall year round such as a Sunday farmersmarket, regattas, races, the Marlow MayFayre and a carnival in September.Whatever the weather it is usually burstingand buzzing with visitors.

The High Street, although attractive with itsselection of cafés, restaurants and shops,is quite congested during the day since it isthe main artery leading to the river. For eat-ing, a great variety of places are on offerthough the prices reflect the popularity ofthe town. A French brasserie like ChezGérard with an outdoor patio hidden awayin a quiet alley is definitely worth consider-ing. The food is simple but reliable and

affordable. Otherwise try the Marlow Barand Grill with a patio at the back and a mur-muring cascade from a mini waterfall. Themodern food is highly priced but the atmos-phere is pleasant.

To escape the noise of the traf-fic, aim for Higginson Parkalong the river. It is dominatedby a grandiose Georgian man-sion used for events and thebronze statue of Sir SteveRedgrave, Marlow’s Olympicrowing winner. The park is baredue to a lack of flower beds but

one can spend anentire day therepicnicking, idling,wandering, watch-ing the passers-by,the boats on theriver or feeding theflocks of geese andswans.

If one is interested in famouspeople, see the house of thewriter Mary Shelley (1797 –1851) and the Romantic poet,Shelley in West Street, number104. Unfortunately it is notopen to the public. There shewrote her worldwide famousGothic story ‘Frankenstein’.The poet TS Eliot was also aninhabitant of Marlow in thesame street. A more contem-porary celebrity bought ahouse in the area too - RobbieWilliams.

Another attraction is the 1832suspended bridge by WilliamTierney Clark who alsodesigned bridges inHammersmith (London) andBudapest. Next to it lies the All

Saints parish church on the river: A lovelysite to rest or to look at from the bridgeespecially at night when it is illuminated.Facing it, on the other bank of the river,next to the weir, one will find The CompleatAngler inn. It owes its name to the book ofthe same title by Izaak Walton(1593–1683). The rooms are pleasant andone knows what to expect as it is run byMacDonald’s hotels. It is very popular dueto its setting. The prices are high and the

food overpriced despite the hotel promot-ing itself for the quality of it. Even the cof-fees are basic. However if one is after aromantic weekend or just unwinding, it isworth a stay.

On the way back after a stay visit one of theNational Trust properties nearby such asCliveden, a spectacular estate overlookingthe Thames with various walks and gar-dens. Or try Hughenden Manor near HighWycombe, once the home of the Victorianstatesman, Benjamin Disraeli who livedthere from 1848 till his death in 1881.

Cliveden House

The Thames at Marlow

Marlow bridge and All Saints Church


Hancox, A House and a Family

By Charlotte Moore

468pp, Viking£20.00 hardback

Hélène Maurice

Charlotte Moore has the privilege of still liv-ing in the house of her ancestors. Thisgave her the idea of trying to find out moreabout the history of the house since thebuilding contains the ghostly presencesand physical modifications of successivegenerations of the family. A house whichhas housed and been changed by onefamily for so long begins to act as both aspiritual and physical embodiment of thatfamily.

Hancox, a Tudor house situated in idyllicrural Sussex, became part of the Moore

family with the marriage of Milicent Ludlowa strong-willed Victorian woman who hadacquired it in 1891, to her cousin’s husbandNorman Moore in 1903.

The book takes the reader through the upsand downs that every family inevitablygoes through. But what makes it special isthe colourful, influential and talented char-acters and unique personalities who livedin the house. The family was related toFlorence Nightingale and could count theDarwin family and Kipling as friends.

It is captivating to have a glance at this sortof domestic social history which usuallyremains hidden and unwritten. However itis the sort of story one has to read throughin one go as it is very easy to get confusedand lost with all the different members ofthe extended family.

45

Hélène Maurice

Many of us love sitting in a warm gardensurrounded by beautiful rose shrubs dif-fusing an intoxicating, rich scent. But inbig cities many people cannot hope to dothat. But you can head for the parks whenspring then summer arrives. In London,the Rose Garden in Regents Park has anamazing variety of roses on display fromJune till August.

Often a symbol of beauty and love, therose is also recognised as having culi-nary and medicinal purposes. Roseflavoured food was very popular inElizabethan times and throughout historyroses have been used in a wide range ofsweet recipes: rose water, rose butter,rose candies, crystallised rose petals todecorate cakes.

In his book The EnglishPhysician, the physicianNicholas Culpeper(1616-1654) mentionsseveral remedies involv-ing roses from relievinginflammation of the liverto aching joints. Therose's essential oils havevarious properties fromheart tonic, antidepres-sant, antiseptic antiviralto diuretic. Rose water isalso beneficial to all typesof skin, hence the French

saying, ‘un teint de rose’ for a healthycomplexion. The only time that it is to beavoided is during the first four months ofpregnancy.

Flowers and Herbs:

The Delicate Rose (Rosaceae)

Family House Secrets


46

Books...Mark Winfield

Boldly Gone

Dan Dare: Pilot of

the Future:

a Biography

Daniel TatarskyOrion HardbackPrice £14.99

Dan Dare is oneof the mostfamous British

cartoon characters of the20th century. Despite hav-ing been introduced to

the world (well the UK at any rate) in the first edi-tion of the Eagle comic in 1950 he remains anicon of the heroic age of British science fiction.By now those who knew him directly in his earlydays would be in their 70’s but he continues tofascinate new generations. Dan’s future was1995 but though 60 years old now the vision ofthe future still appeals. If only 1995 had beenhalf as exciting as it was in the comic strips. Wemight have iPods and 3D movies but where is aneffective UN world government and space bat-tles with the implacable Mekon and his evilVenusian underlings?

I was too young to really experience Dan at firsthand but as an eager Cub Scout (it soon woreoff) I helped out at the jumble sales that generat-ed income for the troop. I always volunteered forthe book stall as this let me have first pick ofwhatever had been donated and at a preferentialrate. It was there that I discovered the old EagleAnnuals which contained complete stories for allthe favourites, PC 49, Harris Tweed – ExtraSpecial Detective (A pompous buffoon entirelyreliant on his young assistant -I was type cast ashim in the school play), Riders of the Range andLuck of the Legion but far and away the best wasDan Dare – Pilot of the Future. Dan was alwaysin full colour on the front page and every framewas beautifully drawn and full of such splendiddetail. The future was bright and stylish, theworld was at peace with itself and in ColonelDare and his plucky companions it had theanswer to any uppity aliens with evil intent.Even as a child I found the moral rectitude of theColonel quite hard to take. He never swore oracted badly, and he hardly ever used his ray pis-tol to lethal effect even on that most deservingvillain, the wonderfully resilient and utterlyremorseless Mekon, usually addressed as "TheMighty Mekon". There was a good reason forthis, Dan Dare had been devised by a vicarspecifically to be an exemplar of Christianbehaviour to the children of Great Britain. At onestage he was actually going to have been aspacefaring chaplain but fortunately he becamea pilot and was thus able to save humanity anda whole host of alien races too. Two fisted andpipe smoking, he was the epitome of Britishpluck and decency. He ought to have been

insufferable but he wasn’t, he was just a thor-oughly good chap. No one objected to the highmindedness when the stories were so excitingand well drawn

It is the sheer quality of the strips that stands out,particularly with the first artist Frank Hampson, aperfectionist who sounds as though he was hellto work for. He was also the very best of his gen-eration. The level of detail and consistency incontinuity was achieved through a studio systemusing models, photographic references of peo-ple in costume and mock ups of the aliens andtheir space ships. It was Rolls Royce engineer-ing applied to simple comic strip but the qualityshowed and helped the Eagle to achieve rapidpre-eminence in the market right after its launch.Hampson more or less burnt himself out (andseveral colleagues too) and left when the maga-zine was sold and the new owners were not pre-pared to make the expenditures necessary forsuch a superior product. He was succeeded bya very good graphic artist but the richness of theoriginal strips was never quite achieved. Evenwithin Dan Dare there are degrees of nostalgia.

The strip still has an active fan base and reprintsof the classic stories sell well. The rare originaldesigns that come up at auction commandimpressive prices and memorabilia also tradesat high rates. There is persistent talk of a moviebut I wonder if the highest skills in computer gen-erated graphics could ever really recapture thepristine 2D worlds of Frank Hampson. Betterperhaps to concentrate on eradicating povertyand getting that UN World Government set up!

