Monday Morning

We’ve finally arrived at the last issue of the year. That time of the year with empty hostels and barren roads, not to forget scorching heat of otherwise ‘green-city’ Rourkela. While most students are home, enjoying the vacation in glory; only a handful of the Ph.D. and M.Tech students remain in campus,

Tragedy hit NIT Rourkela yet again when one of the present B.Tech second year girls, Ms.Swarupa Rani Behera, passed away last Wednesday i.e. on 2nd of May. She was suffering from a severe form of throat cancer which was detected in the 3rd semester after which her life was never the same. She finally

This last Director's Desk of the academic year, we take the Director down memory lane about a few commitments made, in the hope that their fulfilment will come to sight.

MM: Students going out of station for placement interviews are granted official leaves while the students

Someone last year said, “We might not see this kind of placement statistics again, for a long time at NIT, Rourkela.”  Whoever it was, he was highly mistaken. The placement season 2011-12 at NIT Rourkela, living upto the ‘Great Expectations’ of  everyone concerned, has seen the best placements in

Quintessentially quiet and sincerely studious is what your first impression would be about Sourav Pattanayak, final year B. Tech, from the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. Yet, our ex-Chief Coordinator, current Chief Mentor and ‘Once a Hall 7ite, always a Hall7ite’ is

“Life is always full of surprises. The best way to handle these surprises is to take life as it comes!”

This motto has helped Kreeti Das evolve as a person and become what she is today! A final year student of

“Nobody's a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It's hard to stay on top.”

These words of Anwesha Sahoo, final year undergraduate of the Department of Civil Engineering, who recently bagged a job in

When Professor Supratim Giri of the Chemistry department walks into the Open Elective classroom of Spectroscopy or Chemical Kinetics, students perceive a difference. May it be his accent, the green folder in his hands or the mid-semester histogram, curiosity arouses in the minds

The mini text book exhibition for the B. Tech, Dual Degree and Integrated MSc Students was organized on the first floor of SAC from 9th to 13th April 2012. The book fair continued from 4PM to 8PM and students were allowed to order books with the usual amount of Rs.1000 which is assigned to them

It’s been over two weeks now since the Webmail informing us that the installation of the two new diesel generators is finally complete, reached us. Students just simmered with hope as they were about to realise their dream of not having a power cut again in the campus, only to see their hopes

A foreigner in NITR is quite an unusual sight, especially if it is not during the International Students’ Meet. But during the past few days a few students and professors have come from foreign countries to our institute under the following projects.

DAAD Project: “A new

IIT Bombay has initiated the program “Spoken English Workshop” under National Mission on Education through Information and Communicaton Technology (NME-ICT), a project of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The project develops tutorials for different open source

League of Champions, the annual cricket tournament of the Institute, was held from 19th March to 12th April this year. This unique tournament, organized by the students in the even semester, is conducted similar to the IPL format. Each of the four teams is given a virtual amount of five crore rupees. The

The institute has initiated a Summer Internship Programme with an objective to encourage ambitious and bright B.Tech, B.Sc and M.Sc students from different institutes/universities across India who has completed 2 to 3 years of studiestoward Engineering or Science degree. Ignited young minds from

The Computer Centre of the Institute organized a workshop on IBM SPSS on Wednesday, 11th March, 2012. SPSS, recently licensed by the Institute, is a computer program used for statistical analysis. Trainers from SPSS conducted the workshop which was attended by five students. The registration

A powerful earthquake and aftershock struck the Indian Ocean off of northern Indonesia Wednesday, triggering tsunami watches and evacuations throughout the Indian Ocean basin, from Australia to Kenya.

The first temblor, a magnitude 8.6 quake, struck at 2:38 p.m. local time, along a segment of a fault on the sea floor some 269 miles southwest of the coastal city of Banda Aceh,

In Facebook's largest acquisition to date, the social media giant says it will spend $1 billion to buy the photo-sharing software company Instagram.

Instagram lets people apply filters to photos they snap with their mobile devices and share them with friends and strangers. Some of the filters make the photos look as if they've been taken in the 1970s or on Polaroid

Three Indian students are among 50 from around the world chosen for this year's prestigious Gates Cambridge scholarship established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 and awarded annually to the “world's most brilliant” scholars.

They are Siddhartha Kar, SuhasiniSen and AnandShrivastava. They will begin their courses at Cambridge University in October.

The

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Microsoft Corporation announced that the AICTE will deploy Microsoft Live@edu, a cloud-based solution over the next three months to more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout India. The cloud deployment will expand students’ access to high-quality technical education and collaboration.

Live@edu is a

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the owner and administrator of the GMAT exam, announced the induction of IIM Lucknow as its seventh member school in India. The other member schools include ISB Hyderabad, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, SPJMIR Mumbai, SOM NMIMS University, Mumbai and Great Lakes Chennai.

“Our association with GMAC would give us access to a larger

12th April, was the last day of NIT Premier League football tournament which started on 26th March. After a few action packed matches, which saw some top-class ‘footwork’, the last match was played between G.D. Birla Hall and Dhirubhai Ambani Hall of Residence. The tournament was played on a

The world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, Caterpillar Inc, visited NITR a few days back for on-campus recruitments. Nishan Das, final year student of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is one of the four students who bagged this super dream job. MM met up with Nishan

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

The band which has held on to it’s roots in this generation of hard-core metal and western musical influences and taken classical and fusion music to another level altogether, was featured in the national newspaper, The Indian Express, last month doing the entire NITR community,

The training & Placement Cell of the Institute has completed the formation of the Placement Committee for the academic year 2012-13. The following is its composition:

TED is a non-profit organization devoted to ‘Ideas worth Spreading’. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to now become an international organization which supports world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading,

We, the Monday Morning Team, hereby apologize for grave factual errors in an article named "Over the Ages: Evolution of Music at NITR" published on 9th April, 2012. People, NITR band members from the alumni, and whosoever has been hurt by this article may kindly excuse us.

The club Créateur, under the guidance of Prof. S. Chatterjee, Department of Mining Engineering, is organizing a workshop on COMSOL multi-physics software in the Institute.

The COMSOL is finite element method based software. It has multi-disciplinary applicability, including Civil,

After the recent performaces by NITR students in various technical conferences and cultural fests in outside institutes, we yet again have a stupendous achievement to be proud of. Young engineers from across the country met for two days in Jamshedpur to take part in the second edition of 'Behind the

As per the guidelines of NPIU, there is a provision in TEQIP-II for improving the skills of weak students by providing academic support to them. For this, NITR has started special classes for improving their skills by experts from inside & outside of the Institute, in the subject areas

Setting all rumours to rest, yet another Public Sector Undertaking, Engineers India Limted visits the campus and picks up three of the brightest, paying a staggering figure of 9.9lpa.

Engineers India Ltd

Sparkling seas and California’s famed sunshine—along with thousands of research presentations and a bustling exposition—drew chemists from around the world for the 243rd American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition held between 25th - 29th March at the

The Rotaract club of the Institute visited the Birsa Munda School, located near CWS Hospital, on 7th April, Saturday, to organize a drawing competition for students of the school. The project was aimed at initiating a culture of extra-curricular activities in the school.54 students from

Social networking giant Facebook is reportedly planning to create a new search engine which would help people to navigate on the website better.

A Bloomberg Businessweek report said the firm has deployed two-dozen Facebook engineers onto the ambitious project, which aims to improve the search engine currently available on the social network.

According to the report, the

Apple will become the world's first trillion-dollar company when its shares top $1,000 each, Wall Street analysts have predicted.

The technology giant's shares were worth $633.38 last week as its stock price rose above Google's for the first time, the Daily Mail reported on Friday.

Brian White, of Topeka Capital Markets, then claimed Apple's sky-high share price will hit

ENCYCLOPAEDIA Britannica is to stop publishing print editions of its flagship encyclopaedia for the first time since the sets were originally published more than 200 years ago.

The book-form of Encyclopaedia Britannica has been in print since it was first published in Edinburgh in 1768. It will stop being available when the current stock runs out, the company says.

The

IIT-Bombay has reason to rejoice. The institute is clearly the hub of innovation in the country with three of its alumni, VSK Murthy Balijepalli, Nitin Joshi and VanteruMahendra Reddy making it to the MIT's India TR35 2012 list of young technology innovators.

This list contains 20 young innovators, all under-35 years, from the fields of bio-medicine, communications, computing,

IIT-Delhi has recently taken a decision to prohibit its students from using the internet in the hostel premises between 1am and 6am. The institute, during these five hours, disconnects the internet facility available to students in their hostel rooms.

