A $136-million Storage Idea

In 2005, when Hitesh Chellani and Anand Babu Periasamy decided to start their own cloud computing start-up, there weren’t too many believers to cheer them. The duo planned to build technology that would store everything that’s ever been filmed, taped, photographed, recorded, written or spoken – an idea so audacious that it was dismissed as a pipe dream.

After several meetings at the local Starbucks in Fremont California, the two entrepreneurs launched Gluster with an angel investment of $200,000 from Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Anil Godhwani.

Despite the money, few people believed that the two friends could turn this investment into a business that generates many millions of dollars in less than five years. Gluster was started inside Chellani’s home, with his daughter’s bedroom serving as the office and data centre occupied with noisy servers. So successful were they at chasing that dream that in just five years, Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, acquired Gluster for approximately . 667 crore ($136 million) in an all-cash deal.

“A lot of people told us what we were doing was impossible and we were crazy. But great ideas are always controversial in the beginning,” said AB Periasamy.

The acquisition by Red Hat came through because the start-up had built an open-source storage platform for working with large amounts of data (terabytes, all the way up to petabytes and brontobytes) that ties together everything from the operating system layer to the file system and management interface.

“We are offering this technology to our customers for the first time,” said Brian Stevens, CTO and vice-president, worldwide engineering, Red Hat.
The story of Chellani and Periasamy might be common in the US. But in India, where the start-up set up its development centre, this was an uncommon tale of earlystage success. The two are firstgeneration entrepreneurs who did not come from a business family background.
A computer engineer graduate from Annamalai University, Periasamy hails from Tharamangalam, a town in Salem district of Tamil Nadu. His father passed away when he was still in school. Faced with financial constraints, his mother had to mortgage the house to help him finish studies.

Chellani, an electronics engineer, spent the first two decades of his life in Mumbai where his family of four lived in a 600 sqft apartment. His father had migrated from Pakistan during the partition and gone through a couple of unsuccessful businesses.

Beginning his career as a software engineer for Tata Unisys in India, Chellani worked for a while in Dubai to finance his way to a Master’s Degree in the US.

Chellani met Periasamy there, while working together at California Digital and were part of the team that built the ‘Thunder’ supercomputer for Lawrence Livermore National Lab. When ‘Thunder’ was put into production in 2004, it was the second-fastest supercomputer in the world.

Once they joined forces to launch Gluster the duo battled disbelief until they landed their first customer order with Petróleos de Venezuela, the Venezuelan national oil company. Gluster soon expanded its services by selling opensource storage solutions to customers such as UK defence major BAE Systems, Stanford University, Deutsche Bank and the administrative office of the US courts. To become a significant storage player, Gluster needed serious funding. Just prior to securing first round of funding, the company had just $25,000 in the bank and it had to pay salary to 13 people. “But we did not lose hope” said Chellani.

Gluster raised first round funding of $4 million amidst the 2008 financial crisis, led by Nexus Venture Partners with participation from Index Ventures.
For Nexus Venture, who along with Index, have invested $12 million in Gluster since 2008, the acquisition of the start-up by Red Hat has been a blockbuster event. “We saw the passion, energy, vision of the Gluster team and realised the potential of the disruptive technology they had developed,” said Jishnu Bhattacharjee from Nexus. Instead of IITs, IIMs and IISc, Gluster tapped tier-2 engineering colleges such as SJCE Mysore, NIT Trichy and RVCE Bangalore for talent.

It also has support from an open source community that has grown to over 8000-user developers. Most of them are college students. The company has till now deployed its solutions in over 150 enterprises including top research institutes such as the US-based Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. The entrepreneurs said their goal was always to build a good company. They did not do it for the sake of getting acquired or good exits. “ Gluster is still an unfinished game. Now at Red Hat we are aiming to build a billion-dollar business,” said Periasamy.

ReFloating the massive Cruise ship.

How to Refloat a Capsized Liner

The long process will involve chains, pulleys and plugging a giant hole and could take several weeks.

