How to apply for an Indian Passport @ Chennai

I share this because i really felt it difficult for me to apply for a passport without any help from agents or friends. So i feel this would be a nice pathway finder for many friends out there like me...!! :)

The Passport Seva Kendras will function from Monday to Friday from 9.00 AM to 4.00 PM with lunch time break from 1.30 PM to 2.00 PM.

The addresses of Passport Seva Kendras are:

1.      VADAPALANI – No.1, Bhanumathi Ramakrishna Road, Saligramam, Chennai 600093

2.      AMINJIKARAI – Navins Presidium, No.103, Nelson Manickam Road, Aminjikarai, Chennai 600029

3.      TAMBARAM – Claret Complex, Old No.4a & 4b, New No.17 & 19 Duraisamy Reddy Street, Tambaram, Chennai 600045

Full capacity online appoints open from 1st October 2011.

Procedure for Online Application in the Passport Seva System:

1.            Log on to website, www.passportindia.gov.in

2.            Create your user ID and assign a password

3.            Fill & submit the application form online or download the e-Form, fill and upload the same in the website. You can also scan & upload relevant supporting documents.

4.            You should note the Application Reference Number (ARN), schedule an appointment and take printout of Application Slip

5.            You should visit the designated Passport Seva Kendra (PSK)

6.            Applicant’s present is mandatory alongwith all required original documents and photocopies. 

7.            Your photograph will be capture at the PSK.

8.            You can track the status of your application or get any assistance by calling 1800-258-1800 or logging on to www.passportindia.gov.in

Important information to note:

1.      Only applications with prior appointment will be processed at Passport Seva Kendra.  Walk-in applicants will be allowed in emergency cases only.

2.      From 1^st October 2011 onwards, full appointments as per the total capacity at PSKs will be opened to public while Regional Passport Office will stop accepting applications, except for emergency cases.

3.      Applicants who have already taken appointments in the existing system should visit Regional Passport Office to submit their applications.

4.      Appoints are made available on the website on a first-come-first-serve basis, with a 3 day lead time.

5.      District Passport Cells (DPCs) will continue to accept applications for passport services. DPCs will accept applications for Fresh Passport only (No Re-Issue, Lost/ Damaged / Miscellaneous Services).  Applicants must submit their details in the new application form ONLY.  Applicants may download the new Application Form from the online portal (www.passportindia.gov.in), take a print-out, manually fill in and submit the same in the DPCs.

6.      In the new system, all miscellaneous services will fall under ‘Re-issue) category.  Therefore, the services will be classified as Fresh, Re-issue and PCC.

7.      Citizens who have applied for a passport in the old system will have to track the application in the old system only and call centre will not give information pertaining to the old system.

Airplane Plus Heat Plus Ice Equals Mystery

It's difficult to believe that an airplane flying in the tropics in the summer could have an engine fill up with ice, freeze, and shut down. But the phenomenon, known as engine core ice accretion, has happened more than 150 times since 1988 — frequently enough to attract the attention of NASA aviation safety experts, who are preparing a flight campaign in northern Australia to learn more about this occasional hazard and what can be done to prevent it.

"It's not happening in one particular type of engine and it's not happening on one particular type of airframe," said Tom Ratvasky, an icing flight research engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "The problem can be found on aircraft as big as large commercial airliners, all the way down to business-sized jet aircraft." And it has happened at altitudes up to 41,000 feet.

No accident has been attributed to the phenomenon in the 23 years since it was identified, but there have been some harrowing moments in the air. In most of the known cases, pilots have managed to restore engine power and reach their destinations without further problems. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there have been two forced landings. For example, in 2005, both engines of a Beechcraft business jet failed at 38,000 feet above Jacksonville, Fla. The pilot glided the aircraft to an airport, dodging thunderstorms and ominous clouds on the way down. Engine core ice accretion was to blame.

Little is understood about ice crystal properties at high altitude and how ice accumulates inside engines. The engines may be toasty warm inside at such heights, but the air outside is frosty cold. The prevailing theory holds the trouble occurs around tropical storms in which strong convection currents move moist air from low altitudes to high altitudes where the local temperatures are very cold, creating high concentrations of ice crystals. But the properties of the ice crystals, such as their size and how many of them are in a given volume of air, are a mystery — one that an international research team led by NASA aims to solve.

This graphic explains what researchers believe might happen to cause engine icing. Credit: NASA/Maria Werries › Link to larger photo

The FAA has proposed new certification standards for engines that will be operated in atmospheric conditions that generate ice crystals. The rules will take effect next year, just as the NASA team heads to Darwin, Australia, aboard an aircraft specially equipped with instruments to study cloud physics during the Southern Hemisphere summer. Analyses of the Darwin flight tests and additional tests in ground-based facilities in the United States and Canada will provide the FAA the means for ensuring compliance with the new standards.

