« September 2011 | Main | November 2011 »
October 30, 2011
Miss World Contest Returns to London, Celebrates 60th Anniversary
Photos: (From the top) Miss World 2011 participants are introduced to the Birds of Prey of the British School of Falconry at The Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire, Scotland; Traditional Dance Rehearsal; Talent Semi-Finals; Miss World 2011 contestants participating in the Highland Games section of the Miss World Sports Challenge; Miss World 2011 contestants at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland; Miss World 2011 contestants at The Gleneagles Hotel Golf Academy; Miss World 2011 contestants at Cambridge University; Miss Venezuela, Ivian Sarcos, participating in the Top Model Competition. All Photos © Copyright Miss World Ltd.
• Celebrating its 60th anniversary, the 2011 Miss World Final will bring together representatives from a record 122 countries, celebrity judges, former Miss Worlds and top entertainers.
Miss World Final is one of the most watched annual global events on TV and the 2011 Miss World Final in London will be broadcast live on Sunday 6th November to over 150 countries with a global audience of over 1 billion viewers. The broadcasters include E! in the UK and USA, CCTV in China, Zee in India and Televisa in Mexico.
Former Miss World contestants have gone on to a variety of successful careers including lawyers, doctors, teachers, fundraisers and actors. Such contestants include Hollywood actress — Halle Berry (1986 finalist); one of China’s biggest stars and a face of L’Oreal — Zilin Zhang (2007); Hollywood actresses — Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh; American actress and singer — Lynda Carter (1972 finalist); and Bollywood’s two biggest female stars — Aishwarya Rai (1994) and Priyanka Chopra (2000).
Earlier, the organizers had informed GlobalGiants.Com about the Miss World 2011 program —
The Miss World 2011 UK tour would begin in Scotland where participants would play golf at the world famous Gleneagles Hotel. The contestants would then visit ancient Stirling Castle (where Mary Queen of Scots was crowned in 1543) and Edinburgh Castle (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). At Edinburgh Castle, they would experience the firing of the One O’Clock gun and a rousing ‘Beating Retreat’ ceremony.
The tour would then move to one of the the world’s most famous universities, the University of Cambridge, where Miss World participants would take part in a debate at the Cambridge Union on the issue of social responsibility and then tour the university campus.
Back in London, the participants would enjoy a Thames boat cruise to historic Greenwich and would tour The Tower of London.
The Miss World Charity Gala would take place at The London Hilton Ballroom. All the funds raised there will go to support sick and disadvantaged children through the Miss World’s Beauty with a Purpose program.
Photo: Miss World 2011 Contestants — France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium in London. | © Copyright Miss World Ltd.
Photo: The Miss World Charity Dinner was held in the Grand Ballroom at London’s Hilton Park Lane Hotel. The evening of entertainment culminated in an eclectic mix of music, song, and dance provided by the Miss World Talent performers. | © Copyright Miss World Ltd.
• This year, over half the participants are in full time education studying for a degree, one in four are already graduates, and over half speak three or more languages.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 6:42 AM | View the original post
October 27, 2011
Formula One World Championship ventures into new territory — India
Photo: Motorsport - F1 2011 - India Grand Prix - Buddh International Circuit - New Delhi, India. Photo Credit: DPPI. © DPPI Media.
Photo: Motorsport - F1 2011 - Spain Grand Prix. Petrov Vitaly (Russia) - Lotus Renault GO R31. Photo Credit: DPPI. © DPPI Media.
Photo: Motorsport - F1 2011 - European GP. Photo Credit: DPPI. © DPPI Media.
Photo: Sebastian Vettel of Germany and Red Bull Racing drives during the final practice session prior to qualifying for the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit on April 17, 2010 in Shanghai, China. Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images. © Getty Images.
Photo: Jarno Trulli on track. 2011 Indian Grand Prix - Friday Buddh International Circuit, New Delhi, India. 28th October 2011. Jarno Trulli, Team Lotus Renault T128. Photo © Team Lotus/Steven Tee/LAT Photographic.
