Category Archives: Science & Technology

Muslim youth invents flying car, a schoolboy e-Cycle

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Chennai, TAMILNADU / Aurangabad, MAHARASHTRA :

A youth from Chennai has invented a flying car, while a schoolboy from Aurangabad has invented an e-Cycle

Chennai: 

Indian Muslims are silently making their efforts for innovative development in the country. A youth from Chennai has invented a flying car, while a schoolboy from Aurangabad has invented an e-Cycle. Their achievements tell the story that Muslims are second to none in the innovative development of the country.

Muhammad Furkan Shoaib, an aeronautical engineer, has fulfilled the dream of million Indians of riding a flying car in the sky. He along with his technical team has innovated India’s first flying car. Furkan Shoaib is a certified UAV pilot and the Chief Technology Officer at VINITA – an Aero-mobility company in Chennai.

The model of this flying car was shown at the London Helitech Exposition on October 5, 2021. Many of India’s news channels showed the car launch in their news coverage. They gave credit for this innovation to the “Make in India” project and failed to mention the promising young engineer’s contribution to this innovation.

The gap was filled by a US website called ‘Future Flight’ that gave coverage to this innovation and also appreciated Muhammad Furqan’s abilities for his stellar contribution to the field of aviation.

Undoubtedly Muhammad Furqan has made the whole country proud. His innovation is a morale booster and inspiration for the youth, especially the Muslim youth, who too want to be on such work of innovation in the country.

Aurangabad :

“e-Cycle”

The second story is of a talented high-school boy Mohammad Faizan from Aurangabad in Maharashtra. Faizan is making waves in social media for his innovation of an e-bike that has made people rushing for a glimpse of him and his invention. Its video is available on YouTube.

Faizan, the tech-savvy student of 8th grade, has transformed a paddle bike into electric one. He actually has transformed the common paddle bike into a motorbike. Attached to the bike are a self-starter switch, accelerator, clutch, breaks, and other features.

Watch Video: Faizan’s e-bike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRG_QfntzC4&feature=emb_imp_woyt

The bike is powered by an electrical motor. Faizan has connected the motor with a rechargeable battery that takes two hours to get fully charged. A single charge lasts for about 50 kilometers and there is a digital indicator that displays remaining battery levels. The speedo-meter tells the speed of the bike. The innovator claims that the top speed of the bike is 30 kilometers per hour.

These two positive stories from the much-maligned Muslim community show mirror to those who accuse, the 14 percent Muslim minority community of a drag on 84 percent Hindu population.

The negative stereotyping of the Muslims likes “puncher chaap” or “love jihadi” are corona jihadi are dutifully circulated in the media, while the story of these two characters has never been told even though they inspire a whole generation of youth of the country.

[Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com.]

source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> Science & Technology / by Syed Ali Mujtaba / October 18th, 2021

BENFA: Changing Lives

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Bengaluru, KARNATAKA :

Bengaluru-based BENFA helping poor people.

Bengaluru :

AS they say – think individually, act globally – BENFA is doing just that. BENFA (Bengaluru Friends Alliance) was born with the common goal and the collective efforts of a group of doctors to help the underprivileged section of society. The organization extends financial help to the poor and helps them overcome their financial hurdles in education and healthcare.

Talking about the organization Dr. Saleem Mehkri, Vice President and Trustee, said, “We were already into helping poor Muslim population with their education and health issues.

Then, it was planned by Dr. Suhel Pasha to establish an umbrella organization to facilitate their charity works on a large scale. The organization primarily addresses a large number of poor Muslims and deserving non-Muslims, too.”

Dr. Suhel Pasha, President, BENFA, said, “Twenty percent of the city’s population lives in slums with the lowest standard of education, inefficient healthcare, lack of necessities, and most importantly low standard of living. Even today, one-third of the slum dwellers fall below the poverty line with an income of less than Rs. 2500 per month. So, to help these poor populations, BENFA was established in October 2020.”

