Monthly Archives: February 2015

India Network Foundation inaugurates mineral water project in Krishnapatnam village, Andhra Pradesh, India

Orlando, FL :

India Network Foundation a US based non-profit organization announces grand opening of a mineral water plant at Krishnapatnam, Andhra Pradesh that will provide safe drinking water to about 3000 villagers. The plant was designed and executed by India Network Foundation and will be managed by the villagers themselves. The water plant provides 1000 liters of treated drinking water per hour and will be supplied to villagers every day. India Network Foundation, sponsor of award winning health insurance program for visitors coming to the United Statescontributes to several community projects helping elementary schools in rural Indiaand drinking water projects in remote areas. A small village Krishnapatnam worked hard to complete building for the project to start the mineral water plant within one month of award of the grant by the India Network Foundation.

The Drinking water projects taken by the India Network Foundation provide high quality equipment, and training to local villagers. who have to manage the project on their own. The Foundation plans to help many more rural villages where community wholly participates for the benefit of everyone.

India Network Foundation also sponsors India Network visitor health insurance  plans for visitors coming to the United States, and Travel grants to researchers presenting research at national and international conferences. In India, the Foundation has been helping schools with maps and other educational equipment, and constructing several schools in Bhuj, Gujarat, India in the past. Recently, Foundation has launched an initiative to provide clean drinking water to villagers living in remote rural areas. The first such project, Mineral Drinking Water Project in Krishnapatnam village, Andhra Pradesh, India sponsored by the Foundation has been commissioned today. The plant will provide 1000 liters per hour of good quality drinking water to villagers at a nominal cost .The project involves partnership with local community and their willingness to provide a shelter, and electric connection while the Foundation will help with equipment and training.

Dr. KV Rao, Founder and President of India Network Foundation stated that the Foundation philosophy of providing direct help to end beneficiaries is challenging but very rewarding. Even after many years the foundation continue to receives letters of appreciation for help rendered to families of Indian soldiers died or injured in Kargil war and from school teachers that benefitted from map projects. Foundation encourages members in the United States to take advantage of its vast experience and knowledge in providing direct end user benefitting projects.

source: http://www.insurancenewsnet.com / InsuranceNewsNet.com / Home> Newswires / PR Web, Orlando- FL / February 26th, 2015

Yes Bank sets up flagship branch in city

 

YES Bank Group President R. Ravichander and Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao after inauguration of the bank’s flagship branch in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. —Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam
YES Bank Group President R. Ravichander and Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao after inauguration of the bank’s flagship branch in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. —Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam
India’s fifth largest private sector bank, Yes Bank, opened its flagship branch – the first in Andhra Pradesh — here on Thursday.

Inaugurating the branch at Dwarakanagar here, Minister for HRD Ganta Srinivasa Rao said the high-tech branch would shift the focus from plain vanilla transactions to high-end value added services.

The bank would open two more branches at Rajahmundry and Nellore. The city which at present had two branches would have four or five more. The bank had set a target to have 25 branches in Andhra Pradesh in next three years, according to its Group President R. Ravichander.

The flagship branch showcased the cutting edge technologies in tune with the bank’s aim of transforming branches from being mere transaction platforms into service-centric advisory centres, he said.

The state-of-the-art branch was the seventh operational branch of the bank in Andhra Pradesh. Some of the innovative services being offered free of cost were secure and instant money transfer, including bill payments with two-factor authentication and unique online aggregation service under proprietary branch ‘Money Monitor’ on the net banking platform, said Mr. Ravichander.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Visakhapatnam / by Special Correspondent / Visakhapatnam – February 27th, 2015

For Google languages centre at Vizag

FOR BEST USE OF TECH in digitising languages:Kuchibhotla Anand
FOR BEST USE OF TECH in digitising languages:Kuchibhotla Anand

Telugus of Silicon Valley are lobbying with IT giant Google to set up a centre for Asian Languages in Visakhapatnam.

Software technocrat and Silicon Andhra founder Kuchibhotla Anand told The Hindu that talks had already been initiated with the managers of Google to explore the feasibility of establishing a centre of Asian Languages in Visakhapatnam. A decision on it would have to taken at the vice-presidents level, he said.

The setting up of a centre for Asian Languages would help in deploying the best available technology for digitising languages, he said.

Mr Anand, who is well established in the Silicon Valley, was recently nominated as chairman of the Kuchipudi Natyaramam and took charge in the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat on Thursday.

‘Ahead of Tamil’

He said Silicon Andhra was collaborating with Google to create new open source Unicode fonts for Telugu. Various search engines could not recognise the font unless it was Unicode compliant. Though the Telugus were 14 years behind the Tamils in becoming Internet savvy, the language at present was “two steps ahead” of Tamil in the development of Unicode fonts.