An Aerial Last Huzzah

Empire of the

Clouds

James Hamilton -PatersonFaber & FaberHardbackPrice £20.00

This is the storyof the lastfleeting golden

age of British aviationfrom the end of the

Second World War until the early sixties. It sawBritain’s aircraft industry decline from a position– if not of world eminence- then certainly that ofa major player to the current situation wherecomplete aircraft are no longer built in the UK,only engines and sub-assemblies. It is a storywhich is well known and much lamented bythose familiar with economic and aviation histo-ry but the author does not merely re-visit suchwell know disasters as the Comet 1 (quite literal-ly), the Bristol Brabazon, Fairey Rotodyne and

TSR2, which were commercial failures. The bril-liant design concepts that never made it into pro-duction or failed to live up to their full commercialpotential.

Hamilton-Paterson is best known as a novelistand he brings a writerly sensibility to how it felt toattend the air shows of the early post war periodfocussing on the SBAC (Society of BritishAircraft Constructors) shows at Radlett and laterFarnborough which showcased British productsand where daring test pilots diced with death.The opening chapter deals memorably with theFarnborough of 1952 when a twin boom, twin jetDH 110 Vixen prototype flown by John Derry dis-integrated during a display killing both him andhis observer and 27 people in the crowd whenan engine ploughed into the assembled specta-tors. He captures brilliantly the romance andhopes of the New Elizabethan era when itseemed as if a second British Empire of technol-ogy, commerce and arts might replace the oldone which we were losing.

This was just after the war and the companiesand the test pilots accepted appalling risks andlosses in the same spirit as they had in combatduring the war. The attitude infected the wholeindustry to some extent. One British flag carrierBritish South American Airways had such a badrecord for fatal accidents that its unofficial com-pany slogan was said to be not “We get youthere and home again” but “We will inform yourNext of Kin”. The MD when pressed about thelosses said they were trivial when compared withthose he was used to in Bomber Command!Personal bravery was the hall mark of most testpilots and they needed it, their job was scarcelyless dangerous than it had been in war time butthere was a desperate attitude of over compla-cency and a spirit of “we beat the Luftwaffe, wecan beat the competition.

In 1945 the UK did have the only operational jetfighter amongst the Allied Powers in the GlosterMeteor, a rather sturdy looking twin jet whichwas eventually developed into a useful aero-plane which had a great international sales suc-cess and held many world records. It was a leadthat was not to last. The USA’s first efforts at jetpropulsion were not particularly useful but in theswept wing North American Sabre they pro-duced a second generation jet that pretty muchleft the Brits standing. In Korea it could copewith its swept wing rival the Mig 15. The straightwinged Meteors and Vampires of the RAF werecompletely outclassed and the FAA was valiant-ly trying to do its bit with the propeller driven SeaFury, a wonderful aircraft in many ways but bythen a technological dead end. The fact that theyactually did shoot down one Mig 15 is a wonder-ful testament to British Pluck but no way to winan air war.

In fact a bit less pluck and rather more applica-tion not to mention a clear and consistent strat-


egy shared by government, industry and BritishOverseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC) thenational flag carrier, might have led to a differentresult. Already severely handicapped by restric-tions imposed by the Americans under the termsof the war time lend-lease agreements the civilaviation industry was always going to struggle. Itwas incapable of the sheer production volumethat the USA could achieve and lacked the coor-dination of its rivals. It was fragmented andreliant on ever changing requirements from theMinistries of Defence and Supply not to mentionin BOAC a company which seemed to hate itsown aircraft industry. It was not short of brilliantdesigners and engineers but it just could not geta really good product to the market in full work-ing order on time. The RAF had to get Sabresas a stop gap until the Hawker Hunter was fullydeveloped as the new jet fighter and struggledalong with frankly sub standard types like theSupermarine Swift and Gloster Javelin, both ofwhich looked fabulous but hardly worked proper-ly until just before they were retired from service.Ever the poor relation the FAA had to make dowith the mirth inducing Supermarine Attacker.BOAC wanted Boeings and you begin to seewhy. The Comet was a world beater, it just keptbreaking up in mid air. A 707 had a greater pay-load and range and it worked.

The story is inevitably a sad one. The tragedy ofthe lives lost and the waste of commercial oppor-tunities cannot be seen as anything else but theauthor is very good at evoking what might havebeen and was at its best glorious. There werethe three V Bombers, the successful prop liners,the eventual success of the Comet 4, and theworld speed and altitude records.

Leadership in Action

Finest Years:

Churchill as

Warlord

Max HastingsFaber & FaberHardback Price £20.00

Max Hastingshas written asplendid trib-

ute to the man who ledthe Empire through the

darkest hours of the Second World War. In manyways it forms a trilogy with his two equallyweighty books on the end of the war in the west(“Armageddon”) and the east (“Nemesis”). Allthree have an almost superhuman grasp oftelling details and incident combined with theability to depict great matters on the broadest ofcanvases. It cannot have hindered him in that heclearly loves his subject very much.

Churchill was the very embodiment of the saying“cometh the hour, cometh the man”. Not in trutha very successful politician or in any sense aparty man his career seemed largely to haveended by the thirties. He had occupied greatoffices of state, changed parties, been involvedwith the disaster of the Dardanelles and brieflycommanded a battalion on the western front fol-

lowing that episode. Hewas larger than life and it ishardly surprising that manypeople in politics detestedhim, either as a turncoat oronly interested in himself.

What Churchill (right) didhave however was an im-mense energy and enthusi-asm which quite belied hisyears. He bought to the warleadership a relish and anenthusiasm which no oneelse could match amongstthe British political establish-ment, indeed there werevery few fighting men whocould either. In a wayChurchill retained the samerelish for adventure andmartial glory that he hadshown as a young cavalrysubaltern and as war corre-spondent on the North WestFrontier, at Omdurman andduring the second Boer War.Alone of his fellow politicianshe actually enjoyed makinghistory no matter how des-perate the situation.

Hastings is acutely awarethat Britain was not thedominant partner amongstthe allied powers once Russia and then the USAfinally entered the fray and understands theshifting relationships between Stalin, Rooseveltand Churchill. He sees Stalin as the monster hewas and Roosevelt as an essentially chilly andunsympathetic character interested only in pur-suing American national interests. Churchillknew full well that Britain could never win the waralone and assiduously courted the Americansfrom the outset. It was a long and troubled rela-tionship however “special” it might strive to be.The Americans wanted cash on the nail for anyaid and felt entirely free to criticise the Brits fortheir lack of martial success. In this areaHastings returns to a theme which informs hisother books about the war. In many ways theBritish Army’s performance was inferior to that ofthe Americans. Lack of material and war weari-ness can account for a good deal, particularly bythe stage that the Americans entered the fight inthe west, but man for man the Brits were just notas aggressive as the Yanks. Hastings givescredit to the RAF and rates the Royal Navy’sperformance very highly (apart from its carrieroperations) but there is no disguising that whenit came to real fighting and dying it was largelydone by the Russians. Churchill was usually dis-satisfied with his commanders, sometimesunreasonably so and interfered terribly but hedid care. Hardly anyone had his fighting spiritand some of the ones, who had, like Wingate,were too barking mad to be useful in war but forreal stalwarts like Brooke, Slim, Cunningham,Tedder and Portal it was galling to be constantlyasked for more activity. Of course Churchillremained wedded to side shows throughout thewar which led to such fiascos as the Aegeancampaign and annoyed his allies as well as hisgenerals. Fortunately Churchill really did believehimself to be the servant of his country and not

its Fuhrer so he was not allowed to impose hiscrackpot ideas very often and his caution aboutwhen to open a second front in France helped toinsure that sufficient men and material wereassembled to ensure success when it did takeplace in June 1944.

What stands out is Churchill’s resilience and sin-gle mindedness. He knew what Roosevelt andStalin were really like and also that the BritishEmpire was in a very weak position. It neverstopped him from doing what he had to do to letBritain survive. He might have to curry favourand accept slights but that mattered nothing solong as Nazism was defeated. Churchill wasnever without enemies at home even during hismost embattled or triumphant moments but peo-ple generally realised that here was the man forthe job. Churchill’s clear sightedness about theneed for victory was matched by an equalrefusal to devote any time to considering whatneeded to be done domestically after victory wasachieved. He wanted to preserve the Empireand fend off Soviet ambitions in Europe but wasdisinterested in what to make of an exhaustedand bankrupt – though victorious – country. Thepopulace at large knew that too and he wasswept from power in the General Election threeweeks before VJ Day. Stalin was astonished.How could they arrange these things so badlyunder capitalism?

