Dharavi class IX girls raise $4,795 to start library

Mumbai: Hidden in a tiny bylane of Dharavi is a bright blue room, where over 20 children are reading everything from Disney comics to science fiction. The small room, with wooden shelves on both walls, is the Friends library.

The best part? It’s run by eight class IX students. The girls, from the Guru Nanak High School and Kamarajar Memorial High School in Dharavi, started the library in February.
The library has now over 350 books, which children can borrow at a refundable deposit of Rs20. “Children in the area never got a chance to read as there was no library in the area,” said Menaga Nadar, one of the founders.

The idea of a library struck them at the Avasara Leadership Fellows programme, an intensive after-school enrichment programme for adolescent girls from urban slums. It was here that they first read books beyond their texts.

However, turning the idea into a reality wasn’t an easy task. “We started off with a plan. Initially, we wanted to run it for around six months. We realised we would need Rs60,000,” said Sweety Pavithra, one of the eight founders.

Hope came from the Avarasa programme. “We approached a teacher from the US, who was at the programme, to host a Kickstarter page for us.”
Kickstarter is an online funding platform for creative projects, which allows people to present an idea to raise funds. Also, the project requires an American citizen to be part of the idea.

“The girls soon started creating content for raising funds and also made a video explaining their concept. In three days, the project received $4,795, almost five times the requirement. The next step was to find the perfect space.

“Joba’s (one of the girls from the group) parents offered us the first floor of their house for a rent of Rs4,000,” said Mansi Singh. The girls took over the place with a bucket of paint and brushes to add colour to their dream.

“It’s so great to see these girls work on their own. From planning, execution and problem solving, they have managed all by themselves,” said Roopa Purushothaman, founder of Avasara Leadership Institute.

With more funds at their disposal, the girls are now planning to train a younger batch to run the library as they move to class X.

Source::: DNA, 12-03-2014.

73-year-old Tamil Nadu librarian donated Rs 30 crore to the uneducated poor 

TN activist Palam Kalyanasundaram remained a bachelor so that he could dedicate his life to the poor.

Thin, frail, emaciated and sporting a shy smile, Palam Kalyanasundaram looks like your next-door neighbour’s old, but affectionate grandpa. Once you get to talk to him, the fire and determination in him shines forth through his words. He speaks in a childlike manner, and his voice, too, is high-pitched, but as you listen, you are awestruck at the yeoman service he has done for humanity. He has received several awards and has donated Rs 30 crore of prize money he got from these honours.

Born at Melakarivelamkulam in Thirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, Kalyanasundaram lost his father at a very young age. It was his mother who inspired him to serve the poor.

A will to serve humanity has been 73-year-old Kalyanasundaram’s guiding principle throughout his life. A gold medalist in library science, he also holds a masters degree in literature and history. During his 35-year-long career at Kumarkurupara Arts College at Srivaikuntam, he diligently and willingly donated his salary month after month towards charity and did odd jobs to meet his daily needs. Even after retirement, he worked as a waiter in a hotel in exchange for two meals a day and a meagre salary so that he could continue to donate to orphanages and to children’s educational funds.

He was amply rewarded for his service to humanity. The Union government acclaimed him as the best librarian in India. The International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, has honoured him as one of the ‘noblest of the world’ and the United Nations adjudged him as one of the most outstanding people of the 20th century. He also received Man of the Millenium award and Life Time of Service Award from Rotary Club of India in 2011.

“People think that I started doing charity when I was young by donating clothes and helping people study, and they attribute it to a public cause, but I insist it was for a private one. The place where I lived was a tiny village with no provision for roads, buses, schools, electricity, and there was not even a shop to buy a matchbox from. I had to walk 10km to school and back and walking all that way alone can be a pretty lonesome experience. Hence, I had this thought that if I could motivate most of the children to come with me to school, it would be great fun as well.”

Kalyanasundaram says with a twinkle in his eye. “In those days, children could not afford to pay school fees which were around Rs5. I offered to pay their school fees, got them books and clothes as well.”

