Navigating The Arctic's Icy Waters

Over the last few decades the Polar Regions have been experiencing an accelerated decline in ice cover due to global warming. Whilst the opening of arctic trade routes, most notably the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage, may bear bountiful fruit for the shipping industry, the sector is also at the centre of much controversy over the use of these routes due to the huge potential and actual environmental impact that the movement of freight through these waters brings.

The shipping industry has often been blamed as a leading contributor to the increased carbon emissions, however the resultant melting of the Arctic ice actually poses huge opportunity for the industry.

The prospect of cutting voyage time is luring many owners to navigating their ships and cargo through the arctic region, due to the economic opportunity it presents. Therefore, this week Fathom takes a look at the exploration of the new shipping routes across the Arctic and the issues and benefits that ship owners face when it comes to thinking about navigating through the extreme conditions presented in the region to seek aforementioned economic opportunities.

We also study the future regulations that The International Maritime Organization (IMO) are currently exploring in order to protect the fragile environment and to mitigate the risks associated with moving freight across the arctic trade routes.

Black carbon (BC), also known as soot, is strongly light-absorbing carbonaceous material emitted as solid particulate matter (PM) and is formed by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass. BC is the most effective PM, by mass, at absorbing solar energy and is one of the major causes of global warming. When BC is deposited on snow and high risk merchant account, it causes more sunlight and heat energy to be absorbed, resulting in surface warming. The potential rise in shipping traffic will result in further deposition of BC and therefore the risk of further melting is greatly increased.

 The shipping industry is a contributor of marine ecosystem degradation and therefore any increase in marine traffic within Polar Regions has the potential to cause major impacts to the ecosystems. These impacts could include oil spills, invasive species, marine mammal strikes, air, water and noise pollution and accelerated arctic warming from BC deposition.

The commercial shipping industry is thought to contribute about 1-2% of global BC emissions.Ships emit more PM and BC per unit of fuel consumed than other fossil fuel combustion sources due to the quality of fuel used.

Therefore, with the exposure of the Polar Regions, namely the Arctic, to increased levels of marine freight movement, the regulation and legislation around aforementioned impacts is under close scrutiny and development.

This increase in ice melt as a consequence of global warming and BC deposition has resulted in and will continue to result in the opening and expansion of passages that were once blocked by ice. The shipping community is fast jumping on the possibility of saving huge amounts of money on fuel and time by utilising these new routes.

 2013 seems set to be a record year for maritime activity on the 'Northern Sea Route'. There has been a tenfold increase in the number of vessels using the route during recent years. In 2012, 46 vessels sailed the whole route, compared to 34 in 2011 and only four in 2010.

As the Lloyd's Register Global Shipping Trends 2030 report points out, in future summer months when the ice has melted to a far more significant extent than today, it will be possible to cut journey times between Europe and Asia by up to a third by using Arctic routes.

The Northern Sea Route along the arctic coast of Russia reduces journeys between East Asia and Western Europe by 21,000 km, in other words, 10-15 days. The opening up of the Northwest Passage, which is currently only navigable one year in seven and crosses Canada's Arctic Ocean, would make a journey between East Asia and Western Europe about 13,600 km long as opposed to 24,000 km when using the Panama Canal. The Arctic Bridge linking Russia to Canada, and the Transpolar Sea Route linking the Arctic to the Strait of Bering and the Atlantic Ocean of Murmansk, would also be potentially usable.

Whilst shortening the voyage in theory is wonderful news for an operator looking to limit fuel costs and emissions; service providers and original equipment manufacturers need to understand how their products will operate under Arctic conditions, or even whether they need to start designing and testing new solutions in advance – though the IMO does not yet have an official set of guidelines that describes the requirements of offshore merchant account.

 Inadequate navigational aids, poor or non-existent charting, extreme cold and darkness, and lack of infrastructure are all concerns. The level of isolation means that should a vessel get into trouble, it will be difficult to secure a timely emergency response. Bunkering facilities, port reception facilities for ship's waste, pilotage in shallow passages, possible ice-breaking assistance all require further development.
This lack of experience in extreme and rapidly changing weather conditions could result in disaster and with polar regions being a hot topic, eyes will be watching the shipping community if vessels start utilising these channels.

