IPL live on YouTube, no problem says Sony

In yet another audacious move, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has signed a two-year exclusive deal with Internet giant Google for live streaming of the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches across the world. The matches will be telecast on its popular user-generated content platform, YouTube. This is the first time a sporting event will be telecast live on the Internet.

Besides the live videos, YouTube users will have the option to see the matches the way they want through features such as the ability to choose one's own camera positions, freezing or fast forwarding the stream, access to an archive function that allows the replay of past shots and also, a feature called Fan Feed that will give them access to entertainment around the event.

"The basic structure of the relationship is that we will place IPL live matches in this season and the next on YouTube," said Shailesh Rao, managing director, Google India. "We will also make available on-demand broadcast, clipping, videos and so on. We will do all of this on a global basis so that users from around the world can enjoy cricket," he said in an announcement made in Mumbai today.

In India, IPL has an exclusive 10-year broadcast deal, signed for a whopping $1.26 billion, with Multi Screen Media Pvt Ltd, the network that runs channels such as Sony Entertainment and Max. The matches are shown live on its movies and events channel Max.

The deal with Google, though, has not been signed for a pre-determined fee. It is, instead, a revenue-sharing arrangement under which Google will share a certain percentage of the revenue it generates with the BCCI.

Globally, YouTube has 400 million unique viewers and the Indian market comprises only 10 million of this user set. The average global traffic the site gets every day, however, is around 1 billion. In comparison, Max claims to have had 102 million and 125 million unique viewers for IPL's first and second season, respectively. "Our cumulative reach is around 400 million," said Sneha Rajani, executive vice president and business head, Max.

Unique viewers is a term used to denote the net number of individuals tuning in to a platform whereas the cumulative reach denotes the number of times the unique viewers visit the platform.

Rajani said the deal with Google will not impact Max's viewership or even the advertising potential because the target universe of both the platforms is mutually exclusive. "In India, the number of people having access to broadband is limited. Also, the service that is available is patchy and may not be able to support three-hours live video streaming. Besides, the number of YouTube users is also small here. So it won't dent our loyal viewership set."

"Likewise, our advertisers will continue to be with us because of the mass access to people we can provide," she said.

IPL chairman Lalit Modi said the idea behind the deal was to take IPL to the global audiences. "Distribution is key for any property. While last year, IPL's stint at South Africa made it achieve the status of a global event, through this deal with Google we can now take this event to the global audience."

To monetise the acquisition, Google is also primarily looking at advertisers and is talking to various advertisers in big cricket markets such as India, Australia, the UK and the US. While exploring global deals, it said it will also look at country-specific advertisers to focus on one particular territory.

Parminder Singh, business head, Google India, said: "We believe that there will be three different categories of advertisers who would look at this. One, who already have IPL as an important part of their brand strategy because with YouTube, they will have access to a new medium. Two, advertisers who have been wanting to associate with IPL but due to several reasons, such as budgets, were not able to do that. And thirdly, the advertisers who are focused on the Internet."

Full-body scanners cleared, trials in Delhi soon

The government today decided to introduce full-body scanners at airports across the country in a phased manner to secure them against potential terrorist attacks. The US and Israel are already using full-body scanners at some of their airports, and more such scanners are on their way to airports in the US, England, Japan and the EU.

The proposal, cleared by a technical specification committee under the Ministry of Civil Aviation and comprising representatives from all security agencies, comes in the backdrop of a recent attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a Detroit-bound aircraft using explosives attached to his body. Security checks at Lagos or Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, where the would-be bomber boarded planes, failed to detect the explosives.

The scanners have been at the centre of privacy and health concerns for several years across the world. The panel has debated all these issues at length, a government official told The Indian Express.

"The full-body scanner will be installed shortly on a trial basis at the Delhi international airport," he said.

Security checks currently in place at airports across the country include, other than pat-down searches, Door Frame Metal Detectors (DFMDs) and hand-held device scans, which can detect only metal objects.

An estimated 125-200 full-body scanners might be needed for Delhi and Mumbai, India's busiest airports, the official said. Each scanner will cost around Rs 1 crore. "The cost will be borne by the private airport operator or the Airports Authority of India, as the case may be," the official said.

Full-body scanners use two basic technologies — millimetre wave and backscatter. The former type is manufactured by companies like L3 Communications; the latter by Rapiscan Systems, which has set up a joint venture with Secunderabad-based Electronics Corporation of India Ltd.

Most new scanners to be commissioned in the US this year will employ the backscatter technology. The Indian government, however, is yet to decide on any one type. "At this stage, we do not wish to restrict the number of vendors," said the official.

"The trial runs will give us an insight into the failure rate of the equipment, if any. We can assess its performance at times of power fluctuation or outages at the airport and during extreme weather conditions, especially summers," he said. Based on the results of the trial runs, the committee will finalise technical specifications. A global tender will then be floated by the airports.

Eyes, eyes, baby!