Kalyanasundaram says money does not impress him at all. “One can get money in three possible ways. First, through earnings; secondly, through parents’ earnings, and thirdly, through money donated by someone. But there’s nothing more fulfilling than being able to donate money for charity out of your own earnings.”

Palam Kalyanasundaram lives a simple life all on his own in a small house in Saidapet, Chennai. He never married for the simple reason that he did not want to spend all that he earned on charity. Even today, he comes to office at Adyar regularly and does whatever he can for the uplift of the underprivileged people.

Source | http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-73-year-old-tamil-nadu-librarian-donated-rs-30-crore-to-the-uneducated-poor-1928555

SC rules for cheap cancer drug

Novartis Loses Battle To Block Indian Generics

Subodh Varma TIG (The Times of India, 02-04-2013, p.01)

    The Supreme Court on Monday rejected pharma giant Novartis AG’s plea to preserve its patent over a life-saving cancer drug, Glivec, drawing a huge sigh of relief from thousands of patients in India and in dozens of developing countries as the fear of an almost 15-fold escalation of drug costs 
receded. It is the biggest setback for multinational pharma companies, which have been denied patent protection for a series of life-saving drugs in recent years. 
    Invented in 1991, Glivec is a miracle cure for a type of blood cancer called chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). In this form of cancer, certain bone marrow cells go rogue and produce excessive white blood cells, causing mild fatigue and hip pain initially, but slipping into an out-of-control crisis of zooming platelet and white cell counts. It used to be fatal, but with Glivec, the survival rate is over 95%. Imanitib, the active component, is on the National Essential Drugs List in India. 
    India has an estimated 3 lakh CML patients, with 20,000 added every year. Glivec is sold by Novartis for about Rs 1.2 lakh per month. Indian manufacturers sell the same drug at a monthly cost of Rs 8,000. This was the reason why Novartis launched a seven-year-long legal battle to protect its patent on the drug. 
    Novartis, which made a net profit of $9.6 billion in 2012, criticized the judgment. Ranjit Shahani, VC & MD, Novartis India, said, “It is a setback for patients that will hinder medical progress for diseases without effective treatment options.” 
MNCs blast verdict, say it’ll hit innovation 
    The SC’s decision has come as a big blow to MNCs’ ability to sell lucrative medicines in the country. The main beneficiaries of the ruling will be companies like Cipla, Natco Pharma and Sun Pharma which already market generic Glivec at a fraction of the cost of the Novartis product. The ruling cements the role of domestic firms as major suppliers of inexpensive generics not only to the Rs 70,000-crore domestic market, but also across the developing world, and further establishes India as “the pharmacy of the world”. P 20 Key section of law applies to Glivec: SC 
    When the drug was first commercially sold in 2001, India was moving over from the old patent regime to a new one after signing the international trade and patent related agreements in 1995. The new patent law came into force in 2005. Novartis could not get apatent on Glivec as it dated from an earlier time when a different patent law prevailed. It tried but the patent tribunal rejected the claim in 2006. 
    After going through various appeals, Novartis ended up in the apex court pleading that a crucial section 3 (d) of the new patent law was not applicable to Glivec. This section says that just discovering a new form of a substance is not enough to grant a patent, if it does not enhance its “known efficacy”. 
    Novartis was arguing that a new “beta crystalline” form of Glivec is more effective and hence qualifies as a new invention, and hence should get patent protection. 
    The Supreme Court, in a 112-page analysis of all the claims and counter-arguments disagreed. It said that the beta crystalline form was nothing new. It has always existed in the original amorphous form. 
    The landmark judgement means that Indian firms like Natco and Cipla can continue making and selling Glivec, not only for India but to most third world countries. The SC judgment dims hopes for some other pharma giants fighting legal battles on patents. Pfizer’s cancer drug Sutent and Roche’s hepatitis C treatment Pegasys and Merck & Co’s asthma treatment aerosol suspension formulation lost their patented status in India last year, decisions the companies are fighting to have reversed. 
    Many pharma giants are concentrating their legal firepower on India because it is an $11-billion-a-year market growing at 13-14% annually. Equally important is that India has emerged as the ‘pharmacy of the world”, selling over $26 billion worth of cheap generic (non-patent) drugs to most of the poor and still developing countries. It is estimated that about 80% of the HIV patients in the developing world are surviving because of cheap Indian drugs.

