Mobile number portability from October 31

(IANS) The telecom regulator said on Thursday that mobile number portability (MNP) will be implemented nationwide from October 31, ruling out any further delay.

The MNP is a service that allows a mobile user to change his operator while retaining the number.

"There will be no further delay in the implementation of MNP," Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman JS Sarma said in New Delhi.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) had said on Wednesday that the operators must ensure that all inter-operator tests for porting the numbers from one service provider to another are completed before September 1, 2010.

Mobile number portability from October 31

Satellite-based navigation system, GAGAN to be launch in India.

(IBNLIVE) India is set to launch its own satellite-based navigation system - GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation or GAGAN.

In the next five years the Indian airspace will get more crowded and the chances of accidents may increase. To reduce the chances of future air disasters, India has endeavoured on the GAGAN project for traffic and directional guidance from outer space.

"The scope for GAGAN extends far beyond Indian borders. It reaches up to Africa and south East Asia. It is a huge airspace that we can monitor with this technology," says Praful Patel, minister of state for civil aviation.

The GAGAN project receives GPS signals from international satellites, but it boosts their accuracy, locking a plane's position anywhere in India to within three meters.

Satellite-based navigation system, GAGAN to be launch in India.

Man bikes across US to raise funds for Indian kids

(PTI) 67-year-old American, who worked as a teacher in India for a couple of years, from undertaking a 3,831- mile bicycle tour across America to raise $ 14,500 for the education of children in India's rural areas.

Lauren Brown, who was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania, taught Chemistry at the Methodist Rural School in Zahirabad in Andhra Pradesh's Medak district from 1964 to 1967 while serving in the Peace Corps in India.

Brown began his bicycle journey on April 26 from California and travelled 3,831 miles to reach Washington on August 9, during which he raised USD 14,500 (around Rs 6.67 lakh).

During his journey, Brown organised church programmes and charity functions as part of his efforts to raise funds for poor village children so that they can attend Methodist Schools in India.

Man bikes across US to raise funds for Indian kids

Indian origin American claims to solved one of the toughest Mathematics problem.

An Indian origin man living in United States has solved one of the most difficult mathematics problems in the world. Vinay Deolalikar, a HP employee in US has told that he has solved the world’s most difficult problem “P versus NP”

This P vs. NP problem has been considered as most difficult mathematical problems to solve. The well known mathematical institute, Massachusetts based Clay Mathematical institute has categorized this P vs. NP in the seven world’s difficult math problems.

Vinay Deolalikar claimed that he has solved this math puzzle. If Vinay Deolalikar claim is proved, he will get $1 million as cash award.

Indian origin American claims to solved one of the toughest Mathematics problem.

New Method to treat lung cancer

(Deccan Chronicle) That lung cancer is potentially fatal if left untreated is a well known fact. But the major problem in treating it through radiation is the constant movement of the organ as it is difficult to target the tumour. There are chances of healthy parts being hit by the radiation.

Thus far in India, the best procedure to treat lung cancer has been surgery. But, as we all know any surgical intervention is not without complications and suffering. With advancement in technology, lung cancer patients in India can have access to what is called 4D-Gated Stereotactic Body Radiosurgery.

Recently, using this technology we have treated a 65-year-old man with inoperable lung cancer. He is the first in India to receive 4-Dimensional Gated Stereotactic Body Radiosurgery using RapidArc technology.

New Method to treat lung cancer

According to WHO, swine flu pandemic is over.

(Associated Press) The World Health Organisation (WHO) HAS declared the swine flu pandemic officially over, months after many national authorities started cancelling vaccine orders and shutting down hot lines as the disease ebbed from the headlines.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the organisation's emergency committee of top flu experts advised her that the pandemic had "largely run its course" and the world is no longer in phase six, the highest influenza alert level.

"I fully agree with the committee's advice," Chan told reporters in a telephone briefing from her native Hong Kong.

According to WHO, swine flu pandemic is over.

Wipro recognised as first Bluetooth test facility in India

(PTI) Global software major Wipro Technologies has been recognised as India's first Bluetooth qualification test facility by the Bluetooth trade association, the IT bellwether said late Tuesday.

Bluetooth is an open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances (using short length radio waves) from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks (PANs) with high levels of security.

The recognition makes Wipro competent to perform Bluetooth qualification conformance or compliance tests, the company said in a statement here.

"We will test products submitted by members of the Bluetooth special interest group at our test lab in the electronics city campus. The tests will also include Bluetooth protocol conformance," said Wipro vice-president C.P. Gangadharaiah.

Wipro recognised as first Bluetooth test facility in India

Competing for Co-partner may reduce your lifespan.

