City boy clinches second IM norm

Sports

Eyes medal in Commonwealth Championship this month-end

R. Raja Rithvik inched one step closer to realising his dream of becoming an International Master (IM) when he achieved his second IM norm in the just-concluded Mumbai Mayors Cup chess championship.

The 10th standard student of Orchids International School (Jubilee Hills) scored 6.5 points in 10 rounds, winning four, drawing five and losing only one in a championship which featured seven Grandmasters. Significantly, the city’s young talent outwitted one of them — Ukraine’s Neverov Valeriy — and his only loss was against an Indian Grandmaster, Diptyan Ghosh.

Rithvik, 14, also improved his ELO rating, moving to 2,340 from 2,296 picking 46 points. “It was an immensely satisfying event for me as it featured 200 players and some of the strongest ones too,” he says with a big smile.

In April this year, Rithvik clinched his first IM norm in the Bangkok Open championship with 6.5 points from nine rounds and now needs only more norm to become the International Master. “I am confident of becoming one very soon. I know what are the challenges ahead and I will prepare accordingly. The Mumbai Cup was a huge experience, given the quality of players I faced,” says Rithvik.

His progress was not surprising given the fact that he won five gold in the recently-concluded Asian Youth championship in the under-14 category — winning two in individual events of classical and blitz formats, three gold in team events of all three formats including Rapid.

“My next big goal is to win a medal in the Commonwealth Championship this month-end and then prepare for the World Youth championship in Greece this October,” he says.

He credits his coach ‘Raju sir’ (N.V.S. Rama Raju, who also trained GM Dronavalli Harika among other big names). “There is a constant endeavour on my part to keep improving and I am confident of being a much better player with improved variety in openings, middle and end-games,” says Rithvik.

Sports Authority of Telangana State chairman A. Venkateshwar Reddy felicitated the young chess talent on Tuesday.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Telangana / by V.V. Subrahmanyam / Hyderabad – June 12th, 2018

Award for Singareni CMD

Business & Economy, Leaders, Records, All
N. Sridhar

The Institute of Economic Studies (IES) has selected Chairman and Managing Director of Singareni Collieries Company Ltd N. Sridhar for its Outstanding Global Leadership Award in recognition of the latter’s leadership skills in improving the performance of the company over the last four years.

The award would be presented at the global economic summit to be held at Dubai on June 28. It is the second international award to be received by the top executive of the SCCL this year with the Enterprise Asia presenting him the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship award for 2017, according to officials.

In a letter sent to SCCL, Executive Director of the Institute of Economic Studies, Sangeetha Singh, stated that the award would also comprise a gold medal and invited Mr. Sridhar to attend 28th global economic summit to be held in Dubai. It said ‘IES confers the leadership award to financial experts, parliamentarians, financial research experts for India’s financial stability’.

Officials of the SCCL stated that the company has gained international recognition along with scaling up its performance during the last four years.

The company’s turnover has increased from ₹11.928 crore in 2013-14 to ₹22,667 crore in 2017-18.

Similarly, profit of the company has also gone up from ₹419 crore to ₹1,200 crore during the last four years, registering an increase of over 186%.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – June 12th, 2018

Class 7 Telangana chess whiz is now World No. 1

Education, Records, All, Sports, World Opinion
N.V.S. Ramaraju with V. Praneeth. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Telangana’s Vuppala Prraneeth is now World No. 1 in chess in the under-11 category, his coach N.V.S. Ramaraju, who is also credited with training chess Grandmaster Dronavalli Harika, has revealed.

For someone known to be ‘very good’ in opening and middle-games, Prraneeth came under Mr. Ramaraju’s wing three years ago. “There is no doubt that he is a potential champion from the State in the days to come,” the proud coach, who runs Race Chess Academy in the city, tells The Hindu.

Prraneeth, whose parents hail from Nalgonda, has a creditable ELO2281 and was felicitated by the Sports Authority of Telangana State chairman A. Venkateshwar Reddy last week.

Mr. Reddy assured complete support to the chess wizard in his pursuit of excellence at higher levels and hoped he would become a Grandmaster soon, given his consistency in tough events.