The IMO is working with Member States and other interested stakeholder (such as NGOs) to develop a mandatory Polar Code to control the expected increase in shipping traffic in the polar waters. It is also intended to function alongside existing IMO conventions, such as SOLAS and MARPOL. The Polar Code will have to control traffic to mitigate against potential accidents. This will be achieved by drawing up traffic routeing and separation schemes, areas to be avoided, speed restrictions, and mandatory ship location reporting. The increased volume of traffic will however improve search and rescue capabilities in the Arctic waters.

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Bankers still worried with Aadhaar authentication

According to a report in the Economic Times on Monday, the Unique Identification Authority of India is pushing for biometric authentication for credit card and ATM transactions, but bankers are reluctant to make changes since technology costs are high.  Bankers argue that upgrading every ATM and point of sale terminal at thousands of merchant outlets will not come cheap, besides travails and risks of a new technology, says the report. But aren’t we forgetting something here? ATM with biometrics is not a new idea. It has been tried and discarded as a failure when the ATMs did not authenticate the biometrics of many underprivileged persons and left them without access to their own funds, especially when banks were closed.

While use of biometric ATMs looks good on paper, its implementation so far has proved costly for the banks as well as for the end-users. On 1 December 2006, Citibank had issued a global release about the launch of its biometric ATM with multi-language voice instruction capability.  It had tied up with a NGO called Swadhar FinAccess and a microfinance firm for Citibank Pragati for accounts. The experiment ended in a whimper. In fact, the drumbeat for biometric ATMs began in 2005 as suggested by this report in The Financial Express.  In 2007, Andhra Bank had launched biometric ATMs and wanted to make the mobile, to cater to the burgeoning microfinance business.

Canara Bank set up its first biometric-based ATM at Dharavi, in Mumbai in 2008 with much fanfare. It was a dual purpose ATM, which accepted cards as well as thumbprints for banking transaction (mostly cash withdrawals). The biometric-based ATM was expected to cater to the needs of working class, especially housemaids and other people in Dharavi. In fact, even after the global financial crisis, the biometric ATMs and tie-ups continued because micro-finance firms were still seen as saviours and had not revealed their exploitative and rapacious side.

The ground reality turned out to be completely different. According to information provided by several non-government organisations (NGOs) spreading financial literacy in that area, the biometric ATMs in Dharavi failed from day one. The reason? Working class there, especially housemaids and other labours do not have fingerprints without which they could not operate the ATM!

Not having fingerprints is just one of the issues with the biometric-based ATMs. The more serious issue is the danger it may pose to the user as thieves may stalk and assault the person to gain access. If the item is secured with a biometric device, the damage to the owner could be irreversible, and potentially cost more than the high risk merchant account. For example, in 2005, Malaysian car thieves cut off the finger of a Mercedes-Benz S-Class owner when attempting to steal his car.

In addition, the biometric-based passwords are irreversible. That means it cannot be re-issued in case of loss or theft. If a token or a password is lost or stolen, it can be cancelled and replaced by a newer version. This is not naturally available in biometrics. If someone's face or fingerprint is compromised from a database, it cannot be cancelled or reissued.

Another problem associated with the biometric-based ATM is its cost, both installation and operations. The biometric-based ATMs, as proposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that would facilitate use to Aadhaar data, are more costly than the regular card-based ATMs. While consumers are increasingly complaining about reasonableness of bank charges, the banks themselves are lobbying hard with the RBI, claiming that high cost of technology is making each transaction very expensive. For instance, having encouraged and pushed to obtain corporate accounts of companies, banks are now cribbing about high transaction costs on small withdrawals from ATMs.

For instance, a senior central banker says that each balance inquiry at an ATM costs the bank Rs11 while each transaction costs around Rs18. However, this calls for a serious discussion on the cost-benefit of technology to consumers, since the solution cannot be to load higher costs on to consumers.

And while the UIDAI and RBI are still thinking about using Aadhaar number or fingerprints collected under the UID scheme, for authentication of transactions, the world has moved ahead. World over, fingerprint based ATMs are being replaced by biometric ATMs, which use ‘finger vein scanning’ technology to authenticate the customer's ID. Unlike current fingerprint scanners, the finger vein scanner, developed by Japanese company Hitachi, uses infrared light to analyse the micro veins beneath the surface of the finger. According to Hitachi, it is impossible to fool its machine, as it is not possible to replicate an individual's finger veins. In addition, it does not work with fingers that have been chopped off, the company had said.

