Red Chillies...

Collider halted until next year...

2008-09-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

The incident was probably caused by a faulty connection between magnets

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be shut off until spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure.

The incident on 19 September caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak out into the experiment's 27km-long tunnel.

Officials said the time required to fully investigate the problem precluded a re-start before the lab's winter maintenance period.

The collider is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

"Coming immediately after the very successful start of LHC operation on 10 September, this is undoubtedly a psychological blow," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), in a statement.

But he praised the skill and preparation of the teams involved in building the particle accelerator.

High priority

A spokesman for Cern told BBC News it was unclear at this stage when the collider could re-start operations after the lab's regular winter shut-down - which is partly done to save money on electricity during this period of peak demand.

A number of factors could affect when the lab re-opened, including prolonged cold weather.

The LHC has been in construction for some 13 years

"It's usually around late March or early April that we start re-commissioning the whole accelerator chain. The LHC being at the end of that chain," said James Gillies, Cern's director of communications.

"It will take us a while to get beams injected into the LHC, but I think it's fair to say this will be the priority for next year's start-up."

The accelerator chain prepares the beams of protons to be fired through the machine to make possible the collisions that physicists will use to study the make-up of our Universe.

The problem occurred last weekend, when a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel, which straddles the French-Swiss border.

Helium spill

The machine has more than 1,200 "dipole" magnets arranged end-to-end in the 27km-long, ring-shaped tunnel that houses the LHC.

These magnets carry and steer beams of protons which will whizz around the machine at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points around the "ring", these beams cross paths, smashing together near four massive "detectors" that monitor the collisions for interesting events.

Cern said the most likely cause of the equipment failure was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets.

This connection melted during testing of the machine and caused a huge leak of super-cool helium.

This helium is used to chill the magnets to a temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F) - which is colder than deep space.

This makes the magnets "superconducting", allowing them to generate the large magnetic fields required to steer the beams while at the same time consuming relatively little power.

A quench occurs when part of a superconducting magnet heats up and causes superconducting properties to be lost.

Hot spot

Cern has procedures in place to deal with quenches before they damage equipment, but in this instance a hot spot in the machine got out of control.

"It does seem that all the systems that are supposed to protect the machine in cases like this worked as far as we can tell. But obviously something went wrong," said Mr Gillies.

"The engineers have decided that in order to find out what really happened, they are going to have to go into the machine."

One of the LHC's eight sectors will now have to be warmed up so an inspection can be carried out.

Mr Gillies told BBC News that this was likely to take a week, and that engineers would then have a much better idea of how to fix the fault.

Each particle accelerator is a unique machine, so Cern says that teething troubles were to be expected with such a complex machine at the cutting edge of technology.

"Events occur from time to time that temporarily stop operations, for shorter or longer periods, especially during the early phases," said Cern physicist Peter Limon.

Source: BBC News

Long-lost Einstein telescope restored...

2008-09-23T14:35:00.001-07:00

In this undated photo made available by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, an unidentified man adjust a telescope that once belonged to Albert Einstein, at the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Students and visitors at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem will be able to look at the stars through Albert Einstein's long lost telescope starting Thursday university officials said, after it was retrieved from a storage shed and renovated. (AP Photo/Hebrew University in Jerusalem, HO)

Albert Einstein's long-lost telescope, forgotten for decades in a Jerusalem storage shed, goes on display this week after three years and $10,000 spent restoring the relic.

The old reflecting telescope is cumbersome by modern standards, but a demonstration for The Associated Press showed it still works well enough to see five of Jupiter's moons and stripes on the surface of the huge planet.

The legendary physicist who famously theorized relations among energy, speed and mass received the telescope in 1954, the year before he died. It was a gift from a friend named Zvi Gizeri, who probably made it himself, said officials at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where the public will be able to view the telescope starting Thursday.

Einstein, who was a co-founder of the Hebrew University, willed his records to the school. There were rumors through the years that he also left a telescope, but it took modern sleuthing and some luck to find it.

The long black tube about eight inches in diameter and 6 feet long stands on a base experts say may have been taken from the German army. It was this unique base, recognizable in a picture of Einstein with the telescope, and a signature from Gizeri on one of its mirrors, that confirmed its authenticity in 2004, when a biologist named Eshel Ophir made the connection.

The forgotten telescope was first discovered in a storage shed in the late 1990s by a computer specialist at the Hebrew University. But he did not recognize it as Einstein's, and left it in the shed.

Ophir made the connection by accident, initially mistaking another forgotten telescope for the famous physicist's. After searching through the archives and photos, Ophir realized the real Einstein telescope was actually the one his colleague had found unceremoniously years earlier.

Ophir said he immediately took the telescope to the university's Meyerhoff Youth Center, where he was serving as director, to protect and clean it.

With the exception of a new eyepiece, the rest of the device, from lenses to optics, is original.

It is unlikely, though, that a theoretician like Einstein, who won a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his theory of relativity, would have had much use for a telescope in his work.

"I don't think anybody investigated Einstein's star-gazing habits," said Dvora Lang, the current director of the Meyerhoff Youth Center. "But it was for his pleasure, not for his work."

The telescope goes on display Thursday at the Meyerhoff center in conjunction with Researchers Day, when schools across Europe and Israel will open their laboratory doors to the public.

The newly unveiled telescope will not be housed with the rest of Einstein's documents at the Jewish National and University Library but will remain in the Meyerhoff center for use by students.

Lang said she hoped by looking into the telescope of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, a new generation of Israeli children would be inspired to learn more about science.

"This is setting them on fire," she said.

NASA Taps IBM iDataPlex for New Supercomputer...

2008-09-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

NASA is planning to use IBM’s iDataPlex server array to build a new supercomputer that will help the federal space agency collect data from satellites that are observing both the Earth and deep space. When the high-performance cluster is complete, this NASA supercomputer will offer a top performance of 42 teraflops. To build this supercomputer, IBM will use Intel’s quad-core Xeon processors.

NASA is turning to IBM and its iDataPlex server array to build a new supercomputer that can execute 42 teraflops and will help collect data from a series of satellites that observe both the Earth and the universe.

On Sept. 23, IBM is planning to announce that it will build the new supercomputer at the NASA Center for Computational Science, in Greenbelt, Md. When complete, this cluster-style supercomputer based on the iDataPlex array will offer a top performance of 42 teraflops and use 1,024 quad-core Intel Xeon processors. NASA is then planning to combine this new system with the existing Discovery supercomputer at NCCS, which will then offer a combined performance of 67 teraflops.

In addition to collecting a range of data from observational satellites, the new supercomputer cluster is slated to help NASA with its climate and weather modeling as well as creating simulations to explain cosmic phenomena such as black holes.

IBM is known for its range of supercomputers, including the well-known Blue Gene systems and its recent Roadrunner system at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which broke the petaflop mark. With clusters built around the iDataPlex system, IBM uses more industry-standard hardware, including Intel processors and InfiniBand switches.

When IBM first announced iDataPlex, Big Blue presented the array as a way for companies to use x86-based hardware to build data centers that can support a cloud computing infrastructure. However, IBM has announced a series of contracts with companies that will put iDataPlex to use as a supercomputer.

In addition to NASA, the University of Toronto has contracted with IBM to build Canada’s most powerful supercomputer using iDataPlex, which will create a system that offers a performance of 360 teraflops. Microsoft is also using a system based on iDataPlex that will test its HPC (high-performance computer) operating system HPC Server 2008.

In the case of NASA, Herb Schultz, a marketing manager with IBM’s Deep Computing division, said the NASA requirements for this supercomputer are similar to the needs of those companies developing their own cloud infrastructure or building out a business based on Web 2.0 technology.

“If you look at HPC requirements and the emerging requirements of Web 2.0, whether it’s social networking or gaming, there are a lot of similarities and a lot of it has to do with being able to scale out in a cost-effective manner,” said Schultz. “They also need to manage their power and cooling constraints and they need something that is incrementally global and something that is standard and running Windows or Linux on an x86 platform … For the kind of work NASA needs, it’s not too different than what we first talked about when we introduced iDataPlex.”

At the same time, IBM had to take into account NASA’s requirements for power and cooling as well as fitting the computer into a constricted space.

“When it comes to supercomputers, it used to be performance, price performance and can you run my codes,” said Schultz. “Now, it’s basically customers are asking that the system works underneath a certain power consumption threshold or they ask what are your flops per watt and can I put this in here without rearranging my data center.”

With the iDataPlex cluster for NASA, IBM is offering a number of power and cooling technologies including the company’s Rear Door Heat Exchanger, which is a series of sealed tubes within the cabinet that are filled with chilled water that helps cool the heated air before it comes out of the servers. IBM also rotated the racks within a typical iDataPlex array cabinet, which creates an environment that is wide but not deep, and allows the company to squeeze more servers into the system while leaving room for switches.

The new NASA supercomputer will also take advantage of IBM’s xCAT (Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit) management software and the company’s General Parallel File System, which will allow the cluster to create and maintain large file sets based on the amount of data the cluster can process.

IBM Institutes New Tech Standards Policy...

2008-09-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

IBM on Tuesday released a policy the company plans to follow when interacting with any technical standards organization. The policy, Big Blue claims, is being instituted to ensure that any technical standards organization in which IBM participates assures that electronic devices and software programs are developed in order to interact with one another.

The new standards policy comes after IBM voiced its dissent in an apparent dig at Microsoft in April when the International Organization of Standards (ISO) agreed to fast track Open Office XML for international standardization. OOXML, used by Microsoft's Office 2007 productivity suite, is a competitor of the OpenDocument Format (ODF), which IBM supports.

IBM has said the fast-track approval process was inadequate in light of the complexity of OOXML (more than 6,000 pages of code), and exposed flaws in the standardization process. "People now have some sense that there are no brakes on putting the wrong standards though some existing processes," Bob Sutor, IBM's executive vice president of standards, wrote at the time.

Yet even with IBMs protests, the ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) approved the ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the official moniker given to the publication of the OOXML specification.

IBM's policy update comes after the publication of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 which may have prompted Big Blue to facilitate an online discussion forum between 70 independent experts in the fields of law, academia, standards, government and public policy. The conversation, which was conducted over the summer of 2008, brought the computer manufacturer to adopt the following standards when interacting with open technology standards groups, such as the ISO.

The tenets of IBM's new policy are to:

Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.
Encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.
Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, protected from undue influence.
Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure that open software interoperability standards are freely available and implementable.
Help drive the creation of clear, simple and consistent intellectual property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and business decisions.

"Common, open and consensus-based technology standards from reputable standards bodies help ensure that each of us can easily purchase and interchangeably use computing technology from multiple vendors," Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards, said in a statement. "The ways in which they are created and adopted provide reasonable assurances that disparate products will work with one another, and withstand the test of time."

IBM's policy is effective immediately.

Now, TCS postpones promotions...

2008-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

It seems the financial turmoil sweeping the global markets has finally started hitting the Indian software industry. After a number of murmurs about impending job cuts and delayed appointment letters across top tech companies, the country's No. 1 IT services company Tata Consultancy Services has delayed promotions.

Sources told Indiatimes Infotech that in a message on the company's internal website on Monday, the company's global HR head and vice president Ajoy Mukherjee, communicated the company's decision to employees.

According to the note, Mukherjee has said that "considering the recent upheavals in the US financial markets that had global impact on the financial sector, we feel it would be prudent to wait for clarity in the business environment before we take a decision on promotions. As a result, the promotions will not be effected in second quarter this year."

However, the company communique added that TCS had completed the assessment process of selecting the individuals eligible for promotions, but was holding back promotions in view of the "current business environment which remains challenging and is expected to remain so for the near future."

When contacted by Indiatimes Infotech for their version of the news, the company's PR representative said that the company's spokesmen are traveling hence cannot be contacted.

But sources told Indiatimes Infotech that the process for most employees had been finished way back itself, and they had actually been expecting the good news for the past few weeks. The letters, they pointed out, had been given out by this time last year.

The catastrophic events overtaking global financial majors are expected to dent the revenues of Indian outsourcing companies, both in terms of the expected business and contracts they have already undertaken. Many of the affected investment banks are expected to pull out of some of their outsourcing contracts.

Analysts are of the opinion that TCS is likely to be hardest hit by the US financial crisis because of its significant exposure to Merrill Lynch, which analysts say ranks among top five financial services clients.

Incidentally, according to some recent media reports, TCS is also gearing up for another round of layoffs. The company also plans to discourage employees from staying on bench for more than two months at any of its centres.

The company had also fired close to 500 employees at the end of its annual appraisal cycle earlier this year, citing poor performance after its annual appraisal. It was also among the very first companies to announce a cut in the employee variable pay across the board.

The company which sees some project delays this quarter, but no cancellations, terms this as an employee utilisation exercise. The process will involve counselling employees and training them, according to the company executives. Employees would be asked to undertake projects on which they have never worked, and will have to update their skills.

Recently, TCS had also retrenched 15 employees from its Australian subsidiary. Last month too, the company had shown door to some 25 employees from its Kolkata and Bangalore centers, though it was done for a different reason as they were found to be fudging CVs.

Tech Mahindra, TCS set sights on Flextronics unit...

2008-09-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

The appetite for acquisitions by Indian IT companies remains undiminished with software services majors Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Tech Mahindra eyeing the India design services unit of the $31-billion Flextronics, sources said.

The global electronic manufacturing services (EMS) giant Flextronics has put the design services unit in Bangalore on the block as part of a worldwide restructuring.

When contacted, TCS declined to comment, while Tech Mahindra said it was looking at “inorganic growth options though we have nothing specific to comment”. Flextronics officials, based locally, could not be reached for immediate comments.

The Indian design services outfit employs about 250 high-skilled workforce, which is the key attraction for the potential suitors. Mindtree Consulting is also believed to have been interested in Flextronics Designs, but this could not be confirmed.

Sources said the discussions with Tech Mahindra and TCS come even as Flextronics decided to shut down the Bangalore unit leading to the possibility of a “bargain buy” for the contenders. It is believed that Flextronics has already put the employees on notice.

Either TCS or Tech Mahindra would be able to leverage the skill sets of this design services unit across their multiple business verticals. TCS could leverage the acquired resources in business segments of defence, aerospace and R&D services.

Industry observers believe that engineering services outsourcing is a growing area for the Indian IT industry and it takes considerable amount of time to build this kind of talent base organically.

“Flextronics is keen on cutting costs and exiting the business. They are trying to sew up a deal for the unit rather than closing it down,” sources said.

The Singapore-headquartered Flextronics unfurled a big India play about 3-4 years back with back-to-back acquisitions of Deccanet, Future Software and Hughes Software.

It later sold its software services unit to PE giant KKR for $900 million, though holding certain stake as well as keeping the design services functions separately. It also has manufacturing facility in Bangalore and is in the process of setting up second unit near Chennai.

Source: The Economic Times

US scientists unveil world’s thinnest balloon...

2008-09-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Scientists have created a balloon-like membrane that is just one atom thick, which can be effectively be called as the ‘world’s thinnest balloon’.

According to a report in the Chronicle Online, the membrane, made using a lump of graphite, a piece of Scotch tape and a silicon wafer, is ultra-strong, leak-proof and impermeable to even nimble helium atoms.

The research, by Scott Bunch, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Cornell professor of physics Paul McEuen and Cornell colleagues, could lead to a variety of new technologies from novel ways to image biological materials in solution to techniques for studying the movement of atoms or ions through microscopic holes.

The work was conducted at the National Science Foundation-supported Cornell Center for Materials Research.
Graphene, a form of carbon atoms in a plane one atom thick, is the strongest material in the world, with tight covalent bonds in two dimensions that hold it together even as the thinnest possible membrane.
It’s also a semimetal, meaning it conducts electricity but changes conductivity with changes in its electrostatic environment.

Scientists have used graphene in the multi-layer membrane of the world’s thinnest balloon, which could be used in various applications, including filters and sensors.

To test the material’s elasticity, the Cornell team deposited graphene on a wafer etched with holes, trapping gas inside graphene-sealed microchambers.

They then created a pressure differential between the gas inside and outside the microchamber.
With a tapping atomic force microscope, which measures the amount of deflecting force a tiny cantilever experiences as it scans nanometers over the membrane’s surface, the researchers watched the graphene as it bulged in or out in response to pressure changes up to several atmospheres without breaking.

They also turned the membrane into a tiny drum, measuring its oscillation frequency at different pressures.
They found that helium, the second-smallest element (and the smallest testable gas, since hydrogen atoms pair up as a gas), stays trapped behind a wall of graphene - again, even under several atmospheres of pressure.
Such a membrane could have all kinds of uses.

“This could serve as sort of an artificial analog of an ion channel in biology,” said McEuen, or as a way to measure the properties of an atom by observing its effect on the membrane.

“You’re tying a macroscopic system to the properties of a single atom, and that gives opportunities for all kinds of single atom sensors,” he added.

Antitrust group urges limits on Google, Yahoo deal...

2008-09-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

Google and Yahoo's deal to let Google place some ads on Yahoo's search pages, which the Justice Department is reviewing, should be allowed with limits, the American Antitrust Institute said on Tuesday.

Because the search advertising market is already extremely concentrated with Google by far the dominant firm, the institute argued that consumers would be best served if No. 2 Yahoo remained independent.

Google's market share of U.S. web search widened to 63 percent in August, while Yahoo dropped to 19.6 percent and Microsoft slipped to 8.3 percent, according to comScore Inc.

"Prohibiting Yahoo from using Google ads could result in Yahoo's acquisition by Microsoft, which would effectively remove Yahoo from the market," wrote Norman Hawker, who teaches at Western Michigan University and is a fellow at the AAI.

The AAI is a nonprofit think tank that studies antitrust issues.

At the Justice Department, Thomas Barnett, the assistant attorney general for antitrust, declined to discuss the government's assessment of the deal. "We are obviously looking at the issues and trying to work through them," he told reporters.

In June, Google and Yahoo announced a deal that would allow Yahoo to place some Google ads on its search results. The arrangement has been widely seen as a effort to help Yahoo fend off Microsoft by helping it earn another $800 million annually.

Advertisers have worried that the deal will mean they will have to dig deeper to buy ads, and Hawker urged the Justice Department to consider their concerns.

He urged the department to consider barring Yahoo from using Google ads to replace less lucrative Yahoo ads, barring Google and Yahoo from setting minimum prices on its advertising auctions, barring Yahoo from using Google ads on free or "organic" search results outside North America or on any third-party web site.

Archaeologists Say Stonehenge May Have Been Healing Site...

2008-09-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

British Archaeologists have said on Monday that south-Britain monolithic site Stonehenge may have drawn ailing people from all over Europe who came in hopes of healing, according to the first archaeological digs to be conducted at the site for more than four decades.

Digs conducted by Bournemouth University archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill with special permission from Britain’s National Heritage organization, which administers and cares for national monuments, unearthed that grave-sites scattered around the Stonehenge area showed that not only were roughly half of them "not native to the Stonehenge area", but that most of them were suffering from some sort of injury or illness at the time of their death.

"Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell, but people who were capable of [healing] them," said Professor Darvill, "Therefore, in a sense, Stonehenge becomes 'the A & E' of southern England," or, differently put, an ancient equivalent of the modern-day Lourdes shrine, which is revered for the same miraculous healing powers.

Stonehenge is built from massive stones – as heavy as 50 tons – called sarsens, which are set up standing in concentric circles, surrounded by a circular earth mound and ditch (this earth formation is often encountered in the Neolithic as a primitive form of fortification). The sarsens are surrounded by smaller stones, made of white-speckled dolomite, also known as bluestones due to the bluish hue they take on when cut or wet. The sarsens were quarried 24 miles north of Stonehenge, in Marlborough Downs, while the bluestones were imported from Wales, regardless of the great effort, due to their believed healing abilities. As an aside, bluestones are first recorded in medieval literature as healing stones, although their presence here may indicate that their reputation as such is far older than that.

Scientists have also used the opportunity of this dig to conduct carbon dating of the site. They dug a 2.5m x 3.5m patch of earth beneath one of the bluestones, and sampled organic material from the area. This was carbon-dated, placing the site "between 2400BC and 2200BC,” with a generally-accepted average of 2300BC. This is 200 years earlier than previous estimates, and is the most precise dating of the site that archaeologists have been able to produce to date. "It's an incredible feeling, a dream come true," says Prof. Wainwright.

The date that scientists have resolved for the Stonehenge site coincides with one of the earliest skeletons found there, the “Amesbury Archer,” a wealthy, powerful fellow who seemed to have come from the Alps in Europe, and who had knowledge of metallurgy. One of the theories for his presence there is that he brought the trade to the area, and practiced it there, perhaps even had a hand in construction or other works on Stonehenge, but a serious knee injury and a grave dental problem that were discovered upon examination of the skeleton, propose another theory: that he may have been one of the early pilgrims who sought healing at the holy site; it’s unknown whether the stones were standing or not at the time.

The earliest signs of habitation however, according to the Bournemouth Univ. team’s findings, date as far back as 7200BC, that’s three and a half millennia before any previous finds. This means that, at the time of the giant stones’ erection, the place already had a long history.

Space Tourist Ready for Bumpy Ride...

2008-09-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

A Texan space tourist said Tuesday that he was undaunted by two previous jolting re-entries by Russia's Soyuz capsule and was looking forward to conducting his own science experiments in space.

Richard Garriott, a video game developer from Austin, Texas, will pay a reported $35 million to fly into space next month alongside a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut headed to the international space station.

After 10 days in space, Garriott, whose father is a retired NASA astronaut with two space flights, will return to Earth with the station's old crew aboard a Soyuz re-entry vehicle, a three-man capsule that has not worked properly in its last two flights.

In April, a Soyuz capsule landed about 420 kilometers off course in the Kazakh steppe after explosive bolts failed to detonate ahead of reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, sending the craft into a steep descent. Last year, a Soyuz capsule carrying Malaysia's first astronaut also made a so-called "ballistic" landing, deviating from its landing zone by 200 kilometers and subjecting the crew to enormous gravitational forces. Faulty bolts were also blamed.

