Sports

Momentous moments of Indian sports in 2011

NEW DELHI: Indian sports had some adrenalin-rush moments in 2011. The second cricket World Cup crown, Formula One coming to New Delhi and Virender Sehwag's record double ton in ODIs are some of the main sporting highlights of the year.

The following are some of the highs in Indian sports: 

 
* Led-by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India lifted the World Cup at home after a gap of 28 years at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, April 2. For batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar it was a dream come true as he realised his childhood dream of laying his hand on the most coveted trophy in international cricket.

* Formula One, rated as the pinnacle of motorsports, zoomed into India at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida. Some 95,000 crowd turned up at the spectacular circuit on a bright Sunday, October 30, to cheer for home team Force India and India's first Formula One driver Narain Karthikeyan, who was racing for Hispania Racing Team. 

* Virender Shewag proved again his menacing power in cricket and smashed a breathtaking record 219 off 149 balls while leading the side against the West Indies at the Holkar Stadium in Indore, December 8, for the highest individual score in ODIs. Sehwag also broke his mentor Sachin Tendulkar's 200 record that was set in Gwalior, some 500 kms from Indore, in 2010.

* India's badminton star Saina Nehwal had a mixed year but she ended it on a high by becoming the first Indian player to reach the singles final of the BWF World Superseries Finals. The Hyderabadi shuttler finished runners-up to World Champion Wang Yihan at the tournament in Liuzhou, China after beating the likes of Denmark's Tine Baun and and former World No.1 One Wang Xin in earlier rounds.

* Indian tennis player Rohana Bopanna might have made his mind to team up with veteran Mahesh Bhupathi for 2012 but he alongwith with long time Pakistani doubles partner Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi did enough to add another feather in their caps. The erstwhile Indo-Pak Express won their maiden ATP Masters by winning the Paris event in November. They split soon after winning three titles in the year. 

* Shiva Keshavan brought a little known sport into limelight by winning the gold at the Asia Cup luge event in Nagano, Japan last week. The 30-year-old from Manali clocked 134.3 kmph at the Japan meet to set an Asian record and get India its first gold in an international winter sports event.

* India entered the big league of boxing with Transtadia taking up a franchise in World Series of Boxing. Thirteen Indians including Akhil Kumar are part of Mumbai outfit that is named Mumbai Fighters. The team also has four overseas recruit in Patrick Gallagher, Marko Calic, Paul Gene Koon and Trent Rawlings.

* Haryana boxer Vikas Krishan secured India's second medal in the World Championships when he won a bronze in the 69 kg category at the 2011 edition in Baku, Azerbaijan. Vijender Singh is the first Indian to win a medal at the world meet. He won a bronze in 2009.

* The continuous rise in the performance of archers have given Indians hope of an Olympic medal in London. One of the biggest achievement for Indian archery came came this year when the recurve trio of Deepika Kumari, Chekrovolu Swuro and Laishram Bombayala Devi finished runners-up in the World Championships in Turin, Italy. Kumari went on to win her second individual gold in World Youth Archery. 

Sports is one area where India lags behind even some of the poorest nations in the world. This despite the huge pool of talented sportsperson that exists in all parts of India. At the junior levels, our boys and girls can compete with the best in the world in almost every sport. However when it comes to the senior levels, where the actual capabilities of our sportsperson are tested, we fail miserably. This shows that it is not the lack of talent that bogs down our athletes but somewhere along the line, it is the lack of proper training that lead to their poor performances in the international arena.

The fact that professional sportsperson in our country face a lot of hardships cannot be denied. There are usual problems of lack of infrastructure and funds, lethargic approach on the part of government agencies and indifference of the corporate sector in providing sponsorships. However the fundamental problem lies in the absence of a sporting culture in India. Sports in India are considered a secondary and supplementary activity. This explains to a large extent, the apathy on the part of the government machinery towards sports. The corporate indifference too stems from the fact that they are not sure that the sponsorship money will be efficiently used in promoting the game and for the welfare of the players.

International sports is highly competitive where only the best and the brightest can hope to reach the top position. Past experience has shown that the government run organisations like the Sports Authority of India (SAI) have consistently failed to produce athletes who can compete at the international level. Hence government should withdraw itself from the administration and running of sports at the senior levels.

