‘It has been developed after a three-year research and will take a year for field trial’
College of Fisheries here has developed a kit for detecting residues of a particular pesticide in fish and shell fish.
It could detect residues of chlorpyrifos in fish and shell fish, according to K.M. Shankar, Dean (Fisheries) of the college.
Speaking to media following demonstration of the kit at the college on Thursday he said chlorpyrifos was extensively used in agriculture.
Its residues could join water sources such as ponds and rivers at any time, due to human activity. With this, fish cultured in ponds came into contact with this pesticide.
Those engaged in in-land fisheries, exporters, and fish consumers could use this kit for detecting the pesticide content.
He said the kit has been developed following a three-year research. It would take one more year for field trial. Using the kit, a sample could be tested with in 10 minutes.
Field trial
Mr. Shankar said that if the technology was to reach consumers it would have to be transferred to a company for developing the kits. The company would have to conduct the field trial. The college would have to take steps for technology transfer.
The kit, which is yet to be named, was developed with funding from the Department of Biotechnology, Delhi and European Union, Brussels.
Earlier, the college had developed a kit called RapidDot for field level detection of white spot virus in shrimp. It has been commercialised through M/s. Virbac Animal Health Care Ltd., Mumbai.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Mangaluru / by Raviprasad Kamila / Mangaluru – December 04th, 2015
Lakshmidevamma in her clean kitchen in Vyachakurahalli village, Chikkaballapur district, Karnataka, on Thursday.
Gauribidanur (Chikkaballapur District) :
Until last month, Thimmakka had to blow her lungs out even to make a cup of coffee. And this has been her ritual for 40 years now . Not any more. Her kitchen is now fitted with an LPG stove. Like 274 other households in Vyachakurahalli of Gauribidanur taluk in Chikkaballapur district.
Cooking with firewood is passe in Vyachakurahalli since all households here have LPG. The Union petroleum ministry has officially declared it as India’s first smokeless village, owing to its conversion from conventional fuel to LPG. “My compliments to the residents of Vyachakurahalli which has been declared as the first smokeless village in India,” tweeted petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) piloted the ‘Mission Smokeless village’ project here, about 77km from Bengaluru. “The idea was to redeem women’s health,” said Moti Sayi Vasudevan, general manager (smokeless villages) at IOC. “Due to the continuous inhalation of particles, women are more prone to pneumonia due to usage of firewood as a fuel.”
For over four decades, firewood had been the only fuel for the most of the village’s women. Wracked by bouts of cough caused by the soot-filled air in the blackened kitchens, cooking was an ordeal for them.
But that was until last week. Now, the kitchens have got swanky steel gas stoves and red cylinders. While a separate plank has been built to accommodate the new gas stove in Lakshmidevamma’s kitchen, Saraswathamma is looking forward to cooking these days. “I would frequently have bouts of cough due to the continuous use of firewood,” she said. “This is the best thing that has happened to women in the village.”
In drought-hit Gauribidanur, this recognition for clean fuel comes as a huge relief. As Ratnamma put it: “No more black roofs and black lungs.”
Learning safe handling of LPG
Gita Jayender sits with a group of women in a small thatched roof kitchen, telling them how to operate an LPG stove, how it is important to switch off the regulator at the end of the day, how not to leave utensils on the stove and go away, among other things. Shrenik Enterprises on Railway Station Road is buzzing with activity as entire families walk in to purchase new LPG stoves. “We had to first conduct an awareness campaign for villagers to tell them why it is important to go smokeless. Drought is staring at them. Why LPG, they asked,” said Shrenik R J, who is spearheading the smokeless movement in the village. The next project will be taken up at Gandhian Dr H Narasimhaiah’s birthplace, Hosur, in Chikkaballapur district, he said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Bengaluru / by Seetha Lakshmi, TNN / December 04th, 2015
Disha Karigar demonstrating her bicycle generator.— Photo: VAIDYA
Event is an initiative of Ministry of Science and Technology
The project to generate electricity from a stationary bicycle developed by Disha Karigar, a class VII student of Mythri Higher Primary School at Shikaripur, has been selected for a national-level science exhibition, being conducted as part of Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) launched by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The State-level exhibition (INSPIRE) was held at B.K. School at Belagavi, recently.
