Why you should drink orange juice

Drinking a glass of orange juice a day can keep your skin glowing and keep cold away. Orange juice is known to contain a high percentage ofVitamin C, which is helpful in boosting the immune system. 

So, you will be less likely to catch various illnesses, such as cold or flu. Also, medical studies show that orange juice may help lower both cholesterol and blood pressure levels. 

What's your squeeze? 

Don't mix sugar with orange juice. Always remember that you do not need to drink a whole lot of orange juice in order to get these healthy benefits. In fact, since orange juice is fairly high in calories, avoid drinking too much of the stuff. If you are drinking canned orange juice, then be sure to check the sugar content on the label when choosing orange juice if you really want to get the highest amount of health benefits from your orange juice and, ultimately, prevent weight gain (since high sugar levels can cause it). 

Pulp fiction 

It is often said that orange juice containing pulp tends to be healthier for the body, but it is an issue that is often debated. If you have a stomach condition, remember that orange juice is very acidic and for that reason, it may cause a stomach upset. Due to its acidity, orange juice can also cause tooth damage , if left uncared for.

Blend cooking oils to stay away from heart diseases

Avoid reheating oil; use combination of oils and read food labels to ensure that transfats do not creep into your diet

While plans maybe afoot to welcome the New Year with health conscious resolutions, one vital culinary component that is linked to non-communicable diseases is often neglected – cooking oils. While the debate on the healthiest oil continues through various studies and reports, most of them clearly frown upon sticking to one type of oil for cooking. The reiterated thumb rule is to use a combination of cooking oils to derive the maximum benefits from fatty acids contained in these oils. “Use a combination of two or three types of oil regularly or rotate types of oil for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” says M.V.Alli, assistant professor, department of nutrition and dietetics, Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College.

RISK OF HEART DISEASE

The choice of cooking oil is important as the risk of heart disease is linked to the usage of oil, says N.Senthilkumar, interventional cardiologist, Kauvery Hospitals. Cooking oils containing saturated fats can elevate bad cholesterol or LDL cholesterol levels which block arteries and increases risk of heart disease, insulin resistance, and obesity.

Cooking oils are of various types: saturated like ghee and coconut oil, and unsaturated oils are further classified into monounsaturated and polyunsaturated oil apart from transfats.

Transfats are found in hydrogenated oils or vanaspati or vegetable shortening which are present in pastry products, pizzas, burgers. In his book, ‘how to protect your heart’ Dr. Senthilkumar recommends avoiding transfats, minimal use of saturated fats, and striking a balance between monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats which are present in mustard oil, groundnut oil, olive, gingelly, sunflower, safflower and canola, to name a few. “We do not recommend the use of saturated oils like coconut oil or ghee, particularly for persons with cardiovascular disease, diabetes or obese people,” says Dr. Alli.

Reheating oil

At a health meet in the city this year, cancer specialist, V.Shanta, chairperson, Adyar Cancer Institute, said reusing of oil was a cause for worry as reheating oil has been linked with cancer. The practice is prevalent due to rise in prices of essential commodities like oil and cap on subsidised gas cylinders. Reheating oil multiple times is the primary reason why doctors and dieticians frown upon eating out in restaurants and buying deep-fried snacks at roadside eateries.

Apart from refraining from reheating oil used for deep frying, baking, boiling, using non-stick pans are options recommended to achieve optimum oil usage. Read food labels to ensure that transfats do not creep into your diet, Dr. Senthilkumar suggests.

Standards of higher education in the country should be improved: Pranab

Hon'ble President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee delivers convocation address at SRM University

The standards of higher education in the country should be improved, President Pranab Mukherjee said here on Friday.

Delivering the convocation address at SRM University in Kattangulathur , Mr. Mukherjee said the country had universities such as Nalanda and Takshashila which had established themselves as international centres of educational excellence where students from all over the world came and studied. In contrast, many Indian students were now going abroad for higher studies.

Private sector’s role

Mr. Mukherjee said: “We need universities to provide quality education that meet international benchmarks. We must change the reality of our universities not figuring in the list of top universities of the world. Indian universities should aim at becoming top educational institutions in the world with global standards of research, teaching and learning. With unlimited demands and limited resources, it is important that the private sector also contributes its best to the provision of higher education in India. The private sector has played a key role in higher education in other countries across the world. Many top universities including Harvard, Yale and Stanford are the result of efforts of private sector. There is no reason why Indian private sector cannot achieve similar results.”

