Six final year B.Tech students of NSS Engineering College, Pallakad, as part of their final year project, have designed a wheelchair which is controlled by sound.
This wheelchair moves forward, backward and sideways following voice command from the person sitting on it. A bicycle iron frame forms the basis of this innovative wheelchair.
It is made in a cost-effective manner and is quite affordable.
The wheelchair with car’s viper motor costs around Rs 8,000. The same wheelchair with a better motor and other utility systems can be made within a budget of Rs 10,000.
The wheelchair can bear a maximum body mass of 75kg. The sound command is transferred via a small chip called ‘voice module’ which is attached to the wheelchair’s micro controller.
The innovation could be used for patients in hospitals and other health care centers.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Thiruvananthapuram News / by Samayam Malayalam / TNN / April 25th, 2018
Niyog traversed the Arctic with 19 adventurers from across the globe. | Photo Credit: HAND OUT
Niyog, the first Indian to take part in Fjällräven Polar, recounts the expedition’s high points
The extreme cold was expected. Niyog had prepared himself for it by spending some days in Manali, Himachal Pradesh, in winter. But, the 26-year-old from Punalur, the first Indian to take part in Fjällräven Polar, a dream expedition of adventure travellers, found that no preparation was good enough to face the wild Arctic wind. “The wind was such that we couldn’t stand on the ground. We had to build ice walls around our tents so that they wouldn’t be blown away. Breathing was tough at some point,” Niyog recalled his journey across the Arctic with 19 selected adventurers from all over the world.
Fjällräven Polar is an annual expedition being organised by the Swedish company Fjällräven since 1997. The participants, selected through an online poll, travelled 300 km in -30° Celsius through the Arctic wilderness in Norway and Sweden on sleighs pulled by six Siberian Husky dogs.
The participants had to adopt different methods to make fire as it was an integral part of survival in the Arctic. “We were provided stoves to cook food, that worked on Super Fuel. We used magnesium coils to make fire and then brought them to compressive mode. On another day we collected fibres from the bark of a tree to make fire,” Niyog said.
Danger in sweating
Cooking using melted ice for water and sleeping in a sleeping bag inside a trench, when the snow could bury them any time, were part of the adventure.
“We had to be careful about sweating, as sweat turning into ice could be very dangerous. The ice settled anywhere in 10 seconds and the wind made the situation worse,” he said.
Niyog found controlling the dogs easier than expected as the animals were trained to follow the well defined path. But he had a hard time balancing the sleigh in the unpredictable terrain and was thrown off many a time.
The trip over, Niyog cherishes watching the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) and enjoying the hospitality of the Sami tribe that served the adventurers with reindeer meat dishes. It took several baths alternatively in steam and ice cold water besides dipping in an ice hole to acclimatise. Now, back home, the young man who is always driven by adventure finds himself unfit for more — for at least a few weeks.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Aabha Raveendran / Kozhikode – April 20th, 2018
Dr K Madhavankutty, freedom fighter and director of Bharathiya Vichara Kendram, died here on Friday. He was 93.
Madhavankutty was taken into custody for participating in the Quit India movement while he was studying for the intermediate. But he was released as he was a minor.
After completing medical education from the Stanley Medical College in Chennai, he joined as tutor in the same college. He was appointed as professor when the Kozhikode Medical College was established in 1957. Later he became the principal of Kozhikode, Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram medical colleges. He was also the chairman of Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan, Kozhikode.
He contested the Lok Sabha elections in 1984 from Kozhikode with BJP support. Again, he fought the assembly elections in 1991 from Beypore as an independent supported by both BJP and UDF. The strange political alliance is a point of debate in political circles even now. Madhavankutty had authored many books, including the autobiography ‘Mayillee Kanakaksharangal’.
He is survived by son C Jayaram and Dr C Jayasree. Cremation will be held at Puthiyapalam at 10am on Saturday. tnn
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kozhikode News / TNN / March 30th, 2018
Startup firm picke2heal has introduced a application that makes medical laboratory tests cost effective and brings a wide range of lab services to the doorsteps of the patients.
Through the app or website (pick2heal.com) patients can select a list of labs that conduct the tests along with prices and an option to book the test at special rates. If one needs the service at their doorstep, it will be provided at a discount price from the best labs nearby.
The company, headquartered at Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM) in Technopark here, plans to launch its service in Kochi soon. The timesaving facility brings transparency in medical testing and creates a level playing field in laboratory testing. The platform allows the patients to access the test report from anywhere at any time and can be useful as an online repository for the same.
Prasanth Peethambaran, who founded the company with the idea of aligning the interests of customers and diagnostic centres, said “Our mission is to solve the problems of the medical domain with technology and innovation. You can check prices and book tests online through the website or mobile app.”