Photo: Grand Prix of India 2011. Red Bull Racing practice pitstops during previews to the Grand Prix of India 2011 in New Delhi, India on October 27, 2011. Photocredit: © Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool.
Photo: Grand Prix of India 2011. Sebastian Vettel leads during the Grand Prix of India 2011 in New Delhi, India on October 30, 2011. Photocredit: © Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool.
Photo: Grand Prix of India 2011. Race winner Sebastian Vettel (2nd R) celebrating on the podium with Red Bull Racing Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey (2nd L), second placed Jenson Button (L) of Great Britain and McLaren and third placed Fernando Alonso (R) of Spain and Ferrari following Indian Formula One Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit in New Delhi, India on October 30, 2011. Photocredit: © Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool.
Photo: Grand Prix of India 2011. Sebastian Vettel of Germany celebrates in parc ferme after finishing first in the Grand Prix of India 2011 in New Delhi, India on October 30, 2011. Photocredit: © Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool.
• The Formula One World Championship ventures into new territory this week with inaugural Indian Grand Prix, which takes place on October 30 at the Buddh International Circuit. The 5.137 km track is located some 40 km from the Indian capital, New Delhi, and has been built as part of a massive redevelopment of the Greater Noida area, which will eventually include residential and professional buildings.
The circuit layout has been designed by Hermann Tilke with extensive input from the Formula One teams and features several interesting features, including a 1.1 km straight that goes steeply downhill before rising uphill and a double apex cambered radial turn named the Parabolica. The wide track - at many points over 21m in width - also features marked changes of gradient over the course of a lap, so there is likely to be several overtaking opportunities.
• Meanwhile, French Carmaker RENAULT told the GlobalGiants.Com Publisher that since the Buddh International Circuit is a new addition to the calendar, a great deal of work must be completed at the factory before a car has even turned a wheel on the tarmac. This enables a good base power-train set-up to be determined and available track time to be maximised. So, Renault Sport F1 will use all the tools at its disposal, such as computer simulation and engine dyno running, to meet this objective.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 12:52 PM | View the original post
October 14, 2011
Georgetown University hosts U.S.-India Higher Education Summit
Photos: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers remarks to the U.S.-India Higher Education Summit held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Photos Credit: Phil Humnicky/Georgetown University / October 13, 2011.
• The U.S.-India Higher Education Summit was held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, October 13. The Summit was jointly hosted by the Government of the United States and the Government of India and attended by 300 higher education leaders and government officials from the U.S. and India, as well as private sector leaders.
The objective of the summit was to further strengthen higher education collaboration and exchange between institutions in the United States and India through exploration of topics of mutual interest such as joint degrees, research partnerships, accreditation and quality assurance. In addition, the summit highlighted the importance of education as a pillar of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue and set forth goals for deepening this aspect of the bilateral relationship in cooperation with the many excellent institutions of higher education in both countries.
The summit featured a roundtable discussion on U.S.-India Higher Education Cooperation, co-chaired by Assistant Secretary Ann Stock and Indian Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal. Prominent higher education and thought leaders spoke at a plenary session and in breakout sessions on topics crucial to expanding and strengthening higher education collaboration between the two countries.
Minister Sibal thanked Secretary Clinton and her colleagues, as well as the academic, non-governmental, and business communities in the United States for their efforts in successfully organizing the U.S.-India Higher Education Summit, and expressed optimism about building on this successful Summit in the expanded U.S.-India Higher Education Dialogue to be held in 2012.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 5:04 AM | View the original post
October 9, 2011
Twizy: Renault's Response to the Challenge of Urban Mobility
Photos: French Carmaker Renault’s Twizy is an innovative response to the challenge of urban mobility. With its four-wheel chassis, Twizy offers the driver and passenger - seated one behind the other - an all-electric means of transport which produces no CO2 emissions.
Twizy is compact, nimble and practical - everything you need in city traffic. The wraparound bodywork creates a safe, reassuring cocoon which offers first class protection for both the driver and the passenger.
