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Saina Nehwal wins Indonesian Open, scores hat-trick
JAKARTA: Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal continued her rampaging form as she completed a spectacular hat-trick of titles by clinching the Indonesia Open Super Series with a three-game triumph over Japan's Sayaka Sato on Sunday.
Unbeaten for the past three weeks, the top seeded defending champion defeated her unseeded but resolute rival 21-19, 13-21, 21-11 in a rollercoaster encounter that lasted 45 minutes.
This was Saina's third successive title, having won the Indian Open Grand Prix at home and the Singapore Open Super Series Tournament last week. This is also the 20-year-old world number three's third Super Series title overall.
In a see-saw battle, the 19-year-old Sato matched the defending champion shot for shot for most part of the opening game but was undone by her own mistakes at crucial junctures.
The first game that lasted 14 minutes had both the players tied 11-11 at one stage and though Saina remained ahead for most part after that, a gritty Sato did have her share of chances.
Leading 20-18, Saina could have finished it off on her own serve but she handed Sato a chance by hitting the shuttle wide.
But Sato could not capitalise and smacked a forehand into the net to give Saina the opening game.
The second game saw Sato making a comeback with the change of ends also leading to a change in fortunes. The Japanese proved to be the more dominant of the two players in these 15 minutes as she raced to a 4-9 lead.
Sato sent down some powerful shots from the baseline and Saina could only watch as they fell out of her range. The frustration of being out-witted by a rival ranked 26th in the world showed when Saina clinched her fist at one of Sato's unforced errors.
Shaken by the setback, Saina roared back in the decisive third game. The Indian took a comprehensive 11-5 lead but continuing her never-say-die attitude, Sato reduced the margin to 9-13.
The Indian, however, was in no mood to slip up and emerged triumphant after reeling off four successive points.
A jubilant Saina let out a huge scream after winning the title, which also made her richer by $18,750.
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World’s first flying car
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Washington, DC, USA -- The Terrafugia Transition, which is designed with foldable wings, made by Terrafugia Inc., a company founded by MIT graduates, successfully completed its first flight, after six months of road testing - setting the world record for the First Flying Car.
The World's First Flying Car, which runs on unleaded gasoline, can travel up to 450 miles and can fly at 115 mph. It's also designed to fit into a typical household garage, to fly primarily under 10,000 feet, and has a maximum takeoff weight of 1,430 pounds, including fuel and passengers. Gas mileage on the road is about 30 miles per gallon (12 km/litre).
So far, the company has more than 70 orders with deposits. "It is the next 'wow' vehicle. Anybody can buy a Ferrari, but as we say, Ferraris don't fly," Terrafugia vice president Richard Gersh said.
The First Flying Car in The World recently cleared a major hurdle when regulator Federal Aviation Administration granted a special weight limit exemption to it, the company said.
With that FAA clearance under its belt, the company said it is on track to deliver the first Transitions to customers late next year.
"To actually have it fly is a dream come true," said Richard Gersh, a vice president at Terrafugia, at the time. "I'm not sure it's up there with the Wright brothers, but it's awfully close."
The World's First Flying Car falls into the light sport aircraft category and costs USD 194,000, excluding additional charges for options like a radio, GPS and a full-plane parachute.
"If you get into a very dire situation, it's the ultimate safety option," Gersh said.
People will need a sport pilot certificate to fly the Transition, which is designed to take off and land at small, local airports and to drive on virtually any road.
Terrafugia is Latin for "escape from the land." The company was founded in 2006 by five Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad students who were also pilots. They received some seed money from the school.
The concept of a car-plane has been around since at least the 1950s, but it's possible that Terrafugia may become the first company to mass-produce one, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.
Watch Flying car Video:
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/7795222/20620979
On the Net: Terrafugia: http://www.terrafugia.com/
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Last updated at 5:12 PM on 5th July 2010
India's Prime Minister said the opening of a glittering new £2 billion terminal at New Delhi's International Airport signals a "new India".
The futuristic steel-and-glass structure, which was unveiled at the weekend, is India's biggest public building.
Futuristic: Designs for the state-of-the-art terminal include a series of giant hands in poses drawn from Indian classical dance
Spread over 120 acres, it has 160 check-in windows, more than four miles of conveyor belts, 20,000 square metres of shopping space and can handle 34 million passengers a year.
The nine-level terminal also features the largest car park in India, with space for 4,300 cars, as well as its own metro line.
The terminal features 20,000 square metres of shopping space.
Terminal 3, or T3, was built in just 37 months and will open for international passengers on July 14. Its first arrival will be a non-stop Air India flight from New York.
As the ultra-modern construction was revealed, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: "An airport is often the first introduction to a country.
"A good airport will signal a new India, committed to joining the ranks of modern industrialised nations.
"This airport terminal establishes new global benchmarks.
"It also exemplifies our country's resolve to bridge, and bridge fast enough, the infrastructure deficit in our country."
Built to coincide with Delhi's hosting of the Commonwealth Games in October, the terminal features a huge Buddha head and a series of giant hands in poses drawn from Indian classical dance.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Bazaar area is designed to reproduce the experience of shopping at a traditional Indian market.
The terminal will be lit with daylight however its roof is angled to protect the interiors from direct sunlight.
British architect Clare Brenner was part of the team who designed the new terminal. She said: "The roof is angled in such a way that will only allow northern light to come in."
Colourful: A worker gives some art work a quick polish before the terminal is unveiled to the public
The Indian government has predicted that domestic air travel will rise 10 per cent per year to 180 million by 2020, while it says international traffic could reach 50 million in another decade. A similar terminal is planned for India's financial capital, Mumbai.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10550430.stm
8 July 2010 Last updated at 06:59 ET
The solar-powered plane lands near Bern
An experimental solar-powered aircraft launched on Wednesday has landed safely in Switzerland after successfully flying through the night.
The feat is a step toward the makers' aim of circling the globe using the power of the Sun to fuel the plane.
The aircraft used super-efficient solar cells and batteries to stay in the air after the Sun's rays had faded.
The plane touched down at an airfield about 30 miles (50 km) from the Swiss capital Bern at 0900 (0700 GMT).
