Latest news with #Natraj
Deccan Herald
07-07-2025
- Health
- Deccan Herald
Academic Heights Public School celebrates the power of yoga
Academic Heights Public School, Channagiri, celebrated International Yoga Day with events including a yoga-dance fusion and nasal cleansing demo. President Soubhagya, Administrator Natraj, and Principal Shanthi led the event. The theme 'Yoga for One Earth, One Health' echoed through thoughtful speeches, asanas, and student performances.
New Indian Express
12-05-2025
- New Indian Express
Elderly couple die in blaze at Chennai home; grandson, worker narrowly escape
CHENNAI: In a tragic accident, an elderly couple were charred to death after a fire broke out at their house at Choudry Nagar in Valasaravakkam on Sunday afternoon. The couple's grandson and their domestic worker who were in the house with them managed to escape through a window after the fire spread inside the house. While the boy escaped with minor injuries, the domestic worker fractured her leg, the police said. The Valasaravakkam police have registered a case and a probe is on to ascertain the cause of the fire. According to the police, Natraj (74) was a retired lawyer who lived with his wife N Thangam (70) in their two-storeyed bungalow with their son N Sriram (50) and his family. Sriram, a chartered accountant, shared the house with his wife, daughter and son (S Shravan), who completed his Class XII this year. Natraj's other son lives abroad, the police said. 'On Sunday afternoon, Sriram, his wife and daughter had gone out, while Shravan stayed back with his grandparents. Around 12:30 pm, a fire broke out in one of the rooms on the ground floor, which we suspect to be the pooja room. The fire then quickly spread to other rooms,' a police source said. Shravan, whose bedroom on the first floor overlooks the road, jumped from the balcony and escaped to safety with minor bruises, the police said. The family's domestic staff, Devi (37), who was on the second floor of the house, jumped to the ground from the terrace and escaped with fractured legs. Since the fire quickly engulfed almost the entire house, the elderly couple could not get out, police said. 'The fire and rescue department, along with the police, were alerted. Four tender vehicles were deployed and the fire was put out after a struggle of more than two hours. By the time the fire department personnel could go inside the house, the couple were charred to death,' a fire and rescue department source said. The bodies were recovered and sent to Government Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital for postmortem. A case has been registered and an inquiry is underway. A police officer said that the exact cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained and the value of the property lost is yet to be assessed.
The Hindu
28-04-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
Brain-Computer Interface enables movement for people who are paralysed
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have achieved a significant breakthrough in assistive technology for individuals with paralysis. The lead author of a scientific paper on the project, an Indian who grew up in Chennai, Nikhilesh Natraj, says they have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that allows a paralysed man to control a robotic arm simply by imagining the movements he wishes to execute. Dr. Natraj is a neuroscientist and neural engineer at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences, UCSF. 'Here, our team has developed a framework that allows a paralysed man to control a robotic arm for 7 months straight using just his thoughts alone, with minimal calibration,' he says. The results of this study were published in a recent volume of the peer-reviewed journal Cell. Developing stability in Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) To start with, the team had to understand the neural patterns behind movement. The key was discovering how activity shifts in the brain day to day as a study participant repeatedly imagined making specific movements. Once a machine learning/AI algorithm was programmed to account for those shifts, it worked for months at a time. Karunesh Ganguly, professor of neurology and a member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences who studied how patterns of brain activity in animals represent specific movements, saw that these patterns changed day-to-day. If one assumed that the same thing was happening in humans, these changes would explain why the participants' BCIs became unstable and quickly lost the ability to recognise movement patterns. The team worked with an individual who had been paralysed by a stroke and could not speak or move, a note on the varsity website stated. The study participant had tiny sensors implanted on the surface of his brain that could pick up brain activity when he imagined moving. The sensors do not send pulses to the brain, but only read out the intent to move from the movement regions of the brain, Dr. Natraj explains. AI and signal processing To see whether and how his brain patterns changed over time, the participant was asked to imagine moving different parts of his body. Although he couldn't actually move, the participant's brain could still produce the signals for a movement when he imagined himself doing it. The BCI recorded the brain's representations of these movements through the sensors. Analysing the patterns in the high-dimensional sensor data, the team found that while the structure of movement representations stayed the same, their locations in the high-dimensional data shifted slightly from day to day. By tracking these shifts and predicting how it would evolve, the team was able to overcome instability in BCI systems and developed an end-to-end signal processing and AI framework. From imagined movements to real-world actions The participant was then tasked with imagining himself making simple movements with his fingers, hands or thumbs while the sensors recorded his brain activity to train the AI. The read out signals were then decoded to actuate a robotic arm. Initially, he practiced on a virtual robot arm that gave him crucial feedback on the accuracy of his visualisations, helping him refine his direction and control. Eventually, the participant managed to control a real-world robotic arm executing the action. He could perform tasks such as picking up and manipulating blocks, turning them, and relocating them. He even managed to open a cabinet, retrieve a cup, and hold it under a water dispenser—simple tasks but those that can be life-changing for those living with paralysis. Having established that it can be done is the first stage, a lot more work needs to be put into refining the technique and for it to be deployed among people who have paralysis, Dr. Natraj says. Especially, the system should be able to work fluidly in complex scenarios with many distractions, such as when going to a crowded grocery store, he adds.