In addition, several experts have pointed out that using Aadhaar for identification is completely different than using it for authentication. Especially, when it comes to using biometric data of Aadhaar for payment transactions, the facts are not too encouraging. Several poor people like housemaids and construction labourers are finding it difficult to even enrol for Aadhaar due to lack of a clean fingerprint sample. Some could not even submit sample of their iris due to cataract. In such cases, how will the Aadhaar help in authenticating the card present transaction? Also, why burden the entire banking system with high costs, which will have to be paid by hundreds of million account holders who have no need for biometric identification and have no reason to support biometric authentication systems?

Coming back to the issue of using Aadhaar or UID for authentication card present transactions, it looks good only on paper. As per the latest census, 58.7% households were availing banking services in 2011 as compared with 35.5% in 2001. Notwithstanding these efforts by the RBI and the offshore merchant account, the challenges are enormous. Providing banking coverage to a population of 120 crore and ensuring transactions in these accounts is a daunting task.

While, the government and the RBI have asked banks to accept the Aadhaar number as one of the identification proofs for opening an account, the lenders are not sure about the authentication and verification of these numbers for payment system. The RBI itself was not confident about Aadhaar as it felt that the UID project is not ready for handling secure payment transactions.

According to the Economic Times report, there was a distinct possibility that RBI would ask banks to gradually roll out Aadhaar-based biometric authentication as an additional authentication for card transactions. RBI may not mandate banks immediately, but may nonetheless ask them to upgrade the technology. This is happening at such a time when banks are issuing credit and debit cards based on Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) chip technology, the report said quoting a banker.

According to a report by a "Working Group on Securing Card Present Transactions" of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), there is a need to put in place a series of measures to strengthen the payments’ infrastructure and ecosystem in the country. Inferences drawn from case studies clearly indicate the need to have a much stronger authentication mechanism and reiterate the need for a second factor (2FA) for card present transactions.

The report discusses new systems like EMV chip cards with PIN that has been adopted by many countries and enhancing the current MSD card system with help from biometric identification.

"Aadhaar (issued by UIDAI) authentication using biometrics, provides a strong 'Who you are' factor of authentication. This can be combined with a second 'What you have' or 'What you know' factor to achieve strong customer identification at the point of sale," the report said.

While the option to use biometrics from the UIDAI database looks good, it may, in practice, due to insufficient feasibility tests, may not be a viable option. "The working committee considered biometric, or UID, as the second factor in one of the solution sets; however, the decision to adopt this would depend on various factors like the number of UIDs issued to the population which transacts through cards, the error rates, authentication network capability to handle transaction volumes, network capability to handle enhanced transaction size and acquiring infrastructure," the report said.

According to the Economic Times report, another working group set up to study the recommendation of the previous group has recently submitted its report to the RBI. “(the) panel has pegged the cost of banks' readiness for Aadhaar at Rs4,259 crore compared with Rs3,556 crore the banking industry has to spend to upgrade machines to match a different technology they think lowers the risk of card frauds,” the report says.

Unfortunately, instead of addressing all the problems related with the Aadhaar, the UPA government is forcing its usage and acceptance, that too without any Parliamentary approval for the UIDAI scheme. The hard push for biometric ATMs is just one of the examples about how technology is being used to exclude the needy, without even thinking about the cost.

New phone upgrade plans akin to renting

The phone companies call them installment plans, but I think of them as phone rental. Before you pay off the cost of the phone, you're entitled to hand it back in to get a new one -- every six months with Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile or every year with AT&T.It's a good deal for some people on T-Mobile. Unlike the rival plans, T-Mobile's Jump comes with insurance to cover loss and damage. And it doesn't add that much to the cost of the phone. With Verizon's Edge and AT&T's Next, you're essentially paying for the same phone twice.

When you buy an iPhone 5, you might pay $200 for it, but it actually costs $650. Your phone company covers the difference and makes it up over the life of the two-year service contract. On the phone bill, it just appears as a service fee for voice, text and data. But that fee actually includes an amount that helps the phone companies cover the difference. The service fee doesn't go down, however, even after you've covered the third party payment gateway, or paid the phone off.

With AT&T's and Verizon's installment plans, you're paying the full $650 for the iPhone, spread out over 20 or 24 months. But once again, the service fee doesn't go down, even though there's no "difference" the phone companies need to make up. So you're paying for the phone through the installment payments, plus what's baked into the service fee.

