***City(Kolkata) boy in Germany solves ‘Newton puzzle' ***

A 16-year-old schoolboy who had moved from Calcutta to Germany four years ago has earned himself the title of “Young Scientist” after solving a problem said to have been posed by Isaac Newton over 300 years ago, German media has reported.

Shouryya Ray, a resident of Dresden, has solved a differential equation that addresses a fundamental problem in particle dynamics and may be used to predict the flight path of a ball bouncing off a wall, the German paper Die Welt said.

The report said Shouryya had developed an analytical solution for a particle dynamics problem that had until now been addressed through numerical solutions using computers that yielded results based on approximations.

“The report suggests that this is a mathematical achievement — an analytical solution is a complete solution in contrast to an approximation,” said Velayudhan A. Raghunathan, a physicist at the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, who is not familiar with Shouryya’s work.

Some physicists are still unclear about Ray’s achievement.

“The flight of a ball is classical Newtonian dynamics —all we need (to describe the motion) is the angle at which the ball is projected and the coefficient of elasticity which describes the interaction of the ball with the wall,” said K. Subbaramaiah, an executive member of the Indian Association of Physics Teachers.

Shouryya’s feat, the paper said, has helped him win a competition in German’s Saxony province where senior schoolchildren presented myriad projects — from the effects of breakfast on the ability to concentrate, to the cloning of a gene, to a solar car.

Shouryya has just taken the Abitur, the equivalent of the Class 12 exam, at the Martin Andersen Nexo High School in Dresden. He attributes his interest in science to his father, Subhashis Ray, an engineer who works as a research assistant at the Technical University of Freiburg, saying he instilled in him a “hunger for mathematics” by teaching him calculus at the age of six.

Subhashis said he was no longer able to keep up with his son’s mathematical prowess. “He never discussed his project with me before it was finished and the mathematics he used are far beyond my reach,” The Times, London, quoted him as saying.

Shouryya encountered the problem during a visit to the Technical University in Dresden with fellow students, when he was provided the raw data to evaluate a numerical simulation that can be used to describe the flight path of a ball thrown at a wall.

When he realised that the current approximation method could not yield an exact result, Shouryya decided to take the problem on.

“I asked myself, ‘Why can’t it work?’” Shouryya was quoted by Die Welt as saying.

Shouryya, the paper said, doesn’t think he’s a genius. He was weak in graph theory and had trouble even with problems for beginners. It said he’s “even worse” in the social sciences, and quoted him as saying: “In football, I would be bad even in India.”

But he worked for several months on the differential equation and came up with the solution after “many blind alleys”, the paper said. It added that Shouryya was still unclear whether to major in physics or in mathematics.

Yahoo CEO isn’t the only leader who has fudged résumé...

Yahoo’s Scott Thompson is the latest chief executive to come under fire for fudging his résumé. Here’s a look at other CEOs and leaders who have been caught up in résumé scandals.
Scott Thompson, shown at PayPal's offices in San Jose when he was PayPal president, was named chief executive of Yahoo in January 2012. Yahoo shareholder and New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb questioned Thompson's qualifications and integrity after exposing a misrepresentation about the executive’s education. The fabrication was confirmed by Yahoo on May 3, 2012. The résumé listed a computer science degree that Thompson never earned. Thompson apologized to Yahoo employees four days later, saying that he takes "full responsibility." On May 13, the company announced that Thompson had stepped down.

iGate opens gate for Patni delisting

The Patni name will cease to exist in the Indian markets. Over a year after iGate wooed and won over Patni Computers, it has received the go-ahead to delist Patni from the bourses, reports Sunanda Jayaseelan of CNBC-TV18.
For the Patni brothers, it's time to say good-bye to their brand. iGate's Phaneesh Murthy, who bought Patni Computers a year ago, is ready to fulfill his dream of making it "one company".
And it starts with a new look and having faced some trouble protecting itself in a few markets because of the Patni family name, iGate has decided to drop the Patni name. While iGate and Patni will continue to function independently, they will go to market under a single "iGate" brand. And this new look comes even as iGate gets permission to delist Patni from the Indian bourses; a move Murthy insists is not a cost-cutting exercise.
Phaneesh Murthy, chief executive officer, iGate, says that this delisting was not done from an operational cost synergy perspective. It was done more for strategic reasons about not wanting to have two public companies so on and so forth. It was done for those kinds of reasons.
We understand that iGate received approval to delist Patni on 4th May but the stock will stop trading only by the third week of May. For iGate, the process itself has not been smooth.
Its plans to raise UDS 215 million dollars in debt to buy out Patni's minority shareholders flopped. Against its floor price of Rs 356 per share, its open offer for Patni drew offers at Rs 520 per share. This meant iGate had to raise UDS 265 million in debt to make the open offer successful.  iGate admits this higher price was fair to Patni shareholders. And of course, operational synergies have already worked in iGate's interests.
“The operational synergies have already helped us to get up to about USD 32 million run rate in annual savings. So that has already been achieved thanks to the operation integration, ” added Murthy. Murthy is betting on these savings to meet the USD 75-80 million interest payout on debt due this year. He also feels that with projected growth of 35-40%, iGate will be able to rapidly reduce its debt burden.