University students who present new ideas and innovations in the information technology (IT) domain, will be offered a chance to visit GITEX Dubai 2006, in UAE during Nov. 18-22, IRNA reported.
Iranian Students Innovations Development Organization (ISIDO) affiliated to University Jihad, will sending qualified students for a tour of the exposition free of charge. The program is sponsored by a number of privately-run companies.
An official with ISIDO, Hamidreza Soleimani, explained that due to the limited capacity, priority will go to students who propose novel ideas in the IT field.
“The initiative is intended to help the elite keep abreast of latest developments in the domain,“ he added.
Those interested can refer to Tehran University’s Technical Faculty from 14:00 to 17:00 on weekdays as of Nov. 6 for enrolment.
GITEX 2006, the 26th information technology exhibition, is the Middle East’s Largest telecommunications event.

Per capita budget for cultural activities in higher education centers has risen from 20,000 rials previously to 36,000 in the current academic year.

Ministry of Science, Research and Technology will boost spending on cultural programs of higher education centers.
The ministry’s director general for cultural affairs said the per capita budget for cultural activities in higher education centers has risen from 20,000 rials previously to 36,000 in the current academic year (started Sept. 23).
Talking to IRNA on the sidelines of a conference on scientific associations of universities, Mohsen Eslami said the budget will be secured through funds allocated for improving cultural, welfare and sport standards in universities.
The official noted the ministry will monitor how the state-run universities expend the newly-increased cultural budget.
He put the number of active and semi-active student research associations around the country at over 1,600.
Eslami explained that the ministry allocates 4.5 billion rials for the launching of every active student association.
The student associations are sources of scientific progress for the country, he observed, stressing that the ministry is negotiating with Management and Planning Organization to specify specific funds for the associations.
The official unveiled a plan for sending top students with artistic and cultural endeavors to European tours this year.
According to him, exemplary students doing research in engineering and basic sciences will be offered 20-day research trips to Europe within the next two months.
Eslami said 2,500 newsletters are published by university students.
The publications printed on various subjects need financial and other types of support from the ministry, the official said.
He vowed that the ministry will grant funds to universities to subsidize supply of paper for student publications.

Iran’s first specialized art gallery for children was inaugurated concurrent with Eid-ul-Fitr (Oct. 24), CHN wrote.
Jahan Nama Gallery, located in Niavaran Cultural Complex, aims to acquaint children and young adults with Persian mythology as well as literature.
The gallery began its artistic programs with an exhibition of works by renowned illustrators of children’s books namely Parviz Kalantari, Nasrin Khosravi, Mahnoush Moshiri, Farideh Shahbazi, Leili Derakhshan, Mohammad Reza Dadgar, Nafiseh Shahdadi, Karim Nasr and Noureddin Zarrinkelk. The exhibition closed on Nov. 4.
Director of the gallery, Nazanin Aygani, herself a member of the Association for Illustrators of Children’s Books, said that workshops are going to be among the gallery’s top priorities.
Children participating in the workshops will become familiar with history, literature and culture of their homeland through storytelling and making masks, she explained.
“Historic tales are narrated for kids in the workshops. Then the children design masks inspired by their imaginations. Later, the masks created by children are combined to create new stories. For instance, children are asked what might happen if Rostam (a mythical hero of ancient Persia immortalized by the 10th century poet Ferdowsi in Shahnameh or Book of Kings) and not Majnoun fell in love with Leili (characters in a tragic story of unending love similar to Romeo and Juliet).“
Highlighting the role of literature in the lives of oriental people, the illustrator observed that literature has a strong impact on Iranian art.
She regretted, “Unfortunately, since Iranian children are not properly acquainted with Persian mythological figures, heroes and myths of other countries gradually enter our culture.“
Aygani blamed a failure to provide children with visual images of Persian heroes for the children’s ignorance toward mythological personalities.
“We have never presented children with an images of Persian idols like Rostam. That’s why kids and young adults do not show much enthusiasm toward Persian literature.“
She pointed to programs to introduce religious rituals like Ashura mourning ceremonies (the 10th day of Moharram lunar month marking the martyrdom of third Shitte Imam Hossein (AS)) and went on, “Religious rituals are a key component of Iranian culture which children have to become familiarized with.“
Stressing that all the gallery’s guides have been trained on how to deal with children, the expert expressed hope that it would serve as a venue where artists active in children’s field can display their works.

Surveys conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) suggest that about 20 percent of children living in Iran’s drought-ravaged eastern provinces of Kerman and Sistan-Baluchestan are malnourished, IRNA said.
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) program officer in Iran,, Jan-Pieter Kleijburg, said at a press conference that malnourishment in children is resulted due to inadequacy of nourishing materials in their foods.
He said that UNICEF is following up a plan to fortify wheat flour with iodine and iron to curb anemia among women and children.
The official noted that the UN’s children agency also provides kids with supplements to decrease vitamin A deficiency which leaves kids vulnerable to irreversible blindness and to a greater risk of dying from malaria, measles or diarrhea. Klaiberg commended Iran’s efforts to encourage mothers to breastfeed their newborns at least for six months.
He went on to add that parents, caregivers and teachers have to be educated on healthy dietary habits since they play a pivotal role in feeding kids.
The UN official noted that UNICEF has focused on activities to bring down malnourishment rate among children in Sistan-Baluchestan province.
He said the agency has also plans to carry out studies on nourishment of all Iranian children.

Child, Environment and Health is the title of a festival that is underway in Tehran’s Pardisan Park.
Deputy head of the Department of Environment for education and planning affairs noted the event aims to promote preservation of the environment and improve the awareness of children and youngsters on health and safety issues, IRNA wrote.
He said various programs including plays, puppet shows, face painting workshops, painting as well as group games have been scheduled during the event.
Mahmoud Raeiszadeh continued that observing safety, health and environmental standards would help increase health indices among children, adding such events can as well raise the awareness of families.
He invited families, kindergartens, preschools and elementary schools to take children to the festival.
Raeiszadeh said people and officials do not have sufficient knowledge about the environment, regretting that environmental education has not been seriously heeded.
Launched on Nov. 4, the event will be open to public through Nov. 8 from 9:00 to 19:00.

A young artisan carving wooden objects at a handicrafts workshop in Rasht, Gilan province (IRNA Photo)

An Iranian student, majoring in telecommunications engineering at the master’s level in Shiraz University, says he has invented a robot which is capable of cooking a variety of foods, especially Iranian stews, pottage (Aash) and rice.
Mohammad Qahremani was further quoted by IRNA as saying, “I managed to design the robot with the help of Fahimeh Saee, an electronics engineer.“
The ingredients, he explained, are stored in special containers inside the robot, which then starts to cook independently and according to a preset time schedule.
“It cost me 150 million rials to create the robot,“ he said, adding he holds the patent rights on the creation which has been registered with the General Directorate for Registration of Companies, Industrial Ownership and Inventions.
Qahremani said he has not so far received financial support from any organization for mass production of the robotic chef.
He commented that the presence of Iranian inventors in international exhibitions can produce highly valuable results.
“However, the costs of attending such expositions are really high for young inventors. So, it seems essential that they be financially supported by universities and the Science Ministry.“

Japanese school administrators wanted to give students more time to prepare for grueling college entrance exams when they secretly dropped some required courses from the curriculum.
Instead, they caused a scandal that has left 80,000 seniors without the right credits to graduate from high school, sparked a nationwide uproar against Japan’s increasingly criticized schools and even drove one principal to suicide for failing to offer basic science classes for the past three years.
“The schools apparently had no qualms about violating the rules to bolster the pass rate in entrance exams or lying to cover their tracks,“ the Asahi newspaper said of the scandal, AP wrote.
The uproar hits at the heart of Japan’s highly standardized education system, which is often criticized for advocating rote memorization and test performance over creativity and critical thinking. From elementary school on up, pupils routinely pack cram schools where they relentlessly drill on the skills necessary to hurdle the make-or-break entrance exams.
“Exam Hell“ is a national rite of passage. Many test-taking hopefuls flock to popular “pedagogy shrines“ where they pray for passing grades and pay to take home specially blessed No. 2 pencils.
Yet despite the focus on education, Japanese students have been slipping in international rankings of math and reading skills. Now Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made overhauling the whole system a top priority.
“The needs of our time require that we reform and return to a focus on the basics of education,“ he said in a weekly newsletter posted on the Internet.
Perhaps no one was more shocked than the students when Japan’s Education Ministry announced that 540 high schools nationwide, or 10 percent of the total, had been secretly dropping some required courses to focus on entrance exams. Classes moved to the back burner include history and geography. The findings affected 7.2 percent, of all Japanese high school seniors, and initially triggered fears they wouldn’t graduate.
Lawmakers and parents agreed that the students shouldn’t bear the brunt of the responsibility for the shortfall, but with the spring graduation season coming up in March, there wasn’t much room to make up for lost time.
After much hemming and hawing, the Education Ministry unveiled a plan calling on students to take up to 70 makeup class sessions for each subject missed. They will have to take the classes after school or during winter or spring break.
While some students and parents say that puts extra burden on students who otherwise still have to squeeze out extra study hours for entrance exams, the government says the official curriculum will not be flouted.

There are over a million orphans in Malawi, half of whom have lost one or both parents to AIDS, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), but only 15 out of almost 1,000 orphanages are registered with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, IRIN wrote.
“Normally, we do not support orphanages, but the problem we have is poverty as a result of pressure on families due to the AIDS epidemic. The extended family system is still there, otherwise the situation would have been very bad. Government has no option but to allow people to open orphanages where they can take care of children,“ said Penson Kilembe, director of Social Welfare in the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
“However, this does not mean that the extended family system is falling apart or disintegrating. If this were the case then we would have many children in the streets or in the orphanage homes. Government is allowing people to open these centers because it is the only last resort to deal with the problem.“
The extended family system is a strong tradition in the Southern African country, but almost half the population struggles to live on less than $1 a day, HIV/AIDS affects nearly a million of Malawi’s 12 million people, including 83,000 children, and nearly a third of infected mothers pass the virus to their babies.
Kilembe believed the number of orphans would decline as the grip of HIV/AIDS on the country eased, and pointed out that the government lacked capacity to monitor the proliferation of orphanages.
“Government has not failed to inspect these centers. We know there are a number of them that are not registered, and the minister has powers to close them down once we discover that they are not registered, as required by law.“
The ministry also supports families willing to take on orphans by empowering them to start small businesses.
The government’s seeming reluctance to take action against illegal orphanages is also influenced by the lack of a solution to the expanding problem. “But then it is not just a question of closing them [illegal orphanages] down--we will have to find an alternative to deal with these children once the center is closed,“ said Kilembe, who dismissed allegations that lack of proper monitoring could put children’s lives at risk.
An official in the ministry told IRIN that there were a number of problematic centers. In some, the children ate one meal a day, and “whenever donations of clothes come for children, the managers at the centers sell them. In most cases they do not even want government officials visit the places, not even the media“.
Orphanages are not an ideal place for a parentless child, who should rather live with extended family members, said Samson Matewere, executive director of Eye of the Child, a children’s rights advocacy group.