IIT -JEE 2008

Nearly 3.2 lakh students would appear in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) on April 13 for admission into IITs across the country, registering an increase of about 70,000 candidates over last year.There will be no change in the question pattern this time.The IIT JEE last year decided to change the pattern, making provision for two papers in place of three earlier. Each paper consist of questions from Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.The questions are of objective type.Earlier, the students had to appear for three papers, one each dealing with physics,chemistry and mathematics.The IITs were supposed to increase the seats for implementing OBC reservation which has been put on hold by the HRD Ministry as the matter is pending before the Supreme Court.

shortage of doctors

India is setting up 60 new medical colleges and 225 nursing colleges in public-private partnership to tide over its current acute shortage of doctors, nurses, dentists and paramedics, a Planning Commission report has said. It also said that the only way to meet the crunch is to open the medical education sector completely for private sector participation and companies being allowed to establish medical and dental colleges just as they have been allowed to open nursing colleges.The report, released by Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said that India faces a shortage of about 600,000 doctors, one million nurses, 200,000 dental surgeons and large numbers of paramedical staff.The report said in the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12), the government plans to set up six institutions like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and upgrade 13 existing medical institutions.Besides, the nursing schools will be upgraded into colleges and the existing nursing colleges strengthened and upgraded as well as the existing government medical colleges.Currently, medical colleges churn out about 30,000 doctors a year, apart from 20,000 dentists and 45,000 nurses.The report said about 3,181 postgraduate degrees are awarded annually, while 1,316 postgraduate diplomas are given in the country each year.Also, the country faces an acute shortage of dental surgeons. In 2007, there were 73,271 dental surgeons against the requirement of 282,130.In the same year, there was a need for around 2.19 million nurses, but the figure available was 1.16 million nurses.There is an acute shortage of paramedical staff such as radiographers, X-ray technicians, physiotherapists, laboratory technicians, dental hygienist, orthopaedists and opticians. However, the number of pharmacists is adequate.

clinical research and india

India has overtake China to become Asia's most popular destination for conducting clinical trials. According to the Planning Commission, around 139 new trials were outsourced to India recently compared to 98 in China.While the market value for clinical trials outsourced to India is estimated at around $300 million, having increased by 65% in 2006, it is expected to touch $1.5-2 billion by 2010. the increased trial flow to India is based on several fundamental strengths like good hospitals, competent medical professionals, diverse genetic pool and large patient pools with diseases ranging from heart diseases, diabetes and psychiatric disorders, which are also prevalent in industrialised countries.The cost of conducting research in India ranges between 20 and 60 per cent of the cost in industrialised countries.

Central Advisory Board on Education report

According to a report of the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) released recently, 15 states and union territories (out of 35) have reported an enrolment rate lower than the national average.Among the states with low enrolment ratios are Orissa (8.71 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (7.03 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (7.77 per cent) and West Bengal (8.21 per cent).In order to remove disparities in higher education, the central government earlier identified 370 districts - as educationally backward - having enrolment ratios lower than the national average of 9 percent

iit fee hike issue

IIT Directors are likely to hold a meeting with the HRD Ministry soon on the fee hike issue.After the recent increase in fees by IIMs, the IITs have sought to double their fees. The proposed fee structure, once accepted, will be implemented in the seven IITs. Over 4,000 students are admitted to the IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Guwahati and Roorkee every year.The Standing Committee of the IIT Council headed by C N R Rao, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister, has in its recommendations submitted recently suggested urgent revision of fees.

math algorithms

IBM announced that its scientists have created specialised math algorithms to help model and manage natural disasters like wildlife, floods, diseases.The models can be explored to manage floods or famines in India or natural disasters anywhere in the world. A fully developed customised and implemented model can significantly help the approach for disaster risk reduction and management.In case of flooding the stochastic model would use various flood scenarios, resource suply capabiites at different dispatch locations and fixed and variable costs assocaited various risk measures

Tata Institute of Mathematics

After Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, it is now the turn of a national-level mathematics institute from the house of Tatas.The steel major has decided to come up with an advanced institute in mathematical studies in Bhubaneswar. To be called Tata Institute of Mathematics, the project is being launched in association with Utkal University in Orissa.Scheduled to be opened in two months, the centre is based on the lines of institutes of mathematics located in Pune and Chennai. Once functional, it would work in areas like fundamental research in frontier disciplines of the mathematical and physical sciences: mathematics, theoretical physics among others.The centre will also conduct special courses for schoolchildren to help them develop interest in mathematical studies.

Hopeful of matriculation on 39th attempt!

Its been about four decades of struggle but Shiv Charan of Rajasthans Alwar district is still in no mood to give up in life, as he is taking up standard X exams for the 39th time!And, one can meet this 74-year-old struggler at his residence in Khori village under Bahror Tehsil of Rajasthans Alwar District. These days he is engrossed in studies ahead of his exams being conducted under Rajasthan Board.His determination to succeed reflects from his vow not to marry till he clears his matriculation exams.

CAT ONLINE

The common admission test (CAT) will finally go online from 2009.The decision will benefit thousands of students who take CAT each year. Last year 2,30,000 students appeared for CAT and the numbers are expected to increase to more than 3,00,000 in 2008. According to sources, the IIMs are contemplating conducting CAT online for almost 15 days, during which students can choose when to take the exam. Initially the IIMs were contemplating a time period of 30 days.The idea of going online is to stem fraud. In 2003, the test was declared null and void after the exam paper was leaked, the first time in IIMs’ history.

Four new IITs and six IIMs

Government has decided to establish four new IITs and six IIMs in various states besides upgrading some of the state universities to the status of Central Universities.While the new IITs would be located in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh (Indore), Gujarat and Punjab, the IIMs would come up in Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh (Raipur), Uttarakhand and Haryana.These new institutions would be part of the eight IITs and seven IIMs proposed to be set up during the 11th Five Year Plan. Government has already announced establishment of four IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh and one IIM at Shillong.In addition, he said the government proposed to convert the Institute of Technology of the Banaras Hindu University into an IIT. Admission to this Institute was already based on the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination.The 14 Central Universities aiming at world class standards would be located in Pune, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Mysore, Visakhapatnam, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Patna, Bhopal, Kochi, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Greater NOIDA and Guwahati.Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in his annual budget last month announced an allocation of Rs.344 billion for the education sector - an increase by 20 percent over the previous budget.In three states, existing state universities would be taken over by the Central government and converted into Central Universities. They are Dr Hari Singh Gaur University at Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, Guru Ghasidas University at Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh and Goa University.

iit fee hike

After the IIMA raised their fees last week to about Rs 12 lakh a year, the IITs may also raise their fees too.The IITs plan to double their fees from Rs 25 thousand a year to Rs 50 thousand a year.The 7 IITs are heavily subsided by the government. Around 600 crores are spent by the government but as compared to international standards it is still a bargain.For example, tuition, room and board for a four year course at IIT costs 70,000 rupees. For an undergraduate in MIT that would be a little over 14 lakh rupees.The move comes just ahead of the Joint Entrance Examination scheduled for April 13. About 200,000 students will take the test.The last time IITs revised their fees was in 1998. in 1953, the cost of education at MIT was Rs 1,560 and it was Rs 1,420 at the Imperial College, London. The IIT fees was set at Rs 1,500 and a third was paid by students.Increasing fees in IIMs only required the nod of the each management institute's governing council. However, their engineering counterparts, governed by the IIT Act, need a green signal from the ministry.

David Gale

David Gale, a wide-ranging mathematician who helped develop an algorithm for pairing individuals into couples died on March 7 in Berkeley, Calif.Dr. Gale’s interests included mathematical games and puzzles and the creation of economic models, but he was widely recognized for work on the so-called stable marriage algorithm, a concept he developed in the 1960s with the economist and mathematician Lloyd S. Shapley.The problem begins with the assumption that equal numbers of men and women are in search of potential partners.Born in New York, David Gale graduated from Swarthmore College in 1943 and earned his doctorate from Princeton in 1949. He taught at Princeton for a year and then on the Brown University faculty until he moved to UC Berkeley with a yearlong Miller Professorship in 1965. He joined the Cal faculty permanently as a full professor the following year.Professor Gale was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of many awards and fellowships in his field, and the author of "The Theory of Linear Economic Models," a widely used reference work in what is known as linear optimization - a field that earned him a share in the coveted 1980 John von Neumann Theory Prize.Is it possible to pair the individuals in such a way that all achieve a satisfactory match? The solution developed by Dr. Shapley and Dr. Gale was to have each participant rank the members of the other sex in terms of desirability. The researchers then developed an algorithm that directed each participant to his or her next choice of partner, if rejected by the first or second choices. The stable marriage algorithm, due to D. Gale and H. S. Shapely, originally appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1962 under the title ``College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage.He also developed an award-winning website (mathsite.math.berkeley.edu) to demonstrate mathematical concepts and allow hands-on participation by laymen.More recently, a form of the algorithm has been used to assign students to public high schools in New York City. As applied to medical students and their residencies, it has been criticized for not taking hospital salaries into consideration, potentially stifling competition and affecting the way the free market might raise pay for residents, an issue that is controversial among economists who study the matching process.

PBS

From today, highly skilled applicants from India seeking UK Visa will have to follow the new Points Based System (PBS) route, replacing the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.India is the first country where UK has introduced the PBS, a five-tier system, to manage migration for those wishing to enter UK for work and study.In addition, as of April 1, applicants who use false documents or deception to try to get access to the UK would face bans on coming to that country for 10 years. Tierone is the first of five tiers of the PBS to be rolled out over the next 12 months. Tier two, targeting skilled workers with a job offer and Tier five, for temporary workers would both come online in the third quarter of 2008. Tier four, for students, would follow in early 2009. Tier three, which covers low-skilled migration routes, would only be used if shortages are identified that cannot be filled from the UK or European labour force.