COLLEGE CHAOS

40k teachers to boycott exams over arrears

Yogita Rao TNN

Mumbai: It will be a testing time for students from colleges and universities across the state this exam season as over 40,000 college teachers have called a massive boycott of examination work, including practicals, supervision and evaluation.
    The boycott will affect not only the university exams, but also in-house college exams. Around 20,000 contractual teachers might also join the agitation.
    The Maharashtra Federation of University and College Teachers Organisation (MFUCTO) called the boycott as the state government had failed to meet its assurances on the Sixth Pay Commission arrears disbursal. On May 16 the state government had given a written assurance that teachers would get the cash
components in the arrears in two instalments. The teachers are demanding arrears for the 2006-2010 period.
    “We are trying to mobilize over 20,000 contractual teachers in the state who are not getting the minimum wages as per the new pay commission,” MFUCTO secretary Tapati Mukhopadhyay said. “While the new scale is around Rs 20,000-25,000, the contractual teachers are getting around Rs 8,000-10,000.”
    While a boycott had been called last year too, it was restricted to evaluation work.
    Higher and technical education minister Rajesh Tope said the state government was supposed to give only 20 per cent of the arrears and had asked the Centre to disburse the remainder. “Teachers should be more patient,” he said. “They should not take any steps that would hurt the career of students. We are also bringing up the issue in the cabinet in the coming week.” 

 

 

Source:::: The Times of India, 15-01-2013, p.5,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1358247356515

Maha is 17 on edu index, behind Gujarat, Kerala

Sandeep Ashar TNN 

Mumbai: The state is steadily losing its ground on education. It has slipped four points to the 17th position in the Centre’s education development index. 
    The Union government carries out the annual ranking exercise based on various aspects influencing the quality, outreach, infrastructure and performance of students. The latest findings are based on surveys across the country in 2010-11. Maharashtra ranked 13th following a similar exercise in 2009-10.It witnessed a decline in ranking in both the primary (class I to IV), and upper primary (class V to VIII)categories. In the primary section, it dropped one rank from 14 in 2009-10 to 15 in 2010-11. The decline is starker in the upper primary section, where it slipped from 13(2009-10)to18(2010-11). 
    During a state cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the school education,higher and technical education departments were severely criticized by several ministers, following which chief minister Prithviraj Chavan ordered appointment of a core group comprising senior experts and education experts to oversee and chart an improvement in the state’s education standards.Chavan also directed both the school education and higher and technical education departments to give a presentation on the existing education standards to the cabinet. 
    Congress minister Narayan Rane raised the issue during a discussion on non-salary grants for schools, questioning the lack of quality of education in schools. The District Information System for Education report was then cited by the administration. 
    While Puducherry and Lakshwadeep retained the top two slots in the latest rankings, Punjab was third. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Kerala were all ranked aheadof Maharashtra. Govt grants for primary schools Despite objections from the state finance department, the cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposal to provide non-salary grants to primary and upper primary schools from April 2013. It will benefit over 20,000 schools. The grants, discontinued in 2004, were for libraries, laboratories, toilets, etc and cost the state over Rs 330 crore annually. TNN

Various parameters like access to education, infrastructure, teacherpupil ratio and students’ performance, were used

Source:::: The Times of India, 01-11-2012, p.04. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

Fair Use Victory for Librarians

By paufderheide

Created 2012-10-15 16:18

Posted by Patricia Aufderheide [1] on October 15, 2012

The latest judicial ruling on fair use validates librarians’ judgment in their Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, which the Center helped to produce.

In Authors Guild v. Hathitrust, associations of publishers sued libraries that had permitted Google to digitize their books. Once Google digitized the book, the libraries then made a digital archive of them (the Hathitrust Digital Library or HDL), used the text to allow searches for text, and made them available, where there was no commercial copy, to the disabled.

