Just-right planet that can support life detected

t is not too hot and not too cold, and astronomers believe that a new planet detected outside our solar system may have a temperature that is just right to support life.

The planet orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581 and appears to be three times the mass of the Earth, the team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington said on Wednesday.

The team found it using indirect measurements from the Keck telescope in Hawaii, which has been used to scrutinize Gliese 581 for 11 years and has spotted other potential planets orbiting it.

"We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone -- one too hot and one too cold -- and now we have one in the middle that's just right," said Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz.

"The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common," Vogt said in a statement.

The planet, called Gliese 581g, is 20 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, according to the paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal and available at .

A light-year is the distance light can travel in one year at a speed of 186,000 miles (300,000 km) a second, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

The researchers use an indirect method radial velocity to detect planets. As a planet orbits, it makes the star wobble very slightly and this can be measured.

"There are now nearly 500 known extrasolar planets," Vogt's team wrote. "If the local stellar neighborhood is a representative sample of the galaxy as a whole, our Milky Way could be teeming with potentially habitable planets."

This planet, one of six whizzing around the little cool star, has a mass three to four times that of the Earth and orbits every 37 or so days, they calculated.

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," Vogt said.

They estimate temperatures on the planet average from -24 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees C). The planet is locked facing its sun, like Mercury, so one side would be extremely hot and the other perpetually cold, with the livable range being at the edge where dawn and dusk would be on a spinning planet like Earth's.

If it was rocky, like Earth, it could have gravity similar to Earth's and it would be possible for liquid water to be on the surface, they said, although they have not detected water on Gliese 581g.

V-C meet clears streamlined admission, common test

Scores attained on a national level aptitude test besides Class XII marks could soon decide on admissions to undergraduate courses across the 40 odd Central universities in the country. A similar common test with a subject component along with marks attained in graduation could also be the basis for admission to postgraduate courses. That apart, ‘Navratna’ status to varsities that meet certain criteria, faculty and student mobility besides credit transfer across central varsities and a four year integrated BA BEd/BSc programme were approved of as part of academic and administrative reforms for Central universities on Wednesday.

Vice-Chancellors of all Central universities on Wednesday met in New Delhi and approved in principle a proposal that is envisaged as a streamlined admission system to the universities and colleges affiliated to them. While the modalities of the proposed aptitude test/common entrance exam and the normalisation of Class XII board exam results have yet to be worked out, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said that a committee would submit a report on the same in two months and attempts would be made to implement this system by the next academic session after due consultations. Sibal added that concerns of varsities with special categories like Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Milia Islamia University would be factored in before the proposal is implemented.

US Military Must Stop Using Oil In 30 Years, Defense Think Tank Says

The success of the US military in coming decades will depend largely on the development of a world-wide system for producing a variety of biofuels, according to a new report released today. That way, the military can stay refueled and able to operate anywhere, even when petroleum supplies are tight.

"Fueling the Future Force", by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank based in Washington, D.C., makes a set of recommendations for the Department of Defense about how it can move toward running without any petroleum in 30 years' time.

However, it seems to have a poor grasp of where biofuels come from, the energy required to make them, and how to estimate the future availability of oil.

The report is very clear that this transition off of petroleum would be a huge challenge, and if it is to be successful, would require big steps starting now. "The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) must prepare now to transition smoothly to a future in which it does not depend on petroleum," the report says. "DOD should ensure that it can operate all of its systems on non-petroleum fuels by 2040."

The CNAS acknowledges that the cost of petroleum will rise, squeezed both by rising demand and because of shrinking supplies. It doesn't utter the words "peak oil" anywhere, but it does say: "the geology and economics of producing petroleum will ensure that the market grows tight long before petroleum reserves are depleted."

The report seems to vastly underestimate the scope of this challenge, however, for two big reasons. First, the only analysis of geological restrictions in supplies that the report mentions is a brief overview of various countries' reserves-to-production ratios (R/P ratios). For the US, it points out, R/P is now about 11, so if it produced oil at today's rates, the proved reserves would last only 11 years.

Does that mean the US is going to run out of domestic oil in 11 years? No, because the production from mature fields will fall with time. Because of this focus on R/P ratios, I think the authors have overestimated how much oil will be available in the medium-run, over the next 10 years or so. Instead of being able to somehow hold production constant, production will instead decline in those areas with low R/P and little prospect of adding new reserves.

As the site The Energy Standard puts it in a post titled "R/P ratio is completely useless": "One of the favorite argumentative tools used by people who do not understand oil production limits is R/P ratio." The use of it in the CNAS report makes me wonder about their understanding of oil supplies and depletion.

The other, much bigger oversight is that the report says little about where the biofuels will come from. What is the net energy, or energy return on investment (EROI), of biofuels? Are they much less dependent on petroleum than petroleum itself?

The report envisions a worldwide biofuel network that the DoD could draw on:
"new fuel sources must hold the potential to be available globally. DOD relies on international companies and other countries to provide fuel supplies for its use outside of the United States."

Rather than relying on a single fuel,

if DOD can procure fuels from a portfolio of sources, such as fuels made from locally grown switchgrass, algae, camelina or other crops, that diversity can help to keep prices competitive (especially as a hedge against weather or economic conditions reducing crop output in any given region) and deny suppliers leverage over the United States.

The report mentions improvements in biofuel production:

Efforts by the National Laboratories, academia and the private sector are focusing on basic science that will enable more efficient use of second-generation biological fuel sources (made from non-food crops) by increasing efficiency in processing plant materials while retaining net energy gains, and by overcoming other technical hurdles.

However, what are these "net energy gains" now? They're very small with today's biofuels, and may not be any better with other biofuels. Cellulosic biofuel, such as from switchgrass, may be able to produce more gross energy, plot for plot, but it would take a lot of energy to turn the cellulose into a fuel. But what the military—and the rest of us—use is net energy (that is, the gross energy you get out of the whole process, minus the energy you put into the process).

