Olympiad Programmes For Remote Regions

With nearly zero student representation in the international Olympiads from regions like Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal and the north-East states, the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) has decided to start exposure-cum-training camps for schools and colleges from these areas.HBCSE is the country’s nodal centre for Olympiad programmes in Mathematics, the Sciences and Astronomy. The programmes aim at promoting excellence in Science and Mathematics among pre-university students. HBCSE have decided to start a large number of exposure camps for school and college teachers of regions which are rarely represented in these competitions. HBCSE want students to consider a career in Science. Another objective is to drive up the higher secondary science education in our country by training science teachers.Teachers from schools and colleges in these areas lack in expertise and training required to handle tough competitions like the Olympiads. Some may not be even aware of this event. Another reason could be insurgency and violence in places like Jammu and Kashmir and some pockets of Assam.Another focus area will be interior regions in states like Bihar and Chhattisgarh. The camps will start by the end of November. Teachers will be exposed to the experimental programmes at HBCSE; training will be conducted and some of the experimental kits will be given to the teachers.The Olympiads have a rigorous, three-tier selection process, which includes a nationwide examination. Around 35 students are selected to participate in an intensive “orientation-cum-selection camp” at HBCSE, after which the final team is shortlisted.The HBCSE has written to the respective state education departments, Kendriya Vidyalayas, Indo-Tibetan schools and Sainik schools, asking them to help identify teachers to attend the camp.

Regional Mathematical Olympiad

The Regional Mathematical Olympiad , sponsored by the National Board for Higher Mathematics and coordinated by the Department of Mathematics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, will be held on December 5 at several centres in Kerala.The olympiad is meant for talented students from Class X to XII and is the first stage for selecting an Indian team for the International Mathematical Olympiad to be held in the Netherlands in July in 2011. The first five rank holders will get cash awards sponsored by KSCSTE and prizes from Prof C S Venkataraman Memorial. Applications with details such as name, class, address and email should be forwarded by principals of recognised schools, along with DD for `30 each entry in favour of Regional Coordinator, INMO, payable at any bank in Kochi, should reach P M Mathew, Department of Mathematics, St Joseph's College, Devagiri, Kozhikode 673008, before October 25. For an information brochure and old question papers, send a selfaddressed, `25stamped envelope of size 10 x 8 to A Vijayakumar, Regional Coordinator INMO, Department of Mathematics, Cusat, Kochi 22 or call 09447608851, or mail to vambat@gmail.com.

Autonomy for IIT, IIM

The finance ministry has rejected a long-standing demand of the IITs and the IIMs seeking freedom from government interference in creating faculty posts. HRD ministry had proposed the IITs, IIMs and other top technical education institutions be allowed to create teaching posts on their own, while keeping the ratio of teaching to non-teaching posts intact.The HRD minister has on occasions over the past year said he wants to increasingly grant autonomy to the IITs and the IIMs.This proposal was aimed at freeing up some of the country’s best higher educational institutions to create faculty jobs based on their needs at a time rather than on bureaucratic norms.The proposal was seen as critical because of the Foreign Education Providers Bill, that will allow foreign varsities to enter India.Freeing up creation of faculty jobs at the IITs and IIMs would have helped them compete better with foreign universities that enjoy this freedom.The IITs and the IIMs have on occasions lost out on hiring renowned experts in a department because of no vacancies at the appropriate post.The percentage of vacancies in teaching posts varies from 15 per cent to 40 per cent across the IITs and the IIMs.The National Institutes of Technology (NITs), which were to be also covered under the HRD ministry proposal, also face a huge faculty shortage.

Proficiency Test System (PTS)

The CBSE has decided to introduce an optional “proficiency test” in June 2011 for those students who will clear Class X in March 2011 on the new pattern of continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) rather than traditional board examination.Proficiency Test System (PTS) and would be available for the class X students who opted for continuous and comprehensive evaluation last year. PTS would not be a compulsion. Only interested students would opt for the same and take the test accordingly in June. PTS would be available in all subjects namely, English, Maths, Science, Social Studies and Hindi. The test would contain multiple-choice questions. However, the number of questions and the duration of the paper are yet to be finalised. The board is also trying to figure out whether the candidate could take the test online or not. The question papers would be set by institutions of repute. While Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages would prepare the questionnaire for English, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, be responsible for Science and Maths question papers. The board has also contacted Indian Council For Social Science Research and Central Hindi Institute for social studies and Hindi respectively.

IIT-JEE REFORM

Rajiv Kumar, professor of computer science at IIT Kharagpur, has submitted proposal for IIT-JEE reform.Kumar has not suggested 70% marks in class XII as the eligibility condition to appear for IIT-JEE.Kumar has suggested a single examination -- replacing IIT-JEE, AIEEE and all other states' JEEs -- by which a student, after securing a UID card, can have both all-India as well as state rank. A single (all-India level and state level each) merit list should be prepared by which one can seek admission in one of the engineering colleges, including IITs, IISERs, NITs, IIITs, states and others.there should be three sittings of the same examination conducted thrice over a fortnight or a month. An aggregated score over three sittings of the examination should be considered for the final ranking. The single test, Kumar has proposed, should be conducted with four subjects of PCMA (physics, chemistry, mathematics and aptitude) with equal weightage for all the four. There should not be any additional test to test PCMA/PCMB, which is already tested by the single test. The new proposal also says that the curriculum for entrance test should have more stress on the Plus 2 syllabus. He has argued that the skewed marks distribution in IITs is due to the fact that questions are unnecessarily complex; questions do not test much of analytical or conceptual knowledge; questions do not have proper coverage. Therefore, his proposal says, care should be taken on setting correct, unambiguous and within the syllabi Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs). It says proper and balanced questions of Plus Two standard should be set. This will reduce dependence on coaching and students will concentrate on the school level examination.

common entrance examination

Union human resources development ministry has finalised a proposal for single entrance exam for all engineering institutes like IITs, NITs and engineering colleges across the country. The proposal is likely to be put before the HRD council.HRD ministry is expected to push for a common entrance examination test for all engineering institutes in the country, effectively doing away with the IIT-JEE. HRD council is the highest decision making body of the premiere institution. The step of the HRD ministry assumes significance as an IIT directors’ committee had recommended a two-tier entrance exam structure for the prestigious institutes.

Sahal Kaush

Delhi boy Sahal Kaush has cracked the IIT-JEE exam at the age of 14 this year. He has taken admission in an undergraduate course at the IIT institute in Kanpur. Kaushik, who had secured the 33rd rank at all-India level in the IIT-JEE exam this year, has opted for the five-year integrated MSc (Physics) course.There is no age limit for admission into undergraduate courses. A student has to be intermediate pass only. Sahal is the youngest student to take admission in the IIT this year. He completed his class 12 from Vandana International School in Dwarka, Delhi, securing 78 per cent marks.

AIEEE CCB

According to the new system outlined by the Central Counselling Board (CCB) of AIEEE, students allotted a seat in any round till the first three rounds of counselling will have to take provisional admission. This change practically extinguishes the option that the students so far had, that of moving to a better institute and a branch of their choice even after reporting for admission. Under the new rules, there is room only for 'internal sliding' (movement of position within the institute) that can be availed of, with the option of movement across NITs over. In short, it will leave students trapped in NITs not necessarily of their choice: an irony in an age where there is so much of premium on choice. With results of third round of counselling to come on Sunday, students from all over the country have launched online protests (protestagainstccb.webs.com and entrancecorner.com) demanding a change in the rules so that deserving students get NITs of their choice. Students have even found a major inconsistency in CCB's argument that "sliding" will be possible within the institution. "If a student cannot change his institution how will a seat be vacated to upgrade any other student's branch," asks one student. The third flaw being pointed out is that after the fourth round of counselling, not so popular branches in top NITs will still be vacant and these will go to low-ranked students. Upgradation in the same NIT, students say, can also create a situation of a low-ranker getting a better branch. How? Students explain it through an illustration. Suppose a student with an AIR of 6,500 gets computer engineering in NIT Durgapur and another student with AIR 6,000 gets computer engineering in NIT Allahabad. In case the second student chooses to join any other engineering college like IIT, BITS and others, the vacancy in Allahabad will go to a student within the institute, whatever be his rank, and not to someone with a better rank. Students feel the flaw can still be rectified. They say there will be a large number of dropout seats after the fourth round of counselling since many students who have got through to other engineering colleges will wait till that round. But the vacancies thus created will not help students who have already taken admission in NITs after the third or fourth round. Therefore, students have demanded open upgradation — from one institute to another. They also want CCB to allow one round of counselling after refunds have been made to those who did not take admission.

