Aligarh Muslim University approved building projects involving total expenditure of ` 2482.7 Lakhs

 With a view to give a big push to the infra-structure development, the Aligarh Muslim University has approved building projects involving a total expenditure of ` 2482.7 Lakhs in the infrastructure development meeting held today under the chairmanship of Vice Chancellor, Prof. P.K. Abdul Azis.

The meeting approved eleven major building projects under XI Plan involving a total expenditure of 2115.4 Lakhs to be completed by CPWD by March 2012. The Central Public Works Department (CPWD) will start simultaneously all the eleven building construction projects in the first week of July by deploying heavy machines.

The Building Committee of the University has approved the construction of a new multi-storey project for the Faculty of Social Science which will house the departments of Mass Communication, Library and Information Science, Museology, Modern Indian Languages (all the four University departments not having building of their own) with a total cost of ` 1500 Lakhs. Under XI Plan an amount of ` 580 Lakhs has been sanctioned to the University for the new building of Faculty of Social Sciences and the University will approach the UGC for the additional grants requirement to complete the rest of the building.

The CPWD will also complete within the XI Plan timeline the construction of ` 427.71 Lakhs Central Block of Z.H. College of Engineering and Technology. Rupees 400 Lakhs multi-storey composite building for five new departments of Faculty of Unani Medicine and 400 Lakh additional block of Maulana Azad Library building.

Other major building works assigned to CPWD includes construction/extension of building for Department of Ophthalmology New Block (' 150 Lakh), construction of Girls? Hostel for Agricultural Faculty ( 100 Lakhs), purchase of furniture for the newly constructed Engineering College Girls' Hostel ( 19.75 Lakh), purchase of furniture for the newly constructed Students' Canteen (' 18.18 Lakh), development of Indoor sports facilities at Agricultural Faculty ( 10 Lakhs), 5 Lakhs development of Farm structure for Department of Agricultural Microbiology and construction of Farm Structure of Department of Plant Protection ( 5 Lakhs).

The Building Department of the University has been assigned 14 works including extension of Labour Room in the Department of Gynaechology, construction of Museum Building in the Department of History under XI Plan Project and replacement of damaged doors, window shutters of Morrison Court hostel of Aftab Hall, annual repair work of Aftab Hall, re-terracing of MacDonnell, Morrison and Mumtaz hostels, renovation of toilet blocks in Morrison Court and Aftab hostels, re-roofing of Mehmoodabad and Jai Kishan hostels of Sulaiman Hall (a century old heritage buildings), construction of Seminar Library and classrooms in the Department of Petroleum Studies and purchase of store materials. All the above works involving a total expenditure of 367.06 Lakhs will be completed by the University Building Department by 31st July 2011 except re-roofing work that will be completed by July 2012.

The meeting of the Building Committee was held at 11.00 am today at the Selection Committee Room and the members present were Prof. V.K. Abdul Jaleel, Registrar, Prof. Akhtar Haseeb, Officer on Special Duty (Development), Prof. Ekram Husain, Principal, Z.H. College of Engineering & Technology, Prof. Razaullah Khan, Chairman, Department of Civil Engineering, Prof. Mohibullah, Chairman, Department of Electrical Engineering, Prof. Anwaruddin Anwar, Member-in-charge (Electricity), Prof. Mohd. Jamil, Chairman, Sub Committee of the Building Committee, Mr. Rakesh Vij, Executive Engineer, CPWD, Agra, Mr. Shakeb Arsalan, Deputy Finance Officer, Mr. M. Feeroz Khan, University Engineer, Building Department, Mr. S. Wajid Ali, Electrical Engineer (Works & Maintenance), Mr. L.S. Solanki, AE, CPWD, Aligarh.

AMU VC approved amendment to Scholarship provision

The Vice-Chancellor, Aligarh Muslim University, Prof. P. K. Abdul Azis has approved the amendment in the Academic Council Regulations pertaining to the Scholarship in the Chapter LXVI Clause 3(i) w.e.f. 21.04.2011.

