Artificial Intelligence for Youth, “INSPIRE Faculty award”, Smart Bandage, Biotechnology
1. "Responsible AI for Youth"
- The Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice and Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad launched India’s national Artificial Intelligence Portal called www.ai.gov.in
- This portal has been jointly developed by the Ministry of Electronics and IT and IT Industry.
- National e-Governance Division of Ministry of Electronics and IT and NASSCOM from the IT industry will jointly run this portal.
- This portal shall work as a one stop digital platform for AI related developments in India, sharing of resources such as articles, startups, investment funds in AI, resources, companies and educational institutions related to AI in India.
- The portal will also share documents, case studies, research reports etc.
Launched a National Program for the youth, “Responsible AI for Youth”.
- The aim of this Program is to give the young students of our country a platform and empower them with appropriate new age tech mind-set, relevant AI skill-sets and access to required AI tool-sets to make them digitally ready for the future.
- The Program has been created and launched by the National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics & IT in collaboration with Intel India, with support from Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Human Resource Development.
- “Responsible AI for Youth” will empower the youth to become AI ready and help reduce the skill gap, while enabling youth to create meaningful social impact solutions.
- The Program is designed to reach out to students from Government schools pan India and provide them with an opportunity to become part of the skilled workforce in an inclusive manner.
- India must be a leading country in the development of Artificial Intelligence in the world, leveraging upon its vast Internet savvy population and data it is creating.
- India’s AI approach should be of inclusion and empowerment of human being by supplementing growth and development rather than making human beings less relevant.
- Highlighting the importance of the AI Portal will lead to democratization of artificial intelligence in the country.
Details of Responsible AI for Youth Programme:
- The National Programme is open to students of classes 8 – 12 from Central and State government-run schools (including KVS, NVS, JNV) from across the country – all 28 States and 8 Union Territories.
- With the aims to bring about a change in the thought process and create a bridge for the digital divide.
- Teachers will be provided orientation sessions aimed to help the students understand the premise and identify 25-50 potential students for the Program.
- The identified students will attend online training sessions on AI and understand how to identify social impact ideas/projects that may be created using AI and submit their ideas through a 60 seconds video explaining a proposed AI enabled solution.
Adequate handholding will be provided by Intel certified AI coaches and mentors throughout to ensure that ideas mature as prototypes.
Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice and Communications: Ravi Shankar Prasad
2. Bihar under Jal Jeevan mission
- A proper plan is in place for all households with functional tap water connections 100% coverage of all 38 districts during 2020-21.
- Bihar Government is also giving special attention to providing 100% of Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) in Aspirational districts, quality-affected habitations and SC/ST villages.
- State is planning to provide tap connections to remaining 1.50 Crore households in 2020-21. Government of India has allocated Rs. 1832.66 Crore for this during 2020-21.
- During the scorching summer and COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of clean water takes precedence. Washing hands and maintaining good hygiene needs clean water.
- Mostly the rural population depend on stand posts or wells for water, thus making it difficult for the masses to observe social-distancing.
- The relevance of potable water in one’s household premise is a one-stop solution for the given problem.
- Enabling every household with tap connection, Bihar has to give equal thrust on water conservation, rainwater harvesting, grey-water management & tackling over-extraction of groundwater.
- Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) has been launched in partnership with States, to enable every household in villages to have a FHTC within the premises by 2024.
- It has been envisaged that each household will have potable water supply of 55 lpcd of prescribed quality on a regular and long-term basis.
- It’s the endeavor of the Government to bring improvement in the lives of rural people by making provision of assured services at their doorsteps.
- To implement the mission, institutional arrangements at various levels have been made and State’s PHE/ Rural Water Supply Departments are to play a critical role along with the local community. Gram Panchayat/ village water sanitation committee/ user committee are encouraged to plan, implement, manage, operate, and maintain its in-village water supply scheme.
- A sense of ownership has to be instilled in the village community as they are at the center of this mission.
- The community is also expected to play a big role in water quality surveillance.
- Rural women and adolescent girls spend a lot of time and energy in getting water for day-to-day use.
- This results in a lack of participation of women in income generation opportunities, loss of school days for girls, and adverse health impacts.
- JJM is to play a significant role in bringing ‘ease of living’ for the rural community, especially women.
- Women must lead JJM in their villages to meet their needs and aspirations.
3. A Rapid Response Regulatory enabling mechanism facilitated by Department of Biotechnology for COVID 19
Rapid Response Regulatory Framework for COVID-19 to deal with application for development of vaccines, diagnostics, prophylactics and therapeutics has been notified on 20.03.2020.