The model displayed by Ms. Karigar won the first place and thereby, she was chosen for the national-level event scheduled to be held at New Delhi on December 5.
The title of the project is Homemade bicycle generator. K.R. Dayanand, administrative officer of the school, said in a press release that the generator worked on Faraday’s law of electro-magnetic induction. The rim of the bicycle wheel is attached to the shaft of the DC motor of 12-volt capacity with a driving belt. When the bicycle is peddled, the belt and the shaft revolve concurrently, creating an electromagnetic field. With the effect of the electromagnetic field, electricity is generated. In this project, 150 Watts of power can be generated with 1,500 revolutions a minute (RPM).The electricity generated here could be used for domestic lighting and recharging of mobile sets. The stand and the rim of the bicycle has been fabricated to suit the purpose. Peddling of this bicycle is good for health, besides generating power through environment-friendly method, he said.
Ms. Karigar hails from Gagri, a village in Shikaripur taluk. Her father Nagaraj Karigar is a lecturer in a private Industrial Training Institute here and her mother is a homemaker.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Karnataka / Veerendra P M / Shivamogga – November 26th, 2015
If high-adrenaline action is the surest sign of transmitting a message, Deepak Ravindran is sending out one loud and clear. His Bengaluru-based startup Lookup, which has Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Infosys’s Kris Gopalakrishnan as investors, is in the final stages of closing its latest round of funding. And the CEO and founder of the hyperlocal messaging app, that allows businesses to connect with local consumers, reveals the announcement can be expected within a week.
Inspiration for Lookup struck Ravindran while visiting his hometown of Kasargod, Kerala. “I saw my mom chatting with her grocer over WhatsApp and placing her order. That was an eye opener about the way people use chat,” Ravindran says, in a telephonic interview from Bengaluru.
With WhatsApp, he noticed one needs to save the number for ease of communication. Once that is done, you can see each other’s frequently changed display pictures, which may create privacy issues. He addressed those with Lookup, ensuring consumers do not have to worry about chatting with storekeepers they’ve never met before.
The messaging industry has been this 30-year-old serial entrepreneur’s core strength, with this being his third venture in the space. Keeping an eye on the shifting tech landscape, he has morphed the form to suit changing needs. His 2007-launch student startup Innoz for example, was an SMS-based search engine. “It was a time when mobile phones were becoming popular. But internet was still not so common. We saw the potential for an offline search engine,” says Ravindran.
But by 2014, with data lording over voice, Ravindran realised the rules had changed again. To meet the challenge, he decided to merge the two big trends of messaging (chats) and apps. Lookup was born out of this union.
Meet Lookup’s Deepak Ravindran, a CEOentrepreneur who chose funding over finishing college and got his competition (no less than Twitter co-founder Biz Stone) to invest in his venture.
Fashioned after Steve Jobs
Ravindran’s story at 18 wasn’t typical of the average Indian science student. He took his medical and engineering entrance exams, securing ranks in both. He liked computer science, so he picked engineering.
He had discovered the internet just a few years before at 15. Logging on via a dial-up connection, he was fascinated by the worldwide web. He says, “I started looking for inspiring stories and read about Steve Jobs and a few others. I read how he started a company at a very young age and that idea stuck.”
By the time he entered Lal Bahadur Shastri Col lege of Engineering in Kasargod in 2005, Ravindran had decided that he would use it as a fertile ground to found his own company. He did so in 2007, with three classmates. When his startup was picked by IIM-A’s iAccelerator program that promised funding of Rs 3-5 lakh, things came to a head. The founders had to shift base to Ahmedabad, which meant a choice between college and the accelerator.
The quartet made their choice. They dropped out of college. “Dropping out is a fad now. But it was extremely risky back then. The only reason we did it was because we were getting funded for the first time,” says Ravindran, disclosing that they did worry about getting good placements if things didn’t work out.
For a month, the families of Ravindran and his friends believed they had quit college to pursue an MBA at IIM. “It sounded all fancy,” he said. It eventually worked out, as from dropouts, they went to being the largest recruiter at their erstwhile engineering college, taking on over 100 students within a couple of years — first at Innoz and later at Lookup.
From competitors to partners
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was Ravindran’s competition at one point. After Innoz plateaued in 2013 and the team failed to sell it off, Ravindran decided to move to US for an MIT incubator program. He founded a Q&A platform Quest, that competed with Quora and Stone’s Jelly.
Stone was interested in acquiring Quest for a possible expansion into the Asian market. But Ravindran managed to raise just $50,000 over a year, falling way short of the $500,000 target. That’s when he decided to wind Quest down and return to India
Incidentally, Stone’s Jelly failed too. In an interview with Mashable, he even admitted that today, a small group of dedicated users is the only thing keeping the app alive. But a previous failure didn’t hamper Ravindran’s prospects according to Stone, who came on board Lookup after a San Francisco meeting in April.
Undoubtedly, things are looking up for Ravindran at Lookup.
source: http://www.economictimes.indiatimes.com / The Economic Times / ET Home> Magazines> Panache / by Masoom Gupte, ET Bureau / September 03rd, 2015
Millions of differently-abled Indians are technically qualified with the necessary skills to be employable.
But most remain jobless since there are no vehicles to take them. A Bengalurean’s effort to bridge this glaring gap with a fleet of vans modified to accommodate wheelchairs has been grounded for long. Reason: No one wants to fund this initiative, even if the brains behind it is a startup activator himself.
The irony can’t be starker: Wheelchair-bound V Shakthi has been an inspiration for dozens of startups, linking them up with venture capitalists and startup activators. But he has been struggling to realise his vision for five years. Shakthi commutes in a modified cab, a prototype of sorts that could be replicated.
Shakthi explained the rationale behind a modified cab service: “Forty-eight per cent of the estimated 20 million differently- abled people in the country have the necessary skill sets needed to land a job. There are not even 100 of them employed across Bengaluru. Even the employed are stuck at one level, they never go up. Potential employers are ready if this commute issue is addressed.”
But modification is a costly affair. “If the vehicle cost is Rs 7 lakh, you ought to spend another Rs 6 lakh configuring it to accommodate three to four wheelchairs. Add the cost of engaging a driver who is sensitive to the needs of the disabled, maintenance and fuel, and it gets heftier,” said Shakthi. The total cost per vehicle could exceed Rs 12 lakh.
The project plan is modest: A fleet of two to three vehicles, which could be scaled up later. But no one wants to invest the Rs 25 lakh required to get it going. Investors, said Shakthi, insist on a mobile-first, app-based version. Some have even declared it impractical without giving it a thought. Others say it is a service line and not worth an investment.
Undaunted, Shakthi wants to go ahead even if it means hard self-financing. “Even if it takes five to six years, I want to do it for the differently-abled but skilled people,” said the man, who is also the most followed differently-abled Indian on the Internet. He has 1.65 lakh Twitter followers.
Buildings and public infrastructure in Bengaluru are notoriously inaccessible to the disabled. Footpaths, bus stops and other public spaces pose mounting challenges to the visually challenged and the physically disabled. Access audits have repeatedly drawn attention to these glaring lacunae with little effect.
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> States / by Rasheed Kappan, Bengaluru / DHNS – November 19th, 2015
Udaan, a skit to create awareness on special children will be staged this Saturday at Orion Mall
Child empowerment is the underlying message of Udaan says Sujatha
Udaan, directed by Sujatha Balakrishnan and written by Rebecca Ananya Mathias, an engineering student from MSRIT, is an awareness skit on special children. Udaan, in Hindi, means to fly, but also stands for undoubtedly differently-abled amazing nebulae.
The skit is an awareness initiative by Soroptimist International of Bangalore, a global organisation of women in diverse walks of life working on the upliftment of women and children from less privileged backgrounds.
