Category Archives: Education

Programme on first aid held

Education

The Indian Red Cross Society, Tamil Nadu Branch on Saturday launched a one-day orientation programme on first aid and disaster management for college students enrolled under the Youth Red Cross (YRC) in the State.

According to a press release, the programme was introduced to 112 students of Anna University, who also received certificates.

B. Kumar, YRC zonal coordinator, associate professor, department of printing technology, College of Engineering, Anna University, and A. Khadar Basha, honorary advisor of Youth Red Cross, Indian Red Cross Society, Tamil Nadu Branch also participated.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / Home> National> Tamil Nadu / Chennai, February 03rd, 2013

Tailor-made courses for women

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education

Stitch in time:  S. Lakshmi Narasimhan, Superintendent, at the Vocational Training Centre,   The Theosophical Society, Adyar. / —Photo: Aiswarya Murali / The Hindu

Nestled amidst a tranquil atmosphere, The Vocational Training Centre, The Theosophical Society, Besant Avenue Road, is a learning centre for wisdom and compassion.

Courses

Started in 2000, the centre provides free training to young girls and women in vocational skills. The centre consists of a tailoring and a weaving unit, where courses in hand-embroidery, machine-embroidery, tailoring, designing, and weaving are taught.

“It has been a long-term goal of The Theosophical Society and its president Radha Burnier to uplift the people from the marginalised sections of the society by educating them, to come up in life,” says S. Lakshmi Narasimhan, Superintendent, The Vocational Training Centre, The Theosophical Society.

Apart from the main courses, various short-term courses such as house keeping, home management, first-aid in collaboration with St. John’s Ambulance Association, are taught at the Centre.

The institution plans to introduce a 3-month course in painting, building construction, plumbing and electrical work, from this month.

“We plan to offer more courses in the future. The courses are of high standards. Workshops, and educational tours in collaboration with National Institute of Fashion and Technology, Taramani, DakshinaChithra, Muttukadu, and Kalakshetra Foundation on tailoring, weaving, printing and block printing are conducted for the students,” said Lakshmi Narasimhan.

As part of the syllabus, the students visit the ‘Dastkari Haat’, a festival of arts, crafts and textiles conducted by Dastkari Haat Samiti in association with Kalakshetra Foundation, ‘Akshara’, an exhibition on regional Calligraphy, crafts, textiles and arts, Victoria Technical Institute, Central Cottage Industries Emporium, Khadi Gramdyog Bhavan. The visits help them to get an exposure about the cloth, its quality, cost, and textiles, arts, crafts, and other tailoring accessories, she added.

Around 20 to 25 women study every year and complete a one-year certificate course in Tailoring and Weaving. The teachers who handle these classes are alumni of the centre.

Celebrations

The centre provides free snacks to students, as most of them come from far-off places like Old Washermanpet, Okkiam Thoraipakkam and Kannagi Nagar.

On Independence Day and Republic Day, students involve themselves in cultural activities and unleash their talents. S. Ramkumar, Director, Vocational Training Centre, The Theosophical Society, said: “Every year during May, a one-month course on Engineering and Maintenance will be conducted. It attracts students from Industrial Training Institutes. ”

“The aim of the Centre is to make the students resourceful and employable. The courses are offered free of cost. We train the students to become entrepreneurs and employers, ” Ramkumar noted.

The institution plans to introduce a 3-month course in painting, building construction, plumbing and electrical work, from this month.

sources: http://www.TheHindu.com / Home> Features> Down Town / by T. S. Atul Swaminathan / February 03rd, 2013

Alumni meet at Ethiraj College

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Records, All

Entrenched memories:College authorities on the occasion of alumni meet at Ethiraj College for Women and (below) a workshop on physics experiments.Photo: Aiswarya Murali

“Alumnae should come forward to give suggestions that could be incorporated into the curriculum, based on their experiences in professional and personal fronts,” said A.M. Swaminathan, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Ethiraj College for Women, on the occasion of the alumni association meet, which was held on January 26.

