Reblogged from riyaz@reva:

Azim Premji University

Logical Thinking

The idea-logical REVOLUTION

Whether it’s to discuss science or startup plans, a growing number of urban Indians are making a beeline for idea fests. But is this sparking innovation and out-of-the-box thinking or just hot air?

Neha Thirani TNN

Annkur Agarwal’s new venture was floundering, his two key employees had abandoned ship and he was seriously considering a 9-to-5 job. That’s when he heard Faisal Farooqui of MouthShut, a website for user-generated reviews, speak at Startup Saturday. In his speech, Farooqui asked, “Are you preparing for failure or success?” — a remark that struck a raw nerve. Annkur gave up his idea of a day job, found an office space and got to work with a fresh perspective. Today, 13 people work in the Mumbai office from where he runs a thriving ecommerce consultancy called Onlygizmos.
Events like Startup Saturday, geared towards intellectual exchange, have often sparked innovation or helped bring about unforeseen collaborations in the field of social entrepreneurship. By bringing together innovators and lay people, they create a space in public discourse specifically for ideas. However, such events, which take the elevator pitch to the next level, often become unproductive excuses for self-propagation. The question is — have these TED-inspired events created a community of thinkers or are they redundant?
The Social Network showed us how much money there is to be had in harnessing an online community, but the many idea-centric events and organisations recently initiated are evidence of the growing market for sharing ideas. While some events are free, certain popular conferences can make a sizable dent in your wallet. With the more academic talks that are hosted for free in city institutions going largely unnoticed, young professionals in the age bracket of 23 to 35 are flocking to idea fests. The wide spectrum of these events caters to audiences that include students, entrepreneurs, professionals and just about anyone who is interested. The more inclusive events, such as Ignite and Bar Camp, which are curated with less care, are often a random collection of people opining on a variety of topics, which gain legitimacy through the event. While they can sometimes lead to fruitful liaisons, some attend for the sake of fluffing up their resumes. Others simply enjoy meeting new people. “It is a great way to extend your circle and meet like-minded people,” saysPragya Gupta, a regular.
Launched in 1984 in California as a conferencetobring together thoughtleadersfrom thefieldsof technology,entertainment anddesign,TEDhas since widened its scope and gainedinternational popularity. The push still remains bringing together people on the forefront of innovation to speak for 18 minutes and then making the talks available free of cost. Last year, TED came to Asia for the first time with the hugely successful TEDIndia conference which had close to a thousand attendees from 46 different countries. Attendees were so
inspired by the experience that many decided they wanted to keep the momentum created at the conference going. Thus came about a whole array of events spawned by TEDIndia, such as TEDxMumbai,TEDxDelhi,TEDxMasala and the INK conference.
TEDx is a program that emulatestheTEDexperience on a local level with the guidance of the international TED team. Parmesh Shahani, editor-at-large for Verve magazine and author of Gay Bombay, attended TEDIndia and was fascinated by the event. Together with Ajay Hattangadi, he decided to coorganise TEDxMumbai and TEDxDelhion April 3 andAugust 1, 2010, respectively. “Now more than ever, in urban India there is a thirst for these kinds of cultural events,” says Sahani, who is currently involved in initiating an India-centric think-tank with Godrej Industries. “Whether it’s music, design or art, ideas are taking the centre stage.” TEDxMumbai, held atBlueFrog,had about160 attendees who were selected from the approximately 300 who applied. Speakers included Bollywood extra Steven Baker, tiger conservationist Kishor Rithe and actor Anupam Kher. Priced at Rs 1,000, the tickets were soldoutdaysbeforetheevent.
Modelled around a more specific theme, TEDxMasala is organised by The Bombay HUB, an organisation that supports social entrepreneurs. Affiliated to The HUB in UK, the Bombay HUB was started last June and has since hosted several events. The first TEDxMasala took place on April 22, 2010, attended by about 20 people, growing quickly to 80 attendees at the second on December 8. Affiliated to TEDWomen in Washington, the second TEDx Masala talk was about women and girls who are reshaping the future but have not always received the recognition they deserve.