The plane landed at Payerne airport after a total flight time of 26 hours.
During the flight it reached a height of 8,700 m (28,543 ft).
Assistants rushed to stabilise the experimental aircraft as it touched down, ensuring that its huge 63m (207ft) wingspan did not scrape the ground and topple the plane.
It is the longest and highest flight recorded by a solar-powered plane.
The four-engine aircraft was steered by Andre Borschberg, a former fighter jet pilot from Switzerland.
The plane has 12,000 solar cells arranged on its wingspan which collected enough energy to power the plane for the flight.
'Perpetual flight'
Previous flights of Solar Impulse have included a brief "flea hop" and a longer airborne test earlier this year. But this week's attempt was described as a "milestone" by the team.
The designers, the Solar Impulse team led by Mr Borschberg and fellow aviator Bertrand Piccard, say that this proves that a plane can be kept in the air around the clock.
"It's the first time ever that a [manned] solar airplane has flown through the night," Mr Piccard told journalists.
"That was the moment that proved the mission was successful, we made it."
The plane emerged from the darkness of night with three hours power remaining in its batteries, more than had been expected.
"Nothing can prevent us from another day and night, and the myth of perpetual flight."
The team will now build a new, more advanced, model of the plane.
They aim to circumnavigate the globe by 2013.
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India approved a new currency symbol after a nationwide contest this year to find a new way to represent the rupee.
By Ben Arnoldy, Staff Writer / July 15, 2010
New Delhi
India now has its own version of the dollar sign.
The new symbol of the Indian rupee is seen in this handout photograph after it was approved by India's cabinet July 15. India's cabinet on Thursday approved the adoption of the new symbol after holding a competition that drew more than 3,000 entries, which were evaluated by a deputy governor of the central bank as well as artists and designers.
REUTERS/Press Information Bureau of India/Handout
The Finance Ministry held a nationwide contest this year to design the symbol that will represent the country’s currency, the rupee. The Indian government gave its seal of approval today to the winning entry.
Take a capital roman letter “R,” subtract the vertical spine, and add some Euro-like horizontal lines at the top. The character also resembles the “Ra” character in India’s clothesline-looking script known as Devanagari. The new symbol, therefore, has both Indian and international flavor.
Until now, the most common notation for the rupee was “Rs.” The problem is that a number of countries – including archrival Pakistan – also have a rupee, leading international traders to rely on the clunky “INR” to distinguish it.
The creation of the new symbol represents India’s assertion of importance as a major international market, one whose currency warrants a special moniker, not just a jumble of letters.
"With this, India will join an elite group of countries which have a distinct currency symbol. It denotes the robustness of Indian economy," said Ambika Soni, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting.
New rupee notes and coins will bear the symbol, as no doubt will Indian keyboards, shops, and currency stalls.
More important will be the extent to which the symbol will gain international usage and cache. Experts see this as an important branding opportunity for the wider Indian economy among international investors.
“This is yet another symbol of the coming of age of India as a major player in the world economy,” says Surjit Bhalla, managing director of Oxus Research and Investments, a New Delhi-based economic research firm.
“It’s probably more aspirational,” he adds, but “in 1990, if India said we’ll have a rupee symbol, people would have laughed at it. Today, people are asking how important it is.”
This branding effort is aimed at burnishing the reputation of the country’s overall economy, not the currency itself per se. Few expect the fancy character to suddenly turn the rupee into the kind of haven that the dollar or euro represents on currency exchanges.
The rupee has grown increasingly stable in value. Versus the dollar, it made strong gains until the global flight to the dollar at the height of the worldwide financial crisis. The rupee quickly recovered – it now sits at 46.5 to the dollar – reflecting the Indian economy’s quick rebound. The International Monetary Fund forecasts GDP growth of 9.5 percent this calendar year while Western nations remain mired in economic doldrums.
Mr. Bhalla sums up India’s pitch: “You have a nondepreciating currency with a high-growth rate, and you know what? There is even a symbol to go with it.”
For Harish Bijoor, a brand and business strategy consultant in Bangalore, the new character is “a way of saying we are entering into the realm of the developed world.”
But India’s double digit inflation, he says, “is the soft underbelly of this new symbol.”
In June, that inflation reached 10.6 percent, piling on to double digit rates in May (10.2) and April (11.2). Street protests have erupted over rising food prices that have burdened some three-quarters of Indians who still live on less than $2. To get a handle on the problem, India’s central bank has raised interest rates three times since March.
Bhalla counters that India uses a different set of metrics to report inflation than the rest of the world. Using metrics common in the US, inflation will come out to around 4.5 percent for the second quarter of this year.
“It’s quite shocking we’ve allowed food inflation to scale the heights it has. But there’s no overall inflation problem,” he says.
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The Rupee symbol was designed by Dharmalingam Udaya Kumar, doctorate student at IIT-Bombay. He has recently joined IIT-Guwahati as assistant professor in the department of design.
(D Udaya Kumar, PhD student, IDC, IIT-Bombay)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/business/global/06rupee.html
NEW DELHI — Protests against a recent increase in fuel prices shut down markets, schools, airports and businesses across India on Monday, and thousands of people were arrested as violence flared in some cities.
Anupam Nath/Associated Press
Passengers were stranded at a railway station in Gauhati, India, on Monday, during a nationwide strike called by opposition parties to protest a recent fuel price hike.
By HEATHER TIMMONS and HARI KUMAR
Published: July 5, 2010
Jagadeesh Nv/European Pressphoto Agency
A group of protesters on motor bikes in Bangalore rode past tires set ablaze during a nationwide strike over fuel prices.
The effect of the demonstrations — spearheaded by political parties that oppose the governing coalition led by the Indian National Congress — far exceeded expectations, although no official estimates of crowds were immediately available. The vocal and sizable opposition to higher fuel prices may indicate that the Congress party, elected by more votes than forecast last year, is losing some support, said political analysts and people affected by the strike.
“This will create some sense of fear in the government,” predicted Vikas Sharma, 35, the owner of a cloth shop in Old Delhi, who was sitting idly outside his store. The “government will be forced to take some steps,” he said.