Earlier this year, T-Mobile broke the service fee into two fees -- one for the actual service, and one for the phone. So once you've paid off the phone, your total bill goes down. And if you sign up for Jump, you're paying a $10 monthly fee for that, mostly for the insurance, but you're not paying for the phone twice.Even though you're paying more for the phone with Verizon's and AT&T's plans, it might still be worthwhile if you're already planning to upgrade more frequently than every other year. Both take the hassle out of trying to sell your old device.

Here's a closer look at the three plans to see if they are right for you. I'm using prices for Samsung's Galaxy S4 in the calculations, so actual costs may vary. Keep in mind all three plans are optional, so you can still buy phones the old way.Six months after you first sign up for Jump, you're entitled to two phone upgrades every 12 months. You can upgrade twice in the same month, but you'd have to wait a full year for the next one. It's better to spread upgrades out to about six months apart.

If you lose or damage your phone: No problem. The Jump plan replaces insurance, which typically costs $8 a month. So it's just $2 a month more for those who already get insurance to replace phones that get lost, don't work, have water damage or have cracked screens.If you just want an upgrade: Simply turn in your old phone when you get your new one. T-Mobile will refurbish and resell it.

The catch: T-Mobile charges a down payment -- $150 in the case of Galaxy S4. It's the same as you pay when you get your first phone, but you'll be paying that each time you upgrade. If your phone is lost or damaged, and it's not covered by warranty, you pay a deductible of up to $175. In that case, there's no down payment if you are replacing it with the same model, but you have to pay both the deductible and the down payment if you want to upgrade to a different model.

Cost analysis: You break even at 16 months. That is, you have $160 left in payments for your phone, which gets waived when you upgrade through Jump. But you have paid $160 for Jump by that point. At month 17, you pay more for Jump than what you would have to make up in remaining installments. But Jump gives you insurance during that period.You're better off with Jump if you upgrade before the 16-month mark, but it's still more expensive than waiting out the two years, when the phone is normally due for an upgrade. Let's say you upgrade the maximum twice a year. That's three extra phones over those two years. The fourth is the one you would have gotten anyway when the two years are up. At Galaxy S4 prices, that works out to $690 over two years for the luxury -- $450 for the phones and $240 for the cost of Jump. If you would have gotten insurance anyway, figure you're paying just $498 more.

ou're essentially paying twice for the phone. In order to upgrade, you must already have paid at least 50 percent of the cost of the phone. You hit that threshold after one year, so if you upgrade six months early, you have six months of payments to make right away to be eligible. Your new phone comes with new installment payments, even though you've just covered the next six months of payments. You're essentially doubling the payments over those six months.

Also, it's open only to those on Share Everything plans. Customers still on Verizon's older, unlimited data plans are not eligible and must switch to a limited-use plan to participate.Normally, you pay $200 up front, so for a $650 phone, $450 is the minimum premium you pay to upgrade more frequently. If you haven't reached the 50 percent threshold yet, you'll be paying even more. Upgrade every six months as allowed, and you face 12 additional monthly payments over two years (six each year). Those 12 payments add up to $325, assuming the same retail price for the Galaxy S4 replacement. With the additional $450 you're already paying over the normal way of buying phones, you're paying an extra $775 over two years to upgrade every six months. As is the case with third party merchant account, you might be better off breaking a contract and trying to resell the old phone, but Edge removes the hassle.

In a matter of a few years, Smith went from paying out-of-pocket for school – attending when he could afford it, working when he could not – to staring down more than $40,000 in student loan debt.Instead of living paycheck-to-paycheck and putting any extra in savings, he was suddenly flush with cash. His financial aid allowed him to live an expensive lifestyle in college, he says.The tipping point was when he approached the school's student loan office to get help with his $3,000 tuition payment, he says. He walked away with $16,000 for that quarter, starting a cycle that would continue for the rest of his undergraduate career.

"Every quarter I got more free money," he says. "I needed new clothes. I needed a cool car. I needed a nice place to stay.""I always took out way more than I needed," Meehan said in an email. "I thought if it as 'free money' that I would eventually have to pay back when I was living like Carrie from Sex and the City."

