This is what students really need - Thank God they have finally realized...

Engg syllabi: Univ talks to industry heads
Hemali Chhapia I TNN

Mumbai: Imagine studying from texts developed by Bill Gates, N R Narayana Murthy and other industry captains. Following the recommendations of NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies), the faculty of the technology department in the University of Mumbai has decided to hand over the task of drawing up new syllabi to the industry. Most of it is likely to be practical work which is application-oriented.
University officials along with heads of engineering colleges have already held parleys with Microsoft, IBM and Larsen and Toubro among other companies. “Industry has been complaining about the poor employability rates of engineers. Now we are asking them to involve themselves in drawing up the curriculum and also training our teachers,’’ said dean of technology Sandeep Sahare.
Currently, there are 45 engineering colleges affiliated to the Mumbai varsity offering 17 branches. Average employability rate in these colleges stands at about 60-65%. Part of the problem is that the curriculum taught is neither application-oriented nor does it reflect the fast technology changes taking place in various sectors. Many students who graduate are thus rated below industry standards and have difficulty landing corporate jobs without further education.
The colleges’ heads believe the employability ratio will go up if industry is involved in drawing up curricula. Principals and heads from all the colleges who met the dean today said that though employability rates are not poor, most companies are forced to put new recruits through a six-month-training programme, pointed out M B Shah, director of Shah and Anchor Engineering College.
As per the reforms proposed, first year students will have compulsory practicals for basic electrical and electronics studies and engineering mechanics in the first semester and for engineering drawing and computer programming in the second semester. “About 40% marks will be set aside for practicals,’’ explained Surendra Kumar, principal of Terna Engineering College.
Currently, in the first year, marks are allotted on the basis of oral viva voce and journals, which, according to university officials, are not taken seriously. Henceforth, however, even maths, which is otherwise a classroom subject, will be taught in laboratories. Year after year, allotment of marks to practicals will be extended to higher classes, said Udhav Bhosle, principal of Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology.
On the basis of preliminary talks that the colleges have held with industry, practicals will not just give hands-on training to students, but will also reduce dependence on coaching classes that are “ breeding grounds for rote learning’’.
With all this in place, the university will also set up a centralised recruitment centre on the Kalina campus. “While individual colleges will continue conducting their respective campus recruitments, those who are not selected will be trained by the recruitment centre before companies can come and absorb them,’’ added Sahare.

Bizzare images from Mars - May not be authentic - TOI - 24/01/2008

Nasa images hint at ‘naked woman’ on Mars

London: Life on Mars? Well, bizarre images have emerged showing a mystery female figure walking down a hill on the arid planet.
The photo of what looks like a naked woman with her arm outstretched was among several taken on the red planet and sent back to Earth by Nasa’s Mars explorer Spirit, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed web site.
Though no official confirmation has come from Nasa whether the figure is an alien or an optical illusion caused by a landscape on Mars, it has set the internet abuzz that there really is life on Mars.
As one enthusiast put it on the web site, “These pictures are amazing. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars.”
The news of the mystery woman on Mars came just days after a team of French scientists claimed to have discovered proof that the red planet possesses high-level dense clouds of dry ice, which scud across its orange sky.
Using data obtained by the OMEGA spectrometer on board ESA’s Mars Express, the team found the existence of the ice clouds which sometimes become so dense that they throw quite dark shadows on the dusty surface of the red planet. “This is the first time that carbon dioxide ice clouds on Mars have been imaged and identified from above. This is important because the images tell us not only about their shape, but also their size and density.
“Previously, we had to rely on indirect information. However, it is very difficult to separate the signals coming from the clouds, atmosphere and surface,” according to lead scientist Franck Montmessin of the Service d’Aeronomie at University of Versailles.
Not only are the clouds surprisingly high — over 80 kms above the surface — but they can be several hundred kilometres across. They are also much thicker than expected. Instead of looking like the wispy ice clouds seen on Earth, they resemble tall convectional clouds that grow as the result of rising columns of warm air.
Even more surprising is the fact that the CO₂ ice clouds are made of quite large particles — more than a micron across — and they are sufficiently dense to noticeably dim the Sun. PTI

MYSTERY DAME: The image of what looks like a naked woman with her arm outstretched was among several taken on the red planet and sent back to Earth by Nasa’s Mars explorer Spirit

The state of Primary Education in India Today - I wanna be the change...

