President Obama pledges $100 million for BRAIN Initiative

President Obama unveiled the “BRAIN” Initiative—a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.

The BRAIN Initiative — short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies — builds on the President’s State of the Union call for historic investments in research and development to fuel the innovation, job creation, and economic growth that together create a thriving middle class.

The Initiative promises to accelerate the invention of new technologies that will help researchers produce real-time pictures of complex neural circuits and visualize the rapid-fire interactions of cells that occur at the speed of thought. Such cutting-edge capabilities, applied to both simple and complex systems, will open new doors to understanding how brain function is linked to human behavior and learning, and the mechanisms of brain disease.

The BRAIN Initiative is launching with approximately $100 million in funding for research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget.

First Ever Hackathon by the Planning Commission on the 12th Plan

The Planning Commission and the National Innovation Council are organising the first ever Hackathon on the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) on 6th – 7th April 2013.

The Hackathon is being organised simultaneously in 11 locations across India and participants can also join virtually. The event is taking place at University of Jammu, IIT Delhi, Delhi University, Aligarh Muslim University, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, TISS Mumbai, IIIT Hyderabad, IISc Bangalore, IIT Madras and IIM Shillong. Thousands of young creative designers, coders, film-makers along with policy and development enthusiasts will visualise and narrate the 12th Plan through infographics, short films, and support the initiatives proposed in the Plan by developing software applications.

The Hackathon will last for thirty two hours during which participants will gather in teams across India to compete for interesting prizes in three categories - mobile/web applications, infographics and short films.

A hackathon is an event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, as well as graphic designers, interface designers and project managers collaborate intensively on software projects Hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application, an API, the subject and the demographic group of the programmers. In other cases, there is no restriction on the type of software being created.

Moment of explosion is approaching fast says North Korea.

North Korea made a provocative statement that “The moment of explosion is approaching fast,” and that U.S. aggression would be “smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means.

Earlier, U.S has announced that it would mobilise the ground-based THAAD missile-interceptor batteries to protect its military bases on Guam.

Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean. It is located 3,380 km southeast of North Korea and home to 6,000 American military personnel, submarines and bombers. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of sixteen Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United Nations. The island’s capital is Hagåtña (formerly Agaña). Guam is the largest

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is now a registered party

The Election Commission has formally registered social activist Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as a political party.

Mr. Kejriwal was a member of India against Corruption movement, founded by social activist Anna Hazare.

Mr. Kejriwal launched the AAP on November 26, 2012. It has a a 23-member national executive and Mr. Kejriwal is its convener

Vodafone to pay a fine of Rs.104 cr.

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal has approved the recommendation by two internal committees of the Department of Telecom that a fine of Rs.104 cr. be imposed on Vodafone for its alleged violation of the licence conditions for call routing.

U.N. approves global arms trade treaty

The UN General Assembly of April 2, 2013  adopted the resolution of Arm Trade Treaty , in a 154-to-3 vote.

 North Korea, Iran, and Syria voted against the resolution.

23 nations, including India , Cuba,  Myanmar, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Sudan also abstained from voting.

Pakistan voted in favour of the treaty though its representative expressed concerns over the imbalance in obligations between arms exporters and importers.

The Main aim  of this treaty is  to regulate the $70 billion business in conventional arms and keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers.

 Sujata Mehta, India’s Permanent representative to the Geneva Conference of Disarmament during the UNGA session said India cannot accept that the Treaty be used as an instrument in the hands of exporting states to take unilateral force majeure measures against importing states parties without consequences.

Under the ATT, ratifying nations are expected to accept fixed international standards for conventional weapons sales, linked to the protection of human rights. The adopted treaty text covers weapons such as tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, and small and light arms

Optic fibre joins Ambani’ s

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm will use the nationwide optic fibre network of Anil ambani’s Reliance Communications Ltd. for a one-time fee of Rs. 1,200 crore.

Eight years after parting ways, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani on Tuesday started a business collaboration that would allow Reliance Jio Infocomm, controlled by Mukesh, to use the nationwide optic fibre network of Anil’s Reliance Communications Ltd. for a one-time fee of Rs. 1,200 crore.

When the Reliance group partitioned in 2005, Mukesh Ambani got Reliance Industries while telecom business along with power, infrastructure and finance went to Anil Ambani.

The ambanies amended the non competing agreement which allowed Reliance Industries entered telecom by buying Infotel Broadband Services Ltd. that owned radio-wave spectrum for high-speed broadband services.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd is now all set to launch 4G services, by using the optic fiber network The telecom venture, now called Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., is preparing to launch 4G services, which would be served by accessing the optic fibre network.

However the mobile phone companies consider it as a backdoor entry into the cellular market which opted for an internet-only licence.