SHIMLA: Fighting allegations relating to promotion of private universities over public ones, the government on Tuesday expressed incapability of setting up more institutions of higher learning.
Addressing media, education minister Ishwar Dass Dhiman said of the 19 private universities that were issued the letters of intent, 11 had been set up. He said the areas of Chamba, Mandi and Kullu districts were a priority, as no private university had been sanctioned at these places.
Fending off opposition charges of providing government land to these institutions, he said, "No such land had been allotted. Congress is leading a misinformation campaign, which is harming the new institutions and the students."
He said the state's gross enrollment ratio (GER) in colleges and universities was 18%, which was higher than the national level of 12% but the target was to raise it to 25% by 2016-2017.
Government uses 19% of its budget on education and to keep Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) functional, an annual grant of about Rs 50 crore was being provided.
He said the 11 private universities had enrolled 5,865 students for the current session and had provided employment to 2,044 people.
The education minister said the degree courses available in these universities were accepted all over the country. "To maintain education standards and to regulate the administrative systems, an education regulatory commission would be constituted soon," Dhiman said.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
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New Delhi, July 19 (IANS) With their strategic proximity growing in recent years, the US Tuesday pitched for more military sales to India and improved sharing of defence technologies.
'On the issue of defence technologies, the United States expects to continue developing and selling the world's most competitive products. We view these sales as important on their own terms, but also as a means to facilitate the work that the Indian and American militaries can do together -- whether patrolling the seas or providing relief to the victims of natural disasters,' US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is on a three-day visit to India, said here.
She was addressing a joint press conference with her counterpart S.M. Krishna after they held their second strategic dialogue here.
The joint statement issued by the two sides after the talks also spoke on the issue of US military sales and sharing of defence technologies with India.
'The two sides noted India's defence orders from U.S. companies have reached a cumulative value of over $8 billion in the last decade. The two sides noted that these sales reflect strengthened cooperation. Both sides also affirmed their desire to strengthen cooperation through technology transfer, and joint research, development, and production of defence items,' it said.
This was also a clear indication that the US had put behind it the disappointment of two American arms majors - Boeing and Lockheed Martin - losing out in the race for a $10.4 billion Indian Air Force order for 126 combat jets.
India has in the last decade bought eight Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft for $2.1 billion and is expected to order four more of these planes for its navy. It has also bought six C-130J Super Hercules transporters for $1.2 billion and 10 C-17 heavy lift cargo planes for $4.1 billion along with their weapon suites. This apart it has bought a troop carrier, renamed INS Jalashwa, for amphibious operations and will soon be placing an order for 140 M777 artillery guns.
US firms are also in competition for India's requirement of 22 attack helicopters 15 heavylift cargo helicopters.
However, the sticking point in the military sales is the restriction on the supply of high-end systems, as India is yet to sign agreements such as the Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum (CISMOA) and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA).
India is also not satisfied with the progress made by the US in lifting sanctions on its defence and space organisations by removing them from the restrictive entity list, a move that was announced by US President Barack Obama during his visit last November.
However, Clinton said the two sides had 'made progress' on matters of security cooperation during this round of strategic dialogue, which was initiated last year. 'But we can do more to strengthen the security of our nations and this region as a whole,' she said.
The secretary noted that maritime security was also 'a major concern, as we seek to protect sea lanes, combat piracy, and defend freedom of navigation' and applauded India's leadership in fighting piracy in the Indian Ocean region, including its decision last week to chair the 2012 plenary of the piracy contact group operating off the Somalia coast.
The two nations also agreed to continue consultations on maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean region in existing forums such as the defence policy group and its appropriate sub-groups. They also agreed to exchange views on promoting regional security architecture that enhances maritime security in the Indian Ocean
region.
The joint statement noted that India and the US welcomed the progress in bilateral defence cooperation and that their defence policy group, which had met in March, would meet in early 2012.
'They noted the progress in defence bilateral exchanges, exercises, capacity building, information sharing, including in the areas of counter-narcotics, counter-piracy, maritime safety and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Apple had registered the trademark App Store in 2008. GetJar, however, has made it clear that it "won't be subject to this kind of bullying" and will continue to use the term.
"We're not going to cease & desist. We were here long before Steve & Co. We were built by developers, to help developers... We're not going to take it! Steve Jobs isn't our dad," Patrick Mork, chief marketing officer at GetJar, wrote at the company's official blog.