If biofuels are going to replace petroleum, and maintain a high level of energy use, then the EROI on biofuels would need to improve dramatically. This seems unlikely. For more on this, see "Revisiting the Fake Fire Brigade Part 2: Biomass".

One thing the report doesn't seem to have considered is that if the US military ends up having a hard time refueling in future decades, so will many of their opponents—both states and insurgents. If military supremacy is not about an absolute level of strength, but instead about being stronger than your opponents, then the US military could adopt other approaches to maintaining its advantage against states such as China. But maybe in coming decades, the US would be a distinct disadvantage compared with OPEC countries, unless it finds alternative ways of fueling its military.

The report says that aiming for the military to simply use less energy overall is not a good way to go. Perhaps in a perfect world. But if we're actually close to a peak in world oil, then it might be the only way to go. Maybe the military can get better at using mules and donkeys.

Saying No to ‘I Do,’ With the Economy in Mind

 The United States crossed an important marital threshold in 2009, with the number of young adults who have never married surpassing, for the first time in more than a century, the number who were married.

A long-term decline in marriage accelerated during the severerecession, according to new data from the Census Bureau, with more couples postponing marriage and often choosing to cohabit without tying the knot.

“People are unsure about their job security, and a lot of people lost their jobs,” said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, a private research group that analyzed census figures. “Getting married is obviously a big step and if you’re not comfortable about your future, it makes sense that you’d postpone a big decision like this.”

Will McElroy, 26, of Atlanta, has been dating his girlfriend, Ann, for three years. They have discussed marriage, but he lost his job as a computer programmer this year and is now more focused on looking for work than planning for the future.

“Yeah, it definitely takes money to get married,” he said, and “being married probably means eventually buying a house and having kids, right?”

Among the total population 18 and older, the share of men and women who were married fell from 57 percent in 2000 to 52 percent in 2009 — again, the lowest percentage since the government began collecting data more than 100 years ago. The share of adult women who were married fell below half, to 49.9 percent.

Society could be in store for a brief marriage bump if economic good times return, sociologists said, but it is likely to be a temporary reversal, at best, of a long-term downward slide.

Two factors contribute to the decline in marriage among adults ages 25 to 34, said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University: less marriage and more cohabitation, which has become far more socially acceptable, even with children.

“It’s a mistake to think of all unmarried people as single,” Dr. Cherlin said. “Lots are living with partners.” This is especially true, he said, among those without college degrees, who often wait until they feel economically secure enough to marry.

Joel Greiner, 31, director of counseling for the Journey, an interdenominational church in the St. Louis area, said about a third of the couples in his congregation who attend premarital classes live together before marriage, telling him they are “testing out the waters to see if it will work and wanting to save money.”

But Mr. Greiner says the talk of economics may be cloaking the primary issue. “It’s more a fear of intimacy and fear of marriage,” he said.

According to the federal data, the share of young adults who have never married climbed from 35 percent at the start of the decade to 46 percent in 2009.

There have long been large racial differences in marriage rates, with blacks far less likely to marry than whites, but that difference has been shrinking as cohabiting becomes more popular with whites, Dr. Cherlin said. And many young adults, he said, are postponing marriage rather than forgoing it altogether.

Mr. McElroy in Atlanta said he would definitely start thinking about a wedding once he gets a new job and the economy picks up.

Fort Delhi, complete with missiles and Sukhois

With just four days to go for the Games, the Indian Air Force has put in place a tight security cover against aerial threats. The Army, for its part, has deployed specialised teams to conduct night surveillance of all the venues, besides activating its anti-nuclear, chemical and biological contamination units.

On Monday, the Air Force activated a comprehensive air defence network over the city, covering a 60-km radius from India Gate, involving the deployment of mobile surface-to-air missile units, radars, anti-aircraft guns as well as armed choppers to take on aerial threats. Fighter aircraft, including SU 30 MKIs and MiG 21 Bisons, have also been kept ready at nearby air bases.

The Army has deployed specialised teams to deal with chemical, nuclear and biological threats and put a long-distance night surveillance network in place at all venues. An extensive network of L70 air defence guns that can be used to neutralise low flying targets has also been installed. In addition to this, bomb disposal teams and sniffer dogs have been kept ready.

"We have taken all contingencies into consideration, including aircraft hijacking, low-speed aerial threats, balloons and microlights," an official said.

Sources said armed choppers, including Mi 35 attack helicopters, will be airborne during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games. Two searcher Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will also be put into action during both the ceremonies.

Specially-trained sniper units of the Delhi Police will be deployed at mobile observation posts to deal with sub-conventional threats such as aero-models and balloons. A network of Pechora, OSA AK and Igla surface-to-air missiles will be put in place by the Air Force while L70 anti-aircraft guns will be kept ready for use by the Army. Mi 17 and Mi 35 armed helicopters will patrol the skies, and smaller Cheetah/Chetak choppers will be deployed for emergency transport and casualty evacuation contingencies.

Commonwealth Games is more nostalgia, less sports??

 If anything, the Commonwealth Games provide a lingering aroma of the British empire that in these modern times only evokes nostalgia and little else of note. The Games have evolved from the British Empire Games, first held in 1930 at Hamilton in Canada, to the British Empire and Commonwealth Games (1954), the British Commonwealth Games (1970) to the present Commonwealth Games (1978).

The event has grown in size too, from 11 countries, 400 sportspersons and six sports to 71 nations and territories, 7,000 participants and 17 disciplines at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games Oct 3-14.

The change in nomenclature also reflects the gradual break-up of the British empire as erstwhile colonies, including India, gained independence.

The last vestiges of the British Raj, as Indians refer to the pre-independence period, still remain to keep the Commonwealth Games fire burning, although top sportspersons tend to give a thumbs down to the quadrennial event.