Two Google open source Telugu Fonts named after N.T. Rama Rao (NTR) and former Minister who held the first World Telugu Conference Mandali Venkatakrishna Rao (Mandali) were very popular and being downloaded by Internet users all over the world. Google had 18 Telugu fonts on its list, more fonts than any other Indian language, he said.

Google was also developing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software for Telugu. Once the software was available, text file could be created by simply scanning the page of a book.

Software for converting speech to text and vice versa was also coming soon, Mr Anand said.

The setting up of a centre for Asian Languages will help in deploying the best available technology for digitising languages

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by G. Venkataramana Rao / Vijayawada – February 28th, 2015

Chandrababu Naidu calls on ailing TDP functionary

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu arrives at the CMC Hospital on Friday.—Photo: C. Venkatachalapathy
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu arrives at the CMC Hospital on Friday.—Photo: C. Venkatachalapathy

The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party president N. Chandrababu Naidu visited the Christian Medical College Hospital here on Friday evening and called on G. Mahadeva Naidu (60), Andhra Pradesh State Organizing Secretary of TDP.

G. Mahadeva Naidu is undergoing treatment for a serious neurological problem at the hospital for the last six weeks.

Mr. Naidu who earlier arrived from Cuddapah by helicopter at the VIT helipad drove straight to the CMC Hospital. Here he was received by Dr. Sunil Chandy, Director of the CMC Hospital and R. Nanthagopal, Collector of Vellore. After calling on the TDP functionary, he left for Tirupathi by helicopter en route to Hyderabad.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> National> Tamil Nadu / by P.V.K. Murthi / Nellore – February 28th, 2015

Mega health camp for thalassaemia patients

A mega health camp, the first of its kind in Andhra Pradesh, is being conducted in the Krishna District Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition Society premises beside The Hindu office in Autonagar exclusively for thalassaemia patients from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on February 28.

Thalassaemia patients, most of them children, are born with a defect in their blood. Their body cannot make haemoglobin, a compound that helps in the transport of oxygen. Children with thalassaemia have to continuously get haemoglobin from somewhere else.

Blood transfusion is the only way they can get taemoglobin so they need to get blood transfusion frequently. Babies that are one year old or less may need blood transfusions once in a month, but as they grow they will need it once in two weeks. But the frequent transfusions cause several complications.

Iron overload is one of the treacherous complications. Too much iron in the body results in damage to the heart, liver and endocrine system, which includes glands that produce hormones that regulate most processes in the body.

Another dangerous complication of frequent transfusions was enlarged spleen. The spleen helps the body fight infection and filtered out unwanted materials such as old or damaged blood cells. Thalassaemia is often accompanied by the destruction of a large number of red blood cells, making the spleen work harder than normal, causing the spleen to enlarge making the anaemia worse. The only solution to the problem was the removal of the spleen.

For more details, dial 939296779 or 9393096779.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by Special Correspondent / Vijayawada – February 26th, 2015

Awesome ‘Eightsome’ Do ALC Proud

 

NCC cadets of Andhra Loyola College, who participated in the Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi, shares a light moment before being felicitated by Krishna district collector Babu A on the college premises in Vijayawada on Tuesday | Express Photo
NCC cadets of Andhra Loyola College, who participated in the Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi, shares a light moment before being felicitated by Krishna district collector Babu A on the college premises in Vijayawada on Tuesday | Express Photo

 

Vijayawada :

Pride of achievement was writ large on their faces and their demeanour spoke of confidence. They were eight NCC cadets engaged in a banter while waiting outside the auditorium in Andhra Loyola College (ALC) on Tuesday to be felicitated by the district collector for representing the state in Republic Day parade.

ALC had achieved a rare distinction of being the first college to have eight NCC cadets selected to participate in Republic Day parade. Sharing their experiences and future plans with Express, the cadets expressed their joy and pride of being able to participate in Republic Day parade.

‘Awesome’, ‘Most cherished moment of life’ were their immediate response, when asked how they felt being part of such a momentous occasion. Many of those cadets want to join civil services and become IPS officers while some want to pursue their career in defence services.

Senior Under Officer D Venkata Krishna, pursuing BSC (MPC) second year, was the contingent commandant from the state. It was a proud moment when he got selected for the RD and had seven members of his own group also getting selected for the event.

Venkata Krishna, the only cadet from Andhra and Telangana to get selected for the All India Guard of Honour – 2015 at RD camp, said it was one of the best moments of his life. “I had  been able to perform cultural programme in Teen Murti Bhavan in the presence of the Prime Minister,” he said. He along with another cadet R Divya Sai got selected for Youth Exchange Programme (YEP) for 2015. They will be visiting a foreign country, yet to be finalised, in March.

