Namaste ,
Youth for Seva ( YFS) is an organisation which works towards networking of Youth, esp professionals towards service activities. Last month,a few software professionals from YFS joined hands together and embarked on a program to collect funds to distribute school kits to children of government schools. After finishing the collection drive, they went to Ramayanpet, which is about 100 kms from Hyderabad and distributed the school kits in the schools and finally spent some time in the Seva Bharati hostel for destitute children. They played with the children as well. Pl find below links to the photographs. I thought this would interest you.
Ramayampet:
http://tinyurl.com/lsn89l
Sewa Bharathi Hostel:
http://tinyurl.com/ntufnm
best regards
Ayush
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
An experiment of economic empowerment by Sewa Bharati in Jharkhand
By Maya Singh
The experiment of Self-Help Group (SHG) by Sewa Bharati proved a major success in the remote areas of Jharkhand. Presently, there are over 1400 SHGs in the state run by Sewa Bharati activists. Every group normally has 15-20 women. This number goes over 25,000. Today, these women are writing a new chapter of change after achieving self-respect and self-dependence with the help of SHGs.SHGs have brought about a sea-change and awareness among the women who are mostly illiterate. They not only developed the feeling of taking group decisions but also to get rid themselves of the clutches and atrocities of private moneylenders. They not only changed their own life but also extended a helping hand to the needy persons of the society. Women of a similar group in Ranchi helped in eye operation of a minor child at Shankar Eye Hospital in Chennai. The women in the group of Meera, Rani and Neetu make bari, papar, pickle, spices, jute bags, etc. Arati, Anuradha and Sanyukta impart training of making candles, growing mushroom, making jam and jailly and also sell the goods made by them. Malati and Keshwanti of Tupudana received the training of making bangles by lakh and goods of jute from Jaipur. Now they not only make all these things themselves but also impart training to other women. They organise stalls of the goods made by them under the banner of Sewa Bharati in various fairs and exhibitions. Some sell the products in local markets while some move up to Delhi to participate in the trade fair organised at Pragati Maidan every year.The group of women, led by Malati of Tupudana purchased a tractor with the help of a bank and earned money by running it on hire. When the Block Development Officer (BDO) of Khunti misguided Mateshwari Devi regarding the time of foundation stone laying ceremony of a road at 6.00 am in the morning, she, along with other women, went to the spot at 4.00 am and blocked the road to protest against the mischief of the BDO. Finally, Malati got the contract of making that road and she did the work with dedication and received appreciation from all. The SHG of women led by Arati of Namkom purchased an auto-rickshaw and got contracts of building roads, ponds and government buildings.The women take part in social activities too with full activism. Sarika of Khunti district foiled the game plan of a married person who was going to marry another woman despite having one wife. She earned praise from the people through this conduct. Similarly, Arati, Sanyukta and Anuradha of Namkom jointly got a wedding ceremony stopped, as the groom was addict. They also forced the groom's parents to pay the expenditure of the bride's family on the marriage. They later married that girl with a suitable boy after some time. The women of Bokaro who mostly work as midwives helped their husbands who are mostly rickshaw-pullers and work as collie, to learn at least doing signature. Now they proudly say that nobody in their group is illiterate. They are also very punctual in their activities, which is praised by all.Sumitra Devi and Manodevi of Dhanbad admit that their life has changed considerably after joining the SHGs and Samskar Kendras run by Sewa Bharati. They not only felt the change in their individual life but also got more respect by their husbands and the society. The women of Gumla purchased foodgrains in bulk and sold it after some time, which helped them in earning good profit.A woman of Gumla was not going to her in-laws' house. She had the bad habit of fighting with everybody. She levelled various allegations against her husband and every time she refused to go with him. The women of SHG persuaded her husband and sent her with him. The women of Pakud district organised a mass marriage ceremony and got married 125 pairs.Such change comes silently and leaves lasting impact. All this has been possible only due to the involvement of the Sewa Bharati workers with the projects from hearts.
