LIRC@SFIT

The centre creates pathways for employment by facilitating placements through IG Drones’ expertise and partnerships with the National Skill Development Corporation. India’s first-ever Drone Centres of Excellence (CoEs) was established in Odisha. Under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY), Member of Parliament Sujeet Kumar established the initiative in partnership with drone technology company IG Drones.  Read the full article at:  https://www.educationtimes.com/article/newsroom/99737612/india-s-first-drone-centre-of-excellence-established-in-odisha-to-empower-tribal-youth-and-women

The story so far: An assessment of India’s groundwater by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) found that several States are grappling with a serious problem of nitrate contamination. The most concerning finding was that the number of districts with excessive nitrate in their groundwater rose from 359 in 2017 to 440 in 2023. This works out to nearly 56% of India’s districts having excessive nitrate in ground water, defined as having more than 45 mg/l (milligram per litre). Of the 15,239 groundwater samples collected from across the country for testing, 19.8% samples had nitrates — nitrogenous compounds — above safe limits though it must be said that this proportion has not substantially changed since 2017. In the 13,028 samples analysed in 2017 for instance, 21.6% had excessive nitrate. There are two major concerns with excess nitrate content: one is methemoglobinemia, or a reduced ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen. Read more at:  https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-...

  "India’s Genomic Revolution: 10,000 Whole Genome Samples Now Accessible Globally" "Prime Minister Modi Congratulates Scientific Community as India Poised to Lead the Next Generation Revolution in Biotech" Posted On: 09 JAN 2025 7:51PM by PIB Delhi Making a vital move towards self-reliance in the field of genomics, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, today announced that India is no longer dependent on foreign genomic data. At the Genome India Data Conclave, held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi the Indian Genomic Data Set unveiled and Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh launched the ‘Framework for Exchange of Data Protocols (FeED)’ and the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) Portals, making 10,000 whole genome samples accessible to researchers across India and the globe. Addressing the conclave, Dr. Singh proudly stated, “India has developed its own genomic dat...

BENGALURU: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced plans to invest $3 billion in India in cloud and AI infrastructure, including setting up new data centres over the next two years. He added the company is committed to training 10 million people with AI skills by 2030. The $3-billion additional investment in India, Nadella said, would represent the single-largest expansion into the region. "The diffusion rate of AI in India is exciting. This is the golden age for systems when it comes to innovation," he told a crowd of over 3,000 developers who had gathered to listen to him in a massive exhibition centre in Bengaluru on Tuesday. In his nearly 11 years as CEO, Nadella has transformed Microsoft with his bets on cloud computing and AI, and the infusion of a culture of collaboration, enabling the pioneering computing company to become the second in the world to touch $3 trillion in market capitalisation (the first was Apple). A lot of Microsoft's work is today driven by its vas...

  Talking about her preparations for the exam, Shanan Dhaka, who currently lives in Punjab’s Zirakpur, says she studied five hours a day for 40 days and made it a point to solve previous years’ papers. “It was instantaneous,” says Shanan Dhaka, 19, on her decision to apply for the Army. The Haryana resident came first among women candidates — and tenth overall — in the entrance examination for the National Defence Academy (NDA), which will admit women cadets for the first time this year. “I took inspiration to join the armed forces from my grandfather, Chanderbhan Dhaka, who was a Subedar, and my father, Vijay Kumar Dhaka, who retired as a Naib Subedar from the Army Service Corps,” Dhaka told  The Indian Express . “Growing up in cantonment areas, I saw the respect being accorded to Army officers. Plus the trust everybody has in Army personnel really motivated me to join the service. It’s an opportunity to serve the nation with unparalleled pride and honour.” To read the full a...

Gita Gopinath, who was scheduled to return to her academic position at Harvard University in January 2022, has served as the IMF's chief economist for three years. Indian-American Gita Gopinath, the chief economist of International Monetary Fund, is being promoted as IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director, the fund announced Thursday. She will become the second-ranking official, replacing First Deputy Managing Director Geoffrey Okamoto who  plans to leave the Fund early next year . Gopinath, who was scheduled to return to her academic position at Harvard University in January 2022, has served as the IMF’s chief economist for three years. To read the full story, please visit:  https://indianexpress.com/article/world/gita-gopinath-to-take-on-new-role-at-imf-as-first-deputy-managing-director-7653547/

  Be Safe in Cyber World: Do's and Dont's for Teachers  Be Safe in Cyber World: Do's and Dont's for Students For More resources, please visit the following URL: https://ciet.nic.in/pages.php?id=booklet-on-cyber-safetysecurity&ln=en&ln=en

