Indo-Canadian Symposium on medicinal plants and functional foods

Federation of Indian Herbal Industry (FIHI) and Sinhgad Institute of Pharmacy, Lonavala are organising `The 3rd Indo Canadian Symposium on Medicinal Plants and functional foods in the management of Diabetes obesity and cardiovascular diseases' at Lonavala (100 km from Mumbai) from February 23rd to 25th 2008. Contact person:
Prof Vimala Devi, President,FIHI at auropharma@vsnl.net

World Development Report 2008

World development report 2008 focuses on agriculture. Chapter 7 deals with innovating through science and technology. Download report from:

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2008/Resources/WDR_00_book.pdf

LaCONES

The ambitious international project Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES) was launched in 1998 by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB). Project envisaged to help conserve the fast disappearing big cats and preserve genetic diversity of selected species of animals. The methods used to conserve and propagate these species are artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, transfer of embryo and finally cloning. As part of this project, artificial insemination of big cats was tried for the first time. Between April 2000 and January 2001, four lionesses were artificially inseminated 12 times while three such trials were also done in the case of a female leopard. But CCMB did not get any success in terms of obtaining pregnancy following insemination.Success had come with the birth of a live fawn by Black Buck artificially inseminated b non-surgical intra-vaginal insemination.

source: www.csir.res.in/External/Heads/Blacky-CCMB.pdf

MEMS Innovation Fest 2007

The first international conference on MEMS innovation is going to be held at Bangalore on 9th & 10th December 2007, with an unique theme based on 'BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN PROTOTYPE TO COMMERCIALISATION'. There will be a workshop on MEMS by Dr Vincent, co-founder & Vice President, Asia Pacific Microsystems,Taiwan.
Contact: sayanu pamidighantam at sayanu@hotmail.com.

Global Innovation and Technology Alliance (GITA)

Global Innovation and Technology Alliance (GITA) is an initiative of CII and the Government of India (DST) for promotion and facilitation of International Technology Programmes for the benefit of Indian Industry and Institutions. GITA is organizing Technology platform at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from 14th to 15th November 2007. GITA works as a promotion, management, execution arm of DSTs International Cooperation Division (ICD).

New American legislation on S&T, Innovation &Competitiveness

Earlier this year, both the U.S. House and Senate passed comprehensive legislation (H.R. 2272, S. 761) to ensure US competitive position in the world through improvements to math and science education and a strong commitment to research. There will be a a President’s Council on Innovation and Competitiveness ; a directive that each federal research agency should support and promote innovation through funding for high-risk, high-reward research.

KMINDIA 2007

KM India 2007 annual summit is planned on 14th to 16th in New Delhi. Master classes include talk by Christian Bason on `Giving innovation a home'. Christian is Manager at Mindlab and is the author of books in Danish "Innovating Welfare - leading fresh thinking in the public sector".

The Indian Abacus

Chinese Abacus , Japanese Abacus- everyone heard of them. But Indian Abacus- little known among general public yet creating wave of excitement among mathematics teachers and students has come from innovator M.S. Nethrapal, an IPS officer with a BTech from IIT Madras and MBA from IIM Bangalore. He invented the e-square-m speed maths and new abacus system which implements all the vedic operations in it.
Looking for franchise, contact : nethrapal_ips@yahoo.co.in

Ananth Technologies

Ananth technologies receives DSIR in-house R&D award Electronics for development of 12 Channel rotary telemetry system for Gas Turbine.Dr. Subba Rao Pavuluri, M.D has been awarded the prestigious "BHASKARA" award for the year 1999. This award was in recognition of Dr. Rao's significant and unique contribution to the Remote Sensing programme by the Indian Society of Remote Sensing (ISRS) in recognising Dr Rao's significant efforts. This was followed by another award for "Excellence in Electronics R & D and for the outstanding Performance for the year 2001-02" by Ministry of Communication & Information Technology, New Delhi.

India R&D 2007

FICCI and CSIR are organizing India R&D 2007 conference in New Delhi on 5th & 6th December. Check for details at www.indiarnd.com

Skills India

The SKILLS portal , a new initiative of DST and UNDP, has been developed to serve the purpose of being a repository of information for vocational course and trades that have potential for both wage and self-employment. The portal provides course material, toolkit details and competencies in several trades. The institutions that offer courses related to these trades and also details regarding institutional infrastructure and capabilities are provided. Registered users of the portal can contribute course material for new trades, relevant articles, whitepapers and any other information useful for this community.

India Innovation conference-CII

CII Innovation Conclave scheduled in New Delhi for the 15th - 16th November. Anchored by EREHWON and CII the summit 'Accelerating Product & Business Model Innovation' is designed to bring together cutting edge innovators across industries, to discuss and share their stories on ‘Product and Business model Innovations – Challenges and opportunities’ and make India the fountainhead of innovation for the world.
Contact person:
Abhay Kumar Sinha
In Charge – Manufacturing Competitiveness Sub-Committee, CII - NR
Head - Western U.P. Zonal Office, CII
CMA Tower, A-2E, Mezzanine Floor, Sector-24, Noida
Tel-0120-4345972(D), 73, 4231957
Fax:-0120-4345970, Mobile:- 9818523517
E-mail: abhay.sinha@ciionline.org

BioAsia Innovation Award for Young Scientists-2008

BioAsia Innovation Award was introduced for the first time in BioAsia 2007 through Federation of Asian Biotech Associations (FABA) to promote Innovation among the young Scientists below the age of 35.Dr. Madhusudan Reddy Nandineni received the award for his proposal on “A Microbial Process for L-Arginine Production”.

