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The Right to Education now a Fundamental Right
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Foreign Education Bill finally gets Cabinet nod
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Budget steps to put eco back on 9% growth track
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| Government approves establishment of National Knowledge Network |
New Delhi: The government has given its nod to the establishment of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) which proposes to connect 1500 educational institutes around the country through a high-speed data communication network.
 The establishment of the network—with an outlay of US$ 1.32 billion—was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure (CCI), chaired by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. The NKN would be implemented over a period of ten years by the National Informatics Centre.
The network will feature 25 Points of Presence (PoPs) as well as 600 secondary PoPs and is expected to stimulate collaborative research, specialised resources and knowledge-sharing. The NKN will have a scalable architecture and will feature an ultra-high speed core, with speeds in multiples of 10 Gbps, which will be complemented by a distribution layer.
The core network—which was announced by Finance Minister Mr P Chidambaram in his 2008-09 Budget speech—is forecast to be completed in a period of 24 months.
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| Static testing of L110 liquid core stage of GSLV- MkIII launch vehicle conducted |
Indian Space Research Organisation conducted the static test of its liquid core stage (L110) of GSLV Mk III launch vehicle, for 150 seconds at its Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) test facility at Mahendragiri at 16:00 hrs yesterday (March 5, 2010).
 While the test was originally targeted for 200 seconds it was stopped at 150 seconds since a deviation in one of the parameters was observed. About 500 important parameters were monitored during the static test. The next static test for 200 seconds will be conducted after analysis of this data.
GSLV Mk III launch vehicle is being developed for launching 4 tonne class of satellites in Geo-synchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). Measuring 17 meters in length and 4 meters in diameter, L110 is an earth storable liquid propellant stage with propellant loading of 110 tonnes. L110 stage uses two high-pressure Vikas engines in a clustered configuration and draws its heritage from the second stage of PSLV and GSLV and strapons of GSLV.
While in PSLV and GSLV, the liquid stage with single engine configuration burns for 150 seconds, the GSLV-MkIII requires burning for 200 seconds in a twin engine configuration
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| Successful flight testing of advanced sounding rocket |
Indian Space Research Organisation successfully conducted the flight testing of its new generation high performance sounding rocket today (March 3, 2010) at 08.30 Hrs, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), SHAR.
Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV-D01), weighing 3 tonnes at lift-off is the heaviest sounding rocket ever developed by ISRO. It carried a passive scramjet engine combustor module as a test bed for demonstration of Air- Breathing propulsion technology.
During the flight, the vehicle successfully dwelled for 7 seconds in the desired conditions of Mach number (6 + 0.5) and dynamic pressure (80 + 35 kPa). These conditions are required for a stable ignition of active scramjet engine combustor module planned in the next flight of ATV.
The successful flight testing of ATV-D01 is a step ahead towards the advanced technology initiative taken up by ISRO in the area of Air- Breathing propulsion.
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| Mini-SAR on Chandrayaan-1 finds ice deposits at moon's North pole |
| source : The Times Of India |
Analysis of data obtained by the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) onboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has provided evidence for the presence of ice deposits near the moon's North pole. The Mini-SAR instrument found more than 40 small craters (2-15 km in diameter) with sub-surface water ice located at their base. The interior of these craters is in permanent sun shadow.
Prof. Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment said "The new discoveries by Chandrayaan-1 and other lunar missions show that the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought."
The Mini-SAR mapped the moon's permanently shadowed polar craters that are not visible from Earth. The radar uses the polarisation properties of reflected radio waves to characterise surface properties. Results from the mapping showed deposits having radar characteristics similar to ice. The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments, Moon Mineralogy Mapper and Mini-SAR on Chandrayaan-1 and NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon.
The Mini-SAR's findings have just been published in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters authored by scientists from 13 agencies from USA and India, including Prof. J. N. Goswami, Principal Scientist, Chandrayaan-1 from Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and Dr M. Chakrabarty of Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad. The new findings add to the growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water on the moon.
Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper are two of the 11 instruments on Chandrayaan-1, which was launched on October 22, 2008, and began orbiting the moon on November 8, 2008. The Applied Physics Laboratory, USA performed the final integration and testing on Mini-SAR. It was developed and built by the Naval Air Warfare Center and several other commercial and government agencies in USA.
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| Attrition Rebounds: IT Pros Switch Jobs With A Vengeance |
| source : The Economic Times Bangalore |
Many in India’s tech capital were driven to the edge last year as their employers cut back aggressively to cope with the global financial recession.
Today,
they give nightmares to their employers as the economy rebounds and companies dust up their expansion plans.
Kept on a tight leash with hardly anyone recruiting, India’s notoriously attrition-prone code-jocks are now sizing up their options and moving in for the kill, threatening to kick back the attrition rates to the 25% levels of the boom years.
In the $50-billion software industry, even 15% attrition was considered an achievement until 2008 while some companies struggled to keep it below 20-30%.
The scene nose-dived after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the onset of the financial slowdown, with attrition rates at India’s top tech firms dropping to single digits.
Today, with large customers such as JP Morgan, Citibank and GE sending more projects to the country, and multinationals like IBM and Accenture under pressure to hire more in India.
the war for retaining and hiring talent is being waged once more.
According to Nasscom, the Indian IT industry will hire around 90,000 staff this year, taking the total IT workforce to around 2.3 million.
Last year, the industry added only around 20,000 professionals as companies stalled their hiring plans. Companies are now hoping that they will be able to retain employees with a 2-8% wage hike.
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| IT, BPO Industry To Recruit 150,000 This Year: NASSCOM |
| source : Fincial Chonicle |
 Nasscom said the Indian information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) industry would hire 150,000 people this year. Nasscom president Som Mittal also said that the domestic market is expected to witness 12 percent growth this year and would reach up to Rs 66,200 crore.
“I think we have reached the better bottomline now and I will be surprised if there are less than 150,000 jobs are taken this year. Growth in emerging verticals such as retail, healthcare and utility would be higher and they are growing three times faster than core verticals,” Mittal told reporters here.
The findings of the association also said that the industry would continue to be a net hirer with direct employment expected to grow by four percent and cross 2.3 million with over 90,000 jobs added in FY09-10. Asia pacific is the fastest growing geography with an estimated growth of 10 percent. Infrastructure services would also be a key growth driver for the industry with an estimated growth of 10.5 percent in the next fiscal, it added.
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