The corporate sector should be encouraged to take full control of the management of games and training of athletes. This only will ensure greater accountability on the part of the players and the coaches to show results. It should restrict its role to promoting sporting activities at the school and college levels and in providing jobs to meritorious sportsperson. It should make all efforts to encourage young boys and girls to take up sports as a full time profession and not as a secondary activity.

Archery and Chaturanga, (chess) were more than just sports in ancient India. While archery was closely allied to the military itself, chess was introduced in the golden period of the Gupta Empire to closely study the nuances of the battlefield. Though invented in ancient India, these games have not just survived but grown exponentially buttressed by technological innovations. Be it analytics, database building, virtual learning, or tele-presence, technology today has transformed the game culture altogether.

 Chess with ITChess had its roots in India and spread across the world though it has always been the Russians, especially in the last century, who have dominated the game. Among the strongest champions of all times, however, ranks Deep Blue — the IBM computer that managed to defeat Garry Kasparov, one of the finest chess players the world has ever seen. Such is the ascendancy of technology in chess. Technology has come a long way from facilitating learners to understand the moves of eminent Grandmasters like Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kimovich Kasparov, Bobby Fischer, and Vishwanathan Anand, to helping viewers analyze counter-moves. Chess search engines such Fritz, Hierch, Junior and Hertz enable the viewers, players and learners realise the optimum move in real time. Another interesting type of a tournament is the Advanced Chess where both the players could use their laptops in while playing the games. Also, with the use of personal chess managers to electronic chess clocks, online/e-learning of the moves and also virtually playing onscreen, this ancient Indian game has really come of age with technology as its backbone. 

While a chess player may be talented and knowledgeable, success is still, ultimately, a matter of training. Until he is equipped with IT, i.e., a personal computer customized to his requirements, it would be very difficult for him to carve a niche in this field where IT has its strongest hold. badminton with ITBadminton, where Saina Nehwal did India proud by winning a Bronze medal in this year’s London Olympics 2012, too, has its origin in British India. What started off just as a recreational game by British military officers stationed in pre-independence India has come to its own globally. With analytics and virtual mapping of the strokes, this racquet sport has carved a niche in the field of technology as well today. From being able to map the speed of shuttle in the air through plotting and diagrams onscreen to studying the racquet techniques even while a player is on the ground, technology gives the viewers numerous options to the study an opponents’ technique.

 IT helps viewers to virtually and simultaneously analyze the movements while the players are in action on the court. It also helps cataloguing the players scoring pattern, holding racquet testing before games and predicting the outcome of a game through analytics. Badminton as a whole has embraced IT completely. 65 years after its independence, India is slowly making its sporting presence felt internationally. At every step, technology has helped in this endeavour. Let us hope that this journey of Indian sports, so ably supported by technology continues to reach higher peaks. 

Curtly Ambrose first came on the scene in 1986, representing the Leeward Islands in the local Red Stripe cup competition. The Antiguan played only one game that year against Guyana at Bourda and he took 4 wickets. He missed all of the 1987 season because The Leewards fast bowling department was staffed by the likes of Winston Benjamin, Eldine Baptiste, Anthony Merrick and George Ferris, players who were either already playing for the West Indies, or were considered among those next in line. He only started the 1988 season because Baptiste and Benjamin were in India on West Indies duties and made good use of the opportunity.

Fitter and faster now, he began to terrorize the regional batsmen and soon word spread throughout the Caribbean that he was to be feared, and possibly avoided. One Jamaican opener was somehow convinced by his partner that his left-handedness made him less vulnerable to AmbroseÃÔ missiles, and so he should take him while he would content himself with Benjamin. The result was that Nigel Kennedy, making his first class debut, suffered a broken arm and never played for Jamaica again that season, and I am yet to find out if he has spoken to his opening partner since.

On a docile Antigua Recreation Ground pitch Ambrose totally routed Guyana, taking 12 wickets in the match with 9 of them bowled. In all, the 6? Antiguan took a season high of 35 wickets at an average of 15.48, with Malcolm Marshall next in line with 27 wickets.

By competitions end everyone knew that his next step would be to the then all-conquering West Indies team. There was just no way his claims could have been ignored, and we were confident he would add his name to the long line of fast bowling legends from the Caribbean. So no one was surprised when he was named in the team to face the visiting Pakistanis.