Lakshmi Pratury, co-host of TEDIndia, has founded a new conference called INK (Innovation and Knowledge) in association with TED. The first INK conference took place from December 9-12. Themed ‘Untold Stories’, the speakers included ‘The Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening, film-maker James Cameron, innovator Arvind Gupta and Super 30 founder Anand Kumar. “Countries in Asia and Latin America are at a very different place in their developmental trajectory, and there needs to be a forum to discuss these region-specific changes,” says Pratury. The INK Fellows program will select 20 world-changing innovators andworkwiththem to incubate and support their projects. It will then distribute the content created to a national audience in the hope of sparking original thinking.
Events like Ignite, on the other hand, often lack a clearly demarcated area — they have speakers who opine on a whole gamut of topics, looking to enlighten or simply entertain.Founded in Seattle in 2006, Ignite spread toover 50 cities all over the world and was launched in Mumbai this April. Aviraj Saluja, Mandeesh Madambath,
Suyash Trivedi and Nidhi Thakkar — four friends who are all 25 — hosted the first Ignite with a modest turnout of about 50 people. However, the audience tripled atthe nextevent andis only looking to grow bigger. The concept of Ignite is to have a variegatedselection of individuals from different fields who each speak for five minutes, with 20 slides and exactly 15 seconds per slide. Within that span of time, speakers at Ignite Mumbai conveyed their thoughts on topics ranging from the unique to the banal; how to hack, the problem with happiness,howtobuild a modern social movement. “There was no formal selection for the speakers, we just asked people we considered coherent enough to share their ideas,” says Aviraj. As the profiles of the people attending are all between 23 and 35 years, the event is generally hosted in the relaxed atmosphere of a
restaurant or a bar.
The orchestrated set-up of such conferences, however, causes them very often to be accused of creating passive listeners rather than evolving a healthy debate and engagement. Moving away from the choreographed setting of speeches and panel debates, events like Bar Camp — an international network of usergenerated conferences which like to be referred to the as the ‘unconference’ — are aimed at creating a more interactive atmosphere. Rather than having a fixed schedule, the talks here are decided on a firstcome-first-serve basis by participant volunteers, and the audience moves fluidly between three or four rooms. Started in Palo Alto, California,Bar Campshavespreadto over 350 cities around the world.In India,Bar Camp was started in 2006 in Bangalore and now has a presence in ten cities. “These events are gratifying because I like interacting with people, exchanging ideas and connecting people to one another,” says Netra Parikh, the organiser.
Some of the same folks who organise Bar Camp began Startup Saturday as well with the aim to create a local platform specifically for early stage entrepreneurs to network, share ideas and solveone another’s problems. “We realised that we needed an ecosystem for early stage start-ups to help those who have already begun and those who are looking to start their own venture,” says Saptarshi Chatterjee from Headstart
Network Foundation, the NGO that organises Startup Saturday. Started in January 2008, Startup Saturday is a monthly meet-up on the second Saturday of each month that takes place across eight citiesin India with a different theme each month. The day consists of some lightening pitches, some talks from seasoned entrepreneurs and some demos from early-stage start-ups. Among the interesting people who have spoken at the event are Dheeraj Gupta of JumboKing andJay Gupta, founder of The Loot store. “Networking is a crucial part of the event,” says Chatterjee. “It’s a great place for people to meet fellow entrepreneurs, customers, potential employees and investors.”
There’s also a specific niche for entrepreneurshiprelated events that target a very specific audience — like the Silicon Valley-inspired ‘Mumbai Hackers and Founders Dinner’ held on December 6, 2010. The event was organised by Ankesh Kothari, a self- proclaimed Mumbaibased serial entrepreneur who started his own e-commerce platform in September. “At these events normally, there is a large audience and one person speaks,” says Kothari. “I wanted to do something more interactive, a platform for people to share their problems with starting a new business and troubleshoot for each other in an intimate setting. The 21 people who showed up were in the age bracket of 23-35 and
included someone working on creating his own search engine, someone who has a very popular website on time-sharing of vacation homes and someone who has sold more than 500,000 solarpowered lights to villagers.
One isn’t sure that the dynamics at such idea-centric events always spark innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. But one idea does meet another idea. And as science writer Matt Ridley put it at TedGlobal in July, they have idea sex. And, when the conditions are right, they conceive and spawn little baby ideas, which go on to have ideas of their own.
For more stories, log onto
www.toicrest.com