As it moved to eliminate subsidies on petroleum products, the Congress government said June 25 it would raise the price of gasoline by 3.5 rupees, or 7.5 cents, a liter. Diesel is being raised by 2 rupees a liter, and kerosene, which makes up a large portion of expenses for poor people, by 3 rupees.
India’s state-run fuel companies must sell oil and natural gas at government-set rates and will lose 530 billion rupees this fiscal year, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said last month. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Sunday that the fuel price increases would not be rolled back, regardless of the scope of the protests Monday.
The Congress government is paring market controls that keep prices of some goods artificially low in India. At the same time, it is investing in employment programs.
“The main thing they are trying to do is move away from subsidies to spend on development,” Nikhilesh Bhattacharyya, an economist for Moody’s economy.com. “It is a slow process, a very slow process,” he said.
Opposition parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), say the reforms are misguided and harmful to the average citizen.
“Wrong economic policies and bad governance is the basic reason for the price rise,” said Nitin Gadkari, president of the B.J.P., which is the Congress party’s main rival.
The prime minister, Mr. Gadkari added, is “more worried about the financial condition of oil companies than the condition of poor people.”
Fear of violence or transportation snarls kept some of India’s largest companies closed Monday, including the information technology giants Wipro and Infosys in Bangalore. Airports in Calcutta and Chennai were paralyzed, and taxis stayed off the streets in major cities.
The strike cost India’s economy about 30 billion rupees, the Confederation of Indian Industry said. “The worst affected are daily wage earners and people dependent on small trade,” the trade group said.
About 1,000 people gathered at Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi’s main commercial hub, to protest the price increases and listen to speeches by opposition politicians.
Protesters carried three effigies of paper and sticks, with heads of demons. They yelled, “Sheila Dikshit, down, down” naming the chief minister of the capital region, who is a member of the Congress party, before setting fire to the figures.
“Inflation deflates the hopes of the common man, down with price rises,” read one signboard at the protest. “The poor man’s plate is empty and the government is clapping,” read another.
Many of the country’s citizens are not feeling the benefits of India’s fast-paced economic growth, which is expected to top 8 percent this year. India’s wholesale price index, a measure of inflation, rose 10.16 percent in May from a year before.
Inflation is driving up food prices, but salaries of low- and middle-income workers have not risen significantly, making basic commodities like lentils and milk much more expensive. Laborers on construction and road projects in New Delhi, for example, can be paid as little as 150 rupees a day, while a kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of the most commonly eaten lentils costs as much as 70 rupees.
Poor monsoon rains in recent years mean that farmers, who make up more than half of India’s workers, have suffered. “It is a very poor country, and that growth isn’t really broad-based,” Mr. Bhattacharyya said. For the average farmer, 8 percent growth “doesn’t mean much,” he said.
The strike also caused problems for poor people. “We are the worst victims of the price rise, and we suffer in the closure as well,” said Kishen Dev, a 35-year-old day laborer who was sitting on road in Chandni Chowk. Mr. Dev said he was a father of four who generally earned 125 to 150 rupees a day, but on Monday he made nothing.
In Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, normally chock-a-block main roads were empty because most stores and offices were closed.
Buses and commuter trains were running much less frequently than usual after protesters attacked some buses and blocked train tracks. Taxi drivers kept their cars off the road, making it hard for people without vehicles to move around the city.
On a main thoroughfare in central Mumbai, stores and banks were closed, though automatic teller machines were still operational. The country’s two main stock exchanges were open but trading was very light.
Vikas Bajaj contributed from Mumbai.
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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-20100722,0,6548800.story
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said he never imagined all of the ways people would use the social networking site when he started it six years ago. (Sebastien Nogier, Reuters / July 22, 2010)
By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times
July 22, 2010
Reporting from San Francisco —
Facebook Inc. on Wednesday issued its own eye-popping status update: The world's most popular social networking site had surpassed 500 million users.
And now, the Internet phenomenon that has transformed how the world communicates is eyeing another distinction — connecting one out of every seven human beings on the planet.
Six years after getting its start in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook said it was aiming to have 1 billion members, matching the reach of Internet search giant Google Inc.
If it can keep up its current breakneck pace, a feat that would defy predictions from analysts, Facebook could reach that goal by next year.
"We all love to dream big around here," said Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who handles marketing. "We are going to take a day or so to celebrate 500 million users before we start thinking about going beyond that."
The site's runaway growth is nearly without precedent. Last summer, Facebook had 250 million users. It has amassed 100 million new members since February alone. Now if Facebook were a country, it would be the world's third largest.
All of which has lent credibility to Mark Zuckerberg's confident assertion that his company could almost "guarantee" growing to 1 billion active users despite a recent spate of privacy concerns and increasing competition from Google and others. Facebook defines active users as people who have logged onto the site within the last 30 days.
"I could have never imagined all of the ways people would use Facebook when we were getting started six years ago," Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
Zuckerberg created Facebook as a place for college students to connect with one another. Since then it has been on a tear.
It eclipsed its former arch rival, News Corp.'s MySpace in April 2008. Facebook is the world's largest social networking site, shoulders above Twitter Inc. with 105 million users and LinkedIn Corp. with 70 million.
The privately held company does not disclose financial results, but people familiar with Facebook's finances said revenue, mostly from advertising, could top $1 billion this year, up from about $550 million in 2009 and $300 million in 2008. It has 1,400 employees at its Palo Alto headquarters and more than 12 offices around the world.
Crushing the competition has freed up Facebook to pursue an even more ambitious goal: connecting all corners and crannies of the world. Even as U.S. growth begins to plateau, Facebook saw its international users increase 73% in the last year alone, said ComScore analyst Andrew Lipsman.
In Portugal, for example, Facebook had a remarkable growth burst from 10% of the market in 2009 to 63% in 2010, Lipsman said.
"It just goes to show that in a very short period of time, Facebook has a powerful network effect," he said. "Once the site reaches that critical mass, it can really take off in a big way."
Two years ago, Facebook was available only in English, making overseas expansion more of a challenge except in English-speaking countries such as Britain and Australia.