Get Cracking On Education

Some improvement, but not enough, in primary schools

Bhaskar Dutta

It is a sad commentary on our public life that the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest honour, has now become embroiled in political controversy. The past recipients of the award have typically been very distinguished public figures, and there has hardly been any controversy surrounding the award. One of the recent recipients, Amartya Sen, was in the news recently — apparently the French president has requested him to advice his government on how to incorporate factors affecting the quality of life in conventional measures of national income. It is not clear whether Sen can give any new advice on this issue since indices such as the Human Development Index, which aggregates levels of achievement in education, health and national income, have been in use for a very long time.
Of course, if fresh advice can help, then Nicolas Sarkozy could not have chosen a better person. Sen has been perhaps the most influential economist supporting the use of indices such as the HDI in evaluations of the standard of living or quality of life, and has been a vocal advocate of increased government expenditure on health and education. Unfortunately, he seems to have had very little impact on government policies in his own country.
The UNDP releases values of HDI for roughly 175 countries. It is depressing to see that year after year, India figures somewhere near the bottom of the ladder. What is worse is that the low level of human development in India is not due simply to the fact that per capita GDP is relatively low. Even if countries were ranked simply in terms of health and education indicators, India would fare rather badly.
Our relative position in education is particularly disappointing. The average reader of the TOI almost certainly believes that India is “more educated” than most countries in Africa and Latin America. This erroneous belief has been fostered or promoted by successive Indian governments, which have all paid lip service to the vital need to improve education and health in the country. In particular, the pivotal role of education has been repeatedly stressed in various official documents. This started with the Indian Constitution which resolved to provide universal free elementary education within a period of 10 years. The National Policy on Education in 1968 and 1986 also stressed the need for total eradication of illiteracy and to provide universal elementary education in the shortest possible time.
But is the overall situation finally changing in India? Over the last couple of years, the wellknown NGO, Pratham, has been conducting
nationwide surveys of elementary education to, in their own words, “take stock of the situation”. Pratham has just released its provisional Annual Status of Educational Report (ASER 2007) for rural India. The survey aims to get reliable estimates of the status of children’s schooling and basic learning in reading and arithmetic. At least some of its findings are very promising.
ASER 2007 confirms that there has been a significant and steady improvement in enrolment amongst children in the 6-14 age group. The percentage of children who are not in school in this age group is now less than five. The central government must be given some credit for this — clearly, programmes like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) have made a difference, with 98 per cent of rural children now having access to primary schools within a radius of one kilometre. The ASER team also finds evidence of improvements in school facilities with better availability of toilets, drinking water, and a significantly greater supply of mid-day meals.
Unfortunately, all aspects of the ASER report are not as cheerful. Learning levels remain a cause for concern. Only 60 per cent of children in class V can read a class II text, while only 40 per cent can do simple divisions. Clearly, a lot of children are going to school but not learning very much. It is not surprising that ASER also finds some evidence that teacher absenteeism has been increasing. Perhaps, the only silver lining is that there has been some improvement in these figures between 2005 and 2007.
Of course, these are aggregate figures for rural India as a whole, and there is a lot of variation across states. Not surprisingly, Kerala — a state that is far ahead of the rest of India in terms of human development — performs remarkably well according to all the learning criteria. It is also almost inevitable that Bihar, UP and Rajasthan would figure at the other end of the scale. However, there are a few pleasant surprises. Perhaps, the biggest of these has been the quite remarkable improvement in both enrolment and learning levels recorded by Madhya Pradesh, which was once classified as a BIMARU state.
Some people would have us believe that the low levels of education in rural India are because rural parents do not understand the value of education. Perhaps one of the biggest contributions of ASER is that it debunks this hypothesis. A significant fraction of rural children actually undertakes private tuition. So, there is no lack of demand for education. This puts the ball squarely in the state’s court. Funding of SSA and similar programmes must increase. But, it is not simply a question of pouring more money into such programmes. We must also ask why some states do significantly better than others.
The writer is professor of economics, Warwick University.

Education has become a business - We need to develop a system for providing free higher education at excellent quality.

