A load of crap from an idle brain

Indian hospital chain Fortis Healthcare will buy 23.9 percent of Singapore’s Parkway Holdings  from U.S. buyout firm TPG Capital in an expansion drive into Asia and the Middle East.

The $685 million deal will give Fortis a foothold in Singapore and Malaysia and make it the biggest private hospital network in Asia, it said.

The move continues an overseas acquisition push by Indian companies looking for new markets and know-how. Top Indian mobile carrier Bharti Airtel is in talks to buy the African operations of Kuwait’s Zain for $9 billion.

Fortis intends to move into other parts of Asia and the Middle East, Chairman Malvinder Mohan Singh told reporters.

“Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand are markets we would like to evaluate,” Singh told Reuters in Singapore.

Fortis has no immediate plans to raise its stake in Parkway and planned to work with the Singapore firm in expanding across the region, added Singh, who will be nominated Parkway chairman.

Fortis will be the largest shareholder in Parkway, with a stake slightly higher than the 23.32 percent held by Malaysian state fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd, according to Parkway’s website.

Fortis’ purchase follows its $187 million acquisition in August of 10 hospitals from unlisted Wockhardt Hospitals.

“It makes more sense for Fortis to acquire a strategic stake in Parkway than to go for a full-fledged acquisition as it would mean lower risk as well as lower cost,” said Sapna Jhawar, a healthcare analyst with Mumbai-based Sharekhan.

Full news here

Above picture of Fortis hospital, Noida courtesy: Neytri

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The good news is that scientific research papers being filed from India are on the upswing.  The bad news is that countries like China, Korea etc have left India long behind in this race.  In fact, China has more than doubled its research output since 2004.  Read more on these reports at this Thomson Reuters website.

Often referred to as a “sleeping giant” in scientific literature, India seems to be waking out of its slumber, says a recent global research report on “Research and Collaboration in the new Geography of Science” by Thomson Reuters.

As per the report, Chemistry and Pharmacology are fast becoming the most “published” disciplines in India; USA remains its largest research partner even as South Korea is racing ahead of China to partner with India. And Japan’s University of Tokyo collaborates most frequently with Indian researchers.

If the current trajectory continues, the study estimates, India’s productivity would well be on par with that of most G-8 nations within eight years and could even overtake them between 2015-2020.

In a testament to its strength in information technology, computer science accounted for the highest increase in world publications from India between 1999-2003 and 2004-2008, increasing by more than 100%. When it comes to research, India’s strength lies in Chemistry and emerging sectors like pharmacology, microbiology and traditional agricultural sciences.

Between 1993-2003 and 2004-08:

• In Chemistry, India’s research output increased from 21,206 world publications to 33,504

• From a 2.8 per cent share of the world output in pharmacology and toxicology, India’s share is up to 4.25 per cent

• Output in engineering rose from 2.69 per cent to 3.57 per cent

• Microbiology saw publication output rise from 1.62 per cent to 2.79 per cent

Agricultural engineering, Tropical Medicine, Organic Chemistry and Dairy & Animal Science are areas of research where India is picking up well besides Crystallography and Textiles.

Read the full news here

Above picture source: 30yearchallenge

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The father of the Indian nuclear programme celebrates his birth centenary today – October 30.

He laid the foundation of India’s huge atomic energy establishment almost singlehandedly, nurturing and expanding it with his dynamic vision. Thanks in no small measure to Homi J. Bhabha’s dream, India’s atomic energy programme has acquired global stature today, capable of designing and testing nuclear weapons and aspiring to meet its growing demands for nuclear energy.

Born to Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha and Meherbai on Oct 30, 1909, in Bombay (now Mumbai), the young Bhabha led a sheltered and emotionally secure childhood. The very first glimmerings of a keen and inquisitive mind became apparent when a specialist told his very worried parents why he slept little — a hyperactive brain that kept him awake at nights.

Excellent family ties with the Tatas and their association with national leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru and also with the British imbued the sensitive boy with a sense of nationalism and perspective.