Mork added, "GetJar was started by developers for developers in 2004. We started formally distributing free apps in early 2005 and are among the pioneers of the modern direct-to-consumer app store distribution space when the iPhone was just an R&D project in Steve Job's head. So it's not as if we were waiting around for Apple to come up with the idea of app stores."
On Friday, a judge in the US denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction to stop Amazon from using term 'app store'. The case is slated to go to trial in October.
Patrick Mork said that industry as a whole is moving towards an ecosystem that is closed. "The truth is really alarming. The ecosystem as a whole is becoming increasingly closed. Its character is dictated by larger companies exercising excessive force to get bigger shares of the pie," he wrote.
He added GetJar is starting a movement against the current apps trends. "We're hereby starting a Facebook cause called The Open And Free App Movement (OFAM) to encourage every pi**ed off developer, start-up, carrier, OEM or NGO who is fed up with this crap to make their voice heard," he wrote.
Space shuttle Atlantis, delayed almost to the last second by a computer glitch, left the launch pad here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and made its way into the history books.
After 135 flights in 30 years, it was the last space shuttle launch ever. And it was a spectacular sight to the estimated one million people who crowded around the space center to see it happen. The shuttle rose on a streak of flame that was almost blinding to see, going higher and higher and higher. Within a minute it punched a hole in the clouds above it and disappeared from sight, leaving a pillar of steam that slowly dissipated in Florida's muggy air.
"We got to witness something really, really special and something amazing," said William H. Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's space operations.
But it may be the last time America launches its own astronauts for many years. At the Kennedy Space Center, throngs of people applauded, cheered -- and in some cases wept. This part of Florida has lived in large part for space shuttle launches, and there is not a clear plan for what comes next.
Atlantis' launch – a dramatic spectacle in any event – became a nail-biter as well. Controllers had less than five minutes in which to get it off the pad while its target, theInternational Space Station, was orbiting overhead. Clouds, which had loomed over the area all morning, parted just in time, and the countdown clock went into its final moments. But with just 31 seconds to go before liftoff – it suddenly stopped.
The problem turned out to be small: a sensor had failed to confirm that an access arm on the shuttle's gantry had safely retracted. Controllers solved the problem by going relatively low-tech: they looked at the arm through a television camera on the launch pad. But three tense minutes passed while controllers satisfied themselves there was no actual danger. If the wait had been longer, it would have forced an expensive two-day launch delay.
"I think we launched with 58 seconds left," said Mike Leinbach, the launch director. "That's an eternity as far as I'm concerned."
Atlantis is now on its way to a final rendezvous with the space station, scheduled for midday Sunday. Its mission sounds fairly mundane: it is carrying a year's worth of preserved food, clothing spare parts and other supplies for the station's six crew members. It is scheduled to land on July 20 at 7:06 a.m., ET.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
MUMBAI (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has imposed an import ban on products made at Dr. Reddy's Laboratories' Mexico unit for violation of manufacturing practice rules, the Press Trust of India reported, citing a notice by the regulator.
In June, the FDA said it had issued a warning letter to the Mexican facility of the Indian drugmaker for violating manufacturing standards.
It had said failure to correct these may see the regulator refuse entry into the United States, a key export market for the firm, of products manufactured at Dr Reddy's Mexican facility.
Calls to a spokesman at Dr. Reddy's were not answered and there was no immediate reply to an email seeking comment.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
With his starched kurta-pyjama and white Nike sneakers, the Congress general secretary was unlike any other politician the villagers had seen in their midst.
As he walked on, displaying the confidence of a seasoned politician, occasionally folding his sleeves, a large number of police and commandos followed him.
Also accompanying him were a large number of villagers -- who have been protesting for weeks against what they say is the forced takeover of their land by the Uttar Pradesh government.
After reaching Bhatta Parsaul village shortly after dawn despite being denied permission to hold a rally there, the young Gandhi hit the village of Nangla Bhattauna -- his third halt -- by noon.
He took six hours to cover the 12 km distance. In all, Gandhi covered five villages and 19 km Tuesday.
While he kept sipping bottled water, his supporters used hand pumps in the rural belt to quench their thirst.
In between, Gandhi stopped for a two-hour break at the house of farmer Rajbir Singh.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Google Inc's Chrome Web browser has grabbed more than 20 percent of global market share, while Microsoft Corp's long-time leader Internet Explorer has slipped below 50 percent, according to Internet statistics firm StatCounter.
