So here are a few more additions to the Elitmus Placement Paper . These are some of links to various books that are essential for preparation of not only eLitmus Test but is also useful for various other exam. These links can be found in New Addition section on Elitmus Placement Paper page. with a date stamp of 03/12/2011.These links are for ebooks like elitmus study material,  Verbal Non Verbal Reasoning by R S Agarwal, Barron Vocabulary, Book : R S Agarwal Verbal Reasoning, Book : Barron’s GRE (12th edition), Book : 10th CBSE maths book.

Follow this link to go to that page:
http://alok007.wordpress.com/placement-papers/elitmus-placement-papers/

It is almost 4:04 AM in morning but I couldn't resist myself from posting this as I think this is one of the most important topic for all mankind for which I can deprive myself of sleep .

I was commenting on a post of one of my most Inspiring FB friend Carlos E. Jean-Gilles. He was discussing on the necessity of taking required action.

In his words :

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

~

My wife and I have had several of our windows broken because we believe in the above statements. After our windows were broken because my wife made an anonymous call to Missouri's Department of Social Services when we had reasons to suspect that a toddler's life was at stake (as a psychologist, she was required to make that call), the family in question retaliated by filing trumped up charges against me and we were subject to a nightmarish three-month period where we were harassed in the middle of the night by these people. A week ago, I was pulling out of my driveway with our son in the car when the seventeen-year-old boy who conducted most of the intimidation rampage against us was assaulting his girlfriend in bright daylight. Had I had my camera with me, I would have videotaped it all; unfortunately, I didn't, but that experience thought me a lesson--to have my smartphone at the ready at all times. He was so convinced that his retaliation tactics and intimidation work that he was oblivious to the possibility that I would do anything about it. I can't force his girlfriend to press charges against him, but I certainly did report it. The cops, of course, will not do anything about it because the incident has to be reported immediately after the fact. The problem with that is by the time one calls the cops, he would have been long gone, and he would have made sure that he wasn't at home when the cops came to his house. Since it was a minor incident, the cops would have filed their report and nothing would have been done since they have bigger fishes to fry.

The cops are under the delusion that by putting someone like that in jail will resolve the problem. I don't think it will. This kid is a timed bomb waiting to explode. It's just a matter of time before he kills someone or he's killed by someone else. We must speak up! We must have the courage to be the change that we want to see in the world.

~

I totally agree to his view points and posted the following as comment. Hope this post can inspire you to take your stand and just not sit back and watch.

In my words:

 keeping silence and staying back from taking the necessary actions has never been a solution to any problem. The one who has taken needful action has only been rewarded with golden letters in pages of history

I want to quote a beautiful verse from our sacred text "Bhagwad Geeta" where  Lord Krishna gives importance to "karma" or deeds/actions

Sanskrit
" कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन  |
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर मा ते संगोस्तवाकर्मनि || "

English : 
"Karmanyewaadhikaaraste maa faleshu kadaachana
Maa karmfal heturbhooh maa te sango-astvakarmani."

Meaning:
"To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction"

It says that we should not run away from doing our duty thinking about outcomes. Because we don't have any control over the outcomes. We only have control over our actions and we must never run away from doing action that is required. Outcome is in the hands of GOD if we perform our action in right manner the outcome will surely be a good reward that may or may not be instantaneous.

People run away from taking some required action only due to fear of some outcome that they think will be in negative way. But who are we to judge a outcome in negative or positive? If you believe in God then you must have faith that God will never give a negative outcome to your positive deeds. And if you believe in Science then why do you forget Newton's third Law of Motion that states every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So if we take a good action that is required it implies we will get back good reaction(feedback) in reply, it may not be instantaneous though (in real life). Some may argue that standing and facing some challenge may be harmful to ourself but then I would like to say that if we show that courage to stand up and face a challenge may be it could create a revolutionary change of mind (inspiration) in others who are staying back to join hands in facing the challenge. If the challenge is bigger and no one is around may be in extreme case we have to face a life-challenging situation but remember that a martyrdom for a good cause can never go to waste. Revolutions happens only when someone stands in front of a challenge to face it. If we learn to face every challenges we come across with boldness and fearlessness then that would be the biggest revolution the mankind can have.

Hoping to get your views on this topic which needs attention of every individual.

Lets be the change we want to see.

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Check out the new addition in Placement Papers : AMCAT (Aspiring Minds) Sample Paper & Syllabus.
Aspiring Minds conduct a nation-wide Computer Adaptive Test to provide a statistically-valid multi-dimensional skill assessment to judge the employment suitability of a large pool of candidates.

The multi-dimensional score coupled with innovative filters and graphical visualization lets you find the most appropriate set of candidates for your job profile instantly.

Here are sample papers/ Placement papers and syllabus for AMCAT test.

http://alok007.wordpress.com/placement-papers/amcat-aspiring-minds/

So this is my first addition in Placement Paper which was added today. You can find it in the Placement Paper page.

eLitmus is a first-of-its-kind service in the world. Since it was launched in 2005, eLitmus has been redefining how fresher and entry-level recruitment is done in India. pH Test evaluates job seekers based on a variety of parameters, and grades them nationwide using an advanced statistical model, resulting in a pH Score for each candidate.

eLitmus has been one of the toughest test which requires CAT level preparation. And as there are no previous paper available anywhere it gets more tougher to even predict its pattern. As I was preparing for this particular exam I came across some papers which were tagged as eLitmus papers. I am sharing them here.

I will continue to add to it in future as I get any new papers. You can straight away head to http://alok007.wordpress.com/placement-papers/elitmus-placement-papers/ for this page.

Hope it helps you in your preparation. Good Luck for future.

New Addition: Placement Papers

It has been around 4 months since I last posted on my blog. Well I now agree that though we can say at starting that we  will keep posting every week or every month but it really gets difficult to do that for a normal person who is not an avid blogger. I wish someday I may be able to update my blog more regularly as earlier promised. And till that day becomes reality I have a good excuse " I AM NOT AN AVID BLOGGER "... ha ha.:D

So coming to the point ... Today I have added a new page titled Placement Papers where I will share some of the placement papers of exams and companies (Engineering). Hope it helps many of you who are aspiring to get placed in big companies. I will try to keep most of the materials in PDF format so that it can be easily downloaded and shared.

CHI ’11: Enhancing the Human Condition

By Janie Chang

May 9, 2011 8:45 AM PT                                                                      (courtesy: MICROSOFT RESEARCH)

The Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2011), being held May 7-12 in Vancouver, British Columbia, provides a showcase of the latest advances in human-computer interaction (HCI).

“The ongoing challenge,” says Desney S. Tan, CHI 2011 general conference chair and senior researcher at Microsoft Research Redmond, “is to make computing more accessible by integrating technology seamlessly into our everyday tasks, to understand and enhance the human condition like never before.”

Microsoft Research has a consistent record of support for CHI through sponsorships and research contributions. This year, Microsoft researchers authored or co-authored 40 conference papers and notes, approximately 10 percent of the total accepted.

This comes as no surprise to Tan.

“Microsoft Research’s goal,” he says, “is to further the state of the art in computer science and technology. As the realms of human and technology become more and more intertwined, Microsoft Research has focused more and more of our effort at the intersection of human and computer, and this is evident from our researchers’ level of participation.”

One unusual contribution comes from Bill Buxton, Microsoft Research principal researcher. Items from Buxton’s impressive accumulation of interactive devices are on display in an exhibit titled “The Future Revealed in the Past: Selections from Bill Buxton’s Collection of Interactive Devices.”

Effects of Community Size and Contact Rate in Synchronous Social Q&A, by Ryen White and Matthew Richardson of Microsoft Research Redmond and Yandong Liu of Carnegie Mellon University, received one of 13 best-paper awards during the conference, as did Your Noise is My Command: Sensing Gestures Using the Body as an Antenna by former Microsoft Research intern Gabe Cohn and visiting faculty member Shwetak Patel, both from the University of Washington, along with Dan Morris and Tan of Microsoft Research Redmond. One of two best-notes awards went to Interactive Generator: A Self-Powered Haptic Feedback Device, co-authored by Akash Badshah, of the Phillips Exeter Academy, a residential high school in Exeter, N.H.; Sidhant Gupta, Cohn, and Patel of the University of Washington; and Nicolas Villar and Steve Hodges of Microsoft Research Cambridge.

The Touch-Sensitive Home

Imagine being freed of physical attachments to input devices because your body isthe input device. One approach is to put sensors on the body. The challenge then is to separate actual “signal” from “noise,” such as ambient electromagnetic interference, which overwhelms sensors and makes signal processing difficult. InYour Noise is My Command: Sensing Gestures Using the Body as an Antenna, the researchers turned the problem on its head.

“Can we use that electrical noise as a source of information about where a user is and what that user is doing?” Morris recalls asking. “These are the first experiments to assess whether this is feasible.”

The human body behaves as an antenna in the presence of noise radiated by power lines and appliances. By analyzing this noise, the entire home becomes an interaction surface.

The human body is literally an antenna, picking up signals while moving through the noisy electrical environment of a typical home. The researchers tested whether it is possible to identify signals with enough precision to tell what the user is touching and from where. To measure those signals, the researchers placed a simple sensor on each study participant and recorded the electrical signals collected by those sensors. Laptop computers carried in each person’s backpack collected data as the participants performed a series of “gestures,” such as touching spots on walls and appliances or moving through different rooms.

Next came determining whether analysis of this data provided the ability to distinguish between gestures and locations. It was possible in many cases to recognize participants’ actions based solely on the ambient noise picked up by their bodies. For example, once a participant “taught” the algorithms about the noise environment around a particular light switch by demonstrating gestures around the switch, it was possible to determine which of five spots near that switch the user was touching, with an accuracy of better than 90 percent. Similarly, researchers could identify in which room a participant was present at any given time with an accuracy exceeding 99 percent, because the electrical noise environment of each room is distinct.

“It was quite a gratifying series of results,” Morris says. “Now, we are considering how we can package this up into a real-time, interactive system and what innovative scenarios we can enable when we turn your entire home into a touch-sensitive surface.”

The Patient as Medical Display Surface

Reports from the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association confirm that patient noncompliance is a major obstacle to successful medical outcomes in treatment of chronic conditions. Doctor-patient communication has been identified as one of the most important factors for improving compliance. The paper AnatOnMe: Facilitating Doctor-Patient Communication Using a Projection-Based Handheld Deviceifocuses on understanding how lightweight, handheld projection technologies can be used to enhance doctor-patient communication during face-to-face exchanges in clinical settings.

Three presentation surfaces: a) body, b) model, and c) wall.

Focusing on physical therapy, co-authors Tao Ni of Virginia Tech—a former Microsoft Research Redmond intern—Amy K. Karlson of Microsoft Research Redmond, and Daniel Wigdor, formerly of Microsoft Research Redmond and now at the University of Toronto, spoke with doctors to understand general communication challenges and design requirements, then built and studied a handheld projection system that flexibly supports the key aspects of information exchange. Doctors can direct handheld projectors at walls or curtains to create an “anywhere” display, or at a patient to overlay useful medical information directly atop the appropriate portion of the anatomy for an augmented-reality view, or “virtual X-ray.”

Reviews and formal lab studies with physical therapists and patients established that handheld projections delivered high value and a more engaging, informative experience than what is traditionally available.

“This is an interesting new space,” Karlson says, “because, despite the prevalence of technology in many medical settings, technology has been relatively absent from face-to-face communication and education opportunities between doctors and patients.

“The coolest part was hearing the positive reactions from study participants when we projected medical imagery directly onto their arms and legs. We got, ‘Wow!’ ‘Cool!’ and ‘I feel like I am looking directly through my skin!’ There seems to be something quite compelling and unique about viewing medical imagery on one’s own body.”

Touch-Free Interactions in the Operating Room

The growth of image-guided procedures in surgical settings has led to an increased need to interact with digital images. In a collaboration with Lancaster University funded by Microsoft Research Connections, Rose Johnson of the Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K.; Kenton O’Hara, Abigail Sellen, and Antonio Criminisi of Microsoft Research Cambridge; and Claire Cousins of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, U.K., address the problem of enabling rich, flexible, but touch-free interaction with patient data in surgical settings. The resulting paper, Exploring the Potential for Touchless Interaction in Image-Guided Interventional Radiology, has received a CHI 20 Honorable Mention paper award.

During treatments such as interventional radiology, images are critical in guiding surgeons' work; yet because of sterility issues, surgeons must avoid touching input devices such as mice or keyboards. They must navigate digital images "by proxy,” using other members of the surgical team to find the right image, pan, or zoom. This can be onerous and time-consuming.

This view toward an X-ray table from a computer area shows a surgical team and the complex collaborative environment that touch-free interactions must address.

The research team began fieldwork with the goal of understanding surgeons' working practices. The researchers are collaborating with surgical teams to develop and evaluate a system. Touchless-interaction solutions such as Kinect for Xbox 360 offer opportunities for surgeons to regain control of navigating through data. There are many challenges, though, in terms of enabling collaborative control of the interface, as well as achieving fluid engagement and disengagement with the system, because the system needs to know which gestures are “for the system” and which are not.

“The most intriguing aspect of this project,” Sellen says, “is the potential to make a real impact on patient care and clinical outcome by reducing the time it takes to do complicated procedures and giving surgeons more control of the data they depend on. From a technical side, it is exciting to see where technologies like Kinect can realize their value outside of the gaming domain.”

Use Both Hands

Touch interfaces are great for impromptu casual interactions, but it is not easy to select a point precisely with your finger or to move an image without rotating it unless there are on-screen menus or handles. In the world of touch, though, such options are not desirable, because they introduce clutter. Rock & Rails: Extending Multi-touch Interactions with Shape Gestures to Enable Precise Spatial Manipulations, by Wigdor, Hrvoje Benko of Microsoft Research Redmond, and John Pella, Jarrod Lombardo, and Sarah Williams of Microsoft, proposes a solution by using recognized hand poses on the surface in combination with touch.

“Rock and Rails” is an extension of the touch-interaction vocabulary. It maintains the direct-touch input paradigm but enables users to make fluid, high degree-of-freedom manipulations while simultaneously providing easy mechanisms to increase precision, specify manipulation constraints, and avoid occlusions. The tool set provides mechanisms for positioning, isolating orientation, and scaling operations using system-recognized hand postures, while enabling traditional, simple, direct-touch manipulations.

The Rock & Rails paper augments a) traditional direct-manipulation gestures with independently recognized hand postures used to restrict manipulations conducted with the other hand: b) rotate, c) resize, and d) 1-D scale. This enables fluid selection of degrees of freedom and, thus, rapid, high-precision manipulation of on-screen content.

The project was a collaborative effort between Microsoft Research and the Microsoft Surface team, so the researchers were able to test their work on real-world designers—the intended audience.

“One of the best moments of the project,” Benko recalls, “was when we realized our gestures could be made ‘persistent’ on the screen. We had transitioned from the model where you had to keep the pose of the hand in order to signal a particular option, to a more relaxed mode where the user could ‘create’ or ‘pin’ a proxy representation of a gesture. This allows users to perform all sorts of wacky combinations of operations without needing to hold the gesture for a long period of time.”

These are just a few of Microsoft Research’s current investigations in how to enhance the ways people can interact with computing devices.

“HCI is all about discovering and inventing technologies that deeply transform people’s lives,” Tan concludes. “Microsoft Research is committed to advancing the state of the art in human-computer interaction.”

Thanx to http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/chi2011-050911.aspx for this content.

Om Sai Ram

Before sharing my thoughts I would like to offer my humble prayers at the divine feet of Lord Sai and lets pray that His soul rest in peace.

I am really shocked to hear the sad news of His departure today morning. Who knew that lord will depart for his Heavenly Abode on the day when Jesus rose from the dead (Easter Sunday).

My association with Lord dates back to the day I entered Sri Sathya Sai Vidhyapeeth, Sri Sailam, my school in kerala. It was the year of 2000, I was unaware of Sathya sai baba and only knew about shirdi sai baba. From that day I started listening to numerous stories, incidents, and miracles of sai baba from my friends and teachers. Some times I thought is that really possible in modern world or is it just a myth. There were also deviations in faith among various friends and my mind always toggled between between faith and myth. As time progressed one day came when we were heading to puttaparthi for Divine Darshan. This was my first face to face interaction with the Divine Guru. Though I didn't get a chance to get anywhere closer than three rows behind the front one... but that Divine Presence left  a deep impact on my mind. I felt like The Divine Aura around him engulfed me. And after that my faith in Him started building day by day. I witnessed some of the miracles like bibhuti, chain and ring creation..Well some may think of this as Magic or trick but to me it has always been a way to encourage spiritual beliefs among devotees and attract others to follow the Divine path.

I was just a student of 7th grade but my mind started exploring more about Him. After that I joined Bal Vikas classes that was conducted in my school and learned various lessons of spirituality. Slowly and steadily I developed immense faith in Him. Though there were various negative stories floating around and some friends didn't believe on His Divinity, But all those negative thoughts failed to deviate me from my Faith. By the time I was in XIIth I had chance of visiting Puttaparthi Four times. And these Holy trips have strengthen my believes more and more. I also had a chance of  Sai Seva in a Meical Camp in a village near Puttaparthi.

And after leaving my school when I was away in Ranchi for one year, I experienced that my Faith on Him went on increasing. Now I felt that as I was moving away from the Sai Circle I was more and more eager to come back to the Divine Presence. And that eagerness kept my Faith alive in Him even though I was away from Puttaparthi and Sai Trust.

I joined Bharath University in Chennai for pursuing Engineering and I think it was a Golden Chance for me to visit the Divine Place as it was so near. But I could not capitalize and transform these opportunities into reality. Even though I have spend past four years living so close to The Divine Presence but have not been able to visit and have Divine Darshan.

Now after this incident of His Divine departure I am in a state of mind where I am not able to console myself that I have lost the Golden Opportunity of His Darshan by my own ignorance. I should have gone there some time and taken the Divine Blessings. But that is a part of History now. Opportunities don't wait for us, rather we have to utilize our opportunities. And thinking and regretting  over the lost chances will only push us back into darkness. I wish I overcome this very soon .

Will continue sharing  my experiences. Till then Jai Sai Ram

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