Microsoft CEO will also deliver the keynote address at the first edition of the India Today Conclave Next 2017.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is on a two-day visit to India to promote his book Hit Refresh – The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone.
The tech giant’s India-born chief will be in Delhi on November 7 to deliver the keynote address at the first edition of the India Today Conclave Next 2017. Nadella kickstarted his trip with a visit to Microsoft’s headquarters in Hyderabad on November 6 – the city of his birth – where he joined NDTV’s Prannoy Roy for a discussion on his book that will soon be available in Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil.
The book takes readers through Nadella’s personal journey from his childhood in India to his ascendancy through the ranks at Microsoft. It talks about the transformation he has initiated at Microsoft, from its culture to its competitive landscape and industry partnerships as well as his outlook on the exciting and disruptive wave of technologies that will impact all our lives in the coming days.
Many of these themes will also be explored at the day-long India Today Conclave Next 2017.
Nadella’s book also carries a foreword by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The book’s English edition, launched on September 26, 2017, can already be found in bookstores, while the Hindi edition, published by HarperCollins India will be available in bookstores by November end.
The Tamil and Telugu editions published by Westland Books will be available in print at bookstores from November 7. A Kindle version of the Tamil edition will also be available for download on the same day.
source: http://www.dailyo.in / Daily O / Home> Sci-Tech / November 06th, 2017
Digital Domain, a leading player in the visual effects arena, has made a foray into India with the opening of a studio in Hyderabad.
This is the fifth studio and the tenth location globally for the company, which earlier this year opened facilities in Beijing and Hong Kong. The company, whose visual effects appear in films such as Titanic, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Spider-Man: Homecoming and Beauty and the Beast, is keen on shaping the 42,000 sq.ft. facility in Hyderabad into the role of a mainstay for it.
Pegging the investment on the new facility in the $3-5 million range, chief operating officer Amit Chopra, in an interaction with the media on Monday, said: “India is and will continue to be an integral part of Digital Domain’s global expansion plans.”
“We foresee the region to be a leading consumer of premium content,” he said, even as Sudhir Reddy, head of Digital Studio, India, chipped in saying the company was keen on taking up work for customers in the country as well. To begin with, the Hyderabad studio would rely on international projects — movies, commercials as well as VR/AR work — before the demand for its services, especially from Bollywood, is expected to pick up.
“Combined with the recent projections for smart phone growth and mobile bandwidth expansion in the region, the people of India are primed to demand and expect premium content, and we are ready to deliver on that need,” Global CEO Daniel Seah said in a statement.
Of the 500 people who can be accommodated at the new facility, 205 are already on board. By mid-2018, the headcount would touch 500, added Mr. Reddy. Globally, Digital Domain employed 1,400 people.
The new studio, inaugurated on Sunday by Telangana IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao, is at present involved with four big projects, the details of which the senior executivesrefused to share.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Business / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – November 06th, 2017
Vama Industries Ltd., a Hyderabad-based IT infrastructure and ITeS company, has bagged a ₹35.42-crore order for Hierarchical Storage Management System from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The order is towards the supply, installation, integration and testing commissioning of computer infrastructure, Hierarchical Storage Management System as well as network elements for data processing and exploitation system, the company said on Wednesday.
Describing the order from the ISRO as very significant for the company, chairman and managing director V.A. Rama Raju said that Vama Industries was keen on expanding business across different locations across the country.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correpondent / Hyderabad – November 02nd, 2017
An 81-year-old man became the recipient of the world’s smallest pacemaker in city on Tuesday .
The leadless pacemaker, which has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only a year back, is a new heart device that offers the most advanced pacing technology at onetenth the size of a traditional pacemaker, said D. Bharat V Purohit, chief of Interventional Cardiology , Continental Hospitals, Hyderabad, where the procedure was carried out.
Pacemakers are the most common way to treat Bradycardia to help restore the heart’s normal rhythm.
“The gentleman had slow heartbeat and was suggested a pacemaker. In view of prior history of angioplasty for which he is on blood thinner, stopping the medicines for doing conventional pacemaker would have caused a risk.Besides in view of advanced age, he was very reluctant for any surgical procedure. Hence option of this leadless pacemaker was discussed and decided,” said Dr Bharat V Purohit.
The pacemaker was implanted through the leg. It was attached directly to the walls of the heart to give electrical signals for maintaining a normal heart rate.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Hyderabad News / TNN / November 01st, 2017
The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) is working on components of driverless car technologies.
“We are actually working on components of driverless car. We are not hoping that the car will be running on Hyderabad roads without a driver,” IIIT-H director P J Narayanan told reporters.
