Dec/24/2011

Wipro Vizag to have 2,400 seats: Premji

Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro, has expressed interest to associate his company with the Andhra Pradesh government to take up a project to provide a surveillance system in Hyderabad involving installation of about 1,000 closed circuit cameras, to start with.

Mr. Premji called on Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy at the Secretariat on Friday along with a retinue of his company's officials and discussed different subjects with him, including Wipro's activity in the State.

Enquiries with GHMC officials revealed that plans were being prepared by the civic body to establish surveillance systems at all the traffic junctions in the ever expanding mega city as part of the infrastructure improvement project.

Mr. Premji told this correspondent later that the Wipro facility at Manikonda turned into massive 11,000-seat establishment whereas its facility at Visakhapatnam was being developed to have 2,400 seats. He said that depending on various factors Wipro would make efforts to have facilities wherever possible.

For Ramanujan, it was a theorem a day

At the peak of his prowess, mathematics wizard Srinivasa Ramanujan was perhaps discovering one new formula or new theorem every day, which beat the record of anyone indulging in a less creative activity, said Prof. C. R. Rao, Professor Emeritus and Adviser, C. R. Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science (AIMSCS), here on Thursday.

Launching year-long celebrations of the 125{+t}{+h}birth anniversary of Ramanujan and a workshop on the ‘Ramanujan-Chandrasekhar legacy in science' hosted by the Tamil Nadu Science & Technology Centre (TNSTC), Prof. Rao said Ramanujan who flashed like a meteor through a span of 32 years making remarkable contributions to mathematics before he was struck down by tuberculosis had left behind a strange and rare legacy – well over 4,000 formulae written on pages of three notebooks besides scraps of paper.

Assuming that the bulk of his work was produced during a period of 12 years, Ramanujan was discovering at least one new formula or theorem every day, Prof. Rao said. In fact, the work undertaken in the last year of his life — subsequently compiled as the ‘Lost Note Book'— alone are considered the equivalent of a lifetime work of a great mathematician, he said.

According to Prof. Rao, each of Ramanujan's theorems could spawn a whole new theory and still have a profound influence on current mathematical research. However, he did not do mathematics as mathematicians do, but rather discovered and created mathematics.

In fact, Ramanujan had no formal education in higher mathematics, stated theorems without proofs and could not explain how results were obtained even though most of his stated theorems have been proven correct. His own explanation was that the Goddess of Namakkal inspired him with the formulae in his dreams, Prof. Rao said.

Turning to the ‘Ramanujan-Chandrasekhar' legacy, Prof. Rao said both of them shared the same cultural background in their formative years and were two of the brightest stars to illuminate the world of science by opening doors to knowledge.

About the contemporary science scenario, Prof. Rao noted that though Indians had made substantial contributions to mathematics over the seven centuries starting 500 AD, the country was lagging in the global ranking of knowledge societies. Going by the number of research papers published in high impact journals and the number of citations they received India's rank is below that of a few third world nations.

V. S. Ramamurthy, former Secretary, Central Department of Science & Technology (DST), called for new initiatives to create a love for maths among school children and nurture young talents. India should also resolve the conflict between excellence and equity and find a way of fostering excellence without compromising on equity principle, he said.

A. T. B. Bose, Secretary, Ramanujan Museum and Maths Education Centre, Chennai, said an example of the applicability of Ramanujan's theorems in everyday life was his partition formula for numbers that is the basic principle now used at ATMs for apportioning currency by the available stock of denominations.

B. P. Singh, Head, National Council for Science & Technology, DST, A. B. Mandal, Director, Central Leather Research Institute and S. B. Rao, AIMSCS Director, were among the participants.

The celebrations are being supported by the DST and the National Council for Science & Technology Communication

Haryana to issue smart cards for farmers

The Haryana Government has decided to introduce a new scheme of issuing electronic smart cards for farmers in the State.

Stating this here on Friday, an official spokesperson said the card would be made available to each farmer by the market committee concerned. The cards will have all details such as the name of the farmer, his village, age, description of his land and the crops grown by him.

The card will also have details about sale of agriculture produce of the farmers and payments made to him for the same.

With the issuance of this card, the farmers will not need to keep a separate record of their yields and income, the spokesperson added.

More Japanese aid for Rajasthan water projectThe Japanese financial assistance for the Nagaur Lift Water Supply Project has been revised to Rs.2,199 crore from the earlier amount of Rs.1,774 crore. The proposal is for supply of surface water from the Indira Gandhi Canal Project to Rajasthan's fluoride-affected district of Nagaur. The project, financed through the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), will cover 978 villages and seven towns.