It was an unbelievable rise. Ambrose had played his first meaningful cricket match for Swetes, his village, in 1984 at the age of 21. Within four years he was a West Indies player, bowling alongside Malcolm Marshall and Courtney Walsh.

ItÃÔ not like he lived for cricket. Unlike many Caribbean boys, Ambrose did not dream of playing for the West Indies. Most athletes who make it to the highest level dedicate hours of youthful energy to improving their craft. We know that Donald Bradman spent hours throwing a golf ball against a tank and hitting it with a stump. Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player ever, practiced every morning before school with his high school coach. Success normally requires a love for the sport that borders on obsession, and a work ethic that only a few can summon.

It was not so with Ambrose. He never really played much cricket as a young man, he said; actually, he never really cared much for the game. He played football and basketball. Cricket was too hard, consumed too much energy, so he only played tennis ball cricket on the beach with his friends to have a good time, and occasionally, because his friends thought he could bowl, he would be persuaded to have a game in the village.

This is somewhat unusual. Read the biographies of most cricketers and they tell of endless games in the backyard, or the nearby ground, or at some makeshift venue.
Cricketers who make it to the elite level often report that they were so taken with the game in their youth that they became cricket stalkers, searching for a game wherever one could be found. Ambrose only played when his friends asked.

Had an acquaintance from his village left for space when Ambrose was a teenager, and returned, say in 1994 while he was putting England to the sword at the Queens Park Oval, they would have been flabbergasted to find that the beanpole kid who was so indifferent to the sport could have risen to its very top. He would have found it remarkable that such a reluctant cricketer would have gone on to take 610 international wickets.

Ambrose played his last game for the West Indies at the FosterÃÔ Oval in Kennington on the 2000 England tour. Since then it appears he has been mainly occupied with music. He plays bass in a band called ŵhe Big Bad Dread And The Baldhead, which also features Richie Richardson as its rhythm guitarist. Cricket? He hardly even watches.

Music

Sotta Sotta Song in Engeyum Eppodhum (2011)

Vaagai Sooda Vaa-Sara Sara Saara Kathu HQ Video Song 

Mazhai Varum~Veppam 2011 video song 

Azhage Azhage [OKOK] Lotus Video Song 

Introduction to the Music of India

Once a King asked a sage how to make sculptures of the Gods. The sage said, "Someone who does not know the laws of painting could never understand the laws of sculpture. Someone who has no knowledge of the principles of instrumental music cannot know the laws of dancing. Someone who does not understand the art of vocal music cannot understand the principles of instrumental music." It is through the medium of the arts that people of different nations and backgrounds are able to communicate and understand each other better. The West is becoming more familiar with Indian music - it is no longer merely an exotic expression of the East, but is reaching an ever growing and more knowledgeable and appreciative audience.

HISTORY

The music of India and its history are too complex to be described briefly. Nevertheless a brief introduction will help those who are new to Indian music; they will no doubt be more influenced by what they hear than by what they read but a foreknowledge of certain theoretical points may assist their appreciation.

HERITAGE

Indian music has a very long, unbroken tradition - the accumulated heritge of centuries. The origin can be traced back to Vedic days - nearly two thousand years. The culture of India today is an outcome of the interaction and interweaving of races and cultures, both indigenous and foreign; and it is the study of the contribution of these various races and tribes that gives us the picture of the evolution of Indian music. The Negrito, the Mongoloid, the Dravidian, and the Aryan, have all contributed to the complexity of Indian culture. North Indian music is popularly known as Hindustani music and South Indian as Karnatic; their origin is the same, only the approach and style are different. When and how the two main schools crytallized would be an interesting study but the earliest treatises of Indian music do not make any distinction between Northern and Southern schools.

INFLUENCES

One of the strongest and most significant influences has perhaps been that of Islam (and of Persian music); a few centuries of Muslim invasion and rule brought in its wake a changed perspective in the style of Northern Indian music, rather than in its structure. Not being part of the religious ritual it was necessarily fostered outside the places of worship; hence an element of physical pleasure, particularly of the courtier, became predominant. It is interesting to note the influence of Indian music on sculpture and particularly painting. Painters have portrayed the theme of the Raga and they have named their paintings after the Ragas and Raginis. Both paintings and sculpture concentrate on creating contained, volume-filled forms. Great care is taken to keep the basis simple. The moving line and contained space complement each other, giving each other meaning. This is exactly analogous to the character of Indian musical melody, which moves in smooth united motions, including within its curves definite units of musical form.

