Fabulous four  Meet this talented bunch of students from Kendriya Vidyalaya, NF Railway, Maligaon, Guwahati. Spandita Sharma, Barnali Chakraborty, Arjal Jyoti and Sumita Sarkar have made Assam proud by becoming the national winners of the ‘Furure Space Scientist Program’ recently. The science outreach programme, participated by over one lakh students and teacher-guides from over 240 schools across India, was conducted by the Oracle Education Foundation, an arm of the world’s leading enterprise software company Oracle with active support from Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and ThinkQuest, formerly known as Think.com. As student science ambassadors, the four from Guwahati along with their teacher-cum-coach Zeenat Fatema Rashid attended an exciting science safari down south that included visits to premier science establishments in Bangaluru and Sriharikota, among others. Their project ‘Fresh and Foul’ — it is related to air pollution and is an attempt to mobilize the global community to weed out the ‘foul’ air in a mission to breathe ‘fresh’ air, by reducing their input to air pollution — earned huge applause from the scientific community as well as the common audience during their presentation. The winners received prizes from ISRO chairman Dr Madhavan Nair at a ceremony at Antariksh Bhavan, the ISRO headquarters in Bangaluru. A select panel of ISRO scientists earlier shortlisted 21 teams from schools all over the country from among the participants for this unique programme that was launched on the National Science Day on February 28, 2008. The students and teacher-coaches were to take up various activities on science and sanitation under the programme, besides participating in debates as well as theme-based projects. The shortlisted teams then had interactions with the ISRO scientists over telephone before being selected for the finals. Our best wishes to the fabulous four and also let’s all pledge “to reduce our input to air pollution” as they suggested in their project to make our air fresh and clean.

Double feast  Dimapur was witness to a rare entertainment combo — a rock-cum-fashion show that featured one of the leading rock bands of the region, Winwood and a colourful fashion show by Dulcetson. If some electrifying performance of jiving and heart-thumping music from Winwood, the winners of the All Nagaland Gospel Beat Contest 2007-08, rocked the audience, it was the vivacious beauties who just set the stage on fire with their lively catwalk on the ramp, donning some scintillating stuff. The fashion show saw local girls Aren and Liry walk away with the winner’s and runner-up crowns respectively. The event was sponsored by Airtel as part of its mission to promote local talents.

Simanta / Mridumoloy