Mar 2011 - Michigan South Asian
Mar 2011 - Michigan South Asian
Mar 2011 - Michigan South Asian
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<strong>Michigan</strong> <strong>South</strong> <strong>Asian</strong> MARCH <strong>2011</strong> Page 6<br />
Indian Inventor Claims To Have<br />
London, Feb 14<br />
An Indian inventor, A.K.<br />
Vishwanath, has claimed that<br />
he has made a flying car with<br />
the help of India’’s first small<br />
car, <strong>Mar</strong>uti.<br />
Made out of a seemingly<br />
ordinary 800cc <strong>Mar</strong>uti car, it<br />
has rotor blades affixed to the<br />
roof with extended wheelarches<br />
creating a “vacuum section”,<br />
and has been one of the star<br />
Made ‘Flying Car’<br />
attractions at the Aero India<br />
<strong>2011</strong> air show in Bangalore.<br />
<strong>Mar</strong>uti, built in the 1980s by<br />
Suzuki, and has formed the<br />
basis of inventor Vishwanath’’s<br />
dream. The 52-year-old has<br />
spent 16 years working on the<br />
“flying <strong>Mar</strong>uti”, and claims it<br />
has vertical lift-off and he has<br />
tested a scale version tested in<br />
a wind tunnel, reports the Daily<br />
Mail.<br />
North <strong>South</strong> Foundation – Encouraging<br />
Excellence In Education<br />
By Srinivas Gudeti<br />
May last week, Indian American kid champion for the last three<br />
years, Samir Mishra, Kavya Shivashankar, Anamkika Veeramani.<br />
These name are most familiar to <strong>South</strong> <strong>Asian</strong> Americans. Common<br />
things among these, all three were Scripss Speling bee champions<br />
from 2008 to 2010 respectively but also they got basics and exposure<br />
of spelling bee contests from North <strong>South</strong> Foundation. NSF<br />
kids got top positions in Scripps spelling bee, National geography<br />
bee and Math Counts over so many years.<br />
North <strong>South</strong> Foundation was started in 1989 by Dr Ratnam chitturi<br />
to promote academic excellence among Indian American youth and<br />
also help needy and meritorious students in India by giving scholarships.<br />
North <strong>South</strong> Foundation is volunteer driven non-profit organization<br />
with zero overhead costs.<br />
Foundation raises money for the scholarships through registration<br />
fees of educational contests. There are 16 chapters in India for<br />
North <strong>South</strong> Foundation to seek and process the applications from<br />
the poor and merit students who are applying for colleges. Amount<br />
of $250 scholarship per year is given to the qualified applicants to<br />
complete their education. Past recipients of college scholarships in<br />
India and now helping the foundation in USA is a big testimony of<br />
its good work.<br />
North <strong>South</strong> Foundation has got about 80 chapters in USA and five<br />
in <strong>Michigan</strong>. To promote learning and excellence among Indian<br />
American youth, regional educational contests are conducted during<br />
<strong>Mar</strong>ch to April over three weekends in the entire country. Spelling<br />
bee, Math, Vocabulary, Geography, Science, Public speaking<br />
and essay writing are the contests conducted in Junior, Intermediate<br />
and Senior categories.<br />
Based on national cut off score, top 100 kids in each contest are<br />
being invited for National finals usually conducted in August, September.<br />
National finals are held in a selected city every year. This<br />
year national finals will be conducted in San Jose. It is planned to<br />
host 2012 national finals in University of <strong>Michigan</strong>, Ann Arbor.<br />
In regional contests, all the participants are appreciated with ribbons<br />
and medals on the stage to keep their self esteem and for their<br />
efforts of learning. The foundation emphasizes and promotes the<br />
joy of learning and competing on one’s own abilities to excel with<br />
hard work. For Spelling and vocabulary bee contests, preparation<br />
of the given 1000 words itself is an education and learning process<br />
for the participants.<br />
(Continued On Page 7)<br />
So far, he has garnered 40<br />
patents, and told reporters his<br />
inspiration came from many<br />
sources, including the flying<br />
ability of bees. Other engineers<br />
are also working on the project.<br />
He told reporters that the car<br />
is powered initially by an<br />
electrical generator, after which<br />