Cadet Captain R Divya Sai was part of the Prime Minister’s rally and bagged All India second best cadet award (silver medal).  She also won the Governor’s gold medal for excellence in RD camp 2015 along with Chief Minister’s gold medal at state level. “It was one of the most cherished moments of my life ,” she said. Sergeant M Vikram, who too was part of the PM Rally, said he is proud of his achievement.

Cadets S Naga Balaji and Tijo Thomas said they were excited to march along the Rajpath on Republic Day.

Cadet Shaik Riyaz, who got 3rd place in static model presentation ‘Eurofighter’ explained how he workedhard to prepare for RD camp and the stages he had to cross to get qualified.

Corporal P Gayatri got selected for RD contingent and secured All India fourth place on Gold Star and she was the only girl who could complete the novice show jumping arena with two different horses.

Junior Under Officer Meer Akbar Basha was part of Swachh Bharat Ballet presented by the AP contingent in PM’s house.

“I am proud that I got an opportunity to show culture of both AP and Telangana through my cultural programme,” he said.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Andhra Pradesh / by S. Guru Srikanth / February 25th, 2015

City endocrinologist shares novel scoring system in Paris

Sunil Kota, endocrinologist from Vijayawada, at the Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes conference held in Paris. —Photo: By Arrangement
Sunil Kota, endocrinologist from Vijayawada, at the Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes conference held in Paris. —Photo: By Arrangement

City-based endocrinologist presented a paper on metabolic surgery at a three-day international conference, ‘Advanced Technologies and treatment for Diabetes’ in Paris.

Dr Sunil Kumar Kota shared with the colleagues at the conference his novel ‘Metabolic Surgery Score’ system that used six pre-operative parameters of a diabetic to predict the success rate of the remission of diabetes following the bariatric surgery. Dr Sunil Kumar also discussed with other participants his experience with anti-diabetic drug – Saroglitazar — discovered by Indian scientists.

His paper was about the results he obtained in seventy type 2 diabetics who underwent “Ileal interposition with Sleeve Gastrectomy/diverted sleeve gastrectomy,” a type of modified bariatric or weight loss surgery.

Dr Sunil Kumar was the only participant from Andhra Pradesh and one of 11 participants from India at a conference attended by 450 delegates from all over the world.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by Special Correspondent / Vijayawada – February 24th, 2015

eGovWatch: Wipro, Andhra Pradesh ink deal to build Enterprise Architecture

The vision of the state of Andhra Pradesh is to use eGovernance as a tool to provide integrated services to its citizens through a free flow of information
The vision of the state of Andhra Pradesh is to use eGovernance as a tool to provide integrated services to its citizens through a free flow of information

Andhra Pradesh Government has signed an MoU with Wipro for building and implementing the State Enterprise Architecture (APSEA).

The APSEA aims to be a lever for transformational change in the way government services are conceived, designed, delivered and consumed, state’s IT, Electronics and Communications Secretary B Sreedhar said, adding the Bangalore-headquartered IT major would be engaged for a two-year period.

“The vision of the state of Andhra Pradesh is to use eGovernance as a tool to provide integrated services to its citizens through a free flow of information. APSEA is an essential first step to achieve the vision of the State of Andhra Pradesh,” the MoU said.

APSEA intends to make the state government “future-ready” by changing from departmental stovepipes to a citizen-centred approach to government services achieved through transformation of the front, middle and back office operations, it was stated.

Sreedhar said APSEA necessitated collaborative working and information sharing between departments, forming a virtual/digital network of departments organised around citizen services and their outcomes.

APSEA shall follow a multi-level approach to account for different layers of government bodies.

To ensure relevancy and pragmatism, government services will be taken up progressively, based on their priority.

These services representing the business of government would be analysed for inter-departmental linkages, for information, automation/digitisation and infrastructure requirements.

Service delivery would be supported by deep collaboration between departments in terms of information flow, application interaction and common infrastructures.

Services would be supported by deep collaboration between departments in terms of information flow, application interaction and common infrastructures.

Services would be evaluated for actual outcomes, rather than outputs.

Countries like South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Estonia, Norway, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand have already embraced a holistic architectural approach to e-governance, according to him.

source: http://www.computer.financialexpress.com / Express Computer / Home> eGovWatch / by PTI / February 24th, 2015

 

ANU botany professor pens a treatise on flora of Guntur

Senior Professor of Botony P. R. Mohana Rao shares excerpts from his book ``Flora of Guntur City Andhra Pradesh," in Guntur. Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar
Senior Professor of Botony P. R. Mohana Rao shares excerpts from his book “Flora of Guntur City Andhra Pradesh,” in Guntur. Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

A former professor of Botany from Acharya Nagarjuna University has brought out an exhaustive treatise on the wealth of flora in Guntur City. The book, “Flora of Guntur City Andhra Pradesh,’’ a brain child of P.R. Mohana Rao, Professor Emeritus and former HoD, Department of Botony, Acharya Nagarjuna University, is considered the only available and authentic work throwing light on the numerous species of plants and trees in the city.

