The Bright Bunch: Rajendra S. Jain’s students, from left, Chavi, Kusum, Jay and Moksh strike a pose with the trophies they won at National Memory Championship. (Photo: DC)
Hyderabad:
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could recall a lot more than you can at present? It is possible! Your memory skills can be made better through focused training. And Rajendra S. Jain of Nellore, specialises in this field and has several of his students winning memory competitions too.
Most recently, his students, Chavi, Jay, Kusum and Moksh, all from Nellore bagged medals in National Memory Championship held in Mumbai.
Rajendra, himself, won a silver medal at the event and broke a national record in the adults’ category and finished all-India number three. While Chavi won a gold medal, Jay and Kusum were awarded silver and bronze medals in the kids’ category and Moksh secured a bronze medal in the junior category.
All of them are Class VIII students, of different schools in Nellore, and they have special permission from their schools for pursuing their academics using Rajendra’s training methods, memory systems, speed reading and mind maps.
Rajendra says that this system of teaching is prevalent in the UK. He now wants to prepare a curriculum of Memory Systems for Indian students as well. “The government should introduce memory as a subject in schools since it improves both imagination and academic skills,” says Rajendra, a science graduate who left his business of jewellery in 2009 to pursue memory techniques. His first accomplishment was a fifth place in the National Memory Championship held in Hyderabad in 2010.
“My next aim is to groom these kids to be the future grandmasters in mind sports,” says Rajendra, who was awarded the Grandmaster of India Award in 2013, becoming the second Indian to bag this honour after John Louis.
source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / DeccanChronicle / Home> LifeStyle> Offbeat / DC / Pathri Rajasekhar / September 16th, 2014
City-based student Syed Tazib Rehman has proved his mettle at the Global Cancer Conference and Medicare Summit 2014. He is one of the 12 students across the world whose online presentations were selected for special appreciation. Rehman is a student of Sri Chaitanya Junior College Visakhapatnam. All the selected students except Rehman were graduates and post-graduates.
The 12 students would repeat their presentation before the President of India and other officials on September 15 at HICC, Hyderabad. Earlier, Rehman bagged the ‘Bala Ratna’ award for ‘Creative Scientific Innovation’ in 2013.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Andhra Pradesh / by Express News Service / September 15th, 2014
Senior journalist Behera Raja Rao (60), died at his residence in Simhachalam in the early hours of Sunday due to prolonged illness.
He is survived by wife and two sons. Raja Rao had been part of the Express Group throughout his journalistic career, spanning over 30 years. He joined the ‘Andhra Prabha’ newspaper as a contributor in late 1980s for news reporting from Simhachalam and Visakhapatnam.
He was later appointed as the correspondent for ‘The New Indian Express’ in 2003 at Vizianagaram where he worked for about seven years. Then, he was transferred to Visakhapatnam where he retired in 2012. He worked for evening daily ‘Leader’ until he was diagnosed with a lung disorder.
Known for his jovial nature and friendly attitude, Raja Rao enjoyed good relations with journalists from different generations and was fondly called as ‘old man’ or ‘uncle’. AP Working Journalists’ Federation of Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram chapters, Uttarandhra Journalists’ Front and Vizag Journalists’ Forum expressed their heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Andhra Pradesh / by Express News Service / September 15th, 2014
DCIL chairman-cum-managing director Captain DK Mohanty receiving the award at a grand ceremony held at Bangalore
Visakhapatnam :
Dredging Corporation of India Limited (DCIL) has bagged the ‘Organisation with Innovative HR practices’ award presented at the Asia Pacific HRM Congress 2014, a conclave of CEOs and HR professionals.
DCIL was selected for the award in recognition of the strategic position the organisation holds in the fraternity. Chairman-cum-managing director DK Mohanty received the award at a function held at Bangalore.
The DCIL, during the past three years, has taken various steps for improving the working condition on board the dredgers and redressal of grievances of the floating staff.
At present the corporation employs about 750 marine personnel to man its dredgers. During the past two years, the Corporation recruited 32 Diploma in Nautical Sciences (DNS) and 29 Trainee Marine Engineers (TME) with professional skills, who are undergoing training on various dredgers. In due course they will be elevated as Dredge Masters and CEOs.
