Official NASA publication.
Most Americans didn’t realize until the recent Mars mission that India even has a space program. In fact, the Indian Space Research Organization has been around for many years (since 1969) and recent achievements represent the maturation of several long running lines of research. It is very broad based program with major programs in space applications (communications, Earth observation etc.), planetary research, and launch vehicle development.

September 30, 2014

RELEASE 14-266

U.S., India to Collaborate on Mars Exploration, Earth-Observing Mission

In a meeting Tuesday in Toronto, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), signed two documents to launch a NASA-ISRO satellite mission to observe Earth and establish a pathway for future joint missions to explore Mars.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (left) and Chairman K. Radhakrishnan of the Indian Space Research Organisation signing documents in Toronto on Sept. 30, 2014 to launch a joint Earth-observing satellite mission and establish a pathway for future joint missions to explore Mars.

While attending the International Astronautical Congress, the two space agency leaders met to discuss and sign a charter that establishes a NASA-ISRO Mars Working Group to investigate enhanced cooperation between the two countries in Mars exploration. They also signed an international agreement that defines how the two agencies will work together on the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, targeted to launch in 2020.

“The signing of these two documents reflects the strong commitment NASA and ISRO have to advancing science and improving life on Earth,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “This partnership will yield tangible benefits to both our countries and the world.”

The joint Mars Working Group will seek to identify and implement scientific, programmatic and technological goals that NASA and ISRO have in common regarding Mars exploration. The group will meet once a year to plan cooperative activities, including potential NASA-ISRO cooperation on future missions to Mars.

Both agencies have newly arrived spacecraft in Mars orbit. NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft arrived at Mars Sept. 21. MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars. ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), India’s first spacecraft launched to Mars, arrived Sept. 23 to study the Martian surface and atmosphere and demonstrate technologies needed for interplanetary missions.

One of the working group’s objectives will be to explore potential coordinated observations and science analysis between MAVEN and MOM, as well as other current and future Mars missions.

“NASA and Indian scientists have a long history of collaboration in space science,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science. “These new agreements between NASA and ISRO in Earth science and Mars exploration will significantly strengthen our ties and the science that we will be able to produce as a result.”

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, targeted to launch in 2020, will make global measurements of the causes and consequences of a variety of land surface changes on Earth.

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, targeted to launch in 2020, will make global measurements of the causes and consequences of a variety of land surface changes on Earth.

The joint NISAR Earth-observing mission will make global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes. Potential areas of research include ecosystem disturbances, ice sheet collapse and natural hazards. The NISAR mission is optimized to measure subtle changes of the Earth’s surface associated with motions of the crust and ice surfaces. NISAR will improve our understanding of key impacts of climate change and advance our knowledge of natural hazards.

NISAR will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band) to measure changes in our planet’s surface less than a centimeter across. This allows the mission to observe a wide range of changes, from the flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets to the dynamics of earthquakes and volcanoes.

Under the terms of the new agreement, NASA will provide the mission’s L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid state recorder, and a payload data subsystem. ISRO will provide the spacecraft bus, an S-band SAR, and the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

NASA had been studying concepts for a SAR mission in response to the National Academy of Science’s decadal survey of the agency’s Earth science program in 2007. The agency developed a partnership with ISRO that led to this joint mission. The partnership with India has been key to enabling many of the mission’s science objectives.

NASA’s contribution to NISAR is being managed and implemented by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

NASA and ISRO have been cooperating under the terms of a framework agreement signed in 2008. This cooperation includes a variety of activities in space sciences such as two NASA payloads — the Mini-Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper — on ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon in 2008. During the operational phase of this mission, the Mini-SAR instrument detected ice deposits near the moon’s northern pole.

For more information on NASA’s Mars exploration program, visit:

nasa.gov

For more information on the NISAR mission, visit:

nisar.jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Cole

More: U.S., India to Collaborate on Mars Exploration, Earth-Observing Mission

People are people, all over the world, we share that human vulnerability and a need to strive for something better. If, like Uttam, you can face those vulnerabilities with a smile on your face, then the entire world moves a step forward.

I admire her positive outlook, her bravery, and her refusal to be confined and defined by what the rest of us may consider to be weaknesses.