The reason, according to ShashiMathur, dean, students, IIT-D, is to ensure that the academic performance of students does not

Amitpal Iqbal Singh Bhatia - a long name it is; the list of achievements tends to be much longer. This final year Electrical Engg student hails from Gondia, Maharashtra and happens to be the Class Representative of his branch, EE 2008-12. Placed in the first company that visited NIT-Rkl -

The Indo-UK symposium on Biocomposites for Various Engineering Applications held on 27th -28th March witnessed Prof. S C Mishra deliver the key-note lecture. The main motive of the symposium organized by the Centre for Product Design, conducted at the IISC, Bangalore was to promote collaborative

“I never felt the heat of preparations for my exams.” These are the words of Mr. Ranjan Kumar Rath, a to be Electronics and Communication Engineer who scored a GATE rank of AIR 34 this year and has many other achievements added to his laurel list, something

“When in doubt, go to the library”, is what Ronald Weasley said about Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter books. One can safely assume that the Director is NITR’s library; the one-stop solution to all problems, the ultimate answer to all queries and the Wikipedia for Team MM. This week, we

The world is full of good, successful people. Meet, Mrudula Annavajhala, final year student of Chemical Engineering at NITR, who very recently received admits from two world-famed universities for Masters Education, namely - Rutgers University, New Jersey and University of Florida. A very dynamic

The Student Activity Centre is a complex body which has a complex structure and a much more complicated system. Some of it’s rules are well implemented and well-known, properly put-down; the SAC elections being a prime example. But, for many other aspects, the laws governing the ‘centre’ are

A relatively new venture in the comity of clubs registered under the SAC, the Vortex club of NIT Rourkela saw its light of the day on March 2010 under the able leadership of Rahul Goyal, Susheel Kumar Singh and YatinChhabra; its founder members. It remained inactive though,

For all those football fans out there who burned with jealousy during the super six tournaments, don’t worry, from now on there is “FUTSAL”!!!! Futsal, is a portmanteau of Spanish words for soccer, “FUTbol” and indoor, “SALon”, so it can be roughly translated as “indoor football”. This new

Last weekend, we witnessed all the gamers battling it out till late night in the common room of M.V. hall to be the champions of the world’s most famous computer game, counter strike. This special edition of “Jihaad”, the inter-clan counter strike tournament was held as a tribute to the

Facebook is not just about reaching out to friends but also foes as a new application allows you to add enemies to your profile.

EnemyGraph is a new application, available for free to all Facebook users, which lets you add enemies to your Facebook profile, including real victims from your friends list, or from other users of the application.

You can also

People across the world observed Earth Hour by switching off lights on Saturday, 31st April. Earth Hour is an initiative by the international wildlife and environmental body WWF where citizens and organisations around the globe show their support for action on climate change by turning off lights for one hour from 8:30 pm.

Organised by World Wide Fund for Nature, the 'Earth Hour'

Wishtel, a Mumbai-based company, last week launched two tablet PCs, Ira and Ira Thing, which support 23 Indian languages.

The seven-inch portable devices run on Taiwanese chipmaker VIA Technology's 800 MHz processor and operate on the Google Android ecosystem. While Ira sports a TFT LCD resistive touch screen, 256 MB RAM and 2GB of storage, the top-of-line Ira Thing features a

Sachin S. Kukke is the Asia-Pacific region winner and one of the six global winners of the YouTube Space Lab 2012 contest for young people to design experiments that can be performed in outer space.

The winners of the contest by YouTube and Lenovo, in cooperation with Space Adventures, NASA, European Space Agency(ESA), and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) were announced

Facebook has hired an engineering student for an annual package for Rs 1.34 Crore, making it as one of the biggest offers given to any alumnus of technical institution of the country.

The lucky man is a B.Tech student from Allahabad-based Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT). Hiring for a high amount, in 2010, a student from IIT

Sunday afternoon; for most NITians this is the time to ease bloated stomachs with a quick siesta! After a heavy Sunday feast, with the raging heat outside, most students can think of nothing but sleeping in front of a cooler, savoring the break from daily classes.But not

A notice on the boards of all hostels and the webmail at 4.40 pm on Wednesday, 21st March spread a wave of panic and chaos among students who had missed their mid-semester exams and were supposed to appear for the alternative mid-semesters. It said that the exams were supposed to begin the

"Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius. It is better to be absolutely ridiculous than be absolutely boring."

Going by the adage, a campus-literate NIT-Rourkelite could easily relate it to a very conspicuous, cherubic personality in the institute;

As the session is nearing an end with less than a month left for the end semester exams, the MM team approached Prof. K. C. Pati in his house for the Chief Warden’s Column with some complaints from students and some questions from the curious. A patient chief warden with an ever smiling face patiently heard us

Monday morning got in touch with the student convenor of the recently concluded International Students’ Meet (ISM), Mr.Asit Kumar Parida, a pre-final year student of Electronics & Communication Engineering to understandthe secret behind the much successful version of the festival.

MM:

Nowadays, every sporting event ending with the letters PL, promises a lot of excitement, coupled with a refreshing fast-paced format.

The new AXIS Bank ATM, about which talks had been going on since quite a while now, has finally started functioning. It was opened for the general mass after a brief inauguration function on Friday evening. This new ATM, which has been setup at the cycle stand adjacent to the Department of

Students of NIT RKL have displayed an excellent performance in two IEEE Conferences held at MNNIT, Allahabad and MANIT, Bhopal. Ten students from the final & 3rd year belonging to EE & ECE department presented their research papers in both the conference. Not seen often; those B.Tech students

In the beginning of the year, our honorable Director had put forth the proposition of working on the institute’s intellectual property, as one of the resolutions for the year. The last two days of this past week, had events conducted, which were very much in sync with the envisaged plan of action.

PAN-NIT is an online community whose purpose is to connect all NITians across the country to increase the brand development of NIT, nationally and globally.

An official meeting of PAN-NIT was organized in NIT Warangal by the students during the ISM, in which the student representatives

The department bagged a new project under the funding of DST (Department of Science and Technology), GoI. The project, one of the biggest in the department, will receive a support of Rs. 1.01 crore. TRL Krosaki Refractories Ltd. would be a partner in the project. The project, to be spearheaded by Prof. Debashish Sarkar, is titled ‘Development of Low-Carbon Steel

PhD research scholar Mrs. HunnyMehrotra of Computer Science department, gets her project entitled “Multidimensional indexing of very large iris biometric databases”, technically recommended by Ministry of Science and Technology,  Government of  India.

Almost everything Facebook does, Yahoo contends in a just filed patent suit, is based on something that Yahoo did first.

“Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profile for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology,” the suit said. Yahoo also lay claim to Facebook’s core

Hungarian-born EndreSzemeredi has won the 6 million kroner ($1 million) Abel Prize for his studies in mathematics and contribution to computer sciences.

The mathematics award committee says Szemeredi's efforts have provided "fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science."

Szemerédi has also done a similar astonishing work of

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investigating the feasibility of developing software that can identify a user based purely on the style and speed of his or her typing.

“What I’d like to do,” explained Richard Guidorizzi, DARPA product manager, in a talk last year, “is move to a world where you sit down at a console, you identify yourself, and you just

It seems like everything is going online, even education. The Union Minister for Human Resource Development has launched Virtual Labs — a collection of ninety-one virtual laboratories containing hundreds of experiments. The experiments span nine disciplines in Science &Engineering; Virtual Labs is part of a comprehensive undertaking to provide easily accessible and high quality education

CBSE and ISC students scoring 90% and above can now seek admission in undergraduate courses at Oxford University. The students will, however, have to appear for admission tests and interviews for securing a seat in this highly prestigious academic institution.

