USA – Page 13 – Take off with Natarajan

All You Need to Know about VolksWagen Crisis….. Part 2….

September 24, 2015September 25, 2015Natarajan1 Comment

With 11 million cars affected worldwide, €6.5 billion ($AU10.28 billion) set aside to fix the problem, and facing $US18 billion ($AU25.56 billion) in fines, the scandal enveloping Volkswagen is shaping as the largest in automotive history. So what have VW actually done, and how did they get caught?

VW’s software fix while testing

Volkswagen stand accused of fitting cars with diesel engines with a ‘defeat device’ – a chunk of software that is able to detect when the car is undergoing emissions testing, which then ensures all emission controls are fully functioning as the test takes place.

How does the car know it’s being placed into test mode? Consumer Reportsdetails how VW, and many auto-makers, have a test mode that overrides certain things like traction control. That’s because the car is placed onto a dyno and needs to operate with front wheels spinning but back wheels stationary.

Having a test mode itself wasn’t the problem, it’s that VW look to have utilised that mode to enable emissions limits.

Once the test is over, the cars cease to utilise the emission controls – which significantly reduce fuel economy – and according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, “during normal operation, [the vehicles] emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx, at up to 40 times the standard”.

The EPA went on to explain that NOx pollution is linked to respiratory and and cardiovascular diseases, and in some cases even death.

“Using a defeat device in cars to evade clean air standards is illegal and a threat to public health,” said Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Working closely with the California Air Resources Board, EPA is committed to making sure that all automakers play by the same rules. EPA will continue to investigate these very serious matters.”

The aforementioned $US18 billion fine is based on the EPA having the power to fine $37,500 per car which isn’t up to standard, of which they estimate 482,000 have been sold in the US since 2008. Clearly, that number has risen substantially worldwide, and VW stand to lose tens of billions in recalled and refitted cars alone.

The company said in a release that the €6.5 billion “may be subject to revaluation”, and with 11 million cars to solve, one would expect that revaluation to go up.

It’s also worth noting that the EPA told VW car owners it was on the company to get their vehicles up to code, and that “although these vehicles have emissions exceeding standards, these violations do not present a safety hazard and the cars remain legal to drive and resell”.

How they got caught

While this has all blown up over the last week or so, the case against Volkswagen has been building for over a year.

However rather than a sting, the EPA got somewhat lucky in discovering the company’s systematic cheating.

In May 2014 the International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT) released a paper entitled ‘In-use emissions testing of light-duty diesel vehicles in the U.S.’.

ICCT wanted US NOx emission standards introduced in Europe, and thus employed researchers from West Virginia University to gather emission data.

“Some people have mischaracterised what our role was,” Dan Carder, interim director of the University of West Virginia’s Centre for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions, told IEEE. “Some have used the phrase ‘tipped off the EPA’. But we were just working under contract.”

While the cars in the paper were referred to as ‘Vehicle A’, ‘Vehicle B’ and ‘Vehicle C’, the discovery that emissions on the road were vastly different to those under test conditions piqued the EPA’s interest.

“We presented this in a public forum in San Diego, in the spring of 2014; we said, these are two vehicles; we’re presenting what we can present,” Carder said. “And EPA people were in the audience.”

Over a year later the case was brought before Volkswagen, who were quick to admit their wrongdoing, with US chief executive Michael Horn saying on Monday the company had “totally screwed up”.

The question now is just how far up does this go? An admission of screwing up is one thing, but 11 million cars claiming to be up to 40 times cleaner than they actually are is a tremendous breach of trust, particularly in an increasingly environmentally conscious car market.

While it’s the kind of scandal that could ruin a company, VW probably have the size and pockets to handle it. In July this year VW – which also owns Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche – was the largest-selling carmaker in the world.

Authorities the world over are now investigating whether other companies under the VW umbrella – and indeed unrelated car manufacturers – have been employing similar tactics.

by Joe Frost in Gadgets

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe was Junior Vice-President at Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net until it was bought out by Bill Gates. He now subedits for Conversant Media and considers it a step up.