Prof. V. K. Abdul Jaleel, Registrar said that the amended clause would now read that a meritorious cum-means deserving student may be allowed to draw more than one scholarship tenable during Academic Session; provided that the total amount of award does not exceed Rs. 20,000/- per annum and that other conditions of the scholarships awarded by the outside agencies are also fulfilled. In case of award of University scholarships of fee concessions (full or half freeship) etc. may be ignored provided the total amount does not exceed Rs.20,000/­per annum. Earlier, the ceiling amount was limited to only Rs. 2,000/-.

Is the Rocky Alien Planet Gliese 581d Really Habitable?

A rocky alien planet called Gliese 581d may be the first known world beyond Earth capable of supporting life as we know it, a new study suggests.

Astronomers performing a new atmospheric-modeling study have found that the planet likely lies in the "habitable zone" of its host star — that just-right range of distances that allow liquid water to exist. The alien world could be Earth-like in key ways, harboring oceans, clouds and rainfall, according to the research.

This conclusion is consistent with several other recent modeling studies. But it does not definitively establish that life-sustaining water flows across the planet's surface.

The new study assumes that Gliese 581d, which is about seven times as massive as Earth, has a thick, carbon-dioxide-based atmosphere. That's very possible on a planet so large, researchers said, but it's not a given. [Video: Life-Sustaining "Super Earth" Gliese 581d]

The Gliese 581 system: Worlds of possibilities

Gliese 581d's parent star, known as Gliese 581, is a red dwarf located 20 light-years from Earth, just a stone's throw in the cosmic scheme of things. So far, astronomers have detected six planets orbiting the star, and Gliese 581d is not the only one intriguing to scientists thinking about the possibility of life beyond Earth.

Another planet in the system, called Gliese 581g, is about three times as massive as Earth, and it's also most likely a rocky world. This planet received a lot of attention when its discovery was announced in September 2010, because it's located right in the middle of the habitable zone. That makes 581g a prime candidate for liquid water and life as we know it — if the planet exists.

Some researchers question the analysis used to discover the planet, and say they cannot confirm 581g in follow-up studies. The planet's discoverers, however, are standing by their find. [The Strangest Alien Planets]

Gliese 581d orbits outside of 581g, far enough away from its star that researchers first thought it too cold for life when it was originally discovered in 2007. But a strong greenhouse effect may warm 581d up substantially, perhaps enough to support liquid water.

That's the tentative conclusion of the new study, as well as several other recent studies by different research teams that also modeled Gliese 581d's possible atmosphere.

Modeling an alien atmosphere

The planet Gliese 581d receives less than a third of the solar energy that Earth does from our sun, and it may be tidally locked (a situation in which one side of the world always faces its sun — a permanent day — and the other faces away, producing eternal night).

After Gliese 581d's discovery, it was generally believed that any atmosphere thick enough to keep the planet warm would become cold enough on the night side to freeze out entirely, ruining any prospects for a habitable climate, researchers said.

The research team tested that possibility in the new study, developing a new kind of computer model that simulates alien planets' atmospheres and surfaces in three dimensions. The model is similar to those used to study climate change on Earth.

When the team ran the model, they found that Gliese 581d probably can indeed host liquid water if it has a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. Even though the planet is relatively far away from its dim red dwarf parent star, it could be warmed by a greenhouse effect, with daytime heat circulated around the planet by the atmosphere.

The team, led by scientists from the Laboratoire de Métrologie Dynamique (CNRS/UPMC/ENS/Ecole Polytechnique) at the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, published their results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The work remains speculative.

To determine conclusively if Gliese 581d is truly habitable, future work will probably have to detect and characterize its atmosphere directly. And that is likely years off, since it requires the development of new and advanced telescopes. Human-made probes won't be getting to the planet anytime soon; with current technology, it would take spacecraft hundreds of thousands of years to make the 20-light-year trek.

India''s poverty declined to 32 pc in 2009-10: Plan panel estimate

India's poverty is estimated to have declined to 32 per cent in 2009-10 from 37.2 per cent five years ago, as per preliminary findings of the Planning Commission.

