Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Your friend's face can be your new password

London: PTI





A new authentication system that asks you to identify faces familiar to you could spell end of passwords. Decades of psychological research has found that humans can recognize familiar faces across a wide range of images, even when their image quality is poor. In contrast, recognition of unfamiliar faces is tied to a specific image -so much so that different photos of the same unfamiliar face are often thought to be different people.The new system, called Facelock, exploits this psychological effect to create a new type of authentication system whose details are published in the journal PeerJ.
Familiarity with a particular face determines a person's ability to identify it across different photographs and as a result a set of faces that are known only to a single individual can be used to create a personalized `lock'.
Access is then granted to anyone who demonstrates recognition of the faces across images, and denied to anyone who does not.
To register with the system, users nominate a set of faces that are well known to them, but are not well known to other people. The researchers found that it was surprisingly easy to generate faces that have this property .
For example, a favourite jazz trombonist, or a revered poker player are more than suitable -effectively one person's idol is another person's stranger. By combining faces from across a user's domains of familiarity -say , music and sports -the researchers were able to create a set of faces that were known to that user only . To know all of those faces is then the key to Facelock. The `lock' consists of a series of face grids and each grid is constructed so that one face is familiar to the user, whilst all other faces are unfamiliar. Authentication is a matter of simply touching the familiar face in each grid. For the legitimate user, this is a trivial task, as the familiar face stands out from the others. However, a fraudster looking at the same grid hits a problem -none of the faces stand out. Building authentication around familiarity has several advantages.
Unlike password or PIN-based systems, a familiarity-based approach never requires users to commit anything to memory .

Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Beyond The Spoils System

Shailesh Gandhi





Why can't we select governors and key public servants on merit rather than patronage politics?

There is considerable debate underway on whether various statutory heads n the country should be replaced because of a change in political dispensation at the Centre. It is therefore the right time to discuss whether these highly paid public servants deliver significant value and how their selection process could be changed to enhance their value.While there is an active debate about whether present governors selected by the UPA government should be retained or pushed out, we hardly discuss whether they perform any useful functions. It is an accepted fact that most members and heads of various commissions and corporations are appointed as a consequence of their closeness to political leaders in government, and not because of their suitability for the job.
Governors and lokayuktas among many others, who head regulatory functions, are beholden to political masters who have gifted these jobs to them.
There is rarely any evaluation about their merit or suitability for the job.
Democracy operates at various levels and in a wide variety of ways. Apart from the legislature, executive and judiciary, it is felt necessary to have various other institutions to take care of special needs and to act as checks and balances in the system.
Most of these, whether created by the Constitution or by statute, have very important functions to perform. But the majority of those appointed to these positions are retired senior citizens who are physically and mentally incapable of working even 40 hours a week. They do not feel the need to be accountable and look at their jobs as sinecures and rewards, for having served some political masters and keeping them happy .
We have a peculiar situation where a police constable, driver or peon is employed by a due process of selection and evaluation for the job. When these are violated and selection is done arbitrarily we protest and sometimes get courts to intervene. On the other hand, at the highest levels of public office, jobs are doled out based on arbitrary political recommendations.
This writer's selection as a Central Information Commissioner was a random occurrence rather than a consequence of any process or evaluation. If some governors, lokayuktas, regulators, commissioners are good it is by chance rather than by design.
There are many senior bureaucrats and other power brokers who spend considerable time and effort to get the right recommendation to bag these jobs. Usually on offer is significant proof of personal loyalty in addition to political loyalty , as well as an implied promise of being willing to do the master's bidding when required.
Under such circumstances, these institutions have become largely ineffective. Even bright or honest people capable of working hard do not deliver because they have often been rewarded with a position for which they are not suitable.
It is time to demand a transparent process of selection for such high positions. It should generally start six months before a vacancy arises and should be an invitation for applications/nominations of persons along with a set of criteria for the relevant job.
Drawing up a list of requirements and suitability for different jobs ­ including that of governor ­ is not a very difficult task. Candidates could be shortlisted by a panel based on seeing which of them meet the objective criteria which are laid down. Such a shortlist of persons should be interviewed before people and media by an eminent pre-selection committee.
If this is done citizens would be able to see if the persons were basically competent, suitable and committed to the job they wanted to take up. It would act as a check on completely arbitrary choices made on the basis of patronage politics.
The pre-selection committee would recommend a panel which could be three times the number of persons to be selected.
The final selection from this panel could be done by the same political system which now operates. If this is done properly those occupying such positions would draw respect from every one and also have the required moral authority .
Besides a transparent process of selection it should be incumbent for all such bodies to display the work done by them on their websites. Citizens should be able to evaluate whether the various statutory bodies are delivering meaningful results in a satisfactory and time-bound manner.
This could be achieved by having a satisfaction evaluation of those who have approached these bodies every six months.
We must get the right persons willing to be accountable at the highest levels of public service.
Concurrently , distribution of plum jobs as political largesse must stop.
Once we do this we won't have the unholy spectacle of our governors and other authorities being shunted out whenever there is a change of the party serving at the Centre. The present practice is a reminder that these positions have been given as largesse and do not deliver any significant value to citizens and democracy .
The writer is a former Central Information Commissioner .

Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

60% of NREGA work must be agricultural

Subodh Ghildiyal

New Delhi:





The Centre is likely to make it mandatory that 60% of work in a district under the job guarantee scheme, MGNREGA, should be linked to agriculture.The rural development ministry will incorporate the mandatory clause in Schedule-1 of the MGNREGA so that every state has to follow the norms designed to give a fillip to agriculture through labour-intensive work under the job scheme.
Rural development secretary LC Goyal said, “The proposal has been sent to the states for comments. It would be decided soon.” The move would inextricably bind MGNREGA with farm activities, thereby focusing the creation of assets in the farm sector. According to the plan, a minimum of 60% of work in a district should be “in the nature of productive assets linked to agriculture through the development of land, water and trees”.
The fine-print suggests that if it is implemented, it could push overwhelming activity under the job scheme towards agriculture. The 60% floor limit is “in terms of costs”.
Given that many works permitted under MGNRE
GA, like road construction, are capital-intensive because of the material costs, the stress on 60% minimum expenditure on farm-related activity would compel the authorities to discourage other work. According to estimates, construction of roads forms 37% of works done under MGNREGA, with Rs 8-10 lakh spent on every km of road.The refocusing of the job scheme towards farming marks a new chapter in the chequered history of the pro-poor scheme that was brought in by UPA to provide distress labour to the poor.
Over last seven years, the scheme was found to be riddled with corruption and inefficiency while also failing to creating durable assets.
The BJP was widely perceived to be in favour of disbanding the scheme. But after coming to power, it seems to have steered clear of any drastic action, possibly because of the negative message it would send to the vast section of the rural populace. Instead, redirecting the scheme towards boosting the farming activity seems to be an acceptable improvisation.
“The shift would lead to better community assets and also provide employment to the needy,” Goyal said.

Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

France to salute SRK with its highest honour

New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





France has decided to honour Bolly wood actor Shah Rukh Khan with Legion of France, its highest distinction civilian or military. Sources here said French foreign minister Laurent Fabius will travel to Mumbai next week to confer the award of Officier de la Legion d'Honneur (Officer of the Legion of Honour) on Khan for his contribution to cinema. The only Bollywood actor to have received the same honour was Amitabh Bachchan in 2007. The “Légion d'Honneur“ is the highest distinction that can be conferred in France on a French citizen as well as on a foreigner. Lata Mangeshkar and Satyajit Ray are other notable winners of the honour from India.Fabius will start his three-day visit to India on June 30. His meeting with his counterpart Sushma Swaraj will be the first high-level interaction between the two countries since the NDA government assumed power. “After his meetings in Delhi on June 30 and July 1, the minister will travel to Mumbai for business meetings and give the highest French honour to the actor,“ said a source.
Fabius had earlier called up Swaraj to congratulate her after she took charge as external affairs minister. During his stay in India, Fabius will also participate in a discussion on “Sustainable Growth in Response to Climate Change“ along with environment minister Prakash Javadekar.
For India, France remains one of its most cherished strategic partners. It was the first country with which India entered into a civil nuclear cooperation agreement following the waiver given by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, enabling India to carry out nuclear commerce despite not having signed NPT.

Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

JNU's iconic eatery also a cultural institution

Avijit Ghosh

New Delhi TNN





Shutting Down Ganga Dhaba Akin To Killing Part Of JNU's Glorious Heritage Ganga dhaba was synonymous with JNU's nightlife, its cultural ecology. It was a place where the political types decided on the text and tenor of the next pamphlet. Ask anyone to name one place in JNU; a majority would say Ganga dhaba. Why kill your best-known imprint?