October is celebrated as   National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM)   globally. In order to bring attention to Cyber Security and as a concentrated effort to stay safe and secure online, NCSAM is celebrated all over the world. It is an initiative to put conscious efforts towards ensuring better cybersecurity hygiene and incorporate stronger security measures. With this objective, DSCI drove a month-long awareness campaign under the guidance of the National Cyber Security Secretariat. The campaign disseminated various content artifacts and reached out to 3.25 million citizens throughout the country. Many interesting quizzes have been launched on the myGov portal to   test the knowledge and readiness level of citizens around Cyber Security. The overall objective of the Quiz was to create Cyber Security awareness among citizens, to achieve a better security posture for the country, and to empower online users to remain Safe Online.   Participate and earn reward ...

According to the most recent UK Home Office data, Indians form the largest group of highly-skilled professionals within the Tier 2 (General) category of work visas. London:   Indians are among the largest group of professionals set to benefit from a new UK government plan to remove any limit on the number of PhD-level work visas to be granted. UK Chancellor Philip Hammond announced on Wednesday in a Budget update, referred to as the annual Spring Statement, that from later this year all such highly-qualified roles will be exempt from any cap on the numbers that can apply and come to work in Britain. “[A] key pillar of our plan is backing Britain to remain at the forefront of the technology revolution that is transforming our economy. And to support that ambition, from this Autumn we will completely exempt PhD-level roles from the visa caps,” Hammond said in his speech in the House of Commons. “From Autumn 2019, PhD-level occupations will be exempt from the Tier 2 (Genera...

India and the European Union will step up cooperation in research and innovation, according to a statement. On areas for future cooperation, health research and bio-economy will remain high on the agenda, it said. Jean-Eric Paquet, Director-General of Research and Innovation, European Commission, co-chaired the 12th EU-India Joint Steering Committee meeting on science and technology along with Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary of DST, here according to an official statement. India and the EU will step up cooperation in research and innovation, Paquet said here. To build upon the robust cooperation of the past 20 years, the EU and India intend to renew the India-EU Science and Technology Agreement for another five years, the statement said. It was also agreed to explore new areas of cooperation to fill the knowledge gap on climate change, on renewable energy in line with Mission Innovation aiming at reducing CO2 through concentrated efforts on energy. On artificial intelligence,...

Are you looking for the top bloggers and best blogs in India? This is the place where you’ll discover top Indian blogs to read in 2019. There are only two ways to succeed in blogging: reading and implementing. If you’re not a regular reader of blogs and don’t know what’s going on around your niche, you can never create a successful blog that makes money. Reading best blogs is a no-brainer if you want to get the latest trends in your industry. Some of my favorite blogs that I usually read are from Indian bloggers. And I like to read Indian blogs because I can relate myself with them. It’s not like that I do not  read other bloggers  but still love to read Indians. To read the full article, visit https://bloggerspassion.com/5-indian-blogs-you-must-read-always/  (Accessed on February 22, 2019)

Wizard of AI: Meet India’s foremost reinforcement learning expert Reinforcement learning is a pretty complex topic to wrap your head around, as far as intellectual pursuits go. It’s also one of the hottest areas of AI research: MIT Technology Review picked it as one of the  top 10 technologies of 2017 . Reinforcement learning chalked up one of the flashiest wins for AI this decade in March 2016, when DeepMind AlphaGo beat world championship player Lee Sedol at the game Go. Sedol, after his 4-1 loss to AlphaGo said that it felt like he was playing against an alien intelligence. Many AI researchers consider reinforcement learning, or RL in short,  to be the path that will help humanity scale its highest summit: artificial general intelligence. (Park away in your mind artificial general intelligence, or AGI, for later in this story.) No wonder then, that it’s on a league of its own, in terms of ambition and hype. To read more, visit: https://factordaily.com/balaraman-ravind...

Research in AI started soon after the Indian government launched the Knowledge-Based Computing Systems (KBCS) program in conjunction with the United Nations Development program in 1991. Later, a number of nodal centres were set up to focus on various research including expert systems in IIT Madras, a speech processing centre in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, parallel processing in Indian Institute for Science, image processing in Indian Statistical Institute, and natural language processing in Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. The top 10 names chosen by  Analytics India Magazine  were based on various parameters such as their PhD degree, patent papers and authored technical publications, pioneering work, knowledge and many more. We mined LinkedIn and  H-Index data  for the same. Here are top ten artificial intelligence and  machine learning  researchers  presented in an alphabetical order . Balaraman Ravindran Professor Bal...