• India Test-Fries Pinaka Rocket Launcher in Orissa
• Engg Student Designs Cost And Natur Friendly Car
• Indian N-Data on Thorium Unique, Valuable: IAEA-CRP
• India Can Build Fast Breeder Reactors: Burns

• India to Become Hub For Elderly Care
• Kerala Ayurveda Pharmacy, Pacific Healthcare Sign MoU
• India, US to Sign Agreement on Launching Satellites

India has twice tested rocket launcher Pinaka from a defence base in Orissa on Tuesday, officials sources said. The first test was carried out at 3.15 pm and the second one at 3.45 pm, both from the experimental establishment in the coastal district of Balasore. The indigenously built Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher can fire rockets with a range of 39-40 kilometres. It can fire 12 rockets with 1.2 tonnes of high explosives within 40 seconds. Defence officials described the tests as a routine exercise.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times, March 28, 2006

Back to Index

The UK-based writer Deborah Moggach's imagination to give a new identity to India's Silicon Valley, from 'outsourcing hub of IT services' to 'global destination for elderly care', couldn't escape government's attention. Moggach, in her book These Foolish Things, floated the idea of outsourcing elderly population of developed world to India and policy makers realised that India has a potential to become a hub for elderly care. "Her idea has a basis. Elderly care is part of our cultural values. Some of the Indian locations are ideal destinations for such people. So far as healthcare facilities are concerned, health tourism in India is already popular," says a government official.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, March 27, 2006

Back to Index

As an alternative to the 'heavy on the pocket and on nature' vehicles, a final year engineering student has designed a battery run car valued at Rs 95,000 that he claims is a dream come true for the middle income group. The 'Elf Electra' car could travel at 65 km per hour and cover 110 km when fully charged, Pradeep Kumar Rahi, in his final year of Mechanical Engineering course at GLA College of Engineering and Technology, Mathura claimed. Also, the car was lightweight at 525 kgs and had an operational cost of just 37 paise per km, he said. "The engineless car runs on a battery that supplies power to the motor. An electronic controller fitted in the vehicle controls the speed," he said. Rahi got the idea to make the car from foreign automobile expos, he said. "Gradual hike in petrol and diesel rates also egged me to come out with the cost and environment friendly alternative." Rahi visited several automobile companies before "embarking on the mission". He was helped by friends and teachers, including senior lecturer Kamal Sharma, who designed the model of the car.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, March 26, 2006

Back to Index

The Kerala Ayurveda Pharmacy Ltd has entered into an MOU with Singapore-based Pacific Healthcare Holdings for a joint venture as a 51 per cent subsidiary to establish medical centres in major Indian cities. The joint venture would offer specialist medical services, cosmetology and cell research banks, Kerala Ayurvedia Pharmacy informed the Bombay Stock Exchange. Pacific Healthcare Holdings is a healthcare provider which offers specialist medical care, general practice medicine, dentistry, health screening, wellness services, operation of nursing homes, day surgery centres and psychiatric hospitals.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, March 23, 2006