The experiment of Self-Help Group (SHG) by Sewa Bharati proved a major success in the remote areas of Jharkhand. Presently, there are over 1400 SHGs in the state run by Sewa Bharati activists. Every group normally has 15-20 women. This number goes over 25,000. Today, these women are writing a new chapter of change after achieving self-respect and self-dependence with the help of SHGs.SHGs have brought about a sea-change and awareness among the women who are mostly illiterate. They not only developed the feeling of taking group decisions but also to get rid themselves of the clutches and atrocities of private moneylenders. They not only changed their own life but also extended a helping hand to the needy persons of the society. Women of a similar group in Ranchi helped in eye operation of a minor child at Shankar Eye Hospital in Chennai. The women in the group of Meera, Rani and Neetu make bari, papar, pickle, spices, jute bags, etc. Arati, Anuradha and Sanyukta impart training of making candles, growing mushroom, making jam and jailly and also sell the goods made by them. Malati and Keshwanti of Tupudana received the training of making bangles by lakh and goods of jute from Jaipur. Now they not only make all these things themselves but also impart training to other women. They organise stalls of the goods made by them under the banner of Sewa Bharati in various fairs and exhibitions. Some sell the products in local markets while some move up to Delhi to participate in the trade fair organised at Pragati Maidan every year.The group of women, led by Malati of Tupudana purchased a tractor with the help of a bank and earned money by running it on hire. When the Block Development Officer (BDO) of Khunti misguided Mateshwari Devi regarding the time of foundation stone laying ceremony of a road at 6.00 am in the morning, she, along with other women, went to the spot at 4.00 am and blocked the road to protest against the mischief of the BDO. Finally, Malati got the contract of making that road and she did the work with dedication and received appreciation from all. The SHG of women led by Arati of Namkom purchased an auto-rickshaw and got contracts of building roads, ponds and government buildings.The women take part in social activities too with full activism. Sarika of Khunti district foiled the game plan of a married person who was going to marry another woman despite having one wife. She earned praise from the people through this conduct. Similarly, Arati, Sanyukta and Anuradha of Namkom jointly got a wedding ceremony stopped, as the groom was addict. They also forced the groom's parents to pay the expenditure of the bride's family on the marriage. They later married that girl with a suitable boy after some time. The women of Bokaro who mostly work as midwives helped their husbands who are mostly rickshaw-pullers and work as collie, to learn at least doing signature. Now they proudly say that nobody in their group is illiterate. They are also very punctual in their activities, which is praised by all.Sumitra Devi and Manodevi of Dhanbad admit that their life has changed considerably after joining the SHGs and Samskar Kendras run by Sewa Bharati. They not only felt the change in their individual life but also got more respect by their husbands and the society. The women of Gumla purchased foodgrains in bulk and sold it after some time, which helped them in earning good profit.A woman of Gumla was not going to her in-laws' house. She had the bad habit of fighting with everybody. She levelled various allegations against her husband and every time she refused to go with him. The women of SHG persuaded her husband and sent her with him. The women of Pakud district organised a mass marriage ceremony and got married 125 pairs.Such change comes silently and leaves lasting impact. All this has been possible only due to the involvement of the Sewa Bharati workers with the projects from hearts.
Panini to the rescue for a computational grammarian
Panini to the rescue for a computational grammarian
Research team turns to the “world’s first computational grammarian!”.
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/images/ 2009051850090301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Panini, the legendary Sanskrit grammarian of 5th century BC, is the world’s first computational grammarian! Panini’s work, Ashtadhyayi (the Eight-Chaptered book), is considered to be the most comprehensive scientific grammar ever written for any language.
According to Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad) and an expert on language computation, Panini’s epic treatise on grammar came to the rescue of language experts in making English unambiguous. English is more difficult (as far as machine translations are concerned) with a high degree of ambiguity.
Some words have different meanings, making the analysis (to facilitate translations) a difficult process. Making it disambiguous is quite a task, where Panini’s principles might be of use.
Ashtadhyayi, the earlier work on descriptive linguistics, consists of 3,959 sutras (or principles). These highly systemised and technical principles, some say, marked the rise of classical Sanskrit.
Sampark, the multi-institute effort launched to produce a translation engine, enabling users to translate tests from English to various languages, will use some of the technical aspects enunciated by Panini. “We looked at alternatives before choosing Panini,” Prof Sangal says.
Incidentally, Prof Sangal co-authored a book, Natural Language Processing – A Panini Perspective, a few years ago.