     THE GIST

• Authorities worry that rough weather may push the ship out to deeper water.
• Diesel fuel must be removed from the ship, a process that will take at least several weeks, before it will become buoyant.
• A series of chains and pulleys in a winching system called “parbuckling" may finally right the ship.

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Rescuers work on the cruise ship Costa Concordia. Click to enlarge this image.
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How do you turn over a 952-foot cruise ship that’s capsized on a rocky shoreline?

Marine engineers around the world are speculating on the best way to refloat the Costa Concordia, an operation that will begin as soon as authorities account for all the missing passengers.The Italian ship with 4,200 passengers and crew ran aground Friday in 45 feet of water as it was passing the island of Giglio off the coast of Tuscany. As of Tuesday, 11 people had been killed and more than a dozen were still missing.


Although the ship lies on its starboard side and is in shallow water just offshore, Italian coast guard authorities fear that worsening weather is pushing it into deeper water which could make the rescue and salvage operation more difficult. Italian environmental officials have also asked the ship’s owner, Miami-based Carnival Cruise Cruise Lines, to come up with a plan to remove 2,000 metric tons of diesel fuel that remain in the hull of the stricken liner.

“Nobody wants a wreck removal where you have to chop it up,” said Joe Farrell III, a marine salver and naval architect at Resolve Marine Group in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “You want to take enough weight off it so it will float off the bottom. The thing is on its side. You’d need to roll it right side up and you would need a crazy amount of force to do that.”

Farrell recently returned from Sri Lanka where he salvaged a group of four ships, and also rescued a stranded cruise ship in the Arctic Canadian waters last year. Once the diesel fuel is removed from the ship, a process that will take at least several weeks, it will become more buoyant.


Salvers also may decide to force air into its ballast tanks in order to blow out water that has leaked through a 165 foot gash along the side. The damage would likely be repaired only after workers cut away the jagged edges around the gash and weld steel plates to the hull. The entire operation can be modeled on computer programs that predict the kinds of stresses that the ship can handle.

Once the hole is patched, Farrell said that airbags could be placed under the hull to help stabilize the ship. They may not be enough to right-size it. That would be done using a series of chains and pulleys in a winching system called “parbuckling.”Special marine chains made with 90-pound, 18-inch links are wrapped around the ship and then pulled around a pivot point or “deadman” that is anchored either into the sea bed or onshore. A winch then slowly pulls the ship back over.

“You’re talking 5,000 to 6,000 tons of force,” Farrell said. “It’s got to be one of the biggest operations ever.”
Marine salvage operators from Seattle to Greece are already eyeing the prize of repairing and refloating the massive Costa Conordia, which contains four swimming pools, five restaurants, 13 bars and a casino.


Some experts say the trend of ever-bigger cruise ships pose a danger on the high seas. It’s not just the size of the ship, but the number of people on board, according to James Herbert, a spokesman for the International Salvage Union, a London-based trade group representing salvage operators. “Evacuating those passengers and handling them safety far out to sea is a matter of considerable concern,” he said.

'Jetman' Soars Over Grand Canyon: Big Vid

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4CX-8Eo_6I&feature=player_embedded 
   
   May 11, 2011 -- Swiss adventurer Yves Rossy, also known as "Jetman," successfully completed a flight above the Grand Canyon on Saturday with his custom-designed jetpack, according to the watchmaker Breitling, which sponsored the event.

Rossy was originally scheduled to take flight on Friday in front of the media and members of the Hualapai, a Native American tribe which manages the area flew over. However, Rossy canceled his originally scheduled flight, citing a lack of training due to a lengthy authorization process from the Federal Aviation Administration.

BIG PIC: Rocketman Takes Off in Custom-Made Wingsuit

Since the flight was authorized for both Friday and Saturday, Rossy attempted to complete his flight in front of few observers outside of his support team. Launched from a helicopter 8,000 feet above the Grand Canyon, Rossy soared at speeds reaching up to 190 miles per hour for an eight-minute flight before deploying his parachute for a safe landing.