'Euler's Equation of degree four

mathematician Daniel J. Madden and physicist, Lee W. Jacobi, found solutions to a puzzle that has been around for centuries.Jacobi and Madden have found a way to generate an infinite number of solutions for a puzzle known as 'Euler's Equation of degree four.The equation is part of a branch of mathematics called number theory. Number theory deals with the properties of numbers and the way they relate to each other. It is filled with problems that can be likened to numerical puzzles..In the mathematical puzzle that Jacobi and Madden worked on, the problem was finding variables that satisfy a Diophantine equation of order four. These equations are so named because they were first studied by the ancient Greek mathematician Diophantus, known as 'the father of algebra.In 1772, Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, hypothesized that to satisfy equations with higher powers, there would need to be as many variables as that power. For example, a fourth order equation would need four different variables, like the equation above.Euler's hypothesis was disproved in 1987 by a Harvard graduate student named Noam Elkies. He found a case where only three variables were needed.Madden and Jacobi used elliptic curves to generate new solutions. Each solution contains a seed for creating more solutions, which is much more efficient than previous methods used.

Abel prize

John Griggs Thompson, US, and Jacques Tits, France, have been awarded the 'Abel' prize and 1.2 million dollars for their work in algebra and group theory mathematics.The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters said Tits, 77, and Griggs Thompson, 75, had been given the so-called "Mathematics Nobel" because of their "profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory."Their theories can be used to explain problems such as the Rubik's Cube puzzle."The achievements of John Thompson and of Jacques Tits are of extraordinary depth and influence. They complement each other and together form the backbone of modern group theory.Tits is an expert at the College de France in Paris and Griggs Thompson works at the University of Florida. They will share a prize of six million Kroner (750,000 euro, 1.2 million dollars) which will be presented on May 20 in Oslo.
Tits, who was born in Belgium, emerged very young as a brilliant maths scholar and earned his doctorate at the age of 20. The College de France says he is now one of the world's most "influential and original" mathematicians.Griggs Thompson studied at Yale University and got his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1959.
He taught at Cambridge University in England in the 1970s before going to the University of Florida.The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awarded the prize.The candidates were chosen "for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory" stated the prize committee. Group Theory is a branch of math that is 200 years old.It deals with the concept of symmetry and helps to understand equation solution. The Award was named after a 19th century mathematician; Niels Henrik and was awarded by King Harald of Norway.The Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund was established in 2002, to award the Abel Prize for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics. The prize amount of 6 million NOK (about $1.2 million) was awarded for the first time in 2003.The prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and their choice of Abel Laureate is based on a recommendation by the Abel Committee consisting of five internationally recognized mathematicians.

Ratan Tata conferred degree by IIT Kharagpur

Ratan N Tata, group chairman, Tata Group, has been conferred an honorary degree of doctor of science by the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Kharagpur at its 50th annual convocation.The award is to recognise his outstanding leadership in globalising India and transforming Tata Group as a company to reckon with, setting global benchmarks. Some of the past recipients of this award include Mother Teresa, Satyajit Roy and Mani Lal Bhowmik.Mr Tata has also been conferred an honorary doctorate in business administration by the Ohio State University, an honorary doctorate in technology by the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, and an honorary doctorate in science by the University of Warwick. Mr Tata received a bachelor of science degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1962 and completed the advanced management program at Harvard.Tata has been the Chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group since 1991. During his tenure, the group's revenues have grown over eight-fold to annualised group revenues of over USD 50 billion.

Resolutions to promote Punjabi language

The Punjab Vidhan Sabha has passed two resolutions in order to promote and preserve Punjabi language.As per the first resolution, the house sought making use of Punjabi mandatory for all government officials, including IAS and IPS officers working for the Punjab government.the Punjab assembly on unanimously passed second resolution making the use of Punjabi language compulsory in all government offices and a mandatory subject in all schools upto class tenth.The resolution was passed by the assembly unanimously even as some educational boards like CBSE, Punjabi as a subject is not compulsory in class tenth.only 90% of schools have Punjabi as compulsory subject up to class X while the remaining schools, affiliated to CBSE or ICSE, including Navodaya and Kendriya Vidyalyas, permit students to have alternate language in lieu of Punjabi from class IX onwards.

Arthur C Clarke

Visionary science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, who introduced the concept of communications satellites to the world and authored more than 100 books on space, science and future, died here in the wee hours today.Ninety-year-old Sir Arthur Clarke, a British national, lived in Sri Lanka, his adopted country, from 1956 until his death .Sir Arthur, who battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, breathed his last at 1:30 am (local time).Sir Arthur has authored more than 100 books on space, science, communication and the future, was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality.

largest quiz

Triumphant Institute of Management Education Private Limited (TIME), a national level education and training organisation, has created a new guinness world record for organising and conducting the largest quiz in the world ever.The national circuit of Aqua Regia, the science quiz, was completed over three months and more than 2.40 lakh students of eighth, ninth and tenth standard student from 25 cities in India attended.TIME also hold sthe national record for the largest quiz in India as officially certified by Limca book of Records.

Young Global Leaders for 2008

The World Economic Forum has named 17 Indians, including budget carrier GoAir Managing Director Jeh Wadia and market regulator SEBI's Executive Director Sandeep Parekh, in its annual list of Young Global Leaders for 2008.The chosen ones are from all walks of life, including business and politics.Other Indians on the list include Lok Sabha MP Sachin Pilot, SKS Microfinance's CEO and founder Vikram K Akula, Chairman of Bhatia Enterprises Sabeer Bhatia, Managing Director of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering Anurag Behar, senior NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt, Global ITeS' CEO and President Suhas Gopinath, Director of PRS Legislative Research C V Madhukar and Thermax Ltd Chairperson Meher Pudumjee.Besides, music composer Allah Rakha Rahman and noted sitar player Anoushka Shankar also find a place in the list.

World Maths Day 2008

World Maths Day 2008 is a free web-event where kids from six to 16 years old can compete in live competitive challenges with other kids from around the world in answering mental arithmetic questions.There are currently more than one million kids already registered from 150 countries to participate in the maths day.Questions set come under four categories: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In each game, the student has one minute to answer as many of these questions of a random category as they can (chosen per game, rather than per question). Each question is limited to two numbers of one or two digits; addition and subtraction have only single digit second numbers and all division results are integers.

BolognaRagazzi Awards

The Night Life of Trees, a book illustrated by tribal artists from India, has been awarded one of the prestigious BolognaRagazzi Awards given to children’s publishers, for 2008. This is the first time a book from India has won the award. The BolognaRagazzi Award is promoted by the Bologna Book Fair (Italy), which is the largest children’s book fair in the world. The award will be presented at a special ceremony on March 31. The artists — Ram Singh Urveti, Durga Bai and Bhajju Shyam — belong to the Gond tribe in Madhya Pradesh. Gond art is traditionally painted on mud floors and walls of their houses.The beautifully crafted book is a fascinating glimpse into the visual imagination of the artists and their beliefs about the Sembur, the Peepul, the Mahua trees and more. The haunting illustrations bring alive the trees on the black handmade paper that make up the pages of the book.

girl child award

The Indian government has announced it will pay poor families nearly $3000 to bring up their girl children.British medical journal Lancet says 10 million female foetuses have been aborted in India in the past 20 years. Female foeticide is a particular problem in the Punjab - where just 793 girls are born for every 1000 boys
.

cbse exam 2006

Overseas students appearing for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 10 examinations, which are currently under way, were in a fix about a question on India’s northernmost and southernmost international airports in the social science paper. A map in the question paper showed Nedumbasherry airport close to Thiruvananthapuram whereas the airport is near Kochi, a city north of the Kerala capital.

Schwarz-Christoffel formula

An existing mathematical equation, now known as the Schwarz-Christoffel formula, was independently discovered by two mathematicians in the 1860s to enable them to translate the unusual and angular shapes of the real world, whether brains or aircraft wings, into a simpler circular shape so that they are much easier to model and analyse.The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in America describest the work as a "breakthrough" that will have an impact on in all kinds of applications ranging from traditional engineering disciplines such as aeronautics.Professor Crowdy, a specialist in applied mathematics at Imperial College, London, has now succeeded in completing the formula that eluded scientists for 140 years.He realised that by applying a different mathematical technique – the theory of Schottky Groups, which was developed 20 years after the orginal equation – the formula could be improved to cope with any shape.

cbse exam 2008

first question papers in the examinations for class X and class XII under Central Board of Secondary Education started on Saturday across the country and abroad passed smoothly.The class-XII students appeared in the Chemistry paper while Class-X students sat for Information Technology. However, the students did not find any problem to answer them. For the first time, 20 per cent of the questions required 'high-order thinking skills' as prescribed by the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), the guiding document for preparation of NCERT textbooks .