Now, proposals are invited for BioAsia 2008 award. Closing date: 1st January 2008.

DNA testing for less than 200 US dollars

GeneTree and Ancestry.com both sell DNA kits for less than $200. Users can build online family trees and contact others with DNA matches to compare family histories. Both GeneTree and Ancestry use DNA test kits from Sorenson Genomics.GeneTree sends mouthwash that users swirl in their mouths, spit into a container and mail back for $99 or $149, depending on how much DNA the user wants analyzed. With Ancestry, users return a cheek swab. Ancestry offers a greater variety of tests; the one comparable to GeneTree's higher-end offering costs $179.
Source: Technology Review

Research Grants from MIT Deshpande Centre

What is hot in research? One indication is Research Grants from MIT Deshpande Centre. See the list for 2007 and pick yr winners.

The fall 2007 grant recipients are:
Continuous Drug Delivery: Yet-Ming Chiang
A new device to provide medicine through a portable delivery device to assist individuals with chronic diseases (renewal from fall 2006 grant round).

CD-4 T Lymphocyte-Counting Microchip: Utkan Demirci
A disposable CD-4 T lymphocyte-counting microchip providing fast, cost-effective on-site HIV virus monitoring to improve patient care in the developing world.

Drug Delivery for Heart Surgery Patients: Elazer Edelman
A unique means of safely administering peri-operative drugs for heart failure patients.

Compound to Enhance Immune Stimulation: Gerald Fink
A compound to stimulate a more powerful immune response to specific monoclonal antibodies, potentially enabling development of effective new disease therapies.

Energy Storage in Carbon Nanotube Super-Springs: Carol Livermore and Timothy Havel
A dramatically improved mechanical energy storage system that could lead to new products such as mechanical watches than run for a month between windings (renewal from Fall 2006 grant round).

Power Source for Terahertz Imaging: Keith Nelson
A compact power source enabling safe and efficient terahertz imaging for explosive detection and other applications.

High-Amperage Energy Storage Device: Donald Sadoway
A new technology to store high-amperage energy for industrial settings (renewal from Fall 2006 grant round).

High throughput Nanoscale Imaging: Henry Smith and Rajesh Menon
An absorbance modulation technique enabling economical high-resolution, high-throughput, nanoscale imaging for faster, more flexible analysis of nano-structures.

Renewable Propane from Biomass: Jefferson Tester
Technology to allow the production of propane from biomass, such as sugar, starches, or cellulose.

Drug delivery system to enhance healing of wounds and burns: Ioannis Yannas and François Berthiaume
Novel skin substitutes designed to accelerate blood vessel growth, improve wound and burn healing, and to reduce the risk of infections.

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

Teaching the new carbon math

Earth Council Geneva (ECG), the GHG Experts Network (GEN) and ClimateCHECK have combined their forces and expertise to form a new highly-charged organization called the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute. The mission of the new institution is to raise the bar on GHG emissions training and management, and become the standard bearer for best practices in this field. Supported online learning, ECG’s specialty, will be used to accomplish this in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

Gurtej Sandhu

Gurtej Sandhu is listed among the top 10 prolific innovators, he is ranked fifth with a patent portfolio of 576. He is an alumni of Guru Nanak Dev University ,physics graduate of 1983.
Gurtej S. Sandhu is the engineering manager responsible for directing strategic technology developments at Micron Technology, Inc. He received his degree in electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and received a Ph.D. degree in physics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1990. He then joined Micron Technology, where he has been in a number of engineering and management roles responsible for process technology development, pilot manufacturing and transfers to manufacturing. He has been involved with a broad range of process technologies, such as ion implantation, deposition technologies, plasma processing,
CMP, Litho and front-end and back-end module integration technologies for IC processing.
He has been associated with microelectronics technology for over 15 years and has pioneered a number of process technologies such as CVD Ti, Plasma MOCVD TiN among others, which are currently employed in mainstream IC manufacturing. Moreover, he has been associated with introduction of a number of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) based processes into IC manufacturing. Dr. Sandhu has authored over 75 technical papers .

Review of UK's Science & Innovation policy

A full-scale review of the UK's science and innovation system was released on 5th October offering detailed recommendations for boosting the pace of that country's research commercialization efforts. It has gotten not only high marks from university and business leaders, but also an immediate response from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the form of new funding and programs called for in the report. Authored by former science minister and millionaire businessman Lord Sainsbury, the review made more than 50 recommendations, four of which were immediately embraced by Brown.
download copy
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/sainsbury_review/sainsbury_index.cfm

Kalpasar Project-modern India's most ambitious project

It is an extraordinary project that involves building a 64 km dam and turning a part of the Arabian Sea into a freshwater lake. It will take at least 20 years to build and if it ever gets off the ground, it will cost around Rs 50,000 crore (Rs 500 billion). It envisages creation of fresh water basin of more than 2000 sq. kms, which will receive water from 12 rivers flowing into Gulf including excess water from Narmada, Mahi, Sabarmati and Dhadhar. Labs NEERI and NIO signed MOU to carry out impact assessment study.