From India's perspective, the Commonwealth Games present an excellent opportunity to score some points and medals at the international level, though overall, the collective performance has been far from satisfactory.

India's haul of 270 medals (102 gold, 97 silver, 71 bronze) pales into insignificance compared to those of the front-runners. Australia's tally is a whopping 1,894 medals including 728 gold, 615 silver and 551 bronze to England's 1,693 (576-552-565).

India's tally is less than 50 percent of Australia's bronze medal haul.

Only in the last decade have the Indians begun to make a mark. They picked up 69 medals (30-22-17) in 2002 (Manchester) and 48 (22-17-9) in 2006 (Melbourne).

Of the 102 gold that Indians have won so far, 35 have been in shooting, 33 in weightlifting and 23 in wrestling, while the only success in the showpiece athletics event was by the legendary Milkha Singh in 1958 at Cardiff when he won the 440-yard (quarter-mile) dash clocking 46.6 seconds.

Incidentally, India's performance in the hockey competition that was introduced in 1998 has been dismal. The women's team, though, fared better with a gold in 2002 and a silver in 2006 while the men finished fourth in 1998 and sixth in 2006.

With the top stars opting to stay away more often than not, the image of the Commonwealth Games as one of premier global sporting events has lost its lustre though the authorities would like to us to believe otherwise.

This time around, the timing of the Games, near the end of the international sporting season and just weeks prior to the Asian Games in China in November, besides the security concerns and the threat of dengue following unprecedented rains, has left the fields depleted in the wake of pull-outs by high-profile sportspersons.

While the situation is tailor-made for Indians to hog the limelight, it will take a lot more to convince the discerning that performance in the Commonwealth Games is any yardstick at all to measure India's sporting progress.

AdSense Forefather Makes 14 Million Business Listings Available for Free

Gilad Elbaz's last company was acquired by Google and became AdSense, the source of 30% of Google's revenue. His new company,Factual, is a marketplace for live, collaboratively and algorithmically maintained bulk data. This month Factual has announced that it now offers read and write access to 14 million U.S. business listings and locations - for free.Gigaom's Liz Gannes called the offering "a great place database in the sky." Adam Duvander atProgrammableWeb said it was "a first step toward creating a place database to which anyone can contribute...extremely valuable to developers." What makes this data offering so exciting? The ability to cross-reference it with any other location data that you already have and create something new.

The most obvious use-case is this: You want to build an app that checks where a user is physically located, then tells them what businesses are nearby. That data isn't readily and freely available otherwise, and even if you buy it from a major provider it's hard to know that what you get is up to date. Factual now offers 14 million listings in the U.S. and 25 million worldwide as just one of many data sets on the site.

The write access that Factual provides offers a solution to the problem of accuracy, the company says. Gannes explains that Factual "combines data from partners, vendors and users, and applies machine learning to extract and validate facts -- for instance, to determine what the actual current phone number is for a business." (See also our reviewof Factual's basic offering from October.)

A mobile "what's near me" app is just the most obvious use case, though. Such data could really be put to use in enriching any existing bit of location data. The Factual data set includes fields beyond name, latitude, longitude and adress - it's also got phone numbers, whether a business delivers food, whether it serves alcohol and much more.

The Real World, Mashed Into Apps

Imagine any of those fields being cross referenced with any other location data you've got.

• Full bars with the highest Yelp rating within a quarter mile of any movie theatre.
• Family-friendly restaurants within a mile of every historic landmark in the country, for those weekend educational trips with the kids.
• 24-hour restaurants nearest any musical venue.

Every one of those mashups of location data is a Web or mobile app that people would use, aren't they? Those are just a few quick ideas.

The data set needs filling out beyond the basics; many of the fields beyond location and phone number hold sparse data right now. But the potential, the price (free), the pedigree and the programmability of this offering are all very promising.

Location as a platform, cross-referenced with place, time, people and content, could be a big part of the future of our computing experience. The first step is to get the data about what is where into as many hands as possible.

"Hopefully," Elbaz says on his very narrative LinkedIn profile, "high-quality, lower or no cost data will unleash a wave of creativity and productivity by application developers and content publishers.
"

Ancient Italian Town Now Has Wind at Its Back

 

The towering white wind turbinesthat rise ramrod straight from gnarled ancient olive groves here speak to something extraordinary happening across Italy.

Faced with sky-high electricity rates, small communities across a country known more for garbage than environmental citizenship are finding economic salvation in making renewable energy. More than 800 Italian communities now make more energy than they use because of the recent addition of renewable energy plants, according to a survey this year by the Italian environmental group Legambiente.

Renewable energy has been such a boon for Tocco that it makes money from electricity production and has no local taxes or fees for services like garbage removal.

A quintessential Italian town of 2,700 people in Italy’s poor mountainous center, with its well-maintained church and ruined castle, Tocco is in most ways stuck in yesteryear. Old men talking politics fill gritty bars, and old women wander through the market. The olive harvest is the most important event on the calendar.

Yet, from an energy perspective, Tocco is very much tomorrow. In addition to the town’s wind turbines, solar panels generate electricity at its ancient cemetery and sports complex, as well as at a growing number of private residences.

“Normally when you think about energy you think about big plants, but here what’s interesting is that local municipalities have been very active,” said Edoardo Zanchini, in charge of Legambiente’s energy division. “That this can happen in a place like Italy is really impressive.”

Italy is an unlikely backdrop for a renewable revolution. It has been repeatedly criticized by the European Union for failing to follow the bloc’s environmental directives. It is not on track to meet either its European Union-mandated emissions-reduction target or its commitment to get 17 percent of its total power from renewable sources by 2020, experts say.

Currently, only 7 percent of Italy’s power comes from renewable sources.

But the growth of small renewable projects in towns like Tocco — not only in Italy, but also in other countries — highlights the way that shifting energy economics are often more important than national planning in promoting alternative energy.