But it is a problem that practically every good group in the world is working. It poses several academic challenges,” he said.
Though the goal is a driverless car, the research into the subject would help understand many other things, he said.
“Driverless car, that’s our goal. It’s not easy to have a driverless car on Indian roads… But, the purpose is you develop technologies for it, you learn a lot for other things.
“Instead of driverless car, how can you make our car safer. How can you help our drivers with automatic help…,” he said.
The institute is working on a project for providing data on the condition of roads in Hyderabad to the government agencies, Narayanan said.
Under the project, a car fitted with cameras is proposed to be sent on the roads and the cameras would capture images on the condition of roads.
“…Just send a car with a video. Not driverless. Somebody driving it. And the car will record the video and at the back end information algorithms will detect where are the problem points. This information will help GHMC (Hyderabad civic body) or government to collect,” he said.
The institute runs a car with the technology within its campus under controlled conditions as part of its research, he said.
source: http://www.economictimes.indiatimes.com / The Economic Times / ET Home> Industry> Auto> News> Industry / PTI / October 24th, 2017
n business: Activated jamun powder was able to reduce the fluoride content of Nalgonda groundwater from 3.2 ml per litre to 1.5 ml per litre. | Photo Credit: K_Ananthan
The activated jamun powder can be reused up to five times by heating it to 50 degree C
Now, while removing excess fluoride from drinking water, the usual problems such as high operational costs and getting rid of toxic sludge will be a thing of the past. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad have used activated jamun seed powder to bring the fluoride content in drinking water to less than the WHO limit of 1.5 mg per litre. The results were published in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering.
The team led by Dr. Chandra S. Sharma from the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Hyderabad mixed the jamun seed powder thoroughly with potassium hydroxide and heated it to 900 degree C for an hour to produce activated jamun powder. The activation increases the pore volume several times and the surface area by more than 50 times. As a result, the fluoride adsorption efficiency increased several times compared to samples that were not treated with KOH but heated to 900 degree C.
The fluoride ion removal increases with a decrease in pH, with maximum adsorption found at pH 3. The activated jamun seed acquires a positive charge at low pH and the positive charge attracts the fluoride ions while the negative charge in an alkaline medium repulses the fluoride ions.
With fluoride adsorption capacity of 3.65 milligram per gram, activated jamun seed was close to tea ash (3.75 milligram per gram) but much higher than other substances such as banana peel, coffee husk, and coconut shell.
“Besides testing the activated jamun seed powder in the lab we also tested it using groundwater taken from Nalgonda village, which is one of the worst fluoride-affected villages in India. After two hours of contact time, we were able to reduce the fluoride content from 3.2 milligram per litre to less than 1.5 milligram per litre, which is the WHO limit,” says Dr. Sharma.
On heating the activated jamun powder to 50 degree C, the fluoride gets desorbed and the jamun powder can be reused up to five times. “About 96% of the fluoride can be desorbed. So there is a loss of only 4% efficiency after each desorption,” he says.
Disposal of sludge
Disposal of the fluoride sludge is another area that the team is working on. “The fluoride ions desorbed from the activated carbon will be present in very small quantity of water. We can add sodium hydroxide to this water to produce sodium fluoride,” he says. The major objective of the current study was to evaluate the fluoride removal efficiency using a novel, low-cost activated carbon.
“We will next be testing the efficiency of the activated jamun powder in water containing multiple ions such as fluoride, arsenic and heavy metals,” says Ramya Araga the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Hyderabad and the first author of the paper.
“We have so far carried out all tests in batches. We need to now undertake column studies,” says Araga. The continuous flow parameters have to be optimised to achieve best results; during the batch studies, two hours of contact time was needed for the fluoride to be removed.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sci-Tech> Science / by R Prasad / October 21st, 2017
The highly versatile tool can conduct search and rescue operations at sea
Mobile app ‘SARAT’ developed by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) based in Hyderabad, which can assist with searching for over 64 types of missing objects like boats, ships, man-over- board etc., at sea, was formally launched in New Delhi on Monday.
Work is currently on to integrate it with the Indian satellite INSAT for improved real-time transmission and relay of information, according to INCOIS Director Satheesh C. Shenoi.
The app was earlier released in the web format last year and will be made available for download from the Google Play Store. This will enable the Indian Coast Guard, Navy and Coastal Security Police to shorten search time during their various operations to minimise loss of life, injury and property damage. National Maritime Search and Rescue (NMSAR) Board chairman and Director General Indian Coast Guard Rajendra Singh launched SARAT at a meeting held at Vigyan Bhavan in the nation’s capital.
