June 2022 – Karnataka First

Human milk bank comes up at SDM Hospital in Dharwad

Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari inaugurates Amruta to cater to the needy in North Karnataka

The twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad have got their first human milk bank in the form of “Amruta-SDM Rotary Human Milk Bank” set up on the premises of SDM Hospital at Sattur in Dharwad.

On Wednesday, Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari D. Veerendra Heggade inaugurated the human milk bank that will cater to the needs of needy patients in the North Karnataka region.

Inaugurating the human milk bank, Veerendra Heggade said that mother’s breast milk is crucial for the proper growth of the child. “Giving breast milk to another woman’s child is not a phenomenon. Such a practice has been in existence for time immemorial. Suppose one mother in a family fell sick, another lactating mother will breast feed such a child. Now, with technological advancements, human milk banks are being established,” he said.

The human milk bank has been set up by SDM Hospital with assistance from Karnataka Vikas Grameena (KVG) Bank and Rotary Club of Seven Hills which have extended help under the Rotary Foundation of the Rotary International Global Grant (Ph: 2232708). Thanking them for the support, Veerendra Heggade felicitated Rotary District Governor Gaurish Dhond, President of Rotary Club of Seven Hills Pallavi Deshpande, Secretary Gauri Madalabhavi and Chairman of KVG Bank P. Gopi Krishna on the occasion.

The human milk bank has been set up on a space of 1,000 sq m and the plan is to extend and add further services in the coming days. In addition to children getting treated at the hospital, the service will be extended to children in need from other hospitals and places.

Vice-Chancellor of SDM University Niranjan Kumar, Principal of SDM College of Medical Sciences Ratnamala M. Desai, Director of Administration Saket Shetty, Vice-Principal Vijay Kulkarni and others were present.

Bengaluru set to add 46 new unicorns in next few years: Hurun India

These 46 soon to be unicorns come with a cumulative valuation of $18.4 billion

Bengaluru, the startup capital of India and the world’s third largest startup ecosystem after the U.S and China, is likely to witness the emergence of 46 new unicorns in the next two to four years, as per predictions made by Hurun Research Institute on Wednesday.

Hurun India Future Unicorn Index 2022 said 122 new unicorns would come up in the country in the next two to four years and Bengaluru alone would add 46 of these soonicorns to its existing tally of 33.

The pack of 46 soon to be unicorns that comes with a cumulative valuation of $18.4 billion would be led by city-based Ninjacart, a fresh produce supply chain firm, according to the report.

The long list of city’s soonicorns also include startup Juspay that got noticed with a Softbank-led $60 million fundraising round. Founded by Vimal and Ramanathan, the fintech currently supports BHIM App, an Indian mobile payment app developed by the National Payments Corporation of India, based on the Unified Payments Interface. The firm has been building foundational infrastructure by unifying and enhancing hundreds of diverse payments options.

Farmers celebrate Mannettina Amavasye with great reverence

Mannettina Amavasye, which is considered a farmer festival, was celebrated across Yadgir district by the farming community.

Farmers brought bullocks made of mud and offered a special puja to them and kept them on the top of their roof.

“Farmers believe that they will get sufficient rainfall if they observe this amavasye. They clean and plough the land in the summer to sow seeds in the monsoon. The bullocks play an important role and help farmers in tilling land and growing crops. Thus, they treat them as god,” Mallikarjun Satyampet, a farmer leader and State convener of Rajya Raitha Sangh, said.

The farmers offer puja to every farming equipment before they use it for agriculture activities. But, here, they offer puja to bullocks made of mud, which they treat as live bullocks, to seek sufficient rainfall for their crops.

“We worship mud-made bullocks with great reverence as we offer puja to live bullocks which are the most useful for us and we feel happy in celebrating every festival that is connected to farmers,” he added.

Lancet paper highlights child and adolescent care model of NIMHANS

The model has been initiated to increase access to and availability of child and adolescent mental health and protection support and services

Highlighting the SAMVAD model by NIMHANS, a recent paper published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia has said that this model is the way forward to strengthening the nation’s response to child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) issues.

