Dhoni Surpasses Kirmani

When MS Dhoni stumped West Indies' Kraigg Brathwaite off Pragyan Ojha, it was his 199^thwicketkeeping dismissal in Tests. He thus overtook Syed Kirmani, who had held the Indian record of 198 dismissals.

Kirmani, who finished playing Tests in 1986, was the first Indian wicketkeeper to 100 Test dismissals, and he had owned the record for over three decades.

Later in the innings, Dhoni caught Marlon Samuels, making him the first Indian wicketkeeper to 200 dismissals.

Dhoni is the 13^th wicketkeeper to reach the mark. He would be expected to climb this list quickly given that most of these wicketkeepers here have retired.

No	Player	Team	Mat	Inns	Dis	Ct	St
1	MV Boucher	SAF	139	265	521	499	22
2	AC Gilchrist	Aus	96	191	416	379	37
3	IA Healy	Aus	119	224	395	366	29
4	RW Marsh	Aus	96	182	355	343	12
5	PJL Dujon	Win	79	150	270	265	5
6	APE Knott	Eng	95	174	269	250	19
7	AJ Stewart	Eng	82	141	241	227	14
8	Wasim Bari	Pak	81	146	228	201	27
9	TG Evans	Eng	91	175	219	173	46
10	RD Jacobs	Win	65	122	219	207	12
11	Kamran Akmal	Pak	53	99	206	184	22
12	AC Parore	NZl	67	121	201	194	7
13	MS Dhoni	Ind	62	114	200	174	26

Dhoni is No. 9 among wicketkeepers with most Test stumpings. The list:

No	Player	Team	Mat	Inns	Dis	Ct	St
1	WAS Oldfield	Aus	54	101	130	78	52
2	TG Evans	Eng	91	175	219	173	46
3	SMH Kirmani	Ind	88	151	198	160	38
4	AC Gilchrist	Aus	96	191	416	379	37
5	IA Healy	Aus	119	224	395	366	29
6	Wasim Bari	Pal	81	146	228	201	27
7	HAPW Jayawardene	Srl	43	73	107	81	26
8	RS Kaluwitharana	Srl	48	85	119	93	26
9	MS Dhoni	Ind	61	113	200	174	26

The opponent-wise break-up of Dhoni's 200 dismissals:

Opposition	Mat	Inns	Dis	Ct	St
Australia	10	19	35	26	9
Bangladesh	3	6	15	12	3
England	12	22	40	37	3
New Zealand	5	10	22	19	3
Pakistan	5	9	10	9	1
South Africa	10	17	25	24	1
Sri Lanka	9	16	22	21	1
West Indies	8	15	31	26	5
Total	62	114	200	174	26

The top Indian wicketkeepers:

Player	Mat	Dis	Ct	St
MS Dhoni	62	200	174	26
S Kirmani	88	198	160	38
K More	49	130	110	20
N Mongia	44	107	99	8
F Engineer	46	82	66	16
N Tamhane	21	51	35	16
D Karthik	16	50	45	5
P Patel	20	49	41	8

Taking Indian schools to 21st Century

“Schools across the globe have started creating 21st Century learning environments on their premises in a big way and Indian schools should not be left out. It is the need of the hour for all stakeholders of schooling,” said EZ Vidya founder and CEO Chitra Ravi here on Saturday.

She was speaking at a colloquium on “Creating 21st Century Learning Environment in Primary Classes” at India Habitat Centre. EZ Vidya is an educational consulting and service company with the mission to “Let the Child Blossom”. Based so far in Chennai, it is exploring new vistas now in North India and beyond.

“Our organisation's aim is to successfully bridge gaps in the teaching-learning process in schools. I feel that thinking, creativity and sound reasoning in students will be the dominating forces in the coming years. One of the principal objectives of any school education system is to facilitate the process of equipping students with knowledge, skills and competencies to eventually enable them to solve problems related to real-life situations,” she said.

“When a community progresses from the by-gone industrial age and the just-passed digital age to the ‘conceptual age' in which we live, skills like critical and creative thinking, collaborative learning, team work through projects at classrooms must result in ‘innovation' skills, which is a key outcome of students in conceptual age,” she noted in her presentation.

