On the eve of General Bipin Rawat’s birthday, the army on Tuesday dedicated a chair of excellence in the late chief of defence staff (CDS)’s memory at the United Service Institution of India (USI), the country’s oldest think tank founded in 1870, the army said in a statement. Rawat, who was killed in a helicopter crash last December, would have turned 64 on Wednesday.
The aim of the Chair will be to conduct research on strategic issues pertaining to the armed forces, officials said
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Russia-Ukraine war: External affairs minister S Jaishankar told Rajya Sabha that the evacuation efforts were undertaken at a time when artillery shelling and airstrikes on Ukrainian cities were underway.
The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras’ Centre for Innovation (CFI) held its annual Open House, featuring over 60 innovative student projects. The event showcased autonomous vehicles, rockets and the electric Formula racecar developed by the student team Raftar.
The CFI is a round-the-clock innovation lab with 13 clubs, four competitive teams and over 700 members, who apply their engineering knowledge to come up with products.
Institute director V. Kamakoti, who launched a new website for the CFI on the occasion, said the CFI not only provided a platform for young innovators to showcase their creations but also served as an inspiration for other young students to innovate.
Nilesh Vasa, dean of students, said the student-driven facility inspired students to work creatively and collaboratively. The CFI team Abhiyaan’s autonomous vehicle ‘Bolt’, team Abhyuday’s rocket, team Avishkar’s hyperloop, a sports science and analytics project in collaboration with Sports Science Centre of Excellence, a bird diverter project in partnership with the Wildlife Institute of India and projects on blockchain technology were on display.
Prabhu Rajagopal, faculty advisor of CFI-IIT-Madras, said nearly 10% of the students of the institute are engaged with the CFI, cutting across the undergraduate-postgraduate divide. Quite a few teams and projects had graduated to form start-ups, making Open House the largest calendar event of the CFI and showcasing the best student projects of the year.
Asokan Tondiyath, faculty advisor of team Anveshak, said the team had steadily progressed in the past three years and was in the process of making ‘Foresight’ with custom-made wheels, a lightweight manipulator and a state-of-the-art electronic system.
Among the new developments is the chennaiwaterlogging.org platform that enables users/public to report details such as location of floods and water depth and add photos of waterlogged sites with a description. These reports are used to develop a real-time flood map.
A group of students have converted an electric golf cart into an autonomous shuttle. Team Abhyuday has qualified for the Spaceport America Cup, an annual international event for intercollegiate rocketry teams, in its first attempt. It is the first across IITs to qualify for such an event.
Mina Swaminathan, Distinguished Chair, Gender and Development, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), died in her home in Teynampet on Monday morning. She was 88. Her death was due to natural causes, said a source at MSSRF.
A teacher-educator and writer on early childhood education (ECE), she was appointed in 1970, by the Central Advisory Board of Education, as Chairman of the Study Group on the Development of the Preschool Child. The report of this committee, submitted in 1972, became the basis for the scheme known as the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in 1975, a landmark intervention in the field of early childhood care and development.
Mentor Match, an ed-tech start-up, has raised $1 million in its pre-seed round of funding from Sapient Fund, a US-based seed-stage venture fund led by Karthik Sundaram.
Founded by a group architecture graduates, Rohit Raheja (CEO), Sachit Dugar (COO) and Rayhaan Shaik (CMO), the Chennai-headquartered Mentor Match is a self-study platform that helps students of Classes VIII-XII connect instantly with tutors through a one-on-one live video call for JEE, NEET, NTSE, Board exam and school exam aspirants. And interestingly, many tutors are students from institutions like IIT, NIT and BITS.
The Indian Institute of Technology – Madras and Walmart Global Tech have tied up to improve research in new areas of technology. The collaboration will be in the areas of continuing education and projects for corporate social responsibility for the chain stores’ India operations.
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved the establishment of a WHO (World Health Organization) Global Centre for Traditional Medicine (WHO GCTM) at Jamnagar in Gujarat. An agreement was signed by the Government of India with the world body in this regard.
The WHO GCTM, to be established under the Ministry of AYUSH ( Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homoeopathy), will be the first and only global outposted centre (office) for traditional medicines.
A novel nanoparticle-based bio-degradable-carbonoid-metabolite (BioDCM) that can protect agricultural crops from pathogens has been developed jointly by scientists and reseachers of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), Indian Institute of Rice Research-Hyderabad and IIT-Kanpur.
The invention of these novel nanoparticles would act as shields to protect crops, especially the rice crop, from infection and diseases. The technology serves as a protective biological alternative that can be used to enhance crop protection against various diseases in rice crops, said an official release.
Want to read Rabindranath Tagore or Vaikom Muhammed Basheer in French?
It is possible now, thanks to an initiative by 43-year-old Dominic Shyju.
This resident of Vadathula has opened a one-cupboard library that contains a host of French books from his home.
Literature, non-fiction and dictionaries are available for “students, teachers and lovers of the French language,” says Dominic, who plans to add more books and shift the library to a more central venue in the city.
The books are from the private collection of Claire Mathey, a French fashion designer who lived in Kochi for nearly four years. When she left during the COVID-19 crisis, she gifted her books to Dominic, who had been a guide in the Fort Kochi area.
France / Kochi
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, have developed a technique for coating face shields with a hydrophobic layer to improve their efficiency.
Face shields act as primary barriers to airborne disease-carrying droplets. But these simple face shields are made from plexiglass plastic or polyethylene terephthalate.
Plastic is hydrophilic; and tiny water droplets tend to stick to its surface. Studies have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 laden respiratory droplets can survive on different surfaces for a few hours to a few days.
Maharashtra