Independence day – India

Its been 60 years that India gained independence from the British rule. Look at some indicators for India, compared against US, EU, Japan, Germany and China. Some of the prominent ranks/numbers (from CIA fact book page) include:

• Largest democracy in the world
• GDP (official exchange rate) rank : 13th @ $804 billion; preceded by South Korea
• GDP (purchasing power parity) rank : 5th @ $4.156 trillion; preceded by Japan
• Resource Consumption ranks are as follows; Electricity : 6th, Oil : 7th , Natural Gas: 22nd
• Second largest roadways.
• 18th largest importer and 30th largest exporter. Lots of room for improvement here.
• Seventh largest in total land area
• India has the largest arable/irrigated land. The only big nation to have as much as 48% of its land arable.
• Second most populous nation @1.13 billion with median age of 24.8 y, while chinese median age is at 33.2
• Second largest HIV/AIDS incidence at around 5 million, next to South Africa.
• India has world’s largest number of people living below poverty line ~ 280 million ~ 25%
• One third of the population in India is still illiterate.
• Holy cow !! India has the largest cattle population.

Mars Direct | Singularity

Place holder for two concepts that grabbed my attention recently.

Mars Direct – A low-cost plan for a manned mission to Mars proposed by Robert Zubrin and David Baker
Video: A documentary on Zubrin’s effort to kick-start manned Mars missions.
Book: The Case for Mars – Robert Zubrin

Singularity – An eventuality due to accelerated tecnologies, as professed by Ray Kurzweil, when humans evolve beyond biological forms and integrate with matter completely
Video: Ray speaks at Singularity Summit, Stanford
Book: Singularity is Near- Ray Kurzweil

Its time for the Tax Refund.

If you are a single F-1 student ( in US) from India, here are the two crucial details that should get you started. Thanks to U.S.-India Tax treaty, you can claim a Standard Deduction of $5150 for 2006. (that’s entry 11). Exemption deduction in line 13 is $3300.

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Download the elusive 1040NR-EZ form. [ for detailled instructions see i1040nre.pdf ]
2. Here’s a filled form sample along with simple instructions.
3. At 11, claim $5150 and put $3300 at 13.
4. Don’t forget to quote “Standard Deduction allowed under U.S.-India Income Tax Treaty. Article 21(2)” in J, on page2
5. Send it to “Internal Revenue Service Center, Austin, TX – 73301-0215″.  Write the form number 1040NREZ on top of your envelope for faster processing.

and you are done.

Proof of Poincare Conjecture is breakthrough of the Year 2006

Please read the Science Magazine articles for details: on Poincare Conjecture proved by Grigori Perelman and the nine other breakthroughs.

MathWorld has a concise description of Poincare Conjecture, stated as: “Every simply connected closed three-manifold is homeomorphic to the three-sphere.” This conjecture (here n = 3) in its general form has already been proved for all n > 3.

The story of Grigori Perelman is so inspiring that every math/science student needs to know.

Links: Science Mag, Wiki:Grigori Perelman

CIA World-Factbook Indicators

Here’s a short compilation of key indicators for important nations wrt India

http://santhosh.wordpress.com/quick-nation-indicators/