The recent High Court ruling brings into focus issues involved in temple renovation, writes S. Prabhu

Jayakumar Gopinath talks about Pulluvanpattu, the ritualistic art form of Kerala that sings songs for the snake gods, and how his community is trying to preserve it

Amira and Vasundhara explore Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poem ‘Subh-e-Azadi’ in a sonic landscape of traditional ragas and electronically modified sounds

Veena exponent Jayanthi Kumaresh recalls how she and violinist Kala Ramnath, along with European musicians, explored the beauty of Baroque music

Apart from researching into temple history, Madhusudhanan Kalaichelvan has been creating awareness about heritage and architecture through specially-curated trips

Founded in 1887 and designed by British architect Henry Irwin, the Gaiety Theatre in Shimla was the venue of the recent Parampara aur Viraasat Utsav

The incident happened when the passengers who wanted to get down were informed of the failure of the brakes.

Conceptualised by the Gandhi Peace Foundation, the museum makes concerted efforts to keep the Gandhian philosophy relevant to the life and times of India

The move was to facilitate talks with the Centre on the creation of the autonomous Frontier Nagaland Territory, said the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation

Police have arrested one person and seized the motorcycle used to commit the crime while claiming that two other absconding persons would be caught ‘very soon’

CM Bhupendra Patel spoke with collectors of Navsari and Valsad districts, directing them to shift residents of low-lying areas to safer places

Ms. Thakur’s remarks come about two weeks after the Supreme Court stayed directives by the U.P. and Uttarakhand governments mandating eateries to display the owners’ names

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee vowed to seek death penalty for the perpetrator in the Kolkata doctor rape and murder case

The police had last month arrested 11 people in connection with the July 2 Hathras stampede

Complaint filed by contractor in charge of installation and maintenance said around 3,800 bamboo lights and 36 ‘gobo projector’ lights went missing in May

Police said masked men on a scooter fired five rounds on Tuesday evening. In July 17, miscreants had lobbed a grenade, but it did not explode and was later disposed of by a special squad

Right-wing outfits allegedly warning that under no circumstances will Muslim families be allowed to settle in the predominantly Hindu locality

The Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation wants the creation of Frontier Nagaland Territory comprising six districts of the northeastern State bordering Myanmar

Titled ‘New Industrial Policy 2024-30: Incentives for Industries’, the policy, announced after a cabinet meeting held in Nava Raipur, will come into force on November 1

2008 USAIN (United States Agricultural Information Network) Conference

Tradition in Transition: Information Fueling the Future of Agbiosciences

April 27 – 30, 2008 Wooster, OH

University of Florida is an institutional member of USAIN, an organization whose primary purposes are to promote discussion of agricultural issues and trends, to develop and influence national agricultural information policy, to make recommendations to the National Agricultural Library (NAL) and to increase collaborations between member partners (http://www.usain.org/). USAIN does an excellent job communicating legislative changes to its members, and then working with members to get involved with state and national government.

The conference was hosted by Ohio State University and held at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, closely situated next to a beautiful arboretum and rose garden.

Here are a few of the most important highlights from the conference:

1. The AgNIC Born Digital Steering Committee, of which UF is a participant, met for the first time to begin phase I of the born digital initiative. Here at UF it used to be we would receive a copy of IFAS Extension resources, which we would catalog and make available in our print collection. Many Extension resources (documents, websites, etc) are now published only in digital format and while this format increases access to the current resources, many of these older resources are at risk of being permanently lost due to a lack of consistent preservation processes. This is a problem not just at UF, but at almost every land-grant throughout the nation. The goal of this steering committee is to identify digitization standards (selection, metadata, format, etc.) and to develop an infrastructure to assist the land-grants in developing their own processes at the local level. The other institutions participating are Univ. of Arizona, Ohio State, Colorado State, Texas A&M, Cornell, Univ. of Minnesota, Purdue, and potentially Michigan State and Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

2. Mary Ochs (Cornell) Peter Ballantyne and Barbara Hutchinson (IAALD) spoke about Agbioscience information for the worldwide community. There is a strong need to "make research information easy to access for current and future generations" through common international standards, open applications, user friendly information & data, andlocal and global action . A large amount of agricultural information is created within the U.S., and we should do more to share that information with the international community. The result of this discussion was the creation of an International Agricultural Information Interest Group which will focus on the first steps of bringing in librarians from other countries to future USAIN conferences, as well as providing more Ag information on the USAIN website. Here is Peter Young - the Director of the National Ag Library - speaking about global collaborations: http://iaald.blip.tv/file/864317/

3. Peter gave the NAL update, mentioning the new Blueprint for Success: The National Agricultural Library 2008-2012. Many of you may have seen in the Washington Post the article, A Precious Resource at Risk, about the drastic budget cuts facing NAL in the upcoming year. I believe it was at the last USAIN that I learned that the NAL has had a flat budget for the last twenty years. Somehow I didn't write down the percentage they will have to cut, but I believe it was either 40% or 60% - both staggering cuts. This will prevent the NAL from preserving their special collections, from buying print materials, from participating in Interlibrary Loan, and more. For more information, see the USAIN website for Lobbying Congress for Support.

Many of the invited speakers spoke on biofuels, bioenergy/bioproducts, and sustainable farming, including David Kline, an Amish farmer and author/editor of Farming Magazine. Without going into too much detail, here are a few of the interesting things I learned from all the speakers:

1. In the 1850’s ethanols were used for lighting, but in the 1860s-1906 an ethanol tax was enacted (making kerosene more competitive). The first ethanol fueled auto was the Ford Quadricycle (1896). The first flex-fuel car: Model-T (1908)!
2. In 2008 there were 11 billion gallons of ethanol produced from corn. Unfortunately there are a number of issues related to: water quality, soil erosion, water supply, biodiversity, loss of grasslands, increase in feed costs. Also, corn is displacing other crops -- leading to food riots.
3. The cellulosic biofuels (corn, switchgrass, MSW, forest residues, etc.) industry will grow rapidly in coming years. And will bring some very specific questions, such as how will supply chains develop (big issue), what are the implications for the food/feed/fiber markets, how will environmental issues be addressed, can we coproduce fuels and foods, and how can farmers and local communities benefit?
4. Lastly, has been shown to increase smog and cancerous benzene emissions. Also, all current biofuels increase carbon dioxide emission relative to gasoline.

There was quite a bit more information available from all the speakers. If you are interested in reading the speaker presentations, they are available for download: http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/usain/downloads.html

Today’s 2cm victory is a little revenge for the previous year: Jakub

Usain Bolt’s superhuman effort of 9.58 seconds (100m) and 19.19 seconds (200m) at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin have not been threatened ever since.

ATHLETICS | Junior international Jeyavindhiya also figures in NADA’s list; sprinter Neha banned for four years

The national record holder Avinash Sable, who has already attained the Paris Olympic qualifying standard, clocked 8:31.75 to overwrite his own previous meet record of 8:33.19, set five years ago in Lucknow.

Post the Paris Olympics, the association has planned to completely restructure its training and competition modules, possibly allowing more freedom and opportunities to athletes in both; this includes doing away with centralised national camps, grading the training centres and academies and increasing regional events for easy access to competitions

The lineup features 314 women and 278 men, spanning ages from 16 to 59 and with 46 states represented.

Competing in her third Olympics — Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo — Yousofi finished with a time of 13.42 seconds, slower than the 13.29 three years ago.

Noah Lyles, the sport's biggest showman, was unable to double up, taking bronze in the 200 and then revealing he was running with COVID.

Neeraj Chopra will be up against a top-class field in Lausanne, with five of the top-six finishers in the Paris Olympics final competing