Attrition rate in the Corporation has also reduced considerably among the floating officers, owing to the constant efforts made by DCI in providing training to DNS and TME engineers who completed their requisite courses from Indian Maritime University affiliated institutions. Availability of trained manpower in the field has been suitably addressed by innovative methods as well.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Andhra Pradesh / by Express News Service / September 16th, 2014
Students of V.M. Ranga Municipal School performing yoga feats at IGMC Stadium in Vijayawada on Sunday.Photo: Ch. Vijaya Bhaskar
Impressed by mind-boggling feats of students, Police Commissioner A. B. Venkateswara Rao decides to adopt V. M. Ranga Municipal School at Krishna Lanka
The students of V. M. Ranga Municipal School at Krishna Lanka will always remember this bunch of students, who are ardent practitioners of yoga.
It is their dedication to the traditional art that helped win the heart of Commissioner of Police A. B. Venkateswara Rao, who impressed by their mind-boggling feats, decided to adopt their school.
The school will soon will have a yoga hall and amenities such as computers, toilets and other infrastructure for the benefit of hundreds of students. “That is the power yoga,” proudly said Krishna District Yoga Association president V.V. Rama Rao.
Flexing their supple bodies like rubber, these girls drew the attention of the viewers at the IGMC Stadium during the Krishna District yogasana competition on Sunday by showcasing several asanas(postures) and patterns, using breathing to the optimum level.
“These girls have been practising for the past two years and are regular participants in the district and State competitions. They regularly exhibit their talent at various public functions like Independence Day, Republic Day and Chief Minister’s visits, promoting the concept of healthy life,” said coach Suryakumari.
Will power
Highlighting the importance of yoga in the stress-filled modern world, Mr. Rama Rao said yoga not only improved the will power and mental faculties but also made the body strong. “Yoga is essential for students are their future is filed with deadlines and targets. The modern corporate sector is so demanding you (youngsters) need to spend more number of hours in front of the computer. Yoga helps you acquire how to tackle stress by improving immunity.”
He said yoga improves flexibility, adds strength to limbs and helps achieve better concentration. “To play a game a cricket we you need to spend thousands of rupees but to master yoga you need just a mat,” said Mr. Rama Rao amidst thundering applause.
Many speakers while highlighting the positives of yoga said that diseases like hyper- tension, blood pressure and diabetes can be prevented by regularly practising the ancient art.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by J. R. Sridharan / Vijayawada – September 15th, 2014
Anand Chitipothu had very humble beginnings and he made sure he worked hard to make the best use of whatever he had to make an impact on the world. Our Techie Tuesday for this week works at archive.org and is a Python enthusiast to the core.
The impact of the kind of work which Anand has been doing is not limited to one person or even a country. If you have a website or just browse the internet casually then there are chances that you might have clicked an archived link and visited a backed up version of a webpage at some point of time. Archive.org is a project by Aaron Swartz to create an archive of the internet and Anand works at Open Library – A project under archive. org, which aims to have a web page for every book.
Anand comes from Lingarao Palem, a small village near Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and had his early schooling in Telgu medium. It was only when he started studying in class 12th (intermediate as it was called then) he switched to English medium. In his first attempt Anand couldn’t get a seat in EAMCET – The common Entrance Exam conducted by Jawaharlal National University Hyderabad. Anand waited for a year and joined the electrical Engineering Course at Regional Engineering Collage (Now NIT) Bhopal. It was here that he was introduced to computers embarked on a journey which would change the course his entire life also affect a huge number of lives in the years to come.
They were introduced to PASCAL but the experience wasn’t good. The only things they could manage was to compile and run very basic programs on a DOS machine. Also the access the computer was a luxury even in the premier engineering college. Anand remembers, ” The computer center would close soon after the college hours and they wouldn’t let us skip the classes to use the computers. The only available time was lunch break and an hour just after the college times. ” To overcome the problem Anand and his friend decided to pool in some money and bought a computer for themselves to practice.
