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#1 ·
Tech Goes Rural

Tech Goes Rural

The Internet helps near-bankrupt farmers turn their businesses around; milkmen use smartcards while fishermen turn to the Web for a better catch. Though in pockets, infotech is empowering rural India

Rajneesh De
Thursday, September 23, 2004

http://www.dqindia.com/content/top_stories/2004/104092301.asp

Sandeep Tawde had hit rock bottom. His poultry-farming business was on the verge of bankruptcy. There didn't seem much else he could do any more. Might as well go visit the newly opened Internet café in the village. He did, and it changed his life.

Tawde's café visit might well go down in history as one of the most profitable cyber journeys ever made in rural India. What was then an exotic new tool gave him exotic options, and this B.Com graduate decided to make a drastic change in the kind of birds he reared, moving from poultry to emus. The 32-year-old emu farmer has, in the last three years, made profits of Rs 6 lakh, since that life-altering online quest, by selling more than 1,200 birds.

Says Tawde, "I found out a lot about emu farming from various sites and then started on a 60-acre farm with an investment of Rs 2 lakh. Subsequently, I set up an Internet kiosk in my farm, the first in the whole of Baramati, and have been using Net since then to both market my products as well as acquire information on them. I also started pomegranate farming, again after gathering information about it online, and last year even sold about eight to ten tonnes of pomegranate online to a buyer in Taiwan. Now I get online orders for emus too, from places like Saudi Arabia."

The "Net" effect: 60% additional profits compared to offline business because of large export orders; more than 27,000 people visiting his farm following online information; and, most importantly, the formation of a Maharashtra Emu Farmers Association with 48 farmers, who use mail and video conferencing to not only share inputs but also sell abroad as a consortium.

Rural Revolution

Tawde's isn't an isolated success story. The Internet revolution is no more merely a hep topic for discussion at seminars held at swank five-star hotels. It has become something more wondrous-it is now the stuff of mundane life in rural India. The digital revolution, mostly in the form of Internet kiosks, has come home to where the majority of India's people live.

Take Mohan Tambe's story. Tambe is a tomato farmer in Pimple-Jagtap, a sleepy hamlet about 100 km from Pune. Last year, most of his tomato crops were damaged, and despite running from pillar to post, Tambe couldn't find any solution to his problem. Finally, he walked into the Internet kiosk run by the Grameen Information Center (GIC) in association with Krishi Vikas Kendra (KVK) in Baramati. Not only did he post his queries but he also showed photos of his damaged crops online to the KVK experts.

"The response I got helped me save crops worth Rs 10-12,000. Also, the medicine the KVK experts at Baramati recommended cost me only Rs 450, while what other sources hereabouts were recommending would have cost me three times as much," says Tambe.

You need to thank the telecom revolution for this, because other vital basic infrastructure is still entirely lacking in many of these villages. There is no motorable road to Tawde's farm: in Pimple-Jagtap this correspondent had to walk through knee-deep slush. And the Net was not working then, since there was no electricity. The radical potentials this virtual revolution embodies can hardly be harnessed without the contiguous development of real infrastructure-power, road and water supply-to support the virtual one already in place.

It's not only agricultural farmers who are reaping the benefits of Internet kiosks. During my journeys through vast expanses of this real India, I met different sections of people who were effectively employing IT for various businesses. Here's a list, culled at random: it includes milkmen, fishermen and even traders in the village mandis. Dattatreya Jagtap, Dattu Bhosale, Prabhakar Bhosale and Dhansingh Bhosale, all milkmen in Pandare, a village near Maligaon, have become digitally empowered thanks to smartcards. Each of them now carries the smartcard when they go to the milk co-operative center to sell their produce. An attendant at this center carries a PoS terminal through which these cards are passed, recording every commercial detail of these transactions. The earlier nightmarish hassles with middlemen or about the quantity of milk sold seem to have fled with the dawning of the IT-empowered day.

IT helps offshore too. For instance, Muthumaran, a fisherman in Perikalapet village near Pondicherry can drag his boat into the blue waters of Bay of Bengal without the fear of encountering an unexpected storm. He can also sail to the exact spot where he would get a large catch of sardines. All this is possible only because Muthumaran now gets information about how high or low the waves will be, whether there will be any tricky currents and most important of all, the potential zones of fish aggregation from the local phone in his village panchayat office.

