Part of this perception has been bolstered by the killing of writers and rationalists, where Hindutva rightwing groups have been the accused. Kalburgi is threatened and then murdered because he was against idol worship, then does another writer with similar views have the right to be frightened For this people like Kher, a fine actor who has some remarkable work to his credit, have no proper answer. It is also foolish to publicly state that being a Congress lackey and being a member of the Left coalition is the same thing.Is that tolerance of intolerance or the intolerant ruling the roost We have reached a peculiar stage in India today — nurtured by years of political patronage, the "sentiments" of random groups of people now determine our cultural, political and social discourse.And the rest of their perception has, in fact, been vindicated by the howling response of anger from the Central government and its supporters.If all this was just Twitter talk or TV news hysteria, it could safely be ignored or dismissed. This is something that followers and supporters of political parties have found hard to fathom in spite of democracy being our chosen form of governance in 1947, cemented in 1950.Tolerance of the intolerant or intolerance of the tolerant: Which is the battle being fought in India today Tolerance of the intolerant or intolerance of the tolerant: Which is the battle being fought in India today Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje apologised to the artist after an art installation called the Bovine Divine was taken down in rage. Others have not returned their awards but have put forward their discomfort or distress at the perceived atmosphere of "rising intolerance".The writer is a senior journalist who writes on media affairs, politics and social trends end-of. In the larger sense, it does not matter whether the artist was talking about today’s cow politics or something else. The Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur displayed the installation — a plastic cow suspended from a balloon — in an open area. After film star Shah Rukh Khan said that he felt there was intolerance in the air, Kher was careful to warn people not to send Khan to Pakistan. That is the first reaction in the high-frenzy atmosphere of today. It is fair to say, however, that Anupam Kher completely missed the point, whether deliberately or mistakenly. The fact that an elevated sense of outrage can so easily attack freedom of expression means that we are unable to combat the forces that want to take us to a closed society. The irony, the thought, the idea of the artist in naming his installation "The Bovine Divine" was completely turned on its head in the end. It was been two months since a number of people, known and not so well known, from various walks of life, including retired soldiers, protested against a climate that does not allow free speech or a dispensation that goes back on electoral promises.And while in Rajasthan, renowned if sometimes controversial international sculptor Anish Kapoor also found himself on the receiving end of intolerance — two days after he was appointed to a cultural panel set up by the Rajasthan government, he was removed. Whatever you say or paint or sing or show, there will be several groups of people ready to take offence. If a writer who supports Kalburgi is threatened with death on social media by a Bajrang Dal activist, what is that a sign of And the removal of Anish Kapoor from a culture panel because he dislikes the politics of the Prime Minister, is that a sign of tolerance or intolerance The other argument against people who fear "rising intolerance" is that they are all stooges of the Congress Party and/or they are against the BJP. And thereby hangs another miserable tale. That includes agreeing or disagreeing with the party in power. If scholar-writer M. Kapoor has made some scathing, uncomplimentary comments about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It fools no one that such words and actions are nothing but extreme acts of intolerance. The cow on a balloon was offensive because it was a cow and cows are holier than holy at the moment. But it is not. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley appears to spend more time fulminating over accusations of intolerance and the extreme victimhood of the Prime Minister than he does over the rising prices of pulses — which is a reality that no one can deny, not even Kher or whoever does the shopping in his household. The artist, Siddharth Karwal, was trying to draw attention to the plight of cows eating plastic waste.Even worse is the fact that the plastic cow was later brought back out of storage and worshipped. However pro-cow activists — a new power group in India — misunderstood, took offence, called the police who took the installation down. However, all things being equal, you still have the right to have an opinion and make a political choice. Thus, for these people, it does not matter which political party runs various state governments.What they mean is that they are disturbed by the stated intolerance to their particular views or the views of others. Now that actor Aamir Khan has added his own views to this, weighing in on the side of those who fear intolerance, Kher has sent him a few gentle tweets asking him what needs to be done.This is because, ultimately in India, we are more tolerant of whatever comes out of Bollywood than we are of the views of some of our best writers, intellectuals and scientists. Some have returned awards that they received for their writing, scientific work, artistic efforts, academic achievements, even bravery.It is intriguing though to gauge the reactions of those who refuse to accept that India can possibly be seen as intolerant. Some may be less inclined towards Hindutva, some may have connections with this or that political party and others may not. India is tolerant, declared a well-known film actor as he led a protest march against the protestors. The sweeping nature of this allegation makes it untenable. They seem to be hemmed in by their political beliefs. What matters is who has done the killings or who has done the threatening.M. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln should have added to his definition of democracy what happens when people try to fool themselves.At the crux of the matter though is a disingenuous misunderstanding of the word "tolerance" and a neat logical skip to pointing out how India is not intolerant. Because once you bring patriotism and nationalism into the argument, you can now send everyone who China Plastic clamshell packaging boxes disagrees with you to Pakistan or, barring that, book them for sedition, as is the current fashion. They have a strong film connection

