CRUISING THE E-WAY

Mumbai: Doctors worried about scoring the mandatory points for renewing their registration can now go the-way. Medical education seminars can now be held online, and doctors could attend virtual classrooms from the comfort of their homes and update their knowledge on a regular basis, said the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) on Sunday.
The MMC, which came into being on July 9 after a 12 year-long wait, addressed hundreds of doctors affiliated to the Indian Medical Association (IMA) from across the state on Sunday through a live webcast. Concerns over fulfilling the mandatory 30hours of Continuing Medical Education (CME) over five years topped the list of worries for doctors. Doctors serving in rural areas were particularly concerned about fulfilling the criteria, which is a requisite for the renewal of their registrations every five years.
Member of the MMC Dr Shivkumar Utture said that when communication was advancing by the day, medical education could no longer lag behind. “We realised that while doctors in Mumbai can easily attend conferences every weekend, those in rural areas do not have that facility. So, we are working towards a system where doctors can attend conferences through interactive technology,” he said. Utture added that it would also be a boon for ageing doctors. “CMEs are a must, as doctors who have passed out decades back need to be updated on latest diagnostic and treatment modalities,” he added.

Doctors from places like Pen and Beed spoke about the inconvenience endured in travelling all the way to Mumbai to renew their registrations. Currently, doctors from the entire state have to physically come to the MMC’s Mumbai officefor registration purposes.

Another concern voiced by the doctors was the overwhelming number of non-allopathic doctors practising without any rules or laws biding on them.