In 1924, Homi Bhabha passed the Senior Cambridge exam at the age of 15. But by then he had grasped the complexities of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as well as the intricacies of classical painting.

His arrival in Cambridge, a fount of nuclear physics, three years later in 1927, permitted his native genius to bloom for the next 12 years, where he obtained his PhD in physics with specialisation in cosmic rays, in 1934. He was just 25 then.

Bhabha met many of the greatest physicists of the time, namely Niels Bohr, James Franck, and Enrico Fermi, who played key roles in the Anglo-American atomic weapon programmes.

In March 1944, even before the world acquired a nodding acquaintance with the mighty potential of nuclear energy, Bhabha, then a professor, wrote to Sir Dorab J. Tata, who headed the Tata Trust, proposing an institute for nuclear physics in India.

“When nuclear energy has been successfully applied to power production in, say, a couple of decades from now,” Bhabha wrote with remarkable prescience, “India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand.”

Thus the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) came into being on Dec 19, 1945, just four months after Hiroshima and three years before Indian independence.

Bhabha served as its first director, which placed him at the commanding heights of the country’s nuclear future, until his premature death in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps on Jan 24, 1966.

Bhabha was very particular about maintaining excellence. Addressing the then National Institute of Sciences, Bhabha said: “This is a field in which a large number of mediocre or second rate workers cannot make up for a few outstanding ones, and the few outstanding ones always take at least 10-15 years to grow.”

As the new nation’s prime minister, Nehru entrusted Bhabha with complete authority over all nuclear-related affairs and programmes. Both of them shared a close rapport. In April 1948 at Bhabha’s bidding, Nehru agreed to legislate the Atomic Energy Act in the Constituent Assembly, creating the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).

On Jan 3, 1954, the IAEC decided to set up a new facility, the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET). In August the same year, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) came into being with Bhabha as its secretary. Till date, it remains answerable only to the prime minister. Prime minister Indira Gandhi renamed AEET the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).

Full article here

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All 7 satellites launched in their precise orbits by ISRO’s old workhorse, the PSLV in its 16th launch is indeed praiseworthy.  The successor to the Oceansat-1,  is supposed to be the country’s second ocean studies satellite that aims to aid fishermen in identifying fishing zones and weathermen to forecast cyclones by measuring sea surface winds.

Along with the Oceansat-2, 6 nano satellites (4 CUBESATS and 2 RUBIN) were also launched.

CUBESATs : The four CUBESATs are educational satellites from European universities, each weighing around one kg. and developed to perform technology demonstration in space. The satellites are launched inside a Single Picosatellite Launcher (SPL) also weighing one kg., which is a dedicated European launch adaptor to deploy a CubeSat.

CUBESAT-1: UWE-2, from the Universität Würzburg, Germany
UWE-2 is a pico satellite, with the mission objective of demonstration of a newly developed Attitude Determination and Control system (ADCS) and the technology demonstration of a GPS on a Cubesat.

CUBESAT-2: BeeSat, from the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
BeeSat is a pico satellite project of the Technical University of Berlin with the main objective of on-orbit verification of newly developed micro reaction wheels for pico satellite applications and will demonstrate the use of coin sized micro reaction wheels for attitude control of pico satellites in orbit as one of the key elements

CUBESAT-3: ITU-pSAT1, from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
The primary mission of the satellite is to examine the performance of an on-board passive stability system consisting of a magnet which will align the satellite to the magnetic field of the Earth with an error of about 15 degrees according to simulations, and to verify this figure. A secondary objective is to download photographs taken using a camera with a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels

CUBESAT-4: SwissCube, from Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne, Switzerland
The SwissCube mission objective is to house a science payload and take optical measurements and characterize the airglow intensity over selected latitudes and longitudes thereby demonstrating that the airglow emissions are strong enough to be measured by an off-the-shelf detector and validating the concept for the development of a low-cost Earth sensor.

RUBIN-9
RUBIN-9 consists of two Spacecrafts Rubin-9.1 and Rubin-9.2 weighing 8kg each and will primarily be used for the Automatic Identification System (AIS) for Maritime applications. These are non-separable payloads that will be mounted at an angle of 45deg to the PSLV EB deck.

