London Olympics 2012: China claims 1st Gold

China claimed the first gold medal at the London Olympics 2012 and made their intent clear that they are going to dominate the 30th Summer Olympics. The gold medal for China came from Yi Siling, who  won the 10 metre air rifle shooting.

India At Olympics:

India had a bad today on Saturday. The Men's Archery team lost to Japan in the tie-break in the quartefinals. In Mixed Doubles, V Diju and Jwala Gutta lost their opening group game.Rower Swaran Singh also came fourth in his heats in single sculls. Shooter Vijay Singh failed to qualify for the finals of 10m Air Pistol event, as he finished 31st in the qualifying round. The hype over teenage boxing sensation Shiva Thapa ended in a disaster, as he lost 9-14 to his Mexican rival Oscar Valdez Fierro in the bantamweight opening round bout. Shuttler Parupalli Kashyap was the sole saving grace, as he won his opening match against Yuhan Tan of Belgium in straight sets. In Table Tennis, Ankita Das also crashed out of the medal race.

Samajwadi Party expels Shahid Siddiqui for Modi Interview

A day after his interview with Gujarat CM Narendra Modi was published in a Urdu Weekly, Shahid Siddiqui was expelled from the Samajwadi Party with immediate effect.

Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav told the media that Shahid Siddqui was no longer with the party. Although Siddiqui had joined the Samajwadi Party on January 8, Ram Gopal Yadav lied that he was not in his party.  

It seems that the Samajwadi Party is completely embarrassed after Modi's interview with a senior leader of his party and trying to control the damage by disowning him. In that sensational interview, Narendra Modi had said that he was ready to be hanged if proven guilty for the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Not NRI but US Return !

More and more Indians graduating from top global business schools, including Wharton, Harvard and Stanford, are spurning traditional job offers in favour of starting up new business ventures back home.

Wharton's MBA batch of 2012 had 70-80 Indians, of which 10-15 turned entrepreneurs. And in the current class of about 100 Indians, 15-20 are already entrepreneurs or are actively working towards founding their own businesses, according to ET estimates based on interviews with 10 alumni. Such instances were uncommon even as recently as 2009. 

Harvard Business School saw 5-6 out of 30-35 Indian students turning entrepreneurs from its class of 2011, according to alumni estimates. It hardly had any Indian entrepreneurs five years ago. Similarly, Stanford's B-school saw a record-breaking 16% of its class of 2011 starting their own firms, with a significant number of Indians in the group. 

MARUTI SUZUKI - Why Only Counts ?

Over the past several months, many owners of the new Swift have been complaining that their car doesn’t stop in bumper to bumper traffic. Maruti doesn’t agree. Will this be the first test of SIAM’s voluntary recall code?

Mangalam Singhania, a 31-year-old IT professional based out of Bangalore and the once-proud owner of the new Maruti Swift, was really angry. He had waited 22 days (May 31-June 22) hoping that somebody from Maruti Suzuki would reply to his email and explain why his car wouldn’t stop in bumper to bumper traffic. 

But nobody did. And Singhania had already tried everything: Threats of a consumer court case, five visits to authorised Maruti service stations in just six months, and long discussions with the Maruti Regional Service manager in Bangalore. But nothing worked. Maruti refused to acknowledge that there was any problem with the car’s brakes. Frustrated, Singhania sent the company’s customer service department a strongly worded email. That didn’t get a reply either.

Singhania is not the only one with this peculiar problem. In the past six months, several Swift buyers have complained of a braking issue in their new cars. They have complained on car forums, in emails to Maruti, on the Swift’s Facebook fan page. In Kerala, Sibiraj PR even filed a consumer court case against Maruti, but the company has given no explanation. Puzzled customers who complain at the dealership are told to register the complaint directly with Maruti. The total number of consumer complaints, which you can pick up from car enthusiast forums, runs into the hundreds. 

