Vitamins may increase risk of death

BETA carotene and vitamins A and E, antioxidant supplements taken by millions to fight disease, may actually raise the risk of death, a review of 68 studies on nearly a quarter of a million people.The report related only to synthetic supplements and not to fruits and vegetables in everyday diets which are natural and contain less concentrated levels of antioxidants, said the study from the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research at Denmark's Copenhagen University Hospital.

Water

Indian Oscar dreams were once again dashed as Deepa Mehta’s controversy ridden film, ‘Water’, lost out on the Best Foreign Language Film award after making it to the final five. Although ‘Water’ was officially a Canadian entry to the Academy Awards, India had pinned her hopes on Deepa Mehta and her film given that ‘Raang De Basanti’, India’s official entry, did not even make the final cut.

IIM-B

A staggering 40 percent of IIM-B graduates, who accepted offers from global firms at the campus selection, have quit their jobs within months, in the last two years. The IIM-B is now devising ways to bring the number of drop-outs down so that its pre-placement exercises are meaningful.While global firms have shown immense interest in IIM-B graduates, many new recruits appear to get disillusioned with the overseas jobs and return home to work in India. IIM-B officials believe that often the communication-gap leads to the drop out.Most employers are investment banks, consultant firms, and financial services. There seems to be a lack of proper understanding about the nature of the job among sections of graduates before they accept the offer.The IIM-B sources said that students leave the job within two to three months after recruitment. To counter this, the placement cell intends to introduce steps to improve the counselling sessions before placements and final recruitment.In 2006, out of the 45 pre-placement job offers, 17 were accepted, where in 10 students dropped out after six months of job at the global firm.

lifted the ban

Government has lifted the ban on entertainment channel AXN, six weeks after it was penalised for showing "indecent" programmes.The government had on January 17 prohibited the transmission or re-transmission of the satellite channel with immediate effect, up to March 15 throughout the country. The channel, however, submitted a prompt apology after it was blacked out and the ban was lifted early.The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, empowers the government to "regulate or prohibit the transmission or re-transmission of a channel on a programme" on all platforms in the name of "public order, decency, or morality."

news

Eating garlic - either raw or as a supplement - does not lower cholesterol levels, a US study has found. There has been a belief that garlic could help, supported by positive lab and animal studies. But a comparison of raw garlic and two garlic supplements in Archives of Internal Medicine found none of the three had any effect.

car manufacturing facility

: Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M), French car giant Renault and Japan’s third largest automaker Nissan signed a deal with the Tamil Nadu government for a Rs 4,000 crore car manufacturing facility at Oragadam near Chennai. The new 1,100-acre plant will have an installed capacity to make 4 lakh vehicles a year. Production will start in the second half of 2009, with output to rival cars produced by market leader Maruti, Tata and Hyundai.

Reliance Industries

Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries (RIL), along with his other associates, will pay Rs 1,402 per share (Rs 16,824 crore) for increasing their stake in the company through warrants issued on a preferential basis.RIL on Saturday announced to build one of largest petrochemical complex at its Jamnagar special economic zone for $3 billion, taking the total investments in the ongoing projects to over $13 billion.

Kaiga Atomic Power Station

After completion of its construction in record time, the Unit 3 of the Kaiga Atomic Power Station achieved its first self-sustained thermonuclear reaction and is expected to supply power to the southern grid by March end. The first criticality was achieved at exactly 10.10 a.m. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, S.K. Jain, Chairman of Nuclear Power Corporation of India and other senior officials witnessed it. The construction of the 220 MW unit began in March 2002. "Five years is the international benchmark for completing nuclear power plants and along with the project completion cost for this unit, there is going to be a new benchmark

