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Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi through video conference interacted with field officials from States and Districts regarding their experience in handling the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the interaction, the officials thanked the Prime Minister for leading the fight against the second wave of Covid from the front. The officials shared their experiences and apprised the Prime Minister about the innovative steps that were undertaken to manage the recent surge of cases. They also informed about the efforts being undertaken to augment the medical infrastructure and capacity building in rural areas. The Prime Minister asked the officials to compile the best practices and innovative steps so that these may be used in other districts of the country.
Addressing the officials after his interaction, the Prime Minister appreciated the dedication and perseverance shown by the nation’s healthcare workers, frontline workers and administrators during these difficult times, and urged them to continue working with similar vigour moving forward. The Prime Minister said that every district in the country is equally different and has its own unique challenges. He said to the district officials, “You understand the challenges of your district much better. So when your district wins, the country wins. When your district beats Corona, the country defeats Corona.” He commended the officials who were working without taking any leave in spite of contracting COVID-19. He added that they are inspiration to many and he understands the sacrifices made by them.
The Prime Minister said that all the officials have a very important role in this war against Corona like a field commander of this war. He remarked that Local containment zones, aggressive testing and correct & complete information to the people are the weapons against the virus. At this time, the number of corona infections are decreasing in some states as well as increasing in several other states. So he stressed on the need to be more vigilant in the face of decreasing infections. He emphasized that the fight is to save every single life and the focus should be in rural and inaccessible areas. He requested the officials to make the relief material easily accessible for the rural population.
The Prime Minister advised the officials also to take care of the ease of living of every citizen of their district. He stressed on the need to stop infection and at the same time ensure unhindered flow of essential supplies. He informed that work is being done rapidly to install oxygen plants in hospitals in every district of the country through PM CARES Fund and these plants have already started functioning in many hospitals.
The Prime Minister spoke about how getting vaccinated is instrumental to lowering the severity of the disease and reducing hospitalisations and mortalities. He said continuous efforts are being made to increase the supply of Corona vaccine on a very large scale. He added that the Health Ministry is streamlining the system and process of vaccination. Attempts are being made to give a schedule of the next 15 days to the states in advance. He stressed on the need to stop vaccine wastage. He said the convenience of the people increases when information of bed availability and vaccine availability are easily made available. In the same way, black marketing should be curbed and strict action should be taken against those who do so. Mobilizing the front-line workers by keeping their morale high.
The Prime Minister commended the way villagers were maintaining social distance in their farm. He said villages grasp the information and modify it according to their needs. This is the strength of villages. He added we must adopt best practices against coronavirus. He gives free hand to them says you are free to innovate, suggest policy changes. He appeals to stay alert even with covid cases reducing.
The meeting was attended by the Home Minister, Defence Minister, Health Minister, Chief ministers of Various states, Member (Health) NITI Aayog, Health Secretary, Pharmaceutical Secretary, and other officers from PMO, Ministries and Departments of Central Government.
Sources https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1719567
The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, announced the launch of the NGMA’s Audio-Visual Guide App on the occasion of International Museum Day. It will be possible for museum viewers to listen to anecdotes and stories related to the treasured Indian modern art exhibited at the Gallery, on smart phone, anywhere, anytime. The app is an audio-visual guide for exploring the modern art treasures on display across galleries of the Museum.
The app is available on both the Google Playstore and the Apple Appstore. To listen to the narrations, users need to download the app and navigate the content using the numbers mentioned. The same numbers will be on display next to the art work at the Museum. A web version of the app is also available for those not keen to download the app and can be accessed by just scanning the QR code at location. The NGMA app and tours are free for all users.
The museum tours are a rich mix of images, videos and voice. They aim to enhance the viewing experience of the visitors at the museum and also enable one to ‘visit’ the art works virtually. The text is written in an interesting storytelling format with details about the artist, the thought behind the art work and the techniques used in creating the piece.
Speaking about the launch, DG NGMA Shri AdwaitaGadanayak said, ‘The launch of NGMA’s Audio-Visual Guide App is a major landmark. It will help people connect with art in an intimate way. I especially hope that our children and youth will use the app prolifically, experiencing art as a vital expression of the human spirit.’
The museum has launched the app today (18/05/2021) on the occasion of the International Museums Day 2021.
About National Gallery of Modern Art
Founded in 1954, as the premier museum of modern art of a newly independent nation, the National Gallery Modern Art, New Delhi, houses and showcases masterpieces of the changing art forms of modern India spanning more than one hundred and fifty years. The museum continues to reaffirm its role as a repository of modern and contemporary visual, plastic and new media arts.
