Page 6 - Research

New SATHI centres after approval from competent authority, says govt

The government on Monday said it will announce new centres to house major analytical instruments for sharing them with research institutions after approval from the competent authority. The recommendations of the empowered committee, chaired by former ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan, to examine 12 proposals to identify Sophisticated Analytical and Technical Help Institutes (SATHI), are under the consideration of Ministry of Science and Technology, officials in the ministry said. "The recommendations of the expert committee meeting held in Noida for the proposals received for the SATHI scheme are being processed. They will be announced after approval of competent authority," the Department of Science and Technology (DST) posted on X. The DST said it was also reviewing the Sophisticated Analytical Instrument Facilities (SAIF) programme, a separate scheme with a history of five decades. It said a high-level committee has been formed to improve the programme, intending to include more ..

No more euphemisms: India's sell-side researchers should say what they mean

Last time, trouble erupted in banking, and this time, it is brewing in outsourcing. Euphemisms are more damaging than the unvarnished truth

Tata Motors sets up 2 R&D facilities on H2 fuel tech, including ICE

In January this year, Tata Motors set an ambitious target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2045

Indian-origin academics among 30 winners of UK's 3 mn pound research prize

Indian-origin academics from the University of Oxford and a South Asian historian from King's College London are among 30 winners of the UK's 3-million-pound 2023 Leverhulme Trust award, which recognises exceptional research across different fields. Professor Amia Srinivasan from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford has been recognised for her work on epistemology, social and political philosophy, feminism, metaphilosophy, and the history of philosophy. Fellow Oxford University Professor, Ridhi Kashyap, from the Department of Sociology, has been honoured for her work on demography, social statistics, computational social science, digital and computational demography, and gender inequalities. Oxford is an exciting place to conduct research at the intersection of demography and computational social science. I look forward to continuing my research in both substantive and methodological directions and contributing to the advancement of digital and computational ...

Syngene International Q2 results: Net profit rises 14.22% to Rs 116.5 crore

Syngene International Ltd on Tuesday reported a 14.22 per cent increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 116.5 crore in the September quarter. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 102 crore in the year-ago period, Syngene International said in a regulatory filing. Consolidated revenue from operations were at Rs 910.1 crore as compared to Rs 768.1 crore in the year-ago period, it added. The company's total expenses rose to Rs 773.6 crore in the second quarter of the current fiscal as against Rs 653.5 crore a year ago. Syngene International Managing Director and CEO Jonathan Hunt said the company posted strong results for the second quarter and first half of the ongoing financial year, particularly in its development and manufacturing services. "In development services, we also added a new non-GMP capability centre to meet market demand for agile, cost-efficient, early phase development and scale-up services," he said. "In manufacturing, we made good progress on o

Isro chief Somanath conferred honorary doctorate by Bengalore University

ISRO Chairman S Somanath dedicated the honorary doctorate conferred on him by the Bangalore University on Tuesday to the team members of the recently-launched Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya-L1 missions. He sent a video message as he could not be present for the 58th annual convocation of the university to receive the honour due to his work-related commitments. "Let me also accept the degree awarded to me by the Bangalore University as a gesture of their love and affection to each and every scientist and engineer and also the technicians, the workers of the Indian Space Research Organisation who have done such stellar work of making India proud through the missions like Chandrayaan as well as Aditya-L1 in the recent times," he said in his video message which was played at the convocation ceremony. Somanath said the space agency is always focused towards bringing the benefits of space technology to the common man. "I would like to also mention today that the work in the Department of Spac

Gender bias seen in AI-generated content on leadership, new research says

New research has revealed an inherent gender bias in the content - text, images, other media - generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Analysing AI-generated content about what made a 'good' and 'bad' leader, men were consistently depicted as strong, courageous, and competent, while women were often portrayed as emotional and ineffective, researchers at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and Massey University, New Zealand, found. Thus, AI-generated content can preserve and perpetuate harmful gender biases, they said in their study published in the journal Organizational Dynamics. "Any mention of women leaders was completely omitted in the initial data generated about leadership, with the AI tool providing zero examples of women leaders until it was specifically asked to generate content about women in leadership. "Concerningly, when it did provide examples of women leaders, they were proportionally far more likely than male leaders to be offered as examples of bad leaders, .

Govt approves 18 R&D projects of technical textiles worth Rs 46.74 crore

Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday chaired the 7th meeting of the Mission Steering Group of National Technical Textiles Mission, and 18 R&D projects worth Rs 46.74 crore were approved, according to an official statement. The cleared projects include those under key strategic areas of Geotech, Protech, Indutech, Sustainable Textiles, Sportech, Smart E-Textiles and Meditech segments. The textiles minister said the industry's proactive and robust engagement is essential for the indigenous development of technical textiles in India. Goyal also reviewed the progress of different components of the National Technical Textiles Mission, including review of sanctioned R&D products, R&D projects in Mission mode, formation of a committee for Startups in technical textiles under GREAT Guidelines and certain outreach activities and events. Emphasis should be on R&D for globally highly imported technical textiles items, apart from import-dependent technical textiles items and ...

Govt rolls out Rs 5,000 cr scheme for innovation in pharma, medtech

The PRIP scheme has two main components - the first one would focus on infrastructure building

CCMB moves 83 terabytes of genomics data to AWS cloud to boost research

CCMB has already reduced the time taken for research analysis from 550 days to just nine days, or by up to 98 per cent on average, with cloud computing services, AWS said

Team including Indian wins 2023 Nobel prize for humorous scientific feats

A team of scientists from India, China, Malaysia and the US has won this year's Ig Nobels, the prize for humorous scientific feats, in the mechanical engineering category for its study of repurposing dead spiders to be used in gripping tools, the organisers said. Counting nose hairs in cadavers, repurposing dead spiders, smart toilets idea, and explaining why scientists lick rocks, were among the 10 winning achievements in the 33rd Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The prizes were announced on Thursday during an online event produced by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research'. The Nobel Prize is the premier award in science, reserved for those that "have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. However, the Ig Nobel Prize celebrates the most trivial and ridiculous achievements that first make people laugh, and then think. Researchers Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, from Rice University in the US, won the prize for their research on ...