Tocco was motivated to become an early adapter because Italy already had among the highest electricity rates in Europe, and nearly three times the average in the United States, and it could not cope with the wild fluctuations in fossil fuel prices and supply that prevailed during the past decade.

At the same time, the costs of renewable energy have been falling rapidly. And as in much of Europe, the lure of alternative power here was sweetened by feed-in tariffs — government guarantees to buy renewable electricity at an attractive set price from any company, city or household that produces it.

In the United States, where electricity is cheap and government policy has favored setting minimum standards for the percentage of energy produced from renewable sources rather than direct economic incentives like Europe’s feed-in tariffs, stimulating alternative energy has been only mildly successful. But in countries where energy from fossil fuels is naturally expensive — or rendered so because of a carbon tax — and there is money to be made, renewable energy quickly starts to flow, even in unlikely places like Tocco.

With its four wind turbines (two completed in 2007 and two last year), Tocco is now essentially energy independent from a financial standpoint, generating 30 percent more electricity than it uses. Production of green electricity earned the town 170,000 euros, or more than $200,000, last year. The town is renovating the school for earthquake protection and has tripled the budget for street cleaners.

Kieran McNamara, Italy desk officer for the International Energy Agency, said that although small renewable energy projects were not enough to sustain an entire industrial economy like Italy’s, they were important.

“These small projects have their own intrinsic value and make a very, very positive contribution in countries where electricity prices are high,” Mr. McNamara said.

High electricity prices in Italy are a result of various forces, according to the International Energy Agency: Italy has almost no fossil fuels of its own, and until last year, it banned nuclear power plants; new plants will take a decade to build even if strong public opposition can be overcome. Although Italy has officially opened the former state electricity monopoly, Enel, to private competition, the country does not yet have a functioning market, the energy agency has found.

Large renewable projects are still rare in Italy compared with other European countries because Italian planning and permitting procedures are so complicated.

The type of renewable energy coming from small towns like Tocco depends on local resources. In the northern Alpine counties there is a heavy reliance on hydropower and the burning of agricultural waste. Italy’s scorching south tilts a bit more toward solar, although wind, too, is important there because it is by far the most cost-effective renewable technology, the energy agency said.

Tocco itself was primed for success. In a mountain valley that serves as a thoroughfare for passing winds, Tocco was chosen as the site for an early European Union demonstration project in wind power in 1989. It had two inefficient wind turbines installed that lasted about a decade and were not replaced, meeting at best 25 percent of the town’s electricity requirements. Residents called them “sacks of noise.”

But in recent years, with improved technology, silent turbines and a meager public purse, town officials took another look at wind.

B-schools at the crossroads

A barrelling economy. Emerging business models that have the international business community keenly watching. At least half a dozen sunrise sectors shooting off the charts. Fastclipping businesses chasing new markets both in India and overseas. Outside-in foreign interest scaling record highs.

The world of Indian business, it appears is in churn - in an enriching kind of way - like never before. That should be scintillating news for the aspiring managerial class. Especially the thousands waiting on the sidelines of India Inc. to dive into jobs that will bring them wealth and respect. Respect which can come through that muchchased stamp of an MBA, a Masters in business administration. A certificate from a business school, or B-school, that will fast-track them through the early decades of what is promised to be India's century.

Here's the list of top 30 B-Schools in India

Hold on. That is the 10,000-foot view. Closer to terra firma, it's a churn of a different kind. One that has business graduates wringing their hands dealing with what hirers call "employability" issues, B-schools changing themselves to reflect the rapidly morphing world of business, recruiters seeking custom-made programmes at management institutes to suit their workplaces and industries, and foreign B-schools gingerly feeling their way in the world's second-fastest growing major economy.

Welcome to the context in which Business Today presents its Best B-schools annual. As much as each of the above factors finds reflection in our rankings, put together with market researcher The Nielsen Co., sometimes it does not seem that way. That may sound confusing but is true.

Rankings reflect the perception of the target audience and the 2010 and 2009 surveys are the best examples of that. In a year of financial meltdown, the value proposition was the top factor at work. Amity Business School, which charged a modest Rs 4 lakh in fees compared with over Rs 10 lakh at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other top tier B-schools, vaulted to the Top 10 list last year for the first time since our surveys began in 1998. It didn't seem to matter that Amity was perceived a clear rung below the aristocracy.

This year the tables have turned, and Amity has come in at No. 27 in the rankings. The snoot club is back in the velvet, thanks to the strength of the economic recovery. And yet, the haute table has its surprises: we have three new place-cards in the 2010 Top 10. The Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) of the University of Delhi has moved seven ranks to No. 4 from No. 11 last year. Sure, FMS is not expensive at all, charging just Rs 10,000 in annual tuition fees, but what about the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, which costs nearly Rs 12 lakh for a one-year programme? ISB climbed to No. 7 in 2010 from No. 13 last year.

IIM Indore also makes its way back into the Top 10 after it fell to No. 12 last year. The upward march of these B-schools has pushed Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, to No. 13 and No. 14 respectively, from a high No. 4 and No. 5 last year.

IIM Ahmedabad stays overall leader of the Indian B-schools pack by a mile, a position it has maintained for the last eight years. What is the secret sauce that keeps the school ticking? Nose to the grindstone execution, says director Samir K. Barua. "The ability to do the basics of good academic processes right, day after day, year after year, is the reason why IIM-A continues to be able to deliver top quality education," he says.

That courses are delivered on schedule by a competent faculty and programmes are continually updated help, he adds. 'On schedule' and 'competent' could well be the key phrases that set IIM-A - and the top half of the pack - apart from the rest. Otherwise there is no dearth of courses and no shortage of programmes that are on offer from a motley bunch of institutes that range from the third rate to those bordering on the fraudulent. To understand the swirls and eddies that put B-school education at the crossroads in India today, some context is instructive.

