Relevance IN - Prelims (about Caruna and its objective)
What's the NEWS

• Associations representing officers of Central Civil Services, including the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police Service (IPS), have formed an initiative called 'Caruna' to support and supplement the government's efforts in fighting coronavirus,

• The acronym 'Caruna' stands for Civil Services Associations Reach to Support in Natural Disasters and represents a collaborative platform, on which civil servants, industry leaders, NGO professionals and IT professionals among others have come together to contribute their time and abilities.
• Civil Service associations- IFS, IPS, IFoS, IRS (IT), IRS (C&E), IRPS, IRTS, IPOS, IA&AS, IDES, ICAS, IIS & IAS form CARUNA - Civil services Association Reach to Support in Natural Disasters - a technology platform to support Govt in the fight against #COVID19
• Caruna will support and supplement laudable government initiatives on a real time basis, besides sharing relevant information with @MoHFW_INDIA, @mygovindia and the task forces set up by the central and state governments in the fight against COVID19

• Department of Science & Technology, Government of India in a rapid response to combat COVID-19 global pandemic approved setting up of a Centre for Augmenting WAR with COVID-19 Health Crisis (CAWACH) to scout, evaluate and support the innovations and start-ups that address COVID-19 challenges.
• The Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), a technology business incubator at IIT Bombay supported by DST has been identified as the Implementing Agency of the CAWACH.

• DST's effort at this hour of need is to support R&D initiatives in this direction by boosting innovations offering comprehensive solutions like Ventilators, Diagnostics, Therapeutics, Informatics and other intervention for control and mitigation of Covid-19.
• The support will be provided to startups at different stages for fast tracking commercialization process and journey and scale-up across geographies which will have significant impact in the long term.
• The CAWACH's mandate will be to extend timely support to potential startups by way of the requisite financial assistance and fund deployment targeting innovations that are deployable in the market within next 6 months.
• CAWACH will identify upto 50 innovations and startups that are in the area of novel, low cost, safe and effective ventilators, respiratory aids, protective gears, novel solutions for sanitizers, disinfectants, diagnostics, therapeutics, informatics and any effective interventions to control COVID-19.
• It will provide access to pan India networks for testing, trial and market deployment of these products and solutions in the identified areas of priority COVID-19 solutions. This will help to address various challenges faced by country due to severe impact of Covid-19.

Relevance IN - Prelims (about operation Sanjeevani)
What's the NEWS

• The Indian Air Force (IAF) sent 6.2 tonnes of essential medicines and hospital consumables to the Maldives as this consignment could not be transported through usual channels due to the 21-day lockdown in India.
• IAF aircraft C-130J airlifted the supplies to Maldivian Capital, Male as part of Operation Sanjeevani

• The Maldives is the first country in India's neighbourhood to have received essential medicines since the lockdown commenced in India.
• At the request of the government of Maldives, the IAF aircraft activated Operation Sanjeevani and lifted these medicines from airports in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Madurai before flying to the Maldives.
• The Indian Army facilitated the transport of these medicines and consumables from warehouses across India to the respective airports
• India had also sent a 14-member Covid-19 Rapid Response Team of doctors and specialists enhanced preparedness. The team worked closely with health authorities in Male and outlying islands

• A number of top fund managers from blue- chip venture capital firms and prominent startup CEOs have joined hands to set up a Rs 100 crore grant that will back fledgling firms working on products and services to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

• The Action Covid Team (ACT) Grants, which is possibly a first-of-its-kind initiative globally, has already received about 40% of its target corpus, with some of the country's top entrepreneurs also coming on board to not only provide capital, but also identify ventures that may be still at an ideation stage.
• The domestic arm of global non-profit organisation, United Way Worldwide, will manage the grant, with plans to distribute the capital over the next quarter or earlier.
• Nachiket Mor, India head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is heading the leadership team for ACT Grants.
• In an effort to widen the pool, individual members are also believed to be reaching out to global funds for contributions.
• Given that the financial support to startups will be in the form of grants ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore, the investors will not pick up a stake in the selected ventures.
• The fund managers are committing capital from the fees they charge and the carry that they earn from managing their respective funds.
• The grant will back ventures looking to provide Covid-19 scale testing, at-home disease management mental health support and procurement of prevention, protection and safety gear, among others.

• A fund manager is responsible for implementing a fund's investing strategy and managing its portfolio trading activities.
• The fund can be managed by one person, by two people as co-managers, or by a team of three or more people.
• Fund managers are paid a fee for their work, which is a percentage of the fund's average assets under management (AUM).
• They can be found working in fund management with mutual funds, pension funds, trust funds, and hedge funds.

• Venture capital is a form of private equity and a type of financing that investors provide to startup companies and small businesses that are believed to have long-term growth potential.
• Venture capital generally comes from well-off investors, investment banks and any other financial institutions.
• Venture capital is typically allocated to small companies with exceptional growth potential, or to companies that have grown quickly and appear poised to continue to expand.

