Author: Bhakti Narayanan

Bhakti Narayanan

Hyundai to invest Rs 20,000 crore in Tamil Nadu

Hyundai Motor India, the nation’s second-largest automaker, announced on Thursday that it will spend Rs 20,000 crore over ten years in Tamil Nadu to launch new electric vehicle (EV) models and boost output at its Irunga plant. In a statement, Hyundai claimed that over the next five years, it will establish 100 EV charging stations throughout the southern state and a battery pack assembly facility with a 178,000-unit annual capacity. The business wants to boost annual output at its manufacturing facility outside of Chennai from about 775,000 to 850,000 automobiles. The automaker, however, did not provide a timeframe for completing…

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WION launches a new show, World DNA

WION, India’s sole international news channel, recently announced the debut of its new show, WORLD DNA, in an effort to broaden its audience and viewership in the American market. Hem Kaur Saroya and Rohit Wellington will serve as the show’s hosts on the newscast that will compile the most important stories from across the world into a single program. The show, which airs live every night at 10 p.m. EST, strives to teach American and Asian viewers about events that will affect their present and set the stage for the future. Chief business officer of WION, Madhu Soman, said, “With…

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Manoj Bajpayee set to promote his movie at NYIFF

The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF), which takes place in New York City from Thursday, May 11, to Sunday, May 14, is where Bollywood star Manoj Bajpayee will promote his forthcoming film. Since its first season in 2001, NYIFF has been the longest-running annual film festival in North America that serves the Indian diaspora. The courtroom drama in Bajpayee’s movie is called Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai. It will debut on Zee5 Global, an OTT service made specifically for South Asian programming, on May 23. In the film, Bajpayee will play high court attorney P.C. Solanki. The plot of…

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On Thursday, Oscar-winning director Guneet Monga stated that she never supports a movie with the goal of taking home a prize. Producing “The Elephant Whisperers” by Kartiki Gonsalves, which in March received the Academy Award for best documentary short subject, is all about being faithful to the narrative, according to Monga. “Every film has its own journey. You never make content for an award; you just make a piece of cinema because you love the story. When you tell a story through the long format, with the number of years it takes to make the film, you have to fall…

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A project of Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust, the Schmidt Science Fellows program seeks to build a community of scientists and advocates for multidisciplinary science. Out of 32 applicants, five early-career scientists of Indian descent were selected. For up to two years of postdoctoral research, the fellows—Sahil Loomba of Imperial College London, Shilpa Pothapragada of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Krishnakant Saboo of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Susmita Sarkar of Purdue University, and Sridevi Venkatesan of the University of Toronto—will receive a stipend of US$100,000. The Schmidt Science Fellows are assigned to world-class researchers and famous laboratories to work on a field that is different from their Ph.D. topic in an effort to promote interdisciplinary study. An engineer from IIT-Delhi will change his focus from statistical network modeling to causal inference as part of the Loomba initiative, measuring the effects of massive public health campaigns on independently observable outcomes like vaccination uptake. Pothapragada, a doctoral student at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Hyderabad, majored in biochemistry during her undergraduate and graduate studies before switching to bioengineering and concentrating on women's health. Saboo, an IIT-Bombay electrical engineering graduate with a focus on communications and signal processing, will switch her attention from computer engineering to neuroscience in order to create customized models of abnormal brain activity that support epilepsy diagnosis and brain stimulation-based treatment. To pursue her master's degree at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Sarkar relocated from northeast India to the United States. Her focus will shift from mechanical engineering to chemical engineering as she develops wearable technology for healthcare purposes. Venkatesan, a University of Toronto doctorate candidate, will go from neuroscience to genetics and genomics to create a precision medicine platform for uncommon hereditary brain illnesses, enhancing accessibility to diagnoses and therapies worldwide. Her study centered on understanding how neurotransmitter pathway abnormalities result in cognitive deficiencies and developing therapies to reestablish regular neuron activity.

A project of Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust, the Schmidt Science Fellows program seeks to build a community of scientists and advocates for multidisciplinary science. Out of 32 applicants, five early-career scientists of Indian descent were selected. For up to two years of postdoctoral research, the fellows—Sahil Loomba of Imperial College London, Shilpa Pothapragada of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Krishnakant Saboo of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Susmita Sarkar of Purdue University, and Sridevi Venkatesan of the University of Toronto—will receive a stipend of US$100,000. The Schmidt Science Fellows are assigned to world-class researchers and famous laboratories to…

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January will see the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award conference

On April 28, 2023, in the Indian consulate in New York, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (Non-Resident Indian) Awardees in the tri-state area met with Amit Kumar Mishra, Deputy Secretary of Overseas Indian Affairs in the Ministry of External Affairs. At the gathering, there was Ashook Ramsaran, president of the Indian Diaspora Council International (IDC), as well as a Guyana-based recipient of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (PBS). The IDC released a statement stating that the meeting’s objectives were to discuss the upcoming PBSA conference and the contributions made by diaspora scientists to scientific research in India. According to the press release, the…

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India to consider a long-term agreement with Russia about the rupee-ruble payment system

As part of the severe sanctions imposed on Moscow, Russia was first denied access to the SWIFT international system. The exercise that initially aimed to make payments easier is no longer intended only to get over the severe restrictions. India is considering a similar agreement with Iran, which is also subject to US sanctions.  “There are some issues with rupee trade, but we are looking at these payment arrangements as a long-term system and not just linked to the sanctions. We are looking at rupee trade with these countries as something more permanent,” said a senior government official. “There are…

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How Kids Can Benefit from Mindfulness Training

   Now that 2021 is here, many are looking for new ways to manage stress. Although mindfulness and meditation are not new – there is evidence suggesting that humans have been practicing meditation for more than 5,000 years – many are turning to these techniques to improve overall well-being. Mindfulness is a technique that involves paying attention to what’s happening now in the present moment, in an accepting, nonjudgmental manner. There are mindfulness apps for managing stress, anxiety, chronic pain, weight loss, better sleep and quitting smoking. Mindfulness and meditation are also a part of mind-body activities and exercises such…

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