As a nation, India produces the highest number of MBAs in the world. If you shrugged at that saying India has more than 1.1 billion people and producing 200,000 MBA graduates is not a big deal, think again. Some estimates put the number of newbie "managers" higher because there are scores of fly-by-night B-schools not certified by the All India Council for Technical Education, or AICTE, a statutory body governing technical and other higher education, or recognised by the University Grants Commission (UGC), which sets standards for university level education.

China has 200 B-schools. India 10 times that with some 2,000 government-certified B-schools awarding MBA degrees, or an equivalent and, often, more valuable diploma versions (like those given by the IIMs). Consulting group Technopak presents a more sophisticated look at the situation. India has nearly 100 management school seats per billion dollars of GDP, compared with about 11 in the US, 13 in Britain and some six in China.

Technopak's estimate of 100 seats per billion dollars of national income in India is based on a conservative 120,000 "production capacity" of MBAs in India. Take that up to the more widely accepted 200,000 number, and it rises to 160 managers for each billion dollars of GDP. And there are no signs of slowing down. Experts reckon that between 150 and 200 new institutes apply to the AICTE for permission to set up B-schools every year.

To be sure, you don't need AICTE or UGC approval to set up a B-school or management institute but do need a green flag from them if you want to award a post graduate degree or tom-tom that your B-schools is "government recognised", a stamp that still is a big draw among management degree aspirants. "A number of institutes are set-up as study centres for distance education degrees. We estimate that capacity is growing up by over 20 per cent every year," says Bharat Gulia, a senior manager tracking education sector at audit and consultancy firm Ernst & Young. "Most B-schools are little more than finishing schools and, that too, poor at it."

The result is that thousands and thousands of business grads being produced are way behind on employability - or the ability to take managerial jobs without heavy doses of training. "While the top 30 to 35 schools churn out good or industry-ready talent, the others struggle to match up. We focus only on the top 25 to 30 schools to meet our staffing needs," says a spokesperson for Infosys Technologies. Preety Kumar, Partner at headhunter Amrop India, says she finds a lot of challenges around B-school grads. "I would any day hire an MA in Economics in place of an MBA who has unrealistic expectations vis-a-vis his skillset," she says.

All this makes for a sweet spot for Nishant Saxena. In an upcoming locality of Gurgaon, south-west of New Delhi, is a nondescript office of Elements Akademia, which runs a chain of finishing schools offering rigorous "employability" training. Among willing takers for its modules are Tier II and Tier III B-schools (Gyan Jyoti Institute of Management, Chandigarh, and Business School of Delhi, Greater Noida, to name two) that are mushrooming all over India.

Saxena, Founder of Elements Akademia and himself an IIM Lucknow alumnus, has not yet started to work with any of the top 50 B-schools in the BT-Nielsen rankings, but that may just be a matter of time - apart from the top four on our list this year, all others have scores below 1 on the zero to five Brand Equity Index that Nielsen, the world's biggest consumer measurement company, uses while arriving at the rankings. E&Y's Gulia predicts a shakeout among B-schools.

At the top B-schools, the challenges are different. In the aftermath of the slowdown - set off on Wall Street by greedy banks and greedier bankers in 2008 - when the ethics of individuals and compensation structures in organisations were put under the scanner, the one question that educators and employers asked was: is there a need to rethink business education? B-schools in the US and Europe have been introspecting on this deeply - Harvard Business School has instituted a Hippocratic Oath for students - and changing how they teach.

So are Indian management institutes. FMS has introduced new syllabus that teaches new modules on corporate social responsibility and ethics. What's taught as part of a course on ethics? Simply, what's the "right" way of doing business: how to replenish value that is extracted from society and how to see beyond just shareholder value. In Gurgaon, Management Development Institute has introduced compulsory papers on ethics and corporate social responsibility across its courses.

IIM Kozhikode has new modules on social transformation in India that talks about how villages work, how rural folk share resources. IIM-K, in fact, wants to be an equal opportunity institute through gender diversity and focus on the underprivileged. "IIMs can't be elitist; the idea is to globalise Indian thought," says Debashis Chatterjee, Director. These changes have a strong connect with B-school rankings. The institutes that make a successful transition meeting new management education needs will be the ones likely to retain or improve their standing. Sunil Rai, CEO of the 15-month-old Mumbai Business School, knows this well and is modelling the institute's programmes on medical colleges. His experience-based approach to B-school pedagogy is based on context of "where to apply, when to apply and how to apply" theoretical concepts in real-life situations, says Rai, former Joint Director at S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai.

As business education matures in India and recruiters demand new skills, the gap between the top B-schools and those lower down will only widen. There will be a more cross-border selection by wealthy students as the fee differentials slim between Tier-I Indian B-schools and counterparts elsewhere and quality of exposure overseas attracts them.

Even today "getting an MBA in India does not mean that things are cheap," says David Wilson, President and CEO, GMAC, which conducts the Graduate Management Admission Test and counts over 30,000 applicants from India - more than three times the number in 2005. At over $40,000 for a programme "the fee in top-tier B-schools here is comparable to international education costs," he says.

For the larger population of B-school aspirants, the road ahead will mean taking a hard look at returns from their MBA investment. For working executives, it will be mean factoring in the opportunity cost of taking time off from work, even if it is for one year. The truly interested and ambitious manager-aspirant will ask ever tougher questions about the quality of faculty, international affiliations and even the industry-specific courses on offer.

Employability and potential prosperity will out-rank the temptation to go for a quick and easy piece of paper certifying nothing more than another frustrated job-seeker. When the hordes that knock on B-schools' doors begin to make more hardnosed choices, the air will look less turbid.

AMU organises valedictory function

he valedictory function of the 1^st Training of Trainers of UP under the auspices of Comprehensive Child Survival Programme supported by UNICEF and National Rural Health Mission organized by the Department of Pediatrics, Aligarh Muslim University was held today. AMU Registrar, Prof. V. K. Abdul Jaleel was the chief guest while Prof. S. Abrar Hasan, Dean, Faculty of Medicine and Prof. M. Ashraf Malik, Principal and Chief Medical Superintendent graced the programme as guests of honour.