Interactive Educational Tool

The amazing thing about this whole endeavor is how far IT has come from being an ivory-tower luxury to an almost commonplace, but nevertheless, vital everyday component of life even in impoverished rural Indian villages. One does not know what to be more amazed at: the ease with which these often illiterate villagers were taking to what was for them a technology unlike any other they might have heard of, or the dogged persistence of those who pioneered the introduction of the technology as well as ways of using it. The wholehearted participation of the Tawdes, Tambes and Bhosales in making IT a grand success story in our villages was indeed an eye-opener.

Huge strides are being made in the imparting of IT eduction and training. I myself came upon three such instances during my Bharat Gram Darshan. One was in the Urdu Medium Baramati Nagar Parishad Primary School No. 1. There I met sixth standard students Bushra Aslam Baghban and Aliya Sayeed who were learning the basics of computers at sleek LCD monitors inside a bus in front of their school. They do this one hour every week when the bus comes to their school. One should not miss the social significance of this particular instance: here it is Muslim girls from families below the poverty line that are being provided with this most modern education. Then there's also Khadija Bibi of Kolmanna, a remote village in Malappuram, one of Kerala's most backward districts. Every evening after working in the paddy fields, she comes to the newly-opened eKendra in her village, where she learns how to email, in Malayalam, her uncle Rashid Baig in Muscat.

While Baramati has its bus, Bithoor near Lucknow has its thela. Five days a week fourteen-year-old Kanhaiya and his friends, who do not even go to the local school, attend the computer education classes, conducted with a computer on a reddle-cart, which teach them the basic applications of word processing, Internet, Excel and PowerPoint, all in Hindi. His elder brother Jeevlal, who has completed these courses, is now learning accounting packages and web designing.

IT also affords "lifestyle luxuries", once livelihood, education and healthcare in these villagers have been taken care of-that is, the relative luxury, in Indian terms, of not queuing up to pay frequent, hassle-prone utility bills. Many villagers in Kolmanna and other Malappuram villages use their eKendras to pay these bills, perform Netbanking, make revenue remittances and so on. While Malappuram is part of the Kerala government's Akshaya project, which offers these financial services routed through an SBI online ePayment gateway, even private players like ICICI are not lagging behind. Says Sharad Rambhau Bhosale, who runs an Internet kiosk in Pandare, "ICICI Bank has started an Internet banking access center in my kiosk, and within 15 days of its opening, I sold 15 ICICI Prudential insurance policies online."

The Pioneers

One thing that surprised me was that most of the endeavors I encountered were not part of the standard e-governance projects all states showcase. Critics complain that not only are most such projects irrelevant, they mostly never make it beyond the pilot phase. In many instances, it was private organizations and NGOs initiating them in collaboration with the government or some philanthropist. However, funding becomes a problem in many of these cases after the initial hoopla. Corporate support is a solution, especially since it implies a wider publicity blitz. Perhaps, in future, a more balanced public-private association will be the order of the day.

Some beginnings in this direction have already been made. The now defunct Media Lab Asia's association with the various IITs was one such effort. In Maharashtra, the Vidya Pratishthan Institute of Information Technology (VIIT), the Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Baramati and the Pune-based Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) have been in the vanguard of similar cooperative projects, with Uday Borwake, chairman, MCCIA and Dr Amol Goje, director, VIIT, being the driving force behind one of these initiatives.

Not only is VIIT running the Pandare smartcard application, it is maintaining 30 Internet kiosks connected through WLL in different gram panchayats within a 40 km radius from Baramati. It provides consultancy on agriculture to farmers through videoconferencing and is now setting up an FM community radio station at an investment of Rs 2 lakh to disseminate agricultural infomation eight hours everyday. VIIT has also started a mobile computer classroom project with an investment of Rs 70 lakh. It has developed content in both Marathi and English for classes V-VIII using SCORM technology that enables the teacher to add his own content. Currently, this is being done for 54 schools, with a total of 6,700 students, 60% of them being girls living below the poverty line. This project also covers 870 Adivasi students in Ambergaon too.

MCCIA, for its part, has launched the GIC running on a wireless operation model across 172 kiosks with a subsidy of Rs 1 crore from the Maharashtra government. Following the success of its pilot project at Chale village, this one now runs from a Wi-Fi campus at Vigyan Ashram in Pabal village. While exemplary successes have been recorded from the seven villages of Pimple-Jagtap, Kendur, Uralikanchan, Karoos, Rajgurunagar, Retawdi and Khed, this effort also covers farmers in 110 villages in the three talukas of Shirur, Rajgurunagar and Handoli. 34 of these villages have Internet connectivity while the rest are connected by VPTs.

Telecom has a stellar role in each of these cases. While both Pabal and Baramati use wireless technology, the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) uses CorDect technology in its initiatives in Perikalapet, Veerampattinam and Nallavadu, all coastal villages in Pondicherry. This is part of the Info Village project started by MSSRF, which connects 10 villages near Pondicherry through a hybrid wired and wireless network consisting of PCs, telephones, VHF duplex radio devices and email through dial-up telephone lines, facilitating, thus, both voice and data transfer. The Info Villages, which provide life-changing information, use two technologies, VHF and Spread Spectrum, to establish connections between the Knowledge Centers, which are small hubs housing computers fitted with wireless sets.

Silent Revolutionaries

We must not let the legionnaires who actually make possible this silent coup remain nameless. Since it is hardly possible to name everyone, we shall have to remain content with a couple. There's Prashant Tambe, who operates the Pimple-Jagtap kiosk. There's Shantanu Inamdar, the IIT Powai-Media Lab Asia representative who has worked for three years in the Pabal Vigyan Ashram. While Tambe gave up a Rs 10,000 job at Tata Motors and now earns half of that, Inamdar initially had to visit villages by cycle, get all the agricultural queries that villagers had, get the answers from KVK, and finally, go back with the answers. There's Sharad Rambhau Bhosale, who conducted a guidance camp for 60 farmers in Pandare to provide information on fertilizers and seeds through videoconferencing. There's Chandrakant Dikshit, the teacher in the bus at the Baramati school.

The digital divide is a myth. The dreams of the digital empowerment of rural India aren't dreams any more. They are slowly taking real shapes in the hands of our rural poor, who, with luck and IT on their side, will not remain impoverished much longer.

Rajneesh De With inputs from Nanda Kasabe in Pune, Jasmine Kaur in Delhi and Nisha Kurian in Chennai
 
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#642 ·
With $18 million funding, IIT Madras professor breaks the glass ceiling

“I am glad that technologies from academic labs are getting venture funding in units of millions of dollars,” says Prof. T. Pradeep from the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. It was only a couple of days ago that he signed the final agreement with Nanoholdings based in Connecticut, U.S. wherein Nanoholdings will provide his team venture funding of $18 million (about Rs.120 crore) to further develop its nanomaterials-based water technology that is currently used in India to remove arsenic from drinking water.

For a person whose first research grant in 1994 was a meagre Rs.42,000 and slowly graduated to being funded in the range of Rs.2-3 lakhs, and the licensing fee from the first product (to remove pesticides from drinking water) he developed fetched him just Rs.3 lakhs, the bonanza funding is proof that researchers in India, especially in institutes such as IITs can dream and achieve big. That there is huge market and demand for good technologies that impact human lives positively has come out loud and clear in this case.

Prof. Pradeep’s basic research was funded by the Nano Mission of the Central government.

If each institute has at least a couple of researchers who can generate funding of this magnitude then it will change the research environment in the country and have a ripple effect that would energise many more to follow suit. Why should graduating students being offered mind-boggling salaries alone be the news of the day? “Is the day too far when professors’ substantial earnings from their own research work become the talk of the town?” Prof. Pradeep wonders.

Prof. Pradeep’s company, InnoNano Research Private Limited, started as a start-up at IIT Madras Incubation cell in 2008 and has now become a graduated company. “InnoNano leads the table in terms of innovation. It is a great example of how research in an academic institution like IIT can be commercialised and have an impact on the society. It is one of our successful graduated companies that we are proud of,” says Tamaswati Ghosh, CEO, IIT Madras Incubation Cell.

In the next three months, InnoNano will have a new research lab of 5,000 sq. ft. size operational at IIT Madras Research Park. The research lab will have around 10 research staff. “He is doing excellent research on nanotechnology, especially water filtration. Who better than our faculty member setting up a R&D lab and giving opportunity to students and Ph.D scholars,” says Rajendra Kumat Mootha, Chief Operating Officer of IIT Madras Research Park.

“I think our biggest strength is that while we focused on one area (water), we chose to learn and do everything in that area — technology and product development, manufacturing, conducting trials and reaching out to users. I think that's the strength of most reputed tech companies today,” says Anshup, a B.Tech from IIT Madras and one of the co-founders of InnoNano Research. “It gives us and our users a sense of completeness.” Udhaya Sankar and Amrita Chaudhary are the other two co-founders.