STRUCTURE

The tradition of Indian music should be understood in the context of Indian life and thought. The theory and practice of Indian music are the logical result of a consistent development, a distintive process, which plays an integral part in Indian history and culture. One should not listen to Indian music and judge it in terms of Western music or any other musical form. It would be like judging Beethoven or Brahms in terms of Raga (the basis of Indian melody) and Tala (the basis of Indian rhythm). Ideally, the western listener is requested to forget counterpoint, harmony, and mixed tone colours and to relax into the rhythmic and melodic pattens of a great cultural heritage. Each melodic structure of Raga has something akin to a distinct personality subject to a prevailing mood. Early Indain writers on music, carried this idea further and endowed the Ragas with the status of minor divinities, with names derived from various sources, often indicating the origin or associations of the individual Ragas. In theoretical works on music each Raga was described in a short verse formula, which enabled the artiest to visualise its essential personality during meditation prior to the performance. This borrowing of the meditational technique used in Hindu worship enabled the musician to enter into the mood of a particular Raga and thus perform is successfully.

TECHNICAL ASPECT

Raga is neither a scale, nor a mode. It is, however, a scientific, precise, subtle, and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement which consists of either a full octave, or a series of six or five notes. An omission of a jarring or dissonant note, or an emphasis on a particular note, or the slide from one note to another, and the use of microtones along with other subleties, distinguish one Raga from the other. There are 72 'melas', or parent scales, on which Ragas are based. Raga has its own principal mood such as tranquility, devotion, eroticism, loneliness, pathos, heroism, etc. In Indian music there is above all an awareness between man and nature, each acting and reacting on the other, andhence each Raga is associated, according to its mood, with a particular time of the day, night or a season. Improvisation is an essential feature of Indian music, depending upon the imagination and the creativity of an artist; a great artist can communicate and isntill in his listener the mood of the Raga.
'Tala' is the second important factor in Indian music. These are rhythmic cycles ranging from 3 to 108 beats. The division in a Tala and the stress on the first beat, called 'Sum', are the most important features of these cycles. Talas having the same number of beats may have a stress on diferent beats, e.g. a bar of 10 beats may be divided as: 2-3-2-3, or 3-3-4, or 3-4-3. Within the framework of the fixed beats the drummer can improvise to the same extent as the principal artisits after going their separate ways, come back together with an accent or stress on the first beat. Thus, the 'Sum' becomes the most important beat of emphasis thougout a recital of Indian music, since this urge for unity and its fulfilment are the most rewarding experience.

GLOSSARY (General)

Alap: is the first movement of the Raga. It is a slow, serene movement acting as an invocation and it gradually develops the Raga.
Jor: begins with the added element of rhythm which (combining with the weaving of innumerable melodic patterns) gradually grains in tempo and brings the raga to the final movement.
Jhala: is the final movement and climax. It is played with a very fast action of the plectrum which is worn on the right index finger.
Gat: is the fixed composition. A gat can be in any Tala and cab be spread over from 2 to 16 of its rhythmic cycles in any tempo, slow, medium or fast.
A Gat (for a fixed composition), whether vocal or instrumental, has generally two sections. The first part is called "pallavi" - South Indian term - or "asthayi" - North Indian term - which opens the composition and is generally confined to the lower and middle octaves. The following part of the composition is called the "anupallavi" (or antara) which usually extends from the middle to upper octaves. In South Indian music further melodic sections called "charana" follows the "anupallavi."

TALAS

Dadra rththmic cycle of 6 beats divided 3-3.
Rupak rhythmic cycle of 7 beats divided 3-2-2. Jhaptal rhythmic cycle of 10 beats divided 2-3-2-3.
Ektal rhythmic cycle of 12.
Adha-Chautal rhythmic cycle of 14 beats divided 2-4-4-4.
Teen-Tal rhythmic cycle of 16 beats divided 4-4-4-4.