A new study shows that ratios between males and females affect human longevity. Men who reach sexual maturity in a context in which they far outnumber women live, on average, three months less than men whose competition for a mate isn't as stiff. The steeper the gender ratio (also known as the operational sex ratio), the sharper the decline in lifespan.

"At first blush, a quarter of a year may not seem like much, but it is comparable to the effects of, say, taking a daily aspirin, or engaging in moderate exercise," says Nicholas Christakis, senior author on the study and professor of medicine and medical sociology at Harvard Medical School as well as professor of sociology at Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "A 65-year-old man is typically expected to live another 15.4 years. Removing three months from this block of time is significant."

These results are published in the August issue of the journal Demography.

Competing for Co-partner may reduce your lifespan.

Praying to God helps to de-stress but only for those who belive in it.

"Eighty-five percent of the world has some sort of religious beliefs," says Michael Inzlicht, who cowrote the study with Alexa Tullett, both at the University of Toronto Scarborough. "I think it behooves us as psychologists to study why people have these beliefs; exploring what functions, if any, they may serve."

With two experiments, the researchers showed that when people think about religion and God, their brains respond differently—in a way that lets them take setbacks in stride and react with less distress to anxiety-provoking mistakes. Participants either wrote about religion or did a scrambled word task that included religion and God-related words. Then the researchers recorded their brain activity as they completed a computerized task—one that was chosen because it has a high rate of errors. The results showed that when people were primed to think about religion and God, either consciously or unconsciously, brain activity decreases in areas consistent with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area associated with a number of things, including regulating bodily states of arousal and serving an alerting function when things are going wrong, including when we make mistakes.

Praying to God helps to de-stress but only for those who belive in it.

Mankind must abandon earth or face extinction: Stephen Hawking

"The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet," the renowned astrophysicist told the website Big Think, a forum which airs ideas on many subjects from experts.

"Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space," he added.

He warned that the human race was likely to face an increased number of events that threaten its very existence, as the Cuban missile crisis did in 1962.

The Cold War showdown saw the United States and Soviet Union in a confrontation over Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba, near US shores, and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Mankind must abandon earth or face extinction: Stephen Hawking

Nerve connections regenerated after spinal cord injury.

(IANS) In a breakthrough study, scientists have successfully achieved regeneration of nerve connections after a spinal cord injury.

UC Irvine, UC San Diego and Harvard University team conducted the study on rodents.
They did this by deleting an enzyme called PTEN (a phosphatase and tensin homolog). PTEN activity is low early during development, allowing cell proliferation.

It then turns on when growth is completed, inhibiting mTOR and precluding any ability to regenerate.

Even a small spinal cord injury can cause paralysis of arms and legs, loss of ability to feel below the shoulders, inability to control the bladder and bowel, loss of sexual function, and secondary health risks including susceptibility to urinary tract infections, pressure sores and blood clots due to an inability to move the legs.

Nerve connections regenerated after spinal cord injury.

Thousands of kids misdiagnosed with food allergies

(IANS) Hundreds of thousands of children are being misdiagnosed with food allergies because of unreliable tests sold online.

Youngsters are being put on unnecessary and restrictive diets, avoiding products containing egg, milk, fish and wheat, which can leave them malnourished.

The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) UK, says doctors are often too quick to dismiss parents' concerns over their child's runny nose or tummy ache - which can be symptomatic of an allergy, reports the Daily Mail.

Unsure what to do, many parents then turn to so-called 'alternative allergy tests' sold by private firms online.

Thousands of kids misdiagnosed with food allergies

Ousted HP CEO to get $40 million pay cheque

(Associated Press) Whatever Mark Hurd did that cost him his job as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest technology company, it wasn't enough to cost him a payday that could top $40 million.

Meanwhile, with little still known about why an actress and HP contractor threatened Hurd with a sexual-harassment lawsuit, stockholders took a $9 billion hit Monday, and HP's 300,000 workers were left to wonder about its future.

HP insisted that the problems it uncovered with the CEO's behavior were limited to falsified expense reports for his dinners and other meetings with Jodie Fisher, who helped organize HP events from 2007 to 2009 and greeted executives at the gatherings.

Ousted HP CEO to get $40 million pay cheque

2611 may be India's National Emergency Telephone Number

(PTI)A National Emergency Telephone Number - 2611 - has been mooted by a Pune-based Telecom engineer as a versatile communication platform during emergency and disaster management in the country.

Dial 2611, a National Emergency Telephone Number system (NETNS,) is designed and developed as a nationwide single telephone number assigned to integrate local, regional and national help lines and is easy to remember, Dinkar Borde, a scientist and an innovator, said.