Rubin-9.1 is developed by Luxspace and has a mission objective of providing an insight into the issue of message collisions that limit detection in areas of dense shipping.

The main purpose of the Rubin-9.2 spacecraft is to test and qualify nano technologies from Angstrom company Sweden and to continue space based maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver experiments (started with Rubin-7 and Rubin-8 missions). Rubin-9.2 is similar to the Rubin-8 launched on PSLV-C9 in April 2008.

More information on the launch here

All information & pictures source: ISRO

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Most of the time, we hardly use about 10-20% of our computer’s resources and the rest 80% odd is wasted.  By being a part of the World Community Grid, a small part of an application runs in the background of your PC thus contributing your computing power to getting results on a lot of projects.

The grid works on projects worldwide like

• Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2

• Influenza Antiviral Drug Search

• Help Fight Childhood Cancer

• The Clean Energy Project

• Nutritious Rice for the World

• Help Conquer Cancer

• Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

• Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2 Project

• FightAIDS@Home Project

What Grid Computing does is to join together many individual computers, creating a large system with massive computational power that far surpasses the power of a handful of supercomputers. Because the work is split into small pieces that can be processed simultaneously, research time is reduced from years to months. The technology is also more cost-effective, enabling better use of critical funds.

World Community Grid runs on software called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at University of California, Berkeley, USA with funding from NSF (National Science Foundation).  It is powered by none other than IBM.

What is World Community Grid?

World Community Grid’s mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Our work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change our world for the better. Our success depends on individuals – like you – collectively contributing their unused computer time to this not-for-profit endeavor.

How can you help?

Donate the time your computer is turned on, but is idle, to projects that benefit humanity! We provide the secure software that does it all for free, and you become part of a community that is helping to change the world. Once you install the software, you will be participating in World Community Grid. No other action must be taken; it’s that simple!

For years, i have been a member of the World Community Grid and have contributed my computer’s resources for the project.  A badge of which is visible on the right side of this post.  My moniker is full2njoy and am part of a team called India.

Go to the World Community Grid website for more information on how you can do your part for this project.

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The PSLV-C12, carrying 300-kg Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-2) and 40-kg Micro Satellite ANUSAT lifted off from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan space Centre here on Monday morning. At the end of the 48-hour countdown, the 44-meter tall four-stage PSLV-C12 blasted off from the second launch pad with the ignition of the core first stage.

PSLV C-12 at the launch pad early morning today

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, weighing 230 tonnes at the time of launch, soared into a clear sky at 6.45am(local time) from the spaceport here, about 90 km north of Chennai. This is the 15th flight of ISRO’s workhorse PSLV, which had launched 30 satellites (14 for India and 16 for foreign countries) into a variety of orbits since 1993.

The launch vehicle carries two payloads – RISAT-2 (with all weather capability to take images of Earth) and ANUSAT (the first satellite built by an Indian University to demonstrate the technologies related to message store and forward operations).

The ANUSAT satellite made by the Anna University, Chennai

The rocket would place both the satellites in their orbits around the earth shortly. The SAR, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries, gives RISAT defence capabilities.

ANUSAT is the first satellite developed by an Indian university (Anna University), which would demonstrate the technologies related to message storing and forward operations. University sources said scores of students and faculty from different streams had worked on this satellite for the last six years.

ANUSAT is a store-and-forward communication satellite that will help transfer confidential academic materials, including exam question papers, to prevent question paper leakages. It will also help monitor drought and wasteland, urban planning and other studies.

Above news from: TimesofIndia & pics from ISRO

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In a historic event, the Indian space programme achieved a unique feat today (November 14, 2008) with the placing of Indian tricolour on the Moon’s surface on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday. The Indian flag was painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, that successfully hit the lunar surface today at 20:31 hrs (8:31 pm) IST. This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India.

Weighing 34 kg at the time of its launch onboard Chandrayaan-1, the box shaped MIP carried three instruments – a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon’s surface as MIP approached it. The radar altimeter was included to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface. Such instruments are necessary for future lunar soft landing missions. And, the mass spectrometer was for studying the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.