He said that a book on the institution will be released for which alumnae have been invited to contribute materials that will include interesting anecdotes, experiences in the alma mater and others. He mentioned the chapters of the alumni association in Erode and Karur and wished to form further chapters in other areas as well.

Mr. Swaminathan requested the alumnae to keep their alma mater informed about their progress and achievements. He said that the college is proud to have produced graduates who had scaled great heights and made a mark in various spheres such as politics, journalism, administrative services and others.

Developments

The principal, Jothi Kumaravel, in her welcome address, briefed about the developments that have taken place in the college such as introduction of new courses, upgrade of two departments into research departments, and conferences, and seminars and workshops.

She acknowledged the alumnae for enabling the college to provide scholarships and breakfast to its poor underprivileged. The interest accrued from the Rs.10 lakh deposit was used for the purpose.

Various cultural events were presented and the investiture ceremony for the newly inducted office-bearers of the association was held. Thos who want to contribute for the book can mail to ethirajalumnae@gmail.com. This mail ID can also be used to stay in touch with the alma mater.

Two-day workshop

The Department of Physics will organise a UGC-sponsored State-level experimental workshop on Feb. 1 and 2 on “Practical Troubleshooting in Electronics, Microprocessor and Microcontroller Experiments” for college teachers at the Library Conference Hall.

The programme will be inaugurated by V.M. Muralidharan, Chief Operating Officer, Bahwan Cyber Tek, MN Software Services Organisation. The workshop will be conducted by S. Gunasekaran, Head, Postgraduate and Research Department of Physics, Pachaiyappa’s College, and G. Kumar Sathiyan, former Head, Department of Physics, Madras Christian College.

For teachers

The department had organised a similar workshop for school teachers in the city which dealt with fundamental experiments in physics. As part of its social responsibility, the department has been extending its resources to school students under IMI Project (Inculcate Motivate Integrate).

Under this programme, the staff and students of the department taught the students of Government Hobart Muslim Girls Higher Secondary School, Chennai, the basics concepts of experiments in physics.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / Home> Features> Down Town / by L. Kanthiamthi / February 03rd, 2013

Radio Frequency Identification system for library books soon

Education, Science & Technologies

Beep will alert whenever a book is taken out at MKU library

The Madurai Kamaraj University library, which has a collection of three lakh printed books, will soon have a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system. Once the RFID system is put in place, each time a book is taken out of the library without proper entry, a beep would alert the librarian.

Varsity sources told The Hindu on Friday that a couple of proposals have been prepared to make the university’s Dr. T. P. M. Library a digital library and these proposals will be submitted to Vice-Chancellor Kalyani Mathivanan shortly.

“RFID will prevent incidents of stealing/theft of books from the library. Even if a person takes a book by mistake, it would alert us,” said B. Suresh, university librarian.

The library will soon get a collection of 3,016 e-books on various subjects.

He said the electronic version of textbooks will provide easy access to students and research scholars.

The university already has in its collection 8,700 e-journals procured through Infonet Consortium.

“The e-books will be useful for students of all colleges. They can download and copy in a pen drive or we will provide them with CDs,” Mr. Suresh said.

The e-books can also be accessed by university departments.

A proposal to develop a herbal garden on the library premises is also on the anvil, sources said.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / Home> News> Cities> Madurai / by Shastry V. Mallady / February 02nd, 2013

Aero show attracts thousands

Business & Economy, Education, Science & Technologies

  Students looking at the exhibits at Aeroplus 2013 that began in the city on Thursday. / Photo: S. Siva Saravanan / The Hindu

For the thousands of children in the city who would have wished to touch aeroplanes that soar over the skies, it is a dream come true as Aero Plus 2013 was inaugurated at Nehru College of Aeronautics and Applied Sciences at Kuniamuthur on Thursday.

