Singapore is hosting the 5th edition of the Annual Biologistics World Asia event that brings together industry captains in the Asia-Pacific region.

This event scheduled for March 16-17th focuses on logistics and supply chain of bio-pharmaceuticals!

According to organizers, this event will bring 150+ high-profile attendees together to discuss, debate and brainstorm on the most pertinent issues affecting the biopharmaceutical logistics network.

It will be attended by decision makers who will influence the future of Asia’s healthcare logistics industry. Leverage on this year’s best marketing and sales opportunity to access the fastest growing healthcare logistics and cold chain market of the world! Your potential clients and partners are hungry for new supply chain ideas, logistic and packaging technologies and services, and they need you to make it happen.

The event is an avenue for meeting key Supply Chain, Logistics, Distribution, Procurement, Validation, & Quality stakeholders from International and Regional Biopharma, BIG Pharma, Biorepositories, CROs, Solution Providers, Academic & Research Institutes and Government & Regulatory bodies across Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China.

This annual event is prepared from a concept that most of the biopharma companies are looking at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of their quality efforts by crafting and implementing a comprehensive program that takes the entire supply chain into account, from the materials provided by key vendors to production, packaging, disposition, and distribution.

Biologistics World Asia seeks to tackle all these challenges and introduce new perspectives in today’s fast evolving cold chain environment by bringing together key opinion leaders, rising players and market experts to discuss, debate and brainstorm on the most pertinent issues.

some key speakers include; DR. RAJ SHANKAR GHOSH Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CLEO KONTORAVDI Imperial College London, Andreas Weiller of Novartis, Prof. Mazen Hassanain of SaudiVax, Swapank Jana of Serum Institute of India, Rakesh Vyas of PT Sanbe Farma, and Ujwala Vilas Salvi of NUCLEON Therapeutics LLP among several others.

On February 28th, India celebrates the annual National Science Day commemorating Indian physicist C V Raman’s discovery in 1928 of the Raman effect, the scattering of photons or light particles by matter.

India has registered notable advances in the missile, space technology, medicine, IT and many other fields with this former British colony now emerging as a leading country in the comity of nations.

This is a moment to celebrate the progress that India has made in science and technology research, thanks to its science policies.

Science and technology has assumed great significance and the theme for the current year is : Future of STI-Impacts on Education, Skill and Work”.

The event is now organized with seminars, conferences, public debates and discussions in schools, colleges, universities and other academic, scientific, technical, medical and research institutions all over the country.

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, a top scientist who had served as the 11th President of India in his book “India 2020” had strongly advocated for an Action Plan to develop India into a knowledge superpower and developed nation.

He had worked on high positions in DRDO, ISRO and was popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology as also India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998.

India is on the right tract of science and technology highway and it must now go with quick and sure steps.

Key to Advancement The Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been underscoring the role of scientific knowledge, technology and innovations through bold initiatives for overall speed development so that India emerges as a safe and super strong nation.

Some positive signals are emerging with leading advanced educational and other institutions already in place coupled with lot of promise, scope and talent .

India has made tangible strides it has still to move forward for transformation of society to attain the status of super power with a mission of working for peace, progress and spiritual enlightenment for humanity.

The report published by the National Science Foundation of the U.S. in December 2019, India was the third largest publisher of peer-reviewed science and engineering journal articles and conference papers, with 135,788 articles in 2018.

This milestone was achieved through an average yearly growth rate of 10.73% from 2008, which was greater than China’s 7.81%.

However, China and the United States had about thrice and twice the number, respectively, of India’s publications.

According to Stanford ranking, hope for Indian science The not-so-good news is that publications from India are not impactful.

Indian astronomers have reported one of the strongest flares from a feeding super massive black hole or blazar called BL Lacertae, some 10 million light-years away.

And, the analysis of the flare from this blazar, one of the oldest astronomical objects — can help trace the mass of the black hole and the source of this emission.

This, the team believes can provide a lead to probe into mysteries and trace events at different stages of evolution of the Universe.

A team of astronomers led by Alok Chandra Gupta from the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) had been following the blazar since October 2020 as part of an international observational campaign.

The team detected the exceptionally high flare on January 16, 2021, with the help of Sampurnanand Telescope (ST) and 1.3m Devasthal Fast Optical Telescopes located in Nainital.

“This class of objects is very unique. They have complete electromagnetic emission, that is they emit radiation in all electromagnetic bands ,Radio Waves; Microwaves; Infrared; Visible Light; Ultraviolet (UV); X-Rays and Gamma Rays — which is not something all objects can do. Gamma ray births do this, but they are short lived,” Gupta told TOI.

He said that these objects are most distant, meaning they were formed in the very early stage of universe formation.

“While there are more than a billion agents/sources that astronomers have detected over the years, these objects are very rare. Till date, only about 5,000 blazars are known. And, of these, only about 50 are prominent, allowing continuous/long-term observation,” he added.

According to the department of science and technology (DST), Blazars or feeding supermassive black holes in the heart of distant galaxies receive a lot of attention from the astronomical community because of their complicated emission mechanism.

“They emit jets of charged particles traveling nearly at the speed of light and are one of the most luminous and energetic objects in the Universe,” the DST said.

“BL Lacertae blazar is 10 million light-years away and is among the 50 most prominent blazars that can be observed with the help of a relatively small telescope.

It was among the three to four blazars that was predicted to be experiencing flares by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT), an international consortium of astronomers,” Gupta said.

The data collected from the flare observed will help calculation of the black hole mass, size of emission region, and mechanism of the emission from one of the oldest astronomical objects known, hence opening a door to the origin and evolution of the Universe.

Times of India