The estimates are based on the formula suggested by the Tendulkar Committee for computing the number of poor in the country.

"2009-10 data show a decline in poverty from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05 to 32 per cent in 2009-10 as the per the preliminary data worked out the (Plan panel member) Abhijit Sen," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters here.

Tendulkar Committee had suggested that poverty should be estimated on the basis on consumption based on cost of living index instead of caloric intake. It said that the basket of goods should also include services like health and education.

The new poverty line, as suggested by the Tendulkar Committee, is different for rich and poor states and also different for rural and urban areas within a state.

"These are preliminary data... Abhijit Sen has worked on them...He has reported that the 2009-10 data show a decline in poverty from 37 per cent in 2004 to 32 per cent in 2009. I agree with Sen. I agree with his assessment," Ahluwalia said.

He added that the National Sample Survey, which conducts large sample surveys every five years, will launch its next round in 2011-12.

"When the second sample survey (for 2011-12) becomes available by 2013 then we will really know whether the effort to make the 11th Plan more inclusive have been successful or not," Ahluwalia said.

Speaking on the issue, Minister of State for Planning Ashwini Kumar said, "This, of course, is in the process of being reviewed. Once we have the exact figures of 2009-10 we will be able to know whether poverty estimates have come down and what is the exact position".

He said the Tendulkar Committee has applied a particular methodology, which had been accepted by the Planning Commission.

"There is a lot of confusion in everybody's mind about what are the yardsticks, what is the committee that has an accurate estimate of poverty index," Kumar added.

Estimates of poverty are important because the cheap grains under proposed Food Security law will be provided based on these numbers.

India: A global power in the making

India's shining all over again and it's not just the cricket team that's making waves across the globe.  The G-20 has predicted that India will be one of the 10 largest members in the IMF and its rank in the IMF will improve to eighth position from the current 11th in terms of quota.

Leaders from across the globe are all set to meet in the US later this year for the prestigious Wharton India Economic Forum meeting to discuss how India continues to position itself to compete and succeed in the rapidly changing global environment. The theme for this year's conference is ''India: Gaining Momentum''. With an economy that's growing over 8%, that's hardly surprising.

The country is an emerging global power. R Seetharaman, the Chief Executive Officer of Doha Bank in Qatar, says "India will become one of the most sustainable economies in the future and by 2030, Asia's economy -- mainly encompassing India and China -- will be larger than that of the US and European Union combined." Seetharaman said the world has seen India and China emerging as the main contributors to the recovery of the global economy from a crisis situation.

Another point to note here is that the Sensex crossed the much awaited 20000 mark. The Indian indices defied all global markets and held its fort through the disaster in Japan and the Libya crisis. Exports too have been advancing greatly.

So what is contributing to India's stupendous growth story?

•    Youth population
•    An Educated society
•    High domestic Consumption
•    Investments
•    Grass roots entrepreneurship

India's Gen Y is its best asset and will be the biggest contributor to India's growth. In the next two decades, it will add over 200 million people to its working age - between 18 to 60 years - population. Much more than any other country in the world.

For India, more working people means more income. More income means a more prosperous nation. For a country that will become a middle income nation - per capita annual wages of $1,200, translating into Rs 4,500 a month - by the end of 2010/11 after more than a century of penury, its young population presents a never-before opportunity for transition.

Now if only we elect the right leaders, there's no stopping India from being the next super power.

INDIA:Rise in Literacy Rate

India's effective literacy rate has recorded a 9.2 percent rise to reach 74.04 percent, according to provisional data of the 2011 census released Thursday.

Effective literacy rate in the 2001 census was 64.83, which improved to 74.04, said Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner C. Chandramauli.

Interestingly, literacy rate improved sharply among females as compared to males. While the effective literacy rate for males rose from 75.26 to 82.14 percent marking a rise of 6.9 percent, it increased by 11.8 percent for females to go from 53.67 to 65.46 percent.

