The Maze of Desires

Whenever in my life, I've desired something badly, i can be sure that i wont get it and whatever i get, is usually a surprise. I thought of a job after giving mains but as luck would have it, i'm not just getting any chance. I needed this DCIO interview to go well so badly that you can't imagine. Although i'm out of touch of Electronics and Communication from past 3 years, i decided to give it a good try. I decided to work on Current affairs, Communication (Modulation, GSM, CDMA etc), Digital Electronics, personal details, job etc.

While preparing, it was a strange lack of energy i felt, maybe because i was left alone at my flat or may be due to the realization that it is unrealistic to even attempt to study this vast course. Anyways, i managed to finish atleast 5 chapters from Haykin and 3 or 4 chapters of Digital Electronics (Morris Mano).  I prepared all my hobbies, personal details and all other bullshit (Bullshit because not even a single question was asked about Current Affairs or personal profile).

On the interview day, a friend accompanied me till the venue (Dholpur House). On checking the call letter they let me in, and asked me to enter from Gate No 2. As i entered they asked all aspirant to deposit their mobile phones and gave us a token, assign us a table and asked us to sign on a sheet. I saw that my name was listed in the afternoon session. 

Then they let us into a hall and i sat on the table assigned to me, This hall is the central hall of the Dholpur House and the dome that appears in all pictures of UPSC. This was followed by a verification check by a rather strict lady and unluckily one candidate was asked to leave the venue as the caste certificate was not in the format provided. After getting the verification, we were all onto ourselves, free to gossip and discuss the questions asked in interview.
One by one interview passed and we kept discussing what was asked. It was mostly about their job and Communications and no electronics (Analog or Digital). Candidates whose interview was after lunch were asked to get lunch and report back at 2:15. I went to the UPSC canteen and got the famed puri-sabzi in 10 rupees.
Then came my turn, i was escorted by a friendly gentleman to the interview room. I passed along the corridor, looking at the names of the UPSC members embossed on their offices and wondering what it takes to reach such heights. Anyways, in no time i was sitting on a comfortable chair outside the interview hall. To reduce anxiety i took an active interest in the gossips of the UPSC employees about things ranging from LPG connection to bank jobs.
Anyways, a bell rang and i was let in the room. Chairman in front and a gentleman and a lady on my end of table. I'm trying to reproduce the verbatim script of the interview: (CM is the Chairman, and I1 and I2 are two interviewers and K'Jo being me :P)

CM: So, Javed Akhtar.. (I thought, question bombarded even before asking my name. Then i realized that one guy was absent before me.)
K'Jo: Kartika Joshi.
CM: Sit. You were working in Deloitte, thats a private company (as if it is a crime to work in a private organization, when a glorious career awaits in Government. I replied in affirmative, luckily the lady happened to know that its some popular company. I explained about the company). You were paid well, so why did you leave the job.
K'Jo: Sir, i wanted to prepare for civil services, also i found myself a misfit in the IT culture.
CM: ooohh, So your main aim is Civil Services. So you are here for practicing for the interview (Grr..). As of culture, you'll find it worse in Government departments. Anyways, i'm not discouraging you. Ill begin with a preliminary question, What was this Y2K problem and was it really a problem
K'Jo: Caused die to 6 place storage of dates and it was not really a problem,a mere hype by IT companies. IT companies made quite a fortune in the name of upgrading the systems and it wasn't really a problem
CM: Agreed. Okay, if as a technical head of IB, a person reports that a Wireless set has been missing. What will you do?
K'Jo: The medium of communication is no longer secure as it has been compromised. I'll issue instructions that no confidential instruction should be transmitted on the medium. Ill explore if there is a way by which i can permanently disable the wireless set or keep it off the grid.

He pointed to the Gentleman sitting next to me to continue.

