Sri Chinmoy, the spiritual guru, who was among the nominees for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, died of a heart attack at his home in New York. He was 76.
Sri Chinmoy dedicated his life to serving mankind, inspiring his followers to feats of extreme physical endurance.
Among world figures who sent tributes were Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who said his close friend Sri Chinmoy will forever remain a man who dedicated his life to peace.

Prithwis Mukhopadhyay, a ninth grader at Lake Junior High in Minnesota is one of 40 finalists who will travel to Washington to present his research on the Discovery Channel’s science talent hunt show ‘Young Scientist Challenge’.
Prithwis 14, will present his research on banana peels as a source of biogas energy. He filled one airtight jar with manure and another with banana peels, mixed both with water and connected each to an empty jar to collect gas. 
He set a heater near the jars and measured gas for 60 days. He found banana peels yielded five times more biogas then manure did, converting the pollutant into clean energy.

Vanu Bose son of famous sultan of sound Amar Bose, known the world over for his Bose Corporation, is working on using software to handle the integrated radio function in cellular phones. He wants to remake the wireless base station by changing phones from complex systems that incorporate hardware, software and electronics needed for wireless communications, into systems run primarily with software.
Bose’s software makes it possible for networks to switch modes automatically and his conviction has received the support of, for one, Charles River Ventures that invested into an $8 million funding for Vanu’s company AnyWave

ANDHRA DIASPORA

The Doctoral dissertation of a 26-year-old computer science student is having an unusual effect on security and transportation at Los Angeles International Airport. Praveen Paruchuri has designed a new software, based on a game theory that could prove to be a valuable tool for law enforcement officials manning security check points at international airports.
Guards are usually told to patrol in a random fashion, but being human, they 
tend to form habits that patient criminals are able to exploit easily.
To help make their rounds less predictable, Praveen Paruchuri and his colleagues at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles have created software that simulates various random paths that a guard could take airports and how criminals might react.
Potential rewards, such as catching more criminals, 
and costs, such as a terrorist explosion, are evaluated for each path, before the software suggests the best route.
Presently Paruchuri’s software is being tested at the Los Angeles international airport.

A Young Indian has made a dazzling debut in the international music market, whizzing to the top ten of Britain’s popular TV Airplay Music Chart even before his album is officially launched. Hyderabad-born Shayan Italia’s Reflection is fourth on the list, next only to Foo Fighters (The Pretender), Mark Ronson Feat. Amy Winehouse (Valerie) and Kanye West (Stronger), according to the latest Music Week .
The 28-year-old musician held an exclusive live performance for a select gathering at the famous Mint Leaf Restaurant here last night where Lord Karan Bilimoria described him as a budding music superstar.

NILESH MISTRY, 40, an illustrator based in Harrow, North West London, won the top prize in the "British Sari Story’, a countrywide sari design competition, created and staged by a cultural arts organisation that called for people to create sari designs reflecting British Asian life.
Mistry’s sari design demonstrated Harrow’s coat of arms and its elaborate borders illustrated the burrough’s citizens including a Somali woman in a burka, a hoodie with a cell phone, a Gujarati housewife, a Polish builder, an Afro Caribbean woman and a Muslim mullah.
Funded by the heritage lottery fund, the British Sari Story is part of the Mayor of London’s ‘India Now’ celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of Indian independence and celebrating British Asian heritage.
Mistry was presented the award by the first British Asian woman to receive a peerage, Baronness Flather.

Professor Nikhil A. Koratkar, associate professor in Rensselaer’s Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, has devised a method that involves infusing polymers with electrically conductive carbon nanotubes, then monitoring a structure’s electrical resistance to pinpoint the location and length of stress induced cracks in a composite structure.
Once the crack is located, engineers can send short electrical charges to the area to heat up carbon nanotubes and melt an embedded healing agent that will flow in to seal the crack giving it a 70 per cent recovery in strength.
Koratkar made a structure from common epoxy, the kind used to make lightweight frames of fighter jet wings, then added enough multiwalled carbon nanotubes to comprise one percent of the structure’s total weight.

Pune-born Mohammed S. Zadah, an NRI settled in Lagos, got the shock of his life when he found $490,000 missing from his bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Pune.
Internal investigations by the bank showed the amount was transferred to Bank of China, Shenzhen branch, based on forged messages and false emails by African national Abdel Madjid Djaidia.
An African national has been booked for cheating and forgery and the CBI is investigating the case.
However, the case is complicated by the fact that neither the victim nor the accused living resident of India.

NRI-PIO BODIES