A sevenfold increase in usage in the last two years is a boost for Google, which is trying to convert its dominance in Web search into operating systems and mobile software, bringing it into direct competition with Microsoft.
Google's Chrome browser, launched in December 2008, took 20.7 percent of the global market in June, according to StatCounter, up from 2.8 percent in the same month in 2009.
In the same time, it said the various versions of Internet Explorer fell to 44 percent from a 59 percent share two years ago, while Mozilla's Firefox dipped slightly to 28 percent from 30 percent.
Google's gains come as the company makes a concerted push into browser-centric, or "cloud" computing. In May, Google launched its long-awaited Chromebook, a laptop that works almost entirely on software accessed via the Internet, rather than installed on the machine. This is a direct challenge to software leaders Microsoft and Apple.
Microsoft, which controlled as much as 95 percent of the market in the early 2000s after crushing browser pioneer Netscape, has seen its market share ebb after disputes with antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe, which accused Microsoft of abusing its monopoly in operating systems to dominate the browser market.
The resolutions of those disputes effectively prohibited the world's biggest software company from making Internet Explorer the default browser in its dominant Windows operating system. Microsoft, which is developing the IE10 version of its browser, settled the issue with European Union regulators in December 2009, pledging to give consumers better access to rival browsers.
StatCounter, based in Dublin, Ireland, says its statistics are based on data collected from a sample of more than 15 billion page views per month from more than 3 million websites.
Net Applications, a more widely used browser statistics source, estimates that Google has not increased its share quite as much.
According to its market share data for June, Microsoft's Internet Explorer leads with 53.7 percent, Firefox has 21.7 percent and Chrome 13.1 percent. Apple Inc's Safari has 7.5 percent and Norway's Opera Software 1.7 percent.
Monday, July 4, 2011
The Samsung Galaxy S II has been one of the hottest selling devices in the world, and also arguably one of the best smartphones in the world.
The handset is available in countries across Asia, Europe and other continents (excluding North America) where the demand has been gradually increasing. And not surprisingly, the Galaxy S II has reached a new milestone. This time in terms of sales. Well, the handset reached the 1 million sales mark recently within a month of its launch, and now the handset has managed to cross sales of over 3 million units within 55 days of its launch.
The Galaxy S II has now bettered the Samsung Galaxy S which took 85 days to reach the 3 million sales mark. It is said that a unit of the Galaxy S II is sold every 1.5 seconds.
Well, this seems like a great year ahead for Samsung with the Galaxy S II doing pretty well in the market and mind you, the handset has still not hit North America yet, where the users are heavily anticipating the handset’s launch. Meaning that the handset could sell a lot more when that happens.
The original Galaxy S sold over 10 million units worldwide, and its successor could exceed its sales without any trouble. In the UK, the handset has been one of the most desired phones with Samsung being the top selling handset manufacturer over a period of 17 weeks. In India, the handset is sold out with most retailers. This speaks volumes of the handset’s demand in the country.
Well, the Galaxy S II is the handset that everybody were waiting for. Ever since it was unveiled at the MWC in Barcelona, people have been excited to hear about the handset. And some people feel it has all the makings of being one of the greatest smartphones ever made. Though in terms of build quality, most people weren’t impressed (me included). That however doesn’t steal away the show from the Galaxy S II.
Canonical's Ubuntu 11.04--also known as "Natty Narwhal" was officially released on April 28. Some of the highlights of the new release include the Unity desktop interface, LibreOffice for productivity software, and the Compiz window manager.
Natty Narwhal--named for the whale that lives year-round in the Arctic--represents a big departure for Ubuntu in its switch away from the GNOME desktop shell as a default. The latest version comes with new capabilities, enabling the user to try the open source OS in the cloud, without having to download or install it.
The Gnome desktop has been replaced by the Unity interface that made its first appearance in the 10.10 Netbook Edition. You can still install Gnome, or download the Xfce-based Xubuntu distribution, but Unity is now the default.
It’s a controversial change, but we reckon it’s an improvement. The Launcher at the side of the screen is far more inviting than Gnome’s niggly menus, and it makes better use of a widescreen display. The way the icons work – click to launch, right-click for options – will come naturally to anyone familiar with Windows 7 or OS X.
The Ubuntu button at the top-left of the screen opens a searchable index of files and applications, which will again be familiar to anyone who’s used Spotlight on the Mac or the Windows search box.
