MSDE, IIM Bangalore Sigh MoU for Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship Programme

Highlights

* Fellows in the two-year blended programme with academic module at IIM-B & district emersion program will train with district administration officials
* Programme aims to provide academic inputs and field experience to understand and contribute to the creation of a district level skill development ecosystem
* Programme launched in 75 districts across Gujarat, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand

To boost skill development at the district level, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE)  signed a contract with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore for introducing a two-year fellowship programme Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship (MGNF) programme.

The contract was signed in the presence of Shri R. Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Dept. of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, GoI, Dr. K P Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Shri G Raghuram, Director, IIM, Bangalore, Mr. Junaid Ahmad, Country Director, World Bank, and officials from the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, GoI. The program has been developed under the able guidance and leadership of Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship; who has given a renewed focus to skill development at the district level, since his joining at the Ministry.

Designed under Skills Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion (SANKALP) the fellowship aims to address the challenge of non-availability of personnel for implementation of various programmes at national, state and district levels.

The MGNF programme has an in-built component of on-ground practical experience with the district administration. Launched on a pilot basis in 75 districts across Gujarat, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, eligible fellows for the programme have to be in 21-30 years age-group, have a graduation degree from a recognized university and be citizens of India. Proficiency in official language of state of fieldwork will be mandatory.

Commenting on the partnership, Dr. KP Krishnan, Secretary, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, said, “A dearth of individuals who can implement and manage skill development programmes at the grass roots level is a deficit we seek to address with this fellowship programme with IIM Bangalore. MGNF seeks to create a cadre of young individuals and train them in a blended academic programme that provides both academic inputs and a component of field immersion at the district level. Besides allowing for an immersive experience to fellows under the programme, MGNF will also be an attractive proposition for those who wish to eke a career in public policy. It is only fitting that we have launched this programme on the 150th birth centenary of Gandhi ji who was strong believer in decentralized planning.”

“Through this endeavour we are ensuring participation of a larger community for local merit good and we are certain that this program will attract great talent which will further strengthen the skill component at the district administration level,” he further added.

Shri R. Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, said, “Today, our nation's youth is willing and is anxious to contribute to our nation building exercise and to the society at large. It has to be our effort to ensure that they are given the right opportunities to extend their support. This is a great initiative by MSDE and I am sure that it will see through all the challenges at the district level and come out to be a great outcome based program.”

In the course of their training, fellows will work under the close supervision of state skill development missions (SSDM) and will spend time and effort in understanding skilling challenges and gaps in the district. They are expected to enrich skilling programmes by bringing in fresh thinking to local planning, execution, community interaction and outcome management. Fellows will receive a stipend of Rs. 50,000 in the first year and Rs. 60,000 in the second year. On completion of their engagement, they will be awarded a Certificate in Public Policy and Management from IIM Bangalore.

Shri G Raghuram, Director, IIM, Bangalore, said, ““The Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship programme is aimed to identify and train a group of young, committed and dynamic individuals, who will leverage the IIMB ecosystem in management, entrepreneurship and public policy and work with the district administration in strengthening the process of skilling to create a vibrant local district economy. Its unique design will allow the Fellows to take academic learning at IIM Bangalore and use it in the field under faculty mentorship with the goal of understanding challenges and barriers that the district ecosystem faces in fostering growth and development.”

Launched by the Government in January 2018, SANKALP is a World Bank loan assisted project that aims to strengthen institutional mechanisms for skill development and increase access to quality and market-relevant training for youth across the country. Four key result areas have been identified under SANKALP viz: (i) Institutional Strengthening; (ii) Quality Assurance; (iii) Inclusion; and (iv) Expanding Skills through PPPs.

Neighbourhood Shopping Bonanza @ Orion Avenue Mall from Oct 6 to Nov 3, 2019

Orion Avenue Mall (Formerly known as Orion East Mall) has brought the festivities to the suburbs around east Bangalore with the hugely popular Neighbourhood Shopping Bonanza. This year's edition promises to spread cheer and excitement with the mall pulling out all stops to attract customers with a bevy of high value offers and prizes from 6th October to 3rd November 2019. There’s nothing like the feeling of being rewarded to shop around the festive times; and shoppers can expect to win a BMW G 310 R as the grand bumper prize and the latest smartphones as weekly prizes. Adding to the festive allure is the gorgeous season specific décor that truly lights up the faces of visitors. Shoppers can enjoy the festive spirit with their favourite brands wooing them with great offers. It’s also a great family festive outing with its wholesome mix of entertainment, food and shopping options.

Vijay Kumar Bhatia, Sr. GM- Orion Malls says, “We have gone all out to spread cheer among our patrons; whether it is the resplendent mall décor or the exciting line up of prizes to be won.  We expect it to be a great season for shopping and leisure for our customers. There’s nothing quite like getting our neighbourhood community excited about visiting the mall during this special time of the year”

Tata Motors Launches the Extended Range Tigor EV in 3 Variants

Following the introduction of Tigor EV for Government and fleet consumers, Tata Motors today announced the launch of its extended range Tigor EV Electric Sedan, with a range of 213 km, certified by ARAI. It will be available in 3 variants – XE+, XM+ and XT+ – for both fleet and personal segment customers. The new Tigor EV will be available across 30 cities, at a starting price of Rs. 9.44 lakh, ex-showroom Delhi (after deducting Govt. subsidies). This vehicle qualifies for a FAME II incentive for eligible commercial customers. The new extended version offers an enhanced driving range, low cost of ownership, connectivity, comfort of a sedan and zero emissions.