Finally Churchill was a wonderful personality,patrician and dismissive of even the whitedominions let alone the natives of the empirethat meant so much to him; he was capable ofpity even for the Germans when they weredefeated. He was also unstoppably witty. WithChurchill at the helm the ship of state might besorely battered but she would stay afloat andshe would never surrender.

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48

Exhibitions:Cézanne’s Card PlayersThe Courtauld GalleryDr Peter Robinson

Cézanne’s card players sit together, yet inthe isolation of their own private worlds ofconcentration. Except that they never sattogether. The effect of this series of iconicpaintings was achieved by several studiesof individual farm workers on Cézanne’sfamily estate in Aix-en-Provence whichwere then tried out in various group combi-nations.

This mini-exhibition, Cézanne’s CardPlayers, which was at The CourtauldGallery in London till January, combinedmultiples versions of The Card Playerspaintings. Preparatory oil sketches, water-colours and drawings show that theseworks, which create a sense of realism andspontaneity, are actually a product of ahighly worked process of underdrawingsand revisions.

But why does the artist, in whatever medi-um, often become obsessed with a particu-lar subject; engaging in studies over sever-al years incorporating different perspec-tives, combinations and techniques? Whatis the relationship between this subject andthe psyche of the artist? What is beingworked out in these repetitions?

Van Gogh painted multiple versions of radi-ant sunflowers, Cézanne found inspirationin a sombre group of card players. A richman, yet in these workers playing cards hefound an essence, a gravitas, absorptionand dignity. “I love above all else theappearance of people who have grown oldwithout breaking with old customs” he said.

A friend of the novelist Emile Zola, in thesestudies Cézanne shares a naturalistapproach in depicting the harsh yet digni-fied, stoic lives of working people. Theapparent realism is filtered through a styleseemingly as coarse and weathered as hissubjects.

These paintings and studies were reunitedfrom international galleries to complementThe Courtauld’s collection and reveal thegestation and experiment that can go intowhat may appear to be a spontaneouswork of art. Every picture in this exhibitiontells this story vividly, helping to show thecreative process.

The Card Players, 1890-92; oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Card Players, c. 1890-92; oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris


49

The Smoker, c. 1891; oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg


50

Life, Legend, Landscape: Victorian drawingsand watercolours.The Courtauld Gallery, London 17 February - 15 May 2011Dr Peter Robinson

Hidden Treasures

What museums and galleries let us see is often but a fraction oftheir collection. Why don't the publically funded institutions rotatetheir collection more often so that those who contribute to theirupkeep may see them, at least once in their lifetime? In theabsence of this level of access perhaps an exhibition like this is thenext best thing. Online access seems the fastest and most work-able option to democratisation, but of course it can never be a sub-stitute for the visceral experience of seeing the original work of art.The Courtauld Gallery, part of the University of London, hasreceived a gift from the International Music and Arts Foundation tobuild on its more recent attempt to allow some of the contents ofits vaults of over 7,000 drawings and watercolours a public view-ing, some for the first time.

This is a miscellany of Victorian drawings and watercolours, theexhibition's catchall title "Life, Legend, Landscape" indicating itscatholicity. The fine catalogue edited by Joanna Selbourne withmany supporting pertinent articles(footnoted details of these stu-dents and other writers would have been appreciated) makes thiswork both an artistic and scholarly achievement by one of the toprated arts research institutions worldwide. It reveals a richness oflesser known works by well and lesser known artists across thelong Victorian period in the more seldom seen mediums of draw-ing and watercolour. Tate Britain’s exhibition “Watercolour” (until21 August) also highlights the diverse uses of the medium.

Millais, a few years ago the subject of a spectacular exhibition atTate Britain, is the centre of the Courtauld's promotion of this exhi-bition. While it may seem that we have seen the best of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in a series of detailed exhibitions in recentyears, The Parting of Ulysses (c. 1862), a small watercolour (pic-

tured top left) copied from a woodcutengraving, is an example of hidden PRBtreasure. It's a roughly sketched, azuremeeting of sea, land and night sky, combin-ing watercolour and gouache, showing themythical parting of Circe and Ulysses. It's apairing painted by John WilliamWaterhouse, recently exhibited at the RoyalAcademy's study of his work in terms of amodern Pre-Raphaelite, and not such apoignant romantic pairing as the Millaiswork suggests, which is more a case of artfor art's, rather than mythic reality's, sake.

A recent arrival at The Courtauld Galleryafter being lost for many years, is FrederickWalker's The Old Farm Garden (1871) (pic-tured left). Not surprisingly, the art critic,John Ruskin admired this work, no doubtbecause of its truth to nature approach,investigated in another recent Tate BritainPRB exhibition, in the detail of the flowersand had Walker not died at just 35 years oldhe would surely have become betterknown. The placing of the figure in theextreme left of the picture, the painting

John Everett Millais (1829-1896), The Parting of Ulysses, c.1862Watercolour and gouache on paper 118 x 103 mm© The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

Frederick Walker (1840-1875), The Old Farm Garden, 1871Watercolour and gouache over graphite on paper, 273 x 405 mm

© The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London


technique of the diaphanous dress and deft suggestion of pendingmovement of figure and cat is sensitive and innovative. As Millaisnoted the subjective perspective of the painter is critical in aesthet-ic appreciation. He wrote to Charles Collins, the painter andyounger brother of the novelist, Wilkie Collins in 1855, "nature istoo variable in itself to give more than a transient feeling of pleas-ure. Aspect, is the great secret. The prospect of the aspect"(Millais’ italics). It is Walker's unusual composition of this scenewith its gash of a path dividing human/animal and the vegetativewhich takes it beyond the confines of this, at first sight, conven-tional, traditional scene.

As its title suggests the exhibition includes life studies, land-scapes, genre scenes and subjects from literature and legend. Itfeatures works by some of the major artists of the age, from Turner(pictured), William Etty and Edwin Landseer, to other Pre-Raphaelites such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (pictured), and worksof the fin de siècle from Whistler to Aubrey Beardsley. Entrance is£6 for adults, concessions £4-50. Free admission for under 18s,full-time UK students and unwaged. Free entrance on Mondays,1000-1400 except public holidays.

51

William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)Chaffinch Nest and May Blossom, c.1845Watercolour on paper, 241 x 375 mm


Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882),

Study for Venus Verticordia, c.1863-64Graphite on paper, 508 x 369 mm


Daniel Maclise (1806-1870)Enid and Geraint: Illustration to Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King', c.1860Pen and ink over graphite on paper, 200 x 250 mm


J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)Brunnen, Lake Lucerne, c.1843-44Watercolour and graphite on paper, 240 x 297 mm



52

The U.A.E. in the GlobalSatellite Training Dynamic

research eBritain Spring 2011

Martin JarroldChief of International Programme Development, GVF([email protected])

(www.gvf.org)

Mazen NassarCEO, MENANets([email protected])

(www.menanets.com)

In March 2010 at the Global VSAT[1]Forum (GVF) Middle East and NorthAfrican regional satellite communicationssummit entitled The MENACommunications ‘Knowledge Exchange’:Development Dynamics in the BroadbandSatellite & Hybrid Wireless ApplicationsMarket – held during the CABSAT/SatelliteMENA 2010 exhibition in Dubai – a MiddleEast-based GVF representative presentedon the topic of the ‘Successful Deploymentof Satellite Networking Technology inMENA: Leveraging off the Satellite

Operator-Supported GVF Training Delivery& Certification Advantage’.

I had the distinct pleasure of acting asChairman of this Summit and was verypleased to have such a distinguished indi-vidual as the Dubai/Beirut-based MazenNassar, CEO of MenaNets, on the pro-gramme to discuss the vital role that GVF –at the global level – and he – on the region-al level – has played, and continues to play,in addressing the vital issue of satellite sig-nal interference mitigation strategies.

I: The GVF

GVF is the international satellite industry’snon-profit association. Founded in 1997,the Forum is the single and unified voice ofthe global satellite industry, bringingtogether organisations engaged in thedelivery of advanced broadband and nar-rowband satellite services to consumers,

and commercial and government enterpris-es worldwide.