Sujatha, a former teacher and counsellor for children with learning disabilities, joined SI, Bangalore in 2004 and is their Immediate Past President. “We focus on the three Es: educate, empower and enable. Women’s empowerment is the core vision.” She speaks with passion about the skit and the cause for special children. “I am an advocate of inclusive education. I go every year to the U.S., where my daughter lives, and volunteer in public schools there. There children are accepted as they are. You don’t label them.”
The multi-faceted Sujatha, who has done a lot of theatre, says the art form is a powerful medium of expression. “Theatre done for a social cause is not just for entertainment, but goes beyond that. Working on this play has been a dream of mine. The children and parents were so enthusiastic. I got an overwhelming response from them.”
Sujatha says the script is very powerful. “The protagonist is Tara, she’s autistic. Eighty per cent of the characters are real. The teacher in the play has a theatre connection too. She is the primary caregiver for her sister who has Down’s syndrome sister. A teenage boy plays Tara in scenes three and four. His brother goes to Spastics Society.” Another highlight of the play is a rap song written by Sujatha. “Special children are a delight, in their own right. Show them that you are there, whenever they need your care”….goes the first line, followed by rhyming gems of compassion. “I just sat down one day to write and the song just flowed. We plan to showcase this with the children coming with placards with each line written on them.” Sujatha concludes with a quote by anonymous: “Children with special needs aren’t sent to special parents. They make parents special”.
Udaan will be staged at Orion mall amphitheatre on November 21 at 6 p.m. Entry is free.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindi / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Sravasti Datta / Bangalore – November 18th, 2015
Mysuru-based renowned agriculture scientist Dr. C. L. Laxmipathi Gowda has been conferred Fellowships of two prestigious agriculture research professional bodies in 2015.
In January this year, Dr. Laxmipathi Gowda was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) based in New Delhi. The Academy is a national level body in India devoted to agricultural sciences. The Fellows of the Academy are recognised for their contributions to science, and includes distinguished personalities in the field of Agriculture and Allied Sciences, both from India and abroad.
Early this week, the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) awarded him the Fellowship of American Society of Agronomy during the Annual Meeting held at the Hilton Minneapolis, Minneapolis, USA. The ASA is a progressive international scientific society that fosters the transfer of knowledge and practices to sustain global agriculture dedicated to advancing the field of agronomy in relation to soils, crop production, environmental quality, ecosystem sustainability, bioremediation, waste management, recycling, and wise land use.
Dr. Laxmipathi Gowda was formerly Deputy Director General-Research, ICRISAT, Hyderabad. As Coordinator of the Cereals and Legumes Asia Network (CLAN) he helped strengthen the national research-for-development (R4D) capacity of national agriculture research systems (NARS) in 12 countries in Asia.
As chickpea breeder he also helped 30 national programmes in Asia and Africa to select and release 70 improved, high-yielding and disease resistant chickpea (Bengal gram or Chana) varieties (both Desi and Kabuli types) that were adopted by smallholder farmers extensively leading to increased food production.
He has received more than 30 awards and recognitions from many countries and professional bodies. Recently, the Government of Karnataka nominated him as a Member of the Vision Group on Agriculture chaired by Prof. M. S. Swaminathan.
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / Wednesday – November 18th, 2015
Aprameya Karthik, Abhigya Anand, Rea Elizabeth & Dhanush
Mysuru :
Four children from city were among 25 children from across the State, who were felicitated for their achievements in the respective fields on the occasion of Children’s Day celebrations at Jawahar Bal Bhavan in Bengaluru on Saturday. City’s young artists Aprameya Karthik, N. Danush, Abhigya Anand and Rea Elizabeth Acchaiah were felicitated by Women and Child Welfare Minister Umashree during the event.
S.R. Aprameya Karthik, a student of Maharshi Public School in city, has drawn more than 3,000 different sketches of Lord Ganesha and also holds a national record for the same. He is the son of S. Ramanathan and M.V. Anitha, residents of J.P. Nagar here.