"It’s very, very different from the way that animals or people get around the world.The researchers also hope to scale the robot much larger and much smaller to see how it performs. Future versions may also grow using liquid, which could help deliver water to people trapped in tight spaces or to put out fires in closed rooms. Inspired by natural organisms that cover distance by growing – such as vines, fungi and nerve cells – the researchers have made a proof of concept of their soft, growing robot and have run it through some challenging tests. Another benefit, in the case of this robot, is that it is flexible and can follow complicated paths.A primary advantage of soft robots is that they can be safer than hard, rigid robots not only because they are soft but also because they are often lightweight. A camera at the tip of the tendril gives rescuers a view of the otherwise unreachable places beneath the rubble.What makes this robot design extremely useful is that the design results in movement of the tip without movement of the body. In the prototypes, the material was a thin, cheap plastic and the robot body everted when the scientists pumped pressurized air into the stationary end. (Image: Stanford University) Imagine rescuers searching for people in the rubble of a collapsed building."The group tested the benefits of this method for getting the robot from one place to another in several ways. They’ve already created a 1.8 mm version and believe small growing robots could advance medical procedures.Stanford researchers develop a new type of soft, growing robot. They place the device at the entrance of the debris and flip a switch.Joey Greer, a graduate student in the Okamura lab and co-author of the paper, said that controlling a robot requires a precise model of its motion, which is difficult to establish for a soft robot. The researchers developed a software system that based direction decisions on images coming in from a camera at the tip of the robot. It grew through an obstacle course, where it traveled over flypaper, sticky glue and nails and up an ice wall to deliver a sensor, which could potentially sense carbon dioxide produced by trapped survivors. This robot could serve a wide range of purposes, particularly in the realms of search and rescue and medical devices, the researchers said.A growing robotThe basic idea behind this robot is straightforward. A newly developed vine-like robot can grow across long distances without moving its whole body. Instead of digging through the debris by hand or having dogs sniff for signs of life, they bring out a small, air-tight cylinder. Rigid robots, by comparison, are much easier to model and control, but are unusable in many situations where flexibility or safety is necessary. In place of a tube that is pushed through the body, this type of soft robot would grow without dragging along delicate structures."To investigate what their robot can do, the group created prototypes that move through various obstacles, travel toward a designated goal, and grow into a free-standing structure. "If you can put a robot in these environments and it’s unaffected by the obstacles while it’s moving, you don’t need to worry about it getting damaged or stuck as it explores. "Also, using a camera to guide the robot to a target is a difficult problem because the camera imagery needs to be processed at the rate it is produced. "The body can be stuck to the environment or jammed between rocks, but that doesn’t stop the robot because the tip can continue to progress as new material is added to the end. Further, it pulled a cable through its body while growing above the dropped ceiling, offering a new method for routing wires in tight spaces.This is just one possible application of a new type of robot created by mechanical engineers at Stanford University, detailed in a June 19 Science Robotics paper. In other versions, fluid could replace the pressurized air. From one end of the cylinder, a tendril extends into the mass of stones and dirt, like a fast-climbing vine. It’s a tube of soft material folded inside itself, like an inside-out sock, that grows in one direction when the material at the front of the tube everts, as the tube becomes right-side-out. This is especially useful in situations where a robot could be moving in close quarters with China Blister packaging services a person.Going big – and smallAs it exists now, the scientists built the prototype by hand and it is powered through pneumatic air pressure. It successfully completed this course even though it was punctured by the nails because the area that was punctured didn’t continue to move and, as a result, self-sealed by staying on top of the nail. In the future, the researchers would like to create a version that would be manufactured automatically."Some iterations of these robots included a control system that differentially inflated the body, which made the robot turn right or left. end-of Tags: robot, stanford university, soft robotics. A lot of work went into designing algorithms that both ran fast and produced results that were accurate enough for controlling the soft robot," Greer said. It could prove useful in search and rescue operations and medical applications."Essentially, we’re trying to understand the fundamentals of this new approach to getting mobility or movement out of a mechanism," explained Allison Okamura, professor of mechanical engineering and senior author of the paper.In other demonstrations, the robot lifted a 100-kilogram crate, grew under a door gap that was 10 percent of its diameter and spiraled on itself to form a free-standing structure that then sent out a radio signal. This, however, also poses some challenges. They are also exploring new, tougher materials, like rip-stop nylon and Kevlar."The body lengthens as the material extends from the end but the rest of the body doesn’t move," explained Elliot Hawkes, a visiting assistant professor from the University of California, Santa Barbara and lead author of the paper.Difficult environments"The applications we’re focusing on are those where the robot moves through a difficult environment, where the features are unpredictable and there are unknown spaces," said Laura Blumenschein, a graduate student in the Okamura lab and co-author of the paper. The robot also maneuvered through the space above a dropped ceiling, which showed how it was able to navigate unknown obstacles as a robot like this might have to do in walls, under roads or inside pipes