A health village is to be established in Elavur, near Chennai, to serve as the hub for medicare and medical research in South Asia. It is a joint venture between Frontier Lifeline Hospital and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO).
A memorandum of understanding, formalising the Rs. 450-crore project, was signed by representatives of the organisations on Wednesday in the presence of Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.
Frontier Lifeline was represented by its founding chairman K.M. Cherian, and TIDCO, by its Managing Director S. Ramasundaram.
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Thursday, November 22, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Tamil Brahmi script in Egypt
A broken storage jar with inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi script has been excavated at Quseir-al-Qadim, an ancient port with a Roman settlement on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. This Tamil Brahmi script has been dated to first century B.C. One expert described this as an “exciting discovery.”
The same inscription is incised twice on the opposite sides of the jar. The inscription reads paanai oRi, that is, pot (suspended) in a rope net.
An archaeological team belonging to the University of Southampton in the U.K., comprising Prof. D. Peacock and Dr. L. Blue, who recently re-opened excavations at Quseir-al-Qadim in Egypt, discovered a fragmentary pottery vessel with inscriptions.
Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India.
Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about first century B.C.
The same inscription is incised twice on the opposite sides of the jar. The inscription reads paanai oRi, that is, pot (suspended) in a rope net.
An archaeological team belonging to the University of Southampton in the U.K., comprising Prof. D. Peacock and Dr. L. Blue, who recently re-opened excavations at Quseir-al-Qadim in Egypt, discovered a fragmentary pottery vessel with inscriptions.
Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India.
Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about first century B.C.
March deadline set for IT corridor project
The six-lane road works on the 20.1-km Information Technology (IT) Corridor from Madhya Kailash Temple to Siruseri will be completed by March-end.
A toll plaza on Rajiv Gandhi Salai would come up at Perungudi and the Government would make arrangements to provide Local Residents Pass for those living on the road.
The Tamil Nadu Government had, in principle, cleared the second phase of the IT corridor extension, from Siruseri to Mamallapuram, with a link road to Kelambakkam and it was awaiting a detailed report from the consultancy agency. Similarly, consultants were working on the expansion and widening of ECR from Thiruvanmiyur to Sholinganallur and also on putting up flyovers on the IT corridor.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Major fire at Madras Export Processing Zone
A major fire broke out at a cosmetics manufacturing unit inside the Madras Export Processing Zone here on Friday. It broke out at one of the units of Suntara Cosmetics India around 12.30 a.m. and continued to rage even after 6 p.m. While no one was injured, finished goods and raw materials worth several lakhs of rupees were destroyed, said representatives of the company.
The fire broke out in the eyeliners and lipliners unit. The company has another unit in the MEPZ where perfumes are manufactured.
The fire broke out in the eyeliners and lipliners unit. The company has another unit in the MEPZ where perfumes are manufactured.
How to Think :Managing brain resources in an age of complexity.
When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.
1. Synthesize new ideas constantly.
Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.
2. Learn how to learn (rapidly).
One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)
3. Work backward from your goal.
Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound--or you might not. If you work backward, then you have at least directed your efforts at something important to you.
4. Always have a long-term plan.
Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it. And even if you revise it often, you're guaranteed to be learning something.
5. Make contingency maps.
Draw all the things you need to do on a big piece of paper, and find out which things depend on other things. Then, find the things that are not dependent on anything but have the most dependents, and finish them first.
6. Collaborate.
7. Make your mistakes quickly.
You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Winston Churchill put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols.
That way, when you return to something you've done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.
9. Document everything obsessively.
If you don't record it, it may never have an impact on the world. Much of creativity is learning how to see things properly. Most profound scientific discoveries are surprises. But if you don't document and digest every observation and learn to trust your eyes, then you will not know when you have seen a surprise.
10. Keep it simple.
If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it. It will work better, be more reliable, and have a bigger impact on the world. And learn, if only to know what has failed before. Remember the old saying, "Six months in the lab can save an afternoon in the library."
Two practical notes.
The first is in the arena of time management. I really like what I call logarithmic time planning, in which events that are close at hand are scheduled with finer resolution than events that are far off. For example, things that happen tomorrow should be scheduled down to the minute, things that happen next week should be scheduled down to the hour, and things that happen next year should be scheduled down to the day. Why do all calendar programs force you to pick the exact minute something happens when you are trying to schedule it a year out? I just use a word processor to schedule all my events, tasks, and commitments, with resolution fading away the farther I look into the future. (It would be nice, though, to have a software tool that would gently help you make the schedule higher-resolution as time passes...)