its engine pumps out so-called<br />
‘’energy flows’’ which provide<br />
lift-off and cruising.<br />
The car was developed by<br />
Vishwanath’’s company,<br />
B’’Lorean, named after his<br />
home of Bangalore and the<br />
winged DeLorean sports car of<br />
the 1980s, famously used as a<br />
time machine in Hollywood’’<br />
flick ‘Back To The Future’<br />
series of films.<br />
How Women Fend Off<br />
Washington, Feb 16<br />
Domestic Violence<br />
A woman’’s arsenal of defences<br />
for resisting violence critically<br />
depends on her position within<br />
the family and community, according<br />
to a new study.<br />
“Women’’s resistance is often<br />
conceptualised only as exit,<br />
which is problematic,” said<br />
study author Stephanie Paterson,<br />
a professor in the Concordia<br />
University Department of<br />
Political Science and member<br />
of the Centre for Research in<br />
Human Development.<br />
“We know that violence increases<br />
upon separation. Focusing on<br />
exit obscures the experiences of<br />
women who are unwilling and/<br />
or unable to leave,” she added.<br />
Contrary to popular belief, the<br />
new study found that wealth<br />
was not a guaranteed escape<br />
from an abusive relationship.<br />
It’’s just one of many factors<br />
that can help a woman resist<br />
violence.<br />
‘’Moby-Dick’’ Discovered<br />
London, Feb 12: <strong>Mar</strong>ine archaeologists have discovered a 19thcentury<br />
shipwrecked whaling ship ‘Two Brothers’ — which went<br />
down in 1823 – from the Hawaiian waters. Slammed into coral<br />
reef about 600 miles northwest of Honolulu, the vessel was skippered<br />
by Captain George Pollard Jr.<br />
Two years earlier, Pollard commanded another ship that was<br />
rammed by a whale and sank in the <strong>South</strong> Pacific. Many know<br />
that as the inspiration for Herman Melville’’s writing the 1851<br />
novel ‘’Moby Dick’’. Iron and ceramic scraps from the Nantucket<br />
whaling ship ‘Two Brothers’ were located in shallow waters<br />
nearly 600 miles from Honolulu in the remote chain of islands and<br />
atolls that make up the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, reports the<br />
Telegraph. According to expedition leader Kelly Gleason, a marine<br />
archeologist, the area protected by the U.S. government as<br />
the Papahanaumokuakea <strong>Mar</strong>ine National Monument, was key in<br />
helping to preserve the site.<br />
The discovery was unveiled on Friday by researchers from the National<br />
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which<br />
led the initial 2008 expedition to the wreck and subsequent explorations<br />
of the site during the past two years. This is the first discovery<br />
of a sunken whaler from Nantucket, Massachusetts, birthplace<br />
of a U.S. whaling industry that played a key role in America’’s<br />
economic and political expansion into the Pacific, according to<br />
NOAA.<br />
Those factors can be tangible,<br />
such as access to a caring personal<br />
network. They can be intangible,<br />
such as her partner’’s<br />
perception of her resources, and<br />
his perception of her role within<br />
the family.<br />
If a partner perceives a woman<br />
as being in a strong position to<br />
resist, he’’s more likely to reconsider<br />
being violent towards<br />
her.<br />
Paterson’’s study examines the<br />
different options faced by battered<br />
women – from placating<br />
an abuser to threatening to exit<br />
– and how these options can influence<br />
subsequent violence.<br />
The notion that women have<br />
some bargaining power in cases<br />
of domestic abuse forces society<br />
to reconsider the dynamics<br />
of violence and expands the options<br />
for victims of such abuse.<br />
For women’’s negotiation tactics<br />
to be effective, however,<br />
much has to change in society<br />
at both the household and public<br />
policy levels.<br />
“Not only must we provide<br />
women with adequate material<br />
resources, but we must also address<br />
and challenge the origins<br />
of authority within families,”<br />
said Paterson.<br />
“Enabling resistance is not<br />
about making women accountable,<br />
but rather challenging the<br />
state to create systems in which<br />
effective resistance is possible.<br />
Only then will violence against<br />
women cease,” she added.<br />
The study is published in the<br />
journal Review of Radical Political<br />
Economics.