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| Gold recovers, silver surrender further ground NEW DELHI, Nov 22: Gold prices recovered on the bullion market today on scattered buyings by local parties while silver maintained a downward slide. Marketmen said there was no respite in silver trading as prices continued to decline for the fifth strait day on stockists selling.......more Cisco Systems signs BANGALORE, Nov 22: Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the internet, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Andaman & Nicobar Islands administration to set up the Cisco Networking Academy program in the Union Territory.....more Citibank announces MUMBAI, Nov 22: To promote branding of its products, Citibank in India today announced the change .....more |
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Take an active
role in development of IT: Kohli KOLKATA, Nov 22: Former TATA Consultancy Chairman and eminent information technology....more Scientists build tiny LONDON, Nov 22: Following mother nature’s lead, Israeli scientists have built a dna computer so tiny......more Abn Amro opens 11th BANGALORE, Nov 22: Dutch banking major Abn Amro today opened its eleventh.......more India asks EU to reduce NEW DELHI, Nov 22: India today asked the European Union (EU) to reduce non-tariff barriers..........more Japan Oct unemployment TOKYO, Nov 22: Japan’s jobless rate, already at a record high, will likely creep up further....more |
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Cisco
Systems signs education MoU with BANGALORE, Nov 22: Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the internet, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Andaman & Nicobar Islands administration to set up the Cisco Networking Academy program in the Union Territory. The MoU was signed between Mr Prakash Kumar, Secretary Information Technology, Andaman & Nicobar administration, and Mr Rajeev Chopra, Vice President, India and SAARC region, Cisco Systems. As part of the MoU, a regional networking academy would be established in the Union Territory. Which would receive networking equipment, comprehensive training, the networking academy curriculum, and technical support from Cisco Systems. The regional academy would in turn set up local networking academies in polytechnics and colleges across the state. To help maintain the highest quality of training and and education at these institutions and the other networking academies around India, Cisco would implement the Cisco networking academy quality assurance plan. The Cisco Networking Academy program focusses on teaching students how to design, build, and maintain computer networks. The program prepares students for the 21st century workplace, while serving as a valuable model for e-learning. As of today, approximately 232,000 students have enrolled in the program in over 8,400 academies in 134 countries around the world, according to a press release here. (UNI) |
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Citibank
announces change in name MUMBAI, Nov 22: To promote branding of its products, Citibank in India today announced the change in the name of its software subsidiary from Citicorp Overseas Software Limited (COSL) to Orbitech Limited. Announcing the launch of the newly named company, Mr Dipak Rastogi, Vice Chairman of Citigroup Investments, said, the combined strength of Orbitech in the areas of consultancy, software development, integration and support along with its cutting-edge product suite, orbipack, gives a unique advantage in offering its customers powerful yet flexible and responsive software solutions in India and abroad. Orbitech which has three software development centers in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai, will shortly open its fourth development center at Pune and sales and marketing offices in New York and London. It is a SEI-CMM level-5 company with 1,200 software professionals in India and is expected to generate a revenue earning of US dollar 62 million in the very first year of its operation under the new name. Asked about a similar software arm of Citibank called I-flex, Mr Rastogi said that the bank would be positioning its software arms as growth-oriented companies where each firm would have unique advantages through cooperation from others. Orbitech would have a separate of board of directors for management and would be looking for both strategic, financial and distribution alliances with other firms or entities. Currently, majority of earnings of orbitech is coming from services while at later stage, it would have equal share of revenues both from products and services. Cosl, the previous name of orbitech, was set up in 1985 for developing and exporting banking software within the Citibank worldover. Now with the launch of Orbitech, the same world class software products and services would be provided to the Indian banking and financial services sectors in additional to clients and institutions abroad. (UNI) |
