The Courageous CFO

A CEO (and member of Forbes 400!) throwing a party takes his executives on a tour of his opulent mansion. In the back of the property, the CEO has the largest swimming pool any of them has ever seen. The huge pool, however, is filled with hungry alligators. The CEO says to his executives "I think an executive should be measured by courage. Courage is what made me CEO. So this is my challenge to each of you: if anyone has enough courage to dive into the pool, swim through those alligators, and make it to the other side, I will give that person anything they desire. My job, my money, my house, anything!"

Everyone laughs at the outrageous offer and proceeds to follow the CEO on the tour of the estate. Suddenly, they hear a loud splash. Everyone turns around and sees the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) in the pool, swimming for his life. He dodges the alligators left and right and makes it to the edge of the pool with seconds to spare. He pulls himself out just as a huge alligator snaps at his shoes. The flabbergasted CEO approaches the CFO and says, "You are amazing. I've never seen anything like it in my life. You are brave beyond measure and anything I own is yours. Tell me what I can do for you."

The CFO, panting for breath, looks up and says, "You can start by telling me who the hell pushed me in that pool!!"

AUDIO: Bush and the new premier of China (Who's Hu?)

2 mts 16 secs

Click on the image above, and then click on play button once it becomes available.

VIDEO: Pehchaan (Identity)

6 mts 30 secs

Click on the image above, and then click on play button once it becomes available.

Kansas University Clultural India Club's Diwali presentation set to the title song from Swades.

Pakistan Maths Question Paper

Examination Paper - Mathematics
Full Marks 100

Instructions:
i) Students found copying will be shot on the spot.
ii) Any student coming late after 10 minutes after the exam starts will be forced to join Al Qayda group .
iii) AK47's and grenades are not allowed in the exam hall. Students may keep their daggers,Revolvers and pack of anthrax bombs only for self defense.
iv) Time 3 hours
v) All questions are compulsory.

1. Abdul was sent to jail for murder .He has 7 wives in his house.
Abdul distributed money to his wives in such a proportion that the youngest and most recent wife receives maximum and oldest wife gets minimum, and each wife gets double of her former competitor. Abdul has 1700 Rupaye left in his house. Abdul's oldest wife needs atleast 25 rupaye per month. Find out the time when Abdul will have to break Jail to come out and earn money so that his wives do not starve.

2. Karim is a Drug seller. Prices per gram of Marijuana, hasis, haroine and LHD s are 50, 60,70,80 Rupaye respectively. Karim offers a discount of Rupaye 20 for his buyers who buys more than 50 grams of drug. If Rahim , a buyer gets Rupaye 37 discount , find out the grams of LHD he bought.

3. Imran tampers the ball thrice per over. He deforms the ball .02% of its original shape each time . Find the percentage deformation the ball due to tampering in a one day series against India in which Imran bowled 9.3 overs.

4. Mohammed has a Company named Al Allah Kidnapping & Murder Private Limited. He has to threat 10 people per day over Telephone. 40% of the people he threats are cinema stars in Mumbai, 30% are Businessman in Delhi, 20% are Cricket Players in Madras and 10% are shopkeepres in Calcutta . If ISD charges are rupaye 15, 25, 40, 50 per minute from Mohammed's city Islamabad to Bombay, Delhi,Calcutta and Madras respectively and he gets a Telephone bill of 10,230 Rupaya in a month Find out The No of Cinema stars in Mumbai ,threatened in that particular month.

5. A terrorist group has to provide one Ak 47.one AK 49,one Rocket Launcher, 50 Grenades and one pack of RDX to its Ron roots for training.One AK 47 costs 100$; One Ak 49 costs 150 $,A Bazuka rocket Launcher costs 250 $ , grenade is 3 $ each, a pack of Rdx Bomb attached with remote Control is 500 $. The terrorist group admits 2000 new people every year out of which 30 % are court-martialed. Find the amt of Foreign Money Pakistan Govt has to provide each year to run such a group.

6. If stabilty of democratic Govt. in pakistan is given by the following equation X exp3 +X exp2 -16 = i, where the notations have their usual meaning; Find out x.

7. Probaliblity of a Pakistani prime minister to be shot is 78%. Probabilty of a Military general to be shot is 80%. Find the joint probability of a Prime minister to be shot who is also a Military general.

8) Find out geometrically the area of Paktunistaan using PI Theorem with Osama BIn Ladens Correction (That is taking the value of PI = 786 instead of 3.14....), if Paktunistaan is taken as a heptagon.