For the record, Prraneeth bagged bronze in the 201 South Asian championship and set a record of sorts scoring ELO22 points in the 14th Parshwanath International championship in Delhi. “There is obviously a lot of scope for improvement and the best part is that he is very young, sincere and puts in hours of hard work,” points out Mr. Ramaraju.

This Class 7 student of David Memorial High School is now dreaming of bigger things, including World championship titles in his age group as he embarks on what he feels will be a demanding journey.

“I am aware that I have to widen my opening game repertoire and also improve upon my end-game. But with Ramaraju sir taking care of every aspect of my game, I am confident of achieving bigger things,” says Prraneeth.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Telangana / by V.V. Subrahmanyam / Hyderabad – June 11th, 2018

From grocery store work to CM’s Sarvonnatha medal

Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Records, All

Constable now a key person in developing apps for State police

Thirty years ago, he worked in a grocery store in two shifts to meet the expenses for his intermediate studies.

Today, 46-year-old police constable P. Ramulu is winner of Mukhyamantri Sarvonnatha police medal 2018, the highest medal given to police personnel by the State Government on the eve of State Formation Day. From a Telugu-medium student in a government school to become a key person in developing applications for the police department, his has been an arduous yet fascinating journey.

Eldest of three sons of a labourer couple from Amangal of unified Mahbubnagar district, Ramulu came to Hyderabad for intermediate education. “I worked in a grocery store at Lakdikapul in morning and evening shifts and attended classes at Kachiguda Government Junior College,” he recalled.

Continuing his struggle, he joined B.Com course and got selected as a constable in 1991 after writing the first year exam. In his first posting at Santoshnagar, Ramulu created a record of sorts by executing hundreds of warrants pending for over four years in less than two months.

Noticing his writing skills, the officers shifted him as Assistant Station Writer, one who prepares case diaries, charge-sheets and investigation reports.

In 2001, the Government selected nearly 400 constables from Hyderabad police to work for e-Cop project, the first step towards computerisation of police department. After one-week training, 10 were selected out of the 400. Ramulu topped the ranking when four were selected from those 10. “With the help of other three colleagues, I installed 260 computer systems in all police stations of Hyderabad and other important offices,” the constable said with a sparkle in his eyes. Recognising the services of the self-motivated constable, senior officers sent him for additional training in Database System Administration, hardware and networking. In one training module lasting a year, he used to work at the institute from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., come back to office and work till late in the night. “Those long hours of work taught me a lot of new techniques and subjects. This helped me design latest applications of Hyderabad police like HAWKEYE and HYDCOP,” he said.

Balancing his training, work and family life, Ramulu completed his graduation which he had discontinued after joining the department. To hone his IT skills, he secured admission into M.Sc. (Information Technology) from Sikkim Manipal university and successfully completed it.

“The department has given to me so many opportunities, and I want to give my best,” he said, expressing joy over being selected for the prestigious medal.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Telangana / by Marri Ramu / Hyderabad – June 07th, 2018

UoH student gets into Ph.D in Harvard

Education, World Opinion

Akshita Srinivasan, a student of University of Hyderabad (UoH), has been selected for the prestigious Ph. D programme at Harvard and is one of the 15 students who have been accepted from around the world.

Akshita, who did her Integrated Master’s in Health Psychology at the UoH. will be working in the area of Developmental Psychology with Dr. Elizabeth Spelke.

Her lab in general focuses on uniquely human cognitive capacities like our understanding of objects, actions, people, places, number, and geometry. It gets at this using behavioural research with infants and children.

The work that Akshita will be doing during her Ph. D is related to children’s understanding of number.

Children who sell fruits and vegetables in Indian markets are so good and quick at arithmetic, but the same children do not do well when tested in school-based arithmetic.

Akshita’s research tries to examine this discrepancy and aims at creating interventions that can be used to help improve mathematics education, a press release said.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – June 06th, 2018

Telangana Formation Day Award for TITA

Records, All, Science & Technology

Telangana Information Technology Association (TITA) has been conferred with the ‘Telangana State Formation Day Award – 2018’ recognising the efforts and services to promote digital literacy among common people.

IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao presented the award during the annual report of the IT Department. TITA was awarded under the ‘NGO with Best Outreach’ category.

100K Digithon program, Telangana Yuva Nirmaan and Telangana Innovation & Incubation Centre (TIIC) are the few major initiatives of TITA. These have been appreciated and taken as basis for award by the government and this is the third consecutive award for TITA by the Government, said a press release from global president Sundeep Kumar Makthala.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – June 04th, 2018

ICRISAT releases bio-fortified pearl millet varieties

Agriculture, Green Initiatives / Environment, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Nature, Records, All, Science & Technology
The bio-fortified variety of pearl millet being grown at ICRISAT at Patancheru in Sangareddy district.

Iron and zinc levels increased using conventional breeding methods: scientist

Consuming supplementary nutrients for better health has become common. Making it more convenient, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has promoted project to include the micro-nutrients in millets.

The ICAR has set minimum levels of iron and zinc that have to be bred into the varieties of pearl millet (Bajra) available across the country. The scientists at a national-level workshop, part of the All-India Coordinated Research Project on Pearl Millet, early this year decided a minimum of 4.2 milligrams of iron per 100 grams and zinc 3.2 milligrams per 100 grams. Any variety or hybrids to be sold to farmers by public or private seed producers should follow this micro-nutrient standards apart from giving a higher yield.

Dhanashakti — the first bio-fortified pearl millet variety released in 2014 — has been a grand success and is currently being cultivated in 65,000 hectares across the country and the seed is largely being supplied by Nirmal Seeds, Maharashtra State Seed Corporation and Karnataka State Seed Corporation. The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) here has recently developed four bio-fortified pearl millet hybrids with iron and zinc — the most deficient nutrients in current diets.

The hybrids are — AHB 1200 Fe, HHB 299, RHB 233 and HHB 311 — officially released in collaboration with agricultural universities of Maharashtra (VNMKV), Haryana (CCSHAU), Rajasthan (SKNAU).

These bio-fortified varieties and hybrids will contain 7.5 to 8.0 milligrams of iron per 100 grams and 3.5 to 4.5 milligrams of zinc per 100 grams of millet.

So, consumption of 200 g/day bio-fortified bajra-based foods will provide almost 70% of daily iron and zinc requirement in men and women, and 130 gram will give 100% requirement for children.

“It took more than five years to develop these varieties with active support of ICAR and State agricultural universities. These varieties of pearl millet will offer nutrient rich food to the consumers. Minimum nutrient level has been standardized after examining as many as 120 varieties bajra across the country, ICRISAT Senior Scientist Mahalingam Govindaraj told The Hindu.

Key vitamins

“Bio-fortification is conventional crop breeding to increase micro-nutrient levels. It helps to address preventable deficiencies of key vitamins and minerals like iron, zinc and vitamin A. This project was supported by HarvestPlus Challenge program of CGIAR,” he explained.

“Since the seeds have been developed in conventional breeding method there is no need to worry. This is an excellent move in the background of malnutrition levels in India – with over 58 % of children and 50 % of pregnant women being anaemic in India, further, 38 % of children under five are stunted,” he explained.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by R. Avadhani Pattancheru (Sangareddy Dt.) / June 05th, 2018

Prime posting for journalist from Hyderabad

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Leaders, Nri's / PIO's, Records, All, World Opinion

Joins Columbia Journalism School

Columbia Journalism School announced on Monday that Raju Narisetti, a leading digital media executive and editor, will join the faculty as Professor of Professional Practice and also serve as the new director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism.

Mr. Narisetti is from Hyderabad and did his B.A. (Economics) from Osmania University and an MBA from IRMA in India. He also holds an M.A. from Indiana University, lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Kim Barrington Narisetti, and daughters Leila and Zola.

“I am delighted to join the journalism faculty and also lead the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship program at Columbia University,” he said in a release. He recently served as chief executive of Gizmodo Media Group and earlier, was News Corp’s senior vice president of strategy. He also spent 14 years at The Wall Street Journal, starting as a summer intern in 1991 and becoming an Editor too.

He also served as the managing editor for digital and new products at The Washington Post, has been Founder-Editor of Mint. He began his business journalism career at The Economic Times in New Delhi, and his U.S. journalism career at The Dayton Daily News.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – June 06th, 2018