education in budget 2008

Overall, it has been a good budget for education.Total allocation for education sector including the NER region increased by 20 per cent to Rs 34,400 crore from Rs 28,674 crore.The FM has given a hike of 17% to higher studies and 20% to elementary and secondary schooling. But the biggest gainer is University Grants Commission, with a 36% hike for creating 16 new central universities. the emphasis on improving the quality and access to school education is welcome.The announcement of setting up 6,000 high quality model schools is an important initiative.Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas are quality schools, with comparatively good infrastructure set up by the Central government in rural areas.Thus, the decision to set up 20 such schools in districts with a large concentration of SC/ST populations is a small but welcome step.Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhyalayas address the issue of equity in the education of girls belonging to disadvantaged and minority communities and the decision to add another 410 to the existing 1754 vidyalayas would also serve the same objective. FM enunciated the list of projects and schemes already on paper but yet to be implemented. This is particularly true for higher and technical education — three IITs (announced in 2006), new IIM in Shillong (2004), new School of Planning & Architecture (2006) and 16 new central universities in 2007.Set up three IITs, two IISERs and two schools of Planning and Architecture and Allocation of Rs 100 crore to the Ministry of Information and Technology to establish the National Knowledge Network are also part of budget. The budget has set aside Rs650 crore for a Model School Programme, with an ambitious target of establishing 6,000 schools. An additional 20 Navodaya Schools will be established, specially targeted at socially backward sections. However, for these schools to deliver the results, the government should formulate a programme to train sufficient number of teachers. Though they lack even basic facilities, we do have a large number of schools in rural areas. But, the number of well-trained teachers is well short of requirements and has prevented any improvement in our school system.The focus of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has been changed from access to and infrastructure at primary schools to improving quality of learning and retention. The allocation for the programme, which has been a rare success at such a large scale, has also been increased to over Rs13,000 crore for next year.The decision to extend the mid-day meal programme to upper primary classes should bring down malnutrition among rural children and curb the rate of school dropouts. The extension of the scholarship scheme for upper primary students is a welcome step and future governments should look at expanding the scope of this scheme. The hike in salaries of anganwadi workers was long overdue. The finance minister has also set aside Rs2 crore to upgrade the facilities of each of the 22 Sainik Schools. Sainik Schools are the best possible source of supply for future officers for the armed forces. When a career in services is becoming increasingly less attractive, and the forces suffer a high attrition rate combined with a shortage of suitable officer material recruits, the government should spare no effort to increase the number of Sainik Schools to expand the supply base. Just 22 schools to groom future leaders for the nearly 2-million strong armed forces is pathetic.The most significant initiative for higher education sector is the proposed establishment of 16 Central Universities across the country.

cbse exam 2008

It was an end to the anxiety of class 10 and 12 students who took the CBSE examinations on Saturday.For the first time, 20 per cent of the exam paper will test the students on their analytical skills as prescribed by the National Curriculum Framework. Students have to be able to apply concepts as opposed to just putting them down on paper.But the problem is, this was announced just two weeks ago. So, students are terrified about this unknown quantity.Also a new feature this year, no multiple-choice question. Instead, up to 10 marks are allocated to very short answers, students have one sentence or less to make their point.Contrary to the popular opinion that the new format based on high order thinking skills or HOTS might just make things difficult, students on the whole appeared to be happy and satisfied.

Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist.One of the most radical figures in the field of technological prediction Kurzwiel is also known for his initiatives in various fields of computing, such as optical character recognition - the technology behind CDs - and automatic speech recognition by machine.He is one of the scientists among the group of 18 scientists who have been assigned to identify the greatest technological challenges facing humanity.According to Ray Kurzweil the time to come will see artificial intelligence as par with human intellect and that machine will outcast han in their intellectual abilities while solving intractable problems.

Brain Science Centre

Central government of India is planning to set up India’s first Brain Science Centre for Forensics, CBSF directly under the Central Forensic Scien Laboratory, Delhi, Ministry of Home Affairs.CBSF would be established in the campus of State Forensic Science Laboratory, Bangalore but it would be directly under central government and would be applied for forensics including brain mapping, polygraph, narco analysis test, MRI, EEG and ERP etc.Center is also planning to sep up MRI machines and DNA printing for forensic purpose.

National Science Day

Every year February 28 is celebrated to mark the discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ by celebrated scientist Sir C.V. Raman this day in 1928 which brought the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.It was the initiative of National Council for Science & Technology Communication, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, by which the day was designated as National Science Day in 1987 for the first time.The day is also to inculcate scientific temperament among students, young scientists through close interaction by conducting lectures, seminars, symposia of various disciplines, which creates awareness among all regarding latest developments in science and technology. Such activities hold much importance as these should be disseminated to the next generation.With such an emerging scenario and competitive economy it has become necessary to understand the ever changing requirement of common man and build up appropriate technology and skills to make the life of human more easier but at the same time adding longevity to earth’s life.

IIT-JEE 2008

Hundred Percentile Education Private Limited, the provider of educational technology solutions announced the launch of its new offering "Know your IIT-JEE Rank" through its successful IIT-JEE preparation portal www.100percentile.com . This new feature, appropriately timed when there are few weeks to go for the IIT-JEE 2008 actually provides students a near real-life simulation wherein they can appear for previous years IIT-JEE papers online and benchmark their preparation level against previous years' cut off scores.

Quota for SCs/STs in MBBS, BDS

The Union Government has decided to introduce reservation for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes candidates in undergraduate medical and dental courses from this year under the all-India entrance examination. With the introduction of the quota, nearly 310 SC and 155 ST students will benefit this year. In 2007, the total number of MBBS/BDS seats was 2,075, which were filled on the basis of merit.The CBSE will conduct the preliminary test for the all-India entrance exam on April 6 and the final on May 11.

IIM fee hiked

Studying at the IIMs will be costlier this year onwards with three management institutes namely IIM-Calcutta, IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore increasing its fees. The tuition fees in IIM-C has increased from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 3 lakh for academic session 2008 to 2010. Again next year, the fees will again surge by an additional one lakh and students will have to pay Rs 4 lakh for enrolling in the esteemed institute.The tuition fees at IIM-C has been brought at par with IIM-Ahmedabad. IIM-A has already raised its fees from Rs 2 lakh to a whopping Rs 3 lakh. IIM Bangalore on the other hand, has increased its fees from Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 2.74 lakh.In 2007, IIM-C raised its tuition fees from Rs 1.75 lakh to Rs 2 lakh while IIM-A had raised its tuition fee from Rs 1.77 lakh to Rs 2 lakh. But IIM-B chose to increase its fee by Rs 75,000 and fees were increased from Rs 1.75 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh. The board has also decided to increase the family income limit from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh, for meritorious and financially weak students

CBSE EXAMINATION -2008

CBSE have proposed to allow students who fail in Mathematics to appear for another subject in lieu of his compartment examination. The governing body has cleared this decision and this will come into force from this year. 20 per cent of the question paper will be dedicated to checking Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), there will also be 10 per cent questions that will be very short answer type.Some portions of the question paper are actually meant for the below average students who may find it difficult to answer some of the higher range questions.Also for the first time, students will be marked internally by schools based on the project work they do in a subject like Mathematics in Class X. So there is another chance to gather marks, provided you actually pay attention to the subject. And then you also have practicals for subjects like Social Studies and Mathematics, apart from science subjects.The National Curriculum Framework, 2005, had recommended certain changes in the examination pattern to turn it into a more meaningful assessment of what a child has actually learnt, rather than a simple rote learning-based exercise.Over 13 lakh students are appearing for the board exams this year. While 7,65,095 students would appear for the class X exam 5,48,815 would for the class XII, which begin on March 1.

Taare Zameen Par

Taare Zameen Par (Stars on Earth) is about a small boy suffering from the learning disability dyslexia.Taare Zameen Par becomes the story of any and every child who is being robbed off his childhood by insensitive parents and teachers who believe their job is to create race-winning rats for the rat race rather than Einsteins, Edisons, Agatha Christies and Leonardo Da Vincis.Taare Zameen Par takes us into the heart of Ishaan's world: his struggles with the three r's, his ambitious father who thinks Ishaan needs discipline, his caring-but-harried mother, his loving big brother who watches out for him. And his art teacher Ram Shankar Nikumbh, who saves Ishaan from sinking into a dark box.It's also the first time we've seen the dark, traumatic side of childhood. Bullying, and constant haranguing by teachers and parents in hindi movie.

mathamazement.com

mathamazement.com is unlike other websites.Its creater Mr. David Terr, PhD Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, stated that he created the website to inform and educate the public about the glorious world of mathematics. He hopes to further the knowledge of math and its applications. The site has many great features, including numerous articles such as 'Uses for Math', 'Teaching Math', 'Advanced Math', 'Math and Art', 'Math and Sports', and 'Web Design and Math

CPMT EXAMINATION 2008

The Combined Pre-Medical Test (CPMT), organised by Lucknow University (LU), will be held on May 14.Over one lakh candidates are expected to appear in the test, which is the gateway for admissions to state medical colleges.The decision was taken by the university authorities in consultation with the state government.CPMT, which was originally scheduled for May 10, was postponed as it was clashing with the All India Pre-Veterinary Test.

IISc. Entrance on April 27

The Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc.) Bangalore - 560012, has invited applications for an entrance test to be held on April 27 for admission to its Integrated Ph.D. programme in biological, chemical, physical and mathematical sciences.Eligibility: First class B.Sc. degree under 10+2+3 pattern in relevant disciplines. For biological sciences, a degree is required in physical, chemical or biological sciences, including pharmaceutical, veterinary and agricultural sciences. For chemical sciences, the degree should be with chemistry as one of the main subjects and with mathematics at the Plus-Two level. For physical sciences, the degree should be with physics as the main subject. For mathematical sciences, B.Sc. mathematics, B.E. or B.Tech. are required. Applicants should qualify in the entrance test and the following interview.The institute has also invited applications for admission to M.E. in aerospace, chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical, telecommunication and materials engineering; computer science and engineering; micro electronics; signal processing; and system sciences; M.Tech. in electronics design and technology; computer science; climate science; and instrumentation; Ph.D.; and M.Sc. engineering. Online application facilities are also provided. The last date for receipt of completed application forms is March 24. from- hindu

Microsoft India opens Tech Lab at IIT Madras

Microsoft India has opened a laboratory at Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) that will give students access to the company’s latest Windows technologies. It has invested Rs.90 lakh in the facility, which will be used by graduate, postgraduate and research scholars of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments.The initial focus in the lab will be on Windows Terminal services, device drivers, networking protocols, windows mobile and multi-modal localisation.The laboratory will offer MS technology for the faculty and students to work with. In addition to helping students with their B Tech and M Tech projects, as well as MS and PhD research, the laboratory will have experts from Microsoft visit the institution regularly to conduct seminars and workshops.

math disability

some young children have difficulty learning number names, counting, and recognizing how many items are in a group. Some of these children continue to demonstrate problems learning math as they proceed through school.child with a math disability has difficulty making sufficient school progress in mathematics similar to that of her peer group despite the implementation of effective teaching practices over time.approximately 6% of school-age children have significant math deficits and among students classified as learning disabled, arithmetic difficulties are as pervasive as reading problems. This does not mean that all reading disabilities are accompanied by arithmetic learning problems, but it does mean that math deficits are widespread and in need of equivalent attention and concern.Interestingly, some of the students with these difficulties may be remedial math students during the elementary years when computational accuracy is heavily stressed, but can go on to join honors classes in higher math where their conceptual prowess is called for.An extremely handicapping, though less common math disability, derives from significant visual-spatial-motor disorganization. The formation of foundation math concepts is impaired in this small subgroup of students. Methods to compensate include avoiding the use of pictures or graphics for conveying concepts, constructing verbal versions of math ideas, and using concrete materials as anchors.