UKTU DEHRADUN, COUNSELLING

The Uttarakhand Technical University, Dehradun has announced its counselling program for the admissions in the first year of B.Tech. course conducted by UKTU and its affiliated colleges. According to an advertisement released by UKTU, the admissions will be based on the state ranks of AIEEE 2010. Hence, the candidates appeared and qualified the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (organized by CBSE) 2010 – and who are domicile of Uttarakhand (UK) state or have passed 10+2 from any institute of UK, are eligible for admission in B.Tech. in UKTU.The UKTU counselling for various branches of B.Tech. first year will held between 8th July and 8th August 2010. The candidates can get all related information from the website ukcounseling.nic.in, which is currently under construction. The counselling fee will be accepted through bank challan. The counselling will be held in three phases starting from 8th July.If you have not appeared in AIEEE, you can still have a chance to get into engineering colleges of Uttarakhand. UKTU will consider such students during third phase of counselling starting from 2nd August.After the last date of online registration on 20th July, students will be allotted seats which will be informed through SMS on 21st July and reporting date will begin from 22nd to 25th of July. Candidate should note that their User-id or login id is their Roll number and candidates should not enter any special characters in address field to avoid error message during registration.Candidates who have deposited fee before 14th can register now, for others bank data will be available shortly. Candidate has to type his full 9 digit transaction id and transaction date at time of counselling For such students, the merit will be generated according to the 10+2 marks. Students are advised to follow these websites for more information: uktech.in, ukcounseling.nic.in, uk.gov.in/uktu.

http://gov.ua.nic.in/uktu/documents/AIEEE_2010_Counseling.pdf

Tathagat Avtar Tulsi

He completed high school at the age of 9, had a B.Sc at 10, an M.Sc in Physics at 12, and a PhD in Quantum Computing from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, at 21. In 2003, Time named him among the world’s seven most gifted youngsters. Now, at age 22, Patna-born prodigy Tathagat Avtar Tulsi has become possibly the youngest assistant professor at IIT. Tulsi will teach Physics at IIT Bombay from July 19, having chosen the institute over Waterloo University, Canada, and the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER), Bhopal, both of which had offered him jobs.

Mission-Ascribed Career

With 16 of its alumni having made it to the Civil Services this year and another 152 having cracked the IIT-JEE, the government-run Navodaya schools have set their aim higher, at a figure of 10,000. Tying up with coaching institutes and tutorial centres, the chain of 560-plus Jawahar Navodaya schools spread across the country plans to help that many of its Class XII students clear national- and state-level competitive entrance examinations annually. Under the new scheme tentatively christened ‘Mission-Ascribed Career’, the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS) will chart out everything from coaching to loans at concessional rates for its students. The 16 alumni who cleared the UPSC Civil Services exam made it to the Indian Revenue Service and Indian Forest Service, apart from other allied services. If some cleared the IIT-JEE, other students secured admission to regional engineering colleges through high scores in the AIEEE and other examinations. Still others cleared medical entrance exams to prestigious colleges.

DU to offer MSc Earth Science course

The Delhi University will offer a five-year integrated MSc Earth Science programme from this year. The course will be conducted by the Department of Geology and will be supported by other departments under the Faculty of Science. The duration of the course is 10 semesters spread over five academic sessions. The number of seats for the course is 25. Candidates who have passed the 10+2 exams in Science will be considered eligible for admission to the course. The admission will be open in two categories for students.
Category-1 will include those who have taken the IIT-JEE. These aspirants will have to submit their score with their application.
Category-2 will be those who don’t have their IIT-JEE score but have passed their 10+ 2 exam with Mathematics.
Initially, the admission will be on the basis of IIT-JEE merit list. However, depending on the vacancies available, students of Category-2 will be also considered for admission. Application forms can be downloaded from the university website, (http://www.du.ac.in).

Coaching Centres To Turn Into Colleges

State government has granted an IIT coaching class permission to convert all its six centres in Mumbai into full-fledged junior colleges. IITian's Pace. It has started a charitable trust, Pace Education Trust, which will run the new junior colleges. The government feels with a large number of students applying for the science stream, there is a need for more science colleges. Hence, the special permission for Pace to start Class XI from the academic year 2010-'11. The new junior colleges will be permanently unaided. In addition to physics, chemistry and math, subjects that are already being taught at the six centres, Pace will now hire language teachers for the colleges.

TUSSLE OVER IIT TOPER

HRD ministry has ordered a CBI inquiry into specific allegations against two IIT coaching institutes FIITJEE and Aakash Institute for misusing the name of Nitin Jain, topper of IITJEE and AIEEE in 2009, for commercial gains.HRD ministry has already set in motion the process of change in JEE to break the stranglehold of coaching institutes. Though the initial inquiry might be limited to these two institutes, sources said making false claims about toppers is quite widespread.The HRD ministry's action comes in the wake of a complaint by Chiranji Lal Jain, father of Nitin Jain, to Sibal seeking his intervention.

IIT-JEE REFORM

The IIT-JEE panel committee comprising of IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Madras, and IIT-Bombay and IIT-Roorkee directors submitted a report insisting on 70 percent weightage to be given to Class XII performance of students while selecting them for admission to any one of the 15 IITs.The panel committee further said for IIT-JEE entrance test to be replaced by a National Aptitude Test (NAT) which will be considered as a comprehensive examination to test the students’ inner talent abilities than confining it to certain specific subjects or objective type questions.The NAT examination being put forward for consideration by the ministry will have questions from all streams of Std XII level, Science and Humanities. About 40,000 students will be shortlisted, who secure good scores in NAT for once again attempting an add-on test to be eligible for admission to any of the 15 IITs.Now, the IITs are acquiring students on the basis of cut-off percent prepared in view of the marks scored by students in IIT Joint Entrance Examination. Consideration of Class XII marks in the cut-off would ensure that meritorious students get into the IIT stream.The HRD ministry and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) seem headed for a confrontation over drastic examination reforms proposed by a panel of IIT directors. The ministry is unlikely to allow the IITs a two-tier entrance exam structure, as proposed by a panel headed by IIT-Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya.The two-tier structure suggested by the IITs comprises a common aptitude test and an additional test for those who cross the first hurdle. The additional test was proposed to accommodate the faculty, who are against scrapping the JEE. Over 1,300 IIT alumni too have petitioned the government against abolishing the JEE. But it had also said it needed further consultations with stakeholders and may fine-tune its recommendations. After the faculty opposed scrapping JEE, the panel suggested an additional test. It hoped JEE could continue as this additional test.

AIEEE 2010 COUNSELLING

Few important dates of the admission procedure are listed below:
AIEEE Online Registration and Choice Filling: Jun 8 to Jun 23, 2010
AIEEE Locking of Choices: Jun 12 to Jun 23 June, 2010
First Round Seat Allotment: Jun 25, 2010
Second round of seat allotment: Jul 4, 2010
Third round of seat allotment: Jul 11, 2010
Fourth round of seat allotment: Jul 22, 2010
Fifth round of seat allotment: Aug 3, 2010

John Torrence Tate

US mathematician John Torrence Tate, cited for “his vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers,” received Norway’s Abel Prize, dubbed the Nobel Prize for mathematics.Norwegian King Harald handed over the prize, worth 6 million kroner (900,000 dollars), at a ceremony in Oslo.During his 60—year career, Dr. Tate has contributed to research ranging from “the mysteries of prime numbers to the ways in which we store, transmit and secure information in modern computers.Several mathematical concepts have been named after him, including the Tate module, Tate curve, Tate cycle, Hodge—Tate decompositions, Tate cohomology, Serre—Tate parameter and Lubin—Tate group.Dr. Tate, 85, received his PhD from Princeton University in 1950.His academic career included a position at Columbia University and a 36—year stint at Harvard University. In 1990, he took up a position as a mathematics professor at the University of Texas, from which he recently retired.The Abel Prize was first awarded in 2003.It had been created a year earlier to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Niels Henrik Abel. He is considered to be Norway’s greatest mathematician, even though he died at age 26.Last year, the prize was awarded to Russian—born Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov of France.