See more from Joe Frost

Source….www.techly.com.au

Natarajan

Clear Skies Over the United States… A View from International Space Station

September 19, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

On Sept. 17, 2015, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured images and video from the International Space Station during an early morning flyover of the United States. Sharing with his social media followers, Kelly wrote, “Clear skies over much of the USA today. #GoodMorning from @Space_Station! #YearInSpace.”

Tuesday, Sept. 15 marked the midpoint of the one-year mission to the space station for Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. The average International Space Station expedition lasts four to six months. Research enabled by the one-year mission will help scientists better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight. This knowledge is critical as NASA looks toward human missions deeper into the solar system, including to and from Mars, which could last 500 days or longer.

Image Credit: NASA

Source…www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

How a farm labourer became a CEO of a Company …. An Inspiring Story…

September 19, 2015September 19, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

From earning Rs 5 a day as a farm labourer to starting an IT services company that is worth Rs 1.5 crore (Rs 15 million), Jyoti Reddy’s story of success is nothing short of an inspiring movie plot.

That night she decided to break the rules.

With a few friends, whom she referred as akka, she did not return to the orphanage till way past midnight.

It was Sivaratri, the great night of Shiva, when the planets are potently aligned to embrace his cosmic dance.

After visiting the Shiva temple in their village, they decided to do something really daring — go for a movie, a blockbuster love story.

She laughs, a deep throaty laugh, which betrays a teenager’s giggles at the memory of forbidden pleasure.

Anila Jyothi Reddy has travelled very far from that night and her obscure village in Warangal in Telangana.

Her memories though are as fresh as it were yesterday.

“When we returned late in the night, we got a good thrashing from the warden. But I was so enamoured by the movie that I did not much care for the repercussion. I thought I should also marry for love,” she tells me.

Not all dreams come true

But fate — the eternal party spoiler — intervened.

Jyothi was married off exactly a year later at the age of 16 to a man 10 years her senior.

Love did not figure in the arrangement that her parents made for her future.

All her hopes of a better life seemed to recede like the bullock cart in the rear view mirror of a speeding highway truck.

He was a farmer who had not even passed the intermediate.

She was thus doomed to a fate of a daily farm labourer slogging the whole day in the paddy field under the blazing hot Telangana sun.

For all her efforts, Jyothi earned a meagre Rs 5 a day. She did this for five years from 1985 to 1990.

“I became a mother at 17. I had to do all the household chores and then head straight to the fields.

“I would return home at dusk and get down to making dinner.

“We did not have any stove, so I had to cook on a wood fire chulha,” she tells me over the phone from Hyderabad, where she visits at this time of the year from her home in the US.

Today, Jyothi is the CEO of a $15 million IT company, Key Software Solutions, based in Phoenix, Arizona, US.

Her incredible story seems to be the stuff of fiction conjured up by a shrewd novelist inflicting numerous sufferings on his protagonist to eventually make her a winner.

Except here, Jyothi herself altered her destiny.

Unwilling to live a life that was preordained for her, she beat all odds to emerge a winner.

A forced orphan

Jyothi’s aspirations were slowly growing wings.

“I could not stand being poor. I was born poor and was wed into another poor family,” she says.

Those days her dream was to have four plastic boxes full of daal (lentils) and rice.

“I would dream of having more than enough food to feed my children. I did not want to give them the life I was leading.”

Having been married off at the age of 16, Jyothi became a mother at 17 with her first daughter, followed by another girl a year later.

“At 18, I was a mother to two girls. There was never enough money for either medicine or to buy them toys.”

When the time came to admit them in school, she opted for Telugu medium because the fees was Rs 25 a month, while for an English medium school it was Rs 50 per month.

I could educate both my girls at Rs 50 hence I chose to send them to a Telugu medium school.”

Jyothi is the second among her four siblings.

Because of abject poverty at home, her father admitted his two daughters into an orphanage saying that they were motherless.

“I lived in an orphanage for five years from class five to class 10. Life there was tougher. My sister could not manage and would cry the whole time. My father had to take her back home.”

But Jyothi stuck on.

Even though she missed her mother and needed her the most, she finally adjusted to remaining in the orphanage.

“I remember a wealthy man would visit the orphanage every year to distribute sweets and blankets.

“I was a very sickly child then, and I would imagine myself being rich one day and carry a suitcase with 10 new saris in it,” she laughs re-imagining her dreams those days, which she was afraid to share with her hostel mates lest they made fun of her.