( i have edited the title to accurately reflect her gender)

Uttam baba, as she is popularly known among her ‘chelas’ (followers), dresses in bold colours and has a quintessential smile that never leaves her face. But her loud exterior belies the serious intent that is reflected in her beautiful kohl-rimmed eyes: she wants to be an agent of change. Although the 32-year-old admits that she may not have succeeded in making an impact on the upper crust Nagpur voter, she is confident that she has “made inroads into the hearts of ordinary people”. “It’s my right to dress the way I like. Nobody can object to my exercising this freedom of choice. And I really think it’s not fair to judge people on the basis of their attire or style. A politician should be known by his/her work and not by his/her clothes. I have the ability and the drive to prove myself in the arena of public service,” Senapati remarks.

Life has not been the easiest for Senapati; she knows what it is to face rejection and be denied basic rights and entitlements. After all in traditional society being ‘different’ is simply unacceptable. But it is precisely to change this oppressive reality, especially for transgenders, that Senapati made up her mind to fight this election.

More: A Transgender’s Dreams of the Parliament » the Indian Republic

The Street Children’s World Cup is one of my favorite programs currently working to solve the problems related to homelessness, poverty, gender, and family in some of the most deserving and simultaneously undeserved communities in the world.

Over 230 children from 19 countries will participate in a girls’ and a boys’ football tournament, a festival of arts and a participatory conference for children’s rights. We believe that no child should have to live on the streets.

Video

After being picked up from the streets, given education, and put through six months of rigorous football practice, on Wednesday night, nine children from Karunalaya, an organisation that works for child rights, flew to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, to represent India at the Street Child World Cup (SCWC).

The team of nine children, rehabilitated at Karunalaya after escaping abusive backgrounds, left for Rio De Janeiro on Wednesday. They will represent the country at the Street Child World Cup — Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

In this second edition of the world cup, scheduled to take place from March 28 to April 7, these children will fight it out against 15 other teams of boys from 18 countries.

Sixteen-year-old T. Gopinath, trying hard to control his emotions, says, “This is unthinkable for all of us. Our focus now is to come back with the cup and make everyone proud.”

Paul Sunder Singh, secretary of Karunalaya, said, “The last six months has been quite hectic and tiring for these children. They had an emotional farewell when they left our Karunalaya home this evening.”

More: Chennai Boys Head to Brazil to Battle for Soccer World Cup - the Hindu « Karunalaya - Centre for Street and Working Children

If you have not heard of the ‘Street Child World Cup’ it is an orginization that hosts formerly homeless children in international soccer competition:

The Street Child World Cup is a global movement for street children to receive the protection and opportunities that all children are entitled to. Ahead of each FIFA World Cup, they unite street children from across five continents to play football and unite in a unique international conference. Together through football, art and campaigning their aim is to challenge the negative perceptions and treatment of street children around the world.

The first Street Child World Cup was held in Durban, South Africa, in March 2010[1][2][3] The event brought together teams of street children and former street children from Brazil, South Africa, Nicaragua, Ukraine, India, the Philippines and Tanzania. The participants were between 14 and 16 years old at the time of the event and all had experience of living full time on the streets without family. Each squad of 9 players included 3 girls. A representative team of young people from Manchester, UK, also took part in the tournament. This team was mentored by UK children’s TV presenter Andy Akinwolere, and his journey was covered on the BBC Children’s TV show, Blue Peter.

China and India are facing a cancer crisis, with smoking, belated diagnosis and unequal access to treatment all causing large-scale problems, experts said on Friday.

In a major report, published in The Lancet Oncology, more than 40 specialists warn that Asia’s big two emerging giants are facing huge economic and human costs from the disease.

More: China and India Face Huge Cancer Burden

India may have set its sights on Mars and is aspiring to become a key global player, but its ambitions are in stark contrast to some of the realities it faces. One of the most shocking truths has come to light with the Global Survey Index mentioning the country as being home to half of the world’s modern slaves. This slavery ranges from severe forms of inter­generational bonded labour to forced and servile marriage, the worst forms of child labour and commercial and sexual exploitation.

In 2012, the Indian government banned all types of labour for children under the age of 14, making hiring a child a punishable offence. The ban followed the implementation in 2010 of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, popularly known as the RTE, which states that all children between the ages of 6 and 14 have the right to free schooling. Yet two years on from the child-labour ban, despite much talk, there has been little visible result on the ground. There are two main reasons behind the failure.