Most of us spend at least a few inevitable hours daily looking at the computer screen, watching television or simply studying. And while we toil 
for hours, it is our eyes that bear the brunt. It is essential, then, that we take adequate precautions to keep our eyes healthy.


According to ophthalmologist Dr Keiki Mehta, eye exercises help the eyes in two important ways — mechanically and optically. “Mechanically they improve the mechanical stability of the eye by coordinating and strengthening the eye muscles. They strengthen the convergence power of the eye and balance its function with that of accommodation. Optically they improve the optical image coordination between the two eyes, thus permitting a proper three-dimensional accurate picture to be received and subsequently evaluated by the brain.

Eye exercises would be futile if you think they would lower your spectacle number, cure cataract, glaucoma or any organic disability in the eye or even in curing large degrees of squint for which surgery is the only recourse,” says Dr Mehta who suggests that eye exercises help the mechanical stability of the eye by:

- Increasing the range of movement of an eye by exercising a weak muscle.

- Allowing eye movement, especially in people who wear spectacles or have their eyes fixed at a particular position for long periods by relieving congestion and permitting a more comfortable vision.

- When done correctly, they reduce an imbalance between the convergence and accommodation, thus reducing eye strain and headaches.

- In an eye which has a squint, exercising a particular group of muscles can cure or radically reduce a squint.

- Even if a squint is surgically operated, the use of exercises can build up the capacity of the eye to virtually normal limits.

They improve the power of the eye to maintain convergence in depressed position (the eye turns in and bends down during the most important activity of modern life reading) and thus permit long comfortable application to near work.

Remember: 
- Make vertical and horizontal movements of the eyes to the maximum extreme every 30 minutes if you are sitting in front of a computer or studying long hours.

- Apply a cupped palm on your eyes to make them feel relaxed. This relieves tired eyes.

- Another great relaxing technique is to look far and then at a point close to you rapidly a few times.

Consultant ophthalmologist Dr Gul J Nankani, says that there are several ways to prevent eye strain while studying/ sitting on the computer. “Adjust your chair, table and computer in a way that you don’t have to look up while reading. One should always look down or straight while reading. Avoid sleeping and reading and maintain a distance of about one to one and a half feet between the eyes and your book.

Take a break every 30 to 40 minutes and when you do, take your eyes off the book and stare at a distance. Relax your eyes with warm compresses — dip a napkin in lukewarm water, squeeze the water and place it on your eyes. Or if you find your eyes feeling dry or tired, use some moisturising or lubricating eye drops. And if you notice a squint or deviation in your child, get it checked,” says Dr Nankani. Blinking your eyes as frequently as possible, getting your eyesight tested regularly and using anti-reflective coating on spectacles or on your computer monitor to avoid glare are all ways to protect your eyes.

Eye exercises 
- Rub your hands about 15 to 20 times until they feel warm. Close your eyes and cup them with your warm hands. Let your fingers overlap and rest on the centre of your forehead for about a minute.

- Hold your thumb at an arms distance in the line of your nose and focus with both eyes. Slowly move the thumb towards the nose with your gaze fixated on the thumb.

- Hold your thumb six inches from your nose and focus with both eyes. Now shift your focus on any other object, which is 10 feet away. Repeat this back and forth about 15 times. This improves eye flexibility.

- Sit in a comfortable position. Roll you eyes from side to side and then up and down. Now move your eyes slowly in a circular motion. Repeat five to 10 times.

- Sitting or standing at one end of the room, let your eyes scan around the edges of objects in the room — clocks, doors, television etc. This is to keep the eyes moving in a loose and fluid way. Do this for approximately two minutes.

- Place a bowl of luke warm water and a bowl of cold water in front of you. Take a clean napkin and put it in each bowl. Place the napkin from the warm water on closed eyes for 30 seconds and then alternate with the napkin from the cold water. Repeat this three to four times.

Hot career: Biotech

The implications of life sciences are overarching. From medicine to agriculture to industry, it can be applied to every walk of life. India's largely unsolved medical needs and the urgent need to produce high yielding crop varieties have given a huge impetus for research in this field.

The Indian biotech sector's overall turnover in 2008-09 was USD 2.51 billion as compared to USD 2.13 billion in 2007-08. By 2010 the industry is expected to reach the USD 5 billion mark. According to a report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India ranks among the top 12 biotech destinations in the world and has the third largest number of biotech companies in Asia Pacific.

"Due to its inherent intellectual capital, India has become the preferred destination for research and development activities of multinational companies. On the home front the momentum has been maintained by the help from various departments," says K. V. Subramaniam, president and CEO, Reliance Life Sciences.

He adds that various schemes have been offered by the department of biotechnology to support small and medium enterprises, to encourage private-public collaboration and to open new centres of excellence in biological science research.

The government of India has joined hands with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to train and educate human resource in interdisciplinary studies relevant to biotechnology. To realise this agenda they would be setting establishing a Regional Centre for research, training and education under the auspices of UNESCO by 2010.