Headquartered in London, GVF is an inde-pendent, non-partisan and non-profitorganisation with 230+ members frommore than 100 countries. Its broad-basedmembership represents every major worldregion and every sector of the satelliteindustry, including fixed and mobile satelliteoperators, satellite network operators, tele-ports, satellite earth station manufacturers,system integrators, value added andenhanced service providers, telecom carri-ers, consultants, law firms, and users.

Since its foundation, GVF has includedamongst its portfolio of activities the devel-opment of a range of capacity-building pro-grammes to serve the entire spectrum ofcommunications stakeholders worldwide.Amongst these programmes GVF has,either directly or in collaboration with other

Figure 1: GVF VSAT Training Certification Programme – Overview of Course Structure. Detailed information is available at http://gvf.coursehost.com

entities, developed a range of offerings,each of which aims to facilitate the commu-nications community’s provision, use of,and/or regulation of, satellite-based com-munications solutions.

II: The GVF VSAT Installation &

Maintenance Training Certification

Programme

One such offering is GVF’s running of thesatellite industry's global VSAT Installation& Maintenance Training CertificationProgramme which won a ‘Best SkillsDeveloper Award’ at the SatCom AfricaConference in Johannesburg in 2009, andhas also been cited in the Society ofSatellite Professionals International (SSPI)‘Industry Innovator’ awards.

The GVF VSAT Installation & MaintenanceTraining Certification Programme is aseries of highly interactive, 3-D animated,simulator-driven courses provided online,covering topics beginning with satellitebasics, progressing to installation tech-niques to mitigate uplink interference,VSAT fundamentals, and practical VSATinstallation techniques. The certificationprocess includes a hands-on-skills-test(HOST) for Basic and Advanced certifica-tion, and there is also a series of manufac-turer specific ‘specialist’ certifications forcertain specific VSAT terminal equipmentfrom particular manufacturers/vendors.

Regular updates on the continuing roll-outof GVF training resources are providedthrough the online publication, the GVFTraining Newsletter, which is produced inpartnership with its training partner-organi-sation, SatProf. A recent edition of thenewsletter cited the endorsement of GVFinstallation and maintenance training bythe Satellite Operators InterferenceInitiative, the membership of which organi-sation currently comprises 19 of the world’ssatellite operating companies.

III: The Satellite Operators Interference

Initiative

The Satellite Operators InterferenceInitiative has the objective of controlling theserious problem of satellite uplink signalsinterference. In recent years, the satellitecommunications industry has experiencedan escalation of signal interference,adversely affecting broadcast and telecom-munication services, and the Initiative haslaunched a multiple front campaign to com-bat this trend.

One of these fronts is a carrier ID workingforum to pursue industry implementation ofcarrier ID: a means to identify interferingsignals. The second aspect is the formationof the Space Data Association to facilitatecollecting and sharing interference event

data amongst its satellite operator mem-bers. The third aspect is the GVF VSATInstallation & Maintenance TrainingCertification Programme.

Installation by inadequately trained techni-cians is one of the main causes of interfer-ence identified by the Satellite OperatorsInterference Initiative. GVF has respondedby enhancing the established VSATInstaller Training Programme to focus evenmore strongly on the skills necessary toavoid accidental generation of adjacent-satellite, cross-pol, and re-radiation inter-ference.

Whether it is mitigating uplink interferencevia the Basic Certification, providing solidknowledge and skills in VSAT installation,maintenance, and troubleshooting via theAdvanced Certification, or gaining skills forinstallation, maintenance, and trou-

bleshooting of specific equipment types viaSpecialist Certifications, the GVFCertification Programme provides trainingfor the knowledge and skills needed to besuccessful in the VSAT industry.

Details of the courses available, and theprocesses and steps required to achieveGVF certification are fully detailed at theGVF/SatProf training portal athttp://gvf.coursehost.com, but the threelevels of certification can be quickly sum-marised as follows:

• GVF Basic VSAT Installation Certification.Basic skills that all VSAT installers musthave to help prevent interference.Requires completion of online courseGVF510 and the formal GVF Hands-On-Skills-Test.


53

Figure 2: Front page of one of the GVF VSAT Training Certification Programme information brochures – GVF510 ‘Core Skills for VSAT Installers’

54

• GVF Advanced VSAT Installation andMaintenance Certification. Knowledgeand theory for all expert VSAT field tech-nicians. Requires completion of onlinecourses GVF510, GVF520, GVF521, andthe formal GVF Hands-On-Skills-Test.

• GVF Speciality Certifications. RequiresGVF Advanced Certification plus comple-tion of one of the online specialty courses,such as iDirect (course GVF503i), orHughes (course GVF503H).

Much more information is centrally locatedwithin the training portal, including detailsof the Andrew Werth ScholarshipProgramme for trainees from developingcountries – defined as those nations classi-fied as Least Developed Countries by theUN (http://www.un.org/ohrlls/), or as thoseclassified by the WorldBank (http://web.world-bank.org/) with economiesin the low income, low-mid-dle income, IDA, or HIPCgroups – as well as detailson how to become a GVFCertified Examiner.

IV: GVF Training in the

United Arab Emirates

Mazen Nassar is ChiefExecutive Officer of MenaNetswith offices in Beirut, Lebanon,as well as in Dubai. He servesas the GVF’s Master InstallationTrainer for the MENA region,and MenaNets operates pan-regional training delivery onbehalf of GVF throughout the region andbeyond, sometimes with the additionalassistance of other GVF personnel andtraining instructors.

MenaNets is a system integrator providinginstallation and networking services oversatellite, and is also the authorised distrib-utor/reseller for a range of VSAT satelliteequipment manufacturers, including ASCSignal, Skyware Global, iDirect, AnacomInc., Paradise Communications, and oth-ers, covering hardware products includingmodems, dishes (1.2 metres to 2.4metres), feeds, LNBs, BUCs, filters, con-nectors, adaptors, and tools, etc.

GVF training in Dubai has grown over theyears to include a small training facilitywithin the city for small groups, and anoth-er training site suitable for up to 40 traineeswhich is located at the MenaNets ware-house in the Jebel Ali free zone. Togetherthese facilities afford generous capacity tohold training sessions at various timesthroughout the year, including immediatelyafter two of the most important telecommu-nications-related exhibitions in the Dubai

events calendar – CABSAT/Satellite MENAand GITEX. Tens of thousands attendthese exhibitions, and GVF/MenaNets pro-vides opportunities for trainees to takeadvantage of spending one or two extradays in the city to complete the hands-on-skills-test (HOST) element of their training.

Other training sessions are also scheduledthroughout the year to provide more flexi-bility for those who are not able to attendduring the exhibitions, and other sessionsare scheduled to meet the demand or thetiming-requirements of trainees even ifthere are only relatively few registrants.

The Dubai facility has grown to host manytrainees from various satellite communica-tions companies, and from the non-govern-ment organisation (NGO) sector, across aregion spanning from Afghanistan toMorocco and from Iraq to all over theAfrican continent. In addition to the opensessions described above, private dedicat-ed training HOST sessions have beendesigned for organisations like the WorldFood Programme in Dubai, OrascomTelecom in Algeria, Alkan in Egypt,NigComSat in Nigeria, etc. These organi-sations had a training requirement for mul-tiple trainees and the HOST session was ineach case designed to meet their needs intheir respective countries/locations.

V: Installation & Maintenance TrainingDelivery As shown in the illustration at Figure 1, inorder to progress through to their GVFCertification, all students must successfullycomplete the hands-on-skills-test (HOST).The HOST comes at the end of thetrainee’s period of study of the series ofinteractive, 3-D animated, simulator-drivenexercises that are provided online throughthe aforementioned GVF/SatProf trainingportal at http://gvf.coursehost.com. Theperiod of time which each student devotesto their study period is essentially undertheir own control, though there is a guide-line study period-duration indicated foreach course (see Figure 2) within the train-ing programme.

Typically at the MenaNets facilities, eachsession is kept to amaximum of 15 to 20trainees and isapproached with a flexi-bility that allows for oneor more days training(see Figure 3). Thisallows the trainees tobenefit from their train-ing according to theirown needs. The training

appeals to individuals with arange of roles within their ownorganisations. Trainee installersget to see and use the differenttypes of satellite communica-tions hardware; and, managersattend to focus on what thehardware looks like, how it is

packed, how long it takes to install, andwhat planning is needed to successfullyundertake equipment installation projects.Additionally, company financial personnelsometimes participate to understand theneed for customer acceptance test and sig-natures, safety procedures, documentationneeds, spectrum analyzer features andcost, hardware differences and how toavoid equipment shipment errors and otherunnecessary, and costly, mistakes.