Prof. Pradeep’s water filter, Amrit (Arsenic and Metal Removal by Indian Technology), installed in 750 locations in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka provides arsenic-free drinking water at a cost of less than 5 paisa per litre to nearly 500,000 people. It functions without electricity or running water; all it requires is gravity. It requires less than a minute of contact time for Amrit to purify the water of arsenic.

In December last year, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation had recommended the replication of the nanotechnology-based purifier in all States where drinking water is contaminated with arsenic. Punjab has just initiated steps to procure filters for the State.

A community plant capable of filtering both arsenic and iron has been operational in Nadia, West Bengal since 2013. It provides 200,000 litres of water per day at about 4 paisa per litre.

With this venture funding, Amrit will soon dot many locations across the world as arsenic is a global problem. Besides purifying arsenic-contaminated drinking water, Nanoholdings wants the technology to be able to filter fluoride, natural iron and industrial pollutants such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and copper.

A water filter capable of removing fluoride is already close to commercialisation. And the research team has already been working on an all-in-one water purifier to address a wide spectrum of contaminants like pesticides, mercury, cadmium, lead, fluoride and arsenic.

“There is further scope for development of this technology. We want to make it more robust so that it can be used anywhere in the world,” says Bhabendra Pradhan, Chief Technology Officer at Nanoholdings.

“We expect to complete the development by five years.” A new manufacturing facility of 10,000 sq ft will become operational soon to supply water filters for the international market. The location of the manufacturing unit has not been finalised yet. InnoNano already manufactures water filters at its 8,000 sq ft Ambattur facility in Chennai to meet India’s demand. “All of these were possible only because some of our own students decided to take this as their life” he says.

Keywords: Arsenic-free water, IIT Madras, InnoNano research private limited
 
#643 ·
Germany to fund study on climate change in Chennai

The Greater Chennai Corporation area is set to get assistance from Germany to cope with climate change.

The Corporation Council on Saturday adopted a resolution approving the inclusion of Chennai in the project, ‘Cities fit for climate change.’ It will be implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. It supports cities in carrying out research on various aspects of climate change.

“They will fund research to mitigate disaster. Rapid urbanisation in Chennai is a cause for concern,” said an official. The first meeting of officials of the civic body with German officials was held in Chennai recently.

Tracing urbanisation trends and the role of cities in addressing climate change issues, the project will support other cities too.

The output of the research is expected to assist Chennai in its urban strategies , an official said. The Corporation will also get aid to develop integrated climate-friendly urban development instruments that enable ‘climate-proof urban development.’

Keywords: Greater Chennai Corporation, German assistance, climate change
 
#644 ·
India & US to research on energy storage tech

Wednesday, 10 August 2016 PTI

Washington: India and the US have agreed on a USD 30 million public-private five-year research initiative for a joint research on smart grid and energy storage technology.

"Smart grid and storage technology will transform how we produce and consume electricity, which has the potential to decrease carbon pollution by scaling up renewable energy deployment," US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said.

"Working collaboratively with India will accelerate solutions to drive down technology costs and improve grid resilience and reliability in both countries," Moniz said after Department of Energy made an announcement in this regard.

Under the US-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy Research (PACE-R), the US Energy Department (DOE) and the Indian Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) will each commit USD 1.5 million per year for five years to the expanded research effort, subject to congressional appropriations.

The US and Indian private sectors will match the respective government commitments, resulting in a combined USD 30 million public-private research investment over the next five years, a statement said.


In 2009, the two countries launched Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE) to support research and deployment of clean energy technologies.

PACE is the core mechanism of bilateral energy R&D collaboration between the US and India.

Since its launch, the countries have agreed to expand the initiative, which has three main areas of activity: Research (PACE-R), Deployment (PACE-D) and Access (PEACE).

In 2012, the two countries committed to jointly funding PACE-R with a combined USD 50 million in government funding over five years to launch three initial research consortia, focusing on solar energy, energy efficiency in buildings, and next-generation biofuels.

The latest announcement provides resources for a fourth consortium under PACE-R that will focus on smart grid and energy storage for grid applications.

The new consortium will enable counterparts in the United States and India to leverage the technological research capabilities of both countries.

The new consortium will be officially established when an award selection is made - anticipated in 2017, the statement said.
 
#645 ·
‘Indo-UK joint research funding is growing’

A three-day workshop ‘Clean Water through Advanced and Affordable Materials’ brought together early career researchers, including 12 from the United Kingdom and 15 from India.

The workshop is part of British Council’s collaboration with the Royal Society of Chemistry. It is the first of six ‘Newton Bhabha Researcher Link Workshops’ awarded in 2015-16 and was inaugurated by Bharat Joshi, British Deputy High Commissioner at IIT-M.

