HAPPY NEW YEAR-2015

HAPPINESS, BLISSFUL LIFE BE A WAY OF LIFE WITH WONDERFUL SWEET MEMORIES EVERY DAY IN THE NEW YEAR-2015.

WISH YOU A HAPPY SUCCESSFUL AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR-2015

THERMAX...!!!

MIND BOGGLING YET…

I WAS AMAZED TO SEE THE PRICE ROCKETED TO CREATE ENOUGH TURBULENCE IN ME.

I BOUGHT 1000 SHARES OF THERMAX FOR Rs 38.65, 15 YEARS BACK,

TODAY, THE PRICE OF THERMAX IS Rs 1050/- OF Rs 2/- FACE VALUE (EQUAL TO Rs 5150/-). IN OTHER WORDS, ONE LAKH INVESTED HAS BECOME MORE THAN 66 LAKHS.

EVEN RECENTLY, 2-3 YEARS BACK, I FOUND MARKSAN AT Rs 2.30 NOW IT IS QUOTING Rs 64/-.

ALSO FOUND MORARJEE TEXTILES AT Rs 7.0 NOW TOUCHED A HIGH OF Rs 61, INDOCOUNT INDUSTRIES AT Rs 7.0 NOW TOUCHED A HIGH OF Rs 390/-.

BUT THE ABOVE THREE WERE JUST MEMORIES BUT NO PARTICIPATION……

=========================================MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU & ALL INVESTORS/TRADERS…

IS NOT "ALL IS WELL" FOR IT- WORKERS...?????

Psychiatrists report sudden rise in cases of depression among IT workers, Nasscom says all is well

By Devina Sengupta, ET Bureau | 25 Apr, 2013, 10.02AM IST

BANGALORE: More than a few concerns are arising over the mental health of India's 3-million strong IT workforce, even as the industry slashes fresh hiring, demands better and more diverse skills from existing staffers and puts poor performers on notice.

"Earlier, when the sector was booming, IT executives suffered stress. But they are showing signs of depression now," says P Satish Chandra, director, NIMHANS, one of India's largest psychiatric and counselling centres. In the past six months, more and more IT executives are coming in with problems of acute depression, insecurity, low confidence, dejection, aversion to social life and panic. Earlier, fewer people came and with different problems, mostly stress-related issues such as anxiety and lack of appetite.
NIMHANS opened a centre for Well Being in 2011 to counsel urban patients on work-life problems. It is now seeing more than a steady trickle of tech professionals seeking help. At the current pace, the centre expects that more than half its patients will soon be from the IT industry. Even two years ago, less than a third were IT executives. It treated about 600 such patients last year.
"This (number of depressed IT workers we are seeing) is just the tip of the iceberg," claims Chandra. Many choose not to seek medical help fearful of the stigma surrounding mental ailments. NIMHANS' well being centre has been built away from the psychiatric wards for this very reason.This is not just a Bangalore phenomenon. Sameer Malhotra, head at Max Healthcare's Mental Health and Behavioural Science department in Delhi, says roughly a third of his patients are techies. The number, he says, was much lower two years ago.
"This group has no human touch and is connected mostly through social media, where everyone puts up their best photographs," says Nirmala Menon, founder of Interweave Consulting, who has counselled many IT workers struggling with depression. "They don't discuss work problems and everyone wants to pretend they have a slice of happy life," adds Menon.

LACK OF MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS

Nirmala Menon of Interweave Consulting recalls the example of Ayesha (name changed), a 23-year-old high-performer with a Chennai-based IT company, who buckled under work pressure and needed counselling. Her lack of meaningful relationships outside work aggravated her problem.
Similarly, Satish Sen (name changed), a professional with six years' experience, slipped into depression as soon as his project shut down and he was put on the bench. "I have no life outside my job. I routinely did night shifts and worked on weekends to meet targets," he says.
Industry body Nasscom says such fears are exaggerated. "When we were growing at fast pace, people said stress; now it can't be growing depressed. Quality of work has improved," says Nasscom President Som Mittal.
"Counsellors are making it (deterioration of mental health of IT workers) sound bigger than it actually is," adds Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president, Nasscom. "We have a 3-million workforce. We need to see what percentage is having such problems."
Such slowdown pressures, Nasscom believes, should be seen as an opportunity to re-skill, not as a setback.
The IT industry, which was once a magnet for young talent with its fat salaries, stock options and modern workspaces, is now flailing in the throes of a slowdown. This year, the industry will hire 50,000 people less than last, according to Nasscom forecasts. Salary costs eat up a big chunk of the industry's $76-billion revenues and any cost-cutting inevitably hits employees first.