• Naval Dockyard, Mumbai has designed and developed its own handheld IR based temperature sensor for undertaking screening of large number of personnel at the entry gates of the yard reducing the load on the security sentries at the gate.

• The instrument has been manufactured under Rs 1000 (US$ 14.30)/ - through in-house resources (which is fraction of the cost of the Temperature Guns in the market).
• The non-contact thermometer has an Infrared sensor and an LED display integrated with a microcontroller which runs on a 9V battery.
• With the manufacturing cost of less than Rs 1000 (US$ 14.30)/- the dockyard has the capability to scale up production of these if required towards which sourcing of the components is in progress.

• The non-contact thermometer works on the principle of Black body radiation and it uses lens to focus infrared light.
• Molecules of any object will start moving if the temperature of that particular object is above 0 degree
• If the temperature increases then the speed of the molecules also increases and as the molecules move they emit IR rays
• These IR rays from the hot body concentrated by a detector which is attached in the IR thermometer
• If the rays are more, the detector generates higher current. Higher the current, higher is the temperature of the body

• The government has launched a nationwide research and development (R&D) initiative to combat coronavirus, which neither has a medicine nor a vaccine.

• The Department of Science and Technology - Science and Engineering Board (DST-SERB) has announced several special research projects.
• The first set of 5 projects have been selected for further development into implementable technologies.
• These projects were selected after peer-review and assessment by a Special Expert Committee for CoVID-19 projects.
  
  

• The first project will help in search of potential metabolite biomarker signature for coronavirus and recognition of novel targets for therapy.
• Biomarkers or biological markers capture activity of a cell or an organism at a given moment and help identifying potential drugs or vaccines.
• The second project will help develop viricidal coatings for inanimate surfaces used in healthcare settings such as surgical masks for the prevention of infectious diseases caused by highly contagious pathogens such as coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
• The third project concerns development of antiviral surface coatings to prevent the spread of infections caused by influenza virus.
• The objective is to develop small molecular and polymeric compounds which will be coated on various surfaces and kill respiratory viruses completely upon contact.
• The fourth project is to develop material which may be applied to mops to disinfect the surfaces and remove any adhering viruses or bacteria.
• The fifth project relates to development of antibody-based capture of 2019-nCoV and its inactivation using lipid-based in situ gel.
• This is the first such coordinated research initiative from India, and initiated by the government.

Science & Technology
NIF invite innovative citizens to participate in Challenge COVID-19 Competition (C3)

Relevance IN - Prelims (about NIF + about C3)
What's the NEWS

• National Innovation Foundation - India (NIF), an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India has come up with a call inviting innovative citizens to participate in its Challenge Covid-19 Competition (C3).

Know! more about Challenge Covid-19 Competition (C3).

• All interested innovators are welcome to participate with their creative ideas and innovations for problems or issues like reducing transmission of Corona virus through original creative ideas, innovations
• The initiative being launched will not only create awareness, but will intimately engage a wide cross-section of society with diverse backgrounds in providing and implementing solutions.
• The selected technological ideas and innovations will be supported for incubation and dissemination.

Know! about the National Innovation Foundation (NIF)

• It was set up in March 2000 with the assistance of Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.
• It is India's national initiative to strengthen the grassroots technological innovations and outstanding traditional knowledge.
• Its mission is to help India become a creative and knowledge-based society by expanding policy and institutional space for grassroots technological innovators.
• NIF helps grassroots innovators and outstanding traditional knowledge holders get due recognition, respect and reward for their innovations.
• The INSPIRE Award - MANAK (Million Minds Augmenting National Aspiration and Knowledge) is being revamped and executed by Department of Science & Technology and National Innovation Foundation-India to align it with the action plan for "Start-up India

Information and Technology
Hack the Crisis - India, an Online Hackathon to find working solutions for overcoming COVID 19 pandemic
Relevance IN - Prelims (about Hack the Crisis - India hackathon and its objective) + Mains GS III ( awareness in the field of science and technology)
What's the NEWS

• Hack the Crisis - India, an Online Hackathon to find working solutions for overcoming COVID 19 pandemic launched
• This hackathon is part of a global initiative and is being organised by ‘Hack A Cause - India' and ‘Ficci Ladies Organization Pune' and supported by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India (MEITY).

Know! more about the hackathon

• The aim of this hackathon is to strengthen fight against COVID19.The winning ideas from few top participating teams, as implementable solutions on corona crisis is expected to help India and global citizens.
• over 2000 teams and over 15000 participants will be enhancing their working prototypes in 48hour hackathon with expert mentoring from India, Estonia and Finland. Top teams from India will participate in 'Hack the Crisis - World' global hackathon in coming weeks.

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