super 30

A former Japanese beauty queen and actress is making a documentary film on a Bihar mathematician and his innovative and successful experiment of setting up a Super 30 school that sends children from poor families to top engineering colleges in India.Norika Fujiwara, 36, the 1992 Miss Japan and a popular model, was in Bihar last week for a shoot.The Super 30 school takes a group of 30 students mainly from poor and rural backgrounds. The students are given free coaching, food, accommodation and other facilities to help them crack the highly competitive Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE).It is supported with the income generated from the Ramanujan School of Mathematics run by Anand Kumar. The Ramanujan institute has students from affluent families who can afford to pay to fulfil their dreams.Anand Kumar is actively helped by Bihar's Additional Director-General of Police Abhyanand, who teaches physics despite his busy schedule of monitoring crime in the state known for its high rate of lawlessness.Super 30 took shape five years ago and its success can serve as a model for other such institutes across India.Last year, 28 of its 30 students, nearly half of them from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and three from the Scheduled Castes category, made it to the IIT- JEE.The number has been steadily growing over the years. Eighteen students cracked the IIT-JEE in 2003 the year Super 30 was set up. The number rose to 22 in 2004 and 26 in 2005.

iit

The HRD ministry has snowballed the plan of IITs to open new campuses. The first to be hit are the top three IITs of the country at - Delhi, Mumbai and Kharagpur.In a policy directive, the HRD ministry has rejected the idea of opening satellite campuses in places far off from the main campus, citing huge costs involved. The decision was taken after number of IITs approached the HRD ministry seeking its views on opening new campuses.While IIT Delhi was formulating a plan for Gurgaon, the proposal of IIT Mumbai for Gujarat and IIT Kharagpur for Bhubaneswar have already been rejected by the HRD ministry.IIT Kharagpur, which has a small campus functioning in Bhubaneswar, offering post-graduate diplomas, wanted the ministry’s permission to expand the existing campus and convert it into satellite campus offering undergraduate courses.A similar proposal from IIT Mumbai to open a campus in Ahmedabad to tap huge influx of JEE pass-outs from Gujarat was not approvedThe HRD ministry has got, in principle, approval for opening three new IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar. HRD minister Arjun Singh has requested Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YSR Reddy to provide 500-600 acres of land.

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world's fastest graphics memory

Samsung Electronics has announced that it has increased the data transfer speed of the world's fastest graphics memory, GDDR4 (Graphics Double Data Rate, version 4) by two-thirds. Developed using 80-nanometer production technology, the GDDR4 works at 4G bps (bits per second) (2.0GHz), which is 66 percent faster than the current fastest memory available that works at 2.4G bps.

Intel Tera Chip

Intel developed a 'Tera Research Chip' to deliver supercomputer-like performance .it was a team of Indian engineers at the Intel India Development Center (IIDC) in Bangalore that played a key role in the development of this fingernail-sized chip.The team comprises 20 members, and was led by Vasantha Erraguntla, an Intel veteran, who contributed almost half of the work that went into the chip in terms of logic, circuit and physical design, while the rest was done at the company's other lab located at Oregon. The 80-core chip is the result of Intel's "Tera-scale computing" research aimed at delivering Teraflops (trillions of calculations per second) performance for future PCs and servers. It is the world's first programmable processor from a single, 80-core chip, using only 62 watts of electricity, less than many single-core processors today. IIDC was set up in 1998, and is Intel's largest non-manufacturing site outside of the US. Reportedly, Indian engineers at IIDC work on the design of chips and chip sets.

convocation

The fourth annual convocation of National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) Suratkal was held at their silver jubilee auditorium today 24 Feb 2007.Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair delivered the convocation address. In total 27 gold medals were presented to the toppers and 717 degrees conferred on outgoing students during the convocation.Madhavan Nair delivering the convocation address, urged the students to play an active role in the economic development of the country and ensure that it reaches the rural masses.Young graduates emerging out of their careers should contribute to the overall development of the nation and ensure that wealth generation is not just for the privileged sections of society but also for the rural people", he said.India has set a goal of becoming a developed nation by 2020 and this status cannot be achieved unless concerted action is taken for rural upliftment, he said.Globalisation has provided increased opportunities in general, but also has increased the divide between the haves and the havenots, Nair observed.

revolutionary chip

A little over a decade ago, Intel Corp. introduced the world's first supercomputer capable of handling 1 trillion calculations per second - in computerspeak, a "teraflop" of data.The supercomputer - actually a series of connected computers containing nearly 10,000 Intel Pentium processors - took up more than 2,500 square feet of space.This month Intel announced it has figured out how to put the same amount of computing power into a single processor chip about the size of your fingernail.

Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has been named as a professor at a leading American private research institution, Atlanta's Emory University, in the first such appointment the Tibetan spiritual leader has accepted. The appointment reflects a partnership between Emory and Tibetan exiles that includes a major project to provide a comprehensive science education curriculum to Tibetan Buddhist monks, the university said Monday.Emory has named the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate a presidential distinguished professor and he will deliver a lecture and take part in a conference on science and spirituality during a visit Oct 20-22,

Minority Education Commission

The Uttar Pradesh government has constituted a minority participation and education commission to suggest ways to promote education among minorities and ensure their increased participation in government jobs. An official release quoting Chandra Prakash, minority welfare and Waqf secretary, said the tenure of the commission would be three months, which could be increased later.

FDI

-- The government backed 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in higher education in India, saying that the same national rules will apply to foreign universities wishing to set up bases in the country and hinted that it could also include mandatory reservations for certain sections. The government has proposed 100 percent FDI in higher education in all institutions," Higher Education Secretary R.P. Agrawal said, while alluding to India's World Trade Organisation commitments made in 2003.He said this at the Editors' Conference on Social Sector Issues when he was asked to clarify whether the government was considering a cap of 50 percent FDI in higher education.

Down 1Crore Job Offer

Manasi Prasad, second-year PGDM student at IIM-B, let go of an opportunity to work in New York with Goldman Sachs for a handsome salary, simply because she wanted to pursue her first passion music.She bagged the job offer during her summer placements and spent two-and-half months in NY. "It was a fantastic experience for me. It was challenging to be working for one of the best banks in the world. But then, I had to get back. If I want to be a musician, I cannot do that in New York."Music is in my family. My mother is my first guru. I have been performing for the last 10 years, both in India and abroad," she said. An engineering graduate from BMS college of Engineering, Manasi grew up in Gulf and completed her Classes X and XII in Singapore.

goiit

goiit is a portal which provides IIT and JEE preparation
material for students which is absolutely free for students.It is a portal, which aims to build a community of aspiring and successful students who help out each other.Apart from study material goiit also contains features like“Expert Panel” and “Discuss with Community” sections. Expert Panel is a community of IIT coaching Professors wherestudents can ask there queries and get clarified from these professors who works on 24x7 basis.

news

At the 57th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin, which concluded last week-end, two practically unknown Indian filmmakers were in the award-winning league.The more prestigious prize, for the Best Debutant Film at the festival, went to Rajnesh Domalpalli for his maiden feature film, Vanaja.Chennai-born Domalpalli is a B.Tech who graduated in 1984 from IIT, Powai; he worked in the US as a computer engineer. Vanaja, his thesis film for the course, was shot in Andhra Pradesh with a cast of raw first timers.The other award, a Special Mention by the Youth Jury, went to Tarsem Singh for The Fall, a co-production credited to India-UKUSA.Tarsem, also 45 years of age, is quite a man of parts: techno whiz, producer, director, writer, and actor

Tejaswini,'

Kerala, more famous to the outside world as an eco tourism hotspot, today became home to the country's largest Information Technology park with the opening of `Tejaswini,' the seventh building in the premises. With the inauguration of the 8.50 lakh sq ft facility, the IT park now boasts of almost 32 lakh sq ft of commercial space, housing 120 IT companies

Neuroscience study

A pregnancy hormone may help repair the damage to nerves caused by multiple sclerosis, Canadian research suggests.The Journal of Neuroscience study, by the University of Calgary, may explain why MS tends to go into remission while women are pregnant. Working on mice, the researchers found the hormone - prolactin - encourages production of myelin, the fatty substance that protects nerve cells

GOOGLE

Google Apps Premier Edition, will include word processing and document sharing, instant messaging, and Internet voice capability. Google will offer it to large companies for $50 per employee, host the applications on its own servers, and provide a service guarantee for its customers.Consumers have long been able to download software, like the e-mail program Gmail, from Google's website for free.

NEWS

Migrate to the UK could face English tests under proposals being considered by a commission advising the government that identifies the inability to speak the language the single biggest barrier to social integration in the country.The proposal is one of the most controversial features of an interim report being published by the Commission on Integration and Social Cohesion, which was set up last year in the wake of the July 7 London bombings.The report identifies the inability to speak English as the single biggest barrier preventing migrants from integrating successfully in Britain.