 

TALK THE TALK: TEDxMumbai had about 160 attendees who were selected from the 300 who applied. Priced at Rs 1,000, the tickets were sold out days before the event

Hemawati nandan university

DIBRUGARH UNIVERSITY

 

sorry for the delay. All the best.

1. a. Define a hub, switch and router and mention in which layers they are present. 2.5 marks

b. Write a note on ATM Networks . 5 marks

c. Differentiate between connection oriented network and connectionless network. 5 marks

2. a. Explain Packet Network Topology. 6.5 marks

b. comment on following arguments:
i. Network services is all that matters to transport layer, not the way of network operation.
ii. Why transport layer is close to application layer as compared to network layer . 6 marks

3. a. Draw the structure of a packet switch. 2.5 marks

b. What is head of-line-blocking? Explain a multistage architecture solution for it. 5 marks

c. What is hierarchical routing? Explain. 5 marks

Engg colleges to share infrastructure with polytechnics

After 2 pm, 15 engineering colleges in the state will turn into polytechnics! In a move aimed at providing adequate infrastructure facilities for polytechnic students on a par with engineering students, the All India Council for Technical Education has decided to allow polytechnic students to use the engineering college infrastructure.

There are over 2 lakh polytechnic students in Karnataka. This, however, will not affect the engineering classes.

Of the 15 colleges which have applied for this scheme under Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) for the academic year 2009-10, four are from Bangalore. The others are at Bijapur, Mangalore, Bellary, Tumkur and Gubbi.

H C Nagaraj, principal, Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, said: “Polytechnic subjects are closely related to engineering. Hence, sharing of infrastructure with engineering students will help polytechnic students.”

He said as engineering colleges have a higher standard of education compared with polytechnics, their books and journals could be used by polytechnic students. As labs in engineering colleges are not utilized much after 2 pm, these facilities can be utilized by polytechnic students. Acharya Institute of Technology, which has applied for this scheme, said the college had sufficient infrastructure.

“There is demand for polytechnic courses in our college. In the last three years, there have been no vacant seats for engineering and polytechnic,” G P Prabhu Kumar, principal, said. He said labs can be utilized by polytechnics. “This scheme works if there is sufficient infrastructure. Otherwise, sharing of resource can impact quality,” VTU registrar KVA Balaji told The Times of India.

DEGREE OF COMPARISON

Polytechnic education lags behind degree courses in engineering Only 2,65,000 seats in 1,244 diploma-level institutions as against 5,82,000 seats in 1,522 degree engineering colleges Ratio of degree to diploma admission capacity is more than 2 Ideally it should be 0.25 to 0.33 High cost of diploma-level education and relatively poor financial capacity of aspiring students is not attracting private investment into diploma-level education BOOST TO POLYTECHNICS Norms to share resources

Bangalore: The AICTE has decided to allow polytechnic students to use the infrastructure available in engineering colleges after 2 pm.
Norms for running second shift of polytechnics in an existing engineering institution

Second shift should be allowed in those branches which are already in existence in the institution for at least two years.

In case of new courses/disciplines to be started, additional facilities for such courses should be provided Intake in the second shift will range between 120-240

Second shift timing should be from 2 pm to 8.30 pm while first shift from 7 am to 1.30 pm No additional land is required to be added for second shift

No additional built-up area is required to be added for second shift. However, laboratories should be adequately equipped to accommodate second shift students

Library should be provided with 20% more books and journals and library timing should be extended to facilitate second shift students
No additional facility is required to be added

At least 50% additional faculty should be appointed for second shift and 25% visiting faculty should be engaged and remaining 25% faculty should be used from 1st year faculty

At least 50% additional staff should be appointed for second shift and 50% existing staff of first shift may be utilized

No additional facility is required to be added

Polytechnic institutions in existing engineering institutions

1. Channabasaveshwara Institute of Technology, Gubbi

2. HMS Institute of Technology, Tumkur

3. Kalpataru Institute of Technology, Tiptur

4. Acharya Institute of Technology, Bangalore

5. Sri Krishna Institute of Technology, Bangalore

6. Rajarajeshwari College of Engineering, Bangalore

7. Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, Bangalore

8. GSSS Institute of Engineering and Technology for Women, Mysore

9. Srinivas Institute of Technology, Mangalore

10. Shree Devi Institute of Technology, Mangalore

11. Basaveshwara Engineering College, Bagalkot

12. Basavakalyana Engineering College, Basavakalyana

13. Bellary Engineering College, Bellary

14. Rural Engineering College, Bhalki

15. BLDEA’s V P Dr P G H College of Engineering and Technology, Bijapur

Read more: http://discuss.itacumens.com/index.php?topic=49136.0#ixzz1A8VzQXeU

life isthene

 

NEIGHBOUR’S ENVY

Happiness is all about earning more than others

London: Money can buy you happiness, only if you earn more of it than your friends, scientists say.
A study of life satisfaction in dozens of countries found that contrary to popular perception, economic growth doesn’t bring with it a corresponding long-term rise in happiness.
While people may feel more positive in the short-term, the shine quickly wears off, found the study by researchers from University of Southern California. However, they found that the rich are happier than the poor within an individual country, the Daily Mail reported.
This implies that what matters is earning more than others, not the actual amount earned, said professor Richard Easterlin, who led the study.
Professor Easterlin first coined the theory in the 1970s which became known as the Easterlin Paradox.
With several recent studies challenging his findings, professor Easterlin again set out to examine if this pattern still exists. After crunching together figures from 37 countries around the globe, he said little had changed.
Easterlin said: “Simply stated, the happiness-income paradox is this: at a point in time both among and within countries, happiness and income are positively correlated. But, over time, happiness does not increase when a person’s income increases.” AGENCIES

Entrepreneurship opportunity

research in physics