Software training for science graduates

IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has inducted around 500 science graduates after transforming them into software professionals under a seven-month-long course.Students from different parts of the country were given training in software technology under the project 'Ignite' for the first time.However, trainees of ‘Ignite’ are being given 30 per cent less salary than their other counterparts.TCS was planning to increase the number of students taken for the project to 3,000 next year and up to 5,000 in the coming years.

prime numbers

In 1874, an English mathematician W. Stanley Jevons claimed that only he knew the divisors of the prime number 8, 616, 460,799. He had obtained this number by multiplying two of the largest prime numbers known then viz., 96079 and 89681.The largest prime number discovered without the help of computers consisted of 39 digits it reigned supreme from 1876 to the middle of the 20th century. With the help of computers the quest for the largest prime number surged forward.In 1983, the largest known prime number was a monster with 39,000 digits in it. In 1986, the largest known prime number has an astounding 60,000 digits in it. It will occupy more than 500 lines and require 25 pages to be written down.New and sophisticated methods have been evolved to determine whether or not a number is a prime. No longer need we use the old method of successive divisions to check for remainders. In this method, even the super computer of today would not have time to explore a number with a mere 50-digits, even if it had worked non-stop for 15 billion years.Josh Findley, a volunteer in the Mersenne.org research project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), has discovered the largest known prime number. Findley used his home PC and free software by George Woltman and Scott Kurowski as part of an international grid of 240,000 networked computers in virtually every time zone of the world.The new number, expressed as 2 to the 24,036,583th power minus 1, has 7,235,733 decimal digits and was discovered May 15th. It is nearly a million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number, and belongs to a special class of rare prime numbers called Mersenne primes . The discovery marks only the 41st known Mersenne prime, named after Marin Mersenne , a 17th century French monk who first studied the rare numbers 300 years ago. Mersenne primes are most relevant to number theory, but most participants join GIMPS simply for the fun of having a role in real research - and the chance of finding a new Mersenne prime.

Centre for computing resources

The Indian Institute of Technology- Madras (IIT-M) inaugurated the P G Senapathy Centre for computing resources in its campus here.The facility with a data centre has been set up at a cost of Rs 20 crore with the data centre coming up at an investment of Rs 2.5 crore and was inaugurated by Infosys CEO and Managing Director S Gopalakrishnan. The facility can house 12,000 CPUs and has a computing power of 10 peta flops.

convocation

The Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi is finding it tough to find quality faculty at the institute, said Director Surendra Prasad at the 38th convocation of the institute.Ramamurthy said increasing career options, attractive salaries in industry and globalisation of market for technically trained personnel were some of the factors dissuading students from taking up teaching careers. He stressed on setting up of a national structured faculty intern programme in leading institutions where promising graduates could be nurtured.guest at the event, said the Commission was likely to meet after August 15 to decide the financing pattern of the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) and firm up the action plan for improving the standard of higher and technical education.IIT awarded 1,380 degrees, including 140 PhD degrees. The institute also honoured five alumni with distinguished alumni and distinguished service awards and gave the degree of honoris causa to space scientist Dr U R Rao.

math Olympiad

In the 14th IMC which was held in Blagoevgrad University, Bulgaria, 140 teams from 36 reputable universities competed on 3-9 August, 2007. Hungarian students came in first and Moscow University students came in second.Iranian Olympiad competitors have swept eight medals and currently stand third in the International Mathematics Olympiad.