During the holidays Anand bought C programming books and practice reading and writing programs on paper. Once the college would reopen he would then go and practice those programs on the computer. The year was 1996 and Internet was not easily affordable by everyone. The only means available for Anand was to install Linux distros which used to come with magazines like PC Quest and language they could play around was C. Anand made best use of all the tools he had. He would look at a math equation and then figure out a way to plot a curve for that equation using C on the computer.
There was never a dearth of problems for them to work on and for Anand it was always a new challenge. Once he wrote a simulator for the 8085 microprocessor when the actual device started giving problems. Anand recalls, “8085 is microprocessor that is taught to electrical engg. students. It requires you to type in the machine code of the program in keyboard. In the lab, the instrument always used to give some error due to some hardware issues. So I wrote a simulator to try it without having to go to the lab and hold a physical device.”
By the time Anand passed out, he knew that his heart lie in computers and not in electrical engineering. Anand tried to get a job in programming but it was in vain. He decided to pursue higher studies in Computational Sciences and appeared for GATE. He got a seat in IISc. IISc proved to be a blessing in disguise.
Anand had moved from C to VC++ and from VC++ to Java. Each language was better than the previous one. There was ease of use. Talking about his migration from VC++ to Java, Anand says, “I hated VC++ because of the way it works. It generates a lot of code and asks you to modify that. It used to become a mess very quickly. On the other hand Java was very beautiful, everything that you want to do is specified in the code. What happens on a button click, what is the title of the button etc, are all in the code. But in VC++, it was driven by UI. ”
After IISc, Anand took a job in a Strand Life Sciences – A startup from IISc itself. Which is where the introduction to Python happened and the interest in Python grew. After experimenting with Python for some time to automate workflows and developing tools in Jython (Python on a JVM) Anand started looking around for more Python related communities and joined Bangpypers – The Bangalore Python Group where he attended Python meetups and met likeminded Python enthusiasts.
Working in a startup, it was evident for Anand to read and follow the startup community. He started following Paul Graham very closely and decided to plunge into web programming after getting to know about viaweb(the startup Paul Graham sold to Yahoo in 1998). Anand tried to learn different frameworks like Django, Plone but found them too complicated.
Aaron Swartz released web.py framework at the same time and Anand took to it. Soon he started web programming and also after looking at the simplicity of Python, the dislike for Java crept in. Anand Says, “I knew how to build websites, my hands were itching to build something using the new things that I learnt. By then I started disliking java, after tasting Python. Java is too verbose. It takes too much code solve something. It was like ‘I knew what to do, I knew how to do, but takes 3 days coding to finish it’.”
Anand quit Strand and joined another startup called Picsquare. The required a custom photosite for events. Anand implemented it using web.py. During this time Anand also started working with Aaron Swartz, Anand recollects,” I remember seeing this page couple of times and dreaming about being there. http://web.archive.org/web/20051201022645/http://infogami.com/ though I hadn’t seen the code of Infogami, I tried building a clone of that for fun. It was very crude, but I could make one.
Reddit.com and Infogami.com were launched around the same time. After few months of helping the startup, I saw an email in the web.py group from Aaron that he is looking for someone to help him on a web.py project.
I replied to that email saying that I’m interested.He was looking for someone to build the next version of Infogami and I showed the clone that I built. He liked it and I started working with him on building Infogami. While I was working on Infogami, I started contributing to web.py and took over the maintenance of it from him.”
It was in 2007, Aaron asked Anand if he can move to US for a project, Anand decided he can be a part of the project from India itself and would work remotely. The project Aaron wanted Anand to work on was openlibrary and Anand was one of the first members on the team. Aaron moved on to activism while Anand continued working with the openlibrary project.
Like most of us in the open source community, Aarons death came as a surprise to Anand.
“It was a shock.
I never expected Aaron would do that. A friend of mine started working with Aaron on a project just couple of months before his death. I heard his big plans for future and what kind of things he wanted to build. I miss him dearly.
We worked pretty well together. He had very good trust on my abilities and I enjoyed working with him. He asked me 2 months before his death if I wanted to work with him on a long-term project. I couldn’t accept because I wasn’t ready to quit the archive at that time.”