ANUPAM NEHA

Like last year the topper of the Class-X Bihar School Examination Board once again hailed from Nalanda.Five of the six top candidates are girls. What is more, like the first topper, Anupam Neha, the fifth ranked, Khusboo Kumari, is also from the same school, S S High School, Biharsharif. So Nalanda, as a district, is fast emerging as the Neterhat of pre-Jharkhand days as there are more candidates from the district in the top ten position.

NPTEL

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has made it mandatory for engineering institutes in Mumbai and across the country to use the online lectures and study material designed by the IIT.The material available online is under the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a joint venture by the seven IITs - Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Roorkee and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.At present, nearly 150 engineering institutes across the country access the material free of cost on You Tube and other sites.AICTE has even asked the institutes to update their libraries accordingly. This access will be free of cost.The IIT online course content would also help students in our engineering colleges to enhance their knowledge.The idea is to cater to the large number of students who are unable to attend scholarly institutions. Through NPTEL, they will now have an access to quality content from IIT.IITs are also implementing the second phase of the project and plan to introduce around 950 courses in basic sciences and engineering, within the next two years on NPTEL.In the first phase of NPTEL, 250 courses have been developed. Around 4,500 hours of this content is available online for free. NPTEL, a project by IIT, was launched around four years ago to improve the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum-based video and web courses.It was started along the lines of Open Courseware by MIT in the US. However, access to this content was charged. Now, it can be accessed freely on the Web. NPTEL has 4,400 videos on YouTube for 120 courses .

IIT-JEE 2010

The Delhi High Court refused to stay declaration of results of prestigious IIT Joint Entrance Examination for 2010-11 on the allegations that there were errors in instructions in question papers and a faulty marking system was adopted by the organizing committee for the tests.A division bench of acting Chief Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Mukta Gupta declined to stay the declaration of IIT-JEE (joint entrance examination) result but directed the IIT to explain by way of affidavit how the mistakes occurred. 'Demonstrate to us the software with which you set these papers and also how the papers are scrutinized,' the court said when the counsel for IIT claimed that their system is foolproof and is up to standard. The High Court also declined to give a direction to IIT for holding the examination afresh. "We are dismissing the applications (for staying the declaration of results and conducting afresh the entrance tests)," a Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Mukta Gupta said on two separate PILs filed in this regard.The court directed the IIT to file an affidavit by June 2. The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) of a non-government organization (NGO) that has sought a stay on the declaration of result of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) entrance exam held April 11. Raising the issue of errors in the instructions for examinees who took the IIT-JEE in Hindi, the NGO, Satya Foundation, filed the PIL. Chetan Upadhyaya, secretary and counsel of Satya Foundation, submitted before the court a list of serious blunders in the IIT-JEE 2010 and said that instead of accepting the faults and re-conducting the examination, the Joint Admission Board was trying to cover up the issue with 'corrective measures' which are 'totally illogical and can't be digested by anybody'. 'The IIT-JEE board evolved corrective measures May 2 to ensure that genuine candidates were not affected by the examination errors. It formulated a point-by-point remedial action and posted the same on the IIT-JEE website,' Upadhyaya argued. However, after dismissal of Upadhyaya's petition, he said he will approach the Supreme Court. The results were scheduled to be declared on May 26. However, the court kept the petitions filed on the issue pending by directing the IIT's organizing committee for JEE to demonstrate before it on June 2 the software adopted for evaluation of answer sheets. The IITJEE exam is conducted by the IIT on rotation basis for admission into various IITs. As on today there are 15 IITs [7 Old IIT and 8 new IIT] in addition to these students get admission into IT BHU Varanasi and ISMU Dhanbad by qualifying the IIT JEE examination.The Lakhs of students appeared for the admission into the IITs and related institutes by cracking the IIT JEE 2010. There candidates selected for the admission into the IIT JEE will be called for the counselling and choices will be filled by the students and on the basis of the availability the students will be alloted the IIT and courses in IIT.The students qualifying in IIT JEE 2010 will get admission into the IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Guwahati, IIT Roorkee, IIT Mandi, IIT Ropar, IIT Jodhpur, IIT gandhinagar, IIT Indore, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Patna, IIT Bhubaneshwar, IT BHU Varanasi and ISMU Dhanbad for more than 10000 seats of undergraduate courses, integrated courses, dual degree programs etc.

Janvi Thoshani---all-India ICSE topper

For the third year in a row, Mumbai has produced the all-India topper at the Indian School Certificate Examinations (ICSE). Janvi Thoshani, a student of Lilavatibai Podar School, Santacruz, scored 98.80% (English plus best of four subjects), making it a hattrick for Mumbai. Last year, Mumbai student Rishi Mehta topped the board with 98.2 per cent. Her score — she got 100 marks in four out of seven subjects — is the board’s highest ever. Thosani is planning to study chartered accountancy.

KOLKATA TOPPER

ISC topper Sreya is a student of Mahadevi Birla Shishu Vihar. Though she got to know from the council website that she had scored 98.75%, she had no clue for quite some time that she was the board topper. Sreya shared the honours with Sumedha Rai of St Anthony’s Junior College, Agra. She wants to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a chartered accountant. Punit, who stood second in ICSE, is a student of Bhawanipore Education Society. His score of 98.6% was just a shade lower than the country record of 98.8%, secured by a girl from Lilavati Poddar School, Mumbai. An extremely studious boy, Punit worked very hard for his brilliant results.

मैट्रिक परीक्षा

.बिहार विद्यालय परीक्षा समिति की 10वीं क्लास का परिणाम शनिवार को घोषित कर दिया गया। इस वर्ष भी छात्राओं ने बाजी मारी है। मैट्रिक के नतीजे में टॉप टेन में 7 छात्राएं शामिल हैं। इतना ही नहीं पहला और दूसरा स्थान भी छात्रा अनुपम नेहा और खुशबू ने हासिल किया है। बिहारशरीफ के एस.एस.ग‌र्ल्स हाई स्कूल की छात्रा अनुपम नेहा 92.8 प्रतिशत अंक हासिल कर नया इतिहास बनाया है। इसके साथ ही इस वर्ष भी सर्वोच्च अंक लाने वाले पहले तीन परीक्षार्थी छोटे शहर से हैं।इस वर्ष सर्वोच्च अंक लाने वाली अनुपम नेहा नालंदा के एस.एस. बालिका उच्च विद्यालय की छात्रा हैं। वहीं दूसरे स्थान पर हैं जो खुशबू कुमारी कटिहार के सोनाली उच्च विद्यालय की छात्रा हैं। इसी तरह तृतीय स्थान पाने वाले राहुल कुमार भी नवादा टीं आईं बीं उच्च विद्यालय के छात्र हैं। पिछले वर्ष की परीक्षा में प्रथम तीन स्थान प्राप्त करने वाले छात्र-छात्राएं क्रमश: पालीगंज, रोसड़ा और अंदौर (समस्तीपुर) के थे।इस वर्ष 10वीं की परीक्षा में 70.90 फीसदी छात्र-छात्राएं सफल रहे। पिछले वर्ष 68.28 फीसदी परीक्षार्थी उत्तीर्ण हुए थे।परीक्षा में कुल 9,74,340 विद्यार्थी शामिल हुए, जिसमें छात्रों की संख्या 5,66,792 एवं छात्राओं की 4,00,850 है। 6,86,109 छात्र-छात्राओं ने सफलता हासिल की, जिनका प्रतिशत 70.90 है। लगभग 3 लाख छात्र-छात्राएं असफल रहे। टॉप -5 1. अनुपम नेहा-एसएस गर्ल्स हाईस्कूल,बिहारशरीफ -464 2.खुशबू कुमारी-एएल हाईस्कूल, सोनाली,कटिहार -463 3.राहुल कुमार-टीवी हाईस्कूल,गोविंदपुर,नवादा -456 4.नंदिता कुमारी-हाईस्कूल,बिंद,नालंदा-455 5.खुशबू कुमारी- एसएस गर्ल्स स्कूल,बिहारशरीफ 453.