In the life of any institution, some places become cultural markers. In collective memory and popular perception, they gradually attain the sanctity of a heritage site. For JNU, that's what Ganga dhaba perhaps is.To equate it with any other eatery in the campus and initiate moves to shut it down not only means the university's lack of appreciation of its own tradition but also an inability to see the importance and strength of its own most instantly-recognizable brand.
Ask anyone to name one place in JNU; a majority would say Ganga dhaba. Why kill your best-known imprint?
Till the mid-1980s, the Nilgiri dhaba, poised between Periyar and Godavari hostels, was a hotter nightspot than Ganga. But within a few years, the latter overshadowed the former by a mile. Even a suicide committed by one of the dhaba owners did nothing to dimin ish its popularity .
Those days when most eateries--and there were hardly any in the campus--shut down early , Ganga dhaba's nimboo-paani and bunomlettes served as late as 1.30pm were lifesavers for hundreds who had missed their dinner for one reason or the other.
But more importantly, Ganga dhaba was synonymous with JNU's nightlife, its cultural ecology . It was a place where the political types--and there were so many--decided on the text and tenor of the next pamphlet and mapped the strategies of the forthcoming campus agitation. Late night, the civil services types would also emerge from their rooms and fill in their thermos flask with over-sweetened tea which helped them get through the night.
At the dhaba, only a handful indulged in deep and mea ningful conversation on Marxism. This is one of the most enduring mythologies of JNU which many of us are guilty of having perpetuated.
Most boys and girls chatted deep into the night over anything and everything under the stars because it just felt so good to do so. The place was a comfort pillow. It was also an addiction.
And yet depending on the quality of the students involved, there was often something meaningful in those avante-garde conversations. One never realized it back then but those were takeaways that enabled you to negotiate life.
To be fair, the importance of Ganga dhaba is certainly not the same today as it was back in the 1980s and 1990s. Nowadays, eateries abound in the campus and home delivery of dinner to hostels is common.
But to look at Ganga dhaba as just another cheap open-air eatery would be erroneous. It gives the university a sense of history and adds to its character. It is a signpost of what the institution once was. If there are issues related to hygiene or anything else with regard to its running, they need to be sorted out rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Any campus is always a work in progress. The university authority is entitled to ring in positive changes. But the intelligent changemaker always preserves the best of the past. Ganga dhaba links JNU's past to its present. To shut it down would mean the end of JNU as we prefer to remember it. It would be both a mistake and a tragedy .

Small states perform well again in education development index - 

Small states and Union territories like Puducherry, Lakshadweep, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh continued to perform well in the latest education development index on learning outcome and quality of teachers, a government study said.

While Puducherry occupied the pole position, Lakshadweep was at the second place and Sikkim occupied the third position in the study based on four constituents such as access, infrastructure, teachers and outcomes.

The flash statistics 2013-14 for elementary education in India, prepared by National University of Educational Planning and Administration, were released by HRD Minister Smriti Irani.

Lakshadweep had occupied the first position in the last report followed by Puducherry while Sikkim was at the fourth place.

The educational development index of the states took into account the progress made both at the primary and upper primary level.

Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Kerala and Punjab also figured in the top 10 list compiled annually. Delhi was ranked sixth.

The report covered 1.45 million schools spread over 662 districts across all states and UTs.

Uttar Pradesh was at the bottom of the education development index at the 35th place while Bihar was ranked 34th, Jharkhand 33rd and West Bengal at the 32nd place.

Among the big states, Madhya Pradesh was ranked 31st, Rajasthan 23rd and Maharashtra 13th place.

-Source: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/06/small-states-perform-well-again-in-education-development-index/#sthash.DMyBleNk.dpuf

Jun 25 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

15 WAYS THE WORLD WILL BE AWESOME IN 2050





When you consider the ongoing social and economic progress and the coming innovations in science and technology, there's plenty of room for optimism