Speaking on the launch of this new variant, Mr. Ashesh Dhar, Head – Sales, Marketing and Customer Service, Electric Vehicle Business, Tata Motors Ltd. said, “Tigor EV Extended Range model aptly addresses the requirements of longer range applications and also provides higher revenue earning potential for our commercial customers. This new version builds on the success of the award winning Tigor EV, which is already deployed with several fleets and Government customers. This launch reinforces our commitment towards sustainable mobility solutions in India.”

Battery

* With a 21.5 kWh battery pack, the new model offers a significantly longer range
* Battery cooling system is designed to ensure consistent performance even in extreme ambient temperature conditions
* The car has 2 charging ports - fast charging as well as slow AC charging

Additionally, the vehicle will be equipped with dual airbags (XE+ variant with Driver Airbag only) and an anti-lock braking system as standard safety features. The vehicle also comes with an inbuilt warranty of 3 years or 1.25 lakh kms, whichever is earlier. 

Cybersecurity Leaders Launch Initiative for Interoperability and Data Sharing to Thwart Attacks

IBM Security and McAfee join with Advanced Cyber Security Corp, Corsa, CyberArk, Cybereason, DFLabs, EclecticIQ, Fortinet, Indegy, New Context, ReversingLabs, SafeBreach, Syncurity, Threat Quotient, and Tufin to collaborate on new initiative at OASIS

The OASIS international consortium announced an industry initiative to bring interoperability and data sharing across cybersecurity products. With initial open source content and code contributed by IBM Security and McAfee, and formed under the auspices of OASIS, the Open Cybersecurity Alliance (OCA) brings together organizations and individuals from around the world to develop open source security technologies which can freely exchange information, insights, analytics, and orchestrated responses.

According to industry analyst firm, Enterprise Strategy Group, organizations use 25 to 49 different security tools from up to 10 vendors on average, each of which generates siloed data.  (Cybersecurity Landscape: The Evolution of Enterprise-class Vendors).

Connecting these tools and data requires complex integrations, taking away from time that could be spent hunting and responding to threats. To accelerate and optimize security for enterprise users, the OCA will develop protocols and standards which enable tools to work together and share information across vendors. The aim is to simplify the integration of security technologies across the threat lifecycle – from threat hunting and detection, to analytics, operations and response -- so that products can work together out of the box.

The purpose of the OCA is to develop and promote sets of open source common content, code, tooling, patterns, and practices for interoperability and sharing data among cybersecurity tools. For enterprise users, this means:

Improving security visibility and ability to discover new insights and findings that might otherwise have been missed;
Extracting more value from existing products and reducing vendor lock-in;
Connecting data and sharing insights across products.

Founders of the Alliance, IBM Security and McAfee, are joined in the initiative by Advanced Cyber Security Corp, Corsa, CrowdStrike, CyberArk, Cybereason, DFLabs, EclecticIQ, Electric Power Research Institute, Fortinet, Indegy, New Context, ReversingLabs, SafeBreach, Syncurity, ThreatQuotient, and Tufin. The OCA welcomes participation from additional organizations and individual contributors.

“Today, organizations struggle without a standard language when sharing data between products and tools,” said Carol Geyer, chief development officer of OASIS. “We have seen efforts emerge to foster data exchange, but what has been missing is the ability for each tool to transmit and receive these messages in a standardized format, resulting in more expensive and time-consuming integration costs. The aim of the OCA is to accelerate the open sharing concept making it easier for enterprises to manage and operate.”

“When security teams are constantly spending their time manually integrating tools and maintaining those integrations, it’s not helping anyone other than the attackers,” said Jason Keirstead, chief architect, IBM Security Threat Management. “The mission of the OCA is to create a unified security ecosystem, where businesses no longer have to build one-off manual integrations between every product, but instead can build one integration to work across all, based on a commonly accepted set of standards and code.”

“Attackers maximize damage by sharing data with one another. Our best defense strategy is to share data too," said D.J. Long, vice president business development, McAfee. "The OCA creed is 'Integrate once, reuse everywhere' which builds upon McAfee’s open philosophy that led to the OpenDXL project in 2016. Organizations will be able to seamlessly exchange data between products and tools from any provider that adopts the OCA project deliverables. We're looking at the potential for unprecedented real-time security intelligence.” 

Emirates Celebrates Diwali with Discounted Fares to Popular Destinations from Indian Cities

Emirates is offering a special Diwali treat with a 10% discount across all its cabin classes on select flights to the US, Europe, and Africa. This can be the perfect break for the travel-hungry, who want to journey to popular and exotic destinations during the upcoming holidays. The offer is valid for flights booked between 9 and 14 October 2019 for travel between 14 October 2019 and 31 August 2020.

