
Meet on latest innovations in computer science begins
Eminent experts, professors, and researchers from various countries are set to present and discuss their latest innovations and contributions.
Vice-president and Chief Data Centre Delivery Officer at Pi Data Centres Abhinav Kotagiri who was the chief guest, underscored the critical importance of both programming skills and research aptitude for securing employment opportunities in today's competitive tech landscape.
The conference features a lineup of prominent speakers who will deliver keynote talks and present groundbreaking research, elaborating on the latest innovations in computer science and the significance of research papers in both academia and industry.
Notable speakers include Shesha Raghunathan from IBM, Bengaluru, Venkat Pola from OneShot AI, USA, V Shiva Kishore from Infosys, Germany, Venu Nimmagadda from Velera, USA, Kiran Babu Machha from Maximus, USA, Dr Ganganagunta Srinivas from University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Oman, Suresh Suggula from SwankTek, USA, Dr Koothadi Venumadhav from International University of Science and Technology, South Africa.
The conference was formally inaugurated with the release of the event poster by Principal Dr Meka Ramesh.
He was joined by Vemuri Baburao (Director), Rajesh C Jampala (Dean), Dr TS Ravi Kiran (Conference Convener), G Samrat Krishna and K Sudheer (Co-conveners), and Kavuri Sridhar (Administrative Officer).
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Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
NSBT and Findability Sciences launch Integrated AI Lab
Nath School of Business & Technology (NSBT) recently joined hands with AI company Findability Sciences to establish an AI Lab in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar . This extends their existing partnership. Findability Sciences also has a similar partnership existing with Worcester institute, US. Students enrolled in the BCA (Artificial Intelligence & Data Science) program will gain hands-on exposure to generative AI, machine learning , and natural language processing (NLP). Anand Mahurkar, Founder & CEO, Findability Sciences, 'At Findability Sciences, our journey in Shambajinagar has always been anchored in talent, not location. Collaborating with NSBT, we're bringing world-class AI infrastructure and mentorship right here—to create an ecosystem where students solve real problems, contribute to global innovation, and uplift their own communities.' 'Quality tech education, jobs, and innovation can emerge from small towns, not just big tech hubs,' said Harsh Vardhan Jajoo, Director of NSBT.

The Hindu
3 hours ago
- The Hindu
Science retracts NASA arsenic bacteria paper after years of controversy
In 2010, in the waters of Mono Lake in California, NASA-funded scientists claimed to have found a microbe called GFAJ-1 they said rewrote biology. It had allegedly replaced the phosphorus in its DNA with the toxic element arsenic. The announcement, made at a high-profile press conference on December 2 that year, stunned the world. The findings, soon published in the journal Science, hinted that life could rely on a radically different chemistry. Lead author and microbial geobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon declared, 'Life as we know it may be due for a revision.' Speculation surged: had NASA stumbled onto alien biology? Set the ball rolling On July 24 this year, Science announced that it would be retracting the GFAJ-1 paper, nearly 15 years after its splashy debut, citing shifting editorial standards and lingering public confusion. 'It's important to have any groundbreaking work independently evaluated before drawing far-reaching conclusions,' University of Minnesota synthetic biologist Kate Adamala said. 'We want the public to be excited, but the message must match the strength of the data.' Mainstream media amplified the drama. One headline read: 'NASA Discovers Life Not As We Know It'. Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a site that tracks withdrawn papers and promotes research transparency, and executive director of The Centre for Scientific Integrity, saw the media blitz as pivotal. 'Without the hype, this paper might never have been retracted.' He pointed to NASA's style of communication as a key factor in the storm that followed in 2010. 'Historically, NASA hasn't always had a respectful relationship with journalists,' he said. 'They're great at promoting themselves, and sometimes at overselling.' Peer review in public To the people at large, the prospect of arsenic life hinted at alien biochemistry. But for many scientists, the GFAJ-1 paper raised more questions than answers. Critics began pointing out that arsenate is unstable in water, so its role in DNA seemed chemically implausible. 'If true, this would have overturned nearly a century of data, but nothing in the chemistry suggested it was possible,' Steven Benner, an early critic and chemistry professor at University of Florida said. Others were initially intrigued. 'I was very excited and impressed. It was a big deal in the origins community,' Adamala, then a graduate student, said. But like many, her enthusiasm waned as flaws emerged. Microbiologist Rosemary Redfield became a leading critic and one of the first replicators to disprove the findings. 'It's a fine example of how easy it is for scientists to be misled by an attractive hypothesis and of why we need both formal peer review and informal outside scrutiny.' By late December, the backlash gained traction. Blogs and Twitter (now turned the paper into a case study on post-publication peer review. Sheila Jasanoff, professor of science and technology studies at Harvard, noted that while such public spaces can foster valuable crowd-sourced peer review, they also risk overreach. 'These days science, like true crime, has spilled outside the constraints of officially authorised review. However, like all forms of democratisation, such informal policing can run out of control if it is driven by a mob mentality that is out to shame or undermine a researcher or a research program.' The original team stood by their findings — but by now the tone had shifted. Evidence falls apart Over the next 18 months, multiple labs tested the paper's core assertion. In 2012, Science published two studies that refuted it. Redfield's team found no arsenate in GFAJ-1's DNA. Tobias Erb's group confirmed the microbe still needed phosphorus to grow, i.e. it hadn't rewritten biology, just tolerated low-phosphate conditions. Wolfe-Simon maintained that her team's methods showed arsenic was incorporated into DNA and were robust enough to rebut Benner's contamination claims. Science didn't retract or flag the paper, saying claims should be resolved by further research, not editorial action. And since no fraud was alleged, the rebuttals sufficed. 