Orissa Civil Services 2006

Orissa Public Service Commission declared much-awaited result for Orissa Civil Services 2006. This year 378 candidates have qualified for the elite posts. Sambit Kumar Gadnayak has topped the list whereas Aneeta Panda has secured the second spot.About 4,500 eligible candidates had appeared for the main examination. The OPSC had to re-conduct the main examination following a directive on May last year by Orissa High Court cancelling the previously declared results in which 3,730 candidates had appeared the test.Earlier in March 2006, the government had made a requisition to OPSC for recruitment of at least 400 class II posts, including 100 OAS and an equal number of OFS officers. These vacancies were lying since 2000.. There are 378 candidates Qualify in the examination .there are 162 candidates are woman.List of top 10 in the Examination.Sambit Kumar Gadnayak (Toper),Anita panda (female toper),Indira sahoo,Satyajit Rout,Debi Prasad Mohanty,Gopinath Kanhar,Surendra Nayak,Amibika Prasad Dash ,Ashish Kumar Dash,Trilochan Mohanty.

Perfect score

100 is a score that most students aim for in Mathematics. However, unlike last year when 707 students across the country had managed to achieve the score, only 160 managed to get full marks this year in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) class 12 exams.Of these, only 53 students in Delhi have scored 100 in Mathematics.The Board, however, said the figures do not reflect the overall performance of the students. Students who managed to score a perfect 100 said that though some questions were a little ‘tricky’, overall the paper was quite easy.Among others who scored the full marks in Mathematics are Sneha Aggarwal, a student of Rukmini Devi Memorial School, Pitampura and Vaishali Garga of DPS, R.K. Puram who are two of the three toppers in Delhi with a score of 97.2 per cent.Some of the other subjects in which the students scored the maximum marks are Geography, Economics, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Business Studies, Accountancy and English Core.

CBSE RESULT

The overall pass percentage of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 12 board exams saw a drop of 1.13 percent. The board results were declared in Delhi, Guwahati and Allahabad.The overall pass percentage was 79.87 percent compared to 81 percent last year.The pass percentage for girls was 85.28 percent, compared to 75.90 percent for boys.The results, which were uploaded on the board's website www.cbse.nic.in were declared for the three zones at 8 am. In Ajmer, Chennai and Panchkula regions, the results were declared on Wednesday.The overall pass percentage was the highest in Chennai - 92.12 percent.The pass percentage for regular students was 81.95 percent while it was 41.99 percent for those who studied through correspondence.This year, 699,129 students - 408,367 boys and 290,762 girls - took the Class 12 board exams in the country and abroad.

IPhO 2010

Sarda from Mumbai, Mehul Kumar from Jaipur; Sanchar Sharma from Jodhpur; Shivam Handa from Delhi and Vipul Singh from Bhilai will all represent India in the 41st IPhO 2010 to be held in Zagreb, Croatia, from July 17 to 25. About 36,000 students from across the nation participated in the first level examination. Of these, 312 were selected to move up to the next level, the Indian National Physics Olympiad (INPhO) examination. The INPhO examination was conducted in 15 centres across the nation and 37 students were selected to participate in an intensive training camp from May 4 to 17. On Monday, the five finalists were declared. In physics, India has been faring rather well at the Olympiads — since some years, the Indian team's tally has remained similar , it has bagged four gold medals and a silver.

CIVIL SERVICES 2009

A KASHMIRI aspirant Shah Faesal, a doctor by training, has topped the list of 875 candidates, who have cleared the Civil Services Exam held in 2009-2010. Prakash Rajpurohit, a BTech from the II T Delhi, has bagged the second position while. Iva Sahay from the JNU has secured the third position who is also the topper among women candidates. A total of 680 male and 195 female candidates have been recommended for appointment to the prized Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, Indian Police Service and other central services. A total of 30 physically challenged candidates passed the test.This year 21 Muslim candidates could make it through this prestigious competitive exams.The number of vacancies reported by the Government for the Indian Administrative Service is 131 (66 General, 38 Other Backward Classes, 18 Scheduled Castes and 09 Scheduled Tribes); for the Indian Foreign Service is 30 (15 General, 10 Other Backward Classes, 01 Scheduled Castes and 04 Scheduled Tribe); for the Indian Police Service is 150 (77 General, 39 Other Backward Classes, 21 Scheduled Castes and 13 Scheduled Tribes); for the Central Services Group ‘A' is 582 (298 General, 159 Other Backward Classes, 81 Scheduled Castes and 44 Scheduled Tribes) and for Central Services Group ‘B' is 96 (57 General, 27 Other Backward Classes, 06 Scheduled Castes and 06 Scheduled Tribes). This includes 30 vacancies for Physically Challenged candidates.

World Robot Olympiad

Over 2,000 students from 40 countries will take part in an international robot olympiad to be held here in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2011.The students will be required to identify robot hardware, according to specific mechanisms and functions and to programme robots through voices and movements that would be received by the robots through sensors.The robot olympiad would promote creativity and competition for students of all levels. The competition will have two categories - regular and open. The regular category requires participants to solve basic problems within a set time period, while the open category will require students to assemble robots under a certain theme. The 2010 edition of the world robot olympiad will be held in Manila in November.

44th international chemistry Olympiad

The 44th international chemistry Olympiad named after renowned Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleyev will held in Baku on April 27-May 3.Along with Azerbaijani schoolchildren, the Olympiad will bring together schoolchildren from CIS member states, the Baltic, Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia.Over the past 10 year, the International Mendeleyev Olympiad was held in Russia, Kazakhstan, Moldavia, Tajikistan, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Azerbaijan last hosted the Olympiad in 2000.

11th Asia Physics Olympiad (APhO)

The 11th Asia Physics Olympiad (APhO) started in Taipei on Saturday, with 181 students and their teachers from 16 countries or region.Teams from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka.China is absent from the competition .China had participated in all past Olympiads when the host was not Taiwan, which also held the competition in 2001.Taiwanese students amassed five gold, one silver, four bronze and six honor medals at the 11th Asia Physics Olympiad.

Math explains HIV immunity

A mathematical model has revealed part of the secret to why some people infected with HIV never get sick providing a new target in the attempt to harness that ability in a vaccine., Arup Chakraborty from MIT and his colleagues went after the question using mathematical models, which, according to Chakraborty, are well suited for investigating complex evolving systems like the immune system.Chakraborty and his colleagues used their model to predict that the HLA-B57 subtype can bind to fewer self-peptides than other subtypes. As a result, this subtype trains T cells against fewer self-peptides.The researchers tested their model against samples taken from HIV patients, and found that, in those that tended to progress in their disease, their HLAs were also able to bind to more self-peptides.

Shankar Balasubramanian

Chennai-born Shankar Balasubramanian of Cambridge University has been named Innovator of the Year by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Britain's leading agency for academic research and training in non-clinical life sciences.He has been awarded £10,000 in recognition of his work on Solexa sequencing, the high speed genome sequencing technology. The award, now in its second year, is meant to encourage research that has practical impact on quality of life.Professor Balasubramanian, whose parents moved to Britain a year after he was born, graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and went on to do a PhD. He worked with David Klenerman of the department of chemistry, to invent low-cost and high-speed genome sequencing technology.

Perfect Rigor: A Genius And The Mathematical Breakthrough Of The Century By Masha Gessen,

This is the biography of one of the greatest living mathematicians, Grigory Perelman. The biography proceeds from a paradox: despite the fact that the subject is still alive, he has not been interviewed or spoken to. This peculiarity is not for the want of trying on the part of the biographer, Masha Gessen. It is totally to do with the personality of Perelman who, after he solved one of the toughest mathematical problems, became a recluse, refusing to meet anyone. He even refused the Fields Medal (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics) and a prize of $1 million.In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute in Boston had announced a prize of a million dollars to anyone who could solve the seven great unsolved problems of mathematics. One of these problems is a classic of mathematical topology and is known as the Poincaré Conjecture. It is named after Henri Poincaré who formulated it in 1904. The Conjecture had been worked on by many famous mathematicians and had been the subject of many false proofs. It was finally solved in 2006 by Perelman.Gessen’s marvellous book on a difficult subject and a difficult person is based on very detailed research. She has spoken to almost everyone who knows or knew Perelman — his classmates, teachers, coaches, teammates and colleagues in Russia and the United States of America. She was aided in her research by her own background. She is herself a mathematical whiz raised in Russia.One great advantage of this book is that it demands no knowledge of maths, but an interest in it

No compulsory Punjabi in schools

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has refused to accept the Punjab government’s demand to make Punjabi language compulsory up to Class X in schools in Chandigarh and Punjab. The Board has said the language was optional and would remain so.
Recently, the Punjab government had sent a written communication to the CBSE at its regional centre in Panchkula, asking it to make the language compulsory.

