Two supercomputer genuises of Indian-origin are working together to build mammoth computing systems. While, California Digital Corporation (CDC), the Fremont, US-based technology company, founded by Mr B J Arun, CEO, has just deployed 'Thunder', a giant number cruncher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, California. On the other hand, the company's CTO, Prof. Srinidhi Varadarajan built 'System 10', a non-proprietary, supercomputer using 1100 Apple G5 machines. He continues to hold the post of director, supercomputer facility at Virginia Tech. CDC's Thunder is expected to take the second place in the June list of top 500 supercomputers - an annual ranking of world's fastest computing systems. System 10 is already placed at the third slot in the current top 500-supercomputer listing. The number one ranked supercomputer is the NEC-built Earth Simulator, which is housed in Yokohama. How big is big in this world? The Japanese machine is a 35.86 teraflop system - a teraflop being short for trillions of floating point operations per second. Thunder is a 19.94 sustained teraflop system, while System 10 delivers 10 teraflops. The CDAC, India, built supercomputer PARAM Padma is a half a teraflop cluster. It ranks 171 in the list of top 500 supercomputers in the world. CDC's 'Thunder' runs on 4096 Intel's Itanium 2 processors. It's only of late that supercomputer's built with low priced components and running on open source Operating System have started making their presence felt. Mr Arun said that Thunder has been built at fraction of Earth Simulator's cost. To prove his point he said that it cost approximately $20 million to put together Thunder, in comparison to the over $ 350 million (just hardware cost) that it took NEC to build the Earth Simulator.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, May 19, 2004

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The Indian operations of Sony has been identified to be the hub for the software needs of the Japanese electronics major. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam are the other manufacturing bases for the Japanese consumer electronics company in the Pan Asian region. The system has been developed from the point of view of ease of regional management. Each of these markets would become the manufacturing hub for a certain kind of product like audio or TV. India contributes to Sony's R&D activities through Sony India 's Software Architecture Division (SARD) located in Bangalore. SARD has contributed to many of Sony's top products, including AIBO, CLIE, VAIO PC and digital TV. It was also recently awarded the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level 5 rating, the first among Sony software centers worldwide to achieve this prestigious award. Sony India will continue to utlilise the skilled technology manpower in this country to complement the activities of Sony's software facilities worldwide. It may be pointed out that Sony exported software worth Rs 150 crore last year.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, May 19, 2004

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Reliance Clinical Research Services (RCRS) has extended clinical research services to markets in US and Europe. RCRS, a part of the Reliance group's life sciences initiative, focuses on assisting the development of pharmaceutical and biotechnology products through pre-clinical and clinical (Phase I to Phase IV) studies. "Reliance Clinical Research Services initiative is one aspect of Reliance's transformation from a manufacturing organisation to a knowledge and service-driven enterprise," Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries, was quoted as saying in a press release. RCRS provides services in project management, clinical operations, site management and biometrics - which includes data management and bio-statistics - and medical affairs, which includes pharmaco-vigilance and medical writing, regulatory affairs, animal studies, quality assurance, molecular diagnostics, archival facility and drug storage and supplies.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, May 11, 2004

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More and more people are turning towards Ayurveda for treatment and this has worked wonders for the tourism industry, writes Madhu Gurung. Cornelia Ullrich (46) has flown all the way from Germany to India for her "Ayurveda holiday". She spent 14 days "de-stressing" at Angsana, an ayurvedic centre in Bangalore. Ullrich, who heard about this place from a fellow sculptor, says she "feels reborn". India, once touted the world over as a cultural, spiritual and heritage tourism centre, is now increasingly popular as a health destination. Radhika Ray, said merchandising and product development manager at Sita World Travels. "earlier, we sold India as a cultural destination. Now, the world over, there is a shift to vegetarianism, alternative healing, yoga and healthy living. An editorial published in 1998 in The Journal of the American Medical Association was the first to note the increasing popularity of alternative medicine. It reported a 47 per cent increase in US-based patients turning to alternate health practitioners. Travel and tourism gurus in India were quick to seize on these global trends. Tourism has never been this good in a decade and a half. Global recession is on the wane and India's economy is growing at around seven per cent per annum. The benefits of doing business with and in India have resulted in thousands of jobs moving to Indian shores from the West. Kerala, at the tip of the Indian peninsula, has marketed itself remarkably well. It sold itself as "God's own country" and the land of ayurvedic massages and treatments. The Kerala government had an outlay of about Rs 742 million for the financial year 2003-04. This investment makes available cheap, long term funds to help finance the tourism infrastructure. Kerala is today a popular destination in India for foreign tourists. Although the science of Ayurveda is practised all over the country, the Kerala School appears to dominate the scene. Dr VR Verma of the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy in Karol Bagh, New Delhi, says, "Ayurvedic curative therapies originated in Kerala and there is still a sizeable number of doctors still carrying on the old traditions." After fighting a losing battle with chronic arthritis, retired botanist Maya Anderson (71) made a determined journey from the US to Sittilanchery, a small village near Palghat.

Courtesy: The Statesman, May 09, 2004