Microsoft

Microsoft, backed by the US government and heavyweight corporations, has taken its patent battle with telecommunications giant AT&T to the Supreme Court, in a case that has wide implications for US firms doing business abroad.Appealing the case to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Microsoft contended that software code is not a component under the 1984 law. It also argued that copying software for overseas sales is not the same as supplying software.

indian health syestem

According to the National Family Health Survey-III, (NFHS-3), over 56.2 percent married women in the age group between 15 and 49 were anaemic in 2006 as against 51.8 percent in 1999.Anaemia is a deficiency of red blood cells, which can lead to a lack of oxygen-carrying ability, causing unusual tiredness, complications in pregnancy, and many other health-related problems.Among the states, Assam is the worst affected, with 72 percent of its married women suffering from anaemia, followed by Haryana (69.7 percent) and Jharkhand (68.4 percent).

banks raise rates

Three state-run Indian banks have raised their lending rates as inflation pressures in the economy grow. Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and Punjab National Bank, all of which are state-run, have raised their prime rates by half a percentage point.Figures released on Thursday showed wholesale inflation rising to 6.73%.

Muhammad Yunus

Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has announced that he is forming his own political party.state of emergency is in place in Bangladesh and an interim government is in charge while fresh elections are organised. The state of emergency was triggered by weeks of violence ahead of the 22 January poll

Performance Related Pay

Sixth Central Pay Commission has asked Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to conduct a study to examine the feasibility of having Performance Related Pay (PRP) in government.starting point, the study will seek to identify the metrics for five measures of performance—competence, effort, result, efficiency and quality.

pain monitor

Professor GC Ray at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur has developed an anaesthesia and pain monitor to measure the level of consciousness and pain felt by patients on an operation bed.The equipment design began in 2001 and was successfully completed last year. The monitor is being tested for use at the Phoenix Hospital and at the Charnoc Hospital in Kolkata, supervised by team member Dr Das.

state of economy

The year 2007 is significant as the Eleventh Plan starts this year after completion of an eventful 10th plan. The country's economic fundamentals are now not only resilient to successfully negotiate emerging challenges but also strong enough to post higher rates of growth. The current balance sheet of the economy reveals that, in respect of fiscal consolidation and prudence, we are on course. Monetary policy is geared to validate the growth impetus manifest in all sectors of the economy while containing the pressures on the inflation front. With a buoyant investment climate, comfortable forex reserves and a benign current account deficit, the country marches successfully on the road of growth and development. With the revival of growth in agriculture, and continued buoyancy of the industry and services sectors, the vision for India should be to realize the potential of double-digit growth through policies that promote inclusive growth.

outsourcing

Legislation with respect to outsourcing were introduced in nearly all 50 US states as well as in the Congress and there is little to indicate that this legislative trend is going to stop, a new study has indicated.some of the bills have actually become laws but in most cases they lack teeth. In some cases it has cost states millions of dollars by forcing them to pay contractors in the United States in call centres. But lobbying to strengthen legislation is intensifying, computer world

China's English proficiency

China, which is aggressively working on improving people's English language proficiency, will challenge India's domination in the information technology sector by 2008, a global research company has indicated.The Chinese government is stressing on English language learning as Beijing city is all set to host the 2008 Olympics that year. Moreover, the government is supporting Chinese IT companies to learn from India's experience in the software sector and replicate it here. The increasing proficiency, and the competence of developing software in English, will make the Chinese mainland a more competitive

news

With the Middle East still a dream destination for many in Kerala, the state leads the rest of India in the number of passports issued.In the last fiscal, a record 616,906 passports were given out from three passport offices in the state, according to figures provided by the external affairs ministry.The Kozhikode office issued a record 272,804 passports followed by Kochi with 196,097 and Thiruvananthapuram with 148,005, says the data.Kerala today is the only state in the country to have four full-fledged passport offices, with the fourth one having opened in Malappuram district in north Kerala last year.

