He also said that the Smart City project would be implemented in two stages at the Infopark and an amount of Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) has been sanctioned for the first year, the minister said.

The minister also said that the Kannur airport would be implemented in the manner of Cochin International Airport with public-private participation. The government will have 26% equity in the project.

Kerala [ Images ] budget taxes liquor, proposes sops for tourism

The Kerala government’s budget for 2010-11 also proposed to extend the ambit of welfare schemes like employment guarantee and food subsidy, reduce taxes on tourism, beer and wine and impose fresh ones on direct to home services and jewellery shop owners.

While continuing with most of the schemes under the Rs 10,000-crore (Rs 100 billion) stimulus package unveiled last year during the slowdown, Isaac in his budget announced fresh sops for the crisis-hit tourism sector by slashing the luxury tax.

Luxury tax on tourism, a major revenue earner, was brought down to 7.5 per cent and 12.5 per cent in different categories from 10 per cent and 15 per cent.

Among other highlights of the budget are the extension of the Rs 2-per-kg-rice scheme to labourers of the unorganized sector from June and the employment guarantee scheme to the urban areas. The government has earmarked Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) for the food subsidy plan that will benefit about 3.5 million families.

Possibly with an eye on the assembly polls next year, the budget also left VAT rates untouched but proposed a 10 per cent hike in tax on liquor other than beer and wine.

The budget, showing a cumulative deficit of Rs 577.09 crore (Rs 5.77 billion), also sharply brought down the stamp duty on registration of real estate property as a sop to recession-hit construction sector.

Stating that Kerala cannot get rid of the revenue deficit by 2014-15 as suggested by the 13th Finance Commission, Issac said it would be Rs 3,629.55 crore (Rs 36.295 billion) for the year, about 11.64 per cent of the state’s revenue.

Tax on beer and wine was slashed by 10 per cent, but that on other liquors was increased by 10 per cent.

The budget also sought to rationalise stamp duty and increased lifetime tax to 8 per cent for new motor cars and omni buses for private use, where engine capacity is 1500 cc and above.

A lifetime tax of 6 per cent ad valorem on all types of construction equipment vehicles was also imposed.

As the steep rise in gold prices had not been adequately reflected in the compounded tax, the budget re-fixed tax rates increase payable by the Jewellery shop owners.

Direct to Home service was brought under the tax net, with a levy of one per cent tax on gross charges paid by customers.

To protect small-scale cable TV operators, it exempted those having less than 5,000 connections from luxury tax.

The minister also sanctioned Rs 412 crore (Rs 4.12 billion) for heavy industries, Rs 240 crore (Rs 2.40 billion) for small and traditional sectors, agriculture projects would get Rs 622 crore (Rs 6.22 billion), the grand Kerala Shopping Festival will get Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) and the coconut development project will receive Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million).

Source: Rediff

“The test was successfully conducted Wednesday at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, about 80 km north-east of Chennai,” the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here.

Weighing three tonnes at lift-off, the advanced sounding rocket is the heaviest developed by the Indian space agency, carrying a scramjet engine combustor module to demonstrate air-breathing propulsion technology.

“During the flight, the rocket remained for seven seconds in the desired conditions of Mach number (6+0.5) and dynamic pressure (80+35 kPa). These conditions are required for a stable ignition of active scramjet engine combustor module planned in the next advanced technology vehicle flight,” the statement noted.

A sounding rocket carries an instrument to take measurements and performs scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. It is used to take readings in space at a distance of 50-1,500 km above the surface of the earth where weather balloons float and satellites orbit.

A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) consists of a constricted tube through which inlet air is compressed by the high speed of the vehicle, a combustion chamber where fuel is combusted, and a nozzle through which the exhaust jet leaves at higher speed than the inlet air.

Jet engines use a compressor to squeeze air into the engine, then spray fuel into the compressed air and ignite it to produce thrust by funnelling it through the back.

Source: SiliconIndia

NASA’s Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters ranging in size from 2 to 15 km in diameter with water ice, the US space agency announced Monday.