David Jenkins from Plymouth University and Vasanthakumari, Director of Polymer NanoTechnology Centre, BS Abdur Rahman University, coordinated the workshop.

Mr. Joshi, who lauded the effort, said the co-investment made by both countries in supporting joint research activities had risen from £1 million in 2009 to around £12 million and continues to grow. According to Stephen Hawthorne, Deputy Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the programme would offer new opportunities for chemists to partner internationally over the next few years.

Mei-kwei Barker, Director, British Council South India , said the Newton Bhabha Fund would be used to support greater scientific research capacity in India and build research partnerships between British and Indian research institutions. “We hope that the skills and knowledge developed through this partnership will make a significant contribution to various fields underpinning science,” he said.

Dr. Vasanthakumari the workshop focussed on providing clean drinking water through affordable materials and nanotechnology.

Varsities to contribute

Leading universities from the U.K. (Cambridge, Nottingham and Cardiff) and India (IIT-Delhi, IIT-Madras and IIT- Mandi) will contribute to the workshops in India. These workshops will focus on varied chemical sciences topics such as human health, energy and environment and sustainability.

Co-investment in joint research activities

has risen from £1 million in 2009 to around £12 million
 
#646 ·
200+ years after Cobalt Blue was established, scientist from Chennai discovers YInMn Blue

Cross-posting from Chennai thread.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/200-years-after-Cobalt-Blue-was-established-scientist-from-Chennai-discovers-YInMn-Blue/articleshow/53558052.cms

Global recognition isn't new to Chennai, as namma people have made headlines time and again. The latest to join the list of achievers from Chennai is Dr Mas Subramanian, who has created the world's newest shade of blue, called YInMn Blue. This vibrant shade is creating quite a buzz among artists ever since it has been licensed for commercial use. We caught up with Subramanian who is currently a chemist at the Oregon State University.

...
 
#647 ·
Fifth Generation signs pact with Anna University

The research is a unique attempt to use physics in three areas — creep, fatigue and corrosion

Fifth Generation Technologies, a multi-national research and innovation company with specialisation in building “real time intelligence” solutions and products to the manufacturing industry, has entered into an agreement with Anna University, Chennai, for conducting research to arrive at a useful prediction of the remaining life of critical equipment that are working in high temperature environments.

The company proposes to invite one of its clients who are global industry leaders and original equipment manufacturers of such critical equipment to participate in this research.


“We wish to involve the user industry from the beginning of this research and make them participate as an integral member of our team so that the time to practical value of this research can be minimized”, says Sumitra Seshan, Chief Executive Officer, Fifth Generation.

“The research is a unique attempt to use physics in three areas — creep, fatigue and corrosion — to arrive at a prediction of remaining life of critical equipment exposed to high temperature thermal cycles”, says K.A. Padmanabhan, a Principal Mentor of this research work.

The research work shall be conducted by a Ph.D scholar who shall, apart from being financially supported by 5G, seek funding under the PM Fellowship Scheme for Doctoral Research, according to a company release.

The proposed research shall be performed under the auspices of the Centre for Technology Development and Transfer (CTDT), which has been set up by Anna University for encouraging synergies and technology transfers between the industry and the academia.
 
#648 ·
So what this does is employ cheap research solutions that can be patented by this company for ideas and solutions to be sold in international markets like the us and China. Positive news? Maybe not. Investments? Sure.
 
#649 · (Edited)
Cabinet approves financial support to BHEL for R&D project for development of Advanced Ultra Super Critical Technology

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has approved a proposal of R&D project for development of Advanced Ultra Super Critical (AUSC) Technology for Thermal Power Plant with an estimated cost of Rs.1554 crore and providing one time budgetary support of Rs.900 crore spread over a period of three years, commencing from 2017-18, to be provided as plan Gross Budgetary Support to BHEL for implementation of the R&D project.

A Consortium of three Government Entities, namely BharatHeavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Indira Gandhi Centre of Atomic Research (IGCAR) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) have proposed a R&D project for development of AUSC Technology for Thermal Power Plants of future, envisaging reduced coal consumption as well as Carbon Di-Oxide (CO2) emission.

The project is formulated with a time cycle of two and a half years, with an estimated cost of Rs. 1554 crore, with a contribution of Rs. 270 crore from BHEL, Rs. 50 crore from NTPC, Rs. 234 crore from IGCAR, Rs. 100 Cr from Department of Science and Technology (DST).