CBSE class X examination

As many as 9.25 lakh candidates will be appearing in CBSE class X examination beginning March 3 across the country under the new grading system.More than 6.99 lakh candidates will also take their class XII examination which start on the same day.According to CBSE, the number of students appearing for the class X examination is 8.65 per cent more than last year. Among the candidates, 5,33,715 are boys and 3,68,802 are girls.The examination will be held in 12,303 schools and centres across the country.The class XII examination will see a 8.80 per cent increase in number of students sitting for the examination.The Board has for the first time decided to provide class X question papers of Mathematics and Science for blind candidates.In Delhi, 2.47 students will sit for the class X examination, and 1.99 lakh will sit for the class XII examination. This is an increase of 6.32 per cent and 9.28 per cent respectively compared to last year.There would be 13,311 students appearing for the class X examination in 56 foreign centres and 8,596 candidates appearing for the class XII examination in 45 foreign centres.

Charles K. Megibben

Charles K. Megibben, who played a major role in developing the mathematics department of Vanderbilt University into a major research center, has died. He was 73 . Megibben, an internationally acknowledged leader in the theory of abelian groups, a major field of algebra, died March 2 in Nashville while undergoing heart surgery. He was a professor of mathematics, emeritus.Megibben became a professor of mathematics, emeritus, in 2005. Megibben was a popular professor among students, known for writing and distributing lecture notes to his classes instead of using published textbooks and spending time with students in his office answering math questions.

Class XII score to add 'weight' to IIT -JEE

The government set up a committee to suggest reforms in the IIT entrance examination .Committee was set up under IIT Kharagpur Director Prof. Damodar Acharya to study the existing JEE structure and suggest improvement in it. The committee will submit its report in three months. It is expected to suggest on how to consider the Class XII marks of students while preparing the cut-off for the admission into these 15 elite institutes.The committee will look into the issue of factoring in Class XII examination result in the cut-off for admission into IITs. Currently, 60% is the requirement for appearing for IIT-JEE. Then a cut-off is decided every year for IIT-JEE. Class XII results are being factored to break the stranglehold of coaching centres. In the last meeting of the IIT Council, there was consensus that more weightage be given to the school-leaving examination. Consideration of Class XII marks in the cut-off would ensure that meritorious students get into the IIT stream. The institutes will also suggest how to expand their infrastructure incrementally. A committee under Prof. Anand Krishnan was set up to study this issue and give recommendations. Suggestions were also made to have a structured credit transfer system in the IITs to enable students of IITs to migrate to other institutes. Government asked the IITs to explore setting up a secretariat for their marketing. The government also set up a separate committee under IIT Guwahati Director Prof. Gautam Baruah to suggest improvement in the governance in the IITs.This committee will study the relationship of the IITs with the government and suggest how to have better correlation. Government asked the IITs how they could increase their linkages to school children and with technical institutions and universities. government is planning to set up a Higher Education Funding Corporation, which would provide assistance to poor students. The proposal on fee hike would be discussed after the corporation is set up. IIT Kanpur had prepared a detailed proposal on hiking the tuition fee. At present, B.Tech students are paying Rs 50,000 per year as fee. The proposal suggested increasing the fee to Rs 4 lakh per annum over a period of ten years. At the last meeting of IIT Council, the apex body to decision on IIT issues, discussions were held on giving more weightage to marks obtained in school-leaving examinations while selecting students.

IIT-JEE 2010

The founder of Patna-based 'Super 30' coaching institute, which offers free coaching along with food and accommodation to 30 students from economically backward classes to help them crack the IIT-JEE, met Prime Minister in New Delhi and requested him to come up with schemes under which coachings can be provided on the lines of Super 30 to shape the career of poor students.The Super 30 was started by Kumar along with Bihar's Additional Director-General of Police Abhayanand in 2002 in Patna. But two years ago Abhayanand dissociated himself from the institute. He said that the ministry of human resources development should lay emphasis on two different syllabi, keeping in view different sets of students- one for ordinary students and other for gifted students. The syllabus for bright students should provide non routine challenging problems, so that they could develop deep insight into the subjects at an early stage. He requested him to allow poor students three chances to appear in the IIT JEE test instead of two keeping in view the vast disparity in the quality of education in cities and villages. Kumar also suggested a number of changes in the IIT entrance system as rural students face difficulty to solve Olympiad level problems in IIT JEE entrances despite sound subject knowledge of class 12 level. Kumar demanded that along with the IIT-JEE results, the extended merit list (EML) of around 50,000 students is also published. This will becomes a tool in the hands of coaching institutes to take gullible students from rural areas for a ride. They showcase EML results as IIT-JEE results. Therefore, IIT should release EML results after a few days of IIT-JEE results.Therefore, the problems asked in IIT JEE should be conceptual/analytical and of 12th standard,' IIT-JEE is the cherished dream of scores of Class 12 students across India. With less than four months to go for IIT-JEE 2010, preparations for the examination are sure to be turning frenetic.The best way to deal with the pressure and the high expectations is through proper planning. Divide available time between the three subjects. Make a time schedule, chapter-wise and topic-wise. Make summary notes/ points to remember of all concepts topic/chapter-wise and flag the questions which are tricky or call for analytical skills.This will help in quick revision a couple of days before or even on the eve of examination.Students, who have to simultaneously prepare for the Class 12 board exams and IIT-JEE, should start concentrating on Class 12 portions and the corresponding IIT-JEE chapters about 21 days before the board examination. However, the flame should be kept burning even for Class 11 chapters by way of revision till the start of the board exams.After the board examinations, focused and concentrated revision of both Class 11 and Class 12 portions should be undertaken.The right approach for those attempting the examination for the first time is to be loyal to one source. Don’t hope to read all the books/study material flooding the market. Study packages, IIT-JEE archives, review packages, workbooks, AITS/AIITS series offered by FIITJEE are good starting points.Take a short break of 5-10 minutes after every hour of serious study. Complete relaxation during the break will recharge your batteries for another intensive spell of serious study.Pay attention to specificsIn Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics, students are advised to avoid selective study. The number of questions being large and the question papers being objective, all topics are likely to be covered by the examiners. The JEE syllabus is almost completely based on Class 11 and Class 12 portions. The complete syllabus with all chapters and topics is available on the website http://www.iitjee. org.The JEE syllabus of Class 11 and Class 12 contributes about 45 per cent and 55 per cent of the IIT-JEE question papers, respectively.While preparing for Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, take time to study the following.Mathematics: Quadratic Equations & Expressions, Complex Numbers, Probability, Vectors, Matrices in Algebra; Circle, Parabola, Hyperbola in Coordinate Geometry; Functions, Limits, Continuity and Differentiability, Application of Derivatives, Definite Integral in Calculus.Physics: Mechanics, Fluids, Heat and Thermodynamics, Waves and Sound, Capacitors and Electrostatics, Magnetics, Electromagnetic Induction, Optics and Modern Physics.Chemistry: Qualitative Analysis, Coordination Chemistry and Chemical Bonding in Inorganic Chemistry, Electrochemistry, Thermodynamics, Chemical Equilibrium in Physical Chemistry and Organic Chemistry.Need for speedDuring practice sessions, develop speed in working out the problems.The strategy of solving questions, starting from the fundamentals, will spark thinking processes which are essential to enhance and master analytical skills with conceptual understanding. Aim for 100 per cent hit rate. This will give you a competitive edge. Speed and accuracy will also allow you to finish the IIT-JEE papers ahead of time, leaving you with time for revision.Stay calm & focusedExercise and meditation every day will help you to develop inner calm, confidence and the power of concentration needed for success in an examination like IIT-JEE. This will be of immense help on the day of the examination. Students have a tendency to overwork just prior to the examination, thereby wearing out themselves. A minimum of 5-6 hours of sleep every night is necessary to stay physically fit and mentally alert. The strategy in the examination hall is to keep cool and have faith. It is advisable to reach the examination centre at least 20 minutes before the commencement of the exam.Take a few deep breaths in the hall to keep nervousness at bay. Instructions given on the question paper should be read and followed very carefully. Do not spend more than 45 minutes on any of the subjects. Prioritise after a concentrated and quick reading of the paper and start answering the questions you are confident about; move progressively to ones in ascending order of difficulty.Questions with no negative marks must be attempted first. The 45-minute cycle should be repeated for the other two subjects. Thereafter, return to the three sections and attempt previously omitted questions. Even if some segment/section appears to be tough, keep cool since it is your relative performance which matters. The IIT-JEE examination tests your understanding in application of concepts and analytical skills vis-à-vis mechanical or blind application of formulae and theory. Temporary setbacks or poor performance during practice in quiz sessions or mock test papers should not discourage you. Your success in the examination is proportional to the number of problems you’ve solved independently and, preferably, using more than one method.