According to provisional totals of the latest census, literates constitute 74 percent of total population aged seven and above.

Chandramauli said it was encouraging to note that out of total 217,700,941 literates added during the decade, females at 110,069.001 outnumbered males at 107,631,940.

He said a significant milestone reached in 2011 census was the decline of illiterates by 31,196,847.

Ten states and union territories, including Kerala, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Tripura, Goa, Daman and Diu, Puducherry, Chandigarh, National Capital Territory of Delhi and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, have attained literacy rate of above 85 percent, the target set by the Planning Commission to be achieved by 2011-12.

The gap of 21.59 percentage points recorded between male and female literacy rates in 2001 census reduced to 16.68 percentage points in 2011. The Planning Commission had set up a target of reducing this gap to 10 percentage points by 2011-12.

Kerala has the highest literacy rate at 93.91 percent followed by Lakshadweep at 92.28 percent. Bihar is at the bottom of the ladder with literacy rate of 63.82 followed by Arunachal Pradesh at 66.95.

Mounting Human Toll And Nuclear Emergency In Japan

Japan’s nuclear emergency worsened today, highlighting the dangers to the lives and health of perhaps millions of people, even as the full horror of the death and destruction left by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami continued to emerge.

A fourth explosion at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (Tepco) Fukushima nuclear power plant, and a government warning of health-threatening serious radiation leaks, have heightened fears that the disaster could worsen.

Officially, the death toll from the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that struck the Pacific coast of north-eastern Japan has risen beyond 2,400, with at least 15,000 unaccounted for. The actual number of deaths is much higher. Police said the total in the Miyagi Prefecture port town of Minamisanriku alone was expected to surpass 10,000. Searchers found 2,000 bodies in the Miyagi region yesterday, including 1,000 recovered from beaches along the Oshika Peninsula, washed back in with the tide.

Entire communities have yet to be reached by relief teams, and shocking video and photographic images are just emerging from remote areas, showing almost incomprehensible devastation. Whole towns have been wiped out, with many residents, particularly the elderly and frail, given little chance to escape. Although 66,000 military personnel had been deployed in six prefectures by last night, some coastal towns in northern Miyagi and in adjoining Iwate Prefecture had still not been contacted.

Last night, millions of people faced a fourth night without sufficient water, food and heating in near-freezing temperatures. “People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming,” Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate Prefecture, one of the hardest hit, told journalists. Sato said deliveries of food and other supplies were just 10 percent of what was needed. Body bags and coffins were also running short, he warned.

As of 8 p.m. last night, the government said, nearly 450,000 people had been taken to some 2,500 evacuation centres in nine affected prefectures, but some shelters were yet to receive relief supplies such as water and food. Relief efforts were reportedly being hampered by blocked roads, disrupted communications and a shortage of petrol for ambulances and trucks.

“It’s a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish,” Patrick Fuller of the International Red Cross said from the north-eastern coastal town of Otsuchi. “The situation here is just beyond belief, almost everything has been flattened. The government is saying that 9,500 people, more than half of the population, could have died, and I do fear the worst.”

Evacuees expressed concern to journalists about their future after losing not just their homes and all their possessions, but their means of livelihood. In the city of Ishimaki, for example, as many as 111,295 people, or about 70 percent of residents, have sought refuge in shelters, according to city officials. More than 53,000 houses and buildings have been damaged, if not completely destroyed by the force of the tsunami, leaving vast areas of rubble that will need to be cleared up.

Repeated aftershocks—more than 200 measuring magnitude 5 or more on the Richter scale—are further hindering rescue and assistance operations, and authorities have warned of a 70 percent likelihood of a major quake of magnitude 7 within days. On Sunday, a magnitude 6.2 quake from a separate fault system about 100 kilometres due east of Tokyo also rocked the capital. Yesterday, a new tsunami scare triggered evacuations along the north-east coast after a large wave was spotted rolling into shore, but authorities later lifted the alert.