Dyscalculia

Children with dyscalculia have trouble reading numbers and picturing them in their mind.Dyscalculia can be quantitative, which is a difficulty in counting and calculating; or qualitative, which is a difficulty in the conceptualizing of mathematics processes and spatial sense; or mixed, which is the inability to integrate quantity and space.Dyscalculia is a collection of symptoms of learning disability involving the most basic aspect of arithmetical skills. On the surface, these relate to basic concepts such as: telling the time, calculating prices and handling change, and measuring and estimating things such as temperature and speed.For example, they might mistake a three for an eight because the numbers look similar. They also have trouble counting objects and organizing them by size.Memory is another issue. Children with dyscalculia may not remember the correct order of operations to follow in solving math problems.Difficulties like these can lead to a lifelong fear of mathematics.Experts say students with dyscalculia need extra time to complete their work

cbse examination 2008

Class X and Class XII examinations of the CBSE will see a change in the pattern of questions, with the focus being more on understanding and analysis rather than memorising ability of students.For the first time, 20 percent of the questions will be based on `high-order thinking skills’ as prescribed by the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), the guiding document for preparation of NCERT textbooks.Over 13.13 lakh students are appearing in the exams starting from 1st March.While there are 7,65,095 candidates, including 4,49,742 boys, for the Class X exam, 5,48,815 students, including 3,18,618 boys, have registered for the Class XII exam.The total number of candidates marks an eight percent increase over the number of students last year.Over 12 lakh students had appeared in the test last year in the board exams.About 2,500 physically-challenged students will appear in the exams.These include 373 visually-challenged students in Class X and 214 such candidates in Class XII.There will be 2,624 centres for Class X and 2,394 centres for Class XII students.About 18,000 students have registered for the exams from foreign countries.
In Delhi region of the board, 2,19,796 students have registered for the Class X exam while there are 1,60,414 students for the Class XII exam.The CBSE has already put the sample question papers on its website.It will also put the sample answer papers of those students who had secured 100 percent marks in the papers last year.

Parivartan -2008

The Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi is organizing its annual business festival Parivartan on February 15-17 at IIT Delhi.Parivartan is the celebration of the Indian Economy encapsulating business growth through a colorful spectrum of events.The curtain raiser for Parivartan, scheduled on February 15, will be graced by none other than the country’s first woman IPS officer Kiran Bedi and Ambassador J. C. Sharma.Parivartan sees participation from Business Schools all over the country and corporate as well. This year, over 100 teams are arriving on campus to take part in the fest.

HSEE-2008

IIT-M offers a five year integrated master's programme in Humanities for students completing their plus-two. This integrated masters' course may be taken with specialisations in the disciplines of Economics, Development Studies or English.Class 12 students of commerce and humanities streams are eligible to apply for this five-year integrated masters programme. Selection would be made through the Humanities and Social Sciences Entrance Exam (HSEE) to be held on May 18 in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi. The total number of seats available is 30. Students completing the course are eligible to pursue doctorates at international institutes like the London School of Economics.The examination syllabus is structured on English and comprehension skills, analytical and quantitative ability, Indian and world history, Indian economy, environment and ecology. The question pattern would be objective and exam duration is three hours. The question paper will pose 180 questions, and negative questions will be awarded to wrong answers.Application forms can be obtained by post. The cost of the application form and examination fee is Rs. 600. For women, physically challenged persons, and students from scheduled caste or tribe, the application form costs Rs.300.Interested students, who have completed their plus two exams or would be completing it in March, may apply for this integrated course by sending a demand draft favouring the Chairman, HSEE, IIT, Madras, payable at Chennai, along with two self-addressed slips. The last date for receiving postal requests for application forms is February 25. The completed application forms should be sent to the Chairman, HSEE 2008, JEE Office, IIT Madras, Chennai- 600 036. Tel.: 044-22578220. The last date for receipt of completed application forms is March 3.

Vocational courses

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) would start vocational courses in information technology, fashion design, manufacturing technology, general healthcare and retail management at Plus-2 level with industry support.CBSE with the support of the National Stock Exchange, has already introduced a course on financial market management in 90 CBSE schools.In all these competency-based vocational courses, CBSE would formulate the curriculum in association with industry, and certification for students would be given jointly by the CBSE and a mentor organisation.

G.D. Birla award 2007

The prestigious G.D. Birla award 2007 has been conferred on Prof. Santanu Bhattacharya of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore for his significant contribution in the field of chemical biology and molecular design.The G.D. Birla award which carries a cash prize of Rs.1.5 lakh was instituted by the K. K. Birla Foundation in 1991. It is given to young scientists below 50 years of age. The foundation's mission is to promote scientific research in the country by giving recognition to high caliber Indian scientists.Prof Bhattacharya's investigations into DNA-lipid interactions using a number of chemical and biophysical methods and studies have key implications in developing carriers for gene therapy.Prof Bhattacharya was born on April 23, 1958. After obtaining his Ph D in Bio organic Chemistry from the University of Rutgers, USA in 1988, he joined as a CSIR Fellow at the University of Calcutta. From 1991 he has been working in the Department of Organic Chemistry, IIS, Bangalore and is currently ranked as Professor. He is an honorary faculty member, Chemical Biology Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Stuides Research,, Bangalore and has held visiting positions in various universities abroad. Selection for the award is made by a Board headed by the President of the Indian National Science Academy here and includes eminent scientists such as Prof M M Sharma, former Director, Institute of Chemical Technology, University of Bombay, Mumbai, Prof M K Bhan, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Prof Asis Datta, Director, National Centre for Plant Genome Research Centre, New Delhi, Prof T V Ramakrishnan, Department of Physics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and Dr Anupam Varma, National Professor, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.Previous recipients of the prize were Prof Asis Datta (Molecular Biology and Biotechnology), Prof Goverdhan Mehta (Organic Chemistry), Bangalore, Dr R A Mashelkar (Polymer Science and Engineering), New Delhi, Prof Padmanabhan Balaram (Molecular Biophysics) Bangalore, , Prof Girish S Agarwal (Quantum Optics, non-Linear Optics), Allahabad, Prof Biman Bagchi (Pysical Chemistry and Condensed Biophysics), Bangalore among others. Three of the awardees -- Dr R A Mashelkar, Prof Ashoke Sen and Dr Goverdhan Mehta -- were elected Fellows of the Royal Society, London reflecting the quality of the selection made for the award.

Dr Sangeeta Bhatia

Dr Sangeeta Bhatia - associate professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science pioneered one of the first successful methods for sustaining functional liver cells outside the body.devised a novel way to create tiny colonies of living human liver cells that model the full-sized organ. The work could allow better screening of new drugs that are potentially harmful to the liver and reduce the costs associated with their development.Liver toxicity is one of the main reasons pharmaceutical companies. November 15 online issue of Advanced Materials and the November 18 online issue of Nature Biotechnology carried important advances in engineering and medicine by this 38 year old Indian-American scientist.Liver toxicity is one of the main reasons pharmaceutical companies pull drugs off the market. These dangerous drugs slip through approval processes due in part to the shortcomings of liver toxicity tests. Existing tests rely on liver cells from rats, which do not always respond to toxins the way human cells do. Or they rely on dying human cells that survive for only a few days in the lab.The new technology arranges human liver cells into tiny colonies only 500 micrometers (millionths of a meter) in diameter that act much like a real liver and survive for up to six weeks.

Ramanujan

Born in India in 1887, Ramanujan was a mathematical genius whose work continues to surprise mathematicians into the 21st century. His work is filled with surprises. At the Ramanujan centenary conference at the University of Illinois, it was physicist Freeman Dyson who proclaimed, "That was the wonderful thing about Ramanujan. He discovered so much, and yet he left so much more in his garden for other people to discover.Born into poverty, Ramanujan grew up in southern India, and although he had little formal training in mathematics, he became hooked on mathematics. He spent the years between 1903 and 1913 cramming notebooks with page after page of mathematical formulas and relationships that he had uncovered.Ramanujan's life as a professional mathematician began in 1914 when he accepted an invitation from the prominent British mathematician G.H. Hardy to come to Cambridge University. He spent 5 years in England, publishing many papers and achieving international recognition for his mathematical research.Though his work was cut short by a mysterious illness that brought him back to India for the final year of his life, Ramanujan's work has remained a subject of considerable interest.In 1957, with monetary assistance from Sir Dadabai Naoroji Trust, at the instance of Professors Homi J Bhabha and K. Chandrasekaran, the Tata institute of Fundamental Research published a facsimile edition of the Notebooks of Ramanujan in two volumes, with just an introductory para about them.The formidable task of truly editing the Notebooks was taken up in right earnest by Berndt in May 1977 and his dedicated efforts for nearly two decades has resulted in the Ramanujan's Notebooks published by Springer-Verlag in five Parts, the first of which appeared in 1985.Between 1903 and 1914, before Ramanujan went to Cambridge, he compiled 3,542 theorems in the notebooks. Most of the time Ramanujan provided only the results and not the proof.The 600 formulae that Ramanujan jotted down on loose sheets of paper during the one year he was in India, after he returned from Cambridge, are the contents of the `Lost' Note Book found by Andrews in 1976. He was ailing throughout that one year after his return from England (March 1919 - April 26, 1920.The three original Ramanujan Notebooks are with the Library of the University of Madras, some of the correspondence, papers/letters on or about Ramanujan are with the National Archives at New Delhi and the Tamil Nadu Archives, and a large number of his letters and connected papers/correspondence and notes are with the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics of the University of Madras is situated at a short distance from the famed Marina Beach and is close to the Administrative Buildings of the University and its Library. Mrs. Janakiammal Ramanujan, the widow of Ramanujan, lived close to the University's Marina Campus and died on April 13, 1994.Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy (SASTRA), a private university whose main campus is located in the town of Tanjore, purchased the home of Ramanujan in 2003, and has since maintained it as a museum. Research chairs established at the SASTRA centre at Kumbakonam — two by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and one by City Union Bank Ltd. — encourage research in the field of mathematics in honor of Ramanujan.

