The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) celebrated its 6th Foundation Day on Tuesday, March 20th, at the India Habitat centre in New Delhi. This year, the theme for the Foundation Day celebration was ‘Sustaining Innovation: A market driven pathway’. The event saw a participation from large number of dignitaries from the industry and academia, public and private sector, policy makers and national and international organizations.

The Hon’ble President of India Shri Ram Nath Kovind inaugurated the Festival of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (FINE) organised by the Rashtrapati Bhavan in association with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) India and the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

Interspeech--the world’s largest and most comprehensive conference on the science and technology of spoken language processing -- is coming to India for the first time ever. This year will witness the 19th edition of Interspeech, which will be held during September 2-6, 2018 at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), Hyderabad, India, with an expected international participation of over 1500 delegates.

In today’s gadget-filled world of cameras, cell phones, smart watches and other lightweight and wearable devices, thin film transistors are commonplace. They are made by stacking thin layers of semiconductors, insulators and metals. In a study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, have explored how creating textures in metal films used in such transistors could help make them easy to control.

In research to be shared at the prestigious 56th International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), researchers from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (IISc)  will present a paper that details a breakthrough in significantly improving the reliability limits of 3D FinFET technology in sub-14nm technology for System-on-Chip integration. The study is the result of work in collaboration with Intel that sought to better understand various aspects of electrostatic discharge (ESD), latch-up and hot carrier reliability of ultra-dense FinFET technologies.

Scientists from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kgp) and GLA University, Mathura have developed a novel, low power humidity sensor using molybdenum disulphide nanoflakes and platinum nanocrystals.

The Western Ghats in India and Sri Lanka are well known biodiversity hotspots, with a rich diversity of amphibian species. Both these regions have high density of amphibian endemism, which means that many of the species of amphibians found here are found nowhere else on Earth. Over 85% of amphibian species found in Sri Lanka are endemic, making this island nation have the highest amphibian endemism in Asia.

Rampant sand mining over the decades in India and many parts Asia has led to eroding coastlines and degraded waterways in much of the continent. Christina Larson, a journalist from Kihim, India has looked the severe ecological damage caused by unbridled epidemic of illegal sand mining.

The forest owlet (Heteroglaux blewitti), an owl endemic to the forests of Central India, has been the centre of a century-old debate among ornithologists. Its classification into the particular genera is at the stem of this debate. Now, a new study by researchers, involving genetic analysis of the owl’s genome, may put an end to this debate forever.