This is the first time in the university’s 915-year history that it will recognise at least two of India’s

A new M.Tech course by the name ‘Industrial Ceramics’ is to be introduced in the department. This course has already been approved by the Board of Governors, NITRKL and passed by the Senate. Currently, the department is in the process of formulating the complete

The Head of the department, Prof. Japes Bera has recently attended the  2012 2nd International Conference on Key Engineering Materials (ICKEM 2012) which was held in Singapore from 26th to 28th February. This Conference was organized by the International Association for

IIM-Bangalore and United world School of Business joined hands to create a National Platform to create awareness about India’s impending demographic dividend, and to identify ignited minds across the country that shows potential to lead Young India to its growth in the form of “United Minds”

Campus Journalism and News Reporting define what we do at Monday Morning, the official weekly e-newsletter of National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. But what makes us stand out is what we deliver. Into its sixth year now, Monday Morning has been known for its growth and superior

This week, we start off with our traditional series on our beloved Monday Morning final year ex-coordinators and current mentors, who will be passing out in a couple of months’ time. Aradhana Nayak, presently

Celebrities have always been the major attraction for any fest in any campus. This year’s celebrity night during the International Students’ Meet 2012 was a hit and among others, the Film and Music Society delivered a hit. Monday Morning decided to approach the FMS convenors for some

Seldom does it happen that a form of print media appears in another form in an altogether different print medium. Careers360, the first and flagship magazine of Pathfinder Publishing Pvt. Limited and under the Outlook group, in it’s March issue

The department of Mechanical Engineering has been cherished with the addition of a new, enthusiastic faculty. Prof. Suraj Kumar Behera joined the institute in January 2012. He is currently pursuing his PhD here at NIT Rourkela. In addition to that he is currently assigned

Centre for Alumni Relations & Resource Generation (CARRG), NIT Rourkela held Alumni Induction Ceremony on 13th March, 2012 in the lawn in front of B. B. Auditorium. It was a get-together among outgoing students and faculties over evening snacks and cold drinks. As Prof. K. K. Mohapatra, Dean

In the wake of the Rs. 1.5 Crore grant the Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department received

Pantomime, the official drama club of NITR, gave a fitting farewell to Late Kumar Gaurav, who was an active member of the club, by visiting the OSAP Leprosy colony on the 16th of March. They donated one black board, one book shelf for the library and one carrom board and

The Entrepreneurship Cell of the Institute held a two-day summit, Spring Meridian, this past weekend. Four competitions and two Guest Lectures comprised Spring Meridian. The results of the events are:

1.

Clarion, the Literary and Debating club of the Institute, held two back-to-back events last week for the first year students.

‘Raconteur’ was held in B. B. Auditorium on Tuesday, 13th March, commencing at 5:30 pm. 53 participants turned up. The winner of this event was Subhankar Ghosh.

The second event, ‘Ad Lib’ was held on Thursday, 15th March in B. B. Auditorium. It was

14th March, known as Pi Day among mathematicians, is also the birthday of Albert Einstein, one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever seen. Mathematics Club, NIT Rourkela celebrated Pi Day on 14th March, 2012 in the lawn near B. B. Auditorium. The program commenced at 5:30 pm with a cake,

Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), NIT RKL Chapter will be conducting classes on different aspects of Vehicle Mechanics & Automobile components. The topics of discussions will be Engine and transmission, Suspension and steering, Aerodynamics in automobiles, Braking system,

Lab Upgradation

The department of Mining Engineering is now equipped with latest Softwares like VENTSIM & PETRASIM installed in the

The Board of Research in Fusion Science and Technology (BRFST) has granted an extension of 6 months to a project that was sanctioned a year ago by the same organization. This decision was taken in the recently concluded ‘Annual BRFST Project Review Meet.

The meeting was held at

Two very proud achievements that have gone almost unnoticed for over 3 months now are the honors brought to home by two Ph.D students, Ganesh Kumar Sahu and AbhishekChaudhury, of the department of Ceramic Engineering.

The former won the second prize in the ‘Poster

One of the few elements of the four year B. Tech life at NITR which make us feel the essence of becoming an engineer and getting some bragging rights is the Robotics Club of the Institute, CYBORG. The club organized a Robo Show on the 10th March, 2012 during the

Physicists who shocked the scientific world by claiming to have shown particles could move faster than the speed of light have admitted it was a mistake due to a faulty wire connection.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

But researchers at the CERN lab near

A proposed new time-keeping system tied to the orbiting of a neutron around an atomic nucleus could have such unprecedented accuracy that it neither gains nor loses 1/20th of a second in 14 billion years - the age of the Universe.

“This is nearly 100 times more accurate than the best atomic clocks we have now,” says one of the researchers, Scientia Professor Victor Flambaum, who

The Admission Committee of IITJEE has decided to grant 4.5% reservation to minorities within the 27% seats reserved for the OBCs (Other Backward Classes) from this academic year.

Those minority candidates who had submitted the application forms online and have not mentioned their status can do so on the IIT-JEE website — http://jee.iitd.ac.in/obcminority.php — by giving an

The Prime Minister's Office has taken a big leap in the Web world, looking to engage all forms of social media to reach the plugged-in GenNext.

Armed already with a facebook account, a Twitter handle, the PMO debuted on the popular video forum YouTube, putting up footage of two speeches made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

“PMOIndia is now also on YouTube at

The Indian Space Research Organisation’s prestigious mission to Mars has received a boost with the Budget presented in Parliament on Friday making an allocation of Rs. 125 crore during the coming financial year.

The overall budget for ISRO has gone up from Rs 4,432 crore to Rs 6,715 crore with several other planned projects at a hike of Rs 2283 crore.

The Mars mission,

An NITian is a gifted child.

Do not think of adopting unfair means, you are an NITian.

Through the above few lines, we are constantly reminded of the fact that we are NITians, a class and breed apart. An NITian is not an ordinary individual. He is

CAT scores topped gossip charts for a while and now many anxiously await interviews. But amidst all the MBA buzz, tidings from Uncle Sam confirmed that someone from this final year batch shall pursue an M. S. Sumeet Kumar Dandapat, final year student, Electronics and Communication

Around a month after the successful cultural fiesta NITRUTSAV drew to a close, the much awaited International Students Meet (ISM) finally came to the fore. The event had long since been publicized as a mega-event encompassing

Brushing up old memories he, along with a few of the organizing team of the seminar conducted by SAE, went to grab a bite in backpost where he used to spend a lot of time during his graduating days in this institute. It is there that our team caught up with him, Dr. Prashant

The Vikram Sarabhai Hall of Residence has been a victim of postponed deadlines, dishonest contractors and whatnot. The hall was an on-going project since long and the construction seems to be never-ending. It started accommodating students in one of the blocks two years back. However,

After the tremendous show in Kabaddi and Football last week on our home turf, NITR performed reasonably well and gave all other NIT teams a run for their money in the Chess and Cricket events. NITR secured the bronze medal in Chess at NITK Surathkal. The team was led by captain Sharath

Lending a new dimension to online learning, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has launched MITx, under which selection of its courses will be offered through an online interactive learning platform.

MITx course materials are meant to foster learning at an individual pace. It features interactivity, online laboratories and student-to-student communication. MIT

A century after the Titanic disaster, scientists have found an unexpected culprit for the sinking: the moon.

The Titanic collided with an iceberg the night of April 14, 1912 and sank within hours, with the loss of around 1,500 lives. And according to a team at Texas State University, an unusually close approach of the moon three months earlier could have

We have all been living with KONY 2012 phenomenon since Tuesday, 6th March, 2012, when the video was released on YouTube.

In the past week, a documentary detailing accusations of vile acts committed by the Ugandan warlord has spread like wildfire on social media, prompting international outrage and a groundswell of support for his capture.

In the documentary, "Kony 2012,"

Pune students have once again taken the lead in a national-level competition and proved why the city is known as the Oxford of the East.

Students from MAEER’s Maharashtra Institute of Technology beat Ahmedabad’s Nirma Institute of Technology to emerge victorious in robotics competition ‘Robocon 2012’. The winning team from the engineering college would now

British-Indian firm DataWind has won the Smart UK Project award from UK government for nation's 'Most Innovative Mobile Company', beating competition from the other three finalists blippar, P2i and QRpedia. The competition run by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), began its search for UK's most innovative mobile company in November 2011.

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is a government

Tragic incidents have dogged NITR students for the past couple of months or so. In yet another, heart-wrenching and sadly unfortunate incident, we break to you the demise of Kumar Gaurav, B. Tech, second year from the Deparment of Mechanical Engineering, who had been missing since Sunday morning,

The verdict is in. Students want a change in the convocation gown. A whopping 479 out of the 582 voters have voted for a full body black coat and cape while just 3 voters have voted to retain the gown. Monday Morning decided to show the poll results to Director Sir, along with a few pressing

NIT Rourkela students seem to shining everywhere, leaving their mark on some tough competitions not just in India but across the world. After the tremendous show at IIT Kharagpur, where NITR bagged numerous awards, it was time to show their mettle at the Indian School of Mines’ annual cultural

The inter NIT competitions organized by O-INSA (organization of inter NIT student activities), normally held during the winter break was held during the February-March period this year. This year, NIT Rourkela was the host institute for the Football & Kabaddi matches. In both the sports,

The Institute has received and successfully completed many a projects in the past and most of them have contributed significantly to the scientific world and have often lead to path-breaking findings, which has lead to the scientific fraternity often getting back to their think-tanks.