BENFA is a registered charitable trust focusing on education, healthcare, and socio-economic empowerment of underprivileged parts of society. How BENFA assists in empowering the disadvantaged? Answered Abdul Mateen, BENFA General Secretary, “We have recently launched a micro-credit scheme to provide loans to the deserving women and men to start their small trades. The loans we give are free of interest. So, they have to return only the principal loan amount without any interest.”

Dr. Saleem informed, “We have launched schemes not only to empower poor men and women financially, but we also aim to empower them through adult education schemes. We provide education and training to unemployed youngsters/adults as per their skills and help them get government or private jobs. We have helped students to pay their fees and paid hospital bills too.”

According to Dr. Saleem, around five people are benefitted every week through their microcredit scheme. So, how does the organization arrange its finances? Replied Dr. Saleem, “We have around 500 members, including 400 male members and 100 female members, who voluntarily contribute and help run the organization successfully. Nobody is forced to contribute.”

Besides these programmes, BENFA actively distributes rations during Eid-Ul-Fitr, performs Qurbani/sacrifices during Eid-Al-Adha, and distributes meat amongst low-income families. Furthermore, BENFA has several groups focusing on different areas, namely-BEEP for education, BHCP for healthcare, BSSP for socio-economic support, BMCS for microcredit schemes, and BALP for adult learning programs.

That is not all. BENFA is slowly and steadily adding more to its activities for the betterment of society. Lately, in collaboration with the field experts, BENFA has organized several webinars related to health and education topics. Pointed out to Dr. Suhel, “We organized webinars to educate people on several issues that focus on health, education, amongst others. We also organize career counselling for youth. We invite experts to address the relevant topics.”

BENFA also played an active role amidst the raging COVID 19 by supplying oxygen to the patients. As Dr. Pasha said, “We supplied oxygen cylinders during COVID 19 and spread awareness regarding the vaccine and also organized a webinar to help people prepare themselves during COVID crisis.”

Dr. Saleem urged people to join the organization as members to extend help to a large number of underprivileged people.

source: http://www.indiatomorrow.net / India Tomorrow / Home> Development> Features / by Rashida Bakait / October 16th, 2021

Benevolent Kerala parliamentarian is beacon of light for poor tribal pupils

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KERALA / Dubai, UAE :

P.V. Abdul Wahab, the IUML leader, successfully implements Indian government’s development plan in Malappuram district.

It’s a dawn of a new era for a group of poor tribal pupils amid these unprecedented viral times at Nilambur taluka — a cluster of villages — in north Kerala’s Malappuram district.

They are back to learning and continuing their school education, which have been suspended since March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck and resulted in the closure of schools.

Many of the pupils had virtually forgotten in-classroom teaching.

To make matters worse, they were cut off from the rest of the world because of the unavailability of Internet connectivity and lack of smartphones.

P.V. Abdul Wahab, a sitting member of the Rajya Sabha (RS) — the Upper House of Indian Parliament — and a non-resident Indian (NRI), who has been living in the UAE for the past four decades, told that their education suffered since March 2020.

“Some of them could barely remember the names of their schools because the prolonged break had almost wiped out their memories of the campus,” he said.

Wahab, who belongs to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), which is a potent political force in the district, has arranged for the distribution of Internet-enabled tablets for the tribal pupils under the Indian government’s Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS) initiative.

He has been a three-term RS MP and heads the JSS initiative in the district.

So far, around 150 tablets have been given to the tribal pupils, who are overjoyed at being able to reconnect the world at large and continue with their education.

Wahab has been involved with the tribal villages of Karulai gram panchayat as part of the Indian government’s Saansad Adarsh Grama Yojnna, a developmental scheme, and has adopted four villages in the district.

“They live in the middle of the forest in small houses and most of them are unemployed,” Wahab said.

“The only source of economic sustenance is the forest produce that the male tribals collect and sell. Healthcare facilities are abysmal and most of them lack basic amenities such as access to electricity or even telephones,” he added.

The tribal villages are neither well-connected with other parts of the district or the southernmost Indian state and a majority of the locals don’t want to venture out for jobs.

