Category Archives: World Opinion

Set for New Innings

Business & Economy, Leaders, Science & Technology, World Opinion

DrAugustineKERALA 03may2016

Thiruvananthapuram  :

Dr Philip Augustine needs no introduction. For the people of Ernakulam, he was the man who put Koothattukulam Deva Matha Hospital on the map of world health services, when the gastroenterology department he set up there reported some of the rarest diseases in the world. Going forward, Dr Augustine helmed the campaigns to bring changes in the healthcare sector in the state. One of them was the setting up of the Lakeshore Hospital in Kochi in 2005, bringing together some of the brightest doctors in different fields.

Augustine has recently relinquished his post as the Director of Lakeshore Hospital and is all set enter a new phase of his career.

“I think I have reached a point in my life and career where I should focus on broadening my area of activity. As someone who has done a lot for the gastroenterology sector in Kerala, I wish to strengthen the field and inspire the younger generation of doctors to know more about it,” said the doctor.

He has launched Philip Augustine Associates, a firm set up to see his dream through. A subsidiary organization, Kochi Gastroentorology Group, has also been set up to bring together the knowledge of different branches of the field.

“I had three goals to fulfill in my career – setting up a good and world class healthcare facility, ensuring that top notch education facilities are made available for the medical students to learn and creating good research facilities for the advancement of the science. I have done a worthy share in the first two goals and now it is time to focus on the third,” he adds.

Augustine’s achievements

  • Helmed campaigns to bring changes in the healthcare sector in the state
  • Put Koothattukulam Deva Matha Hospital on the map of world health services, when the gastroenterology department he set up there reported some of the rarest diseases in the world
  • Set up Lakeshore Hospital in 2005

Dr Augustine also feels that the rampant corporatisation of healthcare might not bode well for the sector. Even while lauding the innovations corporate hospitals have brought about, he thinks hospitals run purely with a profit motive is not a good idea.

”I am not against corporate hospitals, but I wish there is more space for small and medium hospitals to thrive alongside. That will be good for the public and the healthcare sector in general,” he adds.

Recently, Dr Augustine decided to take up  charge of running the PVS Hospital in Kochi and contribute to the gastroentorology department at the hospital, where he will be a consultant.

I think I have reached a point in my life and career where I should focus on broadening my area of activity. As someone who has done a lot for the gastroenterology sector in Kerala, I wish to strengthen the field and inspire the younger generation of doctors to know more about it 

-Philip Augustine

source: http://www.thenewindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Express Features / May 03rd, 2016

Google honour for Kochi techies

Arts,Culture & Entertainment, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, Records, All, Travel, World Opinion

Wading through the plethora of recipes on the Internet for an easy-to-cook dish, six engineering graduates were led to their eureka moment.

It all began with the culinary dilemma of six young bachelors.

A screenshot from the video of the app.
A screenshot from the video of the app.

Wading through the plethora of recipes on the Internet for an easy-to-cook dish, six engineering graduates were led to their eureka moment. “How about forming a start-up and developing a recipe book app?”

A year later, the app named Recipe Book, refined by artificial intelligence with over six lakh recipes, is basking in the glory of being picked as the Editor’s choice in Google Play. “It is the first app from India to receive such an honour,” said authorities at the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) Startup Warehouse at Infopark, where the start-up is based.

Even as that recognition had barely sunk in, came another: “We have been told that our product will be featured in the prestigious Google I/O, an annual global event showcasing creative coders and their innovative products, to be held in California next month. A Google team is also on its way to profile our company,” Nikhil Dharman, one of the founding members of Recipe Book, told The Hindu.

The app, which boasts a million downloads in over 67 countries on Google Play Store, shot to the top in USA Google Play placements on April 14.

The integration of ‘snap n make,’ an artificial intelligence-driven smart feature, into the app in December seems to have won over the Google Play editorial board.

The features works on a highly imaginative level — take a snap of any food ingredient and the app identifies its diverse features, and a mere shake of the phone will list out all possible recipes using that ingredient.