This was Rossy's first flight in the United States; however, he has successfully completed a trip in his jetpack across the English Channel as well as several stunts. Not all of his journeys have gone according to plan, however. In 2009, Rossy crashed into the sea off Morocco after trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar.

Photo credit: Breitling

Phantom Works

Phantom Works

BY WILLIAM COLE

It would be the biggest bird in the history of aviation.
Dwarfing all previous flying giants, the Pelican, a high-capacity cargo plane concept currently being studied by Boeing Phantom Works, would stretch more than the length of a U.S. football field and have a wingspan of 500 feet and a wing area of more than an acre. It would have almost twice the external dimensions of the world's current largest aircraft, the Russian An225, and could transport five times its payload, up to 1,400 tons of cargo.
Designed primarily for long-range, transoceanic transport, the Pelican would fly as low as 20 feet above the sea, taking advantage of an aerodynamic phenomenon that reduces drag and fuel burn. Over land, it would fly at altitudes of 20,000 feet or higher. Operating only from ordinary paved runways, the Pelican would use 38 fuselage-mounted landing gears with a total of 76 tires to distribute its weight.
The military, commercial and even space prospects for such a cargo plane—officially known as the Pelican Ultra Large Transport Aircraft, or ULTRA—are also huge.
"The Pelican can broaden the range of missions for which airplanes are the favored way to deliver cargo," said Boeing's Pelican program manager Blaine Rawdon, who is designing the plane with Boeing engineer Zachary Hoisington. "It is much faster than ships at a fraction of the operational cost of current airplanes. This will be attractive to commercial and military operators who desire speed, worldwide range and high throughput. We envision that the Pelican can multiply aircraft's 1-percent share in a commercial market now dominated by container ships."
John Skorupa, senior manager of strategic development for Boeing Advanced Airlift and Tankers, said, "The Pelican currently stands as the only identified means by which the U.S. Army can achieve its deployment transformation goals of deploying one division in five days, or five divisions in 30 days, anywhere in the world." If necessary, he said, the Pelican could carry 17 M-1 main battle tanks on a single sortie. Commercially, the aircraft's size and efficiency would allow it to carry types of cargo equivalent to those carried by container ships, at more than 10 times the speed.
"It is attracting interest as a mother ship for unmanned vehicles, enabling rapid deployment of a network-centric warfare grid, a likely future mode of operation for modernized U.S. forces as demonstrated in Afghanistan," Skorupa said. "And it is attracting interest as a potential first-stage platform for piggybacking reusable space vehicles to an appropriate launch altitude.
"Why would such a huge airplane be flown at such a low altitude?
By flying low, the Pelican, like its name-sake, exploits the aerodynamic benefits of a well-known phenomenon called ground effect. Flying close to water, the wing downwash angle and tip vortices are suppressed, resulting in a major drag reduction and outstanding cruise efficiency.
"It's an effect that provides extraordinary range and efficiency," Skorupa said. "With a payload of 1.5 million pounds, the Pelican could fly 10,000 nautical miles over water and 6,500 nautical miles over land.
"Flying in ground effect demands the latest flight control technology, conceded Skorupa. Reliable systems will provide precise, automatic altitude control and collision avoidance. Cruise altitude will be adjusted according to sea state, and if the seas get too rough, the Pelican can easily climb to high altitude to continue the flight.
When could the Pelican be flying? The answer may lie in the Army's Advanced Mobility Concepts Study, scheduled for release next April. The Pelican has been offered by Boeing as part of a system-of-systems solution that would include the C-17 Globemaster III transport, the CH-47 Chinook helicopter and the Advanced Theater Transport.
"A favorable report would set the stage for a possible codevelopment effort between Boeing, the U.S. military and interested commercial cargo carriers," Skorupa said.