"I personally don't think of a ballistic entry as a problem. It is not a particularly abnormal form of re-entry," Garriott told a news conference at the Gagarin cosmonaut training center outside Moscow.

The Federal Space Agency conducted an investigation into the cause of the ballistic landings, and in July two cosmonauts aboard the station removed an explosive bolt for study back on Earth.

Primitive Fingers Found in Prehistoric Fish...

2008-09-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

An ancient fish sported something like fingers that were the precursors to our own digits, according to an analysis of a new fossil skeleton.

"It's really the last piece of evidence to say fingers are not new. They were really present in fish," said lead researcher Catherine Boisvert, an evolutionary biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

The fossilized skeleton belonged to Panderichthys, a predatory fish that spanned up to 4 feet (130 cm) and likely dwelled in shallow waters where it inched along the muddy bottom about 385 million years ago.

While the fossil was discovered in the 1990s by chance in a brick quarry in Latvia in northern Europe, scientists only recently analyzed the fins with computed tomography (CT) and found that the right paddle is tipped with four bony extensions.

If you were to turn back the clocks to the Devonian period when Panderichthys lived and spied the fish, you would not have noticed its "fingers," Boisvert explained.

That's because the bony digit precursors were tucked beneath the fin's skin and bony scales and rays.

The fan-like array of fingers, however, would have made Panderichthys' paddles broader at the ends. The broad fins would have made for stronger supports for the fish to lean on rather than for all-out swimming.

"It was probably using its front fins as supports to be able to look up, kind of doing push-ups at the bottom of the river looking outside with its eyes," Boisvert said, adding that the fish's eyes were on the top of its skull and thus probably good for looking above the mud for fish food.

Though Panderichthys was not made for landlubbing, if the need to hop from the water arose, the fish had the means.

"So if it was stuck in a pool and it was drying out, [the fish] would have been able to get itself out to the next water body," Boisvert told LiveScience. "It's doing push-ups on land with its big fins and then its pelvic fins (hind fins) are used for an anchor in the mud."

Basically, Panderichthys would have dragged its body along land. "It wouldn't have been pretty," she added.

The fossil finding, detailed in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Nature, fills in a gap in the evolution of tetrapods, or four-legged animals. About 380 million years ago, our fishy ancestors crept onto land. Fossil evidence has continued to refine scientists' understanding of this transition, though they still have many questions regarding the fin-to-limb transition and development of other locomotion features.

For instance, one such transitional fish called Tiktaalik roseae lived about 375 million years ago and showed signs of both water living and land trekking. However, Boisvert said, even though Tiktaalik is closer evolutionarily to tetrapods, its specimens lack the distinct finger precursors seen on Panderichthys.

University of Pune ties up with Intel...

2008-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

The University of Pune (UoP) and semiconductor giant Intel India on Monday announced a joint initiative in order to create a specialised workforce in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) layout design, required by the semiconductor industry.

The programme aims at tapping talented postgraduate and undergraduate science students and generating awareness about the opportunities that exist for basic science passouts, in specialised fields like VLSI design.

Initially, the focus will be on M.Sc students from UoP’s department of electronic science (DoES) and undergraduate students will later be covered later in areas such as custom layout for integrated circuits (IC) design.

VLSI refers to the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits in a single chip. The semiconductor industry is a major user of this process to create products that have wide-ranging applications across the industry.

While trained manpower employability for India’s VLSI design industry is pegged at 7.80 lakh by 2015, the industry continues to grapple with a huge demand-supply gap for competent professionals.

As part of its corporate social responsibility activity, Intel runs a dedicated higher education (IHE) progamme that focusses on technology curriculum, research with universities, student programmes and technology entrepreneurship. It is through IHE that Intel got into the country’s ‘first-of-its-kind tie-up’ involving a university electronic science department.

While the tie-up was jointly announced by Pandit Vidyasagar, director, UoP’s board of college and university development, and Manav Subodh, corporate affairs head for Intel India’s south-west region — the foundation was laid last year when UoP DoES and Intel started a pilot project to train 10 M.Sc students in VLSI layout design.

Senior DoES faculty member S.V. Ghaisas said, “Intel helped us install the Cadence software tools required for IC mask design studies, which is a key stepping stone to advanced learning in VLSI design.” The select students underwent a six-month special internship programme at Intel’s India headquarters in Bangalore as well as at other companies like Sasken, he said. “Barring one student, who went for MS studies abroad, the rest got jobs at leading companies,” said Ghaisas.

Interacting with reporters, Subodh conceded that joint initiatives like these needed to be scaled up further to meet the huge manpower requirement. “What we have attempted here is to explore the niche areas where the universities have a strength and work towards structured programmes,” he said. The idea was also to retain the interest of basic science students in such niche areas, he added.

On his part, Vidyasagar said that the tie-up forms a key element of the UoP’s thrust on greater industry-institute interaction. “We want such joint initiatives to work as sort of integrated finishing schools that ensure direct employability for students,” he said.

Source: The Times of India

Anil slots Rs 60k cr for green energy...

2008-09-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

Says RNRL too may put Rs 12,000 cr in cement, shipping biz.

Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG)-promoted Reliance Power (R-Power) is planning to invest over Rs 60,000 crore in renewable and alternative energy resources such as hydroelectric, wind, solar and fuel cell-based power.

In addition, Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL), the fuel transportation arm of the Group, is planning to invest over Rs 12,000 crore in cement and shipping businesses.

R-Power Chairman Anil Ambani said the company was planning to generate about 5,000 MW from hydroelectric energy and that most of the projects for the same would come up in water-abundant northeastern states. He was addressing the company’s 14th annual general meeting (AGM) in Mumbai.

"We have focused on the northeastern region for our hydro-projects not only because of location and resource advantages, but also because of our commitment to the growth of the region," he said.

Ambani said R-Power had engaged international companies such as Halcrow of the UK, SNC Lavlin of Canada and SMEC of Australia to assist in various aspects of their hydro projects.

Currently, R-Power has plans to develop 1,000 MW Siyom and 700 MW Tato-II in Arunachal Pradesh, and 280 MW hydroelectricity at Urthing Sobla in Uttarakhand. The overall investment planned in the hydro sector alone could be over Rs 50,000 crore, said a top R-Power official.

The global financial crisis, the official said, would not affect the company’s fund-raising plans as its balance sheet was well capitalised through money raised from its recent initial public offer (IPO). The company had mobilised around Rs 11,500 crore through the IPO.

Commenting on the wind energy sector, Ambani said ADAG was currently setting up facilities for 150 MW wind power in Maharashtra and had plans to add 500 MW over the next three years at suitable locations.

A source said R-Power has placed equipment orders for 150 MW with wind energy major Suzlon. New wind power installations would come up in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat before December 2009.

Recent initiatives announced by the Government of India for Grid Interactive Multi-Megawatt Solar Thermal Power had given a boost to the solar power market in the country, he said, adding that R-Power was considering the possibility of setting up a one-of-its-kind, 100 MW grid interactive concentrating solar power (CSP) plant through an exclusive alliance with a technology provider.

R-Power was also evaluating the techno-commercial feasibility of commercially producing reformer-based cells and hydrogen technology in India. The company was in an advanced stage of discussion with a global firm on the design, development and manufacture of the same, he said.

Addressing the shareholders of RNRL, Ambani said the company was planning to invest Rs 10,000 crore to set up cement facilities to produce about 20 million tonne per annum. These plants would come up at locations closer to R-Power's power projects, he added. Ambani also said that R-Power was planning to acquire about six ships to foray into shipping logistics with an investment of over Rs 2,000 crore.

Source: Business Standard

Etisalat to acquire 45% stake in Swan Telecom for $900 million...

2008-09-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

New connection: A mobile telecom tower. Swan Telecom has licences to provide mobile phone services in 10 out of 22 circles in India.

The second largest Arab telecom company by market value, Emirates Telecommunications Corp., or Etisalat, said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy a 45% stake in Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd that recently acquired licences to provide mobile telephony in India.

The deal would have to be cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, or FIPB, telecom minister A. Raja said on the sidelines of a function in New Delhi.

United Arab Emirates-based Etisalat said by email from Abu Dhabi that it has agreed to buy some 45% of Swan Telecom for cash up to $900 million (Rs4,113 crore).

The remaining 55% of the shares of Swan Telecom are held by several entities, including its promoters Dynamix Balwas Group, the email said.

Separately, Swan Telecom’s managing director, Shahid Balwa, said: “As of today, we have got spectrum in 10 circles. We will be launching our first operation in the first quarter of next financial year. The spectrum in 10 circles includes the lucrative Delhi service area.”

The Business Standard newspaper first reported on Tuesday that Etisalat would pick up 49% in Swan Telecom and increase the stake to 51% after FIPB approved the deal, quoting unnamed sources.

Etisalat offers phone services in 16 countries across Asia, West Asia and Africa, servicing more than 64 million customers. The company reported annual net revenues of $5.8 billion and net profits of $1.83 billion for 2007.
Etisalat also has a fully owned subsidiary in Bangalore, Etisalat Software Solutions, that sells operational and billing support systems to the telecom industry.

Mumbai-based real estate and hospitality group Dynamix Balwas Group has assets of about $4 billion.
Swan Telecom has got licences to provide mobile phone services on the GSM, or global system for mobile communications, technology platform in 10 out of 22 telecom circles in India, and is awaiting clearance for another two circles, the company said.

“This is good news as the move to expand globally beyond its operations in the UAE is expected to be viewed positively because that way it diversifies its operations and does not depend on only one market,” said Sherif Abdelkhalek, institutions account manager at Beltone Financial, an investment bank operating in West Asia and North Africa.

“The share price might not immediately react to the news because of current market conditions but in the long and medium term, this will benefit revenues and share price,” Abdelkhalek said.

Citigroup Global Markets Ltd and Deutsche Bank AG were advisers for Etisalat and Swan Telecom, respectively.

Swan Telecom’s Balwa said Indian shareholders would remain the controlling stakeholders in Swan Telecom after the Etisalat deal.

A telecom expert said Etisalat always wanted to come to India and only new players could be its potential candidates. “Given the telecom licence and roll-out obligations, and what they want to do, there is always a certain valuation attached to it,” said Rajesh Jain, national industry director for information, communication and entertainment practice at consultancy KPMG India Pvt. Ltd.

RIL eyes oil fields in Latin America, Middle East...

2008-09-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries is redrawing its overseas acquisitions strategy to include more of producing and discovered acreages in the shopping list, even as the company is on way to pumping 89 million cubic metres per day of gas by 2010 from its Krishna-Godavari basin acreage off the Andhra coast.

"We are now more open to acquiring producing or discovered assets. Earlier, that was not the case," president and CEO of the company's oil and gas business P M S Prasad told TOI. This is aimed at improving "portfolio balance". Reliance had so far focused on exploration acreages that came comparatively cheap but also with the risk of failure to find hydrocarbons. A portfolio mix of producing or discovered fields can offset such risks.

Prasad said the company was trawling Latin America, West Asia and Far East but not Russia and Central Asia. "We want to go where we can win on merit and where there is heavy crude," he said. Reliance's refining strategy has been to use advanced plant configuration to process more of heavier crudes, which come cheaper than benchmark crudes, for rising refining margins.

The acquisitions strategy shift comes in the wake of the company starting commercially pumping oil from the MA discovery in the acreage and setting the stage for initiating gas production in the first quarter of 2009 calendar year.
Prasad said as of now, the Krishna-Godavari acreage would yield 89 mcmd of gas.

This, according to present government figures, will double the availability of gas in the country. The Dhirubhai-1 and 3 discoveries, the first two of the 18 strikes Reliance has reported in the concession that is identified as Block D6, 80 mcmd of gas will come out daily within the next 6-8 quarters. Another 9 mcmd will come out from the MA discovery, predominantly an oilfield, envisaged to produce 40,000 barrels a day when it reaches peak production in 18 months.

Reliance is investing $5.2 billion in bringing Dhirubhai-1 and 3 discoveries that will start production with 15-20 mcmd and reach a peak of 80 mcmd. This peak will last for 2-3 years when the company will invest another $3.5 billion to maintain output for the subsequent 7-8 years. "The field's life is 10-12 years, 7-8 years of which will be plateau," Prasad said.

Source: The Times of India

Anil questions oilmin's late entry in gas row...

2008-09-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

Claiming that government would lose over Rs 40,000 crore due to Mukesh Ambani-led RIL's oil and gas venture, Anil Ambani on Tuesday questioned oil ministry's 11th hour intervention in the court to help a private player. "It is anyone's guess what prompted the ministry's belated intervention," Anil Ambani said at the AGM of group company Reliance Natural Resources Limited.

Stating that the petroleum ministry did not think it fit to intervene in the two years since the litigation between his company and RIL began in Mumbai High Court, he expressed surprise over ministry's intervention now, which he felt was to help a private player while "scrupulously keeps away when it comes to protecting the rights of a Navratna such as NTPC." Debunking the perception that higher gas prices would benefit the government in the form of increased profit share, he said, "...based on capex numbers, as reported, it is estimated that government may not get more than Rs 1,000 crore in first five years,while RIL gets more than Rs 20,000 crore during the same period..."

Also, Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL) plans to enter cement manufacturing and shipping activities with an investment of Rs 12,000 crore.

"We will invest Rs 10,000 crore in cement business and Rs 2,000 crore in shipping," RNRL vice-chairman Anil Singhvi said on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting on Tuesday. "Our foray into cement and shipping will take 3-4 years period," Singhvi said. RNRL chairman Anil Ambani had said that "we are actively considering entering into cement manufacturing with 20-million tonnes capacity". However Anil Ambani owned Reliance Power Ltd will complete funding for two so-called ultra-mega power projects this year. Reliance is "likely to achieve'' financial closure for the Sasan thermal power project "by the end of this year,'' chairman Anil Ambani said.

Funding for the Krishnapatnam project is expected later this year, he said. The company has qualified to bid for a third ultra-mega power project at Tilaiya in the eastern state of Jharkhand, Ambani said. Each of these 4,000 megawatt, coal-fired projects requires an investment of as much as Rs 20,000 crore ($4.4 billion), he said.

Source: The Times of India

SAIL setting up steel processing unit in J&K...

2008-09-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

In line with its strategy to meet the market demand for tailor-made steel products and to help increase per capita steel consumption in rural areas, Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) is in the process of setting up steel processing units (SPUs) at locations across the country where it does not have any production facility.

The latest such unit to be set up is the sixth SPU at Lassipora in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, the foundation stone of which was laid by the Union Minister for Steel, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, earlier this week.

SAIL is investing Rs 100 crore in setting up the unit which will have a 40,000 tonnes per annum capacity TMT bar mill and a 60,000 tonnes per annum GP coils/sheet cut-to-length and corrugation line.

More investments

Speaking on the occasion, the Steel Minister urged SAIL to explore the possibility of increasing investment in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mr S. K. Roongta, Chairman of SAIL, said the company’s existing distribution centre at Leh was the highest-altitude steel outlet in the world.

Bihar unit

SAIL’s first SPU, coming up in Bettiah in Bihar at an estimated cost of Rs 236 crore, will have the capacity to produce 265,000 tonnes of TMT bars and pipes.

Another unit in Mahnar, Bihar, is being set up in two phases at a cost of around Rs 265 crore, which will produce 1.5 lakh tonnes of black and galvanised tubes and 100,000 tonnes of TMT bars.

Three SPUs are being set up in Madhya Pradesh – at Gwalior, Ujjain and Hoshangabad – involving an investment of around Rs 83 crore, Rs 100 crore and Rs 154 crore, respectively.

Source: Business Line

Ranbaxy faces more enquiries on FDA ban...

2008-09-23T13:37:00.001-07:00

A week after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blocked over 30 drugs manufactured by Ranbaxy from its two facilities in India, all major geographies have sought details of the company's exports from India.

Sources said that company's major markets including Canada and countries in EU have expressed concern and sought details on the drugs exported to these markets, and the company's action plan on the issue. Drug regulators in developed markets are studying the USFDA ban and seeking details from the company, including drug approvals.

When contacted a Ranbaxy spokesperson said: "We are not responding to any media reports".
Shares of Ranbaxy hit an 18-month low and closed at Rs 308.85 on Tuesday, a drop of over 11% since Monday, on adverse developments, and fears about its revenue outlook, analysts said. US is the largest market for the company, and contributed revenues of $390 million, while EU's share was $365 million in the company's total sales of $1.6 billion last year.

The import alert covers over 30 generic drugs, including medicines such as Simvastatin, Pravastatin, Ciprofloxacin and Gabapentin, Ciprofloxacin HCl, Clarithromycin and Lamivudine.

Even though the FDA clarified that the move was preventive and the drugs were safe, regulatory bodies across major geographies are not taking any chances and want to be reassured. Analysts say that the company is being dragged down by negative news and a slowdown in revenues is expected, particularly in the US revenues.
The manufacturing deficiencies for issuing the import alert include potential cross-contamination of drugs, inadequate sterile processing and failure of keeping records.

The Ranbaxy issue is a dampener for the country's generic industry. "I think the US FDA-Ranbaxy issue has created a significant issue for the Indian pharma sector. Ranbaxy is the flag bearer for the Indian generics industry and the US FDA action is bound to have a serious impact on the perception that other markets have on the quality of Indian products," says Probir Rao, managing director, investment banking, UBS Securities India. Experts are concerned about the loss of reputation of one of the top 10 generic companies in the world.

"The development has destroyed the brand which Ranbaxy had carefully built over the last 20 years. The image created is that of spurious drugs, while this is not the case. Investigations have been on for the last two years, hundreds of batches have been tested and documents have been sought, but the regulator has not found the company lacking in quality issues," sources said.

Some feel that the issue had assumed "political connotations". "The manner in which the company has been constantly under attack, and the issue has been kept alive, shows that there may be lobbying to create roadblocks for the company," experts added.

Earlier US Congressmen have expressed doubts over the quality of inspections conducted by the US FDA on Ranbaxy's manufacturing facilities before giving them marketing nod to generic medicines, alleging that the company supplied "fraudulently approved and manufactured" medicines.

However, analysts feel that the company has managed the issue poorly, and treated it in a lackadaisical manner.
"While the ban is a negative for the company, I see this as a one-off incident. However it could impact the image of Indian pharma if left unresolved. The issue is already a messy one that need not be further aggravated by politicising the same or looking for devils where none exist. I am confident that the company has the manufacturing and regulatory skill set to overcome this ban", says Sanjiv Kaul, MD ChrysCapital, and an ex-Ranbaxy executive.

Source: The Times of India

Punj Lloyd bags $800 mn contract...

2008-09-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

Engineering firm Punj Lloyd on Tuesday said it has bagged a $ 800 million (Rs 3,636 crore) contract for construction related work from Qatar Petroleum.

In a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Punj Lloyd said that under the contract it would undertake engineering, installation and commissioning order for laying of 211 km pipeline. The project would be completed in 32 months.

"This is the fourth Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract that we have bagged in Qatar. The project will facilitate in meeting the power and water production growth of Qatar," Punj Lloyd Group Chairman Atul Punj said.

The company is also executing EPC projects, including the Doha Urban Pipeline Relocation and the Multi-Product Pipeline from Qatar Petroleum Refinery to Doha Depot and fuel systems for the New Doha International Airport.

"Owing to the rapid infrastructure and oil and gas development in the region, we will continue to secure large ticket orders for our portfolio," he added.

With this, the order backlog for Punj Lloyd Group stands at Rs 24,063 crore.

Source: The Hindu

NASA Deploys Rubber Ducks to Track Glacier Water...

2008-09-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

An army of 90 rubber duckies floating on meltwater inside the fastest moving Greenland glacier are helping NASA study how the movement of glaciers speeds up during summer, according to a Reuters report today.

The duckies have "science experiment" and "reward" written on them in three languages along with an email address to contact if found. None have been reported yet, but this is a remote area off the west coast of Greenland.

In addition to the ducks, Alberto Behar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory also sent a football-sized, floating robotic probe carrying a GPS device, pressure sensor, thermometer and accelerometer to study the inside of the glacier. The duckies and probe were lowered on a rope into a moulin -- a hole in the glacier where meltwater rivers drop down to the bottom of the glacier and lubricate the ice river's move towards the ocean. You can think of them as ice-walled water slides. The duckies and probe will float down river under the glacier and allow researchers to get a better sense for what is underneath all that ice, and where the meltwater comes out.

The probe's accelerometers will be able to tell when the water is slowing down or speeding up, indicating a waterfall, rapids or other features inside the glacier. Behar, a space robotics designer, designed the little probe as well as probes for many extreme environments including Antarctic boreholes and deep sea hydrothermal vents that can reach up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

The experiment is designed to shed light on the mechanics of how these rivers of ice flow faster in the summer. One theory is that the summer sun melts pools of water on the surface that melt their way to the base of the glacier and form moulins. The meltwater pouring down into them would then lubricate the ice-rock interface and allow the ice to flow faster down to the ocean.

The fast-moving Jakobshavn Glacier is a good place to start because it is the source of nearly seven percent of the ice coming off Greenland. In fact, Jakobshavn is thought to be the source of the infamous iceberg that sank the Titanic in April 1912. Glaciers on land such as this one will cause oceans to rise if it melts, which makes understanding and tracking its movements all the more relevant to us.

Lift could take passengers straight into space...

2008-09-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

Japanese scientists are attempting to build a lift that will take passengers 62,000 miles into space.

The project could see the realisation of a vision that has inspired science fiction writers for generations.


	A Nasa image of how a 'space elevator' might look

The lift's carriages, which will themselves require new feats of engineering, would move up and down 22,000 mile-long cables.

Those cables would need to be stronger and lighter than any material ever woven.