“The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon,” said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

“The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.”

“After analysing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit,” said Jason Crusan, programme executive for the Mini-RF Programme for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

The Mini-SAR’s findings are consistent with recent findings of other NASA instruments and add to the growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water found on the moon, NASA said.

The agency’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper discovered water molecules in the moon’s polar regions, while water vapour was detected by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.

Mini-SAR, a lightweight (less than 10 kg) imaging radar, and Moon Mineralogy Mapper are two of 11 instruments carried by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1.

The Mini-SAR has imaged many of the permanently shadowed regions that exist at both poles of the moon. These dark areas are extremely cold and it has been hypothesised that volatile material, including water ice, could be present in quantity there.

The main science object of the Mini-SAR experiment is to map and characterise any deposits that exist.

Numerous craters near the poles of the moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow. These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there, essentially indefinitely.

Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high circular polarisation ratio – CPR) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area, NASA said.

However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims. This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters.

“We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters. The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of metres thick to give this signature,” NASA said.

The estimated amount of water ice potentially present is comparable to the quantity estimated solely from the previous mission of Lunar Prospector’s neutron data (several hundred million metric tons).

The variation in the estimates between Mini-SAR and the Lunar Prospector’s neutron spectrometer is due to the fact that it only measures to depths of about one-half metre, so it would underestimate the total quantity of water ice present, NASA said.

At least some of the polar ice is mixed with lunar soil and thus, invisible to the NASA radar, it said.

Source: SiliconIndia

Kannan is the son of Mylswamy Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayan-1, who won the awards for discovering water on the lunar surface. Kannan and Kadri won a cash prize of Rs 55,000 and certificates by a team of judges of IIT Kharagpur and American multinational, General Electric for the system, which might proved to be a boon to power-starved cities of India.

Talking to The Times of India, Gokul and Aswin, who are III year BE mechanical engineering students, said that they won the award based on theoretical calculations. “Our next step is to prove it practically which we plan to do during our holidays in June,” said Gokul. He also said that it was a low cost, small-scale wind turbine generator producing electricity ranging between 5KW to 7.5KW, which can be easily used in ordinary households. “Once implemented, it will certainly prove a tremendous advantage to power-starved cities of India,” claimed Gokul.

Talking about the inspiration to do this kind of project, Gokul said, “We felt that some major domestic problems have to be solved in India and one of them was power. Keeping this in mind we decided to take up this project which took about two-and-a-half months to complete.”

This project would not have been possible without the support of parents. Both the parents had left their son to work independently on their project. Annadurai said, “I left Gokul to work independently on his project with his classmate and never interfered with them. If some of the practical issues are resolved and once implemented, it is bound to prove an advantage to many parts of this country.”

Source: SiliconIndia

The $3 billion project is expected to be completed by 2018, said Brain Mind Institute of Swiss Federal Institute Director Henry Markram to Financial Express. The project is billed as an attempt to build a computerized copy of a brain – starting with a rat’s brain, and then progressing to a human brain-inside one of the world’s most powerful computers. It is an international project, propelled by Swiss Federal Institute, and involves several countries and ethics monitoring by UN bodies. India is yet to be part of the project.

The immediate purpose is to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations. “The study of rhodent brain has given us a template to build on. This would help in unraveling human brain,” says Markram. “The whole idea is that mental illness, memory and perception triggered by neurons and electric signals could be soon treated with a supercomputer that models all the 1,000,000 million synapses of brain.”

The key finding is that irrespective of gender and race, human brains are basically identical. “We will be able to map the differentiations by nuancing the patterns later. The exciting part is not how different we are but how similar we all are,” says Markram.

Source: SiliconIndia

Gogoi said, “Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offered to build a fully furnished lab for me in Guwahati. The Chief Minister had granted me about 1.6 acres of land in 2007, but the file is still lying untouched at the local administrative office.”