'The whole debate ends up circling around the semantics of words like 'error', 'fraud', 'misconduct,'' Oransky said. 'But this paper, let's be honest, has been understood as unreliable since at least 2012, if not earlier.' Why science took so long For Benner, the GFAJ-1 paper reflected differences in scientific perspectives. Biologists saw phosphorus as essential, chemists knew arsenate's instability, geologists accepted mineral substitutions, and astrobiologists embraced radical possibilities. 'It wasn't that reviewers were incompetent,' Benner said. 'They just didn't all speak the same scientific language.' He saw another deeper flaw. NASA's astrobiology community often relies on consensus panels that falter when no one challenges ideas outside their domain. 'Multidisciplinary science is essential,' he said, 'but when it's superficial, weak claims slip through. This wasn't peer review breaking down: it was different communities assuming they shared standards while working from very different assumptions.' Adamala echoed this concern: 'Young scientists in interdisciplinary fields should embrace continuous peer review, as reliance on collaborators' expertise can miss flaws that later scrutiny might catch.' Correction sans closure 'They're right to retract a paper whose high-profile conclusions were entirely wrong,' Redfield said. One senior researcher noted that the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, which many journals have adopted as a measure to improve research integrity, justify a retraction if the findings are unreliable. Here, multiple labs found phosphate in the arsenate medium, undermining the paper's core claim that the microbe grew by substituting arsenic for phosphorus. 'The growth experiments at the heart of the paper were flawed,' the researchers said. 'Even if it was an honest mistake, the core conclusions didn't hold up.' Adamala said that it's a good example of self-regulation in science. 'Slowly but surely, mistakes do get corrected.' Oransky was more measured: 'Science is now acting on an expanded definition of retraction that's consistent with what's been possible for a long time, but rarely used.' Not everyone sees it as black and white. Jasanoff warned that retractions can erase the very messiness that makes science work. 'Rather than draw hard lines between truth and error, science advances through open debate,' she said. 'It's better to preserve a record that shows how scientists test, challenge, and refine their ideas, even when plausible claims later prove wrong.' Benner, for his part, expressed worry that broadening retraction policies could weaken the informal scrutiny that exposed the paper's flaws, raising questions about balancing error correction with preserving the scientific process. Today, the whole saga has transformed into a cautionary tale. Adamala said the controversy may have cast a shadow over exotic chemistry research in astrobiology, making scientists more cautious about bold claims. Who pays the price? Wolfe-Simon's rise and fall was swift. In 2010, she was hailed for a potential revolution in biology. Two years later, she quietly exited both NASA and mainstream science, her research career derailed by controversy and lack of funding. 'Good scientists would have responded by getting back into the lab and doing the necessary follow-up work. But these authors still don't admit mistakes,' Redfield said, pointing to their rebuttal letter in response to the retraction. Ariel Anbar, a coauthor of the now retracted paper, said, 'Science cited no misconduct or specific mistake. We stand firmly by the integrity of our data.' He also criticised the journal for not sharing a blog post it published regarding the retraction with the authors, calling it a breach of COPE guidelines. Oransky disagreed: 'What guideline is this referring to? Furthermore, standing by your data doesn't mean there aren't errors in it.' Anbar also said the team rejected 'the alleged error' and that it was raised in 2011 and rebutted in a peer-reviewed exchange. 'They may reject it,' Oransky replied, 'but that seems to be the rationale for the retraction.' Nonetheless, Oransky also said Science's retraction notice could have been clearer. He explained that retractions often imply misconduct, so when Science called the paper unreliable but not unethical, it still put the authors on the defensive. 'You can see that here, they're saying: 'But there was no misconduct. No clear error.'' Jasanoff said she doesn't see it completely as an individual failure. She argued that the unusually long delay until retraction may reflect less a concern with scientific uncertainty and more with a broader institutional tendency to manage reputation, especially in an era of heightened fears over misinformation. Wolfe-Simon's arc underscored a stark truth: high-risk discoveries bring both acclaim and vulnerability. When science goes public, its failures play out just as visibly as its triumphs, leaving lasting questions about how to correct course without crushing the people behind the work. A slow machine Peer-reviewers cleared GFAJ-1 and media hype propelled it, but shifting editorial norms more than new data undid it 15 years later. Oransky singled out Science's editor-in-chief, Holden Thorp, for leading that shift. 'Other journals have done it, but he's been consistently engaged in a way that encourages open conversation, no matter whether people agree with specific decisions or not.' That kind of editorial openness, he added, may be the real legacy of the arsenic life saga. Jasanoff, however, cautioned that every retraction risks erasing the visible, iterative debate that builds trust. 'It is better for people to understand that science moves through trial and error, and gradual self-correction. It is not a binary. All science is provisional.' Benner drew a parallel to the 1976 Viking missions, where a premature 'no organics, no life' verdict in Science stifled debate. 'Calling the ballgame early had an unfortunate result. It prevented the dialectic the scientific process needs.' The arsenic life case endures not because of its flawed claim, but for what it revealed about the pressures shaping modern science: how spectacular findings — especially from institutions like NASA — can short-circuit scrutiny, and how correcting course means confronting the very systems that made such claims irresistible in the first place. Anirban Mukhopadhyay is a geneticist by training and science communicator from Delhi.