Value-based education

A huge responsibility lay with the educational institutions, said K. Rosiah, Tamil Nadu Governor. Mr. Rosiah said: “We need value-based education which synthesises the moral fabric of the individual and generates a culture of peace in society and makes one’s life in harmony with all existence. It should prepare the youth to face the challenges and responsibilities of the future.”

Honorary degree of Doctor of Science was conferred on V.K. Saraswat, Director-General, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and P.R. Goyal, eminent physician.

GATE-2013 to get tougher

The increasing interest in higher education among the technical graduates in the country is a direct reflection of the growing number of aspirants for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). The aspirants have grown from a mere 1.8 lakh in 2008 to 7.7 lakh in 2012.

The GATE-2013 will see more numbers and certainly be tougher for two reasons. Due to sluggish recruitment in the IT industry more students are likely to appear while on other hand Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) are recruiting in large numbers and GATE qualification is mandatory for most of those jobs.

Moreover, nearly 90 per cent of the applicants take the test unlike the Civil Services where about 50 per cent of applicants actually appear.

The GATE-2013 to be conducted by the IIT Bombay will also see several changes. Out of 21 papers in GATE 15 papers will be conducted in online mode this year. Last year only six papers were online while the previous year only four papers were in the online mode. However, this may not be a concern as GATE aspirants are used to online test like AIEEE or BITSAT.

Another change brought in for the exam includes exemption of application fee for female candidates to attract more number of girl students. The fee will be Rs. 1,200 for general and OBC candidates and Rs. 600 for SC, ST and Physically Challenged boys.

Till last year GATE score calculation used method of average and standard deviation of marks scored by all students. In the new formula to be applicable from this year, the average and standard deviation terms do not refer to the entire population, but to specific ability levels (qualification marks and top 0.1% of students). The score will be valid for two years.

The three-hour exam with 65 questions (30 one-mark questions and 35 two-mark questions) summing up to 100 marks will have questions from core subjects, engineering maths and general aptitude. “Questions from the core engineering subjects far outweigh the other two areas with 70 per cent weightage. But, General Aptitude and engineering maths with 15 marks each, play a vital role in maximising the score,” says Prudhvi Reddy, Course Director of GATE at TIME institute.

Mr. Reddy feels good performance in aptitude and Maths ensure the minimum qualification marks. “Offline mode will have only multiple choice questions. But, online mode exams will also have numerical answer type questions accounting for 15 marks.” Questions are likely to test the applicants’ grip on basic concepts and the ability to apply them in problems. The GATE notification issued gives an overview of the areas where applicants will be tested. These can be broadly categorised in to four types - recall, comprehension, application and Analysis and Synthesis. “Most of the recall based questions will be in the one mark category. Thorough knowledge of fundamentals and extensive practice are the only two factors that can bring success here,” Mr. Reddy says. The GATE trainers advice that candidates should plan their preparation strategically. Attempting previous papers and analysing the weightage given for various topics are crucial elements.

However, aspirants will face tough competition for six papers - CSE, ECE, EEE, ME, PI and IN that account for 90 per cent of the applicants. All these will be in the offline mode on second Sunday of February 2013.

On 09-11-2012, I got Doctorate in Management(Ph.D.)from Hon'ble Governor of Tamil Nadu, His Excellancy Dr. K Rosaiah.

New qualifying criteria dashes hopes of many NET aspirants

Candidates who failed may seek legal recourse

The high hopes with which a majority of candidates appeared for the UGC’s National Eligibility Test in June after a change in the question paper pattern have come crashing after the publication of results earlier this week.

For the first time, NET was conducted in objective mode for all three papers in two sessions. Till then, the third paper in descriptive format was not favoured by many. However, the relief over replacement of the descriptive format with multiple-choice questions has turned out to be short-lived.

The adoption of new qualifying criteria by the UGC has denied thousands of candidates an opportunity for lectureship in universities and colleges.

The candidates blame the UGC for coming out with a last minute specification that an aggregate of 65 per cent in three papers was necessary for qualification for general category candidates. The qualifying minimum was fixed at 60 and 55 per cent for OBC and SC/ST/visually challenged/physically challenged categories.