Talking about slow moving files, another of Gogoi’s invention is the speed breaker that can generate electricity simply when vehicles pass over it. Gogoi explains that a ramp under the speed breaker would absorb the static energy produced by the sheer mass of the vehicle and convert it into kinetic energy. This is, in turn, transferred into electricity and stored in a battery cell. A vehicles weighing one tonne can create electricity equivalent to one kilowatt.

When Kanak started the journey, he had two options; pay up his children’s school fees or spend the money for his scientific innovations. He opted for the latter. In the past 13 years, he has spent Rs.1.5 crore (Rs.15 million) of his own money to satisfy his scientific and engineering curiosities, but steadfastly refuses to commercialize any of them and blames the government for not promoting scientific innovations, although only a few years ago he was making a hand-to-mouth existence.

Felicitated by the President of India last week for his achievements, 47-year old Gogoi is a celebrity in Guwahati’s scientific and engineering circles. He has developed his penchant for creating extraordinary things from ordinary materials used for day-to-day activities during his younger days.

“However, I have never received a single rupee in profit for any of my work and I will never venture to commercialize them on my own. But if anybody is willing, he is free to make use of my innovations for the greater good of the society,” said Gogoi.

Among his innovations are a solar hybrid car, whose 320 watt battery is charged by solar panels and is powered by a 100cc engine. Another car that Gogoi made from integration of motorcycle and Maruti 800 engines, runs on air energy powered by a hand glider and can reach a maximum speed of 120 km per hour.

Gogoi, however, has not bothered to apply for intellectual property rights (IPR) for any of his innovations, although they have cost in Rs.1.5 crore of his own money. “When anybody talks about things like IPR or patents, it is generally assumed that the person must be a Ph.D or DLitt. Who will think of an undergraduate as a genuine and worthy innovator? Besides, paperwork of the kind that is required for patent filing has always been an anathema for me,” said Gogoi.

In fact it is the National Innovation Foundation, headed by noted scientist Raghunath A Mashelkar that applied for a patent on Gogoi’s behalf for his gravity operated cycle, which converts gravitational force released by pedaling of the cycle into kinetic energy.

“I have a successful real estate business, which affords me the luxury of having enough spare money and spare time to concentrate on my engineering activities. I don’t expect and nor do I wish for any monetary returns,” said Gogoi, who had refused an invitation from a North Carolina-based organization to shift to their campus with a daily stipend of $1,000.

The deal has been awarded to HCL Insurance Business Services, the IT firm’s UK-based life and pensions administration business. As part of the deal, HCL will provide complete solutions, including policy administration, finance, actuarial services, IT operational support and call centre services.

Currently, about 340 people are servicing the account. “We expect about 100 people will be taken in by Equitable Life, rendering about 240 people surplus. They will be relieved under suitable schemes,” said Equitable Life Chief Executive Chris Wiscarson. “HCL will take care of the work of these 240 employees, with about 50-70 jobs being taken care of from HCL’s Chennai centre,” he added.

Source: SiliconIndia

“The Apple company after seeing the game asked us to re-do it as it had the iPhone logo. We removed it and the game was released on September 27. In a short span of time, the game has achieved more than 250,000 downloads – the highest for an iPhone application developed by any Indian software firm,” said T. Harikumar. More than 70 percent of downloads have been from Canada, the UK, and the U.S.

Anyone who has an iPhone or an iTouch can log on to iTunes website and download the game for free. The free version of the game allows the user to be one of the players, while iPhone itself takes the role of the second player.

“We have given it a real feel. When the dice appears on screen, just shake the phone as you would do it while playing on the board game, and the dice shows the number,” said Harikumar. The company currently has 22 employees and is mostly into image technology and processing.

Source: Silicon India

“India is already the international standard in the IT world,” said Kenichi Yoshida, Director of Softbridge Solutions Japan, a staffing company. Its founder is an Indian-American, who set up the Japanese company in 2002.

Indian engineers are sent out to Japan after studying Japanese language for five months. In addition to operation and maintenance of financial information systems, they are in charge of systems development for computers and mobile phones, reports Kyodo news agency.