The tribals of Nilambur are a rare exception to Kerala, whose ambitious and enterprising people have been heading out to other parts of India, Arabian Gulf or across the world for better financial prospects.

“But we’re trying to provide employment opportunities for them through specialised training in the hospitality, plumbing and electrical industries,” said Wahab, who has four-decade-long experience in the Middle East, and enjoys a filial bond with Nilambur.

In the UAE, he established the Bridgeway group of companies and along several other firms in his native India; his sons now look after the businesses.

He said the boost on the telecom and education fronts in these tribal villages because of the JSS, which helped instal over 10 basic towers to ensure 5 GHz wireless connectivity to the settlements. “The project aims to create a sustainable social and economic ecosystem for tribal people through a high-speed internet connection,” said Wahab. “It offers a total solution for the digital affairs of the inhabitants of the colonies. This allows them to interact directly with stakeholders and other public servants,” he added.

In the pre-Covid-19-pandemic era, tribal pupils only had access to single-teacher primary schools. The teacher taught all subjects and took four classes simultaneously.

After Grade IV, the tribal pupils would drop out because they were reluctant travel outside their native village.

To make matters worse, the devastating Kerala floods in 2018 and 2019 also destroyed half a dozen computers, a printer and a projector in the school.

The natural disaster was followed by the contagion, which struck a rude jolt as it denied poor tribal pupils’ basic education.

However, the sufferings appear to be a thing of the past, as the poor tribal children can look to a better and prosperous future, thanks to Wahab’s initiative to make the government’s scheme a roaring success.

source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com / Khaleej Times / Home> World> Rest of Asia / by Nithin Belle, Pune / August 26th, 2021

JMI student Kaif Ali wins Commonwealth Secretary-General Innovation Award for Sustainable Development

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NEW DELHI :

Emerging innovator Kaif Ali, a student of the Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia(JMI) won the prestigious Commonwealth Secretary-General Innovation Award for Sustainable Development-2021.

He is the only Indian amongst 15 awardees from 54 Commonwealth countries to win the prestigious award for his contribution towards Covid19, refugee shelter crisis, and climate change.


Each winner of the award received a trophy, 3,000 pounds (3,00,000 INR approx.) in prize money and the opportunity to scale up their innovations in collaboration with partners and mentors across the Commonwealth.


Kaif has invented low-cost portable housing for Covid-19 quarantine and shelter from extreme weather conditions like earthquakes and flooding.

His design has been recognised by the UN under the top 11 emerging innovation start-ups solving climate challenges.


JMI Vice Chancellor Prof. Najma Akhtar congratulated Kaif for the achievement and said that the university is proud of him. “We expect that it will motivate other students of the university to work hard, think out of the box to get noticed and contribute in nation building”, Prof. Akhtar said.


During the pandemic, Kaif researched how architecture could prevent the spread of disease. He designed a prefabricated sustainable shelter, SpaceEra, that would not only help reduce transmission of the virus but could also house refugees worldwide in the future.


“Winning the Commonwealth Innovation Award lifts my confidence to a greater level and motivates me to work even harder than yesterday and innovate unprecedented solutions toachieve a sustainable future. I pledge to become the voice of the youth transforming the Commonwealth and to Be the Change!”, Kaif said.

source: http://www.jmi.ac.in / Jamia Millia Islamia / Public Relations Office, JMI / September 30th, 2021

AMU scientist’s discovery can make infertile land cultivable

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Aligarh, UTTAR PRADESH :

AMU scientist's discovery can make infertile land cultivable

Aligarh :

A faculty member of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), in association with German researchers, has discovered a new protein in plants that will ‘improve the salt stress tolerance of crops.’

This will enable farm land with high salinity soil amenable to cultivation.

Dr Tariq Aftab, assistant Professor, Department of Botany, AMU, together with other collaborators from Germany, have identified a new protein and named it ‘HvHorcH’.

This protein plays an important role in conferring salt stress tolerance in barley plants. Salt stress tolerance of crop plants is a trait with increasing value for future food production.

According to an official release from AMU, the research work has been carried out at Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben, Germany during the assignment to Dr Aftab as visiting scientist.