'Gandhigiri'

Imagine a school where teachers mark themselves absent voluntarily if they get late and the headmaster notes down his own time of arrival!The Bawadia Kalan Middle School on the outskirts of the Madhya Pradesh capital has become quite popular with students and parents with a bit of 'Gandhigiri' - a term that has come to signify winning over people with persuasion and honesty.

self-financing universities

Rajasthan is to get 22 self-financing universities. Two government-run engineering colleges will also come up in Ajmer and Bikaner by AprilAll the universities would get the final clearance in the budget session of the assembly in March, he added.The engineering colleges to be opened in Ajmer and Bikaner would have 240 seats each. Biotechnology, IT, computer science, electronics and communications would be the main streams.

civil services exam

The Indian Civil Services is one of the legacies of the British that has endured with time, albeit gradually Indianising itself. This intricate order of hierarchical accountability and controls was established after the 1857 uprising, when the reins of power went out of the hands of East India Company to the Crown. The role of the Civil Services has undergone major reforms since independence, operating as it does now, within the parameters of a democratic welfare state with more emphasis on development work and maintenance of law and order. The All India Services, comprising the IAS, Indian Forest Service plus the Indian Foreign Service, which is a central service and the IPS, are the cream of the services. Powerful, glamorous and the most coveted of the lot these services attract some of the best brains in the country. It is this non-political entity - the bureaucracy that gives permanency to policy-making and its implementation and also serves as an advisory body to the ministers. This highly centralised and hierarchical body is in charge of almost all aspects of administration in the country. The All India Services follow a cadre system wherein the officers are allotted various states (cadres) during their probationary period, to which they remain affiliated throughout their career. The Indian Administrative Service (IAS): Constituted formally in the year 1947, the IAS has extended the role of its precursor, the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Handling essentially administrative affairs, IAS officers man the key posts in the districts as well as at the central or state secretariats. At the central level, this involves policy framing and implementation. At the district level, it mostly sees to development works besides administrative affairs and the divisional level it looks after law and order, general administration and development work. While work at the secretariat involves a lot of paperwork, preparation of reports and answers asked in the Parliament, discussions etc., a field job is a different story altogether. Field assignments are those where one is required to implement the government policies. It involves greater interaction with people, touring, supervising and co- ordinating the work of governmental and non-governmental agencies and receiving ministers, senior officers etc. Superintendents of Police (SPs), District Magistrates (DMs), etc. are Field Officers in the central government while Deputy Superintendents of Police (DSP), Block Development Officers (BDOs), Assistant Engineers etc. are the state government employees working in the field posts. In the IAS cadre, the post of DM or DC - District Collector, also called Deputy Commissioner in some states ,is one of the important field assignments covering a vast area of work. As a DM, one is in charge of law and order, attending and convening of meetings and conferences, receiving VIPs, inspections supervising relief operations, organising government campaigns and any other miscellaneous work that may come up. Supervising the allotment and proper utilisation of funds by field staff is another important job.The Indian Foreign Service (IFS): The IFS is responsible for the administration and activities of Indian missions abroad, and for the framing and implementation of the government's foreign policy. It deals with the country's external affairs, including trade diplomacy and cultural relations. IFS officers are attached to the Ministry of External Affairs and may be posted either in India or abroad. The two-year probation period involves training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration (Mussoorie), followed by a stint in Delhi. Probationers have to specialise in a certain section of the ministry, like the Commonwealth, USA, Far East etc. This includes learning the language or languages of the region. The initial posting is as Third Secretary in an Indian High Commission abroad, usually for two years, usually followed by a posting in the country. Travel is an integral part of the job and a country allowance is provided according to the country one happens to be posted in. The Indian Police Service (IPS): This service has the difficult and unenviable task of maintaining public safety and security. A job that not only demands mental alertness and physical fitness but puts all of one's abilities to the harshest of tests while dealing with the ever increasing crime graph. The role of the IPS has changed over the years. Now, it is not solely concerned with the maintenance of law and order in the traditional sense. Its ambit now includes listening to public grievances regarding neglect or delay of police action, formulating strategies for various programmes associated with public welfare, and taking preventive steps to ensure that elements disrupting social peace are dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly. To fulfil these functions, the service has been divided into many functional departments: Crime Branch, Criminal Investigation Department or CID, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Traffic Bureau. A number of central policing agencies are also headed by the IPS including the Intelligence Bureau, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Cabinet Secretariat Security, Border Security Force (BSF) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).
Entry: Entry into the three All India Services (as well as the Central Services) is through the combined competitive examination held for the civil services. The examination is divided into two sections (i) the Preliminary examination and the (ii) the Main. The Preliminary examination is the first step for selection to the services. On the third Saturday of December usually, the UPSC publishes a supplement in the Employment News on the Civil Service exams. The supplement also contains an application form for the Prelims. The examination is conducted in 40 centres all over the country on the second Sunday of June.
The Prelims is a written test comprising two objective, multiple- choice type papers. Paper 1 is an optional subject of 300 marks and paper 2 is of general studies of 150 marks. There are 23 optional subjects to choose from in the first paper. General Studies covers six topics - Indian History, Constitution of India, Geography, Economics, Science and Current Affairs.
The Mains, also a written test, are held around November/December each year. The exam carries 2,000 marks, to be followed by an interview (for the successful candidates) of 300 marks. The written exam consists of seven papers and two language papers - one in English and the other in an optional Indian Language. Marks gained in these papers are not computed in the total score, but passing in both is compulsory for qualification. The other papers are: one compulsory Essay paper, two papers in General Studies and two papers each of the two optional subjects one opts for. All the papers are of subjective type.
The Interview or Personality Test: This is the final stage in the selection process, the battle royale that can swing the outcome either way. The interview score plays a decisive role in the selection process and also in the service, which is finally allotted to you. Roughly 750-800 candidates make it past the final selection out of the hundreds of thousands who apply. HINDU