Under Javier Olivan, who joined Facebook as head of international growth three years ago when the site had 30 million users, Facebook has encouraged its users to translate the site into more than 70 languages. Now Facebook is pulling even or overtaking social networking services in country after country, gaining traction in Europe, Latin America and beyond. Some 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States.
Facebook said Wednesday that it has grown to 12 million users in India and 6 million users in Brazil, countries where until recently it had only a small presence and battled Google's social networking service Orkut. Facebook has lagged in several major markets: Japan, South Korea and Russia.
Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray cautioned that Facebook would have to tread carefully to avoid creaking under the weight of so many new users and exponential expectations.
Privacy advocates in Europe have already begun to howl, particularly in Germany where strict data protection laws have also sparked inquiries into the practices of Apple Inc. and Google. Facebook is being investigated in Hamburg for collecting data on non-Facebook users from the e-mail address books of active users.
This week, the University of Michigan's 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business report gave Facebook 64 on its 100-point scale, a ranking lower than that of the IRS and in the bottom 5% of all the private companies the report measured, which included airlines and cable companies.
Even companies that seem unassailable are not, Ray said.
"At times, it seems that no one can take them on given the amount of time people spend on Facebook," he said. "But we used to think that about big websites in the '90s, and some of those don't exist anymore."
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100723/ap_on_hi_te/as_india_supercheap_computer
AP – In this Thursday, July 22, 2010 photo, India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal displays …
By ERIKA KINETZ, AP Business Writer
Fri Jul 23, 12:55 pm ET
MUMBAI, India – It looks like an iPad, only it's 1/14th the cost: India has unveiled the prototype of a $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students, which it hopes to bring into production by 2011.
If the government can find a manufacturer, the Linux operating system-based computer would be the latest in a string of "world's cheapest" innovations to hit the market out of India, which is home to the 100,000 rupee ($2,127) compact Nano car, the 749 rupees ($16) water purifier and the $2,000 open-heart surgery.
The tablet can be used for functions like word processing, web browsing and video-conferencing. It has a solar power option too — important for India's energy-starved hinterlands — though that add-on costs extra.
"This is our answer to MIT's $100 computer," human resource development minister Kapil Sibal told the Economic Times when he unveiled the device Thursday.
In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte — co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab — unveiled a prototype of a $100 laptop for children in the developing world. India rejected that as too expensive and embarked on a multiyear effort to develop a cheaper option of its own.
Negroponte's laptop ended up costing about $200, but in May his nonprofit association, One Laptop per Child, said it plans to launch a basic tablet computer for $99.
Sibal turned to students and professors at India's elite technical universities to develop the $35 tablet after receiving a "lukewarm" response from private sector players. He hopes to get the cost down to $10 eventually.
Mamta Varma, a ministry spokeswoman, said falling hardware costs and intelligent design make the price tag plausible. The tablet doesn't have a hard disk, but instead uses a memory card, much like a mobile phone. The tablet design cuts hardware costs, and the use of open-source software also adds to savings, she said.
Varma said several global manufacturers, including at least one from Taiwan, have shown interest in making the low-cost device, but no manufacturing or distribution deals have been finalized. She declined to name any of the companies.
India plans to subsidize the cost of the tablet for its students, bringing the purchase price down to around $20.
"Depending on the quality of material they are using, certainly it's plausible," said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research. "The question is, is it good enough for students?"
Profitability is also a question for the $35 machine.
Epps said government subsidies or dual marketing — where higher-priced sales in the developed world are used to subside low-cost sales in markets like India — could convince a manufacturer to come on board.
This and similar efforts — like the Kakai Kno and the Entourage Edge tablets — show that there is global demand for an affordable device to trim high textbook costs, she said.
If it works, Epps predicts the device could send a shiver of cost-consciousness through the industry.
"It puts pressure on all device manufacturers to keep costs down and innovate," she said.
The project is part of an ambitious education technology initiative by the Indian government, which also aims to bring broadband connectivity to India's 25,000 colleges and 504 universities and make study materials available online.
So far nearly 8,500 colleges have been connected and nearly 500 web and video-based courses have been uploaded on YouTube and other portals, the Ministry said.
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Low Cost access –Cum-Computing Device Unveiled by Shri Kapil Sibal
Thursday, July 22, 2010
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=63417
The Union Minister for human Resource Development, Shri Kapil Sibal unveiled a low cost computing-cum-access device, here today. The price of the device exhibited today is expected to be around $35 per piece, gradually dropping down to $20 and ultimately to $10 a piece. Since this effort of continuous reduction in price and enhancement in capabilities would require a constant endeavour for R&D, IIT Rajasthan and some other IITs and technical institutions are setting up research teams to cover a wide range of issues in achieving our ultimate goal in terms of price and quality.
The three cardinal principles of the Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality could be served well by providing connectivity to all colleges and universities, providing low cost and affordable access cum computing devices to students and teachers and providing high quality e-content free of cost to all learners in the Country. National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT) encompasses all the three elements. Connectivity to Universities and Colleges has already started. Nearly 8500 Colleges in the country have already been connected, high quality e-content in various subjects is being created and under the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), nearly 500 web based and video courses are available and uploaded on “sakshat”, YouTube and NPTEL portals and another 1100 courses in various disciplines of engineering and science are getting generated in 4 quadrant approach.
The ministry started its efforts, subsequent to lukewarm response from known corporate in this sector, by holding discussions on this concept with a group of Professors / experts at IISc, Bangalore, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and IIT Bombay. B. Tech and M. Tech students were guided to produce the mother board for such low cost devices with ample flexibility to change components. One mother board design was generated under Ministry’s guidance in the B. Tech project of a student at VIT, Vellore. The cost of bill of material worked to 47 $ at that point of time. The PCB of the mother board was got fabricated at IIT Kanpur. It could be seen that by customising the device to the needs of learners across the country, and utilizing the processor capabilities of processors suitable for the purpose, it was possible to substantially reduce the prices of such access-cum-computing devices. Then started a wave of collaboration with such interested partners.
