Month: May 2023

At a ceremony held today Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Shri Shantanu Thakur flagged off the vessel ‘M.V. MSS Galena’ from V.O. Chidambaranar Port, as the Direct Shipping Service between Tuticorin to Maldives.   During visit of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to Maldives in June 2019, Prime Minister of India & President of Maldives dwelt on need to improve connectivity between India & Maldives through establishment of enabling infrastructure, which shall also give impetus to bilateral trade between two countries.   To take this forward and…

A month after the record handling performance for the last FY, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA), India’s premier container port, has achieved another feat when it set a global benchmark in container cargo handling. According to the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) Report, 2023, published by the World Bank, JNPA has an impressive turnaround time (TAT) of just 22 hours (equal to 0.9 days), putting India amongst the top performers.   JNPA was able to achieve the feat due to various measures taken in reducing the dwell time. Most importantly the…

In a momentous milestone in S&T cooperation between India and Israel, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Industrial Research and Development Cooperation was signed between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) under the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) of the Republic of India and the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D), under the Ministry of Defense of the State of Israel.   Dr N Kalaiselvi, DG, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR thanked the Hon’ble Minister of State(IC), Ministry of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, GoI and…

At a ceremony held today Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Shri Shantanu Thakur flagged off MV-ITT LION (V-273) from Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, Kolkata as the inaugural shipment to operationalise the Sittwe Port in Rakhine State of Myanmar.   The Port has been built under a grant assistance from the Government of India as part of Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project (KMTTP). The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), as a project Development Consultant for the implementation of Port and IWT components of the work, has successfully…

A new smart gel-based sheet using three-dimensional (3D) printing technology that can self-roll into a tube during surgery to form a nerve conduit could help reduce the complexity of surgeries and aid rapid healing of nerve injuries.   The gold standard for the treatment of peripheral nerve injuries is still autografts. Bioresorbable polymer-based conduits are being explored for clinical use as alternatives. But these treatment strategies suffer from several limitations, such as donor site morbidity in the case of autografts and the necessity for sutures that demand highly skilled microsurgeries,…

Metavalent bonding—a new type of chemical bonding in solids, can be used to tailor the thermoelectric performance in quantum materials and efficiently convert waste heat to electricity, which could show a new direction for the country’s newly launched Quantum Mission.   Generating electricity from waste heat holds an exciting prospect for green energy production. Finding high-performance thermoelectric materials for this purpose requires materials with a magical recipe of properties that can conduct electricity like a metal, heat like a glass, and exhibits the Seebeck coefficient like a semiconductor.   The…