No pay for 3 mnths, docs at 2 hospitals ready to quit

No pay for 3 mnths, docs at 2 hospitals ready to quit

Paras.Singh@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:11.06.2020

The resident doctors of Kasturba Hospital and Hindu Rao Hospital have threatened to mass resign if their salary arrears for the past three months are not credited to them.

The Resident Doctor’s Association of the Kasturba Hospital has written to the additional medical superintendent, stating that they have not been paid since March. “All the residents are working during the Covid-19 pandemic, putting their own and their families’ lives at risk. Over that, we are not getting our salaries,” the letter states.

The letter goes on to add: “We are afraid that if we are not paid by June 16, we will have to move for mass resignation. We hope authorities concerned will take immediate action,” it states.

The RDA at Hindu Rao, in their letter to the medical superintendent, urged the administration to release the salaries of three months by June 18, and to also ensure a monthly disbursement of salaries to all the health care workers.

A north corporation official said that the civic body is facing acute financial crunch and salaries are paid in ascending order, with safai karamcharis being paid first and senior officials getting it last.

Dr Sunil Kumar, who is the president of RDA at Kasturba Hospital, asked how could doctors be expected to work without any money in such testing times. “This is inhumane. Being frontline workers we should be paid our pending salaries as soon as possible and a regular salary pay out should be ensured,” he added.

Indians shine in AI research, but prefer to work in US

Indians shine in AI research, but prefer to work in US

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:11.06.2020

India is the source country for 12% of the most elite –the top 0.5%– of researchers in artificial intelligence, a new study has found. But these top brains prefer to work in the US rather than India. In a global AI tracker launched by MacroPolo, a think tank devoted to the study of China, they found Indian undergraduate education throws up the most number of top level AI researchers (after the USA) but almost all travel out to the US for graduate education and work.

The data is significant as the Modi government has declared greater emphasis on Industry 4.0, AI, robotics and machine learning as focus areas. Clearly, systemic issues need to be fixed before India can marry the twin objectives of harnessing tech brainpower and building local in the key industry or top level knowledge institutions. The world’s top 25 institutions for AI research are overwhelmingly in the US, with China contributing its top two institutions, Tsinghua and Peking Universities. There are no Indian institutions in the list.

The key takeaways from the study show that the US continues to maintain a huge lead over all other countries in top-tier AI researchers. China remains the largest source of AI researchers, but this may be in jeopardy as the Trump administration has announced plans to curb access of Chinese STEM students to top US universities. The study noted that over half of all top-tier AI researchers are immigrants or foreign nationals, researchers working in a country different from where they received their undergraduate degree. China makes up 27% of foreign AI researchers in the US, while Indians make up 11%.

Number of recovered patients exceeds active cases for the first time

Number of recovered patients exceeds active cases for the first time

Sushmi.Dey@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:11.06.2020

For the first time since the Covid-19 outbreak surfaced in India, the number of recovered patients has exceeded the total active cases with the health ministry on Wednesday recording 1,33,632 active cases, whereas 1,35,205 people have been cured so far, taking the total recovery rate to 48.99%.

“The recovery figures are reflecting better clinical management and timely detection enabled by ramped up testing and hospital infrastructure across the country,” a senior official said. The number of samples tested by ICMR crossed 50 lakh on Wednesday. In the last 24 hours, ICMR tested 1,45,216 samples and has continued to ramp up testing capacity to detect infected persons.

However, new cases continue to rise amid easing of restrictions which were imposed under the lockdown. India reported close to 10,000 new instances of the infection in the last 24 hours till 8 am on Wednesday, pushing the cumulative case load to over 2.7 lakh. The return of migrants to their homes has also increased reporting of cases though the numbers are not a runaway trend as of now.

“Most cases are mild to moderate and will recover in home quarantine or maximum with oxygen support. Our focus is to reduce mortality and for that we need to take care of the elderly and those with co-morbidities,” the official said.

Full report on www.toi.in

HALE & HEARTY: An old man who successfully fought coronavirus being felicitated after his recovery at an Indore hospital

WhatsApp fixes loophole which exposed users’ no. on Google

WhatsApp fixes loophole which exposed users’ no. on Google

Anam.Ajmal@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:11.06.2020

Instant messaging platform WhatsApp has fixed a loophole which was exposing users’ phone numbers in plain text to any internet user on Google, the Facebook-owned app said on Wednesday, two days after a cyber security researcher claimed that between 29k to 3 lakh users were impacted by the loophole.

“What makes this finding easy or appears to be simple is that data is accessible on the open web and not on the dark web,” researcher Athul Jayaram wrote in his blog post.

According to Jayaram, the “leak” occurred through WhatsApp’s “click to chat” feature, which allows users to begin a chat with someone without having their phone number saved in their address book. The feature generates a link, which users can then click to begin a conversation with anyone who has an active WhatsApp connection. He further said that cybercriminals and fraudsters could target users whose numbers are exposed to Google.

WhatsApp denied that it was a vulnerability. “Our Click to Chat feature, which lets users create a URL with their phone number so that anyone can easily message them, is used widely by small and micro-businesses around the world to connect with their customers,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.

