Tag Archives: India World Record

GLOBAL & NATIONAL: SPORTS / CHESS: 2022 should go down in History as India’s Greatest Ever in Chess

From hosting the Chess Olympiad to Praggnanandhaa beating world champion Magnus Carlsen, India enjoyed significant success at the sport this year.

Two female chess players, one 35 and the other 15 did India proud in the Kazakhstan city of Almaty at the fag end of the year. At the World rapid and blitz chess championship, Koneru Humpy won a silver and B. Savitha Shri a bronze.

A great year for Indian chess just became greater. The year 2022 should actually go down in history as India’s greatest ever.

Over the last couple of decades or so, India has enjoyed some significant successes — Viswanathan Anand won five World championships, the first of which came in 2000 — and virtually every year, there have been several causes to cheer about, but 2022 has been unique.

Significant moment

India doesn’t boast as many great talents in the women’s section as it does in the men’s. So when a 15-year-old Savitha wins a medal at an event as prestigious as the World rapid and blitz championship, after beginning as the 36th seed, it is a significant moment. As is the silver of Humpy, a former World rapid champion.

Earlier in December, another Indian woman brought much joy to Indian chess. R. Vaishali did that in the City of Joy, as she stunned a very strong field to take the blitz title in the Tata Steel Chess India tournament at Kolkata.

At the very tournament, in the open section, Nihal Sarin claimed the rapid title and Arjun Erigaisi the blitz. R. Praggnanandhaa and D. Gukesh, who complete the magnificent quartet of Indian teenagers, may have disappointed at Kolkata, but they too have had some exceptional results right through the year.

In fact, Gukesh’s outstanding performance for India-2 at the Chess Olympiad in Chennai — he won his first eight games on the trot en route to the gold on the top board — was one of the highlights of the year in world chess. And India swept the medals at the Olympiad, winning nine out of the 36 medals on offer.

The Olympiad was an organisational success too, thanks in no small measure to the active participation of the Tamil Nadu Government, which had only got just four months to conduct an event featuring more than 1700 participants from 186 countries. The Olympiad also helped chess become more mainstream in India.

With players like Praggnanandhaa consistently making news, by scoring stunning wins against the likes of World champion Magnus Carlsen, the game hit the headlines regularly. The year’s last ranking list has eight Indians in the world’s top 70.

The year also saw India continuing to win medals at the World age-group championships and promising teenagers like V. Pranav and Pranav Anand turning Grandmasters.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

NATIONAL: SPORTS / DEFENCE SERVICES: The Indian Army Creates History and Pioneers by Recruiting 4 Meritorious Sportswomen as Havildars to Participate in the Women’s Category in National Boxing & Wrestling.

They were recruited as direct entry Havildars under its Mission Olympic Programme.

The Army has recruited four meritorious sportswomen into the Corps of Military Police as direct entry Havildars under its Mission Olympic Programme.

The four sportswomen — Recruit Havildar Sakshi (Boxing), Recruit Havildar Arundhati Choudhary (Boxing), Recruit Havildar Bhateri (Wrestling) and Recruit Havildar Priyanka (Wrestling) have created history by becoming pioneers to represent the Army in women category at the national championship in boxing and wrestling by participating in the 6th Elite Women National Boxing Championship 2022 from December 19 to 26 at Bhopal and Senior National Wrestling Championship from December 21 to 23 at Visakhapatnam.

The Army has a long tradition of promoting and nurturing sports personnel and runs a well-structured programme named “Mission Olympics”, the statement added.

Earlier in the year, Summy, an international-level sportswoman who excels in 400-metre athletics and Jasmine Lamboria, Commonwealth Games 2022 Bronze medalist in Boxing, were also recruited by the Army.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

NATIONAL: RURAL DEVELOPMENT: Sethrichem Sangtam of ‘Better Life Foundation’ gets ‘1st Rohini Nayyar Prize 2022’ for Rural Development in Nagaland

His organisation ‘Better Life Foundation’ focusses on rural livelihood security, environment sustainability and education for change.

Sethrichem Sangtam, who helped triple the incomes of 1,200 marginalised farmers in Eastern Nagaland, was awarded the first Rohini Nayyar prize for outstanding contribution to rural development.

The prize awarded to an individual 40 years or under in age, was presented by the Niti Ayog Vice-Chairman Suman Bery. The winner was selected by an eminent jury from civil society consisting of Dr. Ashok Khosla, founder, Development Alternatives; Dr. Rajesh Tandon, founder, PRIA; and Ms. Renana Jhabwala, national coordinator, SEWA.