Prof. Jaleel appreciated the efforts of Prof. S. Manazir Ali for bringing such a prestigious resource centre in Department of Pediatrics and congratulated the participants for completing training. He also distributed the certificates of participation to the participants.

There were six senior trainers from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Allahabad, Mirzapur and Agra while 25 participants were from Agra, Hathras, Bijnor, J. P. Nagar, Etawa, Firozabad, Lucknow, Kasganj, Rampur and Mahova.

Prof. S. Manazir Ali, Coordinator and Chairman, Department of Paediatrics gave the over view of department and highlighted the projects running in the Department from different funding agencies (UNICEF, NRHM, ICMR, WHO,) to provide better child health care. He pointed out that 22 Lakh children die under age of five years every year in India. It means more than 6000 children every day and more than 250 children every hour die in India. He also mentioned that malnutrition is more common in India than in Sub-Saharan Africa. One in dying every three malnourished children in the world lives in India.

Prof. S. Abrar Hasan and Prof. M. Ashraf Malik also addressed the valedictory function and appreciated the efforts of the Chairman, Department of Pediatric. Prof. Tabassum Shahab, Dr. Farzana Beig and Dr. Zeeba Zakaur Rab from Department of Pediatrics were also present.

The participant and trainers of the programme appreciated the venue of training, hospitality, food, accommodation, transport, clinical cases and beauty of the University.

Could Peak Oil Save The Human Species?

Nobody likes to hear a bleak diagnosis. But without a proper diagnosis, if you have a serious illness, your chances of survival become vanishingly small.

Enter Guy McPherson, conservation biologist, climate scientist and blogger, who despite his gloomy outlook about the prospects for industrial civilization--he thinks it could disappear within his lifetime--regards himself as an optimist. Why? Because back in 2002 after he finished editing a book on global climate change, he concluded that "we had set events in motion that would cause our own extinction, probably by 2030."

But, then he discovered the concept of peak oil and realized that "its consequences might bring the industrial economy to an overdue close, just in time." That development would make it possible for humans to persist on the planet for a considerably longer time by saving the life support systems of the Earth essential to both humans and the other species which humans rely on. Peak oil became a cause for optimism rather than pessimism.

I asked McPherson, who gave a talk this weekend near where I live, what would change his mind about the trajectory of industrial civilization. He answered that the discovery of a miraculous, cheap, easily scalable new energy source would probably allow our current arrangements to persist for a while longer. But such a development would be a death sentence for the human race since it would lead to the total destruction of the life support systems we rely on, systems which are only seriously crippled now. It would result in further population overshoot, resource depletion including that of soil and water, and further destruction of species we rely on for our well-being.

He likened what we are doing now to constructing an extra floor on the top of a 30-story brick structure using bricks pulled from the lower floors. We are engaging in the "world's largest game of Jenga" with the building blocks of our existence.

He says the emerging collapse of our modern living arrangements is not a recent phenomenon, but actually an ongoing process. He traces it back to the oil crises of the 1970s which were the beginning of the end. The key metric in his view is a peak in per capita oil consumption in 1979. McPherson says he would not be surprised if the endgame for industrial civilization plays out very quickly given the long period of stress both human society and the biosphere have been under for the last generation.

As a response he suggests focusing on four things: water, food, maintaining proper body temperature, and community. Water and food are obvious needs, but many of us don't think about whether the climate we live in will allow us to maintain proper body temperature. We have central heating and air conditioning to help us with that. But when such amenities are not available, the climate where we live will become crucial to our well-being and comfort.

By community he means building ties of mutual support with one's neighbors. "There ain't no lone rangers in collapse," McPherson explained. "If you look for ways to serve your community, you've got a good life ahead." His model is Monticello (minus the slaves) where "agriculture was the center of commerce and therefore the center of life."

As part of his own preparations he lives on land at moderate elevation with deep soils and easily accessible water. He grows food and raises goats for milk. The area is already populated by what he calls "life-loving economic doomers" who do not need to be convinced that industrial civilization is coming to an end. Mutual assistance is a way of life. Practical concerns trump philosophical and religious differences.

To do all this McPherson left his position as a tenured professor. He says at the beginning he knew practically nothing about how to provide the necessities for himself. "I could barely distinguish between a zucchini and a screwdriver," he explained. Now, he's milking goats, making cheese, growing vegetables and performing myriad our tasks necessary to a more localized existence, one that does not rely so heavily on the far-flung logistical networks of the globalized economy.

He doesn't call what he's doing "sustainable," a term which, he said, has even been co-opted by Wal-Mart. Instead, he refers to it as "durable," meaning he is trying to build a way of life that will outlive industrial civilization. He said his cosseted existence as an academic did little to prepare him for what he is doing now. But precisely because of this he is convinced that "if I can do this, anyone can do this."

And, in the manner of a principled prophet on a lonely mission, he soldiers on each day trying to help others build a durable way of life before it's too late.

The Truth Will Set U.S. Free: Breaking Israel 's Stranglehold Over American Foreign Policy

If Israel 's stranglehold over U.S. foreign policy is to be broken, Americans will need to be informed about the harm that Washington 's unconditional support for the Jewish state is doing to American interests, say leading analysts of U.S.-Israeli relations.

According to John J. Mearsheimer , co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy , “The only plausible way to weaken the lobby's influence on U.S. foreign policy is for prominent policymakers and opinion-makers to speak openly about the damage the special relationship is doing to the American national interest.” 

“Plenty of people in the United States , especially inside the Beltway, know that Israel is an albatross around America 's neck,” says Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago . “But they are afraid to stand up and say that for fear that the lobby will attack them and damage their careers.” 