Balance amount of Rs. 900 crore will be contributed by Department of Heavy Industry (DHI) as grant.

The project will enable Indian industries to design, manufacture and commission higher efficiency coal fired power plants with indigenously developed technology and manufacturing processes. This will be the first time large power plant equipment will be manufactured with advanced technologies, but without any Technological Collaboration/ Licensing Agreement with foreign companies.

The proposed technology is still in research stage in all countries working on it. It is still not matured and demonstrated anywhere in the world. The consortium partners are working on the project from the basics of material development, characterisation of alloys for high temperature and high pressure applications, basic principles of thermal engineering useful in design from scratch for large equipment like boiler, valves and steam turbine suitable for the proposed operating parameters which are far elevated from the present day established parameters, as required for higher efficiency in energy conversion.

Power generation from coal contributes to about 38% of CO2 pollution in the atmosphere. 20% reduction in CO2 emission at source combined with 20% saving in coal consumption compared to a sub-critical plant and by about 11% compared to a supercritical plant are the primary reasons justifying this project. Use of this technology in all future large power plants will ensure energy security for the country for a longer period, along with a greener environment.
 
#651 ·
India's first ocean power generation project coming up in Kavaratti, Lakshadweep

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of developing 'blue economy' to complement India's economic trajectory is getting onto the drawing board, with the development of an indigenous technology to tap ocean energy. India's maiden Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) project is coming up in Kavaratti, capital of the Lakshadweep archipelago, off the south-western coast after almost three and a half decades of initial plans.

India had planned to set up an OTEC plant way back in 1980, off the Tamil Nadu coast, but with the foreign vendor closing down its operation, it had to be abandoned, until a new vision to develop India's vast coastal resources was drawn up by NDA government. Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), under the Earth Sciences Ministry has now developed expertise in design, assembly and deployment of deep sea pipelines, reviving India's hopes to explore Ocean Thermal Energy.

"The current OTEC project is being set up to power a desalination plant. The power expected to be generated is under 200 kW. It is in the design phase currently and is likely to be commissioned early 2019," Dr. Purnima Jalihal, Scientist at NIOT, Chennai, told the Indian Science Journal.

India is geographically well-placed to generate ocean thermal energy, with around 2000 kms of coast length along the South Indian coast, where a temperature difference of above 20oC is available throughout the year. That means, about 1.5x106 square kilometres of tropical water in the Exclusive Economic Zone around India with a power density of 0.2 MW/km2.

The total OTEC potential around India is estimated as 180,000 MW, considering 40% of gross power for parasitic losses. However, the cost estimates of ocean energy as against conventional energy is still being worked out, as the country is still in a nascent stage of development of the technology and start generation.


"It's too early to talk about costing. OTEC is capital intensive and is economical only at very large scales. The complexities and challenges in a large offshore OTEC plant are many and hence a land based small rating one is being attempted at Kavaratti to power a low temperature thermal desalination plant," said Dr. Jalihal.

Dr. Jalihal said, the plant in Lakshadweep is a land-based, since deep water is available close-by. For mainland, 'we need to have an offshore platform mounted plant moored in deep waters'. She said, the Kavaratti plant is entirely an indigenous one.

"OTEC holds promise for a large country like India with a long coastline. After this attempt in Kavaratti, scaling up for mainland will be taken up," added Dr. Jaihal.

Ocean thermal energy conversion uses the temperature difference between cooler deep and warmer shallow or surface seawaters to run a heat engine and produce electricity. It is base load electricity generation system. OTEC is one of the continuously available renewable energy resources.
 
#652 ·
SRU to open new research centre on 7 October

Wednesday, 5 October 2016 NT Bureau

Chennai: Sri Ramachandra University (SRU) will inaugurate its recently designated ‘SRU-Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Centre for Advanced Research on Air Quality, Climate and Health’ on 7 October.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, director, Union Department of Health Research will inaugurate the event scheduled to be held between 9.30 am and 10.30 am.

Research agencies like National Institute of Health, USA, United States India Education Foundation and UN foundation -Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves will provide research funding in the initial phase, a release said.
 
#653 ·
IIT Alumni Centre's leg-up to R&D tie-up

By Express News Service | Published: 12th October 2016 02:54 AM |
Last Updated: 12th October 2016 02:54 AM | A+A A- |

CHENNAI: Research scholars of IIT across the country have a reason to smile. Thanks to an initiative by the IIT Alumni Centre (IITAC), cross-border collaborations and funding of research now has a direct bridge.