Aircraft Lights Reduce Bird Hits

Bradley Blackwell of Wildlife Services explains that the most effective avoidance technique may not come from the ground, but from the air. If airplanes were better lit, birds would see them and avoid them.

Mon Mar 2, 2009 09:16 AM ET

Aircraft lights could deter close encounters with birds.
iStockPhoto

Most bird-aircraft collisions occur within the airport environment. Two-thirds of bird strikes that result in serious aircraft damage occur between zero and 500 feet above ground level. But a substantial number of strikes occur between 501 and 3,500 above ground level. At that height, certain ground-level dispersal methods, like loud noises or bird-chasing dogs, are ineffective. So it seems appropriate to look for a way to lessen strikes when an aircraft is at a higher altitude.
I think one method could involve pulsing lights that make aircraft more visible to birds. The idea for this comes from more than a decade of anecdotal information that is graduating from theory to field research and practice.
It goes back to 1999, when I was contacted by Precise Flight of Bend, Oregon. They told me that they had an FAA-approved pulsing light system for planes that was being used to enhance pilot-to-pilot and pilot-to-ground visibility. But, bush pilots in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska noticed that the pulsing lights also seemed to reduce bird strikes.
The company asked if we had any information to support this. I dug through the scientific literature and saw that there were some indications it could be true. For example, vision is a primary sensory pathway in birds. While birds, like humans, see in color, they have different photoreceptors and can see beyond the range of humans. Also, different species see differently. It seemed reasonable to begin conducting some experiments. So I partnered with my National Wildlife Resource Center colleagues, Thomas Seamans and Glen Bernhardt, and later with engineering expert Scott Philiben of Precise Flight and Dr. Esteban Fernandez-Juricic of Purdue University.
In our first experiment, we set up a large cage at the end of a one-mile lane, and placed live birds inside. We built a pseudo wing with landing lights on top of a truck and then drove it toward the bird-filled cage at a speed of 75-miles-per hour. The idea was that the experiment would mimic a small aircraft, such as a Cessna, taking off while birds were feeding on the ground alongside the runway. We also drove a truck without lights toward the birds. And in all cases, we filmed the experiments.
We learned a lot from the experiment and continue to refine it. Our latest work uses three, high-speed cameras that are able to film down to 1/10th of a second. We also tested different pulse frequencies and different approach speeds, all while measuring behavior and speed of response, as well as ambient light conditions and lighting treatments. Last year, we were invited to present some of our data to Boeing. The results of our study will be published later this spring in the journal Animal Behaviour.
Our findings are promising. We are optimistic that our research will result in methods to help birds detect and avoid aircraft in the air. This will add another tool in the wildlife hazard mitigation toolbox and complement existing wildlife management on airports and new technology, such as radar. Radar is a great tool, but it's not the only solution, especially at airports with heavy traffic where aircraft deviation isn't always practical.
So, approaching the problem from a variety of perspectives and utilizing the best-available technology can reduce bird strikes, reduce damage and save lives.
Bradley Blackwell is a Research Wildlife Biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He works out of the National Wildlife Research Center’s Ohio Field Station and specializes in reducing wildlife hazards to aviation. The views expressed are the author's alone and do not represent the official position of the Discovery Channel.

Could U.S. Nuclear Plants Withstand a Tsunami?

In the wake of the crisis gripping Japan, should we take a second look at nuclear plants closer to home?

THE GIST

• Experts are calling for new risk assessments of the vulnerability of nuclear plants in the yo natural disasters.
• Each of the 104 reactors in the United States has to undergo individual testing for local risks.
• More than 80 reactors worldwide are located in seismically active areas.

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The San Onofre plant near San Clemente sits right on the Pacific coast. Click to enlarge this image.
Getty Images

Nuclear accidents are measured in their severity with the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Find out how it works.