This past week, the Training and Placement Cell achieved a new high, crossing the magical figure of 700 offers in record time with many more companies lined up and a few of them yet to declare their results. Kudos to the Placement Committee 2011-2012 for a splendid performance and we hope that last year’s figure of 713 will be crossed very soon and the current B. Tech batch will

Department of Mining Engineering hosted an Executive Development Program on Coal Mining for Officials of Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Limited (BCMCL), Bangladesh from 21st February to 5th March, 2012. It was a 15 days program for a Batch of 7 executives on Special Courses on

A team of twenty-three students of various streams, accompanied by Prof. S. Murugan, faculty in department of Mechanical Engineering and faculty advisor of SAE – NITR Chapter, participated in BAJA SAEINDIA 2012 held from February 17th to 19th at Pithampur, Indore. The 5th edition of

A new telephonic exchange project is under way in the Institute. Monday Morning met Dr. Santanu Behera, Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, who is the Professor-in-charge of the Telephone Exchange.

The present telephone exchange is of Semens, Hicon-301, its

Four representatives from Tata Consultancy Services were on campus on Thursday, 1st March 2012 to introduce students to their new online portal http://nextstep.tcs.com/. This session was part of the

This winter, the post graduate students along with the faculty members of the department of Chemical Engineering organized a “picnic”. The location was idyllic “Khandadhar” (somewhere between 100~110 kms from Rourkela city). A simple Google search might give enough hits, detailing the geography and demography of the location but no information is truly

A seminar on “Seismic Evaluation of RC Stepped Building Frames” was held on 17th February i.e., Wednesday in seminar hall of civil department. Prof. Pradip Sarkar, Associate professor of the department of Civil Engineering was the presenter.

Prof. S. P.

Some of India’s oldest and most prestigious entrance exams are soon to going to give way to a new entity – a consolidated entrance exam that will change the way students enter the hallowed IITs and equally renowned NITs, along with a host of other institutes.

The HRD Ministry has come with a revolutionary proposal that has a solitary, national level entrance test -

The rise in the number of vacant engineering and management seats may result in stopping new professional institutes from coming up from 2014. This decision has been taken by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in accordance to the requests by various states to stop permissions to new institutes.

States such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu,

The Bangalore City Railway Station on Friday became the first in the railway network to offer BluFi, a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that will provide passengers with a wealth of information.

The facility was launched by Railtel Corporation of India in collaboration with TeleBrahma, a mobile advertising solutions provider.

Launching the facility, South Western

Scientists in the US say they have developed a computer which can respond to students' emotions and boredom.

A team from University of Notre Dame, the University of Memphis and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has in fact come up with what they claim is the "emotion-sensing" computer software that models and responds to students' cognitive and emotional states, including

Software giant Microsoft has unveiled a beta version of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system (OS) for consumers to install and try out.

The new software is designed to work on tablets and on traditional computers, and will replace Microsoft Windows 7.

The look and the feel of the Windows 8 operating system have been making the rounds on online technology forums for some

It's that time of the year again when we student journalists feel like throwing the pen away. Literally! The mid semester exams are upon us and for a change, we are studying instead of scouting for news. Monday Morning wishes all it's student readers All the Very Best for the ongoing

After collecting views and suggestions from quite a few concerned members of the student community and doing our own bit of research, Monday Morning met Prof. Sarat Kumar Patra, Head, Computer Centre.  The biggest question that was puzzling the students was that what prompted such an urgent enforcement of Kaspersky throughout the institute.

The Lions International hold a Lions meet every year to educate various other lions as well as leos (the student wing of lions) about the various aspects of social service as well as share ideas. This year however, NIT Rourkela, being the best Leo club of Odisha got the opportunity to host the grand event from Lions International. The event took place on the 11th and 12th of February. 39 leo

Thursday, the 9th of February 2012, was a black day for our Institute as one of our beloved seniors, Prasanjeet Pattnaik passed away under tragic circumstances. Monday Morning chooses to remember one of our nearest and dearest alumni and highlight his eventful life, which should serve as a

Every batch has a student or two who are known by every other student. The current batch of final years as well as quite a few of their juniors know G. Bhargavi, one such student from the Department of Electrical Engineering, who has achieved the near-impossible SGPA of 10. Twice. Not only

The Biju Patnaik Central Library has been catering to the inquisitive minds of students and teachers of NIT ROURKELA ever since it was built in 1965. It has more than 65000 books & 18000 periodicals. The Library also manages   Institutional Repository (IR), Electronic Thesis and Dissertations

The last Student Pulse on Monday Morning put forth a question to the NITR junta asking their judgement on whether to change the present convocation gown or not. An overwhelming majority voted in favour of this and we decided to take up this issue with the Director, who is laden with

It was a cool Saturday evening when the MM team approached Prof.K.C.Pati,the chief warden of the halls of residence in NIT Rourkela to know about the upcoming surprises in the scholar’s avenue. Sir as usual was busy in devising and implementing plans for improving the condition of halls and

The Annual power-lifting and body building competition was held in the gymnasium on the 10th of February. There were only about 15 students who participated in the event including a first year. Along with the SAS officers and the Vice Presidents of

This year, the Formula SAE team of the Institute, ‘Roadrunner’, has cleared the virtual round of SUPRA SAE INDIA 2012 held at Pune. It is the only team from the state of Odisha to qualify to the next round, which is ‘Manufacturing & Fabrication’ of

The second edition of the International Students’ Meet is scheduled from 9th - 12th March, 2012 and with counted days left, it is reported that preparations are going on in full swing to make this fest a success. The first edition was one of the many events held as part of the Golden

A couple of weeks back we found official notices regarding the installation of the Kaspersky antivirus in our systems by 31st January, following which all the systems without the said antivirus would get disconnected from the system. Many of us attempted to use the link

GrapeVine, the AdMaking club, is organizing the following three events as per the schedule mentioned alongside:
1.    Extempore Competition: 15th February, ‘12
2.    Creative Writing Competition: 15th February, ‘12
3.    Ad making Competition: 17th February, ‘12
The competitions shall be held at the ‘School of Management’ (BM/BT Building) at 5 p.m. on the dates specified

Cyborg, the robotics club, conducted inductions for second year students on Thursday, 9th February, ’12. The following were selected:

1. Barada Prasanna Acharya

2. Subhajit Sahoo

3.

Champion’s Trophy, the annual inter-department cricket tournament, began at the Sachin Tendulkar Sports Complex of the Institute on 3rd February, 2012. The tournament is a competition between teams from each batch of all the departments. But, due to inadequate number of

SAE NIT Rourkela Chapter organized a workshop on 3D Designing & Solid Modeling on 11th – 12th February, 2012. It was attended by more than 40 first & second year students, who were familiarized with 3D designing.  Suryakant Sahoo & Shatabdi Biswal, pre-final year members of SAE,

•    Two new faculties joined the department of industrial design- Prof. Dhananjay Singh Bisht & Prof. B. B. V. L. Deepak. Both the faculty joined as Assistant Professor.
•    Prof. Mohammed Rajik Khan attended the International Conference on

A new and advanced CAD Lab will be functioning under Department of INDUSTRIAL DESIGN by the end of this month of February. The lab will be equipped with six workstations (super performance) & 40 high end desktop computers. ...

On Friday 10th February, a seminar-talk was delivered by Mr. Rakesh Kumar Shah, AGM, power distribution department, Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP), organised by the department of electrical engineering, NIT Rourkela. The Seminar was held at Seminar Room,

A seminar on “Parametric instability of beams with transverse cracks subjected to harmonic in plane loading” was held on 8th February i.e., Wednesday in seminar hall of Civil Department. Uttam Kumar Mishra, Assistant Professor of

Workshops have been a rarity in recent fests at NITR. Not this time though, as NITRUTSAV witnessed an Android workshop being organised in the institute. The workshop was organized by FadooEngineers.com. Sixty-Eight  students registered for the workshop with many participating from places

Facebook can terminate services of its chief Mark Zuckerberg at any time for any reason, or even without a reason.

As per Facebook’s employment agreement with Zuckerberg, his tenure at the social networking giant would be on an “at will” basis, meaning his job can be terminated “at any time for any reason or no reason”, either by him or by the company.

The global leader in

In a big consolidation move for the burgeoning Indian e-commerce market, the poster boy of Indian online retail - Flipkart.com - has bought out electronics retailer Letsbuy.com to help increase share in an online market that's expected to grow to $70 billion by the end of this decade. Both sites are backed by common investors - Tiger Global Management and Accel

Chennai based iBerry India, a brand associated with the manufacture of low cost Android tablets in the country, will launch its first Android 4.0 (Google Ice Cream Sandwich) tablet for the Indian audience in  March 2012.