The app will help ensure quick action and make the system available to all. Request forms and generated responses have been provided in local languages of all Indian coastal States so that fishermen can easily use it to search when their fellow fishermen are in distress, Dr Shenoi said.
In a statement released here, he said that the SARAT mobile app was a highly versatile tool, as conducting search and rescue operations at sea is extremely challenging and can be compared to the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.
Search and rescue operations are most frequent during bad weather over the high seas, when the fisherfolk inadvertently venture out and their vessels capsize. App users can select a specific point where the person or object was last seen using the interactive map or they can select a nearby coastal location, approximate distance travelled and the bearing angle so that the missing point is calculated.
The most probable ‘Search Area’ is then generated and relayed in map form as well as a text message. The rescuer can share his GPS location in the app to calculate his closest route to easily reach the Search Area. To avoid connectivity issues the rescuer may use the SARAT app in advance while still on land, to determine the Search Area and then download the generated approach route (a PDF of the path will be provided as well).
Dr. Shenoi said the app was expected to be compatible with over 90% of Android-based handsets in use and includes support up to Marshmallow (API 23). The accuracy of SARAT has been validated using networks of drifting buoys and other instruments.
The SARAT system had earlier successfully assisted in recovery of the Indian Coast Guard’s missing Dornier aircraft off Chennai in 2015. The system can predict the most probable search area for up to five days, he added.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – July 10th, 2017
Meticulous work Small portions of the corneal tissue were separated from the miniature eyes and used for growing corneal epithelial cell sheets in the lab.
Lab-grown corneal epithelial cells can potentially be used for restoring vision
Researchers at the Hyderabad-based LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) have successfully grown miniature eye-like organs that closely resemble the developing eyes of an early-stage embryo. The miniature eyes were produced using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The iPS cells are produced by genetically manipulating human skin cells to produce embryonic-like stem cells that are capable of forming any cell types of the body.
Small portions of the corneal tissue were separated from the miniature eyes and used for growing corneal epithelial cell sheets in the lab. Such tissue-engineered cell sheets can potentially be used for restoring vision in patients whose limbus region of the cornea is damaged in both the eyes. The limbus region of the cornea contains stem cells, and chemical or thermal damage to this region affects corneal regeneration and results in vision loss.
Stem cells present in the limbus region of a healthy eye have been used for restoring vision when only one eye is damaged. But when the damage is present in both eyes, the only way to restore vision is by using the healthy limbus taken from a related or unrelated donor. Patients have to be on immunosuppressants lifelong when limbus is transplanted from donors. However, immunosuppressants are not required when corneal cells grown using the patient’s own skin cells are used for restoring vision.
Growing eye-like organs
A team led by Dr. Indumathi Mariappan was able to grow complex eye-like organs in the lab by allowing the cells to organise themselves in three dimensions. The miniature eye closely resembles the developing eyes of an early-stage embryo. The eye-like structure consists of miniature forms of retina, cornea and eyelid. The results were published in the journal Development.
“It took about four–six weeks for the eye-like structure to form from iPS cells. We then removed the cornea-like structure for further study,” says Dr. Mariappan from the Centre for Ocular Regeneration at the LV Prasad Eye Institute and the corresponding author of the paper.
The cornea has three layers — epithelium (outer layer), stroma (middle layer) and endothelium (inner layer). “All the three layers of the cornea were observed, indicating that the mini-cornea had developed correctly,” she says. “The cornea initially forms as a simple bubble-like structure which is very delicate to handle. It later matures to form a thick cornea-like structure over a period of 10-15 weeks.”
The corneal epithelial sheets that would be used for treating the damaged eyes were then grown in the lab using small pieces of the mini-cornea containing the epithelium and a portion of the stroma. The stem cells present in the tissue pieces proliferated and gave rise to a uniform sheet of epithelium of about 2.5 cm by 2.5 cm size.
Animal trials
The team is currently focusing on testing the usefulness of the corneal cells grown from iPS cells in restoring vision in animal models (rats). “We will soon be starting the animal experiments,” she says. Trials on human subjects will be considered if the animal experiments turn out to be safe and effective in restoring vision.
In treatment
In parallel, the researchers are also working on producing mini-retinal tissue and actively exploring iPS cell-derived retinal tissues for treating several retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), retinitis pigmentosa and certain forms of congenital blindness seen in children and young adults.
Already, retinal cells grown using human embryonic stem cells and iPS cells are being tested in clincal trials in a few countries to treat retinal diseases.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / Home> Sci-Tech> Health / by R. Prasad / June 17th, 2017
Appreciating efforts: JNTU Hyderabad Vice Chancellor Venugopal Reddy interacting with students who designed the street lights control system and exhibited at Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering during convocation ceremony in Hyderabad on Thursday. | Photo Credit: K.V.S. GIRI
If it were left to young engineers of Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering, Country’s street lights would be auto-operated. The 91st graduating batch of the college produced a GSM connected, cell phone-operated lighting system which can be turned on and off based on requirement.