The promising areas in the medical domain are vaccines against human pathogens, nano science, and regenerative medicine. Bio-diesel (from seeds, algae and yeast) is a bio-fuel in nascent stages, which is gaining substantial momentum. Developing high-yielding crop varieties, conservation of rare plant species, high energy crop generation through plant tissue culture are some of the important areas in plant biotechnology.

As far as employment opportunities are concerned some companies such as Reliance Life Sciences offers a plethora of job profiles under one roof. Whereas, most other big players in the field focus on one area. In Bio-pharma space, Biocon, Serum Institute, Zydus Cadila and Wockhardt are some prominent names. Bioservices look at the areas which have mainly sprung up after the outsourcing movement. They offer opportunities in clinical research, contract manufacturing or contract research. Bioinformatics deals with data banking and gene-based therapy and requires a knack for numbers along with science background.

Companies include Strand Genomics, Wipro, Genotypical technologies to name a few. "While there are R & amp;D based companies in India, I still feel that a lot needs to done in the industry to fully exploit the manpower we are creating," opines P.K. Yadav, professor, School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

The World's Most Earthquake-Vulnerable Cities

The strongest earthquake to hit Haiti in more than 200 years crushed thousands of structures, from humble shacks to the National Palace and the headquarters of U.N. peace keepers.

Destroyed communications made it impossible to tell the extent of destruction from Tuesday afternoon's 7.0-magnitude tremor or to estimate the number of dead lying among the collapsed buildings in Haiti's capital of about 2 million people.

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International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally told the Associated Press that an estimated 3 million people may have been affected by the quake and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge. Clouds of dust thrown up by falling buildings choked Port-au-Prince for hours.

And while a massive quake like this one would undoubtedly do damage to any world city, the death toll and degree of destruction has more to do with investment in well-designed infrastructure capable of handling a massive earthquake than the quake itself.

Blame the mortality spread on exponential population growth, increasing poverty and lax or nonexistent building codes. In short: Poor nations--like Haiti--run far greater risk of earthquake fatalities than rich ones.

GeoHazards International, a nonprofit research group aiming to reduce suffering due to natural disasters, measured the lethal potential of seismic disasters facing small and large cities in Asia and the Americas--areas most at risk for seismic calamity. The sample cities spanned both developed and developing countries.

Variables measured: building frailty, potential for landslides and fires, and the rescue, firefighting and lifesaving medical abilities of local authorities.

Kathmandu, Nepal, ranked first in the 2001 study, followed by Istanbul, Turkey; Delhi, India; Quito, Ecuador; Manila, Philippines; and Islambad/Rawalpindi, Pakistan--all of which could expect fatalities in the tens of thousands if disaster struck. The only first-world cities on the list were in Japan: Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe. Fatalities in these cities were estimated in the hundreds, not thousands. Port-au-Prince was not on the list.

Events since then show the estimates to be fairly accurate, if not low. A 2008 earthquake in China's Sichuan province killed perhaps 15,000 people and left thousands buried under heaps of rubble. The magnitude 7.6 quake that struck the Kashmir region of Pakistan in October 2005 killed more than 73,000 people, many in remote parts of the country, not dense urban centers like Islamabad. Geohazard's study predicted a 6.0 hit on Pakistan's capital would kill 12,500 people.

In a 2004 paper Brian E. Tucker of GeoHazards warned the problem would become worse, citing a study of estimated earthquake fatalities based on population growth and construction changes in northern India.

One scary finding: A magnitude 8.3 earthquake striking Shillong might kill 60 times as many people as were killed during a similar-size quake that hit in 1897, even though the population of the region has increased by only a factor of about eight since then. Reason: The replacement of single-story bamboo homes with multistory, poorly constructed concrete-frame structures, often on steep slopes, has made the population much more vulnerable.

The opposite has happened over the last century in developing nations. Building codes have improved in earthquake-prone regions, as have preparations for disasters. Populations have grown in urban areas, to be sure but at nothing like the rates in Third World cities, where an influx of rural poor has created increasingly dense living arrangements. In the next 20 years the world's population will grow by 2 billion, yet only 50 million will be added to industrialized nations. The gains in the Third World will come mostly in urban centers.

Economic impacts from earthquakes are radically different as well. Tucker finds the cost of the 1994 Northridge, Calif., earthquake was about 1% of the regional gross domestic product, and the cost of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was only about 0.2% of the regional GDP. By contrast, he pegs cost of the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake at 40% of that country's entire GDP, and the cost of the 1986 El Salvador earthquake at 30% of that country's GDP.

For a country like Haiti, the devastation will likely last decades. According to Tucker, Munich Re data indicate that in the period from 1985 to 1999 the world's richest countries' losses to natural disasters averaged about 2% of their GDPs, while the poorest countries' losses averaged about 13% of their GDPs.

--The Associated Press contributed to this story