B'Cognizance

Opportunities

admin — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 09:11:30 +0000

TECHNA, Kolkata India

Cryptologic product development team members and leads
TECHNA, an American company is collaborating with ISI faculty to create a range of cybersecurity products using cryptology/cryptography.
Contact: Dr. Alo Ghosh
www.linkedin.com/in/draloghosh/
More Information: http://www.techna.com
Closing Date for Applications: 2014-04-30

Indian Army Recruitment 2014 for the 121 various posts:

REGISTRATION FOR ON LINE APPLICATION WILL OPEN ON 03 FEB 2014 AND WILL CLOSE ON 03 MAR 2014

Notice Board

admin — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 08:07:59 +0000

A national instructional workshop on Cryptology is scheduled to be held from 5-9 June,2014 by the Department of Mathematics(MNIT Allahabad) & Cryptology Research Society of India at MNIT-Allahabad.

http://www.mnnit.ac.in/images/stories/NIWC-2014_Brochure_final.pdf

Security and Privacy Symposium 2014 is being organized jointly by IIT Kanpur, IIIT Delhi and BITS Pilani from 20-22 February 2014.

Go for B’Accumen Nov Quiz

admin — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 07:28:36 +0000

Please wait while the quiz is loading… this will take a few seconds..

ASTRONOMY

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:52:30 +0000

Human ingenuity is bringing us closer and closer to understanding the cosmos, but of all the questions, one, perhaps the biggest one of all remains unanswered, i.e. are we alone in the universe, or is there other life out there?

For many, astronomy means the study of the night sky and the objects that it contains, but what we do not realize is, it is much more than just pointing a giant telescope at the sky and trying to figure out what these faraway objects are, in fact, by studying objects that are billions and billions of kms away, we are only trying to dig deeper into our own past, still trying to very much understand the conditions that eventually led to our own existence..

Modern Astronomy is built on foundations laid by great scholars such as Galileo and Copernicus, today we use powerful giant telescopes and cutting edge technology to study the sky and our sight is only limited by our technology.

Amateur astronomy does not involve any of these high-tech instruments or terms and understandings, it only deals with the observational half of it, all you would need is a chart of the night sky, a pair of binoculars perhaps or just a modest telescope, and you too can take pleasure in unlocking the mysteries of the Cosmos.

The night sky as we see it is made up of 88 constellations (groups/ patterns of stars), 12 of which forms the Zodiacal constellations, the moon, our neighboring planets, and of course hundreds and thousands of stars, and tens of thousands of deep sky objects (Galaxies, nebulae and star clusters) all catalogued as either M objects or NGC objects.

Stars and galaxies too, just like us are born, live and die- a process that takes many millions of years. By observing the billions of stars around, each in different phases of its life we are able to understand this process, the forces of nature that act upon, helping us understand the secrets of our Sun and the formation of our planet. Scientists widely believe this to be important as it shapes our future and also reveals our fate.

Our ordinary sense of distance fails while scaling these realms of stars and galaxies. For example, our Galaxy, the Milky Way, alone, is said to consist of a hundred billion stars, most of which are known to have planets. Just like our Sun, it is also a hundred thousand light years wide and roughly a thousand light years thick. We need a much larger unit like the Light year (A light year is the distance light travels in a year – approx ten trillion Kms)

It is said that more than 99.9% of the human race pass their entire course of life without the knowledge about the cosmos and their part in the universe & hence, my aim in writing to you is to bring down this huge difference , even by a small fraction and be more than happy to share this knowledge and joy of stargazing…

