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indianexpress:  For eight-year-old Ayusha Atul Bora, swimming 35 kilometres from Dharamatar Jetty to Gateway of India in less than seven hours was no mean feat. A class III student of St Helena’s school, Ayusha now has broken the record of Amruta Kharkanis and has become the fastest girl swimmer in the country to complete the swim in 6 hours, 45 minutes and 18 seconds.

Ayusha’s mother cannot stop smiling. “She took 17 feeds during the swim. We gave her chocolates, carbohydrate drinks and fruit juices. Ayusha swam the course on November 26 . She started at 2.20 am. and finished her event at 9.05 am. She swam initially at 96 arms per minute and then later at 88 arms per minute. Amruta, a Mumbai based girl’s record was seven hours and seven minutes.

“The best part of the swim was her feed which she took very fast,” Manisha Bora said. Dilip Koli was the boat man and Rahul Chiplunkar was the observer. Koli said that this was the highest tide of the start of the season and the young girl swam really hard to cope up with the tide and made it in record time.

Vinay Marathe who is an experienced long distance swimmer was all praise for Ayusha who swam really hard at such a young age while Sandhya Kotbagi, general manager of Champion Aquatic Club accompanied the swimmer. Manisha who is a lecturer at a city college and Atul who is an owner of a factory supplying spare parts are happy for their child and hope to train her for international events

indianexpress:  The Credit Consumers Association of India (CCAI), with 50,000 members across the country, that has started “a war” against those banks using illegal methods of recovery have demanded that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) take stringent action against and cancel their licences. With the banks also not following the State Money Lending Act, and charging interest rates up to 45-60 per cent per annum, the CCAI has demanded that they should follow the 18 per cent rule.

On the one hand these banks are aggressively pursuing the common man for availing of credit facilities and that too at exorbitant rates ranging between 28 per cent to 50 per cent per annum under the guise of unsecured loan and on the other hand are restoring to terror tactics in recovering the amounts even when the default is due to genuine reasons.

The logic these banks give for such a high rate of interest is that the default rate is very high. “The loan taker is actually already paying for people who are defaulting. If one were to make queries about the default rate, it has been pegged at 7-8 per cent of the total lending basket and no logic can translate into such high rate of interest, he said.

CCAI is now set to create awareness among the masses about their rights of fair practices to be adopted by lending banks, financial institutes and credit card companies. “Banks and their recovery agents have crossed all limits of decency and often use the foulest of language in their effort to browbeat the customer into submission,’’ said president of CCAI Vijay Kamble at the meet.

Having represented several cases with the banks, most of them of foreign origin seeking relief for its members, CCAI has taken out a morcha last week in Mumbai resulting in a promise by RBI Governor to take stringent action against banks practicing unfair and illegal practices to recover their dues. “Not only that, the ICICI Bank has agreed to form a committee of five members from both sides to solve any problems related to recovery harassments,” he said.

indianexpress:  Cognizant, an IT and business process outsourcing company, organised business plan contest for business schools students across the Asia pacific region. The final round of the contest was held in Chennai where almost 400 students from across the globe participated.

The participants were from prestigious business schools throughout the Asia pacific region such as SIBM, Pune, IIFT, Delhi, S P Jain, Dubai, Nitie, Bombay, NUT, Singapure and students from the most prestigious business school IIM, Kolkatta Delhi and Bang lore. Cognizant has launched the ‘Board Room: Smart Business plan contest 2007.’

These 400 students were divided into teams of 20 students each. Of them it was ‘Endeavors,’ the team from Pune consisting of three students — Amit Nanchahal, Meydhavi Gupta and Soumayadeep Sur from city-based Symbiosis Institute of Business Management — which won the first prize of Rs two lakh.

The runners-up were from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi, who won a cash prize of Rs one lakh.

Cognizant aims at promoting a spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation. among management students, and also look for the new talent.