Indian Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (IIEST)

Indian Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (IIEST) are institutes proposed by the Government of India to meet the growing demand for IITs by every state in India. Initially, a group of seven elite universities had been selected for upgradation to the status of IIESTs by the S.K.Joshi committee.The Ministry had short-listed these institutions based on the recommendations made by the S.K. Joshi Committee that suggested the upgradation of select institutions in the country to the level of IITs.As a continuation of the recommendations of the Joshi Committee, a committee headed by M. Anandakrishnan (Chairman of the Madras Institute of Development Studies) was appointed for an in-depth evaluation of seven of the identified institutions for upgradation to the level of IITs.The thrust of IIEST will be for engineering education. The Departments under the Faculty of Science, Social Science, Humanities and Law will be at peril.According to an expert committee appointed by the MHRD, the President will be the visitor of all IIESTs. The five institutions should function as a consortium with an IIEST council, an advisory body for major common policy decisions. The Minister for Human Resource Development will be ex-officio chairman of the council. Each IIEST shall have a Board of Governors chaired by an eminent academic.The Board of Governors shall be the highest decision-making authority of the institute. The President will appoint its chairman. Each institute will have an executive council and an academic council. The institutes will have an individual statute providing for other institutional authorities, their responsibilities and power.All IIESTs will preserve its all-India character in student population through national level admission tests either by adopting the Joint Entrance Examination system or the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination. The expert committee has given a budgetary recommendation for Rs.2,407.86 crore for the five institutions identified for upgrade during 2007-2012.The proposed IIESTs would be created by an act of the Parliament of India. They would be given the status of Institutes of National Importance, on the lines of IITs and NITs by the Indian government. Later, the Government of India selected five institutions for the upgradation.The upgradation would be brought forth initially by introducing two separate schedules in the NIT Act and the act would be renamed NIT-IIEST Act. By virtue of this act the power of authority passes to the Central Government. The institute will be able to have 50% seats reserved for it's domicile candidates. Rest will be based on all India rankings.Gradually as more institutes get the approval, the central government would enact a separate act for the IIESTs. IIESTs would be special in the sense that these would be catering towards post-graduate and research studies exclusively like the IISc differing only in the sense that most of their courses will be integrated in nature. Students selected through UG Competetive exams would be enrolled for dual-degree courses in engineering and sciences. The admission would be through the AIEEE. The state would have a representative in the Governing body. BESU would be the first IIEST to start functioning from the academic year 2008-09. The five institutions have been short-listed based on the final Anandakrishnan report are as follows:

IIEST Varanasi IT-BHU
IIEST Cochin Cochin University of Science and Technology
IIEST Kolkata Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur
IIEST Hyderabad Osmania University College of Technology
IIEST Visakhapatanam Andhra University College of Engineering

Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters

The French government will confer "Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters" title on Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan for his contribution to Indian film industry.This distinction is given to persons who have established themselves by their creativity in the field of art, culture and literature or for their contribution to the influence of the arts in France and throughout the world.

Officer of the Legion of Honour

Infosys mentor was conferred with the Officer of the Legion of Honour, the highest civilian distinction of the Government of France.French Minister of Higher Education and Research Valerie Pecresse bestowed the honour to the "most admired business leader" of India .Created in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Legion of Honour is the highest civilian distinction that can be conferred in France regardless of the social status or the nationality of the recipients.Pecresse acknowledged the humble beginnings of Infosys, which was co-founded by Narayana Murthy in 1981 along with six friends and 215 dollars in the pocket.

CAT ONLINE

The directors of the seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will meet later this month to discuss details of a proposal to take the Common Admission Test (CAT) online by 2009.The CAT exams may also be formatted on the lines of the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) so that the scores are valid for two to three years. An IIM Calcutta professor who is working on the proposal said the primary reason for taking the CAT online is the increasing number of aspirants.

More teachers for math and science

The Human Resource Development ministry asks state governments to appoint more teachers for mathematics and sciences to improve quality of school education in India.The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) recently found that over 50 per cent of Class V level government school students fail to solve simple mathematics questions like multiple addition and subtraction.The ministry will also seek feedback on the Central government proposal to open 6,000 new model secondary schools in the country.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Byron and his first wife, Isabella Milbanke, was highly mathematically gifted. Milbanke, known as Princess of the Parallelograms for her exceptional mathematical and logistical abilities, tutored Ada rigorously in science and mathematics, and Ada went on to collaborate with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the calculating machine. Her theories of indexing and looping form the basis of modern computing and Ada is now widely acknowledged as one of the world's first computer programmers.Ada called herself "an Analyst (& Metaphysician)," and the combination was put to use in the Notes. She understood the plans for the device as well as Babbage but was better at articulating its promise. She rightly saw it as what we would call a general-purpose computer. It was suited for "developping [sic] and tabulating any function whatever. . . the engine [is] the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity." Her Notes anticipate future developments, including computer-generated music.

Education bigger than tourism

EDUCATION has replaced tourism as Australia's top services export.The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that education exports last year were worth $12.5 billion compared with the $11.5 billion tourism industry.Its data ranked education as the third most lucrative export industry behind coal ($20.8 billion) and iron ore ($16 billion).The ABS figures were calculated by assessing the dollars spent in Australia by foreign students, which last year numbered more than 450,000, 18% more than in 2006. Almost half of the students were staying in universities, while the fastest areas of growth were in the vocational training and English language sector. The top five countries for students were China, India, South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Dr. Andrew H. Wallace

Dr. Andrew H. Wallace, professor emeritus of mathematics at Penn and former chair of the mathematics department (1968-71), passed away January 18 in Chania, Crete, Greece. He was 81.Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, he graduated in 1946 with an MA in mathematics and physics from Edinburgh University. He earned his PhD in mathematics from St. Andrews University in 1949.After immigrating to the US in 1959, he served as professor and chair of the mathematics department at Indiana University. He then came to Penn in 1965 and stayed until his retirement in 1986. his mathematical work was mainly concentrated in topology where he produced fundamental results reported on principally in his series of papers entitled “Modifications and Cobounding Manifolds.” Here, he essentially settled in dimensions 5 and higher, the basic open problem regarding these geometric objects, though he did not push his results to an explicit statement of the solution.Dr. Wallace’s work in the topology of three dimensional spaces was groundbreaking and remains frequently cited and used to the present day.