Anand is also actively involved in organizing PyCon India and have been in the organizing team since its inception. He is also leading an initiative on organizing Python workshops around the country with his initiative PythonExpress.
For people just starting out in technology, Anand refers them to read an article by Aaron Swartz. His advice to students is, “Be passionate, work hard, try new things.
World is full of interesting problems waiting to be solved. There are lot of interesting problems around us, we just need to look around.”
source: http://www.yourstory.com / YourStory.com / Home / by Aditya Bhushan Dwivedi / September 16th, 2014
Woman farmer G Mythili at her farm in Ambajipet mandal of East Godavari. PHOTO: By Arrangment / The Hindu
Garimella Mythili Subrahmanyam, a woman from a traditional Brahmin family, is making strides in the field of farming by using innovation to the fullest. Ms. Mythili, a native of Kotivari Agrharam in Amabjipet mandal of East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, completed her graduation and entered farming as a result of adverse circumstances. She has also completed her diploma in computer education.
Having cultivated coconut in about 2 acres of land in the village, Ms. Mythili started thinking of out-of-box ways to improve yield and revenue. As a first step, she bought a cow which met the requirement of her family for milk and curd, thereby reducing cost.
As the cow used to give only two litres of milk per day, she replaced it with another that gave better yield. At present, she has four cows and three calves.
While increasing the number of cattle, she simultaneously focused on gobar bio-gas plant, which has reduced the cost of purchasing cooking gas. She was also instrumental in encouraging more than 80 farmers to install bio-gas plants in their backyards. “I was presented an award for using cow urine to produce bio-gas. We made an arrangement in our backyard whereby the cow urine directly flows into a tank,” she told The Hindu.
Ms. Mythili has also received the International Society of Extension Education Award in the past.
She was here at International Crops Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) to receive an award from Director General William Dar for her innovative practices in farming.
Ms. Mythili is cultivating four varieties of grass in her coconut farm, a rare practice. She also supplies grass seeds to farmers who approach her and explains how they can cultivate it in the fields.
“I love cows as they serve humanity better than many animals. We can continue farming depending on cows rather than on pesticides and fertilizers,” she says.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by R. Avadhani / Patancheru (Medak District) – September 16th, 2014
MASTER OF KEYS Venkateswara Rao at Max Mueller Bhavan with the first piano he tuned for Handel Manuel. Photo: R. Ragu / The Hindu
Meet S. Venkateswara Rao, Chennai’s famed piano tuner, who has given the instrument its voice for over 50 years
It’s not easy to tell exactly how old he is, because he still bustles about like he’s in his 20s, lifting piano stools, attempting to move grand pianos by himself and juggling back-to-back piano tuning appointments every day. He’s not sure how old he is either, owing to a flood that washed his birth certificate away.
S. Venkateswara Rao, a piano tuner for over 50 years, says, “I don’t celebrate my birthday, I only celebrate music.” Active and agile, he is keen to talk about himself and the glamorous cine world that surrounds him. He states dates and incidents with accuracy and yet, struggles to remember the name of people who walk up to greet him. “I’m surprised at how much trouble comes at this age,” he says, laughing.
He was born in Rajamundhry. His father died when he was five and his mother fell prey to tuberculosis by the time he turned 12. His uncle, who brought him up, was a harmonist for street theatre, which kept him in the art circle during his childhood. At 14, he was taken in by Ratna Varma in Machilipatnam, whose shop he worked and often slept in, learning to tune and make instruments. In two years, he’d mastered the art of making and repairing many string instruments like veenas, violins and harmoniums.
He moved to Madras when we was 16, at a time when trams still traversed the streets. He worked in many musical shops in the city, where he learned the technical aspects of making and tuning bigger, professional instruments.
Four years on, he got the opportunity to be a piano repairing technical assistant at Musee Musical, for a monthly salary of Rs. 60. He still works there today, as a freelance tuner, making about Rs. 1,000 for two hours of work.
To learn international tuning, he started training under Master Dhanraj, even before Ilaiyaraaja could learn from the famous music teacher. “I’m Ilaiyaraaja’s senior,” he says, smiling proudly.
