Saturday, October 23, 2010

The 28th Dr Lobo Memorial Oration held

In 1969, Dr. Lionel Henry Lobo took over as Professor and Chairman of Orthopaedics department at Christian Medical College, Ludhiana. Under his dynamic leadership the department excelled in every facet and achieved recognition as a centre of excellence in the country. He was also the principal of CMC Ludhiana. and Hospital from 1971-1982. After his sudden demise in 1983 he is remembered continuously by his students, patients, colleagues, friends, followers and the citizens of Ludhiana for the exemplary ways he guided CMC, Ludhiana.
   The XVIIIth Annual function of the Dr L.H. Lobo Memorial Trust was held on Saturday, 23rd October 2010.  It was established in 1983 in memory of late Dr. L.H. Lobo, an eminent renowned Orthopaedic Surgeon and former Professor  & Head of Department of Orthopaedics and Principal of the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana. The aim of the trust is ‘Furtherance of Medical Education’. The oration is held in the specialty of Orthopaedics every other year.  The function was jointly organized this year by the trust and the Department of Orthopaedics, CMC, Ludhiana.  According to the President of the trust Shri S.R. Wadhera and Dr. M.K. Mahajan, secretary of the trust, the function has been held regularly for the past 27 years.
Dr. C.V. Ananthakrishnan, Senior Joint Replacement Surgeon, Ex Clinical Associate Professor, Dept. of Orthopaedic surgery, Texas Tech University, School Of Medicine, Lubbock, Texas, USA was the chief guest.  Dr Raj Bahadur, Director-Principal, GMCH, Chandigarh were the guests of honour.
 A scientific symposium on “Revision Total Knee Arthroplasty” was held after the oration under the aegis of Punjab Medical Council. Eminent orthopedic surgeons from the country and abroad with extensive experience in the field participated in the symposium.  Dr Bobby John, Professor and Head, Department of Orthopaedics, CMCH, felt that Revision knee arthroplasty was the need of the hour, as many patients with knee arthritis are undergoing knee replacement surgeries and would somewhere down the line need a revision knee surgery. This symposium was conducted to sensitise the doctors and patients in the region to the intricacies of revision knee arthroplasty. According to Dr Anupam Mahajan, Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedics, CMCH, the average age of doing a knee replacement is going down as it is getting more acceptance in the society. Many of these patients may require a revision surgery later and it was useful for all to get acquainted with it. 

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

A bold move to fix inhumane prisons

We must do better. Help us build momentum for the Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act before it crumbles in Congress.
No toilet. No clothes. Filth and disease. Prison conditions around the world are a festering human rights failure.
We must do better. Help us build momentum for the Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act before it crumbles in Congress.
Dear Rector,

Beset by rampant disease and malnutrition. Death trap.

That’s how one report describes the horrendous prison conditions in Zambia. Things are equally horrific in Sudan, Iraq and dozens of foreign prisons around the world.

Senator Patrick Leahy described the mistreatment of human beings in these facilities as “reminiscent of the Dark Ages.”

Click here to help Amnesty fight for humane prison conditions. 

For years, Amnesty has documented inhumane conditions in prisons around the world. I’m happy to report that Congress is finally paying attention.

Last month, Senators Leahy and Sam Brownback, and Representatives Bill Delahunt and Joseph Pitts introduced theForeign Prison Conditions Improvement Act of 2010. The bill will help ensure minimum standards of dignity for millions who languish in inhumane prisons.

The bill is a bold step to address the problem globally, especially given current financial conditions. But passage is far from certain. The legislation needs co-signers quickly or it will wither on the vine. 
Foreign Prison Conditions
The Foreign Prison Conditions Act is designed to reduce the suffering of millions of people in foreign prisons, but it doesn’t stand a chance unless more members of Congress sign on. Our team is ready. Can you help them?
Donate Now!
Click here to make a contribution of $35 or more today and help Amnesty convince Congress to pass this important piece of human rights legislation. 