So, what’s the problem with the Swift’s brakes? Toms Matthew, who bought the top end ZXi variant in February 2012 and has had a frustrating time since, explains it pretty well. “You need to be in bumper to bumper traffic situation…of which we have a lot in Bangalore, drive in first gear, half clutch, RPM under 1,000 and after two or three presses on the pedal, the brake pedal becomes absolutely hard and there is no braking,” he says. While this typically happens at speeds under 10km/hr, it is not a nice situation to be in. During two separate incidents while driving in heavy traffic, Matthew says his Maruti scratched a Honda City and a Toyota Innova after his brakes failed. A third time, while Matthew was parking in his garage, the Maruti scratched a parked motorcycle. 

Though the risk of harm is low at such slow speeds, a car needs to stop when the driver hits the brakes. When it won’t, there’s a problem. Maruti, though, seems to disagree. “There is no impact on braking performance in the cars mentioned. If the customer has experienced hardness in the brake at very low speeds of 5km/hr or less, that may be on account of driving in half clutch and pressing the brake to control speed, which results in engine RPM [revolutions per minute] falling below ‘Idle RPM’ [the speed at which the engine generates enough power to operate smoothly],” said the company’s spokesperson. “The brake is fully functional during such time, irrespective of hardness of pedal. “The correct technique is to press the brake and not crawl at half clutch. Please note that the NVH [noise, vibration and harshness] refinement level of new Swift is so good that the engine does not judder even under such abnormally low RPM conditions.”

Customers say that not only do stop and go traffic conditions require driving in half clutch, the problem surfaced only in the new models. And while Maruti maintains the Swift’s brakes work even when customers drive in half clutch and the pedal becomes hard, customers and experts believe Maruti isn’t coming clean on the problem. “It is not a first brake and then clutch issue. If this has to be done in stop go traffic, more than half the drivers will be stalling their engines... But yes, there could be a problem with the brake pistons which do not release on the third or fourth application [only if this happens rapidly]. This usually manifests itself as brakes getting hard. What you need to understand is, do the brakes still apply or is there no braking? No braking, then we have a serious issue,” says Bertrand D’Souza, editor of Overdrive magazine. 

Even Maruti agrees there is some hardness in the brake pedal, and customers swear that when the pedal becomes hard, the brakes don’t work at all. So, is this a serious problem being pushed under the carpet? 

Just a few weeks ago, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) issued a voluntary code of conduct by which automobile manufacturers agree to call back vehicles found to have defects defined in the code. But drivers shouldn’t expect Maruti to make the Swift the first car recalled under the new code. Since Maruti does not think there is a problem, customers have been left high and dry.

There is no precedent for recalls in a country where a car maker can change the starter motors in about 1,40,000 cars and still refuse to call it a recall, as Tata did with the Nano. At the SIAM press conference announcing the voluntary code of conduct, SIAM President S Sandilya said whatever Tata Motors wants to call the Tata Nano case, it was a recall. Tata Motors was not happy about this. Their spokesperson responded to Sandilya’s comments in an email to Forbes India, saying, “The installation of the new starter motor, which is a vendor supplied part, began in October 2011 and has been completed. This new starter motor was already installed in the Nano 2012, which was introduced in November 2011…we decided that we will give owners of old Nanos on the road also the option, free of cost. That is how it was done. It was not a recall.” 

Recall or no recall, the SIAM initiative is unlikely to live up to expectations because automakers have a vested interest in avoiding costly recalls. In most countries, automobile recalls happen because there is a separate, independent body whose sole job is to set safety standards and ensure that they are followed. These agencies review each and every call, letter and online report they receive of an alleged safety problem. Depending on the number of consumer complaints, they may start an investigation. If safety-related defects are found, it’s up to the independent agency to determine whether or not a safety defect exists. If so, the manufacturer has no choice but to conduct a recall. 

The problem with the Indian automotive industry is that there is no such body overseeing auto safety. Instead, it’s up to the manufacturer to issue costly, but perhaps crucial, recalls. Sadly, that means India’s car buyers are usually out of luck.