9) A 'GHAURI' missile tries to fly from Drass to Kargil which is not too far from Drass (say 100 miles) and is exactly to the East of Drass . The wind is blowing from the South and the speed of the wind is exactly equal to the speed of the airplane. (The speed of the airplane is measured with respect to the air!) The pilot decides to steer straight to Kargil all the time during the flight. Will the airplane ever reach Kargil ? What if the speed of the wind is k times the speed of the airplane, where k is a positive number (can be greater or less than 1)? Try to sketch the trajectory of the airplane (with respect to the ground, of course) in each of the three cases: k=1, k1 and k<1.

10) Briefly discuss the Unsolved problem of "Bisection of a Triangle" with a Compass and an unmarked ruler if the triangle is named as KASHMIR.

The Chemistry of Trust

A person's level of trust can be changed with a chemical spray

SUSPICION and trust are two sides of the same coin. Over the course of evolution, humans and other animals have walked a line between the need for self-preservation and the benefits and delights of social co-operation. When a swarthy man beckons you into a dimly lit alley, you would do well to walk briskly away, but in reality you might be losing an opportunity to discover a delightful but out-of-the-way little restaurant.

A paper in this week's Nature, by Michael Kosfeld and Markus Heinrichs of the University of Zurich and their colleagues, explores the biological underpinnings of trust in such interactions. The researchers found that trust is surprisingly mechanistic: sniffing a spray containing a hormone called oxytocin increases a person's level of trust in others.

Oxytocin, a hormone produced by part of the brain called the hypothalamus, plays many roles. It stimulates contractions during childbirth and, once a child is born, helps to release milk when its mother feeds it. In some species, notably voles, it has been shown to regulate behaviours such as pair bonding, maternal care and the ease with which an animal will approach a stranger. Dr Kosfeld and Dr Heinrichs therefore had good reason to suspect that it plays a role in trust. They also knew from the work of others that hormones consisting of protein fragments known as peptides can cross into the brain if administered as a nasal spray. Oxytocin is one such peptide.

To probe oxytocin's role in promoting trust between people, the researchers invented a game. This game involved an “investor” and an anonymous “trustee” in whom money, in the form of “monetary units” worth 40 Swiss centimes (32 cents) was invested. Investor and trustee never met, and were allowed to interact only once. In addition to being paid for their time, participants were able to cash their monetary units in at the end of the game, in order to get the proper economic juices flowing. Each investor received 12 units. He could choose to keep all of them, or to give four, eight or all 12 of them to the trustee—which would result in their value being tripled. The trustee then chose whether to reward or abuse the investor's trust by sharing a portion of the proceeds with him.

All the investors and all the trustees had something sprayed up their noses before the experiment started. In some cases, though, there was no oxytocin in this spray. Of the investors who were sprayed with oxytocin, 45% invested the maximum of 12 units, while only 21% of those who received the control spray did so. On average, the oxytocin-sprayed group transferred 17% more money to their trustees than the controls. Oxytocin, therefore, seems to promote trust.

The proof that it is trust that is being promoted, rather than a general bonhomie towards others, or a reduced aversion to risk, comes in two parts. The first is the response of the trustees. These people did not, as some might expect, simply take the money and run. The investors usually got something back, albeit less than half of the trebled amount. But the sum returned did not depend on whether there was oxytocin in the spray a trustee had sniffed—as it might have been expected to if oxytocin promoted generally sociable behaviour, rather than trust specifically.

The second piece of proof that oxytocin is “trust-specific” came when the investors were told that a computer rather than a human trustee would be on the other end of the transaction, and that the amount returned would be decided at random. In this set-up, the oxytocin-sprayed group and the control group invested equal amounts. The researchers thus concluded that oxytocin was not simply lowering a person's risk aversion.

Besides helping to unravel the biological basis of an important emotion, Dr Kosfeld and Dr Heinrichs also raise questions about some of the fundamentals of economics. Studies like these are beginning to shed light on the extent to which humans actually resemble Homo economicus, the proverbial rational economic agent. This particular case raises the possibility that those with different hereditary propensities to produce oxytocin, or different sensitivities towards it, might reach different conclusions when presented with similar economic decisions.

While acknowledging that these results could be put to nefarious use to “induce trusting behaviours that selfish actors subsequently exploit”, the authors hope their findings will instead be used to treat mental disorders such as extreme social phobia. Nevertheless, untrusting readers might beware of strange odours or mysterious vapours in the boardroom.