Besides the technical side, Panini would be of great help to researchers on the translation engine on the language side too.
A good number of words in almost all the Indian languages originate from Sanskrit. “That is great because Indian languages are related to each other,” Prof Sangal points out.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/stories/ 2009051850090300 .htm
Break the language barrier
Word for word: More on the Sampark initiative to enrich translation. .
Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this?
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/bline/ ew/2009/05/ 18/images/ 2009051850070301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Telugus, Kannadigas and Malayalis can read Subrahmanya Bharati, the legendary Tamil poet, and relish the sweetness in his poetry. Similarly, Premchand, Tagore, M T Vasudeva Nair, and U R Ananthamurthy too could be read and understood by readers in other languages.
All this will soon be a reality, thanks to a project initiated by IIIT (Hyderabad) and eight other universities and institutes. To be precise, the beta translation solutions of a few languages will go live next month (June 2009).
The project, whose public Internet interface will be known as Sampark, will let users translate texts among various Indian languages. All one needs to do is copy-paste the text in an appointed box and press ‘enter’, and get the translated version in another box beside it. Not just text, you can translate the whole of a Web page. Copy the URL (a site’s Web address) and paste it in the relevant box in Sampark’s Web site. “You will get the translated page, with photos and other images intact,” says Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad), who is leading the team.
The nine institutions have roped in over 120 experts in computer engineering, language, and translators to take up the ‘machine translation’ programme, which is aimed at breaking the language barrier.
The project is broadly divided into two areas. Translation of the four Southern languages into Hindi (vice versa too) and translation of Bangla, Punjabi, Marathi and Urdu into Hindi (and back). Simultanesouly, the consortium is working on direct translations among Telugu-Tamil, Malayalam-Tamil. To begin with, the consortium has put two ‘systems’ Punjabi-Hindi and Urdu-Hindi beta versions live. “By June 2009 end, we will be adding Tamil-Hindi, Marathi-Hindi and Telugu-Hindi to the project,” Prof Sangal says.
How it works
Broadly, the machine translation happens in three phases — the source side, transfer aspects and the target side action. The two important factors in translation are grammar and dictionary. “Languages have many exceptions and idiosynchrosies. These will be addressed effectively,” Prof Sangal says.
On the source side (the text you want to translate), the machine analyses the text sentence by sentence and keeps a representation of the text. The analysis will include morphological analysis, how words are formed. It will check whether the text carries any local phrases. It will search for nouns and parts of speech before going for sentence analysis.
In the second phase (transfer phase), the machine does lexical and grammar transfer. “The grammars of source and target languages may not be similar. This phase would see change of grammatical structure. The later phase would involve target language generation.”
common architecture
The step-by-step process is done on a common architecture. This allows for addition of a new language to the project quite easily. “If you want to add Kashmiri, you need to develop an analyser, generator and add a Kashmiri-Hindi dictionary. These, in fact, are parallel dictionaries,” Prof Sangal says.
“The project, unlike earlier projects, hinges on dictionaries that give meanings based on concepts rather than just meanings,” Prof Uma Maheshwar Rao, who is working on the Telugu-Hindi aspect of the project, says.
Formed by the Union Ministry of Information Technology in 2006, the consortium comprises IITs (Kharagpur and Bombay), Anna University, C-DAC, University of Hyderabad, Tamil University Jadhavpur University, IISC (Bangalore) and IIIT (Allahabad).
Prof Rao, who works at the Centre of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at University of Hyderabad, says the Sampark project is more advanced than earlier attempts that sought to offer translation solutions.
The earlier efforts failed to take the meanings of the words contextually. Citing the example of the word ‘bank’, he points out that the earlier efforts would not make out whether it was a bank used in the expression river bank, or a bank that deals with money.
“In the present project, we cross-link words with all the synonyms in the other language. This will help resolve the ambiguity problem, the knottiest one in the translation process,” he explains.
The immediate task of the consortium is to add more servers and more engineering to make the machine faster.
“We are going to add three languages to the system every two months till November,” Prof Sangal says.
He, however, admits that it is not a complete translator. But the beta versions will definitely give a flavour of the meaning in the source language. You can see improvements constantly, he adds.
Machines learn!