More: IT’s Time for India to Tackle Poverty and Child Slavery

India has a problem with slavery, a very serious problem that rarely seems to merit discussion. The Global Slavery Index estimates that India is home to half of the world’s modern slaves. More than 100,000 young people are believed to be working in conditions of domestic slavery in Delhi alone. They are tricked into leaving their homes with promises of a better life in the capital, only to be sold to placement agencies who sell them on again to families. The stories they tell are of unimaginable abuse: rape, beatings, imprisonment and a life of penury.

Part of India’s problem is the rise of its middle class, who demand servants to ease their busy lives.

Read more: thenational.ae

S.T. Joshi, a Seattle writer, has written or edited more than 200 books, and part of his work focuses on atheism and agnosticism. Credit Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

The atheist writer S. T. Joshi, 55, born in India, raised in Indiana and now living in Seattle, has written or edited more than 200 books, including a novel of detective fiction, a bibliography of writings about Gore Vidal and numerous works about H. L. Mencken.

He edits four periodicals, including Lovecraft Annual, the major review of scholarship about the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft; The American Rationalist, a journal for unbelievers; and The Weird Fiction Review, which is what it sounds like. He once spent years scanning into his computer — and typing what could not be scanned — every word ever written by Ambrose Bierce, about six million total.

And this month Mr. Joshi got a call from a friend who works for Barnes & Noble, asking if he could edit a new edition of “The King in Yellow,” the 1895 collection of supernatural stories by Robert W. Chambers. It seems that the book was a major inspiration for “True Detective,” the popular HBO series. “I am one of maybe three people in the world who knows anything about Robert W. Chambers,” Mr. Joshi said, by way of explanation. His new edition will be out in April.

More: Spreading the Word on the Power of Atheism

Our Goals

According to the 2013 UNICEF Report on Improving Child Nutrition - The Achievable Imperative for Global Progress, one-third of the world’s under nourished children are in India and an estimated 61 million, half of the total child population in the country, are stunted due to chronic undernutrition.

While progress towards reducing child underweight in India has been made, it has been uneven. The 2010 UNICEF Report on Progress for Children: Achieving MDGs with Equity highlights that in India, the prevalence of underweight in children below five years in the richest 20 per cent of the households decreased from 37 per cent in 1992 to 25 per cent in 2006, whereas the corresponding reduction in the poorest 20 per cent households was negligible, from 64 per cent to 61 per cent.

via unicef india

More: First 1,000 Days » United Nations in India

Earlier, the 70-year-old ex-president was brought to the court from a military hospital in Rawalpindi in a heavily-protected convoy. He sat in witness box and stood briefly when addressed by the judge. But Musharraf did not speak.

When Justice Arab asked him how he was feeling, he replied with a smile on his face that he was “good”. He remained in the court for 20 minutes and was taken back to the hospital, where he was admitted on January 3 after complaining of chest pain while traveling to the court for hearing.

The trial against Musharraf is related to his suspension, abrogation and subversion of the constitution after imposition of emergency rule in November 2007.

More: Musharraf Appears Before Court in Treason Case - the Times of India

Krish Dulal, wikipedia commons, commons.wikimedia.org

The little known, and very intriguing story of the father of Nepalese democracy, and arguably its greatest modern political figure:

When India expelled the British in 1947, the Nepali people became more eager to introduce democracy to Nepal. As it was very difficult to organise a revolutionary political party inside Nepal, they used Indian territory to do so.

Now, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has a great opportunity to follow in KP’s footsteps by writing a new republican constitution. KP’s contributions to the struggle for freedom and democracy in Nepal are a grand legacy, which all of our current politicians must strive to emulate.

More: Remembering KP Bhattarai

Addressing a gathering organised on the third death anniversary memorial of leader Bhattarai here in Lalitpur on Tuesday, leader Deuba reminded that the government led by leader Bhattarai in 2047 B.S. had brought the constitution within a year. Present government can also learn lesson from him, he reiterated.

read his bio here from wiki

The Top Seven Myths debunked in 2013 according to Discovery News!

Photo Via Discovery News article

This past year was a strange one, with a variety of popular beliefs being busted. Some were welcome news: Other myths left a funk like a fart-filled balloon when they burst. Here, in no particular order, are seven popular stories and myths busted in 2013, ranging from the scientific to the sublimely pseudoscientific …

Read more at Discovery News