In today’s emergency at Fukushima, one of four nuclear power facilities shut down by the quake and tsunami, workers were reported to have evacuated the plant. A Tepco spokesman said there had been a “huge explosion” this morning at the No. 2 reactor, where officials had earlier said fuel rods were exposed and at risk of meltdown. Two hydrogen explosions had rocked the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 3 reactors on Saturday and Monday, with at least 11 people injured in the second blast.

At 11 a.m. local time today, Prime Minister Naoto Kan called a media conference to announce that mandatory evacuations had taken place around Fukushima. He advised people living within a 30-kilometre radius of the plant to stay indoors.

“The level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out,” Kan said. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukido Edano said: Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health.”

Edano revealed that the radioactivity levels around the plant had been previously misreported in microsieverts, when they should have been reported in millisieverts, which are 1,000 times stronger and much more damaging to human health.

Shortly after Kan and Edano had addressed the media, it was reported that the plant’s No. 4 reactor had also exploded. The prevailing winds were blowing in the direction of Tokyo, where the French embassy warned its citizens to stay indoors, saying that that the fallout could arrive within 10 hours.

Kan’s government and Tepco, the private company that operates the ageing Fukushima facilities and supplies Tokyo’s electricity, warned yesterday that there was the danger of a catastrophic full meltdown in the facilities’ reactors. Such a meltdown could result in a breach of a container vessel and cause a possible radiation leak into the environment.

Part of the container of a reactor appeared to be damaged, the Japanese government also admitted. Edano told reporters “damage appears on the suppression pool”—the bottom part of the container that contains water used to cool the reactor and control air pressure inside. “But we have not recorded any sudden jump in radiation indicators,” Edano said, continuing the efforts of the government and Tepco to play down the dangers. Earlier, Edano had insisted that the problem “will not develop into a situation similar to Chernobyl”.

However, the Kyodo news agency said higher radiation levels had been recorded at Ibaraki between Fukushima and Tokyo. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the government had distributed 230,000 units of stable iodine, which is used to protect against thyroid cancer when radiation exposure occurs, to evacuation centres in Fukushima.

Tepco has been pumping seawater into the reactors in a desperate, and previously untested, effort to cool the reactor cores. This last-ditch procedure will render the 40-year-old plant unusable in the future. Nuclear experts warned that even if a full meltdown were averted, the emergency could last for up to a year, due to the difficulties in cooling the cores, necessitating long-term evacuations.

Authorities have declared an exclusion zone within a 20-kilometre radius of the plant and evacuated 210,000 people. At one shelter, a young woman holding her baby told public broadcaster NHK: “I didn’t want this baby to be exposed to radiation. I wanted to avoid that no matter what.”

Despite Japan being the most earthquake-prone island chain in the world, its ruling elite has over the past four decades turned to nuclear power plants, run by profit-seeking conglomerates, to generate a third of its electricity.

Among ordinary working people, anger is reportedly mounting, not just over the nuclear breakdown but also Tepco’s mismanagement of a series of planned blackouts in the country that caused mass confusion and train delays in and around Tokyo yesterday. The giant utility company failed to provide timely information and constantly changed its plans. Its web site crashed, and the company also made mistakes in naming cities and areas on its list of blackouts, which are scheduled to last until next month.

Even before yesterday’s confusion, the company took out a full-page ad in the Nikkei, Japan’s leading financial paper, apologising for the inconvenience of the blackouts and asking for cooperation in conserving energy.

The level of international aid appears to be minuscule compared to the scale of the catastrophe. As of last night, about 750 foreign search and rescue workers from 12 countries, accompanied by 35 sniffer dogs, had arrived in Japan. The US aid consisted primarily of a large-scale mobilisation of US armed forces stationed in Japan and elsewhere, which marked the first such wide-ranging joint operation with a host country’s military forces to deal with a disaster, according to Kyodo News.

Even that intervention was affected by the nuclear emergency. The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet was forced to detour after encountering radiation downwind of the Fukushima plant, the Yokota-based US Forces Japan said in a statement.