Railway Budget special 2016

Railway Budget special:

Theme of the Budget

• Overcoming challenges – Reorganize, Restructure Rejuvenate Indian Railways: ‘Chalo, Milkar Kuch Naya Karen’
• Three pillars of the strategy i.e. Nav Arjan – New revenues, Nav Manak – New norms, Nav Sanrachna – New Structures. 

Four new categories of trains announced

Four new categories of trains have been announced in the budget— one for unreserved passengers and three for reserved passengers.

The four new categories of trains are- Humsafar, Tejas, Antyodaya Express and Uday.

1. Humsafar would be fully air-conditioned third AC service with an optional service for meals.
2. Tejas on the other hand will showcase the future of train travel in India. Operating at speeds of 130 kmph or more, it will have on-board services such as entertainment, local cuisine, Wi-Fi etc.
3. Utkrisht Double-Decker Air-conditioned Yatri (UDAY) Express will be introduced on the busiest routes, which has the potential to increase carrying capacity by almost 40%.
4. Antyodaya Express is a long-distance, fully unreserved, super-fast train service, for the common man to be operated on dense routes.

The railway minister has also announced that two to four Deen Dayalu coaches would be added in some long distance trains for unreserved travel. These coaches will also have facility for potable drinking water and a higher number of mobile charging points.

Seven missions to improve functioning

To make the functioning of railways more efficient, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has announced seven missions, including activities to increase the average speed of superfast mail trains by 25 kilometres per hour in the next five years.
The seven missions are ’25 Tonne’, ‘Zero Accident’, PACE (Procurement and Consumption Efficiency), ‘Raftaar’, ‘Hundred’, ‘beyond book-keeping’ and ‘capacity utilisation’.

• Under Mission Raftaar, the railways would target doubling average speeds of freight trains and increasing the average speed of superfast mail/express trains by 25 kmph in the next 5 years.
• On Mission 25 Tonne, railways will augment the carrying capacity to realise the goal of revenue enhancement. A critical step in that direction is making our infrastructure suitable to carry 25-tonne axle load. It is proposed to introduce 10-20% freight loading through 25-tonne axle-load wagons in 2016-17 and target movement of 70% of freight traffic on high axle load wagons by FY 19-20.
• Among others, Mission Hundred would focus on sidings and freight terminals.
• Under ‘Beyond Book-keeping’, Indian Railways will establish an accounting system where the outcomes can be tracked to inputs.

Each of the missions would be headed by a director reporting directly to the Railway Board Chairman.

 

Three freight corridors to be built on priority

The country will get three new dedicated freight corridors, according to the Railway Budget 2016, in addition to the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata freight corridors that are due to be commissioned in 2019.

• The new projects are a North-South corridor, from Delhi to Chennai, an East-West corridor from Karaghpur to Mumbai and an East Coast corridor, from Karaghpur to Vijayawada.
• These projects will be financed through a PPP (public private partnership) mechanism and rolled out on a high priority basis.

Superman memory crystal

The 'Superman memory crystal' could hold the future of data storage

 

"Coined as the ‘Superman memory crystal’, as the glass memory has been compared to the 'memory crystals' used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures."

Scientists at the University of Southhampton have developed a 5D glass disc that can store 360 Terabytes of data for billions of years. The discs are made out of nanostructured glass, and the data is stored and retrieved using femtosecond laser writing. These discs can store data for up to 13.8 billion years, that's over twice the estimated age of the Earth, and about equal to the estimated age of our universe. Essentially, the discs are made by a laser that can make microscopic etchings in nanoglass. 

Some famous documents lasered into 5D discs

So what exactly do they mean by 5-dimensional? Traditionally, we think of our universe in terms of the 4 known and easily perceptible dimensions. The first 3 dimensions are our directions of movement or an XYZ axis; the 4th dimension is traditionally thought of as time. These 4 dimensions combined are referred to as spacetime. Unfortunately, this can cause quite a bit of confusion. The 5-dimensional discs made by the University of Southhampton are not time traveling devices that can view parallel universes, but instead tiny patterns printed on 3 layers within the discs. Depending on the angle they are viewed from, these patterns can look completely different. This may sound like science fiction, but it's basically a really fancy optical illusion. In this case, the 5 dimensions inside the discs are the size and orientation in relation to the 3-dimensional position of the nanostructures. The concept of being 5-dimensional means that one disc has several different images depending on the angle that one views it from, and the magnification of the microscope used to view it. Basically, each disc has multiple layers of micro and macro level images.

A laser burning microscopic images into 3 layers

 

Since glass is plentiful and inexpensive, this technology has a very good chance to become widely available in the future. People are already thinking of uses for this technology, everything from storing an immense library of video games to storing the entirety of human history and culture for future civilizations. Professor Peter Kazansky is very optimistic about the technology's potential, he elaborated in an interview with the University of Southhampton's news publication:

"It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten."

By using 5-dimensional shapes that are laser-etched into glass discs at a microscopic scale, the University of Southhampton has developed the highest storage efficiency in a data storage device to date. The discs also have the longest life-span of any data storage device to date. With all of the amazing things that they can do, people all over the world are excited to get their hands on one. If you're one of those people, you're in luck; the team at Southhampton is currently looking for partners to invest in this technology in hopes that it can be commercialized in the future. It could only be a matter of time before this kind of data storage is the norm.

 

Photonic Propulsion

NASA researchers are working on a technology that could harness the power of light and reduce the time taken to reach mars from the current five months to just three days.

Which is that technology?
The technology is known as ‘Photonic Propulsion’ system.

How it operates?

This technology uses lasers to propel the spacecrafts with giant sails. The system operates on photons particles of light to move forward.

Current practice:
Currently, when a spacecraft is launched, the thrust comes from burning a chemical, such as rocket fuel. This fuel weighs down the spacecraft.

Why Photonic Propulsion is better than the old one?

Current technology is an inefficient system when compared to using light or other electromagnetic radiation to accelerate objects. It is because Electromagnetic acceleration is only limited by the speed of light while chemical systems are limited to the energy of chemical processes.