Launched in Chennai on Tuesday, the platform called ‘Touchstone’ is under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development. With a focus on speeding up research alliances, volunteers mobilised by IITAC will play catalyst to connect researchers with like-minded scholars abroad as well as aid funding for such projects.

To make this happen, Ravi Santhanam, co-ordinator of Touchstone said, “Our greatest resource is the three lakh-odd alumni we have across industries and academia. We hope that they will form a ‘virtual neural network’ that can be tapped into for the benefit of the academia in our country.”

Apart from IIT scholars, this initiative also extends to BITs, IITs and IISERS, a total of 79 institutions in all. The platform will run across 20 research verticals such as aeronautics, ocean engineering and nano technology.

As for the nature of these cross-border collaborations, this could include joint research projects, exchange of research fellows or visiting faculty, to name a few.

It is also planned that business leaders of respective domains or ‘volunteer champions’ chosen by IITAC will support the initiative by contributing four to six hours a week. A short video of HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar appreciating the project was played as part of the event.
 
#655 ·
This life saving implant by IIT-Madras researchers is a boon for critical cardiovascular patients around the world

IIT Madras sees the advent of a new innovation in the campus each day. The latest breakthrough by researchers has been in indigenously developing Asia’s first ‘life-saving’ implant that can prove not only to be a boon for critical cardiovascular patients, but revolutionise the field of surgical patches with products designed and made in India.

Researchers have developed what they call SynkroScaff, a Tissue Engineered Bovine Pericardial Patch. This pericardial patch (sack of buffalo’s heart) has inherent properties of regeneration and integration in the body. The existing ones in India are processed using synthetic material and toxic chemicals like glutaraldehyde or formaldehyde, which can cause post complications in patients. IIT-M’s product, meanwhile, uses biomaterial to ensure it is microbial free.

Moreover, none of the synthetic, homologous (human-derived) and xenogeneic (compatible animal-derived) patches have potential for growth and repair requiring re-operations.

The new technology by IIT-M found to be commercially viable globally has been put out into the market by a Chennai-based firm called SynkroMax Biotech.

Soma Guhathakurta, IIT-M adjunct professor, highlights twin advantages of this innovation- India’s dependence on imports will be eliminated and patients won’t have to undergo a second procedure to remove the sack after usage. The cost of imported material which stands between Rs 30-35,000 is likely to be slashed by half using India-made implants.

Interestingly, development of SynkroScaff using indigenous technology originally stemmed from Guhathakurta’s doctoral research in IIT-M in 2004, under the guidance of Venkatesh Balasubramanian, the Professor of Department of Engineering Design at IIT-M.

“Its applications are immense in cardiovascular and other surgical practices. We obtained the licence for the product in May this year. So far, 800 patches have been manufactured and over 12 surgeons are using them across India. Apollo Hospitals, Kauvery Hospital in Chennai and AIIMS in Delhi are using it. We have also enrolled for Central Medical Services Society (CMSS) recognition of the product. The feedback from doctors and patients has been encouraging, with a 100 per cent success rate,” says Guhathakurta.

While the doctoral work won the best thesis award from Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 2008, Guhathakurta’s mentor says “the true victory is when it is available as a surgical patch for the world, made in India”.
 
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Vellore: VIT University tops in research



Vellore: VIT University has topped among the educational institutes across the country by publishing 2,598 research papers in 2016, according to Scopus database.

VIT University's publication numbers have only increased over the years. While in 2010 it was 441, in 2011, the university had 620 publications, followed by 906 in 2012, 1,704 in 2013, 2,015 in 2014 and 2,402 in 2015, a release said. Among the various schools in the university, the School of Advanced Sciences bagged the top position in terms of publications. This was followed by the School of Bio Science & Technology.

"We decided to give a push to encourage all professors and research students. We started to give them incentives to take up research to bring the institute on par with top institutions in the country. The university has today surpassed many expectations and is marching towards the pinnacle," said university Chancellor G Viswanathan.

"The engineering schools have also started to contribute. The Curriculum for Applied Learning (CAL) system encourages the undergraduate and post graduate students also to take up research work. Next, we want to improve the quality of publications, then go for patents and products," he added. "The university provides research seed money for our faculty members and they also get project funding from government agencies," said VIT University dean, Academic Research, G Buvaneswari.
 
#659 ·
Not quite India Science but the authors of this are Indian and could be highly applicable towards solving water problems in India..