Source | Times of India | 27 June 2011

Harvard Education Letter

Harvard Education Letter

BARC sets up ‘virtual’ nuclear data physics centrePTI

The HinduAn overall view of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. File Photo
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre has set up a ‘virtual’ nuclear data physics centre to enable greater visibility of India’s research in this area at the global platform.
Department of Atomic Energy and Board of Research in Nuclear Science of the government of India have already sanctioned funds for three years (2011-2014) for the NDPCI, S Ganesan, Head of Nuclear Data Section, Reactor Physics Design Division and Project-in-Charge, NDPCI told PTI.
The basic nuclear data physics research is essential in shaping concepts of nuclear power of advanced reactor designs and safety, he said.
With BARC acting as the nodal agency, NDPCI, will serve as the main hub for overall coordination of nuclear data activities in India with members drawn from national laboratories and universities.
“The NDPCI at BARC is promoting the use of accurate nuclear data and its physics usage in all applications including in development of indigenous software for Monte Carlo codes and discrete ordinate codes for advanced reactor applications,” Mr. Ganesan said.
The nuclear scientist said India became the 14th member of the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) in 2008 after being invited to join the international network.
NRDC constitutes a worldwide cooperation of nuclear data centres under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. The Network was established in the early sixties to coordinate the world-wide collection, compilation and dissemination of nuclear reaction data.
Last month, India participated as a full member of International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) at the IAEA, Ganesan said.
“India has been carrying out a number of original nuclear data physics activities during the last six years. The members of NRDC were all in praise for BARC for these new initiatives in nuclear data physics and especially for contributing more than 200 Indian EXFOR (internationally agreed format for the Raw Experimental Numerical Nuclear Physics Data) entries based upon Indian nuclear physics experiments, since 2006,” he said.
Mr. Ganesan said the roadmap of NDPCI will cover a wide range of power and non-power applications including medical applications in the Indian context with a balance of nuclear data physics activities by a well-defined team of nuclear physicists, engineers, mathematicians, radio-chemists and software information management.
Introduction of EXFOR culture in people including in basic nuclear physics has become relatively an easier task with the new managerial initiatives of NDPCI holding phenomenally successful EXFOR workshops in different parts of India, he said.
NDPCI has been very successful in roping people from various fields (Nuclear Physics, Reactor and Radiochemistry Divisions of DAE’s basic research establishments and others) and students and staff from various universities across India.
“It is a very unique activity where both experimentalists and theoreticians were covered,” Mr. Ganesan said.
NDPCI is evolving a strong community of EXFOR compilers in India. Regular staff to perform EXFOR compilations is being planned, he said.
NDPCI is identifying university staff and awarding contracts on EXFOR compilations. The first such DAE-BRNS contract has already been awarded to Prof. Betylda Jyrwa, North Eastern University, Shillong, Meghalaya in May 2011, Mr. Ganesan said.
Since the discovery of neutron, there are more than 18,932 experimental data including neutron induced reaction, charged particle induced reactions and photon induced reaction. “India’s contribution of 200 entries is considered very significant by the international community,” Mr. Ganesan said.
Stressing on the importance of NDPCI, he said even after more than six decades since the discovery of nuclear fission process, the basic nuclear physics experimental data continues to remain more uncertain than the target accuracies needed by reactor designers who rigorously desire to propagate error in simulations.
Therefore, experimental critical facility programme to enable integral validation studies is also an essential part of any serious nuclear programme to speed up implementation of nuclear energy, he said.
“This programme requires covariance data at differential and integral level,” Mr. Ganesan emphasised.
Basic physics understanding and better data physics of nuclear interactions continue to be rigorously sought by nuclear design communities in order to extrapolate conditions in power plants such as higher burn-up and higher temperatures, which are not covered in the room temperature fresh core one-to-one mock experiments.
“The safety and operational requirements of existing power plants have been engineered with a number of one-to-one mockup experiments providing adequate and conservative safety margins,” he said
Yet another ongoing activity of NDPCI is criticality benchmarking of reactors which helps in integrally validating nuclear data and methods of computer simulations.
In 2005, Indian scientists completed successfully the criticality benchmarking of the 30 kilowatt KAMINI research reactor (the only U-233 fuelled reactor operating in the world) operating at Kalpakkam which was completed, peer reviewed and published in the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments (ICSBEP).
“Interestingly after India joined the select band of countries and contributed Kamini Benchmark, the Indian scientists are able to access all the benchmark specifications for over 4,400 experimental benchmark documents of other countries,” Mr. Ganesan added.
In 2008, the international benchmarking of PURNIMA-II (Uranium 233-nitrate solution) reactor has been completed and already accepted by the IAEA and US department of Energy.
Presently, India has undertaken the international benchmarking procedures for the experimental reactor PURNIMA-I. The benchmarking of PURNIMA-I, India’s first fast reactor fuelled with plutonium oxide that went critical in 1972 was completed recently and critical international peer review is in progress.
“The benchmark specifications are intended for use by criticality safety engineers to validate calculation techniques safety margins for operations with fissile material,” he added.

British Library makes Google search deal

20 June 2011 Last updated at 11:02 GMT
Thousands of pages from one of the world's biggest collections of historic books, pamphlets and periodicals are to be made available on the internet.

The British Library has reached a deal with search engine Google about 250,000 texts dating back to the 18th Century.

It will allow readers to view, search and copy the out-of-copyright works at no charge on both the library and Google books websites.

The library gets more than a million visitors a year.

The works selected to be digitised date from between 1700 and 1870, and the project will take some years to complete, with Google covering the costs of digitising.

Among the first works to go online are a pamphlet about French Queen Marie Antoinette and Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol's 1858 plans for one of the world's first submarines.

Google has similar partnerships with about 40 libraries around the world.

Library chief executive Dame Lynne Brindley said the scheme was an extension of the ambition of the library's predecessors in the 19th Century to provide access to knowledge to everyone.

"The way of doing it then was to buy books from the entire world and to make them available in reading rooms.

"We... believe that we are building on this proud tradition of giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time.

"Our aim is to provide perpetual access to this historical material, and we hope that our collections coupled with Google's know-how will enable us to achieve this aim."

Director of external relations at Google Peter Barron said: "What's powerful about the technology available to us today isn't just its ability to preserve history and culture for posterity, but also its ability to bring it to life in new ways."