The Department of Biotechnology has taken several proactive measures to streamline the biosafety regulation and to facilitate researchers and industries which are undertaking research and development in Recombinant DNA Technology and Hazardous Microorganisms.
- Operationalization of Indian Biosafety Knowledge Portal. The Indian Knowledge Biosafety Portal launched in May, 2019 was made fully operationalized and now the Department is receiving all new applications through online portal only. This has made the whole process transparent and time bound.
- Notification of Revised Simplified Guidelines on Import, Export and Exchange of GE Organisms and Product Thereof for R&D Purpose: The Department issued the Revised Guidelines in January, 2020 in which Institutional Biosafety Committee have been delegated authority to take decisions on applications of import export and exchange of GE organisms and product thereof for R&D purpose for RG1 and RG2 items.
- Facilitation of Research and Development on COVID-19: Considering the emerging situations of spread of Coronavirus and with the understanding on requirement of rapid research and development for COVI-19, the Department has proactively taken several steps to facilitate researchers and industries involved in research on COVID19. DBT has issued following guidelines, orders and checklist on COVID 19.
NITI Aayog has recently issued guidelines for sharing of bio specimens and data for research related to COVID-19. As per the directives of the Cabinet Secretary, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has notified 16 bio-repositories for collecting, storing and maintaining clinical samples (oropharyngeal/ nasopharyngeal swabs, broncheoalveolar lavage, sputum, blood, urine and stool) of COVID-19 patients.
The enlistment of 16 Bio Repositories are as follows: ICMR – 9,
DBT – 4 and
CSIR – 3.
4. Scientists develop herbal medicine loaded smart bandage for wounds
- Scientists from Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology (IASST) an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology,Govt. of India have developed a pH-responsive smart bandage that can deliver the medicine applied in the wound at the pH that is suitable for the wound.
- The scientists have developed the delivery system by fabricating a nanotechnology-based cotton patch that uses cheap and sustainable materials like cotton and jute.
A nanocomposite hydrogel bound compact cotton patch incorporated with jute carbon dots was fabricated to carry out the drug release.
Jute has been used for the first time as a precursor in synthesizing fluorescent carbon dots, and water was used as the dispersion medium.
Herbal formulation neem leaf (Azadirachtaindica) extract was taken as the model drug to exemplify the release study.
- The jute carbon dots were immobilized in the hydrogel matrix-bound cotton patch and could effectively exemplify different drug release pattern at two different pH levels –lower at pH 5 than at higher at pH 7.
The stimuli-responsive nature of the fabricated hybrid cotton patch acts as an advantage as in case of growth of bacterial infections in a wound, and this induces release of drug at lower pH which is favourable under these conditions. This pH-responsive behaviour of the fabricated cotton patch lies in the unique behaviour of the jute carbon dots incorporated in the system because of the different molecular linkages formed during the carbon dot preparation.
- In the present work, they controlled the drug release of the cotton patch, thereby making it a smart wound dressing material.
- Around any wound, pH changes due to bacterial infections. Hence they developed a pH-responsive drug delivery system with the cotton patch. Carbon dots which are zero-dimensional nanomaterials, due to their unique carbon core and surface functional groups can be designed to exhibit different behaviour towards different pH.
- They are also known for their low toxicity and great biocompatibility. Therefore, different carbon dots were used as a nano-filler in fabricating hybrid cotton patches to check the drug release behaviour.
- The development of such a stimuli-responsive behavior of hybrid cotton patch paves the way for utilizing it as smart wound-dressing or bandage material. Use of cheap and sustainable material like cotton and jute to fabricate the patch makes the whole process biocompatible, non-toxic, low cost and sustainable.
5. Marriage of material science & electrochemistry for sustainable energy
- From National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar is a recipient of the INSPIRE Faculty award instituted by the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India working in the area of energy research towards marriage of material science and electrochemistry to develop sustainable energy and affordable energy sources. His focus is mainly on electrodes and electrolyte material electrochemistry.
- “INSPIRE Faculty award is a prestigious award and should be distinguished from a regular faculty position in any institute.
- Dr. Malik caters to the research in the advanced areas of energy storage and super-hydrophobic surfaces for water harvesting, besides focusing on the local resources of J&K.
- Similarly, waste dairy products and aquatic flora of Dal lake appear to have appropriate morphology to be employed as precursors for the electrode grade carbon.
- Energy storage activities under iDRAEM partly focus on the synthesis of high-quality carbon materials from local precursors.
- Lotus stem is very promising in being porous to be employed as precursor for electrode grade carbon material.
- It also undertakes challenges of developing high-quality hydrophobic surfaces by replicating the hydrophobic leaf structure of local plants of DAL lake.