The judge ruled [2] that the libraries had the right to repurpose the text because their uses were transformative (the concept that also anchors the librarians’ and other communities’ codes of best practices in fair use). Judge Baer wrote, “The use to which the works in the HDL are put is transformative because the copies serve an entirely different purpose than the original works: the purpose is superior search capabilities rather than actual access to copyrighted material.” He pointed to the fact that academics are already doing new kinds of searches through “text mining,” and that the sight-impaired’s use of digital copy (which can be read out loud with the right software) is a transformative use as well.

Copyright scholars are giving this a thumbs up for both libraries and fair use. Scholar James Grimmelman called it a “near-complete victory” [3]  and the Association of Research Libraries’ blog post [4] noted:

Judge Baer’s opinion should sound delightfully familiar to anyone who’s read Principles 3, 5, and 7 of the Code, which describe the consensus of academic and research librarians around preservation, accessibility, and non-consumptive uses (like search and text mining). Like the librarians, Judge Baer recognizes that these activities are “transformative,” especially the search and accessibility aspects.

Judge Baer also made a rousing defense of copyright policy as a policy intended to promote the creation of culture in his closing comments (as copyright scholar Kevin Smith noted [5]):

I cannot imagine a definition of fair used that would not encompass the transformative uses made by the defendants and would require that I terminate this invaluable contribution to the progress of science and the cultivation of the arts that at the same time effectuates the ideals of the ADA.

Whew. Librarians can get back to work. 

---

Source URL: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blog/fair-use-victory-librarians

Links:
[1] http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blog/paufderheide
[2] http://www.tc.umn.edu/~nasims/HathivAG10_10_12.pdf
[3] http://laboratorium.net/archive/2012/10/10/hathitrust_wins
[4] http://policynotes.arl.org/
[5] http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2012/10/11/a-big-win-for-fair-use-and-libraries/
[6] http://twitter.com/share

UGC norms for selection of state univ VCs relaxed

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

Chennai: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to relax norms for selection of vice-chancellors (VCs) in state universities. On Sunday, UGC chairman Ved Prakash said the move followed requests from several state governments to easethestandards. 
    There has been speculation for morethan a month now thatselection normswouldbe relaxed. Prakash said that from now, selection norms prescribed by the UGC will not be mandatory for the state-run universities. Speaking at the 75th convocation of Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha Madras in Chennai, he said it was the responsibility of the state to maintain quality and transparency in the VC-selection process. 
    The present UGC norms insist that a VC candidate should have a minimum of 10 years experience as professor in a university or 10 years of experience in an equivalent position in a reputed research and/or academic administrative organization. With the recent move,these normswould nolonger be mandatory. 
    Refusing to comment on allegations that political interference plays a major role in the appointment of VCs, Prakashsaidthedecision was taken because several states had sought freedom in carrying out appointmentof university heads.He,however, refused to say if there was a requestfrom theTN government. 
    Senior professors and academicians in the state say the move will only facilitate more corruption. Tamil Nadu, for instance, has a dubious record in VC selection over the last decade. Recently, a VC seeking favours fell at the feet of a politician. Another was suspended on corruption charges and, in a third instance, a VC’s residence was raided by anti-corruption sleuths. 
    A Narayanan, an academician who has filed several petitions seeking transparency in the appointments of VCs and registrarsin thestate universities said the reason for relaxing norms remains unknown. 
    “We have VCs who knew how to find their way to the top post overnight. They are either relatives of politicians or someone from a dominant caste. When money, caste and political power decides VCs and registrar posts in state universities, UGC relaxation will further decay the system,” hesaid. 
    Ved Prakash also refuted reports of cancelling the autonomy of the Madras Christian College. “MCC has submitted all the documents we sought for verification and the autonomywas puton hold only till we complete the verification process,” hesaid.