"We need to understand what that environment is out there and, even though it may be a rare case, be able to fly through those icing conditions unscathed. Or if we can find ways of detecting this condition and keep aircraft out of it, that's something we're interested in doing," Ratvasky said.

Researchers explain the phenomenon this way: Small ice crystals found in storm clouds get sucked into the core of an aircraft engine, where the pressure is high and the temperature is warm. Some of the ice melts and covers the warm engine parts with a thin film of water that traps additional ice crystals. The super-cooled water chills the engine components enough that ice can accumulate on them. If the built-up ice breaks away in chunks it can damage compressor blades, reduce the power level, or snuff out the engine altogether.

This Gulfstream 2 business jet is being outfitted over the next few months with special sensors to probe cloud properties during the High Ice Water Content experiments.

 

Image credit: NASA › Link to larger photo

For the flight research, NASA is outfitting a Gulfstream 2 business jet with more than 20 meteorological sensors that will be used to probe cloud properties, such as water content and the size and concentration of ice particles, which can lead to engine and air data sensor failures that threaten aviation safety. The data gathered will aid scientists' understanding of cloud growth processes, help them create reliable detection methods and realistic ground-based simulations, and provide a foundation for possible new aircraft design and certification standards. FAA can use what the team learns over the course of its research project to verify the range of atmospheric conditions addressed in the new standards.

The flight campaign has three primary goals:

• Characterize the range of environmental conditions in which internal engine icing can take place, with an emphasis on how much water or ice is present in a given volume of air.
• Determine how to identify geographic regions where such weather threatens and ways to detect the conditions in real time in order to develop guidance that pilots can use to avoid the hazard.
• Collect enough data to enable researchers to simulate the weather conditions for aircraft engine tests in ground facilities such as Glenn’s Propulsion Systems Laboratory.“Our plan is to study the weather patterns that lead to these conditions, not to test a particular engine configuration. We do not plan to intentionally cause our engines to have an icing event,” Ratvasky said. 

The Propulsion Systems Laboratory recently underwent upgrades to equip it for ground-based simulations of high-altitude icing conditions. Work to transform the Gulfstream 2 into a working airborne science laboratory is under way at a NASA contractor site, Flight Test Associates in Mojave, Calif., and will be completed early in 2012. Engineers will mount six instruments on each wing and additional instruments on the fuselage to measure cloud particle size and shape and water content, whether the particles are liquid or crystal, and the speed of the updraft as cloud particles form.

The research team – with representatives from FAA, The Boeing Company, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Environment Canada, the National Research Council of Canada, Transport Canada, Airbus and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology – will conduct trial runs during the monsoon season in February and March 2012, develop findings and address lessons learned, and then return in January through March 2013 for the primary flight campaign.

The team chose Darwin for several reasons: its ground-based weather observing systems are the best in the tropics, there will be plenty of storms to sample, there is plenty of data from previous atmospheric characterization efforts with which to compare, and the Southeast Asia region has seen a large number of engine power-loss events.
Contacts and sources:

Jim Banke
NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate

The Dark Secret Of Queen Hatshepsut's Mysterious Flacon

Bonn scientists shed light on the dark secret of Queen Hatshepsut's flacon

Queen Hatshepsut statue

Image: Wikipedia

The corpus delicti is a plain flacon from among the possessions of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, who lived around 1450 B.C., which is on exhibit in the permanent collection of the Egyptian Museum of the University of Bonn. For three and a half millennia, the vessel may have held a deadly secret. 

This is what the Head of the collection, Michael Höveler-Müller and Dr. Helmut Wiedenfeld from the university's Pharmacology Institute just discovered. After two years of research it is now clear that the flacon did not hold a perfume; instead, it was a kind of skin care lotion or even medication for a monarch suffering from eczema. In addition, the pharmacologists found a strongly carcinogenic substance. Was Hatshepsut killed by her medicine?

Michael Höveler-Müller (left) and Dr. Helmut Wiedenfeld with the mysterious vial.

Photo: Barbara Frommann / Uni Bonn

When Michael Höveler-Müller became the curator of the Egyptian Museum of the University of Bonn in 2009, it occurred to him to examine the interior of the vessel that, according to an inscription, belonged to Pharaoh Hatshepsut. Its neck had been blocked with what was generally considered "dirt," but Höveler-Müller suspected that it might also be the original clay stopper. So possibly, some of the original contents might still be inside. In Dr. Helmut Wiedenfeld from the Pharmacy Institute, he found just the right partner, to get to the bottom of this question and of the flacon.

The "corpus delicti". 

