PhD Research Period is also Teaching Experience: UGC official notice

The University Grants Commission (UGC) recently approved a proposal in this regard at a meeting here.

“The period of active service spent on pursuing research degree, ie, for acquiring PhD degree simultaneously without taking any kind of leave may be counted as teaching experience for the purpose of direct recruitment/promotion to the post of associate professor and above.” the commission decided .

PhD/M.Phil Notifications Across India

The commission’s decision was seen in the academic circles as an effort to primarily facilitate filling up of posts lying vacant in large numbers across the country’s universities and other higher educational institutions.

Many of the universities and other higher educational institutions demand at least two to three years teaching experience for recruitment to vacant posts of faculties.

Teaching Faculty Job Notifications Across India

“We have large number of unemployed meritorious PhD holders. The decision to treat the period spent by them in acquiring a PhD degree as teaching experience will not only open doors of employment to many of such degree holders, but also facilitate institutions fill up their teaching positions lying vacant for years,” official sources said.

Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat

Minister for Railways

Suresh Prabhu

on Friday launched the 'clean my coach' service where a passenger can request for a dirty coach to be swept and cleaned by sending an SMS on mobile number 58888. Prabhu had announced the scheme in the Rail Budget last month.

The service, which is in keeping with the railways' cleanliness drive 'Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat', was launched from Rail Bhavan through video conferencing in New Delhi/Northern Railway, Mumbai Central/Western Railway and Lucknow Jn/North Eastern Railway.

Under the scheme, a passenger can also use theandroid app 'Cleanmycoach Indian Railways' or webpage 'cleanmycoach.com' for logging the request, which will be immediately acknowledged via SMS on mobile phone along with a code.

A message will also be sent by the server to the mobile number of On Board House Keeping (OBHS) staff travelling on the same train along with the details of the passenger such as coach number and seat number.

Speaking on the occasion, Prabhu said the railways was connected to every citizen of the country and it was all the more necessary to maintain clean environment in trains and at stations. He said dustbins had also been put in the non-AC coaches and that the railway administration and citizens were equally responsible for maintaining cleanliness in and around railway premises.

He said foreign tourists who come to see India, should take good memories of comfort travelling in Indian trains.

Prabhu promised more passenger-friendly measures for a better travelling experience on trains. He said the railways was on the fast track in the field of digitalization, cleanliness, passenger amenities, coach designs, mechanized laundries, on board services and social media.

Source : Times India

Oldest man in the world

Yisrael Kristal, whose family were wiped out in Nazi death camp, is now 112

A Jewish sweet maker who survived incarceration in the Auschwitz death camp has been officially named as the world's oldest living man.

Yisrael Kristal, who was born in Poland in 1903 and lived through both World Wars, inherited the title from the previous world-record holder, Yasaturo Koide, who was not far short of his 113th birthday when he died in January.

Guinness gave Mr Kristal the accolade after checking documents from his early years.

In a life that began the year the first Ford Model A car rolled off the production lines, Mr Kristal endured hardship from boyhood onwards, being separated from his parents at the age of 11.

His father was killed shortly after being drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, which controlled Poland as part of the Tzarist empire.

“I don’t know the secret for long life"
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An Orthodox Jew, he never had a bar mitzvah, the traditional Jewish ceremony when a boy turns 13, due to the chaos caused by WWI.

Having then trained as a confectioner, he moved into the ghetto in the Polish city of Lodz with his family in 1939, and after the Nazi invasion of Poland was sent to Auschwitz.

He lost his wife, Chaja Feige Frucht, and their two children in the Holocaust, and was rescued from the camp by the Allies in May 1945.

• Holocaust Memorial Day: Remembering the horror of Auschwitz

The slave labour he had done had reduced him to just 80lbs in weight, roughly half that of an average man.

The sole survivor of his original family, he returned to his profession after hospital and made sweets for Soviet soldiers, before going back to Łódź. He then emigrated in 1950 to the city of Haifa in Israel with his second wife Batsheva and their son, where he built a successful confectionary business.

He now has nine grandchildren and many great-grandchildren, but his family prefers not to state his exact number of descendants for fear of the "evil eye".

Perhaps understandably for one who had lived such a life, Mr Kristal put his longevity not down to diet, exercise or philosophical outlook, but to Fate and nothing more.

“I don’t know the secret for long life," he said. "I believe that everything is determined from above and we shall never know the reasons why. There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men then me who are no longer alive. All that is left for us to do is to keep on working as hard as we can and rebuild what is lost.”

The oldest living person is American-born Susannah Mushatt Jones, who is 115, while the oldest person ever to have lived is Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122.