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Take an active role in development of IT: Kohli KOLKATA, Nov 22: Former TATA Consultancy Chairman and eminent information technology specialist Dr F C Kohli today urged the Union and the State Governments to take an active role in the development of information technology in the country. The Government should take an active part in investing in sectors like education, healthcare, crisis management, transport, planning and monitoring to ensure transparency in administration, he said, while speaking at the inauguration of 36th annual convocation and exhibition of the Computer Society of India. The move would not only make the Government efficient and responsive but would also enhance the society’s development, he said. Speaking about the biasness of the software industry towards the export of its product, he said the industry should concentrate on developing the domestic market which has a huge potential for growth. Following the deregulation of the finance, insurance and transport sectors among others, there is a huge potential in the domestic market for the development of the information technology enabled services like data entry, transcription and call sectors, he added. Dr Kohli said there was immense scope in the export market because the software industry contributes only 2 per cent in the world software market. The market share could be increased by changing the present model and by giving more emphasis on visual computing, modelling, prototyping and simulation, he said. There should be more emphasis in team building and cost reduction, he observed. The cost of communication in China is about one tenth of that in India following the extensive use of the components in the Chinese market, he said. Speaking about the hardware industry Dr Kohli said a large number of micro-economic engineers were required. There are 130 graduates at present despite the market requirement of 3000 micro economic engineers. State Information Technology Minister Manabendra Mukerjee urged the Governments to act like a superpower in its social mission to extend the network of information technology to the gram panchayats. There should be aggressive e-governance planning for creating an infrastructure for the information technology development. He said. (UNI) |
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Scientists build tiny computer from DNA LONDON, Nov 22: Following mother nature’s lead, Israeli scientists have built a dna computer so tiny that a trillion of them could fit in a test tube and perform a billion operations per second with 99.8 per cent accuracy. Instead of using figures and formulas to solve a problem, the microscopic computer’s input, output and software are made up of DNA molecules — which store and process encoded information in living organisms. Scientists see such DNA computers as future competitors to for their more conventional cousins because miniaturisation is reaching its limits and DNA has the potential to be much faster than conventional computers. "We have built a nanoscale computer made of biomolecules that is so small you cannot run them one at a time. When a trillion computers run together they are capable of performing a billion operations," Professor Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute in Israel told Reuters yesterday. It is the first programmable autonomous computing machine in which the input, output, software and hardware are all made of biomolecules. Although too simple to have any immediate applications it could form the basis of a DNA computer in the future that could potentially operate within human cells and act as a monitoring device to detect potentially disease-causing changes and synthesize drugs to fix them. The model could also form the basis of computers that could be used to screen dna libraries in parallel without sequencing each molecule, which could speed up the acquisition of knowledge about DNA. DNA can hold more information in a cubic centimetre than a trillion CDS. The double helix molecule that contains human genes stores data on four chemical bases — known by the letters A, T, C and G — giving it massive memory capability that scientists are only just beginning to tap into. "The living cell contains incredible molecular machines that manipulate information-encoding molecules such as DNA and RNA (its chemical cousin) in ways that are fundamentally very similar to computation," said Shapiro, the head of the research team that developed the DNA computer. "Since we don’t know how to effectively modify these machines or create new ones just yet, the trick is to find naturally existing machines that, when combined, can be steered to actually compute," he added. Writing in the science journal nature, Shapiro and his team describe their DNA computer, which is a molecular model of one of the simplest computing machines — the automaton which can answer certain yes or no questions. Data is represented by pairs of molecules on a strand of DNA and two naturally occurring enzymes act as the hardware to read, copy and manipulate the code. When it is all mixed together in the test tube, the software and hardware operate on the input molecule to create the output. The DNA computer also has a very low energy consumption, so if it is put inside the cell it would not require much energy to work. DNA computing is a very young branch of science that started less than a decade ago, when Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California pioneered the field by using DNA in a test tube to solve a mathematical problem. Scientists around the globe are now trying to marry computer technology and biology by using nature’s own design to process information. (REUTERS) |
