News Ticker

Mumbai International Boat Show 2012 report (0)

5/13/12 •

The 6th edition of the annual Mumbai International Boat Show (MIBS 2012) was organised from February 23-26, 2012 at the MMRDA grounds in Bandra Kurla Complex, which will bring luxury, super-luxury boats and designer yachts that have never been seen on the Indian shores.

Luxury Yacht to be displayed at the Mumbai International Boat Show

There will a display of variety of day boats, speed boats, security boats, personal watercrafts, kayaks, boating accessories, marine engines, marine toys and some of the finest, most luxurious yachts, large boats and sail boats.

The four-day annual leisure boating event has over the years seen a steady increase of international marine exhibitors, enthusiast participations. Touted as

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ABB to invest $50 mn in India (0)

4/16/12 •

ABB, the leading power and automation technology group will be investing around $50 million to build new facilities in India to manufacture high-voltage products and transformers. The expansion is part of ABB’s strategy to locally develop, manufacture and market products that meet the needs of Indian customers.

Bernhard Jucker, head of ABB’s Power Products division, “This decision supports our in country for country approach and our business philosophy to locate production facilities closer to markets. By expanding our extensive manufacturing footprint in India, we can provide customers with an extended offering as well as deliver fast and cost-effective solutions suited to local needs.”

The facilities will be located in the western state of Gujarat and produce high-voltage gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) and PASS (plug and switch system) hybrid switchgear as well as dry-type and oil immersed distribution transformers. The facilities are expected to be operational by the end of 2012.

The new transformer factory will manufacture vacuum cast coil dry-type transformers and oil immersed distribution transformers. It will help to bridge a gap in the present product offering in India and extend the distribution transformer range up to 10 megavolt amperes (MVA), 33 kilovolts (kV). It will also enable localization of vacuum cast coil dry-type transformers.

ABB has global expertise in the design and manufacture of transformers for special requirements that optimize space and can withstand the most demanding conditions. Dry-type transformers help reduce environmental impact and can be deployed in environmentally challenging conditions.

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Microsoft inks edu pact with AICTE (0)

4/12/12 •

Microsoft Corp and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) announced today that AICTE is deploying Microsoft Live@edu over the next three months to more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout India. The cloud deployment will expand students’ access to high-quality technical education and collaboration.

Live@edu is a hosted communication and collaboration service that offers email, Microsoft Office Web Apps, instant messaging and storage to AICTE’s more than 7 million students and nearly 500,000 faculty members, for a total reach of 7.5 million users — roughly double the size of the Los Angeles population — making AICTE Microsoft’s largest cloud customer ever. Live@edu is the first step in AICTE’s deployment of Microsoft cloud computing for education. AICTE also plans to deploy Microsoft Office 365 for education when it becomes available later this year, providing access to Microsoft Exchange Online email and calendar, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Online and Microsoft Office Professional as the technical infrastructure to support member colleges and institutes.

“Microsoft’s cloud platform will make for a truly progressive ecosystem and contribute to the country’s technical education by providing a better communication and collaboration platform for institutes and students,” said Dr. S. S. Mantha, chairman of AICTE.

Part of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development, AICTE is the governing body for technical education in India, certifying and managing technical colleges and institutes in a country where the technology industry and higher education are both becoming increasingly vital to the economy. To carry out its charge of evaluating the curriculum and quality of education for all technical institutes across the country, AICTE needed to have consistent and timely communication with these colleges, some of which are located in the remotest districts of India. AICTE and the ministry wanted to deploy a technology system that would provide an efficient platform for students and the institutional framework and would foster efficiency and support broader educational reforms.

AICTE reviewed solutions from a range of vendors, including Microsoft, IBM and Google. One of the major factors in the decision to choose Microsoft’s cloud services for education was Microsoft’s comprehensive commitment to education across all the company’s products and programmes, as well as the system’s seamless interoperation with the entire Microsoft product portfolio. The council was also impressed by Microsoft’s extensive experience in higher education and ability to deploy a system across geographically distributed locations without adding significantly to the institutions’ IT management costs or complexity.

“India is seeing rapid economic activity and growth. Developing India’s youth and their skills is going to play an important role globally in the country’s inclusive growth,” said Anthony Salcito, vice president of Worldwide Education. “The union budget also laid emphasis on skill development and so does the proposed 12th Five Year Plan with a National Policy on Skill development. The PPP model (public-private partnership) is most essential in running and managing training institutions that provide every opportunity to address the skill gap most efficiently. Microsoft’s commitment to empower students by deploying Microsoft Live@edu to 7.5 million students, teachers and university employees across the country with AICTE is commendable and a step toward an informed and developing India. I congratulate both AICTE and Microsoft on this significant milestone.”

“We are delighted with the confidence posed by AICTE in Microsoft,” said Sanket Akerkar, managing director, Microsoft Corp. India Private Ltd. “Microsoft has always seen education as a priority area and believes that technology offers possibilities that can help empower not just teachers and students but collectively India as a nation.”

The implementation is already underway and is being managed by Microsoft and a set of Live@edu partners. Full deployment is expected to be complete by summer 2012.

Live@edu is the leading cloud suite for education, with more than 22 million people using the service worldwide. At 7.5 million users, the AICTE deployment is the largest cloud deployment ever. Other recent Live@edu adoptions include a 700,000 cloud-based collaboration solution for the Kentucky Department of Education. The online service helps educational institutions provide email and enterprise-grade online tools to students and faculty while helping to reduce costs and simplify IT management.

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Pharma industry pledges $14 bn for nine neglected tropical diseases (0)

2/01/12 •

Research-based pharmaceutical industry announced donations of $14 billion treatments this decade to support the elimination or control of nine key neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

Averaging 1.4 billion treatments annually, the donations build upon companies’ existing medicines donation programmes which already reach millions of people around the world. Today’s announcement comes in conjunction with an NTD collaboration comprised of pharmaceutical companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the US and UKgovernments, international organisations, and endemic countries’ national governments.

At least one billion people worldwide – one person in seven – suffer from NTDs. Each year NTDs disproportionately kill or disable millions of poor people primarily in tropical and subtropical areas.

These donations follow a World Health Organisation (WHO) announcement of new targets for NTDs whose elimination or control is achievable with adequate supply and distribution of the relevant medicines. For maximum impact, these donations focus on those nine NTDs that represent more than 90 percent of the global NTD burden.

“For decades individual pharmaceutical companies have researched, developed, and donated medicines to fight disease and improve patients’ lives,” said Eduardo Pisani, Director-General of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA). “Today the research-based pharmaceutical industry jointly pledges a further 14 billion treatments to help end these debilitating diseases. This is our commitment as partners to help end NTDs and improve patient health.”

In addition to medicine donations, the research-based pharmaceutical industry supports the fight against NTDs with capacity-building efforts in developing countries and medical innovation. The research-based pharmaceutical industry was the second largest funder of R&D for neglected diseases in 2010, reaching more than USD 500 million.

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