They would be anchored to the ground and disappear into the sky, eventually reaching a satellite docking station orbiting above the Earth.

Scientists hope that as well as carrying human passengers, the carriages could also haul huge, solar-powered generators that could power homes and businesses back on Earth. It could also remove barrels of nuclear waste, dumping them into space.

"Just like travelling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space," Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, told The Times.

Japan's promise to spend £5 billion on the project has sparked swift reaction from other quarters: several competing space lift projects are now believed to be under way, with Nasa among those involved.

An international conference is to be held in Japan in November, aiming to draw up a detailed timetable for the machine's production.

One of the biggest challenges is expected to be producing a fabric for the lift's cables. It must be extremely light while also resilient enough to resist the various matter that it will be struck by in space. It is expected that an answer will be found in carbon nanotubes - microscopic particles woven into fibres.

Professor Yoshio Aoki, a director of Japan's Space Elevator Association and a professor of precision machinery engineering at Nihon University, said the cables would need to be 180 times stronger than steel. It would also need to four times stronger than the strongest carbon nanotube fibre ever produced, he added.

On the question of how the lift's carriages will be powered, Prof Aoki said: "We are thinking of using the technology employed in our bullet trains.

"Carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable to provide power all along the route."

It is thought the concept of the lift was first envisioned by the great sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke, in his 1979 book The Fountains of Paradise.

India to Reach for the Moon Next Month...

2008-09-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Chandrayaan is all set to make history; taking India to the moon...

If everything goes as planned, any of the days starting October 19th to 28th would be remembered as a red-letter day for us Indians. Our very first, homespun lunar probe, Chandrayaan is all set to make its first voyage to our nearest celestial body -- the Moon on these tentative dates -- depending on the weather conditions then. If the weather plays spoil sport, the mission will need to be postponed to December. In any case, a successful mission will no doubt put India in the elite club of counties who have been able to send missions to moon.

Chandrayaan is still undergoing tests and is yet to clear the vibration and acoustic tests, which it would be subjected to later this week. These tests will simulate the conditions that the probe will need to bear at the tine of launch. These include high-temperatures, vibrations during take off and not to mention, the tremendous noise that is expected of a typical rocket launch.

Chandrayaan will carry as many as 11 payloads -- five from India, three from the European Space Agency (ESA), one from the Bulgarian Space Agency (BSA) and two from NASA, making it a truly global initiative. The two-year mission will be invaluable as the Chandrayaan is programmed to orbit the Lunar surface and digitally map it. It will also send information on the traces of the composition of the lunar surface apart from looking for atomic minerals such as thorium and uranium. The probe is also equipped with high-resolution cameras which could help shed some light on the existence of water on the moon.

A modified (rather upgraded) PSLV launch vehicle will be used to transport the probe to the lunar orbit. Due to the modifications, the PSLV C-11 will have a lift-off weight of 316 tonnes, which is much higher than the "standard" 294-ton version. Additionally, the payload capacity too has been increased from 1600 kg to 1800 kg. The PSLV has been the most successful launch vehicle for ISRO till date. It also holds the record for sending as many as 10 satellites simultaneously during its last mission. This time round, it is all set to break its own record by carrying 11 different payloads.

Undoubtedly, the Indian space program has come a long way since its initial stages when the first rocket transporter happened to be a bicycle, which carried the 9 kilo rocket to the "launch pad"! That was back in 1963 when visionaries like Vikram Sarabhai and APJ Abdul Kalam laid the foundation of what has become one of the greatest success stories of India.

Helium Leak Shuts Down LHC For Two Months...

2008-09-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

After last week’s transformer failure, a new hardware malfunction has stopped the LHC dead in its tracks. This time, the electrical link between two of the particle accelerator’s massive 30-ton superconducting magnets has failed, causing a magnet quench event. Due to having to warm up the section of the tunnel containing the magnet in order to conduct repairs, and then cool it back down to its -271°C operating temperature, these repairs will take at least two months.

Technical setbacks have plagued the Large Hadron Collider ever since it was started on September the 10th, including a transformer failure which shut down its cooling plant, which was only repaired on Thursday. Immediately afterwards, on Friday, during a test, one of the bus bar connections which linked cables between the magnets failed, and melted thus causing roughly a ton of liquid helium to leak into one of the tunnel sections. The fire brigade had to be called to handle the situation. "It seems to be a badly made connection – but this all has to be confirmed once we have had the chance to take a look at it," said James Gillies, director of communications at CERN.

The rather large dipole magnets that are used to steer protons around the Large Hadron Collider’s circular tract, are superconductive. What this means is that scientists have taken advantage of a property of matter by which its electrical resistance is lowered to naught when cooled very close to absolute zero. This allows much more current to be passed through the magnets, giving them much more force in steering the supercharged particles, which can run at up to 7 terra-electron-volts.

Non-superconductive magnets simply would not be strong enough to handle the proton beams, which would steer off-track, hitting the collider pipe walls. These particles, at such energy levels, can melt through several feet of steel in nanoseconds, so you don’t want those out of control.

Getting the magnets to and out of such low temperatures however – colder than outer space – takes a while however, and were it not required to use superconducting magnets, the repairs would only take a few days. This way, it will at least take two months, dangerously narrowing the window of opportunity in which to conduct the collision tests. This is because the LHC facility shuts down during the winter to save on energy costs. If they don’t get the problem fixed by then, there won’t be any collision until 2009.

CERN physicists are not very worried though, and are calling this an expected setback as the LHC, which is arguably the most complex machine ever built, has been in construction for 20 years and has so far cost more than $8 billion, and such hitches have been very probable since the beginning.

"If you keep an eye on the big picture, we've been building the machine for 20 years. The switch-on was always going to be a long process," said Gillies, who went on to say that "A year or two down the line, this moment will be a distant memory, and we'll be running smoothly."

The LHC’s Gala Inauguration party, set for October 21, will still take place, according to Dr. Gillies.

Android Era Set To Begin...

2008-09-22T15:16:00.001-07:00

When Google unveiled its Android mobile software platform last November, it was clear that the search giant had broader ambitions than just a gPhone.

The Linux-based open source platform and the Google (NSDQ: GOOG)-backed Open Handset Alliance are seeking to merge the openness of the Internet with the mobile space. These lofty goals potentially make Android a major disruption in the mobile communications industry. However, multiple questions remain.

One thing for certain, T-Mobile will officially announce the first Android-powered handset Sept. 23. While details aren't official, FCC filings suggest the Dream (or G1) will sport a large touch-screen that flips out to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard.

The smartphone is expected to have built-in Wi-Fi, GPS, and will be capable of using T-Mobile's expanding 3G network. It's expected to be on sale in mid-October, and the handset will undoubtedly have an entire industry watching it.

Google's Dream


Android Market's open content distribution system will help users find, purchase, download, and install content onto their Android-powered devices.

For Google, Android is all about getting mobile users on the Internet where the search giant can use its expertise to provide a better user experience. The operating system is royalty-free so hardware manufacturers can potentially spend their money on better hardware or on research and development.

Additionally, Google wants to make it easier for mobile users to download and add applications to their mobile devices like they can on a PC. The open-source nature will potentially allow others to improve the software, like with the desktop Linux.

Strategy Analytics predict the Android smartphone will capture 4% of the U.S. smartphone market in the fourth quarter. This represents about 400,000 units sold, and it is a healthy figure considering the handset's not expected to go on sale until the middle of the quarter.

According to Chris Ambrosio, executive director of Strategy Analytics, the Dream's price point will be an important factor of adoption, and The Wall Street Journal recently reported the first Android handset will debut for $199.

Ambrosio said there appears to be a large level of interest within the industry, but the mass-market appeal is currently lacking. That should change after T-Mobile's official announcement, as the carrier will probably put great efforts to market the first Android-powered handset.

Jason Spero, VP of marketing for AdMob, said there hasn't been a clear marketing push for Android. Despite recent crossover, Spero said the BlackBerry is primarily marketed as the best for the mobile workforce, and the iPhone is marketed as a consumer device.

"It's important for the group of people delivering Android devices to articulate a value proposition for a core audience," Spero said.

Despite this, analyst firm Gartner recently estimated Android will account for 10% of the smartphone market by 2011. But, analysts said the first generation of devices may not capture the public's interest like an iPhone.

"The G1 is the first device coming to market supporting Google's operating system Android," said Roberta Cozza, Gartner's principal analyst, in a statement. "Although this will give us a taste of what the platform will be able to do, we are expecting some limitations given this is the first device."
While the Android OS will eventually be on a slew of devices from Sprint, LG and Samsung, it's inevitable that the Dream will be compared to Apple's iPhone.
This comparison is not exactly fair as every aspect of the iPhone was developed primarily by a single company, whereas the Dream's hardware was made by HTC, and its software comes from more than one OHA members.

Even though it has similar features, the Dream probably won't offer the same "wow" factor that the iPhone did, industry experts said. But as popular as the iPhone is, it still accounts for a relatively small percentage of the overall handset market.

Shawn Bohonos, CEO of Routeme2 Technologies, recently saw his application named a finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge. He said the platform and the industry consortium will lead to innovation in the mobile arena.

"A similar comparison is the CDMA vs. GSM debate, when initially CDMA was able to innovate more quickly than GSM since it was developed by a small group of companies," Bohonos said. "GSM, on the other hand was developed by a consortium, which did not yield itself to rapid development, but over time, it was able to achieve better economies of scale and adoption than CDMA, thereby driving end user costs down."

Applications

The success of Apple's App Store, which is on pace for a billion downloads sometime in 2009, has shown the hunger for mobile applications. These mobile programs will be a critical driver in adoption of Android devices.

But Google is taking a different approach to the distribution of these apps, and its Android Marketplace will have fewer restrictions than Apple's. For example, Apple pre-approves all applications in its store and takes a 30% cut of any sold. Google said its Android Market will feature a YouTube-like system for publishing, distributing, and commenting on apps, and the search giant won't take any of the revenue.

Some developers are already praising Google for its open approach with both the market, and its SDK.

"The fact that Android apps can be developed in Java means that existing Java ME applications are easier to port to Android than to the iPhone, since code can be reused, whereas for the iPhone it needs to be rewritten in another language," said Bohonos. "Thus, the barrier to entry of Android has dramatically reduced the skills required to get up and running on mobile devices."

Ambrosio said the debate over a closed or open distribution method is not as important as the support offered and the interest it can generate for your brand. Because of this, he sees the Android Market as critical to Google because it enables them to tie their online offerings to mobile.

"Apple is much more into selling boxes," said Ambrosio. "For Google, more than any single handset or device, it's important to get the app store right."

The Android platform seems squarely aimed at the consumer market, but some figure it could eventually be Google strongest move into the enterprise market.

As more companies rely on Web-based mission-critical software, Ambrosio sees Google's strengths in that area as a major advantage for Android devices. But he expects Google to target the consumer market first, and eventually make a strong push for the enterprise.

A recent study by J. Gold Associates suggests that most companies will take a wait-and-see approach with Android, though.

The report said Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) will remain the dominant player in the United States for enterprise smartphones, with nearly 60% of the market in 2011. This will be followed by Windows Mobile, Apple's iPhone, Symbian, and Palm. The report estimated Android will garner a relatively small 4.8% of the market in three years.

A Crowded Market

Cracking the mobile market won't be easy, as companies like RIM, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Apple won't give up their market share without a fight. Many companies are emphasizing their experience in the mobile space as Nokia, the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, recently upped the ante in the software war by buying out Symbian in June and creating the SymbiaFoundation with the goal of making Symbian an open source OS. Executives believe the company's "mobile DNA" will enable the OS to remain dominant.

"I think that the fact there is a mature platform that is being introduced in an open source environment kind of changes the game," said David Rivas, head of technology management atNokia (NYSE: NOK)'s S60, in an interview with Reuters. "The choices up until then were: You could go with proprietary and mature, or you could go with immature and free. Now there is a choice that is free and mature."

he Last Microsoft Ad Strategy: The Disco Mom...

2008-09-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has morphed its weird Gates-Seinfeld ads into new, "I'm a PC" ads--short video clips submitted by the general public, each saying what they do and telling the world that they are a PC. This is a direct attack on Apple's "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, where the two characters symbolize the platforms.

These dingbat Microsoft ads kind of miss the point. The people don't symbolize anything. They say who they are and that they are a PC, which makes no sense whatsoever because they are not PCs. They are people. They use a PC, but they are NOT a PC, unless they are mentally deranged.

he differences between the Apple and Microsoft campaigns actually aren't so subtle, but this seems lost on Microsoft. Apple uses humans in a kind of transmogrified sense to represent the two platforms and speak for them in a way unflattering to Microsoft. Microsoft finds happy users who are willing to say they are a PC for no apparent reason.

This is dumb. That said, a friend of mine thinks it is brilliant, because anytime you engage the public by exploiting the public itself, you always have a winner. People love to see themselves on TV, and Microsoft promises that they will.

I'm not convinced, since only a few hundred at most will get in on these ditties, and it amounts to very little effect overall. And I notice that on the main page Microsoft has duplicates already. Two Ballmers are clearly seen with duplicates all around him. So the whole thing is something of a scam from the beginning.

I did notice something curious in my own behavior, however. I was clicking on some of the people and stumbled upon some shapely woman standing in a bikini saying that she was a Disco Mom. I'm not sure what that means, but she was attractive and worth looking at. A few of the other women were compelling enough to click on, too. This told me that the site is boring except for the possibility of spotting a pretty girl. "That's it!" I thought to myself. The never-fails, find-a-pretty-girl trick.

Just line the Web site with the prettiest girls you can find, all extolling the virtues of the PC and what it does. You know, the really shallow crap Playboy traditionally promotes in its centerfold profiles. Dumb "who really cares?" stuff.

I can assure you that the first "I'm a PC and I'm a stripper!" will get some serious attention. Let's see, Microsoft can make hay with the aerobics instructor, yoga instructor, second-grade teacher, Ellen Feiss (beep-beep-beep-beep), every B-movie actress in Hollywood, singers, dancers, and even showgirls! Just go for the cheesecake; Vista will fly off the shelves and the stock will skyrocket. People will click like crazy, watching all the advertisements to see what new hubba-hubba girl will appear next.

Now, if there were some way to take this idea over the top, here is my suggestion for the furtherance of the campaign and the cheesecake idea: Find the hottest women who will submit videos. And to balance things, find a few guys, too. They end up on the TV commercial, say that they are a PC, and give out their phone number. "I'm a Vegas showgirl and I'm a PC. Call me at my number (flashes on screen) for more information about me."

A computerized phone system answers all the inbound calls and the showgirl (or Disco Mom or whomever you called) answers the phone with a recording. "Hi, I'm Rhonda the Vegas showgirl and I'm a PC. I'm 5' 11" tall, 135 pounds, and my measurements are 36-24-36…and I love being a PC. In fact I'm just crazy about being a PC, and I make sure I'm always up-to-date with the newest software from Microsoft. You should, too. You really should! If you want a special offer from me to you, just press 1 on your touch-tone phone…." It can go on like this with all sorts of come-ons and follow ups.

Microsoft can sell upgrades, get people on the mailing list—whatever. This is direct sales at its best. Right now on that Microsoft ad site there is zero incentive to even click the Buy or Downloads button at the top. Most people won't even see them unless coaxed to look.

The company has a potential goldmine here if it cares to exploit it. But that wouldn't be politically correct, would it? Actually, I think the Disco Mom will be the end of it. But the gold is there to be mined.

More advertisers seek to block Yahoo-Google pact...

2008-09-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

An international network of advertisers publicly criticized the proposed search-advertising partnership between Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. on Monday, saying the deal may "have a detrimental effect on competition."

The World Federation of Advertisers, which says it represents 55 national advertiser associations worldwide, said it has asked the European Commission to block the partnership, which is expected to get under way next month.

Although the advertising partnership will only affect Web sites in North America, it is under review by antitrust regulators in Europe and Canada in addition to the Justice Department and several state attorneys general. Under the proposed deal, Google would match some search queries made on Yahoo's Web sites with advertising, and then split any resulting revenue.

Yahoo sought out the partnership as a key step in walking away from the unsolicited acquisition bid that Microsoft Corp. made earlier this year. Yahoo says the Google deal could result in an additional $800 million in revenue during its first year of operation.

Earlier this month, however, the Association of National Advertisers, a U.S.-based member of the WFA, issued its own criticism of the proposed partnership, saying it "will likely diminish competition."

Yahoo executive vice president Hilary Schneider responded to the ANA with a letter assuring the group that its concerns are "unfounded." Schneider promised to "set the record straight" on how Yahoo will actually use the deal to strengthen its presence in the online search market, and ultimately wean itself from dependence on Google.

The WFA said in its statement Monday that even though the partnership will only cover Yahoo sites in the U.S. and Canada, it "believes the effects will be global."

In particular, the WFA said the deal could result in price increases for advertisers, and a reduced number of available options for search advertising. "The substantial benefits for both parties in the U.S. and Canada will almost certainly reduce their incentive to compete in other markets as they do today," the WFA said.

The WFA says it represents roughly "90% of global marketing communications," worth roughly $700 billion annually.

'Focused on growing our own business'

Yahoo and Google have argued that the partnership will actually bolster competition in the search advertising market, by strengthening Yahoo's balance sheet and allowing the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company to invest in its own search service.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has also stressed that prices for the keywords used in search advertising are set through auctions, meaning that advertisers will only pay more for advertising on Yahoo sites if they believe they will get more in return.

Critics, however, have argued that other factors, such as tweaks in each search providers' technology, also contribute to the price of search advertising.

In addition, critics say that the higher prices Yahoo will be able to enjoy through the Google partnership will encourage its expansion, allowing Google to spread its influence over the search-advertising market even further than it has already.

According to data released last week by comScore Inc., Google's share of the online search market in the U.S. grew to 63% in August, while Yahoo's share fell to just below 20% and Microsoft's share fell to 8.3%.

In her letter to the ANA, Yahoo's Schneider stressed that the company doesn't plan to funnel more business through Google.

"This is exactly the opposite of our business goals in pursuing this agreement," Schneider wrote. "The sponsored search connection to Google should ultimately shrink, not grow, over time -- because we are focused on growing our own business, NOT Google's."

"If anything, we will use the higher value ads that we can deliver under the Agreement to expand the market and compete more effectively," Schneider wrote.

Intel vPro Technology Looks to Better Secure, Manage Corporate Desktops...

2008-09-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

The latest version of Intel’s vPro technology for desktops, formally codenamed “McCreary,” adds new management and security features that should make it easier for IT managers to fix and monitor a fleet of corporate desktops. Intel is also enhancing vPro with new features called Dynamic Virtual Client, which will allow various virtualization technologies to work with and take advantage of Intel’s vPro features.

Intel is sprucing up its vPro management and security technology for corporate desktops by adding new features, including allowing PCs to “call” an IT administrator for help. Intel is also working with partners and ISVs to improve the ability to create a virtual desktop infrastructure by using vPro technology.

Intel announced the latest enhancements to its vPro Technology Platform during a Sept. 22 event. The latest version of Intel’s vPro Technology – formally called “McCreary” – includes support for Intel's newer duel- and quad-core Core 2 desktop processors. There is also a new chip set – the Intel Q45 Express – and the 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection.

The vPro Technology, which Intel first introduced for desktops in 2006 and then for laptops in 2007, is essentially a chip bundle designed to make it easier for IT departments to manage and secure a large corporate fleet of PCs. Intel has been partnering with companies such as Symantec and LANDesk to provide the security and desktop management software.

The updates Intel announced this week around vPro represent another incremental step as the chip giant looks to convince more of its customers to begin using the technology that has been include with their corporate desktops. Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates, believes that enterprises will still need about 25 percent of the fleet to have Intel vPro installed within the desktops before its makes economic sense to invest in the management features.

“My sense now is that there are a slightly higher proportion of enterprises that have met the [vPro] criteria and Intel is starting to get some adoption,” said Kay.

At the same time, Intel is hoping that by adding more features, it can entice its customers to look at and invest in the vPro Technology platform.

The features that Intel introduced this week include the ability for the IT department to connect with and fix a PC, whether the desktop or notebook is inside or outside the corporate firewall. The new set of technologies also allows an administrator to contact the PC whether the machine is fully functioning or if it has been damaged and the operating system is no longer working or has been crippled.

Within this out-of-band technology, Intel has added two features. The first is Remote Alert, which allows a PC to call the IT department on its own without notifying the user first. The second is Remote Scheduled Maintenance, which allows the IT manager to schedule maintenances checkups automatically.

In addition, Intel has added a tool called Access Monitor, which keeps a log of activities within an individual PC and can also determine and stop a virus or malware. Intel is also adding support for Microsoft’s Network Access Protection or NAP, which helps determine the health of PC attached to the network. (vPro also supports Cisco Systems Network Admission Control or NAC.)

The fact that Intel is offering its own desktop and laptops management does not mean that it’s the only choice IT department have if they decide they need this level of protection. For its part, Advanced Micro Devices, which just released its first complete desktop platform earlier this year, is supporting and pushing DASH (desktop and mobile architecture for system hardware) standards as a better and more open way to secure PCs.

While Intel’s vPro is proprietary, the company also supports DASH as well.

However, Intel is looking ahead toward a future where more and more companies might decide to create and invest in a virtual desktop infrastructure. Some of the companies that are pushing the VDI model include VMware, Citrix and Microsoft.

To that end, Intel also introduced a program called Dynamic Virtual Client. This allows Intel to work with ISVs and other virtualization providers to offer a way for a VDI environment to work with and take advantage of vPro Technology and other features such as Active Management Technology and Trusted Execution Technology.

The Dynamic Virtual Client technology works as an application delivery system. The technology creates a secure container and then this container can deliver the operating system and application to a client, while allowing IT to control the data from a central location.