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Abn Amro opens 11th branch in India BANGALORE, Nov 22: Dutch banking major Abn Amro today opened its eleventh branch here in India offering the entire gamut of consumer banking products including doorstep banking to customers. Speaking to newsmen on the ocassion bank’s Senior Executive Vice President Jan Peter Schmittmann, who inaugurated the branch earlier, said the bank would take care of all banking needs of both individual and corporate customers through its full service branch. Bank’s Executive Vice President and country representative Romesh Sobti said the new branch offered service to its retail customeers throughout 365 days a year. Cash delivery upto Rs 25000 would be offered to customers within an hour in the city, he added. He said the Bangalore branch would have another first to its credit in asia by offering a new concept called internet banking cafe giving Bangaloreans a relaxed and comfortable family financial service experience in a fully hightech web based environment. This service would be extended to other branches as well. The ultimate idea was to give a single window offering to customers, he added. He said the bank had already tied up with mastercard to launch its creditcard by March next. Another 30 branches would be opened to provide a second tier support to already existing branches in next four years covering 12 cities including the metros. Two branches in Ludhiana and Noida would be opened in next three months, he added. (UNI) |
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India asks EU to reduce
non-tariff barriers, NEW DELHI, Nov 22: India today asked the European Union (EU) to reduce non-tariff barriers and grant benefits under Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) so as to allow greater access to its markets. "In order to access the developed markets like EU, there is a need for deeper appreciation of large but developing economies like India. It calls for a series of positive steps in terms of granting GSP, reducing non-tariff barriers and also significant reorientation of contingent remedies," Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran said at the second India-EU summit here. Indian trade and industry was facing difficulties in the EU markets on account of non-tariff barriers, Maran said, suggesting that eu should reconsider anti-dumping/ anti-subsidy initiatives against India. "Some of the non-tariff barriers noticed are sanitary and phyto-sanitary/ technical barriers to trade (SPS/TBT) standards in agro/organic products, environment related barriers in respect of marine products and tariff rate quotas in respect of agri products," he said. Maran said that though the bilateral trade with EU at over 20 billion dollars per annum was growing steadily, India’s share in the EU’s global imports was just about one per cent. "Diversification could be achieved by addressing growth sectors like food processing, pharmaceuticals, software and electronics," he added. Maran pointed out that the Indian Government had on its part opened up the economy to make it an attractive investment destination. He, however, admitted that more progress has to be made. "India is less a tiger than an elephant -a sleeping elephant just awakened. Its steps are measured and steady. But we agree that an elephant also can walk faster and we need to increase our pace to keep steps with the fast moving world". Commenting on the WTO ministerial meeting at Doha, Maran said, "it is important that all outstanding developmental concerns raised by developing countries on implementation are duly and urgently addressed and form the prime objective in the next WTO initiatives". "India looks forward to working with the eu and other countries in carrying forward the work programme. It is very important that the needs and concerns of the developing countries are fully integrated into all aspects of WTO activities," he added. (PTI) |
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Japan Oct unemployment seen at record 5.4 pct TOKYO, Nov 22: Japan’s jobless rate, already at a record high, will likely creep up further as grim economic conditions continue to squeeze the country’s beleaguered workforce, economists forecast in a Reuters survey. Fifteen economists polled this week produced a median forecast of 5.4 per cent for unemployment in October, a touch above a record-high 5.3 per cent hit a month earlier. The employment report is due out at 8:00 a.m. on Friday, November 30 (0430 hrs Ist). A stream of gloomy data suggests the jobless rate could worsen in the months ahead. Figures released last week showed that bankruptcies soared to their highest level in more than 17 years in October. The Trade Ministry said yesterday its all-industries index fell 0.8 per cent in September, while the key tertiary sector index representing service industries fell 0.9 per cent. "The tertiary index shows that bad conditions are spreading from the manufacturing to non-manufacturing sectors," MCM Asia Pacific analyst Kenji Arata said. Minako Iida, an economist at Deutsche Securities, said the worst was not yet over, although she predicted a brief respite in November. "I expect the figure to be flat this month, but I don’t expect it to stay that way," she said. "I think it will rise in November and December." Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi said earlier this month that Japan was "near an emergency situation", and that worse conditions could be around the corner. The Government is trying to ease the pain through extra spending on employment measures. The bulk of a three trillion yen (24.35 billion dollar) extra budget decided on earlier this month will go to tackling rising joblessness. (REUTERS) |
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