Prof Sangal says the machine can learn based on the data you give it. Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this sentence? The one developed by the consortium, thanks to the conceptual dictionary, would look at the context and tell apart the meaning of the two chairs in the sentence. “Earlier, we used to give rules to the machine to follow. Now, we have algorithms to let the machines learn from this. We have combined artificial intelligence approach with the linguistic process,” he explains.
More to come
Busy finalising modules, the team members continue to set their eyes on long-term goals. “We will continue the long-term research independently and collaboratively. The next stage is to build more robust sentence analysers. They will be able to do translations more correctly. The quality of the output will go up,” he says. Prof Sangal, who has been working on machine translation for the last 25 years, says it is team work that helped the group to give a shape to the machine. “We discussed several issues physically and through mailing groups. We have set up sub groups to address specific issues.”
English to Indian languages
Simultaneously, a different consortium, in which IIIT-H is also a member, is working on translations from English to several Indian languages and back. C-DAC (Pune) is leading the consortium. The researchers take a different approach.
Unlike popular belief, English is a difficult language for the machine to understand. “Unlike Indian languages, there is a high degree of ambiguity. When a machine analyses, it has to do disambiguation, which is a difficult process,” Prof Sangal says. The research team is almost ready with the English-Hindi version, which is in test mode. At a later stage, these two different projects could technically work in tandem and offer users a better translation experience.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.business line.in/cgi- bin/print. pl?file=20090518 50070300. htm&date=2009/05/ 18/&prd=ew&
Research team turns to the “world’s first computational grammarian!”.
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/images/ 2009051850090301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Panini, the legendary Sanskrit grammarian of 5th century BC, is the world’s first computational grammarian! Panini’s work, Ashtadhyayi (the Eight-Chaptered book), is considered to be the most comprehensive scientific grammar ever written for any language.
According to Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad) and an expert on language computation, Panini’s epic treatise on grammar came to the rescue of language experts in making English unambiguous. English is more difficult (as far as machine translations are concerned) with a high degree of ambiguity.
Some words have different meanings, making the analysis (to facilitate translations) a difficult process. Making it disambiguous is quite a task, where Panini’s principles might be of use.
Ashtadhyayi, the earlier work on descriptive linguistics, consists of 3,959 sutras (or principles). These highly systemised and technical principles, some say, marked the rise of classical Sanskrit.
Sampark, the multi-institute effort launched to produce a translation engine, enabling users to translate tests from English to various languages, will use some of the technical aspects enunciated by Panini. “We looked at alternatives before choosing Panini,” Prof Sangal says.
Incidentally, Prof Sangal co-authored a book, Natural Language Processing – A Panini Perspective, a few years ago.
Besides the technical side, Panini would be of great help to researchers on the translation engine on the language side too.
A good number of words in almost all the Indian languages originate from Sanskrit. “That is great because Indian languages are related to each other,” Prof Sangal points out.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/stories/ 2009051850090300 .htm
Break the language barrier
Word for word: More on the Sampark initiative to enrich translation. .
Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this?
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/bline/ ew/2009/05/ 18/images/ 2009051850070301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Telugus, Kannadigas and Malayalis can read Subrahmanya Bharati, the legendary Tamil poet, and relish the sweetness in his poetry. Similarly, Premchand, Tagore, M T Vasudeva Nair, and U R Ananthamurthy too could be read and understood by readers in other languages.
All this will soon be a reality, thanks to a project initiated by IIIT (Hyderabad) and eight other universities and institutes. To be precise, the beta translation solutions of a few languages will go live next month (June 2009).
The project, whose public Internet interface will be known as Sampark, will let users translate texts among various Indian languages. All one needs to do is copy-paste the text in an appointed box and press ‘enter’, and get the translated version in another box beside it. Not just text, you can translate the whole of a Web page. Copy the URL (a site’s Web address) and paste it in the relevant box in Sampark’s Web site. “You will get the translated page, with photos and other images intact,” says Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad), who is leading the team.
The nine institutions have roped in over 120 experts in computer engineering, language, and translators to take up the ‘machine translation’ programme, which is aimed at breaking the language barrier.