“This was perhaps the first contest organised by an IT company in search of the young mind to promote and set up the new branches,” said a pressrelease.

indianexpress: Even as the 15th National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC) gets set for its launch in Maharashtra on December 27, its organisers are having a tough time garnering funds for the event, with the State government apparently turning a blind eye to repeated requests for funds by the organisers.

Although the total budget amounts to Rs one crore, the organisers have so far been able to procure only Rs 30 lakh, which has been given by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India.

NCSC is being organised in Maharashtra for the second time since it began in 1993. It aims at fostering scientific temperament among children to attract them towards pure research.

With Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar as its chief patron, NCSC is being organised and hosted in Baramati by the Vidya Pratishthan in collaboration with the Jidnyasa Trust, Thane.

The Congress, which will be inaugurated by former President APJ Abdul Kalam, is expected to attract nearly 1,200 students and teachers from across the country, including the Union Territories. Foreign participation is also expected, with 30 children to participate from 10 countries under the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Besides, another 20 lakh student visitors are also expected.

“Apart from the Rs 30 lakh from the DST, the Vidya Pratishthan has agreed to bear as much of the total cost as possible. But there is still a huge deficit, and we are looking to the state government to put in another Rs 30 lakh. We sent them a request in September, followed by another reminder in October, but we have not yet received any response,” said NCSC convener Surendra Dighe.

indianexpress: How has the traditional tribal occupation of fishery impacted the marine biodiversity in Dahanu?
What are the varieties of medicinal plants available in tribal areas in Junnar? How can ordinary grass be used for creating value-added products to boost the income of tribal communities?

These are some of the questions that will be tackled in the research projects to be presented by tribal children in the age group of ten to 17 years at the National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC) 2007, which will be held from December 27 to 31 at the Vidya Pratishthan, Baramati. Nearly half of all the research projects that will be represented will be from rural areas. Of a total of 30 projects from Maharashtra, 13 are from rural areas, with three from the tribal areas of Dahanu, Shahapur and Junnar.

This year, the Congress will focus on the theme of “Biodiversity — nurture nature for our future,” with the sub-themes terrestrial, aquatic and man-made biodiversity, conservation practices, sustainable utilisation of biodiversity.

Over 650 student research projects have been selected through a rigorous screening of over two lakh projects across the country. The students were given a theme, on which they were to provide creative proposals that were prepared using scientific methodology. These will now be evaluated based on technical presentations given at the NCSC.

Training workshops for teachers, exhibitions, activity corners and interactions with eminent scientists will also be a part of the NCSC. “We are expecting many scientists to attend the event, and will even have interactions via videoconferencing with Nobel laureates and other noted scientists including Sam Pitroda,” said Vijay Bhatkar, speaking at a press conference to announce the event on Wednesday

indianexpress: Saeed Ahmed Desai, the alleged ISI agent’s Pune trip seems to be finally drawing to a close with Chief Judicial Magistrate Dr Y Chawre directing the police commissionerate to depute two officers to go to Delhi and return with the Pakistani national’s travel permit. Judge Chawre had earlier given an eight-day deadline to the Pune police commissionerate and the CBI, to procure the necessary documents, on November 20.

Desai’s lawyer, advocate Vidyadhar Koshe had filed an application with the judge on December 1, urging that his client be sent back to his country within 24 hours. However judge Chawre ordered the police commissioner to depute two officers to Delhi, and collaborate with the CBI to procure the permit. The officers would also be required to fax a day-to-day update of the progress to the judge via fax.

The judge also directed the CBI to contact the Ministry of Home Affairs, External Affairs and the Pakistan embassy to speed the process for the travel permit. “Once the permit is acquired, then the officers will return and take Desai with them,” said Koshe. The process needs to completed within ten days, according to the Judge’s directions.

Desai has been lodged in the Sahakarnagar police station even after the a Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court released him after his imprisonment tenure was over, owing to lack of appropriate documents for his trip back to his home country.

techtree: Epson has launched yet another AIO (all-in-one), the Stylus CX7300, which is targeted at office- and home- users.