(Northern Form)

Dhrupad compositions have four parts or stanzas, viz. Asthayi, Antra, Sanchari and Abhog. Dhrupad is accompanied only by the Tanpura and Pankhawaj. Dhrupad is considered to be the oldest classical vocal forms of Hindustani music.
Hori Dhamar: These compositions are akin to Dhrupad and enjoy identical status. Despite the variations in the themes of these compositions, all of them are associated with the festival of Holi (playing of colors) and the compositions are all of 14 beats time cycle.
Khayal: The Dhrupad style of music was replaced by the romantic Khayal (the word Khayal means imagination, idea). The most important features of a Khayal are 'Tans' or the running glides over notes and 'Bol-tans' which clearly distinguish it from 'Dhrupad'. The slow (Vilambit) and fast (Drut) styles of Khayal are the two recognised types today.
Tappa: This is a distinct style having its origin in the Punjab. Its beauty lies in the quick and intricate display of various permutations and combinations of notes. It is strange that even though the Tappa lyrics are in Punjabi, Tappa is not sung in the Punjab. Banares and Gwalior are the strongholds of Tappa. Bengal has also been greatly influenced by the Tappa style.
Thumri: Thumri originated in the Eastern part of Uttar Pradesh. Its most distinct feature is the erotic subject matter picturesquely portraying the various episodes from the lives of Lord Krishna and Radha. The beauty of Thumri lies in the artist's ability to convey musically as many shades of meaning as the words of a song can bear. It is a much freer form than 'Khayal'.

(Southern Form)

Varnam: A composition usually sung or played at the beginning of a recital. It reveals the general form of the Raga. The Varnam is made up of two parts: 1) The Purvanga or first half and 2) The Uttaranga or second half. The two halves are almost equal in length.
Kriti: A composed song set to a certain Raga and fixed Tala (rhythmic) cycle. It is a highly evolved musical form.
Ragam: A melodic improvisation in free rhythm played without mridangam (drum) accompaniment.
Tanam: Another style of melodic improvisation in free rhythm.
Pallavi: This is a short pre-composed melodic theme with words and set to one cycle of tala. Here the soloist improvises new melodies built around the word pallavi.
Trikalam: Is the section where the Pallavi is played in three tempi keeping the Tala constant.
Swara-Kalpana: Is the improvised section performed with the drummer in medium and fast speeds.
Rangamalika: This is the final part of the Pallavi where the soloist improvises freely and comes back to the original theme at the end.

GAmes

Heli Attack

Ever since Daedalus fashioned wings of feathers and wax for himself and his son Icarus, humans have yearned to master powered, heavier-than-air flight. In the early 20th century, a few daring inventors turned the dream into reality by designing and building flying machines that actually lived up to their names. Everyone knows the story of the Wright brothers and their famed flight across the dunes of Kitty Hawk, N.C., so we won't dwell here on their accomplishments or how airplanes work. Instead, we want to focus on a lesser-known personality -- Igor Sikorsky -- and his vision of the modern helicopter: an aircraft without wings that achieves vertical flight from the rotation of overhead blades.

One thing that has characterized the helicopter since its invention in the 1930s has been the absurdity of the machine. The contraption simply looks unable to deliver on its promise, which is to fly up and down, backward and forward, right and left. The famous U.S. broadcast journalist Harry Reasoner discussed this apparent paradox in a 1971 commentary he delivered about the use of helicopters in the Vietnam conflict:

An airplane by its nature wants to fly. … A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance, the helicopter stops flying, immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

Reasoner laid bare the fundamental reality of helicopters -- that the machines have complex designs and that flying them is extraordinarily complicated. The pilot has to think in three dimensions and must use both arms and both legs constantly to keep a helicopter in the air. Piloting a helicopter requires a great deal of training and skill, as well as continuous attention to the machine.

To fully appreciate this complexity, it helps to study the evolution of helicopters through the ages. How exactly did we get from floating, feathered Chinese tops to Black Hawks buzzing in the air? You'll see. Next.

History of the Helicopter: From Feathers to Hoppers

The modern mechanical marvel we know as the helicopter began as a Chinese top consisting of a shaft -- a stick -- adorned with feathers on one end. Really. When a person placed the stick between his hands and spun it rapidly, the top would rise vertically into the air. Try it for yourself if you're feeling experimental.