Here’s what the Foreign Prison Conditions Improvement Act will do:
  • Provide assistance to countries making significant efforts to improve prison conditions
  • Mandate that the US restructure or even decrease US assistance to countries unwilling to improve prison conditions
  • Create a new State Department position focused solely on prison conditions
I know I can count on Amnesty members to help relieve the suffering of people denied their basic human rights and stripped of dignity. People in these prisons face some of the most abominable human rights conditions I’ve ever seen.

Please support our life-saving human rights work with your financial contribution today. 


Larry Cox Sincerely,
Larry Cox
Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA


Donate now

Monday, October 18, 2010

Lynn: Cyberspace is the New Domain of Warfare


Posted on: Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:00 PM
By Cheryl Pellerin of American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2010 – With the creation of the U.S. Cyber Command in May and last week’s cybersecurity agreement between the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, DOD is ready to add cyberspace to sea, land, air and space as the latest domain of warfare, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said.

“Information technology provides us with critical advantages in all of our warfighting domains so we need to protect cyberspace to enable those advantages,” Lynn said during an Oct. 14 Pentagon Channel interview.
Click photo for screen-resolution image
U.S. sailors assigned to Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command man their stations at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Va., Aug. 4, 2010. The sailors monitor, analyze, detect and respond to unauthorized activity within U.S. Navy information systems and computer networks. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joshua J. Wahl
  
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.
Adversaries may be able to undermine the military’s advantages in conventional areas, Lynn said, by attacking the nation’s military and commercial information technology, or IT, infrastructure.
This threat has “opened up a whole new asymmetry in future warfare,” the deputy defense secretary said.
DOD’s focus on cyberdefense began in 2008 with a previously classified incident in the Middle East in which a flash drive inserted malware into classified military networks, Lynn said.
“We realized we couldn’t rely on passive defenses and firewalls and software patches, and we’ve developed a more-layered defense,” he said.
Lynn laid out a draft cyberstrategy in the September/October issue of “Foreign Affairs” magazine. He said DOD is working to finalize the strategy.
“There’s no agreed-on definition of what constitutes a cyberattack,” Lynn said. “It’s really a range of things that can happen -- from exploitation and exfiltration of data to degradation of networks to destruction of networks or even physical equipment, physical property. What we’re doing in our defense cyberstrategy is developing appropriate responses and defenses for each of those types of attacks.”
One element of the strategy –- working with Homeland Defense to protect critical military and civilian IT infrastructure -– was put into place Oct. 13, when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a new agreement to work together on cybersecurity.
The agreement includes a formal mechanism for benefiting from the technical expertise of the National Security Agency, or NSA, which is responsible for protecting national security systems, collecting related foreign intelligence, and enabling network warfare.
Another element is what Lynn calls a “layered defense, where you have intrusion detection and firewalls but you also have a … layer that helps defend against attacks.”
In his draft strategy, Lynn describes the defense-layer component of cybersecurity in terms of NSA-pioneered systems that “automatically deploy defenses to counter intrusions in real time. Part sensor, part sentry, part sharpshooter, these active defense systems represent a fundamental shift in the U.S. approach to network defense.”
And, since no cyberdefense system is perfect, DOD requires “multiple layers of defense that give us better assurance of capturing malware before it gets to us,” Lynn said.
“We need the ability to hunt on our own networks to get [intruders] that might get through and we need to continually improve our defenses,” he continued. “We can’t stand still. The technology is going to continue to advance and we have to keep pace with it.”
Envisioned attacks on military networks could impair military power, national security and the economy, Lynn said.
Enemy cyberattacks could deprive the military of the ability to strike with precision and communicate among forces and with headquarters, he said, and it could impair logistics or transportation networks and eliminate advantages that information technology has given military forces.
“Beyond that, cyberattacks conceivably could threaten the national economy if [adversaries] were to go after the power grid or financial networks or transportation networks, and that, too, would be a national security challenge,” Lynn said. “And over the long run there’s a threat to our intellectual property … basically a theft of the life blood of our economy.”
Working more closely with allies is an important element of the strategy, he said, to ensure a shared defense and an early warning capability.
The NATO 2020 report rightly identified the need for the alliance’s new 10-year strategic concept -- a draft of which is an expected product of the 2010 NATO Summit slated for Nov. 19-20 in Lisbon, Portugal –- to further incorporate cyberdefense concepts Lynn wrote about in Foreign Affairs.
U.S. technological advantages are a critical part of the cyberstrategy and the Pentagon already is working with industry and with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to put these to work, Lynn said.
As part of a public-private partnership called the Enduring Security Framework, Lynn wrote in his Foreign Affairs article, chief executive officers and chief technology officers of major IT and defense companies meet regularly with top officials from Defense, Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
DARPA also is working on the National Cyber Range, a simulated model of the Internet that will enable the military to test its cyberdefenses before deploying them in the field.
The Pentagon’s IT acquisition process also has to change, Lynn wrote in Foreign Affairs. It took Apple Inc. 24 months to develop the iPhone, he said, and at DOD it takes on average about 81 months to develop and field a new computer system after it is funded.
“The Pentagon is developing a specific acquisition track for information technology,” Lynn wrote in Foreign Affairs, and it also is bolstering the number of cyberdefense experts who will lead the charge into the new cyberwar era.
The military’s global communications backbone consists of 15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices across hundreds of installations in dozens of countries, Lynn wrote. More than 90,000 people work full time to maintain it, he said, but more are needed.
Through the establishment of U.S. Cyber Command and the bolstering of cybersecurity at other defense agencies “we’ve greatly increased the number of cyber professionals we have at DOD and will continue to increase that,” Lynn told the Pentagon Channel.”
Biographies:
William J. Lynn III