A number of teams have been moving back and forth independently but constantly interacting with the HRD Ministry and improving upon design parameters and customization guidance for Indian students. The efforts of some of the teams working with those design philosophies were presented today. The aim is to reach such devices to the students of colleges and Universities and to provide these institutions a host of choices of low cost access devices around Rs. 1500/- ($35) or less in near future.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10500164.stm
Nearly $2bn (£1.3bn) in loan guarantees will be given to two companies to kick-start the US solar energy industry, President Barack Obama has announced.
The solar power plant planned for Arizona may be the biggest in the world
One of the firms, Abenoga Solar, says that it is planning to build the largest solar power plant in the world in Arizona.
Mr Obama said the projects would provide more than 5,000 new jobs.
The Arizona plant should power 70,000 homes and cut carbon dioxide emissions.
The money will come from government stimulus funds designed to boost the economy during the recession.
Outlining the "Solana" project at Gila Bend near Phoenix, Abenoga said it would have an area of 1,900 acres, using thermal storage-equipped parabolic trough technology, with 280 MW of power output capacity.
According to the company's website, 1,500 new jobs will be created during the plant's construction with 100 positions for staff to maintain it.
'Aggressive'
The second company, Abound Solar Manufacturing, will manufacture state-of-the-art thin film solar panels, the first time anywhere that such technology has been used commercially, the BBC's Jane O'Brien reports from Washington.
Plants will be built in Colorado and Indiana, creating 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs, the Associated Press reports.
President Obama had promised during his election campaign for the White House to create manufacturing and construction jobs in the green power industry.
"We're going to to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America," he said on Saturday.
The renewable energy industry in the US faces tough competition from developers in China.
Mr Obama also acknowledged the loans would not be an instant solution.
Around 125,000 jobs were lost in the last month, the government reported.
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http://www.abengoasolar.com/corp/web/en/index.html
http://www.abengoasolar.com/corp/web/en/our_projects/solana/index.html
Solana: The world's largest solar plant
Location: Gila Bend, near Phoenix, Arizona.
Type of proyect : 280 MW, CSP trough plant with storage.
At Abengoa Solar, we have signed an agreement with Arizona Public Service (APS), the largest electric company in Arizona, to build and operate what will be the largest solar power plant in the world.
For us, this contract will represent the construction of the first concentrating solar power plant for producing electric power in the United States.
The plant will be installed approximately 100 kms southeast of Phoenix, near Gila Bend. Solana features thermal storage-equipped parabolic trough technology with 280 MW of power output capacity. Once operational, it will have the capability of supplying 70,000 homes and will prevent the emission of 400,000 t of CO2.
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Power block | Solana trough |
http://www.abengoasolar.com/corp/web/en/about_us/general/presentation_videos/v_solana.html
Solana will operate like Solnova, with the addition of storage capacity as shown in the diagram below.
This thermal storage allows the system to send power to the grid even when the sky is overcast and allows Solana to generate electricity even after the sun goes down.
The plant will have an area of 1,900 acres and will create 1,500 new jobs during its construction. Once completed, there will be around 100 positions for qualified personnel over the course of its life.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/business/18novel.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=business
By ANNE EISENBERG
Published: July 16, 2010
MATT REYNOLDS, an assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at Duke University, wears other hats, too — including that of co-founder of two companies. These days, his interest is in a real hat now in prototype: a hard hat with a tiny microprocessor and beeper that sound a warning when dangerous equipment is nearby on a construction site.
Jochen Teizer
Using only radio waves for its electrical power, the SmartHat has a beeper that alerts the wearer to dangerous construction equipment nearby.
What’s unusual, however, is that the hat’s beeper and microprocessor work without batteries. They use so little power that they can harvest all they need from radio waves in the air.
The waves come from wireless network transmitters on backhoes and bulldozers, installed to keep track of their locations. The microprocessor monitors the strength and direction of the radio signal from the construction equipment to determine if the hat’s wearer is too close.
Dr. Reynolds designed this low-power hat, called the SmartHat, with Jochen Teizer, an assistant professor in the school of civil and environmental engineering at Georgia Tech. They are among several people devising devices and systems that consume so little power that it can be drawn from ambient radio waves, reducing or even eliminating the need for batteries. Their work has been funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
Powercast, based in Pittsburgh, sells radio wave transmitters and receivers that use those waves to power wireless sensors and other devices. The sensors, for example, monitor room temperature in automatic systems that control heating and air-conditioning in office buildings, said Harry Ostaffe, director of marketing and business development.
The company recently introduced a receiver for charging battery-free wireless sensors, the P2110 Powerharvester Receiver, and demonstrated it in modules that sense temperature, light level and humidity data, he said. The modules include microcontrollers from Microchip Technology, in Chandler, Ariz.
Until recently, the use of radio waves to power wireless electronic devices was largely untapped because the waves dilute quickly as they spread, said Joshua R. Smith, a principal engineer at Intel’s research center in Seattle and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington.
“That’s changing,” said Dr. Smith, who explores the use of electromagnetic radiation. “Silicon technology has advanced to the point where even tiny amounts of energy can do useful work.”
Two types of research groups are extending the boundaries of low-power wireless devices, said Brian Otis, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington. Some researchers are working to reduce the power required by the devices; others are learning how to harvest power from the environment. “One day,” Professor Otis said, “those two camps will meet, and then we will have devices that can run indefinitely.”
Professor Otis, who designs and deploys integrated circuits for wireless sensing, is in the first group. Dr. Smith of Intel is one of the harvesters, gathering radio power that is now going to waste. And there are plenty of radio waves in the air to provide fodder for him as they spread from Wi-Fi transmitters, cellphone antennas, TV towers and radio stations.
Some of the waves travel to living-room televisions, for example. But others, which would otherwise be wasted as they rise through the atmosphere into space or are absorbed in the ground, can be exploited, he said. “Ambient radio waves,” he said, “can already provide enough energy to substitute for AAA batteries in some calculators, temperature and humidity sensors, and clocks.”