Madhukar Daftary

Madhukar Daftary, a sexagenarian from Vadodara, is a leader in his own right. The retired chemical engineer spends four hours every day solving maths and physics problems posted online by people who usually want 'urgent homework help'. After having meticulously tackled over 8,296 questions in two years, the silver-haired answer guru is India's 'top contributor' in the mathematics section of 'Yahoo Answers', the community-driven Q & A website.

IBM ties up with IITs

Technology major IBM has tied up with Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) Delhi and Roorkee to jointly promote research in areas of common interest, like green technologies, energy-efficient computing and data mining.Researchers at IIT Delhi will work on energy-efficient computing, with major focus areas being architecture and operating system-level optimisation for bringing down energy consumption in computing environments.With IIT Roorkee, IBM will work on development of data mining algorithms for analysing time series data and applying them to real-life data, such as meteorological data from the Indian peninsula, detecting patterns in changes in the forest cover in India and prediction of natural disasters.
The joint research is part of IBM’s Shared University Research (SUR) initiative where the company awards equipment to universities to promote research in areas of mutual interest besides connecting the research and researchers at the university with personnel who are interested in the research from the IBM research, development and solutions provider communities.In 2007, three Indian universities received around $300,000 (nearly Rs 1.4 crore) from IBM, while in 2008, the SUR grant was around $210,000 (nearly Rs 1 crore).

IITS PLACEMENTS

Public sector giants hogged the limelight at the ongoing placement season at IIT- Madras this year. As in the past, major recruiters were global investment banks, MNCs, leading Indian corporates and some private universities from West Asia and north India. Top PSUs that visited the campus this time include ONGC, DRDO, BHEL, NTPC, Mazagon Docks, Bharti Shipyard, Pipavav Shipyard, deputy registrar and placement offer Lt Col( retd) Jayakumar said, adding HAL too was slated to visit soon. Apart from core engineering companies, that took in as many as 70% of students, finance (7-10%), PSUs (10%) and FMCG (rest) sectors were the other big recruiters. The highest offer, though, came from Tower Research Capital at Rs 28 lakh pa. The company has taken in four students.The biggest offer last year was from oilfield services provider Schlumberger at Rs 22 lakh annually for Indian posting and Rs 44 lakh for overseas. Put together, PSUs took in aound 100 candidates — nearly 10% of the 1,077 students who had registered for plaecments — compared to 35 last year and offered annual packages ranging from Rs 5 to Rs 7.6 lakh. BHEL alone has offered 20 jobs, making it one of the biggest recruiters, next only to Delloitte which has hired 23. While the number of students placed so far, in absolute terms, is similar to that placed last year towards the end of January, average package has gone up 25% at around Rs 8 lakh pa. compared to Rs 6-7 lakh pa. during the 2008-09 session.Some of the first-timers on campus this year were World Quant, Boston Consultancy Group and Dolat Capital. Others on Day 1 included Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, IBM, Tower Research and Goldman Sachs. The Indian Navy too visited the IIT placement session, making five job offers for naval officers in specialised ship-building role. Top private companies that visited this time were L&T, Reliance, Ashok Leyland, Caterpillar, Daimler India, Tata Motors, TVS Motor, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero Honda and GE. Nissan Motor is also scheduled to visit later this year coinciding with its inauguration of its plant near Chennai. Some students also took up teaching slots at varsities, both Indian and foreign. These include King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia), Mewar University ( Rajasthan) and Lovely Professional University (Ludhiana). IIT Madras (IIT-M ) has marked two days exclusively in its placement calendar for ventures promoted by IIT alumni. Nearly 45 percent students from IIT-Kanpur have been picked up by various public and private sector companies of global repute during the
ongoing campus placement. Like other institutions, IIT-Kanpur too felt the pinch of global recession last year and thus, there was a sharp decline in the placements despite the best efforts made by concerned authorities. Around 120 companies have visited the IIT Bombay campus till date, with 500 offers in their bag. All told, over 180 companies have confirmed their presence.Around eight leading management consultants have visited the campus for recruitment including McKinsey, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co, Booz & Company and The Monitor Group. Alvarez & Marsa has recruited for the first time from IIT Bombay. Other companies which have recruited from the campus include Sony, IBM, Intel, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, Tower Research Capital, Morgan Stanley, J P Morgan, Credit Suisse and Nomura. As many as 60 offers have been made by the financial services sector.At IIT Kharagpur, of the 1,341 students, around 531 have been placed. The highest offer at the institute has been for Rs 22 lakh per annum from Barclays Bank for a placement at Singapore. IIT Roorkee has invited around 1,200 companies to the campus against 800 last year. The institute will place around 1,200 students this year. So far, IBM has made an offer of Rs 14 lakh, which is the highest till date at IIT Roorkee. And at IIT Kanpur, Tower Research Capital, a financial services company from New York, has made the highest offer of Rs 44.5 lakh. These institutes said they have seen a 30 per cent salary hike over last year.A total of 3,031 students from seven IITs were recruited by MNCs through campus selection in 2008, according to figures sourced from the Ministry of Human Resources (MHRD). However, in 2009, the number had almost halved to stand at 1,606 since the effects of the global slowdown had kicked in. For instance, while in 2008, 593 students were selected from IIT- Bombay, this year only 381 students of the institute were selected by MNCs. And while 633 students from IIT-Delhi were recruited by MNCs last year, the number fell to 390 this year.However, this year, the response from companies has been so good that IIT-Kanpur invited around 200 ex-students on the campus to participate in its placement process this year. These students who passed out last year from the campus could not get placed owing to economic slowdown and thereby less participation by companies on the campus.The premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have managed to place between 50 and 70 per cent of students till date. During the same period last year, these institutes had managed to place only around 35 per cent of their students due to the global economic slowdown. IITs began the final placements on December 1, 2009. The process will continue till March 2010.

child prodigy

A child prodigy is defined as someone under the age of 13 who is capable of excelling in at least one area of skill at a level that is considered to be an adult level in that field. There are child prodigies in all different skills areas including music, math, chess, the arts and even humanities. As long as the child shows demonstrable adult-level skill in one of these areas prior to that age 13 mark, he or she is considered a prodigy in that area. The most famous child prodigies include Mozart for music and Picasso for art.Until now, almost nothing was knownabout the neural basis of exceptional cognitive ability. In a pioneering study in this issue, Pesenti and colleagues have now used functional brain imaging to examine the calculating prodigy RüdigerGamm, and to compare his brain activity with that of normal control subjects asthey perform mental arithmetical calcu-lations. Gamm is remarkable in that he is able (for example) to calculate 9th powers and 5th roots with great accuracy, and he can find the quotient of 2 primes to 60 decimal places. The authors found that Gamm’s calculation processes recruited a system of brain areas implicated in episodic memory, including right medialfrontal .They suggest that experts develop a way of exploiting the unlimited storage capacity of long-term memory to maintain task-relevant information, such as the sequence of steps and intermediate results needed for complex calculation, whereas the restof us rely on the very limited span ofworking memory.A child prodigy is someone who at an early age masters one or more skills at an adult level.Some researchers believe that prodigious talent tends to arise as a result of the innate talent of the child, the energetic and emotional investment that the child ventures, and the personal characteristics of the individual. Others believe that the environment plays the dominant role, many times in obvious ways.

