GN

This is where Carmen V. Russoniello, lab director and a professor in the College of Health and Human Performance at the university, is trying to determine whether some video games can be good for you.

"I've always thought there's something special about the concept of fun; it's one of the most powerful words in the English language," Russoniello, a former president of the American Therapeutic Recreation Association, said in North Carolina recently, just yards from a wall covered with diplomas, professional citations and the medals he earned in the Vietnam war.

"As scientists," he said, "we know there is a cascade of beneficial biochemical and hormonal effects in people when they are engaged in an activity they perceive as fun. What we're seeing here is that some video games fit into that mould and that some games can have a positive health effect on people."

Formally, Russoniello's research project is called A Randomized, Controlled Study of the Effectiveness of PopCap Video Games in Reducing Stress and Improving Mood.

Informally, that means that the professor is in the process of bringing 120 test subjects in, wiring them up like Woody Allen in Sleeper (1973), sitting them in front of a computer and then measuring their brainwaves and heartbeats as they play simple games such as Bejeweled, Bookworm Adventures and Peggle. PopCap, the Seattle company that makes those games, is paying the $23,500 (around Rs9.4 lakh) cost of the study. Russoniello intends to announce his results later this year.

For set-top boxes, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) will look into specifications for IPTV to help cable operators design IPTV networks, said a TRAI official.

This will give a boost to the two PSUs, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), which own close to 90 per cent of the country's total fixed telephone lines.

IPTV permits a telecom service provider to offer TV through telephone lines. A special modem is required at the customer's premises for transmitting TV signals. It uses Internet Protocol (IP) and is, thus, called IPTV. Aksh, Exicom and IOL are some of the leading IPTV service providers that have joined hands with BSNL and MTNL for IPTV services.

They are working on a franchise basis with the two PSUs.

Under this scheme, BSNL gets 10 per cent of revenue earned by the franchisee.

Now, with the government settling the regulatory issue, the two PSUs will be bullish on IPTV. Telecom operators with unified access service li cences and cellular mobile telephony service licences to provide triple-play services, as well as Internet service providers with a net worth of more than Rs 100 crore with permission from the licensor to provide IPTV, can provide the services.

Bharti Airtel started IPTV trials a year ago in 1,000 households in Gurgaon and is slated to launch its services in the first half of the next fiscal. RComm, too, plans to launch the service in 10 cities around the same time. State owned BSNL recently launched multi-play ser vices for broadband cus tomers in Pune. VSNL, too, is expected to launch IPTV ser vices soon.

India has one of the lowest average revenue per user (ARPU) in the world, both in mo bile and fixed line services. Fixed line service providers are looking at IPTV ser vices as a saviour for them. They believe that IPTV services will be able to increase their revenues.

However, the cable industry views IPTV services by telecom operators as an encroachment on their area of operations and a threat to their business model. The advantage of IPTV over cable TV is that it is a two-way medium and, therefore, more interactive in nature.

Since telecom service providers with UASL licences are permitted to provide tripleplay services, questions have repeatedly been raised on whether these operators need further regulatory clearances.

It was a minor revolution at first, because only chimps and other closely related primates passed the "mirror test." Then, in 2001, Diana Reiss of the New York Aquarium showed that bottlenose dolphins marked with dye recognized their reflections. Last week, Reiss, Joshua Plotkin and Frans de Waal of Emory University announced that Happy, a 34-year-old Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo, had shown the same ability. (Two other elephants who live there also took the mirror test; they flunked.) "The mirror test asks something quite hard," says Patricia Churchland, a professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego. "The animal has to say, 'I'm here, that is a perfect replica of me, but it isn't me'." The experiment appears to measure something more, or different, than what we usually mean by "animal intelligence," which we tend to define in practical terms. Animals are "smart" if they can communicate or use tools to get food. But recognizing one's reflection has no obvious survival value; it's a kind of intellectual luxury that until recently only human beings were believed to enjoy.