Source:::: The Times of India, 15-10-2012, p.14. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1350288044348

ON A DIGITIZATION MISSION TO RESCUE RARE BOOKS

Two academicians have been collecting rare journals, census reports, gazettes & books on South Asian history for the last 8 years to digitize them for easy access

Shreya Roy Chowdhury | TNN 

    For the last eight years, a group of academics have been on a rescue mission. Finding procuring material for research a Herculean task during their own fieldwork, two research fellows started gathering rare books and documents on South Asian history with the intention of digitizing them for easy access to researchers. They collected books from waterlogged homes, dusty government shelves, even bathrooms and on November 7, the South Asian Research Foundation will launch the digital archive containing completely searchable digitized versions of five million pages. 
    The first batch of two-lakh pages was purchased from the stalls of halfa-dozen rare-book dealers at the 2005 Kolkata Book Fair. Boria Majumdar and Sharmistha Gooptu were collecting material “randomly” till they formed the foundation in 2008 and got more organized. These included many 19th century Bangla journals, government censuses from the British era and gazettes. The online library will include early editions of William Jones’ works and of the Asiatic Review (from 1780’s), full sets of law reports (from 1870s), film ephemera (film pamphlets with synopses of films and songs from the 1930s and ’40s), about 200 journals, census reports, medical histories and government reports. “The colonial government was in the habit of producing reports,” says Gooptu. There are reports on increasing the number of “pubic latrines” in Bombay, on sale of rotten fish in Kolkata, statistics of cholera epidemics and problems of urbanization and housing in Bombay — all from the early 20th century. They’ve been painstakingly gathered from government offices, private collectors and rarebooks-dealers. About 15% of the documents are in Bangla — more languages may be added later — and series of documents will come with an introductory note from the editors. 
    And because bibliophiles don’t really know where to stop, the duo have found documents being stored in unlikely places – the most extreme case being that of a Hatibagan (Kolkata) collector who’d stacked on a platform of bricks, a lot he couldn’t accommodate in the rooms, in the damp bathroom. The foundation’s project manager spent an entire day in the bathroom sifting through the material and found in it, records of proceedings of the Governor General in council and Lieutenant Governor General in council, starting from the 1910s. In 2008, Majumdar had discovered journals of the Botanical Society in a private residence in Dumdum. “It was monsoon, there was waterlogging inside the house and there, in knee-deep water, I found the soaked copies of the journals,” he says. 
    Once rescued, the foundation does what it can to preserve the documents. The original hardcopies are housed in a rented a three-floor property on Diamond Harbour Road, near Taratala, Kolkata. Before a digitized version can be created, books are treated to deal with the pinholes and the yellowing. Pest control treatments twice every month keep the worms at bay. 
    “The archive building is not airconditioned and the cost of maintenance is high. We will donate the entire archive to the government, and the HRD ministry has been very cooperative and has agreed to set up a library and call it South Asia Archive,” says Majumdar. United Kingdombased publisher, Routledge, is funding the digitization process and will also take care of marketing to educational institutions outside India. Within the country, the team has received support from the University Grants Commission. Majumdar assures that the material will be available at a reasonable price to institutions and individuals. The couple’s paying for the purchase and preservation themselves. 
    On their collection drives, they have encountered dealers for whom rare books is purely a business proposition and genuine collectors who’ve dedicated a lifetime of work — and large sections of their homes — to them. “They don’t possess degrees and are humble backgrounds but have a great appreciation and respect for learning. If they make Rs.1,000 in a month, they’ll spend Rs. 2,000 on pestcontrol. That’s the typical profile,” says Gooptu. They found one of the earliest English commentaries on the Upanishads from such a collector, in Bardhaman. 
    “His books had taken up an entire room in a small house,” says Gooptu, “His wife was happy to see them go.”