Titled ‘A transdisciplinary public health model for child and adolescent mental healthcare in low and middle income countries’, the paper was published on June 17.

SAMVAD (Support, Advocacy and Mental health interventions for children in Vulnerable circumstances And Distress) is a model of inter-sectoral collaboration and technology leveraging to build capacity of child care workers. Carved out from the erstwhile Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service project, a collaborative project of NIMHANS and Karnataka’s Department of Women and Child Development, SAMVAD was principally approved by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development in October 2019.

K. John Vijay Sagar, professor and Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NIMHANS who is the principal investigator of the project, told The Hindu that the model is a unique initiative that serves as a resource for the country. “It has been initiated to increase access to and availability of child and adolescent mental health and protection support and services through the use of integrated approaches to child well-being,” he said.

“This model applies innovative teaching and learning methods of participatory, creative and skill-based pedagogies, to deliver training programs focusing on the fundamentals of child mental health and protection work that is relevant to low and middle income countries (LMICs). The model explains frameworks and methodologies that make the training and capacity building done by SAMVAD scalable and standardised while allowing for adaptation of materials to specific professional needs and functions of various types of child care workers and service providers,” Dr. Sagar explained.

IAF martyrs to be honoured at St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School

Two Indian Air Force (IAF) officers who laid down their lives for the country — Flt. Lt. Babul Guha and Flt. Lt. Krishna Kumar Mohan — will be honoured by St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School and the Old Boys Association (OBA) on Friday.

The men, who were martyred in 1965 and 1971, were also the alumni of the school and their names will be unveiled on the War Memorial in the school on which the names of other war heroes have been engraved. This will be followed by a wreath laying ceremony.

“The school and the OBA have always held the sacrifices made by its alumni serving in the Armed Forces in high regard. A War Memorial Service and wreath laying ceremony are held traditionally each year on the occasion of the OBA Day that falls on the first Sunday of September. Currently, there are around 15 old boys serving in our Armed Forces, continuing over a century long proud tradition,” a press release from the school said.

Trained in the 68th Pilot’s Course, Flt. Lt. Guha was attached to No. 1 Squadron, based at Adampur, flying the Mystere IV fighter aircraft during the time of 1965 Pakistan hostilities. After completing his bombing attack on the ammunition dump in Pakistan’s Sargodha airbase, he was shot by a Sidewinder missile from an F-86 Sabre.

Flt. Lt. Mohan trained as a fighter pilot with the 89/90 Pilot’s Course and was also stationed at Adampur airbase with the 26 squadron when war broke out in December 1971. In an air battle during the war, his Sukhoi was believed to be hit by an enemy missile before crashing into the other side’s territory.

The ceremony on Friday will be attended by Justice Arindam Sinha, High Court of Odisha, and Air Marshal Manavendra Singh, PVSM AVSM VrC VSM ADC, Air Officer Commanding in Chief, Headquarter Training Command, amongst others.

Bengaluru is key driver in GST backend operations

E-way bill and e-invoice is driven from the city by a small team from National Informatics Centre

As the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime is set to complete five years in a few days, Bengaluru has contributed to its nationwide operation. The backend operations for the crucial e-way bill, mandatory to move goods across the country, and the e-invoice that helps in input credit, is driven from the city by a small team from the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

In the four years since its inception, the country has seen over 273 crore e-way bills being generated to move goods and over 163 crore e-invoices having been generated. While the transition from the Value Added Tax (VAT) regime to GST regime took place on July 1, 2017, the e-way bill was introduced on April 1, 2018, while the e-invoice was introduced in October 2020. In fact, the e-Sugam launched by the Karnataka Commercial Tax in 2010 morphed into the e-way bill under the nation-wide GST regime. In the VAT regime, Karnataka was generating 1.2 lakh e-way bills a day.