Now 31, with a bachelor's and two master's under her belt, Meehan's student loans total nearly $200,000. She currently works as an online media manager at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania, but said she makes less now than she did straight out of undergrad.In some cases, the borrowers are so-called nontraditional students. Over the age of 25, these undergrads are considered financially independent from their parents. More than 50 percent of students pursuing a bachelor's degree fall into this category.

Some, like Smith, have families of their own. Others are saddled with expenses such as medical bills and car payments.With minimal income – either because of unemployment or underemployment – they have little-to-no expected family contribution, a figure the U.S. Department of Education uses to calculate need. This often allows students to take out federal student loans to cover the full cost of attendance, including housing, personal and living expenses.

The University of Oregon estimates the total cost for undergraduates living off campus at nearly $24,000 for the 2013-2014 school year. Less than $10,000 of that goes to tuition, leaving students with refund checks of roughly $14,000 each year.While these refunds are intended to go toward educational expenses and living expenses – food, rent and utilities – no one monitors how students spend this money.

Nvidia Gives Project Shield Portable Gaming Device A $50 Price Drop

With gamers still talking about the complete 180 Microsoft has taken with its next gen Xbox One console, Nvidia is making news in the portable games space today with its own next gen device. The technology giant has lowered the price of its Tegra 4-powered Project Shield portable gaming device by $50 to $300. The gaming system launches June 27.

The device debuted at CES in January and had a big display at both GDC and E3, allowing developers, analysts and journalists to get hands on with a full catalog of exclusively modified games designed for the console-like controllers and the 5-inch screen. The success of everything from the iPhone to the Samsung Galaxy tablets has revolved around touch-based gaming. Although there are new controller peripherals available for Android phones and now Apple devices, Nvidia has designed a gaming device with everything built-in running on its new Tegra 4 chip.

“You have to remember before things like Nvidia’s Project Shield all these mobile games were touch device games,” said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. “It will take some time for developers to really embrace the idea of controller-based mobile gaming, but it’s a really fun experience and I hope to see a lot of great games for it.”

There are already multiple Unreal Engine 3 games running on Project Shield, including Real Boxing (which in my opinion stands up to the Fight Night console games) and Hawken (a very cool free-to-play Mech shooter).

Developer High Voltage Software is celebrating 20 years of game development. The majority of that time was spent working on console games. But the advent of powerful chips like NVIDIA Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 has opened up new opportunities for the San Francisco-based game studio. Eric Nofsinger of High Voltage Software, explains why his studio is now committed to mobile gaming in this exclusive interview.

Bill Wagner, chief production officer at Meteor Entertainment, said the interesting thing about Hawken is that way back when Adhesive Games was first thinking about the game, they were thinking about it as an Xbox 360 title. The game has always been able to run on a console controller.

“Right now it’s a free-to-play PC game and it’s played with a mouse and keyboard, but the truth is anybody could actually plug an Xbox 360 controller into their PC and play the game just fine,” said Wagner. “There isn’t a lot of difference in terms of gameplay between Project Shield and the PC version because it was already set up to run with a console controller.”

I’ve been able to get hands-on with multiple Project Shield games and the device is very comfortable in your hands and the games really stand out on the screen. The device gives Sony’s PS Vita a run for the money, especially given the mobile pricing for the games once you invest in the hardware. The lower price point is nice, but I think it probably needs to be shaved more to get more gamers on board. Expensive phones like the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 can get service subsidies to lower the price of hardware, which is something Nvidia doesn’t have the ability to do.

One of the cooler aspects of the Shield is the connected home experience that gamers who also own a GeForce GTX 650 or higher graphics card can experience. I’ve demoed this at E3 with Gearbox Software’s Borderlands 2 streaming straight from a PC to the Shield’s touch screen. Gamers can also connect the Shield to an HD TV via HDMI and see the full power of Tegra 4 on a very big screen. Many of these new portable games are getting to the quality of current gen games in my opinion.

Shield has attracted console and PC developers like High Voltage Software. Developer Eric Nofsinger said it was seamless to enhance the Wii game, The Conduit, and bring it to the portable device. They utilized the multi-core technology to up-rez the graphics, add more shader effects and improve the geometry of the sci-fi espionage shooter.

Not everyone is impressed with the device. Michael Pachter, video game analyst for Wedbush Securities, told me, “I don’t understand it at all and I don’t think there is a market for it. It reminds me of the Nokia N-Gage.”