CHILD MORTALITY Between 1990 and 2012, the number of under-5 child deaths went from 90 deaths per 1,000 live births to 48 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to a 2013 report from UNICEF .The Copenhagen Consensus on Human Challenge report ex pects the rate dropping to 31 per 1,000 live births in 2050.
VACCINES AND CURES Researchers are confident that within 20 years they can design a vaccine to stop the spread of HIV , which currently kills anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million people per year. A US vaccine already exists for meningitis. A rheumatoid arthritis drug recently cured a young child's leukemia.
A modified measles vaccine put another woman's cancer into remission.
LIVE FOREVER In the coming decades, scientists hope to upload the contents of human brains into computers, allowing people to live forever. Neuroscientist Randal Koene and Russian financial-backer Dmitry Itskov are trying to transfer human consciousness and brain functions to an artificial body by 2045 by “mapping the brain, reducing its activity to computations, and reproducing those computations in code,“ according to Popular Science.
FEWER POOR “By 2035, there will be no more poor countries,“ Bill Gates wrote earlier this year. The global poverty ratio will fall from about 21% in 2005 to less than 2.5% in 2050, and the number of people living in absolute poverty will decline by another billion, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organizations.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute predicts that by 2050 freely moving robots that outperform humans both physically and intellectually will run entire businesses by themselves. That could allow humans to “occupy their days with a variety of social, recreational and artistic pursuits, not unlike today's wealthy leisure classes,“ he wrote in Scientific American.
CLEAN ENERGY If the world invests enough in clean energy , we will be able to rely almost entirely on renewable energy by 2050 -cutting energy sector greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, according to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report.
SELF-DRIVING CARS In the next decade, major car makers expect to release cars with self-driving features, such as steering, parking, gear-shifting, and braking, the Milken Institute predicts. Experts say most driverless cars will operate entirely without a human occupant's control by 2035.
Driverless cars will be safer because they eliminate human error, which causes 90% of car accidents, according to the Institute. Electric cars will also be widespread by 2050 -a tremendous benefits for the environment.
GENDER EQUALITY The rising participation of women in the workforce will continue to change dynamics at home. In 2050, men and women in much of the developed world will do an equal share of childcare and housework, according to an Oxford University study of 16 European and Bloomberg North American countries, in addition to Australia and Israel.
GLOBAL LITERACY Currently , 23.6% of the global population can't read, costing about 7% of worldwide GDP , according to “ A Scorecard for Humanity ,“ a report from the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
By 2050, experts estimates that illiteracy rates will fall to just 12% and cost only about 3.8% of GDP .
FEWER WARS From 2009 to 2050, the number of countries involved in internal armed conflicts will decrease by more than 50%, according to a report from International Studies Quarterly . The study predicted that, in 2050, 7% of countries will be embroiled in internal conflicts, down from 15% in 2009. Reasons for the decline of violence include more education and the high cost of war. “It has become too expensive to kill people,“ the report's co-author University of Oslo Political Science Professor Håvard Hegre told Apollon. “Modern society is dependent on economic development. It is too expensive to use violence to destroy this network.“
INTERNET EVERYWHERE In “The World We Made,“ Forum for the Future founder Jonathon Porritt predicts that by 2050, more than 8 billion people will go online, 97.5% of the population then. Currently , about 40% of the globe has internet access, with 78% of users in developed countries and 32% in developing countries. That's about 2.85 billion people, many of whom get internet access from mobile phones.
ORGAN TRANSPLANTS Technology is unlocking ways to prolong life while people wait for transplants. Dialysis replaces kidneys for people who need a transplant, and, more recently , artificial hearts have been able to keep some patients alive while they wait for a new one. In the next 35 years or so, artificial and lab-grown organs will create a more permanent solution for patients, who won't have to wait for another person to die before getting a life-sustaining organ. We are already implanting lab-grown bladders and vaginas. Other organs -from hearts and lungs to skin -are on their way .
REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY These days, women only have a very general sense of when in their lives they'll stop being fertile, but in the future, women will have more “personalized“ biological clocks so they'll know exactly when they'll stop being able to make babies, Alexis Madrigal has written in The Atlantic. Couples of the future will also have a better idea of when they should try to conceive. Personal hormone trackers that detect bodily changes through the skin could become a normal part of tracking our fertility .
DESIGNER BABIES Scientists are currently working on genetic engineering to help make sick children healthy by removing or replacing diseased genes. This could later be used to perfect children by genetically engineering away crooked teeth or bad eyesight, improve IQ. “[I] n a couple of decades, and certainly by 2050 ... we'll choose its sex and its appearance and stuff like that, but we can bump up his IQ by 10 points, or by really giving the very latest technology , you get 15 points more of IQ,“ Yale professor and computer scientist David Gelernter told Big Think.
UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR The “universal translator“ -an imaginary device that lets people who speak different languages communicate instantly -has been featured in sci-fi shows like “Star Trek.“ The Economist noted last year that it may not be long before automatic simultaneous translation becomes the norm in the real world, too. In the future, you may be able to go to a foreign country and speak fluently with the locals just by wearing a pair of special goggles or using a phone app.
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