PROTESTING INJUSTICE

Dental college students refuse to pay hiked fees

Hemali Chhapia I TNN

Mumbai: Ever heard of MBBS fees being less than the dental course fees? A Punebased institution that offers both courses charges its medical students less than its dental students. While the interim fee for the Sinhgad Medical College’s dental course has been fixed at Rs 2.25 lakh by the state-appointed fee committee, the college has flouted the order and asked students to shell out Rs 2.58 lakh.
The dental college students have refused to pay the revised fees saying that the college has “inflated’’ their expenditure bills. Annual interim fees at Sinhgad were Rs 94,600 in 2006-7. The rate has been revised to Rs 2.58 lakh within a year.
So what caused the hike? Basic math gone wrong, it appears. The college in its accounts shows the institution’s total salary bill as Rs 2 crore and the building establishment expenses as Rs 40 lakh. But these expenses were divided only among the first two batches of students-numbering 150, instead of being divided among students of various batches.
The Shikshan Shulka Samiti, the fee-fixing committee, also did not realise the error and has permitted the institution to charge the new interim fee. The Samiti has complained about the lack of experts on the panel for a while. This time, the oversight has clearly allowed the fees of a dental college to be hiked by over 100%. And students, who have noticed the error, have refused to pay up.
“We have paid Rs 94,600 as annual fees. But now the college is demanding an additional Rs 1.64 lakh,’’ a student said. Almost 120 students protested outside the Samiti’s office in Bandra on Wednesday, demanding
that their fees be reviewed.
Vivek Korde, president of the Forum Against Commercialisation of Education, said the college had “distorted their accounts’’ and have tried to place the entire financial burden on a single batch.
Officials in the Association of Managements of Unaided Private Medical and Dental Colleges defended themselves saying the government body had fixed their fees and students were asked to pay up on the basis of the Samiti’s decision. The Samiti said the students can seek a review of the fees.

Answering the need for Educating the masses via web - TOI - 24/01/2008

IIT faculty creates online courses

Mumbai: Faculty members from the IITs and the IISc have worked overtime to put together courses that could be accessed online by students. On Wednesday, the SNDT Women’s University became a “user institute’’. It will access the course content in science and engineering created by the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning, a joint venture by the seven Indian Institutes of Technology and Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science funded by the ministry of Human Resources Development.
This means that 128 web courses and 110 video courses will be made available via the university’s yet-to-be launched digital library through the HP Labs Edu Centre. TNN

The day we wipe out the need for coaching classes we will have succeeded in Educating Children.

Frame rules for coaching classes, HC tells state

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has asked the Maharashtra government to frame rules for mushrooming coaching classes that operate in every part of the city.
Hearing a PIL filed by the NGO, Forum for Fairness in Education, against the commercialisation of education by coaching classes, a division bench of justices Bilal Nazki and Sharad Bobde has given the government four weeks’ time to file an affidavit setting forth its stand on the issue.
The petition claimed that the coaching class network was a state-wide racket in which students were charged 20 times the fees, levied by their schools and colleges.
Many of the instructors teaching at the coaching classes were drawn from the faculty of schools and colleges in violation of rules, it said. The classes also induct paper setters who leak question papers to the students who attend such classes, alleged the petitioner Bhagwanji Raiyani. He added that such classes are a purely commercial business and should be allowed to operate only in commercial zones. TNN

Simplification needed for both examination and evaluation - TOI - 24/01/2008

VARSITY WOES

Teachers threaten boycott of evaluation process

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: Only 200 examiners had to assess 1.92 lakh exam papers for Accountancy and Indirect/Direct Taxation for the TYBCom exam in 2007 and 1,000 teachers had to assess 6 lakh exam papers for the semester examinations in engineering.
The Bombay University and College Teachers’ Union released these facts at a press conference on Wednesday. “If the university doesn’t take cognisance of our plight, we will be forced to boycott the entire assessment process,’’ BUCTU president C Sadasivan said.
In several instances, the tremendous load of examination papers results in teachers spending their vacations correcting answer sheets. What’s more, BUCTU has complained that for several self-financing courses like Bachelor in Mass Media students are taught mainly by visiting faculty and temporary faculty whose service is terminated before the examinations. Hence the burden of correcting exam papers falls on the shoulders of the “ever-shrinking’’ regular faculty.
In addition, faculty from other departments who have finished correcting their quota of exam papers are often forced to correct papers for these self-financing courses.
“We want the university to give teachers leave to compensate for every single day of the vacations during which they had to correct
exam papers,’’ BUCTU general secretary Tapati Mukhopadhyay said.
It’s not just teachers who’re affected by the current assessment scheme. BUCTU feels that teachers will not be able to do justice to individual exam papers during the stressful assessment process; this will result in students too losing out when it comes to a fair marking system. “In order to ensure quality assessment, an examiner must be given a maximum of 10 days to assess the papers and not more than 400 papers to assess,’’ said Mukhopadhyay.
At least 500 teachers plan to go on a one-day token hunger strike on Friday if the university does not pay heed to their demands. TOI reported this on Tuesday. In addition to demanding a fair assessment system for examinations, BUCTU also wants the chancellor to take action against the vice-chancellor for tampering with the electoral rolls less than two weeks before the university senate elections to the teachers’ constituency in 2005. Polls have been held up for the last 18 months. “There is nobody to represent undergraduate teachers in the senate,’’said Mukhopadhyay.
Teachers will also protest the “dismantling of the university’s grant-in-aid system,’’ whereby more and more aided colleges are closing down and there is a corresponding increase in the number of private colleges mushrooming across the state, making higher education out of reach for lower-income groups.