Eventually, a few inventors decided to give the Chinese top a power boost. In 1754, a Russian by the name of Mikhail Lomonosov modeled a small rotor on the design of a Chinese top, then used a windup spring to power the device. (A helicopter rotor, by the way, just refers to a rotating part with airfoils, or blades.) Approximately 30 years later, the French naturalist Christian de Launoy built a similar rotor using turkey feathers mounted to both ends of an axle. A string, wound round the axle and tensioned by a crossbow, generated the power. When the tension was released, the counterrotating blades generated lift and carried the device vertically.

These early designs were more toy than transport, but some of the greatest minds in the history of science and engineering were working hard to make vertical-lift flight something humans could enjoy as passengers. Leonardo da Vinci created elaborate sketches for several flying machines, including one he dubbed the aerial screw. The contraption consisted of a linen wing wrapped around an axis, or screw. Four pilots aboard the machine would turn the axis using a pumping action. As the screw turned, so da Vinci theorized, the machine would lift from the ground. And perhaps if the design were lighter, it would have. Sir George Cayley came up with another fanciful machine -- the aerial carriage -- that had two counterrotating rotors mounted on each side of the craft. He attempted to power the device using a gunpowder-based engine, but the results were far from satisfactory.

Eventually, engines evolved enough to move helicopters from the theoretical to the practical. Thomas Edison, who experimented with several helicopter designs in the early 1900s, demonstrated that both high aerodynamic efficiency of the rotor and serious power from an engine were required for successful vertical flight. Other innovations and design refinements quickly followed. The first generation of engine-powered helicopters -- known as hoppers -- emerged between about 1904 and the 1920s. The engineers who built these machines hailed from France, Great Britain, Russia and the Netherlands, and their inventions could make short, tethered flights of just a few seconds. Some of the machines carried pilots, while some were unmanned. Almost all of them were unreliable and difficult to control.

It was Igor Sikorsky, a Russian-born aeronautical engineer, who developed the first machine with all of the qualities we associate with modern helicopters. Interestingly, Sikorsky's early helicopters -- circa 1910 -- were failures, and he abandoned his efforts so he could focus on fixed-wing airplanes. 

After emigrating to the United States and starting Sikorsky Aviation Corporation in Bridgeport, Conn., he once again turned his attention to vertical flight. In 1931, Sikorsky submitted a patent for a modern-looking helicopter design featuring a single main rotor and tail rotor. Eight years later, the first incarnation of this design -- the VS-300 -- lifted Sikorsky into the air. The VS-300 featured a 75-horsepower Lycoming engine connected to a main rotor with three blades and a two-bladed tail rotor. It also provided mechanisms to control the machine's flight. Two inputs, known as the collective and cyclic-pitch sticks, enabled a pilot to change the orientation of the blades to produce lift and enable lateral movement.

This was the first practical helicopter, but it still needed some refinement so it didn't ride like a bucking bronco. Sikorsky continued to make improvements, and on May 6, 1941, the VS-300 broke the world helicopter endurance record by staying aloft for 1 hour, 32 minutes and 26.1 seconds. Other engineers and innovations quickly followed. Notable among the early helicopter pioneers were Arthur Young, Frank Piasecki and Stanley Hiller. Young, backed by Bell Aircraft Corp., developed the Bell 30 helicopter and then the Bell 47, the first commercially certified helicopter. Piasecki designed the single-seater PV2 in 1943, but became better known for large cargo helicopters powered by two main rotors. And Hiller produced several helicopter models including the UH-12, which saw action in Korea and Vietnam.

Sikorsky and a few of his contemporaries brought a technical rigor to the field that finally made vertical flight safe, practical and reliable. As the flight-crazy Russian continued to refine his helicopter designs, he worked out the fundamental requirements that any such machine needed to have to be successful, including:

• a suitable engine with a high power-to-weight ratio
• a mechanism to counteract rotor torque action
• proper controls so the aircraft could be steered confidently and without catastrophic failures
• a lightweight structural frame
• a means to reduce vibrations

Many of the basic parts seen on a modern helicopter grew out of the need to address one or more of these basic requirements. Let's look at these components in greater detail:

Main rotor blade -- The main rotor blade performs the same function as an airplane's wings, providing lift as the blades rotate -- lift being one of the critical aerodynamic forces that keeps aircraft aloft. A pilot can affect lift by changing the rotor's revolutions per minute (rpm) or its angle of attack, which refers to the angle of the rotary wing in relation to the oncoming wind.

