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BPSC extends online application dates for various recruitment exams - Times of India

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BPSC extends online application dates for various recruitment exams - Times of India

PATNA: The Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) has extended the deadline online application for various recruitment examination 2020.

Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) has extended the BPSC Combined Competitive Exam (Mains) application deadline from May 28 to June 24, 2020.

The last date to apply for the BPSC Assistant Engineer (Civil, Mechanical & Electrical) vacancies has been extended from June 02, 2020, to June 24, 2020.

The last date to apply for the recruitment of the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) Assistant Engineer (Civil) has been extended from May 22 to June 24, 2020.

The date of online application for the post of BPSC Motor Vehicle Inspector in Transport Department, Govt of Bihar, has also been extended from June 9, 2020, to June 24, 2020.

The candidates who have applied or want to apply for these vacancies are advised to visit the official website of the state Commission to check further details related to the exam.

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KSET 2020 revised date released, check details here - Times of India

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KSET 2020 revised date released, check details here - Times of India

Mysore University has announced the revised exam date of Karnataka State Eligibility Test 2020. As per the latest update, the KSET 2020 examination will be held on June 21, 2020. The candidates who have applied for the KSET 2020 examination are advised to visit the official website of the exam to check further details.

The notification for KSET examination 2020 was released on february 01, 2020, and the online application process for the same was started on Monday, February 3, 2020. The last date to apply for the KSET 2020 exam was March 6, 2020. The last date for submission of online application with late fee of Rs 250 was May 25, 2020. Initially, the exam was scheduled to be held on April 12, 2020 (Sunday), however, it was postponed due to COVID-19 crisis.

The KSET will be consisting of two papers. Both the papers will consist of only objective type Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs). The test will be conducted in two separate sessions as mentioned below:

1 Hour (09:30 A.M to 10:30 A.M)

2 Hours (11:00 A.M to 1:00 P.M)

Paper-I: Shall consist of 50 objective type compulsory questions each carrying 2 marks. The questions which will be of general nature, intended to assess the teaching/research aptitude of the candidate. It will primarily be designed to test reasoning ability, comprehension, divergent thinking and general awareness of the candidate.

Paper-II: Shall consist of 100 objective type compulsory questions each carrying 2 marks which will be based on the subject selected by the candidate.

The candidate will have to mark the responses for questions of Paper-I and Paper-II on the Optical Marks Reader (OMR) Sheet provided along with the test booklet.

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COVID-19 crisis nudges universities embracing technology for education - Times of India

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COVID-19 crisis nudges universities embracing technology for education - Times of India

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even as the absence of a well laid out protocol for online classes poses series challenges to schools, universities in the state seem to have decided to take the untamed technology bull by the horns and domesticate it themselves. According to sources, APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University would be taking a lead role in shaping up a broad protocol and training facility for affiliated colleges. The university would suggest a bouquet of platforms, available free of cost, to the colleges. Using the same, each college can configure their online transaction platforms for academic transaction between faculties and students. Deliberations are also on regarding how to bridge the internet connectivity gap among students. During the lockdown period, the university has organised online training programme in which more than 100 teachers participated. The first online faculty development programme held from May 22 to 27 saw faculties developing 70 online courses for engineering students.

Taking the proactive initiative to the next level, Kerala University has developed an online platform modeled on Google Meet. The software UoKmeet, developed using Freesoftware, was launched by university vice chancellor V P Mahadevan Pillai on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Kerala State Higher Education Council has prepared a draft approach paper on the approach to be taken to higher education sector in the post-Covid scenario. The draft paper has laid stress on the need to embrace technology based academic transaction with immediate effect and wanted teaching community to realise it. It also predicted the inevitability of several ICT enaplatforms getting integrated to the main body of academic transaction and its seamless and ubiquitous use even after the Covid crisis.

The executive committee that met through video conferencing on Tuesday stressed on the importance of teachers’ training to in online technology platforms so that they would emerge as better equipped to harness the benefits and scope of the technology for themselves and for students. The draft paper of the council comes a few weeks after a committee appointed by the higher education department had taken sceptical views on relying on technology aided education to tide over the Covid induced crisis. Calicut University is perhaps the pioneer among varsities in Kerala that effectively embraced technology aided teaching learning systems, thanks to the educational multimedia research centre there. The centre has successfully curated several online courseware which are of high demand from students and faculties across the country. “The Centre has over 100 online courses to its credit. This includes ‘Art of C programming’, which has already been attended by around l people”, said the centre director Damodar Prasad.