The tab priced at around Rs. 10,000 will make it the cheapest ICS supported tablet available in the market at present.It carries a

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras has made final year projects for B. Tech students optional and replaced it with three theory papers from this academic year as most of the students were not taking the projects seriously.

“Unless there is tremendous motivation, it will be very difficult for every student to do something significant in the project.

On 21st January 2012, students of NIT Rourkela finally got the chance to take part in the much awaited hovercraft workshop conducted by SAE, NITR chapter. The viral publicity of the workshop had kept all the participants eager for the grand event. Three trainers from Aerotrix

That dedication, determination and a minuscule stroke of luck are the quintessential ingredients for brewing a successful college festival was proven yet again, when the 2012 edition of NITRUTSAV left no stone unturned to enthral and

Hell is full of musical amateurs, said George Bernard Shaw. But, if the competition at this year's Central Musical Event Sa Re Ga Ma is anything to go by, NITRUTSAV certainly didn't have amateurs. Instead, some brilliant talent was on display in all the musical events.

An evening which seeks the largest NIT-R crowd, including the laziest, the studious, the interested and the not-so-interested is the event FASHIONISTA, more affectionately known as the FP. This year it was the 4th of February, an evening

Rowdy students and rowdy behaviour is commonplace in this Institute. Most of the times, tolerance is the only reaction other students or the faculty show towards immoral behaviour. But this last Wednesday night, a certain professsor from the Maths

In two separate incidents but connected by one common Professor, two students were manhandled, leading to physical injury and in one case wounding the student involved, mentally. In the first case, a certain Sophomore student was asked to get

This past week we witnessed another PSU coming to the campus, blowing away all talk of PSUs stopping campus visits. Nine from amongst the finest landed their dream job. While HAL, Bangalore added a few more to that growing tally of offers, replacing one letter made for an additional 3 lakhs and another addition to the placement tally. HUL, the hallowed company for MBAs shortlisted candidates

The inter NIT Sports Meet, normally scheduled for the winter break were rescheduled this time around. The cause for the rescheduling was that, their would be a larger audience to witness the different sports events lined up in their institute, support and cheer the home team. The schedule

The cryogenics lab of mechanical engineering department is now facilitated with a decent high performance liquid nitrogen plant. The machine was installed in the lab on 12th November, 2011. It was purchased from LINDE CRYOPLANTS LTD, UK.

The machine specification is –

The department of Chemical Engineering has submitted a proposal for support under the Fund for Improvement of S&T infrastructure in higher educational institutions (FIST) program of Department of Science and Technology (DST). Some Departments like ceramic, civil, chemistry and

The recently concluded cultural festival NITRUTSAV was by far one of the most successful festivals organised in our institute. And that’s largely attributed to the participation of many satellite clubs and organizations of NIT Rourkela. One such organization whose contribution cannot be ignored is National

The search-engine provider, Google battling Facebook for supremacy of user engagement and advertising on the Web, said it planned to introduce changes to its privacy policies. These changes include consolidating 60 Web services, such as Gmail, YouTube and Google+ products under one blanket policy.

When the new policy comes into effect on March 1, information from most Google

Shailesh Rao, managing director (Media & Platforms) at Google's Asia-Pacific operations, has left the world's biggest Internet search company and will join Twitter as vice-president for its international operations.

Rao had joined Google California headquarters in March 2005 as director, local search where he was responsible for worldwide Google Local services and channel

Seven Indian American high school students have been named among the 40 finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search.  They will compete March 8-13 in Washington, D.C., for $630,000 in total awards. The first place winner will receive $100,000 from the Intel Foundation.

The finalists are:

1. SaurabhSharan of Bellarmine College

India will provide a grant of $1.5 million to the University of Chicago to establish a Vivekananda Chair for Indian studies, as part of the initiatives to mark the 150th birth anniversary of the 19th century luminary, Swami Vivekananda, and polymath Rabindranath Tagore.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on 29th January made the announcement at the Fullerton Hall of

Performing well in school will become more important for IIT aspirants from 2013. It’s decided now that at least 40% weightage will be given to class XII marks for admission to the 15 IITs as well as other engineering institutes in the country.

A common aptitude-cum-advanced knowledge test, Joint Admission Board (JAB) will replace the IIT Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and the

Republic Day for some of us, another routine holiday for most of us. While most of us were sleeping, India woke up to it's 63rd year as the largest democracy in the world. Parallely in Planet NITR, the sleepy NCC ground woke up to a flurry of activity to mark a quiet celebration. While the

When Monday Morning visited the NU Yoke: Satish Ray & Ravi Raj, the Convenors of the Literary & Cultural Society, it was visibly another sleepless night for them, along with the organizing committee. All in order to ensure that this academic year is remembered for trend-setting fests in the

The routine gmail checks, the regular Facebook log-ins and the recent NU page visits all have one thing in common. The 'Loading' sign followed by the oh-so-slow percentage bar testing our patience much more than the Indian Cricket Team does nowadays. NITR has been

“I scarcely imagined that a finance & marketing company such as Futures First would ever visit NIT Rourkela. I think the PCs have done a wonderful job and I would like to attribute my success to

The Department of Chemical Engineering successfully organized the National Conference on “Recent Advances in Chemical and Environmental Engineering (RACEE-2012) on the 20th and 21st of January. The two day mega event highlighted many challenging issues in the realm of Chemical

While many of us grumble about the lack of extra-curricular activity at NITR along with no proper encouragement and support from the administration, talent still seems to find a way to bloom in the desert. Going one step better than our last year's performance, NITR has managed to grab the

AASRA is a club completely devoted to the cause of the society. The foundation day of AASRA club was celebrated on 26th January. It is one of the most genuinely dedicated clubs towards the welfare of the less-privileged. A club which has no induction process, thus making it possible for

A seminar was conducted in the Ceramic Engineering department Seminar Room on 27th of January commencing at 3.00pm. Prof B. B. Nayak of the Ceramic department was the program in-charge of the event.

The seminar was an invited talk by Prof. C. Jacob,

When Monday Morning visited the NU Yoke: Satish Ray & Ravi Raj, the Convenors of the Literary & Cultural Society, it was visibly another sleepless night for them, along with the organizing committee. All in order to ensure that this academic year is remembered for trend-setting fests in the

It’s a natural instinct to capture on camera anything that appeals to the eyes. Camera in the cell phone is a must and digicams are more common now than ever before. And not to forget, the heaps of photos on everyone’s fb profile.

But the disconcerting fact that many others may

Nine Indian students are among the 60 finalists in a global science competition, 'YouTube Space Lab', and if they win, experiments they have designed will be conducted in space with the help of NASA, ESA and JAXA.

The competition that was conducted by YouTube, Lenovo and Space Adventures, in association with The National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The US space agency said on 26th January its Kepler space telescope mission has confirmed 26 new planets outside our solar system, all of them orbiting too close to their host stars to sustain life.

The discoveries boost the list of confirmed extra-solar planets to 729, including 60 credited to the Kepler team.

The telescope, launched in

Twitter now has the ability to remove a tweet from its users' feeds in a particular country, according to the companyblog post on 19th January. Twitter said it hasn't done so yet but might act on a government's request.

Previously, Twitter could only block a message all over the world. After years of promoting itself as a champion of free expression on the

The last week turned out to be a week of the Superdreams and brought laurels to eight of the brightest of the institute. After a long-drawn process, Futures First finally got its first recruit from the institute whereas C- Dot instantly selected 7 of them. Here are the details:

1. C-DOT

Ever wondered how the happiest Indian smiled when the British left? Ever thought what an average Indian felt when the draft of our constitution became public?

This Republic Day, Bureacratz Club brings to us a unique event. Here comes the deal! Think about a moment either from the freedom struggle prior to independence or the incidents before we became a republic; feel the

There was joy, there was sorrow, there were reunions, there were good byes, there was celebration, and yes, lots of overflowing emotion – this was exactly how the mood was in the institute, this past week, as our beloved ‘seniors’ were back to their alma mater for the IXth annual convocation which

MM caught up with Mr. Muthu Madhan, the ex-assistant librarian of NIT Rourkela who had visited the institute in lieu of attending the workshop on “Use of e-books and its future” conducted between the 13th and 14th of January, 2012.

MM: Greetings, sir; and welcome back to the

MM: The 9th annual convocation had its venue shifted from AV Hall to NCC Ground. What was the reason behind such a decision?