Ajoka's VIRAST Theatre Festival


Time
Wednesday at 7:00pm - October 23 at 10:00pm

LocationAlhamra, The Mall, Lahore

Created By

More Info
Dear friends,

Ajoka Theatre is organizing the VIRASAT Theatre Festival in Lahore from 20th to 23rd October 2010 at Alhamra The Mall, Lahore at 7p.m. daily, to highlight the rich cultural & historical heritage of Pakistan by showcasing some of its best productions in recent years.

Schedule of the festival is as follows:

• 20th Oct BULLHA Alhamra Hall # 1
• 21st Oct RAJA RASALU Alhamra Hall # 2
• 22nd Oct DUKH DARYA Alhamra Hall # 2
• 23rd Oct DARA Alhamra Hall # 2

Ajoka has now decided to ticket performances in order to sustain our work. We are trying to discourage free performances but we will keep the ticket prices low so that everyone can afford to pay.

For the Virasat Festival we are charging Rs. 100 per ticket for each performance. We will be donating the ticket money to the flood relief efforts. Tickets will be available from 11th October from the Ajoka office & box office. For further information please contact:
Mr. Uzair Sultan Ph: +92-42- 36686634/36682443: Cell: 03434140005

You can also become a “Friend of Ajoka” by paying an annual membership fee the details of which are:

•Complementary Invitations of Ajoka Performances, throughout the year
•Quarterly Ajoka Newsletter
•Reserved Seats during the performances
•25% discount on Ajoka Products
•Invitations to screenings of our telefilms and recorded plays

Membership forms are available at the Ajoka office, For further information contact;
•Mr. Kanwal Christopher, Ph: +92-42- 36686634/36682443: Ph: 03214583164.

Membership Charges

Adults: Rs. 3,000/- per year
Couples: Rs. 5,000/- per year
Students: Rs. 1,000/- per year

Kindly send us your e-mail address at ajokatheatre@gmail.com so that we can add you to our emailing list.
Madeeha Gauhar
Artistic Director