Tulsidharan M.
MSCLIS
IIIT Allahabad

VIGILANCE AWARENESS WEEK

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:11:35 +0000

IIIT- Allahabad has observed the “Vigilance Awareness Week” from 28th October to 2nd November, 2013. In pursuance of the same, number of activities (Competitive and Non-Competitive) were organized at IIIT – Allahabad. On 28-10-2013 Hon’ble Director Dr. M D Tiwari hosted the webpage relating to vigilance in a programme organized at the, Chief Vigilance (CVO) office at 05:00 PM. Formal webpage related to vigilance awareness and its related activities at IIIT-A was inaugurated. On 29-10-2013 few important circulations of guideline for vigilance sensitization & their measures at IIIT Allahabad were electronically circulated to all from the office of Chief Vigilance Officer. On 30-10-2013 an Essay Competition (Competitive Activity) on “Promoting good Governance- Positive Contribution of vigilance” was organized at IT-ITES Lab Top Floor (MBA-IT & MSCLIS Division) during12:30 PM to 01:30 PM. In this competition, participation was invited from Faculty members/ Staff members/ Students of IIIT-A. On 31-10-2013 a Debate competition (Competitive Activity) for the students on the topic “With Cybercrime and warfare on the rise, smart electronic vigilance is the need of the hour” was organized at IT-ITES Conference Room (MBA-IT & MSCLIS Division) during12:30 PM to 01:30 PM. On 01-11-2013The third activity organized during the Vigilance Awareness Week was a Quiz competition (Competitive Activity) organized at IT-ITES Lab Top Floor (MBA-IT & MSCLIS Division) during 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM. In this competition, participation was invited from Faculty members/ Staff members/ Students of IIIT-A. After the quiz competition, prize distribution ceremony for the competitions held, during Vigilance Awareness Week, so far was organized. Shri S N Jha (Former Principal Joint Secretary, U. P. Govt.) was the chief guest for this prize distribution ceremony. In this Ceremony, Hon’ble Director Dr. M.D. Tiwari put his views on the necessity of vigilance awareness. Prof. Anurika Vaish, Chief Vigilance Officer, discussed the importance of transparency into the system through vigilance related activities. Shri S N Jha, Chief Guest, delivered a talk on vigilance awareness and shared his vast experience with audience (Faculty Members/ Staff Members/ Students). At the end, prizes were distributed to the winners of competitive activities organized during Vigilance Observance week (Essay Competition, Debate Competition) by Hon’ble Director. Chief Proctor Dr. Vrijendra Singh delivered a vote of thanks.

FOUNDATION’S DAY

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:09:22 +0000

IIIT-Allahabad commemorated its 14th Foundation day on Monday, August 12th with festivities and celebrations. For the first time, this event was held in the newly inaugurated, state of the art auditorium of the institute – which was filled to capacity with over 1000 students from IIIT-Allahabad and RGIT-Amethi.
The event commenced with the traditional lighting of the lamp by the Hon’ble Director Dr. MD Tiwari, Head of the cultural affairs Dr. R.C. Tripathi and the former Cultural Head Dr. Anurika Vaish.
A rendition of the Saraswati vandana was followed by scholarship distribution to 253 students from IIIT-Allahabad and RGIIT-Amethi. 182 students in B. Tech discipline from IIIT-A secured and 50 students from RGIT-Amethi were awarded scholarships on Merit cum Means basis and Merit-incentive categories.
In the annual academic performance category, 48 scholarships to B.Tech- IT and 24 scholarships to B.Tech-EC discipline were awarded to the meritorious students. The MBA and MS division secured 18 scholarships while the maiden batch of the Bio-Medical Engineering secured 6 performance awards with Ms. Mehul Agrawal being the overall topper for the first year.
The scholarship awards were followed by non-competitive musical and dramatic performances by the second year students. These included a skit welcoming the incoming first semester students – by the second year students which clearly hit all the right notes as evident by the wild applause and laughter from the audience.

The medley dance performance by the trio of Ms. Soumya Sharma, Bhartendu and Prakhar brought the students to their feet. A singing performance by Saurabh Chaturvedi was received an equally boisterous response from the audience.

These competitive events were preceded by a speech by CMO Dr. R Dayal on International Youth Day. Dr. Dayal impressed upon the students, the immense responsibility that they carry on their shoulders and their contribution towards improving the overall environment.
Competitive events started with a “Mushaira”, anchored by Vatsal Mishra which highlighted some original and reflective Urdu couplets by Satish Singh, Anil Yadav and Sonali – among others. This event was planned by “Sarasva” – the literary club of IIIT-A under the able leadership of Divyanshu Ojha.
Two skits by B.Tech 1st year and M.Tech 1st year students, based on the themes- Parent-Child relationships and Reality shows were not only admired, but greeted with enthusiastic applauses and supporting comments from the audience. The skits were prepared and staged by RangTarangini, the dramatics club, under the guidance of Ankur Shukla.
Vartul, Shubham, Chandresh, and the duo of Aishwarya and Tulika kept the audience spell bound by their musical performances. These performances were presented by “Virtuosi” – the Music club of IIIT-A and its head, Saurabh Chaturvedi, who is also a reputed vocalist.
In Dance, a troupe of 6 students from 1st year B.tech performed on
“Light of Lenesia” and “Dheem ta re” and another troupe consisting of performers from M.Tech and MBA performed on various songs, under a medley. The performances were planned, practiced and staged under the able supervision of Ushma-the Dance Club, under President Ayush Varshney.