Mr. Sangtam works with 1,200 marginalised farmers in Eastern Nagaland through his organisation ‘Better Life Foundation’, which focusses on rural livelihood security, environment sustainability and education for change.

Among his many achievements were encouraging farmers in the region to abandon wasteful slash, burn cultivation and move to permanent farming. The average income of the farmers tripled as a result of his interventions.

The prize had been instituted by the family of the late Dr. Rohini Nayyar, an eminent scholar-administrator who spent much of her professional life working on issues related to rural development in India.

Dr. Nayyar, a well-known economist and former principal adviser at the erstwhile Planning Commission, was one of India’s foremost authorities on rural development. She passed away in October 2021.

Developing India’s social and economic development

The prize will be given out annually by the Nayyar Foundation for Social and Economic Purpose, set up to contribute to the social and economic development in India.

While giving away the award, Mr. Bery said many initiatives for rural India which one saw around at present, like the aspirational districts programme, the development of multi-dimensional poverty index for India, and the digitisation to create financial inclusion in rural India, were results of the efforts by Dr. Rohini Nayyar and her team, while she was in the Planning Commission.

Dr Deepak Nayyar, director of the Foundation, said that during her more than two-decades-long stint in the Planning Commission she also worked on the conceptualisation of the MGNREGA.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

GLOBAL: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / RESEARCH: Global Award ‘Ben Barres Spotlight 2022’ for RGCB Scientist, Dr. Karthika Rajeeve for Study on Pathogens. She is 1 of 12 Scientists Awarded Worldwide.

She has been working on the human pathogens  Chlamydia trachomatis. Her research focuses on how these pathogens evade the host immune system.

Dr. Karthika Rajeeve, staff scientist at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB), has been selected for the Ben Barres Spotlight Award, 2022.

The Ben Barres Spotlight Awards has been instituted by scientific journal eLife to perpetuate the memory of American neurobiologist Dr. Ben Barres, a transgender researcher who advocated equality in science.

Dr. Karthika is one of the 12 scientists from around the world chosen for the prestigious award this year. She has been working on the human pathogens  Chlamydia trachomatis. Her research focuses on how these pathogens evade the host immune system.

“The scientific community at RGCB is elated at the international recognition received by Dr. Karthika Rajeeve,” said Professor Chandrabhas Narayana, Director RGCB.

Money for equipment

Dr. Karthika said she would use the award to buy much-needed equipment to take forward her research, besides attending an international conference on Chlamydia biologists to increase the visibility of her work.

Chlamydia trachomatis (Ctr) is a neglected tropical disease and the infection remains asymptomatic as a silent epidemic. The bacteria persist over extended times within their host cell and thereby establish chronic infections.

Persistent and chronic infection can cause potentially fatal ectopic (outside the uterus) pregnancy, pelvic inflammatory disease and sterility.

Her study challenges a long-standing hypothesis and shows that interferon gamma can down regulate c-Myc, the key regulator of metabolism leading to chlamydial persistence.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

NATIONAL: DEFENCE / INDIAN NAVY: 5th Scorpène-class Submarine, the INS Vagir Delivered to Navy by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (MDL), Mumbai

It is scheduled to be commissioned into service in January.

The fifth Scorpène-class conventional submarine,  Vagir, was delivered to the Navy by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) Mumbai on December 20. It is scheduled to be commissioned into service next month, a Navy official said.

“It is a matter of great pride that Vagir has completed all major trials including the weapon and sensor trials in the shortest time in comparison to the earlier submarines,” the Navy said in a statement. A notable achievement is that this is the third submarine delivered to the Navy in a span of 24 months, it added.

Vagir was launched into water on November 12, 2020 and commenced sea trials on February 1, 2022.

The sixth and last of the Scorpène-class submarines,  Vagsheer, was launched into water in April 2022 and is expected to be delivered to the Navy by end 2023.

Six Scorpene submarines are being built under Project-75 by MDL under technology transfer from Naval Group of France under a $3.75 billion deal signed in October 2005. The project is about four years behind schedule.

The first submarine INS  Kalvari was commissioned in December 2017, second submarine INS  Khanderi in September 2019, third one INS  Karanj in March 2021 and the fourth one INS  Vela joined service in November 2021.

Parallelly, the tender to build six more advanced conventional submarines under Project-75I is in the Request For Proposal (RFP) stage but has suffered delays.

With delays in submarine induction, the SSKs – 209s (German HDWs) and EKMs (Russian Kilo’s), are being put through the Medium Refit Life Certification (MRLC) process which will give them additional life of 10 to 15 years.