cbse

The countdown to the Board Exams has finally begun. As students spend sleepless nights battling with biology and juggling geometrical problems, one wonders what is really going on inside those heads.
The toppers give tips
1..For maths, mark out the examples and the questions you did not understand and redo them everyday. Practice them thoroughly.
2..You must practice trigonometry and arithmetic progressions questions thoroughly with the help of reference books.
3..Get the basic concepts right especially in algebra or else you will lose marks due to careless errors.

IIM

The decision to set up an IIM was announced after Union minister for human resource development Arjun Singh, held a meeting in Shillong a few years ago.This proposed seventh IIM in the country will have a two-year post-graduate programme in business management with nearly 150-odd students in the first year.Shillong, known as the educational capital of the Northeast, had to face stiff competition from neighbouring Assam for the institute. Meghalaya was granted the IIM as Guwahati has an IIT.The total budget for the temporary campus has been estimated at Rs 1.75 crore. The Union government has not released any funds for the project so far. The state has undertaken the construction on reimbursement basis and nearly 70 per cent of construction for residential quarters and student hostels is complete.The proposed premier business school will start classes from the next academic year.

bad facts about india

47 percent of Indian children under the age of five are either malnourished or stunted.
The adult literacy rate is 61 percent (behind Rwanda and barely ahead of Sudan). Even this is probably overstated, as people are deemed literate who can do little more than sign their name.
Only 10 percent of the entire Indian labor force works in the formal economy; of these fewer than half are in the private sector.
The enrollment of six-to-15-year-olds in school has actually declined in the last year. About 40 million children who are supposed to be in school are not.
About a fifth of the population is chronically hungry; about half of the world's hungry live in India.
More than a quarter of the India population lives on less than a dollar a day.
India has more people with HIV than any other country

web 2.0

The net is facing the need for serious upgrades in order to meet fresh demands such as high definition video on the web and social networking. recent report from Deloitte said 2007 could be the year the internet approaches capacity, with demand outstripping supply. It predicted bottlenecks in some of the net's backbones as the amount of data overwhelms the size of the pipes.