While the NET notification stated that the scores of only those candidates who score the minimum specified marks would be considered for the preparation of result, the UGC’s new criteria for qualification required candidates in general, OBC, and SC/ST/VC/PC categories to post minimum scores (out of 350 — 100 marks each for first and second paper, and 150 marks for third paper) of 227.5, 210, and 192.5 respectively.

So far, corresponding scores of 155, 138 and 130 were accepted as passing minimum for the three categories of candidates. The NET notification stated: “Only such candidates who obtain the minimum required marks in each paper separately, as mentioned above, will be considered for final preparation of result. However, the final qualifying criteria for Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and Eligibility for Lectureship shall be decided by UGC before declaration of result.”

The candidates are shocked. “The result has caused depression. My efforts have gone in vain,” lamented Gajendran, an Assistant Professor, who felt confident about clearing NET this year, after many attempts over a decade.

His overall score of 188 did not measure up to UGC’s new criteria. Had the UGC struck to the pattern of passing minimum it had been following so far, the pass percentage would have increased manifold, said Vijayalakshmi, a professor in a private college.

While NET/SET is the minimum eligibility for recruitment and appointment of assistant professors in universities/ colleges/ institutions, candidates with Ph.D. in accordance with UGC Regulations 2009, are exempted from clearing this examination.

But, with Ph.D. turning out to be costly and time-consuming, candidates usually devote their attention to clearing NET first before pursuing Ph.D. Hence, their disappointment is only natural, according to S. Iyyampillai, Professor of Economics in Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi, who has vast experience in training candidates for NET/SET

Candidates across the country who have not passed the NET due to the “last minute” changes in the eligibility norms have planned to get their acts together for legal recourse, Ms. Vijayalakshmi said.

No Indian institute in world’s top 200 universities

America's Massachusetts Institute of Technology grabbed the top slot from UK's Cambridge University in a list of QS world university rankings for 2011-2012.

There was little reason for India to smile when the prestigious QS World University Rankings were announced recently. No Indian institute figured in the world’s top 200 universities of the list of 700 that were ranked under the scheme.

For the first time, America's prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology grabbed the top slot from UK's Cambridge University in a list of world university rankings for 2011-2012. However, four of the six top slots in a global university “league table” by QS World University Rankings were occupied by the UK universities.

With MIT leading the list, Cambridge University slipped to the second spot and Harvard still down to the third rank.

University College, London (UCL), Oxford and Imperial took the fourth, fifth and sixth places respectively. The seventh place was awarded to Yale University, followed by University of Chicago, Princeton University and the tenth position to California Institute of Technology.

The QS World University Rankings is a ranking of the world’s top 700 universities by Quacquarelli Symonds using a method that has published annually since 2004.

The QS rankings were originally published in collaboration with Times Higher Education from 2004 to 2009 as the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings. In 2010, Times Higher Education and QS ended their collaboration. QS assumed sole publication of the existing methodology, while Times Higher Education created a new ranking methodology with Thomson Reuters, published as Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

 

The QS rankings rate the world's top 400 universities, evaluating each institution's strengths in research, teaching, the employability of its graduates and international outlook. While India is yet to secure a place in the top 200, other Asian countries such as China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan sit comfortably among the top 100 of the rankings table, led by University of Hong Kong (22) and University of Tokyo (25).

“If we are serious about staying on top, the government must concentrate investment where it will have the most impact — in our world-class research-intensive universities,” director general of the Russell Group of research-based universities Dr. Wendy Piatt said.

In 2010, the Indian Institute of Delhi was ranked 202 in the list but it has fallen to 218th this time. Similarly, IIT-Bombay (was 187, now 225); IIT-Madras (was 262, now 281); IIT-Kanpur ( 249, 306); IIT-Kharagpur (311, 341); IIT-Roorkee (428, 438) and IIT-Guwahati (501, 563). The other universities have followed suit – University of Delhi (was 371, now 398); University of Mumbai (493, 578); University of Calcutta (506, 649) and University of Pune (578, 661).

India has scored very badly on quality research and fall in all the universities’ academic reputation. The employer reputation of IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Guwahati and universities of Mumbai, Calcutta and Pune has slid backwards too. For the academic and employer ratings, inputs from as many as 33,000 academics and 16,785 employers from more than 130 countries were taken by QS, the largest surveys of their kind ever conducted.