The Navy currently has 15 conventional and one nuclear submarine in service. It includes seven Russian Kilo class submarines, four German HDW submarines, four Scorpene class submarines and the indigenous nuclear ballistic missile submarine INS  Arihant.

The Navy has drawn up plans to install Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) modules on all Scorpene submarines as they go for their refit beginning with INS Kalvari in the next couple of years to enhance their endurance. Development of an indigenous AIP module developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is in advanced stages.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

GLOBAL: RANKING / SCHOLARLY RESEARCH: India Jumps from 7th to 3rd Global Ranking in Scientific Publications

India has jumped from 7th to 3rd global ranking in scientific publications. This was informed by the Union Minister for Science & Technology, Dr. Jitendra Singh on Sunday after a review meeting with the senior official of Department of Science & Technology in New Delhi.

Lauding the consistent efforts of India’s scientific fraternity, Dr Jitendra Singh gave all credit to an enabling milieu and freedom of working provided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He said, the very fact that such quantum leaps in India’s scientific pursuits are happening only in the last few years is a testimony to the push given by PM Modi both in terms of the ease of policy as well as his personal indulgence and prioritisation.

Quoting the report of National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Science & Engineering Indicators 2022 of the United States, the Minister said India’s scholarly output has also increased from 60,555 papers in 2010 to 1,49,213 papers in 2020.

Dr Jitendra Singh also took pride that India now ranks 3rd in terms of number of PhDs in science and engineering.

He was also apprised that the number of patents granted to Indian scientists at India Patent Office (IPO) during the last three years has also increased from 2511 in 2018-19 to 4003 in 2019-20 and 5629 in 2020-21.

The National Science Foundation is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.

Mr Singh added that India’s research performance in science and technology has improved significantly over the past few years which is visible through a large amount of scientific knowledge in terms of research publications, development of technologies and innovations contributing to overall development.

source/content: newsonair.gov.in (headline edited)

GLOBAL: LEADERS: Leo Varadkar begins second inning as Irish Prime Minister

Varadkar has Indian roots as his father Ashok is from Maharashtra and his mother Miriam is Irish. He is also amongst the few openly gay leaders of the world.

Smooth handover of power midway in coalition deals is a risky proposition in this part of the world, but not in Ireland as Leo Eric Varadkar was sworn in as Ireland’s prime minister on Saturday. This is his second stint as PM; he first occupied the hot seat in 2017.

The 43-year-old Varadkar is an Irish Fine Gael leader who served as deputy PM and minister for enterprise in the outgoing government since 2020. He succeeded Michael Martin, who will function as deputy PM under Varadkar. Eighty-seven members of Irish Parliament voted to elect Varadkar as PM, while 62 were against it.

On June 26, 2020, a first-ever coalition government was formed that comprised Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Green Party. As part of the arrangement, Fianna Fáil leader Michael Martin was to hold office of PM until December 16 and then hand over the baton to Varadkar.

Varadkar has Indian roots as his father Ashok is from Maharashtra and mother Miriam is Irish. He is also amongst the few openly gay leaders of the world and lives with his partner Matthew Barrett, who is a qualified medical practitioner like Varadkar.

It was during a radio interview on January 18, 2015 (his 36th birthday) that Varadkar came out as being gay. “It’s not something that defines me. I’m not a half-Indian politician, or a doctor politician or a gay politician for that matter. It’s just part of who I am, it doesn’t define me, it is part of my character I suppose,” he had said. He has also been an advocate of same-sex marriage.

He has studied medicine and completed his internship at KEM Hospital in Mumbai. Varadkar has been regularly visiting India, specially Maharashtra. His last trip to India was in 2019 with his partner.Sources said Varadkar would like to visit India as soon as possible depending on scheduling issues since India is already caught up with various events around the G20.

There are many issues that Varadkar will have to deal with in his present term. These includes issues surrounding the Northern Ireland Protocol—the part of Brexit treaty which Varadkar negotiated in 2019 to keep the region within the European Union’s customs block—which remains unresolved.

Ireland is also grappling with a cost of living crisis, high energy bills and an influx of refugees from Ukraine.Housing will be one of the new government’s major policy priorities as it looks to deliver progress ahead of an election due by March 2025. The shortage of homes has been building up for a decade and with forecasts showing a decline in new construction next year. One of Varadkar’s first pieces of legislation will be a planning bill.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

GLOBAL: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / MACHINE LEARNING : Rishi Rajpopat, Indian PhD student at Cambridge University solves 2,500-year-old Sanskrit puzzle making it possible, for the first time, to accurately use Panini’s so-called “language machine”.