A video clip highlighting the various events planned for “Effervescence” – the institute fest was also screened for the audience. This screening also marked the official launch of the complimentary website for this event. The website is supported by the Technical club – led by Gopal Shivhare.
The competitive events ended with awards distribution to the winners of the cultural events and the winners of the various Sports tournaments held throughout the last year by Spirit- the sports club. Former office bearers of all the clubs were also felicitated on this occasion.
The overall event was planned and by the Program Management and Publicity Club – headed by Akshay Chaturvedi.

The event concluded with Dr. R.C. Tripathi delivering a note of thanks to all the students, staff and faculty members of the institute.

EFFERVESCENCE MM13

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:07:08 +0000

Effervescence, as we call it, returned with a bang!! Five days of immense fun, frolic and festivity, The annual cultural-technical-management festival of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, lived up to the expectations of all those present here.

Some very informative and important workshops were held during the initial days of the Effervescence on various Technical yet buzzing topics of Android, Ethical hacking and robotics.(22nd-23rd October).
As for the events, while Confondere dealt with showing how well you are in writing a program, the Segmentation Fault tested the actual knowledge of coding. The event dealt with challenging the top coders to debug the errors in the given program.
Stegolica was the event to test your skills on how good are you in hiding your valuable information, how well can you protect your valuable data and how good are you in over smarting the people who are constantly behaving as a watchdog at your data.
Another very interesting event was the “Coldfire” event,where the event was held online,testing the participant’s hacking techniques.
On the next day,24th October , Al-Khwarizm (the annual Online Programming contest) which is quite different from the other online coding contests. This event is an International level coding contest. Konqueror was the online treasure hunt game where you are allowed to surf the internet and look for the lost treasure. It sure was one amazing experience.
Famous poets like Mahendra Sharma, Pawan Dixit, Deepak Saini and Arjun Sisodia, who have a record of making the audience laugh , presented poems in the event “IRSHAAD”( Kavi-Sammelan.)
In The DJ Night programme, music band Sunburn performed at the institute on 25th October. This band has given several hits including ‘House Music’, ‘Death Metal’, ‘Synthpunk’, ‘New Wave’, ‘Soft Rock’ and ‘Madchester’ and made sure that everyone was left dancing to their beats!
The concluding day of the techno-cultural festival Effervescence at Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) on Sunday, began with the prize distribution ceremony. Director, IIIT-A, M.D. Tiwari gave away the prizes.
Around 23 teams from institutions such as MNNIT Allahabad, Allahabad University, IIT-BHU and the home teams took part. Winners of the quiz event were: First -Anand Kumar Kotriwal, Agrim Khanna ,Prakul Agarwal from IIIT-A; Second – Deepak Kumar Singh, Mahendra Mohan Das, Rohan Kulkarni from IIT-BHU; and Third – Arshad Ahmed, Saroj Kumar Giri, Shishir Kumar Sarkar from IIIT-A.
Nitesh Kumar Verma and Ankit Kumar, both from IIIT-A, won the first prize in the Antakshari event conducted by the Music Club whereas Priyanka Singh and Nishita Rai were the runners up. Saurabh Chaturvedi conducted the event.
Dramatics event “Double-Trouble” which aimed at checking the compatibility quotient of pairs was held at the Admin auditorium and was presided over by Drama Club president Ankur Shukla.
AI-Pod, one of the main technical events held on Sunday offered a captivating display of perfect blend of robotics and artificial intelligence wherein the contestants were required to design baby robots
To add to the fun, informal events like Tug of War, Double Trouble, Harry Potter trivia, Collage making and Silver Screen and Many more were also held during the fest.
Ad-Mania, a management event based on advertisements witnessed participation of 30 students from different institutions like MONIRBA- Allahabad University, IIIT Gwalior, IIIT-A, etc. The event comprised of two rounds. The preliminary round consisted of tag lines to be identified by the participants. The final was an enactment by the participants on the given products assigned to them randomly. The winner was Team Scorpions of MBA-IT from IIIT-A and runner up was Al-fatch of MSCLIS from IIIT-A.
“Incendiary” the Saturday night where whole stadium full of audience was lost in the world of hardcore rock music witnessed huge participation of different bands from different colleges which included the famous “Fumadore” and “Paramit” of IIIT-A, “Rock Confusion” of MNNIT and other bands like Rage, High Frequency and many more.
The most awaited event of the fest, The Celebrity Night, featured the Pakistani band “RAETH”, known for its hit numbers like “Bhula Do” and “Waada”, mesmerized the young crowd with their energetic and soulful performances on various songs. They left an everlasting impact in the hearts of all those present.

