Daily News - 22 Nov

PepsiCo Coughed Up Double Amount than DLF to Be Next 5 Years IPL Sponsor 

PepsiCo left behind Airtel in the race to win Indian Premier League (IPL) title sponsorship for 396 crore Rupees, which is approximately double of the previous right holders- DLF. DLF had paid 200 crore Rupees in 2008 to be the rights holder of IPL. Pepsi has now acquired this right for next 5 years starting from 2013. After meeting on 21 November 2012, the marketing committee of the cricket board two tenders was opened. Airtel offered 316 crore Rupees for the rights. Twentieth Century Media, Pepsi rival Coca Cola, Gameplan and Star TV picked up this tender but did not bid. The chairman of the marketing committee Farooq Abdullah was extremely pleased since the winning bid value reflected the success and growth of IPL. Governing council chairman or IPL, Rajeev Shukla welcomed Pepsi to central sponsorship pool of Pepsi.

Three Indian Writers Shortlisted for DSC South Asian Literature Prize 2013

Three Indian writers- Uday Prakash, Amitav Ghosh and Jeet Thayil were shortlisted for the US Dollar 50,000 DSC South Asian Literature Prize 2013. The names of shortlisted candidates were announced on 21 November 2012 in London. Others who were shortlisted for the prize include Pakistani novelists Jamil Ahmad and Mohammed Hanif as well as Tahmina Anam of Bangladesh. Only contender from beyond the boundaries of Indian Subcontinent is Jason Grunebaum who is the American Writer, academic and translator.
Amitav Ghosh has been chosen for River of Smoke, Jeet Thayil for the debut novel Narcopolis and Uday Prakash for The Walls of Delhi. Well known litterateur K. Satchidanandan chairing the jury said that the list represented diversity of the South Asian fiction in terms of idiom and theme. These works, according to the jury member were stylistically innovative, thematically fresh and have a definitive contribution to the genre of novels.

Tongariro Volcano erupted in the North Island region of New Zealand

The Tongariro Volcano in Mount Tongariro at Tongariro National Park, New Zealand erupted on 21 November 2012. This volcano left behind massive plume of ash billows up to 3 kilometers in the skies of Tongariro National Park in the North Island of New Zealand.
The volcano erupted with a grumble at 1:25 pm about 300 kilometers away from Wellington City of New Zealand.  The volcano was used as the backdrop in many scenes and sequences of the Hollywood movie, Lord of the Rings film Trilogy.

Mount Tongariro Volcano

 
Mount Tongariro Volcano, located in Tongariro National Park of the Taupo Volcanic Zone of the North Island of New Zealand is a compound volcano. Located in the south western part of Lake Taupo, the volcano is the northernmost volcano of the three active volcanoes of the central North Island region.  This Volcano consists of 12 cones and has erupted more than 70 times since 1839. The Tongariro National Park is a dual World Heritage site and first park to win the recognition of National Park in New Zealand, because of its natural beauty, peaks like peaks of Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu.

GRACE revealed that Greenland loses 200 million tonnes of ice every year 

Greenland lost 200 million tonnes of ice every year and the ice melting condition is further aggravating. This is the reason for rising sea levels. The information had been revealed by the recent study from GRACE or Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. GRACE is responsible for detecting the major changes on the earth’s surface. These changes are tracked by GRACE by detecting even the minor increase or decrease in the gravity, which in turn is directly associated with mass below orbiting GRACE satellites.

What is GRACE?

GRACE is a collaborative project of US as well as German Space Agencies (NASA and DLR). The ground segment operations of GRACE at present are co-funded by ESA or European Space Agency. Together these three bodies (NASA, DLR and ESA) are facilitating the measurements of the mass redistribution on the system of the Earth.

Mount Tongariro Volcano in the North Island region of New Zealand Erupted

The Mount Tongariro Volcano erupted on 21 November 2012 at Tongariro National Park, New Zealand. The volcano left behind the cloud of ashes that spread across three-kilometer in the Skies of the North Island. The eruption took place about 300 kilometers from Wellington and the reported time at which the volcano grumbled was recorded as 1:25 pm on 21 November 2012. The volcano was used as the backdrop of many scenes and sequences of the film Lord of the Rings.

Device Developed to Imitate Dog’s Nose for Detecting Explosives

Dogs are known for their olfactory sense. Imitating the same sense, scientists from the University of California in the third week of November 2012 designed the nanotech chip that can smell presence of the molecules from a bomb within a few seconds. According to the researchers, this nanotech chip is portable, absolutely sensitive and accurate which can smell the vapours from the explosives as well as other substances. This could become very common in future just like the smoke detectors found in the public places. Researchers who were led by professors Martin Moskovits and Carl Meinhart designed the detector which makes use of the microfluidic nanotechnology in order to imitate biological mechanism used behind canine scent receptors. This device is not just very sensitive for tracing the amount of specific vapour molecules but can also tell about specific substances besides the similar molecules. The device has been designed with the similar or even better sensitivity just like the nose of the dogs. Results of the study depict that this device can also detect the airborne molecules of the 2, 4-dinitrotoluene, mainly the vapours which emanate from the TNT-based explosives.

Researchers Developed New Tool for Keeping Your Email Spam-Free

Researchers from the Concordia University in the third week of November 2012 proposed statistical structure for filtering the spam which can efficiently and swiftly block the unnecessary messages in the inbox of your email account.  Researchers had conducted a full-fledged study for various spam filters while preparing the efficient and new one. According to researcher Ola Amayri, the new approaches of the spam filtering can adapt to active nature of the spams. It can also handle the tricks of spammers accurately by knowing the informative patterns which are extracted automatically from content, both images as well as text of spams. As of now, the only focus of email spam filteration was that on the text content and not on the images. When the tricks are being used in combined format, spam filters become helpless to curtail these messages since they focus on one of the content- either images or text but hardly on both of them. Majority of the previous researches had their focus on textual content associated with the spams. According to Amayri, by keeping into consideration the patterns from the images as well as text, a new filtering method for spams was discovered.

Gavaskar conferred with Col. CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award

Sunil Gavaskar, the Former Captain and legendary opener of Indian Cricket Team on 21 November 2012 was conferred with BCCI’s prestigious Col. CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award at the BCCI Annual Awards Function 2011-12. Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and V.V.S. Laxman were also felicitated at the award ceremony.  The Lifetime Achievement Award given to Gavaskar carried a citation, trophy and a cheque for 25 lakh Rupees and he received this award from the BCCI president N. Srinivasan. Sachin Tendulkar was honoured at the occasion with a gold-plated bat for scoring the century of centuries in international cricket. Kohli was chosen as the Best Indian International Player of the year at the award ceremony.

About Col. CK Nayudu and the Lifetime Achievement Award

Col. CK Nayudu or Cottari Kanakaiya Nayudu was the first captain of Indian Cricket Team in Test Matches, and he played the first class cricket for India till 1958. The ruler of Holkar in 1923 conferred him with the honour of Colonel in Holkar’s Army at Indore.  Nayudu was appointed as the first captain of Indian team for its first test tour of England in 1932 after the previously appointed captain and vice-captain of the team, Maharaja of Porbandar and Ghanshyamsinhji of Limbdi respectively were out of the series due to health problems. Col. CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest-revered award for captaincy and lifetime achievement in Indian Cricket.