IIM grad sells idlis

E Sharathbabu’s life has come a full circle. He started off with selling idlis in the slums of Madipakkam in Chennai, then left it to graduate from IIM- Ahmedabad. He hit headlines for refusing a lucrative job offer and starting a catering company. He recently inaugurated his first outlet on the IIM-A campus and he’s back to selling idlis.The first outlet of his catering company, Foodking, inaugurated on the lawns of IIM-A’s new campus last week, is already a hit with the students. The menu is mostly south Indian food, with the most expensive item on the menu priced at Rs25. “Foodking Catering Services provides value-for-money, multi-cuisine, packaged meals to corporate houses like BPOs, pharma companies, educational institutions etc

GDP Growth

Despite 3.3 per cent slump in agriculture growth, the country’s GDP growth is projected at 9.2 per cent during 2006-07, against 9 per cent in the previous year, thanks to robust performance in manufacturing and financial services.According to advance estimates of National Income 2006-07 released here today by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), the growth in agriculture dipped to 2.7 per cent this fiscal after rising to 6 per cent in the previous year.The lacklustre performance in agriculture has forced the government to lower the estimates of wheat and rice production to 72.5 million tonnes against the initial estimates of 74 million tonnes.The manufacturing sector grew at 11.3 per cent against 9.1 per cent while construction took a breather to 9.4 per cent against 14.2 per cent last year.The financing, insurance, real estate and business services continued to perform well, logging in 11.1 per cent growth against 10.9 per cent.The 9.2 per cent GDP growth is projected on top of 9 per cent for 2005-06, taking the growth to over 9 per cent for the second year running.There was a marginal improvement in mining and quarry to 4.5 per cent from 3.6 per cent last year.

infotec

With 2,500 seats, the new Chinese facility will be Satyam`s largest outside India. The signing ceremony and the ground breaking ceremony was held today at the Nanjing Software Park.It will be the largest Satyam campus in terms of space, and will include areas devoted to development and training, as well as a convention center. The facility will feature a broadband data communication system, and conveniences such as a restaurant, shopping mall, recreation and entertainment centers, and residential apartments.

IIM-L

NOIDA (Uttar Pradesh) — Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML) yesterday opened a campus here on the outskirts of the national capital. It will focus on updating the skills and knowledge of working professionals.The campus, built at a cost of Rs600 million, will cater to working professionals in Delhi and nearby areas, IIML Chairman Hari Shankar Singhania told reporters after inaugurating the Noida branch. IIML, he said, is the first IIM to start a second campus.The campus is expected to be functional by September.

Computational Optimisation

It is not possible to get the best produce without optimisation for an industry which aims to be a leader in its field. These views were expressed by the faculty member of the department of Mechanical Engineering, Kalyanmoy Deb, at the Indo-US workshop on Advances in Computational Optimisation and Analysis of Systems (COSA), at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K).There are 18 participants from India, while 10 participants are from USA. Smriti Trikha of Indo-US Science and Technology Forum said the objective of the forum was to spread awareness, extend support to science and technology programme, and encourage public-private partnership and technopreneurship between academia and industry.experts from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, General Motors (GM) and others would deliver their lecture during the workshop

Telecom Management

T he MIT School of Telecom Management (MITSOT) at Pune was set up in response to an industry demand for a course that seamlessly blended technology and management for business applications. MITSOT is an industry-backed centre devoted to research and education to help the networked digital industry. MITSOT’s curriculum focuses on telecom as a business, not just a set of technologies. The programme is interdisciplinary, combining computer science, information systems and business-related courses with telecommunications course work. It offers a systematic approach to understanding the globalisation of information technologies and the convergence of electronic media and telecommunications with the Internet.The institute offers a two-year postgraduate diploma in telecom management (PGDTM) with specialisation in either systems and marketing or systems and finance

Design Week

The Industrial Design Centre at the Indian Institute of TechnoJogy (IIT) Bombay, is hosting the prestigious ICOGRADA Design Week from 5 to 9 February 2007. ICOGRADA (The International Council of Graphic Design Associations), a world body for professional graphic design and visual communication was founded in 1963. Today it is active in 60 countries encompassing graphic design, visual communication, design management, design promotion and design education.