The industry is enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for laggards. Since variable pay is a high percentage of salary and calibrated to profits, small differences in performance ratings make a large impact on take-home salary.
1 to 1, a counselling centre for IT professionals, says even a hint of a negative communication causes heightened fear and anxiety.
Financial pressures can easily crack someone who lacks nurturing emotional relationships. About 80% of India's tech workforce is under 40 years of age. They are at the peak of their earning careers and have taken on significant loan repayment commitments.
"Earlier, the calls (for counselling) were about personal problems. Now, it is about fear of termination, and even warning letters spike need for emotional help," says Karuna Bhaskar, counselling psychologist at 1 to 1 help.net. It has 40 IT companies as clients and 80% of its 1,500 counselling sessions every month are for IT and ITeS companies.
"Initially, they lived in denial," says head of NIMHANS' well being centre Prabha Chandra, recounting a pattern she sees in many patients. "They think they are infallible and will muster another job. But when they don't get one, they slip into severe self-doubt."
This spills over and hurts marriages and filial relationships too. "Only after a few sessions do we understand that most problems start with unpredictability in their jobs," she adds.
Bangalore-based TeamLease gets 300 resumes a day from the IT and ITeS industry across branches, but has few openings. Hiring numbers have dropped by 30% in the past two quarters. "Till a year ago, the life of a resume was maximum three months. Now it is at least five months," says Sangeeta Lala, VP and co-founder of the staffing company.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/psychiatrists-report-sudden-rise-in-cases-of-depression-among-it-workers-nasscom-says-all-is-well/articleshow/19717627.cms

Ramanujan’s “deathbed” puzzle

American mathematicians solve Ramanujan’s “deathbed” puzzle

HASAN SUROOR

“Ramanujan's legacy is much more important than anything anyone would have guessed”

American researchers claim to have solved a cryptic formula that renowned mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan believed came to him in dreams while on his deathbed, the Daily Mailreported on Saturday. The formula was contained in a letter he wrote to his mentor, the English mathematician G.H. Hardy, from his deathbed in 1920 outlining several new mathematical functions that had never been heard of before, together with a theory about how they worked. It had baffled mathematicians for more than 90 years, but new findings — presented at a conference at the University of Florida last month — reportedly show that Ramanujan’s “hunch” about his formula was right — that it could explain the behaviour of black holes.

“We've solved the problems from his last mysterious letters,” said the well-known American mathematician Ken Ono of Emory University. “For people who work in this area of math, the problem has been open for 90 years … Ramanujan's legacy, it turns out, is much more important than anything anyone would have guessed when Ramanujan died.”

He said the so-called “deathbed puzzle” which, according to Ramanujan, was revealed to him by the goddess Namagiri, may unlock secrets about black holes. “We proved that Ramanujan was right. We found the formula explaining one of the visions that he believed came from his goddess. No one was talking about black holes back in the 1920s when Ramanujan first came up with mock modular forms, and yet, his work may unlock secrets about them,” said Professor Ono.

The Mail said that Ramanujan’s letter described several new functions that behaved differently from known theta functions, or modular forms, and yet closely mimicked them.

“Functions are equations that can be drawn as graphs on an axis, like a sine wave, and produce an output when computed for any chosen input or value. Ramanujan conjectured that his mock modular forms corresponded to the ordinary modular forms earlier identified by Carl Jacobi, and that both would wind up with similar outputs for roots of 1,” it said. Nobody at the time understood what the Indian mathematical genius was talking about.

“It wasn’t until 2002, through the work of Sander Zwegers, that we had a description of the functions that Ramanujan was writing about in 1920,” Prof. Ono said.

His team, which used modern mathematical tools to solve the puzzle, was “stunned” to find the function could be used even today.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/american-mathematicians-solve-ramanujans-deathbed-puzzle/article4253593.ece?homepage=true

M&M Target achieved, November 5, 2012 8:16 PM

WORLD TOP COMPANIES UNDER FINANCIAL PRESSURE...

Amazon reports first quarterly net loss in years

AGENCIES

Posted: Friday, Oct 26, 2012 at 1828 hrs IST

San Francisco: Amazon.com Inc reported its first quarterly net loss in more than five years on Thursday as the world's largest Internet retailer spent heavily and suffered from an economic slowdown in Europe.