“PROMOTING GOOD GOVERNANCE—-POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION OF VIGILANCE” [Winning Essay in Vigilance Awareness week]

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:01:59 +0000

Governance is the process of taking decision and implementing them for the betterment of the masses and hence the nation as a whole.
Good governance ensures that the entire process of through which citizens receive their services must be of impeccable integrity, fully accountable and hundred percent transparent.
Vigilance is the most important way to ensure good governance as it involves keeping a watchful eye on personnel and promoting integrity and honesty in them.
Government employee and bureaucrats besides all other class of citizens, require vigilance because:
a) Decision making process in public department is slow
b) There is scope for jumping queues.
c) Possibilities of negotiations emits
d) Delay in providing services is detrimental to client as they are very crucial

Hence vigilance can easily deal with corrupt and dishonest personnel so that common man can get speedy delivery of services
Vigilance in itself is not a process but rather a philosophy that provides:
a) Accountability and transparency to all works
b) Reforms decision making process to make it simple
c) Ensure transparency and open information system (on lines of RTI act )
d) Punitive action to dishonest officials
e) Promote and encourage honest personnel.
f) Create an atmosphere of trust between organization and client which promotes good will.

Vigilance can be a more set of words hung upon the wall.it should be embodied in both play and practice. Vigilance must involve
a) Preventive Vigilance:
I. Reforming system to ensure faster delivery.
II. Regular disclosure of all assets and sources of income.
III. Publication of minutes of all meeting that are directly responsible for any wrong doing.
b) Reactive vigilance :
I. Punishing corrupt individuals who have abused their authority and through undue influence earned gratification and benefit and hence provide a loss to the exchequer.
II. Starting and following criminal proceeding against such dishonest individuals under prevention of corruption act and GPC.
c) Suggestive Vigilance:
I. Making surprise inspection in departments and checking relevant documents to ascertain no wrong doing
II. Creating a network of whistle blower that have highest state protection, to impose any intra-departmental misconduct.
Good governance is an utopian concept that is difficult to achieve in reality and practice. But then also it should not dissuade us from striving for a finding the loopholes in our system and plugging them to prevent any kind of misconduct.
We must remember that vigilance is the only price that freedom asks. When a single person refuses to give or take bribe,
It must be taken as example .These small gestures are the only means by which the poorest of the poor can get rid of the pitiful state they live in and banish the anguish and poignancy that they deal in demanding their basic rights.

Mr. Vijendra Singh Aswal
IIIT Allahabad

“PROMOTING GOOD GOVERNANCE—-POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION OF VIGILANCE” [Winning Essay in Vigilance Awareness week]

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 12:00:34 +0000

The evolution of human history has seen several nations, states coming in the present arena of world. The nations which we see are governed by different forms of government across the world. However the core concept of governance is same for the greater good of human society. The concept of governance defines the process and method of decision taken in the government.
The government can be same and so as its concept of governance. The start of 19th century saw the growth and development of many nations which believed in separate concept of economic growth and social development. But later in 1980’s it was thought that the concept of economic growth and social development should be seen in a holistic approach which started with the concept of good governance. World bank in 1990’s gave the concept of good governance which was based on the various attributes such as,
1) Transparent
2) Performance
3) Consensus
4) Accountable
5) Responsive
6) Effective and efficient
7) Inclusive and equity
The above attributes were seen as main constituent of a government to provide citizens a good governance. In today’s environment we see rampant corruption in every sphere of life. The concept of corruption is sometimes misunderstood as financial corruption but other forms of corruption are also prevalent as nepotism, abuse of power etc.
As transparency, accountability, inclusiveness and equity forms important aspect of good governance which is only possible by removing any type of corruption from every field.
When we talk about India and its ranking in transparency index of 2012 India stands at 94th position out of 174 countries which shows that India is very much in grip of corruption cancer. Since 1950 after adoption of Indian constitution which was based on the basic idea of justice, equity, equality and is best laid through the fundamental rights and directive principles. But to realize these rights we need to treat the cancer of corruption.
The various initiatives taken by the government over the last 60 years have been a positive step towards fighting corruption. The formation of CBI, CVC and RTI etc are some important steps towards achieving accountable governance.
Earlier in 1964 with the recommendation of Santhanam committee the government constituted the office of central vigilance commission to check and take preventive measure in fighting corruption. The CVC along with its investigative wings has worked over the past years to remove and prevent all types of corruption in public and private sector. The new initiatives such as forming fighting corruption strategies and joining other countries to promote corruption free environment across the world should be taken. The governing bodies should take actions against the persons involved in any corruption.
The corruption cancer is very dangerous and is spreading even faster across the globe but if the governing bodies, people across the country and different institutions come together they all can fight with this cancer in efficient and effective manner.