Need for Clean Energy - The figures in the article are really appalling - TOI - 23/01/2008

A green stove for the developing world’s health

Amanda Leigh Haag

When Kurt Hoffman visited Tanzania in the 1970s as a young product-development researcher, he could hardly bear to enter village huts to ask questions.
“I couldn’t stand the smoke, the pain in my eyes and the coughing,” he said. “And yet the women and children were sitting there the whole time,” enveloped in smoke from open pit fires or poorly functioning stoves. Some 30 years later, when Hoffman returned to the field in his position as director of the Shell Foundation, a charity in Britain established by the Shell Group, not much had changed. “To find that it still exists,” he said, “I was appalled by it. I said to myself, ‘There has to be a better way.’”
And there may be. The foundation has partnered with Envirofit International at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, to introduce the first market-based model for clean-burning wood stove technology to the developing world.
This year, the team plans to begin distributing 10 million stoves, focusing first on India, Brazil, Kenya and Uganda at a variety of prices over five years. Hoffman played a leading role in the development of the Shell Foundation’s ‘Breathing Space’ program, founded in 2002, one of the first to focus on the problem of indoor air pollution.
Half of the world population and 80% of rural households in developing countries cook with solid fuels like wood, coal, crop residues and dung. In many instances, women cook around open fires, typically with a pot atop three large stones and a wood fire in the middle. Indoor air pollution, including smoke and other products of incomplete combustion like carbon monoxide, is a major environmental risk factor, usually ranking behind lack of clean water, poor sanitation and malnutrition. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.6 million people a year die of health effects resulting from toxic indoor air.
At Envirofit headquarters in the old Fort Collins power plant, researchers are designing and testing clean-burning stoves that they say will significantly improve air quality and require less wood fuel. An important feature will be the ability to control carefully the air pulled in. Too much intake cools the process, leading to incomplete combustion. In a modern gas stove, nearly 100% of the carbon is burned to carbon dioxide. With traditional stoves in the developing world, 90% is fully converted to CO2. The remainder forms a toxic cocktail of byproducts like benzene, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde that billow out in soot and smoke. Envirofit’s stoves will be designed with an insulated chamber that cuts down on energy loss and maintains heat inside the chamber walls. NYT NEWS SERVICE

Almost Useless...

Q& A

‘Oxford won’t be awarding degrees, diplomas in India’

Oxford University, on Monday, announced a joint initiative with Pune-based Lavasa Corporation. Vice-chancellor of Oxford University John A Hood is a part of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s delegation. He spoke to Mahua S Mukherjee about the initiative:

What is this joint initiative all about?
We will establish Oxford University India Business Centre (OUIBC). The centre, which will be located at Said Business School in Oxford, will address major business issues through collaborative research between academics in Oxford, India and elsewhere. Alongside research and teaching at Oxford, the centre will develop a range of custom and open executive education programmes which will be delivered in India through a new facility in Lavasa, near Pune. A study with companies located in India and elsewhere will be undertaken to begin development of these education programmes which will first be delivered in early 2010.
Why have you chosen India?
We at Oxford have extensive research facilities in all aspects of your country. But i must admit that we lacked one aspect and that was Indian business. The way India has evolved post-liberalisation is mindblowing. India is among the top 10 economies in the world. We want to learn from Indian success stories and also want the other developing countries to learn from it. A clear understanding of the issues faced by India and their innovative solutions, as India transitions from poverty to prosperity, will form a guide to future generations of countries attempting similar transitions.
Would you be awarding degrees or diplomas?
Let me make myself very clear. We will be doing none of these simply because we are not allowed to do. What we will provide is faculty support for executive training programmes. These are not courses but just programmes and the duration can be from four days to four weeks. We are yet to finalise the details.
Do you have this type of programme elsewhere?
No, this is a first of a kind project by Oxford. We have no such centre anywhere in the world. As for the research scholars, we are open to anyone across the globe but that person should have a passion for Indian success stories and should be able to understand them well. As for the executives undertaking the programmes, they can be from private companies to government organisations and even NGOs.
How do you plan to go about it and what are your future plans for India?
We at Oxford believe in taking one step at a time. To begin with we will soon sign the MoU at Davos. Gulabchand will endow a new chair — the Ajit Gulabchand professor of Indian business studies — and he will be based at the Said Business School. By the end of the term we plan to appoint the head of the centre. As and when needed our faculty will be flown in from Oxford to conduct the programmes.

FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE: Created by students of Udaipur’s Alok School, ‘Garbha Griha’—an energy-saving house where heat and cold can be trapped in the vacuum between the two walls of a mudhouse—is one of the many attractions at the 20th Western India Science Fair. The event, which has been organised at Nehru Science Centre, will continue till Friday - 25th Jan 2008.

Univ doors open to IB students - TOI - 23/01/2008

Univ doors open to IB students

Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Mumbai: International Baccalaureate (IB) students need no longer worry about re-entering the Indian system after Class XII. Mumbai University has clarified in a letter to Farzana Dohadwalla, IB representative for South Asia, that IB diploma holders will be eligible for technical courses such as engineering and pharmacy as well as regular degree courses in the science, arts and commerce streams provided they opt for the subject combinations on offer.
IB diploma students who have applied for these courses in the past have complained about the lack of clarity in the rules. A few months ago, the University arrived at a decision on the matter at its standing committee meeting.
IB diploma holders who have opted for physics and mathematics at the higher level and chemistry at the standard level are eligible for a Bachelor’s degree in engineering—except for chemical engineering which will be restricted to those who have studied maths and chemistry at the higher level and physics at the standard level.
All those who study chemistry and math at the higher level and either physics or biology at the standard level are eligible for a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy.
IB students can also seek admission to a vanilla BA, BSc and BCom degree depending on their IB scores. While the IB diploma is a graded examination across the world, for Indian students, the International Baccalaureate Organisation converts the grades into marks, so that the students can seek admission to undergraduate courses in India.
“It’s very important for universities in India to recognise the IB diploma. The number of students joining IB schools in India is increasing exponentially. We are not producing IB students in order to send them abroad. We want them to enter the Indian system. They are students of high calibre and will enrich the university they attend,’’ said Indu Shahani, vice-president, who is on the global board of governors at the International Baccalaureate Organisation. She was recently appointed Mumbai’s sheriff.

US universities churning out too many PhDs - TOI - 22/01/2008

‘US universities churning out too many PhDs’

New York: College students in the US are getting a raw deal. The problem is they’re taking too many classes from parttime, or adjunct, professors, a recent New York report asserted.
But that same report has unwittingly revealed something about how higher education is more culpable than it likes to admit when it comes to creating the problem: That about half the nation’s college faculty are now on part-time contracts.
Adjuncts are cheaper for colleges, but they often lack the time and resources for focused teaching, and research shows students’ performance suffers if they are taught by parttimers too often.
In many fields, there are already too many PhDs awarded for the full-time academic posts available, creating a surplus of likely jobseekers.
That pool becomes adjuncts, who command wages and benefits so low that universities find them irresistible hires.
In the life sciences, the US is awarding twice as many doctorates as two decades ago, but has no more faculty jobs, according to one recent study that prompted the journal Nature to editorialise that “too many graduate schools may be preparing too many students.” Nonetheless, universities keep flooding the academic pipeline.
The latest federal data show about 45,600 PhDs were awarded in 2005-2006, 5.1% higher than the year before.
It was the fourth straight increase and tied for the highest percentage gain since 1971. AP

Imaging your teacher getting punished for you getting a bad score!

THEY ARE THE REAL JUDGES

NY to evaluate teachers by students’ test scores

Educators’ Efficiency Will Be Linked To Pupils’ Improvement

Jennifer Medina

New York: New York City has embarked on an ambitious experiment, yet to be announced, in which some 2,500 teachers are being measured on how much their students improve on annual standardised tests.
The move is so contentious that principals in some of the 140 schools participating have not told their teachers that they are being scrutinised based on student performance and improvement. While officials say it is too early to determine how they will use the data, which is already being collected, they say it could eventually be used to help make decisions on teacher tenure or as a significant element in performance evaluations and bonuses. And they hold out the possibility that the ratings for individual teachers could be made public.
The effort comes as educators nationwide are struggling to figure out how to find, train and measure good teachers. Many education experts say that until teacher quality improves in urban schools, student performance is likely to stagnate and the achievement gap between white and minority students will never be closed.
The United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers’ union, has known about the experiment for months, but has not been told which schools are involved, because the education department has promised those principals confidentiality.
Randi Weingarten, the union president, said she had grave reservations about the project, and would fight if the city tried to use the information for tenure or formal evaluations or even publicised it.
“There is no way that any of this current data could actually, fairly, honestly or with any integrity be used to isolate the contributions of an individual teacher,” Weingarten said. “If one permitted this, it would be one of the worst decisions of my professional life.”
Deputy schools chancellor Chris Cerf, who is overseeing the project, said that how students performed on tests would not be the only factor considered in any system to rate teachers. All decisions will include personal circumstances and experiences, he said, but the point will be to put a focus on whether or not students are improving. NYT NEWS SERVICE

Is this science or is this magic?