For example, Intel vPro will work with Microsoft’s Application Virtualization v4.5 – formally SoftGrid – to allow for remote waking and updating of a client with the virtual application cached within the client’s drive. This allows IT to push an update without notifying the user and saves power by allowing for a central way to wake up and shut down PCs.

“The world is rapidly turning into a mix or real and virtual systems,” said Kay. “One adaptation of vPro is to handle the virtual world better. When vPro was first introduced two years ago, virtualization for the desktop was still pretty rare. In order to adapt, Intel has to work with the virtual versions of things. With what ever client session is going on, some subset of vPro has to work with this [VDI] and allow it to come up on a console.”

Finally, Intel is also moving toward making vPro available for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) with 25 or less PCs. For SMBs, Intel is providing Remote PC Assist Technology, which helps a business connect with a service provider that will then use the out-of-band technology to monitor and updates that businesses desktop and notebooks.

Infotech Enter plans $30 mn M&A splash...

2008-09-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Hyderabad-based IT services firm Infotech Enterprises plans to acquire three companies, which is likely to be in hi-tech and automotive engineering services, this fiscal in the range of $20-30 million each. The company is currently involved in due diligence of a European auto engineering company that it hopes to acquire by December-end.

“We see large opportunities in hi-tech and auto engineering. These are areas where the company has not been very strong so far. We have about Rs 300 crore in cash set aside for acquisitions,” Infotech Enterprises founder and CMD BVR Mohan Reddy said.

The company, which provides geographic information and engineering services, recently acquired California-based design service provider, Time To Market.

Infotech Enterprises is also looking at ramping up its domestic presence. Currently, about 97% of its revenues come from exports. “The Indian market is opening up. We expect more action in the engineering services space, especially in the defence sector,” Mr Reddy said.

Dassault, Boeing and EADS, which are its existing clients, have agreed to give it more work once they start manufacturing in India to fulfil the offset clause. The clause mandates that companies supplying equipment to the defence ministry must necessarily source 30-50% of it from India.

Infotech is also looking at ways to grow its presence in geospatial services. Its subsidiary, Infotech Geospatial India, is bidding for geospatial contracts in the domestic market, including those of state governments. The company opened a new facility in Noida, which is its fourth in India, on Monday that can house up to 1,000 associates.

It is also investing in another facility in Noida, which will come up in an SEZ in the next six months. Infotech expects to close the current fiscal with revenues of about Rs 900 crore. It has some 7,700 employees.

Source: The Economic Times

Pepsico! not losing fizz over Wall St mayhem...

2008-09-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

HIRE NOT FIRE: Pepsico! is planning a recruitment drive and is going out of its way to retain talent.

Pepsico! is not losing fizz over the mayhem on Wall Street. It will be investing Rs 2,200 crore in India over the next three years, which will create 50,000 direct and indirect jobs in the country.

"The problems on Wall Street have not yet trickled over to main street which is where we are. Our business continues to be robust. We generate a lot of cash. We are financially very healthy. I don't believe the problems on Wall Street will affect companies like ours," said Pepsico! Chairperson & CEO, Indra Nooyi.

She added that the organisation will create more jobs in India.

At a time when most companies are tightening their grip on budgets, Pepsico! is thinking out of the box. It is not only planning a major recruitment drive but is going out of its way to retain talent, and bring more women into its force.

"India has given us some of the best employees and I am proud of it. This issue is close to me. We have tied up with jobstreet.com and indiwo.com. Indiwo.com is specially to attract women in India," Nooyi said.

The shrinking global economy has pushed Wall Street onto a diet of cost cuts and pink slips but not so for Pepsico! which is a main stream company.

Source: IBN

Goldman, Morgan's switch to banks means more biz for IT cos...

2008-09-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

When Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley gave up their independent investment banking status, it gave reason for Indian IT vendors to smile.

For, more regulations, as a commercial bank, could mean more business for software service providers. While the collapse of the other investment banks in the past few months sent jitters among the software vendors in India, government control of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley gave the Indian IT some reasons to cheer.

Because, morphing into a full-fledged bank not only implies greater access to funds but also more regulation. And tighter regulation could mean tweaking their existing technology by adding more software and processes. They would have to adopt systems in areas such as retail banking, consumer banking, cards and corporate banking.

“It’s an opportunity for IT companies because conversion to traditional banks means they need to add a lot of processes, new functions and areas,” said Frost & Sullivan deputy director-ICT practice Kaustubh Dhavse.

Another analyst, who did not want to be named said, “It’s a bit too early to determine if it will have a positive impact on vendors in India. Currently, it looks like this is a just a window that would help them borrow credit from Fed at a discounted rate. Moreover, they might acquire capability in retail banking by acquisition, instead of building it.”

Wall Street, considered the holy grail for the investment banking profession, lost its sheen late Sunday, with news of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley-two of the Street’s institutions that haven’t succumbed to the sub prime crisis as yet-getting converted into commercial banks that would be regulated by the US Federal Reserve.

As a result, the investment banking space, often characterised with power and heavy pay packets, would cease to exist as a separate industry. The development follows the tumble of iconic firms such as Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and the near collapse of insurance giant AIG, because of their exposure to derivatives linked to housing and credit.

Of the top five Indian IT companies, experts said that while TCS services Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs is an important client for Infosys. So, the existing vendors would have an edge if these newly-regulated banks should go for an increasing in their off shoring activity to India.

It’s not clear how seriously they would expand to other areas of commercial banking, but if they do, it would mean a huge business for product makers.

“A one time expense account has to be incurred to support acceptance of retail deposits, install more ATM s and increase reporting requirements. We will see increased spending on technology from Goldman and Morgan Stanley. Expect product vendors to benefit greater than service vendors,” said Mr Shiva Ramani, CEO, Cybernet-SlashSupport (CSS), an outsourcing firm that’s into technology support.

At the same time, products and software services provider Polaris Software Lab’s CFO R Srikanth added, “It’s a good news for the industry. Though they already have vendors in India, it’s a good opportunity for product vendors. Platforms such as retain finance, risk and treasury, cards, consumer and corporate banking would help.” On Monday, the 30-share Sensex dropped 0.34% and the IT index dropped 0.75%.

Source: The Economic Times

ECB norms relaxed for infrastructure companies...

2008-09-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

In a move aimed at enabling infrastructure companies to meet their increased funding requirements, the Government on Monday eased the external commercial borrowing (ECB) norms to permit bringing in up to $500 million for rupee expenditure each year. The new norms will come into effect from the date of notification by the Reserve Bank of India.

Announcing the relaxation, an official statement here said: “Considering the huge funding requirements, particularly for meeting rupee expenditure, it has been decided to enhance the existing limit of $100 million to $500 million for borrowers in the infrastructure sector under the approval route.”

According to estimates, the infrastructure sector would be in need of about $500 billion over the next five years. The easing of ECB norms is expected to raise the infrastructure companies’ access to overseas borrowings although it is not certain as to whether it would render it easier to mop up funds abroad in view of the ongoing global crisis in the financial market. The official statement made it clear that borrowings by companies in excess of $100 million should have a minimum average maturity period of seven years. Also, the overall cap of $500 million per company each year under the automatic route has been retained.

Alongside, owing to the wide credit spreads now prevailing in global financial markets, the Finance Ministry has also decided to allow companies to pay higher interest rates on such borrowings with a maturity of over seven years. Under the liberalised norms, corporates have now been permitted to pay up to 4.5 per cent over the six-month LIBOR (London inter bank offered rate) as against the earlier cap of 3.5 per cent. At present, the six-month LIBOR is pegged at 3.016 per cent.

However, for companies going for ECBs with a maturity of three to five years, the interest rate has been left unchanged at up to two per cent above LIBOR.

Likewise, the interest rate ceiling on overseas borrowings of more than five years and up to seven years has also been pegged at 3.5 per cent above LIBOR.

For companies other than the infrastructure sector, the existing ECB norms will continue to be in operation.

Source: The Hindu

Reliance Industries: Building natural hedges...

2008-09-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

Reliance Industries Ltd’s announcement of commencement of production from the KG-D6 block did not quite excite the stock market. Its share price did not flare up; on the contrary, it fell marginally by Rs 14.70, or 0.72%, to close at Rs 2,037 on the BSE.

The reason, reckon analysts, is that most of the good news had already been factored in and reflects in the market price: the stock has already gone up 15% from its annual low and has outperformed the market as well. Analysts are now looking at commercial production of gas from the D6 block. Reliance Industries management has clarified that it will initiate commercial production of gas between January to March next year.

Despite the fact that the oil margin ‘golden days’ are set to come down as prices ease, Reliance Industries’ earnings growth story is expected to hold on, and even better many others in the trade . The company will tend to outperform the benchmark Singapore margins, enabled by decline on middle distillates (diesel, ATF, kerosene), which will not be as significant as others like gasoline. This is because middle distillates account for 46.8% of Reliance Industries’ product portfolio, compared to a Singapore complex index weightage of just over 20%. This will allow for a lot of cushioning.

On the petrochemicals side too, the company has created advantages and natural hedges. Despite easing margins in most petrochemical products, Reliance will gain from the IPCL advantage of using a gas cracker. Incidentally, most product prices tend to move in the direction of crude prices. However, gas prices in India have hardly moved.

This makes IPCL at least 60% more cost-effective; it will be able to maintain the advantage going ahead as well. Also, IPCL is expected to gain from strong polyvinyl chloride (PVC) prices, which are at a three-year high and are expected to remain there.

Analysts expect that IPCL, which contributes around 30% to Reliance Industries’ earnings before interest and tax, will contribute more in the current fiscal. The depreciating rupee is an added advantage as the company’s products are largely priced on import parity basis.

Despite these factors, the market eagerly awaits commercial production details of the company. Many reckon that instead of starting commercial production in February, it would benefit if it does so in April 2009. “This will help make most of the 7-year income tax holiday, which is expected for gas production. This tax holiday is for seven fiscal years (April-March) and the full benefit will be available if gas production commences in April,” says a Merrill Lynch report.

Analysts are also closely watching the decline in petrochemical margins; a huge slide could impact earnings considerably. But then, as the business plan unfolds, they expect more built-in hedges to emerge and protect Reliance Industries from commodity price swings. Till then, they will keep looking at smaller developments.

Bengal SEZ plan of JSW gets go-ahead...

2008-09-22T14:36:00.001-07:00

The government today cleared JSW Bengal Steel’s proposed special economic zone along with 26 other projects.

The Board of Approval, chaired by commerce secretary G.K. Pillai, gave formal approval to 17 SEZ proposals and in-principle clearance to 10.

Bharat Forge’s SEZ near Pune spread over 1,271 hectares and involving an investment of Rs 5,000 crore got the green signal from the board.

JSW Bengal Steel’s SEZ at Salboni in West Midnapore district will be set up across 1,804 hectares at an investment of Rs 15,321 crore.

JSW Bengal will set up a 10-million-tonne plant along with a power and cement unit. Financial closure for the first phase of the project is over.

Earlier, JSW Steel vice-chairman Sajjan Jindal had said construction for the project would start in the first week of November. The plant will go on stream by 2011-12, and its cost will be Rs 9,800 crore

Larsen and Toubro’s Rs 1,665-crore heavy engineering SEZ in Tamil Nadu has got an in-principle approval.

Other projects to get in-principle approval include an airport-based multi-product SEZ in Himachal Pradesh by Skil Infrastructure Limited, a textile SEZ in Punjab by Ishan Developers & Infrastructure and an auto component project in Gujarat by SPG Infrastructure.

The proposals to get formal approval include an IT project in Haryana by Orient Craft Infrastructure and an aluminium SEZ in Andhra Pradesh by Anrak Aluminium.

The government has so far given formal approvals to 513 SEZs, of which 250 have been notified and 87 zones have become operational.

Source: The Telegraph

Biocon ranked seventh largest employer in biotech industry...

2008-09-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

Biotech firm Biocon announced in Bangalore on Monday it has been ranked as the seventh largest employer amongst the top global biotechnology companies, quoting a report released by Med Ad News.

The report takes into consideration drug based firms, as these companies provide the best numbers to track the progress of the sector, a Biocon statement said.

"Companies have been ranked by number of employees and Biocon Limited is the only Asian company to feature at Number seven", the statement added.

Source: The Hindu

India, South Africa, Brazil ink tourism pact...

2008-09-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

The fifth edition of Kerala Travel Mart, the biennial event of showcasing the state’s tourism, saw good participation of stake holders in the tourism sector and inking of a trilateral agreement among India, Brazil and South Africa for co-operation in the tourism sector. The event, which began in Kochi on Saturday, would conclude on Tuesday.

Registration of tour operators and resort groups touched an all-time high with 1,300 titles — Indian as well as foreign. As many as 312 business stalls have been erected at Le Meridian Hotel, the main venue of the travel mart. Houseboat operators from Alappuzha backwaters showcased 16 high-end house boats. Kerala Tourism Secretary V Venu said the state would explore new foreign markets, apart from strengthening the existing ones.

He said road shows would be held in the coming months at Melbourne and another location in Australia, an emerging market as far as Kerala tourism is concerned. Besides, Canada and China were also on the radar of the state tourism industry to market the Kerala brand, he said.

Kerala Travel Mart Society president E M Najeeb said Kerala tourism had attracted an investment of Rs 1,500 crore in the past two years. Northern Kerala is also poised for a major leap in the tourism sector. At least, half a dozen resorts have come at Bakel beach in northern Kerala. The proposed green field airport in Kannur would give a further boost to tourism in North Kerala.

He said the state would participate in the International Tourism Bourse, to be held in Berlin early next year. As many as 25 tour operators from the state would go to the largest tourism mart in the world.

A major highlight of the four-day mart was the trilateral pact agreed among India, Brazil and South Africa, under the banner of IBSA, a development initiative between the three countries.

Union Tourism joint secretary Leena Nandan said the pact would promote co-operation in the area of tourism as well as provide for better understanding, goodwill and friendship between the three countries. She said the countries could also explore the possibilities of exchange of students and faculties of academic institutions.

IBM Scientists Unlock the Secret of the Kondo Effect...

2008-09-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA have forged a breakthrough in understanding an intriguing phenomenon in fundamental physics: the Kondo effect. They report their findings today in the scientific journal Nature Physics.

The Kondo effect, one of the few examples in physics where many particles collectively behave as one object (a single quantum-mechanical body), has intrigued scientists around the world for decades. Now, using a technique that was developed by the same team in 2007, the IBM researchers have shown, for the first time anywhere, that it is possible to predict when the Kondo effect will occur -- and to understand why.

The key turns out to be in the geometry of a magnetic atom's immediate surroundings. By carefully studying how this geometry influences the magnetic moment (or "spin") of the atom, the emergence of the Kondo effect can now be predicted and understood. This result represents a major advancement in fundamental physics.

The achievement is one of the latest in IBM's more than two decades of nanotechnology leadership and exploration of the world of magnetism at the atomic scale. Starting with the invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) in 1981, IBM has been at the forefront of research aimed at expanding our abilities to investigate and manipulate individual atoms.

A look at the Kondo Effect

When a single magnetic atom is located inside a metal, the free electrons of the metal 'screen' the atom. That way, a cloud of many electrons around the atom becomes magnetized. Sometimes, if the metal is cooled down to very low temperatures, the atomic spin enters a so-called 'quantum superposition' state. In this state its north-pole points in two opposite directions at the same time. As a result, the entire electron cloud around the spin will also be simultaneously magnetized in two directions.

For more information about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com

Large Hadron Collider experiment delayed due to helium leak...

2008-09-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

Img: LHC superconducting magnets. Credit LHC-2/flickr

A helium leak, which has disabled the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment on the French/Swiss border, is likely to take two months to repair.

European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists said in statement released on the weekend that they had detected a helium leak on Friday which they believed was most likely caused by a faulty electrical connection between two magnets.

The connection had "...melted at high current leading to mechanical failure" said the statement, though CERN insisted that at no time was there any danger to people.

The organisation said they thought the problem should be fixed in a few days once accessible, though added the sector where the problem occurred will have to be warmed up above its operational absolute zero in order for repairs to be carried out.

"A number of magnets raised their temperature by around 100 degrees," said James Gillies, spokesman for CERN. "We have now to warm up the whole sector in a controlled manner before we can actually go in and repair it."

The $10 million atom smasher would then need to cooled back to absolute zero to re-start operations.

The world's largest, and most expensive, atom-smashing experiment, will attempt to recreate the conditions experienced in the Universe just one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Physicists are hopeful the LHC experiment will go some way to answering many questions including uncovering evidence of the elusive Higgs boson, or "God particle", the theoretical particle which would explain how matter gets its mass.

CERN are expecting a "minimum" down time of two months.

Pepsi plans a $500-million splash in India...

2008-09-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

A trimmer Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s global chairman and CEO, addressed media on Sunday afternoon as a precursor to what will be the $39-billion cola and snacks major’s first-ever executive committee meeting in India.

Dressed in a chic black ensemble and several kilos less, Ms Nooyi is clearly symbolising the healthy lifestyle she so often advocates. Announcing a fresh $500-million (Rs 2,200 crore) investment in India over the next three years, Ms Nooyi said the 26 members of PepsiCo’s executive committee are here to see ‘what makes India tick’.

Since Ms Nooyi took charge of the top job at PepsiCo — a company often accused of selling sugary drinks and salty snacks — she has been trying to change its complexion. The objective is to give it a makeover from an undifferentiated cola maker to a company that offers choices to every consumer.

She has been championing health products since she believes that’s the future and she wants to be the first one to come up with innovations.

So, is PepsiCo set to become a company that also sells cola? Ms Nooyi seems to think so. “We want our portfolio to be balanced in India. And the challenge is to ramp up our health portfolio so fast that it is evenly divided between value-added products or good-for-you and better-for-you products, and aerated drinks and snacks known as fun-for-you products.”

Good-for-you and better-for-you products make up for 30% of the company’s beverage portfolio. And in case of snacks, the number is as high as 80%. This, Ms Nooyi said, is the direction PepsiCo will take further to achieve a balanced portfolio.

Another issue that she has caught on to early is retaining talent. An issue that’s close to her, Ms Nooyi has talked about PepsiCo’s ‘talent sustainability’ project in almost every public forum. PepsiCo India, for example, has given the world 27 CEOs, an ‘achievement’ Ms Nooyi says she’s especially proud of. No surprise then, that meeting the alumni is part of her packed schedule for India. “You may get out of Pepsi, but it’s hard to get Pepsi out of your system,” she believes.

Speaking on the financial crisis the US is dealing with, Ms Nooyi said: “The problems of Wall Street have not yet trickled down to mainstream which is where we are. We fortunately continue to be growing at a robust pace.”

She has swung into action with a pilot project which will introduce healthier foods for people ailing from malnutrition and deficiencies — these products would be made available through a public distribution system. Knowing Ms Nooyi, she would like the results of the project ‘tomorrow’, but PepsiCo’s chief scientific officer Mehmood Khan who’s heading the project said, “It’s very important to get the product right. We are working on the ideal resource allocation for the project.”

The fresh $500-million investment for India will be infused, adding new manufacturing capacities, marketing infrastructure, sustainability and R&D. Elaborating on how bullish PepsiCo Inc is on India, she said the market is clocking double-digit growth in volumes.

Right after the committee meeting, Ms Nooyi will chair the high-profile ET Awards jury on September 24.

Source: The Economic Times

IBM bumps Microsoft from second place on brand-value list...

2008-09-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

IBM has moved past Microsoft to claim the title of second most valuable brand in the world, according to the annual Global Brand List.

Interbrand, a global brand management firm, reported Thursday that IBM’s brand value has increased 3 percent, to $59.03 billion, in 2008. That was enough to push it above Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), which was assigned a brand value of $59 billion and fell to No. 3.

Coca-Cola, with a brand value of $66.67 billion, claimed the top spot on the list for the eighth year in a row.

In addition to IBM, which has 11,000 employees in Research Triangle Park, several other businesses with significant presences in the Raleigh-Durham area made the list, including: Hewlett-Packard (No. 12, $23.5 billion), Cisco (No. 17, $21.3 billion), Sony (No. 25, $13.6 billion), Caterpillar (No. 66, $5.3 billion) and Johnson & Johnson (No. 90, $3.6 billion).

Changes in the global economy have had a major impact over the years, Jez Frampton, Interbrand’s CEO, said in a statement.

Merrill Lynch, for example, fell from 22nd in 2007 to 34th this year, and AIG fell from 47th to 54th. Bank of America, which has agreed to buy Merrill Lynch for $50 billion, was not among the 100 companies listed. The U.S. government agreed this week to an $85 billion bailout of AIG.

IBM to enter solar cell arena...

2008-09-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

Following the IC slowdown, New York is turning its attention towards solar, especially in the Hudson Valley.

Several smaller solar start-ups have set up shop in Hudson Valley, which is just outside New York City. But the area may get a huge boost, as IBM Corp. is reportedly looking to enter the solar-cell fray.

Encompassing nine counties that stretch 150 miles from just outside New York City nearly to Albany, the Hudson Valley is the fastest growing part of New York State.

IBM may enter the market on its own or with a partner. The company has announced several solar technology breakthroughs, but has yet to enter the merchant solar market.

Frank Falatyn, vice chairman of the Solar Energy Consortium in Hudson Valley, said a ''very large company'' is interested in moving into the market, but he declined to elaborate. Many speculate about IBM's intent. Falatyn is also president of Fala Technologies Inc., which offers turnkey engineering and manufacturing services.

Many hi-tech companies in Hudson Valley are moving into solar amid huge demand for the technology. For example, Prism Solar Technologies Inc. recently announced that it has received the first equipment for its 60 megawatt holographic film production line in Tucson, Arizona.

In Ulster County, just outside New York City, the company will shortly open a plant. It will be developing and manufacturing proprietary holographic optical film technology as well as photovoltaic modules incorporating its Holographic Planar Concentrator (HPC) technology.

