TN Class X Results ~ SYMA Growth students perform well

There will be crowds everywhere ~ but this is different !!

Tamil Nadu Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC)  -  Class 10 (X) board exam results for this year have been declared this morning  by the Directorate of Government Examinations.  The exams were conducted between 8 and 31 March.  One reports states that  the overall pass percentage stands at 94.4%, which is 0.8% higher than the previous year. This is the highest pass percentage recorded in the last five years, the report said. Nearly 9.82 lakh students appeared for the examination from schools across the State, of which 4.91 lakh were girls and 4.9 lakh were boys. 

It is uniformly 10 + 2 + 3 years of College degree ~ till 1977, it was different – there were different patterns, the most important being 11 + 1 (PUC) + 3 years of College.  Those days a total of 400+ (80%) was considered the biggest mailstone.  Those were the days when the toppers name would appear on newspapers and the Registration No. of those who passed would get printed.  Dailies used to run special editions which will sell as hotcakes as students would run through the pages to find gleefully their numbers. 

Life has changed .. !  ~ In 2008, the then Police Commissioner  Sri R Sekar  inaugurated SYMA Growth, a full time tuition centre imparting quality educational tuition free for underprivileged children.  2016-17 was our 9^th academic year.  I have recently posted on the performance of our + 2 students.

Today, we are a happy lot !    Our students have performed exceptionally well.  English Medium 38 students all pass. 21 of them get more than 400. Topper got 482. In Tamil Medium all 19 pass - 6 students above 400 and the topper secured  427.

We place on record our sincere thanks and gratitude to the management of NK Thirumalachariar Educational Trust and NKT Boys Higher School.  We thank  the Head master of the School Mr S Venkatadri.  We pray to Almighty for continued success of this project and look forward to continued support of you all.  The success is due to the blessings of Lord Parthasarathi who guides us in all our steps.  We must place on record our thanks and gratitude to those teachers who taught these students with great dedication, commitment and devotion.  Our Coordinator Mrs Thara and the team who assisted her also deserve special appreciation. .  A Big Thank you to all of you  who have been supporting us in all our endeavours.

Together We will strive to make the society better place for all of us. ~ and very very special thanks to M/s Experis IT and Manpower Inc for their sponsorship.  Gratitude is due to  Mr PV Venkatesan of Manpower also.

SYMA rededicates itself and marches on in the 10^th year of the Operations – the admission process is already on .. and the crowds that you saw at the start is the Queue line that waited for getting application for entering SYMA Growth tuition centre.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

Secretary, SYMA

19^th May 2017. 

rusted Olympic Medals being returned for redoing !!

He was in limelight  for winning a Gold medal in the 2016 Summer Olympics – were you able to recognize him ?

Mack  Horton represented Australia in the 400 m freestyle, in which he won gold, and the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, in which he finished 4th with his teammates.  He also appeared before a Court for running a red light, where he was told he needs to learn patience.  The 20-year-old was caught on camera running a red arrow at 2.50pm on Nicholson Street in Carlton, Melbourne,  in June and months  later, he beat China's Sun Yang to win gold in the 400m freestyle at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.  His sporting achievements weren’t mentioned during his hearing at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, according to the Herald Sun.  Police said the light had been red for 0.8 seconds. Horton’s lawyer  claimed that it was mistaken judgement while driving; he  pleaded guilty to the charge and was released without conviction on a six-month good behaviour bond. The swimmer was also ordered to pay $150 to the Smith Family Charity.  Just imagine, what could have happened here or elsewhere !!

Olympic Gold medal is great ~but nothing of that before law !! – the  2016 Summer Olympics, officially  the Games of the XXXI Olympiad and commonly,  Rio 2016, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 August to 21 August 2016. More than 11,000 athletes from 205 National Olympic Committees, including first time entrants Kosovo, South Sudan, and the Refugee Olympic Team, took part. With 306 sets of medals, the games featured 28 Olympic sports, including rugby sevens and golf, which were added to the Olympic program in 2009. For the fourth time in five Games, the United States led the medal table both in number of gold medals   and in overall medals  won.  Behind the United States, Great Britain were second on the medal table by golds (27), and third by overall medals (67) – their highest finish under either count since the home games of 1908, while China were third by golds (26), but second by overall medals (70).

Casa da Moeda do Brasil is the Brazilian mint, owned by the Brazilian government and administratively subordinated to the Ministry of Finances. It was established in 1694. Its current headquarters and industrial facilities occupy a modern plant with 110,000 square metres (1.2 million square feet) in Rio de Janeiro's western suburb of Santa Cruz. It produces legal tender coins and banknotes.  It also produced the Olympic medals.