Photo: Egyptian Museum / University of Bonn

At the Radiology Clinic of the Bonn Universitätsklinikum, the flacon was subjected to a CAT scan. Here, the Egyptologist's suspicion was confirmed – not only was the closure intact, but the vessel also held residue of a dried-up liquid. In the summer of 2009, Professor Dr. Friedrich Bootz from the Klinik und Poliklinik für Hals-, Nasen- und Ohrenheilkunde (laryngology, rhinology and otology) of the University of Bonn took samples, using an endoscope.

Too greasy for perfume

This allowed Dr. Wiedenfeld and his team to analyze the old substances for their ingredients. And it became obvious very quickly that what they had found was not dried-up perfume. The mix contained large amounts of palm oil and nutmeg apple oil. "I didn't think anybody would put so much grease on her face," said Dr. Wiedenfeld. "That would make her look as greasy as a plate of ribs." Two additional components clued the pharmacologist in to the actual purpose of the mix, "We found a lot of unsaturated fatty acids that provide relief for people with skin diseases." And this is where the Egyptologist was able to add another piece of the puzzle, "It is indeed known that there were cases of skin disease in Hatshepsut's family." Inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis have a largely genetic component.

And the third group of ingredients also points to the fact that this substance was not about providing a nice fragrance, but instead, for fighting a big itch – the pharmacologists found a lot of hydrocarbons derived from creosote and asphalt. To this day, creams containing creosote are used to treat chronic skin diseases. Due to the potentially carcinogenic effects of some of its ingredients, creosote has meanwhile been banned from cosmetics completely, and medications containing creosote are now prescription-only.

What the pharmacologists detected in Hatshepsut's little bottle was in particular benzo(a)pyrene, a hazardous aromatic hydrocarbon consisting of several carbon rings. "Benzo(a)pyrene is one of the most dangerous carcinogenic substances we know," explained Dr. Wiedenfeld. For example, the risk of contracting lung cancer from cigarette smoke results essentially from this substance.

Did the lotion cause the Pharaoh's death from cancer?

Did Hatshepsut maybe poison herself without knowing it? "There is a lot that speaks for this hypothesis," Dr. Wiedenfeld said. "If you imagine that the Queen had a chronic skin disease and that she found short-term improvement from the salve, she may have exposed herself to a great risk over the years." The Egyptologist also thinks that this is very likely. "We have known for a long time that Hatshepsut had cancer and maybe even died from it," said Michael Höveler-Müller. "We may now know the actual cause."

But at this point, the Bonn scientists can only surmise how Hatshepsut obtained her lotion. "Egyptian physicians were general practitioners and good surgeons, but they were lousy internists," explained Dr. Wiedenfeld. "It is quite possible that they owe their knowledge of certain medications to their contacts with Persia and India where the healing arts were very advanced even in Antiquity."

Contacts and sources:
Michael Hoeveler-Mueller
University of Bonn

We have heard about the founders of Twitter and Orkut and we spend money to watch movies about the creator of facebook!

But how many of us know about Archana, Puneet, Sonpreet. Three fellow Indians who making waves across the tech world! The Trio have created a Mobile app called MyCityWay which has around 3 Million users across the globe and is the No.1 Urban mobility app in the WORLD! 

They are celebrated as one of the best upcoming entrepreneurs in the world!!!!

 Hi All,

The trio like any other Indian had went to NewYork to pursue their American dream but were brave enough to quit their high paying Wall street Job to start their own start up company, three Indians going to NewYork, without any help starting their own company and making it big across the globe is such a feat!!!  They would have undergone struggles and challenges in the foreign land but they have really created history!!

Their App is across the world and in 50+ cities and it is the no.1 travel app in every city they go!

This is a proud achievement for all Indians!!!!!!!!!

They are also officially endorsed and funded by the NewYork government.  

And the greatest of all the news is BMW has approached them and MyCityWay to create navigation technology for all their Future cars!!!! What a feat it is! BMW the world greatest car manufacturer now depends on three Indians to develop their future cars!!!!!

http://www.wiredvc.com/bmw-209launches-venture-company-partners-with-mycityway/

 This is a moment where we can lift our collars as Indians!!!

And recently they have also release their app for Indian cities Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi and the app is available for iPhone, Android and blackberry!

This is another feather in the cap for Indian technical brilliance.

Forward this to all Indians you know and make them aware that if we dream big we Indians can also conquer the world!!!!

Lonely Train Journeys!

Hi all! :)

Journeys in trains, especially long ones are usually fun. For chess players like me, it’s all the more fun since we almost always travel in groups. For this year’s Mangalore open, however, I was forced to travel alone by fate and this turned out to be interesting!

I had the side berth (Number 7) by some ill-fated reservation. Number 8 was absent I guess, turned out to be two chatter box women who came to sit. From Chennai to Katpadi, I could do nothing better than