LIRC@SFIT

Ahaan Parekh, 17-year-old south Mumbai resident, has invented an Eco Solar Bicycle (ESB), which offers three different usage options – solar-powered, battery-powered and manual. This cycle can make life easier for home delivery vendors, such as newspapermen, milkmen, and dabbawalas. dna Research & Archives Ahaan Parekh, 17-year-old south  Mumbai resident, has invented an Eco Solar Bicycle (ESB), which offers three different usage options – solar-powered, battery-powered and manual. This cycle can make life easier for home delivery vendors, such as newspapermen, milkmen, and dabbawalas. The ESB can touch a maximum speed of 20kmph and takes about 5-6 hours to be completely charged under normal sunlight conditions. It also offers the comfort and convenience of getting charged while in use. The project was selected for the All India Nehru Science Center Innovation Festival and Parekh's participation was acknowledged with a trophy. He also impressed as one of the promi...

Sumi has set up a small stall near a grocery store in IC Colony. Sumi with her Marzipan packets at Cassandra's residence.  Aparna Shukla   Team iamin Borivali’s  IC Colony  resident Cassandra Nazareth, as part of her  Christmas celebration, has helped her  maid  Sumi Hemrom, become an independent woman. Nazareth helped her set up a cooking business  during Christmas. Sumi sells Marzipans, Potato Chops, barbequed chicken and much more. A relation that is 16-years-old, is close to Cassandra’s heart. She can't hold back tears, as she speaks of Sumi. As a working professional herself, Cassandra has helped Sumi bring out the cook in her. "She had just come back from West Bengal when I got her home. She was very shy in the beginning but was very honest. Somebody I could trust my children with. They were very young and I had to work. She was a great support then," says Cassandra, who taught Sumi the art that business is. From struct...

Source: Library Journal By  Leslie Stebbins  on  December 10, 2015   3 Comments This all started when my teenage son reported that Adam Sandler has Ebola. He saw it trending on Facebook. I sighed inwardly and asked if he had looked at the source of the information. Being the son of a librarian he quickly said: “Yes! CNN.com.” Of course, Adam Sandler did not really have Ebola, and CNN wasn’t reporting that he did. The site had been hacked. But a lot of people fell for it. The Adam Sandler Ebola scare threw me for a loop. I decided to take a deep dive into the research on how we should be thinking about evaluating and searching for information at a time when people get most of their information from Google, Facebook, and Twitter. I devised some interesting everyday-life research questions, then set about trying to answer them: I investigated whether red wine has health advantages, whether dogs exhibit some rudimentary form of empathy, and the veracity of...

A lunchbox of love served daily CARE FREE An ordinary man from Borivli’s IC Colony, Maark D’Souza has turned dabbawala, feeding the area’s elderly free of charge My favourite tiffins are Saturdays’ and Sundays’, because there is meat or fish in them. And I love it when they serve biryani. PERDITA D’SOUZA, 85, a widow who lives alone in IC Colony, Borivli, and has her meals delivered to her by Maark D’Souza daily Maark has been doing a wonderful job. It is rare to find people like him. His tiffins are a life-saver for senior citizens who can’t cook their own meals. JIMMY DORDI, 76, in charge of Borivli centre of NGO Dignity Foundation Maark’s tiffins make me feel like someone cares about my well-being. He is like a son to me. RAJKUMAR CHADDHA, 74, widower MUMBAI: Every after noon, Perdita D’Souza, 85, waits for her doorbell to ring. She is never disappointed. PRATHAM GOKHALE/HT Maark D’Souza (left) with 85-year-old widow Perdita D’Souza who lives in IC Colony, Borivli alone...

Your kitchen can be a fuel maker DIGESTER Machine converts kitchen waste into biogas which will meet home cooking needs MUMBAI: It was during a walk in the evening, two years ago, when 37-year-old mechanical engineer Kabir Udeshi, a resident of Shivaji Park, came upon an open dump. The sight was not new to him but it was the stench emanating from the dump that provoked Udeshi to come up with an easy-to-use waste management system for households. PRATHAM GOKHALE/HT Kabir Udeshi with his organic waste management kit at a house in Santacruz. In one year, Udeshi and his team took the idea forward and built a machine the size of a standard washing machine, called the ‘Dedko Digester’. The machine converts kitchen waste into biogas and organic fertiliser. According to Kabir Udeshi, organic waste consists of 70-80% of any household waste and the biogas generated through the machine can provide 40-50% of an average household’s cooking needs. “Once the kitchen waste is collected, ...

Language laboratories hone soft skills of college students RISE IN POPULARITY The labs employ audio-visual tools, no structured courses MUMBAI: When Rahul Pandey got admission to Jai Hind College a few years ago, he couldn’t adjust to the new environment. Pandey, who studied at the Mohan Bhagat Hindi School, Vasai was having a hard time communicating with his teachers and his class mates, who preferred English. “I could understand them, but wasn’t able to speak their language,” he recalls. Today, the Science graduate has been placed at Infosys and speaks English effortlessly. He gives credit, in part, to the college’s ‘language lab’. The language labs, which teach the basics of languages and help students develop their soft skills are fast gaining popularity in city colleges. Presently, around 30 students are learning at Jai Hind College’s language lab, compared to 15 when the facility began its operations a couple of years ago. KC College, which started its ‘Bhashas La...