According to a communication from Union Minister of State for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, the proposal has been revised following a suggestion from the JICA mission taking into account the latest schedules of rates and incorporating the fluorosis mitigation programme.

A six-member fact-finding team of JICA had visited Nagaur in the third week of October to discuss the modalities of the project. The Japanese group was also promised government land for the project.

The revised estimates put the total cost of the project at Rs.2,938 crore, out of which Rs.339 crore will be contributed by the Union Government under the National Rural Drinking Water Programme. The State will have to put in a share of Rs.400 crore. The revised project does not have the urban component that was present in the original proposal.

The seven towns that will get drinking water from the project are Kuchaman, Nawan, Makrana, Parbatsar, Deedwana, Ladnun and Degana.

The ground water in Nagaur has high fluoride presence which causes fluorosis and other diseases of the bones and teeth in the local population. Availability of fresh drinking water is going to provide much-needed relief to the people here and bring down their medical expenses sharply.

The availability of water will also make a big difference to the economy of the mineral-rich Nagaur as paucity of water has been holding up its industries. The district has superior breeds of livestock but animal husbandry has remained a neglected area for want of water.

The physical works of the project will start in September 2013 and it is scheduled for commissioning in October 2016.

‘Hypersonic missiles to replace ballistic missiles'

CEO & MD of Brahmos Aerospace, A. Sivathanu Pillai on Friday said future warfare would see intelligent autonomous systems in all spheres of war, with hypersonic regimes of operations of missiles enabling fast operation with low detectability (stealth) and minimum time to hit targets.

He said the future would see re-usable hypersonic missiles replacing ballistic missiles, combat aircraft reconnaissance systems and platforms that could penetrate even the most heavily-defended targets.

Apart from reducing operating costs, re-usability would open up multiple applications for missiles including reconnaissance, payload delivery and damage assessment, he said in his convocation address at the Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering (MCEME) here on Friday.

Earlier, at a graduation ceremony, 29 young officers who passed out of the 89th Degree Engineering Course and 26 more who finished the 16th Technical Entry Scheme (TES) Course got their B. Tech. degree from JNU, New Delhi. Two more received their Masters degree. The parchments were given away by Dr. Pillai and Lt. Gen. N.B. Singh, Director-General-EME.

Dr. Pillai said the Indian Army was the only land force to have the most advanced supersonic cruise missile regiment, while all other nations only had sub-sonic cruise missiles. Strength respected strength, he said, adding however, that the biggest hurdle in realising indigenous technologies was the brain drain due to the attractions offered by developed countries to India's best talent pool.

“With young graduates like you, many critical technologies like high-accuracy inertial guidance system for Prithvi, carbon-carbon technologies for re-entry, super-computers for Computational Fluid Dynamics, the surface-to-air missile and imaging infrared seeker for Nag had been accomplished,” Dr. Pillai said.

Lt. Gen. Singh said the graduation was the beginning of a challenging journey as Army's Systems Engineers with the onerous responsibility of ensuring combat readiness. As future Systems managers, they would have to assimilate and absorb complex technology and play a vital role in combat operations by applying their knowledge, he said.

Earlier, MCEME's Officiating Commandant, Maj. Gen. Amarjit Singh said every year about 400 officers and over 3,000 other rank personnel received training at the MCEME.

‘No hitch in India-Iran pipeline project'

India and Iran held high level talks here on Friday during which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said bilateral cooperation between the two countries would continue despite problems in making payments for imported oil.

Dr. Singh told International Affairs Advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and long-time former Foreign Minister Akbar Ali Velayati, that efforts would be made to find a permanent solution in making monthly payments of about $1billion for oil imported from Iran, which the Prime Minister said was India's second major source of crude.

Pressure, direct and indirect, by the U.S. and its western allies has closed one avenue after another of paying for Iranian crude. “The Prime Minister said some technical difficulties are there and we want to resolve this problem with understanding from both sides,” Mr. Velayati told journalists.

The former Foreign Minister with long-standing contacts with the top Indian leadership said there was no problem between the two countries over the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline.

“The question is the problem of transit between India and Pakistan. There is no problem between India and Iran on this. Both countries want such a link up which is important to both sides. It is the nearest gas reserve for India and Iran cannot get a better customer like India,” he observed.