Harish Chandra

Harish Chandra was a renowned physicist and mathematician of India. His father Chandrakishore was a civil engineer. Harish Chandra spent his childhood at his maternal grandfather's home in Kanpur. At an early age he received education from a tutor. He studied at Christ Church High School till the age of fourteen, and passed his intermediate degree from Kanpur. He went to the University of Allahabad and studied theoretical physics, influenced by Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics. He passed graduation in 1941 and achieved master's degree in 1943. He was a postgraduate research fellow under the supervision of Homi Bhabha on problems in theoretical physics, at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore. He married Lalitha Kale and had two daughters. Harish Chandra grew up in the state of Uttar Pradesh. As a very bright student in his MSc Physics class at Allahabad University, he solved the theory of the vibration of themridangam on the spot as the only question in his Acoustics exam paper, with Prof C V Raman as the examiner and received 100 marks for it. Until then only Prof C V Ramanhad worked this out and had not published it. This convinced Dr K S Krishnan, the headof the department of physics at Allahabad University and Dr C V Raman, the Director ofthe Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore that a very brilliant scholar was found. They recommended Harish Chandra to Dr Homi Bhabha who had recently returned to India from England after his PhD with Paul Dirac on the theory of the spin 3/2 particle.Homi Bhabha soon realized the ability of his first student Harish Chandra, and after somestudy with himself, recommended him to Prof Paul Dirac at Cambridge University. Hewas asked to solve the unitary representations of the Lorentz group for a PhD thesis.Until then only Dr Eugene Wigner, the brother-in –law of Dr P.A.M. Dirac had solved the problem , as well as work by Gelfand, Naimark and Bargmann. Harish Chandra developed his own approach to representations of non compact groups like the Lorentzgroup and the associated Fourier or harmonic analysis. This impressed both Dirac andWigner that Harish Chandra took just around two years to develop on his own a newapproach in group theory and use it for the Lorentz group.When asked by Paul Dirac whether it is necessary that the problem he works on and thesolution he finds have to be associated to physics while the method of work is of Mathematics, Harish Chandra said that it is not necessary that physics be the source orend point of his work, but mathematics was essential. Then he was recommended to become a mathematician and he went to Princeton where he remained all his life. LikeHermann Weyl and Elie Cartan before him, Harish Chandra made fundamentalcontributions to group theory, particularly to Lie algebras. Several programs inMathematics such as the Langlands program have arisen as a result of Harish Chandra’swork. The Institute at Allahabad is named as the Harish Chandra research Institute in his memory.K S Krishnan was Harish Chandra's teacher at Allahabad University; he recommended his name to Dirac for research work at Cambridge for his Ph.D. degree. In 1945, Harish-Chandra studied for his doctorate degree at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, under Dirac's supervision. However, he was not quite satisfied with Dirac's lectures when he realized that Dirac was actually reading from his books. During his days in Cambridge, he started to loose interest in Physics and took more interest in mathematics and attended the lecture courses of Littlewood and Hall. While attending a lecture by Pauli, he pointed out an error in Pauli's work. Later Pauli and Harish Chandra became very close friends. In 1947, he received his doctorate degree for his thesis 'Infinite irreducible representations of the Lorentz group. In the thesis he gave "a complete classification of the irreducible unitary representations of SL(2,C)". Harish Chandra accompanied Dirac to Princeton from 1947 to 1948 and worked as his assistant. During his stay at United States, the leading mathematicians Weyl, Artin and Chevalley who were working there had great impact on him. He remained at Princeton for another year even after Dirac came back to Cambridge. At Harvard from 1949-50, he was influenced by Zariski.. Harish Chandra was a faculty at the Columbia University from 1950-63, this duration is considered to be the most productive period of his career where he worked on representations of semisimple Lie groups. During this period he worked in many institutions. From 1955-56 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, from 1957-58 as a Guggenheim Fellow in Paris. Harish Chandra formulated a fundamental theory of representations of Lie groups and Lie algebras. He even extended the concept of a characteristic representation of finite-dimensional of semisimple Lie groups to infinite-dimensional representations of a case and formulated a Weyl's character formula analogue. Some of his other contributions are: the specific determination of the Plancherel measure for semisimple groups, the evaluation of the representations of discrete series, based on the results of Eisenstein series and in the concept of automorphic forms, his "philosophy of cusp forms", including the real Lie groups, but also p-adic groups or groups over adele rings. While working at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton from 1963, he was appointed IBM-von Neumann Professor in 1968. Harish Chandra received many eminent awards as:
AMS Cole Prize in Algebra (1954)
Speaker at International Congress (1954)
AMS Colloquium Lecturer (1969)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1973)
Ramanujan Medal from Indian National Science Academy.(1974)
Honorary degrees by Delhi University (1973) and Yale University (1981)
Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (United States) (1981) He was participating in a conference in Princeton when he died on Sunday 16th October1983, due to a heart attack.

Ngo Bao Chau

Mathematician Ngo Bao Chau, who made one of Time magazine’s top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009, has accepted a faculty appointment at the University of Chicago. Ngô will become a professor of mathematics, effective Sept. 1, 2010.Ngo, 37, came to Time’s attention for decisive advances he recently made in two central areas of modern mathematics: number theory and representation theory.He proved a basic result, a matching conjecture called ‘the fundamental lemma,’ so named because it represents the central gate for progress in the Langlands program. Native of Hanoi, North Vietnam, Ngô received his doctoral degree from Université Paris-Sud in 1997. Currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Ngô received the Oberwolfach Prize in 2007, the Prix Sophie Germain de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris in 2007 and the Clay Research Award in 2004.In 1979 the Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands developed an ambitious and revolutionary theory that connected two branches of mathematics called number theory and group theory. In a dazzling set of conjectures and insights, the theory captured deep symmetries associated with equations that involve whole numbers, laying out what is now known as the Langlands.The lemma is a conjectured identity between orbital integrals for two groups, e.g., the unitary groups U(n) and U(p)xU(q), where p+q = n. Combined with the Arthur-Selberg trace formula, it enables one to prove relations between automorphic forms on different groups and is a key step towards proving links between certain automorphic forms and Galois representations. This is one of the aims of the Langlands program, which seeks a far-reaching unification of ideas in number theory and representation theory. The result of Laumon and Ngô uses the equivariant cohomology approach introduced by Goresky, Kottwitz, and MacPherson, who proved the lemma in the split and equal valuation case. The proof for the unitary case, which is significant for applications, requires many new ideas, including Laumon's deformation strategy and Ngô's purity result which is based on a geometric interpretation of the endoscopy theory of Langlands and Kottwitz in terms of the Hitchin fibration. 1. Short curriculum vitae of Ngo Bao Chuoa•1972 born in Hanoi, Vietnam•1990 moves to France•1992-1995 student at the ENS, rue d’Ulm•1993-1997 doctoral studies at U. de Paris Sud, with G. Laumon•1997 dissertation ‘Le lemme fondamental de Jacquet et Ye’•1998-2004 charg´ de recherches au CNRS, at Univ. de Paris Norde•2004 Habilitation•2004– Professor U. de Paris-Sud•2006– IAS, Princeton•distinctions: Clay Research Award 2004, Speaker at ICM 2006.The conjecture of Langlands and Shelstad lies in the field of automorphic forms. Inthe beginning of the 20th century this theory was the theory of modular forms, i.e., ofholomorphic functions on the upper half plane transforming in a prescribed way under theaction of discrete groups of conformal motions. It was only in the 1950’s, under the influ-ence of I. Gelfand and Harish-Chandra, that the theory of automorphic forms on arbitrarysemi-simple Lie groups, or semi-simple algebraic groups, was developed. In the 1960’s thetheory was dramatically refocused through the introduction by R. Langlands of his func-toriality principle. This principle is a conjecture that stipulates correspondences betweenautomorphic forms on semi-simple groups which are related by a homomorphism betweentheir Langlands dual groups. This principle is surely among the most ingenious ideas ofthe last century and constitutes the deepest statement about automorphic forms known today.