The museum has a seminal collection of more than 2000 artists. The line-up includes artists of the of stature of Raja Ravi Verma, Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, Thomas Daniell, and a few leading international artists. Some of the oldest works preserved at NGMA date back to 1857. With 12,000 square meters of exhibition space, it is one of the world's largest modern art museums.
For further updates, please visit:
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NGMA INSTAGRAM:@ngma.delhi
Indian Railways is leaving no stone unturned in the fight against Covid 19. On one hand, Railways is moving Oxygen Expresses swiftly with loaded oxygen to different parts, at the same, it is continuing with the movement of passenger and freight traffic. At the same time, Railways has geared up its in-house medical facilities.
Massive Capacity Enhancement is planned in 86 Railway Hospitals across India. 4 Oxygen Plants are functional, 52 are sanctioned and 30 under various stages of processing. All Railway Covid Hospitals to be equipped with Oxygen Plants.
General Managers have been delegated further powers, upto Rs 2 crores in each case for sanctioning Oxygen Generation plants under M&P vide Rly Bd letter no 2020/F(X)II/ PW/3/Pt dated 4.5.21.
A series of measures have been initiated. The number of beds for Covid treatment have been increased from 2539 to 6972. The ICU Beds in Covid hospitals have been increased from 273 to 573.
Invasive ventilators have been added and their number has been increased from 62 to 296. Constant efforts are being made to add critical medical equipment like BIPAP machines, Oxygen concentrators, oxygen cylinders etc in Railway hospitals. Railways have also issued instructions that Covid affected employees may be admitted to empanelled hospitals on referral basis as per need.
This massive capacity enhancement in Railway Hospitals would usher in better infrastructure to handle medical emergencies.
Indian Astronomers have developed a new method based on Machine Learning that can identify cluster stars-- assembly of stars physically related through common origin, with much greater certainty. The method can be used on clusters of all ages, distances, and densities. The method has been used to identify hundreds of additional stars for six different clusters up to 18000 light-years away and uncover peculiar stars.
Studying stars and how they evolve is the cornerstone of astronomy. But understanding them is difficult since they are observed at different ages. A star cluster is, therefore, a great place to study stars. All stars in a star cluster have approximately the same age and chemistry, so any differences seen can be attributed to the peculiarities in individual stars with certainty. As the clusters are part of the Milky Way, there are many stars between us and the cluster, so it isn’t easy to identify and select the stars of a particular cluster.
A team of Astronomers from Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India used European Space Agency (ESA)’s recently released Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) which gives very accurate information about the brightness, parallax, and proper motion of more than a billion stars with an accuracy of 1 milli-arc-second (equivalent to seeing a person standing on the moon) to pick out the stars that are cluster members.
IIA team identified the crucial measurements for this task and understood the complex relationship between these parameters, using a machine learning technique called Probabilistic Random Forest. This uses a combination of parallax, proper motion, temperature, brightness and other parameters to classify each star as a cluster member or a non-member. The IIA team trained their algorithm using the most likely members from a model called the Gaussian Mixture Model, which can identify clumps of co-moving stars. The Probabilistic Random Forest algorithm then learns how to identify a typical cluster member star and efficiently takes out stars that share only similar proper motions or only similar velocities as the cluster itself. They used 10 parameters to identify members, after performing a trade study of all available parameters in the catalogue.
IIA team used the catalogue of members to identify the hottest stars in the six clusters using ultraviolet images from Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on the Indian space observatory ‘AstroSat’. This work has been published in the scientific journal ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society’. Their work has already resulted in discovering hot subdwarf-B type stars (compact stars that are very rare) in open cluster King 2. A research paper on the same has been accepted for publication in the ‘Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy’. The tool helped confirm that these stars are indeed part of the cluster, though showing unexpected properties.
The newly developed method can now identify cluster stars with much greater certainty and pinpoint individual stars that behave differently from their siblings. The team will apply the algorithms to more clusters in the future.
“Manual identification of stars belonging to a star-cluster is a daunting task owing to an armload of data to be analyzed. The new Artificial Intelligence based algorithm is very promising in automating and greatly speeding this process and may also find uses in other areas of analysis of patterns in biology and materials science,” said Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST.
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Figure 1The first figure shows a group of stars moving in a particular direction that are all part of a star cluster (see more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzQUNCleS3o, credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC). Second figure shows the ultraviolet image of open cluster M67. |
The first figure shows an example of the star cluster Hyades (in Rohini nakshatra). The arrows indicate the movement of the stars. The most likely cluster members are shown in yellow, all moving to the right with ~25 km/s. All stars in front or behind this group and having different velocities do not belong to the cluster.
Publication link:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07122
http://arxiv.org/abs/2102.13375
For more details Mr. Vikrant Jadhav (vikrant.jadhav@iiap.res.in) can be contacted.
Sources https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1719644
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