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The Hindu : y>

Sudarshan Vidya Mandir Institutions, (State and ICSE) organised their graduation ceremony for the students of std. X recently at the SVM grounds, Bannerghatta Road.

The school captains, Surabhi Manawat (State Board) and Rishikeshan V (ICSE) welcomed the guests.

The invocation was followed by an instrumental item by the musicians of SVM. The cultural captains, Suhas M (State Board) and Tushara Devi B R (ICSE), introduced the chief guest, Dr.Vanaja Ramprasad and the guest of honour, Mr. Deepak Thimaya. The Principal, Ms.Hemaa Narayan, addressed the gathering. The letters of appreciation and special prizes as Mr. and Ms. SVM based on resourcefulness, sociability and academic performance were given away by the chief guest and the guest of Honour.

The ceremony culminated with a melodious group song by the graduating students of Std X followed by a vote of thanks by the sports captains, Gauri Sridhar (State Board) and Shashank R Athreya (ICSE).

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The Hindu : SUDHINDR A.B

Learning science is not about presenting facts but exploration says Nobel laureate Eric Cornell.

Promising Science Talent: Rashmi Ravishankar receiving the prize from Dr. Cornell

To facilitate first hand knowledge of what children do at school and what they mean by research-oriented and activity-based education, the Gear Innovative School organises MI – ACT exhibition every year.

The exhibition showcases the materials created by teachers and it helps parents understand what goes on in the school and support their children at home.

The best way

Eric Cornell, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, inaugurated this year’s exhibition. He said that science is not just about presentation of a series of facts but about exploration and discovery. “Children must be encouraged to discover and explore.

And, it is the best way to learn science,” Dr. Cornell said. He also highlighted the importance of proper facilities to achieve excellence in science and research. Srinivasan, founder Principal of the school said they believe that school is the place where the destiny of the country is shaped. Hence the plan is to adopt the latest researches of the world, best practices of effective teachers, and the first hand-experience of leading minds – all rolled into one viable education model called CIPE (Creative, Inventive and Productive Excelment).

The exhibition showcased the curricular adaptations of Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences by Gear mentors.

This year the school launched ascience promotion programme called “Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell Promising Science Talent Award”. The maiden award was presented by Dr. Eric Cornell himself and Rashmi Ravishankar of Std. IX was the winner.

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The Hindu : y>

In Wisteria lane The Housewives are back

On February 26, “Desperate Housewives Season 6” premieres on Star World, at 10 p.m. The show will be telecast from Friday to Sunday.

The latest season promises to be a pot boiler of drama with the introduction of a new housewife, a painful pregnancy, a pesky niece, a hidden affair and probably another walk down the aisle for one of Wisteria Lane’s ladies. While the last season ended with a love triangle between Susan, Mike and Katherine, this season opens with a wedding of one of them to Mike while the other is driven to a mental breakdown.

“Desperate Housewives” is narrated from the perspective of Mary Alice Young – a perfect housewife who had everything a woman could want…until she put a bullet to her temple. Now dead, and infinitely wiser, she peeps into the secret lives of all her neighbours. As each of Mary Alice’s friends on Wisteria Lane wonder and probe in their own ways the real reasons for her death, the plot weaves its way around their own lives, affairs and bring out the skeletons in their closets.

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The Hindu : y>Facebook has thrown up privacy issues, making personal data a free-for-all, says NEETI SARKAR, unless you are smart enough to set things right

Make room for new worrieson Facebook. Nowit’s not that people arespending too much timeon it, playing Farmville andMafia Wars. The latest concernof Facebook users is that ofprivacy.

With Facebook changing itslayout ever so often and withregular social networkers dishingout their personal detailsmore easily and readily thanbefore, there seems to be aproblem in controlling contentthat might be viewed and probablymisused by completelyrandom strangers.

Sunaina Anand, a collegestudent says: “I have alwaysbeen careful about who gets toview my profile but it was onlyrecently that I realised the privacysettings on Facebook hadchanged and that if I didn’tcustomize my list, just aboutany Facebook user would haveaccess to my personal detailsand pictures.”