“We have some criteria of choosing labs and that is how we ensure that the patients get the best service at an affordable price at their doorsteps. Health, wealth and time – three of them are important in today’s fast moving life,” he opined. The first step in the process was to break certain misconceptions, said Peethambaran.
“For instance, our natural assumption was that patients go to the labs that their doctors recommend. But there is a new category of educated patients, who research the tests and search for alternatives. They are our target customers. When we take 1,000 people, around 200 of them will have chronic problems like diabetes and thyroid. They should have to do blood tests like HbA1c and TSH on every two to three months interval without any doctor’s prescription,” he explained.
Pick2heal has also tied up with diagnostic labs to offer discounts on tests booked through their website or app. Around 70% of treatment decisions in India are based on test results and diagnostics services constitute one of the most critical components of medical care.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Thiruvananthapuram / TNN / March 20th, 2018
The first Indian woman botanist, E K Janaki Ammal, ought to be more widely known for her huge contributions to science. But she remains unknown within the country and outside academic circles and even our textbooks have failed to teach our children about her glorious scientific history
: Just a fortnight before the International Women’s Day, the John Innes Centre in Norfolk, UK, announced a new scholarship for post-graduate students from developing countries in honour of an Indian woman botanist. Under the scheme, 88 applicants who wish to study plant and microbial sciences can apply in commemoration of the distinguished work and contributions of Dr.E.K.Janaki Ammal who was an international alumni of the leading research and training centre between 1940 and 1945.
A heart warming gesture from an institution abroad, but may be India should have done something similar for the country’s first home grown woman scientist, who went overseas and returned accomplished breaking every caste and gender barrier through her work.
Just take a moment to think where we would be without the inventions of this brilliant mind.
Janaki Ammal in younger days | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
After laborious crossbreedings in the laboratory of Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbatore in the 1930s, she created the indigenous variety of sweetened sugarcane that we consume today. Till then India was producing sugarcane in abundance and yet importing as they were not as sweet as the ones grown in the Far East.
During the World War II bombings in the 1940s, she continued her phenomenal research into chromosomes of thousands of species of flowering plants at the John Innes Horticultural Institute, Norfolk, where she worked with some of the best names in cytology, genetics and botany . While working on the gorgeous Magnolia, she co-authored The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants with renowned biologist CD Darlington.
The magnolia saplings she planted on the Battleston Hill in Wisley continue to bloom every Spring and one of the pure white blooms is named after her, the Magnolia kobus Janaki Ammal and apparently only few nurseries in Europe have the variety today.
At a time when most Indian women did not even attend school, she received scholarship and obtained her MS from University of Michigan in 1925 and later returned as the first Indian Oriental Barbour Fellow. She remains one of the few Asian women to be conferred honorary doctorate (DSc. honoris causa) by her alma mater in 1931. There she discovered a new variety of brinjal that exhibited triploidy instead of the normal diploid, where there are two sets of chromosomes in the cells.
The flower Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
At the insistence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, she returned to India in the 1950s and restructured the Botanical Society of India travelling to several remote areas of the country in search of the plant lore of the indigenous people and scouting for medicinal plants in her home State, Kerala.
A fascinating figure of the early 20th Century she was. E.K.Janaki Ammal lived a life which perhaps very few women of her time could dream of. The distinguished geneticist, cytologist, global plant geographer studied about ecology and biodiversity too and did not fear to take on the Government as an ardent environmental activist. She played an important role in the protests against the building of a hydro-power dam in Kerala’s Silent Valley in the 1970s. She made a mark with her paper on “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth” at an international symposium in Princeton in 1955 and two decades later, she was awarded the Padmashri in 1977.
With a profile like hers, Janaki Ammal never got into spotlight. If anything she fought her status as a single woman from a caste considered backward and problems with male mentorship in her field. But she proved through her work that Science knows no caste, gender or social boundaries.
Yet for her extraordinary journey from small town Thalassery to the finest institutions across the world, there is no archive related to her in India. Her papers are available only in hard copy at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, according to Vinita Damodaran, who teaches South Asian History at University of Sussex and has also published a well researched paper on “Gender, race and science in twentieth century India: E.K.Janaki Ammal and the history of science.”
Luckily, the Nikari series of talks held under the banner of ‘Manarkeni’, a Tamil research journal, brings to light the works of lesser known women in different fields. In the previous years, the focus was on women in literature and history. This year it chose science and brought the story of Janaki Ammal to the fore.