I1: You must have read the roles and responsibilities of the job (i replied a brief, "Yes Sir"), then you must have figured out that a lot of maintenance work is involved in it.
K'Jo: Sir, I'm ready for it.
I1: You have a wire of a certain length, how will you measure its resistance. (K'Jo: Multimeter) What if you dont have a multimeter. (K'Jo: Do i know the material ?) Yes.
K'Jo: If i know the material then i know the resistivity. Then i can calculate using cross section and length using R= (P* l)/AI1: Suppose an equipment stops working, how will you proceed?
K'Jo: I'll first check the power supply, if it is okay, i will open it. I'll check various wirings and detachable parts by plugging and unplugging them. Then I'll use a multimeter to check if they are receiving current.
I1: What else can be used?
I could not think of anything else.
I1: Oscilloscope.
K'Jo: Yes sir, using that ill check the output of various ICs and transistors and check if they give desired output.
I1: How will yo check whether a transistor is functioning correctly?
K'Jo: I'll apply current across emitter and check the output at the collector.
I1:  How will you check when a transistor is connected in a circuit.
I could not think of it and I1 said that you haven't done that in practical, right?
I1: At what Bandwidth does voice travels in a landline telephone?
K'Jo: Sir, its from 300 Hz to 3100 Hz
I1: How does the bit rate comes out to be 64 Kbps?
K'Jo: Sir this is sampled at 8 Khz due to the constraints set by Sampling theorem. (Explain?) Then using 8 bit coding for each, we get 8 KHz * 8 bps= 64 Kbps (i fumbled a lot in explaining that)
I1: Do you know how a PCM system works?

Well this question was the single biggest mistake committed by me. I skipped this chapter while reading  Haykin. I thought, all those Passband Modulation Schemes and Spread spectrum modulation is far more important. So this point can be termed as the 'Turning point' of the interview.

K'Jo: No sir. I remember only few parts of it.
I1: Can you tell me, how the voice is converted to the electrical signals in a telephone?
I said something about Sound being a longitudinal wave and pressure etc but it was of no use to them :(
On to I2.
I2: What are the various security algorithms?
K'Jo: AES, DES, PGP, SSL etc etc
I2: No, the ones we use for encoding (I asked, Channel or source Encoding?), Yes!
K'Jo: Linear Block codes like Huffman coding and Convolutional encoding.
I2: How do you implement them on a circuit?
K'Jo: Sorry, i don't know. (I knew it, but i was too tensed to remember it. Its using XOR gates)
I2: How will you design a jammer?
K'Jo: I'll use a high bandwidth noise.
I2: Thats a good idea, but how will you implement it? Do you know of any other technique?
K'Jo: I heard of a multitone method, but i dont know how to implement it. (Gosh! How on earth can i draw a circuit of a Jammer. For god sake, we never studied it in the B Tech)
I2: Okay, if you are provided with Network Analyzer or Spectrum Analyzer, which one will you use for making a Jammer.
K'Jo: Spectrum Analyzer.
I2: Can you tell me, what are they used for?

That was most idiotic again, Not knowing something but choosing an option out of two. A suggestion, Never make a choice in an interview when you don't know about other option. In exams it may work but not in interviews.

K'Jo: Spectrum Analyzer is used to see the distribution of harmonics and i don't know about Network Analyzer.
I2: You haven't studied Network Analyzer and network parameters like S, S2..
K'Jo: No mam, is it the electrical one (Obviously No)
I2: Were you a communication student ?
K'Jo: Yes mam.

That finishes the interview. I felt terrible at the end of it. It was a bad experience but yes a learning one as well. I got the lesson than how big a zero i am in my core Electronics and Communication. I have two chain of thoughts, either to not ever try in a core job or to study it very well so that i don't get to face this humiliation ever again. Lets see which direction i take. 
The result has not been announced yet but i don't have any expectations. The theory that whenever i 'desire' something badly, i don't get it seems to prove correct this time as well. :(

Blue Brain Project

Science has advanced in the Second Millennium in ways that we now challenge ourselves into doing what we could not have earlier. We have embarked on an experiment to determine the ultimate particle of which all nuclei, atoms, molecules and materials are made anywhere on earth or in the vast sky. We look for the “God particle”. We have sent man-made crafts to other planets, and have made machines and tools that enquire whether life exists elsewhere in the sky, and whether there are other planets similar to ours that may supports life- “second earths”. We have read the “book of human life”, the 3.2 billion- letter-long code of DNA that makes us what we are.