GVF, in partnership with MenaNets, workssuccessfully to achieve the objective ofproviding the VSAT industry with a simple,reliable, comprehensive, achievable, andaccessible training certification that leadsto improved quality of service delivery,improved savings, safe professional prac-tices, and, not least, more reliable satellitecommunications.

Notes:

1. VSAT is the acronym for very small aperture

terminal

Figure 3: Scenes from GVF installer training at theMenaNets facility in Dubai


56

A Study of the UnderlyingTechnologies and Design Principlesof Mobile CommerceJameel A QadriLecturer British Institute of Technology & Ecommerce, London, UK

Dr M FarmerDirectorBritish Institute of Technology & Ecommerce, London, UK

M T BandayAssociate ProfessorDepartment of Electronics and Instrumentation Technol-ogy, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India

Abstract

Mobile commerce, also known as m-com-merce, is very similar to electronic com-merce or e-commerce in many respects.However, in many other respects the two arequite different. M-commerce includes anumber of underlying technologies and con-cepts like communication technology, webtechnology and growth in mobile communi-cation in terms of connection speed and thedevice capabilities. In this article we willpresent an overview of these technologiesand concepts that over time made m-com-merce possible.

Key Words: M-commerce, Mobile Commu-nication, Communication Protocols, DesignStrategy

Introduction

It is very difficult to estimate the speed atwhich technology is progressing, but, how-ever fast or slow the progress, the growth oftechnology is gradual except at the timeswhen some radical invention or discovery ismade. M-commerce does not fall in the cat-egory of a radical invention and therefore itsprogress can be traced phase by phase.Google’s Ngram viewer locates 1980 as thetime which marked a sharp growth in thephrase “mobile phones”. We will choose1980 as our anchor year to explore the de-velopment of m-commerce. M-commerce isdefined by Nigel and Phillips as the intercon-nection of portable computing technologiesand the wireless telecommunications net-working environments necessary to providelocation independent connectivity within thebusiness information system domain (Nigel,Elliot, 2004). At this point a minimum of onemore definition is required to clear the con-cept of term ‘mobile’ in m-commerce. Al-though m-commerce is the commerce car-ried out in a wireless environment, but itshould not be confused with e-commerceconducted in wireless mode. The term mo-

bile has a distinct connotation which is sup-ported by altogether different technologythan what is used in wireless communica-tion. Müller-Veerse described m-commerceas “any transaction with a monetary valuethat is conducted via a mobile telecommuni-cations network”. The mode of communica-tion is very important as it has direct conse-quences on 1) the communication protocols2) changes in the web design and accessi-bility 3) the display of information 4) qualityof multimedia 5) the availability of bandwidth6) connection stability and 7) convenience;and indirect consequences on 1) Softwaresupport, 2) microprocessor capability 3)memory size 4) fulluse of operatingsystems and 5)power consump-tion. Mobile de-vices, includingmobile phones,pagers, Family Ra-dio Service andsome satellitephones, are de-signed for the situ-ations where thehandset is ex-pected to be in mo-tion during use(Gow & Smith, 2006). M-commerce, assuch, means to carry out financial transac-tions anytime anywhere using handsetsworking on mobile communication systembased on cellular technology.

Cellular technology

Cellular networks are based on small radiocoverage zones known as ‘cells’ allowingthe system to use same frequency in non-adjacent cells in variety of cluster patterns.This design was a breakthrough which madecommunication mobile and pervasive. Oneof the most important technological chal-lenges was to overcome the connectionbreaks while moving from one cell to anothercell where the signal strength becomesweak and overlapping. The connectivity wasmaintained by a very important cellular net-work design called hand-off. The hand-off isthe process that permits a mobile customerto move between radio cells without losingconnection (Gow & Smith, 2006). That com-pleted the fundamental design of the cellu-lar networks. The user was now able tomake or receive calls anywhere and anytime

in full duplex mode. Commercial cellularphone networks took off in the 1980s. Thesame decade saw exponential growth of gi-ant mobile pioneering companies like Nokia,Ericsson and Motorola. However, first gen-eration 1G and second generation 2G net-works operated with inadequate data trans-fer speed to access web links from themobile phone. 2.5G systems based on ei-ther Cellular Digital Packet data (CDPD) orGeneral packet radio service (GPRS) en-hanced the data rate up to 28.8 kbps. Stillless than broadband but this data transferrate made it possible to access the webfrom mobile phones. 3G technologies like

Universal Mobile Telecommunications Sys-tem (UMTS), High Speed Packet Access(HSPA), Worldwide Interoperability for Mi-crowave Access (WiMAX) and Long TermEvolution (LTE) are able to provide highspeed mobile data service termed as mobilebroadband. The quality of the mobile broad-band is gauged by its coverage, capacityand the speed. According to the BBC thereare more than 5 billion mobile connections inthe world (July 2010), out of which 500 mil-lion users use 3G according to website GSMArena.

Mobile devices

Several facts are responsible for the kind ofpopularity mobile phones enjoy today. Oneof the outstanding achievements is the evo-lution of the mobile devices in terms ofminiaturization. Early mobile phones whichcould not be commercialized were as heavyas 16 kgs. The size of the phone restrictedtheir portability and hence mobility. The Mo-torola Dyna-TAC 8000X , known as the‘brick’ was the first handheld cellular phone.It weighed over 1 kilogram, had one colour

Fig 1. Google Ngram Viewer result for the phrase “Mobile Phones”


57

LED display and memory to store 30 tele-phone numbers. By the mid 1990s the mo-bile became as small as practically possible.The keypad and display limited any more re-duction in size. At this point size was nolonger the priority. Mobile phones with ex-tended features came into the market.1996, Nokia introduced the Communicator,a GSM mobile phone and handheld com-puter. It had a QWERTY keyboard and builtin word processing and calendar programs(Farley, 2005). At the present time there areover 5000 handset types available (Cart-man, Ting, 2009). Mobile devices haveevolved into powerful convergent devices

with better processor capability, sharperscreen resolution, better colour display andbetter overall features (Cartman, Ting,2009). Although Nokia 1100 and other basicmodels are still popular with first time buy-ers in third world countries and far flung ar-eas of developing countries smart phonesfrom Blackberry and iPhone are fast grab-bing the market share in developed coun-tries. In most of the third world and develop-ing countries people still use GSM andtherefore need for smart phones is less,however, in North America and Europewhere mobile penetration is high with 3G orlater technology, smart phones with in-builtmicro-browsers are in great demand. More

powerful features are incorporated in themobile devices. Screen resolution andgraphic support is becoming comparablewith that of laptops or desktops. Softwaresupport is very impressive as well in modernphones. Documents To Go enable the userto view, edit and create Microsoft Word, Ex-cel and PowerPoint files. Adobe PDF filescan also be viewed on Android-poweredsmart phone.

Communication Protocols and software

support

The wired and wireless communication sys-tems are governed by TCP/IP network archi-

tecture. TCP/IP architecture make end toend communication possible. The commu-nicating machines (sender and receiver ma-chines) are assumed to be either fixed ormoving within a single network connectionmaking it logically stationary with respect tonetwork movements. Hypertext TransferProtocol (HTTP) is application level protocolresponsible to fetch web pages from theweb servers. In contrast, in mobile commu-nication WAP architecture is used. WAPstands for wireless application protocol.WAP is not a single protocol but a completelayered architecture. The layers are embed-ded in both server side technology and theclient side technology so that the two parts

can effectively communicate with one an-other in a wireless environment. Wap archi-tecture sits on the underlying communicationtechnologies like GSM, GPRS, CDMA,PDC, TDMA, etc. The five layers of the WAPmake it possible to access data on the Inter-net. The WAP architecture was developed toovercome the disadvantages of the mobilephones seen as compared to desktop orlaptop computers. In order to enhance theweb experience on mobile phones the dis-advantages like slower Internet speed,smaller display size, reduced capability todisplay rich multimedia, low quality connec-tivity, and cost of accessing the Internet are

the key areas that WAP architecture takescare of. The protocol stack defined in WAParchitecture works on the design that opti-mises the communication resources avail-able to the mobile user. For example, web-site design is simpler with less multimediafeatures occupying less device memory andless bandwidth when downloaded. Accord-ing to the white paper published by WAP fo-rum, HTTP/TCP/IP use 17 packets toprocess a stock quote query which is 65%overhead whereas WSP/WTP/UDP use only7 packets for the same job resulting in only17% overhead(WAPForum, 2000). TheWAP specification defines a microbrowserthat is the ultimate thin client, able to fit in a


58

limited amount of memory in the handhelddevice. The use of proxy technology andcompression in the network interface re-duces the processing load at the handhelddevice so that an inexpensive CPU can beused in the handset. This further helps to re-duce power consumption and extends bat-tery life, meeting the needs of both handsetmanufacturers and wireless subscribers.(WAPForum, 2000).