Graphene Oxide Sieve Can Make Seawater Drinkable

Now, in a study published Monday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team of researchers from the University of Manchester has described a breakthrough that could open the door to the synthesis of an inexpensive desalination method — creation of a graphene oxide membrane that can be used as a sieve to remove salt from seawater.

“Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology,” study co-author Rahul Nair said in a statement released Monday. “This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sieve sizes.”

Although previous experiments have shown that graphene-based membranes are capable of filtering out small nanoparticles, organic molecules, large salts, until now, scientists had been unable to create membranes with pore size small enough to filter out sodium chloride.

In order to overcome this hurdle, the researchers placed epoxy resin on either side of their graphene oxide membrane, stopping it from swelling up when immersed in water. When this was done, the membrane filtered out 97 percent of the sodium chloride, while allowing water molecules to pass through.

“The developed membranes are not only useful for desalination, but the atomic scale tunability of the pore size also opens new opportunity to fabricate membranes with on-demand filtration capable of filtering out ions according to their sizes,” Jijo Abraham, the study’s joint lead author, said in the statement.

Although the technology has the potential to revolutionize water filtration — especially in countries that sorely lack access to clean drinking water — more work is needed to scale up the production of these membranes to an industrial level.

“The ultimate goal is to create a filtration device that will produce potable water from seawater or wastewater with minimal energy input,” Ram Devanathan, a scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, wrote in a commentary accompanying the Nature Nanotechnology study.
 
#661 ·
Indo-Canadian venture radicalises drug research

The pharmaceutical industry has so far been chained to a cycle of creating new drugs. The TRAC- MedGenome venture attempts to look at an existing drug and make it better.

So, the first company established under this venture – in Chennai – is working on a drug for age-related macular degeneration, a disease that causes blindness and could claim as many as 10 million victims over the next decade.
 
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#662 ·
IIT Madras builds research facility to help CERN

TNN | Updated: Aug 18, 2017, 11:54 PM IST
Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) is setting up an exclusive centre on its premises for research, and to develop a silicon tracker detector that will go into upgrading the massive 14,000 tonne CMS (compact muon solenoid) detector, which is studying a wide range of physics including the dark matter that makes up the universe. The CMS detector is installed by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in France.

The dedicated Silicon Detector Research and Development and Application Centre to be set up at IIT Madras at a cost of Rs 6 crore, will be part of India-CMS collaboration. The Centre is expected to be operational by end of 2018.

"The main purpose of this centre is to work with other Indian collaborating institutes to build a '2000 silicon detector module' that will be part of the CMS detector at CERN," said Prafulla Kumar Behera, associate professor, department of physics, IIT-Madras.
The main CMS detector in France will undergo upgradation in 2025 when the existing silicon tracker detector dies out. The silicon tracker detector is one of the four subdetectors in the main CMS detector. Data from the main detector installed 100m below ground may help scientists understand the evolution of the universe better.
Prof Behera said the centre not only aims at conducting cutting-edge research with advanced machine tools but will also train students in the process. "IIT-Madras is also offering summer internships at CERN for our undergraduate students since 2015," he said.

Scientists said the sensor that goes into the detector a technology for which is available only in a few countries has several potential spinoff applications like medical imaging that can help the Indian healthcare sector. "If we could get such technologies, may be in the future we can use them if we are going to build such detectors in our country," Behera said.

IIT-M became the first IIT to be made a full member of the CMS experiment at CERN in 2014. India became as associate member of CERN in 2016.
 
#663 ·
C.N.R Rao chosen for international honour for materials research

The Bharat Ratna awardee is the first Asian to be chosen for the prestigious Von Hippel Award

Eminent scientist, Professor C.N.R Rao, has become the first Asian to be chosen for the prestigious Von Hippel Award for his immense contribution in materials research.

The award is the US-based Materials Research Society’s (MRS) highest honour.

It recognises “those qualities most prized by materials scientists and engineers - brilliance and originality of intellect, combined with vision that transcends the boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines,” according to the MRS.

The award citation noted Mr. Rao’s immense work on novel functional materials, including nanomaterials (having particles of nanoscale dimensions), graphene (the strongest and thinnest material) and 2D materials, superconductivity, and colossal magnetoresistance (change in electrical resistance of a material in a magnetic field).

The award will be presented in Boston on November 29, during an MRS meeting, according to a release issued by the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research here of which Mr. Rao, a Bharat Ratna awardee, is the founder president.

The award includes a cash prize, trophy and a diploma.
Source: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/sc...ls-research/article19741577.ece?homepage=true
 
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