NEW LIFE: The page of a rare journal before and after it was processed for digitization

Source:::: The Times of India, 15-10-2012, p.14. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1350288044348

Small towns fuel online education boom

Market set to double in five years

Priyanka Golikeri l Bangalore

A growing demand for education from smaller towns is giving a big impetus to the domestic online education market. With access to computers increasing day by day, people from smaller towns such Ranaghat, Sardar Sahar, Tonk and Talipramba that have populations from some thousands to a few lakh are looking for online tools to update themselves and get access to certificate courses and degrees. This is set to double India’s online education market to $40 billion by 2017 from the present $20 billion, according to industry estimates. Take an example of Manju, a 22-year-old history graduate from Gulbarga, Karnataka, who is a history graduate is currently undergoing an online course in retail management and would even take her exams online. A dearth of institutes offering diverse courses in her region has prompted her to take up the e-course, which will fetch her a certificate from the Retailers Association of India. Her school-going sister, too, regularly uses online tools to understand concepts in physics and math. Experts say like the metros, the demand for online education is galloping each day in places such as Chiplun (Maharashtra), Hissar (Haryana), Kannur (Kerala) and Churu (Rajasthan). The proliferation of computers is also fuelling the trend. The sale of personal computers rose 16% in financial year 2011-12, compared to the previous year, as per data by the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT). About 10.8 million units of desktop computers, notebooks and netbooks were sold during April 2011-March 2012. Pavan Chauhan, MD of online education firm Meritnation, said the demand comes not just for higher education, but also from school students. “Students from kindergarten to class 12 (K-12) express a need for assessment modules and animation videos to understand concepts in various subjects. They see online education as something which supplements formal education,” said Chauhan. Meritnation has about 33-34 lakh students registered from ICSE and CBSE boards in the K-12 domain, with nearly half hailing from small towns. Edukart, which operates in the higher education space of e-learning, has tapped about 7,000 people since its inception November last year. “There is a strong demand from working professionals, housewives and people who could not attend formal institutes,” said Ishan Gupta, CEO of Edukart. Edukart currently offers courses in retail, computers, etc, through its tie-ups with the RAI and Computer Society of India. Gupta said the firm would branch out into areas such as hospitality, telecom and energy soon. “We are looking at tapping 30,000-40,000 people in the next two years,” said Gupta. While Meritnation would restrict its focus to K-12 in the near future, Chauhan said Edukart aims to reach out to one crore school children in the next few years.

Source:::: DNA, 04-10-2012, p.14. http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?pgNo=14&edcode=820009&eddate=2012-10-04

Bapu's Letters Our Columns

Source::: The Times of India, 03-10-2012, p.17. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

The deafening truth about mobiles

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

Mumbai: When 21-year-old Hiten, a Dadar resident, started complaining of a whistling sound in his right ear, he thought it was an infection. But ENT specialist Divya Prabhat shocked the youngster with his diagnosis: hearing loss. 

    “An audiogram revealed that he had significant hearing loss in his right ear, the one he favoured while talking on his phone,” said the doctor. While the jury is still out on the connection between shiny new phones, personal listening devices and hearing loss, Dr Prabhat said he found no other reason for Hiten’s galloping hearing loss. 

    During World Deafness Week, which this year has ironically coincided with Mumbai’s favourite but noisy festival, Ganeshotsav, doctors and activists feel it is time to draw a connection between lifestyle and hearing loss. “Previously, I would get patients with complaints of tinnitus (ringing sound in the ears) in their 60s, but now I have patients in their twenties,” said Dr Prabhat. 

    Overusing mobile phones, say doctors, is also associated with rising incidence of vestibular schwannoma (also referred to as acoustic neuroma or benign tumour growing on the nerve). “It is felt that the incidence of vestibular schwannoma would be 50% higher in mobile users than nonusers,” said Dr Prabhat. 

A loud warning for youth 

Long hours on phone, listening to loud music affects hearing, say docs Today, youngsters hit by ear ailments for long associated with those in their 60s Listening to sounds over 80 decibels for four hours will damage ear, warns WHO Activists say noise pollution must be considered a health problem and awareness created.

We may turn into a nation of deaf people: Activist 

    Doctors say hearing problems affecting youngsters these days are due to their favourite habit—hanging on to their phones and music players at loud volumes for several hours a day. “Hearing loss depends on two factors—the decibel of sound and the duration for which one is exposed to it,” said Prof Hetal Marfatia from KEM Hospital, Parel. “If one is listening to sounds over 80db for four hours, there will definitely be hearing loss.” The World Health Organization has said that noise above 85db is damaging to human ears and a 3db rise above this reduces by half the time needed to cause damage. 

