AIM (Atal Innovation Mission), in association with Australia`s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), is organizing a two-day hackathon on the circular economy, ‘India–Australia Circular Economy Hackathon (I-ACE)’, on 7 and 8 December.

 

♦ Innovation in packaging reducing packaging waste

♦ Innovation in food supply chains avoiding waste

♦ Creating opportunities for plastic waste reduction

♦ Recycling critical energy metals and e-waste

 

♦ The idea of the hackathon (I-ACE) was conceived during a virtual summit on 4 June, between the Indian and Australian prime ministers, exploring innovative ways to boost the circular economy in India & Australia.

♦ Hackathon will focus on identification and development of innovative technology solutions by bright-minded students, startups and MSMEs of both nations.

♦ Shortlisted startups/MSMEs and students will be called for the hackathon (I - ACE), where two winners per theme from each country will be announced at an award ceremony on 11 December. 

♦ India and Australia have had a strong and productive bilateral partnership since a decade and our collaborations across a broad range of areas have yielded significant results. Australia and India can align research and developmental efforts to achieve more at a challenging time in the history of mankind.

♦ The winning startup/MSME and Indian student teams will be awarded with a prize of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh, respectively, coupled with post-hackathon product development opportunities. The winning student of Australia will be awarded a prize of AUD$3500 and the winning Australian SMEs/startup team a prize of AUD$9500.

Analysis from the extensive computation analysis of the 1029 sequenced genomes from India carried out by CSIR constituent labs, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad were published in the scientific journal, Nucleic Acid Research.

 

♦ The observation led to the identification of 55,898,122 single-nucleotide variants in the India genome dataset.

♦ Comparisons with the world genome datasets revealed that 18,016,257 (32.23%) variants were unique and found only in the samples from India.

♦ India is the 2nd largest country in terms of population density with more than 1.3 billion individuals. In spite of having this rich genetic diversity, India has been under-represented in global genome studies.

♦ CSIR started the IndiGen Program in April 2019. Under this, the whole genome sequencing of 1029 self-declared healthy Indians drawn from across the country has been completed.

♦ The current IndiGenomes data provides a compendium of genetic variants representing the contemporary Indian population with an objective to classify variants involved in Mendelian disorders & improve precision medicine outcomes. 

♦ The resource is accessible to the researchers and clinicians in India and abroad. There have been over 200,000 pageviews on the IndiGenomes web page from users spanning 27 countries. 

 

This is the first launch by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) since the COVID-19 induced lockdown came into force in March.

 

♦India would launch its latest earth observation satellite EOS-01 and nine international customer spacecraft onboard its Polar rocket PSLV-C49 from the spaceport of Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 7.

♦ISRO Chairman K Sivan had said in June that ten space missions being prepared for launch this year have been `disturbed` due to the lockdown.

♦EOS-01 is intended for applications in agriculture, forestry&disaster management support.

♦The launch is tentatively scheduled at 3.02 pm on November 7 subject to weather conditions from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.

♦The customer satellites are being launched under a commercial agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), Department of Space.

♦This will be the 51st mission of ISRO`s workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

♦Given the strict COVID-19 pandemic norms in place at the launch centre, a gathering of media personnel there was not planned, and the viewing gallery will be closed.

♦However, the live telecast of the launch will be available on the ISRO website, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter channel.

♦In June, Sivan highlighted that ISRO would assess the impact of the lockdown on its missions.

♦Because of this (pandemic), everything got disturbed. We have to assess after the COVID-19 issue is resolved.