Rishi Rajpopat solved the 2,500-year-old Sanskrit puzzle by decoding a rule taught by Panini, known as the father of linguistics.

A grammatical problem that has defeated Sanskrit scholars since the 5th Century BC has finally been solved by an Indian PhD student at the University of Cambridge, it emerged as his thesis was published on Thursday.

Rishi Rajpopat made the breakthrough by decoding a rule taught by Panini, known as the father of linguistics, and is now encapsulated in his thesis entitled ‘In Panini, We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Astadhyayi’.

According to the university, leading Sanskrit experts have described Rajpopat’s discovery as “revolutionary” and it could now mean that Panini’s grammar can also be taught to computers for the first time.

“I had a eureka moment in Cambridge,” recalls Rajpopat.

“After nine months of trying to crack this problem, I was almost ready to quit, I was getting nowhere. So, I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer, swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating. Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns started emerging, and it all started to make sense. There was a lot more work to do but I’d found the biggest part of the puzzle,” said the 27-year-old scholar.

Over the next few weeks, he was so excited that he couldn’t sleep and would spend hours in the library, including in the middle of the night, to check what he’d found and solve related problems. It would take another two and half years before he would get to the finish line.

“Panini had an extraordinary mind and he built a machine unrivalled in human history. He didn’t expect us to add new ideas to his rules. The more we fiddle with Panini’s grammar, the more it eludes us,” says Rajpopat.

The 2,500-year-old algorithm decoded by him makes it possible, for the first time, to accurately use Panini’s so-called “language machine”.

Rajpopat’s discovery makes it possible to “derive” any Sanskrit word, to construct millions of grammatically correct words, using Panini’s revered language machine, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest intellectual achievements in history.

Panini’s system – 4,000 rules detailed in his renowned work, the Astadhyayi, which is thought to have been written around 500 BC – is meant to work like a machine. Feed in the base and suffix of a word and it should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences through a step-by-step process.

Until now, however, there has been a big problem. Often, two or more of Panini’s rules are simultaneously applicable at the same step leaving scholars to agonise over which one to choose. Solving so-called “rule conflicts”, which affect millions of Sanskrit words including certain forms of “mantra” and “guru”, requires an algorithm. Rajpopat’s research shows that Panini’s so-called language machine is also self-sufficient.

“My student Rishi has cracked it – he has found an extraordinarily elegant solution to a problem that has perplexed scholars for centuries. This discovery will revolutionise the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in the language is on the rise,” said Professor Vincenzo Vergiani, Sanskrit professor and Rajpopat’s PhD supervisor.

Six months before Rajpopat made his discovery, Professor Vergiani gave him some prescient advice: “If the solution is complicated, you are probably wrong”. A major implication of Rajpopat’s discovery is that now there is the algorithm that runs Panini’s grammar, it could potentially teach this grammar to computers.

“Computer scientists working on Natural Language Processing gave up on rule-based approaches over 50 years ago. So teaching computers how to combine the speaker’s intention with Panini’s rule-based grammar to produce human speech would be a major milestone in the history of human interaction with machines, as well as in India’s intellectual history,” said Rajpopat.

Sanskrit is an ancient and classical Indo-European language from South Asia. While only spoken in India by an estimated 25,000 people today, it has influenced many other languages and cultures around the world.

“Some of the most ancient wisdom of India has been produced in Sanskrit and we still don’t fully understand what our ancestors achieved. We’ve often been led to believe that we’re not important, that we haven’t brought enough to the table. I hope this discovery will infuse students in India with confidence, pride, and hope that they too can achieve great things,” added Rajpopat.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL: ARTS & CULTURE / OVERSEAS: India Restoring Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar

‘Today, we are restoring and renovating the temples in Angkor Wat. These are contributions which we are making outside because the civilisation of India has gone beyond India’.

The Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia is being restored by India because our civilisation is not limited to India, but is spread across countries, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Sunday said.

Addressing the Kashi Tamil Sangamam on the subject ‘contribution of temples in society and nation building’ being held here, Mr. Jaishankar said, “There are temples not only in India, not only in the Indian subcontinent, but in many regions beyond.”

“I had gone with the Vice President to see the biggest temple in the world—the Angkor Wat temple complex. Today, we are restoring and renovating the temples in Angkor Wat. These are contributions which we are making outside because the civilisation of India has gone beyond India,” he said.