A DIRTY TRICK? People apply mud on one another from a medicinal mud pond at the ‘Lagoon of Miracles’ in Chilca, Peru. The ‘Lagoon of Miracles’ with its distinct greenish colour along with the mud ponds that surround it is said to cure everything from acne to rheumatism

Active Volcano beneath Antarctica - TOI - 22/01/2008

Scientists find active volcano beneath Antarctic ice sheet

Kenneth Chang

Here is another factor that might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica’s glaciers: volcanoes.
In an article published Sunday on the web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh FJ Corr and David G Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica.
For Antarctica, “This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet,” Dr Vaughan said.
Heat from a volcano could still be melting ice and contributing to the thinning and speeding up of the Pine Island Glacier, which passes nearby, but Dr Vaughan doubted that it could be affecting other glaciers in West Antarctica, which have also thinned in recent years. Most glaciologists, including Vaughan, say that warmer ocean water is the primary cause.
Volcanically, Antarctica is a fairly quiet place. But sometime around 325 BC, the researchers said, a hidden and still active volcano erupted, puncturing several hundred yards of ice above it. Ash and shards from the volcano carried through the air and settled onto the surrounding landscape. That layer is now out of sight, hidden beneath the snows that fell over the subsequent 23 centuries.
Although out of sight, the layer showed up clearly in airborne radar surveys conducted over the region in 2004 and 2005 by American and British scientists. The reflected radio waves, over an elliptical area about 110 miles wide, were so strong that earlier radar surveys had mistakenly identified it as bedrock. Better radar techniques now can detect a second echo from the actual bedrock farther down.
The thickness of ice above the ash layer provided an estimate of the date of the eruption: 207 BC, give or take 240 years. For a more precise date, Corr and Vaughan turned to previous observations from ice cores, which contained spikes in the concentration of acids, another byproduct of eruptions. Scientists knew that an eruption occurred around 325 BC, plus or minus a few years, but did not know where the eruption occurred. “We’re fairly confident this is the same eruption,” Vaughan said. NYT NEWS SERVICE

Just another theory?

Universe ‘may be tied up with cosmic strings’

New York: A team of international researchers claims to have unearthed hints that there might be cosmic strings — lines of pure mass energy — stretching across the entire universe.
“This is an exciting result for physicists. Cosmic strings are relics of the very early universe and signposts that would help construct a theory of all forces and particles,” according to lead researcher Dr Mark Hindmarsh of the University of Sussex.
Using data from Nasa’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which is a satellite currently mapping the intensity of cosmic microwaves from all directions, the team compared the predictions of what should be seen with and without strings before coming to the conclusion.
The researchers made predictions of how the strings would affect the Cosmic Microwave Background, relic radio waves from the Big Bang which fill the universe by using a Silicon Graphics supercomputer. It turned out that the best explanation for the pattern of this radiation was a theory which included strings.
“We cannot yet see these strings directly. They are many billion light years away. We can only look for indirect evidence of their existence through precision measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, of cosmic rays, gravitational radiation, and looking for double images of distant quasars,” Dr Hindmarsh was quoted by the ‘Science Daily’ as saying. According to the researchers, better data is required before the existence of cosmic strings can be confirmed. “This will be produced by European Space Agency’s Planck Satellite mission (due for launch this year),” Dr Hindmarsh said.
The results of the study have been published in the latest edition of Physical Review Letters journal. PTI