The company estimates that it will bring more than 140 jobs within three years into the community, and more than 400 jobs within five years. Prism has raised more than Rs.36.43 crore ($8.5 million) dollars primarily from venture capital firms and expects to be announcing an agreement on a manufacturing site in Ulster County in the near future.

Another start-up, Solar Thin Films Inc., a developer of manufacturing equipment for the production of "thin-film" amorphous silicon photovoltaic modules, has recently signed an agreement with Ulster County, New York, for the establishment of a solar module manufacturing plant.

The facility will represent Solar Thin Films' first amorphous solar module manufacturing plant in the United States.

The company will utilise solar module manufacturing machinery produced by Kraft Electronikai Srt., based in Budapest, Hungary, a subsidiary of Solar Thin Films. The company anticipates that, once established, the facility will be capable of establishing six lines of equipment capable of producing 36 megawatts of module power.

In addition, Solar Thin Films will also use its new Ulster County location for research into the enhancement of amorphous silicon module efficiency as well as the development of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) panels. The parties believe that the new facility will create a substantial number of new jobs in Ulster County over the next five years.

Is IBM next? IBM has developed technology in the arena. Recently, for example, IBM said it has managed to squeeze 230W of power on to a centimeter square of solar panel using concentrator photovoltaics. The energy was then converted to 70W of usable electric power, the best power efficiency yet achieved, the company claimed.

The IBM researchers used a very thin layer of a liquid metal made of a gallium and indium compound that they applied between the chip and a cooling block. Such layers, called thermal interface layers, transfer the heat from the chip to the cooling block so that the chip temperature can be kept really low.

IBM and Japan's Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co. Ltd. (TOK) recently said they are collaborating to establish low-cost methods for bringing solar cells to the market. TOK and IBM have agreed to develop processes, materials, and equipment suitable for the production of solar cells, based on copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) technology.

Expecting Google’s Android Launch...

2008-09-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

T-Mobile is expected to be the first carrier offering a phone based on Google's Android platform, set to be announced next Tuesday. Android, which will become open source around the time the first Android handset comes out, is intended as an easier platform for developers to work with.

The device is developed and manufactured by HTC, and called the Dream.

A press event will take place on Tuesday, September 23, at which the first smartphone running Google's Android operating system will be announced. However, the invite doesn't promise that this product will be released next week. T-Mobile USA is now in beta testing, which is designed to slash the time and effort required to get an application on the fourth-largest U.S. mobile operator's phones.

Android represents the basis of the new device which also comes with a new Linux-based operating system for smartphones being developed by Google and a group of partners. This will be strongly tied to Google online services, and may even by advertiser supported.

Rumor has it that the Dream will be priced at $199 if bought with a two-year service contract. Among the Dream's features will be a large touch-screen, a track-ball for navigation and a swivel-out full keyboard, the Journal said. It will also run several Google applications, such as Maps, and feature an online market place that has the same properties as Apple's Store.

"We expect Android will eventually offer a compelling range of mobile applications emphasizing Google's online assets, such as advertising, mapping and search," Neil Mawston, director at Strategy Analytics, wrote in a report released Friday.

An Einstein fridge that can run without power?

2008-09-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

Scientists at Oxford University are working on a 1930 invention by Albert Einstein to develop an environmentally friendly refrigerator which they claim will run without electricity.

Previous researches have suggested that modern fridges emit greenhouse gases called freons and as a result damage the environment. Now the Oxford team is developing appliances that can work without electricity and thereby reduce the gases.

In fact, they have already completed a prototype of a type of fridge patented in 1930 by Einstein and his colleague, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, 'The Observer' reported. The design was partly used in the first domestic refrigerators before more efficient compressors became popular in the 1950s. It avoids the need for freons and instead uses ammonia, butane and water and takes advantage of the fact that liquids boil at lower temperatures when air pressure is lower.

"If you go to the top of Mount Everest, water boils at a much lower temperature than it does when you're at sea level and that's because the pressure is much lower up there," lead scientist Malcolm McCulloch said.

At one side is the evaporator, a flask that contains butane. "If you introduce a new vapour above the butane, the liquid boiling temperature decreases and, as it boils off, it takes energy from the surroundings to do so. That's what makes it cold," he said. Pressurised gas fridges based around Einstein's design were replaced by freon-compressor fridges partly as they were not very efficient.

But, according to the British scientists, by tweaking the design and replacing the types of gases used it would be possible to quadruple the efficiency of the refrigerators that could well be the GenNext appliances.

Source: Business Standard

Palin E-Mail Hack Underlines Webmail Vulnerabilities...

2008-09-21T15:35:00.001-07:00

The recent attack that invaded Governor Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and her privacy drew attention to public web-based e-mail systems’ inherent vulnerabilities, due to the relatively simple way in which Gov. Palin’s account was broken into.

The attacker, who goes by the handle Rubico on blogs and forums, and who is suspected of being a 20-year-old student from Tennessee, has posted on 4chan.org forums an account of how he gained access to Sarah Palin’s yahoo account using the Yahoo password recovery form and publicly available information.

Now, Gov. Palin is a public person, therefore it is easier to obtain personal information about her using sites such as Wikipedia. But even if your personal history is not a matter of general attention, public records or social networking websites, like Facebook for instance, make it relatively easy for someone to obtain enough information to give the correct answers to “security questions” asked by the password recovery systems of public websites.

Alternatives to these relatively easy to guess questions are using secondary e-mail addresses to send one’s password to, or simply lying about your details in the account details. Most web users are conditioned to tell the truth in such forms, and will do so without a second thought, possibly jeopardizing their privacy.

Even though no saucy details were unearthed by Gov. Palin’s e-mail hack, the act embarrassingly proves the point of those who criticized the vice-presidential candidate for using a public e-mail address to conduct state-business: they’re simply not secure enough right now.

The public scandal – it always seems to take one for any overdue change to happen – will most likely prompt web-mail companies to re-think the way they handle security. But until then, if you think your privacy is safe when using them, think again.

Apple recalls defective Iphone power adapters...

2008-09-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

APPLE has ordered a recall of its ultracompact USB power adapters.

The adapters, originally packaged with the Iphone 3G, apparently contain flimsy metal prongs that are susceptible to snapping.

According to Apple, the broken prongs could "remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock".

The flawed adapters were reportedly sold in the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico and South America. Club Cupertino recommended that customers in the affected countries stop using their adapters "immediately" and exchange them for new ones. The company also confirmed reports of "detached" prongs but emphasised that they had caused no known injuries.

The once-shiny fruit has been seriously tarnished by serious 3G network woes and critical OS X security vulnerabilities.

As the Inquirer previously reported, a San Diego man has sued Apple and US wireless partner AT&T over their failure to deliver promised network performance for the Iphone 3G.

In addition, Le Pomme was recently forced to fix a shocking total of 33 bugs, 9 of which enabled remote code execution in OS X (Leopard).

Govt. to chalk out strict norms for Wi-Fi security...

2008-09-21T15:31:00.001-07:00

With terrorists using open Wi-Fi networks to communicate, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Department of Information and Technology (DIT) are working out steps to check this practice.

Investigations into the recent bomb blasts at Ahmedabad and Delhi showed widespread use of wireless technology.

A DIT official said the department was in talks with the DoT and some action in terms of general guidelines, instructions and advisories could be expected soon.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is also looking at various measures taken globally to make such networks secure.

The discussion between the telecom regulator and the DoT also revolves around carrying a campaign by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to educate their customers on security measures related to Wi-Fi.

An official of the cyber security wing of the DIT, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), said the ISPs should provide features like passwords and their protection.

Open networks are easy to access as the most widely used default password for Wi-Fi open network is 1234.

ISPs, however, denounce this point saying Wi-Fi routers are easily available in the market and it is the customer who should take care to protect his passwords.

The unsecured networks should be made secure by customers themselves for their own security. All an ISP can do is educate the user to be more careful on passwords for Wi-Fi technology, said Rajesh Chharia, president, Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Source: Business Standard

Google Inc.’s Sergey Brin Is Predisposed To Parkinson’s Disease...

2008-09-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

In his recently opened blog page, Google Inc.’s co-founder Sergey Brin revealed the fact that he is predisposed to developing Parkinson’s disease, due to a genetic mutation. The discovery was made by his wife’s company, 23andMe, which studied his DNA and reached the conclusion that similar to some of his family members, there is a strong chance that he might also develop the disease.

"Because there are only a small number of genes which are known to have a very substantial effect on health (e.g. 10 times the average risk), I felt the possibility of discovering something very important to my health was just a hypothetical exercise," Brin explained in one of his posts. "So, when my wife asked me to look up [the gene mutation] in my raw data, I viewed it mostly as entertainment. But, of course, I learned something very important to me -- I carry the G2019S mutation and when my mother checked her account, she saw she carries it too."

He also revealed which of his relatives suffer from the degenerative brain disorder - him mother and his great aunt. Brin explained that he felt extremely fortunate to be in the possession of such information, as he is now informed about a certain aspect of his life decades before it is going to happen. This offers him the possibility to perform and support the research needed for better understanding the disease and finding an appropriate solution, which if found, will not only help him but also his family members and others.

Brin shows a lot of confidence in the future, as he now has a better chance of preparing for the things to come.

RIL can sell KG gas at higher than discovered price...

2008-09-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

Reliance Industries (RIL) can technically sell its Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin gas at a price higher than the government-discovered price of $4.20 per million British thermal units (mBtu). The thought has put the government in a tizzy as the countdown for natural gas production from RIL’s D-6 block has started. In the government’s opinion, nothing stops RIL to charge more than $4.20 per mBtu for the gas even as the petroleum ministry termed it as selling price in all its communication.

“The empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on pricing and utilisation of New Exploration Licensing Policy (Nelp) gas approved the pricing formula on September 12, 2007, for determination of the government’s share (profit petroleum) and not the selling price,” an official source said. The pricing formula, approved by the EGoM on September 12, is valid for all contracts under Nelp for five years.

In comments on Sunday morning, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani indicated that he would like to review the $4.2 price fixed by the EGoM. “In the long term, we must have a road map towards market pice,” Mr Ambani said. The government is studying implications of the September 12 decisions on future gas production by other companies under the Nelp.

The EGoM minutes mention that “the biddable character of the formula” must be retained. This indicates that the selling price of the gas could be higher than the discovered price of $4.20 per mBtu at the delivery point, the source said. “Though in the present instance the value of C is to be retained at zero, for the purpose of retaining the biddable character of the formula and allocation of gas amongst priority sectors, the formula must retain C as a positive non-zero integer,” the September 12 minutes said.

Another area of concern is the validity of the gas formula approved by the EGoM on September 12. The formula is applicable to all contracts signed under Nelp-I and Nelp-VI. According to the EGoM minutes, the pricing formula will be valid for five years from the date of commencement of supply.

There will be several gas production under Nelp-I to VI, including ONGC’s 6.7 trillion cu ft gas from the east coast. Production from different fields would differ in date. It is not clear whether the same pricing formula would be valid for varying periods for various contracts, the source said.

The EGoM, constituted on August 13, 2007, to examine and decide the issue of gas pricing and commercial utilisation of gas under Nelp had accepted the pricing formula submitted by RIL and Niko Resources with modifications as per recommendations of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC).

The EGoM was chaired by minister for external affairs Pranab Mukherjee and comprised of power minister Sushilkumar Shinde, minister of chemicals & fertilisers and steel Ram Vilas Paswan, minister of finance P Chidambaram, minister of law & justice H R Bharadwaj, minister of petroleum & natural gas Murli Deora, minister of corporate affairs Prem Chand Gupta and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Source: The Economic Times

Help! Tatas about to quit Singur: CM...

2008-09-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee gave a clear indication that the Tatas were close to a decision on pulling out of Singur.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the West Bengal chief minister, for the first time, noted: “Any further delay in resuming work at the Nano plant would force the Tatas to quit Singur.”

When contacted, a Tata spokesperson refused to comment on the chief Minister’s statement.

The chief minister appealed to all opposition parties to desist from agitating in Singur and, instead, help his government restore normalcy in the region to create an enabling environment for the Tatas to resume operations at the Nano plant forthwith.

Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, who has been spearheading the agitation, rejected the chief minister’s 70-acre offer and reiterated that she would renew her agitation at the Nano factory site if the state government did not implement the September 7 agreement.

She held a meeting on Sunday with all 21 political parties that are supporting her Singur agitation. She is expected to announce renewal of the stir on Monday.

Trinamool activists held a rally in Singur on Sunday demanding return of land and threatened to renew their agitation if their demands were not met.

Ms Banerjee’s has been demanding the return of 300 acres from within the Nano complex and another 100 acres from outside the factory premises for displaced farmers who did not accept state compensation.

She had suspended it on September 8, following the September 7 agreement between the Buddhadeb government and Trinamool Congress that was inked in Raj Bhavan in the presence of the West Bengal governor.

Doing his bit on behalf of the Centre, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee warned, “Tata pullout from Singur would hurt the future of industrialisation in West Bengal.” Mr Mukherjee was addressing a gathering on Sunday in Murshidabad.

The chief minister urged Singur farmers and opposition parties to accept the new compensation package announced by his government on September 13. He also appealed to the Trinamool Congress to help his government in facilitating the Nano project.

In his statement, the chief minister has noted: “Opposition parties should also consider the future of the next generation and look into West Bengal’s overall interest.

The chief minister’s appeal follows his Saturday evening session with West Bengal governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, wherein, he had explained his government’s stand on the Singur land return issue.

He had also told the governor that it would be impossible for his government to return more than 70 acres from within the Nano complex. He had also drawn the governor’s attention to the circumstances that had compelled his government to announce the new package.

“We are running against time and any further delay will force the Tatas to quit Singur,” the chief minister, reportedly told the governor.

Source: The Economic Times

Reliance SEZ referendum sees low voter turnout...

2008-09-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

The first-of-its-kind referendum on whether farmers and their kin want the Reliance Industries-promoted special economic zone (SEZ) in Navi Mumbai was marked by low voter turnout today. Out of 30,000 eligible voters, whose names were included in land records, only 6,151 showed up for voting.

"A total of 6,151 eligible voters registered their opinion,” said district collector Nipun Vinayak.

Reached for comments, top Reliance executives said the low turnout vindicated the company’s position on the issue.

Vinayak is not expected to declare the result of the referendum immediately and will submit a report to the Maharashtra government after analysing the opinions expressed by the farmers along with their votes. After that, the state government is expected to announce whether the 22 villages in Pen taluka will be a part of the SEZ or not.

However, some civil society activists had told the villagers not to give any opinion to the officials. “To ensure that the government doesn’t get the scope to misinterpret the opinions of the farmers, our activists who combed the area for the last three to four days gave clear instruction to the farmers that they shouldn’t answer any of the questions posed by the officials and should simply tell them that they don’t want to sell their land,” said Vaishali Patil, coordinator, Anti-Mumbai SEZ Action Committee.

The activists could be seen posted outside each polling booth, which was in the local school, to collect one copy of the form. Based on these forms, the committee is expected to declare the result of the opinion poll soon.

Vadahav, a village located 10 km off the Mumbai-Goa highway, became the centre of attraction for the Mumbai media. Villagers staged a protest against the initial refusal of the officials to acknowledge the no-opinion forms given to them by the anti-SEZ activist. Tempers ran high and those sympathetic towards the SEZ were intimidated.

Sudam Mhatre, who owns an acre of land in the village and runs a poultry farm, said: “I am willing to sell my land for the SEZ project, provided I get Rs 1 crore for my one acre of land. I have four sons and I can’t sustain my family on the ragtag poultry which I operate, and one acre of land.” The mob did not take kindly to his utterances.

Kaleshree, another village located around five km from Vadhav, barred the media from entering till the end of the voting. Angry youth from the village appeared in favour of the anti-SEZ activists.

Murlidhar Mhatre, a farmer from Motha Bhal, the largest village in the designated SEZ area with more than 2,000 eligible voters, said emphatically: “Out of my five acres of land, I had earlier sold one acre for the SEZ. But today I cast my vote against the SEZ. That time, I needed money for my daughter’s marriage and I also to carry out repairs of my house; so I sold the land. Why should I sell off the rest of my land which gives me enough income to support my family?”

Source: Business Standard

India may take up Ranbaxy ban issue with the US...

2008-09-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

India may take up the issue of the import ban imposed by the USFDA on 30 drugs manufactured by Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy in case the ban is not revoked following corrective actions taken by the company, according to senior officials in the commerce department.

Ranbaxy has told the commerce department that it has made procedural corrections at its manufacturing facilities in conformity with FDA rules and is in the process of informing the FDA.

“There is nothing wrong with the quality of the drugs banned by the US. There were small procedural violations pointed out by the USFDA. Ranbaxy has informed us that those violations have been corrected and it would now invite the FDA to come and inspect its facilities,” a commerce department official told ET.

The government would step in if the US FDA refused to revoke the ban despite the steps being taken by Ranbaxy. “We have no objections when genuine concerns are addressed. But if quality issues are unnecessarily raked up as non-tariff barriers, we will surely discuss the matter with the US,” the official added.

Expressing concern over USFDA’s actions against Ranbaxy, commerce & industry minister Kamal Nath had written to his US counterpart Michael O Leavitt last month, pressing for an early resolution of the issue.

“The company (Ranbaxy) has been fully co-operating with the concerned authorities and is willing to take appropriate steps to bring all concerns and issues to a closure. Since June 2008, requests for the company to meet the FDA and gain a better understanding of US’ concerns have been fully addressed,” the minister pointed out.

The chemicals minister Ram Vilas Paswan had also written to Mr Leavitt last month, supporting the pharma company’s case. The minister had sought the US health ministry's intervention to resolve the matter at the earliest. The external affairs ministry may also take up the issue with the US government, according to sources.

However, this could not be independently confirmed. Mr Paswan wrote to the external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, asking for Ranbaxy's case to be taken up through the Indian Embassy in the US.

The USFDA had banned 30 medicines manufactured by Ranbaxy at Dewas in Madhya Pradesh and Poanta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh. While drugs produced at the Dewas unit were banned on the ground of cross contamination, those manufactured in Poanta Sahib were banned due to improper maintenance of records. Sources said that these were not minor violations which could be corrected easily.

Some in the pharmaceutical industry believe that the ban could be a ploy by the US pharma lobby to discourage Indian drug manufacturers.

The Indian formulations used for treating serious diseases such as AIDS are several times cheaper than those manufactured by the US companies.

Source: The Economic Times

'Bankrupt' Lehman Brothers on hiring spree!

2008-09-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

Collapse of the Lehman Brothers in the world's biggest ever bankruptcy story may have sent thousands of its employees flocking the job market, but the 158-year-old American investment bank giant still seems to be in hiring mood.

Once known as one of the favourite places to work in the financial services space, especially due to its fat pay packages, Lehman Brothers had a workforce of close to 26,000 employees at the last count. But its filing for bankruptcy protection on September 15 saw nearly all its employees on a lookout for new employers.

However, Lehman Brothers seems to be continuing with its hiring activities, as it has posted at least four new job vacancies for the US after its bankruptcy filing. These vacancies are for positions like Investor Accounting Specialist, Foreclosure Specialist and Default Supervisor, and they seem to have been posted on the bank's website a day after the bankruptcy filing or later.

In addition, Lehman Brothers has over a dozen recruitment events lined up across the world through September, October and November.

The interested candidates, if any, can register for these recruiting events and presentations in the career section of Lehman's website.

"These events are intended for those who are applying for early years programmes, internships or first year Full Time Analyst/Associate programme hires," it says on its website.

One such event, "Equities and Fixed Income PhD Recruiting Presentation", is scheduled for as early as September 23 in Massachusetts and is for Harvard and MIT students in their penultimate or final year of their PhD programme.

Ten such recruitment events are lined up for the UK, while there are three others for Italy through October and November.

While two vacancies -- Investor Accounting Specialist and Supervisor Default positions -- were posted on September 16, it posted one vacancy each on September 17 and 18 for Foreclosure Specialist and Investor Accounting Specialist posts, respectively.

However, there has been no new job postings after its bankruptcy filing for Asia-Pacific and Europe and Middle East regions. Lehman has posted at least four job vacancies in September for India, where it employs over 2,500 people, but all of them were posted before the bankruptcy filing.

However, a number of job portals continue to have close to 20 recruitment ads for Lehman's India operations for positions like Test Engineer (QA), Java Senior Developer, Prime Services Analyst, Project Manager, Capital Resource Analyst and Vice President - Global Sales & Banking Technology.

One of Indian job portals vacancies are also there for the posts of Recruitment Manager and Recruitment Executives at Lehman Brothers. However, these job website postings are believed to have been put before the bank's collapse.

Lehman set up BPO operations in India in 2005, and according to the fact-sheet of the firm, the centre saw the number of employees going up by eight times by the middle of this year and had declared its plans to grow the operations. In fact, it was recruiting till as recently as couple of months back.

The company has in all about 2,500 people working for it in India, including those in the BPO unit. Recent news reports have said the company had asked a section of its BPO staff to quit.

In its new job postings for the US, Lehman says that the job profile of a "Foreclosure Specialist" would involve monitoring "the actions of the Foreclosure Attorneys... to ensure that all paperwork needed by the Attorneys is completed timely and accurately. To update internal systems for checks and balances and to apply money as appropriately directed."

Besides, the Investor Accounting Specialist would be responsible for the monthly reconciliation of investor custodial accounts and clearing accounts, while Supervisor (Default) would be responsible for the overall operation of the Collection Department.

Lehman has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which allows a company to restructure while creditor claims are held at bay.

A number of the company's employees are already said to have joined other companies, including its Mergers Advisor Group Chairman and co-head Mark Shafir, who has joined Citigroup.

Sharif continued at Lehman through its bankruptcy filing and is said to have helped negotiate the USD 1.75-billion sale of its US investment banking business to British banking major Barclays.

Source: The Economic Times

Markets at a glance...