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HCL's acquires Cisco's SON tech for $49 million; to boost 5G tech deployment

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HCL's acquires Cisco's SON tech for $49 million; to boost 5G tech deployment

New Delhi: Country’s third largest software services firm HCL Technologies has announced the acquisition of Cisco’s Self-Optimizing Network (SON) technology in an all cash deal for $49 million.

The acquisition, which comprises of products and services built on Cisco’s SON technology, will help HCL cater to customers in the telecommunications industry as SON has become a major component in the move towards 5G networks, including tier-one communications service providers globally.

As part of the deal, employees who work on Cisco’s SON technology will move from Cisco to HCL.

“HCL’s decision to make this acquisition comes in line with our Mode 3 strategy.

As we expand our footprint in this space and support the mobility needs of our customers; the SON products and services will now be included in our telecommunications offerings. This will gain further importance with 5G networks,” said Sukamal Banerjee, Corporate Vice President, HCL Technologies.

The Cisco SON technology uses machine learning and a set of applications to automate the Radio Access Network (RAN). It helps customers boost performance, harmonize the multiple technologies that comprise a RAN, and maximize the capabilities of?existing infrastructures, resulting in reduced capital and operational expenditures.

“We are proud to lead the next phase of the Cisco SON business journey, especially regarding 5G, and look forward to supporting new and existing customers with continued innovation,” he added.

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Trump's move against social media cos unlikely to change India's stand

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Trump's move against social media cos unlikely to change India's stand

NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump’s executive order diluting the immunity enjoyed by social media companies is unlikely to change India’s stand on making firms such as Twitter and Facebook more responsible and accountable for content posted on their platforms.

India has been facing a challenge of misinformation on a large scale and has had to deal with situations such as mob lynching due to unchecked hate speech and fake news on social media. This has made New Delhi propose key policy changes to legislations that put the onus of checking content largely on social media companies.

India and the United States, though, are reconsidering the immunity for different reasons, said Udbhav Tiwari, policy advisor with Mozilla.

“While India wants to compel platforms to carry out better content moderation and cooperate with law enforcement, the US seems to think that current content moderation practices are negatively impacting political neutrality and wants to rein in such practices,” Tiwari said.

Indian policymaking is unlikely to be immediately influenced since most large social media companies are based in the US and their product policies are made keeping in mind American laws, he said, although this policy change may have “far reaching ramifications globally” if it goes through.

There is also a key difference in US and Indian law on the kind of actions for which immunity is granted to social media platforms.

The US provides Good Samaritan protections under Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act by explicitly allowing intermediaries to restrict content on certain grounds.

On the other hand, India provides immunity to intermediaries under Section 79(2) of the IT Act, only on the condition that platforms do not modify content in any form. India does not provide any explicit Good Samaritan exceptions.

Industry experts expect Trump’s executive order to face widespread legal challenges.

The order, signed on Thursday, came after Twitter flagged Trump’s tweets with a fact check warning, alerting users to his claims about mail-in ballots.

“They’ve had unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences,” Trump said while signing the order. “There is no precedent in American history for so small a number of corporations to control so large a sphere of human interaction.”

Twitter has been unrelenting in its approach though and called the order an attempt to unilaterally erode and threaten the future of online speech and internet freedom.

The Indian government has been in the process of finalising amendments to the IT Intermediary Guidelines, which will require platforms to verify their users in order to discourage anonymous posting and need companies like WhatsApp to trace the origin of unlawful messages on court orders, among a host of measures to pin greater responsibility on companies for the content on their platforms.

Governments across the world are battling with the common problem of how to regulate social media, said a top government official.

“This episode highlights concerns of accountability and proliferation of fake news on social media platforms. Suitable legal regimes are evolving across the world and this seems to be one approach to it,” the official said.

Although companies are encouraged to fact check posts, the question of who runs those fact checks and who the fact checkers will be answerable to will be possible issues, he added. Once platforms start modifying or filtering content, challenges around why only one kind of content is flagged will also crop up, said the official.

Prasanto K Roy, a tech policy expert said that platforms rely on algorithms to moderate content, letting them screen millions of posts in real time, with human intervention only for escalations. It also allows a semblance of fairness and consistency, and plausible deniability. “The moment firms start blocking or restricting major handles, things can explode. Imagine the backlash in India if Twitter did to a Modi tweet what they did to Trump’s tweet?” he added. Twitter executives were summoned to the Parliamentary IT committee in February 2019 after a pro-government handle was blocked for abuse, and there was outrage when Jack Dorsey didn’t personally attend, said Roy.