At Intel, Dr. Smith, working with the researcher Alanson Sample of the University of Washington, created an electronic “harvester” of ambient radio waves. It collects enough energy from a TV station broadcasting about 2.5 miles from the lab to run a temperature and humidity sensor.
The device collects enough power to produce about 50 microwatts of DC power, Dr. Smith said. That is enough for many sensing and computing jobs, said Professor Otis. The power consumption of a typical solar-powered calculator, for example, is only about 5 microwatts, he said, and that of a typical digital thermometer with a liquid crystal display is one microwatt.
DR. SMITH and his colleagues have built a second device, powered by radio waves, that collects signals from an outdoor weather station and transmits them to an indoor display. The unit can accumulate enough energy to send an updated temperature every five seconds.
Dr. Reynolds of Duke has long been interested in electronics and wireless equipment. One company he helped found, Zensi, developed a system to sense the amount of electricity used by home appliances; Zensi was bought by Belkin, an electronics concern.
Many electronic devices are limited by batteries that fade away or can’t survive temperature extremes, he said. But, he added, “we are on the cusp of an explosion in small wireless devices” than can run on alternatives to battery power. “Devices like this can live on and on,” he said.
E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.
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Tiffany Kaiser - July 15, 2010 6:34 AM
(Source: Contented)
The chicken wins!
One of the most puzzling and famous life questions has stumped people for generations. It's the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg? In order for there to be an egg, a chicken would have had to lay it. In order for there to be a chicken, it would have had to hatch from an egg. It seems as though either answer could be the correct answer; until now.
Dr. Colin Freeman from Sheffield University
along with colleagues from Warwick University have figured it all out. Their research project originally aimed to figure out how animals make eggshells because it's an extraordinarily strong yet lightweight material that no human has been able to replicate, and the researchers hoped to learn how to develop a manmade equivalent by learning about the way animals make eggshells.
Chickens were chosen as their test subjects simply because the protein was easy to study. The study began when Freeman and his colleagues used the UK Science Research Council's super-computer called HECToR (High End Computing Terascale Resource), which is based in Edinburgh. The "ingredients" used to make eggshells were programmed into HECToR, and that was it. The computer was left to produce results on its own, and it took weeks for HECToR to figure out how chickens make eggshells.
When HECToR finally arrived at a conclusion, the researchers were stunned when they realized that they had solved the age old question. After years and years of debate, it was finally determined that the chicken came before the egg.
"It had long been suspected that the egg came first, but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first," said Freeman.
What they found was a protein, called ovocledidin-17 (OC-17), that exists only in a chicken's ovaries and is vital to eggshell formation in chickens. The protein acts as an ongoing builder that pieces microscopic parts of the shell together by converting calcium carbonate into calcite crystals. The shell would not exist without this protein, which only exists in chickens, so the end result is that the chicken came first.
The protein was discovered before this research project, but HECToR made it easier for the researchers to observe the process "in microscopic detail," thus understand the proteins significance in the eggshell-making procedure.
So what does this mean for those who always thought the egg came first? Freeman and his colleagues referred to some theories that suggest that chickens' "ancestors evolved to create hard eggs around the time of the dinosaurs."
In addition to answering the question that has burdened the human race for ages, the results of this study could be advantageous in the medical field since human bones and teeth are made in a similar way as eggshells. This could lead to a better understanding of how to rebuild human bones. Also, the study could help figure out how crystal structures can be made and destroyed (since the eggshells are made up of microscopic crystals). Learning how this can be done could lead to the elimination of limescale crystals on pipes and kettles.
Also read:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38238685/ns/technology_and_science-science/
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123506601/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
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http://health.yahoo.net/experts/skintype/top-5-causes-skin-aging
The Skin Guru
Nov 07, 2008
Let's count down the top five barriers between you and healthier, younger-looking skin:
5. The enemy: Lack of moisture. Dry skin isn't just uncomfortable - it's also a sign that your skin isn't holding on to enough water to allow its repair enzymes to work properly. That means that your skin is less able to naturally heal the inflammation caused by external attackers like the sun, excess sugar intake, and pollution.
The solution: Moisturize! Not all creams and lotions are created equal, though: Ideally, a moisturizer should not only temporarily hydrate, but also strengthen skin so that it can retain moisture more effectively. Check ingredient lists for ceramides, cholesterol, and fatty acids (stearic acid is the one you'll see most often) - those are the very lipids found naturally in your skin barrier, a layer of the epidermis that keeps moisture in and irritants out. Deliver those powerhouse moisturizers topically, and you'll bolster skin's ability to prevent further dryness.
4. The enemy: Pollution. The exhaust-belching cars and other pollutants in our modern environments are among the major causes of free radicals in the skin (the sun and cigarette smoke, which you'll read about below, also make the list of free-radical producers).
So just what is a free radical? In a nutshell, it's an oxygen molecule that has been stripped of one of its electrons ... meaning that it's on the hunt for replacement electrons. As a result of that hunt, free radicals attack vital skin components like collagen, resulting in skin aging.
The solution: Chances are, you can't take off for the less-polluted climate of a pristine desert island, but antioxidants can help mitigate the damage that pollution causes. Antioxidants calm free radicals by delivering the electrons they seek - and as a result, they also stave off free radicals' aging effects. Get them through your diet (through green tea, dark chocolate, and lots of fruits and veggies, particularly berries and pomegranates) or topically with skin-care ingredients like coenzyme Q10, green tea, coffeeberry, and idebenone.
3. The enemy: Genetics. Yes, to some extent each person's aging process is the unavoidable result of the genes they inherited.
The solution: Obviously there's not much to be done about this one. We are, however, looking into the genetic component of skin aging at the University of Miami Cosmetic Medicine and Research Institute and hope to pinpoint the exact genes involved.
2. The enemy: Smoking. If you need another great reason to quit smoking, here's one: Smoking breaks down collagen, one of the most critical structural proteins in your skin. The result is premature aging in the form of lines, wrinkles, and loss of skin firmness. Smoking also decreases blood flow to the skin, which leaves the complexion sallow and less radiant, and allows damaging toxins to build up.
The solution: Talk to your doctor, research stop-smoking aids, or enlist the support of your friends... just do what it takes to quit smoking!
