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Hi-tech centre for clinical trials opens at Himalayan Hospital

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Inaugural session of the Clinic
Dateline Dehradun: Clinical trials are an intrinsic part of top quality, contemporary healthcare facility, and constitute a significant step in developing new treatments to improve human health.
At Himalayan Hospital, Jolly Grant the stage has been set for clinical trials covering a rage of diseases and conditions.
Formally inaugurated in the presence of experts, faculty, students and invited guests, the centre has been established to conduct clinical trial studies for the development of new drugs.
The elated team
Vice Chancellor Swami Rama Himalayan University, Dr Vijay Dhasmana inaugurated the centre.
Clinical trials in India refer, to clinical research in which researchers test drugs and other treatments on research participants. As per rules of Government agencies (NDCTR 2019 and ICMR guidelines) it is recommended that all researchers conducting a clinical trial must publicly document it in the Clinical Trials Registry – India.
Dr Nikku Yadav and Arvind, Director Somaya Research and Health Services (SRHS) assured that trials will get underway as per various government laws, and the guidelines of the Drugs Controller General of India that grants approval for conducting clinical trials in India. The trials will be held in collaboration with Somaya Research and Health Services (SRHS) LLP, which is a unique site management Organization.
SRHS provider delivers operational and administrative support services to the clinical investigator at a research site. This includes everything from handling regulatory and compliance activities to managing patient recruitment and data collection. SRHS also provides support with study start-up, monitoring, and closeout. SRHS is working with pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, clinical research sites, contract research organizations (CROs), and others to enable those organizations to deliver their research in a time-efficient manner.
“The clinical trials will be conducted at the centre for multiple indications. Our doctors will be involved in the development of new drugs and also, the students of clinical research will benefit from in-house hands-on experience of clinical trials,” averred Dr Vijay Dhasmana. .”
Present on the occasion were Dr Vijendra Chauhan Pro Vice Chacellor SRHU, Dr Sunil Saini Director CRI, Dr Susheela Sharma Registrar SRHU, Dr Mushtaq Ahmad Director HIMS, Dr Rajendra Dobhal Director Strategies and Planning Research & Development, Dr SL Jethani CMS Himalayan Hospital, Prof CS Nautiyal, Dr Sanjay Gupta, Dr Vinita Kalra, Dr SK Verma, Dr Yashpal Singh, Dr Nikku Yadav, Dr Asha Chandola-Saklani, Dr Rajeev Bijalwan, Dr Deepshikha, Dr Vidisha, Dr Girish Gupta, Dr Suman, Dr Taruna Sharma, Dr Abha Srivastava, Dr Abhishek Kandwal, Dr Vipul Nautiyal,  Prabhjot Kaur,  Abhishek, Kavi and Clinical Research and Epidemiology students. The members from SRHS were Arvind Kumar,  Shubham Tomar and  Nidhi Yadav.

Students come in support of World Mental Health Day

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A session in progress

Dateline Mussoorie: In honour of World Mental Health Day, on the 10th of October, Woodstock School’s counselling department and mental-wellbeing team organized an inter-active event to raise mental health awareness in Mussoorie and its surrounding localities.

The event was focused on raising mental health awareness not only in the hill-station but in rural areas surrounding it as well. A specially curated session took place in Thatyur, in association with Landour Community Hospital with students from five government Inter and Degree Colleges attending in full attendance, along with teachers, parents; senior citizens and village dignitaries. The students of Woodstock School presented a skit that showcased various day to day mental health related scenarios that young children might face, and wrapped it up with a presentation focusing on some tips and tricks regarding mental health. This was followed by short performances from the local schools, which showed the growing importance and acceptance of mental health.

Woodstock’s students have done a series of similar events in the past. Most recently, they visited fellow students at St. Georges College,  another boarding school in Mussoorie, and discussed in-depth the mental health issues that might affect boarding school students.

Talking to Newspost, Binu Thomas Head of Personal Counselling, Woodstock School reiterated the fact that, ‘Schools offer a major role in strengthening and supporting the overall well-being of a child. Post Covid, the student population around the world is struggling hard to deal with emotional issues.’

The participants as well as the audience had many questions and concerns which were adeptly addressed by the counseling team who promised to keep them abreast in the near future as well.