Google's plan to digitise copyrighted texts has run into serious legal problems in the US. Among critics were the Authors Guild of America and the Association of American Publishers.

The digitised works are just a small fraction of the library's collection which totals more than 150 million items representing every age of written civilisation, including books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages.

Source | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13836332

Reading made easy: Why just books libraries work

Sunder Rajan, founder of Just Books, is using technology to bring libraries back to the people.

Melissa D’Silva goes to the library almost every day. For someone who is not a book lover, this is unusual. “I don’t like to read,” she confesses. “But I came here to find books on baby care, and things to occupy my mind and time.” A few days ago, D’Silva had started her maternity leave and boredom was creeping in. So one day, she decided to head to the local library that her husband, Sharlon, had been frequenting for four months. Soon, she was hooked.
D’Silva’s 10-year-old niece Rhea recently picked up Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. When Rhea wanted to read the other books in the series, the library, called Just Books, offered to get her those books within 24 hours. The books would be sourced from other member libraries.

Until a few months ago, the D’Silva household were not members of any library. “I was last the member of a government library, 12 years ago,” says Sharlon D’Silva.
So, what’s the reason for the change? Simply that Sunder Rajan, a software engineer from Bangalore, had a bright idea. He hated travelling miles to access a library. So, in May 2008, he decided to start one near his house with the help of his wife. This was the beginning of Just Books. He thought it would be a good part-time run, but he was surprised when he got 1,000 members in three months. He shrugged it off as the initial excitement about a library in the neighbourhood. But after another three months when his fledgling library grew to 2,000 members, Rajan knew he had stumbled onto something. He decided to make it his full-time job. Today, his company has 22 libraries all over India with a revenue of approximately Rs. 4 crore.
A New Way to Read

Rajan wanted two things to become the DNA of his company: One, the libraries had to be integrated so that members could borrow from one library and return books to another; two, members should spend more time reading a book than searching for one. He has achieved both these objectives.

Members can borrow or lend books from any Just Books library in India. “Once we reach 5,000 members in a city, we establish a warehouse in that city,” says Rajan. “This helps us network the libraries so that if one member from one area needs a book that is in another library, we can get it for them.” Rajan calls it the milk van model. “We collect all the books [that have been asked for in other libraries] in the evening, and sort them out to be sent in the morning.” Rajan already has a warehouse in Bangalore, where most of his libraries are based. The next warehouse will be between Mumbai and Pune to service the libraries in both cities.
Most transactions in a Just Books library — searching, issuing or returning a book — can be done through a self-help kiosk using an ID card given to members. Users can locate the shelf within any library on which the book is placed. Members can also have books picked up and delivered from any address in India.
“The clichéd image of a library — dusty, books untouched, no one knows what is where — is done away with,” says Ramesh Prabhu, a book lover and a member of Just Books.
Tech Does the Trick

The one secret ingredient behind all this efficiency is Rajan’s belief in technology and the software that he invested in early on.

As his chain grew, Rajan convinced 10 of his old colleagues from iFlex (now Oracle Financial Services) to leave their full-time IT jobs and work at half their pay to build an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. The ERP software integrates all aspects of running a library and makes efficient use of all the available resources. For the software engineers, who were bored with their jobs, Just Books provided the spark they were looking for in their line of work.
Rajan also coupled the ERP offering with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. RFID is usually used in stores like Wal-Mart or in other supply chain management systems.
By using RFID, Rajan can ‘read’ several books at one time, and route them to their library with one click. This, in turn, increases the efficiency of the user experience.
Akilesh Kataria, Rajan’s colleague at iFlex and now the head of the IT team in Just Books, says, “Initially, we used to process 200 books; this number has gone up to 1,500 per day, and will keep going up.” Just Books has approximately eight people working on four different entry processes. RFID enables them to track the books and move them across libraries efficiently. The entire inventory is connected to every member library. These technical nuances have helped Just Books grow from five libraries in May 2010 to 30 libraries across four cities by May 2011, and an inventory of over three lakh books.