But the book of life tells us how our body works. DNA determines the physiology and biochemistry. What about the brain? Can we ‘model' the human brain in the laboratory? How do the trillions of cells in our brain connect with one another so that it can do all that it does – pick up information from the outside world, make sense out of it and act, learn things and control our thoughts?

There are two ways to approach this grand challenge. One is to try and understand the neurons (nerve cells) of “lower” organisms – worms, flies, fish, rats and such, and build on this knowledge. This involves experiments on the “normal” organism and on its “mutants” – its cousins who are born (or tampered with in the lab) with one or more neural problem. Many biologists are involved in such experiments, and several more directly study humans with neurological problems and try to make sense out of the basis behind such errors in the brain.

This field is busy; every year as many as 60,000 papers are published in this area of neuroscience. But we need to learn from them, bring the pieces together and make sense out of them. This approach is incremental, building from what we have learnt and plan new experiments there from. With advent of computers, another approach called in silico (since computers use silica chips) has emerged. This exploits the fact that information is collected and collated in the brain via connections between neurons; based on the results of such neural interactions, the brain processes the information and acts on it. So then, why not model this using the computer?

By the mid-1970s, information technology had advanced to such a level that companies, notably IBM, had thought of modelling the “thought” behind chess games that we humans play. The advanced computers programming that they did at that time was christened “Deep Thought” (a term coined by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, including Dr. Thomas Anantharaman). By the 1990s, IBM had put together a then gigantic computer system that was named ‘Blue Gene' (blue being the nickname for IBM, and gene referring to the kind of biologically realistic model of DNA-based and protein- based information processing). One of the noteworthy programming done using the capabilities of Blue Gene was to play chess. Real chess involves calculating the consequences of moving pieces from place to place, each step determined by the possible consequences of what the “opponent” does in response, with the ultimate aim of winning. Having done this, Blue Gene challenged a human champion, Gary Kasparov, to a series of chess games. (Comfortingly for us, the human won over the machine then, but who knows what tomorrow has to offer).

It is these advances in computers that led Dr. Henry Markram of Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland, to think of creating supercomputer models of the brain that would be accurate to the last biological details. To this end, he has put together what he calls the Blue Brain Project (the blue here symbolizing supercomputers).

The approach of Blue Brain is binary. It uses the information available from the hundreds of thousands of publications of neuroscientists on one hand, and ability of computer programmers to create connectivities between the millions of “neurons” in silico on the other. Combining the two, he expects to build a facility that would aim at data integration and help build brain models.

What has been achieved so far? His group was able to incorporate data collected from genetics, cell signalling pathways and electrophysiology, and program them on a supercomputer. And by 2006, they were able to simulate one of the neocortical columns of the brain of a rat. The neocortex is that part of the brain responsible for higher functions such as thought and consciousness. The neocortex of the rate consists of many columns, each 2 mm tall and 0.5 mm thick and has 10,000 neurons, which are interconnected through synapses (connecting junctions or ‘solders'). The number of such synapses in one such rat column is 100 million. The task is thus not trivial and Markram believes that by the next a few months, a cellular circuit of 100 neocortical columns and a million cells will have been built.

And given enough money, it should be possible in about 10 years hence, to get the first to the first draft of a unified model of the human brain. It will not be a complete model, but one that will account for what we know. Believable Boast by the Builder of the Blue Brain! Hope the Bursaries Buy it! (An interview of Dr Markram by Greg miller appears in the 11 November 2011 issue of Science).

(Reproduced from The Hindu)