Amazing Brand Bangalore gets bigger, IT will get only better

Brand Bangalore has not lost its sheen yet - that's what the Information Technology Department has to say. While the state government has cleared the path for investments worth Rs 60,000 crore in August, September and October had over 40 projects worth over Rs 38,000 crore cleared.
The state IT secretary Vidyashankar says the numbers for November and December will be just as encouraging and proves that Bangalore has not suffered because of the state's political instability.
"We are seeing, on the contrary, an increase in participation not only from IT but also from telecom, biotech and nano industries. Bangalore is acting more,” he says.
The reason? Brand Bangalore is still synonymous with outsourcing, making it easier to market to client overseas.
"Bangalore is a global entity and is top of the mind recall for it honchos all over the world. If the country is going to continue to grow, Bangalore will grow as well,” says Vidyashankar.
Other senior government officials tell CNN-IBN that the absence of an elected government may have made the state more business friendly. This is because the governor's executive committee is not making decisions that are purely based on merit and there is very little room for vested interests.
The city's infrastructure continues to be the bone of contention. But officials say changes are being made.
"The kind of initiatives we are putting in will take care of infrastructure for the next 20 years. Be it water, roads or metro, it's all being taken care of," says Vidyashankar.
While the city exported Rs 49,000 crore worth software in 2006-07, its nearest competitor Chennai managed just about Rs 21,000 crore. This year, the exports are estimated to touch a record Rs 70,000 crore.
The I-T secretary says the target of Rs 100,000 crore in exports for the year 2010-11 is more than achievable

Revealed: Why beer bellies make men bend over

Pregnant women may stand out a mile away with their characteristic backward-leaning stance, but that clumsy-looking position is a unique adaptation that evolved over millennia, anthropologists said on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for men with large beer bellies!
Pregnant pre-humans appeared to have stood the same way. And it may save women from even more back pain than they already have, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
The bodies of women do two things when they are pregnant -- they adjust their stance to move the center of gravity to accommodate the growing fetus, and the lower vertebrae have evolved a distinct shape to allow this shifting to take place without damaging the spine, Katherine Whitcome of Harvard University and colleagues found.
"It was one of these things like, 'Oh my god, no one's ever thought of this,' and it looks so obvious," Liza Shapiro of the University of Texas at Austin, who helped supervise the work, said in a telephone interview.
Whitcome and Shapiro followed 19 women through their pregnancy, using digital cameras and motional analysis equipment to map the changes in stance and movement as the months passed.
"What women do when their pregnancy reaches about half of the expected mass ... they shift backwards," Shapiro said.
"If you didn't have any of those mechanisms, the only way to offset a load in front of you is to contract your back muscles. The more you have to use your muscles, the more discomfort you would have. It would be worse otherwise, and there would be more potential damage to the vertebrae."
Without this change in shape, the vertebrae could be subject to shearing forces, with one sliding over another, damaging the fluid-filled discs in between or pulling on ligaments and muscles.
"The shape of the vertebrae allows her to rotate the upper body," Shapiro said.
When she moved to Harvard, Whitcome continued the study and looked at the fossils of pre-humans known as australopithecines, as well as at the bone structure of our nearest living relatives, the chimpanzees.
"These differences are absent in the chimpanzee. So there is something unique about humans," Whitcome said. "We also see some evidence for these adaptations in early australopithecines."
Men do not have this adaptation, either, Shapiro said.
"We can only conclude that men can't resist the forces of their big bellies as well as women. They are at a disadvantage," she said.
"They probably lean back the same way to try and balance that load, but they are kind of putting their vertebrae more at risk. I am sure there has got to be a correlation between having a big beer gut and having back pain," Shapiro laughed.

Big B, SRK better role models than historical figures: Study

Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai serve as more influential role models for youngsters than any of the famous figures from history, a new study from the University of Leicester suggests.
The research in the University of Leicester Department of Media and Communication examines interest in celebrities and gossip about them. It was carried out by Charlotte De Backer who sought in her study to explain interest in celebrity culture.
"Life is about learning, gaining experience and in that process we have a tendency to observe and mimic the actions of others. Ideally we mimic what makes others successful and avoid unsuccessful actions others have trialed (and paid for),” De Backer said.
"In reality, humans seem to have the tendency to mimic the overall behaviour pattern of higher status or more successful others. This explains why celebrities act as role models for broad ranges of behaviour they display – good or bad,” she added.
De Backer also examined another theory for interest in celebrity, known as the Parasocial Hypothesis.
In this case, the bonds are parasocial or one-way because the celebrity reveals private information (often involuntary), and the audience members respond emotionally to this, but there is no feedback of the private life of the audience going to the celebrity (or hardly ever), and nor do celebrities display emotions towards their audience.
Her study of 800 respondents and over 100 interviews confirmed that younger participants showed greater interest in celebrity gossip, even if it was about celebrities who were a lot older than them and even when they did not know the celebrities. They showed greatest interest in internationally known celebrities, because they considered those as more prestigious.
De Backer study also found that older people were interested in celebrity gossip not because they wanted to learn about the celebrities, but because it helped them to form social networks with other people.
"We did find in the interviews that older people do not gossip about celebrities as much because they want to learn from them or feel befriended with them, but they use celebrity gossip to bond with real life friends and acquaintances,” De Backer said.
"Living in scattered societies, we often don't know who to talk about with the many people we know, and celebrities can act as our mutual friends and acquaintances,” she added.
De Backer’s research was published in the journal Human Nature.

Amazing Phone Holder!!!!

Amazing Phone Holder!!!!

London Inn offers free stay for Marys and Josephs

London: Josephs and Marys in search of a room at the inn this Christmas are being made an offer they can't refuse.
A British hotel chain is promising free accommodation to couples who share their first names with the couple from the Christian Nativity story.
Almost 30 Josephs and Marys have already signed up for the free night's stay at the Travelodge, said Shakila Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the hotel chain.
"The 'gift' of free night's stay is to make up for the hotel industry not having any rooms left on Christmas Eve over 2000 years ago when the original 'Mary and Joseph' had to settle for the night in a stable," the company says on its Web site.
The offer is good at any one of the chain's 322 hotels in the United Kingdom, the Web site says. The couples must bring proof of identity and must prove that they are in a long-term relationship.
"If you satisfy the criteria, you get a free night in a family room for two adults and two children," Ahmed said. "There's also parking space for a donkey if needed," she joked.
Ahmed said the offer, which will run from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night — December 24 to January 5 — had been very well-received.
"We've had a lot of interest. I think people like the fact that it resonates with the Nativity story at a time when the actual meaning of Christmas often becomes forgotten in festive overkill," she said.
Couples can register their names at a special e-mail address set up by Travelodge, which has hotels across the Britain, Ireland and Spain, Ahmed said.