Rao says there are about 3-4 other tuners in the city who he has heard about, but never met, making him quite a rarity. “You know the pianos Rajnikanth and Sri Devi play on screen? I’ve tuned those,” he says proudly, yet matter-of-factly. He emphasises that he hasn’t missed a single Ilaiyaraaja composition; he’s always the piano tuner on the job.
In 1967, Rao joined Max Mueller Bhavan and the first ever piano he tuned, was for the legendary Handel Manuel.
He has tuned for the programmes of many big names since then, including musicians Roman Rudnytsky, Billy Taylor and Chico Freeman; music directors A.R. Rahman, Yuvan Shankar Raja, and Harris Jeyaraj; and singers Unni Krishnan, Srinivas and Karthik.
He continues to tune pianos for many in the city, even as he divides his time between tuning appointments for The Music Academy, Taj hotels, The Leela Palace, Chennai, the programme VijaySuper Singers, weddings, receptions and just about any stage with a piano that requires his attention. Typically, he tunes around 15-20 pianos a month.
For the hour-and-a-half he takes to tune a piano, everything is in his control. He tunes in accordance with Bach’s technique and that has been a constant since the day he started. “Till the world ends, the technique will be the same,” he states. Everything else, however, changes.
When his wife of 50 years fell ill, it was a struggle for him and his family of five children. She suffered from diabetes for years and he spent lakhs for the treatment. And then, she died suddenly of a heart attack. “I’m alright,” he says when asked how he came to terms with her death. “Life is as it is. I give full attention only to music; nothing else matters.”
His love for music and his work takes up every inch of his life, including the time he could spend with his seven-year-old grandson. “Fine tuning isn’t possible if you have avocations,” he states plainly.
Rao does not pause to rest because the happiness he derives from work, he gets from nothing else. Yet, his work is done well before the curtain goes up.
While a guitarist plays with six strings on stage, he works with the 220 strings of a piano backstage, knowing them like the back of his hand. “This is a special technique. One town has one man,” says Rao, who for the longest time, has been tuning for this city.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Raveena Joseph / Chennai – September 15th, 2014
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has proposed to set up a laboratory housing electronic warfare projects and an evaluation facility in Andhra Pradesh’s Kadapa district.
At a meeting with Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu at CM Camp Office today, DRDO officials requested the government to allot land for the lab in Kopparthi village.
The officials informed Naidu that about 3,383 acres has been identified in the village for setting up the lab.
“The Chief Minister replied in the affirmative (to the request on land allotment),” a CM office statement said.
The DRDO team informed Naidu that the Government of India had already sanctioned Rs 468 crore for the project’s first phase proposed to be completed in 42 months.
The total investment earmarked for the project is Rs 10,000 crore over a period of 10 years, the statement said.
They told the Chief Minister the facility would also attract more investments from local as well as foreign firms. It would provide about 1,500 jobs to skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled personnel, it added.
source: http://www.articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com / The Economic Times / Home> Int’l/Svcs> Engineering / PTI / September 10th, 2014
Taking a step further in eGovernance, the Andhra Pradesh state cabinet has now gone paperless.
On Monday morning, wielding iPads in their hands, chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his council of ministers conducted a meeting of what is being called “eCabinet”, a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country.
It was a regular meeting of the state cabinet, but the uniqueness this time was that it is paperless, with the government switching over to the electronic format in conducting proceedings.
The agenda and the minutes of the meeting were all electronically recorded while a power-point presentation was made on important subjects for elaborate discussion, sources in the chief minister’s office said.
Andhra Pradesh government, during Chandrababu’s previous stint as chief minister between 1995 and 2004, had been a pioneer in launching various eGovernance initiatives.
The CM is making use of the advances in technology like ‘Cloud’ to further eGovernance and eCabinet is a “momentous” initiative.
Now, during his current tenure, the chief minister is making use of the advances in technology like ‘Cloud’ to further eGovernance and eCabinet is a “momentous” initiative, the CMO sources pointed out.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> India / PTI / September 15th, 2014
