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India is brimming with enthusiasm in the science and technology sectors and its youngsters are leveraging the power of science to make the planet better, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday. Prime Minister Modi said this after meeting academic and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa here. "Had amazing meeting with most brilliant of world leaders: @narendramodi @PMOIndia. Blown away with his dedication to the people of India and the world and understanding of science and technology," Wadhwa said on Twitter after meeting Modi. The academic said that in his meeting with Modi he discussed how India will lead the world in curing cancer and transform agriculture. Tagging Wadhwa's tweet, Modi said on Twitter, "Happy to meet you and discuss fascinating innovations in science and technology." "India, as you know, is brimming with enthusiasm in these sectors. Our youngsters are leveraging the power of science to make our planet better," the prime minister said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that India's scientific community should work to make India 'aatma nirbhar' (self reliant). Development in science should be aimed at fulfilling India's needs, and this should be the inspiration for our scientific community, he said in his address to the Indian Science Congress, being held in Nagpur, via video conferencing. He cited the country's growing energy needs and urged the scientific community to forge such innovations in the field as may benefit the country. Since India is home to 17-18 per cent of world population, progress of such a large number of people will lead to a surge in global advancement as well, he said. India today is using scientific means for progress and its consequences are visible, he said, noting that India jumped to 40th rank in the global innovation index from 81 in 2015 in a list of 130 countries. Scientific attempts can turn into big achievements when it steps out of lab to reach "zameen" (ground), when
An eminent astrophysicist has called for treating eclipses as natural celestial events and not believe in superstitions surrounding these. Different parts of India and the world are set to witness a total lunar eclipse on Tuesday, just a fortnight after a partial solar eclipse. Astrophysicist Debi Prasad Duari said it is unfortunate that people give credence to superstitions related to such natural celestial events despite the immense developments in space science and technology in the 21st century. "People should not believe in this sort of things and go ahead and treat it as just a natural celestial event," he said. Duari, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and International Astronomical Union, said that superstitions surrounding a solar or lunar eclipse are prevalent not only in the country but also in different pockets across the world. In India, people do not eat or cook food during eclipses. Some do not even step out in the open during these celestial events. It i
Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday stressed on the modernisation of indigenous texts of ancient knowledge as India seeks to assert its scientific prowess in the world. Inaugurating the national conference on 'Akash Tattva Akash for Life' here, Singh said India's indigenous knowledge and ancient texts were ignored as students of science pursued their studies based on texts written by authors of other countries. "There is a scientific basis to this linking of ancient knowledge with modern science. What India has, others are not aware of it. We are also not aware of what we have because we have been reading their literature," Singh said at the conference where former RSS general secretary Suresh 'Bhaiyyaji' Joshi, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, secretaries of science departments of the central government were also present. "Our textbooks were written by authors of other countries. We did not have the kind of resources and hence could not ...
The click chemistry that won Morten Meldal, Barry Sharpless, and Carolyn Bertozzi this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry is about making difficult processes easier. Click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions -- which take place without disrupting the normal functioning of the cell -- have taken chemistry into the era of functionalism, bringing the greatest benefit to humankind. Sharpless from Scripps Research, US, and Meldal from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently. Bertozzi, from Stanford University, US, took this click chemistry to a new dimension and started utilising it in living organisms. Chemists have long been driven by the desire to build increasingly complicated molecules. In pharmaceutical research, this has often involved artificially recreating natural molecules with medicinal properties. This has led to many admirable molecular constructio