Being held from Thursday to Sunday, the seventh edition of this exhibition features Bell 47 GF helicopters and other single propeller aircraft such as Cessna.

A new addition is the Hawker Siddeley HS.125 1A, a twin-engine mid-size corporate jet. Going beyond just getting to see them, the children could also get to know about the thousands of components in an aircraft as the students of the college explained in detail the intricacies and engineering behind these machines.

The college has a Cessa 150 D, Lear Jet 25B, King Air C90 Beechcraft, and Bell and Enstrom f28 helicopters to provide training to its students

According to P. Krishna Kumar, chief executive officer and secretary of Nehru Group of Institutions, the objective behind the exhibition was to motivate students to take up aeronautic science and create awareness among the general public.

The institutions’ students benefit from the opportunity it provides to explain what they have learnt in the course regarding the functionality of each parts and its configuration.

Earlier, addressing the inaugural function, chief guest P. Vinodh Kumar, Regional Head (General Aviation), Air Works India Engineering, Pune, said that the aviation sector was highly interesting as it was demanding and challenging.

The company provided maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services in 12 airports in the country for business and general aviation customers.

Mr. Vinodh Kumar, himself an alumnus of the Nehru institution, said that those entering the field must be prepared to put in a lot of hard work.

R. Krishna Moorhty, Executive Director of KTVR Knowledge Park for Engineering and Technology, said that air travel was set to increase exponentially in the country.

The exhibition is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on January 31 and February 1 and between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. on February 2 and 3. There is no entry fee.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com /Home> News> Cities> Coimbatore / by Staff Reporter / February 01st, 2013

First batch of Thanjavur Medical College medicos meet

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Nri's / Pio's, Records, All, Science & Technologies

   old memory:       Doctors of the Twin Medicos 1959 batch at a reunion in the city recently.

Fifty-four years ago, 70 students were admitted as the first batch of the Thanjavur Medical College. But with the new campus being under construction, they joined the fifth batch of the Madurai Medical College (comprising 100 students), earning the sobriquet ‘Twin Medicos’ that stuck on and got renewed at every reunion.

The two-day reunion of the ‘Twin Medicos 1959 batch’ was an informal meeting of old friends who specialise in various fields from paediatrics to geriatrics. Of the original 170, 64 made it to the 13{+t}{+h}get-together. The reunion saw the maximum participation in recent years, said Mohamed Farook, orthopaedic surgeon and member, organising committee.

The meet included a sightseeing trip to the historic Grand Anicut (Kallanai) and a group photo was taken on location.

Among the most illustrious of the classmates was V.S.Natarajan, pioneer in geriatric medicine in India, and recipient of the Padma Shri and B.C. Roy Award. He was felicitated along with recipients of the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University’s Lifetime Achievement Award and doctors who had won recognition from various medical bodies. Surgeon Dr. Zawahir presided over the meet.

Close to 10 medicos flew from America, Europe and Australia to attend the event with their families, said the organising committee members.

The medicos took home a souvenir with photographs and an update on each of their classmates. Featured among the pages were sepia tinted photographs of sharing food in the hostel mess, cultural programmes and medical college life in the 1960’s- a handy trip down memory lane.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com /Home> National> Tamil Nadu /by Staff Reporter / Tiruchi, January 30th, 2013

Two-day robotic workshop ends

Education, Science & Technologies

Coimbatore :

They were at last happy to see their robot go back and forth without interruptions winning the first prize and getting a chance to go to the National Robotics Competition (NRC) to be held at IIT Karagpur in a few months. Muhammed Shafeeq, and his team members, all second year electrical engineering students were participating in the two-day workshop and competition held on Tuesday at the Park College of Engineering and Technology. Engineering students from various city colleges had participated in the event which was conducted to train and select a team for the national-level event.