TOI article - Weirdest Creatures

World’s weirdest creatures are headed for extinction

85 Of The World’s Top 100 Strangest Species Will Disappear Soon: Experts

London: What do the pygmy hippopotamus, the bumblebee bat and the rare slender loris have in common? Well, these weirdest creatures are facing extinction.
According to the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), 85 of the top 100 of the world’s weirdest and most endangered creatures are receiving very little conservation attention and will disappear if no action is taken.
The society, which has drawn up a list of some of the creatures threatened with extinction, has recently launched an amphibians conservation and fund-raising initiative called EDGE that aims to save the animals.
“Tragically, amphibians tend to be the overlooked members of the animal kingdom, even though one in every three amphibian species is currently threatened with extinction, a far higher proportion than that of bird or mammal species.
“These species are the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ — they are highly sensitive to factors such as climate change and pollution, which lead to extinction, and are a stark warning of things to come.
“If we lose them, other species will inevitably follow. The EDGE programme strives to protect the world’s forgotten species and ensure that the weirdest species survive the current extinction crisis and astound future generations with their extraordinary uniqueness,” Dr Jonathan Baillie, the Head of the EDGE programme, told The Daily Telegraph.
The ZSL has identified and is starting work to protect 10 of the most unusual and threatened EDGE amphibian species this year. They include: Chinese giant salamander, Sagalla caecilian, Purple frog, Ghost frogs of South Africa, Lungless salamanders of Mexico, Olm etc.
By mathematically combining a measure of each species’ unique evolutionary history with its threat of extinction, the scientists were able to give species an EDGE value and rank them accordingly.
“These animals may not be cute and cuddly, but hopefully their weird looks and bizarre behaviours will inspire people to support their conservation,” Helen Meredith, the EDGE Amphibians coordinator, was quoted as saying. PTI

EXOTIC & ENDANGERED: (Clockwise from top) A Malagasy rainbow frog; a Gardiner’s Seychelles frog resting on a thumb; an Olm swimming underwater; a giant Chinese salamander that predates T rex

And the Red Tape goes on...

Pvt edu plan to be taken up at state cabinet meet

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: The long-pending proposal to set up a regulatory authority to frame policy guidelines on admissions, reservations and fee structure for private professional educational institutes is likely to be taken up for discussion by the state cabinet at its weekly meeting scheduled on Tuesday.
The state higher and technical education department, headed by Dilip Valse-Patil, has tabled the proposal, which aims at governing matters related to professional institutes offering courses on management, engineering and architecture.
The proposal is to equip the regulatory body with statutory powers, akin to the Maharashtra Energy Regulatory Commission (MERC), making the decisions taken by the fivemember regulatory authority binding on the institutions.
It is proposed to enact a new law to be called the Maharashtra Private Professional Education Institutions (regulation of admissions and fees) Act detailing its powers and its jurisdiction.
On two earlier occasions, the state cabinet had deferred taking any decision on this proposal as most of the educational institutes belong to or are closely associated with political leaders in the Democratic Front (DF) coalition.
The proposal is to appoint the chairperson of the regulatory authority. He will be assisted by four other members that are not directly or indirectly associated with private colleges.
The chairperson will be any person who has worked as principal secretary or as vicechancellor of a university. The authority will also have jurisdiction over all aided, unaided and also over minority or non-minority institutes affiliated to an university.

After the Worli-Bandra sea link its gonna be the underwater road from worli to Nariman point!

Now, underwater road from Worli to Nariman Pt?

Yogesh Naik I TNN

Mumbai: Taking note of the spiraling costs in the construction of the Bandra-Worli sealink, senior government officials are now contemplating having a road under the sea for the stretch from Worli to Nariman Point.
A meeting of senior officials will be held on Tuesday under the chairmanship of additional chief secretary (urban development) Ramanand Tiwari at Mantralaya.
The foundation-laying ceremony for the Worli-Bandra sealink was held in 1999, and the project has failed to meet several completion deadlines since then. The cost has shot up from Rs 400 crore to over Rs 1,500 crore.
The contractor, Hindustan Construction Company, blamed the government for the delay and consequent cost escalation. It said the sea-link’s alignment and specifications were changed, resulting in the delay and hike in cost. Also, payment was not made on time, which had earlier forced it to stop work.
Chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was upset with the mess; the project is being supervised by minister Anil Deshmukh, who belongs to the NCP. The Congress is now likely to suggest a cheaper alternative for the second phase. The chief minister is said to be in favour of the “road under the sea’’ concept as suggested by senior officials of the public works department.
The Bandra-Worli sea-link costs over Rs 200 crore per km; it is believed that the costs will come down if the
new concept is put into place. It involves laying huge concrete blocks under the sea and constructing a road inside the tunnel.
Such tunnels are already in operation in Hong Kong and other cities. Also, said sources, such a design will not mar the beauty of the coastline from Worli to Nariman Point.