Amazon shares slipped slightly to $220.75 in after-hours trading after the results.The company said its third-quarter net loss was $274 million, or 60 cents a share, versus net income of $63 million, or 14 cents a share, in the third quarter of 2011. Part of the loss related to an impairment charge from Amazon's investment in daily deal company LivingSocial.

Third-quarter revenue was $13.81 billion, up 27 percent from a year earlier, Amazon also said.Amazon was expected to lose 8 cents a share in the third quarter on revenue of $13.9 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The last time Amazon reported a quarterly net loss was in the third quarter of 2003, according to Thomson Reuters data……..http://www.financialexpress.com/news/amazon-reports-first-quarterly-net-loss-in-years/1022443/0

FE Home- Infotech - Story

Apple's weak margin outlook surprises analysts

AGENCIES

Posted: Friday, Oct 26, 2012 at 1840 hrs IST

At least three brokerages cut their price targets on Apple Inc by up to $50 a share after the iPhone maker surprised analysts by forecasting lower gross margins for the current quarter.

Apple shares edged lower 0.1 percent to $608.85 in premarket trading.

For the December quarter, Apple forecast revenue of $52 billion, below estimates of $55 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It expects margins of 36 percent, far lower than analysts' expectations of 43 percent.

Analysts focused on the decline in margins and played down the significance of a fall in iPad sales in the last quarter, as users waited for the iPad mini, and they did not expect this to continue.

Apple's forecast decline in gross margin, even assuming it was deliberately aiming low, still pointed to an unusual decline, Evercore Partners analysts Rob Cihra and Edison Yu said in a research note. Evercore cut its price target on the stock : At least three brokerages cut their price targets on Apple Inc by up to $50 a share after the iPhone maker surprised analysts by forecasting lower gross margins for the current quarter……..http://www.financialexpress.com/news/apples-weak-margin-outlook-surprises-analysts/1022450/0

FE Home- Infotech - Story

Apple warns of holiday earnings drop

AGENCIES

Posted: Friday, Oct 26, 2012 at 1543 hrs IST

New York: Apple has a new iPhone, two new iPads and three new PCs as it heads into the holiday quarter, the biggest selling season of the year. But, paradoxically, it expects these new gadgets to bring down its profits compared to last year. The reason: the new gadgets are expensive to make, Apple executives said Thursday, and the company is not interested in cutting corners for the sake of short-term returns.

On top of the holiday-quarter warning, the company reported earnings for its just-ended quarter that missed Wall Street's expectations for the second quarter in a row – something that hasn't happened in more than a decade……http://www.financialexpress.com/news/apple-warns-of-holiday-earnings-drop/1022381/

Citigroup fined $2 million over facebook IPO

Associated Press | Updated On: October 26, 2012 22:36 (IST)New York: The top securities regulator in Massachusetts has fined Citigroup $2 million, charging that an analyst there leaked confidential information about Facebook's initial public offering.

Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin announced the charges Friday. Citi agreed to the settlement without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Citi was part of the team of banks that helped underwrite the deal that made Facebook a public company in May. When a bank helps underwrite such a deal, it has information about a company that the broader investing public does not have. The bankers who underwrite the deal are not supposed to act on that information or share it with any favored clients, because it would give them an unfair advantage over the public.

The arrangements can also bring accusations of conflicts of interest; banks not only help companies go public or do other deals, they also have units that provide research on the companies. The research is supposed to be impartial, but the banks have a stake in how a company does if it is helping it with underwriting.

According to Galvin's office, a junior analyst in Citigroup's San Francisco office was assigned to help research Facebook. On May 2, the junior analyst sent an email to two employees at the technology website TechCrunch.com, with proprietary information about Citigroup's research on Facebook.

"I am ramping up coverage on FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates)," the junior analyst wrote.

A TechCrunch employee wrote back: "There's no way I can publish this doc from an anonymous source, right?"

A minute later, the junior analyst replied: "My boss would eat me alive."

The analyst and the TechCrunch employee were friends, according to Galvin's office, and had gone to Stanford together.

Citigroup fired the junior analyst in September. The bank told Galvin's office that the junior analyst acted alone. In addition to agreeing to the $2 million fine, Citi also agreed to review its policies for overseeing analysts' communications, and to strengthen compliance training for the analysts.http://profit.ndtv.com/news/international-business/article-citigroup-fined-2-million-over-facebook-ipo-312538?pfrom=home-latest