2008-09-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

It was an action-packed week at the bourses, with the bears going for the kill in the first half of the week as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch got bought out by Bank of America and AIG sought a $40 billion Federal Reserve aid.

Meanwhile, ICICI Bank reported an exposure of Rs 375 crore in the senior bonds of Lehman. But the bulls staged a smart comeback on the back of US government’s initiatives to infuse $85 billion in AIG, mop up toxic mortgage debt from banks and curb short selling.

Investors back home also took heart from P Chidambaram’s assurance that the health of Indian banks was sound.

The markets ended the week on a strong footing, with the BSE Sensex closing 726 points (or 5.46 per cent) higher at 14,042, while the Nifty gained 207 points (or 5.13 per cent) to 4,245.

During the month, FIIs have sold shares worth Rs 2,785.9 crore (till September 18) while mutual funds have bought shares worth Rs 1,031.20 crore (till September 17).

What to expect this week

With no major events scheduled in the forthcoming week, the market will closely watch the turn of events globally, especially in the US financial sector, to take cues on a future course.

Volatility could further heighten on account of expiry of September 2008 derivatives contracts. While traders admit that the US bailout plan could provide timely support to the equity markets globally, they point out the importance of a cautious stance as the subprime crisis is far from over.

India Inc’s top 20 taxpayers showed mixed signals, with almost 35 per cent paying lower advance tax in September this year. Shares of state-run oil marketing firms will be under pressure on a rebound in crude oil prices to $98 from recent lows of $90.51.

. Stock to watch

OPTO CIRCUITS

Last week's close (Rs) 294.73

Prev. week's close (Rs) 307.70

Week's high (Rs) 304.95

Week's low (Rs) 260.23

Last week's ave. daily turnover (Rs cr) 16.82

Prev. week's ave. daily turnover (Rs cr) 5.44

Number of up/down move 3/2

Healthcare equipment manufacturer Opto Circuits India was in the news last Friday, with the acquisition of Europe-based medical devices maker. The acquisition size is over $100 million (about Rs 460 crore), which is close to Opto’s FY08 revenues.

Despite the mid-cap index increasing 3 per cent on Friday, the stock did not react much to this piece of news (up 1.83 per cent), probably because investors are waiting for further details about the acquisition.

Another reason why investors would have chosen a cautious stance towards the stock is the fact that one per cent of the company's shares were held by Morgan Stanley Mauritius (as on June 30), which has been on a selling spree last week. At Rs 295, the stock trades at 14.8 times its FY09 earnings and is close to half of its 52-week high of Rs 587.

Source: Business Standard

Helium leak forces two-month shutdown at LHC...

2008-09-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

The world's largest particle collider has been shut down for at least two months due to a large helium leak stemming from an incident Friday, officials said.

The Large Hadron Collider is a gigantic particle accelerator located in a nearly 17-mile-long circular tunnel along the French-Swiss border about 330 feet underground. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN.

The collider was officially launched on September 10 when the first particle beam was successfully sent around the full circuit. On the heels of an earlier malfunction due to a faulty transformer, CERN said Friday's incident was most likely caused "by a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure." At no time was there any risk to people, CERN added.

Although a full investigation is still underway, CERN announced Saturday that the section of the tunnel will have to be "warmed up" for repairs, which means the LHC will be down for at least two months.

The LHC experiments involve accelerating two beams of subatomic particles--called hadrons--in opposite directions to more than 99.9 percent the speed of light. Smashing the beams together will create showers of new particles for physicists to study using special detectors.

The result is expected to push forward theories of particle physics and the fundamental building blocks of all things. The LHC was designed primarily as an attempt to product the "Higgs boson," a hypothetical particle whose observation would help confirm some of the predictions in the Standard Model of physics. Other currently theoretical particles may also be observed for the first time, including microscopic black holes.

Some have theorized that the black hole experiments could go wrong with catastrophic results, but CERN has done extensive safety analysis and has repeatedly denied any such threat.

Blocking the Sky to Save the Earth...

2008-09-20T15:30:00.000-07:00

TO the relief of climate scientists around the world, it appears that the polar ice cap hasn’t shrunk as much this summer as it did last summer.

The ice cap usually reaches its smallest extent around now, and although the total area of ice in September fluctuates from year to year, in the last two decades it has generally declined, probably because of carbon-driven global warming. Last year, the ice cap shrank at a record-breaking pace; at its minimum it was almost 39 percent smaller than the average from 1979 to 2000. This year it’s down about 33 percent.

A couple of years’ rapid melting may be a random event. But the ice loss of recent years puts the Arctic melt decades ahead of model predictions, raising concern that climate change is proving worse than expected.

We should also worry about the consequences of a decline in sea ice. As the Arctic Ocean loses sunlight-reflecting ice and gains sunlight-absorbing open water, energy circulation across the northern half of the planet could also shift, altering jet streams, storm tracks, rainfall patterns and food production much farther south. The loss of sea ice will probably cause faster melting of the Greenland ice cap and thus a faster rise in sea levels.

How should we respond? First, we must recognize that uncertainty and inertia are inescapable features of the climate system. For instance, we know that warming will melt Arctic permafrost, which, when it rots and releases carbon, causes more warming — but how bad will this cycle be? How much of the extra carbon will be absorbed by plants that grow faster in a carbon-rich atmosphere? Inertia refers to the long lags in the climate’s response to human carbon emissions.

Systems with lots of uncertainty and inertia are notoriously hard to control: we can’t effectively predict their future behavior, and we can’t quickly correct behavior we don’t like. By the time we find out that the climate dice have rolled against us, inertia could make conventional responses like carbon taxes and wind power inadequate. Planning our response around what we currently think is the most likely outcome is therefore reckless. We must hope for the best while laying plans to navigate the worst.

Navigating the worst could involve what scientists call geo-engineering — the intentional modification of the earth’s climate. Unfortunately, although specialist circles and blogs are alive with heated conversations about geo-engineering, the idea is so taboo that governments have provided virtually no research money. Most of these conversations focus on the idea of injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere to screen out the sun’s radiation, as happens when volcanoes erupt. Also, most of the limited scientific research on geo-engineering has aimed to show why sulfate injections won’t work — like why they might damage the ozone layer or produce too much cooling and drying in places where we don’t want these changes.

Yes, it’s vital to have this “red team” of skeptics questioning geo-engineering. But we need more emphasis on a “blue team” to figure out what geo-engineering approaches might work, because we might need to move fast. Instead of replicating volcanoes, we might use synthetic particles made from metals or ceramics designed to scatter sunlight selectively or that exploit the physics that governs the motion of small particles in the upper atmosphere so that cooling is focused at the poles where it’s needed most.

Of course, flooding the atmosphere with man-made particles poses real risks. So to reduce the uncertainty surrounding geo-engineering, research should include real-world tests of various technologies that poke the climate system just a little. At first, tests might use existing research aircraft like NASA’s ER-2, a heavy version of the U-2, to release small payloads of particles and then measure the effects on solar radiation and the ozone layer. If these early tests showed the risks were low, enough material could then be released to have a detectable climate impact, while still keeping the amount substantially less than that needed to offset all human-driven global warming.

For the second stage of tests, we might use high-altitude aircraft to deliver a larger quantity of particles at about 65,000 feet in the tropics, which would then be carried much higher and toward the poles by the natural overturning circulation in the stratosphere. The reduction in climate risk from even a small-scale sun-shading scheme could easily be larger than the increase in risk from the scheme’s possible side effects. And in any case the effort would cost only a tiny fraction of the expense of meaningful efforts to reduce man’s carbon emissions.

The important thing is to get scientists, environmentalists and global-warming skeptics alike out of the nonsensical all-or-nothing dichotomy that characterizes much current thinking about geo-engineering — that we either do it full scale, or we don’t do it at all. While we should all hope that we never need to play God with the earth’s climate, we must also have the best science at hand to do what might be necessary if melting polar ice leads to a far more dangerous future.

Source: The New York Times

IT Fab Four go slow on hiring, defer joining dates...

2008-09-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Recruitments, which are a strong indicator of the expected business for software firms, have suffered a significant drop while placements for the coming season are reflecting the uncertainty in global financial markets. The top four IT exporters have nearly frozen hiring of experienced professionals and have deferred the joining dates for many freshers, analysts said. Around a week or two back, number one software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) reportedly sent out letters postponing joining dates by six to nine months, people familiar with the situation said.

“This quarter, we don’t immediately see a drop in revenues. But we expect the next quarter to show flat to negative growth for some of the top firms,” said an IT analyst, adding that TCS had the highest exposure to financial services among the top tier firms with around 43-44 % of its revenues coming from financial services. According to a survey conducted by brokerage CLSA in 45 colleges, the class of 2009 has received 17.4% lesser job offers compared to the previous year’s figures.

Offers from Satyam and Wipro were about 33-50 % lower while that of TCS and Infosys Technologies were 16% and 12% lower, respectively. Regarding the class of 2008, the study noted, “Companies have pushed out the joining dates for the graduating class of 2008. Admittedly, the class of 2008 was given job offers in 2007, pre-slowdown and companies have ostensibly over-hired relative to demand.”

The numbers could not be confirmed with the IT firms because they were in the silent period before their second quarter results. A Satyam spokesperson said, “We haven’t changed our 12,000-15 ,000 guidance for new hires-we will honour our commitments. We are in our silent period, and as of now, not commenting on specifics like joining dates.” An analyst with a domestic brokerage noted that TCS had scaled down the number of hires it had projected for the year from 35,000 to 30,000 while multinational IBM had asked about 1,000 employees to leave.

“Infosys is the only firm that has so far stuck to the number of 25,000 hires that it had initially given out,” he said. The CLSA survey, which is probably the first comprehensive survey after the slowdown, said Accenture was the only large firm to have shown an increase in hiring numbers among the colleges it visited. The colleges were spread across eight cities and the top IT exporters had collectively hired 7,278 freshers from them last year.

This year, the figure was down to 5,835, the brokerage said. In addition, the IT firms were pruning the number of colleges they visited for placements and dropping tier 2 and tier 3 colleges from the list. Infosys, which visited around 1,079 campuses last year, has scaled the number down to 620 this year, while Wipro has reduced it from 300 to 106.

Source: The Economic Times

Observatory detects record burst...

2008-09-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

GRB 080913 seen by Swift's X-ray and UV/optical sensors

The Swift space telescope has detected a gamma-ray burst some 12.8 billion light-years from Earth - a record.

These intensely bright but fleeting flashes of very high-energy radiation signal some of the Universe's most violent happenings.

This blast, designated GRB 080913, probably originated in the catastrophic explosion of a massive star.

"This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen," said lead scientist Dr Neil Gehrels.

"It's coming to us from near the edge of the visible Universe," explained the researcher from the US space agency's (Nasa) Goddard Space Flight Center.

The burst was detected at 0547 GMT on 13 September, in the constellation Eridanus.

Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the Universe means looking back in time. The distance this flash has had to travel means Swift is seeing the event less than 825 million years after the Universe came into being; and some 70 million years further back in time than the previous record holder, a burst detected in 2005.

Indeed, it is one of the most distant objects ever seen. Only the light from some faint galaxies has been detected beyond this burst - 100-300 million light-years further away.

Scientists are very keen to probe these great distances because they will learn how the early Universe evolved, and that will help them explain why the cosmos looks like it does now.

Swift was launched in 2004. It is a three-in-one observatory. Its Burst Alert Telescope is set up to catch the intense but fleeting flash of very high-energy gamma radiation that initially signals a GRB event. Swift then swings itself to look directly into the flash with X-ray and ultraviolet/visible telescopes.

This longer wavelength afterglow can last days and Swift alerts ground-based observatories to join the spectacle.

Although a Nasa-managed mission, it has significant British and Italian contributions.

The UK's major input has been to provide an X-ray camera and elements of the UltraViolet/Optical Telescope.

Source: BBC News

THEORY OF EVOLUTION...

2008-09-20T14:55:00.000-07:00

A professor at a Vatican-sponsored university has expressed dismay that some Christians reject the theory of evolution.

Gennaro Auletta, who teaches at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, told reporters that recent popes have "recognized the scientific value of the theory of biological evolution."

Joining him at the news conference was a Vatican official who said, "Creationism from a strictly theological view makes sense, but when it is used in scientific fields, it becomes useless."

Pope Benedict XVI warned last week against literal interpretations of the Bible. He told intellectuals in Paris that "the word of God can never simply be equated with the letter of the text."

Church of England Issues Apology

Some 126 years after Charles Darwin's death, the Church of England has gone into 21st-century cyberspace to issue an official apology to the naturalist for its own 19th-century "misunderstanding" over his theory of evolution.

Darwin's thesis that all life evolved over millions of years was published in 1859 in his book, "On the Origin of Species," and almost instantly triggered controversy that still continues.

His antagonists, including the Church of England, vilified him for questioning their own creationist convictions that the universe and all its parts were solely the work of God, perhaps around 6,000 B.C. and certainly no earlier than 10,000 years ago.

But in a new section of the Church of England's Web site, the Rev. Malcolm Brown, director of missions and public affairs, addressed Darwin and conceded that the church "owes you an apology for misunderstanding you, by getting our first reaction wrong."

That reaction, Brown added, resulted in "encouraging others to misunderstand you still."

RADICAL ISLAM

Film Draws Muslim Protests

A movie being distributed as an advertising insert in more than 70 newspapers nationwide is drawing protests from Muslim groups who call it an attempt to stir up hate.

The movie, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," argues that radical Islam is the greatest threat to American society and that 10 to 15 percent of the world's more than 1 billion Muslims are "radical."

"There's no other goal to it other than that these people hate Muslims," said Abdelmajid Jondy, president of the Flint Islamic Center in Michigan. The filmmakers "want to make everybody hate the Muslims."

The film was made by the New York nonprofit organization Clarion Fund, which was formed in 2006 to address threats to U.S. security, said Gregory Ross, director of communications.

The advertisement, which included a video of the movie, was disseminated in several competitive states in the upcoming presidential election, including Michigan, Ohio and Florida, according to the list of newspapers included in the ad.

Some have argued that the movie supports Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, who has a military background. Ross said the organization does not back a candidate, but said there was an "emphasis" on swing states.

"Whoever is president, we feel that this will be their greatest task," he said. "We want to make sure America is informed."

"Obsession" will be distributed to 28 million people this month and was inserted in national newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Ross said.

Google billionaire lives with genetic timebomb...

2008-09-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

Sergey Brin, one of the billionaire founders of Google, announced last week that he is carrying a mutant gene regarded as an indicator of Parkinson’s disease.

Brin, 35, revealed that his DNA had been examined by 23andMe, a genetic testing company co-founded by his wife, Anne Wojcicki. The results showed that his genetic make-up included a mutation of a gene known as LRRK2, which several studies have linked to Parkinson’s.

Writing in a new blog, Brin acknowledged that the implications of his discovery were “not entirely clear”, but he added: “It is clear that I have a markedly higher chance of developing Parkinson’s in my lifetime than the average person.”

He cited studies that put that chance at anywhere between 20% and 80% — a margin that some researchers have said is too broad to be worth consideration. One New York neurologist noted that many people with Brin’s mutation, which is known to specialists as G2019S, never develop the disease.

Supporters of genetic testing argue that the DNA results provide important information about health probabilities that can inspire patients to take appropriate action. Critics have argued that the tests may cause psychological problems if patients begin to worry about diseases they may contract in decades ahead.

Brin declared himself “fortunate” to have learnt about his genetic make-up. His mother, Eugenia, has already been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and a DNA test has revealed that she also carries the G2019S mutation.

“This leaves me in a rather unique position,” Brin wrote in his blog. “I know early in my life something I am substantially predisposed to. I now have the opportunity to reduce those odds.”

Brin and his parents have already donated nearly £1m towards research at the hospital in Baltimore where his mother has been treated. With a fortune estimated at £8.7 billion — which according to Forbes magazine makes him America’s 13th richest person — he may be inclined to spend millions more on research into what is currently an incurable disease.

Is Android Google's Ticket into the Enterprise?

2008-09-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

Google Inc.'s Android project could be the start of a much larger enterprise strategy, according to one industry analyst. But before the search engine giant can threaten Microsoft's enterprise supremacy, most observers of wireless industry efforts agree that the company's open source OS platform will need to regain support from its development community.

With the first Android-based phone -- the HTC Dream -- rumored to be joining the crowded smartphone market later this year, whether or not enterprise users will take notice remains to be seen. But according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at The Enderle Group, big business is exactly the target Google hopes to attract.

"The Android platform is part of Google's strategy to eventually move against Microsoft in the enterprise," Enderle said. "Google is coming in with the phone because it's not a platform that Microsoft currently controls and no vendor has reached a monopoly in the mobile space yet."

Enderle said the smartphone is trending to be the next laptop computer and an integral part of enterprise communication. "Just like Microsoft rode the change from the mainframe to the PC into the enterprise, Google will look to do the same with the smartphone," he added.

But other mobile industry watchers, like Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney, disagreed with Enderle's theory that the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant has its sights focused on large organizations.

"Google really needs to focus on the consumer first and we have said publicly that we do not believe Android will be an enterprise candidate," Dulaney said. "If one of the developers or operators wanted to create an open source profile that's attractive to the enterprise, however, Google would say 'go for it.'"

Enderle agreed that Google and its partners will initially target the consumer market with its first batch of handhelds. But, he added, the company will look to create enterprise buzz by following the blueprint set out by RIM and Apple -- which had its devices carried into the enterprise by board members and top-level executives.

"With the economic times being hard, it's difficult to believe that enterprises will be jumping in and buying everybody new phones," he said. "So, the path that Apple and Google are on, for the most part, is a good one. Go after the consumer market first, and then alter the capability of the phone so it can address enterprise needs."

Jack Gold, an independent technology analyst based in Northborough, Mass., argued that whether or not Android has any applicability in the enterprise space will rest solely on the willingness of the developer community to create business-focused apps.

"Developers are always looking at where they can make a buck and I know there are enterprise-level developers that want to look at this environment," he said. "I've talked to some developers who have said they are looking at Android because they expect it to be a major player."

Unfortunately for Google, there has been a vocal contingent within its Android developer community that has expressed some concerns over the search giant's overly secret behavior with the open source OS. Leading up to last week's Android software developer kit (SDK) launch, the company has been criticized for restricting access to key development tools and bringing open source principles into question.

Earlier this summer, Google announced that the latest SDK would be released first to the 50 winners of its Android Developer Challenge, a multi-million dollar contest to find the most innovative Android applications. The contest was met with severe criticism from developers, who argued the company was compromising its developer-friendly reputation and not allowing many early adopters the chance to grow the platform.

"No one likes secrecy, especially in the developer community," Gold said. "Those guys want access to everything and they don't want Google to be overly controlling."

Gold added that by keeping Android close to its vest, Google is contradicting the open source principles it's trying to uphold.

"On one hand they're trying to do the right thing and create an open mobile platform, and on the other they want to be in control of everything," he said. "It's a bit like politics, trying to get the left and the right to vote for you at the same time. It's going to be a hard thing for Google to pull off."

Intel India team lofts a ‘sixer’...

2008-09-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

The world’s first six-in-one processor has been completely designed and developed in India.

Engineers of the Design Enterprise Group at the Bangalore development centre of chipmaker Intel have crafted the latest Xeon processor, used to fuel high-end, server-type computers.

The 7400-series has 1.9 billion transistors on board to drive six separate cores or computing units. That means after dual and quad processors, we are now offered one chip doing the job of six.

Better performance

Code-named ‘Dunnington’ during its development (the joke among Intel geeks is that it should be renamed DunninIndia), the chip delivers one-and-half times more performance and power savings than earlier Xeon processors, R. Ravichandran, director-sales, Intel South Asia, said at the unveiling of the chip here last week.

Having designed the chip from scratch, the Intel India team also carried out “post-silicon validation,” making sure the design translates into a smooth manufacturing process when it is handed over to the silicon foundry.

Expertise in product design

Intel India president Praveen Vishakantaiah, who personally led the Dunnington team in its formative period, says: “We have achieved considerable expertise in product design and the proof of this is in today’s launch of the world’s first six core x86 processor, which has been completely designed here.”

Terascale chip

The India centre of Intel was also a key partner last year in delivering the world’s first terascale experimental chip capable of one trillion operations per second.

Source: The Hindu

Mission to collect rock samples from asteroid...

2008-09-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

The European Space Agency is planning an ambitious mission in which anuncrewed robot would land on an asteroid near Earth and extract up to 300 grammes of dust and rock.

Detailed plans for the Marco Polo mission are being developed at the company's EADS Astrium in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, and OHB in Bremen, Germany. If the plans are approved by ESA, the mission could launch in2 017. It would cost around EUR300m.

Understanding the composition of asteroids is of great interest to planetary scientists because they represent the debris that was left behind when the solar system formed 4.6bn years ago.

Dr Matthew Genge at Imperial College London said, "We've got over 30,000 meteorites in collections around the world, but we don't know where the majority of them come from - exactly which asteroids," he said.

"The value of going into space is that we know exactly which asteroid it comes from and that tells us how far from the sun it probably formed and that gives us that little extra information about the formation of our solar system."

Dr Ralph Cordey at Astrium said, "We've got to look at all elements - how we would design the mission, how to design the trajectory to one of a number of possible asteroids, how to optimise that so we use the smallest spacecraft, the least fuel and the smallest rocket."

One scenario would involve a launching from Europe's Kourou spaceport in French Guiana using a Soyuz rocket before undertaking a series of gradually higher orbits of the Earth. From here the space craft would fire off towards a near-Earth asteroid - a journey that could take two-and-a-half years.

Once there, the craft would spend months mapping the surface so that mission controllers could decide on a suitable landing site. After landing it would need to be kept in place using downward thrusters because of the asteroid's weak gravity. At the same time it would use a coring device to remove samples of dust and rock.