Her classmate SulochanaRamakrishna who recentlyclosed her Facebook accountseems to have enough reasonto do so. “Earlier, if one had alimited profile, a person addinghim/her as a friend would nothave access to their wall, informationor albums until theperson accepted the friend request.However, now peoplewhose requests have not yetbeen confirmed have access toan unbelievably large amountof personal data, including statusupdates and new friendconnections. This reallyfreaked me out so I decided toget off Facebook.”

For 19-year-old Monalikawho aspires to be a modelsomeday, the story is quite different.”I had recently done aprofessional photoshoot formy portfolio and I had postedsome of these pictures on myprofile. The next thing I knewwas that a classmate had mypicture on his phone, which ofcourse he sourced from Facebookby just clicking `copy image’on my photo, which helater must have saved on hisPC before transferring it to hismobile. It was by chance I gotto know of this. Otherwise onenever knows how your detailsor pictures are being misused.”

Tagging pictures on socialnetworking sites have causedgrief to many a soul. If for instanceone has been tagged byhis friend in a picture, friendsof the person as well as friendsof that friend would be…More

The Hindu : y>! R. Bhavani Kumari Chowdhary talks about the need for preserving the flora and fauna

India is a country blessed with many natural resources and large varieties of animals, both domesticated and wild. Recently, the numbers of animals in the wild has seen a sharp decline.

The indifferent attitude of the majority of the population to large-scale poaching activities carried out by a small section of the populace is also responsible for this situation.

By such activities, the country is being fast depleted of its flora and fauna.

It is true that adopting wild animals is not possible, but steps must be taken to ensure that killing of wild animals warrants strict punishment. In this matter, the government has to take the initiative.

The hunting of wild animals must be banned across the country and steps should be taken to increase the declining population of endangered species.

People must be educated about the hazardous effects of depletion of flora and fauna on the environment and the mankind.

Steps should be taken to protect the habitat of wild animals.

By conscious efforts of the government and the people, this problem could be easily solved.

Do you have anything to say? About the state of the world, the city, your angst? Pen it stylishly and you might get it published. And dash off your piece with your photograph.

Email it to bangmetro@gmail.com or post it to MetroPlus, The Hindu, 19 & 21, Bhagwan Mahaveer Road (Infantry Road), Bangalore 1.

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The Hindu :

Children learn very early in life to put themselves in others’ shoes. But to get that going, they must share a positive and caring relationship with parents and caretakers

HERE FOR YOU When a child shows concern for another, appreciate it openly

Empathy, the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and recognise and respond to what that person is feeling, is an essential ingredient of a civilised society. Manifestations of empathy often show up early in life, as when a toddler brings a favourite toy or blanket to another child who is injured or in distress. Some experts maintain that infants display empathy when they whimper or cry upon hearing another baby cry.

Lacking empathy, people act only out of self-interest, without regard for the well-being or feelings of others. The absence of empathy fosters antisocial behaviour, cold-blooded murder, genocide.

Children may enter the world with different capacities for empathy, a result of neural connections in the brain. The capacity for empathy may be partly or wholly lacking in disorders like autism and schizophrenia, in which the mind is focused inward.

Environment is crucial

But in otherwise normal children, the environment in which they are reared can make a big difference in whether empathy is fostered or suppressed. Healthy self-esteem is essential to empathy, so anything that helps children feel good about themselves will also help them recognise and respond effectively to the feelings of others.

If children are to relate positively to others, they must feel secure themselves and “have a secure attachment to another person,” said Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin. Infants and young children whose own distress is ignored, scorned or, worse yet, punished, can quickly become distrustful of their environment and feel unsafe.

Nancy Eisenberg, a psychologist at Arizona State University, agrees. “Children need a positive, caring relationship with their parents or caretakers,” she said in an interview,…More

The Hindu :

Salma Sultan, the popular newsreader on Doordarshan, on life beyond the small screen

POISE PERSONIFIED Salma Sultan

Pride coupled with grace and humility — meet Salma Sultan, the woman who ruled the small screen as a newsreader for over two-and-a-half decades. A rose became synonymous with her and news reading, an elegant exercise.

Today, Salma, who is more than 70 years old, hasn’t lost her charm and poise. A serious persona on television, it is hard to imagine that she possesses a tremendous sense of humour. Barely a sentence of Salma’s is free from effortless wit.