Unity itself has been jazzed up since its netbook-only days. Launcher icons are more colourful and detailed than before, although the background remains a miserable grey even if you select a brightly coloured desktop theme.
And the Launcher now hides when you set an application to full-screen mode, which can be done by dragging it to the top of the display, just like in Windows 7. This works on netbooks as well as full-sized PCs, and netbook users can save files to the desktop too – an option frustratingly disabled in 10.10.
The main menu bar has been updated, so application menus can now appear here, Mac-style. It’s a small change, but it saves screen space and adds a welcome sense of coherence.
The last notable interface change is support for multitouch interfaces. Unity’s button-driven design is already better suited than Gnome to finger-driven devices; and a feature jovially named Love Handles adds touch-friendly controls for moving and resizing windows. We couldn’t get this to work, but hopefully an update will remedy that.
For us, the most significant update to Unity isn’t a question of features, but of performance. Even on an ageing netbook, Unity felt more responsive than the 10.10 Netbook Edition.
We saw particular improvement when searching for files and programs using the Ubuntu button. Before, the search window took a second or more to appear; now it pops up almost instantly, and results often appear before you’ve finished typing.
In terms of applications, the most interesting update here is the Ubuntu One Control Panel. Although Canonical’s cloud storage system isn’t new, this graphical interface at last makes its services – including synchronising files, contacts and bookmarks – easy to use.
In future, Ubuntu’s OneConf tool could be integrated too, allowing your entire application setup to be mirrored across PCs, but this isn’t here yet.
Beyond that, Canonical has merely tweaked the bundled software. OpenOffice.org has been ditched in favour of LibreOffice – but since the latter suite is a recent spin-off of the former, the differences are minor. The default music player has changed too, from Rhythmbox to Banshee, which again offers similar features but in a cleaner interface.
Of course, you can install whichever players, browsers and so forth you prefer from the Software Centre application. Here, though, you run into Ubuntu’s one enduring weakness: its software library remains a bewildering hotchpotch, with minimal consistency and quality control.
Factor in the lack of industry-standard tools such as Outlook, Excel, Photoshop or Final Cut, and it’s clear that, for many purposes, sticking to Windows or OS X will give you an easier ride.
For those who are happy in Linux world, however, Ubuntu 11.04 is the most exciting release in ages. Unity is a breath of fresh air, and its improved performance is a godsend for netbooks.
Users of older releases will want to upgrade right away. And for Linux virgins, the new interface makes it more tempting than ever to take Ubuntu for a test drive.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp made its biggest move into the mobile, Internet-accessible world of "cloud" computing on Tuesday, taking the wraps off a revamped online version of its hugely profitable Office software suite.
The world's largest software company is heaving its two-decade old set of applications -- including Outlook email, Excel spreadsheets and SharePoint collaboration tools -- into an online format so that customers can use them on a variety of devices from wherever they can get an Internet connection.
It wants to push back against Google Inc, which has stolen a small but worrying percentage of corporate customers with cheaper, web-only alternatives, which remove the need for companies to spend time on installing software or managing servers.
"It puts Microsoft in a better position than they were -- they now have a broad product that they can more easily sell," said Michael Silver, an analyst at tech research firm Gartner.
Microsoft shares rose 0.8 percent on Tuesday, following a 3.7 percent jump the day before, partly buoyed by hopes that the company can ultimately boost profits by extending its software dominance to the growing cloud sector.
Microsoft has offered online versions of some Office programs -- chiefly Outlook email -- for its corporate customers for several years, and last year rolled out free versions for individual home users.
Chief Executive Steve Ballmer presented the overhauled and updated set of offerings -- collectively called Office 365 -- at an event in New York City on Tuesday morning, stressing that online versions and built-in conferencing tools can save users money, especially small and medium-sized businesses.
One test customer "expects to cut travel costs and reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent after they retire the 60 servers they think they will save," said Ballmer.
GROWING MARKET
The market for web-based software services is heating up, and every company, government department and local authority is getting pitches from Microsoft and Google whenever they reevaluate their office software.
It's a new challenge for Microsoft, which built itself up on expensive versions of software installed on individual computers. That business model turned the Office unit into Microsoft's most profitable, earning more than $3 billion alone last quarter.
Microsoft's plan is to make up for smaller profit margins from web-based applications -- due to the cost of handling data and keeping up servers -- by grabbing a larger slice of companies' overall technology spending.