Dr. Shashi Kant Rai
Assistant Professor
MBA-IT & MSCLIS Division
IIIT Allahabad

WHY INDIA IS NOT AN EDUCATION SUPER POWER?

admin — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 11:58:17 +0000

Recently the QS world university rankings were announced. None of our country premier institutes have found a place within 200. The QS world university ranking puts IIT, Delhi, at 222. The Times Higher Education’s (THE) World University Rankings list 2013-14 has placed, IIT, Delhi, along with IIT, Kanpur, IIT, Kharagpur and IIT, Roorkee, in the group of institutions between 351-400.There have been so much hue and cry over these rankings, with even our president and prime minister expressing their deep concerns about bad performances by country premier institutes. Some are even questioning the point of having such rankings and their genuineness. However the matter of debate is not about the validity or genuineness of rankings, it is about the modal of education system we are following. Is education system we are having is world class? Is it serving the purpose of creating a workforce which can adopt itself to the ever-changing technical advancements? These are the some tough questions which need to be answered by the education policy framers of our country. We need to analyze our shortcomings and find a viable solution to them.
Now the question arises why we are underperforming in education sector. A recent study has found that about 70% of technical stream graduates and 85% general stream graduates are either unemployed or under employed. However at the same time a number of jobs in industry, government and other sectors are lying vacant for want of qualified people. What can be more ironical than this, at one side we have unemployed and under employed people and on the other the jobs are lying vacant. We need to find out the reason behind this situation and solve the problem as quickly as possible.
So what are the roadblocks in path of India becoming an education super power? The problem has to analyzed form its roots. Firstly there is dearth of good quality institutions in our country. If we exclude our so called top class institutes IITs, IIMs and AIIMS etc. the other institutes are not simply good enough. There are certain exceptions but these exceptions should not be treated as face of whole country. Till this point the whole talk is around the higher education however amid this talk we should not miss what is going on in primary(school) education sector. This is because school education is the base for higher education. To ensure the economic growth of our country we need a workforce that is minimally primary school and preferably secondary school educated. If we compare our self to China,79% of China’s workforce belong to primary and secondary school educated as compared to only 48% of India, situation is so grim. So if we have 52% workforce which is not even primary and secondary school educated how can we imagine being an education superpower. Government may be patting its back for increasing the literacy rate in recent years but literacy rate figures are only eyewash which do not represent the true picture. If the condition of school education is so worse how can we have a world class higher education. In 2009 the government passed the Right to Education Act, making education free and compulsory up to the age of 14 a legal right. However the implementation of this act has been as worst as it can be imagined. Government decided to provide financial aids to schools to implement this act. Only 80% of the schools take this aid. The remaining 20 % unaided schools serve 73% of children in school and form the backbone of school education in the country. Some unaided schools are good but majority of them lacks even the basic amenities like toilets and drinking water. The situation is worse in rural and remote areas.
Again continuing the discussion about the higher education the situation is not so different than school education. Most of the technical colleges especially those run by private bodies have their sole aim to earn profit. The world quality education does not exist in their dictionary. The apex bodies which are designated to look upon these institutes are themselves involved in corruption. In government institutes the numbers of teaching positions are lying vacant. This is the case even with the most prestigious institutes such as IITs and IIMs. There is lack of people who want to be entrepreneur. The curriculum followed is mostly outdated in most of the institutes. Most of the technical institutes owned by private bodies do not have even laboratories and library.
So what is the solution? Is solution is possible at all. Definitely solution is possible. What we require is to know our mistakes and accept them and act in planned manner to rectify our mistakes. Government need to be a torch bearer in the education reforms. India have successfully implemented the Green Revolution and White Revolution, what we need now is an Education Revolution. In revolution in which everyone has to play a role, the government, the private bodies, academicians and common people. We need to make an extensive use of information technology to bring about this revolution. The government needs to increase its spending on the school education. The existing top institutions need to be incorporate changes to make them world class. The private sector should be encouraged by the government to invest in this sector and provide a quality education.
If we want to see India as a developed country, as a technical super power we need to understand the need of hour and work accordingly.

VIVEK KUMAR SINGH
M.Tech.
IIIT Allahabad