The project is broadly divided into two areas. Translation of the four Southern languages into Hindi (vice versa too) and translation of Bangla, Punjabi, Marathi and Urdu into Hindi (and back). Simultanesouly, the consortium is working on direct translations among Telugu-Tamil, Malayalam-Tamil. To begin with, the consortium has put two ‘systems’ Punjabi-Hindi and Urdu-Hindi beta versions live. “By June 2009 end, we will be adding Tamil-Hindi, Marathi-Hindi and Telugu-Hindi to the project,” Prof Sangal says.
How it works
Broadly, the machine translation happens in three phases — the source side, transfer aspects and the target side action. The two important factors in translation are grammar and dictionary. “Languages have many exceptions and idiosynchrosies. These will be addressed effectively,” Prof Sangal says.
On the source side (the text you want to translate), the machine analyses the text sentence by sentence and keeps a representation of the text. The analysis will include morphological analysis, how words are formed. It will check whether the text carries any local phrases. It will search for nouns and parts of speech before going for sentence analysis.
In the second phase (transfer phase), the machine does lexical and grammar transfer. “The grammars of source and target languages may not be similar. This phase would see change of grammatical structure. The later phase would involve target language generation.”
common architecture
The step-by-step process is done on a common architecture. This allows for addition of a new language to the project quite easily. “If you want to add Kashmiri, you need to develop an analyser, generator and add a Kashmiri-Hindi dictionary. These, in fact, are parallel dictionaries,” Prof Sangal says.
“The project, unlike earlier projects, hinges on dictionaries that give meanings based on concepts rather than just meanings,” Prof Uma Maheshwar Rao, who is working on the Telugu-Hindi aspect of the project, says.
Formed by the Union Ministry of Information Technology in 2006, the consortium comprises IITs (Kharagpur and Bombay), Anna University, C-DAC, University of Hyderabad, Tamil University Jadhavpur University, IISC (Bangalore) and IIIT (Allahabad).
Prof Rao, who works at the Centre of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at University of Hyderabad, says the Sampark project is more advanced than earlier attempts that sought to offer translation solutions.
The earlier efforts failed to take the meanings of the words contextually. Citing the example of the word ‘bank’, he points out that the earlier efforts would not make out whether it was a bank used in the expression river bank, or a bank that deals with money.
“In the present project, we cross-link words with all the synonyms in the other language. This will help resolve the ambiguity problem, the knottiest one in the translation process,” he explains.
The immediate task of the consortium is to add more servers and more engineering to make the machine faster.
“We are going to add three languages to the system every two months till November,” Prof Sangal says.
He, however, admits that it is not a complete translator. But the beta versions will definitely give a flavour of the meaning in the source language. You can see improvements constantly, he adds.
Machines learn!
Prof Sangal says the machine can learn based on the data you give it. Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this sentence? The one developed by the consortium, thanks to the conceptual dictionary, would look at the context and tell apart the meaning of the two chairs in the sentence. “Earlier, we used to give rules to the machine to follow. Now, we have algorithms to let the machines learn from this. We have combined artificial intelligence approach with the linguistic process,” he explains.
More to come
Busy finalising modules, the team members continue to set their eyes on long-term goals. “We will continue the long-term research independently and collaboratively. The next stage is to build more robust sentence analysers. They will be able to do translations more correctly. The quality of the output will go up,” he says. Prof Sangal, who has been working on machine translation for the last 25 years, says it is team work that helped the group to give a shape to the machine. “We discussed several issues physically and through mailing groups. We have set up sub groups to address specific issues.”
English to Indian languages
Simultaneously, a different consortium, in which IIIT-H is also a member, is working on translations from English to several Indian languages and back. C-DAC (Pune) is leading the consortium. The researchers take a different approach.
Unlike popular belief, English is a difficult language for the machine to understand. “Unlike Indian languages, there is a high degree of ambiguity. When a machine analyses, it has to do disambiguation, which is a difficult process,” Prof Sangal says. The research team is almost ready with the English-Hindi version, which is in test mode. At a later stage, these two different projects could technically work in tandem and offer users a better translation experience.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.business line.in/cgi- bin/print. pl?file=20090518 50070300. htm&date=2009/05/ 18/&prd=ew&
Saturday, November 8, 2008
India enters supercomputing race
A year old news , but nevertheless something that makes us proud.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7092339.stm
Ayush
A computer system designed in India has made it into a top ten of the world's fastest supercomputers.