“While the number of working people is decreasing in Japan, in India, the number will continue to increase until 2040. Education levels are also high. It’s important for Japanese industry to work together with India,” said Yoshida.

Softbridge Solutions also provides opportunities for Japanese engineers to undergo training in India for two to four months, and major Japanese enterprises are taking advantage of the service. “Everything is in English there. They eat curry from same bowl and return home a lot tougher,” said Yoshida.

Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward has the highest number of Indian residents, at about 2,200. After visa requirements for engineers working in Japan were eased in 2001, Indians flocked to the ward because it is close to the centre of Tokyo and prices are lower than in other wards. “Until several years ago, there were only men in their 20s whose families were back home, but recently, the number of Indians accompanied by their families is increasing,” said Jagmohan Chandrani, 57, President of a company, who came to Japan about 30 years ago.

Chandrani imports and sells black tea, runs a guest house and also serves as leader of the Indian society in the ward, assisting his countrymen in their day-to-day lives. Many new residents are from Bangalore, known as India’s Silicon Valley. Given that tandoori chicken and nan, which are popular in Japan, are northern Indian dishes, Chandrani has opened a southern Indian restaurant and a food store for engineers yearning for the taste of home.

Chandrani hopes that the ward will become not an ‘India town’ but a place serving as bridge between the two countries.

Source: Silicon India

Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, the consumer products arm of the software firm, has taken up Yardley business across these areas for $45.5 million (Rs. 215 crore), continuing its takeover spree that included Unza.

“We picked up a lot of debt from Unza’s balance sheet when we acquired it. Yardley is a profitable brand and will add to our operating margins which are at 10-13 percent,” said Vineet Agrawal, President, Wipro Consumer Care.

Being controlled by British billionaire Mike Jatania, Lornamead had acquired the Yardley brand in September 2005 for 60 million pounds. It will retain the Yardley business in Europe and America. Funded by internal accruals, this deal will enable Wipro straddle different price points and give it greater bargaining power for key accounts in certain markets.

“Yardley is a great fit for Wipro if it wants to go beyond Santoor to include more premium brands. Synergies will improve if Wipro took a bottoms-up approach of gearing its sales force and partners towards this change to premium range,” said Anand Ramanathan, FMCG Analyst, KPMG.

Yardley’s Lavender talcum-to-soap range is priced around 50 percent higher than the costliest brand in Wipro’s existing portfolio, Unza’s Enchanteur range. This move will also strategically surge Wipro Consumer Care’s foothold in high growth markets such as the Middle East where its overall revenue is projected to double to $30-35 million. The Middle East contributes 70 percent to the acquisitions revenues, with 20 percent coming from India and the remainder from other Asian markets.

Wipro is also in plans to increase the product range under the Yardley brand. “We see certain gaps in Yardley’s product range such as body washes and deodorant roll-ons, which we feel could be added to increase relevance with the youth. We are also evaluating the manufacture of Yardley products such as soaps through our factories,” said Agarwal.

The company plans to leverage its distribution reach across 50,000 outlets in metros and tier-I cities to grow the brand in India and sees cost efficiencies rising out of merging common suppliers. Wipro Consumer Care has made a series of acquisitions in the past six years.

Wipro arrived on the acquisition stage in 2003 by picking up Hindustan Unilever’s glucose drink brand Glucovita. It bought Kerala based ayurvedic brand Chandrika after one year and Delhi based North West Switchgear’s switches business in 2006.

Wipro Consumer Care division came into limelight in 2007 with its $246 million purchase of Singapore based personal care firm Unza Holdings, which has a significant presence across South-East Asian markets. This deal will see Wipro Consumer Care’s contribution to the parent’s top line growing by 50 basis points. In the second quarter, the consumer-care division notched up eight percent of Wipro’s overall revenues. Wipro’s stock closed at Rs. 598.30 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, a rise of 0.42 percent on Thursday.

Source: SiliconIndia