The talk delivered by S Krishnaswamy, former professor at the School of Biotechnology, MaduraiKamaraj University, highlighted various stages of Janaki’s career both in India and overseas. “Her career shows that scientists must speak their mind with social consciousness even if it means going against the policies of the government. In today’s context, it becomes necessary to bring achievers like her to the forefront,” he asserts.
Janaki Ammal must have conquered her fears and broke the glass ceiling for a rewarding career in science. “She wanted to be known only through her work. Let her work be known to all successive generations, who have much better opportunities” says Krishnaswamy.
An inspiring role model, Janaki Ammal passed away in 1984 at the age of 87 at Maduravoyal near Chennai, while working in the field laboratory of the Centre for Advanced Study in Botany, Univerity of Madras. She perhaps did not receive the acclaim she deserved but devoted herself to research, opening up a universe of possibilities. Let our children not be bereft of that knowledge. It is worth knowing and remembering leaders in science like Janaki Ammal.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society / by Soma Basu / Madurai – March 09th, 2018
A municipal workers attempts to unblock a sewer overflowing with human excreta in New Delhi. (HT File Photo )
Manual scavenging, an abominable practice that claims several lives across the country every year, could soon be a thing of the past with a group of young engineers from Kerala developing a robot to do the sewage cleaning job.
The Kerala Water Authority that manages the sewage department in the state has already placed orders for 50 robots, christened as Bandicoot.
To market their invention, the young engineers have started a startup called ‘Genrobotics’. After receiving patent for the robot from India, the company has now applied for the world patent, applicable in 150 countries.
Manual scavenging is a caste-based occupation mainly involving cleaning septic tanks, sewers and gutters.
Despite legal bans, the dehumanising practice continues in the country. According to one estimate more than 1200 people died from manual scavenging related activities between 2014 and 2016 in the country.
The start-up claims the Bandicoot is the tech solution to the social malaise. Genrobotics says it will go global only after “fixing the country’s nagging problem.”
Apart from sewer lines the robots can also be pressed into service for other under-water activities.
Death of three sewage workers on the outskirts of Bangalure two years ago prompted the young techies to think something out of the box to tackle the problem, which is often being called India’s shame, said Vimal Govind, the 24-year-old CEO of Genrobotics. Govind is a mechanical engineer.
“I worked more than one year in the TCS to earn some money to fund the stage one of the project. We all nine classmates of MES Engineering College in Kuttipuram came around quickly and developed the first prototype in six months,” added Rashid K, a software engineer.
Initially they struggled to find fund for the project, but now they say money is pouring in from different sources.
Manufacturing cost of the machine is somewhere between Rs 3lakh and Rs 5 lakh, Rashid said. Their machine weighs 80kg but the main operating part that goes into the hole weighs only 30 kg.
Once installed atop a clogged sewage line, a wire carrying camera goes inside the hole and beams pictures of the problem on the screen atop.
After gauging the problem, the robot dismantles itself from the main machine and goes into the hole taking tools such as a shovel or a jet pipe, depending on the magnitude of the problem, and cleans the system.
Young scientists claim a robot can manage three workers’ three-hour schedule in 30 minutes.
To operate the machine, the Genrobotics wants to engage manual scavengers so that they don’t become jobless.
“Even a small boy can operate our system. We will train these workers. It is their product. We are planning to move a proposal under the Prime Minister’s flagship Swachh Bharat scheme to train them,” said Govind, who recently visited Taiwan for a presentation.
“Our guiding spirit is our former President A P J Abdul Kalam. He always used to say dream, dream. The young India is committed to fulfil his dream of becoming a fully developed nation sans hunger and strife,” said Jaleesh, another member of the team.
He said talks are on to produce these machines commercially.
Kerala’s IT department, which is the first in the country to formulate a start-up policy is upbeat over the achievement of the youngsters.
“The noble product shows social commitment of these youngsters. Many firms including the BPCL promised help to take their innovation to the next stage,” said state IT Secretary M Sivasankar.
In an international conference conducted recently by the American Society of Research, out of 13 papers submitted, a paper on Bandicoot was selected as the best.
The paper was published in the International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research.
source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / HIndustan Times / Home> India / by Ramesh Babu, Hindustan Times, Thiruvananthapuram / January 06th, 2018
The Kerala State Council for Science, Technology, and Environment (KSCSTE) has announced the State awards for outstanding young scientists.
V.B. Kiran Kumar, CUSAT (Mathematics); Ajay Venugopal, IISER, Thiruvananthapuram (Chemistry); Sasidharan B.S., NIIST (Chemical Science and Technology); Sumod S.G., Sacred Heart College, Kochi (Physics); Kumaravel S., NIT, Kozhikode (Electrical Engineering); and Pradeepan Periyat, University of Calicut (Chemistry); have been chosen for the award, an official pressnote issued here said.