"The key message is this is a great opportunity for organizations to get out of the business of trying to provide commodity yet mission-critical services," said Silver at Gartner.
Microsoft said it will charge from $2 per user per month for basic email services to $27 per user per month for advanced offerings. Google charges a flat fee of $50 per user per year for its web-based Google Apps product, which offers email, calendars, word processing and more online.
Microsoft, like Google, will host users' data remotely, and maintain all the servers in vast data centers. Unlike Google, it will also allow companies to put their data on dedicated servers should they choose, or keep the data on their own premises.
The full launch of Office 365, which has been in beta testing since last autumn, spices up the lively competition with Google for new users.
Earlier this month, Google snagged InterContinental Hotels Group (LSE:IHG.L) as a major customer, moving 25,000 of its employees onto Google email from Outlook.
Google, which has had the most success in the small and medium-sized business range, says there are now 40 million users of online Google Apps suite. Microsoft does not publish equivalent numbers, but research firm comScore has estimated 750 million people worldwide use Office in some form.
But Internet-centric Google -- whose success is based on its dominance in Web search -- is confident it has the upper hand in the cloud.
"Compared to what they (Microsoft) have in the market today, they have nowhere to go but up," said Dave Girouard, head of Google's worldwide enterprise business, in an interview last week. "We feel we're years ahead of them in terms of building a viable cloud solution that just works."
I came across this beautifully complied 15 different quotes of Warren Buffet on investment from different time, place and sources by Business Insider. I found them very simple but very effective.
1) The essentials first
“Rule No. 1: never lose money; rule No. 2: don’t forget rule No. 1″
2) Think about this one
“I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am no investor.”
3) Berkshire is like the Met
“You can sell it to Berkshire, and we’ll put it in the Metropolitan Museum; it’ll have a wing all by itself; it’ll be there forever. Or you can sell it to some porn shop operator, and he’ll take the painting and he’ll make the boobs a little bigger and he’ll stick it up in the window, and some other guy will come along in a raincoat, and he’ll buy it.” - On what makes people sell to him
4) Wonderful v Fair
“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
5) No need to be a genius
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.”
6) The Fourth Law Of Motion
“Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.” If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.”
7) Time is ticking away
“Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.”
8 ) Watch carefully…
“After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
9) Timing is everything
“Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.”
10) No limits
“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
11) Game pressure
“The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything–you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you’re a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, ‘Swing, you bum!’”
12) About Socks and Stocks
“Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that ‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’ Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”
13) The “lack of change” appeal
” Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it’s the lack of change that appeals to me. I don’t think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That’s the kind of business I like.”
14) The right moment to strike
“The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble…We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.”
15) Choose sleep over extra profit
” I have pledged – to you, the rating agencies and myself – to always run Berkshire with more than ample cash. We never want to count on the kindness of strangers in order to meet tomorrow’s obligations. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night’s sleep for the chance of extra profits.”
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
A big war is on for territory, and it looks like India is fighting Bharat on many fronts.
In Bengal, Orissa, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, governments are acquiring huge tracts of land for projects that, as the Supreme Court said yesterday, enrich a few at the expense of many.
Governments hand over cheaply and forcibly acquired land to private companies to develop expressways, housing colonies, mines, and factories. (In pre-liberalisation times, the government would have set up public sector units, but it now only talks of private-public partnerships, coming across to the deprived as a dalal acting on behalf of the moneybags).
The land-owners, mostly small farmers, aren't giving up so easily. They look at it this way: "The city-slickers have money, bulldozers, and a convenient land acquisition law to back them. But we still have one weapon: our vote."
Land wars exact a heavy toll. The CPM, for example, didn't take protesting Singur and Nandigram farmers seriously, and as a result, comprehensively lost Bengal, a state it had ruled for three decades. The land wars are spilling over into politics in many other states as well.
The moment Mamata Banerjee came to power in Bengal, she passed a law to take back land that the CPM government had handed over to Tata Motors. She has a promise to keep: returning land to farmers angered by the CPM's forcible acquisition. The Tatas, after suffering a setback in the High Court, are now approaching the Supreme Court. The battle has cost both parties dear. The protesters have lost lost their lives and property, the Tatas are losing a lot of money, and the CPM has suffered humiliation.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati faces assembly elections in a year, and is getting jittery about the land battle in her state. She has been rapped by the courts for taking fertile land away from Noida farmers to help real-estate developers. She has also faced widespread protests and demonstrations. Rahul Gandhi has been quick to seize the political opportunity; the Congress is celebrating hisbirthday as Farmers' Rights Day from this year.