“It was a challenge to put to task what we had read as theories but it was an interesting experience,” said Shafeeq. Twenty five teams of five students each took part in the two-day workshop and the competition, which were held at the end of the second day. They were trained to make the hardware of the robots as well as to programme the machines.

At the same time their trainers said that the students were given simpler training as they were not used to doing projects.

A Himanshu, who was one of the resource persons for the event from ARK Technosolutions said that the students who were from various engineering branches were not quite familiar with doing application-based projects. “Knowing the theories is one thing and applying them as well as tackling the difficulties, which arise as the task continues is another. Even the fourth year students found it hard to execute the tasks,” he said. At the same time the pace with which the students learnt could help them to stand in good stead with the competitors, he said.

The application of robotics is growing in several of the industrial units. This has created a growing interest among students to pursue more about the subject. Experts say that the field involves topics from several engineering streams including electronics, and electrical to computer programming.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> City> Coimbatore / TNN / January 23rd, 2013

‘Spirit of Mylapore’ award to Lady Sivaswami Girls School

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education

TT Srinivasaraghavan, MD, Sundaram Finance Ltd., presenting the award to Leela Narendran, Secretary, Lady Sivaswamy Ayyar Girls’ Higher Secondary School.

Lady Sivaswamy Ayyar Girls’ Higher Secondary School was chosen for the 5{+t}{+h}Sundaram Finance ‘Spirit of Mylapore’ award.

The award was presented on January 13 by T.T. Srinivasaraghavan, MD, Sundaram Finance Ltd., to P. Ruby Puthotta, Headmistress and Leela Narendran, Secretary, Lady Sivaswamy Ayyar Girls’ Higher Secondary School on the final day of the 11{+t}{+h}Sundaram Finance Mylapore Festival.

T.T. Srinivasaraghavan said, “For the past 143 years, Lady Sivaswamy Ayyar Girls Higher Secondary School has remained committed to the objective of educating girl children.” The school was founded by the Maharaja of Vijayanagaram in 1869 and later taken over by Sir PS Sivaswami Ayyar.

Sundaram Finance instituted the ‘Spirit of Mylapore’ award in January 2009. Every year, it recognises the long-time resident or institution of Mylapore that has contributed significantly to the culture and heritage of Mylapore.

It is to be noted that the previous recipients were Book Seller RK Azhwar, legendary musician Shri. Rajam, Dabba Chetti Kadai and Rasi Silks.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com /Home> Features> Down Town / January 20th, 2013

IIT-Madras ready for mass production of artificial blood

Amazing Feats, Business & Economy, Education, Records, All, Science & Technologies

Chennai:

IIT – Madras  scientists have blood on their hands — and nobody is complaining. A team of scientists from the department of engineering design has been successful in creating enough red blood cells  from stem cells to be used as  ‘artificial blood’ in people who need transfusion.

Having proved their oxygen-carrying capacity, the RBCs will now go into ‘mass production’ before starting human trials in three years, scientists said. The IIT team recently got a funding approval from the Union ministry of science and technology to produce artificial blood on an industrial scale. This blood would be tested on animals before human trials. If the trials prove successful, it will help hospitals overcome shortage of blood and save many accident victims.

“We will be able to provide any amount of safe and disease-free blood at half the cost of blood sold now,” said the study’s principal investigator, Dr Soma Guhathakurta, a visiting professor at the department of engineering design IIT-M.

In the past few months, Dr Soma and her team of researchers have made trillions of red blood cells – the carrier of hemoglobin that delivers oxygen to various body tissues and clears up carbon dioxide – on a Petri dish. They cultured adult stem cells derived from cord blood in the presence of some “easily nutritional supplements” for 17 days in the lab.

The stem cells, which are undifferentiated cells with the potential to turn into any cell, developed into red blood cells. The department of biotechnology (DBT) has recently approved a proposal from the scientists to develop a bio-reactor for large-scale production of artificial blood. The reactor will be built with support of IIT’s biotechnology department.