36% increase

Since its introduction in 2018 April, the number of e-way bills generated daily has seen a 36% increase from about 22 lakh a day to 30 lakh a day. If 55.8 crore e-way bills were generated in 2018-2019, it has shot up to 77.4 crore in 2021-2022.

In case of e-invoice, the numbers have shot up by 92% since October 2020 when 26 lakh invoices were generated daily to about 50 lakh invoices daily now. If 4.95 crore e-invoices were generated in October 2020, it has reached 12.18 crore in April 2022. The numbers have also increased as the e-invoice mandate has been extended to those reporting above ₹500 crore turnover annually when the e-invoice was introduced in October 2020 to include those reporting turnover of over ₹20 crore in April 2022.

The NIC, sources in Commercial Tax Department said, has been managing the entire operations from Bengaluru with a staff of around 50. Sources also said, “It is heartening that the 24/7 software and hardware support from Bengaluru has been such that there has been no incident of the software glitch where an e-way bill generation has been delayed over the past four years.”

Researchers at IISc. develop algorithm to study connectivity in brain

Researchers at Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) have developed a new graphic processing unit (GPU) based machine learning algorithm called Regularised, Accelerated, Linear Fascicle Evaluation (ReAl – LiFE), which will help to obtain a better understanding and in the prediction of connectivity between different regions of human brain.

This algorithm can help analyse extensive data generated from diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) scans which helps scientists study the connectivity in the brain at a speed, which is 150 times higher than a regular desktop computer or existing state-of-the-art algorithms. The study has been published in the journal Nature Computational Science.

“Even though it is difficult to pinpoint the connectomes, we are trying to infer information highway network by looking at traffic flow patterns (if molecules are like cars). We look at the movement of water molecules in the brain and we try to infer where the wires are. The water molecules have to travel along the length of the cables (axons), which have connected various parts of the brain. By measuring these lengths of water molecules, we are able to infer which areas are connected,” explained Devarajan Sridharan, Associate Professor at the Centre for Neuroscience (CNS), IISc., and corresponding author of the study.

BEL signs MoU with Belarus-based Defense Initiatives

Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) signed an MoU with Defense Initiatives (DI), Belarus, and Defense Initiatives Aero Pvt. Ltd., India, a subsidiary of DI Belarus, for supply of Airborne Defense Suite (ADS) for the helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

The cooperation between these companies is also aimed at exploring various business opportunities for India and global markets for ADS, said BEL in a statement on Friday.

State’s first exclusive park for specially-abled children opens

On Saturday, Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot inaugurated the State’s first disabled-friendly park in Jawaharlal Bal Bhavan (JBB), Cubbon Park, built for children with disabilities by Mindtree and Bal Bhavan Society.

Built at a cost of ₹3 crore under the guidance of health and child development experts, the park provides a safe, inclusive, and physiotherapeutic place where children with multiple forms of special abilities can play uninhibited by their mobility aids or the risk of accidents, officials said.

Designed in the shape of a turtle, the park consists of different zones for a wide range of physical, mental, therapeutic, and touch and feel activities. The park has a specially designed sand table for children on wheelchairs and a special swing. Tactile pathways make it easier for visually-challenged children to navigate their way around the park. To mitigate injuries from falls, all playing surfaces are made of a synthetic, non-toxic, and skid-proof rubber called EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer).

Prahlad Agasanakatte Award presented

Research student Nagaraj Kori was honoured with the Dr. Prahlad Agasanakatte Student Story Award at a function in Hubballi on Sunday.

Felicitating the young writer after presenting the award in the function jointly organised by Akshara Sahitya Vedike and KIMS, Hubballi, on Sunday, writer Allamaprabhu Bettadur termed the initiative of identifying and honouring student writers as crucial. Nagaraj Kori’s story, Kalavalada Deegi Kunidittavva, was chosen for the award.

Mr. Bettadur said that writers of North Karnataka have desi (indigenous) sensitivity and because of its distinct regionalism, it has found base in Kannada literature. Judge of the contest Chidanand Kammar spoke on the award-winning story.