Month: March 2021

If everything goes as per plan, Bihar is set to become the country’s first state to have two green energy efficient towns in Rajgir and Bodh Gaya. The towns will start getting solar energy through the first of its kind renewable energy project from 2023.

 An Indian American couple has donated over Rs 1 for crore healthcare works in Bihar and Jharkhand, the Bihar Jharkhand Association of North America (BJANA) announced on Monday.

The generous donation of USD 150,000 by the Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation to the BJANA would be used for healthcare efforts in the rural areas of the two states through the PRAN-BJANA clinic initiative.

The Pravasi Alumni Nisshulk (PRAN) is an initiative by like-minded Indian-American physicians who are working to provide healthcare to the underprivileged and underserved in Bihar and Jharkhand.

The Micky and Vinita Pant Charitable Fund, founded by IIT Kanpur alumnus Muktesh Pant and his wife Vinita, on Saturday announced the signing of an MoU with his alma mater to support the establishment of the School of Medical Research and Technology (SMRT)

‘Astrome’, a women-led startup, has developed an innovative wireless product that gives fibre-like bandwidth at fraction of the cost of fibre. This helps telecom operators deliver reliable low-cost internet services to suburban and rural areas.

One of the authors says that this was the first time a new species was discovered by an all-Indian research team from the Western Ghats.

A new sub-species of the six line blue butterfly named Nacaduba sinhala ramaswamii has been discovered from the south Western Ghats and it adds to the butterfly fauna of India as well as that of the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Four researchers – Kalesh Sadasivan and K. Baiju from Travancore Nature History Society (TNHS), Rahul Khot from Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and S. Ramasamy Kamaya Naicker of Vanam in Theni described the species. It was published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa in March, 2021.

Year-long study to document diversity of damselflies, dragonflies
The Kole wetlands, spread over Thrissur and Malappuram districts, is home to 30 species of dragonflies and 14 species of damselflies.

The 44 species of odonates, belonging to 33 genera and eight families, were documented from the Kole wetlands, a Ramsar site, during an year-long study to document the diversity of odonates and seasonality.

Data on UNICEF’s website shows that India had received 10 million doses of vaccine from COVAX, the most of any country.

India itself has received more than a third of the nearly 28 million Indian-made AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered so far by the global programme for poor countries, according to data from UNICEF and vaccine alliance Gavi.