DD: AV Hall is logically a far better choice than the NCC Ground. But AV Hall’s capacity is 694, but last

The much-awaited cultural extravaganza NITRUTSAV’12 is around the corner and the student community is waiting with bated breath for the sequel to a blockbuster Innovision. NITRUTSAV’12, the annual cultural festival of NITR is scheduled to be held from the 3rd-5th of February

Shortly after the Autumn-2011 edition of D361 was distributed among the freshmen; D361 (or “Degree” as it is commonly referred to as by the NITReople) conducted its inductions in a two-phase process. The chief agenda being to recruit creative writers and technical assistants from the 1st and

Athletics were definitely a part of more students’ lives in school and high school. Enter NIT-R and interest in such activities seems to mysteriously disappear into thin air. The Athletics Meet is an annual event and a part of SAC’s major activities, besides the tech- and the cult-fest. But

Last Thursday, i.e on the 19th of January, a major disaster was averted when a fire broke out in the Department of Ceramic Engg. but was controlled and put out just in time before any serious damage was done. The fire broke out in Prof. Ranabrata Mazumdar’s office at

Avid quizzers and veteran quizmasters of yesteryear R.Raghuraman and Shishir Joshi conducted an Alumni quiz on 21st Friday, 2011, on the eve of the Convocation ceremony. Around 40 participants from all 5 years (including the 2011 pass-out batch) took part in

Athletics were definitely a part of more students’ lives in school and high school. Enter NIT-R and interest in such activities seems to mysteriously disappear into thin air. The Athletics Meet is an annual event and a part of SAC’s major activities, besides the tech- and the cult-fest. But

The eagerly awaited PSU, NTPC finally visited the campus this past week and declared its results within a very short time span. Contrary to last year’s 18, this time the head count of finally placed students has come down to 8. The interview for Futures First is still under process in Kolkata. The following students have been selected:-

1. 

Even in absence, author Salman Rushdie continued to cast his shadow on the Jaipur Literature Festival despite the presence of crowdpuller TV mogul Oprah Winfrey.

While Winfrey was addressing a session, high drama was witnessed in a separate wing as Publisher S Anand clashed with organisers of the festival for distancing themselves from the controversial author and those who

The bankruptcy of Eastman Kodak after 131 years is a sad moment, and may trigger nostalgia for the days of Instamatic cameras and rolls of Kodachrome. But it carries a deeper lesson for American business: Kodak fell victim to digital-photography technology that it pioneered.

It was Kodak engineers who introduced the first 0.01 megapixel digital camera in 1975. Yet the company

Wednesday 18 January marked the largest online protest in the history of the internet. Websites from large to small "went dark" in protest of proposed legislation before the US House and Senate that could profoundly change the internet. The two bills, Sopa in the House and Pipa in the Senate, ostensibly aim to stop the piracy of copyrighted material over the internet on websites based

Journalist-turned-activist Vinay Rai has succeeded where Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal failed—putting the fear of law in the minds of India's bloating community of bloggers, surfers, plain e-wayfarers and inter(net)lopers.

Blogs haven't yet been blocked, but a Delhi High Court bench asked 21 internet firms, including Google, Facebook and YouTube, to look at China and

Researchers have devised a new technology, which can dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity up to 45 percent.

With military colleagues, the University at Buffalo engineers have shown that embedding charged quantum dots into photovoltaic cells can improve electrical output by enabling the cells to harvest infrared light, and by

The canteens have been in news recently. We have seen changes, looked forward to something new and, it would not be wrong to say, have been disappointed too at times. But this time around, the administration doesn’t seem to be in the mood to make concessions. The new semester has seen yet

This year the students of our institute witnessed the Golden Jubilee of the annual athletic meet, held on the 14th and 15th of January. The event began at 9 am on Saturday with the opening ceremony held at the scheduled time. This year’s meet was organized well with most of the events being held

Dr.Prasanta Kumar Bhuyan joined NIT Rourkela in the last semester as an assistant professor in Civil Engineering Department. He warmly welcomes us in his office and shares with us the vast and interesting experiences he has had throughout his career.

Prof.Bhuyan has done his B.Tech from CET

The 50th Annual Athletics Meet ended on a note that can only be described as ‘sorry’. Stress your memories and still you would not recall an incident where the Secretary of a Society was slapped by the Dean (ironically, of Student Welfare) and the Sports-in-charge of the Institute, in agony,

It had been a day like any other, last Friday. After attending classes all day, students returned to their rooms and did what they always do first: login to their mails and FB accounts. And that’s when the expressions on their faces changed. Here

The last day of the past weekend saw the beginning of a series of arguably the most important interactive 'Get Serious' sessions of a B. Tech student's career. All thanks to the Training and Placement cell, Prof. B.B Biswal and the present placement coordinators who organized a ‘Campus

Rhapsody, the annual inter-school talent hunt competition organised by the Leo club in the autumn semester, is among the top projects of the club. The co-ordinators of this year’s edition were Saurav Pandey and Jasmine Sahoo of the pre-final

A great man had once said “The old has to leave, to make way for the new”. And in accordance to the quote, in one hand as many of our old, experienced faculties are retiring; on the other hand, many new young, qualified faculties are joining the institute.
One of many such

Prof. Manoj Kumar Mishra of the Department of Mining Engineering has been working on the project ‘Bulk use of fly ash composite materials in the sub-base of surface coal mine haul roads to reduce strain’. The project is under the financial aid of Department

The last week placement count was a bit low as compared to the sumptuous ones that the institute has seen so far. Only a single company has declared its preliminary test results which has left the selected ones with their fingers crossed for the big finals. The applications of others are under scrutiny and results are yet to be declared.The details of the company which has declared its

Mr. Debashish Das, alumnus of the 2007 batch, B. Tech, Mechanical Engineering, was on campus on Tuesday, 11th January, 2012. Presently pursuing M.S. at University of Illinois, Chicago, USA, Mr. Das presented a seminar on “Research and Higher Studies”. Around 80students

All our movie gyaan, thanks to DC++, was put to test by Rotaract this past week. They had organized a Dumb Charades competition on Wednesday, 12th January, 2012 at 5:30 pm in the B. B. Auditorium. The participants were invited in groups of three. Close to twenty teams participated in the

The following students have been declared elected as convenors of various societies of the Student Activity Centre through the election process held between respective representatives of various societies held on 26.11.2011.

Technical Society:

1.Kranthi Kumar

Prof. Pradip Sarkar and Prof. Shishir Kumar Sahu were approached by Indian Rare Earth (IRE) Ltd., Manavalakurichi for a consulting project for structural design and detailing of self-supporting Mild Steel chimney including its

VenkatramanRamakrishnan, India-born US citizen, whose pioneering work in molecular biology won him the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has been honoured with a knighthood by the royal establishment in a rare recognition of achievements by foreigners based in Britain.

58-year-old Ramakrishnan, known to most as Venky, is based at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in

Apparently there is no limit to the number of Steve Jobs tributes that continue to pour forth. Publisher Bluewater Productions on 11th January announced the release of a Jobs-themed comic book.

Dubbed "Steve Jobs: Founder of Apple," the 32-page comic chronicles the entirety of Jobs' career. Bluewater first announced its plans for the issue in June, so it doesn't cover Jobs'

The much-awaited results of the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2011 for admissions in Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) were declared on 11th January. Nine MBA aspirants have secured 100 percentile. Around 1,800 students have secured beyond 99.9 percentile. As per reports, there are in all 3,241 seats in the 13 IIMs.

Around

Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM says who believed that they have prepare the world's smallest magnetic memory bit.

Researchers at IBM have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to

Bird flu was detected for the first time in Odisha as the central laboratory confirmed the virus in two dead fowls in Khurda district on 9th January. Following the detection of bird flu virus (H5N1) in Keranga in Khurda district, the State Government on Monday alerted the Collectors of all 30 districts to take precautionary measures.

The three-day culling

A boy who came back to his country to attend university went home for vacations, only to never return. NIT Rourkela grieves the loss of Mohammed Ehtesham Khan, second year student of Department of Mechanical Engineering,

Warmly ushering Monday Morning members into his suite in the South Block guest house, Mr Sandip Kumar Dasverma ; one of the most distinguished and prolific alumni of the institute and an active member of the alumni association looks

Even the Parliament’s extended session and the anticipation of the Lokpal Bill in the House could not HOLD Mr. Pranab Mukherjee back. Afterall, Santa Claus had himself sent for him... and so he came.

Rourkela last month hosted the annual congregation of the ‘Nikhil

The New Year has ringed in. So has a new semester. But a lot occurred on campus during vacation. And of course, we had carry-overs too. All was bundled together and MM’s Santa slung his bag to pay a visit to Prof. Sarangi.