Padma Awards

The President of India has approved the names of the 135 persons for conferment of the Padma Awards-2008. The list has 13 Padma Vibhushan awardees, 35 Padma Bhushan and 71 Padma Shri winners.The Padma Vibhushan winners are Asha Bhosle (Art), Justice (Dr.) A.S Anand, PN Dhar, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee (all three for public affairs), Dr E Sreedharan, and Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri for science and engineering, Late Mr Edmund Hillary (Posthumous), Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, Viswanathan Anand (all three for sports), Lakshmi Narayan Mittal, N R Narayana Murthy, PRS Oberoi, Ratan Naval Tata (all four for trade and industry).The list of Padma Bhushan awardees has five from the field of art. These are Amarnath Sehgal (Posthumous), Ustad Asad Ali Khan, P Susheela, Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar and Prof. Sushil Kumar Saxena. For civil service the awardees are Chandrshekhar Dasgupta, K Padmanabhiah and V Ramachandran.There are nine winners in the field of Literature and Education. These are Prof Brijinder Nath Goswamy, Prof Ji Xianlin (China), Prof Kaushik Basu (USA), Prof. (Smt.) Padma Desai (USA), Ravindra Kelekar, Dr (Smt.) Shayama Chona, Shri Lal Shukla, Dr Srinivasa SR Varadhan, Prof TK Oommen and Prof (Dr) Jagjit Singh Chopra. Prof Nirmal Kumar Ganguly has got it for medicine while Mian Bashir Ahmed, Lord Meghnad Desai, Late Yuli Mikhailovitch Vorontsov (Posthumous) have got Padma Bhushan for public affairs. Prof Asis Datta, Prof. Sukh Dev have got it for science and engineering.Indian born astronaut Sunita Williams has got it for astronautics.Vasant Gowarikar, DR Mehta, Dominique Lapierre (France), Dr (Ms.) Inderjit Kaur have got it for social work. Suresh Kumar Neotia, Baba Neelkanth Kalyani, K. V. Kamath, Shiv Nadar and Vikram Pandit have got it for Trade and Industry.The Padma Shri award list has 71 names. The list consists of Gangadhar Pradhan, Mikhailovich Pechinkov (Russia), Pandit Gokulotsavji Maharaj, Hans Raj Hans, Dr.(Smt.) Helen Giri, Jatin Goswami, Jawahar Wattal, John Martin Nelson, Jonnalagadda Gurappa Chetty, Kekoo M. Gandhy, Madhuri Dixit, Mangala Prasad Mohanty, Manoj Night Shyamalan, Meenakshi Chitharanjan, Moozhikkulam Kochukuttan Chakyar, P.K. Narayanan Nambiar, Pratap Pawar (UK), Sabitri Heisnam, Sentila T. Yanger, Dr. Sirkazhi G. Sivachidambaram, Tom Alter and Prof. Yella Venkateswara Rao have got it for Art.Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Dilip Sardesai and Vinod Dua have got it for Journalism.
Prof. Amitabh Mattoo, Balasubramanian Sivanthi Adithan, Bholabhai Patel, Dr. (Smt.) Bina Agarwal, Prof. (Dr.) K.S. Nisar Ahmed, Dr. (Smt.) M. Leelavathy, Dr. Nirupam Bajpai, Dr. Srinivas Udgata, Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, Shri Surjya Kanta Hazarika, Dr. Vellayani Arjunan and Mohammad Yousuf Taing have won it for Literature and Education.Haji Kaleem Ullah Khan has got Padma Shri for Mango Plantation and Grafting.Dr. A. Jayanta Kumar Singh, Prof. (Dr.) Arjunan Rajasekaran, Prof. (Dr.) C.U. Velmurugendran, Dr. Deepak Sehgal, Prof. (Dr.) Dinesh K. Bhargava, Dr. Indu Bhushan Sinha, Dr. Keiki R. Mehta, Dr. (Smt.) Malvika Sabharwal, Dr. Mohan Chandra Pant, Dr. Rakesh Kumar Jain, Dr. Raman Kapur, Dr. Randhir Sud, Dr. Shyam Narayan Arya, Prof. (Dr.) Surendra Singh Yadav, Dr. Tatyarao Pundlikrao Lahane and Dr. Tony Fernandez have got it for medicine.Colette Mathur has got it for public affairs. She is from Switzerland.Bhavarlal Hiralal Jain, Dr. Joseph H. Hulse (Canada), Prof Kasturi Lal Chopra, Dr. Sant Singh Virmani (USA) have got it for science and engineering. Kailash Chandra Agrawal, Sister Karuna Mary Braganza, Dr. (Smt.) Kshama Metre, Dr. Kutikuppala Surya Rao, Madan Mohan Sabharwal, Dr. (Ms.) Sheela Barthakur, V.R. Gowrishankar, Vikramjit Singh Sahney and Yousaf Ali Musaliamveettil Abdul Kader of UAE have been awarded the Padma Shri for social work.Baichung Bhutia and Bula Chowdhury Chakraborty have got it for sports.Dr. Amit Mitra has got it for trade and industry.The government has once again skipped conferring the Bharat Ratna for the seventh time in a row. The last time it was given was in 2001 when it was conferred filmdom's golden voice Lata Mangeshkar and Shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan. Apart from Sreedharan, honours list includes educationist Shyama Chona, Prof Asis Datta, journalists Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt and Vinod Dua have been honoured. Veteran commentator Jasdev Singh, retired IAS officer and government's interlocutor in the Naga peace process K Padmanabhaiah, US astronaut of Indian origin Sunita Williams and French co-author of "City of Joy" and social activist Dominique Lapierre are among those awarded Padma Bhushan for their contributions. Noted sociologist T K Oomen has been awarded a Padma Shri. Apart from Madhuri Dixit, veteran actor and theatre personality Tom Alter has been given a Padma Shri. In 2007, 121 Padma awards were announced — of these, 10 Padma Vibhushans, 32 Padma Bhushans and 79 Padma Shris.

TCS asked 500 staffs to leave for poor performance

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has asked around 500 people to leave the company after the second annual appraisal it carries out, citing performance-related issues. By the end of the financial year, this number could go up to 600. The employees who were asked to leave are mostly those with 2-3 years of experience and do not include trainees because they have less than a year’s experience.Last week, TCS was in the news for cutting down the variable pay of employees for slippages in internal growth targets — a move that will save it about Rs 83 crore.An official statement from the company termed it a routine exercise carried out bi-annually to weed out non-performers.source--Economic times

Six-year D. Pharm course in the offing

Kakatiya University will introduce Doctor of Pharmacy, a six-year course, from the next academic year. The new course will comprise more clinical aspects to make the candidates on par with doctors.This will enable the pharmacy profession more supportive to doctors and it will result in improvement of the over-all healthcare system.The existing pharmacy colleges offering B.Pharm courses and having necessary infrastructure and tieup with a hospital are eligible to have the new course.

Frank Nelson Cole Prize

Professor Manjul Bhargava received the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory for his work on composition laws and his contributions to the work of renowned mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. He has previously been awarded the Clay Mathematics Institute’s Research Award and the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize. In 2002, Bhargava was named one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10.Manjul Bhargava, the youngest full professor at Princeton, has made phenomenal contributions to number theory, notably by his discovery of higher order composition laws. These appeared in a Ph.D thesis, written under the direction of Professor Andrew Wiles of Princeton University and published in the `Annals of Mathematics.Bhargava created a whole new area of research in a classical topic that had seen very little activity since the time of Gauss.

TCS variable pay cut

On January 30, India’s largest software company Tata Consultancy Company (TCS) has announced to cut the variable component of its employee and on an average, the cut will affect the employee’s salary by anywhere between 1.5 – two per cent less this month and onwards. Though 1.5 – two per cent cut does not look very huge in the industry, which is suffering, but getting less salary is certainly pinching the employee. But it appears that the company may not have any other choice keeping in view that they have maintained the same level of salary despite appreciation of rupee since last one year.THE STRENGTHENING of rupee, imminent recession in US, sub prime mortgagee crisis in US and its worldwide coupling effect - it seems that everything is going against Indian software industry. On one side, due to slowdown in US economy and effect of sub prime crisis in US as well as in Europe, search of new clients and increasing the contracted rates are becoming tough for software companies.

Scholarships for minority community children

Two-and-a-half million schoolchildren from India's minority communities will get scholarships for the next five years, with a cabinet panel earmarking more than Rs.18 billion for this. The decision of the cabinet committee on economic affairs (CCEA) would benefit students of Class I to X studying in government or aided private schools. Thirty percent of the scholarships have been earmarked for girl students.The government has also identified 90 districts across the country with a concentration of the minorities and has initiated moves to upgrade the basic infrastructure in these areas.

Eight Indian Americans reach Intel science talent finals

Eight Indian American high school students, five of them girls, have been named among 40 finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search 2008 contest.Avanthi Raghavan, Shravani Mikkilineni, Hamsa Sridhar, Shivani Sud, Isha Jain, Vinay Venkatesh Ramasesh, Ashok Chandran and Ayon Sen get at least $5,000 in scholarships and a laptop. They will next compete for 10 scholarships - including the top award of $100,000 - in March in Washington, DC.The eight talented students were selected Wednesday from over 1,600 individual entrants for the nationwide competition, often called the "junior Nobel prize", administered annually by the Washington based Society for Science & the Public.The project Ashok Chandran, 17, of Nesconset, New York, submitted for the competition, studied the link between smoking and breast cancer. He tested the hypothesis that nicotine would alter mammary cell gene expression, creating a cellular environment akin to that of a breast cancer cell.Isha Himani Jain, 17, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has identified a cellular mechanism underlying bone growth spurts in zebra fish, similar to the way children's bones grow. She had also won, in October, a $100,000 scholarship topping the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology for the same study, which has been published in a journal.Avanthi Raghavan, 17, of Orlando, Florida, submitted a project studying the mechanisms of protein transport critical to the survival and virulence of the malaria parasite, which accounts for over two million deaths every year.The project of Shivani Sud, 17, of Durham, North Carolina, focuses on identifying stage II colon cancer patients at high risk of recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumours.Hamsa Sridhar, 18, of Kings Park, New York, developed a low cost optical tweezers system that uses laser light to trap and suspend microscopic particles.Ayon Sen, 17, of Austin, Texas, investigated the natural processes by which the ocean transports heat. He developed a MATLAB software interface for deep-water ocean current velocity data and integrated it with surface water velocity data from satellite altimeters.Vinay Venkatesh Ramasesh, 18, of Fort Worth, Texas, submitted a chemistry project involving algorithms to accurately determine molecular thermodynamic properties of large molecules, such as proteins.
Shravani Mikkilineni, 17, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, studied the computation of continued fraction expansions of the square roots of positive integers.

CBSE to provide counselling

The CBSE will be providing counselling services through multiple modes of communication including telephone, newspapers and internet.For students facing exam blues this season, relief is just a click or phone-call away.The CBSE will be providing counselling services through multiple modes of communication including telephone, newspapers and internet.The CBSE has been providing counselling services to students for the past ten years and introduced multiple modes of communication this year to maximise its reach.The programme which is aimed at helping students and parents overcome anxiety and exam-related stress, opens its first phase of counselling services from February 1 to March 31 this year.Apart from tele-counselling through Interactive Voice Response System, on-line counselling and question-answer through newspaper columns will function as additional modes of communication for students.

Online Test Portal “Successrunway.com”

Bangalore based premier training organisation BASE and ExcelSoft, an e-learning solutions company announced the launch of http://www.successrunway.com, a portal offering online test series for students aspiring to get into professional institutes like IITs, NITs and engineering colleges. The portal presents tests and assessments that help students prepare better for these exams. SuccessRunway will offer students a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) featuring the Online Test Series to prepare for the IIT-JEE, AIEEE and the Karnataka CET and COMEDK examinations. The tests can be taken at a cyber café, at home or any place with a broadband Internet connection.Students can take 5 tests on the pattern of the competitive examination so that they become familiar with a wide variety of questions. Feedback is available immediately on answering the test. “The unique feature of the portal’s online Test Series is that it provides pedagogically strong near-classroom learning experience.Established in 1991, BASE is a premier educational services company with training centres in Bangalore and Mysore. Started by a prominent team of academics, BASE’s mission is to mould meritorious students into true winners. Apart from providing training services, BASE also offers academic support to a large number of institutions across Karnataka.