Salivary Proteins can help predict metastatic triple-negative Breast Cancer

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IIT Roorkee

Dateline Roorkee: Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee researchers have identified and validated three proteins found in saliva that can predict metastatic Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC).

The team’s diagnosis method is based on salivary gland function, which is impaired in people with breast cancer. Their protein composition is also altered. Thus, an effective biomarker can be obtained if the difference can be identified and quantified.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women in India, with more than 1.6 lakh cases registered and more than eighty thousand deaths yearly due to breast cancer. About 10 to 15 percent of all breast cancers are metastatic TNBC, the most aggressive form that does not respond to the usual hormonal and HER2-protein targeting drugs.

The Research was led by Dr. Kiran Ambatipudi, Associate Professor, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Roorkee, and included Mr. Kuldeep Giri and Ms. Sudipa Maity, Doctoral Students, IIT Roorkee. The findings were published in the reputed peer-reviewed Journal of Proteomics (DOI – https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jprot.2022.104701) in a research paper co-authored by the three researchers

Congratulating the Researchers, Prof. Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, “The research findings could potentially help in early diagnosis and treatment. This will improve the quality of life of such patients.”

Elaborating on this research and the need for urgency for developments in the area, Dr. Kiran Ambatipudi, Associate Professor, Dept. of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Roorkee, said, “There have been many efforts in the past decades to identify biomarkers of metastatic TNBC, but there have not been any that have reached practical application.”

Dr. Kiran Ambatipudi added, “Currently, biopsy and radiological evaluations are used to diagnose breast cancers, but these are invasive processes and are usually performed only after symptoms appear, by which time it may be too late for therapy. Delayed detection is the primary reason for the high morbidity rate of breast cancer patients, and this necessitates the development of techniques that are not only non-invasive but also sensitive enough to detect cancers in their early stages.”

The team collected saliva from healthy subjects and those diagnosed with TNBC. The proteins in these saliva samples were isolated and tested for change in abundance by targeted mass spectrometry.

The team discovered differences in the amounts of three salivary proteins – lipocalin-1, SMR– 3B, and plastin-2 –between healthy subjects and cancer patients. Further studies isolated five peptides (the building blocks of proteins) from these three proteins, which were starkly different between aggressive TNBC and healthy subjects. These peptides could point to the presence of TNBC with 80 % sensitivity and 95 % specificity.

“If appropriately validated on larger patient cohorts, the discovered peptide markers could become a powerful handle for breast cancer diagnosis in the future,” added Dr. Kiran Ambatipudi, the lead researcher, on the importance of their finding.

Winners of the PFC-VoW BOOK AWARDS 2022 are…

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PFC-VoW 2022 winners

Dateline Dehradun:  Valley of Words announced the winners of all eight categories of its Book Awards—celebrating the best of English Literature and Hindi Sahitya. The PFC-VoW Book Awards is currently in its sixth edition as the most comprehensive independent literary award programme in India.

Over 400 nominations were received in 2022 from 37 publishing houses across the country. The critically-acclaimed longlist of ten books per category was brought down to a final five in the shortlist and then the selection of the final winners as part of an ongoing process which began early this year, with an esteemed Jury for each of the eight categories.

Commenting on the Book Awards, Festival Director Dr Sanjeev Chopra said, “The selection of the books involves a three-stage process, and is indeed a tough call as the quality of submissions becomes more competitive each year. I  take this opportunity to thank  the distinguished Members of our Jury: Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed (English Non-Fiction), Prof. Surekha Dangwal (English Fiction), Menaka Raman (Writings for Young Adults), Rajeev Sharma (Hindi Non-Fiction), Alka Saraogi (Hindi Fiction), Paro Anand (Writings for Children), Padmaja Ghorpade (Translations to Hindi) and Ranjita Biswas (Translations into English) for their painstaking efforts in reading all the books and giving their recommendations.”

And the PFC-VoW Book Award Winners for 2022 are…

ENGLISH FICTION 

The Odd Book of Baby Names by Anees Salim

(Penguin Random House)

ENGLISH NON-FICTION 

Tagore & Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

(Aleph Book Company)

HINDI FICTION

Khela by Neelakshi Singh

(Setu Publications)

HINDI NON- FICTION

Jeete Ji Allahabad by Mamta Kalia

(Rajkamal Prakashan)

WRITINGS FOR YOUNG ADULTS

Savi and the Memory Keeper by Bijal Vachharajani

(Hachette)

WRITINGS/PICTURE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Aai and I by Mamta Nainy

(Pickle Yolk Books)

TRANSLATION TO HINDI 

Yaadon Ke Bikhre Moti: Batware ki Kahaniyan by Aanchal Malhotra translated by Brig. Kamal Nayan Pandit

(HarperCollins)

TRANSLATION TO ENGLISH 

Amader Shantiniketan by Shivani translated by Ira Pande

(Penguin Random House)

The Valley of Words community extends warm congratulations to all the winners this year!

Please join us at the finale of the 6th Edition of Valley of Words, on the 12th and 13th of November in Dehradun, as we celebrate the Word—and beyond.

For further information, please visit www.valleyofwords.org

IIT Roorkee researchers develop a sentiments analysis method for Sanskrit text

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IIT Roorkee

Dateline Roorkee: A proposed sentiments analysis technique has achieved 92.83 percent accuracy for sentiment classification in Sanskrit text by the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) researchers who have developed an efficient method for Sanskrit text sentiment analysis.

Sanskrit is one of the world’s most ancient languages; however, natural language processing tasks such as machine translation and sentiment analysis have not been explored. The proposed technique has achieved 87.50% accuracy for machine translation and 92.83% accuracy for sentiment classification.

Sanskrit sentiments analysis

Sanskrit is one of the world’s most ancient languages; however, natural language processing tasks such as machine translation and sentiment analysis have not been explored for it to the full potential because of the unavailability of sufficient labeled data.

The research proposed a method that comprises models for machine translation, translation evaluation, and sentiment analysis. The team involved in this research are Prof. Balasubramanian Raman, Department of Computer Science and Engineering and his Ph.D. student Mr. Puneet Kumar, and M.Sc. student Mr. Kshitij Pathania, Department of Mathematics.

The machine translations have been used as cross-lingual mapping of the source and the target language. The obtained English translations are sufficiently mature and natural as the original English sentences. The model has been published as a Research Paper in a reputed peer-reviewed journal Applied Intelligence (DOI – https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-022-04046-6)

Elaborating on the sentiment analysis model, Prof. Balasubramanian Raman, Department of Computer Science, IIT Roorkee, said, “We have trained our model to predict sentiment scores in the range of positive, neutral, or negative. And the model uses statistics, natural language processing, and machine learning to determine the sentiment with over 90% accuracy.”

The dataset to perform this research was taken from the Valmiki Ramayana website (https://www.valmiki.iitk.ac.in ) developed and maintained by the IIT Kanpur researchers. The future plans of the researchers are to exploit the morphological properties of Sanskrit for better classification using only root words with their respective suffixes and prefix. It is also planned to evaluate whether the morphological richness of Sanskrit is retained while translating to English. Moreover, the researchers also plan to obtain a model that discerns the context of words in multiple languages and provides word embeddings of lesser dimensions.

Actress Kavya Thapar heads to Dehradun

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Kavya is all smiles

Dateline Dehradun: Post the success of her debut movie Middle Class Love Actress Kavya Thapar made her way to Dehradun to take the blessings of her Guru Ji and offer Langar at Anantdham.

Kavya Thapar, one of the cutest women in show business, continues to win over audiences’ hearts with her alluring attitude and enchanting personality. The actress has been praised for her portrayal of Sysha. The debut actress was seen at the Mumbai airport on her way to celebrate the success of her movie with her Guru Ji and to give langar after the release of her debut film ‘Middle Class Love.’

Kavya is all smiles

A spiritual person, Kavya feels that it is important to make everyone around her happy. Post the release of the movie the actress visited her guruji’s Anantdham in Dehradun and offered lungar to all the needy people on her behalf and shared the success of her movie with them. Pictures  of the actress beaming as she takes part in the langar hands-on are doing the rounds on the internet.

Definitely, this beauty knows how necessary it is to be grateful.

The actress looked every bit elegant in a stunning pastel printed dress. Talking about the makeup, to give perfect Desi kudi vibes she kept it very subtle with a nude lip shade, rosy cheeks, and a defect black bindi. She accessorised her ensemble with minimal jewellery while keeping her in a bun.