N. Dhanush, an 8th student of Manasarowar Pushkarini Vidyashrama, is an upcoming singer. Danush has participated in many competitions and won prizes. He is the son of A.N. Nanje Gowda and T.S. Sudha, both teachers as Shiskarni Central School in Hebbal and Government Higher Primary School, Manchegowdana Koppal, respectively.
Abhigya Anand, a 6th std. student at the Government Higher Primary School in Bastipura in Srirangapatna Taluk, developed interest in Bhagavad Gita and has learnt all the chapters of the Holy Book.
He also conducts free Bhagavad Gita classes at Sri Krishna Temple in Gokulam everyday during which he teaches the chanting of slokas and also gives lectures on ill-effects of consuming junk food. Abhigya is also pursuing PG Diploma in Aryuvedic Microbiology. He is the son of Anand Ramasubramanian and Annu Anand, residents of Hebbal.
The other child prodigy from Mysuru to receive the award was Rea Elizabeth Acchaiah, a 9th std. student of St. Joseph Central School in Vijayanagar. She was awarded for her achievements in Roller-Skating. Rea is the daughter of Acchaiah and Priya, residents of Vijayanagar.
Among the awardees were 10-year-old M. Siddesh and 11-year-old Siya Vamanasa Khoday, who risked their lives to save people. They were felicitated with the ‘State Bravery Award’ on the occasion.
Governor Vajubhai R. Vala honoured M. Siddesh, a resident of Avaragere in Davanagere with the prestigious award for risking his life to save passengers traveling in the Harihara-Chitradurga Passenger Train on Mar. 15, 2015. Siddesh, who noticed craks on the railway track near Avaragere, quickly removed his red shirt and started waving at the train, thus averting a major mishap.
Siya Vamanasa Khoday from Dharwad, who also received the Bravery Award, had saved her younger brother Kumara Yallappa when he had come in contact with the live-wire while playing at the terrace of his house in Dharwad.
The State Government also honoured four organisations and four individuals working for the welfare of children namely Ranga Kahale (Bengaluru), Belagavi Roller Skating Akademi (Belagavi), Samruddhi Charitable Trust (Bidar) and Sneha Sadana (Mangaluru), K. Prabha Narayanagowda (Chikkaballapur), Parampalli Narasimha Aital (Udupi), Ismail Moulasab Ukkali (Vijayapura) and Mehaboob Killedar (Koppal).
While the organisations received a cash prize of Rs. One lakh each, individuals were given Rs. 25,000 each.
The other children who received award are: Pranil Satare (Shivamogga), Deeksha Moolya (Udupi), N.B. Pragathi (Bengaluru), B. Likhith (Bengaluru), M. Panchami (Moodabidri), D.S. Bhoomika (Ballari), Sahana (Ballari), M.V. Alok Parla (Davanagere), Surakshit Gowda (Kolar), G. Gagana (Udupi), S.S. Gautham (Madikeri), Mohammed Suhail (Mandya), R.P. Rahul (Bagalkot), M. Mohammed (Raichur), Ganashri (Doddaballapur), J. Nihal (Tumakuru), Meghana (Chitradurga), Amruth Nagesh (Dharwad), K.G. Ananya (Hassan), M. Dhruthi (Dakshina Kannada), Yashaswi Ajit Kumar (Gadag) and Anthakarna (Shivamogga).
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / Monday – November 16th, 2015
You can now book an appointment with a raddiwala on an Android app, after which professionals turn up at your apartment and collect scrap and pay you a handsome amount too. Three Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduates, who quit their cushy corporate jobs and turned raddiwalas, have made this possible. The three – Priyank Jain (IIT Kharagpur), Harshal Chowdary (IIT Madras), and Rahul Jaiswal (IIT Kanpur), who worked in various technology firms, are now excited at the good response to their startup, encashea.com.
They started it in August by collecting scrap from residents of apartment complexes.
Presently, the firm is providing service to only apartment complexes in the south-eastern part of the city.
Mr. Jain said that it all started with the residents of high-rise apartment complexes finding it difficult to dispose off scrap. “We identified that residents of apartments had very restricted access to raddiwalas due to their secluded nature. It was a gap in the market which we decided to fill,” he said.