Wireless markup language WML is used todevelop the websites for mobile phones.WML uses a different design procedure inwhich web pages are designed as a deck ofcards which can be downloaded with a sin-gle request on to the device and then can benavigated from the memory rather than mak-ing fresh requests. This makes the web nav-igation faster and saves bandwidth as well.xHTML,a code sub-set of XML, and WMLare converging technologies for the web de-velopment. Web content developed usingxHTML can be viewed both via webbrowsers on PCs or laptops and WAP en-abled mobile devices. Among other tech-nologies used to develop web content formobile phones, Sun Microsystems’ J2ME-java 2 Micro Edition-is very popular amongthe developers.

Mobile websites

Apart from other bottleneck problems likedata transfer rate, memory size and micro-processor capability, one of the biggest chal-lenges for the mobile medium (website orapplication) is small screen size. The designconcepts for PC based medium and mobilebased medium therefore differ. It is reportedin the literature that designers stress theneed of redesigning rather than miniaturiz-ing the websites designed for PC and lap-tops. W3C has come up with the guidelinesto be used in the design of mobile siteskeeping in view the limitations of the mobileenvironment. Many recommendations aregiven for content control, clarity of the infor-mation and the navigation. Control on theuse of images is essential for mobile sites.In PC-based websites a number of multime-dia elements less relevant to the informationpresented on the web pages can be in-cluded, e.g. background images, button im-ages, banners and flash elements. In mobilesites such elements can easily be avoided.Clarity of the navigation elements is alsovery important. Most of the page’s contentshould be displayed on loading the pagewith contrasted navigation links. Structure ofthe page should remain consistent, except inthe cases where the context of the givenpage changes. Good colour contrast ismaintained and blue and purple font coloursare used only for hyperlinks. A number ofother strategies for mobile interactive de-sign process are reported in literature. Theaim of the design strategies is to improve the


user experience when accessing the webfrom mobile devices.

ConclusionMobile Commerce is still in its infancy, how-ever, as it is not a completely a new conceptits growth is envisaged to be huge in thecoming years. The users are already famil-iar with the use of traditional web and onlinefinancial transactions. Mobile commerce is aresult of gradual and continuous develop-ment of communication technology. This pa-per provided an integrated view of differenttechnologies responsible for m-commerce totake place. The article paves the way for fur-ther research in different areas of m-com-merce.

Glossary

References

1. BBC [online]. (2010) [Accessed 10 Febru-ary 2011]. Available from:<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10569081>

2. David J Myers (2004). Mobile Video Te-lephony. Ist. ed. United States of America:McGraw- Hill.

3. Ernst & Young, "Global Online Retailing:An Ernst & Young Special Report," CapGemini Ernst & Young,http://www.ey.com/global/vault.nsf/US/2001_Retail_Study/$file/GOR.pdf

4. G. Elliot, N. Phillips (2004). Mobile Com-merce and wireless Computing System. Ist.ed. England: Pearson Education Limited.

5. G.A Gow, R.K. Smith (2006). Mobile andwireless Communication. Ist. ed. England:McGraw -Hill Education.

6. GSM Arena [online]. (2010) [Accessed 10February 2011]. Available from:http://www.gsmarena.com/the_number_of_3g_customers_worldwide_hits_500_million_-news-1413.php

7. Henderson, R., D. Rickwood, and P.Roberts, "Beta Test of An Electronic Super-market," Interacting with Computers, Vol.10:385-399, 1998.

8. Ivo salmre (2005). Writing Mobile Code.Ist. ed. United States of America: PearsonEducation.

9. J. Cartman, R. Ting (2009). Strategic Mo-bile Design: Creating Engagaing Experi-ences. Ist. ed. United States of America: NewRiders.

10. Müller-Veerse, F., 2000, Mobile Com-merce Report, World Wide Web:http://www.dad.be/library/pdf/durlacher1.pdf

11. T. F arley, 2005, “Mobile telephone histo-ry” Telektronikk 3/4.2005 p-32

12. WAP Forum (2000). Wireless Internet To-day.

59

1G,2G,2.5G,3G First, second, between second and third and third generations ofmobile communication

CDMA Code Division Multiple Access

CDPD Cellular Digital Packet Data

CPU Central Processing Unit

GPRS General Packet Radio Service

GSM Global System for Mobile Communication

HSPA High Speed Packet Access

HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol

J2ME Java 2 Micro Edition

LED Light Emitting Diode

LTE Long Term Evolution

PC Personal Computer

PDC Personal Digital Cellular

PDF Portable Document Format

TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TDMA Time Division Multiple Access

UDP User Datagram Protocol

UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

W3C World Wide Web Consortium

WAP Wireless Application Protocol

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access

WML Wireless Markup Language

WTP Wireless Transmission Protocol

xHTML eXtensible HyperText Markup Language


60

A study on transactionscheduling in a real-timedistributed systemY Jayanta Singh College of Information Technology,

7th October University, Misurata, Libya

[email protected]

Prof Hasan Al-Saedy British Institute of Technology and E-Commerce

London, UK

[email protected]

S C MehrotraDept of Information Technology and Computer Sc,Dr. B.A.Marathwada University, Aurangabad, India

[email protected]

Abstract:

The transaction in a real time databasesystem has deadlines to process theworkloads. Many transaction complex-ities are there in handling concurrencycontrol and database recovery in dis-tributed database systems. And com-plexity increase in real time applica-tions by placing deadlines on theresponse time of the database systemand transactions processing. Such asystem needs to process Transactionsbefore these deadlines expired. Theperformances depend on many factorssuch as traffic workloads, databasesystem architecture, underlyingprocessors, disks speeds, and varietyof operating conditions. A series ofsimulation study have been performedto analyze the performance under dif-ferent transaction scheduling conditionsuch as different workloads, differentenvironments, varying file selectiontime, and varying arrival rate. Thescheduling of data accesses are donein order to meet their deadlines and tominimize the number of transactionsthat missed deadlines. A newapproach “firm randomization” methodis introduced to help to distribute work-loads to all sites uniformly.

Keywords- Transaction scheduling,Real time system, deadlines, firm ran-domization, throughput.

I. INTRODUCTION

A real time distributed computing has het-erogeneously networked computers tosolve a single problem. If a transactionruns across two sites, it may commit at onesite and may failure at another site, leadingto an inconsistent transaction. Two-phasecommit protocol is most widely used tosolve these problems [Silberschatz02]. Toensure transaction atomicity, commit proto-cols are implemented in distributed data-base system. A uniform commitment isguarantee by a commit protocol in a distrib-uted transaction execution to ensure thatall the participating sites agree on a finaloutcome. Result may be either a commit oran abort condition.

In a real time database system the transac-tion processing system that is designed tohandle workloads where transactions havecomplete deadlines. Many real time data-base applications in areas of communica-tion system and military systems are dis-tributed in nature. To ensure transactionatomicity, commit protocol are implement-ed in distributed database system. Thispaper shows report of study the perform-ance implications of supporting transactionatomicity in a real time distributed databasesystem with the help of simulation.Experimental performances of transactionscheduling under variety of workloads anddifferent system configuration are evaluat-ed through this simulation.

The section II describes the concept of areal time database system. In section III,detail simulation model and simulationparameters are given. The detail experi-ment results and analysis are given in sec-tion IV. The overall conclusions are dis-cussed in section V.