Computer giant IBM continues to dominate the list - which is compiled twice a year - with a total of 232 out of the top 500 supercomputers.
Its Blue Gene/L supercomputer - used to ensure the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable - comes out at number one.
The Indian system - known as EKA - made it into fourth place.
The world's fastest supercomputer - BlueGene/L - has been significantly upgraded in the last six months.
It can now deliver a sustained performance of 478 trillion calculations per second (478 teraflops), nearly three times faster than any other machine on the list.
Petaflop barrier
TOP FIVE SUPERCOMPUTERS
IBM's BlueGene/L - 478 teraflops
IBM's BlueGene/P - 167.3 teraflops
SGI Altix ICE 8200 - 126.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c (EKA) - 117.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 102.8 teraflops
Second place went to another IBM system - a newer version of BlueGene/L known as BlueGene/P. The system, introduced this June is the first in a batch of IBM machines designed to operate at a petaflop and beyond.
Breaking the petaflop barrier - the ability to process 1,000 trillion calculations every second - has long been a key milestone in supercomputing and would allow highly detailed simulations.
For example in earthquake simulations it could show building-by-building movements of regions in earthquake zones, improving future structural designs.
India has also entered the exclusive list for the first time with a Hewlett-Packard designed system that has a performance of 117.9 teraflops.
Codenamed EKA - Sanskrit for number one - it is installed at the Computational Research Laboratories in Pune.
The system will be initially targeted at developing applications such as neural, molecular and crash simulations, and digital media animation and rendering.
"The supercomputer system will have a direct effect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.
The next step for the system is to put more applications on it.
"While the ranking is important the more important thing is to keep on improving performance and applications," said Mr Ramadorai.
Third place on the top 500 list went to a new supercomputing centre based in New Mexico.
Fifth place went to another Hewlett-Packard system installed at a Swedish government agency
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7092339.stm
Ayush
A computer system designed in India has made it into a top ten of the world's fastest supercomputers.
Computer giant IBM continues to dominate the list - which is compiled twice a year - with a total of 232 out of the top 500 supercomputers.
Its Blue Gene/L supercomputer - used to ensure the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable - comes out at number one.
The Indian system - known as EKA - made it into fourth place.
The world's fastest supercomputer - BlueGene/L - has been significantly upgraded in the last six months.
It can now deliver a sustained performance of 478 trillion calculations per second (478 teraflops), nearly three times faster than any other machine on the list.
Petaflop barrier
TOP FIVE SUPERCOMPUTERS
IBM's BlueGene/L - 478 teraflops
IBM's BlueGene/P - 167.3 teraflops
SGI Altix ICE 8200 - 126.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c (EKA) - 117.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 102.8 teraflops
Second place went to another IBM system - a newer version of BlueGene/L known as BlueGene/P. The system, introduced this June is the first in a batch of IBM machines designed to operate at a petaflop and beyond.
Breaking the petaflop barrier - the ability to process 1,000 trillion calculations every second - has long been a key milestone in supercomputing and would allow highly detailed simulations.
For example in earthquake simulations it could show building-by-building movements of regions in earthquake zones, improving future structural designs.
India has also entered the exclusive list for the first time with a Hewlett-Packard designed system that has a performance of 117.9 teraflops.
Codenamed EKA - Sanskrit for number one - it is installed at the Computational Research Laboratories in Pune.
The system will be initially targeted at developing applications such as neural, molecular and crash simulations, and digital media animation and rendering.
"The supercomputer system will have a direct effect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.
The next step for the system is to put more applications on it.
"While the ranking is important the more important thing is to keep on improving performance and applications," said Mr Ramadorai.
Third place on the top 500 list went to a new supercomputing centre based in New Mexico.