“We will simultaneously process papers for performing animal trials with the artificial blood. It will first be tested on anemic mice. If they are able to accept it and survive, we will take it to the next level,” he said. Scientists across the world have been working on artificial blood. While a French team has started human trials, a UK team is all set to follow suit. Dr Soma, a heart surgeon, says their research is different because unlike other cases, they have been able to exclusively produce red blood cells. So far nobody has been able to mass produce only red blood cells.

“Almost all earlier attempts have had at least 40% of white blood cells in the culture. Introducing such artificial blood into a patient with a weak immune system could be tricky. As a surgeon, I would prefer only red blood cells,” she said.

The IIT scientists  say they did not use any expensive enzyme or growth factors. “Despite this, the yield was a billion times high. In a typical RBC blood bag, there are about a trillion (1 followed by 12 zeros) red blood cells. On our Petri dish we had a yield of about a quadrillion (1 followed by 15 zeros) cells from the starting point of about a million stem cells,” said Venkatesh Balasubramanian, associate professor in the department of engineering design.

The World Health Organization says a country needs a minimum stock of blood equal to 1% of its population. This means India needs 12 million units of blood, but collects only nine million units annually, though demand has gone up drastically. The cost of blood has gone up in the last few years as blood has to be subjected to several tests to ensure it is disease-free, says Dr K Selvaraju, former state blood transfusion officer. This could be avoided in artificial blood.

It may take at least five years for artificial blood to be available for clinical use as large-scale trials will follow. The research hasn’t been published in peer-reviewed science journals owing to the intellectual property concerns of the scientists. The researchers have applied for an Indian patent and are considering an international patent.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> India / by Pushpa Narayan, TNN / January 12th, 2013

Tamil heartland gets set to promote English language

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education

MKU to focus on English-speaking ability for employability

Madurai is gearing up to give a major push to the English language.

Bowing to current trends in employment, the Madurai Kamaraj University and its affiliated colleges are putting their money on ‘English Language Labs’ to promote communication skills among undergraduate students, most of whom are from the rural areas.

Language lab

With the focus on spoken English, the university is in the process of setting up an English language lab for which Rs.30 lakh has been allotted by the State Government recently. Kalyani Mathivanan, Vice-Chancellor, told The Hindu on Saturday that the lab would be equipped with special CDs to enable students to listen to good English and help them improve their communication and pronunciation.

“We are keen to get the English lab ready before the start of the next academic year. Students should make use of the facility on a regular basis so that they will be able to pick up the basics,” she said.

Focus on English Department

The Vice-Chancellor felt that if students are able to speak in English, they will improve their self-confidence. She said that the English Department would be enhanced and given more visibility on the campus.

“Right now, some sections connected to this department are located in an isolated place.

Very soon, all of them would be housed in the same building,” she added. Dr. Kalyani Mathivanan urged the affiliated colleges to create more opportunities so that students can listen to English CDs to become familiar with the language.

Affiliated colleges

Affiliated colleges too have realised the importance of students conversing in English.

The Department of English at Yadava College, which draws more students with a rural background, has established a language lab with 50 computer systems.

C. Raju, Associate Professor, said that audio-visual facilities would enable undergraduate students acquaint themselves with grammar and correct pronunciation.

“We are focusing on fluency, conversation, body language and interview skills. In fact, our UG students have to compulsorily pass a Communicative English paper in their semester examinations,” Dr. Raju said.

Principal of Madura College, R. Murali, requested the Vice-Chancellor to keep the varsity’s English language lab open for students of affiliated colleges as well.

“Speaking in English has become inevitable and nobody can survive without it these days. We request the university to allot time slots for students of affiliated colleges.

Also, the University Grants Commission can provide more funding support to colleges to set up language labs,” he added.

Dr. Murali welcomed the MKU move to promote English learning activity and said that interactive CDs made learning effective.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / Home> News> Cities> Madurai / by Shastry V. Mallady / January 13th, 2013