II. REAL TIME DATABASE CONCEPT

Database researchers have proposed vari-eties of commit protocols like Two phasecommit [Gray’78, Mohan et al.’86], Nestedtwo phase commit [Gray’78], Presumedcommit [Lampson and Lomet93] andPresume abort [Mohan et al.’86],Broadcast Two phase commit [Oszu andValduriez’91], Three phase commit [Oszuand Valduriez’91, Kohler’81] etc. Theserequire exchanges of multiple messages,

in multiple phases, between the participat-ing sites where the distributed transactionexecuted. Several log records are generat-ed to make permanent changed to the datadisk, demanding some more transactionexecution time [Lampson and Lomet93,Nystrom and Nolin04, Ramamritham etal’04]. Proper scheduling of transactionsand management of its execution time areimportant factors in designing such sys-tems.

Transactions processing in any databasesystems can have real time constraints.The scheduling transactions with deadlineson a single processor memory residentdatabase system have been developedand evaluated the scheduling through sim-ulation [Robert et al’92]. A real time data-base system is a Transaction processingsystem that designed to handle workloadswhere transactions have complete dead-lines. A centralized timed Two-phaseCommit protocol has been designed wherethe fate of a transaction is guaranteed to beknown to all the participants of the transac-tion by a deadline [Davidson et al’89]. Incase of faults, it is not possible to providesuch guarantee. Real actions such asFiring a weapon or dispensing cash maynot be compensatable at all [Levy et al’91].Proper scheduling of transactions andmanagement of its execution time are theimportant factors in designing such sys-tems. In such a database, the performanceof the commit protocol is usually measuredin terms of number of Transactions thatcomplete before their deadlines. The trans-action that miss their deadlines before thecompletion of processing are just killed oraborted and discarded from the systemwithout being executed to completion[Jayant et al’92].

III. SIMULATION DETAILS

A.Simulation model

The study follows real time processingmodel [Jayant et al’92] and transaction pro-cessing addressing timeliness [Han’03].Such model consists of a database that isdistributed in a non-replicated manner,over all the available sites (say 8 sites inthis study) connected by a network [Jayantet al’96,90,91]. In the actual model, each ofsites has six components: (i) a source: gen-erate transactions, (ii) a transaction man-


61

ager: models the execution behavior of thetransaction, (iii) a concurrency control man-ager: implements the concurrency controlalgorithm, (iv) a resource manager: modelsthe physical resources, (v) a recovery man-ager: implements the details commit proto-col and (vi) a sink: collects statistics on thecompleted transactions. A network manag-er models the behavior of the communica-tions network. The study is concentrated inmanaging the transaction scheduling underdifferent workloads. In this study, the part ofconcurrency control is not fully implement-ed. The modified model is shown in Fig 1.The study has concentrated to minimizednumbers of the percentage of miss trans-actions in order to optimize the atomicityproblem in a distributed database system.The definition of the components of themodel is given above.

(i) The source:

This component is responsible for generat-ing the workloads for a site. The workloadsare characterized in terms of files that theyaccess and number of pages that theyaccess and also update of a file.

(ii) The transaction manager:

The transaction manager is responsible foraccepting transaction from the source andmodeling their execution. This deals withthe execution behavior of the transaction.Each transaction in the workload has ageneral structure consist of a masterprocess and a number of cohorts. Themaster resides at the sites where the trans-action was submitted. Each cohort makes

a sequence of read and writes requests tofiles that are stored at its sites. A transac-tion has one cohort at each site where itneeds to access data.

To choose the execution sites for a trans-action’s cohorts, the decision rule is: if a fileis present at the originating site, use thecopy there; otherwise, choose uniformlyfrom among the sites that have remotecopies of the files. The transaction manag-er also models the details of the commitand abort protocols.

(iii) The concurrency control manager:

It deals with the implementation of the con-currency control algorithms. In this study,this module is not fully implemented. Theeffect of this is dependent on algorithm thatchooses during designing the system.

(iv) The resource manager:

The resource manager models the physicalresources like CPU, Disk, and files etc forwriting to or accessing data or messagesfrom them.

(v) The sink:

The sink deals for collection of statistics onthe completed transactions.

(vi)The Network Manager:

The network manager encapsulates themodel of the communications network. It isassuming a local area network system,where the actual time on the wire for mes-sages is negligible.

B. Execution model and Simulation

Parameters

The execution model is discussed below. Acommon model of a distributed transactionis that there is one process, called asMaster, which is executed at the site wherethe transaction is submitted, and a set ofprocesses, called Cohorts, which executeson behalf of the transaction at these vari-ous sites that are accessed by the transac-tion. In other words, each transaction has amaster process that runs at its site of origi-nation. The master process in turn sets upa collection of cohort’s processes to per-form the actual processing involved in run-ning the transaction. When cohort finishesexecuting its portion of a query, it sends anexecution complete message to the mas-ter. When the master received such a mes-sage from each cohort, it starts its execu-tion process.

When a transaction is initiated, the set offiles and data items that, it will access arechosen by the source. The master is thenloaded at its originating site and initiatesthe first phase of the protocol by sendingPREPARE (to commit) messages in paral-lel to all the cohorts. Each cohort that isready to commit, first force-writes a pre-pared log record to its local stable storageand then sends a YES vote to the master.

At this stage, the cohort has entered a pre-pared state wherein it cannot unilaterallycommit or abort the transaction but has towait for final decision from the master. Onother hand, each cohort that decides to

CC Manager

Sink

StatisticsCollection

Source

CreateTransaction

Transaction Manager

• Load Master/Cohort• Read/Write• Abort/Commit

Resource Manager

• Disk/CPU• File

Network Manager

’o

’

oTransactions

Service

Done

Figure 1. Real time distributed database model.


62

abort force-writes an abort log record andsends a NO vote to the master. Since a NOvote acts like a veto, cohort is permittedunilaterally abort the transaction withoutwaiting for a response from the master.

After the master receives the votes from allthe cohorts, it initiates the second phase ofthe protocol. If all the votes are YES, itmoves to a committing state by force-writ-ing a commit log record and sending COM-MIT messages to all the cohorts. Eachcohort after receiving a COMMIT messagemoves to the committing state, force-writesa commit log record, and sends anacknowledgement (ACK) message to themaster. If the master receives even oneNO vote, it moves to the aborting state byforce writing an abort log record and sendsABORT messages to those cohorts thatare in the prepared state. These cohorts,after receiving the ABORT message, moveto aborting state, force-write an abort logrecord and send an ACK message to themaster. Finally, the master, after receivingacknowledgement from all the preparedcohorts, writes an end log record and thenforgets and made free the transaction. Thestatistics are collected in the Sink [Jayantaet al’90,92,96].

The database is modeled as a collection ofDBsize pages that are uniformly distributedacross all the NumSites sites. At each site,transactions arrive under Poisson stream

with rate ArrivalRate, and each transactionhas an associated firm deadline. The dead-line is assigned using the formula DT=AT+SF*RT (1).

Here DT, AT, SF and RT are the deadline,arrival rate, Slack factor and resource timerespectively, of transaction T. TheResource time is the total service time at

the resources that the transaction requiresfor its execution. The Slack factor is a con-stant that provides control over the tight-ness or slackness of the transaction dead-lines.

In this model, each ofthe transaction in thesupplied workload hasthe structure of the sin-gle master and multi-ple cohorts asdescribed above. Thenumber of sites atwhich each transactionexecutes is specifyingby the Fileselectiontime (DistDegree)parameter. At each ofthe execution sites, thenumber of pagesaccessed by the trans-action’s cohort variesuniformly between 0.5and 1.5 timesCohortSize. Thesepages are chosen ran-domly from among the

database pages located at that site. A pagethat is read is updated with probability ofWriteProb. Summary of the simulationparameter is given in table 1.

C. Parameter Settings

The values of the parameter set in the sim-ulation are given in table II. The CPU time

to process a page is 10 milliseconds whiledisk access times are 20 milliseconds.

In this simulation mainly concentrated inprocessing timing of commit protocol. It issure that if it is reduced the number of misstransactions, it can also able to reduce theatomicity problem. If the transaction’saction deadline expires either before com-pletion of its local processing, or before themaster has written the global decision logrecord, the transaction is killed and dis-carded.