After several years of further studies and repeat trials, the report has been published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Dr Aftab said that the identification of this protein will open new horizons in developing stress-resilient crop plants. “Global climate change, which is predicted to be accompanied by prolonged and intensified drought periods, is likely to aggravate this situation even further.

Intensified irrigation attempts to combat drought ultimately increase soil salinity and thus eventually impede farmland cultivation when salinity reaches threshold levels that can no longer be tolerated by crop plants.

“It is therefore an eminent goal for a global sustainable food supply to improve the salt stress tolerance of crop plants in order to push these thresholds of soil salinity upwards so that more farmland with high-salinity soil will still be amenable to agriculture,” he explained.

source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz / Home> Education / September 26th, 2021

AMU Scholar’s Works Cited In Cambridge Publication

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Aligarh, UTTAR PRADESH :

Dr. Faisal Shaan with Prof. S.A. Azmi and Dr. Shravan

Aligarh :

Acknowledging the research credentials and academic potentials of AMU faculty members, a book, “Psychopathology of Rare and Unusual Syndromes”, written by Femi Oyebode and published by Cambridge University Press, UK, has cited two published papers of Dr Faisal Shan, Senior Resident, Department of Psychiatry, JN Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University.

Prof S A Azmi (Chairman, Department of Psychiatry) congratulated Dr Shan for the achievement saying his success is a matter of pride for the department and the university.

source:http://www.indiaeducationdiary.in / IndiaEducationDiary.com / Home> Academics / by India Education Diary / September 23rd, 2021

Indian-origin neurosurgeon helps save Israeli twins conjoined at head

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Jammu & Kashmir, INDIA / London, UNITED KINGDOM (UK):

A Kashmir-born Muslim doctor scrubbed up alongside an Israeli team to help a Jewish family was a reminder of the universal nature of medicine: Dr. Noor Ul Owase Jeelani.

Indian-origin neurosurgeon helps save Israeli twins conjoined at head

Jerusalem: 

A world-renowned Indian-origin pediatric neurosurgeon in the UK has helped a group of Israeli doctors to successfully operate on a pair of twins conjoined at the head, with the babies now likely to lead normal lives, a media report here said.

This is for the first time that Dr. Noor Ul Owase Jeelani, who was born in Kashmir and works at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, agreed to carry out such a surgery outside the UK when contacted by doctors at Israel’s Soroka hospital, according to a report in The Times of Israel (TOI).

He and his colleague, Professor David Dunway, are globally seen as experts on such cases.

Jeelani said, “from a doctor’s point of view, we’re all one” and that medicine transcends all divisions.

“He said that the fact that a Kashmir-born Muslim doctor scrubbed up alongside an Israeli team to help a Jewish family was a reminder of the universal nature of medicine,” the report quoted him as saying.

“It was a fantastic family that we helped,” Jeelani said, adding, as I’ve said all my life, all children are the same, whatever colour or religion”.

“The distinctions are man-made. A child is a child. From a doctor’s point of view, we’re all one,” he emphasised.

The doctor found the family’s delight at the success of the operation “deeply moving”.

“There was this very special moment when the parents were just over the moon. I have never in my life seen a person smile, cry, be happy, and be relieved at the same time. The mother simply couldn’t believe it, we had to pull up a chair to help her to calm down,” Jeelani told the news portal.

Jeelani is said to have also worked for months on the surgery of the Israeli twins.

“We’ve been involved right from the start, talking to the team in Israel and planning it with them over a period of six months,” he said.

“This latest surgery fulfills a key objective of our charity, namely, to empower local teams abroad to undertake this complex work, successfully utilising our experience, knowledge, and skills gained over the past 15 years with our previous four sets of twins,” the neurosurgeon stressed.

It is also a major achievement for the medical team at Israel’s Soroka hospital that managed this complex operation despite having never performed such a surgery.

It involved complicated on-the-spot decisions regarding which blood vessel to give to which twin, and assessing in real-time the impact that immediate decisions were having on the functioning of the brains, the report said.