Stabilizer -- The stabilizer bar sits above and across the main rotor blade. Its weight and rotation dampen unwanted vibrations in the main rotor, helping to stabilize the craft in all flight conditions. Arthur Young, the gent who designed the Bell 47 helicopter, is credited with inventing the stabilizer bar.

Rotor mast -- Also known as the rotor shaft, the mast connects the transmission to the rotor assembly. The mast rotates the upper swash plate and the blades.

Transmission -- Just as it does in a motor vehicle, a helicopter's transmission transmits power from the engine to the main and tail rotors. The transmission's main gearbox steps down the speed of the main rotor so it doesn't rotate as rapidly as the engine shaft. A second gearbox does the same for the tail rotor, although the tail rotor, being much smaller, can rotate faster than the main rotor.

Engine -- The engine generates power for the aircraft. Early helicopters relied on reciprocating gasoline engines, but modern helicopters use gas turbine engines like those found in commercial airliners.

Fuselage -- The main body of the helicopter is known as the fuselage. In many models, a frameless plastic canopy surrounds the pilot and connects in the rear to a flush-riveted aluminum frame. Aluminum wasn't widely used in aeronautical applications until the early 1920s, but its appearance helped engineers make their helicopters lighter and, as a result, easier to fly.

Cyclic-pitch lever -- A helicopter pilot controls the pitch, or angle, of the rotor blades with two inputs: the cyclic- and collective-pitch levers, often just shortened to the cyclic and the collective. The cyclic, or "stick," comes out of the floor of the cockpit and sits between the pilot's legs, enabling a person to tilt the craft to either side or forward and backward.

Collective-pitch lever -- The collective-pitch lever is responsible for up-and-down movements. For example, during takeoff, the pilot uses the collective-pitch lever to increase the pitch of all the rotor blades by the same amount.

Foot pedals -- A pair of foot pedals controls the tail rotor. Working the pedals affects which way the helicopter points, so pushing the right pedal deflects the tail of the helicopter to the left and the nose to the right; the left pedal turns the nose to the right.

Tail boom -- The tail boom extends out from the rear of the fuselage and holds the tail rotor assemblies. In some models, the tail boom is nothing more than an aluminum frame. In others, it's a hollow carbon-fiber or aluminum tube.

Anti-torque tail rotor -- Without a tail rotor, the main rotor of a helicopter simply spins the fuselage in the opposite direction. It's enough to make your stomach heave just thinking about all that endless circling. Thankfully, Igor Sikorsky had the idea to install a tail rotor to counter this torque reaction and provide directional control. In twin-rotor helicopters, the torque produced by the rotation of the front rotor is offset by the torque produced by a counterrotating rear rotor.

Landing skids -- Some helicopters have wheels, but most have skids, which are hollow tubes with no wheels or brakes. A few models have skids with two ground-handling wheels.

The main rotor, of course, is the most important part of a helicopter. It's also one of the most complex in terms of its construction and operation. In the next section, we'll peer at the rotor assembly of a typical helicopter.

Photo Gallery

We analysed primary breast cancers by genomic DNA copy number arrays, DNA methylation, exome sequencing, messenger RNA arrays, microRNA sequencing and reverse-phase protein arrays. Our ability to integrate information across platforms provided key insights into previously defined gene expression subtypes and demonstrated the existence of four main breast cancer classes when combining data from five platforms, each of which shows significant molecular heterogeneity. Somatic mutations in only three genes (TP53, PIK3CA and GATA3) occurred at >10% incidence across all breast cancers; however, there were numerous subtype-associated and novel gene mutations including the enrichment of specific mutations in GATA3, PIK3CA and MAP3K1 with the luminal A subtype.