MIP’s 25 minute journey to the lunar surface began with its separation from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft at 20:06 hrs (8:06 pm) IST. This was followed by a series of automatic operations that began with the firing of its spin up rockets after achieving a safe distance of separation from Chandrayaan-1. Later, the probe slowed down with the firing of its retro rocket and started its rapid descent towards the moon’s surface. Information from the its instruments was radioed to Chandrayaan-1 by MIP. The spacecraft recorded this in its onboard memory for later readout. Finally, the probe had a hard landing on the lunar surface that terminated its functioning.

Thus, India’s very first attempt to send a probe to the moon’s surface from its spacecraft orbiting the moon has been successfully concluded.

With the switching ON of two of Chandrayaan-1’s payloads – Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) – on its journey to moon and with MIP’s successful impact on the lunar surface today, it is planned to switch ON and test the remaining eight payloads of the spacecraft in the coming few days.

It may be recalled that Chandrayaan-1 was successfully launched by PSLV-C11 on October 22, 2008 from India’s spaceport at Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota into its intended initial elliptical orbit around the Earth. Following this, the spacecraft’s orbit was raised in steps and it was made to pass near the moon by repeatedly firing its 440 Newton liquid engine. After Chandrayaan-1’s entry into its planned lunar orbit on November 8, 2008, the orbital height was reduced in steps to its intended operational altitude of 100 km from the lunar surface.

Since its launch, the health and orbit of Chandrayaan-1 is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore with critical support from antennas of Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu. IDSN antennas have also received the images and scientific information gathered by TMC, RADOM, and more recently, by MIP.

Above article & pictures courtesy: ISRO, Rediff

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Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon, entered lunar orbit today (November 8, 2008). This is the first time that an Indian built spacecraft has broken away from the Earth’s gravitational field and reached the moon. This historic event occurred following the firing of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s liquid engine at 16:51 IST for a duration of 817 seconds. The highly complex ‘lunar orbit insertion manoeuvre’ was performed from Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bangalore.

Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu supported the crucial task of transmitting commands and continuously monitoring this vital event with two dish antennas, one measuring 18 m and the other 32 m.

Chandrayaan-1’s liquid engine was fired when the spacecraft passed at a distance of about 500 km from the moon to reduce its velocity to enable lunar gravity to capture it into an orbit around the moon. The spacecraft is now orbiting the moon in an elliptical orbit that passes over the polar regions of the moon. The nearest point of this orbit (periselene) lies at a distance of about 504 km from the moon’s surface while the farthest point (aposelene) lies at about 7502 km. Chandrayaan-1 takes about 11 hours to go round the moon once in this orbit.

moon impact probe

The performance of all the systems onboard Chandrayaan-1 is normal. In the coming days, the height of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s orbit around the moon will be carefully reduced in steps to achieve a final polar orbit of about 100 km height from the moon’s surface. Following this, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) of the spacecraft will be released to hit the lunar surface. Later, the other scientific instruments will be turned ON sequentially leading to the normal phase of the mission.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00AvB-9RFUI&feature=related]

It may be recalled that Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was launched on October 22, 2008 by PSLV-C11 from India’s spaceport at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. As intended, PSLV placed the spacecraft in a highly oval shaped orbit with a perigee (nearest point to Earth) of 255 km and an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of 22,860 km. In the past two weeks, the liquid engine of Chandrayaan-1 has been successfully fired five times at opportune moments to increase the apogee height, first to 37,900 km, then to 74,715 km, later to 164,600 km, after that to 267,000 km and finally to 380,000km, as planned. During this period, the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), one of the eleven payloads (scientific instruments) of the spacecraft, was successfully operated twice to take the pictures, first of the Earth, and then moon.

With today’s successful manoeuvre, India becomes the fifth country to send a spacecraft to Moon. The other countries, which have sent spacecraft to Moon, are the United States, former Soviet Union, Japan and China. Besides, the European Space Agency (ESA), a consortium of 17 countries, has also sent a spacecraft to moon.

Above news and pictures courtesy: ISRO

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