1. The enemy: The sun. The No. 1 saboteur of healthy, youthful skin is the ultraviolet light of the sun. UV rays induce skin-aging inflammation and generate free radicals, which make the sun the biggest threat to skin's collagen, not to mention the fact that UV exposure puts you at a dramatically increased risk for developing skin cancer.
UV light also worsens and causes hyperpigmentation (they don't call 'em sunspots for nothing!). I have found in my years of practice that dark spots and pigmentation irregularities age people as much as - if not more than - lines and wrinkles.
The solution: Protecting your skin from the sun requires a combination of avoidance and vigilant sunscreen-application. Try to stay out of the sun when it's strongest, at midday, and wear sunscreen every day, even if you're not planning a lot of outdoor time. Incidental sun exposure - on the way to lunch, as you walk to and from your car, while you're waiting for the bus - adds up.
And if you are going to be in direct sunlight, invest in hats and sun-protective clothing. (And don't for a second think tanning beds are the solution - they use concentrated doses of UVA rays, which penetrate deep into skin, and are actually even more damaging than the sun.)
Wishing you great skin!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Baumann is author of the best-selling book, " The Skin Type Solution." To learn more about her revolutionary skin typing system, visit her Web site, SkinTypeSolutions.com.
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http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/24/color.vision.evolution/
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
June 24, 2010 8:16 a.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Violets are blue and roses are red, but maybe those colors are all in your head.
What does it mean for an object to be "red"? Is the way you perceive blueness the same as your neighbor? Your cousin? What about your dog?
Many scientists believe that humans have color vision that is generally consistent across populations and cultures, and that there are evolutionary reasons behind that constancy.
"Color vision is all about emotions and moods, and it has much deeper and richer connections to the rest of our perceptual worlds," said Mark Changizi, a cognitive scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
Color vision in humans and animals
But some people really don't see the color red in the way that most do. About 8 percent of men have trouble differentiating between certain colors; less than 0.5 percent of women have this problem, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Color vision is based on photoreceptors in the eye called cones, of which there are about 6 million to 7 million in the human retina. Humans normally have three types of cones, corresponding to short, medium and long wavelengths of light. Purplish blues are at the short end, and reds are at the long end. They eye also has about 120 million rods, which detect light but not color.
According to some estimates, the human eye can distinguish about 1 million to 10 million different colors. A small minority of women actually have four kinds of cones in their eyes -- meaning they could theoretically see even more colors -- but only a genetic test can determine who has extra cones, and it's unclear exactly how differently they may see.
In most cases of colorblindness, the cone systems for either medium or long wavelengths do not work properly, resulting in reds, greens and perhaps yellows appearing very similar. But different people experience this to varying degrees. In rarer cases, people have trouble telling blue and yellow apart; the rarest of all make people see the world in grayscale.
Dogs and cats are generally colorblind, somewhat like humans who have trouble with reds and greens, but only see pale shades of color. On the other hand, they see better at night and have better peripheral vision. Insects see through photoreceptor units numbering in the hundreds or the thousands, almost like viewing the world as a mosaic. Some animals actually have better color vision than humans. Pigeons and goldfish, for example, can see ultraviolet light, which is invisible to people.
"We're great for mammals but pretty mediocre by broader standards," said David Hilbert, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Biologists believe that animals' visual systems have evolved over millions of years and that the particular structures around today have persisted because they carried some survival benefit to the animals.
Why, then, do humans see in color?
One idea about the origin of the color vision of humans is that it helped early human ancestors spot red berries among green foliage in the wild.
More generally, color vision helps distinguish objects and their spatial structures from one another, said Stephen Palmer, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Changizi has a different idea. According to his research, the cones in our eyes are optimized to detect changes in hemoglobin as blood varies in oxygenation. In other words, what happens physiologically when you blush with embarrassment or turn pale with fear, we can better see with the full human color spectrum.
Across primates, those with furry faces tend to have more primitive visual systems -- with blue-yellow and grayscale perception -- and those with human-like visual systems, such as gorillas, chimpanzees, baboons and macaques, have bare faces. This is because, Changizi argues, the color vision allows bare-faced primates to detect changes in emotion and health according to very subtle changes in reds, yellows, greens and blues in the face.
To take advantage of that ability to detect health signals through skin color changes, Changizi recommends that hospitals adopt gowns that would approximate a variety of natural human skin tones. That would allow doctors to better perceive color changes in the skin than the currently available blue and white gowns, he said. More practically, perhaps, hospitals could have a catalog of hundreds of different skin tone tabs, to help the doctor's eye detect subtle tone changes.
So do most people have the same "red"?
For Changizi, this research on primates and color vision suggests that people's perception of colors must be consistent, given the way the eye's cones detect these specific subtle shifts in skin tone.
But other research suggests that seeing color can be something like tasting foods -- a pleasant flavor for one person may be too bitter or salty for another, just like a single shade of yellow could be seen as pretty or putrid by different people. This argument about color preferences is what Palmer studies in the Berkeley Color Project.
Generally, people naturally dislike tastes of foods that are molding or contain toxic substances. This aversion is evolutionarily beneficial because they are less likely to eat them and get sick.
"The idea is that the same thing is true for colors, that there are certain kinds of colors that are characteristic of stuff that's good for us as a species -- clear sky, clear water -- and stuff that's bad for us, like rotting foods, biological waste products," he said.
Blue may be a common favorite color because it signals such positive things as clear skies, he says. Yellow-green tends to be generally disliked, perhaps because it signals toxicity. A recent study from Palmer's lab that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that participants' color preferences nearly perfectly corresponded with how much they liked objects of the same color.
Feelings about colors can change dramatically in response to a person's environment, and over the course of a lifetime, Palmer said. Institutional affiliation is also a factor -- a study from his lab found that Berkeley students tended to like their school colors, blue and gold, more than their rival school Stanford's colors, red and white.
"I don't think that we have a pure sensory experience of the color. I think it's overlaid with how much we like things," he said.
But most scientists still maintain that your "red" is probably the same as "red" for everyone else (who's not colorblind) in terms of what you see, the University of Illinois' Hilbert said.