Delhi to host Uttarakhand’s first film and music cultural tour.

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Anubhuti, Uttarakhand's first film and music cultural tour

Dateline Delhi: Uttarakhandis in Delhi are in for a treat!  Uttarakhand Film Company along with musical band Pandavaas is putting together Uttarakhand’s first film and music cultural tour that will be flagged off from the national capital.

Coming Sunday i.e. 25th of September the team will perform in front of a packed audience at the Nehru Stadium from 5:00-8:00 p.m. beginning  with a special screening of Director Rahul Rawat’s ‘Sunpat’, Uttarakhand’s first movie to win the coveted ‘Indian Panorama Award’ at the International Film Festival of India.

Sunpat

Why did the team chose Delhi for their maiden event,  Kunal Dobhal of Pandavaas tells us, “Anubhuti Uttarakhand is being flagged off from Delhi as we wanted to give it a befitting take off. We will perform in all leading Metros before we end the tour in Dehradun. We would like to make this is a quality event where Art is given priority over everything else.” He further adds, “This is the first Uttarakhandi event that has entry-tickets.  We want to ensure quality over quantity. We plan to make this an annual cultural event where we give Uttarakhand artists a stage that they truly deserve.“

So what has the response been thus far? We ask Ishaan Dobhal and Rahul Rawat, respectively , “Whenever you start something new there are people who will always judge your decision, doubt your judgement and wisdom. But we stuck to our road-map regarding the event.” Rahul adds, “We, as a team, wanted to bring about a change and it has worked wonders. We have had an excellent response and are sold out in two out of the three categories.“

So for those who haven’t booked their ticket just yet, log on to bookmyshow and make sure you too are part of this ‘once in a lifetime’ experience doing your bit by encouraging talent from your home state.

VoW launches it 6th Edition with G-Literati 

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Dr Tania Saili Bakshi
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Dateline Dehradun: Valley of Words, Literature and Art Festival  in partnership with Daly College, Indore, will be hosting the ‘Young Adults Literature’ vertical on the 13th -14th  of September, 2022. This maiden event at the 150 year old prestigious institution aspires to give children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine and understand.

‘G-Literati’ is a fresh, innovative event aimed at promoting reading among children. Organised by Daly College, Valley of Words and AFS India, students from over a dozen schools will get the opportunity to interact with authors and take part in activities based on literary themes.

Daly College, Indore

Talking about hosting the event in their esteemed institution, Dr. (Ms.) Gunmeet Bindra said, “I am a staunch supporter of promoting the love for reading in children.  No graphic or digital form of knowledge can ever replace man’s best friend, the ‘book’. Creating a vibrant reading environment excites and enthuses me! A book, a story, can help a child step into someone else’s shoes, understand that they are not alone, experience a magical adventure and travel to new worlds.” She further added, “With Valley of Words and AFS India , by our side,  ‘G-Literati’ is a completely new initiative, rarely seen in schools, and I am highly optimistic that it will achieve resounding success, not only in terms of outreach but also in motivating the students to become avid readers.”

The two-day lit fest include physical sessions with authors of selected books under the Young Adult category hosted in its huge verdant campus. Moderated talk shows with the authors will be a prime attraction. These sessions would include a book review and a questionnaire for the concerned novelist with a teacher moderating the session.

As the authors would be present on Daly College campus, they would provide the students with first-hand insights pertaining to reading, novel writing, writing as a career, literary criticism, etc. The sessions will be recorded and shared from all social media handles of Valley of Words.

Thrown in are competitive events such as Animated Videos; Poster Making, Character Enactment and a Short Story Writing competition for students to add more icing to the cake. Also a book fair at the venue will give students the opportunity to grab books of their choice and get them signed by the authors themselves. An experience that the students will cherish forever as they personally get to meet, interact and hear authors talk about the written word.

Dr Sanjeev Chopra, Festival Director stated, “Our partnership with AFS schools has started on a very positive and vibrant note. We hope that this will become an annual feature and the young students and their teachers will find it a rewarding experience. My congratulations to Principal Bindra and her very efficient team for putting this together in one of India’s most well-known public schools in the historic city of Indore.’

Two SRHU research scholars bag top awards at International Conference

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Dateline Dehradun: Two research scholars from the Himalayan School of Biosciences, Swami Rama Himalayan University, bagged top honors at the International Conference GangaAyurCon-2022.