As a first step, she said, one needs to go beyond conventional textbooks/rote-learning and even colourful audio-visuals approaches. At the colloquium, “Chrysalis”, a curriculum from KG to Class V with optimal utilisation of technology to create 21st Century learning, was also unveiled.

“Chrysalis is based on intense research involving several key stakeholders of school education. While many research and development departments in schools and universities in the US, UK, Australia, Singapore, Canada and some European countries are rigorously involved in research to develop 21st Century skills to suit their learners and workforce, in India it is yet to gather momentum. One major hindrance has been the lack of proven approach adopted in Indian classrooms and direct interaction with teachers as facilitators,” said Ms. Ravi.

Five hundred days of solitude: Russia ends Mars experiment

Russia is about to wrap up the longest isolation experiment in space travel history, with six men ending their virtual trip to Mars after 520 days on Friday.

“They are looking forward to their exit just like children on Christmas Eve,” says Martin Zell from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Six participants from Russia, China, Italy and France have been confined inside a 180-square-metre container in Moscow since June 3, 2010 as part of the Mars500 space experiment, which simulates an interplanetary flight to Mars and back.

On Friday, their spaceship is scheduled to “land” again on Earth after nearly 18 months away -- even though they were never gone.

“Simulation is much more difficult than a real flight,” said Italian electrical engineer Diego Urbina, one of the participants.

Mars500 has not included weightlessness or cosmic rays, which would feature on a real 50-million-kilometre flight to the Red Planet.

“Instead, you often feel isolation and heavy monotony,” Urbina told DPA in an interview from the module.

More than 30 cameras are observing the occurrences within the tubular container -- save for one private chamber measuring 3 square metres -- from a control room at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow.

The controllers watch scenes such as Urbina, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, sitting comfortably in front of wood panelling.

“Having a woman on board would have certainly been good. You miss that, to be honest,” the 28-year-old says.

Despite the boredom, Urbina is among the lucky ones. He, along with Russian Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Chinese Wang Yue, got to briefly leave the container in February for a virtual landing and the first steps on Mars.

Researchers had recreated at the IBMP a portion of the Red Planet, which gets its nickname from its iron-oxide dust.

Russians Alexey Sitev and Sukhrob Kamolov as well as Frenchman Romain Charles, meanwhile, had to wait for their colleagues on the “mother ship.” “But hand on heart, we knew every second that we were not on our way to Mars,” Urbina says with a wink.

To keep the crew on their toes, “ground control” came up with dozens of experiments and staged breakdowns.

The crew will have spent nearly 12,500 hours in a windowless container which looks like “a mix between a Finnish sauna and an enlarged roof truss from the 1970s,” according to the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), which is participating in the project.

In the first long-term experiment by the Mars researchers two years ago, Cyrille Fournier of France and German Oliver Knickel spent 105 days “in space” in Moscow.

Mars500 has brought new insights that could be life-saving. “To see Mars and not die is what a real flight to the Red Planet will be all about,” Mars500 project executive officer Alexander Suvorov says.

“This closed society was a paradise for researchers,” said Alexander Chouker, an anaesthesiologist from Munich’s Ludwig Maximilians University, who looked at urine and saliva samples to see how stress affects the immune system.

“I am certain that this was a small but important step on the way to Mars,” said Peter Graef from the DLR.

Since experts cannot rule out life forms on Mars, the most Earth-like planet in the solar system is also the most exciting for them.

Urbina reported that there were no scuffles as in previous experiments. “It was like a normal life on board. Not everybody had to be everybody’s friend,” the Italian said.

His colleague Wang Yue cannot wait to leave the spaceship. “I really miss my mother’s cooking,” the Chinese said, in a reference to the strict nutrition rules on board.

The spaceship did have four tons of food on board -- but there was no Asian food to be had.

Dhoni, Abhinav Bindra to get honorary rank of lieutenant colonel today

Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Olympic gold medallist shooter Abhinav Bindra are all set to don the olive greens of the Indian Army on Tuesday.

The two achievers of Indian sports would be conferred the rank of honorary lieutenant colonel for their contribution in the field of cricketing and shooting respectively.

Dhoni had led India to the ICC World Cup victory earlier this year. He was also instrumental in taking the team to the number one spot in the ICC rankings.

Ace shooter Bindra won the first ever individual gold for India in the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. He is also an Arjuna awardee and has been given the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna.