At print speeds of 32ppm (pages per minute), Epson claims it is the fastest general purpose AIO on the market today.

With Micro-Piezo print head technology, the CX7300 delivers 4R photo prints in just 19 seconds. It boasts copy speeds of up to 30 cpm (copies per minute), and scanning speeds of up to 1200dpi (dots per inch) resolution.

The AIO is equipped with Epson DuraBrite Ultra inks, claimed to produce sharper quality text and glossier photo print-outs, besides being fade- and smudge- resistant.

There’s a comprehensive built-in card slot bay, and Pictbridge capability for PC-less operations. For greater ease-of-use, common functions can be found on an intuitive control panel on the AIO.

Besides, there’s a smart ink cartridge bay that accepts either standard capacity or high capacity Black ink cartridges to suit individual printing needs. An individual four ink cartridge configuration is deployed to ensure minimal wastage as users need only to replace depleted ink cartridges

techtree: Google has integrated AOL’s popular instant messaging service, AIM, into Gmail.

The new feature will enable users access their AIM account on their Gmail Web page. Users can also have instant message conversations with their AIM buddies on Gmail.

They need to simply click on the upside-down triangle next to “set status here” in Gmail chat, and select “Sign into AIM” from the drop down menu.

Once AIM log-in information is entered, AIM contacts would appear intermingled with Gmail contacts, and the user can select an AIM contact and start chatting directly.

As of now, only the English version of the new feature is being rolled-out. But soon, AIM access will be made available in other language versions as well.

While AIM is AOL’s most valuable service dominating instant messaging in the US, Google’s instant messaging ‘Google Talk’, which was integrated into Gmail in February last year, has failed to make a mark as yet.
 

techtree: Adobe has released a new update to its Flash Player 9 software, previously code named Moviestar, with H.264 standard video support and high efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio capabilities.

The H.264 is the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players.

Presently, H.264 support is available as an encoding option in Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. Which will now be integrated across Adobe’s Flash family of products.

This more video-friendly version of Flash Player 9 also features hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced, full-screen video playback for high-resolution viewing across major operating systems and browsers.

In addition, the update includes support applications developed for Adobe AIR software, a cross-operating system application runtime that enables developers use their existing skills to build- and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.

The updated Adobe Flash Player 9 is immediately available as a free download for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms from www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer.

In addition, Adobe has announced its Flash Media Server 3 family of products with H.264 video capabilities, and high efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support.

techtree: Transcend has launched a digital photo frame, the T.photo 710, sporting a high-resolution 7-inch TFT display, and 1GB of internal memory.

With a total depth of 28mm, the T.photo 710 is capable of showcasing photos with background music, and can be placed on the table or mounted on a wall.

Having standard portrait-size dimensions, the T.photo 710 has rotation functions that allow flawless display of either landscape photos or vertical portraits. It can automatically calculate the best way to display photos based on the information within each digital image, and preserve the original aspect ratio of pictures.

The T.photo 710 supports digital camera jpg, bmp, and motion-jpg formats. It is equipped with built-in speakers, and can be used as an MP3 player by plugging a pair of headphones.

The T.photo 710 also features a multi-card reader that instantly shows all pictures on SD cards (SDHC/SD), MMC cards, MS cards, and CF cards as soon as you plug them in. The device itself can be used as a card reader to attach to the PC.

Moreover, pictures clicked from a cell phone can also be viewed on the T.photo 710 using an SD adapter for microSD and miniSD cards, or a MS adapter for MS Duo, MS Pro Duo, and M2 cards.

The T.photo 710 bundles a slim remote control that enables users to browse through pictures from on-board memory, flash media cards, or a USB flash drive from a distance.

When not being used for viewing full-screen photos, the T.photo can be used as a desktop clock/calendar. Users can store important days, and set alarm reminders.