alchemy

Hi ,

The Chemical department of National Institute of Technology is
conducting its annual technical symposium ALCHEMY 08.
The events include
1) PAPER PRESENTATION
2) CHEMSOFT- MATLAB coding and programming contest
3) CHENOVATOR- Insudtrial Problem Solving event.
and other events……

Exciting prizes to be won- cash prizes worth 30,000 INR and
internships in reputed organizations like GE and Orchid Pharma.

Guest lectures by Texas A & M University Professor Dr.Arun Srinivasa,
Dr KS Gandhi ,IISc Professor and other eminent personalities.

Registrations Open.Visit the website for more details.
www.nitt.edu/alchemy

PRAGYAN

Welcome to Pragyan 2008 – The international level technical festival of NIT, Trichy!

It’s that time of the year again; Pragyan is back, bigger and better. Starting the 28th of February for four days NIT Trichy will play host to a whole lot of technovators. Since its inception, from programming contests to building your own F1 cars, Pragyan offers the chance to the brightest talents from across the globe to showcase their wares and be justly rewarded for the same. Apart from this, Pragyan also gives the students a chance to interact with the most prominent industrialists, scientists and entrepreneurs and other global achievers.

In its fourth edition, Pragyan only promises to be bigger and better. For participants, the stakes are huge and fortunes are ready to be won. To add to this, the lectures and workshops will ensure that an indelible mark is left in the minds of each and every person who comes down to take part. To start with we choose to highlight six of our events.

1)NITTro

This is the car racing event of Pragyan where you have to build your own IC engine powered car and race your way to glory. NITTro gives you a chance to make your F-1 car and race flat out in eliminative races to eventually be crowned winner. The specifications for the car and engine are mentioned in the website. So if speed thrills you and you dream of playing need for speed real time, then NITTro is the event for you this Pragyan.
PRIZE MONEY: INR 50,000

2)Contraption

This event requires you and your team to complete a simple task (like bursting a balloon) through the most complicated method possible. Complications could be brought about through energy transformations at various stages of the process. Contraption is one of the most successful events of Pragyan and a true crowd-puller. Teams will have to rack their brains as they attempt to ′complexify the simple’ and ′convolute the obvious’.
PRIZE MONEY: INR 50,000

3)Ventura

The national B-plan contest of Pragyan, Ventura is for all those who like to construct their own roads with bricks of their own intelligence and perseverance. This event will give you a chance to make concrete plans of your ideas and present them in front of a celebrated panel of judges. If the prizes are not enough incentive, incubation worth INR 25 lacs is being provided by Trec-Step; All in all, a great opportunity for budding entrepreneurs.
INCUBATION AMOUNT UPTO INR 25 LACS PROVIDED BY TREC-STEP.

4)Robovigyan

This is the robot design contest of Pragyan where teams are asked to make bots as per the problem statement. This year there are two events namely
Micromouse
SiM-Bot
A treat for both participants and audience, Robovigyan will give all and sundry a chance to witness artificial intelligence at work.
PRIZE MONEY: INR 75,000

5)Transforma

This is the event that will put engineers to a new and special test this Pragyan. The event requires you and your team to first make a functional model as per the problem statement and then transform the same model into another model performing a different function. For example, a washing machine can be transformed using the same parts into an air-conditioner. So you and your team will first be asked to make the washing machine, which will be tested for proper working, and then convert it into an air-conditioner. For more details regarding parameters for judging the degree of transformation, visit the site.
PRIZE MONEY: INR 24,000

6) Avishkar

As the name suggests, this event is all about innovation. There is no problem statement, no boundaries are set. In short, it’s no holds barred where the most creative will come out on top. This event will require both ingenuity and immense technical competence to give form and shape to your ideas. The functional model which you finally bring will be judged by an elite panel of judges. So come to Pragyan and innovate in Avishkar.
PRIZE MONEY: INR 24,000

For more details on these events and on the many others that we have lined up for you log on to http://www.pragyan.org and stay connected. It is said that “Ability is of little use without opportunity”. Well this Pragyan there will be opportunities galore- it is up to you to come and grab them. We look forward to seeing you this February 28th at NITT.

Email: public_relations@pragyan.org
Website: http://www.pragyan.org

HOW COMPANIES GOT THEIR NAMES?

Apple Computers It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 O’clock. CISCO It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco. Compaq This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object. Corel The name was derived from the founder’s name Dr.Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory. Google The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named ‘Googol’, a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros.After founders – Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to ‘Google’ Hotmail Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world.When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters “html” – the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing. Hewlett Packard Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett. Intel Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ‘Moore Noyce’ but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics. Lotus (Notes) Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from ‘The Lotus Position’ or ‘Padmasana’. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Microsoft Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the ‘-‘ was removed later on. Motorola Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola. ORACLE Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company. Sony It originated from the Latin word ‘sonus’ meaning sound, and ‘sonny’ a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster. SUN Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer. Yahoo! The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos