Category Archives: Science & Technology

Best doctor awards announced

Records, All, Science & Technology

The State government’s 2017 awards for doctors in modern medicine who rendered excellent service have been announced. The award for the best doctor in the Medical Education Department has been won by V.R. Rajendran, Principal, Kozhikode Medical College.

In the health service, the award was won by C. Muraleedharan Pillai, Superintendent, Women and Children Hospital, Alappuzha.

In the insurance medical service sector, the award went to S. Radhakrishnan, ESI dispensary, Karamana.

Amongst autonomous medical institutions, K. Chandramohan of the Regional Cancer Centre won the award. In the dental sector, Koshy Philip, Professor and Head of Orthodontics, Government Dental College, Thiruvananthapuram, and in the private health sector, Shaji Thomas John of Baby Memorial Hospital, Kozhikode, won the awards. A.S. Anoopkumar of BMH, Kozhikode, has been given a special award by the government.

The awards will be presented by Health Minister K.K. Shylaja on July 1 in Kozhikode, at a function to honour all health sector personnel who were part of the Nipah viral outbreak control activities.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / Thiruvananthapuram – June 30th, 2018

Ernakulam District Tourism Promotion Council to bring out online directory of artisans, doyens

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The Ernakulam District Tourism Promotion Council (DTPC) will launch an exclusive initiative to collate data on skilled artisans, dancers and other artists as part of a project.

Kochi :

The Ernakulam District Tourism Promotion Council (DTPC) will launch an exclusive initiative to collate data on skilled artisans, dancers and other artists as part of a project under the Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission. To promote experimental tourism, an online directory having details regarding artists, including their name, coordinates, biodata and details of stage performances, will be brought out.

The initiative, which will help people from across the globe access the state’s traditional art forms, handicraft products and artisans, will be launched by the end of this month. The online directory will provide an opportunity for academics, travellers and event organisers reach them directly. The Tourism Department has been working towards promoting experiential tourism wherein travellers get a chance to familiarise with exotic locales by connecting with the history of the region, its culture and people.

S Vijayakumar, secretary, DTPC Ernakulam, said a secure method will be introduced to verify the skills of artists. “It will revive old and fading art forms of the region, while providing support to the artists. Kerala has immense potential for MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) tourism. And, we believe this initiative will enable artisans to showcase traditional art forms to a global audience, thereby promoting the cultural heritage of the state,” he said.

Meanwhile, the DTPC has planned to entrust Kudumbashree volunteers with tasks such as cleaning and operating parking lots in tourist centres and beaches.  In this way, the members of the women’s self-help group (SHG) will be stakeholders in managing the locales and ensuring cleanliness.  Also, they will manage the food kiosks, while focusing on the implementation of the green protocol.

Under the Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission, the endeavour will support the regional community economically with sustainable living and employment generation in a major way.Owing to the easy air connectivity, Ernakulam owns the privilege of being one of the most-visited places by foreign travellers. In 2017, Ernakulam hosted 32,85,088 vacationers, an increase of 12.4 per cent as compared to 4,07,653 travellers in 2016. Luxury hotels and heritage sites such as Muziris and Fort Kochi are some of the major attractions of this place.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Kochi / by Express News Service / June 26th, 2018

Eco-friendly solution to mosquito menace

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Aravind Gopal engaged in research work at a mini-laboratory set up in his residential courtyard.

Researchers find insecticidal properties in extracts of plants

Now, an eco-friendly solution to mosquito menace. Aravind Gopal, a 40-year-old postgraduate in Biochemistry, and P.J. Benny, Professor of Zoology at Pala St. Thomas College, have found good insecticidal properties in the extracts of as many as 20 commonly found plants in Kerala.

Talking to The Hindu , they said extracts of two commonly found weeds,Merremia vitifolia or Manja kolambivalli or grape-leaf wood rose, and Mikania scandens, also known as climbing hemp weed, have shown very good insecticidal properties, with more than 90% insect repellent property.

Mr. Aravind has set up a mini-laboratory in his residential courtyard at Puthusserry-bhagom, near Adoor, to conduct field trials.

Dr. Benny said local bodies and government agencies could use even the crude extracts of these commonly found weeds as safe mosquito reduction agents in areas affected by mosquito-borne viral diseases. A present, various official agencies are learnt to be using hazardous chemical-based insecticides in mosquito eradication drives.

U.N. findings

Mr. Aravind said a report published by the United Nations in January, 2017 had put the average human casualty due to toxic exposure of pesticides across the world at 2,00,000 a year.

Reliance on hazardous pesticides is a short-term solution and the U.N. report lists an array of serious ailments such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, hormone disruption, birth defects, etc., as having suspected links to pesticides.

Pesticide-poisoning exceeds even fatalities from infectious diseases in some countries, he said.

Mosquito destroyers

Mr. Aravind said backswimmers, dragonfly and its larvae, damselflies and its larvae, diving beetles, frog and tadpole, native fishes, etc., were natural enemies of mosquito. Terrestrial and aquatic plants can provide healthy air that nourishes life.

Hence a social forest-cum-pond like that of the sacred grove (sarpa-kavu) of yore can preserve the biodiversity, provide fresh air and shelter to the predators of these pests, he said.

Mr. Aravind said while controlling pests, which form less than 1% of the insects, pesticides destroy the biodiversity and environment by killing or adversely affecting various other life forms, including more than 99% of the insects which are more integral to maintenance of the ecosystem.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by Radhakrishnan Kuttoor / June 13th, 2018

IESA impressed by Maker Village

Business & Economy, Science & Technology

The Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) has offered to provide mentorship to entrepreneurs operating out of Kalamassery-based Maker Village while evincing interest in having a tie-up with the facility.

The organisation has also volunteered to extend help in promoting the products of companies being incubated out of the facility.

IESA proposes to set up a branch office in the State to facilitate these assistances and most probably the organisation would opt for Kochi, a release issued here quoted Anilkumar Muniswami, Chairman, Executive Council, IESA, as saying. He hinted at such a prospect after visiting Maker Village at Kinfra Park, Kalamassery, along with other committee members on Wednesday.

“The biggest value we can bring to Maker Village is to take product of the companies from incubation stage to commercialisation. We want to have a tie-up with Maker Village and see that all these start-up kind of companies will mature and their products are identified by the industry leaders, so that they get the right kind of funding for commercial purpose,” he said.

Mr. Muniswami hailed the functioning of Maker Village, which he said, is doing a tremendous job in association with the State government by offering facilities at par with the incubation labs in big ticket players like Japan, Taiwan and Sweden.

Madhav Nambiar, Chairman, Maker Village, said the visit of the Executive Committee members would help understand what IESA can do and how the Maker Village incubatees can closely work with the Bengaluru hardware ecosystem to move to the next level.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by Staff Reporter / Kochi – June 06th, 2018

Engineering students develop robotic arm

Education, Records, All, Science & Technology, World Opinion
Students of Toc H Institute of Science and Technology, Arakunnam, with the Electromyography-controlled prosthetic arm that they developed.

It will meet the basic daily requirements of an amputee

Five engineering students of Toc H Institute of Science  and Technology at Arakunnam near here have come up with an Electromyography (EMG) controlled prosthetic arm.

The students – Mereena Baby, Aysha Zenab Kenza, Nikitha Sajan, Lakshmi Mohan, and Sharon Alex – are in the final year of their B.Tech Computer Science programme.

A release issued by the college claimed that the robotic arm would meet the basic daily requirements of an amputee, even though it lacked advanced features.

The prosthetic arm is priced at ₹2 lakh while those with advanced features cost anywhere between ₹15 lakh to ₹25 lakh, which is out of the reach of the common man, it said.

The students said that the Myo-armband interprets the electric signals produced as a result of the muscle movements and converts them into accurate hand gestures. They are then read by a micro-controller through a Bluetooth dongle.

Server motors

Based on those signals read, an appropriate number of server motors are rotated to move the prosthetic limb, they said.

The release said that the product could be made faster and easier by using advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence.

The students expressed the hope that they would get support from investors to take the product to users.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by Special Correspondent / June 03rd, 2018

Energy Management Centre, Kerala, a green, energetic building

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Energy Management Centre, Kerala | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

The main campus of Energy Management Centre, Kerala is a global star in the campaign for energy efficiency

After riding for half an hour in the blazing sun, entering the new building of Energy Management Centre, Kerala(EMC), near Chavadimukku, is, literally, a cool experience. The 43,000 square foot office building inside Sree Krishna Nagar was one of the six in the world and the only project listed from India in UN’s ‘Global Status Report 2017: Towards a zero-emission, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction sector’ released in May 2017.

For a long time EMC, an autonomous institution under the Government of Kerala, was operating out of a rented building near Thycaud. “It was in 2006, when I got to visit the Confederation of Indian Industry – Sohrabji Godrej Green Businesss Centre, that I set my mind on building something similar for EMC in Thiruvananthapuram. Although a plan was on paper by 2011, it took another five years for getting the required funds, administrative sanction and construction,” says K.M. Dhareshan Unnithan, director of EMC-Kerala. The building was inaugurated in 22 February, 2016.

Built on a hillside, the building is designed to be in tune with the terrain to avoid landscaping and tampering with the natural slope of the land. Offices, auditoriums and laboratories are all set around a central green courtyard, which slants from one end to the other. “This helps in draining of rain water from the top to the other end where they are diverted to two ponds that we have in this compound,” says Dinesh Kumar A.N., an energy technologist working at EMC, while showing me around the office.

Also, the building is oriented in such a way as to get maximum sunlight on the roof, where the solar panels are located, while the spaces inside it are designed for maximum availability of natural light. On a bright day, most of the spaces inside the building is lit completely by natural light, while artificial lights inside the building are all LED lamps and that is another way of saving energy. “At the same time most of the windows face north and south directions, which means they never face direct sunlight and that brings down the heat entering the buildings in a huge manner. It has contributed a lot to the energy efficiency of the building as we didn’t have to spend a lot on cooling,” Dhareshan adds. The cross ventilation and turbo vents too help in avoiding things from getting heated up inside the EMC office while solar reflectance index coating and high-albedo painting aids in insulation.

The entire campus is powered by 30 kilowatt grid-connected solar capacity. “We are only using a portion of what we are producing and the rest is being diverted to the grid and that makes us an energy positive structure,” says Dhareshan. All this has made the EMC building four times more energy-efficient than the highly energy efficient five-star rated buildings.

Green buildings, EMC scientists say, are the way to future. Although it might cost the common man a bit more than constructing a regular house, going for the green option would mean saving money in a big manner in future. Dhareshan adds, “There are already powerful wall-mounted batteries in the market that can be charged using solar panels. They don’t come cheap, but anything extra you spend on setting such a system would be retrieved within a time period while saving you a lot of money which would otherwise be used for paying energy bills.”

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sci-Tech> Environment / by Aswin V.N. / Thiruvananthapuram – June 01st, 2018

Farmer awarded, gives Governor a gift that grows

Agriculture, Amazing Feats, Business & Economy, Green Initiatives & Environment, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, Nature, Records, All, Science & Technology

Tuber Man’s ‘seed pen’ germinates into tree after pen is disposed of

Shaji N.M., a farmer who was conferred the Biodiversity Award under special mention category by the National Biodiversity Authority, attracted many eyeballs during the award ceremony on Tuesday.

After receiving the award, he presented seed pens as return gift to the dignitaries, including Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan from whom he received the prize. “It is made of paper. You can use it as a normal disposable pen, and when the ink is exhausted, you can just throw it away. It contains a seed, which will give birth to a tree in future,” he explained.

Making seed pens is more like a hobby for Mr. Shaji, whose major occupation is conserving tuber species.

Started 20 years ago as a response to the drought conditions in Wayanad district where he lives, his passion has taken him places across the country, in search of newer tuber species. “I have a collection of 200 edible tuber species, including the rarest ones, besides herbs and medicinal plants on my four-acre land,” he says proudly.

He has shared the germplasm of the tubers with institutions such as Central Tuber Crop Research Institute and Kerala University.

Recipient of many awards, including National Plant Genome Saviour Award, Mr. Shaji’s conservation efforts are not limited to tubers; they extend to rice. He grows 17 traditional varieties of rice on the meagre plot, besides dabbling in fish farming, bee keeping and horticulture.

There were nine winners and 13 special mentions in total at the biodiversity award ceremony, among whom two were from Telangana.

Sangham Women Farmers Group from Medak won the award for ‘Sustainable use of Biological Resources’ for its efforts in traditional and organic methods of seed processing.

The Biodiversity Management Committee of Modi (Jheri) village of Kerameri mandal in Asifabad district won under special mention category, for conserving 26 native varieties of pulses and cereals. Among them, two varieties ‘Erra Machala Kandulu’ (a variety of pigeon pea) and ‘Vayunowka Jonna’ (a variety of sorghum) have been registered with the Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights Authority of India, while the recognition of another variety, ‘Balintha Pesalu’, is under way.

Singchung Bugun Village Community Reserve Management Committee from West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh won the award for protecting the community reserve, while Lemsachenlok Organization ( Y.NukuluPhom), Longleng, Nagaland, received it in the Institutions category.

Awards were also given under Special Mention category to corporates such as Godrej & Boyce, Mumbai, and Coromandel International, Kakinada. Coringa BMC of East Godavari too won under this category.

There were five categories of awards — conservation of wild species, conservation of domesticated species, sustainable use of biological resources, replicable mechanisms for access and benefit sharing, and best biodiversity management committees.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Swathi Vadlamudi / Hyderabad – May 24th, 2018

City student emerges winner in Google contest

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Abishek V. Ashok

Abishek was roped in by FOSSASIA, which is engaged in open source software development

Abishek V. Ashok is dreaming big these days.

The 17-year-old computer science student from SNDP Higher Secondary School, Udayamperoor, is among the 12 grand prize winners from India in the Google Code-in 2017, a contest held globally to introduce pre-university students aged between 13 and 17 to open source software development.

Third time lucky

He had participated in the contest twice in the past but turned lucky third time around.

Abishek, who lives in Panangad, was among the 1,000-odd students roped in by FOSSASIA, an organisation from Asia engaged in developing open source software, as part of the contest. He was asked to complete 93 coding tasks in 49 days between November and January this year.

“Three days were given to complete tasks while seven days were given for more advanced ones. Many of these tasks required me to spend sleepless nights in preparations before actually coming up with the code,” said Abishek who claims to be the first ever grand prize winner from Kerala in the globally renowned contest. He says writing code to convert a bunch of images in the SVG (scalable vector graphics) file format to the PDF (portable document) format as the most challenging of his tasks.

All the completed tasks were submitted by FOSSASIA to Google Code-in team who vetted it and announced him as a Google Code-in Grand Prize Winner. “I now plan to pursue computer science in IIT or even MIT,” said Abishek who fell in love with technology and computers at a very young age.

He is now awaiting a visa for flying to the Google headquarters in the U.S. to accept the award and attend a few seminars next month.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by M.P. Praveen / Kochi – May 22nd, 2018

Tribal research centre for Wayanad

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Field centre to study genetic diseases

The government has initiated measures to establish a tribal anthropological research centre in Wayanad with a field station at Attappady.

The project, to be implemented in association with the Kolkata-based Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI), seeks to make a detailed study of tribal communities in Kerala.  The field station will study the incidence of sickle cell anaemia and other genetic diseases among them.

AnSI Director Srivastava Vinay, Deputy Director Sasikumar, and Senior Human Ecologist Umeshkumar called on Minister for Tribal Welfare A.K. Balan here on Saturday and discussed the modalities of the proposal. The team later left for Wayanad.

The campus of the Institute of Tribal Studies and Research Centre at Sulthan Bathery is one of the possible locations for the project. Institute Director Pushpalatha informed the team that the proposal would be taken up with Calicut University.

The researchers later visited the Manthanam Adiya colony at Thirunelly and interacted with the residents. It was decided to take up a study of the tribe immediately. The incidence of sickle anemia among tribespeople in Wayanad would also be given priority.

A press note issued here said a seminar on the anthropology of tribespeople in the State would be held in August.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / Thiruvananthapuram – May 19th, 2018

Eminent physicist Sudarshan passes away

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He was recommended for the Nobel Prize nine times, but never awarded

Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan, popularly known as E.C.G. Sudarshan, who made path-breaking discoveries in the realm of quantum optics died aged 86 in Texas on Monday morning.

Professor Sudarshan was a faculty at the University of Texas for the past 40 years. A globally-recognised theoretical physicist, Professor Sudarshan had often pointed out that Physics meant everything to him. He was recommended for the Nobel Prize for Physics nine times, but never awarded.

Professor Sudarshan made significant contributions to the field of theoretical physics — optical coherence, tachyons, quantum zeno effect, open quantum system, spin-statistics theorem, non-invariance groups, positive maps of density matrices and quantum computation, to name a few.

Born to E. I. Chandy and Achamma in Kottayam on September 16, 1931, Professor Sudarshan graduated from the Madras Christian College in 1951 and did his postgraduation from the University of Madras. He later moved to Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, where he worked for a brief period with Homi Bhabha, father of Indian nuclear programme before moving to University of Rochester in New York to work under American physicist Robert Marshak. They founded the V-A theory of of the weak force, which eventually paved the way for electroweak theory.

Contributions ignored

Professor Sudarshan also developed a quantum representation of coherent light later known as Sudarshan-Glauber representation. Glauber was awarded 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for the contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence. Renowned scientists in India and abroad had then observed that the Nobel Committee had ignored the contribution of Professor Sudarshan, who justly deserved to share the coveted award.

An eminent scientist who drew parallels between science and Indian philosophy, Professor Sudarshan was honoured with several awards, including Padma Vibhushan (2007), Dirac Medal (2010), Bose Medal (1977) and C. V. Raman award (1970).

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / Kochi – May 14th, 2018