I don’t see a correlation between the N-Gage, which was designed as a gaming phone, rather than a game system; and Project Shield, which is a pure gaming device. But everyone is allowed to have an opinion.

The price drop is a step in the right direction for Nvidia’s new foray into game hardware. The company is facing off, in a way, with Ouya, the $99 Android gaming device, as well as more high-priced gaming tablets from companies like Wikipad and Razer. And of course, all of these devices are competing with Nintendo’s portables and Sony PS Vita.

For this reason, Daniel Smalley, a graduate student at the school's Media Lab, used a much smaller crystal of material called lithium niobate and, just beneath the surface, created microscopic channels known as waveguides, which confine the light traveling through them. Onto each waveguide, he deposited a metal electrode capable of producing an acoustic wave.

Because each waveguide corresponds to one row of pixels in the final image, the waveguides with their individual electrodes can be packed mere micrometers apart from each other, unlike the Mark-II, which demanded the tellurium dioxide crystal be big enough that the acoustic waves producing the separate lines of the hologram were insulated from each other.

Beams of red, green and blue light are then sent down each waveguide in Smalley's device, and the frequencies of the acoustic wave passing through the crystal determine what colors pass through and what colors are filtered out. This way, combining, for example, red and blue to make purple doesn't require a separate waveguide for each color; rather, it only requires a difference acoustic-wave pattern.

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An increasing trend

Nearly 13 percent of 600 respondents in the 2010 study said they battle asthma. In contrast, the rate of Texas residents with asthma is 6.5 percent, according to 2009 figures, the most recent period of available state data.

Asthma causes to airways narrow and swell, according to the Mayo Clinic’s website. The most common symptoms are coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath. Asthma can’t be cured, but its symptoms can be controlled.

Richardson said there is little the Health Department can do to address the asthma problem.

“We don’t have funding for chronic disease prevention,” he said, adding that his department operates on a $2.3-million budget.

There are usually four factors that trigger asthma: genetics, allergies, respiratory infections or environmental factors, such as pollution, Richardson said. While conceding that the causes for Amarillo’s cases need more research, the city’s asthma problem appears to be mostly tied to genetics and allergies, he said.

Meganne Walsh, a pediatrician who runs a clinic in the 700 block of North Polk Street, said the majority of her asthma patients suffer seasonal asthma. She said they usually show symptoms during the spring or fall, when the allergen count is highest.

“About 20 to 25 percent of my patients have asthma,” Walsh said, adding that she has between 3,000 and 4,000 patients. “Some have it bad, where they have to take (treatment) every day. Others, have it when they do extreme activities such as sports.”

Nabarun Ghosh, a biology professor at West Texas A&M University, said Amarillo’s high asthma rate is probably due to a combination of factors, including wind-driven pollen, crop farming and the worldwide increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

One type of mold considered a major trigger of asthma is alternaria, Ghosh said. The Texas Panhandle has a large farming community and a source of mold is dying crops, he said. “Of the mold growing on the surface of plants when dying off, 90 percent is alternaria,” Ghosh said.

Since 2000, Ghosh has collected allergens and air particles by using a machine called the Burkard Spore Trap. The machine has a green fan-like blade and sits on WT’s agriculture and natural sciences building.

Ghosh said his work has shown there has been an overall increase in molds the past few years. His data shows there were 800 to 900 alternaria per cubic meter Wednesday. On Aug. 15, 2008, the alternaria count was 500 to 600 per cubic meter.

The mold count is generally the same throughout an entire season, Ghosh said.

Ghosh said one well-known place that has registered an increase in pollens is Palo Duro Canyon State Park. He said the canyon has a 20- to 30-mile trail of ragweed, which is known to produce a great deal of allergens. The ragweed trail he’s seen is shaped like a funnel, he said.

“About three years ago, there were simple patches (of ragweed), not that continuous trail,” Ghosh said. “Now it’s continuous.”

Strong winds carry pollens from border states, Ghosh said. Pollen from a species of highly allergenic conifer trees in Oklahoma have been found in the Panhandle, he said.

Ghosh said he’s been working on projects to help asthma and frequent allergy sufferers.

One of Ghosh’s projects, a collaboration with a Las Vegas company, is an air purifier that uses no filter. He said the purifier uses ultraviolet light to attack air allergens and floating bacteria. He said the purifier combats indoor allergens.