With students highly confused about the new academic regulations governing the institute and the recent uproar among students regarding ninth semesters or year backs, Monday Morning decided to present to the student community a clear picture regarding these regulations. The

STM (Science, Technical & Medical) Journals is an international electronic journal - an ambitious initiative of the Consortium e-Learning Network Private Ltd., (CELNET, Noida). It is meant to facilitate a cost effective access to the

This week, the beginning of a new semester, Monday Morning approached one of the two Sports and Games convenors of our institute, Ram Prateek to answer all the elusive questions regarding sports and the general pressing problems faced by the students as well as thrown

With Innovision being a tremendous success, the onus is now upon the Literary and Cultural Society to make the upcoming NITRUTSAV ‘12 one of the best ever. Going by the current progress, the fest does seem to be shaping up well. First came the good news of the fest being scheduled for

Voice Club, in association with National Service Scheme(NSS) students, conducted and coordinated a blood donation camp on the 13th of December, 2011. The event was well coordinated by all the NSS volunteers. The event saw a healthy participation from about 50 blood donors who donated their

Over the past one month, the department has seen couple of seminars being conducted, with many eminent speakers delivering talks. Between the 2nd and 6th of December, a National Conference on Processing and Characterization of Materials (NCPCM-2011) was

Prof. Samir Kumar Acharya, Mechanical Engineering Department presented a seminar on the topic “Friction and Wear Behavior Of Silicon Carbide – Alumina Nano Composites” on 4th January 2012,10.00 AM at Seminar Hall of the Mechanical Engineering Dept.

On the same

Department of Applied Mathematics and Department of Mechanical Engineering, NIT Rourkela jointly organized a workshop on “MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF DYNAMIC SYSTEMS” on 5th – 7th December, 2011 coordinated by Prof. S. Chakraverty, Professor, Mathematics Department and Prof. J. Srinivas, Associate Prof., Mechanical Engg. Department.

Eminent

Dr. (Ms) Bhaswati Patnaik and Dr. R. K. Biswal from the department of Humanities and Social Sciences presented their papers in 21st Annual Convention of the National Academy of  Psychology (NAOP) and International Conference on “Human

Dr. Ngamjahao Kipgen has joined the Department of Humanities, NIT Rourkela as an Assistant Professor from 1st December, 2011. He pursued his Bachelor’s Degree from Manipur University and his Master’s from JNU. Thereafter, he completed his Ph.D. from IIT Delhi. He will be taking two courses on “Environment and Development”

Ms. Sucheta Panda and Mr. Swapnajit Pattnaik have been awarded PhD degrees in the month of November, 2011.

Ms. Sucheta Panda is an Assistant Prof. at Padmanava College of Engineering, Rourkela and a research scholar of department of electrical

The department of Electrical Engineering has planned to procure the following equipment for its laboratories:-

1) Three Phase Rectifier.

2) Solar Array

An M. Tech (Research) Control and Automation student from the Electrical Engineering Department, Srinibas Bhuyan has been awarded with the Second prize by Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE) and L&T for his thesis –Development and control of networked

Prof. Suchismita Chinara, assistant professor of CSE Department and Hunny Mehrotra, a PhD scholar, presented their paper during the Eighth International Conference on Information, Communications, and Signal Processing (ICICS

The department of Computer Science and Engineering organized a workshop on “Software Engineering Application for Computer Networks (SEA-CN’11)” from 8th to 10th December, 2011.

The workshop served as a platform to bring together more than eighty researchers,

Computer Science and Engineering Department organized a short term course named Winter School on Digital Image Processing (WiSDIP 2011) from 13th to 18th December; 2011.The course was co-ordinated by Prof. Pankaj K. Sa and Prof. Banshidhar Majhi.

Department of Chemistry organized a seminar on “ROLE OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IN POLLUTION PREVENTION” on 2nd Decemberalong with Youth Movement Federation of India (YMFI) 2011 in collaboration with State Pollution Control Board (SPCB), Odisha.

The seminar committee

NagaChaitanya Kavuri, an M. Tech (Res) studentof the department of Chemical Engineering presented a seminar talk based on his thesis which has been invited by IIT Kharagpur for presentation. He is currently doing research under Professor Madhushree Kundu, Associate Prof.; Chemical

The year 2011 ended on a successful note for the department of ceramic engineering as Prof. Ranabrata Mazumdar and Prof. Swadesh Kumar Pratihar got selected for representing the country at the ‘International Conference on Electro-ceramics’ or the ICE-2011.

The ICE is a

The golden days of 2011 are no doubt bygone but the ever lustrous placement saga of the institute continues at an even increased rate with 3 companies already having recruited 15 students within a week’s time of the graceful new year. The last one and a half months of 2011 have rained placement offers for the students with about a hundred of them having been knighted with the golden crown by

Teach for India is a nationwide movement of outstanding college graduates and young professionals who will commit two-years to teach full-time in under-resourced schools and who will become lifelong leaders working from within various sectors

The annual athletic meet is all set to be held this year on the 14th and 15th of January after a prolonged delay and the Senate decision to push it to the second weekend of the new year. Effectively denying students an athletic opportunity to show their sporting prowess for one whole year, this

The United States Patent and Trademark Office on 29th December published a patent application from Apple related to face and presence detection for iOS devices, which is expected to be one of the next chapters for mobile security.  Apple has a track record of taking products that work but haven't yet caught on, then redesigning them with the appeal that makes them catch fire with the

Sometimes when we are using internet at the comforts of our home or office, we found it tough to keep going back and forth to the Web, trying to remember the one great article or web page we saw. The same thought occurred to Jonathan Siddharth and Vijay Krishnan in 2007, during their academic rigours of their Masters at the Stanford University in the United States.

The highways ministry has initiated the process to provide Seamless cellphone connectivity along the entire stretch of 72000 kms long National Highways and emergency help, even in black-out zones by dialing a 3-digit emergency number.

Senior highways ministry officials said that a policy ought to be introduced to allow construction of mobile towers in different zones by the

79-year-old E Sreedharan, credited with creating the Delhi Metro network that has changed the way Delhiites travel, retired on 31st December as head of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC). He retired after having worked in government service for over 58 years of which 16 years he spent in Delhi Metro.

Sreedharan was scheduled to retire in 2000,

The 99th Indian Science Congress concluded at Bhubaneshwar on 7th January with Children’s Science Congress and Women’s Science Congress. Shri B Hari Gopal, Adviser, Science and Technology to the Prime Minister took charge from Smt Geetha Bali, outgoing President of 99th Indian Science Congress. The Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh will be the President of the 100th Indian

Winter is here, the vacations are dear, Christmas and the New Year are near! With the end-semester exams having just concluded and the month-long vacation just begun, the Monday Morning team wishes all it's readers a very fruitful

Actions speak louder than words, they say and say it aptly too. Ironically though, ‘actions and words’ is what defines Monday Morning in the true sense. We, at Monday Morning truly believe that our work, a big chunk of which is playing with

With some serious issues and seeking some serious answers Monday Morning approached the Director for one last Director’s Desk this semester.
MM: Monday Morning heard that Prof. B. B. Biswal, Head of TnP is coming to the end of his term and will be succeeded by someone

“Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and

Prof. Seemita Mohanty, Department of Humanities has received HOMI BHABHA Junior Fellowship-2011. The fellowship provides a 2 year project, supported by TATA TRUST COLLABORATION with FORD FOUNDATION. She will be working on “Tribal

The Annual Book Fair was organized by the Biju Patnaik Central Library of the Institute at the NCC ground in the campus from Thursday, 10th November, 2011 to Saturday, 12th November, 2011. The book Fair was inaugurated by Prof. S. K. Sarangi, Director, NIT Rourkela at 10 a.m. on Thursday. New

The institute held its SAC elections on 13th November, 2011, Sunday in Computer Centre. The election procedure commenced at 09:00 am and continued till 01:15 pm. The election process concluded peacefully. The counting procedure was done under the supervision of Prof. P. K. Ray and others. The result of election was declared at SAC

An important summit held last week that went fairly unnoticed was the half yearly review meeting of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. Of India which was hosted by our institute this time. It was a 2 day affair,

The campus is still abuzz. CIL sent out waves by recruiting 90 from 4 departments. Details of that, and others:
12th November 2011

HONDA SIEL

Category: Dream Company
Students Shortlisted: 9
B.

Some shocking incidents have occurred in the premises of our institute. They are shocking because nothing of this sort was ever expected to happen in an esteemed institute like NIT. Girls are being harassed on their way back to the hostel during the twilight hours. The roads

The freshers have completely dominated the Inter-Hall swimming competitions this year! Sweeping every other event other than the 200m freestyle where G.D.B. Hall bagged the bronze, they have emerged as the winners of every other individual event of the tournament.