Jeelani has performed four other such surgeries on twins who were conjoined at the head with fused skulls, intertwined brains, and shared blood vessels.

His involvement with conjoined twins started in 2017 when a neurosurgeon from Peshawar, Pakistan, asked him to operate on identical conjoined twins, Safa and Marwa, born three months earlier to a woman from rural northern Pakistan.

He raised the money for the surgery from a Pakistani oil trader called Murtaza Lakhani and, with Dunaway, successfully performed the operation after hundreds of hours of preparation.

Following the success, he went on to establish Gemini Untwined, a nonprofit organisation, to plan and perform such operations, the report said.

source: http://www.freepressjournal.in / The Free Press Journal / Home> World / by PTI / September 13th, 2021

Fathima Benazir – Science – A game changer for Covid testing

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Bengaluru, KARNATAKA :

Quick Facts

  • 42-year-old Fathima Benazir, a molecular biologist has come up with a new non-toxic used to test for viruses in labs
  • The new dye, derived from natural ingredients, can be handled without gloves and could revolutionise the field of DNA testing 
  • Dye prices have skyrocketed after the pandemic and a 500 ul vial is enough for 10,000 RT-PCR tests

A new discovery could revolutionise DNA testing, which has become so important after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even more remarkably, that breakthrough was made in a kitchen by a researcher whose love of science prompted her to tread the unbeaten path.

With the eruption of Covid-19, the number of RT-PCR tests, regarded as the “gold” standard of testing) have skyrocketed. But with the increased demand for such tests there are also increased lab and environment hazards. This is because the fluorescent (or fluorophore) dyes used in the testing of nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA, are often heavily toxic to lab staff and pose a serious problem when it comes to disposal.

A new non-toxic fluorescent dye invented by a Bengaluru-based scientist could potentially revolutionise how this testing is done in the near future.

Fathima Benazir, 42, a molecular biologist by training, always knew that she wanted to be a scientist, but that it was ultimately a failure to get into an MBBS programme (by a 2% margin), which pushed her towards biotechnology.

Click here to Vote for your favourite changemaker

source: http://www.deccanherald.com /(www.21in21.deccanherald.com/fathima.benazir / Home> Change Makers / 2021

Dawakhana team distributes free medicines

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Aligarh, UTTAR PRADESH :

Aligarh :

In a patient-friendly move to meet community health needs, free Unani medicines were distributed to patients from the lower economic strata by a team of Dawakhana Tibbiya College (DTC), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). The free medicines were dispensed during the inaugural of a Unani Medicine Clinic in Jamalpur locality.

“We found that many poor patients were struggling to get medicines. Some of them have been without any income and couldn’t afford the health facilities. It prompted us to distribute free medicines to people in dire need,” said Prof Salma Ahmed (Member-in-Charge, DTC).

She distributed the medicines with the DTC Marketing Team headed by Mr Shariq Azam.

Former Dean, Faculty of Unani Medicine, Prof Abdul Mannan; Prof Shamim Ahmad (Department of Agriculture Management) and Prof Mohd Khalid Azam (Department of Business Administration) stressed that this free medicine campaign in the wake of the pandemic is a big boon for the financially backward patients.

They added that it is our duty to provide the financially weaker sections with free essential health services including medicines.

source: http://www.amu.ac.in / Aligarh Muslim University / Home> AMU News / by Public Relations Office, AMU / August 27th, 2021

Meet Kaif Ali, who is housing the homeless with his ‘architecture for poor’ idea

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NEW DELHI :

Born and brought up in New Delhi, twenty-year-old Kaif Ali is an architecture student at Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Ali was honoured with The Diana Award 2021 for his work on Covid-19 Innovation–Space era recently, which is a module for demountable and portable shelter space for Covid-19 era. This is his story.

New Delhi :

Every child has drawn their family with a house in the background and most probably made sandcastles at beaches too. However, in the grownup’s world, not everyone can have a house built like that. Twenty-year-old Kaif Ali, an undergraduate student of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi after entering the world of architecture found out that homelessness is a major issue in the world and there are many without proper houses.