“Hopefully, some of them will develop a backbone,” he adds. 

Philip Giraldi , executive director of the Council for the National Interest , believes that Tel Aviv's stranglehold over Washington can be broken “only by directly challenging the power of the Israel lobby and the false narrative about how it is of value to the United States .”  

Giraldi, a contributing editor to The American Conservative , says that “it must be done from the bottom up as Israel cannot be challenged in the mainstream media, Congress, and in the White House .” 

“ The American people must learn that Israel is and always has been a strategic liability that has done immense damage to the United States and its worldwide interests,” concludes the former CIA officer. 

If there is to be an end to Israel's decades-long “sway over Congress and intimidating presidents,” says Jeffrey Blankfort, a prominent Jewish American critic of Israel and its American lobby, “it will require appeals and actions beginning on a local level that inform the American people not so much about what Israel has done to the Palestinians but what its unregistered agents in the U.S., euphemistically described as ‘lobbyists,' have done to destroy what little is left of American democracy and the attendant costs in flesh and blood, as well as its tax dollars.” 

A long-time pro-Palestinian activist noted for his trenchant critique of Noam Chomsky , Blankfort attributes the failure of such efforts to get off the ground to “the continued unwillingness of the leading figures of the Palestinian solidarity movement in the U.S. to acknowledge the invidious power of the Zionist Lobby,” who, following Chomsky's anti-imperialist analysis, prefer to “place the primary responsibility for Israel's crimes and U.S. Middle East policies at Washington's doorstep.” 

“So the first steps,” Blankfort suggests, “may be to publicly challenge these figures while at the same time moving past them and addressing the American people directly.” 

No American President will ever have enough latitude to resolve the conflict in Palestine “unless and until enough Americans are informed enough to make their democracy work,” according to Alan Hart, former Middle East Chief Correspondent for Britain 's Independent Television News. 

“In other words,” explains Hart, who was also a BBC Panorama presenter specializing in the Middle East, “if President Obama or any of his successors is ever going to be free to confront and defeat the Zionist lobby's stooges in Congress and the mainstream media, there has got to be created a constituency of understanding about why it is not in America's own best interests to go on supporting Zionism 's monster child right or wrong.”

The essence of the problem, Hart argues in the three-volume American edition of his bookZionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews , is that “Americans have been conditioned, brainwashed, to believe a version of history, Zionism's version, which is a pack of propaganda lies.”

Jeff Gates, former counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, believes that “transparency, accountability and better design” are required to break Israel 's hold on American foreign policy. 

“At present, the American public is ignorant of Israel 's all-pervasive influence. Its control includes the media-enabled deployment of fixed intelligence to induce this nation to war for Greater Israel ,” says Gates, author of Guilt By Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War . 

“We will know that accountability is underway when we see federal grand juries convened to consider charges against Israel 's agents, assets and sayanim (volunteers). When a jury brings in the first verdict for treason, Americans will know that the rule of law is being restored. We will know that a solution is within sight when the many appendages of its lobby are required to register as foreign agents.”

The Collapse Of Western Morality

Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse.

In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel’s genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check.

I don’t mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.

And we have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting trophies such as fingers and skulls.

This revelation came on the heels of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged leak of a US Army video of US soldiers in helicopters and their controllers thousands of miles away having fun with joy sticks murdering members of the press and Afghan civilians. Manning is cursed with a moral conscience that has been discarded by his government and his military, and Manning has been arrested for obeying the law and reporting a war crime to the American people.

US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.

In other words, to obey the law constitutes “treason to America.”

US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by “a culture of disclosure” and that this “serious and growing problem” could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.

If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state that we don’t need.

The US government, a font of imperial hubris, does not believe that any act it commits, no matter how vile, can possibly be a war crime. One million dead Iraqis, a ruined country, and four million displaced Iraqis are all justified, because the “threatened” US Superpower had to protect itself from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that the US government knew for a fact were not in Iraq and could not have been a threat to the US if they were in Iraq.

When other countries attempt to enforce the international laws that the Americans established in order to execute Germans defeated in World War II, the US government goes to work and blocks the attempt. A year ago on October 8, the Spanish Senate, obeying its American master, limited Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction in order to sink a legitimate war crimes case brought against George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Tony Blair,and Gordon Brown.

The West includes Israel, and there the horror stories are 60 years long. Moreover, if you mention any of them you are declared to be an anti-semite. I only mention them in order to prove that I am not anti-American, anti-British, and anti-NATO, but am simply against war crimes. It was the distinguished Zionist Jewish Judge, Goldstone, who produced the UN report indicating that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked the civilian population and civilian infrastructure of Gaza. For his efforts, Israel declared the Zionist Goldstone to be “a self-hating Jew,” and the US Congress, on instruction from the Israel Lobby, voted to disregard the Goldstone Report to the UN.

As the Israeli official said, we are only doing to the Palestinians what the Americans did to the American Indians.

The Israeli army uses female soldiers to sit before video screens and to fire by remote control machine guns from towers to murder Palestinians who come to tend their fields within 1500 meters of the inclosed perimeter of Ghetto Gaza. There is no indication that these Israeli women are bothered by gunning down young children and old people who come to tend to their fields.

If the crimes were limited to war and the theft of lands, perhaps we could say it is a case of jingoism sidetracking traditional morality, otherwise still in effect.

Alas, the collapse of morality is too widespread. Some sports teams now have a win-at-all-cost attitude that involves plans to injure the star players of the opposing teams. To avoid all these controversies, let’s go to Formula One racing where 200 mph speeds are routine.

Prior to 1988, 22 years ago, track deaths were due to driver error, car failure, and poorly designed tracks compromised with safety hazards. World Champion Jackie Stewart did much to improve the safety of tracks, both for drivers and spectators. But in 1988 everything changed. Top driver Ayrton Senna nudged another top driver Alain Prost toward a pit wall at 190 mph. According to AutoWeek (August 30, 2010), nothing like this had been seen before. “Officials did not punish Senna’s move that day in Portugal, and so a significant shift in racing began.” What the great racing driver Stirling Moss called “dirty driving” became the norm.