In between, there are Gold, Silver and Bronze medals – Gold medal is not Gold  ??   - the  last Olympic gold medal that was actually made from gold was awarded in 1912. The specific composition and design of Olympic medals is determined by the host city's organizing committee. However, certain standards must be maintained:

•        Gold and silver medals are 92.5% silver.

•        Gold medals must be plated with at least 6 grams of gold.

•        All Olympic medals must be at least 3 mm thick and at least 60 mm in diameter.

Bronze medals are bronze, an alloy of copper and usually tin. The custom of awarding gold, silver, and bronze medals started at the 1904 Olympics. After the 1912 Olympics, the gold medals have been gilded silver rather than real gold.  However, Nobel medals are Gold. The 2016 Summer Olympics featured eco-friendly metals. The gold metal used in the gold medals was free of mercury contamination. Mercury and gold are notoriously difficult elements to separate from each other.

Now comes the news that at least 130 medals won at the 2016 Rio Olympics have been returned to the organisers as they've begun to rust or developed black spots on them, the games' spokesman has announced on Friday. The effected medals, mostly bronze and including some from the Paralympics, are being fixed by the Brazilian Mint who were entrusted to make them for last year's event, communications director Mario Andrada told Reuters.

'The most common issue is that they were dropped or mishandled and the varnish has come off and they've rusted or gone black in the spot where they were damaged,' Andrada said.  'The second thing is that a small few, about 10, had problems with the extreme cold.' Andrada said the first problems came to light in October but called them 'completely normal.' The Brazilian Mint would fix any defects and return them, he added.

One shudders to think what would have the reaction of ‘Centerists’ and the media (and social media) if only such a thing had happened in India – imagine the captions and media stories, calling it ‘mother of all scams’ till the next scam surfaces !!

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

20^th May 2017.

Eliminator 2 - SRH out - KKR wins rain shortened match !

The 2nd eliminator at Bengaluru was different – it appears to me, that it becomes too batsmen dominated in a chase when D/L comes to play, especially with the chasing team having all 10 wikets ~ - is is difficult to get 48 in Six or 129 in 20 ?

After the toss, both captains acknowledged that they had got what they wanted. Kolkata Knight Riders had always been a chasing side, said Gautam Gambhir.  They contained SRH throughout – they had brought back  Nathan Coulter-Nile executing those plans perfectly in a crunch game. The Australia fast bowler hadn't played a single game since being struck on the grille by a Dan Christian bouncer at the start of May. On his return, he took 3 for 20 on a ground that , even with it's relaid surface, is not one that is pace-friendly.

He bowled the 19th over when Sunrisers had relatively well-set batsmen at the crease;  with six wickets still in hand.  Commentators were expecting Yuvi do a Dhoni – but things were different.  He forced Vijay Shankar, a batsman in the traditional mould, to try and hit him on the up on this pitch. It got him a wicket first ball. Then, with the same length he found Chris Jordan's leading edge and took a smart one-handed catch, diving to his left.  It cost KKR,  three runs.

With half their Eliminator completed, Kolkata Knight Riders' players must have sat in their dugout, cursing. Cursing the weather, the scheduling, themselves. It  rained, and rained some more. Were this match to be washed out, Knight Riders would be knocked out, since they had finished fourth on the league table and Sunrisers third. They had lost their last two matches and blown a massive chance to finish in the top two.  But the playing conditions for playoffs allow for a five-over match to begin as late as 12.26am - nearly four-and-a-half hours past the scheduled match start - and for a Super Over to be played as far into the night as 1.20am.

And so, three hours and 18 minutes after the rain had begun - a wait longer than most T20 games - Knight Riders' batsmen began the task of following up their bowlers' good work. Instead of 129 in 20 overs, they chased in panic  48 in six; lost three wickets in 1.1 overs. But a shortened second innings favours the chasing team in a most exaggerated manner.  Gautam Gambhir eased them past the early jitters with an unbeaten 32 off 19 balls.

For us with remembrance, way back on 27th Jan 1985 at Sector 16 Chandigarh, in a rain shortened match, England made 121, Alan Lamb top scoring 33.  Kapil gave only 17 in his 3 overs, while Thirumalai Ananthanpillai Sekhar took 3 for 23 in 3 accounting for Mi8ke Gatting, David Gower and Phil Edmonds India chasing required 11 off the last, Chris Cowdrey bowled his only over – Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Lalchand Rajput were at the crease and India managed 3 runs. 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

18^th May 2017.

Antikythera mechanism ~ the mystic precursor of modern analog computer

Lot of things sound Greek and Latin ~ this is truly Greek  !!