Even as the US wants no interference in the name of security of its citizens and free speech, India wants more monitoring in the name of security of its citizens, and this is a classic dilemma, a former top bureaucrat told ET.

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The only online dating tips you need to succeed - Times of India

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The only online dating tips you need to succeed - Times of India

The Coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown that followed have changed our lives in many ways. From our personal life to the professional front, these changes are impossible not to accept. Whatever the situation might be, we are trying to live with it, if not make the best out of it. While the problems in our professional lives are being widely discussed and accepted, somehow those disturbing the balance in our personal life seem to have missed many’s attention. One such area that perhaps remain unaddressed is the dating life of people. With restaurants, malls, movie halls and other places of romantic getaways keeping their doors closed following government orders, those looking for a little romance, candlelight dinners and catching a movie together have no other options but to sulk at home. Does this mean dating someone is out of bounds now? No. According to an online extramarital affair website, their number of subscribers has increased during the lockdown. This means more and more people are into online dating. So, the competition to catch someone’s attention online is quite high, right? This is the right time to work on your online dating skills if you want to make an impression and succeed in this virtual world of romance. Here are some much-needed tips to help you achieve that.

The profile picture and bio When you are on an online dating platform, the first thing that catches other users’ attention is your profile picture and your bio. It is therefore very important to keep both real. Too much editing, putting a fake picture or a picture of your younger self is an absolute disaster. A bio is what presents you as an ideal candidate. Therefore you have to be very smart, avoid cliche, and lies while describing yourself. If needed choose a profile picture and write a bio before uploading it online and ask a friend, preferably one from the opposite sex, to give his or her view. You will then get an idea how it will work online.

Maintain an air mystery Online dating is almost like dating someone in real life. Imagine you meet a person for the first time and he or she is nothing but an open book. Now compare it with a date who likes to maintain an aura of mystery. Doesn’t the latter sound more interesting and promising? The same is the case with online dating. Instead of letting the person know everything about you on the first online date itself, you should keep something for the next meetings. The other person should be curious to know what’s next. That is how one date will progress to another.

Avoid making sexual jokes or innuendos In case you have used online dating platforms earlier, you would not be surprised to find how common it is for people to use such platforms to make sexual requests. This is an absolute no-no. Refrain from making sexual jokes and innuendos and of the other person does the same, ask him or her politely not to do so again.

Don’t be too dramatic or too reserved Now, some people end up being too dramatic or too reserved when they are on an online date. We can understand why they behave so. First, it’s not easy for someone to depend on a phone or a laptop to find romance. Therefore, they freeze and end up acting and talking funny. The best way to avoid that is by letting the other person lead the conversation. That would spare you from the trouble of finding a topic. But this does not mean that you would totally embrace a vow of silence. Try to express your opinion and views without being too forceful or dramatic. Keep the tone of your voice normal and the conversation light.

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Panjab University to conduct semester exams from July; issues SOPs - Times of India

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Panjab University to conduct semester exams from July; issues SOPs - Times of India

CHANDIGARH: Panjab University Exam Controller Dr Parvinder Singh informed that the varsity has finalised standard operative procedures (SOPs) to conduct exams for exit classes from July.

As per the SOP, a maximum of 150 candidates will be allowed at each centre in one session and exam duration will be of 2 hours.

“Not more than 15 candidates and an invigilator will be allowed in a room. No candidate living in red zones/containment zones will be allowed to appear in the exams. Separate arrangements will be made for them,” Singh told ANI.

The staffers on examination duty have to download the Arogya Setu application to check their COVID-19 status. The varsity has made wearing of masks mandatory for teachers, staff and students.

Also, examination halls will be sanitised and thermal screening of every entrant in the hall will be conducted. Any student or staffer under quarantine or having symptoms of Covid-19 will not be allowed to enter the centre.

As the country continues to witness an increase in coronavirus cases, Panjab University had vacated two of its hostels to convert them into quarantine centres to support fight against Covid-19.

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Thierry Delaporte, the first foreign CEO of Wipro, is no stranger to Indian IT

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Thierry Delaporte, the first foreign CEO of Wipro, is no stranger to Indian IT

Thierry Delaporte, the Capgemini executive who has been named as the first non-Indian CEO of Wipro is not a newbie to the country nor the Indian IT services industry.

After Salil Parekh, his former colleague at Capgemini and the current CEO of Infosys, led the French company’s $4 billion acquisition of iGATE five years ago, the largest such deal so far in India, it was Delaporte who integrated the IT services firm into its fold.