Nigel Roebuck in AutoWeek reports that in 1996 World Champion Damon Hill said that Senna’s win-at-all-cost tactic “was responsible for fundamental change in the ethics of the sport.” Drivers began using “terrorist tactics on the track.” Damon Hill said that “the views that I’d gleaned from being around my dad [twice world champion Graham Hill] and people like him, I soon had to abandon,” because you realized that no penalty was forthcoming against the guy who tried to kill you in order that he could win.

When asked about the ethics of modern Formula One racing, American World Champion Phil Hill said: “Doing that sort of stuff in my day was just unthinkable. For one thing, we believed certain tactics were unacceptable.”

In today’s Western moral climate, driving another talented driver into the wall at 200 mph is just part of winning. Michael Schumacher, born in January 1969, is a seven times World Champion, an unequaled record. On August 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, AutoWeek Reports that Schumacher tried to drive his former Ferrari teammate, Rubens Barrichello, into the wall at 200 mph speeds.

Confronted with his attempted act of murder, Schumacher said: “This is Formula One. Everyone knows I don’t give presents.”

Neither does the US government, nor state and local governments, nor the UK government, nor the EU.

The deformation of the police, which many Americans, in their untutored existence as naive believers in “law and order,” still think are “on their side,” has taken on new dimensions with the police militarized to fight “terrorists” and “domestic extremists.”

The police have been off the leash since the civilian police boards were nixed by the conservatives. Kids as young as 6 years old have been handcuffed and carted off to jail for school infractions that may or may not have occurred. So have moms with a car full of children (see, for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AaSLERx0VM ).

Anyone who googles videos of US police gratuitous brutality will call up tens of thousands of examples, and this is after laws that make filming police brutality a felony. A year or two ago such a search would call up hundreds of thousands of videos.

In one of the most recent of the numerous daily acts of gratuitous police abuse of citizens, an 84-year-old man had his neck broken because he objected to a night time towing of his car. The goon cop body-slammed the 84-year old and broke his neck. The Orlando, Florida, police department says that the old man was a “threat” to the well-armed much younger police goon, because the old man clenched his fist.

Americans will be the first people sent straight to Hell while thinking that they are the salt of the earth. The Americans have even devised a title for themselves to rival that of the Israelis’ self-designation as “God’s Chosen People.” The Americans call themselves “the indispensable people.”

CBSE to introduce psychological aptitude test

In order to assess the ability of students, the CBSE will introduce a psychological aptitude test for class X on the lines of similar exams held in other parts of the world. CBSE will hold this exam under Students Global Aptitude Index (SGAI).

CBSE''s SGAI incharge Rama Sharma said, "The exam will be held for class X and the first paper might be on January 15, 2011. The interested students have to pay Rs 100 to appear in the exam.

" The main aim of holding the exam is to know about the students'' interest, their psychology and their skill levels, Sharma said. This exam is based on a scientific index which will tell about the interest of students.

On the basis of findings of the test, the students can choose the subject of their interest in class XI, Sharma said, adding that such exams take place at school levels in US and UK. With this exam, the students would be able to self-assess and teachers can make positive communication with them, Sharma said. The written exam, which will be held for two or two-and-a-half hours, will assess the student''s scientific, numeric, social, behavioural, art aptitude and personality.

Several workshops regarding the exam has been held in Delhi, Bhopal, Bhubneshwar, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Mumbai. On the basis of workshops, response has been demanded from schools.

Some-rivers-stable-after-zero-rains-butYamuna-still-on-swell

Zero rains in Uttaranchal hills on Sunday helped to stabilise the rising water levels of Gang Naher and Kosi rivers which have wreaked havoc in west UP, much to the relief of lakhs of people affected by flood. However, the unrelenting Yamuna continued to swell on Sunday. Meanwhile, the rising water levels of Kalandri hit the outermost boundary walls of Taj Mahal in Agra after submerging the entire lush green landscape of Mehtab Bagh. A masterpiece of the Mughal era, Mehtab Bagh too draws large number of tourists from India and abroad. 

Farrukhabad continued to be the worst-hit district in the state as the rising water levels of the Ganga left the authorities with no option but to rope-in the army for the relief and rescue operations on Sunday. Some areas of Kanpur have also been marooned by the increasing levels of the Ganga. 

At some places, flood waters have submerged roads in five feet deep waters in Kasganj Nibiya village of Patiyali. The rising flood waters entered the main hall of Kailash Mandir early on Sunday evening. The district administration has opened a relief camp on ITI Baljkeshwar campus due to continued discharge from Okhla, Gokul and Tajewala dams. 

In Mathura, flood waters entered the villages of Shergarh, Nauhjheel, Baldeo and its adjoining villages apart from the Parikrama Marg, Jaisinghpura and Khadar localities. After submerging the entire staircase of Bangalighat, flood waters have even spilled onto the main road. 

As much as two to three feet of flood waters have engulfed the Gopi Udhav Samwad Sthal, Lalbabu Mandir, Radhawallabh Mandir and Katyani Mandir in Gyangudri area of Vrindavan. 

The raging rivers on Sunday claimed two more lives. A woman Karamwati (35) drowned after slipping into the deep waters in Mathura while a youth drowned in Farrukhabad after slipping into a well. 

Meanwhile, the state government on Saturday evening claimed to have engaged 240 motorised and manually steered boats along with scores of men from the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF). A total of 8108 people were attended to by doctors at various relief camps. Senior minister Naseemuddin Siddiqui surveyed the flood-hit areas on Sunday as well and held meetings with senior district officials. He issued directions to step up relief and rescue operations in areas where they were found to be lagging.