During take off it would take photographs of the landing site in order to give scientists the most information possible on the context of their samples. Next the spacecraft would return to Earth and jettison a cone-shaped module that would land on Earth without a parachute.

The mission is similar to the failed Japanese Hayabusa spaceship mission to Itokawa asteroid in 2005. The space agency hopes some dust from the asteroid has swirled into its sample chamber.

Source: The Hindu

Judge approves $1.3bn Lehman deal...

2008-09-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

Lehman's Manattan skyscraper is reportedly worth nearly $1bn

A New York bankruptcy judge has backed a $1.3bn (£700m) plan for Barclays to buy the core business of collapsed US investment bank Lehman Brothers.

The deal gives the UK bank ownership of Lehman's Manhattan skyscraper - worth nearly $1bn - as well as responsibility for some 9,000 former staff.

Lawyers for what was the fourth biggest US investment bank said they were confident many jobs would be safe.

Lehman collapsed on Monday sparking a week of turmoil on financial markets.

A US bankruptcy judge approved the sale after a seven-hour hearing that ended past midnight, saying he had found no better alternative for the assets Lehman sought to sell.

'Tsunami victim'

"I have to approve this transaction because it is the only available transaction," the judge, James Peck, told a packed Manhattan court.

He said he was saddened by the case, which he called the "most momentous bankruptcy hearing I have ever sat though".

"Lehman Brothers became a victim, in effect the only true icon to fall in a tsunami that has befallen the credit markets," the judge added.

The demise of Lehman - which collapsed having incurred huge bad debts related mainly to the US mortgage market - prompted the largest US bankruptcy case in history.

Earlier this week, Barclays had agreed to buy the bank's North American investment banking and trading unit for $250m, as well as its New York headquarters and two data centres for $1.5bn.

But the final figure was reduced after Lehman's lawyers said new property valuations were less than expected and that the company's trading accounts had shrunk.

The deal will free up cash to fund operations while the rest of the company unwinds. A lawyer for Lehman's said accounts worth around $138bn were dependent on the sale.

Source: BBC News

Foreign investments via P-notes halve to 25%...

2008-09-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sustained selling by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) since January this year has shrunk the share of foreign investments in Indian shares through participatory notes (P-notes) to 25% of the total FII investments in the country.

This has more than halved from 52% in October last year, when the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had clamped down on P-notes issuances. The figure was revealed to ET by an official familiar with the development. FIIs, including Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns have been on a selling-spree in India. Despite pressure from FIIs on SEBI to review the P-notes policy, officials say that the policy will not be reversed. Since October last year, FIIs have been arguing that P-notes issued by them had no direct relation to the position they had taken in the Indian market. Hence, there should not be any limits on P-notes issued by them.

P-notes are derivative instruments issued by SEBI-registered FIIs to other overseas investors seeking to invest in Indian securities, but are not registered with SEBI either out of choice or regulatory issues. Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Credit Lynonnais, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are the biggest issuers of P-notes. The notional value of P-notes outstanding was at Rs 31,875 crore in March 2004. By August 2007, the value of P-notes was Rs 3.53 lakh crore, about 51.6% of assets under custody by all FIIs in India.

In the past three days, Morgan Stanley Mauritius sold shares worth Rs 1,400 crore in a series of block deals. Likewise, Bear Stearns and Lehman liquidated their portfolio of small-, and mid-cap stocks in India just before they went under. Several overseas funds by registering themselves with the capital market regulator are coming from the front door, after curbs were imposed on P-notes last year in October. As per the information on the SEBI website, on September 18, 2008, there are 1,506 registered FIIs and 4,576 registered sub-accounts against 1,113 and 3,445, respectively, as on October 16, 2007, when SEBI had imposed restrictions on P-notes. The policy had a three-fold approach to contain inflows driven by P-notes.

Firstly, FIIs and their sub-accounts were banned from issuing new ODIs with underlying as derivatives and directed them to wind up the existing ones within 18 months.

Source: The Economic Times

Reliance SEZ: Referendum in 22 villages tomorrow...

2008-09-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

The stage is set for a referendum in 22 villages in the neighbouring Raigad district tomorrow, to gauge farmers opinion about whether they are willing to part with their land for the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliances special economic zone (SEZ).

Ambani has planned a multi-product SEZ on 10,000 hectares of land in the Konkan region. It is expected to attract an investment of nearly Rs one lakh crore.

Ever since the Reliance group initiated steps for procurement of land, anti-SEZ activists led by veteran PWP leader N D Patil launched an agitation in the region. Taking cognisance of the agitation, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh had assured the agitating activists that the state government will withdraw itself from the land acquisition process.

Deshmukh had assured Patil in July that the government will seek the opinion of those residing in 22 villages in the command area of the Hetwane dam whether they are willing to part with their land for the project.

It has been decided to get the opinion of villagers in writing tomorrow. Raigad collector Nipun Vinayak has identified 23 zilla parishad schools in the 22 villages, which would be used as sort of 'polling booths' for the referendum.

Meanwhile, anti-SEZ activists have stepped up their campaign against the special economic zone in Raigad district.

Birla defends Hindalco rights price...

2008-09-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hindalco Industries Ltd unveiled plans to invest nearly Rs 20,000 crore over the next three years to set up aluminium plants and augment capacities.

The company will spend Rs 6,000 crore in the current financial year, Rs 7,800 crore in 2009-10, and Rs 6,000 crore in 2010-11 to wrap up expansion and set up new plants in Orissa, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, the Chairman, Kumar Mangalam Birla, said at the company's annual general meeting here on Friday.

He said the company has already raised the money for the plan.

The rights issue, which opens on Monday and closes on October 10, will be sold at a ratio of three shares for every seven held at Rs 96 per share.

The company is raising $1 billion to repay part of loan that it raised to fund $6 billion acquisition of Novelis Inc 15 months ago.

Some shareholders said the pricing was inadequate. Others feared the issue may be under-subscribed due to the current market milieu.

"Will the promoters buy the unsubscribed lot, if any?" asked a grieved shareholder.

Birla replied the rights have been priced attractively. "And I don't see prices of our shares falling to these levels again."

On the Novelis acquisition, Birla assured shareholders it was a good investment.

"The cost of building a Novelis is about $12-13 billion compared with the $6 billion we paid to buy it. Also, it's not possible to build a company with the kind of technology it has. That is the advantage of Novelis. And practically, they are market leaders wherever they are in," he said.

Birla said an investment of Novelis' size takes at least three years to show on the EPS (earnings per share).

The company has nearly trudged half that route.

"The turnaround is already being seen. Novelis has reported profits for the first quarter against a loss in the previous year."

The aim is to create synergies between Hindalco and Novelis, Birla said.

Is ONGC making heavy losses in its gas biz?

2008-09-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

At its Annual General Meeting yesterday, ONGC said it is making heavy losses in its gas business.

ONGC lost Rs 700 crore in gas business in FY08. This is primarily because ONGC sells 95% gas under APM at USD2.02 mmbtu (Million British Thermal Units). It is waiting for an upward revision.

Crude prices have been fluctuating and are on a downward turn. Even though the international crude prices have been falling, ONGC's Q2 net realisation per barrel is likely to stay around the same as Q1 which USD 69 per barrel.

ONGC's wholly owned subsidary OVL is planning to raise USD 1 billion bridge finance for OVL's acquisition of Imperial Energy. OVL (ONGC Videsh Limited) instead of raising money from the financial institutions, might borrow money from ONGC at a 6% interest. However, the government is keen that OVL should raise money from financial institutions so that it can hedge the risk. But ONGC's point is that it is flushed with money; has Rs 25,000 crore in cash and it will not hedge risks because interest rates are on their way up.

Banks may see short-term rally...

2008-09-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

A rally in bank shares is likely to continue next week because of attractive valuations, dealers and analysts said.

However, gains may not sustain as traders, concerned over volatility in the short term, may book profits at every rise, they said.

“Bank shares depend upon how global bank shares fare. With the funds being infused by the (US) Fed and other central banks, it looks like there could be some buying in global financial stocks,” said Hatim Broachwala, a banking analyst at Khandwala Securities.

The US Federal Reserve infused $180 billion into the financial markets to ease the liquidity crisis after big investment banks went bust.

Financial giants like Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and AIG incurred huge losses because of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Morgan Stanley is likely to be taken over very soon. Banking is the only sector that has seen a lot of two-way trades on a daily basis in the last one month, said Sandeep Shah, head of equity sales, Tower Capital.

“We are optimistic on public sector banks. The valuation gap between private and public sector banks has come down. Going ahead, this differential should come down more,” Shah said. Bank stocks were battered on Wednesday following reports of some Indian banks’ exposure to Lehman Brothers, which has filed for bankruptcy.

ICICI Bank has a debt exposure of $80 million to Lehman Brothers, while State Bank of India has around $5 million.

The Bank Nifty fell by 3.6 per cent on Wednesday, compared with Tuesday, while the Nifty fell 1.6 per cent.

Shares of ICICI Bank were the worst hit amid news of its exposure to Lehman Brothers globally.

IT: US blues

Information technology (IT) shares will continue to languish in the coming week, with spurts of value-buying, as the roil in the US financial markets further weakens business outlook for the industry, analysts said.

This week, Lehman filing for bankruptcy protection and Merrill Lynch’s sale to Bank of America has sent jitters among investors in the tech sector as these are large key clients for offshore IT vendors.

Analysts said talk over the sustenance of Morgan Stanley as an independent entity further undermined sentiment. The investment bank is a large client for Tata Consultancy Services.

A report by brokerage CLSA, based on a survey of campus hiring by technology majors from the batch of 2009, which suggested a fall in recruitment compounded concern over the sector.

“This clearly signals that growth is definitely going to be stalled and even existing order book positions may be slashed,” said an analyst. Recent developments in the US banking sector will affect clients’ budgeting for 2009 in November and December, a note published by Citigroup said.

Several brokerages, including CLSA, have expressed concerns on Infosys Technologies and Satyam Computer Services achieving their 2008-09 guidance in dollar terms.

Analysts said it was likely that earnings per share estimates will be lowered even before July-September results are announced.

Tata Consultancy Services’ and Wipro’s earnings estimates for 2009-10 will also be cut because the companies have so far been saying they expected recovery in demand environment towards the end of FY09, said an analyst.

Thus, FY10 estimates are bullish, he added.

The turmoil at AIG has also put the insurance sector under threat, in turn, raising questions over the business of some smaller players such as Mastek, iFlex Solutions, and perhaps even HCL Technologies, said analysts.

The mid-cap sector should be out of bounds at the moment, said an analyst.

Source: Business Standard

Centre hikes FDI ceiling in defence...

2008-09-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

The Centre has accepted India Inc's proposal to hike the FDI ceiling in defence sector from the current 26% to 49% on a case-to-case basis. This is expected to help indigenise defence production through absorption of latest technologies.

The defence sector will soon be open up to modernise the armed forces to meet emerging challenges, said defence minister AK Antony at an Assocham organised summit on Defene Procurement Policy. Mr Antony emphasised that the government would not open up the sector for all and the increased FDI ceiling would be considered only on a case-to-case basis.

The government would also review the Offset Policy, which came into effect from September 2008. The aim of the review would be to hasten defence procurement, said the minister.

Mr Antony said that the offset policy has been rationalised to include offset credit banking. This will enable foreign participants to create offset programmes.

In order to simplify the process for a domestic firm to participate in such offsets, mandatory requirement of an industrial license has been relaxed so that they only have to meet the relevant guidelines specified by the government.

This will encourage foreign firms to enter into long-term relationships with their Indian counterparts, said the minister.

Defence secretary Pradeep Kumar also said the defence sector was being liberalised to meet the best defence global practices.

Assocham president Sajjan Jindal said the proposal to hike FDI to a maximum 49% would result in increasing defence indigenisation and also ensure technology transfer to Indian defence industry. However, Mr Jindal said that the defence sector should be opened up fully in which the FDI ceiling can be 49% for all.

Source: The Economic Times

Now, Ranbaxy AIDS drug under US lens...

2008-09-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

A United States Congressional committee has widened the scope of its ongoing inquiry into the United States Food and Drug Administration's (USFDA) handling of drug- marketing approvals of India's leading drug-maker Ranbaxy. It is now probing the quality of AIDS medicines supplied by the company to developing countries under US government-funded programmes.

On Friday, four members of the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce wrote to Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, levelling serious allegations over the marketing application and production process of Ranbaxy and sought all details of medicines supplied by the company under a US government programme (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief -- PEPFAR) that was launched in 2003 to combat HIV/AIDS and is the largest commitment by any nation till date to combat a single disease. Recently, the US government committed over $48 billion to combat several diseases across the world over the next five years.

Estimates suggest that Ranbaxy has received over $9 million from the programme so far. Ranbaxy had a turnover of $1.5 billion in 2007-08, of which a quarter came from US sales.

This is the latest twist in the ongoing travails that Ranbaxy is facing in the US. Last week, the USFDA blocked the entry of 30 medicines manufactured by Ranbaxy at its Indian plants. The company is being acquired by Japanese drug-maker Daiichi Sankyo.

The Congressmen have asked Rice for a list of all non-government organisations that have received Ranbaxy drugs for distribution under the programme.

In a statement posted on the US Congress Committee on Energy and Commerce's website, the senators said for more than three years, the USFDA and the Department of Justice have been investigating possible fraud and other improprieties in the firm's applications to sell prescription drugs in the country.

Source: Business Standard

Hadron Collider forced to halt...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.016-07:00

Plans to begin smashing particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be delayed after a magnet failure forced engineers to halt work.

The failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.

The LHC beam will remain turned off over the weekend while engineers investigate the severity of the fault.

A spokesman for Cern told the BBC it was not yet clear how soon progress could resume at the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator.

While the failure was "not good news", he said glitches of this kind were not unexpected during testing.

Delays

The first beams were fired successfully around the accelerator's 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring over a week ago.

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. However, the fault appears to have ruled out any chance of these experiments taking place for the next week at least.

The quench occurred during final testing of the last of the LHC's electrical circuits to be commissioned.

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC's online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

The entry stated that helium had been lost to the tunnel and that vacuum conditions had also been lost.

It added that the Cern fire brigade had been called to the scene.

The LHC has been in construction for some 13 years

The superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9C above absolute zero, to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit.

As a result of the quench, the temperature of about one hundred of the magnets in the machine's final sector rose by around 100C.

A spokesman for Cern confirmed that it would now be difficult, if not impossible, to stage the first trial collisions next week.

Further delays could follow once the damage has been fully assessed over the weekend.

The setback comes just a day after the LHC's beam was restored after engineers replaced a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week.

Source: BBC News

Google ramps up defense of Yahoo ad search deal...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.015-07:00

Google came out swinging this week in defense of its controversial search advertising agreement with yahoo.

The Internet search giant posted an FAQ on its proposed partnership and its affect on advertising prices on its public policy blog Thursday and followed it up with another posting Friday on it's potential affect on competition.

In both cases, Google makes the argument that the deal would not harm competition nor lead to increased advertising prices.

But the blog postings were only part of its busy week. On Wednesday, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters during a press conference that the company planned to proceed with the deal, in absence of any challenge from regulators. The companies expect to move forward with the deal in the second week of October to mid-October, one source familiar with their plans said.

But what Yahoo and Google have not made clear is what their plans will be should the antitrust division of the Department of Justice, or a multi-state task force, announce plans to challenge the deal by filing a lawsuit to block it, or should regulators seek a temporary or permanent injunction. The companies, for example, could demonstrate their resolve and still move forward with the partnership, despite knowing it would wrap them in legal wrangling with regulators.

Google, however, said in a statement:

"When we announced our deal with Yahoo we agreed to give the Department of Justice several months to review the deal before we began implementing it, and we continue to cooperate with regulators as that process continues. Ultimately we have confidence that they'll be able to conduct their review within that time period and allow us to move forward."

"When we announced our deal with Yahoo we agreed to give the Department of Justice several months to review the deal before we began implementing it, and we continue to cooperate with regulators as that process continues. Ultimately we have confidence that they'll be able to conduct their review within that time period and allow us to move forward."

And on Tuesday, Google's chief economist Hal Varian disputed reports of potentially higher advertising costs should his company do its advertising search partnership with Yahoo in his blog.

Such efforts by the Internet giant follow a couple of events last week which may not bode well for its nonexclusive partnership agreement with Yahoo. The Association of National Advertisers announced its opposition to the Google-Yahoo deal. And, on top of that, word began to spread that the Department of Justice had hired seasoned antitrust litigator Sandy Litvack to assess whether a case could be won in trial against the partnership.

Microsoft ads, phase 2: "I'm a PC" takes on Apple...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.014-07:00

After two weeks of ads about nothing to get the public's attention, Microsoft took to the airwaves again Thursday with a new spot meant to reclaim the image of its most important product from rival Apple.

The "I'm a PC" spot opens with Microsoft employee Sean Siler standing against a white background and channeling the frustrated "PC" character from Apple's "Get a Mac" campaign, which has been bashing Microsoft and its flagship Windows Vista operating system since 2006.

"Hello. I'm a PC. And I've been made into a stereotype," Siler says with a wave.

The 60-second spot, which will see heavy rotation on prime-time network television and on the Web, continues with a series of testimonials by Microsoft employees (including Bill Gates), ordinary people and celebrities in diverse settings around the world who proclaim, "I'm a PC."

Mind-body medicine expert Deepak Chopra intones, "I am a PC and I am a human being. Not a human doing. Not a human thinking. A human being."

The spot closes with the tag line "Windows: Life without Walls," which Microsoft tested globally for a year, said Bill Veghte, senior vice president of Microsoft's online services and Windows business group. It's part of the company's $300 million marketing blitz, including print, Web, television and outdoor advertising.

Veghte said the "I'm a PC" spot, which is titled "Pride," is meant to emphasize that Windows is an inclusive brand, countering the stodgy, uncool box Apple's campaign has put it in.

"It's not a stereotype," he said. "It's an inclusive set of experiences that celebrate and support diversity and individuality and choice."

Kathy Sharpe, chief executive of digital marketing agency Sharpe Partners, said Microsoft is running a risk by making such a clear reference to a rival's campaign.

"They have a very tough competitor and they may be looking at them too much."

Even though the spot quickly departs from the austere white background of the Apple campaign, the obvious reference "gives a lot of power to your competitor," Sharpe said. "I'm sure they're very happy at Apple."

She also found the campaign's change in direction a bit jarring.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is not in the latest ad, though a Microsoft spokesman said he may return in future spots.

He starred with Gates in a set of ads beginning two weeks ago that were less about Windows and more about reintroducing the company to an audience that has seen little in the way of Microsoft television commercials recently, save for a short campaign around Vista's launch in early 2007.

While many online pundits speculated that the Seinfeld ads were pulled early, this is what Microsoft and its edgy Miami ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, had in mind from the beginning. It's a departure from the normal model of running a campaign, but Sharpe said if any agency can pull it off, Crispin can.

"It's Crispin and it's unprecedented and that's what they do," Sharpe said.

Veghte said he was pleased with the initial response to the Seinfeld ads, which generated more than half a billion impressions on television and the Web, exceeding the company's goal.

Despite that broad distribution, the ads didn't do much to raise awareness of the Microsoft brand — though more people view the company favorably than they did two weeks ago, according to surveys conducted by YouGovPolimetrix, which takes daily measure of consumer sentiments on 1,025 brands.

Ted Marzilli, senior vice president and general manager of the survey firm's brand group, said about 38 to 40 percent had heard something about Microsoft, positive or negative, in the past two weeks. That's about where the company's figure stood earlier in the year, he said.

Microsoft's "buzz score" — the percentage of U.S. consumers who had heard something positive about the company, minus the percent who'd heard something negative — increased from 11 percent on Sept. 4 when the Seinfeld ads began to 18 percent now.

That gives Microsoft "a reasonable claim that the advertising has been effective," Marzilli said.

Universe's 'dimmest-known galaxy' found...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.013-07:00

Astronomers have identified the "dimmest galaxy" in the universe, which they claim is full of dark matter and an ideal candidate to search for evidence of the mysterious material.

According to them, the galaxy, known as Segue 1, is one of roughly two dozen dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way -- it sits close to the Sagittarius stream which is a river of stellar debris torn from another dwarf galaxy.

"It is the most dark matter-dominated galaxy in the universe," the 'New Scientist' quoted lead astronomer Marla Geha of Yale University as saying.

So far, only 24 stars are confirmed members of Segue 1. Because it is so dim, the astronomers originally thought it was a tight-knit group of stars called a globular cluster. But follow-up observations suggested it's indeed a dwarf galaxy.

The Yale team measured the velocity of its stars and found they were all moving at roughly five km per second, ten times faster than expected if they were gravitationally bound only by each other.

Although the total brightness of the galaxy adds up to less that 350 times the brightness of the Sun, it must weigh at least 450,000 suns -- and possibly 20 times that amount if it is as large as other dwarf galaxies.

There is little gas in the system, suggesting almost all of that mass seems to be made up of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up most of the universe's mass, according to the astronomers.

In fact, the object is one of a larger group of recently discovered galaxies where dark matter seems to outweigh ordinary matter by a factor of 100 or 1000.

"These galaxies are basically invisible. We did not know these kinds of galaxies existed until a couple of years ago," team member Beth Willman said.

Source: The Hindu

'Jules Verne' to plunge into earth's atmosphere on Sept. 29...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.011-07:00

The European spacecraft 'Jules Verne' which recently spent five months docked to the International Space Station for delivering supplies, will plunge into Earth's atmosphere on September 29, according to National Space and Aeronautical Administration (NASA).

The 22-tonne 'Jules Verne' is about to become a fireball and on September 29, with NASA aircraft looking on, will plunge into Earth's atmosphere over the south Pacific Ocean and harmlessly disintegrate, NASA scientists said in Friday's alert news.