David Mumford

Brown University mathematician David Mumford has won the 2008 Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics for groundbreaking theoretical work in algebraic geometry. The Wolf Prize is one of the most prestigious honors in mathematics.

India in world mathematics -M.S. RAGHUNATHAN

“The intellectual potentialities of the Indian nation are unlimited and not many years would perhaps be needed before India can take a worthy place in world mathematics.Those are the words of A. Weil, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, written in 1936. Weil was not a man to be easily impressed; and his assessment of our capabilities were based not just on our record in ancient and medieval history and the achievements of the towering figure of Srinivasa Ramanujan but took into account contemporary Indian perfomance. Colonial rule was not the ideal environment for that favourable prognosis to be realised; yet we made some modest progress.At the dawn of freedom there were in the country a dozen or so mathematicians of high calibre still active. And fully realising our potential was surely a tiny part of our pledge in our “tryst with destiny.”On the eve of Independence there was notable mathematical research activity in some of our university departments; those of Allahabad, Calcutta and Madras were in the lead, work emerging from these centres receiving some international acclaim. The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta had acquired a big reputation in Statistics.
During the first decade after Independence, even as these institutions continued with their good work, a new arrival on the scene, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) was making impressive progress.The 1960s saw the coming of age of Indian mathematics. India has since made some very substantial contributions to mathematics. People working in the country have made fundamental contributions to certain areas of mathematics, notably Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Lie Theory, Number Theory, Probability Theory and Statistics — contributions that are milestones in these subjects. There have been interesting contributions to other areas too, but their impact has not been as impressive.A major mathematical event, the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), has been taking place once every four years since 1900 (with breaks during the World War years) with ever increasing international participation. The meet is built around prestigious invited lectures numbering about 200: some 20 “plenary” one-hour lectures are meant for the general mathematical audience and are given by eminent figures who have had a big influence on the evolution of different mathematical areas. The remaining, more specialised, talks of 50 minutes duration are given by other outstanding contributors to diverse fields in mathematics. (The numbers mentioned are those in recent congresses; they were much smaller earlier on.) It is at these Congresses that the Fields Medal, the most prestigious international award for mathematics, is given.Some idea of the Indian impact on the world of mathematics may be gleaned from the fact that since 1954, in every Congress except in 1966 and 1986 there has been at least one invited talk by an Indian working in India; and all these talks have been in areas mentioned above. There have been two plenary talks by Indians but both were by non-residents. However, on the whole there have been far fewer talks by non-resident Indians than by those working in India.The Fields Medal, by far the most prestigious award for mathematical achievement, is awarded at the International Congresses. This prize has so far eluded India but there are instances of people coming close to it. (The medal is awarded only to mathematicians under 40 and its monetary value is a pittance in comparison with the Nobel prize). Several Indian mathematicians have, however, received the Third World Academy Mathematics Prize (awarded every year since 1980), an award for excellence in mathematical research in the developing countries. M.S. Narasimhan (who retired from the TIFR in 1992) received the King Faisal Prize for Mathematics in 2006. This is an international prize given for outstanding work in the different sciences, and mathematics gets its turn once in four years. All the recipients before Dr. Narasimhan were Westerners. Also in 2006, C.S. Seshadri, who is Director, Chennai Mathematics Institute, was awrded the ICTP Prize for mathematics, yet another prestigious award for scientists from the Third World. The same year, Manindra Agarwal of the Indian Institute of Technology and two of his erstwhile students, Neeraj Kayal and Nitin Saxena, bagged the Godel Prize for outstanding work in Theoretical Computer Science (done in 2002). A (woman) mathematician, R. Sujatha of the TIFR, was awarded (again in 2006) another international prize meant for mathematical achievements in the Third World, the Ramanuajan Prize instituted jointly by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund. The Abel Memorial Fund also
provides funds for the Abel Prize which rewards mathematical achievement on a scale similar to that of the Nobel. This year’s prize went to S.R.S. Varadhan, of Indian origin. Dr. Varadhan’s formative years were spent atthe Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. Another indication of the high levels achieved by Indian mathematics is that three Indian mathematicians working in India have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society of London. Two non-residents (Dr. Varadhan and Dr. Harish-Chandra) and Srinivasa Ramnaujan are the only other Indian mathematicians who have been conferred this privilege.The last two paragraphs briefly outlined the high points of Indian achievement in mathematics. These peaks, however, do not by any means tell the whole story: except the Godel Prize, all the other achievements came from the TIFR and the ISI. In fact, the TIFR accounts for by far the larger share. The general level of mathematics outside a handful of institutions of higher learning leaves much to be desired. One finds at most university departments neither good quality research nor superior scholarship.The present situation is indeed depressing; and in many ways things are on a further decline. There has been a steady loss of interest in the pursuit of mathematics (in fact of all the basic sciences) among the young over the last three decades. This is largely due to socio-economic factors. Till recently, career options for mathematics graduates was essentially limited to the academic profession. The academic profession is of course not attractive in terms of emoluments: a fresh management graduate enters his or her career at a salary which is often higher than what the academic retires on.Unattractive economic status is of course nothing new to the academic profession, but it no longer commands the respect it used to in an earlier era. ”Midnight’s Children” seem to have had a definite advantage over their children in the matter of the quality of their teachers.
Despite all this, some talented youngsters will still pursue mathematics, but most of them seek to do it in Europe or the United States. One reason is that the academic in the West has a much better socio-economic standing; a second reason is the sorry state of most of our institutions of higher learning — an eager student cannot get exposure to truly exciting mathematics except in a handful of places. And even these, while being good, are no match for a Harvard or a Princeton. On top of that, many Western universities are actively canvassing to get Indian students enrolled in their graduate schools.Higher education in the country has come to mean, especially in the context of economic liberalisation, education that leads to big emoluments. The policies of the state are in tune with this perception. Most of the state support for higher education is de facto a subsidy for producing (managerial) human resources for business and industry. Scant attention is paid to promoting learning for its own sake: higher studies that do not cater to commerce get short shrift.For example, State governments have not allowed universities to fill sanctioned positions in their science or humanities departments, by withholding the needed financial support.Mathematics has always played an important role in diverse human endeavours. Physics has had over the centuries a symbiotic relationship with mathematics; so also technology, especially since the Industrial Revolution. Biology and medicine, as also the social sciences, which were relatively impervious to advanced mathematics till a hundred years ago, are now benefiting immensely from highly sophisticated mathematical intervention. In the last few decades the world of finance has turned to higher mathematics for help: Wall Street employs mathematics Ph.Ds routinely.In such a context, it is important that we make an all-out effort to improve the state of mathematics in the country. And any improvement of the general scenario is possible only if we have good mathematics teachers at all levels. And to secure that, it is imperative that the teaching profession be made socio-economically attractive.In sum, the mathematical scene is a mixed bag. We have, on the one hand, an impressive record on the frontiers of mathematics even as the standards in the mathematical community at large are far from satisfactory: we are yet to claim our “worthy place in world mathematics.There is, however, room for some cautious optimism about the future. The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which accounts for most of our peak achievements, continues to perform at a superior level; that institute has set up a centre in Bangalore where areas like Differential Equations are pursued with vigour. The Indian Statistical Institute has established branches in Delhi and Bangalore; these, along with the headquarters in Kolkata, are lively centres producing excellent work.The government has set up two research institutions along the lines of the TIFR, one in Chennai and one in Allahabad, both of which are contributing to enhancing the quality of our mathematics. The Indian Institute of Science has in recent years assembled an excellent, youthful faculty in mathematics, making its future very promising. The IITs are making serious efforts to raise the standards of research and scholarship in mathematics.Some university departments are also trying to do this, but their meagre financial resources make the task very difficult.In the recent past there have been two initiatives at providing excellent undergraduate education in mathematics. One was the creation of the Chennai Mathematics Institute where undergraduate students are taught by active, front-ranking researchers. The Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore is running such a teaching programme. Both institutions have met with considerable success in producing scholars well poised to embark on a career in mathematics. In the last couple of years the government has set up two “Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research” with the same aims and one hopes that these efforts will also succeed.On the whole, our nurture of the potential has been less than satisfactory. We need to make greater efforts in that direction. The diamond jubilee of India’s Independence is a good occasion to reiterate the resolve to do that.

M.S. Raghunathan, a Fellow of the Royal Society, is DAE Homi Bhabha Professor. He was formerly Professor of Eminence, TIFR. from-HINDU

New Institutes

The Centre had proposed three new IITs, 20 Indian Institutes of Information Technology, five Indian Institutes of Management, three IISERs and four Schools of Planning in the 11th Five-Year-Plan. Last year the Union HRD ministry decided to set up IITs in Bihar and Rajasthan and IISERs in Pune and Calcutta.

IIT site

State government had finalized Bihta, a small township west to Patna as the site. But when the Central team came to inspect the area, it found that the place has a water-logging problem.Four months have passed since then but the Union human resources development ministry is yet to hear from the Bihar government.Apart from Bihar, an IIT is going to be opened in Medak in Andhra Pradesh while the site for Rajasthan has also not been finalized.With two states still to take any decision, the HRD ministry has sought clearance of the Expenditure Finance Committee for the IITs, a necessary step before the project gets moving.

Batch of '82 gives Rs 4 cr to IIT-B

The batch of 1982 of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay handed over a cheque of Rs 4 crore to the premier engineering institute. The money will be used to bring in more talent into the faculty. With the interest earned on the corpus, every year 25 incoming faculty members at IIT-B will be offered a bonus of Rs 1 lakh for three years.The batch, having decided to raise Rs 6 crore in all, plans to mobilise the remaining Rs 2 crore and give it to IIT-B for its Legacy Project in 2008. Each year, the Legacy Project sees alumni celebrating its silver jubilee reunion by pledging to take up a project for the institute.This initiative was announced earlier this year at a New York alumni meet when director Ashok Misra and senior faculty members including Deepak Phatak, professor at IIT's Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, visited the US to whip up enthusiasm among NRI ex-students for the ongoing IIT-B golden jubilee celebrations.

