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iNCOVACC, the world’s first intranasal COVID-19 vaccine, was launched on January 26.

Bharat Biotech dispatched three lakh doses of its intranasal COVID-19 vaccine to some hospitals two days ago, the company’s executive chairman Krishna Ella said on Sunday.

Mr. Ella was speaking on the sidelines of an event here at which a bilateral agreement was signed between the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison Global Health Institute (GHI) and the Ella Foundation for the establishment of the first-ever UW-Madison One Health Centre in Bengaluru.

iNCOVACC, the world’s first intranasal COVID-19 vaccine, was launched on January 26. The vaccine is now available on CoWIN and priced at ₹800 for private markets and ₹325 for the government of India and State governments.

“We dispatched three lakh doses of the world’s first intranasal COVID-19 vaccine to some hospitals two days ago,” Mr. Ella said.

On whether Bharat Biotech is looking at exporting the vaccine, he said some countries and international agencies are approaching the company for the intra-nasal vaccine.

iNCOVACC is also the world’s first intranasal COVID-19 vaccine to receive approval for the primary 2-dose schedule, and as a heterologous booster dose for adults.

Mr. Ella said the UW-Madison One Health Centre in Bengaluru is expected to be operational by the end of 2023.

It will advance the development and production of new vaccines for India. Furthermore, the partnership will enable collaboration across disciplines and geographic boundaries, provide Indian students and researchers access to UW expertise and training, and build research capacity in India, he said.

“Both Ella Foundation and UW-Madison GHI share a common vision to advance innovation in science, research, and knowledge sharing. Establishing the UW-Madison Global One Health Centre holds great significance as it will advance global health through research, education, and community engagement by facilitating student, faculty exchanges, research and education,” he added.

UW-Madison GHI director Jorge Osorio said, “We are energised by the opportunity to partner with the Ella Foundation to bring UW knowledge and expertise to expand innovative and impactful health initiatives outside Wisconsin to India.”

The India One Health Centre joins a global network that includes Africa and Latin America and will open new opportunities for research, education, and provide actionable outcomes to benefit humans, animals, and ecosystems that advance equitable and sustainable health across India and the world.

thehindu.com

Music composer Ricky Kej, based out of Bengaluru, has won his third Grammy Award for the album ‘Divine Tides’ and dedicated the honour to his home country, India.

The US-born musician shared the award with Stewart Copeland, the drummer of the iconic British rock band The Police, who collaborated with Kej on the album.

At the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, the duo earned the gramophone trophy in the best immersive audio album winner category. They had won a Grammy in the best new age album category for the same album last year.

“Congrats Best Immersive Audio Album winner – ‘Divine Tides’ Eric Schilling, immersive mix engineer; @copelandmusic, @rickykej & Herbert Waltl, immersive producers (Stewart Copeland & Ricky Kej) #GRAMMYs,” announced the Recording Academy, the organisation behind Grammy Awards, on its official Twitter page on Sunday night.

Kej said he was “grateful” for the recognition.

“Just won my 3rd Grammy Award. Extremely grateful, am speechless! I dedicate this Award to India. @copelandmusic. Herbert Waltl Eric Schilling Vanil Veigas Lonnie Park,” the composer captioned a series of pictures on his Twitter page.

Other nominees in the category were: Christina Aguilera (‘Aguilera’), The Chainsmokers (‘Memories… Do Not Open’), Jane Ira Bloom (‘Picturing The Invisible- Focus 1’), and Nidarosdomens Jentekor & Trondeheimsolistene (‘Tuvahyun – Beatitudes for a Wounded World’).

‘Divine Tides’ is a nine-song album that aims to deliver the message that “each individual life plays a crucial role in maintaining the balance that serves all equally”.

Kej took home his first Grammy in the best new age album category for ‘Winds of Samsara’ back in 2015.

As part of his work with The Police, Copeland has won five Grammys. With Kej as collaborator, this is his second award.

english.varthabharati.in

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s helicopter factory — the country’s largest chopper manufacturing facility — in Tumakuru district of Karnataka.

Bengaluru-headquartered HAL plans to produce more than 1,000 helicopters in the range of 3-15 tonne with a total business of more than Rs 4 lakh crore over a period of 20 years at this facility in Gubbi taluk, officials said.

The factory, spread across 615 acres for which the Prime Minister laid the foundation stone in 2016, would initially manufacture Light Utility Helicopters (LUH)).

It will enable India to meet its entire requirement of helicopters without import and giving much-needed fillip to the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ in helicopter design, development, and manufacture, they said.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and senior officials of Ministry of Defence were among those present on the occasion.

“It is a dedicated new greenfield helicopter factory which will enhance India’s capacity and ecosystem to build helicopters,” Singh said.
Assembly polls in Karnataka are due by May.

PM Modi unveiled the LUH, which has been flight tested. The LUH is an indigenously designed and developed three-tonne class, single-engine multipurpose utility helicopter. Initially, the factory will produce around 30 helicopters per year and can be enhanced to 60 and then 90 every year in a phased manner, according to the Defence Ministry.

The factory will be augmented to produce other helicopters such as Light Combat Helicopters (LCHs) and Indian Multirole Helicopters (IMRHs). It will also be used for maintenance, repair and overhaul of LCH, LUH, Civil Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and IMRH in the future.

Potential exports of civil LUH will also be catered to from this factory, which is being equipped with state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 standard tools and techniques for its operations, officials said.

The proximity of the factory, with the existing HAL facilities in Bengaluru, will boost the aerospace manufacturing ecosystem in the region and support skill and infrastructure development such as schools, colleges and residential areas, it was noted.

The factory is fully operational after the establishment of facilities like heli-runway, flight hangar, final assembly hangar, structure assembly hangar, air traffic control and various supporting service facilities, officials said.

english.varthabharati.in

A second year Indian-American student at Harvard Law School has been elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, becoming the first woman from the community to be named to the position in the prestigious publication’s 136-year history.

A report in The Harvard Crimson said on Monday that Apsara Iyer was elected the 137th president of the Harvard Law Review, which was founded in 1887 and is among the oldest student-run legal scholarship publications.

Iyer said in The Crimson report that as Law Review president, she aims to “include more editors in the process of reviewing and selecting articles and upholding the publication’s reputation for “high-quality” work.”

“I think that right now I’m just focused on making sure we keep the lights on and everything going,” Iyer said.

Iyer’s distinguished predecessors in the role include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former president Barack Obama.

The Crimson report said Iyer graduated from Yale in 2016 and received a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Math and Spanish.

Iyer’s immediate predecessor Priscila Coronado said the publication is “extremely lucky” to have Iyer at the helm.

“Apsara has changed the lives of many editors for the better, and I know she will continue to do so,” Coronado said. “From the start, she has impressed her fellow editors with her remarkable intelligence, thoughtfulness, warmth, and fierce advocacy.”

The Crimson said that Iyer’s interest in understanding the “value of cultural heritage” led her to work in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit that tracks stolen works of art and artifacts.

Iyer worked in the office in 2018 before coming to the Law School, and took a leave of absence after her first year studying law to return to the role, it said.

The report added that Iyer joined the Harvard Law Review following a competitive process called “write-on,” where Harvard Law School students “rigorously fact-check a document and provide commentary on a recent State or Supreme Court Case.”

Iyer has previously been involved in the Law School’s Harvard Human Rights Journal and the National Security Journal and is also a member of the South Asian Law Students Association.

awazthevoice.in

english.varthabharati.in

Turning a decades-old dogma on its head, Indian-origin scientists at University of California-San Francisco and Stanford Medicine shows that the receptor for oxytocin, a hormone considered essential to forming social bonds, may not play the critical role that scientists have assigned to it for the past 30 years.

In the 15-years-long study, published in the journal Neuron, the team found that prairie vole animals bred without receptors for oxytocin and showed the same monogamous mating, attachment, and parenting behaviors as regular voles.

In addition, females without oxytocin receptors gave birth and produced milk, though in smaller quantities, than ordinary female voles.

The results indicate that the biology underlying pair bonding and parenting is not purely dictated by the receptors for oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone.”

“While oxytocin has been considered ‘Love Potion #9,’ it seems that potions 1 through 8 might be sufficient,” said psychiatrist Devanand Manoli, a senior author of the paper and member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

“This study tells us that oxytocin is likely just one part of a much more complex genetic programme,” he added.

Because prairie voles are one of the few mammalian species known to form lifelong monogamous relationships, researchers study them to better understand the biology of social bonding.

The current project emerged from shared interests between Manoli and co-senior author and neurobiologist Nirao Shah, now at Stanford Medicine.

For this study, the two applied new genetic technologies to confirm if oxytocin binding to its receptor was indeed the factor behind pair bonding.

They used CRISPR to generate prairie voles that lack functional oxytocin receptors.

Then, they tested the mutant voles to see whether they could form enduring partnerships with other voles.

To the researchers’ surprise, the mutant voles formed pair bonds just as readily as normal voles.

“The patterns were indistinguishable,” said Manoli. “The major behavioural traits that were thought to be dependent on oxytocin – sexual partners huddling together and rejecting other potential partners as well as parenting by mothers and fathers – appear to be completely intact in the absence of its receptor.”