Borde has submitted his proposal to Bureau of Police Research and Development in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs last October for its consideration.

The NETNS is designed in such a way that it will inform, arrange and coordinate forces at the emergency point and is a single telephone number network for India, Borde said.

2611 may be India's National Emergency Telephone Number

Gabbar the first villian to be brand ambassador

(Ibnlive) Kailash Surendranath started his career at the age of 17. He directed the path breaking Liril launch ad followed by many. He is one of the leading and most reputed ad film makers in India for the last 30 years. He had directed the first 'mile sur mera tumhara'. 

Post the fame and success of Sholay he directed an ad for Glucose-D using Gabbar as the brand ambassador. Read on to know what the director has to say about Amjad Khan aka Gabbar and Sholay.

How and when did the idea of using Gabbar Singh for the Britannia’s Glucose-D come about?

The idea was actually very revolutionary. The film had obviously become a sensation and we just worked on it. The idea to use Gabbar Singh in the ad came from Late Mubi Ismail. She worked in the film department at Lintas India Ltd. She approached me with the idea to take the villain instead of the hero as the brand ambassador. We decided to do something that’s not so obvious after all Gabbar was the most memorable part of the movie. It was a revolutionary idea because no client had the guts to use a villain as a testimonial for an ad for obvious reasons. This was done during a time when not many movie stars were into endorsements. Advertisements at that time had not reached such frenzy as it is now. I remember one Mr. Sunil who sanctioned it from the client’s end. He was Rajan Pillay’s man for advertising. After a lot of brainstorming and couple of drinks it was a done deal.

Gabbar the first villian to be brand ambassador

After 65 yrs of US atomic bombing at Hiroshima.[PICS]

After 65 yrs of US atomic bombing at Hiroshima.[PICS]

Keep busy, eat healthily 'to keep dementia at bay'

Want to stave off dementia? Keep yourself busy and eat healthily, says a new study. Researchers in France have found that keeping brain stimulated, avoiding depression and a healthy diet to reduce the risk of developing diabetes are fundamental in keeping dementia at bay.

In fact, with no cure for the debilitating disease, the researchers claim that the focus should be on the best ways to avoid it.

The latest study in France of 1,500 people found better education would cut new cases by about 18 per cent over the next seven years. But eliminating the main genetic risk factor would lead only to a seven per cent cut in new cases during the same period, the 'Daily Express' reported.

Keep busy, eat healthily 'to keep dementia at bay'

BlackBerry network can be hacked, say experts

( Reuters )Research in Motion's resistance to giving governments access to its BlackBerry network misses a major point - authorities could probably hack the data on their own if they want it badly enough, security experts say.

Indeed, a major attack against BlackBerry users by a telecom in the United Arab Emirates employed that very tactic a year ago, according to RIM. Experts say other malicious programs are likely to be lurking around, readying to be sprung.

India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates say they need RIM's cooperation so they can decode messages scrambled with BlackBerry's proprietary technology. They have threatened to restrict RIM's operations if the company won't meet their demands, which they say are driven by national security concerns.

BlackBerry network can be hacked, say experts

Universal Society of Hinduism warmly welcome Julia Roberts to Hinduism

(ANI): Hindus have extended warm welcome to Oscar winner Hollywood star Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman) into the Hindu fold.

September issue of women's fashion magazine Elle, on which Roberts, 42, is the cover girl, reportedly says: The entire Roberts-Moder family, she reveals, goes to temple together to "chant and pray and celebrate. I'm definitely a practicing Hindu," says Roberts, who grew up with a Catholic mother and Baptist father. And since in Hindu cosmology souls can be reincarnated in other bodies, where does she see herself in the next life? "Golly, I've been so spoiled with my friends and family in this life," she says. "Next time I want to be just something quiet and supporting."

Noted Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, heartily welcomed Roberts into Hinduism. She would appreciate rich, diverse and long tradition of Hindu philosophy; and its interpretation of the nature of reality, he added.

Universal Society of Hinduism warmly welcome Julia Roberts to Hinduism

Gates and Buffet campaign makes US Billionaires to donate half of their wealth to Charity.

There is nothing much happy than give away the things for the needy. This feeling made popular US billionaires to pursue forty US billionaires pledged to give away at least half of their wealth to philanthropic purpose in response to a campaign by Microsoft chief Bill Gates and legendary investor Warren Buffet.

Among those who pledged their contributions are New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, noted Hollywood director George Lucas and media mogul Ted Turner.

The US has 403 billionaires in the world - the most in the world, and New York tops the list within the country.

Buffet, who heads the insurance and investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc, has pledged 99 per cent of his wealth.

Gates and Buffet campaign makes US Billionaires to donate half of their wealth to Charity.