Jules Verne recently spent five months docked to the space station where it delivered supplies, used its engines help the station avoid a piece of space junk, and served as an impromptu bedroom for the ISS crew.

Mission was accomplished, and the doomed spacecraft is now making its final orbits around Earth glowing about as brightly as Polaris (the North Star).

US and European observers are favoured with flybys this weekend. Those interested to see Jules Verne can see the, website http://spaceweather.com/flybys.

Source: The Hindu

Why chemo works for some people and not others...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.010-07:00

MIT researchers have shown that cells from different people don't all react the same way when exposed to the same DNA-damaging agent — a finding that could help clinicians predict how patients will respond to chemotherapy.

The research team from MIT's Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) and the Departments of Biological Engineering and Biology, identified a group of 48 genes that can predict how susceptible an individual is to the toxic compound, known as MNNG. The work appears in the Sept. 19 online edition of Genes and Development.

MNNG, a DNA-damaging compound similar to toxic chemicals found in tobacco smoke and in common chemotherapy agents, usually kills cells by inducing irreparable DNA damage. However, the researchers found a wide range of susceptibility among cells taken from healthy people.

"A cell line from one person would be killed dramatically, while that from another person was resistant to exposure," said Rebecca Fry, former MIT research scientist and lead author of the paper. "It wasn't known that cell lines from different people could have such dramatic differences in responses."

Toxic agents such as MNNG create lesions in DNA, provoking the cell to defend itself with a variety of DNA-repair and other pathways. However, every individual expresses slight differences in the genes involved in those pathways.

"Even if everyone is exposed to exactly the same things, they would respond differently, because we're all genetically different," said Leona Samson, senior author of the paper, director of CEHS, and an American Cancer Society Research Professor.

The team members found that after measuring the expression of every gene in each cell line, they could predict cell sensitivity to MNNG from the expression of just 48 specific genes, with 94 percent accuracy.

Several of those 48 genes have already been linked to cancer, said Samson, but it was not known that their expression is already altered before exposure to the DNA damaging agent.

Source: The Hindu

India to join select nations when it sends mission to moon October 19...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.009-07:00

India will join a select group of nations when it sends its first mission to moon on October 19 this year. This will be a big scientific feat for a developing nation like India that has not received much scientific assistance from the west.

ISRO has already made it clear that the Indian lunar mission will not be an exercise in reinventing the wheel. Chandrayaan-1 will strive to unravel the hitherto unknown features of the moon for the first time.

ISRO points out that a lunar mission can provide impetus to science in India, a challenge to technology and possibly a new dimension to international cooperation. Also on the agenda are the preparation of the three dimensional atlas of the regions on the moon and the chemical mapping of the entire lunar surface.

This is a dream for any nation. And India is going to fulfill its long cherished dream on this coming 19th October. Everyone is unanimous on one thing. If India’s Moon project is successful, it will be something for everyone to cheer loudly about. The Moon is Earth’s single important natural satellite, and as planetary moons go, it is unusually large in size compared to Earth.

For India, which began its space journey in a modest way in 1963 with the launch of a 9-kilo rocket from a research facility at the fishing hamlet of Thumba in Kerala, the Chandrayaan-1 marks a quantum leap. Indeed, India’s unmanned scientific mission to moon, which was approved almost four years ago, has moved further up India’s priority list in the wake of China’s successful manned mission of October 2003.

In the meantime ISRO has announced that Chandrayaan 1 will be on Display for the first time before Media. Chandrayaan Means “Moon Craft”.

The Project was announced on the occasion of 56th independence day of India by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. India will be sending its own spacecraft to the Moon. Chandrayaan-1, the lunar craft would be launched using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) weighing 1304 kg at launch and 590 kg at lunar orbit. Lunar craft would orbit around moon 100 km from moon surface.

India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission is aimed at high-resolution remote sensing of the moon in visible, near infrared(NIR), low energy X-rays and high-energy X-ray regions. Specifically the objectives is to prepare a three-dimensional atlas (with a high spatial and altitude resolution of 5-10m) of both near and far side of the moon.

Its objective is also to conduct chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface for distribution of elements such as Magnesium, Aluminum, Silicon, Calcium, Iron and Titanium with a spatial resolution of about 25 km and high atomic number elements such as Radon, Uranium & Thorium with a spatial resolution of about 20 km.

It is hoped that simultaneous photo geological and chemical mapping will enable identification of different geological units, which will test the early evolutionary history of the moon and help in determining the nature and stratigraphy of the lunar crust.

ISRO scientists have placed aboard the spacecraft a moon Impact Probe, a 29kg instrument about twice the size of a shoebox, that will be released to impact onto the moon’s surface after a 20-minute fall.

"The impact probe will test small thrust rockets that will be used to slow down the fall. We’ll require this for future soft landings on the moon,” a senior official at Isro said. ISRO is planning to send an unmanned lunar lander in 2012.

India has seen numerous successes in the recent past with its space programs. On 28th April this year, India created history by launching ten satellites in one go, carrying a payload of 824 kg. India’s first fully commercial launch came on 23rd April when the Italian astronomical satellite, AGILE, was sent into space. On January 10th 2007, India launched the PSLV C-7 vehicle, injecting four satellites into orbit.

The mission would cost a whopping Rs 386 crores with payloads from other international agencies like NASA as well. It is indeed an exceptional example of international collaboration towards exploring the moon.

India has a history on a number of successful space programmes. On April 28, 2008, India created history by launching ten satellites in one go, carrying a payload of 824 kg. On April 23, 2008, India had its first fully commercial launch, when the Italian astronomical satellite, AGILE, was sent into space. On January 10, 2007, India had launched the PSLV C-7 vehicle, injecting as many as four satellites into orbit.

Videocon-BPCL JV acquires Brazilian firm...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.008-07:00

Videocon Industries, in consortium with state-run refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd, has acquired a Brazilian Oil exploration firm for USD 283 million (over Rs 1,309 crore).

A 50:50 joint venture of Bharat PetroResources Ltd (a BPCL subsidiary) and Videocon Industries has completed the acquisition of the entire stake of EnCana Brasil Petroleo Limitada (EBPL) from Canadian gas producers -- EnCana Corp and Alberta Ltd, Videocon on Friday said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The acquisition has been made for a consideration of USD 165 million, while the consortium would also pay USD 118 million as reimbursement the Canadian firms’ expenses.

Last year, the domestic entities had entered into an agreement with the companies to acquire their exploration arm saying that the deal was for interests in 10 deep-water offshore exploration blocks in four concessions in Brazil.

While Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras operates in three concessions, US-based Anadarko Corporation’s Brazilian subsidiary operates in one concession, the filing said.

Shares of Videocon were trading at Rs 229.40, up 5.54 per cent in the afternoon trade on the BSE.

BlackRock owns 40% in DSP arm...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.007-07:00

The 40% stake owned by Merrill Lynch in DSP Merrill Lynch Asset Manager Ltd has already been acquired by BlackRock — one of the largest fund managers in the world.

The name of the asset management company, DSP Merrill Lynch Asset Manager Ltd, which manages DSP Merrill Lynch Mutual Fund, will soon be changed to DSP BlackRock investment Manager Ltd and the fund it manages will be renamed as DSP BlackRock Mutual Fund, subject to regulatory approval. A senior official of the company said the process of name change would be completed soon.

As Merrill Lynch has no stake in the DSP Merrill Lynch Asset Manager Ltd, the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America will not affect its operation, said the senior official. He further clarified that Andrew Holland was employed with the investment bank, DSP Merrill Lynch, as MD, Strategic Risk Group and not with the mutual fund. Therefore, his quitting the company and joining to Ambit Holding, will not affect the functioning of DSP ML mutual fund. As per the latest available data, DSP ML Mutual Fund manages Rs 19,443 crore. BlackRock is the largest listed asset management company in the world with the size of under management at $ 1.4 trillion.

Source: The Times of India

Tata Singur impasse: West Bengal govt rules out further concessions...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.006-07:00

Trinamool Congress Mamata Banerjee on Friday met West Bengal Governor Goaplkrishna Gandhi seeking his intervention for fresh talks to break the deadlock on Singur issue even as West Bengal government ruled out any further concession on a land-for-land agreement.

Banerjee had an 80-minute meeting with Gandhi at the Raj Bhavan and later told reporters that her party wanted a solution in the interest of the people and the state" and asked the government to implement the September 7 agreement reached between her and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for a land-for-land solution.

Banerjee, who had earlier threatened to go on the warpath from any day after September 19, said after meeting the Governor that if necessary her party was prepared for more talks with the government.

However, adopting a tough posture, the Chief Minister ruled out any further concession on the offer already made by it to return 70 acre from Tata Motors car plant complex to "unwilling" farmers and asked the TC to accept it saying only this can lead to a solution of the imbroglio.

"A solution to the (Singur) problem is possible if the Opposition accepts the package which was publicised on September 14 on the basis of the talks between the government and the opposition in the presence of the honourable governor", Bhattacharjee said in a statement.

"I hope good sense will prevail on the government and it will operationalise the decisions taken at the September 7 agreement signed in the presence of the Governor," Banerjee said.

Referring to the agreement, she said "maximum land means it may be 400 acre or 410 acre or 392 acre. All those affected farmers who did not accept compensation should be returned their land."

"According to records with us farmers who held 353 acres which was acquired for the project, besides the 50 acres belonging to bargadars, should be given back their land."

Banerjee said if necessary she was prepared for more talks. "The spirit in which the decisions were arrived at during the September 7 agreement is required to help resolve the Singur tangle", the TC chief said.

She told a questioner that her party was not responsible for the continuing deadlock on Singur issue and that the Marxist cadre were threatening poor people in the name of the rehabilitation package.

She also said that she informed Gandhi about her discussions with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

Banerjee said "I informed him that the state government was not ready to give any concession on the land. I requested him to take care of this point".

She said her party-led Krishi Jami-Jiban-Jibika Raksha Committee would meet on Sunday to chalk out its course of action.

Source: The Economic Times

IT, bank stocks gain on strong global cues...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.005-07:00

Stock markets brushed aside concerns over havoc in international financial markets with the benchmark Sensex notching up 727 points to close above 14000-level on Friday after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked cabinet ministers to stay alert on unfolding global situation.

The 30-share index, which commenced the day notably higher on firming global trend, spurted by another 500 points, minutes after reports of the Prime Minister’s remarks of caution.

The Sensex finally closed higher by 726.72 points, or 5.46 per cent at 14042.32 on heavy buying by funds and general investors. The key index touched a high of 14097.44 and a low of 13674.96.

The National Stock Exchange index, Nifty, surged 207.10 points to close at 4245.25 as heavy-weights led by software, telecom and realty stocks rose smartly. The Nifty surged to a high of 4262.65 and witnessed a low of 4040.80.

Refinery stocks gained the most as oil and gas index spurted 495.53 points at 9468.42, as Reliance gained Rs. 119 at Rs. 2,051.85 and ONGC by Rs. 72.95 at Rs. 1,072.10.

Capital goods index gained 491.57 points at 11740.07 .

IT stocks ended in the positive on strong global cues.

Further, most of the banking stocks ended in the green for the second straight day on Friday after taking a cue from the Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s assurance that the financial institutions are insulated from the present financial crisis in the U.S. Banking stocks index, Bankex gained 5.03 per cent at 7109.88.

Rupee looks up

The rupee finally overcame its weakness on Friday by gaining 59 paise at 45.82/83 against the dollar to close below the 46-mark, reflecting the impact of infusion of billions of dollars by central banks. In a fairly active trade at the inter-bank foreign exchange market, the rupee resumed strong at 46.15/16 a dollar from the previous close of 46.41/42. It touched a high of 45.76 in late dealings.

Source: The Hindu

Ranbaxy readies plan B for banned drug...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.004-07:00

Ranbaxy may shift production of the $1.5-billion drug Valacyclovir to its other FDA- approved facilities, according to some analyst reports. Valacylovir is slated to be launched in late 2009. Last year, Ranbaxy had reached an out-of-court settlement with GSK—the innovator company—and estimates are that Ranbaxy could earn around $90-$100 million during the one-time six-month marketing exclusivity period for the product. Most analysts are of the opinion that there is enough time for the company to secure approvals to launch from other units. Valacylovir is one of the 30 drugs whose import into US from Ranbaxy’s manufacturing facilities in Poanta Sahib and Dewas has been banned by the FDA.

“The Ranbaxy management has indicated that none of its key first-to-file (FTF) products is covered by the ban, except for Valtrex (Valacyclovir), which would be launched by last quarter of calendar year 2009, which gives the company ample time to go for site variation, “ says an Angel Broking report.

“Since the launch of Valacyclovir is scheduled only in last quarter next calendar year, Ranbaxy has about 15 months time to make a dual filing and shift manufacturing of this product to an alternate site, “ a Motilal Oswal report said.

Some industry watchers say any process to change the manufacturing site may take at least 24 months, specially given Ranbaxy’s past rows with the FDA. Also, the API of Valacyclovir is also in the list of the banned drug. Moreover, a shift in the manufacturing location to the US will result in a significant erosion in the margins that will acccrue to the Indian drug maker from the sale of Valacyclovir.

Analysts also point out that several of the company’s big revenue earning products in the pipeline are not being manufactured in the two plants which the FDA has blacklisted. According to a Citigroup report, Ranbaxy’s filings for most of the company’s FTF pipeline including Lipitor, Nexium, Imitrex, Prilosec and Flomax are not from either of the two facilities in question. The FTF pipeline is crucial as these drugs enjoy a 180-day marketing exclusivity in the US.

“Ranbaxy has indicated that it has backup plans to protect key opportunities in the US (mainly patent wins or settlements – Imitrex, Nexium, Valtrex, Flonase, Lipitor and Caduet) in the form of filings from multiple plants – as it did in the case of Simva earlier. While the Imitrex opportunity is quite close (December 2008), in most cases, we believe there is adequate time for Ranbaxy to execute its plans for these products, ” it added.

Imitrex is not in the list of the banned 30 drugs and the company expects to earn $70-80 million during the six month period. As several generic companies get nod to sell their drugs, top generic players have been betting on FTF pipeline to drive their sales in the US.

Source: The Economic Times

'SBI exposure to Lehman at $5m'...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.003-07:00

The country's largest bank, State Bank of India (SBI), has $5 million exposure to Lehman Brothers against its global balancesheet of $250 billion.

"Even out of that $5 million, 60-70% can be recovered," said SBI chairman O P Bhatt, who was addressing a media conference immediately after official announcement of the merger of Bhavnagar-headquartered State Bank of Saurashtra.

He said that the bank has no immediate plans to merge any of its associate banks with itself. Commenting on future mergers, Bhatt said that the merger does not mean only the marriage of balancesheets but it goes beyond that. "Sometimes it becomes a complex issue. After this merger, we would watch and monitor the situation in the banking industry and would think of merger only if any associate bank comes forward for the marriage of convenience (merger)." Bhatt said.

Merger is not a new process for banking industry, he said adding that the SBS is much older than SBI as SBS was constituted with the merger of several small state banks of Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Nawanagar and other small states in 1950. SBI came into existence only in 1955.

Referring to the benefits of merger, he said employees and officers of the bank would be treated at par with SBI staff members and would get pay and perks accordingly. With regard to benefit to customers, Bhatt said that customers of SBS would get greater exposure.

Source: The Times of India

RIL pumps oil from NELP field...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.001-07:00

Reliance Industries Ltd has commercially started pumping oil from its field in the Krishna-Godavari basin off the Andhra coast. This makes Mukesh Amabni's flagship the first firm to tap crude from an acreage given by the government through international bidding and proves that there is a hydrocarbon treasure trove waiting to be discovered deep below the eastern seabed.

The company is scheduled to formally announce the development on Sunday, possibly by Ambani himself. Industry sources said Reiance is pumping 200 bpd (barrels per day) and once all production systems stabilise within a few weeks, it is expected to pump 10,000 to 15,000 bpd. The company plans to dif two additional wells after which the production will rise to 34,000 bpd, or 1.7 million tonnes a year.

Reliance had made the country's biggest gas find in the krishna-Godavari acreage in 2000 and also found oil, which it started commercially pumping from Wednesday. Reliance holds 90% in the field, whicle Candian Niko has the remianing 10% equity. The consortium is likely to sell 0.8 to 1 million tonnes of oil from the field to state-owned Hindustan Petroleum's Vizag refinery, while the remaining output will go to IndianOIl sunsidiary refinery at Chennai.

This also marks flow of oil from dee below the seabed in India. So far, all domestic oilfields are either onland such as in Assam or in shallow waters like ONGC's Mumbai High. The flow of oil from a deepsea eastern field also has the potential to change the countours of the country's energy map. So far, the western coast has been touted as the oil bowl, with Mumbai High and Cambay, while the eastern coast has been touted as the gas bowl.

Relliance operates India's largest refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat and will start production from another export unit in next the couple of month. It will, however, not refine the east coast crude at its refineries and instead sell it to state refiners. The company invested $2.234 billion in the oilfield, estimated to hold 53.5 million barrels of reserves and will produce oil for 11 years, beginning with 20,000 bpd in first year.

Reliance is separately investing $5.2 billion in phase-I of its gas field development plan, the first output of which is expected at least two months later than the first oil.

Source: The Times of India

Cell banking only for card holders: RBI...

2008-09-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

Small-ticket payments and remittances from mobile phones will become a reality soon. Keeping in mind the superior reach of mobile phones as a delivery channel, the Reserve Bank of India on Friday released its final operative guidelines for mobile banking.

The central bank has decided to keep the limit on the ticket-size for mobile banking at Rs 2,500 per transaction, and Rs 5,000 per day. Banks have also been allowed to put in place a monthly transaction limit, depending on the bank’s risk perception of the customer.

While the guidelines will enable lenders such as State Bank of India and Axis Bank to go ahead with their launch of mobile-banking services, the central bank has decided to restrict the services only to holders of debit and credit cards. The card user base in the country is 80 million, with 55 million debit card users and 25 million credit card users.

However, it comes as a blow to players who intended to use mobile banking to reach out to the underbanked in rural India. A number of microfinance institutions and mobile payment operators such as mChek, PayMate and Obopay had tied up to offer mobile-based financial inclusion products in the hinterland. Banks, however, have been allowed to use the services of banking correspondents for extending this facility to consumers.

Only Indian rupee-based domestic services shall be provided on the mobile-payment platform, and the use of mobile-banking for cross-border transactions have been strictly prohibited. Banks which are based, licensed and supervised in India will be allowed to offer such services. Further, only banks which have implemented the core banking platform will be allowed to offer mobile banking.

At the same time, the RBI has recommended that all mobile banking transactions are validated through a two-factor authentication system, thereby complying to the latest security and encryption standards. The RBI has also said the long-term goal of the mobile-payment framework in India would be to enable funds transfer from and account in one bank to any other account in any bank on a real-time basis, irrespective of the mobile network the customer has subscribed to.

The guidelines also recommend that banks do not compromise on their know-your-customer and anti-money laundering guidelines. They will also be required to file suspicious transaction reports (STRs) to the Financial Intelligence Unit for all mobile banking transactions, as in the case of regular banking transactions.

It has also been recommended that banks explicitly state the risks to the customer and also get them to sign a contract before the service is adopted. It has also asked banks to make their mobile-banking services available across all phone networks.

The number of mobile phone connections in the country was at about 296 million at the end of July this year and it is growing at about 8-9 million per month, according to telecom regulator Trai. Banks have been exploring the feasibility of using mobile phones as an alternative channel of delivery of banking services. Some banks have also started offering information-based services like balance enquiry, stop payment instruction of cheques, transaction enquiry, location of the nearest ATM or branch, etc. Acceptance of transfer of funds, instruction for credit to beneficiaries of same or another bank in favour of pre-registered beneficiaries have also started in a few banks, the RBI said.

Source: The Economic Times

Census uncovers what lies beneath...

2008-09-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

Claws ... a white-topped coral crab collected from dead coral.
Photo: Queensland Museum

MORE than 100 new species of exquisitely coloured soft corals, strange-looking jellyfish and parasites that eat the tongues off fish are among the many creatures discovered in an extensive exploration of Australian coral reefs.

Researchers combed the waters off Heron Island and Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, and Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, as part of the global Census of Marine Life project.

Julian Caley, a principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, AIMS, said they were surprised and excited by the variety of new animals that were found in areas familiar to so many divers.

"Our knowledge of marine life is a proverbial drop in the ocean," Dr Caley said.

The AIMS chief executive officer, Ian Poiner, said reefs faced threats from ocean acidification, pollution, global warming, overfishing and starfish outbreaks.

"Only by establishing a baseline of biodiversity and following through with later censuses can people know the impact of those threats and find clues to mitigate them," said Dr Poiner, who is also chairman of the scientific steering committee for the global census, which will release its first decade of findings in 2010.

The research team, which included scientists from the Australian Museum in Sydney, left plastic "dolls houses" on the ocean floor near Lizard and Heron islands for marine creatures to colonise. They will be collected during the next three years, when further expeditions will be carried out.

Among the weird new creatures found this time were shrimp-like animals with claws longer than their bodies, and one with a long, whip-like back leg.

In separate research, scientists have also identified more than 100 new Australian shark and ray species. A CSIRO taxonomist, Peter Last, said Australia had about 300 species in all, about half of which are found only in these waters.

"With the exception of Indonesia, we have the richest shark and ray fauna on the planet," Dr Last said.

His team used DNA techniques to separate similar looking animals, confirming that an angel shark with big "wing" fins that scouts the seabed off NSW was a separate species.

Likewise, the harmless northern river shark was separated from the aggressive bull shark which accounts for many attacks on people in harbours and estuaries.

The dark waters of Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour in south-western Tasmania provide the only known habitat for the dinner-plate sized maugean ray.

Dr Last said that warming seas threatened its habitat. "This ray really hasn't changed much in 80 million years. It would be catastrophic to see it just go in the blink of an eye."

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