“We were worried (of cultural issues) as Capgemini India was running as a cost centre, while we were operating the India services model,” says Salil Ravindran, chief financial officer at Technosoft Corp. “His cultural sympathy was high.”

Indian IT services firms have built over three decades a model of delivering IT services from offshore locations such as India and at higher margins than global rivals.

Ravindran, who was then the deputy CFO at iGATE, engaged with Delaporte during the one and half years of integration of the IT outsourcer into the European consulting firm, helping it to scale its offshore workforce significantly in India. Capgemini calls the integration a success that has helped it grow its India workforce to over 1.25 lakh, nearly half of its global workforce

“He is very calm, composed, an intellectual and takes faster decisions,” says Ravindran about Delaporte, who lost out to Aiman Ezzat for the top job at Capgemini. Ezzat took over as CEO at Capgemini last week.

Delaporte, who joined Capgemini in 1995, through its acquisition of Sogeti, started with auditing. Soon, he led the finance operations for the company across regions outside of Europe. He moved to sales and later led Capgemini’s Global Financial Services Strategic Business Unit before moving on to head the company’s Latin American operations. In 2018, Delaporte was elevated to Group Chief Operating Officer that led to the exit of Parekh, who was also a contender for the role.

Now, two of India’s top IT services firms have an alumnus from Capgemini leading the respective companies.

Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji, who has seen the company lagging in growth for over a decade, has been looking at an outsider to lead the organisation.

“I am looking at teamwork. Other soft things that are needed in leadership is a certain sense of empathy and vulnerabiity,” Premji said during a panel discussion at Nasscom technology summit in February.

“Gone are the days when everybody had the right answer. The world is changing so quickly, the technology industry is changing so quickly. The ability to put people together, the ability to leverage what is outside you and bring it together,” he said.

Ravindran credits Delaporte for turning Capgemini to have a strong India focus model.

“He understands the India model and definitely a great client facing guy,” he says.

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UGC asks universities to consider SWAYAM MOOCs as credit courses - Times of India

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UGC asks universities to consider SWAYAM MOOCs as credit courses - Times of India

NEW DELHI: With uncertainty looming over reopening of campuses and holding of exams due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked universities and colleges to consider adopting the 124 SWAYAM MOOCs as credit courses for the July 2020 semester.

The students can thereafter sit for the exams to be conducted by the National Testing Agency in November, get the credits transferred thus overcoming the loss due to the lockdown. The regulatory authority has suggested that higher education institutions could get these courses ratified by the statutory bodies.

Currently there are 82 UG and 42 PG MOOC courses on offer under SWAYAM or ‘Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds’, an Indian massive open online course platform launched by the ministry of human resource development in 2017 to offer free online courses.

According to MHRD, since the lockdown from March 23, 2020, over 50,000 learners have accessed 1,900 MOOCs, which is in addition to the 25 lakh students enrolled in the January 2020 semester of SWAYAM.

UGC cited the Credit Framework for Online Learning Courses through SWAYAM for credit mobility, where students can learn online and take the SWAYAM semester exams to be conducted by the National Testing Agency and get the credits transferred to his/ her university.

In his letter to all the heads of higher education institutions, Rajnish Jain, secretary, UGC said: “In the prevailing Covid-19 scenario, universities and colleges are encouraged to make optimum use of the SWAYAM online platform…” and added, “The SWAYAM courses may be approved and adopted through the SWAYAM platform by the vice chancellor on the recommendation of dean academics/ heads of department of your university for credit transfer and ratified by the Academic Council.”

The SWAYAM semester exams will be conducted in November 14 and 15, 2020 and the UGC has asked the HEIs to plan their examination schedule accordingly so as to avoid any clashes.

The commission has also invited faculty members from the HEIs to submit their expression of interest for developing non-technology UG and PG courses to the consortium for educational communication (CEC), an inter-university centre of UGC, which is the national coordinator for the courses offered under SWAYAM.