Nobody’s children

Jyothi makes it a point to come to India every year on August 29.

It is her birthday and she celebrates it with children in different orphanages in Warangal.

She also sponsors a mentally challenged kids’ home where there are 220 children.

She says passionately, “Two percent of India’s population comprises orphans. They do not have any identification. They are uncared for and unwanted. The people who work in orphanages only work there for the money, and not to give care and love to the orphans.”

She has been pursuing the cause of orphan children for many years now and has met ministers in power to bring the plight of these children to their notice.

She is concerned that though the state government has released data for orphan boys till class 10 who are in child remand homes, there is no data for girl orphans.

Where are the girls? Why are they missing?” she asks and replies to her own question.

“Because they are trafficked; they are forced into prostitution. I visited one home in Hyderabad where six girls in their 10th class had given birth. In the same home, these mother orphans were living with their orphan children.”

Being in a position of power today, Jyothi is voicing her concerns at every forum and making sure that the plight of the orphans does not go unheard.

But there was a time when she had to be a mute spectator to the injustices meted out to her by her own husband and in-laws.

With many mouths to feed and little or no income, life was hard.

“My concern was my children. I had a lot of restrictions. I could not talk to any other men, could not go out besides going to work in the fields.”

But as they say where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Jyothi heard an opportunity knock on her door when she started teaching the other farm hands at a night school.

From a labourer, she became a government teacher.

“I would motivate them to learn the basics. That was my job. I soon got a promotion, and would visit every village in Warangal to train women and youth to learn to stitch clothes.”

She was now earning Rs 120 a month.

“It was as if I had got one lakh rupees. I could now spend on my children’s medicine. It was a lot of money for me.”

The American dream

She completed a vocational course from Ambedkar Open University and wanted to enroll for MA in English at Kakatiya University in Warangal.

“I had often dreamt of having a name plate outside my house with the words ‘Dr Anila Jyothi Reddy.'”

However, she could not pass her course and all her dreams of doing a PhD in English came to an end.

But a chance meeting with a cousin from the US fired her imagination and she knew it in her heart that if she had to escape this vortex of poverty she had to go to the US.

“This is too much, right? This is crazy,” she laughs again with joy in reply to my question on how she managed to go to the US.

Talking about her NRI cousin who inspired her, she says, “She had style. It was so different from my ‘teacher look’. I did not leave my hair loose, I did not wear goggles or drive a car. I asked her can I come to America.”

Her cousin told her, “An aggressive woman like you can easily manage in America.”

Jyothi did not waste any time and enrolled for computer software classes.

She would commute to Hyderabad daily because her husband did not like the idea of her living away from home.

She was determined to go to the US. But it was hard to convince her husband.

“I was really greedy to go to the US. That was the only way I thought I could give my children a good life.”

She took the help of relatives and friends to apply for a US visa.

“I make use of every resource and time that I can manage. I never wasted time even while teaching.

“I used to run a chit fund for the other teachers. My salary in 1994-95 was Rs 5,000, I used to earn Rs 25,000 from the chit fund — all this when I was only 23-24 years old.

“I tried to save as much as I could so that I could go to the US.”

Jyothi’s biggest desire was to drive a car, and she knew only if she went to the US, she could drive one.

“There were too many restrictions at home. But one good thing my husband has done is given me two children to fight my life,” she says with a chuckle.

“My girls are like me. They are hard workers and do not waste time.”

Her daughters are software engineers. They are both married now and live in the US.

From poverty to abundance

The American dream is not an easy one.

Though Jyothi fought her fate and reached the land of opportunities, it was a rough ride.

“There was no support for me there. I did not know English very well, and it was a struggle each day.”

She found a PG accommodation with a Gujarati family in New Jersey at $350 per month.

“I did not have a cell phone. I used to walk three miles daily to work.”

She worked as a sales girl, then as a room service person in a motel in South Carolina, as a baby sitter in Phoenix, Arizona, as a gas station attendant, and software recruiter in Virginia.

Finally, she started her own business.

“When I returned to my village after two years, I went to the village temple for Shiv puja and the priest told me, ‘You will not get a job in the US, but if you do business you will become a millionaire.’