The district administration has been awarded for taking steps to reduce plastic waste. Sujith Karun, district co-ordinator of Haritha Keralam Mission, received the award from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on behalf of the district collector in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.
At the function, awards were given to 21 institutions from Ernakulam district for activities aimed at reducing plastic. The office of the Panchayat Deputy Director, Thiruvairanikulam temple committee, SCMS Engineering College, NSS technical cell, Thurithikkara Urja Nirmala Harithagramam, and the Society for Teresians for Environment Protection, were among the institutions that won the award.
The festival at Thiruvairanikulam temple, Malayattoor pilgrimage, Aluva Sivarathri, Edappally church festival, and Moothakunnam festival were among those that followed the green protocol. Biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste were segregated during these festivals and plastics were sent for recycling.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by Staff Reporter / Kochi – June 07th, 2018
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
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 Technologyat 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 | 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
Maharashtra native Pranjal Patil, who had lost her vision at the age of eight, took charge as Ernakulam Assistant Collector today
Kochi :
Pranjal Patil, who lost her vision at the age of eight, has braved all odds to become an IAS officer. On Monday, she took charge as the assistant collector of Ernakulam district.
Pranjal from Ulhasnagar in Maharashtra had cracked the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination in 2016 and secured 733rd rank in her first attempt. Since, Pranjal always wanted to become an IAS officer, she decided to give it a second try and went on to secure 124th rank in 2017.
Pranjal said that she is excited about her posting as the assistant collector of Ernakulam.
“This is my first major assignment. I completed my nine-month training at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie, Uttarakhand, two weeks ago. Here I am undergoing further training to become a collector. So, this is like a practical exam for me. At present, I am considering areas that need my contribution, the areas I need to improve and what positive changes I can bring for the overall development of the district as a whole,” said Pranjal, who is looking forward to learn more about the city by interacting with people here.
For civil service aspirants, she said, “Have faith in yourself. Don’t listen to any negative comments but please be open to criticism. However, don’t get bogged down by criticism. Things may take time to get the desired outcome but we shouldn’t give up.”
According to her parents, L B Patil and Jyothi Patil, Pranjal lost her vision when a student in her class poked one of her eyes with a pencil which eventually led to retinal detachment and as a result she lost the vision of her left eye. Doctors warned her parents that she might soon lose vision in the other eye too and unfortunately, the warning proved to be right and she lost the vision in her other eye within a year.
However, Pranjal’s parents never let blindness come in the way of her education. Her parents said that Pranjal has been good at studies right from her childhood. They sent Pranjal to Kamla Mehta School for Blind in Dadar, Mumbai,. She did her graduation in Political Science from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai and later earned a master’s degree in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
“People who always look for excuses for their failures should learn from my daughter,” said L B Patil, Pranjal’s father.
Pranjal said that technology played an important role in her education. “I have learnt Braille. Now there is a screen reader software installed on my laptop which would read out chapters from various books for me. This software will scan the pages of the book or material I want to read and the software reads it out to me. The screen reader software also helps in carrying out various activities related with my work. Once you know how to use technology things will be easier,” she said.
Regarding whether cracking UPSC exams was a challenging one, Pranjal said that it was challenging for everyone not just her. “Challenge is in the sense of getting the right material and its accessibility. For me, finding a trustworthy scribe to write my exam was also a challenge. But things fell in the right place for me,” said Pranjal.
Pranjal said that her aim is to learn as many Malayalam words within a short span. “Malayalam is a language which is completely different from other languages that I know. So, it will need a lot of effort. But I strongly believe I can master it once I put in all the effort in right direction,” said Pranjal.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Kochi News / TNN / May 30th, 2018