Fifth place went to another Hewlett-Packard system installed at a Swedish government agency
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Indian-origin mathematician honoured
Posted May 29th, 2008 by rkm
SYDNEY:Nalini Joshi, an Australian of Indian origin, has become only the third woman inmathematics to be elected to the prestigious Australian Academy of Sciences(AAS), founded in 1954 by Australian Fellows of the Royal Society ofLondon.Joshi, head of the School ofMathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, was made a fellow of AASin recognition of her life-long achievements in the field ofmathematics.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_Abroad/Indian-origin_mathematician_honoured/articleshow/3080938.cms
SYDNEY:Nalini Joshi, an Australian of Indian origin, has become only the third woman inmathematics to be elected to the prestigious Australian Academy of Sciences(AAS), founded in 1954 by Australian Fellows of the Royal Society ofLondon.Joshi, head of the School ofMathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, was made a fellow of AASin recognition of her life-long achievements in the field ofmathematics.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_Abroad/Indian-origin_mathematician_honoured/articleshow/3080938.cms
Sunday, May 18, 2008
As Jaipur bleeds, volunteers apply much-needed balm
Source: TIMES OF INDIA
16 May 2008, 0312 hrs IST,Avijit Ghosh,TNN
JAIPUR: Calamity often brings out the best in humans. And the Tuesday serial blasts in Jaipur was no exception. From sewadaars of Dera Sacha Sauda to RSS swayamsevaks, from Muslim youths of Pathan Chowk to Nirankaris, not to forget corporate houses and co-operative groups, everyone has set up their tents and stalls outside the city's Sawai Man Singh hospital where a majority of the blast victims are undergoing treatment. Donating blood, working as hospital's unofficial fourth-grade employees, ensuring relief money reaches the right people, offering free food, medicine and telephone services รข€” they are doing it all.
Dera Sacha's sevadars arrived with 30-odd members within an hour of the blast, says Kulbhushan, among the the organisation' s senior volunteers. By morning, the number of volunteers dressed in their cream and green uniform had swelled to 350. "So far we have donated 132 units of blood. We are ready to donate more units but the doctors say there is no more requirement, " he says. They plan to hang around for a couple of days more in case of an emergency.
The blast also prompted a group of Muslim youths who call themselves Pathan Chowk Vikas Samiti into action. Shahid Khan, an advocate and the group's leader, says that the decision to help the blast victims was carried out with rapidfire immediacy. "We not only helped lift the dead but also carried the injured to the hospital. Thirty of our members have donated blood," he says. Now, says Murad Baig from another youth group in the Amagarh area, their efforts are to ensure that the injured and the relatives of the dead get prompt relief. He says there is no competition, only co-operation, among the different groups.
"We have also been co-operating with the RSS volunteers and they with us," says Baig. Relatives of injured are happy with the work done by RSS volunteers who are prominently visible in their khaki shorts. "They have been almost working as ward boys," says Manoj Chhipa, whose father was injured in the blast. Even the Nirankaris of Jaipur have joined relief work in a big way. They have opened a 24-hour langar and donated 150 units of blood. Like the RSS volunteers, they also have sewa dal members who are acting as parallel fourth-grade staff. "We have the phone numbers of 647 volunteers with us. We have their blood group with us. We are ready to provide help at a moment's notice," says Satish Khurana of Sant Nirankari Mandal. That apart even a couple of mobile phone companies have set up their help vans where free calls can be made. Small organisations such as Seva Bharti, Jaipur and Shri Agarwal Vaishya Samaj Samiti have provided free services. Even Rajasthan Co-operative Consumer Federation has, as its assistant manager O P Verma puts it, come up with "a human response." The organisation is providing free medicine to every injured victim. So far, 16 have availed the facility.
Monday, May 5, 2008
PSLV-C9 blasts off from Sriharikota
PSLV-C9 blasts off from Sriharikota
28 Apr 2008, 0935 hrs IST
,INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK & AGENCIES
,INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK & AGENCIESSRIHARIKOTA: India's PSLV-C9 blasted off into space, carrying ten satellites including the country's latest remote sensing satellite CARTOSAT-2A, from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre here on Monday. Scientists cheered as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, in its thirteenth flight, soared into the clear sky in a perfect lift off at 9.23 am from the second launch pad. Besides the 690 kg CARTOSAT-2A, the PSLV is also carrying ISRO's Indian Mini Satellite-1 (IMS-1), weighing 83kg, and eight nano satellites built by universities and research institutes in Canada and Germany. While the CARTOSAT-2A, carrying state-of-the-art panchromatic camera (PAN), will be used for mapping purposes and management of natural resources, the IMS-1 will be used as a platform for trying out advanced technology in future launches. |
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