Arjuna awards 2006

Manavjit Singh Sandhu, who set the shooting rages ablaze with his record breaking feats in 2006, was today selected for the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, the country's highest sporting honour.Ace archer Jayanta Talukdar, athlete K M Binu, chess player P Harikrishna, shuttler Chetan Anand, woman cricketer Anjum Chopra and woman hockey player Jyoti Sunita Kullu were among the 14 selected for Arjuna awards 2006. The list of awardees was finalised by a 15-member committee headed by former Indian captain Kapil Dev and included renowned sports personalities like K Malleswari, P T Usha and Anjali Bhagwat. Former All England champion Prakash Padukone headed another 15-member committee, constituted to choose winners of Dronacharya award for coaches.Apart from Dravid and Jeev, Koneru Humpy (chess), M C Marykom (boxing), Gagan Narang and Samresh Jung (both shooters), Mahesh Bhupathi (tennis) were among the other nominees for the prestigious Khel Ratna award.The list of awardees: Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna: Manavjit Singh Sandhu
Arjuna Awards: P Harikrishna (chess), K M Binu (athletics), Vijender (boxing), Anjum Chopra (womens cricket), Jyoti Sunita Kullu (womens hockey), Chetan Anand (badminton), Jayanta Talukdar (archery), Navneet Gautam (kabaddi), Vijay Kumar (shooting), Saurav Ghosal (squash), Subhajit Saha (table tennis), Geeta Rani (womens weightlifting), Geetika Jhakar (womens wrestling) and Rohit Bhakaar (sport for physically challenged).
Dhayn Chand Awards: Varinder Singh (hockey), Shamsher Singh (kabaddi), Rajendra Singh (wrestling). Dronacharya Awards: R. D. Singh (athletics, paralympic), Damodaran Chandralal (boxing), Koneru Ashok (chess)

Ramon Magsaysay Award

Seven people from China, India, South Korea, Nepal and the Philippines will receive this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award.The awardees include an environmentalist, an AIDS activist, a blind lawyer - all from China - as well as a journalist who writes about India's rural poor, a South Korean pastor, a Nepalese educator and a former senator from the Philippines.The award, to be given out in Manila on Aug. 31, is named for Ramon Magsaysay, the late Philippine president. Some 256 Asians have received it in various categories since it was established in 1957.The Philippines's Jovito Salonga, a former senator, will receive the prize for government service. A staunch opponent of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, Salonga defended victims of the regime and led efforts to recover its stolen wealth.The Reverend Kim Sun Tae, from South Korea, will be honored for public service. Orphaned by the Korean War and blinded when he was young, Kim struggled to become a Christian pastor and helped found the Siloam Eye Hospital in Seoul that provides eye services to poor Koreans. More than 20,000 people have received free eye surgery.Mahabir Pun, awardee for community leadership, used wireless technology for the benefit of poor villages in Nepal. After 20 years in the United States, Pun returned to Nepal to help establish schools and, later, with donations of computers and wireless-communications gadgets from all over the world, helped hook these schools and villages to the Internet.Tang Xiyang is recognized with the prize for peace and international understanding. He was known for his "Green Camps," which have helped publicize the degradation of China's environment. The camps, in which environmentalists and students are dispatched to areas in China where the environment is at risk, have helped influence government policy, according to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.Palagummi Sainath, a journalist from India, will receive the prize for journalism, literature and creative communication arts. The foundation said Sainath had written passionately about India's poor and the injustices they suffer. Today, "his journalism workshops occur directly in the villages, where he teaches young protégés to identify and write good stories and to be agents of change," the foundation said.The awardees for emergent leadership are China's Chen Guangcheng and Chung To. Chen, who is blind, led the filing of a class-action lawsuit in 2004 against officials in rural Shandong Province for, among other complaints, coercing women into having late-term abortions or sterilization. Chen publicized his case, eliciting a backlash from officials that later put him in jail, where he is serving a four-year sentence for "inciting a mob" of supporters.

More language courses for JNU

Jawaharlal Nehru University is keen on expanding its School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies in a major way by bringing more Indian and foreign languages within its purview.In its 11th Plan recently submitted to the University Grants Commission (UGC), JNU has sought expansion of the School and introduction of more languages.the School has also demanded an increase in the number of students being admitted to Korean, Japanese and Chinese languages.In addition to introducing Swahili language, the School is also looking forward to further expanding teaching of languages like Turkish, Bhasha Indonesia, Italian and Portuguese that are till now being offered as part-time programmes.The University has also asked for further expansion and technological upgrading of the Language lab.

Compartmental Examination Result

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) announced the Compartmental Examination Results for Senior School Certificate Examination (Class XII) 2007. Students have done little well in the exam as compared to last year. The pass percentage of class XII compartment exam last year was 75.21, while this year it is 75.96.Out of 45,792 candidates who appeared in the exam this year across the country, 34,782 candidates cleared it. In Delhi, out of 15,693 students, 12,819 candidates passed the exam. The exam was conducted in 282 centres which included 22 centres in foreign land.