Source: Forbes India

Memory Loss increases Death Risk, says Study

Grown-up individuals who have thinking and memory problems are at a higher risk of death, a new research has suggested. Such brain related issue is called cognitive impairment. Greg A. Sachs, MD, professor of medicine and a scientist at the Center for Aging Research at Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine took off the study to determine the link between cognitive impairment and risk of death.

During the research around 3,957 men and women, aged 60 to 102 were examined between January 1991 and May 1993. They were asked 10 questions to judge their mental status.

Now, the researchers classified them to three groups as per their answers. The three categories were - having no cognitive impairment, mild, moderate and severe impairment.

During this examination it was found that out of the 3,957 subjects, 3,157 had no mental impairment, 533 had mild impairment and 267 had moderate to severe problems.

The researchers observed them for a long time up to Dec. 31, 2006 when they found that 57% of those with no impairment died, 68% of those with mild and 79% of those with moderate to severe memory problems died.

In other words, the median survival time was 138 months for those who had no impairment, 106 for those with mild impairment and 63 months for those with moderate to severe impairment.

The study also found the symptoms in case of all the groups. When the impairment is mild, a person has little trouble with attention, language, judgment, memory, reading and writing. In the later stage daily activities are hampered. The stage is termed dementia.

However, the researchers also admit that the study has certain limitations like in several other cases. The men and women were only tested at the beginning. Memory and thinking problems were not tracked over time. And also all the respondents were from Indianapolis having with little education and low socioeconomic status. For that reason, the findings may not be complete.

Sachs further suggests that cognitive impairment is also an important factor for the doctors to evaluate. He says so as it is a common practice that doctors often dismiss problems with memory thinking it to be just inevitable with age and pays much attention to heart disease and cancers. He prescribes physical exercise, mental engagement and social contact to minimize cognitive impairment.

The research was funded by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and findings of the study was published in the ‘Annals of Internal Medicine’.

Now Facebook can reveal User's Personality

Now Facebook can divulge personality of its users – a recent study has claimed. The algorithm is - how you use the social networking site. It would be an interesting part for the users to know what kind of personality they have. Users, who are inclined towards high-risk activities like commenting without an apprehension, were tagged as ‘appetitive’ and the contrary group, those who were more reserved in their activities marked as ‘aversive’.

Researchers at the University of Missouri went for the experiment and found that those who like high-risk activity have a tendency to update their status, upload photos and intermingle with friends often. While conversely, those who are more reserved tend to merely scroll through Facebook's ‘news feed’.

Leader of the study Heather Shoenberger said. "If you're highly 'appetitive', you're more likely to want to engage with media that are more exciting, whereas those who are higher in the aversive trait tend to enjoy safer and more predictable media experiences"

More than fun for the users, the scale is also expected to help advertisers to decide upon the question of putting appropriate ads. The findings were presented at the International Communication Association Conference in Phoenix.

Pluto's Fifth Moon discovered

The NASA’s New Horizons Hubble team has recently discovered the fifth moon to the former planet Pluto. This moon has been currently known only by its provisional name ‘P5’. As per the Hubble Telescope team from NASA, the new moon of Pluto is six to 15 miles wide and travels in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto. P5 has been clearly seen as a separate moon that steers the dwarf planet apart from the four other satellites. The NASA’s team discovered P5 when they were scoping out the space around Pluto for potential debris or dust that could damage their New Horizons spacecraft for the Bastille Day flyby of July 14, 2015. The New Horizons craft travels at 30,000 mph and could be damaged by anything that gets in its path. P5 was detected in 14 separate sets of images taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 26, 27 and 29 in addition to on July 7 and 9. The first moon to Pluto had been discovered in 1978 and named as ‘Charon’, followed by the second and third moon in 2005, which were named as Nix and Hydra. The Fourth moon of Pluto, titled P4, was discovered near Pluto last year. Pluto's moons are traditionally named after Greek mythological characters. The Hubble team has further expected that - The discovery of so many small moons indirectly tells us that there must be lots of small particles lurking unseen in the Pluto system.