The second practical note: I find it really useful to write and draw while talking with someone, composing conversation summaries on pieces of paper or pages of notepads. I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I've conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago--at a touch, on my laptop. With 10-megapixel cameras costing just over $100, you can easily capture a dozen full pages in a single shot, in just a second.
1. Synthesize new ideas constantly.
Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.
2. Learn how to learn (rapidly).
One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)
3. Work backward from your goal.
Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound--or you might not. If you work backward, then you have at least directed your efforts at something important to you.
4. Always have a long-term plan.
Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it. And even if you revise it often, you're guaranteed to be learning something.
5. Make contingency maps.
Draw all the things you need to do on a big piece of paper, and find out which things depend on other things. Then, find the things that are not dependent on anything but have the most dependents, and finish them first.
6. Collaborate.
7. Make your mistakes quickly.
You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Winston Churchill put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols.
That way, when you return to something you've done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.
9. Document everything obsessively.
If you don't record it, it may never have an impact on the world. Much of creativity is learning how to see things properly. Most profound scientific discoveries are surprises. But if you don't document and digest every observation and learn to trust your eyes, then you will not know when you have seen a surprise.
10. Keep it simple.
If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it. It will work better, be more reliable, and have a bigger impact on the world. And learn, if only to know what has failed before. Remember the old saying, "Six months in the lab can save an afternoon in the library."
Two practical notes.
The first is in the arena of time management. I really like what I call logarithmic time planning, in which events that are close at hand are scheduled with finer resolution than events that are far off. For example, things that happen tomorrow should be scheduled down to the minute, things that happen next week should be scheduled down to the hour, and things that happen next year should be scheduled down to the day. Why do all calendar programs force you to pick the exact minute something happens when you are trying to schedule it a year out? I just use a word processor to schedule all my events, tasks, and commitments, with resolution fading away the farther I look into the future. (It would be nice, though, to have a software tool that would gently help you make the schedule higher-resolution as time passes...)
The second practical note: I find it really useful to write and draw while talking with someone, composing conversation summaries on pieces of paper or pages of notepads. I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I've conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago--at a touch, on my laptop. With 10-megapixel cameras costing just over $100, you can easily capture a dozen full pages in a single shot, in just a second.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Samsung’s Sriperumbudur unit goes on stream
Samsung Electronics has opened its second manufacturing facility in India at Sriperumbudur, 44 km to the west of here, to cater to its growing consumer base in southern India as well as increase its exports to countries in the South Asian region. The US$ 30 million facility, which was inaugurated by the Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi on Tuesday, will manufacture flat televisions, LCD televisions and home appliances.
“The growing demand for our products in the south, coupled with the strong infrastructure, the port facilities and the Tamil Nadu Government’s investor-friendly policies, prompted us to set up this new facility,” H. B. Lee, President and CEO, Samsung South West Asia Regional Headquarters, said. Southern India is the company’s largest consumer base in the country, contributing to 34 per cent of its overall revenue.
“The growing demand for our products in the south, coupled with the strong infrastructure, the port facilities and the Tamil Nadu Government’s investor-friendly policies, prompted us to set up this new facility,” H. B. Lee, President and CEO, Samsung South West Asia Regional Headquarters, said. Southern India is the company’s largest consumer base in the country, contributing to 34 per cent of its overall revenue.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Shriram Properties Limited "The Gateway" Chennai SEZ IT/ITES
The Gateway SEZ near Vandaloor is coming up. This property will accomodate IT/ITES firms.Project is jointly promoted by Shriram properties Ltd and Sun Apollo.
SIPCOT Industrial Complex,Cheyyar
SEZ on 255 acres within the Cheyyar industrial estate located near the Mathur-Mangadu Koottu Road, 13 km from Kancheepuram and 15 km from Cheyyar. Allotment was in progress for the remaining land.
For more details http://www.sipcot.com/Industrial_complex_Cheyyar.htm
For more details http://www.sipcot.com/Industrial_complex_Cheyyar.htm
Dell facility near Chennai
Dell Inc, the US-based personal computer manufacturer will build its manufacturing facility at the Sriperumbudur Hi-Tech Park near Chennai.
Yeddyurappa sworn in Chief Minister
Sixty-four-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party leader Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa took oath as Karnataka Chief Minister in the name of God and farmers at a grand ceremony here on Monday. Four other legislators — R. Ashok, Jagadish Shettar, V.S. Acharya and Govind Karjol — also took oath as Cabinet Ministers in the first-ever BJP-led government in the south. The oath of office and secrecy was administered by Governor Rameshwar Thakur.
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