The firm has trained around 10 pick-up boys to professionally collect scrap from households. They operate the app, evaluate the worth of scrap and generate a digital invoice. The firm segregates and sells the waste to secondary recyclers.
Mr. Jain said that unlike most of the disruptive technology aggregators coming up, they were a logistics firm with operations on the ground.
He said a resident sold them over 100 kg of newspaper he had stacked up in his house for want of better avenues to dispose it. “Such avenues will encourage segregation of dry waste and wet waste in the house every day. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the e-waste that you sell a raddiwalah will be disposed off responsibly. We ensure that,” he said.
Ragpickers were the pioneers
The first to start such doorstep waste management in the city were ragpickers themselves, trained by Hasiru Dala.
Total Waste Management started a year-and-a-half ago. Today, it services 77 apartments in J.P. Nagar and Whitefield areas. You can book an appointment on the Total Waste Management app, and ragpickers arrive to educate and manage your waste — a 360 degree service, including wet waste.
The ragpickers visit these apartments twice a week and help the residents in composting as well, apart from collecting all dry waste and scrap.
Nalini Sekhar of Hasiru Dala, said that the very fact that ragpickers go to these apartments with uniforms and use an app to calculate the value of the waste has given them immense confidence. She also said that only Total Waste Management collects all waste from the residents and not cherry pick. “Regular raddiwalas also take only high-value waste like metal and paper, leaving behind low-value waste which attains a critical mass. In our model, high-value waste subsidises low-value waste,” she said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Bengaluru / by K.V. Aditya Bharadwaj / Bengaluru – November 16th, 2015
Raksha SafeDrive automatically alerts rescue services in the event of an accident
The high number of casualties in road accidents has prompted two entrepreneurs, Prasad Pillai and Jayanth Jagadeesh, to manufacture a gadget that automatically alerts rescue services in case of an accident. Raksha SafeDrive, an innovation from Elsys Intelligent Devices, a Thiruvananthapuram-based startup with an office in Bengaluru, debuted on KickStarter, the world’s leading crowdfunding platform, last month.
In the event of a crash, Raksha Safedrive, placed on the rearview mirror in front of the driver, will also send the location details of the vehicle and an initial assessment of the severity of the accident. It has a Smart Panic Button that provides a one-touch two-way voice connectivity with the support network, and can be used in case of an emergency. Officials from the centre will call the vehicle in distress, assesses the situation, and provide the needed assistance.
“Most drivers live through a near-miss accident scenario every week. We thank our stars, curse the other guy and move on. There is no reason why accident preparedness and management has to be so disorganised,” says CEO Prasad, who calls himself a safety freak, who likes to dream big and use technology to solve our everyday problems.
The gadget has been designed in such a way that there is minimal impact of the crash on the gadget itself. It’s an accessory that can be charged like a mobile phone. With a single charge, it works for six to eight hours. Mr. Prasad says they eventually plan to tie up with car manufacturers so that it comes inbuilt in all cars.
Mr. Prasad says that the company takes privacy issues very seriously, and data security features are as strict as in banks. The data collection features are turned off by default. All personal data are anonymised. Only in the event of an accident, the location of the vehicle is made known to the command centre.
“Most of the apps now can be used only to send an SOS alert. But ours provides a full infrastructure to provide all forms of assistance to occupants of a car involved in the crash,” says CMO Jayanth Jagadeesh, an avid biker, who has done a solo motorcycle road trip from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
The founders are also looking at beyond the gadget being merely an accident-alert system. It can gather data on driving patterns such as overspeeding, sudden applying of brakes or how often and where a vehicle has gone over potholes. The data analytics can warn motorists of stretches that have dangerous road conditions.
Mr. Prasad and Mr. Jagadeesh feel the current system of enforcing road discipline by only penalising errant drivers must be changed to one that will also incentivise good driving. “We can now measure driving pattern, and the data can be used to give a scorecard to the drivers, and even give discounts in insurance premium as a discount for good driving skills.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Bengaluru / by B. Prasad Nair / Bengaluru – November 11th, 2015