Other leaders are uneasy, too. As Reuters reports about Posco, "The ... protests are another storm warning in an environment growing increasingly hostile to what many Indians see as a nexus of corrupt politicians and businessmen profiting from kickbacks and forced land acquisition as foreign firms vie for a place in the Indian market."
Over the last two days, people in Orissa have been stalling Posco employees from fencing off a huge area for their steel plant. The agitation against the steel plant is already six years old. Even those supporting the project are angry that Posco is giving out work to contractors from outside the region; they will allow work to progress only if their demand for work is met. The state government isunlikely to renew its contract with Posco by the end of this month, when it is due.
Orissa is saying children shouldn't be roped in for the agitations, but women and children have remained in the forefront of the movement to keep Posco away. Karnataka faces similar problems. Between Bangalore and Mysore, a private road builder has acquired thousands of acres, some of it allegedly by fraud, and is charging the highest toll in India. JD(S) leader H D Deve Gowda is rallying farmer against highway builder Ashok Kheni.
The government's failure to rehabilitate displaced people hardly makes news, but the rural-urban divide is starkly exposed every time a land agitation makes it to the headlines. One way out has been for the farmers to form co-operatives and negotiate with industrialists who want to buy their land. That way, they get the best deal, and are in control of their own lives. Another is to change the land acquisition law, and forcing governments to be more responsible to their people. The centre has beentalking of a new law that is favourable to farmers. The earlier that comes into force, the more conflicts we may be able to avert.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
New Delhi: Rajiv Bajaj, the managing director of Bajaj Auto, is a fitness freak and does yoga every morning. Till some time back, he used to play football with the company's workers in Pune, till an injury happened. Unknown to the outside world, for the last couple of years, he has read voraciously on homeopathy.
Those who know Bajaj well say that the passion for alternate medicine comes from his close friendship of over seven years with Mukesh Batra who runs a famous chain of homeopathy clinics across the country. Last year, Bajaj took the friendship a step further and became the principal sponsor for the Positive Health Awards instituted by Batra.
Bajaj Auto, for the record, has avoided celebrities to endorse its motorcycles and three-wheelers; still, Bajaj and Batra roped in Bollywood's top stars, from Shah Rukh Khan to Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, to support the cause.
Bajaj sees a deep connection between business and homeopathy, which is invisible to others. "Homeopathy is based on the concept of individualisation where the doctor looks at the person and not just the problem that he has. Contrary to looking at things piecemeal, I found that if one looks at things holistically, as homeopathy does, if one looks at one's business more holistically, one is likely to achieve solutions that are sustainable over time."
Bajaj is ready to take his love for alternate medicine/ therapy a step further: He is starting the Homoeopathy Yoga Centre in Pune which will, for the first time anywhere in the world, bring the two streams, one Indian and the other European, together under one roof.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
More than five million people have been displaced or otherwise affected by flooding, as torrential rains continues to lash eastern and southern China. On the other hand many streams and lakes along the Yangtze River have almost dried up. The world's third-largest river -- stretching from the Himalayas thousands of miles to the east meeting the sea -- has been experiencing its worst drought in decades. Almost 35 million people across five provinces on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze have been affected to different degrees by the drought. Chinese officials say extreme weather caused by climate change is to blame.
NEW DELHI: Whenever DMK MP Kanimozhi comes out of Tihar Prisons, the literature loving leader will have acquired one more skill -- candle making. During her past over one month stay in the women's cell at the high security jail, Kanimozhi has, in her spare time, taken interest in the candle making unit and learnt how to make candles from her co-inmates, sources at Tihar Prisons said.
Candle making is one of the vocational courses introduced by Tihar authorities to keep inmates connected to the outside world through competition and skill enhancement.
A candle making unit exists in Jail number six which houses women inmates. Made by the women prisoners, scented candles are used inside the jail and also sold as jail factory products.
Kanimozhi, along with Kalaignar TV MD Sharad Kumar, was sent to Tihar jail on May 20 after a special CBI court rejected her bail plea and ordered her "forthwith" arrest in in connection with the 2G spectrum scam.
Prison sources said the DMK Rajya Sabha member also spends her leisure reading books.
Concerned over her security, authorities have converted an office room inside the women's prison into a cell and kept her there away from other prisoners.