Born and brought up in New Delhi, twenty-year-old Kaif Ali told TwoCircles.net, “Just 200 meters away from my apartment is a settlement made above the sewage lines. In nights, the people there sleep on footpaths since snakes sneak out of sewage.”

Ali could not help noticing how unjustly the metropolitan city is majorly designed commercially for a few per cent of the population. After witnessing these inequalities, Ali wanted to take up architecture as a profession and develop a sustainable model.

Beyond survival
Homeless people are of many types, which include urban poor, migrant labourers and refugees. However, the government made arrangements for these homeless people can barely be called a home. There is no privacy nor any sense of security as sought by a family since most facilities are gender-separated. Open cooking and sanitation, poor waste management, unavailability of electricity and potable water, the list go on.

Ali recollects that it was a documentary called “Cry for Syria” that sensitized him into the refugee crisis. As an attempt to address the issue, Ali went on to design shelter spaces for Syrian refugees, during his early college days.

When asked whether he is concerned about these temporary shelter spaces becoming the permanent settlement of refugees and others, as is the norm, Ali said that his concept of shelter is a home for living and not for mere survival. Therefore, along with houses, Ali also designs schools, gyms, and other recreational spaces using the same modular technology, which facilitates easy assembling and dismantling.

Quoting a few success stories of refugee assimilation with the host country, Ali believes that if refugees are housed holistically, they will not remain on the fringes. “Shelter is the start of all,” he said.

From housing to quarantining
For the last two years, Ali has invested himself in designing shelter spaces for the homeless. As the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, Ali witnessed the dire demand for quarantining thousands in cramped up cities.

That is how he began working with his project last March and designed a portable intermediary quarantine facility of 2.5m x 6m, using PUF panels or shipping containers, which can be assembled with ease, have massive room for expansion, with natural ventilation and 6 layers of social distancing.

The facility can also be later used as refugee camps or disaster relief camps.

Kaif Ali was awarded the international Diana Award 2021 for the same. His design follows all Covid-19 protocols and is more efficient than home quarantine or mass quarantining facilities.

Ali’s quests stem from his immediate realities. Even his intermediary quarantine shelter came up observing the spread of the virus in enclosed spaces through the air, even before WHO confirmed the spread through the air. “That is the power of observation and study. I apprehended that Covid-19 would spread through the air from my study and by keeping this in mind, I have designed the quarantine facility,” Ali said.

Thinking architecture ‘out of the box’
Having varied interests, Ali is good at juggling different pursuits. The twenty-year-old has taken home several awards in architecture and photography. It is the introduction to various international competitions that expanded Ali’s network.

Upon winning Climate Innovation Lab conducted by Climate Technology Centre and Network, Ali has been receiving mentorship of Biplab Ketan Paul, IIT Kanpur incubation mentor and social entrepreneur.

Referring to Ali’s Covid-19 relief work, Paul said proudly, “Kaif Ali is a good samaritan.”

Soon, Ali’s design would shelter the people of Lagos in Nigeria. His project has received appreciation across the world from architects of Germany, Iran, South Africa, Turkey, the US, & Brazil. Ali has also featured in the United Nations top 11 emerging innovation start-ups solving climate action.

Twenty-year-old Ali has not shied away from approaching several state governments. After the Karnataka government appreciated him, organizations working with the Maharashtra government are willing to implement his project.

To make his designs financially viable, Ali said he uses his father’s counsel, who is in the construction business. “His advice comes in handy, especially when deciding the materials and other factors. It is the context that is my foremost priority,” Ali said, elaborating that climate and clients’ context guides his design.

Moreover, Ali aspires to make the language of architecture accessible to common people. His drawings are easily readable for policymakers and politicians alike. “Future architectures cannot limit themselves to space and cost crises alone. In times of rising refugees of climate, wars and poverty, expanding socially responsible entrepreneurial perspective in architecture is a must,” concludes Ali.

source: http://www.twocircles.net / TwoCircles.net / Home> Lead Story / by Arfa Backer, TwoCircles.net / July 30th, 2021