The power-saving circuit built by Noushad M.E., Ashish Kaushik, Sumit Dhanda and Akhil A.R. cost ₹ 57,200. It could be used for both civilian and defence purposes, the innovators said. The model also allows operators to operate just one or two light bulbs in a whole series. “If the operator thinks that just a few light bulbs are enough for lighting any area, they could turn off the rest by texting the details into the circuit,” said Mr. Akhil A.R. The model displayed in MCEME contained a circuit connected to six bulbs.
“The model also detects faulty operations if there are any. If a light bulb goes off, it will alert the operator,” M.E. Noushad told The Hindu. Mr. Sumit Dhanda said the project will be useful in huge military campuses which use power. “If the model is adopted by city development corporations it could cut power costs by one third,” said Mr. Dhanda. The MCEME awarded its annual best project prize to the four officers at its Convocation Ceremony on Thursday.
The MCEME passing out batch had also come up with a simple solution – a microcontroller-based automatic ventilation system – for car interiors which get heated when parked in the open. The ventilator contains a small control unit and a solar-powered exhaust fan which runs on external battery.
The microcontroller which is programmed to check the status of temperature and humidity inside the car every two seconds, triggers the exhaust fan when needed, to clear out the heat,” said an officer Vipin Jaiswal and the team leader. Other members of the project were Mukesh Thakur, M. Hariharan and M.S. Shakhavat.
Military boost
The college displayed a solar rechargeable backpack for troopers among its exhibits. The backpack with solar panels can be used as a tracking devise when soldiers go for long treks in the field, graduates said. “In any dire circumstance if the user presses a button on the backpack it sends a Save Our Souls message to control base. It will help officers to track those who are in danger during combat situation,” said Pankaj Saini who was the syndicate leader of the team which came up with the model. The other members in the team were Harmeet Singh, Sachin Yadav and Sagar.
Speaking at the convocation, A. Venugopal Reddy, Vice Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University asked the graduates to pay attention to new developments in cyber security and be abreast of technological innovations. “Your convocation is not like others’ passing out functions. You leave this institution to serve the motherland,” Mr. Reddy said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Nikhila Henry / Hyderabad – June 16th, 2017
Some of the members of the IIT-H team working to make cancer treatment better, on the institute’s campus in Hyderabad. | Photo Credit: Mohd Arif;Mohd Arif
Team working on finding alternative to chemotherapy
The Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H) has developed biodegradable non-particles that could be instrumental in treating cancer.
A team led by assistant professor Aravind Kumar Rengan has been working on finding alternative ways to chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer treatment to minimise side-effects caused by these therapies. He designed a novel nano system which kills the cancer cells by photothermal therapy.
The group is currently working on making more cost-effective nano particles for photothermal therapy, integrating these particles with cancer specific drugs to have an enhanced effect in killing cancer.
The team members involved in the research are Tejaswini Appidi, Syed Basseruddin, Deepak Bharadwaj, Anil Jogdand, Sushma, Anula — all Ph.D. scholars; junior research fellow Rama Singh, and postdoctoral fellow Surya Prakash Singh.
Photo thermal therapy is a treatment procedure where light (photo) energy is supplied by means of an external laser to nano particles which absorbs this energy and converts it to heat (thermal) energy. This heat generated by irradiation of laser would increase temperature within the tumour and result in the death of cancer cells.
No side-effects
The important aspects of the research is that the treatment procedure has no side-effects, since the nano particles would be accumulated in the tumour region, and also the irradiation is specific to particles, which means the heat is generated only within the tumour and not elsewhere in the body.
Also, the laser used to provide light energy would not harm the healthy cells around the tumour region as these healthy cells would not absorb this light energy as they remain transparent to this irradiation.
The nano particulate system is very unique in its own way. The particles, after generating the heat required to kill the cancer cells, will degrade inside the body and further breakdown into much smaller particles which will be excreted from the body.
“This procedure had very good results in experiments carried out in mice, and is expected to show the same in humans too. This treatment is now under clinical trials and once the trials are completed, this would be available as an alternative treatment procedure to cancer,” Dr. Rengan told The Hindu.
Dr. Rengan was recently awarded the prestigious INSA award in the young scientist category for his outstanding research in treatment of cancer by photothermal therapy using biodegradable particles.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by R. Avadhani / May 19th, 2017