National Metallurgists’ Day is celebrated every year on the 14th of November coinciding with the birthdate of Late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of the nation; and a great visionary and statesman par excellence. The 49th National Metallurgists’ Day (NMD)

This past week, two students from the department were awarded Ph. D. degrees. The final viva-voce was concluded successfully on 8th and 9th November. The 2 scholars were Yougotjoti Nayak and Jyoti Prakash Nayak.
Yougotjoti was working on the topic: “Hydroxy apatite-TZP

The interhall tennis tournament ended last Tuesday, the 8th. The final was played between M. S. S Hall and V. S. Hall and the ties were dominated by V. S. Hall who emerged champions. The fresher talent pool in tennis was disappointing with just one

Film and Music Society, NIT Rourkela, organized ‘WAR OF BANDS’ on Friday, 11th November, 2011 in B. B. Auditorium. Three bands from the Institute performed at the event. The show saw the debut of ‘Satanic Insanity’, a new band at NITR. The other two bands which

Prof. Samir Kumar Patra, H.O.D of life science Department attended the prestigious EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) conference on “Histone variants and genome organization”.
The conference was held on 12th -14th October,

The Inter-Hall matches for volleyball were conducted successfully in the institute. M.V. Hall emerged as the winner of the tournament defeating V. S. Hall. The final was an interesting match with M.V. hall losing the first set. Blaming failure on lack of co-ordination,

A flying car -- it's an iconic image of the future. But after 100 years of flight and automotive engineering, no one has really cracked the problem.

Thanks to an US-based company, Terrafugia which has designed and tested a 'flying car' would be launching the product commercially at the end of the next year.

The aircraft-cum-car has foldable wings,

A physicist from the University of Dallas, Texas has successfully created strands of the elusive invisibility coatimmortalised in the pages of ‘Harry Potter’. Ali Aliev, the researcher behind the feat, said that he was able to make the cloak using carbon nanotubes, which look like thin strands of thread.

“We really can hide objects. ... We

Nobel prize-winning Indian-American biochemist Hargobind Khorana has passed away in Concord, Massachusetts, US on 9th November. He was 89.

Punjab University alumnus, Hargobind Khorana, the biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was born in 1922 in Raipur village of Punjab, now in Pakistan. He did his B.Sc. in 1943 and M.Sc. in

Former President and a renowned Scientist, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam was frisked in New York on September 29 before boarding an Air India flight.

It was reported that even after Kalam had taken his seat in the aircraft, the US security personnel forced the crew to open the door and took away the jacket and boots of the former president to check for explosives

MahimaKhanna, a 23-year-old from Kolkata, has become the third Indian to win one of Cambridge University's highest honours - the Stevenson Prize following the footsteps of Nobel Laureate Prof. AmartyaSen and Sir ParthaDasgupta.

The Stevenson Prize is awarded to students of the Cambridge university who perform exceptionally well in academics.

Patience is a virtue possessed by the fortunate few. In our case though, we might have to tweak the sentence a bit to account for the huge number on this campus, ‘patiently’ waiting for a successful fest. And boy, have they been rewarded! The recently concluded smash-hit

If I say this alumnus is a Padmashree awardee, it is enough information for any NITian to name him. And when I say he is popularly known as the ‘MiG Man of Indian Defence’, it’s a giveaway. A renowned technocrat with a glorious career, Padmashree N. R. Mohanty, alumnus, Department of

A keen, purposeful gaze and a meticulous room adorned with trophies greets the eye as one enters Prof. S. C. Mishra’s office. With no further ado, Prof. Mishra smilingly implores us to begin even as MM begins questioning him about his schooling and early childhood.

His father being an

Owing to a strict directive from the Training and Placement Cell, Monday Morning has discontinued ‘PC Speak’, it’s weekly interview series on the Placement Co-ordinators of the various B. Tech, M. Tech, M. Sc and MBA departments. The Training and Placement Cell has clearly stated that it would

According to the official website of the Government of India, Guru Nanak Jayanti on the 10th of November is a Gazetted holiday. According to the list of holidays by the Govt. of India, under Annexure 1, Para 2, Guru Nanak’s birthday has been enlisted as one of the 14 holidays to be observed

The core of any tech-fest, inarguably, is the much-hyped and popular robotics. What with clubs like Cyborg and SAE managing all the robotics events professionally in the past, this is one event which draws in the maximum participation. These events

Mr. Md. Zafir Alam, alumnus, Department of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, 2002 batch has been selected for the “Young Metallurgists’ Award – Metal Sciences Category” for the year 2011 on the occasion of the 49th National Metallurgists’

The department of Mechanical Engineering welcomed the freshmen batch of students on 1st Nov at the Bhubaneswar Behera Auditorium. This was the first time that the department had a separate fresher’s welcome. The welcome function was a result of the co-ordinated efforts from the second

The week saw three companies on campus, while tidings flew in from another. Also, we have the first students of the pre-final year to bag internships. That totals to 25 jobs and 2 internship offers during last week.

31st October, 2011

1. RIO TINTO

A flying car -- it's an iconic image of the future. But after 100 years of flight and automotive engineering, no one has really cracked the problem.

Thank to an US-based company, Terrafugia which has designed and tested a 'flying car' would be launching the product commercially at the end of the next year.

The aircraft-cum-car has foldable wings,

Amazon is now selling the new 16 gigabyte 7-inch Tab with a note that the tablet is in stock.But when Samsung announced the new Tab 7.0 Plus at the end of September, it said the tablet wouldn't reach U.S. consumers until November 13.A Samsung spokeswoman said the new tablet is now available with larger retailers that have already received the product; however, the

Russia has wrap up the longest isolation experiment in space travel history, with six men ending their virtual trip to Mars after 520 days on Friday, 4th November.Six participants from Russia, China, Italy and France have been confined inside a 180-square-metre container in Moscow since June 3, 2010 as part of the Mars500 space experiment, which simulates an

In a bid to turn Gujarat into apilgrim place for countries which follow Buddhism, chief minister NarendraModi is pulling out all stops to build the world's biggest stupa at 100 km away from the place Suzuki has chosen for the biggest Maruti plant in North Gujarat.

The project will cost Rs 1,000 crore, centredon a 351-ft high stupa towering over a 151-ft statue of Lord

With Innovision approaching and speculation ripe that the Director has taken a personal interest in the way things are being run, Monday Morning decided to base this interview on student activity related matters, what with the cricket fiasco revealing that equipments are bought with his

It was indeed a red-letter day in the pages of NIT Rourkela’s placement history as on the 24th of October; Anurag Mohapatra, a final year EE student made it through the gruelling selection process of the much hyped “Super Dream” firm Rio Tinto and shot to fame with a whopping 30.65 lac

The academic calendar kept us waiting a long time. And when it did show up on the Institute’s website, it left the students puzzled. And those more active at SAC, baffled. Before we tell you more about this, take a look at the following excerpt of the calendar:

This time while filling up the semester pre-registration, the pre-final year batch has something to cherish about. Unlike previous times, almost all the branches are offering an additional professional elective to choose from for their next semester (6th Semester). Here is a new Professional

In the plethora of clubs - cultural, technical and literary - which our Institute can boast of, yet another club is on the horizon, yet will stand out amongst all, as promised by its President, Chinmaya Gautam – a pre-final year student of Computer Science & Engineering. SPAWN (Security

Astro, the astronomy club of NIT Rourkela, organized a ‘star gazing’ session on Tuesday, 25th October, 2011 at the NCC ground from 6 p.m. onwards. With an objective of generating interest in the club’s activities, the members gave participants a chance to savor the amazing views of the sky

As Lord Alfred Tennyson said, "The old order changeth, yielding place to new.”

The oath taking ceremony of SAE NITR Chapter was held on Saturday, 29th October, 2011 at the Pranakrushna Parija Auditorium. The ceremony began with the presentation of SAE’s annual report. The gathering was

Synergy,the dance group of NIT-Rourkela, held its Second Inductions on last Saturday, 29th of August at SAC. The induction programme started at 3 pm in the afternoon and the turnout was quite decent. The hopefuls had to go through a strict selection procedure which was comprised of many rounds examining the dancing skills of the participants. After a

The pre-midsem placements painted a pretty picture as an indicator of better things to come. Yet, the post-midsem placements have been slow off the blocks. The Department of Chemical Engg. got off to a splendid start with Indian Oil Corporation

A Nescafe Outlet has been inaugurated in the Department of Biotechnology & Biomedical Engineering. You can order coffee, tea and maggi at the stall. With the cold setting in, the stall couldn’t have come up at a better time. The students and faculty who have classes

T & P delivered an all-round performance last week with 5 companies recruiting from 7 departments. We saw companies under all three categories and both UG & PG students get placed! Here are the results:

24th October, 2011

AMDOCS