IV. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS

The study for performance evaluationstarts by first developing a base model.Further experiments were constructedaround the base model experiments byvarying a few parameters at a time. Theexperiment has been performed using dif-ferent simulation language such as, inreport [Jayanta et al’96] using C++Sim, andin report [Jayanta et al’92] using DeNet.For this study, GPSS World[Minutesmansoftware’01] is used as a sim-ulator. Literatures are also collected fromseveral recent studies [Xiong andRamamritham'04, Datta and Son'02,Gustavsson and Andler'05,Ziong etal'05,Jan 06,Kang et al'07, Idoudi et al'08].

The performance metric of the experimentsis MissPercent that is the percentage ofinput transaction that the system is unableto complete before their deadline. The

Parameters Description

NumSites or Selectfile Number of sites in the Database

Dbsize Number of pages in the Database

ArrivalRate Transaction arrival rate/site

Slackfactor Slack factor in Deadline formula

FileSelecton Time Degree of Freedom (DistDegree)

WriteProb Page update probability

PageCPU CPU page processing time

PageDisk Disk page access time

TerminalThink Time between completion of onetransaction & submission of another

Numwrite Number of Write Transactions

NumberReadT Number of Read Transactions

TABLE 2. VALUES OF SIMULATION MODEL PARAMETERS

Parameters Set Values

NumSites 8

Dbsize vary(max.2400)

ArrivalRate 6 to 8 job/sec

Slackfactor 4

FileSelecton Time 3

WriteProb 0.5

PageCPU 10ms

PageDisk 20ms

TerminalThink 0 to 0.5 sec

TABLE 1. SIMULATION PARAMETERS


63

MissPercent values in range of 0% to 20%are taken to represent system performanceunder “Normal” loads, while ranges of 21%to 100% represent system performanceunder “heavy” loads. The study analyzesthe performance of the system under differ-ent workload with varying the arrival rate ofthe transaction and their deadlines. Alsothe study analyzed the performance usingthis new concept of firm randomizationtechnique (given below). Only the statisti-cally significant results are discussed. Thecomparison of the performance of the sys-tem under Centralized commit andDistributed commit processing also shown.The experimental results are discussedbelow.

This section discusses the statisticalresults of this simulation under differentenvironments. The distributed systemshave higher percentage of missTransactions than centralized system. Thehigher miss percentage of transaction cre-ates problem in managing atomicity of thetransaction in such a system. This leads todesign of a new distributed commit-pro-cessing protocol to have a real-time com-mitting performance. The comparison of

Centralize and distrib-uted performances isshown in Fig 2.

4.2.Impact of file

selection time to

Individual sites

The simulation wasperforming by taking 8distributed sites andby varying their fileselection timing. Theperformance analysesof each of the sitesunder a normal work-load are shown in Fig3. The miss percent-age of transaction is

reduced in increasing the file selection tim-ing. 4.3. Impact of arrival rates to Individual

sites

In this set of experi-ments, the impact ofincreasing the arrivalrates was observedon the performancesof the each of sitesunder normal loadand heavy load. Fig 4presents the resultsobtained. Here s1, s2etc are representingthe 8 sites. Underboth conditions, themiss percentage isreduced at the lowervalues of arrival rateof the transactions foreach of the sites. Inboth the normal andheavy load the arrivalrate play an important role to give a mini-mized miss percentage. The success ratiosof the transaction are also increase by low-

ering the arrival rate.

4.4. Impact of arrival rate

to Throughput

In this set of experiments,the impact of increasingthe arrival rates wasobserved on the through-put of the system. Fig5presents the resultsobtained. The throughputinitially increases withincrease in arrival rate.But it drops rapidly at veryhigh loads. So the morestudies are required toobserve the correlationbetween missed % andthe throughput to have anoptimized performance.

4.5. Firm Randomization

General randomization rules may give arepetition value in a short iteration. A workis assigned to a site number, which is gen-erated by the randomization rule among 8sites. For example, the first work may beassigned to site number 5 and the secondwork may be assigned site number 2. Thethird work may be assigned to site number5 again, if the randomization rules generate5. This value 5 should not be generatedagain at least before completion last itera-tion. A sites or cohort need some time tocomplete a previous work and to processanother new workload. Here introduced anew concept of randomization for distribut-ing workload to sites so as to avoid assign-ing more worked load to a busy site. Thereare “n” numbers of sites in the system. It ismade the firm randomization in such a waythat, any randomized value should not be

repeated twice, at least in between “1 to n”iteration; repetition is allowed after “n+1”iteration. This helps to distribute a heavywork uniformly to all cohorts. The newtechniques also give better statistics ascompared to the normal randomization rule

4.6. Comparison of Normal and new firm

Randomization

In this set of experiments, the performancecomparison under normal available ran-domization and new firm randomizationprocess are observed. While distributingthe works to different sites, the new firmrandomization process helps in avoidingcontinuous assignments to some specificbusy sites. It helps to distribute the worksuniformly to all sites. Fig 6 shows that theperformance of the system gets betterunder firm randomization technique byabout 10 to 6%. So proper choice of thedistribution or randomization are requiredesigning a best-real time distributed pro-cessing system.

Figure 2. Comparison of Centralized andDistributed performances

Figure 3. Effect of File Selection Time toIndividual Sites

Figure 4. Impact of Arrival Rates toIndividual Sites


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V. CONCLUSION

The real time distributedprocessing system hasbeen simulating under dif-ferent traffic load such asnormal load and heavyload. In both conditionsthe arrival rate of transac-tion plays a major role inreducing number of misspercentage and improvedperformance. The analy-sis report of the individualsites also shows that asmaller value of thearrival rate is important tohave a less percentage ofmiss transactions which will give better per-formance. It also demands the larger valueof File selection timing to minimize the misspercentage to give better results.

The throughput initially increases withincrease in arrival rate. But it drops rapidlyat very high work loads. So the more stud-ies are required to observe the correlationbetween missed % and the throughput tohave an optimized performance.

Time consumption on busy sites by repeti-tively assignment of new workload andreassigning that to other sites can besolved by proper distribution or randomiza-tion process. A new approach “firm ran-domization” method helps to distributeworkloads to all sites uniformly so that per-centage miss transactions are minimized.Once a workload is over assigned to abusy site, reassignment of works to someother free sites will take extra time. Thenew ‘firm randomization’ will prevent fromtaking extra time by directing to free sites ininitial assignment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledge-ments to MinutemanSoftware, P.O. Box 131,Holly Springs, NorthCarolina, 27540-0131,USA for providing freestudy materials at their sitew w w. m i n u t e m a n s o f t -ware.com.

Fig 6. Comparison of Normal randomizationand new firm randomization process

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Biographies

DR. Y. JAYANTA SINGH works as a Lectureriat the College of Information Technology, 7thOctober University, Misurata, (Libya). He ob-tained his M.Sc and Ph.D in Computer Sci-ence from Dr. B.A.Marathwada University,(India) in 2000 and 2004 respectively. He hasworked with Keane (Canada), Skyline Univer-sity College (UAE), TechMahindra (India). Hisresearch papers are published in Internation-al and National Journals and in conferenceproceedings. His areas of interest are Net-working, DBMS, ISO Process, Software Engi-neering and Simulation etc.

PROF HASAN AL-SAEDY works at theBritish Institute of Technology and E-Com-merce; he obtained his MPhil and PhD de-grees from Westminster University andSouthampton University (UK). Both degreeswere in computer Science in 1977 and 1981respectively. He had worked in many univer-sities in Middle East, Africa and the UK. Hisresearch papers are published at Internation-al conferences and in journals. His areas ofinterest are Machine Learning and InternetSecurity applications

DR. S. C MEHROTRA, F.N.A,Sc., FIETEworks as a professor in Dr. BabasahebAmbedkar Marathwada University, Au-rangabad (India). He received his master de-gree in Physics from Allahabad University (In-dia) in 1970 and Ph.D. in Physics from Austin(USA) in 1975. He is recipient of Welch Foun-dation Fellowship (1975), Alexander VonHumboldt Foundation Fellowship (1983-85),FOM (Netherland). He has published morethan 150 papers in areas of Time Domain Re-flectometery, Speech Processing, and Net-work Simulation


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SOLUTIONS

SPIRALEAnswers:

1- Mangle 2- Avenue 3- Remove 4- Income 5- Entice 6- Couple 7- Uncase 8- Rumble 9- Inside

10- Escape

Marie Curie(pictured with husband Pierre)

CROSSWORD

SUDOKU

St James’s Business School is an executive development of the British Institute of Technology & E-commerce.