Artificial intelligence could aid future viral outbreak response: Study

Researchers have developed an innovative patient triage platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that they say can predict patient disease severity and length of hospitalisation during a viral outbreak. Triage is the prioritisation of patient care based on illness, severity, prognosis, and resource availability. The platform, described recently in the journal Human Genomics, leverages machine learning, a form of AI, and data from metabolomics -- the study of small molecules related to cell metabolism. The innovation is intended to improve patient management and help health care providers allocate resources more efficiently during severe viral outbreaks that can quickly overwhelm local health care systems, the researchers said. "Being able to predict which patients can be sent home and those possibly needing intensive care unit admission is critical for health officials seeking to optimise patient health outcomes and use hospital resources most efficiently during an outbreak

Cabinet okays Rs 5k cr PRIP scheme to boost research and innovation

The scheme is set to stimulate collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, Cabinet greenlights Rs 5,000 crore PRIP scheme to boost research and innovation institutions, and start-ups

Indian, Japanese bodies partner on waste management, environment research

The Kolkata-based International Society of Waste Management, Air and Water (ISWMAW) and the Kyoto Beyond SDGs consortium of Japan have inked an agreement on academic, research and industry collaboration between the two Asian countries on various environmental issues. ISWMAW president Sadhan Kumar Ghosh said twenty students from India and 20 others from Japan will also visit each other's country as part of an exchange programme. He said 47 educational institutes are involved in the exercise - 40 in West Bengal and seven in Japan. The MoU was signed for establishing partnerships focussing on sustainable development goals to develop human resource exchanges and information exchange and research collaboration among the industry, academia and government. "Apart from visiting different academic institutions and places of interest and participating in different programmes, every visiting student will be put up at the house of a Japanese friend of his age as part of the initiative to know

JNU professor Gobardhan Das appointed as new director of IISER Bhopal

Gobardhan Das will be the institute's third director since its inception in 2008

Sebi proposes body for administration, supervision of research analysts

Capital markets regulator Sebi on Tuesday proposed to recognise an entity designated as Research Analyst Administration and Supervisory Body (RAASB), which will be responsible for the administration and supervision of the research analysts. In its consultation paper, Sebi said that the proposed body should not place any additional financial burden on the research analysts (RAs). Further, the application fee and registration fee as specified under the current RA Regulations has been proposed to be rationalised accordingly. In addition, it has been suggested to amend the rules to provide that membership of RAASB should be one of the eligibility criteria for consideration of the grant of registration certificate as RA. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has sought comments from the public on the proposals till September 12. "Considering the evolving nature of business of RAs, it is proposed that, on similar lines as IAASB, Sebi may recognise a body, designated as Resear

NRF: What research should be funded?

An effective National Research Foundation would prioritise excellence over relevance, support a wide range of projects, and stress funding millions of individual researchers

Karnataka Research Foundation to be set up for R-D in startups: Minister

Karnataka Minister N S Boseraju on Saturday said a state-level research foundation will be formed to conduct research and development in startups and industries. Speaking at the valedictory session of the Indian StartUp Festival-2023 at Sathya Sai Village here, Boseraju said it is imperative for constant research and development in the field of science and technology that is fundamental to the startup ecosystem. "Our government is taking all necessary steps to create an enabling atmosphere including scientific temperament in the process of learning. We have also focused on protecting ecology and environment as well as ensure a robust economy," said the minister, who holds the Science and Technology and Minor Irrigation departments. Stating that Bengaluru is rightly described as the startup capital of the country, Boseraju said the government has created an enabling atmosphere in terms of infrastructure because of which a number of startup industries are coming up in a big way. "In

Bill to set up national agency to fund research across universities passes

The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed the Anusandhan National Research Foundation Bill 2023 to set up a national agency to fund research across universities in the country. The Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on Monday. It was passed by a voice vote in the Rajya Sabha in just 40 minutes after being taken up for consideration and passage. Only six members participated in the debate as the Opposition had earlier walked out of the House. Replying to the discussion for consideration and passage of the Bill, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh termed it "history in the making" and said it is going to have long-term outcomes. As Opposition members were not present in the Upper House during the discussion and passage of the Bill, Singh said the government was looking forward to having more constructive inputs from them as well. Participating in the discussion on the Bill, Sujit Kumar of the BJD said: "The hope is that this Bill - NRF 2023 - will bring about an integrated, holis

Lok Sabha passes Anusandhan National Research Foundation Bill for research

The Lok Sabha on Monday passed the Anusandhan National Research Foundation Bill to set up a national agency to fund research across universities in the country. Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh had introduced the Anusandhan National Research Foundation Bill-2023 on Friday in the Lower House. The bill seeks to set up a Rs 50,000-crore fund, with a sizeable contribution from the private sector by tapping into the corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds, to "seed, grow and promote" research and development (R&D) and foster a culture of research and innovation throughout India's universities, colleges, research institutions, and R&D laboratories. "PM Narendra Modi has provided an enabling milieu due to which over the last nine years, many taboos of the past were broken, space was opened up for the private sector that is why many startups are working with ISRO. It was our Chandrayan that brought pictures of water and today organisations like NASA are waiting for ..