Back to Index

The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) coordinated Research Project has described the Indian nuclear data on thorium as unique and of high quality and its contribution very valuable for the international nuclear community. The nuclear data on thorium is much better than the six-decade data on natural uranium U-238 in both light water and pressurised heavy water reactors. "With these new evaluations done through the CRP on thorium, India has joined select band of criticality safety benchmark," Andrej Trkov, IAEA Scientific Secretary of Coordinated Research Project (CRP) said. The main contribution of India is in the completion of the KAMINI reactor benchmark which has already been accepted for the prestigious Handbook on International Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments, Mr Trkov said and added a benchmark on post-irradiation examination of irradiated thorium fuel is still in preparation and will be completed as part of this activity. The CRP on "Evaluated Nuclear Data for the Thorium-Uranium Fuel Cycle" was organised by IAEA to produce the library of evaluated neutron cross section data for transactinide nuclei important for the Th-U fuel cycle. The third and final meeting concluded at Vienna last month and India was represented there by Dr S Ganesan of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre as CRP's Chief Scientific Investigator, Mr Trkov said. "The Indian contribution is extremely valuable and is greatly appreciated by the international nuclear community," he said. India has an active R&D projects on utilisation of the thorium-uranium fuel cycle and will, therefore, directly benefit from the improved nuclear data resulting from the project, he pointed out. Thorium-based nuclear fuel cycle offers many advantages - thorium fuel is more proliferation-resistant due to highly radioactive constituents, which cannot be separated out by chemical means. Handling of such material in improvised clandestine laboratories is practically impossible, Mr Trkov said. Other advantages are - the Neutron capture in Thorium-232 yields U-233 which is a highly efficient nuclear fuel. A thermal breeder (or near-breeder) reactor concept based on thorium fuel is feasible. Also, the build-up of long-lived higher actinides, which are the main source of long-term residual radioactivity in the waste, is much smaller in thorium fuel. This fact can be used with advantage in the design of critical as well as subcritical accelerator-driven systems, the IAEA official said. "The burn-up bench mark on thorium done by India is unique in the world as no other country has done it," Mr Trkov said. India is the only country which has irradiated thorium rods indigenously to high burnups and it is a valuable and unique information that India is sharing with the world nuclear community, Mr Trkov added.

Courtesy; The Pioneer, March 13, 2006

Back to Index

India and the United States have agreed to sign a Technology Safeguard Agreement as part of the measures that will facilitate India to launch U.S. licensed satellites and also third country satellites carrying U.S. controlled items. The pact would seek to safeguard the protected technologies of either country associated with such missions. An India-U.S. fact sheet issued on Thursday during the visit of U.S. President George Bush here said the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have also formulated two memoranda of understanding that define the scope of the experiments and the sharing of responsibilities and data with regard to the two instruments from NASA that are to be flown as part of Chandrayaan, India's first lunar mission scheduled to be launched next year. The instruments are a miniature synthetic aperture radar and a moon mineralogy mapper. The radar will map the polar landscape and deposits of water in these cold traps up to a depth of a few metres. The mineralogy mapper will assess the mineral resources of the moon and characterise and map the composition of its surface at high spatial resolution.

Courtesy: The Hindu, March 03, 2006

Back to Index

India can build fast breeder reactors in future to produce nuclear weapons and its strategic programme will be "walled off," the United States has conceded. " ... India could build reactors that would service their nuclear weapons industry," U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told a press briefing on Thursday. Asked whether India could have non-civilian breeder reactors, Mr. Burns, who revealed that talks on securing a civilian nuclear understanding had stretched till 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, said: "And ... the answer is yes, they could build facilities to service the nuclear weapons programme, but the great majority of the growth we think will come on the civilian side." "It's not a perfect deal in the sense that we haven't captured 100 per cent of India's nuclear programme. That's because India is a nuclear weapons power, and India will preserve part of its nuclear industry to service its nuclear weapons programme. But the majority of the programme will now come under international inspection. And we think that is a tremendous and positive gain for us," he stressed. Describing the understanding reached as a "complex and esoteric arrangement," Mr. Burns said India's entire civilian nuclear sector, however, would be opened up to international inspection. " ... India will have international trade and investment into that civil[ian] sector and the entire civil[ian] sector will be opened up to international inspection. But the nuclear weapons sector of their programme will not be open to trade and investment or safeguards. And so that's going to be walled off. And that's important. The United States has not recognised formally India as a nuclear weapons state and that's important. But we do recognise the need for nuclear power in this country." He said the U.S. had committed to India on Thursday to "work very hard" to help ensure a continuous and reliable supply of nuclear fuel to India. Briefing the American press, he said: "First of all, we have a bilateral agreement now to negotiate, and we will embed in that bilateral agreement assurances that we will seek to help India secure fuel for its nuclear reactors." "Second, we have agreed that India and the United States will approach the IAEA for a multilateral regime to supply fuel for India. Third, we've agreed to set up a council of advisers - India and the United States and other countries - so that if there is ever a threat of interruption of supply, those countries could meet to figure out how to maintain supply to India."

Courtesy: The Hindu, March 03, 2006

Back to Index