Dr. Rao was assisted by Assistant Professor of Botony, ANU, S.K. Khasim and former research student Bibi Aasiya, who are the co-authors of the book published by Bishen Singh Mahendra Pal Singh from Dehra Dun.

Dr. Rao had a rich global experience working in University of Cambridge, Delhi University, Himachal Pradesh University before settling at the ANU. He founded the Bio Technology Centre and started M.Sc (Biotechnology) course.

His association with the renowned systematic Botanist Professor late Olov Hedberg at Uppasala University, Sweden, during 1982-83 inspired him to take up the seminal work.

“The book has up-to-date information on flora which will help students, naturalists, tourists and town planners in identifying plants,’’ Professor Rammohana Rao told The Hindu on Tuesday.

The book listed 431 flowering plants, shrubs and trees belonging to 76 families of angiosperms. The families were arranged systematically following Bentham and Hooker System of Classification. The authors besides giving current nomenclature to families, genera and species, also gave original citation and a brief description of species, local names, flowering and dispersal mechanisms. A city map is also incorporated in the book.

It was late Rev.Dr.Uhl, former principal of Lutheran Mission College, Guntur who attempted a book on Flora of Guntur in 1930 but it could not be considered a complete work as Dr.Uhl had not followed any system of classification.

Dr. Rao’s work is based on three years of intensive research during 1990-1993. Leading a team consisting of Dr. Khasim, Aasiya and other students, Dr. Rao began an arduous task of collection of plants from fields, road margins, railway tracks, parks, gardens etc. Field observations included studying habit, habitat, time of flowering and fruiting.

Dr. Rao had also penned a note on the selection of plants for road margins, public parks useful to town planners. Some of the recommended trees included, Adansonia digitata (Baobab tree), Albizia lebbeck and Delonix regia (Gold Mohur) for gardens and parks etc.

“Most of the roads in the city are devoid of tree cover. Unfortunately, the city is lacking in public parks and green spaces. With the town gaining importance due to proximity to capital region, town planners could take a cue from the book on tree planting,’’ Dr. Rao added.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by P. Samuel Jonathan / Guntur – February 24th, 2015

A.P. invites investments in farm sector

Agriculture Minister Prattipati Pulla Rao speaking at a conference on ‘Agriculture investment opportunities in Andhra Pradesh’ in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday.— Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam
Agriculture Minister Prattipati Pulla Rao speaking at a conference on ‘Agriculture investment opportunities in Andhra Pradesh’ in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday.— Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam

Agriculture Minister Prattipati Pulla Rao has invited investments in agriculture and allied sectors by private companies to increase yields and make farming profitable in Andhra Pradesh.

Companies should take up demonstration adopting 5,000 to 25,000 acres with the aim of increasing yield by two to five quintals and the government will provide Rs.5,000 per acre, he said.

He was addressing a conference on “Agricultural investment opportunities in Andhra Pradesh,” organised by the Agriculture Department, Small Farmers Agri-business Consortium (SFAC) of the Government of India and FICCI here.

CMDs and representatives of 25 companies are participating. The State has opportunities to set up warehouses, seed and fertilizer units at international standards, he said.

The State stood first in fisheries with more than 50 per cent exports.

The Chief Minister had discussions with companies like WALMART, Jubilant and Pepsico to explore horticulture potential.

He said companies may come out with proposals for entering into a Memorandum of Understanding with the State government after a meeting with the Chief Minister. Under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVV) State and Central governments would offer subsidies.

Managing Director of SFAC Parvesh Sharma said the basic aim of Public Private Partnership in Integrated Agriculture Development was to increase the primary producer’s share in the value chain from 25-30 per cent to the international average of 50 per cent.

While the government would contribute 50 per cent of the cost of projects, the remaining should come from private companies or from farmers.

CMD of NSPL M. Prabhakara Rao said providing market linkages would benefit farmers, investors and consumers. After participation for three years in Maharashtra, his company would submit proposals for fourth year.

Panchayat Raj Minister Ch. Ayyanna Patrudu, HRD Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao, Minister for Labour K. Achhen Naidu and Agriculture Commissioner K. Madhusudhana Rao spoke.

Special Chief Secretary, Planning, S P Tucker, was present. Ruchira Saini from FICCI coordinated.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Visakhapatnam / by Special Correspondent / Visakhapatnam – February 25th, 2015