Anjali Uniyal and Sweta Upadhyay won the first and second positions respectively in the Scientific Poster Category.

The Conference on “Medicinal Plants of Ganga River Basin and Their Therapeutic Importance in Indian System of Medicines,” was held at Gurukul Campus Uttarakhand Ayurvedic University, Haridwar from 5th to 6th September, 2022

Anjali Uniyal presented her perspective on, ‘Genetic Diversity Assessment Using Molecular Markers for the Conservation of Rheum Species.’ This has been her research topic as well which she is conducting along with Akhilesh Kumar, Sweta Upadhyay, Sanjay Gupta and Vijay Kumar.

Sweta Upadhyay, a PhD Scholar at Himalayan School of Biosciences, SRHU was awarded 2nd position in Scientific Poster Category. The title of her presentation was ‘Molecular analysis of micropropagated Rheum emodi plants using RAPD and ISSR markers for ascertaining Clonal fidelity.’ Her co-researchers in the above research are Anjali Uniyal, Vijay Kumar, Sanjay Gupta and Akhilesh Kumar.

Overwhelmed with the achievement of SRHU’s students, Vice Chancellor Dr Vijay Dhasmana stated, “Their research topic has huge relevance to the welfare of humanity. Their main projection is that cultivation of plants can be planned to meet the needs of the industry in required quantities and at required time. If efforts were made for systematic cultivation of medicinal plants instead of collecting them from the wild, many of the problems like unplanned harvesting and threats to the plant specie would be minimized. Properly identified, certified and biochemically characterized planting material can be supplied to the growers. Unintentional adulteration can be avoided and it will be easier to check deliberate adulteration.”

The proposal presented by the duo was how to develop efficient routine procedures and facility for obtaining genetic data on large numbers of samples in order to specify and detect the variation among the distinct geographical sources through molecular markers, which will be used for the authentication of the plant material. Hence the herbal wealth of the State could be utilized to its optimum. Up grading of plant tissue culture facility at Himalayan School of Biosciences, SRHU, Dehradun will help in implementations of improvement programme for medicinal plants of the State of Uttarakhand more vigorously.

The project was given to Dr. Sanjay Gupta as Principal Investigator and Dr Vivek Kumar, Co-PI by the Uttarakhand Council for Biotechnology, Haldi, Govt. of Uttarakhand.

Swami Rama Himalayan University honors Shourya Saini

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Dateline Dehradun: Deaflympics 2022 Bronze Medalist, Shourya Saini, was handed over Rs 4 Lakh by the Vice Chancellor Dr Vijay Dhasmana to celebrate his spectacular achievement.

Shourya Saini, a first year Baslp (Bachelor of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology) student at Swami Rama Himalayan University has done Uttarakhand and India proud, by clinching a Bronze Medal in 10m Air Rifle shooting event in Brazil held in May this year. He finished third with 622.7 points.

To honour his achievement Vice Chancellor of Swami Rama Himalayan University, Dr Vijay Dhasmana, gifted him a cheque of Rs 4 lakh, to help Shourya buy his personal practice Air Rifle which will be delivered to him in September.

“When Dr Dhasmana learnt that I have difficulty in practicing due to lack of a personal Air Rifle, he very kindly offered to support me in my journey,” shared an elated Shourya. “I want the world to know him by his abilities, not his disability,” states Dr Dhasmana. “He is nothing short of a brand ambassador for our youth,” he added.

The father-son duo travel to Delhi every weekend, as Shourya needs to practice for other events on a 50-meter shooting range, unavailable in Doon. But Shourya believes that hard things are put in his way, not to discourage him, “I want youngsters like me to see that that they shouldn’t let a disability get in the way of their dreams,” Shourya avers. “I believe that the impediments in our way are only there to strengthen us. Therefore I don’t need things easy. I need things possible.”

His father SC Saini informs that Shourya’s coach too lives in Delhi. “So we do not mind travelling regularly. It’s not an issue with us. His passion for his sport is like a mechanism for health and endurance. He was truly determined and totally focused on his training. In such a short span of time he became part of the Indian team and went on to represent India at Brazil.”

The next goal for the champion is a Gold Medal at the Olympics and Deaflympics together.

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