Source | http://www.moneycontrol.com/

Britannica Digital Learning Offers Hundreds of e-Books to Schools and Libraries With iPublishCentral Portal

Powered by iPublishCentral From Impelsys, Easy-to-Use Portal Allows Schools and Libraries to Make Available Hundreds of Britannica Reference Titles to Their Students and Patrons

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Jun 9, 2011) - Britannica Digital Learning, a leading educational publisher, has published hundreds of new, highly illustrated non-fiction e-book titles for K12 schools, universities, and public libraries. All of these e-books are accessible from Britannica's new easy-to-use e-book portal, http://www.ebooks.eb.com/, designed specifically for the institutions served.

The new Britannica e-book platform was developed in cooperation with Impelsys, a global leader in providing electronic content delivery solutions, with the use of the iPublishCentral software that is used by publishers and professional associations worldwide.

iPublishCentral is a full-service electronic publishing solution that allows publishers to market their content as e-books, online journals and other electronic products. The platform gives publishers all the tools they need to manage and monetize their digital assets without making significant development investments on their own.

"With the iPublishCentral platform, we've been able to quickly roll out a simple web-based e-book portal that delivers 24/7 access to our e-books from anywhere," said Michael Ross, a senior vice president at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. and general manager of Britannica Digital Learning. "The portal's full-text search feature, along with linked MARC records for each e-book, make it quick and easy for students and library patrons to find information in Britannica's e-books. Britannica e-books also provide an opportunity for schools and libraries to own digital content -- there are no ongoing subscription or platform fees."

According to Ross, institutions can purchase a single-user, multi-user or unlimited-user license for access to the titles on the site. This is the digital equivalent to having one, several or unlimited numbers of a printed book on their library shelves.

"Britannica is one of the most respected names in the world of education, so we were privileged to partner with them in developing this platform," said Sameer Shariff, chief executive officer of Impelsys. "Britannica's new e-book site already offers access to hundreds of circulating titles and we will be working with them to release more than 100 new e-book titles every year, ensuring an expanding selection of high-quality resources."

Source | http://www.marketwire.com/

--Closing School Libraries

--Closing School Libraries
- http://lisnews.org/node/39302/
It's all  part of a whole.  Cut libraries and librarians at schools, and children will be less comfortable utilizing their local public libraries.  Cut libraries and librarians in the public library
system, and children and parents will be less likely to use and support their school and community libraries.  And so on and so on....  Here's a letter to the editor from a public librarian in Ontario,
Canada that sums up the issues:    Closing a school library is not just an issue for schools.  Library programs at schools foster a love of reading, and develop information, research literacy and critical
thinking skills.  They allow kids to learn about their world, and to explore and develop their own interests.  The lack of these skills among students will have a big impact on both the public and
academic library, as well as on society.  A major Canadian study from People for Education and Queen’s University has found that having a school library improves test scores, and schools with teacher
librarians have more positive attitudes toward reading; while schools with no professional librarian have lower reading scores.  As school libraries and librarians become fewer, the impact on public
libraries and society as a whole will grow.    We will be raising a generation of children who don’t read, leading to a generation of adults who won’t read, and who won’t know how to find information or
critically evaluate the information that they do find.  

Browse, borrow and hangout

BANGALORE: Though most localities in the city have public libraries, the little home-run circulating libraries are more personal and informal and their owners don’t sport the grumpiness generally associated with those manning public libraries. Though it’s been the end of a chapter for some popular neighbourhood libraries, a few of them still exist in some parts of the city.
The librarian in these one-man establishments, of course, not only knew most customers by name, but also their reading habits. He obliged by reserving books on request by the customers. Westerns, best sellers like James Hadley Chase and Alistair McLean besides Photo Romance, Mills & Boons and Archie comics that government libraries didn’t stock, were the most borrowed books here.