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Fitness wearables provide early-warnings for Covid symptoms, study finds - Times of India

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Fitness wearables provide early-warnings for Covid symptoms, study finds - Times of India

WASHINGTON DC: Preliminary research has found that constant stream of data from wearable devices such as Oura rings, Fitbits and Apple Watches reveal early-warnings for coronavirus symptoms, days before people could even realize that they have been infected by the contagious infection, The Washington Post reported. That means fitness trackers could be on their way to becoming sickness trackers. The initial findings from two academic studies into the data from wearable devices prove to be a small step in the fight against the coronavirus, and a giant leap for wearable tech. Since March, a half-dozen studies have been exploring whether the constant stream of data that wearables gather about human bodies offers any clue about who may have caught the coronavirus. On Thursday, researchers at Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute in West Virginia, the US, reported that Oura ring data, combined with an app to measure cognition and other symptoms, can predict up to three days in advance when people will register a fever, coughing or shortness of breath. It can even predict someone’s exact temperature, like a weather forecast for the body, the researchers said. Professor Ali Rezai, the institute’s director, was quoted by the Post as saying that the technology is valuable because it is tuned to reveal infection early on when patients are highly contagious but do not know it. He called the combination of the smart ring and app a kind of “digital PPE,” or personal protective equipment. ‘It can say, “This individual needs to stay home and not come in and infect others,'” he said further. In addition to this, researchers at Stanford University studying changes in heart rate from Fitbits have also informed that they have been able to detect the coronavirus before or at the time of diagnosis in 11 of 14 confirmed patients they’ve studied. In this initial analysis, they could see one patient’s heart rate jump nine days before the person reported symptoms. In other cases, they only saw evidence of infection in the data when patients noticed symptoms themselves. “The bottom line is it is working, but it’s not perfect,” said professor Michael Snyder from the same varsity. However, accuracy is the question that hangs over detecting the coronavirus from a gadget. Fitness trackers started as a way to count steps, a relatively low-stakes measure. Marketers pushed the idea that everyone should take 10,000 steps per day, but it was never rooted in much science, the Post reported. As tech companies have grown more interested in health care, they have added more sensors to wearables. Fitbits now collect heart data, and Google agreed to buy the company last year to get closer to the bodies of millions. Apple was the first to receive Food and Drug Administration clearance for an Apple Watch app that could identify atrial fibrillation. The researchers feed weeks of historical data into software that hunts for patterns. These algorithms are able to spot things humans usually don’t notice about their own bodies, like a slightly elevated resting heart rate. Subtle changes in temperature, heart rate variability and sleep patterns allow the software to make predictions about what is likely to come in the days ahead. To detect the coronavirus, as opposed to just symptoms, Rezai said they’ll need more participants to train algorithms to pick up on the many, sometimes unexpected ways diverse bodies respond to the virus. Past studies have been able to link wearables data to undetected issues like high blood pressure, arrhythmia and early-stage cancer, and use it to improve real-time tracking of seasonal flu outbreaks. Therefore, researchers have opined that the coronavirus could be a game-changer. “Because everybody is going through this, it is an opportunity for us to collect data from essentially the entire population, which is very unique,” said Duke University professor Ryan Shaw who is leading a study on coronavirus smartphone and smartwatch named ‘Covidentify’.

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Delhi University's open book test gets backing from MHRD - Times of India

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Delhi University's open book test gets backing from MHRD - Times of India

NEW DELHI: Backing Delhi University’s plan for holding online open book exams (OBE), Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) on Thursday (May 28) suggested a slew of measures so that no student was left behind due to economic reasons or lack of internet access.

The ministry has asked DU to tie-up with Common Service Centres (CSC) across the country for the final semester exams for third-year students and follow University Grants Commission’s guidelines for promoting first and second-year students. For students from areas like Jammu & Kashmir who fail to take OBE, a pen-paper exam has been proposed in September.

In the OBE proposed by DU, students would have to download the question paper, refer to study materials and mail the scanned answersheets back. Students from underserved areas and economically weaker sections, however, complained that they were at a disadvantage because of lack of internet connectivity or low speed. Some students also cited unavailability of digital infrastructure.

MHRD was of the view that universities needed to innovate to ensure that there was no academic loss in the larger interest of the students. Amit Khare, secretary (higher education), said it was suggested that DU tie-up with CSCs so that final-year students could take exams in case they were facing connectivity issues. “There are around 2.5 lakh final-year students. Every panchayat or block has CSCs where students can take OBE so that none are left behind,” he added.

“Also, DU should first start with those papers that have fewer candidates so that the impact of technical glitches is less and issues are resolved fast. The pen-paper exam has been suggested in September with the idea that online exams shouldn’t be the reason for disqualification of a student due to economic or other reasons,” said Khare.

The UGC guidelines for promoting first and second-year students state: “In case the situation doesn’t appear to be normal, grading of students can be composite of 50% marks on the basis of internal evaluation adopted by the universities and the remaining 50% marks can be awarded on the basis of performance in the previous semester.”

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