RT-PCR tests to detect Covid not fully dependable

RT-PCR tests to detect Covid not fully dependable

Syed.Akbar@timesgroup.com

Hyderabad:11.06.2020

In a finding that could have widespread ramifications, researchers at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, have found that about 50% of Covid-19 positive samples tested through the standard RT-qPCR test may not yield the correct result.

Real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) test has been recommended by the WHO and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is used globally to detect the virus.

The CCMB scientists found a high percentage of false negative cases while comparing the RT-qPCR with a new test method developed by the them. The new test - R-T-nPCR - is not only cost-effective but can be conducted on a large number of people in a short time, the researchers said. is “We found that taking both standard RT-qPCR tests together, the RT-nPCR test was able to correctly identify 90% of samples detected as positive by RTqPCR. It also detected 13% samples as positive among samples that were negative by the standard RT-qPCR test (likely false negatives),” the scientists said in their research paper which has been uploaded on an online pre-print repository for biological sciences ‘bioRxiv’.

“Based on the experimentally measured false negative rate by RT-nPCR tests from this study, we estimated that as many as 50% of the positive samples may escape detection in single pass testing by RTqPCR in an actual testing scenario,” they added.

The new method uses RTnested PCR and is equally sensitive as RT-qPCR. This method needs a simple PCR machine. It increases the possibility of many more labs doing Covid-19 tests, thereby expanding testing capacity. RT-qPCR requires an expensive qPCR machine, which is not found in many labs in the country.

“The CCMB method is suitable for largescale surveillance,” the researchers claimed.

UP notice to 6 sacked teachers for recovery of ₹1.37crore paid to them

UP notice to 6 sacked teachers for recovery of ₹1.37crore paid to them

Isha.Jain@timesgroup.com

11.06.2020

Lucknow/Shravasti: The UP government on Wednesday issued notices to six sacked teachers for recovery of ₹1.37 crore paid to them during their tenure of employment in the district. The six were sacked last year after they were found using fake papers to get the job and FIRs were filed against them. One of them is in jail, one has got bail while the remaining four are absconding. Earlier, similar steps were taken to recover ₹95 lakh from four teachers in Bahraich, which they spent as salary and allowances during their service. Last week, TOI reported about one teacher who worked at 25 Kasturba Vidyalayas for 13 months and ‘took away’ ₹1 crore as salary. Later, it turned out that documents of one ‘eligible’ candidate were being used by fraudsters.

Shravasti’s basic shisha adhikari Omkar Rana issued notices to six teachers —Manoj Kumar of Etah (₹4.8 lakh), Ram Kumar of Firozabad (₹13.6 lakh), Shobnath of Sant Kabir Nagar (₹33.3 lakh), Rajiv Upadhyaya of Gorakhpur (₹33.4 lakh), Kanhaiya Singh of Balrampur (₹32.7 lakh), and Ajit Kumar Shukla of Bahraich (₹19.1 lakh). “All these six teachers were caught working with fake documents last year, after which they were sacked and FIRs were lodged against them,” Rana said.

According to officials, of the six, Ajit Shukla had produced a fake certificate of the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) to get the job. He was sacked, and later arrested but is currently on bail. Rana said, Ram Kumar is related to the 2004-05 BEd degree scam where candidates used fake degrees in the name of Agra University. Others were terminated in different cases of using fake documents. Of the remaining five, Shobhnath is behind bars while four are absconding, Rana told TOI.

Full report on www.toi.in

Poorer show by Indian institutions in QS World University Rankings

Poorer show by Indian institutions in QS World University Rankings

Manash Pratim Gohain & Hemali Chhapia TNN

11.06.2020

NewDelhi: Indian universities made a poorer show at the QS World University Rankings, 2021 with majority of the topranked institutions dropping in their rankings and just four universities in Top 300 as against six last year.

Though IIT-Bombay retained its position as the topranked Indian institution, it too dropped from 152 to 172nd position this year. All the government-run institutions accorded with the Institution of Eminence (IoE) tag, slipped down.

Among the top five Indian universities — IIT-Bombay, IISc-Bangalore, IIT-Delhi, IITMadras and IIT-Kharagpur — the IITs at Kharagpur and Kanpur have fallen out of the Top 300 list. Delhi University, an IoE, falls out of the Top 500 list. This year, 21Indian universities are in Top 1000 as against 24 last year. There is no Indian private university in the Top 650 list.

IIT-Delhi director, Prof V Ramgopal Rao, said, “The character of our institutions is different. Also, it is a marathon we are running, not a 100 metre race.” He said perception-based scores by these agencies are open to a lot of fallacies and other considerations. “We have all had issues with this.” “This is a very dicey and non-transparent metric. International reputation needs an altogether different strategy. We need a global campaign for education like we did ‘Incredible India’ for tourism. In the case of Delhi, at least 200 new recruitments have been made in last few years. Our citations per faculty score have gone down a bit this year because it takes time for new faculty to become productive in our system,” said Rao.

Earlier this year, leading IITs — Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee — decided not to participate in any of the Times Higher Education (THE) — World University Rankings, citing lack of transparency in the methodology of ranking process.

Full report on www.toi.in