• What Makes New Nuclear Reactors Safer
• Crisis in Japan: Full Coverage

Operators of California's two nuclear plants say they are well prepared for a possible tsunami strike. Some experts, however, are calling for new risk assessments that take into account the deadly earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan.
The San Onofre plant near San Clemente is built to withstand a 7.0-magnitude earthquake, while the Diablo Canyon plant is engineered up to magnitude-7.5, according to plant officials. Both are expected to survive tsunamis of up to 25 feet.
They are among the 88 reactors worldwide that are located in seismically active areas, according to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. The California plants are the only nuclear facilities along the U.S. Pacific Coast.
However some critics say that federal regulators need to take a second look at the California plants, given the scope of destruction that occurred in Japan. Ed Lyman of the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists says current risk estimates for seismic and tsunami hazards may be outdated.
"Across the board, the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has not set standards at a high enough level to protect the public from accidents that are more credible and plausible than previously considered," Lyman told reporters at a Wednesday press conference in Washington.
Twenty-three of the 104 reactors in the United States are the same design as the nuclear plant in Japan that's now in crisis. Each of these U.S. plants has to undergo individual testing for local risks, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, high waves, extreme heat or flooding as part of their federal licensing requirements.
In 2008, the California Energy Commission released a report stating that San Onofre lacked safeguards for an earthquake greater than magnitude-7.0, which was the level expected when the plant was designed in the 1960s.
The state Public Utilities Commission agreed and ordered the company that owns the facility to perform a new earthquake and tsunami risk analysis of the reactors using the latest technology before seeking a renewal of the plant's federal operating license, which expires in 2022, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The same request was made of PG&E, which operates Diablo Canyon.
Edison turned in its initial report on earthquake and tsunami risks to the utilities commission last month, but the document lacked the three-dimensional seismic analysis that the agencies requested.
Both nuclear facilities are located above the water on coastal bluffs.
The California coast has experienced tsunamis in the past, the worst from the 1964 "Good Friday" earthquake in Alaska that measured 9.2 on the Richter scale. That quake swept away 11 people in Crescent City and killed a total of 17 people along the coast.
Southern California -- where the nuclear plants are located -- is in a high seismic area. However it doesn't face the large waves generated by big temblors in Japan or Alaska because its coastline is not as exposed, said Peggy Hellweg, a seismologist at the University of California at Berkeley.
Hellweg also doubts that the local earthquake faults near the nuclear plants can generate the kind of power felt in Japan. The Newport-Inglewood and Rose Canyon fault system near the San Onofre plant and the Hosgri fault and the Shoreline fault, which was discovered in 2008, run near the Diablo Canyon plant.
"The size of the earthquake depends on the size of the uninterrupted fault you have," Hellweg told Discovery News. "The length of those faults isn't enough to get a magnitude eight or nine."
Researchers across California have been assembling a comprehensive study of the risk to the state from tsunamis over the past two years. The first phase of the study found that the region probably faces a bigger tsunami threat from earthquakes generated off the coast of Oregon and Washington, called the Cascadia subduction zone, or from the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.
The other danger is from underwater landslides just off the coast, said Stephen Mahin, director of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center at UC Berkeley.
"You have these big cliffs and those can cause local tsunamis which are far bigger than the distant ones," Mahin said. "But those are extremely hard to predict."

What Makes New Nuclear Reactors Safer ????

THE GIST

• Nuclear reactors in development have passive cooling systems that could continue functioning if power is lost.
• A new reactor design by Westinghouse could be shut down for three days without power.
• Industry predicts that production of these plants will now slow down as new scrutiny is placed on safety.

