India's first online Braille library with 12,000 books launched

Mumbai: Visually impaired students have found a new avenue to access books online.

 The country's first online Braille library, with 12,000 books in its catalogue, was launched

in Mumbai last week and will cater to students pursuing higher education in institutions 

across India

It is a joint initiative by the National Institute of Visually Handicapped (NIVH), Dehradun 

& the Xavier's Resource Centre for Visually Challenged, Mumbai. The library allows students

 to download books and read them through refreshable Braille display systems (RBDS). The

 initiative has a website that will host members, which would be the institute's libraries 

across

 the country. The libraries have been given a username and a password

.
The libraries will upload all books available to their online catalogue. To gain access, a 

student needs to login with the institute's username and password. The books can then be

 downloaded instantly and transferred to the RBDS (a flat horizontal monitor consisting of

80 cells). The download appears on the screen of RBDS as raised units for the students to 

read.

Anuradha Mohit, director, NIVH, said, "Now we have a generation of young computer users

 among blind persons. Therefore, the launch has been very timely." Though, she admitted t

 the technology is not as advanced as that in developed nations, she informed this was a

 good start.

The RBDS would enable students to read only one to two sentences at a time.

100 such monitors have been dispatched by the NIVH, which will be used on a shared basis

 by students.

The portal has books in 13 languages that display text in the corresponding Braille script.

Mohit said by March 2013, they aim to have books in all the Indian languages. She added

 that with the bulk purchase of RBDS, it's hoped the cost of equipment would come down

. Students will then have more such devices at their disposal. Students, however, will have

 to wait for some time to access the library, as several institutes are yet to receive the RBDS

 devices.

Live Life .. King Size !!!

   If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than themillion who won't survive the week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of
imprisonment, the agony of torture orthe pangs of starvation,you are ahead of 20 million people around the world.

SMS cap? Think of us, say hearing impaired

BANGALORE: They communicate with the world only through sign language and letters. And then came short message service (SMS) __ a boon to the hearing impaired who found a new world at their finger tips. But has this world suddenly shrunk a bit?

With the recent guidelines issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which limited text messages up to 100 SMSs per day, the worst affected are the hearing impaired who use about 100-200 SMSs per day. The TRAI resolution aimed to get rid of unsolicited telemarketing calls and pesky messages.

World Habitat Day 2011: its the Time to Take Collective responsibility for the future

UN observes today (Oct 3) as World Habitat Day with a view to  appeal the world about its collective responsibility for the future of  Human Habitat. Cities & Cllimate Change is the Theme for this year
The world population is getting ready to pass the 7 billion mark by the end of this October and already 50 percent of the people are living in cities. India's urban population too will double in the next 30 years

India's cities are also characterised by high density of population, housing stock and poor infrastructure that makes them all the more vulnerable to climate change. For instance, studies have estimated that the economic damage - this includes only building foundation damages till 2050 due to sea-level rise - to Mumbai, as a result of climate change, could amount to 15,01,725 crore. 

India hosts 2011 World Environment Day

NEW DELHI: India will host this year's World Environment Day tomorrow and the government has announced that the country will continue to play a very important role in defining the terms of environmental debate at the global level. 

Each year a different country is chosen as the principal venue for the global celebration of World Environment Day which falls on June 5 and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has selected India as the global host of this year's programme. 

The theme of this years celebration is "Forests: Nature at Your Service", which highlights the crucial environmental and economic roles played by the forests, particularly in India. 

One third of world's food is wasted, says UN study

About one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, according to a study commissioned by the United Nations food agency.

That amounts to more than one billion tonnes of waste around the world every year.

The study recommends that developing countries should improve production and distribution, so as to stop losing so much food.

It also says industrialised countries must stop throwing so much away.

Loss versus waste

The UN study, by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, was aimed at an international trade fair for the food packaging industry, to be held in Germany later this month.

Among the key findings are that consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food, 222 million tonnes, as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa.

International Nurses Day (May 12)

  International Nurses Day is observed on  May 12, to mark the Birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale who is regarded as the founder of Modern Nursing and remembered as the “lady with the lamp.” 

This year’s theme is “Closing the Gap: Increasing Access and Equity.”

Health care is as a main public priority in most parts of the world and nurses play a central role in delivering health care. Nurses help educate patients and the public on the prevention of illness and injury, provide care and assist in cure, participate in rehabilitation, and provide support. Nurses have always been in the forefront of change in health care and public health. Their round-the-clock presence, observation skills, and vigilance allow doctors to make better diagnoses and propose better treatments.

‘EARTH’: Need of the ‘HOUR’

 When we step out of our urban homes on the streets of Mumbai, Delhi or Chennai or for that matter any metropolitan hub of India, all we can see is bustling crowd, widely lit streets and shininess. We spend crores on the glitz and gloss to portray urbanity. From streets to malls or even a local vegetable market, everything that we see seems to glitter. Apart from the immense illumination that strikes us, the number of switches that we turn on is innumerable. The gizmos and gadgets that we use to make our lives better somewhere seem to have adverse effect on us. Climate Change is an infamous global phenomenon that has taken its toll on planet earth.

World Tuberculosis Day 2011

World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, which falls on March 24 every year, aims to raise public awareness about tuberculosis, a preventable disease. Tuberculosis is still an epidemic in many regions of the world, annihilating the lives of many millions of people each year. Each year, over nine million people around the world get infected with TB and almost two million TB related deaths are recorded worldwide. The actual figures must be far larger than this.

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

	21March 2011 -- On this day in 1960, police opened fire and killed 69 people peacefully demonstrating against apartheid "pass laws" in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa. The notorious passbooks were a repressive tool to control the movements of black South Africans. The United Nations General Assembly subsequently declared 21 March to be the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and called on the international community not only to commemorate that tragedy, but also to work together to combat racism and discrimination wherever they exist.  Racial and ethnic discrimination occur on a daily basis, hindering progress for millions of people around the world. Racism and intolerance can take various forms − from denying individuals the basic principles of equality to fuelling ethnic hatred that may lead to genocide − all of which can destroy lives and fracture communities. Since the Sharpeville massacre, substantial progress has been made in the struggle against racism. The apartheid system in South Africa has been dismantled. Racist laws and practices have been abolished in many countries, and an international framework for fighting racism, guided by the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, has been established. The Convention is now nearing universal ratification. Yet still, in all regions, too many individuals, communities and societies suffer from the injustice and stigma that racism brings. Source: United Nations