“We are working on a more refined version of the feature, ,” said Bestin Jose, another founding member.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by M.P. Praveen / Kochi – April 29th, 2016

Inventor of Vageeswari Camera Passes Away

Records, All, Science & Technology, World Opinion

KarunakaranKERALA26apr2016

Alappuzha  :

Inventor of Vageeswari wooden field camera K Karunakaran alias Thankappan, 90, a native of Alappuzha, died here on Tuesday. The Vageeswari cameras were once known as the best field cameras in the world.

These cameras were the contribution of Alappuzha to the world and it was as famous as Nikon and Canon brands. The Vageeswari camera shop and manufacturing company was started by Karunakaran at Mullackal in Alappuzha in 1945.The cremation was held.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Kerala / by Express News Service / April 20th, 2016

Choice School bags Architizer A+ Award

Amazing Feats, Arts,Culture & Entertainment, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, Records, All, World Opinion

Kochi:

The Choice School, Thiruvalla, has been selected for the Architizer A+ Award for the best designed educational project in the world. The programme focused on promoting and celebrating the year’s best architecture and products.

An online voting was also conducted as part of the selection process. The design has received more than four lakh votes in the public voting.”We are extremely honoured to receive the award. The complete design was carried out jointly by a Kochi-based Kumar group and a New York-based architecture firm,” said Jose Thomas, president, Choice School. tnn

“The building is a four-storeyed structure that can accommodate 3,000 students. The work is expected to be completed by June this year,” said Jose.

The award will be presented on May 12 during a week-long event to be held in New York.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kochi / TNN / April 21st, 2016

From Calicut to China, a 700-year-old tale

Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Nri's / Pio's, Records, All, World Opinion
The chinese connection: Joe Thomas' documentary traces the history of a Malayali family that migrated to China 700 years ago. (TOI photo)
The chinese connection: Joe Thomas’ documentary traces the history of a Malayali family that migrated to China 700 years ago. (TOI photo)

Kochi :

During the time when the Yuan dynasty was ruling China, a Malayali family from Kozhikode crossed the seas and settled in the Land of the Red Dragon. Over 700 years later another Malayali, Joe Thomas Karackattu, who was doing research on the Indo-China relations during the pre-colonial times and the historical and cultural exchanges that took place at the time, stumbled upon this story. He decided to trace the descendants of this family. ‘Guli’s Children’, a documentary written, shot and edited by Joe Thomas, tells the story of this search. The film was premiered at a function held at Malabar Christian College in Kozhikode on Wednesday.

Thomas, an assistant professor at IIT Madras, was trying to bring out the cultural and historical linkages by locating physical artefacts that connect Kerala with China. “It was during the research on the subject that I came across accounts of this family that moved from Calicut to China during the Yuan dynasty, which got me intrigued. So, along with the physical artefacts that show the Chinese connection, I decided to a search for this family,” he said. Guli in Chinese refers to Calicut and hence the title Guli’s Children.

“Several people had varying accounts on where they were based. So the real challenge was to locate them. The research took me nearly 20,000 kilometres across India and China–from the east to the north to the south of China. The story would be told through an academic paper as well, but the visual dimension to such a search gave me the motivation to capture it on film in the first instance,” said Thomas.

“The thrill of meeting the descendants of a Malayali who had moved to China over 700 years ago was incomparable. I hope that the documentary will open up the way we look at Indo-Chinese relations,”he added. “Cultural interaction with Southern India and China, peaked between the 12th and 15th century. There are historical accounts that refer to connections with Kerala, chiefly Calicut, Cochin and Quilon in Chinese works like Yingyai Shenglan by Ma Huan, Xingcha Shenglan by Fei Xin and Ming Shilu,” he said. “I feel we are stuck in a time-warp or a paradigm warp, when it comes to looking at China. That paradigmatic optic needs to change.”
Thomas, who was born and brought up in Delhi, studied at St Stephen’s College and JNU and was a Fox Fellow at Yale University.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kochi / by Rochelle Dsouza / TNN / April 21st, 2016

Mark Zuckerberg buys domain name from engineering student in Kochi

Business & Economy, World Opinion

Kochi :

Mark Zuckerberg may have started the online social networking revolution and made billions of dollars from his game-changing Facebook (FB). But this maverick internet entrepreneur surely didn’t reckon with city boy Amal Augustine.

Amal Augustine
Amal Augustine

Amal has ‘beaten’ the master at his own game and closed a deal with FB, trading the registration rights of maxchanzuckerberg.org on Monday.

FB approached Augustine for the domain name registered by him as it was the short form of Maxime Chan Zuckerberg, the name of FB founder Mark Zuckerberg’s daughter.

More than the money, Augustine, a final-year electronics student from a city engineering college, says he was thrilled by the fact that FB approached him.

He says his passion for filing internet domain names has earned him a small profit. He received $700 in the deal with FB.

“I have registered quite a few domain names and I have been doing it for some time. I registered this domain name when their baby was born last December,” said Amal, a student of KMEA engineering college. However, the FB team’s approach foxed Amal. The request came as a casual email from GoDaddy, an internet domain registrar and web hosting company, asking whether he would be willing to sell the domain name by the end of last month and for how much.

He replied yes and asked for a decent sum of $700.

But when the mail came closing the deal, he realised it was FB. The mail was from Sara Chapel, manager of Iconic Capital, the firm which handles the financial deals of Facebook founder.

“When the letter came officially mentioning the change of registration, I noticed the FB letterhead. But since it’s not legal to negotiate, I just went ahead and closed the deal in seven days,” he said.

DomainKERALA16apr2016

An internet domain or domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the internet.Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System (DNS). Any name registered in DNS is a domain name.

The Amal-Zuckerberg deal has been the most interesting case of cybersquatting that took place in the state so far, say cyber experts. The deal was made through an online website, GoDaddy which bought the rights from Amal.

Cybersquatting is a process of registering or using an internet domain of a trademark belonging to someone else or an organisation or brand. The cyber squatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name.

“Internet squatting is not an illegal process. People register domains of popular names, brands or organisations and later bargain with the owners and eventually sell it back to make money,” said Mahesh C, faculty in the department of computer science and engineering, FISAT.

“Cybersquatting is quite common. Domains such as amithabbachan.com and salmankhan.com were ‘squatted’ by techies in the past, It is not considered a violation as per the Indian cyber law, but it’s a civil rights violation and action can only be taken as per World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) arbitration rules (2014),” said cyber law expert advocate Prashant Mali.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kochi / TNN / April 15th, 2016

Arithmetic Olympiad on April 17

Arts,Culture & Entertainment, Education, World Opinion

Over 1,000 young minds from across the country will compete in the finals of the fourth National Mental Arithmetic Olympiad to be held at Girideepam Convention Centre, Nalanchira, at 10 a.m. on April 17.

Being organised by CMA, a leading institute in mental arithmetic education, the competition will be judged by arithmetic prodigy Tai Chiang Ching.

10 students

The 10 selected students will represent India in the International Mental Arithmetic Olympiad to be held in Singapore next year.

Former chairman, ISRO, G. Madhavan Nair will distribute the prizes to the winners, according to the organisers.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / A Correspondent / Thiruvananthapuram – April 09th, 2016

Thanks to massive orders, gypsum panels from Kochi going places

Business & Economy, World Opinion

Rising DEMAND: Gypsum panels, headed for Sri Lanka, being loaded into containers from the FACT premises on Thursday.– PHoto: by special arrangement
Rising DEMAND: Gypsum panels, headed for Sri Lanka, being loaded into containers from the FACT premises on Thursday.– PHoto: by special arrangement

Fibre-glass reinforced gypsum wall panels from FACT-FCF Building Products is going places with the Kochi-based unit bagging massive orders from Sri Lanka, Nepal and Kuwait recently.

These orders come close on the heels of the Union government including the use of the gypsum panels among the eight new technologies being inducted to meet the national goal of housing for all by 2022.

The first batch of the export consignment of 6,200 sq.ft. gypsum wall panels meant for a Sri Lankan construction company was despatched from the FACT-Ambalamugal premises here on Thursday. The consignment was flagged from the company premises by the managing director of FRBL, C. P. Dinesh.

A consignment of around 13,200 sq.ft. of the wall panels, meant for a company in Nepal, will be despatched from Kochi on Friday and Saturday.

The FRBL construction products company is a joint venture between the Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers Limited and the Kochi-based Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore.