Customers booking Economy Class can enjoy discounts to Paris, Chicago, Porto, and Cape Town; Business Class to Los Angeles and Frankfurt; and First Class for flights to London and New York.

Porto is Emirates’ newest global destination and customers can look forward to enjoying the UNESCO World Heritage site and Portugal’s second-largest city, which is renowned for its impressive, centuries-old architecture and its serene vineyards; the produce of which is used in the city’s distinguishable port wine. Emirates is also offering a range of special tour packages for those traveling to the US and planning to explore the charms of Americana along the east and west coasts.

Emirates operates from nine Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Thiruvananthapuram – to 150 global destinations spread across 85 countries and six continents.

Renowned for providing an exceptional flying experience, Emirates customers traveling in all classes can enjoy regionally inspired cuisine, 4,000 entertainment channels on ice – the airline’s award-winning inflight entertainment system - and up to 20MB complimentary Wi-Fi to stay connected with friends and family during the flight.

For more information on Emirates, including how to book flights and a complete list of terms and conditions, visit www.emirates.com, a travel agent or the local Emirates Sales Office.

Fusion VR Unveils Industry 4.0 Solutions Suite To Support The Digital Transformation Journey Of Businesses

Fusion VR, the industry leader in emerging technologies including VR, AR, MR, IoT, and AI has announced the launch of cutting edge portfolio of industry 4.0 solutions for next-generation enterprises.

The unveiled suite of industry-leading solutions and services include-: Interactive Simulations, which leverage the power of virtual reality, Gamified Learning for motivated employees and 3D-360 VR Video services.

●      Interactive Simulations: The host of interactive solutions enables businesses to conveniently realize their business objectives leveraging a highly efficient and motivated workforce. The solutions will enable businesses to design better workflows, product launches, prototypes, testing as well as impart better skill training to their workforce.

●      Gamified Learning: The launched range of well-designed gamified VR experiences infuse a sense of goal achievement, reward, and fulfillment among employees. This encourages them to strive in achieving their set Key Result Areas and contribute to the growth of the organisation.

●      3D-360 VR Video Services: The 360 video solution empowers you to showcase your business offerings in a compelling style. This results in a personalized and truly immersive experience for the consumer as they can view multiple points of interest in Stereoscopic-3D with spatial audio.

Detailing more about the strategic business benefits of the suite, Dr. C. SS Bharathy, Certified Industry 4.0 Professional,  founder, Fusion VR said, ‘’Emerging technologies are reshaping the world and will continue to do so well into the future. Our unveiled suite of industry 4.0 solutions and services will empower businesses to exploit the maximum potential of their digital transformation journey and drive innovation to garner a competitive edge.’’

Furthermore, the highly proficient workforce of Fusion VR will also offer end to end support for enterprises with customized industry 4.0 immersive-solutions and strategies encompassing extended reality technologies along with IoT and AI. Our goal is to turn every idea into an exciting XR Product which ultimately delivers a great Experiential-Learning and unbelievable Return-On-Investment (ROI) benefits to our clients.

Reverse-Engineers Computer Method Detects Defective Computer Chips Using X-Rays

Guaranteeing that computer chips, that can consist of billions of interconnected transistors, are manufactured without defects is a challenge. But how to determine if a chip is compromised? Now a technique co-developed by researchers at the Paul Scherer Institut in Switzerland and researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering would allow companies and other organizations to non-destructively scan chips to ensure that they haven’t been altered and that they are manufactured to design specifications without error.

Hardware security is a critical issue. Anthony F. J. Levi, Department Chair of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering-Electrophysics, co- author of the study, Three-dimensional imaging of integrated circuits with macro- to nanoscale zoom” published in Nature Electronics, says that “the supply chain for advanced electronics is susceptible.”

With this new method, it is possible to validate the integrity of computer chips using x-rays.

Called ptychographic x-ray laminography, the technique utilizes x-rays from a synchrotron to illuminate a small region of a rotating chip at an angle of 61 degrees (with respect to the normal of the chip plane). The resulting diffraction patterns are measured with a photon-counting detector array. The data are then used to generate high-resolution slice images of the chip, from which 3-D renderings are created.

Once the3-D image is generated, it can be compared with the original design as a type of forensics to help companies or organizations that are looking to ensure chips are manufactured correctly and meet design specifications.

The researchers indicate that chips have signature features, so it is possible to tell how and where they were manufactured.

In addition, this process allows for reverse engineering of circuit designs without destroying the chip.

Levi says, “The majority of a chip’s intelligence is how it is wired. It is like the connectome of a brain.

By viewing a chip in detail, you can non-destructively figure out what it does. With this technology, hiding intellectual property in a chip is over.”

Levi imagines that the technology could one day contribute to a certification process to ensure the integrity of chips that are inserted into a computer or in communication hardware used by global businesses and governments.

The next step is to continue to improve imaging speed and resolution and to further improve x-ray microscope performance.