MBA

It remains a great puzzle. Approximately half of medical students and more than one-third of law students are women, whereas less than 15% of MBA students are women in India. The fast change in Indian economic structure from manufacturing to service demands greater participation of women in the workforce. There is a strong need for business schools and industry to collaborate and take proactive actions to attract more women to management careers. According to a BusinessWeek survey, women make up only 28% of incoming MBA classes for BusinessWeek’s Top 30 B-Schools in the US, about the same as four years ago. Further, more Chinese women take GMAT exam than Chinese men. According to a profile of GMAT candidates for 2004-05, 56% of GMAT test takers in China are women, while in India the ratio is only 23%.

cat result

Girl students may take the lead in class X and class XII board exams, but IIM Bangalore seems to be a male bastion. This year, only 24.7% of those who took the Common Admission Test (CAT) for IIM-B were women. And an even smaller 17.18% have been shortlisted for group discussion and personal interviews. Compare this with a whopping 75.29% men who applied and 82.82% who’ve cleared the first round, an analysis conducted by the premier B-school of CAT 2006 revealed. Even among the women, it was general category (26.16%) and ST (23.75%) who was more keen on getting into a B-school than women in the other categories. Sadly, only 18.53% general category and 12.66% ST women have been shortlisted for the next round.

iim

The Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B) has been collaborating with global universities like INSEAD, Lancaster, McGill and three schools in Japan for over a decade to train senior executives in management techniques that deal with mindset orientation rather than focusing on usual MBA subjects like marketing, finance and organisation behaviour. Branded as the International Master Program in Practicing Management (IMPM), the course is designed to be a 'next generation' course which combines management development with management education. The programme is structured around managerial "mindsets", one for each module.

Instant Darjeeling tea

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur is about to reveal a secret method to brew instant Darjeeling tea, just like coffee.The IIT’s food and agriculture department is currently in business talks to transfer the secret recipe for instant soluble tea -- it won an Indian patent last year -- to two Bangalore-based tea companies, and one from Ooty.With this process, a kilogram of fresh tealeaves can yield 25 to 30 grams of soluble tea powder, and 230 grams black tea. The total cost for companies to produce the instant tea would be about Rs 1 lakh —- the cost of setting up a grinder, a temperature-controlled chamber and a refrigerated dryer.

minuscule motor

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first imagined an atom-size device dubbed Maxwell’s Demon in 1867. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have made it a
reality. “We have a new motor mechanism for a nanomachine,” said David Leigh, a professor of chemistry at the University.A nanomachine is an incredibly tiny device whose parts consist of single molecules. Nature uses nanomachines for everything from photosynthesis to moving muscles in the body and transferring information through cells.As Maxwell had predicted long ago, it does not use energy other than light. “While light has previously been used to energise tiny particles directly, this is the first time that a system has been devised to trap molecules as they move in a certain direction under their natural motion,” said Leigh who reported the findings in the journal Nature. In an earlier study, he and his team showed that a nanomachine could move a drop up water uphill by using molecular force.

tata steel

The Tatas made history by winning the bid for Corus at the stupendous price of Rs53,500 crore, setting a remarkable milestone for India. The duel between the Brazilian steel giant CSN and the Tatas was exciting and suspense-filled, until the Tatas won, making the company the fifth largest steel manufacturer in the world. There is, of course, tremendous strategic value involved here, in addition to a string of other benefits. With a single stroke, the Tatas have emerged as a notable global industrial power, with added brand value. This is a great achievement for the company and for India.

course on carbon markets

Profitable businesses and responsible environmental policies may not have gone hand-in-hand till now. All this may well be changing. Young MBAs are now getting a shot at making 'green' money. Corporate environment management and study on carbon markets are now finding their way into MBA coursebooks. The Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L ), has started a course that seeks to provide students with an understanding of changing relationship between business and environmental management. With big names like Reliance , Tata Steel, Jindal Steel and Power set to enter the carbon market, the course is expected to equip future managers with the fundamentals on the intricacies of these markets and their potential.

Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactors

The Department of Atomic Energy(DAE) will simultaneously construct four more breeder reactors of 500 MWe each including two at Kalpakkam.The electricity generated from the PFBR would be sold to the State Electricity Boards at Rs.3.22 a unit. The pre-project activities for the construction of the second and third breeder reactors at Kalpakkam would begin in 2010 and they would go critical in 2017. The tariff for the electricity generated from these would be Rs.2.50 a unit. The Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), a public sector undertaking of the DAE, would build all the breeder reactors in India. The four new breeder reactors would cost Rs.2,500 crore each.The new breeders would first use mixed uranium-plutonium oxide as fuel and later switch over to metallic fuel.