With this honour, Dhoni and Bindra will join other sportspersons like Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar who have been given honorary ranks by the armed forces.

Google to offer free websites to Indian SMEs

Google India on Wednesday said it offered free websites to an estimated five lakh small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country.

Google India, the Indian unit of the global internet giant, said on its official blog that it has launched an ‘India Get Your Business Online’ program to provide website, internet domain and web hosting services to SMEs in the country.

“The initiative aims is to break down the barriers that stop small businesses from getting online - by offering a quick, easy and free tool to set up and host a website. Our goal is to help 5,00,000 small medium businesses in India to get online in next three years through this programme,” Google India MD and Vice President (Sales and Operations) Rajan Anandan said.

Interested small business owners would need to submit their PAN (Permanent Account Number) and other tax-related details for verification, after which they would be provided with an online tool for a free website and web hosting service for one year.

After a year, website owners will have to pay a charge if they wished to renew their domain name.

Under the programme, all interested businesses would also get free email addresses and advertising related benefits.

“While India is home to an estimated 8 million small medium businesses, only about 5 per cent have a website. This program is designed to bridge the information gap that exists online due to the lack of presence of local Indian businesses on the Internet,” Mr. Anandan said.

The company has partnered with the U.S.-based Web host HostGator for the initiative. The web firm would also offer free support in creating, hosting and managing the website for a period of one year without any cost through its toll free call centres.

The programme is supported by Federation of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), popularly known as FISME. The non-profit organisation, FISME, will work with Google India to help SMEs get online through direct customer outreach and events.

Asanas for a wow glow

Yoga, as numerous studies have proved, takes years off your face the natural way and the effect is really long-lasting. It not only achieves a natural face-lift by reducing wrinkles, but also gives your skin a healthy glow by balancing your hormones and increasing oxygen circulation. This keeps your skin rejuvenated while preventing dryness and sagging. Some say inverted yoga postures can convert grey hair back to its natural colour. Whether or not this is actually possible, they certainly delay the onset of grey hair by increasing blood supply to the hair follicles in the scalp.

Read more:
Yoga replaces gym
Lucky to be Indian
Say goodbye to Hypertension with Yoga
The amazing things yoga can do
Food for your mood
Stop ageing!
Here are asanas for great skin and hair:
Sarvangasana: Lie on your back with your legs together. Raise both legs at 90 degrees from the floor. Now raise your buttocks with your palms and take support with your elbows bent on the floor. Make sure that your legs, chest and abdomen form a straight line. Hold this for some time breathing normally and come back to the starting position.

Poorna Halasana: Put your feet together, hands by the side with the palms crossed on the floor. Raise your hips with support from your palms. Now try to raise your legs upwards towards your head in a 180-degree angle. Hold it for some time and come back to the starting position in the reverse manner.

Shirshasana: Kneel down and grab your elbows with your hands. Keep the elbows where they are and interlock the fingers in front of you. Place your head on the floor with the back of your head resting against the fingers. Straighten the knees and raise your hips, your body now resembling an inverted V. Keeping your knees as straight as possible, walk with little steps, bringing your feet close to your head. Keep your back as straight as possible to prevent your neck from arching. Bend the knees, keeping them close to the chest and your feet close to your buttocks. Shift the hips to keep your balance. Keep your knees bent and point them to the sky. Now straighten your legs. Keep your feet relaxed. Make sure that the head supports no more than 10% of your body weight, the rest should be on the elbows.

Matsyasana: Sit on the floor and stretch the legs forward with your palms on the side. Now hold the sole of the right foot, place it on your left thigh while you place your left foot on your right thigh keeping the back straight and palms on the knees. Lie on your back slowly with the support of your elbow and bend your head backwards touching it to the ground. Stretch your mid-back, hold toes with index fingers and keep the elbows on the ground. Hold the posture for some time.

Kriya-jalneti: Add a pinch of salt in a glass of lukewarm water and mix it in a jalneti pot. Bend forward in a 90-degree angle from the floor, then turn your neck towards the left and open your mouth. Let the water enter your left nostril through the jalneti pipe and allow it to come through the other nostril while breathing from the mouth. Follow this up with 30 kapal-bhatis in standing position. Repeat with the other nostril.