The earliest known inhabitants were likely seasonal hunters who traveled there to exploit the presence of migratory birds. The population of the island then changed frequently as it was settled and abandoned several times, including a period of significant influence by Cretan culture during the Bronze Age.In antiquity, the island of Antikythera was known as Aigila or Ogylos.    In Bahubali, they use an equipment that could be related to modern day binocular, that shows far objects nearer .. ..

Centuries later, a NY Prof of History of Ancient Science, called it a “philosopher’s instructional device” in an interview with the Associated Press.   After 2,000 years under the sea, three flat, misshapen pieces of bronze at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens are all shades of green, from emerald to forest. From a distance, they look like rocks with patches of mold.  They represent  traces of amazing technology that appear utterly modern: gears with neat triangular teeth (just like the inside of a clock) and a ring divided into degrees (like the protractor you used in school). Nothing else like this has ever been discovered from antiquity. Nothing as sophisticated, or even close, appears again for more than a thousand years.

For decades after divers retrieved these scraps from the Antikythera wreck from 1900 to 1901, scholars were unable to make sense of them. X-ray imaging in the 1970s and 1990s revealed that the device must have replicated the motions of the heavens. Holding it in  hands,  the expert mariners  could track the paths of the Sun, Moon and planets with impressive accuracy !!

Antikythera or Anticythera  (literally "opposite Kythera") is a Greek island lying on the edge of the Aegean Sea, between Crete and Peloponnese.  Its land area is 20.43 square kilometres (7.89 square miles), the most distant part of the Attica region from its heart in the Athens metropolitan area.  Its main settlement and port is Potamós  ~ today it is all about the  Antikythera Mechanism, a clock-like machine consisting of more than 30 precise, hand-cut bronze gears —so much so that nothing comparable was built for another thousand years.  A study leader exclaimed the design to be beautiful, astronomy exactly right, and more valuable than Mona Lisa.

The researchers used three-dimensional X-ray scanners to reconstruct the workings of the device's gears and high-resolution surface imaging to enhance faded inscriptions on its surface and found that the  device's front dials had pointers for the sun and moon — called the "golden little sphere" and "little sphere," respectively—and markings, which coincided with the zodiac and solar calendars. The back dials, meanwhile, appear to have been used for predicting solar and lunar eclipses. The researchers also observed  that the device could mechanically replicate the irregular motions of the Moon, caused by its elliptical orbit around the Earth, using a clever design involving two superimposed gear-wheels, one slightly off-center, that are connected by a pin-and-slot device.

The team was also able to pin down the device's construction date more precisely. Radiocarbon dating suggested it was built around 65 B.C., but newly revealed lettering on the machine indicate a slightly older construction date of 150 to 100 B.C. The team's reconstruction also involves 37 gear wheels, seven of which are hypothetical.  Pieces of this ancient calculating machine were discovered by sponge divers exploring the remains of an ancient shipwreck off the tiny island of Antikythera in 1900. For decades, scientists have been trying to figure out how the device's 80 fragmented pieces fit together and unlock its workings.

The international team, led by Edmunds and Tony Freeth, also of Cardiff University, included astronomers, mathematicians, computer experts, script analysts and conservation experts from the U.K., Greece and the United States. Were it not for Valerios Stais, an important relic in the history of the computer might have gone undiscovered forever. While sifting through artifacts recovered two years earlier from a Roman shipwreck, the Greek archaeologist noticed an intriguing lump of bronze among the statues, jewelry and coins retrieved by divers. What at first appeared to be a gear or wheel turned out to be what is now widely referred to as the first known analog computer.

To highlight Stais' discovery, 115 years ago Wednesday, Google today dedicates  its doodle to the Antikythera mechanism, a complex clockwork mechanism, stating that the corroded instrument's 30 bronze gears were used to track astronomical positions, predict solar and lunar eclipses, and signaled the timing of the Ancient Olympic Games.  The mechanism is now kept at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. As Google points out, the doodle illustrates how a rusty remnant can open up a skyful of knowledge and inspiration.

“The Antikythera mechanism tracked planetary positions, predicted lunar and solar eclipses, and even signaled the next Olympic Games. It was probably also used for mapping and navigation,” Google says. “A dial on the front combines zodiacal and solar calendars, while dials on the back capture celestial cycles. Computer models based on 3-D tomography have revealed more than 30 sophisticated gears, housed in a wooden and bronze case the size of a shoebox.”

“Historians continue to ponder the Antikythera Mechanism’s purpose and inner workings, and visitors to the National Archaeological Museum of Greece marvel at its delicate complexity. Today’s Doodle illustrates how a rusty remnant can open up a skyful of knowledge and inspiration,” Google says.

Very interesting indeed !

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

17^th May 2017.

Bib: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/; www.heavy.com & more