IIT Kharagpur launches new course

IIT Kharagpur will be the first in the country to open a School of Entrepreneurship, the first batch for which will be inducted latest by 2009. The institute is also investing Rs 396 crore in six new projects, including an increasing intake of students up to 24,000 to 30,000 in phases in the next 10 years. Faculty is also being recruited to cope with the influx of both undergraduate and postgraduate students. All IITs are increasing their intake capacity in line with the Central government's policy of upgrading these centres of excellence. Fifty per cent of the investment going into the School of Entrepreneurship is being borne by Mr Vinod Gupta, an alumnus of the IIT. Initially, 30 students will be taken in

World University Rankings

For the first time, no Indian university figures in Britain’s most authoritative league table of the world’s top 200 universities while China is in with six universities revealing a wide gap in higher educational standards between the two competing Asian giants.Other Asian countries with world-class universities are Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), which figured regularly in all the previous rankings, since The Times Higher – Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings which began three years ago, have fallen off the map this year partly because of a change in evaluation norms.For this year’s survey, individual IITs were assessed, and not the “IIT system as a whole.” And none of the seven IITs was considered good enough to find a place among the top-ranking world universities.By way of consolation, however, IIT Delhi and IIT Mumbai find mention among the world’s top 50 technology institutions, with the former at 37 and latter at 33 — both way behind China’s Tsinghua University, placed at 16.The six Chinese universities included among the world’s Top 200 are Peking University, Tsinghua University (also listed among the 50 best technology institutions), Fudan University, Nanjing University, the University of Science and Technology of China and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The survey, which covers 28 countries, confirms the English-speaking world’s dominance in higher education with America and Britain leading the pack. Harvard University tops the league table followed by Cambridge and Oxford at second and third positions respectively. The top 10 universities are all either in U.S. or Britain. FROM-HINDU

DU start course on banking

Delhi University (DU) in collaboration with ICICI Bank is going to start a three-month-long certificate course on banking.The course titled as "Foundation on Banking", would be launched by the Commerce department of the varsity which has recently entered into a partnership with ICICI Bank.The course would be open to those candidates who have secured 50 per cent or more marks in aggregate in their B Com degree.

Earn while they learn

There is a good news for the students of Delhi University as the varsity management is mulling "earn while they learn" programme for its students.undergraduate and postgraduate students will be provided part time jobs within the university set-up while they pursue their studies. They will be given employment for 25 to 30 hours per month.There is a need for students to understand work culture and professionalism while pursuing their academic life.At the same time, this will reduce the monetary burden on their parents, he said, adding that the programme would also protect students from indulging into non-social activities as they won't have leisure time for them.

Patna IIT

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed hope that the proposed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Patna, may become functional from the next academic year.Although the building for the Institute was yet to come up, the state government was prepared to provide an alternative building to make the IIT functional from the next academic year. State government was in the process of acquiring 500 acres of land near Bihta, about 30 kms from the state capital, for setting up of the institute.

FIITJEE

FIITJEE, a leading private coaching institute for IIT-JEE and other top level engineering entrance examinations in India, has announced a "FIITJEE Talent Reward Exam" to be held in 54 test centers across the country on December 2. All students from Classes VII to XI are eligible to apply for the exam.Information regarding the registration process, test schedule, syllabus and the regular FIITJEE programmes are available on its website www.fiitjee.com.The last date for registration is November 28. The result will be announced on December 16. The test is being conducted to encourage aspirants of IIT-JEE and to offer them feedback on their preparation.

Anna University conduct leak-free exams

Anna University is constructing its own satellite ANUSAT to conduct not only leak-free exams but also to foster interest in Earth observation and space technology among students and faculty and to provide hands-on training for all aspects of spacecraft building and operations support.With the development of this project, the varsity has become the first university in India to take up space technology with emphasis on micro-satellite development in its university engineering curriculum. The varsity will also be able to conduct the examinations in a fair manner. This (ANUSAT) would help Anna University to conduct leak-free examinations in all its affiliated colleges.

All India Pre-medical/Pre-dental entrance examination, 2008

The CBSE has begun accepting on-line applications for the All India Pre-medical/Pre-dental entrance examination, 2008.Aspiring students can submit their applications on-line on the website of the Central Board of Secondary Education.The entrance test, conducted for 15 per cent of the merit positions in medical and dental colleges all over the country, involves a preliminary and final examination. The preliminary test will be held on April 6, 2008 while the final exam is scheduled for May 11, 2008. The last date for submission of application is November 26. The preliminary exam will comprise of 200 objective type questions from Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

CBSE

The Central Board of Secondary Education is going to start many new courses soon, disclosed Ashok Ganguli, CBSE chairman.Ganguli said, “We are in touch with India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies for some IT courses, with National Institute of Fashion Designing for fashion designing courses, with some hospitals for starting courses related to general health, besides courses in retail management, service sector, heritage crafts, multimedia and visual arts and creative skills.He said presently CBSE is focusing on four important factors — language, including communication skills enhancing regional as well as local languages; teaching mathematics from Class III onwards with the help of mathematics laboratory; teaching science by learning by doing from Class VI onwards and teaching with the help of computer technology. As per CBSE, a student can get five chances to clear a compartment in any subject. However, students who fail to clear their compartment in the third chance under CBSE Board are denied admission in schools under Punjab School education Board. About this, Ganguli said, “I am also the president of Council of Board of School Education. A meeting is being held in Pune in January 2008, where I will take up the issue.”He added that keeping in view the constructive approach and conceptual framework, CBSE is going to change its assessment pattern. In the Board examination of 2008, question papers will be based on thinking skills among children. So 20 per cent of the question papers will be based on higher order thinking skill, while the remaining will be based on medium order thinking skill. This will help in maintaining the correlation between speed and accuracy, he said.

Applied Materials Opens Nanotech Lab @ IIT Bombay

Applied Materials, Inc., a provider of nanomanufacturing technology solutions, has opened Nanomanufacturing lab at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The company has contributed equipment worth $7.5 million to the Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIT Bombay. The centre will serve as a research and educational platform and for faculty, students and researchers in India to work on breakthrough ideas to invent and innovate technologies that will have an impact on solving current as well as future problems of semiconductor technology. IIT Bombay has decided to name the laboratory as 'Applied Materials.

Rensselaer Medal

Toby Heavenrich of Candor is this year’s winner from Candor High School of the Rensselaer Medal from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.The award is given to students who have distinguished themselves in mathematics and science. Each medalist who is accepted and subsequently enrolls at Rensselaer receives a scholarship of $60,000 payable in four yearly awards of $15,000 each.

Mathematics exhibition

This exhibition is a result of a memorandum of understanding signed by the Kerala State Council for Science and Department of Atomic Energy to set up a 'Kerala School of Mathematics' in Kozhikode - a world-class mathematical studies centre.The idea is to generate students' interest and help them overcome their fear of Maths, which has led to poor performance in the state board exams in the past two years.The concept revolves around relating numbers and abstract equations to everyday life.

Science graduates prefer biotech: Survey

Biotechnology has emerged as the preferred choice for 82 per cent of science graduates showing interest in pursuing it as a career as against professional courses in agriculture, according to an Assocham survey.The chamber's paper on 'Prospects in Agriculture vs Biotechnology' revealed that a meagre 18 per cent of 500 science graduates said they would pursue post-graduation in agriculture to push up innovations in the sector to serve needs of 70 per cent of India's population.Due to the dependence on external factors such as rain, availability of inputs and quality seeds at affordable rate, agriculture has been unable to attract investment from the majority of businessman. The chamber said this further attributes to graduates' disinclination towards the sector

IIT-Kanpur to help Bhutan set up management school

A five-member delegation from Royal Bhutan University visited IIT Kanpur to seek its help in establishing a world class management institute in capital Thimpu.
Besides developing the infrastructure of the institute and arranging for its faculty, IIT-K will also be designing the curriculum for its MBA course.The delegation, headed by Vice-Chancellor of the Royal Bhutan University Dr. Dasho Pema Thinley, is on a two day visit of IIT-K. Acting Director of the IIT, Professor Kripashankar said that the delegation will discuss issues relating to faculty and student exchange programme, development of curriculum and IIT internships for Bhutanese students during their visit.

Coaching class bags $12 m in foreign funds

Mahesh Tutorials Educare Pvt. Ltd received FDI worth $12 million (about Rs49 crore) from Mauritius-based Helix Investments to expand its operations in India and abroad.With current revenue of Rs35.5 crore, the tutorial, which has a strong presence in Mumbai, wants to have a turnover of Rs150 crore by 2010. Most importantly, a stock market listing—an initial public offering (IPO)—could be likely in the near future.In 2000, Career Launcher received FDI of $1 million from Intel Corp.’s investment arm Intel Capital.Other coaching institutes are not far behind. Mumbai-based IITian’s PACE, which comprises former IIT professors, coaches students for the IIT entrance examination. IITian’s PACE is currently in advanced stages of talks with three foreign venture capitalists to finance a one-stop solution for all the educational needs of a child coming from the wealthy class.
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Bribery Charge

The student of IIT, Kharagpur, who had accused his teacher of demanding a bribe to change his assessment, reportedly confessed before the inquiry committee, set up to probe the charge, that he had actually wanted to pay the teacher for his grade change.The three-member inquiry committee set up by the institute’s director recorded Subhas Kumar’s statement on 16 August wherein he reportedly admitted to have offered to pay his teacher, Dr S Chakraborty, to change his grade. The inquiry committee also recorded the statements of the two witnesses to the alleged demand, Deepak Raj Kindo and Ravi Kumar, on the same day.source-Statesman