A cutaway view of the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor which received approval in 2006.
Westinghouse Nuclear accidents are measured in their severity with the International Nuclear and Radiological Event 

• Japan Nuclear Reactor Container Feared Breached
• Crisis in Japan: Full Coverage

Nuclear reactors planned for the United States are safer, stronger and more energy-efficient than the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi facility that has suffered explosions and radiation leaks, according to experts.
At the same time, the nuclear crisis in Japan will probably further delay their approval by federal regulators.
Looking to help the victims of the disaster in Japan? Make your contribution to GlobalGiving's relief fund here.
U.S. and international firms are banking on these new reactor designs that use so-called "passive cooling" to remove heat from a reactor, rather than the kind of active cooling system that failed at Daiichi when the system's cooling water intake pumps and diesel generators were knocked out by a 30-foot tsunami.
"The biggest takeaway is the preparation for the tsunami was inadequate," said Robert Corradini, a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin College of Engineering and a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's advisory committee on reactor safeguards.
"You're going to see refortification of plants for the tsunami. I expect that the NRC is going to slow down the process and do a re-analysis to make sure that nothing has been unturned in terms of lessons learned."
Corradini says the "Generation III-plus" plants proposed by Westinghouse, General Electric, Mitsubishi and the French firm Areva incorporate new designs that take in the lessons of past nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
The AP1000 reactor, designed by Westinghouse, can be shut down for three days without power. Instead of pumps, valves and human operators, the plant uses airflow, pressure changes and gravity to gradually cool the reactor.
"Going forward you will see more reliance on passive safety systems that will automatically shut down the plant instead of generators and pumps," said Scott Shaw, a Westinghouse spokesman in Pittsburgh.
The firm is currently building four AP1000 reactors in China, with the first one scheduled to go online in 2013. Utilities in Georgia and South Carolina each want to build two of the new reactors, but are still waiting for NRC approval.
The NRC approved the initial AP1000 design back in January 2006, but federal officials put out new rules in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to make the reactors able to withstand a direct hit from a jet airplane. Now some industrial officials worry privately that they'll have to do another redesign to make their plants safe from giant waves.
Shaw said it's too early to tell the fallout from the situation in Japan. "Things are still unfolding," he said.
Paris-based Areva is working on its own version of a generation III-plus plant called the EPR or evolutionary power reactor, which is considered the world's largest.
Areva is building 1,650 megawatt EPRs in Finland, France and two in China, according to company officials. The firm is also planning a new reactor at an existing plant at Calvert Cliffs, Md., with a prospective U.S. partner.
The EPR has a double containment dome and four levels of safety systems, said Jarret Adams, a company spokesman in Bethesda, Md. It also has something called a "core catcher" that spreads out nuclear material in a underground circular concrete basin should a complete meltdown occur and the reactor melt through the containment vessel.
In contrast, some critics have pointed out that the type of containment vessel and pressure suppression system used in the failing reactors Daiichi plant -- and in 23 American reactors at 16 plants -- is physically less robust, and it has long been thought to be more susceptible to failure in an emergency than competing designs, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
G.E. officials said the reactor design that failed in Japan, called the Mark 1, hasn't had a problem in 40 years of operation.
The plant in Japan also needed a great deal of cooling water from the nearby ocean to keep it cool, whereas newer plants recirculate more water, said Michael Podowski, visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's department of nuclear engineering.
Podowski believes that another new technology may that uses smaller, less radioactive plants could avoid some of the problems at Daiichi. These "small modular reactors" produce 100 to 200 megawatts of power, about one fifth to one-tenth the size of many current U.S. nuclear reactors.
The advantage is that these smaller plants can be located off the main electric grid to supply rural customers. Since they are smaller, utilities can conduct maintenance work without the entire power production going offline. They produce both less heat (reducing the need for cooling systems) and less radioactivity.
Podowski and others said most of the existing U.S. nuclear reactors are reaching the end of their lifespans. They need to be replaced, or the American public has to find another source for 20 percent of its power.
"Reactors get old and they will have to be decommissioned," Podowski said. "They will be shut down and we will hear more about this issue. The outcome is to build new safer power plants."
While safety concerns are at the forefront this week, many observers point out an equally urgent problem is what to do with the radioactive waste produced by nuclear plants.
Attempts to build a single repository in the Nevada desert have failed over the past 30 years, so spent fuel rods are stored in liquid pools at each of the 104 reactors across the country.