Business Standard
5 hours ago
- Business Standard
2023's marine heatwaves signal early irreversible coral damage: Study
Marine heatwaves -- prolonged periods of raised ocean temperatures than what are typical for that time of year -- experienced in 2023 were not only unprecedented, but may have also signalled a potential climate tipping point, with irreversible, negative impacts to coral reefs and ecosystems, according to a new study. Researchers from China and the US found that regions in oceans across the globe, including the North Atlantic, and the tropical, south and north Pacific experienced extreme marine heatwaves -- the longest in duration, widest in extent and highest in intensity on record. The findings, published in the journal Science, show that the most intense warming occurred in the North Atlantic, tropical eastern Pacific, north Pacific, and southwest Pacific, which "collectively accounted for 90 per cent of the global ocean warming". Heatwaves in the North Atlantic which began mid-2022 persisted for 525 days with an intensity four times the typical, making it "the longest recorded marine heatwave in the region", the authors said. The southwest Pacific heat event broke records for its expanse and prolonged duration, while unusual temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific peaked at 1.63 degrees Celsius during the onset of El Nino, they said. 'El Nino' is the warm phase of the 'El Nino-Southern Oscillation' (ENSO) natural climate pattern, which involves changes in temperatures and atmospheric pressures in the Pacific Ocean. El Nino is linked with warmer ocean temperatures. The authors, including those from the US' Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, said the marine heatwaves of 2023 were "a global event with a 50-year return period, (with a less than two per cent chance of occurrence)". First author Tianyun Dong, a joint postdoctoral researcher at the Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, and Southern University of Science and Technology in China, told PTI in an email, "Global warming, observed over a long-term and primarily driven by greenhouse gas emissions, has raised the ocean's baseline state, making marine heatwaves increasingly frequent and intense." Further, the trends observed also suggest a "possible indication of an approaching climatic tipping point", the study said. A climate tipping point, potentially a 'point of no return', is related with irreversible, disproportionate health and economic consequences for the world's most vulnerable, such as tropical coral reefs, and ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. "While a full (ocean-climate) system collapse has not occurred, irreversible impacts -- mass coral bleaching in tropical reefs, collapse of key habitats -- are already emerging," Dong said. Coral bleaching in reefs, or the loss of algae in reefs causing a 'whitening' and vulnerability to disease and death, are showing few signs of recovering, while the functional collapse of key habitats in some of the world's regions undermine biodiversity and the role of ecosystems, Dong explained. "These impacts reflect more than a short-term stress, suggesting a shift towards a permanent ecological change. The 2023 marine heatwaves may, therefore, mark a dangerous step closer to tipping points in the ocean-climate system," the first author said. Arpita Mondal, associate professor at the department of civil engineering and centre for climate studies, IIT Bombay, and not involved with the study, told PTI, "Based on a primary reading of the paper, I'm quite convinced of the scientific robustness." Mondal explained that the ocean and atmosphere "talk to each other through processes -- called the 'teleconnections' -- through which far-away processes can influence local weather". "For example, processes in the southern and equatorial Pacific Ocean can influence the Indian monsoon," she said. "Of course, El Nino is the most significant phenomenon which affects not only monsoons in South Asia, but ENSO-neutral conditions -- where neither El Nino nor La Nina dominate -- have been linked with the heat waves in the pre-monsoon season too," Mondal explained. "Similarly, oscillations and circulation of currents in oceans and atmosphere can impact weather worldwide," she added. The study team analysed satellite observations and temperature data of the world's oceans. Data from the NASA-funded 'ECCO2' project, focussed on producing a high-resolution estimate of the state of the world's oceans and sea ice, was also analysed. First author Dong said that despite a relatively weak El Nino -- studies show its growth rate unexpectedly decelerated in mid-2023 -- the unprecedented nature of 2023's marine heatwaves cannot be explained by natural climate variability alone. "A continued warming of the planet -- especially when combined with El Nino -- could produce even more extreme marine heatwaves, pointing toward a potential new normal of amplified ocean heat extremes and a higher chance of crossing physical and ecological tipping points," the first author said. Mondal, who is not involved in the study, pointed to the concerning lack of reliable, long-term ocean data. "My concern is more about the lack of long-term, reliable ocean data globally. We have only been monitoring oceans in the recent years. We do not have say, 150 to 200 years of ocean surface temperatures recorded. However, satellites developed in the last 50 years or so have definitely helped in complementing the buoys which have been in place for monitoring the ocean," she said.