    But another doctor, Nishit Shah, said rapid hearing loss is only caused by viral i n f e c t i o n s . “Hearing loss o c c u r s o ve r years,” he said, adding that the only exception would be instances of terror victims turning deaf on exposure to loud sound. 

    But Dr Marfatia said an angiogram would be a definite way of understanding if hearing loss is caused by noise pollution, be it exposure to sound in the environment or personal music players. 

    A study from Tel Aviv University has shown that youngsters who listened to over four hours of music on their MP3 players or iPods could be damaging their hearing. Dr Prabhat remembers a 38-year-old businessman from Surat who suffered complete hearing 

    loss in one of his ears due to mobile use. “He confessed he was on the phone from morning to evening. It definitely had a result,” he said. 

    Sumaira Abdulali of Awaaz Foundation, which works on creating awareness about noise pollution, said, “The levels of noise we are exposed to could turn us into a nation of deaf people. It’s high time noise pollution was considered a health problem and solutions worked out accordingly.” 

    WARNING SOUNDS 

A STUDY BY TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY HAS SHOWN THAT ONE IN FOUR TEENAGERS IS AT RISK OF EARLY HEARING LOSS AS A DIRECT RESULT OF LISTENING TO MUSIC ON PERSONAL LISTENING DEVICES (PLDS) LIKE MP3 PLAYERS AND IPODS 

DAMAGING DEVICES 

PLDs permit users to listen to crystalclear tunes at high volume for hours on end The study found that 21% of the participants were using PLDs from one to four hours and 8% for at least four hours Experts feel that the extent of slow hearing loss will only be felt in 10 or 20 years, by when it may be too late for an entire generation to do something about their hearing 

DECIBEL ALERT 

Worldwide, 16% of disabling hearing loss in adults is attributed to occupational noise, ranging from 7 to 21% in various sub-regions. Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is the second most common form of acquired hearing loss after age-related loss. NIHL is generally used to denote the cumulative, permanent loss of hearing that develops gradually after months or years of exposure to high levels of noise. It has long been recognized as a problem in occupations associated with prominent noise. Studies have shown that people who are exposed to noise levels higher than 85 db suffer from NIH

Source::::: The Times of India, 27-09-2012, p.01. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

US Univs. to Open Centre in city to clear pupils’ doubts

Shreya Bhandary TNN 

Mumbai: Over 200 US universities have got together to start a centre in Mumbai to redress queries of students. The centre will be inaugurated at Jamnabai Narsee school, JVPD on Friday. 
    The increasing number of complaints by students and parents about touts seems to have prompted the move. Narsee Monjee Educational Trust (NMET) has joined hands with the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to set up Narsee Monjee Centre for Excellence (NMCE). “The aim behind setting up the centre was to eliminate the role of agents who dupe people and misguide about universities and other procedures,” said Kanika Choudhary, honorary ambassador of Philadelphia to India. The NMCE will function from an office set up at Jamnabai Narsee school. 
    Apart from information about various courses offered by over 200 universities in the state of Penn sylvania, students will also get a chance to interact with the head’s of institutes to clear their doubts. 
    “We have hired a counsellor who will help students at our centre. Students can apply for an appointment and all their queries will be addressed,” said Sujay Jairaj, NMET trustee. 
    “The centre has been set up on a no-profit-no-loss basis and students will get all the information for a minimum fee. Agents have their own vested interests but we have no such bias,” he added. 
    Soon, certificate courses for interested applicants will commence. “We will also look at various programmes to improve the education system,” he said. 

Education Matters  

T he centre will offer students information about hostels,apartments, rentals and transportation. “Students can also check the best location to stay, while completing their education,” said Kanika Choudhary, ambassador of Philadelphia. Log on www.nmce.ac.in for details.


Source:::: The Times of India, 19-09-2012,  p.11.  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW