Genpact eyes expansion in India

Business process outsourcing company Genpact Ltd expects its healthcare services business to grow at "a good pace," and is looking to
expand the segment in the United States, India and the Europe, its chief executive said.

"This is one (segment) that can grow at very large double digits mainly because it is a relatively untapped market," Genpact Chief Executive Pramod Bhasin said in an interview.

Genpact, which provides services in asset management, hospital administration, supply chain logistics and finance, gets about 7 per cent to 8 per cent of its revenue from healthcare outsourcing. The company, which draws majority of its revenue from banking, financial services and insurance, and manufacturing sectors, reported revenue of $1 billion in 2008.

Healthcare organisations, especially in developed countries, are increasingly looking at opportunities to outsource as the need for a cost-effective healthcare system -- with trained but cheap manpower -- becomes acute. Soaring healthcare costs in the United States, where health spending is estimated to hit $2.5 trillion in 2009, undermine the competitiveness of businesses, strain state and federal budgets and drive many Americans into bankruptcy, even as 46 million Americans remain with no health insurance.

US President Barack Obama aims to expand healthcare coverage to all Americans, provide better care and reduce wasteful spending for medical errors, fraud and unnecessary treatments through his proposed healthcare overhaul package. Obama's proposed health reforms and the healthcare overhaul package are going to put a lot of pressure on hospitals to reduce costs, Bhasin said.

Genpact, which draws about 75 per cent of its revenue from the United States, has been focusing on building expertise in areas such as hospital administration, supply chain logistics, equipment and doctor utilization, asset management, and finance and administration, the CEO said. To make the best use of global opportunities, thrown open by the growing significance of cheaper healthcare, Genpact is planning to expand the business in the United States, India and Europe.

"Healthcare is interesting because it is an area where frankly, anytime, you can actually take this expertise to any part of the world," said Bhasin, who is also the chairman of National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the IT trade body in India. Genpact got its start in 1997 as the India-based business process services unit of GE Capital, General Electric Co's financial services business, and became independent in 2005.

GE is the company's top client, contributing almost half of its revenue. Genpact, which competes with International Business Machines Corp, Accenture Ltd and WNS Holdings Ltd, counts GlaxoSmithKline, Kimberly-Clark Corp and Cadbury Schweppes among its other clients.

Oracle plans to lay off up to 1,000

Oracle Corp plans to lay off up to 1,000 workers in Europe, or about 1 percent of its global staff, as the recession erodes the giant so
ftware company's earnings, French news agency has AFP reported.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined to comment.

The world's No. 2 publicly held software maker would be one of the last major technology companies to undertake significant layoffs in this economic downturn.

Oracle would join EMC Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, International Business Machines Corp, Intel Corp, Microsoft Corp and SAP AG, among others.

Trade unions learned of the job cuts on Monday and Tuesday during committee meetings of Oracle's European workers, according to the AFP report.

Redwood City, California-based Oracle had some 86,000 employees as of May 31, compared with 84,233 a year earlier. About a third of the software maker's employees are in the United States.

UK bank goes for Wipro, TCS staff

Even as protectionism gains ground among political hardliners in the UK and US, UK-based Lloyds Bank has initiated the process of replac
ing most its British IT workers with Indian nationals.

Many of the Indian recruits will be from top-rung Indian IT majors like Wipro and TCS, who are also the bank’s vendors, said two industry officials familiar with the development.

The bank, which has over 400 employees in its IT department, is learnt to be considering replacing over 80% of its IT workforce with those from India. “We continue to outsource areas of IT work to companies based overseas. At any one time, some of the staff from these companies will be based in the UK to deliver aspects of our IT projects which is standard industry practice,” said a Lloyds spokeswoman over email. She added that the number of staff from overseas companies working with Lloyds in the UK varied depending on the projects underway and the skills required. TCS declined to comment since it was in the midst of its silent period while Wipro refrained from comemnting on “market speculation.”

Globally, the economic crisis has resulted in serious cost-cutting measures which includes wage cuts. For example, an Indian IT specialist with over four years of experience, will be paid almost 30% lesser than his British counterpart. “The costs pressures for companies in Europe and US are forcing companies to lay off workers and replace them with more inexpensive labour mostly from India and China,” said a UK-based consultant who advises European banks on outsourcing strategies. Last week, the Lloyds Banking Group’s employee union protested on a move to replace skilled IT workers of British origin with those from India.

“Workers from India, who would otherwise have no legal right to work in the UK, are being given work visas and flown into the country to take on jobs that could otherwise be given to the existing UK-based staff. The UK government should be using its 43% ownership in Lloyds to force the bank’s board to act in the best interest of UK jobs and its economy,” the union’s assistant general secretary Steve Tatlow had said last week.

A Billion Year Ultra-Dense Memory Chip

When it comes to data storage, density and durability have always moved in opposite directions - the greater the density the shorter the durability. For example, information carved in stone is not dense but can last thousands of years, whereas today's silicon memory chips can hold their information for only a few decades. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have smashed this tradition with a new memory storage medium that can pack thousands of times more data into one square inch of space than conventional chips and retain this data for more than a billion years!

"We've developed a new mechanism for digital memory storage that consists of a crystalline iron nanoparticle shuttle enclosed within the hollow of a multiwalled carbon nanotube," said physicist Alex Zettl who led this research.

"Through this combination of nanomaterials and interactions, we've created a memory device that features both ultra-high density and ultra-long lifetimes, and that can be written to and read from using the conventional voltages already available in digital electronics."

Zettl, one of the world's foremost researchers into nanoscale systems and devices, holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD) and the Physics Department at UC Berkeley, where he is the director of the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems. He is the principal author of a paper that has been published on-line by Nano Letters entitled: "Nanoscale Reversible Mass Transport for Archival Memory." Co-authoring the paper with Zettl were Gavi Begtrup, Will Gannett and Tom Yuzvinsky, all members of his research group, plus Vincent Crespi, a theorist at Penn State University.

The ever-growing demand for digital storage of videos, images, music and text calls for storage media that pack increasingly more data onto chips that keep shrinking in size. However, this demand runs in sharp contrast to the history of data storage. Compare the stone carvings in the Egyptian temple of Karnak, which store approximately two bits of data per square inch but can still be read after nearly 4,000 years, to a modern DVD which can store 100 giga (billion) bits of data per square inch but will probably remain readable for no more than 30 years.

"Interestingly," said Zettl, "the Domesday Book, the great survey of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086 and written on vellum, has survived over 900 years, while the 1986 BBC Domesday Project, a multimedia survey marking the 900th anniversary of the original Book, required migration from the original high-density laserdiscs within two decades because of media failure."

Zettl and his collaborators were able to buck data storage history by creating a programmable memory system that is based on a moveable part - an iron nanoparticle, approximately 1/50,000th the width of a human hair, that in the presence of a low voltage electrical current can be shuttled back and forth inside a hollow carbon nanotube with remarkable precision. The shuttle's position inside the tube can be read out directly via a simple measurement of electrical resistance, allowing the shuttle to function as a nonvolatile memory element with potentially hundreds of binary memory states.

Cisco Releases Security Advisory for Wireless Gateways

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NMS: CSCO) has released a security advisory focused on key components susceptible to DoS and Privilege Escalation vulnerabilities inherent in the networking giant’s Wireless LAN Controllers, Catalyst 6500 Wireless Services Modules, and last but not least their superb (in our opinion) Catalyst 3750 Integrated Wireless LAN Controllers. The company has issued patches for the enumerated issues. There are no workarounds outside of the patch activity. The full advisory appears after the jump. Get patching folks.
Cisco Security Advisory: Multiple Vulnerabilities in Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Advisory ID: cisco-sa-20090204-wlc
Revision 1.0
For Public Release 2009 February 04 1600 UTC (GMT)
Summary
=======
Multiple vulnerabilities exist in the Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs), Cisco Catalyst 6500 Wireless Services Modules (WiSMs), and Cisco Catalyst 3750 Integrated Wireless LAN Controllers. This security advisory outlines details of the following vulnerabilities:
* Denial of Service Vulnerabilities (total of three)
* Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
These vulnerabilities are independent of each other.
Cisco has released free software updates that address these vulnerabilities.
There are no workarounds available for these vulnerabilities.

This advisory is posted at http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20090204-wlc.shtml.
Affected Products
=================
Vulnerable Products
+——————
The following products and software versions are affected for each vulnerability.
Denial of Service Vulnerabilities
+——————————–
Two denial of service (DoS) vulnerabilities affect software versions 4.2 and later. All Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) platforms are affected. A third DoS vulnerability affects software versions 4.1 and later. The following platforms are affected by this vulnerability:
* Cisco 4400 Series Wireless LAN Controllers
* Cisco 4100 Series Wireless LAN Controllers
* Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series/7600 Series Wireless Services Module (WiSM)
* Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series Integrated Wireless LAN Controllers
Note: The Cisco Wireless LAN Controller Modules supported on Cisco 2800 and 3800 series Integrated Services Routers are not vulnerable. The Cisco 2000 and 2100 Series Wireless LAN Controllers are also not affected by this vulnerability.
Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
+———————————
Only WLC software version 4.2.173.0 is affected by this vulnerability.
Determination of Software Versions
+———————————
To determine the WLC version that is running in a given environment, use one of the following methods:
* In the web interface, choose the Monitor tab, click Summary in the left pane, and note the Software Version.
* From the command-line interface, type “show sysinfo” and note the Product Version, as shown in the following example:
(Cisco Controller) >show sysinfo
Manufacturer’s Name.. Cisco Systems Inc.
Product Name……… Cisco Controller
Product Version…… 5.1.151.0
RTOS Version……… Linux-2.6.10_mvl401
Bootloader Version… 4.0.207.0
Build Type……….. DATA + WPS

Use the “show wism module controller 1 status” command on a Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series/7600 Series switch if using a WiSM, and note the Software Version, as demonstrated in the following example:
Router#show wism mod 3 controller 1 status
WiSM Controller 1 in Slot 3
Operational Status of the Controller: Oper-Up
Service VLAN: 192
Service Port: 10
Service Port Mac Address: 0011.92ff.8742
Service IP Address: 192.168.10.1
Management IP Address: 192.168.1.123
Software Version: 5.1.151.0
Port Channel Number: 288
Allowed vlan list: 30,40
Native VLAN ID: 40
WCP Keep Alive Missed: 0
Products Confirmed Not Vulnerable
+——————————–
No other Cisco products are currently known to be affected by these vulnerabilities.
Details
=======
Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs), Cisco Catalyst 6500 Wireless Services Modules (WiSMs), and Cisco Catalyst 3750 Integrated Wireless LAN Controllers are responsible for system-wide wireless LAN functions, such as security policies, intrusion prevention, RF management, quality of service (QoS), and mobility. These devices communicate with Controller-based Access Points over any Layer 2 (Ethernet) or Layer 3 (IP) infrastructure using the Lightweight Access Point Protocol (LWAPP). This Security Advisory describes multiple distinct vulnerabilities in the WLCs, WiSMs, and the Cisco Catalyst 3750 Integrated WLCs. These vulnerabilities are independent of each other.
Denial of Service Vulnerabilities
+——————————–
These vulnerabilities are documented in the following Cisco Bug ID and have been assigned the following Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers:
* CSCsq44516 - CVE-2009-0058
Web authentication is a Layer 3 security feature that causes the controller to drop IP traffic (except DHCP and DNS related packets) from a particular client until that client has correctly supplied a valid username and password. An attacker may use a vulnerability scanner to cause the device to stop servicing web authentication or cause a reload of the device. The following error messages may appear on the console during an active attack:
SshPmStMain/pm_st_main.c:1954/
ssh_pm_st_main_batch_addition_result:
Failed to add rule to the engine:
restoring old state
SshEnginePmApiPm/engine_pm_api_pm.c:1896/
ssh_pme_enable_policy_lookup:
Could not allocate message
* CSCsm82364 - CVE-2009-0059
An attacker may cause a device reload when sending a malformed post to the web authentication “login.html” page. The following error messages may appear on the WLC console during this attack:
Cisco Crash Handler
Signal generated during a signal 11, count 193
Memory 0×14ef1e44 has been freed!
Note: A crash file is not generated during this attack.
* CSCso60979 - CVE-2009-0061
Affected Cisco WLC, WiSM and Catalyst 3750 Wireless LAN Controller models are vulnerable to a DoS condition that is triggered by the receipt of certain IP packets. Upon receiving these IP packets, the affected device may become unresponsive and require a reboot to recover. Note: This vulnerability affects software versions 4.1 and later in the Cisco 4400 series WLCs, Cisco Catalyst 6500 WiSM, and the Cisco Catalyst 3750 Integrated Wireless LAN Controllers. Cisco 4100, 2100, and 2000 series WLCs are not affected by this vulnerability.
Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
+———————————
A privilege escalation vulnerability exists only in WLC software version 4.2.173.0, and could allow a restricted user (i.e., Lobby Admin) to gain full administrative rights on the affected system. Note: Wireless network users are not affected by this vulnerability. This vulnerability is documented in Cisco Bug ID CSCsv62283 and has been assigned the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifier CVE-2009-0062.
Vulnerability Scoring Details
+—————————-
Cisco has provided scores for the vulnerabilities in this advisory based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). The CVSS scoring in this Security Advisory is done in accordance with CVSS version 2.0. CVSS is a standards-based scoring method that conveys vulnerability severity and helps determine urgency and priority of response. Cisco has provided a base and temporal score. Customers can then compute environmental scores to assist in determining the impact of the vulnerability in individual networks. Cisco has provided an FAQ to answer additional questions regarding CVSS at http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/cvss-qandas.html Cisco has also provided a CVSS calculator to help compute the environmental impact for individual networks at http://intellishield.cisco.com/security/alertmanager/cvss
* Certain packets may cause WebAuth services to hang or reload the device (CSCsq44516)

CVSS Base Score - 6.1
Access Vector - Adjacent Network
Access Complexity - Low
Authentication - None
Confidentiality Impact - None
Integrity Impact - None
Availability Impact - Complete

CVSS Temporal Score - 5.0
Exploitability - Functional
Remediation Level - Official-Fix
Report Confidence - Confirmed
* Crash handling invalid post for webauth (CSCsq44516)

CVSS Base Score - 6.1
Access Vector - Adjacent Network
Access Complexity - Low
Authentication - None
Confidentiality Impact - None
Integrity Impact - None
Availability Impact - Complete

CVSS Temporal Score - 5.0
Exploitability - Functional
Remediation Level - Official-Fix
Report Confidence - Confirmed
* WLC TSEC driver may hang or crash the device (CSCso60979)

CVSS Base Score - 7.8
Access Vector - Network
Access Complexity - Low
Authentication - None
Confidentiality Impact - None
Integrity Impact - None
Availability Impact - Complete

CVSS Temporal Score - 6.4
Exploitability - Functional
Remediation Level - Official-Fix
Report Confidence - Confirmed
* Local Management Users may obtain full admin rights (CSCsv62283)

CVSS Base Score - 9.0
Access Vector - Network
Access Complexity - Low
Authentication - Single
Confidentiality Impact - Complete
Integrity Impact - Complete
Availability Impact - Complete

CVSS Temporal Score - 7.8
Exploitability - Functional
Remediation Level - Official-Fix
Report Confidence - Confirmed

Impact
======
Successful exploitation of the denial of service vulnerabilities may cause the affected device to hang or reload. Repeated exploitation could result in a sustained DoS condition. The privilege escalation vulnerability may allow an authenticated user to obtain full administrative rights on the affected system.

Software Versions and Fixes
===========================
When considering software upgrades, also consult http://www.cisco.com/go/psirt and any subsequent advisories to determine exposure and a complete upgrade solution. In all cases, customers should exercise caution to be certain the devices to be upgraded contain sufficient memory and that current hardware and software configurations will continue to be supported properly by the new release. If the information is not clear, contact the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) or your contracted maintenance provider for assistance.

Himalayas warming faster than global average

NEW DELHI: Northwestern Himalayas has become 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer in the last 100 years, a far higher level of warming than the 0.5-1.1
degrees for the rest of the globe, Indian scientists have found.

Scientists from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Pune University's Department of Geology examined the variation in precipitation (snowfall and rainfall) in the region and found that warming has led to a delay in the onset of winter and a reduction in snowfall.

The study published in the International Journal of Climatology from the Royal Meteorological society, Britain, found that northwestern Himalayas have warmed at the rate of about 1.4 degrees Celsius in the last century compared to the global range of 0.5 to 1.1 degrees Celsius.

"The interesting finding of the study is the unusually high rate of increase in both maximum and minimum temperatures in the last three decades in the northwestern Himalayan region (NWH) whereas in other high altitude mountainous regions of the world such as the Alps and the Rockies, the minimum temperature has increased more rapidly than the maximum," M.R. Bhutiyani, a DRDO scientist who led the study, told IANS.

"The warming on the NWH has been because of both maximum and minimum temperature increasing at a higher rate, with maximum temperature increasing more rapidly," said Bhutiyani, who is also head of the Department of Geology at the College of Military Engineering, Pune.

The data for the NWH region spread over Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh was collected from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) in Manali and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

The study also indicated a significant decreasing trend in monsoon and annual overall precipitation during the period 1866-2006.


"The alarming aspect of it is that the winter precipitation consists now of more rainfall and less snowfall. Effective duration of winter has been curtailed with the late onset of winter and the early onset of spring. This, in turn, has directly influenced the ecology of the area," said Bhutiyani.

The study found that less snowfall followed by early melting of the snow has resulted in a changed water balance in the catchments.

Conforming to the global trends, the study said that the glaciers in the NWH have shrunk considerably in the last three decades, indicating major ice-loss.

"The research points towards the fact that a significant increase in air temperature, coinciding with the industrial revolution and enhanced anthropogenic (human related) activities may have resulted in warming of the region and climate change," Bhutiyani added.

Now, a way to measure pain!

LONDON: Well, you may soon feel others' pain, thanks to scientists who have discovered what they claim is a way to measure a person's suffering.


Using brain scans, a team at the Oxford University has carried out a series of studies which have shown distinct differences between the brains of people in pain and others who are not.

"Pain seems to increase the blood flow to certain parts of the brain roughly in proportion to the amount of pain felt, and we can measure that activation in a brain scan," the team's leader Prof Irene Tracey said.

What the scientists have found is that the brain possesses what they call a "pain matrix", with such feelings typically activating more than a dozen parts of the brain, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

This is in contrast to other senses such as vision or hearing, where stimuli are generally fed to just one part of the brain for interpretation.