 We identified two novel protein-expression-defined subgroups, possibly produced by  stromal/microenvironmental elements, and integrated analyses identified specific signalling pathways dominant in each molecular subtype including a HER2/phosphorylated HER2/EGFR/phosphorylated EGFR signature within the HER2-enriched expression subtype. Comparison of basal-like breast tumours with high-grade serous ovarian tumours showed many molecular commonalities, indicating a related aetiology and similar therapeutic opportunities. The biological finding of the four main breast cancer subtypes caused by different subsets of genetic and epigenetic abnormalities raises the hypothesis that much of the clinically observable plasticity and heterogeneity occurs within, and not across, these major biological subtypes of breast cancer. 

The common gut bacterium Escherichia coli typically takes about 20 minutes to duplicate itself in good conditions. Could it do it any faster? A little, but not much, says biological physicist Jeremy England at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In a preprint¹, he estimates that bacteria are impressively close — within a factor of two or three — to the limiting efficiency of replication set by the laws of physics.

“It is heartening to learn this”, says Gerald Joyce, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who develops synthetic replicating molecules based on RNA. “I suppose I should take some comfort that our primitive RNA-based self-replicator apparently operates even closer to the thermodynamic lower bound”, he adds.

At the root of England’s work is a puzzling question: how do living systems seem to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics by sustaining order instead of falling apart into entropic chaos?

Thermodynamic limits

Life doesn’t really defy the second law because it produces entropy, in the form of heat, to compensate for its own orderliness — that is why we are warmer than our surroundings. England set out to make this picture rigorous by estimating the amount of heat that must unavoidably be produced when a living organism replicates. In other words, how efficient can replication be while still respecting the second law?

To attack this problem, England uses the concepts of statistical mechanics, which relate different arrangements of a set of basic constituents, such as atoms or molecules, to the probabilities of their occurring. The second law follows from the fact that there are many more disorderly arrangements of such constituents than orderly ones, so that these are far more likely to be the outcome of the particles’ movements and interactions.

The question is: what is the cheapest way, in terms of the energy involved, of going from one bacterium to two? To get there, the raw ingredients of the second cell have to be put in order. To respect the second law, that order must be 'paid for' by pumping heat into the surroundings to increase their entropy.

The minimum amount of heat that would 'just pay' for this order can be determined by working out how much ordering is needed to turn raw ingredients — amino acids and so forth — into a cell. This in turn can be estimated by considering the reverse process: the likelihood that the second cell could fall apart spontaneously into its components.

But as England says, “there are many ways of starting with two cells and ending up with one", and not all are equally likely. The challenge, he explains, is to figure out "what class of paths should dominate that process”.

The problem is precisely those “many ways”. “You can drive yourself nuts trying to think of everything,” England says. But he considered the most general reversal route: if, by chance, all the molecules in the replicated bacteria happened to disintegrate. That is, of course, immensely unlikely. But by figuring out exactly how unlikely, England can place a rough limit on how reversible replication is, and thus on its minimum energy cost.

Heated argument

By plugging some numbers into equations describing the likelihood of a replication event being reversed — how long on average the chemical bonds holding proteins together will last, say, and how many such bonds there are in a bacterium — England estimates that the minimum amount of heat a bacterium must generate to replicate is a little more than a third of the amount a real E. coli cell generates. That’s impressive: if the cells were only twice as efficient, they’d be approaching the maximum possible efficiency.

England cautions that his estimate should be treated as a “plausibility argument” rather than a proof. “The weakest point in my argument is the assumption that we know what the ‘most likely very unlikely path’ for spontaneous disintegration of a bacterium is,” he admits. “We’re talking about things that simply never happen, so we can’t have much intuition about them.”

It’s precisely this that troubles Joyce, who compares the calculation with the joke about a physicist trying to solve a problem in dairy farming by considering a spherical cow. “As an experimentalist, it is hard for me relate to this ‘spherical cow’ treatment of a self-replicating system,” Joyce says. “Here E. coli seems to be nothing more than the equivalent of its dry weight in proteins.”

England says that we can hardly expect bacteria to do much better than they do already, given that they have to cope with many different environments and so can’t be optimized for any particular one. But if we want to engineer a bacterium for a highly specialized task using synthetic biology, he says, then there is room for improvement. Such a modified E. coli could be at least twice as efficient at replicating, which means that a colony could grow much faster. That could be useful in biotechnology. “We may be able to build self-replicators that grow much more rapidly than the ones we're currently aware of,” he says.