“So, today when we are restoring, rebuilding, and re-energising Indian civilisation, our task is not only in India. Our task is all over the world. But, it is not only where our civilisation went, it is also where our travellers went, our traders went, our people of faith went,” he said.

Recalling his days as India’s ambassador to China, the minister said, “Some of you know that for many years, I have been an ambassador to China. I have seen the remnants of Hindu temples even in China on the east coast.” He said that there is a very special connection between Ayodhya and Korea, whose people want to be associated with the developments in Ayodhya, he said.

He also mentioned that Shrinath jee temple in Bahrain, and said, “All these were established by our people, when they went out. It is a matter of pride for us that we are building a temple in UAE, that we got approval to built a temple in Bahrain. We have done a lot of work in Vietnam.”

“So, how do we today take our culture out, take our values, our philosophy, our way of life and share it with the rest of the world through activities outside. We are very committed in the foreign ministry to doing that. We also support what people of India are doing outside … There are more than 1,000 temples in the US,” he said.

He said that there are 3.5 crore Indians and people of Indian origin abroad, who have taken Indian culture with them abroad. “So, it is also our efforts today to support them, and we do it in different ways.” Mr. Jaishankar also informed the audience that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged ₹200 crore to build a Ramayan Circuit into Nepal, “so that all of us will have an opportunity to visit our heritage in close quarters.”

“Even in Sri Lanka, we restored the Thiruketheeswaram Temple in Mannar. This temple was closed for 12 years. So the fact that we took interest, made efforts, has made it possible for the revival of that temple,” he said.

Thiruketheeswaram Temple, one of the five sacred Ishwarams dedicated to Lord Shiva, is venerated by Shaivites throughout the subcontinent and the temple was testimony to the most difficult period in the history of Sri Lanka as it was closed for 12 years during the armed conflict and reopened in 2002.

The minister also said that in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake, many temples were damaged because they were old. “We have committed $50 million for restoration of cultural heritage in Nepal.”

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL: HEALTH & MEDICAL SCIENCES / ALTERNATIVE: 9th World Ayurveda Congress 2022: Experts pitch for Innovations and Research in Ayurveda

Anirudha Joshi said he was envisaging developing wearable devices that could provide vital information about anatomy.

Ayurveda has an enormous potential for innovation but that requires an extensive technology-based research and a concrete roadmap to make it a global brand and its products effective and successful, said experts at the 9th World Ayurveda Congress (WAC) here.

“There are great possibilities of innovations in Ayurveda. There are challenges to develop techniques more advanced than supercomputers. We will have to work on those areas of computing which have not been heard of,” Padma Bhushan Vijay Bhatkar said, while chairing a plenary session on ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurs in Ayurveda’.

Anirudha Joshi, who is credited with developing award-winning ‘Nadi Tarangini’, an Artificial Intelligence-based instrument for pulse-reading, said he was envisaging developing wearable devices that could provide vital information about the human body.

“It will be very helpful if we can develop wearables which can do ‘Astha-vidha-pariksha’. Our vision is to go into prediction of different stages of a disease so that we can defer a disease if we cannot prevent it,” he explained.

In his concluding remarks, Mr. Bhatkar said, “There is a need to develop new devices like `Nadi Tarangini’. We will have to think of ways of marketing, packaging, advertising our products and how they can be shown to the world.’‘ According to Kartikeya Baldva, CEO, Ixoreal Biomed Inc, Ayurveda, a traditional wellness system, had finally arrived but there was still a long way to go.

“It is very important to ensure the success of products but that would require quality, efficacy, branding, marketing and innovation,” he emphasised.

Ajit Kolatkar, Founder- Director of Pune- based Gastrolab India Pvt Ltd, said Ayurveda had to move in such a fashion that a doctor could diagnose the ailments of a patient by using minimum devices.

”We will have to start with fundamental research from Ayurvedic perspective. There has to be a concrete roadmap. There is a need to revisit Ayurveda in the context of contemporary science,” he said, adding there were many key areas where Ayurveda could contribute significantly.

Rishabh Chopra, founder of Ayurveda Experience, an Ayurvedic health and wellness platform, said ‘Ashwagandha’ had now become a popular product in the West.

However, there were several challenges to make Ayurvedic products globally acceptable. He also said Ashwagandha, turmeric and Yoga were some of the most online searched words in the West.

“Our vision is to go into prediction of different stages of a disease so that we can defer a disease if we cannot prevent it”Anirudha Joshi,Inventor,  ‘Nadi Tarangini’

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)