World Class Water purification plant at Bhandup - Mumbai [India]

Middle Vaitarna project gets French touch Bhandup Will House Asia’s Largest Water Treatment Plant Purifying 1,000 M Litres Per Day Sukhada Tatke | TNN

Mumbai: Marking a key stage in the development of the Middle Vaitarna project, the BMC has awarded the contract for a Rs 292-crore water treatment plant to French company Degremont Suez. Work on the project is likely to begin by the end of this month and will result in Asia’s largest water treatment plant at Bhandup.

The Middle Vaitarna project funded by the World Bank is proposed to add 455 million litres of water to Mumbai’s existing daily supply. The new plant will have a capacity to treat about 1,000 million litres water per day. Tenders were floated by the BMC for the project after acquiring the approval of the standing committee about four months ago.

Three bidders came forward and Degremont was chosen as it was the lowest bidder and has a history of carrying out similar projects in Mumbai. A team from the company will meet officials in the civic body this week and complete the formalities.

“The additional water that will come out of the middle Vaitarna will be treated in this plant, which will be located adjacent to the existing one in Bhandup,’’ said additional municipal commissioner Manu Kumar Shrivastav. “We gave the company suggestions on how to execute it after consulting the firm Dalal Mott MacDonald (DMM). We also asked Degremont to give suggestions. The company has its own patented technology which would be used, and both our suggestions as well as their recommendations would be amalgamated,’’ he added.

The project would be based on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) standards. The French company will carry out the construction of the plant over roughly three years and the next four years will be required to operationalise it.

According to Pramod Charankar, deputy municipal commissioner, special engineering, owing to turbidity in the water in Mumbai, process of treating it by allowing it to settle is most critical. “At this stage, alum is added to the water, froth gets formed and then the water settles. After that is the process of filtering and chlorinating,’’ said Charankar. “We will have an additional pumping station and reservoir and then get connection to the usual distribution pipes,’’ he added.

SOME LIQUID FACTS

Mumbai was the first city in India to receive piped water supply in 1860. The city’s water supply system (3,200 mld) is among the largest in Asia

Main sources of water supply (Bhatsa, Tansa, upper Vaitarna, Vihar, Tulsi, Modak Sagar) are about 110 km from the city

The distribution network has more than 4,000 km of mains

HOW THE PROCESS WORKS

Additional water from middle Vaitarna will be first settled, then treated and chlorinated at the plant. It will then go to a pumping station and a reservoir from where it will be connected to the usual distribution links

The 800 year old prestigious university of Oxford coming to our own Pune! :)

Oxford University to set up branch in Pune

Manash Pratim Gohain | TNN

New Delhi: If you can’t study at Oxford, the university will come to you. For the first time in its 800-year-old history, Oxford University has announced that it will set up an offshore facility at Lavasa near Pune.
Oxford University vice chancellor John Hood, who is part of the high-level UK delegation to India, on Monday announced the establishment of Oxford University India Business Centre (OUIBC) which will be part of the Said Business School at Oxford.
On choosing India as the university’s first offshore establishment, Hood said, “India has become increasingly important for Oxford and the world at large. And the university is committed to expanding its collaboration with India which has enriched Oxford’s intellectual heritage for more than 400 years.’’
‘UK, India equal partners’: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a chat with TIMES NOW, has hailed Indians as dynamic people and backed New Delhi’s bid for a UNSC seat, saying the country “deserved to take its rightful place in the world’’. He said the UK was looking at a “partnership of equals’’ with India as it would benefit both. P 21, 14
Jet eyes British Midland: In what could be a repeat of the Air Sahara buyout, Jet Airways is trying to acquire a controlling stake in UK carrier British Midland (BMI). The move is prompted by the desire to get more slots at Heathrow. BMI controls over 11% of the slots in the international hub at London and Jet has approached BMI chairman Sir Michael Bishop, who holds a 51% stake in the carrier, said an aviation consultant. P 24 Indian biz to be focus of Pune campus
New Delhi: Oxford vice-chancellor John Hood has revealed the varsity’s plans to enter India. The Oxford University India Business Centre (OUIBC) campus at Lavasa near Pune will offer an executive management programme.
“We are going to develop a range of executive education programmes to be delivered through a new facility, which will be visited by our faculty at Oxford,’’ he said.
From 2009, he added, the university will introduce a Masters degree in Indian Studies for scholars of the social sciences to study politics, economics, developmental issues, international relations and the challenges of modern India.
The primary objective of the Lavasa centre, however, will be to research and understand the “extraordinary developments’’ in the Indian business scenario in recent years.
The business centre will be funded by Ajit Gulabchand, chairman of Lavasa Corporation. He will also endow a new chair, Ajit Gulabchand Professor of Indian Business Studies at the University of Oxford, to be based at the Said Business School at Oxford.