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Showing posts from January 19, 2014

IIT report points out flaws in Ahmednagar Road BRT work

A safety audit of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on Alandi-Nagar Road, conducted by IIT Bombay, has termed the civic work as satisfactory while pointing out certain shortcomings. The IIT report has stressed on the convenience caused to pedestrians and physically-challenged people while pointing out the need for road signages, adequate lighting among others. The IIT team has submitted the draft findings of the audit report to the Pune Municipal Corporation which has constructed the 16km BRT route from Vishrantwadi to Wagholi. The final audit report will be made available in the next few days, civic officials said. The PMC, which had conducted a preliminary trial run on the BRT route in October, had appointed IIT Bombay for conducting the road safety audit. A similar audit was conducted by IIT Bombay for the 12km BRT between Nigdi and Dapodi in Pimpri Chinchwad last year. PCMC commissioner Shrikar Pardeshi had taken the decision to conduct the safety audit after safety concerns were

IIT-B to check foundation for 200mt Shivaji statue

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Maharashtra intends to steal a march on Gujarat by having the tallest memorial. 200mt Shivaji statue The state government has engaged the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) to examine the stability of the rock formation on the islet in the Arabian Sea where it intends to build a grand statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji.  This is necessary in the context of the state’s revised plan to build a taller statue than was proposed earlier that could go up to 200 metres, making it the tallest in the world. The earlier design proposed a height of 98 metres. The new design will make it even bigger than the proposed statue of Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat which at 182 metres was touted as the world’s tallest. The IIT-B group has been asked to prepare a report and submit it to the state government as early as possible. The new plan will not require any landfill work as instead of a connecting road from the shore, it is planned to set up a boat service to the memoria

NIT students design eco-friendly vehicle

Their idea became innovation as soon as they materialized it. Hear it from the innovative minds of Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology (NIT) who made a human power vehicle which can be run like a cycle by paddling it. A group of technocrat students of electronics and communication and mechanical engineering department have named the vehicle 'Anant'. Based on the concept of vehicular stability, the students have designed the manual vehicle considering air pollution and wastage of petrol. The team included Prabhakar Gupta, Pawan Kumar, Aashish Kumar, Akash Gupta, Avinash Pratap Singh, Dheeraj Kumar Singh, Atul Prashar, Ankur Vats, Shubham Goyal, Prateek Brar and Nikunj Garg along with associate professor and advisor Pramod Kumar. “We have designed and fabricated the human powered vehicle. The special features of this vehicle are that this vehicle is driven only by human power. The comfort level of the driver has been kept in mind while designing it. Th

C.N.R. Rao ‘celebrates’ science at IIT-M

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It is worrying that major institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology are not spending enough time to address issues affecting people , according to scientist and Bharat Ratna awardee C.N.R. Rao. For instance, water is a big problem; energy and environment are subjects where every engineer and scientist can contribute. It could be a chemical engineer, chemist or someone with computation skills who can solve the problem. “We need to use other forms of energy like hydrogen and solar cells. We need a good mixture of all the sources of energy,” he said delivering the inaugural “Institute Lecture” at IIT Madras. Delivering the lecture on the topic “Celebration of Science,” Rao, Honorary President, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, said “Unless we understand the spirit of science, we can never create an atmosphere of science in a country like India. India’s future is closely tied up with science and if it has to do well in any sector, it has to do

IITians and IIMians supporting NARENDRA MODI ??

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Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP )'s prime ministerial candidate  Narendra Modi 's idea of ensuring quality education in the country by setting up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), an Indian Institute of Management ( IIM ) and an All India Institute of Medical Sciences ( AIIMS ) in every state, if the party comes to power at the Centre, has not gone down well with industry and academia. It would mean setting up 13 new  IITs , 15 IIMs and 21 AIIMS in the country. If Modi wants to fulfil his goal, industry says, it would be more sensible to invest in improving pay packages of faculty members and infrastructure at existing institutes. "It is easy for politicians to announce new schemes. But nobody is concerned about quality. The new institutes set up in the past five years are already grappling with shortage of faculty members and fund. Thirteen new IITs would mean around 1,300 more qualified faculty members. Who will come to study or teach at an IIT located in a re

Anti-AAP vibes at IIT-Kharagpur

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The near frenzy at IIT-Kharagpur over alumni Arvind Kejriwal's stunning electoral success in Delhi has been replaced by dismay over AAP's gaffes less than a month into his chief ministership. The IIT-Kgp community is trying to send out warning signs to the party and its leaders to be more restrained and restore respectability. About 400 students at IIT-Kgp had volunteered to become AAP executives and popularize the party among other IITs and in Bengal. However, they are getting restless and have started criticizing the recent goings on in Delhi as attempts to get cheap popularity. The alumni are also critical of AAP's gaffes and fear for the future of the party unless the leaders restrain themselves in their public dealings. This dominated the discussins at last week's alumni meet. A Facebook page started by the IIT-Kgp community for students and alumni is openly criticizing AAP and Kejriwal. Named 'IIT Against AAP' it has already found 24,000 followers fro