Power comes from a 15 kW electric motor which develops 70 Nm of torque, making Twizy versatile and easy to drive. The acceleration performance of Twizy in urban and suburban traffic is comparable to that of a 125 cc motorbike.
Photo: His Highness Felipe de Borbon, Prince of Asturias, during his visit to the Valladolid plant in Spain where Twizy will be manufactured.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 5:40 AM | View the original post
October 6, 2011
Times Higher Education Announces World University Rankings 2011-12
Times Higher Education World University Rankings, unveiled today, spring a surprise at the top, where Harvard University is dethroned by the California Institute of Technology. Caltech snatches first place thanks mainly to a 16 per cent rise in research funding.
• In terms of overall number of institutions in the top 200, the US leads the way with 75, followed by the UK (32), Germany (12), the Netherlands (12) and Canada (9).
TOP 10 UNIVERSITIES
- California Institute of Technology
- Harvard University
- Stanford University
- University of Oxford
- Princeton University
- University of Cambridge
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Imperial College London
- University of Chicago
- University of California, Berkeley
• According to John Morgan, deputy news editor at Times Higher Education, “Switzerland and the UK have the best-value higher education systems in the world while the US languishes in 16th place.”
“When the table is adjusted for national spending on higher education, Switzerland has the most universities in the top 200 per billion dollars spent, followed by the UK in second place and the Netherlands in third. The US finishes 16th by this measure (see graph below),” explains Morgan.
Critics of the higher education reforms in England, where the bulk of public funding is being replaced with private investment in the form of higher tuition fees, see the rankings as a warning against any shift to a market-driven US model.
Howard Hotson, professor of early modern intellectual history at the University of Oxford, who has become a prominent critic of his government’s higher education policy, said: “You can turn the data from the World University Rankings upside down and inside out…to measure different things; but the end results are more or less the same.
“Several small and prosperous countries - notably the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark - do best in per capita terms; the UK comes at or near the top of the value-for-money table; and Switzerland does exceptionally well across the board.
“The US, by contrast, offers unimpressive performance in per capita terms and very poor value for money.” He added: “Although many of the world’s very best universities are private, all the world’s best university systems are public…All this puts a fresh onus on the UK minister for universities and science - and on his counterparts in other countries - to provide equally clear and compelling evidence to justify radical market-driven reforms.”
Many US public universities - notably those in California - have slipped in the rankings as funding falls amid state budget crises.
But Don Heller, professor of education and senior scientist at Pennsylvania State University, said it would “take a number of years of downturn” to damage the research reputation of US universities. “Most of the research funding in the US comes from the federal government. That hasn’t been cut and has gone up a bit, in comparison to general funding from the states.”
[The U.S. Department of Education has confirmed to the Publisher of GlobalGiants.Com that the U.S. federal government takes great interest in university research and directly provides a large amount of research funds to universities and colleges.]
• Bruce Johnstone, emeritus professor of higher and comparative education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, predicted that the US would remain globally dominant. “The bottom line is the US gives a tremendous amount of money to higher education because of the combination of taxpayer revenue, tuition revenue and philanthropic revenue,” he said. Professor Johnstone highlighted philanthropy as an income source not available to competitor nations.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 12:20 PM | View the original post
October 4, 2011
International Day of Non-Violence Commemorated at UN
Photo: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon receives a copy of “India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy” by Ramachandra Guha, at a special event organized by the Permanent Mission of India to the UN commemorating the International Day of Non-Violence on the theme “Non-Violence as an Instrument of Social Change”. Mr. Guha was among the speakers at the event. Pictured with Mr. Ban are Hardeep Singh Puri, Permanent Representative of India to the UN and Baso Sangqu, Permanent Representative of South Africa to the UN. The day is celebrated annually on October 2, the birthday of non-violence pioneer Mahatma Gandhi. United Nations, New York. UN Photo/Evan Schneider.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 10:56 AM | View the original post