They were usually small garages turned libraries or little shops which hoarded books with scant attention to cataloging. Hence, one wouldn’t be surprised to find Dickens leaning comfortably against an Archie on the dusty shelves. Despite the chaos, the librarians and regulars of course knew where exactly each book lay.

These neighbourhood circulating libraries, which generally operated only in the evenings, were not just sources of interesting reading material but served as venues for the neighbours to mingle. Customers exchanged pleasantries and gossip as they dropped by to borrow books and periodicals.

The day’s cricket match, the latest political crisis, a local issue or the weather are debated at great length and with great spirit.

Presently, a teenage boy enters with an eager expression on his face. He eyes a copy of Photo Romance, but he dare not pick it up, for, his elderly neighbour is lurking around near the librarian’s table. As the youngster shuffles about near the shelves, pretending to look for a Louis L’Amour, he watches in dismay as the elderly neighbour unabashedly exchanges his political weekly for the very issue of Photo Romance he had wished to borrow.

Yet another dandy young lad makes religious trips to the library from afar every week. Not because he is a voracious reader but because his crush comes there every week.

A little later, a housewife walks in looking for that elusive women’s weekly, whose cover announces a chutney special from pages 17 to 24. Having finally laid her hands on it, she leaves gleefully, waiting to try out the new recipes. However, she’s back in less that 15 minutes, for, to her horror, after page 16, the next page in the magazine is 25, with the intervening pages either worn out from much flipping or just torn out.
Over time, with newer members showing scant respect for books and the habit of reading dying out, most circulating libraries swapped books for audio cassettes, then video cassettes and finally CDs and DVDs. Most others just folded up, with their books ending up with pavement books sellers, their seals still intact.
vijaysimha@newindianexpress.com
Source | http://ibnlive.in.com/news/

Manuscriptorium Content Available Through EBSCO Discovery Service™ — Digital Documents Related to Historic Books

An agreement between the National Library of the Czech Republic and EBSCO Publishing is bringing metadata from the Manuscriptorium project to EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS). The goal of the Manuscriptorium project is to create virtual research access to all digital documents related to historical book resources up to the year 1800. Content includes: manuscripts, incunabula, early print books, maps, deeds, charters and more. Metadata from the Manuscriptorium—the European Digital Library of Written Cultural Heritage—will be available to all EDS users, further expanding the information available via EBSCO Discovery Service.

The Manuscriptorium project—including more than five million digital images—has created a single digital library database from the resources previously held in libraries throughout the European Union and beyond. While the primary focus of the project is on books, documents of an archival nature are also included. The Manuscriptorium provides researchers, students and teachers with information about the physical documents that are contained in the digital library via its catalogue as well as access to digital copies of the documents themselves.

The General Director of the National Library of the Czech Republic, Tomas Bohm says the agreement with EBSCO expands the goal of the Manuscriptorium project. “The National Library of the Czech Republic set out to pull together the millions of historic book resources that had been scattered throughout libraries around the world. In adding the metadata to EBSCO Discovery Service, we are further able to expand access to this valuable information and bring this important content to more and more users.”

The Manuscriptorium joins a long list of key information sources available to EBSCO Discovery Service users include: British Library, Baker & Taylor, NewsBank, Readex, LexisNexis, Alexander Street Press, Oxford University Press, American Psychological Association, ABC-CLIO, ingentaconnect, Government Printing Office, ECONIS, Mergent Inc., arXiv, Credo Reference, IGI Global, World Book and Accessible Archives. In addition, Web of Science & H.W. Wilson provides access for mutual customers. The EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers (and growing) in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers, representing far more content providers and publishers than any other discovery service.

EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/320334#ixzz1NRAI6sZM

Source | http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/320334

India's new Internet laws go against fundamental right to freedom of speech

Considered as the world’s largest democracy and freedom of speech being a fundamental piece for democracy, the updated rules for governing Internet in India are too generic for comfort. In a country driven by regional politics and politicians more than eager to make mountains out of molehills, social networking sites and bloggers have had it rather tough.
Back in 2008, Google’s Orkut was at the receiving end when a user’s negative comments against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi came to light. Termed as derogatory messages, there was an arrest made since Google decided to provide the cops with the user’s IP address. Another regional political party went on arampage damaging cybercafes when not so kind words were posted for their founder. In another case, reputed news anchor and Managing Editor for NDTV, Barkha Dutt served a legal notice to a blogger who called her out for what he felt wasshoddy journalism during the horrific 26/11 attack on the Taj hotel in Mumbai.
All these cases bring us to the updated laws for Internet and cybercafes in India. Ambiguous verbiage in the laws has dangerous implications on freedom of speech over the Internet. As MediNama points out, the rules are stringent and vague. Left to one’s interpretation of what is (politically) correct or incorrect, the ISP can be forced to bring down websites. Quoting one of the subrules in the new law:
Users shall not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share any information that is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner [...]
users may not publish anything that threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation.
So if I were to write something defamatory and hateful against a country’s government where the world’s most wanted terrorist was found despite their denial, I can get into some trouble or maybe not. If I were to write something against a political leader in India, I will most likely be taken to task for.
The updated rules for cybercafes make it difficult for cafe owners to operate since they will have to register with an agency and have to be responsible for ensuring that their equipment is not used for illegal activities. (In combination to the new laws, the cybercafe owner must ensure that no one is posting something defamatory about someone?) In addition, the cafes will have to install safety and filtering software that restrict and possibly avoid access to pornographic and obscene information. The word obscene is left to one’s interpretation. In what might be a big blow to restaurants offering free WiFi to customers will also be falling under these restrictions. The registered cafes will be required to keep a copy of user identification and details such as Name, Address, Gender, Type of (authentication) document, login and logout times.
So much for freedom of speech.

Consumers are switching on to the possibilities of digital reading, swapping physical books for the screens on their tablets, e-readers and laptops.
According to a recent survey by Gartner Inc, 52 percent of tablet and iPad users find it easier to read text on their digital display than in printed texts. A further 42 percent of tablet owners said the reading experience is about the same on both mediums.
Digital text consumption is now virtually on par with print consumption, but that doesn't mean e-books and digital texts will replace printed literature anytime soon.

"There are concerns that digital media will cannibalize print media, based on the general decline in newspaper sales and take-up of online news services in many parts of the world, but the evidence from our research is that print and online are not generally regarded as direct substitutes by consumers," said Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner. "Something more complicated than a straightforward substitution of print to digital media is taking place."

Many respondents stated that they prefer the digital screens of tablets and e-readers to printed text, but laptop users did not concur. Forty-seven percent of laptop users said they find it harder to read content on their computer screen than in a book. Thirty-three percent of laptop owners said the reading experience is about the same.

Age is a defining factor in reading preferences. Younger readers are happier to read text on digital displays than those aged 40 to 45.

Men found digital reading slightly easier than their female counterparts.

The survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2010 and surveyed 1,569 consumers from the US, UK, China, Japan, Italy and India.

Source | http://www.timeslive.co.za/

Oxford Medicine Online

Oxford Medicine Online Is Pleased To Announce The Launch Of Oxford Medical Libraries Online Welcome to Oxford Medicine Online
...a single access point for online medical resources from Oxford University Press
Oxford Medicine Online allows users to browse and search a range of OUP's online medical textbooks and handbooks from a single location. All of the titles included within Oxford Medicine Online are listed in the browse menus below, with the most popular titles, and most recently added titles, displayed on the right-hand side of the screen.

♦ Learn more: Information on all of our resources is available on our about pages
♦ Subscribe: Contact us for details on how institutions can subscribe, or visit our web catalogue for details on individual subscriptions
♦ Request a free-trial: 30-day free-trials are available for institutions
♦ Recommend a resource: Our online form lets you recommend resources to your librarian

Browse by
SpecialityCareer StageSeries

Source  | http://oxfordmedicine.com/