IITs: Murderer of Dreams

A survey was done in some premier US colleges to find out the reason behind dropping out of students in large chunks. It was found that students of leading universities who belong to the lower section (academically) were more prone to this phenomenon. As it is said, it is better to be the leader of foxes than a minion of lions. In India the most overhyped term is "IITian". Role models for millions of kids and an ideal son-in-law for thousands of parents, these "IITians" are no more than an ideal package for the companies who want to hire servants in numerous attractive names. IITs are wonderful industries where no matter what the raw input is, the output is always the same. I am not generalising this article as it will be an insult for some really brilliant minds who have maintained the reputation of this college but more than 80 percent of IIT "janta" are being processed in these malicious industries. When an enthusiastic kid enters in an IIT, he por

Aakash 4 tablet won't be tested by IITs this time

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Aakash 4 tablet won't be tested by IITs this time VING learnt its lessons after the earlier Aakash tablet project, which led to a row between IIT Jodhpur and Canadian manufacturer Datawind, the Centre is now keeping top notch engineering institutes out of its ambitious tablet plans. Aakash 4, for which the Directorate General of Supplies & Disposals has issued a tender, would be tested and certified by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) instead of IITs. Seventeen vendors, including Dell, Acer, HP, HCL, Microsoft, Mircomax and Datawind, are in the fray to manufacture the low-cost tablet with improved technical specifications. IIT Jodhpur, which was originally slated to test all Aakash devices, had run into a conflict with Datawind over testing parameters and procedures. The project was then transferred to IIT Bombay. For Aakash IV, both testing and certification would be conducted only by C-DAC. Incidentally, the Kapil Sibal led Telecom Ministry

Technothlon

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Technothlon is an international school championship organized by the student fraternity of IIT Guwahati. Technothlon began in 2004 in a small room with an aim to ‘Inspire Young Minds’. Starting on our journey with a participation of 200 students confined to the city of Guwahati, over the past 10 years we have expanded our reach to over 150 cities all over India and various centers abroad. The championship is organized over 2 rounds: a written preliminary examination which takes place in numerous schools all over India in the month of July and mains - which is conducted at IIT Guwahati, among the top 100 students from each squad. Aim Through a series of events involving mental aptitude, logic, and dexterity, we seek to provide school students a platform to build fundamental experience and knowledge, to exercise co-ordination skills, and to think out of the box. Examination Structure Students participate in teams of two. There are two squads: Junior Squad  – Students of clas

AP teenage girl kills self over failure to crack IIT entrance

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A 19-year-old management course student committed suicide on Sunday by jumping from third floor of her apartment near Kirlampudi Layout as she was reportedly upset over her failure to clear the entrance test for IIT, police said. K Swetha, the first year student of Bachelor of Business Management (BBM), wanted to join IIT but failed twice to crack the entrance test, they said. Swetha was the student of Gayatri Vidya Parishad in the city. Her father K S Chalam is the Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Tax Department. "Swetha flung herself to the ground from the balcony of her third floor flat when her parents were asleep. She died on the spot due to severe head injuries," police said. Police sub-inspector A. Hari Babu said Swetha was taking psychiatric treatment. Police found a suicide note, purportedly written by her, in which she apologised to her parents and mentioned the cause behind taking the extreme step as her failure to pass the entrance test. A case w

IIT Madras students work on satellite to pre-empt quakes

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Many of them loved the challenge. Says S Varsha, a third year electrical engineering student who is designing the analogue electronics for the particle detector: "I am able to get practical experience at level difficult in a course." If the students succeed in the project, they might end up making good contributions to science as well.  In the last few decades, scientists have made progress in predicting all natural disasters except earthquakes. Earthquakes can be predicted only when the y begin. Before an earthquake happens, the ground is believed to emit low frequency and ultra-low frequency waves. These waves go up and interact with the Van Allen belt, a layer of charged particles more than 1,000 km above the earth.   This is supposed to lead to a sudden precipitation of particles from the belt, which the IITM students are trying to detect using a satellite below. But it is not a proven theory. In 2012, US space agency NASA launched two satellites right into the Van

CBSE 2014 Class X, XII exam admit cards online

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Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in a new move from March 2014 board examinations for Class 10th and Class 12th will be providing admit cards online. The admit cards for the March 2014 examination beginning from 1st March 2014 are expected to be released online in the first week of February 2014. Initially, only CBSE -affiliated schools will have the authority to download the admit cards, but later students may download their respective admit cards themselves. This new step will remove many hassles regarding admit cards and reduce stress for students. Changes can be made easily in the admit card available online, as compared to the lengthy process of changing information in the official admit cards provided by CBSE directly. Currently, to make any changes in the admit card the schools made corrections, sent them to CBSE office, CBSE office would make corrections and final cards would be sent back to schools. With the downloaded admit cards, schools can make chang

IIT-Bombay student found dead in hotel

A 26-year-old student of IIT Bombay was found dead in his hotel room here under mysterious circumstances today, police said. "S Sivateja came here from Hyderabad on January 16 and has been staying in a room he has booked in a local lodge. He was last seen yesterday when he came out of his room and asked the staff to bring a bottle of water," a police official said. Police said the incident came to light this morning when the room cleaning staff failed to get any response from Sivateja's room despite repeated knocking on the door. "Suspecting that something was amiss, the hotel staff informed police who broke open the door and found Sivateja's body in bathroom," the officer said. Police said Sivateja's face was covered with a plastic sheet which was taped around his neck. Police also found dismantled components of his mobile phone, an identity card and other personal belongings. According to police, Sivateja's parents, who hailed from Hyderabad, had