The FACT-RCF wall panels are manufactured using Australian know-how. The 12×3-metre wall panels have a thickness of 124 mm and can be put to versatile use. The panels can be cut to the required size for construction in individual projects. The Building Materials Technology Promotion Council, working under the Union Ministry of Urban Development, has given the go-ahead for the gypsum panels as an approved building material.

One of the major projects involves building 40 houses at Nellore in Andhra Pradesh.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by Special Correspondent / Kochi – April 08th, 2016

When Baker was given a RAW deal

Arts,Culture & Entertainment, Leaders, Records, All, World Opinion

Kochi:

More than a meeting to commemorate the famous British-born Indian architect, it was an emotional gathering of those who were close to late Laurie Baker, who pioneered the concept of low-cost housing in the state.

Baker came to be known for his cost-effective, energy-efficient architecture and design with a striking aesthetic sensibility, married to tradition.

German architect Dr Klaus Peter Gast, the guest speaker at the meeting organized by Lifelong Learning Foundation on Friday, said that Baker explored the culture and tradition of the society through his architectural designs.

“But Baker’s ‘language’ has only been taken forward by very few architects. Some abused his design, others misinterpreted it. Kerala has to develop its own architectural language,” he pointed out.

Jaigopal Rao and Latha Raman, disciples of Baker, shared their memories of being with the ‘hilarious human being’. Baker was a rebel who fought the ‘establishment’ not with aggression, but humour.

Jaigopal spoke of how Baker had come under the observation of Research Analysis Wing (RAW) during the Indira Gandhi regime.

“It was astonishing to know that a separate file on Baker was kept by RAW. This came to light, when K R Narayanan, the then president of India and a friend of Baker, showed him the file. What provoked the Indira Gandhi regime to go after Baker were his cartoons, which he occasionally drew and published in some magazines. He used to draw a ‘foreign hand’ to denote certain things. The Indira Gandhi-led regime suspected this to be something against them,” he said.

When Baker was asked by his friends what made India his favourite place, he said it was the landscape or ‘the less-known geography of Himalayas’.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kochi / TNN / April 02nd, 2016

Agasthyamala gets UNESCO status

Arts,Culture & Entertainment, Records, All, Travel, World Opinion

The sustained campaign to include the Agasthyamala Biosphere Reserve (ABR) in UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves (BR) has eventually paid off.

The Agasthyamala Biosphere Reserve was included at the International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere programme of UNESCO that concluded in Peru on March 19.

The ABR covers the Shendurney and Peppara wildlife sanctuaries and parts of the Neyyar sanctuary in Kerala and the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve of Tamil Nadu.

India has been campaigning for the inclusion of the reserve in the network for the past few years.

AgasthmalyaKERALA23mar2016

10 make it to the list

The Agasthyamala Biosphere Reserve was the only site considered from the country by the International Advisory Committee for Biosphere Reserves during the Paris session held last year. That time, the ABR was listed in the category of “nominations recommended for approval, pending the submission of specific information.”

With the addition of the ABR, 10 of the 18 biosphere reserves in the country have made it to the list.

The others are Nilgiri, Gulf of Mannar, Sunderban, Nanda Devi, Nokrek, Pachmarh, Similipal, Achanakmar-Amarkantak and Great Nicobar.

The BRs are designated for inclusion in the network by the International Coordinating Council after evaluating the nominations forwarded by the State through National MAB Committees.

Scientific expertise

The ABR would benefit from the shared scientific expertise of all the other members of the world network. The State is expected to work for the conservation of nature at the reserve while it fosters the sustainable development of its population, said a UNESCO official.

The ABR is situated at the southern-most end of the Western Ghats and spread over Kerala and Tamil Nadu and covers an area of 3,500 sq km at an altitude ranging from 100 metres to 1,868 metres above the Mean Sea Level.

Hotspot

The area falls in the Malabar rainforests and is one of the noted hotspot areas because of its position in the Western Ghats, according to the management plan of the reserve. It is estimated that more than 2,250 species of dicotyledonous plants are in the area and 29 are endemic to the region. Many plants are considered endangered too.

Researchers have noted that about 400 Red Listed Plants have been recorded from ABR. About 125 species of orchids and rare, endemic and threatened plants have been recorded from the reserve.

There are 669 biosphere reserves in as many as 120 countries

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by K. S. Sudhi / Kochi – March 22nd, 2016