"I think colors are out there in the world, and we see them more or less accurately, just like we do shapes and sizes," he said. "I don't think that makes them any less interesting or cool. In fact, I think it makes them more interesting."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/health/03patient.html
THERE is nothing like a new hip or knee to put the spring back in your step. Patients receiving joint implants often are able to resume many of the physical activities they love, even those as vigorous as tennis and hiking. No wonder, then, that joint replacement is growing in popularity.
Mayo Clinic
A hip in need of replacement, top, and an artificial hip, bottom, screwed into a patient’s bone. Implants are chosen based on a patient’s age, activity and the shape of the joint to be replaced.
In the United States in 2007, surgeons performed about 806,000 hip and knee implants (the joints most commonly replaced), double the number performed a decade earlier. Though these procedures have become routine, they are not fail-safe.
Implants must sometimes be replaced, said Dr. Henrik Malchau, an orthopedic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. A study published in 2007 found that 7 percent of hips implanted in Medicare patients had to be replaced within seven and a half years.
The percentage may sound low, but the finding suggests that thousands of hip patients eventually require a second operation, said Dr. Malchau. Those patients must endure additional recoveries, often painful, and increased medical expenses.
The failure rate should be lower, many experts agree. Sweden, for instance, has a failure rate estimated to be a third of that in the United States.
Sweden also has a national joint replacement registry, a database of information from which surgeons can learn how and why certain procedures go awry. A registry also helps surgeons learn quickly whether a specific type of implant is particularly problematic. “Every country that has developed a registry has been able to reduce failure rates significantly,” said Dr. Daniel Berry, chief of orthopedic surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
A newly formed American Joint Replacement Registry will begin gathering data from hospitals in the next 12 to 18 months.
Meanwhile, if you are considering replacing a deteriorating knee or hip, here are some ways to raise the chances of success and avoid a second operation.
EXPERIENCE COUNTS Choose — or request a referral to — an experienced surgeon at a busy hospital. “The most important variable is the technical job done by the surgeon,” said Dr. Donald C. Fithian, an orthopedic surgeon and the former director of Kaiser Permanente’s joint replacement registry.
Ask for recommendations from friends who have had successful implants and from doctors you know and trust. When you meet with the surgeon, ask how many replacements he or she does each year.
VOLUME MATTERS A study published in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery in 2004 found that patients receiving knee replacements from doctors who performed more than 50 of the procedures a year had fewer complications than patients whose surgeons did 12 procedures or fewer a year.
The researchers documented a similar trend when it came to hospital volume. Patients at hospitals that performed more than 200 knee replacements a year fared better than patients at hospitals that performed 25 or fewer.
ADJUST EXPECTATIONS Not everyone with joint pain will benefit from a joint replacement.
An implant can help reduce pain and improve mobility if the joint surface is damaged by arthritis, for instance. But a new joint will not help pain caused by inflammation of the surrounding soft tissue, said Dr. Berry, who is also vice president of the board of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
Some people with mildly arthritic joints, for instance, can manage well with the judicious use of medication. “Surgery comes with complications and risks, and should not be approached lightly,” Dr. Berry said.
Joint replacement is not a minor operation. If you have uncontrolled high blood pressure or another serious chronic condition, a joint operation may simply be too risky for you.
NARROW YOUR OPTIONS “There is no one best joint,” Dr. Berry said. “A successful replacement depends on selecting the right implant for the patient.”
A good surgeon will recommend an implant that makes sense for your age, activity level and the shape of your joint. Younger or very active people who place more physical demands on the implant, for instance, may benefit from newer hard-on-hard bearing surfaces, like those made of ceramic, said Dr. Joshua J. Jacobs, chair of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
In general, be wary of the latest, most advanced new joint. There is little evidence to support the use of more expensive designs over basic ones, said Dr. Tony Rankin, a clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Howard University. One recent study found that premium implants fared about as well as standard implants over a seven- to eight-year period.
Be skeptical, too, of advertising gimmicks. “I had a 78-year-old patient with a perfectly good knee replacement come in and ask if she should have gotten the ‘gender knee,’ which she had seen advertised on TV,” Dr. Rankin recalled. “She was doing well, but was swayed by the idea of a knee made just for women.”
GATHER THE DATA Once you have a recommendation or two from a surgeon, find out how well the joint has performed in others and if there are known complications. The newer metal-on-metal hip implants, for instance, are somewhat controversial and may cause tissue and bone damage in certain patients.
Ask if the hospital has a registry that tracks joint replacements. If so, ask to see the data on the implants you are considering.
It is also helpful to understand what the operation involves, including the materials that will be used and how the surgeon plans to fix the joint to the bone. You can learn more about your operation at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeon’s patient information Web site, orthoinfo.org.
If you want to delve deeper, look at a large national registry from another country, like Australia (which can be found at dmac.adelaide.edu.au/aoanjrr/publications.jsp). The annual report of Australia’s registry lists knee and hip implants that had a “higher than anticipated revision rate.”
A caveat: the information can be difficult to parse for a layperson. “A surgeon can provide perspective on information that, taken out of context, could be misleading,” Dr. Rankin said. So discuss it with your surgeon.
PLAN YOUR RECOVERY To avoid complications during your final stage of recuperation, discuss with your doctor in advance the support you will need when you return home, Dr. Berry advised.
Recovery takes a different course for each patient, depending on the type of procedure and implant. In general, expect mild to moderate pain for the first few weeks. Some patients are able to return to work in one to two weeks, but full recovery can take six to 12 months, Dr. Jacobs said.
Make sure you have the help you need in the initial stages of recuperation. Since you may have difficulty getting around and won’t be able to drive right away, you may want to have a friend or family member stay with you. You may even need to hire an aide or visiting nurse.
Follow your doctor’s orders, and don’t rush your recovery. You don’t want your new joint to fail because you couldn’t resist carrying loads of laundry up and down stairs, or felt compelled to rearrange the patio furniture.
If the new joint is given time to heal, you will find plenty of opportunities for all that in the future.
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Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP