List of Active Users for the Month January 2017

Every month we select users who have made maximum use of the library. Below are our active users for the month of January. The below users are entitled for 1 extra book.
Sr. No.

	Member	No. of Transactions
1	CHOUDHARY SANTOSH RAMJANAM SARSWATI	13
2	KHAN ARBAZ SALEEM YASMEEN	13
3	CHAUHAN AMAN KISHAN MAYA	12
4	NIRAJ YADAV	12
5	AISHWARYA NAMBIAR	12
6	TEJASWARARAO MOTAMARRI	11
7	SAYALI JAWRE	11
8	ASST.PROF.RAMJEE YADAV	11
9	MISHRA NILESH MARKANDAY DHARMAVATI	11
10	SAWANT SHIVANI SANDEEP SUMEDHA	10
11	SINGH SATYAM RAJNARAYAN MAYA	10
12	SHAILIN SHAH	10
13	ASST.PROF.PRIYANCA GONSALVES	10
14	SONALI PARAB	9
15	KULKARNI OMKAR SANTOSH RAJASHREE	9
16	SARVESH NARKAR	9
17	HRISHIKESH MAHESH TELANG	9

MU to evaluate answer books online from next exams

Source: The Indian Express dated January 29, 2017

http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/16667145

An encyclopedia for UPSC ecams

Govt plans single entrance exam for all engineering colleges from 2018

The government is considering conducting a single entrance examination for admission to all engineering colleges, including private institutions, across the country.

The proposed joint entrance examination (JEE) for engineering colleges, which is said to be human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar brainchild, could kick in from 2018.

The test, pending clearance, will be on the lines of the national eligibility-cum-entrance exam (NEET) for entry into medical colleges, sources in the HRD ministry said.

It is aimed at bringing transparency to the admission procedure, including checking the practice in some private institutions of extracting a heavy capitation fee from students.

“The aim is to make the process more transparent, standardised, and free of corruption and commercialisation,” a government official said.

India has more than 3,300 approved engineering colleges affiliated to universities, with an annual approved intake of above 1.6 million students. But only about half of the seats are filled.

The current admission process at the graduation level is dependent on performance in entrance examinations conducted by various agencies.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts the JEE-Main for centre-funded institutions. More than 1.3 million students write this examination every year.

The top-rankers from JEE-Main are eligible to write the JEE-Advanced for the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). In the new system, students aspiring for the IITs will have to pass the nationwide common entrance test with high marks and take the JEE-Advanced.

These apart, a number of states conduct their own test. Others grant admission based on marks obtained in class 12.

Several private colleges have their individual entrance examinations. But “some of them, which are self-financed, charge high fees or sell seats in the name of management or NRI quota at a premium”, a source said.

Only a handful of students crack the tough exams set for top colleges such as the IITs, leaving thousands of aspiring engineers to dash for private institutions, many of which are notorious teaching shops.

These colleges have become a magnet for mostly middle-class families in a country where an engineering degree is considered a ticket to a lifetime of fat pay cheques or jobs in the US.

Some of the private colleges admit students without basic talent and aptitude for engineering, affecting overall quality, the source said.

Of the 737,000 graduates in 2014-15, only half found employment. Most of the students didn’t meet expectations of companies offering jobs.

The proposal for a single, nationwide test is viewed as an attempt to streamline the dysfunctional education system. It was discussed at a recent meeting of officials from the HRD ministry and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulator for engineering colleges.

The council will issue regulations for the examination. Issues such as the number of times the examination would be conducted in a year and the minimum qualification marks are yet to be worked out.

A source said the AICTE is planning to conduct web-based counselling sessions for admissions to engineering colleges based on students’ all-India ranking obtained in the entrance examination.

“States would be invited to join the counselling process to fill the seats in colleges under their jurisdiction,” the source said.

The states will be able to prescribe their admission criteria, apart from the score in the entrance test. The JEE score will, however, be the minimum eligibility criteria, the source said.

 Source: Hindustan Times dated 23 December, 2016.

Link: 

http://www.hindustantimes.com/education/govt-plans-single-entrance-exam-for-all-engineering-colleges-from-2018/story-0TaCjvwwd4eav8uxpqI9sO.html

The new frontiers of Virtual Reality

The new frontiers of virtual reality

Virtual reality can change the way individuals and groups interact, and for those interested in experiencing and sharing its powerful benefits

Virtual reality opens the avenues to experience places and time periods otherwise inaccessible to an individual.

Virtual reality (VR) has entered its golden age and now has the potential to help people experience episodes and incidences, across time periods, from a uniquely first-person perspective. While VR continues to make its mark on entertainment, it has immense potential to allow people to experience something ground-breaking. It equips people to experience being in two realities at once, making ‘duality of presence’—being present in two ‘worlds’ at once—a possibility. This extrapolation of VR into reality has an extraordinary potential to create greater empathy, understanding, compassion, and connection to the ‘real world’.

Virtual reality has the capability to make one feel, and the power to make one ‘know’. By immersing in a ‘real’ experience, VR provides a perspective from prime sources and acts as a representation of the real world. It has the potential to positively impact sectors such as healthcare, media and bring immersive experiences to life.

Immersive healing

High-resolution imaging and detection technologies help enable precise, swift, and timely diagnosis, can limit the number of invasive procedures, and support preventive care. As an example, VR is currently being used to help patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Utilizing Bravemind, a clinical, interactive, virtual reality-based exposure therapy tool, an immersive and realistic virtual environment as well as unique interactive scenarios can be recreated. These enable a full-body experience to help normalize the patients’ experiences, thus fast-forwarding the therapy in some cases by as much as two to three years.

Immersive discoveries

VR opens the avenues to experience places and time periods otherwise inaccessible to an individual. This feeds into man’s desire for continuous discovery of the earth, ocean and even the stars. One such example of this is the creation of Cry Out: The Lonely Whale Experience, an underwater VR expedition. It takes the viewer into the depths of the sea where they can witness the underwater life and how pollution has disrupted and injured the delicate ecosystems that create our oceans. This experience educates individuals about the implication of a mere ordinary act on climate change.

Immersive action

VR has also made an impact on journalism, bringing stories closer to life for viewers. With video content fast becoming one of the most popular modes of consumption, many media houses are significantly investing in platforms which enable a video-first content approach. With a firm foundation of traditional journalism, experiences are designed which offer viewers a fully embodied walk-around technology. This offers a virtual but “first-hand” sensation of being an actual witness as a story unfolds.

Many media houses internationally have already ventured into virtual journalism and have produced numerous VR documentaries. With the rapid technological advancements in India, VR stands at the cusp of altering storytelling forever. Indian documentaries such as Cost of Coal (India’s first documentary in VR) and Displaced, planned for release in 2016, are indicative of the potential in the technology.

What’s next?

VR can fundamentally change the way individuals, groups and organizations interact, and for those interested in experiencing and sharing its powerful benefits, it offers an exceptional opportunity, perhaps unlike any other medium. To realise the full potential of VR, pioneering VR headsets and VR-capable hardware and software are required. This is only possible through the partnerships and vision of companies and organizations that bring the most cutting-edge technology to this virtual table. And that’s the reality.

Roy Taylor is corporate vice president of alliances, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

 

Source:  http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/54t9KxcI5M5nVmThhxbVOJ/The-new-frontiers-of-virtual-reality.html

MS MARCO teaches AI to answer questions like humans

Source: Daily News & Analysis dated December 19, 2016

Microsoft releases MS MARCO dataset to train AI systems

by MIKE WHEATLEY

UPDATED 22:39 EST . 19 December 2016

Microsoft Corp. has made yet another big bet in its quest to help lead the development of artificial intelligence with the release of a new dataset containing 100,000 questions and answers.
Called MS MARCO, or Microsoft Machine Reading Comprehension, the dataset is being made available for researchers wishing to train their AI systems. The company says the anonymized data is based on real-world queries typed into its Bing search engine, and that the aim is to make AIs better able to understand questions in a conversational context than they are now.
Microsoft explains that while virtual assistants like Cortana and Siri are already quite adept at reciting facts and figures like the population of certain cities or previous World Series winners, they’re not quite so comfortable with more complex or ambiguous questions. For example, if someone asks Siri what’s the current state of the war in Syria, most virtual assistants will simply provide search engine results that the user then has to comb through to find the answer.
That simply isn’t good enough for Microsoft, which believes its dataset can be used by virtual assistants to provide more definitive answers to such questions. The idea is that instead of simply providing a page of search query results, AIs might be able to analyze those results themselves and come up with an actual answer to the question.
“In order to move toward artificial general intelligence, we need to take a step toward being able to read a document and understand it as well as a person,” said Rangan Majumder (above), a partner group program manager with Microsoft’s Bing search engine division who is leading the effort. “This is a step in that direction.”
Microsoft said the MS MARCO dataset contains questions that its researchers found “interesting.” The answers were based on existing web pages and verified to be accurate by real humans, so as to try and teach AIs to do the same thing themselves. Microsoft said the dataset is available for researchers for free.
The release of MS MARCO came at the end of a busy week on the AI front for Microsoft. Last Monday, the company made headlines with the announcement of a new fund for AI startups, which has already taken a startup called Element AI under its wing. Element AI, is based in Montreal, is working to build commercial-grade AI systems and support the work of local startups trying to apply neural networks in new fields.
Also last week, Microsoft announced a preview of the Cortana Skills Kit and Devices SDK, which are designed for manufacturers that want to integrate Cortana into various smart hardware devices, from cars to home appliances.
With the Cortana Devices SDK, Microsoft is hoping to take on Amazon.com, Inc.’s Alexa-powered Dot and Echo devices, and also Google Inc’s smart home speaker Google Home. To do so, Microsoft is collaborating with Harman Kardon, a brand under Harman International Industries Inc., to create an Amazon Echo-like device that’s integrated with Cortana’s AI capabilities.

Source: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/12/18/microsoft-releases-ms-marco-dataset-train-ai-systems/