Even after her bail plea was rejected twice by the courts, Kanimozhi was never found to be upset and behaved well with all the people she came across inside the jail, the sources said.
Her father DMK chief M Karunanidhi her mother, Rajathi Ammal, along with others visited her on Tuesday. They had brought many packets of Murukku, a popular snack for her.
Unlike her high profile neighbours, Kanimozhi has a slew of people coming to meet her everyday. DMK leaders are lined up in front of Gate No 3 on Jail Road to visit her.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, FRS (Tamil: சந்திரசேகர வெங்கடராமன்) (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indianphysicist whose work was influential in the growth of science in India. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the light that is deflected changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect
Early years
Venkata Raman was born at Thiruvanaikaval, near Tiruchirappalli, Madras Presidency to R. Chandrasekhara Iyer (b. 1866) and Parvati Ammal (Saptarshi Parvati).[1] He was the second of their eight children. At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Vizag, Andhra Pradesh. Studied in St.Aloysius Anglo-Indian High School. His father was a lecturer in Mathematics and physics, so he grew up in an academic atmosphere.
Raman entered Presidency College, Chennai in 1902. In 1904, he gained his B.Sc., winning the first place and the gold medal in physics. In 1907, he gained his M.Sc., obtaining the highest distinctions. He joined the Indian Finance Department as an Assistant Accountant General.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Yukawa was born in Tokyo, Japan. In 1929, after receiving his degree from Kyoto Imperial University, he stayed on as a lecturer for four years. After graduation, he was interested in theoretical physics, particularly in the theory of elementary particles. In 1932, he married Sumi; they had two sons, Harumi and Takaaki. In 1933 he became an assistant professor at Osaka University, at age 26.
In 1935 he published his theory of mesons, which explained the interaction between protons and neutrons, and was a major influence on research into elementary particles. In 1940 he became a professor in Kyoto University. In 1940 he won the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy, in 1943 theDecoration of Cultural Merit from the Japanese government. In 1949 he became a professor at Columbia University, the same year he received theNobel Prize in Physics, after the discovery by Cecil Frank Powell, Giuseppe Occhialini and César Lattes of Yukawa's predicted pion in 1947. Yukawa also worked on the theory of K-capture, in which a low energy electron is absorbed by the nucleus, after its initial prediction by G. C. Wick.
Yukawa became the first chairman of Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1953. He received a Doctorate, honoris causa, from the University of Paris and honorary memberships in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the International Academy of Philosophy and Sciences, and the Pontificia Academia Scientiarum.
He was an editor of Progress of Theoretical Physics, and published the papers Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946) and Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948).
In 1955, he joined ten other leading scientists and intellectuals in signing the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, calling for nuclear disarmament.
Solo violinist Diana Yukawa is a relative of Hideki Yukawa.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
They are probably the best musical pieces I've heard till now,
Cud have included more... But therz always something called as "Top Ten"
1.Carry you home -James Blunt
2.Brothers in Arms -Dire Straits
3.Life in Technicolor -Coldplay
4.East Side Story -Bryan Adams
5.Take me Home, Country roads -John Denver
6.Coming back to life -Pink Floyd
7.Another Day in paradise -Phil Collins
8.I still havent found -U2
9.Still Loving you -Scorpions
10.A Kaleidoscope of Mathematics -James Horner
did i skipped anyone then please say me??
Music is a tool, you won't learn without practice and prior knowledge. I often come across questions by friends, when I just pick up an instrument and start playing without any prior knowledge, to whom I reply, all one needs is to play music first in mind and then it jot down on his instrument, whatever he is playing. Music for me is unarguably a mental performance rather than physical.
I remember when I was judged by my Violin guru, Shri G N Kapoor, who before taking me as his student asked me to tune up a Taanpura, which I did tuned to fairly decent perfection only coz of the Vocal teachings I had in music. For me it was replication of what I was thinking in mind.
I would advise people who read this and are related to music to stop playing instruments by reading notes.
I also want you to know that 'Indian Music', though tethered in its present form, is an awesome experience. There is no restriction for you to create your own stuff out of it, say, Shankar.E.L are doing phenomenal in their music compositions, hardly people know about their Classical-Music base. Other master is John McLaughlin, who has done a lot in popularizing Indian Classical-Music across the globe. India is own such country which has given a lot of Culture to Humanity, its ours (your and mine) duty to carry it with ourselves, not to dump it or let it being dumped.
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