Even more surprising for Manoli and Shah than the pair bonding was the fact that a significant percentage of the female voles were able to give birth and provide milk for their pups.

Oxytocin is likely to have a role in both birth and lactation, but one that is more nuanced than previously thought, Manoli said.

The results help to clear up some of the mystery surrounding the hormone’s role in childbirth: Oxytocin is commonly used to induce labour but blocking its activity in mothers who experience premature labor isn’t better than other approaches for halting contractions.

When it came to producing milk and feeding pups, however, the researchers were taken aback.

The discovery points the researchers down new paths to improving the lives of people struggling to find social connection.

“If we can find the key pathway that mediates attachment and bonding behaviour,” Shah said, “We’ll have an eminently druggable target for alleviating symptoms in autism, schizophrenia, and many other psychiatric disorders.”

daijiworld.com

The SCO Film Festival screens 57 films and 14 films have been nominated in the Competition Section of the Film Festival.

“Indian movies are a rage across SCO countries and have played a great role in people-to-people connections” said Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur at the opening of five-day ‘SCO Film Festival’ in Mumbai.

At the event held on Friday,  the minister said that Indian movies have played a great role in nurturing people-to-people connections.“Showcasing the diversity of films and styles of filmmaking from SCO region is a major goal of the film festival. This festival provides an incredible opportunity to forge cinematic partnership between the countries of this region,” he said.

The Guest of Honour at the opening ceremony was Hema Malini and other film personalities including Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Sajid Nadiadwala, Esha Gupta, Poonam Dhillon, Eli Avram, Hrishita Bhatt and Jacky Bhagnani were felicitated. Union Minister of State for culture Meenakshi Lekhi was also present.

The SCO Film Festival screens 57 films and 14 films have been nominated in the Competition Section of the Film Festival.The event is being held during India’s Presidency of the International Cooperation Organization. It also coincides with the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav celebration.

newindianexpress.com

They used scandium nitride (ScN) to develop a device mimicking a synapse that controls the signal transmission as well as remembers the signal.

A team of scientists from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) have used scandium nitride (ScN) and Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility to develop brain-like computing.

This invention can provide a new material for stable, CMOS-compatible optoelectronic synaptic functionalities at a relatively lower energy cost and also potential to be translated into an industrial product.

According to the Department of Science and Technology, the JNCASR team led by Dheemahi Rao who were working on nitride-based materials used their background for developing hardware for neuromorphic computing. They used ScN to develop a device mimicking a synapse that controls the signal transmission as well as remembers the signal.

“The JNCASR team demonstrates an artificial optoelectronic synapse with ScN thin films that can mimic synaptic functionalities like short-term memory, long-term memory, the transition from short-term to long-term memory, learning–forgetting, frequency selective optical filtering, frequency-dependent potentiation and depression, Hebbian learning, and logic-gate operations,” states the department.

Compared to the existing materials used to demonstrate optoelectronic synapse, ScN is more stable, CMOS compatible, and can be seamlessly integrated with existing Si technology. It can act as a platform for both excitatory and inhibitory functions. The industrial processing techniques of ScN are similar to the existing semiconductor fabrication infrastructure. Response to the optical stimuli also has the advantage of possible integration with photonic circuits known for higher speed and broader bandwidth than electronic circuits.

“Our work enables neuromorphic computing research with a stable, scalable, and CMOS-compatible III-nitride semiconductor that exhibits both excitatory and inhibitory synaptic functionalities. Unlike the previous works on all-electronic synapse, our work shows an optoelectronic synapse with a large bandwidth, reduced RC delays, and low power consumption,”said Dr. Bivas Saha, Assistant Professor, JNCASR.

Apart from JNCASR, researchers from the University of Sydney (Dr. Magnus Garbrecht and Dr. Asha I. K. Pillai) also participated in this study published recently in the scientific journal Advanced Electronic Materials.

thehindu.com

EAM Jaishankar is on a three-day visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka to further expand bilateral engagement with the two key maritime neighbours of India.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih have jointly participated in the groundbreaking ceremony of the Hanimaadhoo international airport redevelopment project, a “historic milestone” in the robust India-Maldives development partnership.

Mr. Jaishankar is on a three-day visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka to further expand bilateral engagement with the two key maritime neighbours of India.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony, Mr. Jaishankar said India’s partnership with the Maldives is based on its genuine desire to work together for each other’s welfare and interests.

“It is a partnership that has enabled us to swiftly and effectively respond to challenges, as we saw recently during the Covid pandemic. It is a partnership that has enabled us to deliver results and bring about tangible benefits to our peoples in accordance with their wishes, aspirations and priorities,” he said on Jan. 18 evening.

“Now we all know that the current complex geopolitical environment has thrown up new disruptions which are impacting every country in the world.

“The need for cooperation and collaboration has assumed even greater importance in this context,” he said.

India has extended support to Maldives to address the evolving economic challenges, including through emergency financial assistance and strongly reaffirmed New Delhi’s firm commitment to continued cooperation to Male.

Mr. Jaishankar said the initiation of the Hanimaadhoo international airport development project marks a “historic milestone” in the robust India-Maldives development partnership.

“Joined President @ibusolih and his Ministers and local leaders at the ground-breaking ceremony of Hanimaadhoo International Airport Development Project,” he tweeted.

“This project will bridge the gap between the people of Northern Maldives and the rest of the world and bring our peoples together. And India is privileged to be with the Maldives for its implementation,” he said at the ceremony attended by a broad spectrum of Members of Parliament and representatives from the Atoll councils in the Maldives. Mr. Jaishankar said better connectivity is a prerequisite for greater prosperity and with this rationale, greater connectivity finds resonance in India’s theme for the G20 Presidency – ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’.

“It is our endeavour to share India’s experiences, learnings and models as possible templates for others, particularly in the developing world and to promote a universal sense of oneness through enhancing connectivity,” he said.

Mr. Jaishankar later tweeted that the rising number of Indian tourists in the Maldives is a ‘reflection of our deepening ties and are outcomes of focus on infrastructure and connectivity, especially under the Modi Government.” President Solih described the airport development project as a well-planned, studied and executed project.

The historic project is the largest and most significant infrastructure project initiated outside the Male region. Funded through an MVR2.1 billion loan from the Exim Bank of India, the project is contracted to India-based firm JMC Projects, Mr. Solih said.

President Solih said the northern region would see economic progress upon the completion of the project as it would increase tourism facilities, including guesthouses and city hotels, drive job creation in the northern atolls, and transform the region into an economic hub.

He underscored that the airport project coupled with the redevelopment of the Kulhudhuffushi Regional Port and connectivity through the Raajje Transport Link (RTL) high-speed ferry services would help the administration transform northern Maldives into the perfect model of a thriving economy.

Providing details on the airport development projects underway in particular, President Solih said that while Hoarafushi Airport and Faresmaathoda Airport projects have been completed, his administration has also mobilised resources for the Maafaru International Airport project.

Earlier, Mr. Jaishankar was given a traditional Maldivian welcome when he arrived at Manadhoo, the capital of Noonu Atoll in the Maldives, on Wednesday.

The Maldives and Sri Lanka are India’s key maritime neighbours in the Indian Ocean Region and occupy a special place in the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘SAGAR’ (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and ‘Neighbourhood First’.

thehindu.com

The literary extravaganza hosts sessions by the biggest names of our time in the field of literature and ideas.

“Other literature festivals may do what they do, but no one does mayhem like we do,” declared William Dalrymple as he, Sanjoy Roy and Namita Gokhale kicked off the 16th edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival on Thursday following an electrifying music performance.

Celebrating the “power of literature, art and culture with a focus on Indian languages”, the festival, which is being held completely in person for the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak, features sessions on 21 Indian and 14 international languages across five venues at Hotel Clarks Amer. It features 350 participants speaking on subjects including climate justice, the female voice, crime fiction, memoir, translation, poetry, economics, tech morality and Artificial Intelligence, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the violence unleashed by the British Empire, Partition, geopolitics and art.

The literary extravaganza hosts sessions by the biggest names of our time in the field of literature and ideas, including Abdulrazak Gurnah, Geetanjali Shree, Shehan Karunatilaka, Tanuj Solanki, Ashok Ferry, Ashwin Sanghi, Avinuo Kire, Bernadine Evaristo, Chigozie Obioma, Daisy Rockwell, Deepti Naval, Christopher Kloeble, Alex von Tunzelmann, B.N. Goswami, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Ruth Ozeki, Katherine Rundell and Marlon James.

Nobel Laureate Gurnah delivered the keynote address on ‘writing as a form of resistance’. He spoke of resistance not so much to tyrannical rule, as is widely understood, but to the more ordinary things in life. Writing, he said, is a “form of resistance to forgetfulness, to distraction, to neglect, to let what we know and what we remember to pass away”.

Every year, the festival recognises a poet of repute with the Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry. The winner this year is the modern poet, critic, editor, translator, and academic K. Satchidanandan. The festival concludes on January 23.

thehindu.com