Based in Delhi for over two decades, Salma lives in a palatial three-storey bungalow at Jangpura. An ardent Nature lover, she says, “Delhi is my karmbhoomi. It shaped my confidence and gave me immense strength.” Born to scholar and former Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mohammed Asghar Ansari, Salma was her parents’ second child. She did her graduation from Bhopal and her post-graduation in English from Indraprastha College, Delhi. Even while studying, she auditioned for the post of announcer in Doordarshan.

On to news reading

Salma became a newsreader by chance. “Those days,” she recalls “only Pratima and Gopal Kaul used to read news.” Kaul wanted to become a producer, so Salma stepped in. “News reading was a well-paid, comfortable job,” says Salma, who remembers how she nervously read a 15-minute bulletin in eight minutes. “The hapless producer decided to train me and that’s how the journey began.” She narrates the story behind the signature rose in her hair. “I once wore a pink rose to match my pink sari on TV. Telephone calls and letters of appreciation poured in. The days I didn’t there would be letters of complaints and requests. So, the rose became a regular affair.”

After her retirement , Salma turned to direction with serials such as ‘Panchatantra’, ‘Suno Kahani’, ‘Swar Mere Tumhare’ and ‘Jalte Sawal’.

The…More

The Hindu :

Shashank Subramanyam’s flute melded with the western notes of the Jungle Orchestra

Enthralling The concert was a mix of Indian flute, mridanga, and western jazz

The queue snaked along the veranda of the Chowdiah Memorial Hall way before the designated start of the concert at 6.30 p.m. Bangalore loves musicians and more so because Shashank Subramanyam, the Indian flute maestro who was to perform, originally hails from the city. Sneaking into the green room to have a quick chat, it was a pleasant surprise to see the Danish group snazzily turned out in cotton kurtas. The concert was a mix of Indian flute, mridangam, and western jazz by Duke Ellington. “ I have been performing for 25 years now,” said Shashank and he is barely 31 years old. “I collaborate with the best musicians in the world. So far I have performed in 2,500 concerts and have cut over 50 CDs with the last one being with John McLaughlin also known as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, the best guitar player in the world. It received a Grammy nomination. I have performed in several collaborative projects with maestros such as Zakir Hussain.”

“In 2008, Shashank and I met at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival at the Royal Playhouse,” says Pierre Dorge the leader of the band called Jungle Orchestra. “It was there that Shashank felt that he should perform in his home countrywith us. I always longed to come to India, ever since I heard Ravi Shankar play in 1965 in Copenhagen,” he adds.

The concert line up consisted of a number of melodies composed by Pierre which is a mix of African, Asian and European music. Formed in 1980, the band was named Jungle Orchestra after the ‘growling jungle’ sound of Duke Ellington’s genre of jazz.

The evening was a melding of sounds played by virtuosos on their favourite instruments. The clarinet, trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, soprano…More

The Hindu : y>

COMPANIES THAT CARE

The economy is finally in recovery mode . The collapse was hardest on charitable organisations, as donations took a hit when people tightened their purse-strings. NGOs either went broke or reduced the scale of their operations to cope with the drastic fall in funding.

If you work for a company and find that things are looking up again, now would be a good time to lend a helping hand. CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), a concept that gained popularity over the last decade has been responsible for major projects like tree-planting drives, beach clean-ups, welfare of senior citizens and the like. The CSR and HR departments bring employees together to make a difference, and the impact is significant .

Some CSR initiatives that benefit animals.

Double your kindness — Some companies tell their employees that they will match donations to an NGO of the employee’s choice, meaning that every rupee that is donated automatically doubles.

Auto debit — Employees could be offered an auto debit of a small amount every month, making donations effortless

Groups of around ten could take turns visiting a shelter to feed the animals and play with them. Employees pick foster pets and pay their feeding expenses. Companies could include this information in newsletters with photos encouraging others to do the same. A whiteboard could be placed in the cafeteria / atrium with the message “I will adopt, not buy a dog” and passers-by could grab a magic marker and sign their names under the pledge.

While salary levels and perks are important, CSR is known to increase employee satisfaction as it helps them pursue their philanthropic goals and look at the larger picture.

Get in touch with CUPA Bangalore at cupablr@gmail.com to help them through CSR

Hero of the week

Aparna Bhatt nominates Jagadish and his wife, who despite a hectic schedule, always take time to help needy dogs. “They have been very generous and…More