The award comprises a purse of ₹50,000, the Chief Minister’s gold medal, and a project assistance up to ₹50 lakh as well as financial support to participate in an international science conference. The awards will given away at the Kerala Science Congress to be held at Government Brennen College, Thalassery, on January 28.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Special Correspondent – Thiruvananthapuram / January 04th, 2018
Prof. Ramani Tharayil has been able to empathize with the pain of the patients ever since she was the principal of Kottayam BCM College.
When she retired from service 17 years ago, she told her husband Dr. K. C. Joseph that she wanted to do something to help cancer patients during her retirement life. He did not raise any objection and she began her service.
Prof. Ramani created beautiful craftworks using the waste pieces of clothes from tailoring shops and sold them to her acquaintances.
Knowing her intention of charity, her friends and relatives accepted her idea with open heart. People flowed to her house at Kaniyamkudil near BCM College, asking for the creative pieces she made. After 3 years her husband died, which turned her complete attention to tailoring.
More of her creations are useful for household purposes, like beautiful kitchen towels or fridge handle cover. The money collected from sales is handed over to the cancer palliative care units every month. All the craftworks are made of eco-friendly materials.
Prof. Ramani said that the sales have increased, since she started trying new designs and crafts from internet. “I feel the same happiness I used to feel as a principal, when my students win or maybe a lot more,” said Prof. Ramani.
Her daughter Priya Mohan, who is a computer science graduate from Calicut Regional Engineering College, offers full support for her mother’s endeavour..
Priya’s husband Mohan Thomas, who is an engineer, also support her activities.
Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba delivering the keynote address at the silver jubilee seminar of Flag Officer Sea Training organisation.
Seminar today to mark the occasion will have 18 foreign delegates taking part
A two-day seminar on “Operational sea training and safety on board” got under way at the Southern Naval Command (SNC) here on Wednesday with the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sunil Lanba, as the chief guest to mark the silver jubilee off the Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) – an organisation within the Navy headquartered in Kochi and is responsible for the conduct of operational sea training of all Indian naval ships through its ‘work up’ teams located in Kochi, Mumbai and Visakhapatnam.
Operational sea training involves comprehensive training of a ship and its crew, to prepare it as a team to perform its full range of tasks during peace and war.
Vice Admiral A.R. Karve, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the SNC, inaugurated the seminar, while Admiral Lanba delivered the keynote address. The first day of the seminar witnessed presentation of papers by speakers from the Indian Navy on the themes, “Combat efficiency through operational sea training” and “Promoting safety on board”.
The seminar will have an international flavour on Thursday with the participation of 18 overseas delegates, from Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Oman, UAE and Mauritius.
The Indian naval work-up team, headed by FOST, has been undertaking sea training service for not just the Indian Navy, but also for the Coast Guard and foreign navy ships since 1992. Over the past 25 years, the organisation has trained the crew of over 1,075 ships and submarines from the Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard and friendly foreign countries. Training for 16 foreign ships and regular interaction with foreign navies/coast guards has helped exchange best practices, while strengthening bonds of maritime cooperation, a defence media release said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home News> Cities> Kochi / by Special Correspondent / Kochi – December 20th, 2017
In its effort to provide assistive technology to people with motor disabilities, International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an organization under state IT department, will collaborate with AsTeRICS Academy in Austria.
The European academy will support ICFOSS in developing its capabilities in a range of assistive tools to support individuals with motor disorders for using computers and other electronic equipment.
An Austrian group consisting of two technologists from the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien is currently in the city in connection with Swatantra 2017, the two-day triennial free software conference being organized by ICFOSS. The team will lead a workshop from Monday at ICFOSS in Technopark for assembling and production of various products they have developed.
“This will be a milestone in Kerala’s efforts in using assistive technology for the welfare of the masses, especially marginalized sections of the society,” said IT secretary M Shivasankar. “ICFOSS is poised to take a lead in this regard and it has already established a research facility jointly with College of Engineering Trivandrum,” he added.
One of such technologies is FlipMouse that acts as an alternative input device for challenged people who prefer or need other input variants than a standard computer mouse or keyboard. Using a FlipMouse, keyboard and mouse activities can be created via slightest finger or mouth interaction. This enables precise control of computer mouse or keyboard actions. Click activities can be created via sip and puff activities, or by attaching external switches to the device. This can be used to control wheelchairs, play games on computers and other activities.
“These technologies and products will be offered to ICFOSS as a do-it-yourself construction kit,” said ICFOSS director Jayashankar Prasad. “This will help us in the production of the equipment at very low cost,” he added.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India . News> City News> Thiruvananthapuram News / TNN / December 18th, 2017
