Since the introduction of the central government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme, enrolment numbers in schools have gone up. But how reliable and meaningful are the enrolment figures? Deepa A uncovers major indications of things having gone wrong in SSA’s quest for targets.
India Together: New indicators needed to track SSA
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India Together: SSA Review
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Problems in India?
India may be doing well economically. But, what’s happening to the social structure?
Where are we headed?
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Welcome to the all-new Parallel Spirals
I deleted all the previous posts since they’re basically not the best of my writing. I will remain offline till 2nd December, 2006. But, you will see on the timestamp that the date is: 25-11-2006. This is thanks to WordPress.com’s timestamp edit feature.
I plan to limit myself seriously in this all-new blog. This is an attempt to make blogging a more productive experience. Feedback and comments are always welcome.
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November/December issue of The Planetary Report out
The November/December issue of The Planetary Report, magazine from The Planetary Society is out. While we’re at the Planetary Society’s blog, Emily Lakdawalla, has a wonderful set of images of the posters that Doug Ellison put together for the Mars Exploration Rover team at Cornell and NASA-JPL.
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SEDS-USA National Conference
Tim of “Where in the universe are Tim and Jen?” has written couple of posts on his experience of the SEDS-USA National Conference at the University of Central Florida. Hope you guys had a rocking time.
If anyone of you have blogged about this, send me your urls. Has anyone blogged about the SEDS-UK National Conference. More on that later.
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First Radio Telescope in the Middle East
Maryam, who’s quite active in both SEDS and SGAC has a post about the first radio telescope in the middle east. The Kuwait National Radio Observatory Project was approved by the Kuwait Science Club.
Congratulations. More on their official website.
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Early Life and Star Formation?
The Danish National Space Centre [DNSC] did a study that proves the connection between early life on Earth and star formation in our Milky Way.
For the simple minded, scientists used some technique to see the relation between the amount of cosmic material coming from space from a period of intense supernovae explosions and star formation coincided with a period of intense growth and decline of bacteria. They then realised: This can’t be a coincidence. Cosmic material increases, bacteria growth-decline cycle increases. There has to be a connection. Atleast, that’s what I understood.
Centauri Dreams explains it more scientifically.
Read the abstract of original paper by Henrik Svensmark here.
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Dark Energy
I first posted this on my space blog at http://blog.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the post using the Wayback Machine here.
NASA had a big press release on dark energy. If you’re new to the concept of dark energy or have only heard about it and don’t know what it exactly is (like me), go to this wikipedia article for starters. For those of you guys who understand high-tech space language, go here. Er, you guys can read the comments too.
Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy assures us that the language in the press release is more people-friendly.
[via Bad Astronomy]
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PM: To cut costs, NASA to outsource it’s shipping jobs
I first posted this on my space blog at http://blog.seds.org/pradeep/. I recovered this from the Wayback Machine here.
Popular Mechanics has a report. Read more here.
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Stories Worth Following
The CS Monitor‘s report on India stepping up ties with Africa, in the face of China doing the same. Don’t understand why they do this. The national interests of India and China can’t be the same. If Africa benefits, good for them. If India benefits, good for us. But, if India is going in just to compete with China, it’s bad strategy.
MS to reconsider it’s China Policy from BBC News.Rice traders and environmentalists have warned the Government of India against experimenting further with genetically modified crops .No news report in CNN-IBN. Have to check their website though…
GoodNewsIndia has several good articles related to agriculture practises and re-invigorating ancient water pools – at a time when it is being said that wars will be fought over water.
Last but not the least…India’s mission to the moon…oh! did I say India’s manned mission to the moon?
Glad to be here…
I probably won’t be blogging for the next couple of days…have to make some arrangements vis-a-vis my studies…exams getting closer…winds getting colder…brrr…and no @#$%^& announcemnt from MU….hmmph…
Hindustan Times has introduced a practise of providing the email ids of people writing the stories – the reporters – this is a wonderful concept and I hope other newspapers follow the example…
Parallel Spirals 