Michael Green -Lucasian Professor of Mathematics

Professor Michael Green, one of the world's leading theoretical physicists is to become the 18th Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.He was elected by senior university staff to one of the world's most famous academic titles after Professor Stephen Hawking decided to shed the title. Prof Green is a professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge and the university said he was a pioneering scientist.Prof Hawking stepped down in September after holding the title for 30 years but continues to work at the university. Previous holders of the title, founded by MP Henry Lucas in 1663, include Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, Sir Joseph Larmor and Sir James Lighthill.Michael Green is one of the founders of string theory, which he pioneered from the early seventies onwards. Apart from original research in the area, his contributions include the a textbook co-authored with Edward Witten and John Schwarz, which for many years remained the only string theory text book around.
Michael Green, together with John Schwarz of the California Institute of Technology, laid the foundations for string theory, which is being heralded as the unifying link between Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and quantum mechanics. String theory has the potential to better explain all kinds of forces in the physical world, from electromagnetic forces and the forces of attraction in the nucleus of an atom, to gravity. The eighteenth Professor to take up this position carries forward the very distinguished tradition of the post.Green and Schwarz have been working on string theory since the early nineteen seventies, a time when physicists were baffled by inconsistencies and anomalies in the theory and easily gave up working on it. The duo’s first breakthrough came in 1984, when they made their first breakthrough in the field and convinced the theoretical physicists of the world of the viability of string theory.
The Chair was deeded in December 1663 as a gift to the University of Cambridge from Henry Lucas, who was a Member of Parliament for the University. It was a time when many of the fundamental mathematical tools used today, such as calculus, had yet to be developed. Professors who have held the chair have made contributions, not just to mathematics, but also to the fields of theoretical and applied physics, fluid mechanics, chemistry, astronomy, and even computing.
The Chair never got quite as much media attention until it was held by Stephen Hawking, well known theoretical physicist and author of A Brief History of Time.

RSA-768

A team of researchers has successfully factored a 232-digit number into its two composite prime-number factors, but too late to claim a $50,000 prize once attached to the achievement. The number, RSA-768, was part of a cryptography challenge that technically ended in 2007 that had been sponsored by RSA Laboratories, a prominent computer-security firm. RSA-768, so named because its binary representation is 768 bits long, is the largest number from the now-defunct challenge to be cracked. Thorsten Kleinjung of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his colleagues announced their result and posted to the Cryptology ePrint.Public key encryption works because it's easy to multiply two large numbers together, but very hard to calculate the factors of a large number. Doing so is largely a brute force process taking an enormous amount of computing power.

51th Mathematical Olympiad

The 51st International Mathematical Olympiad will take place in Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan from the 6th until the 12th of July, 2010.A Mathematical Olympiad is a problem solving competition open to all "mathletes". The aim of the competition is to test innate problem solving skills. The problems are restricted to those that require minimal background and high ingenuity. Since one of the goals of such olympiads is to identify talent at a young age, these olympiads are usually restricted to students not yet admitted to any undergraduate programme.The content ranges from extremely difficult precalculus problems to problems on branches of mathematics not conventionally covered at school and often not at university level either, such as projective and complex geometry, functional equations and well-grounded number theory, of which extensive knowledge of theorems is required. Calculus, though allowed in solutions, is never required, as there is a principle at play that anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics should understand the problems, even if the solutions require a great deal more knowledge. Supporters of this principle claim that this allows more universality and creates an incentive to find elegant, deceptively simple-looking problems which nevertheless require a certain level of ingenuity.The selection process differs by country, but it often consists of a series of tests which admit fewer students at each progressing test. Awards are given to a top percentage of the individual contestants. Teams are not officially recognized—all scores are given only to individual contestants, but team scoring is unofficially compared more so than individual scores. Contestants must be under the age of 20 and must not be registered at any tertiary institution. Subject to these conditions, an individual may participate any number of times in the IMO.
Scoring and format
The paper consists of six problems, with each problem being worth seven points, the total score thus being 42 points. No calculators are allowed. The examination is held over two consecutive days; the contestants have four-and-a-half hours to solve three problems per day. The problems chosen are from various areas of secondary school mathematics, broadly classifiable as geometry, number theory, algebra, and combinatorics. They require no knowledge of higher mathematics such as calculus and analysis, and solutions are often short and elementary. However, they are usually disguised so as to make the process of finding the solutions difficult. Prominently featured are algebraic inequalities, complex numbers, and construction-oriented geometrical problems.Each participating country, other than the host country, may submit suggested problems to a Problem Selection Committee provided by the host country, which reduces the submitted problems to a shortlist. The team leaders arrive at the IMO a few days in advance of the contestants and form the IMO Jury which is responsible for all the formal decisions relating to the contest, starting with selecting the six problems from the shortlist. As the leaders know the problems in advance of the contestants, they are kept strictly separated and observers.Each country's marks are agreed between that country's leader and the deputy leader and coordinators provided by the host country (the leader of the team whose country submitted the problem in the case of the marks of the host country), subject to the decisions of the chief coordinator and ultimately a jury if any disputes cannot be resolved.
Selection process
The selection process for the IMO varies greatly by country. In some countries, especially those in east Asia, the selection process involves several difficult tests of a difficulty comparable to the IMO itself. The Chinese contestants go through a camp, which lasts from March 16 to April 2. In others, such as the USA, possible participants go through as series of easier standalone competitions that gradually increase in difficulty. In the case of the USA, the tests include the American Mathematics Competitions, the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, and the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, each of which is a competition in its own right. For high scorers on the final competition for the team selection, there also is a summer camp, like that of China.
The former Soviet Union and other eastern European countries' selection process consists of choosing a team several years beforehand, and giving them special training specifically for the event. However, such methods have been discontinued in some countries.
Awards
The participants are ranked based on their individual scores.
• Subsequently the cutoffs (minimum score required to receive a gold, silver or bronze medal) are chosen such that the ratio of medals awarded approximates 1:2:3.
• Participants who do not win a medal but who score seven points on at least one problem get an honorable mention.
• Special prizes may be awarded for solutions of outstanding elegance or involving good generalisations of a problem. This last happened in 2005, 1995 and 1988, but was more frequent up to the early 1980s.
• The rule that at most half the contestants win a medal is sometimes broken if adhering to it causes the number of medals to deviate too much from half the number of contestants. This last happened in 2006 when the choice was to give either 188 or 253 of the 498 contestants a medal.
The selected students in first round will now participate in the second stage Indian National Mathematical Olympiad (INMO). Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education is the nodal centre of the country for olympiad programmes in mathematics and science, including astronomy.The mathematics olympiad is conducted in five stages under the aegis of the National Board of Higher Mathematics (NBHM) for class 11th & 12th. Students from 23 places will participate in the second stage on the basis of the results of RMO. Each participating country, other than the host country, may submit suggested problems to a Problem Selection Committee provided by the host country, which reduces the submitted problems to a shortlist. The team leaders arrive at the IMO a few days in advance of the contestants and form the IMO Jury which is responsible for all the formal decisions relating to the contest, starting with selecting the six problems from the shortlist. As the leaders know the problems in advance of the contestants, they are kept strictly separated and observed.

Zohaib Ahmed

A schoolboy has become the youngest person ever to pass A level maths with a Grade A at the age of 9. Zohaib Ahmed grabbed top marks in Mathematics despite sitting his exams an incredible nine years early.Zohaib, who goes to primary school, was still only eight when he took the first of his A-level papers in January.He scored 90 per cent across all six modules to land his A-grade.Now he plans to take A-level further maths, doing three modules in the summer and then three in January. He aims to head off to university by the time he is 14.Last August Zohaib scooped an A* (A star) in his GCSE maths at the age of just eight.Zohaib's 11-year-old brother Wajih is also celebrating getting an A-grade at A-level further maths with a 96 per cent pass.Last summer he had achieved a top grade A in his maths A-level while aged 10.The brothers share the same ambition of working in the city as an actuary in the finance sector.