Latest news with #HERA
Mint
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Paresh Rawal reveals he sipped his ‘urine like beer' for 15 days to recover from knee injury, internet goes berserk
Bollywood senior actor, BJP leader Paresh Rawal in a recent interview recalled the time when he suffered a knee injury while filming at the fish market in Mumbai. He revealed that he drank his own morning urine for 15 days which helped him recover quickly. Paresh said it was Veeru Devgan, father of actor Ajay Devgn who gave him the advice. Paresh who thought that his career was over after the injury, shared he was admitted to Nanavati Max Super Specialty Hospital after the incident. When Veeru Devgan visited him, he was adviced to drink first urine of the day to aid in a speedy recovery. He shared that he was also not allowed to consume alcohol, red meat, and smoking during the process. Paresh Rawal told Lallantop, 'Agar mujhe urine pina hai toh mai udhel nahi dunga. I will sip it like beer. Karna hai toh pure tareeke se karna hai. (If I have to drink my urine then I will sip it like beer instead of just gulping it down for the sake. I will do it all for the process).' The actor added,"15 din ke liye maine kia. 15 din bad jab x-ray nikala gaya, doctor dang reh gaya 'Yeh cementing kaise hua?' I did this for 15 days. 15 days later when the doctor took my X-ray, he was shocked. The doctor asked me, 'How did this cementing happen?'" 'He could see the white line forming. I was supposed to be discharged in 2-2.5 months, but I was discharged in 1.5 months. It was like magic,' Paresh claimed his recovery. He said the urine therapy is called Shivambu. When asked if he had told his family's reaction to his 'formula, the actor said he didn't. 'Har baat thori batayenge (I don't need to tell them everything).' The revelations from the actor have now gone viral on social media. Reacting to it, many have shared memes related to Paresh Rawal's iconic character Baburao Ganpatrao Apte. A user took to X, formerly Twitter and wrote, 'I think India will take a lot of time to achieve 5 trillion dollar economy due to people like (sic).' 'Urine nahi hai re baba, davai hai (this is not urine, this is medicine)," added another one. 'Embarrassing India every time they open their mouths,' tweeted one more user. Someone also shared, 'Now this will be REAL PHIR HERA PHERI.' First Published: 27 Apr 2025, 10:39 PM IST
The Hindu
26-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
A to do list for the incoming UGC chairman
The University Grants Commission (UGC), as the name suggests, was initially conceived to provide grants to higher education institutions in 1953. It evolved into an organization that is responsible for 'coordination, determination, and maintenance of standards of university education' alongside funding, when the UGC Act was passed in 1956. With medical, legal, and even technical institutions (with varying degrees) out of its purview, the mandate remains truncated in practice with disastrous consequences for the sector. And the courts have only complicated matters. Legislative vaccum The NEP seeks to address this by creating different institutions for standard setting, accreditation (maintenance of standards) and funds under and overarching policy regime. That this demands a gargantuan legislative exercise seems to have been missed by everyone concerned with the result that despite the lapse of half a decade, no movement has been visible on the legislative front. In the meantime, the UGC seems to be governed by letters, policy frameworks, and quasi-legal mandates with conditional funding tied to adherence to policies. Once in a while, a huge judicial battle ensues, like in the case of Deemed to be Universities, an anachronism that still lingers on, despite Viplav Sharma versus GOI. We also have GOI initiatives like RUSA (or is it PM USHA now), that eats into the 'grants' domain substantially. The incoming UGC chairman would operate within this legislative vacuum, where the policy mandates splitting and subsuming its identity and functions into various units, under HERA, while there is no legislative progress on it. The UGC would continue to exist in some form or other, since it remains the core national agency responsible for standard setting and maintenance -- a function it is uniquely mandated to perform. Focus on larger issues In an ideal world, the incoming chairman must focus on larger issues and there are quite a few 'idea bombs' the NEPS throws at higher education. Here are the big four. Equity and Discrimination: This would be his first test. The supreme court has already granted leave to UGC to publish and proceed with the anti-discrimination policy. But the current draft is narrow and leaves the crucial elephant in the room. There are two major issues with the draft. First, it restricts caste discrimination as only happening to SC/ST and an is not broad basing discrimination. Second it does not address the elephant in the room, the other list syndrome'. One of the biggest means of discrimination is on the separate publication reserved list and common list. It is time we found a way to stop publication of separate lists and categories mentioned in any way once the candidate is in the system. Promotion of Indian Knowledge system: There has been a plethora of policy measures on integrating IKS without a deeper discussion on what is IKS and how far it is different on an epistemological scale from other knowledge systems. There exists an Indian way of knowing and an indigenous way of doing. Both have undergone constant changes and evolution over the many millennia and, with the tremendous progress in western epistemology in the last few centuries there is no intellectual assessment of what is left of IKS that is truly unique and has value in the current context. There is current value in many domains like Ayurveda and there is historical value in many achievements of the past. Both need to be evaluated separately and integrated accordingly. That needs intellectual integrity of a very high order, not seen very much in the recent appointments. But if we do not want to be the laughingstock of the world then this exercise is imperative. Recognition of Prior Learning: This is the elephant in the room. As early is 2014, the GOI mandated complete integration of vocational and general education in a credit-based format with appropriate credentialling of prior learning. But very little has moved in this direction operationally. The most important element is integrating skill and knowledge and removing the artificial distinction between the two. The deeply ingrained concept of 'achut' or the graded purity of profession would stand in the way of handling this, but must be addressed squarely. The current draft policy needs a complete overhaul, as of yesterday. Admission fiasco: With its remit increasing by the day, the National Testing Agency is now the premier testing agency in the country. But it is totally understaffed. A recent report claims the agency has less than 15 permanent staff members and relies on private agencies massively to conduct the tests. There are issues of wrong questions, wrong marking schemes, and leakages on a recurring basis. In an opportunity starved nation like ours, this is a travesty. Fixing this must be the chairman's first focus. Though the NTA does not come under the purview of the Chairman, his core test UGC -Net lies with NTA. Getting this right with or without NTA should his prime responsibility. Restoring the credibility of UGC-NET is non- negotiable. In addition to the above four, there are major issues that front the current higher education regime like the immanent abolition of affiliation process, the creation of all universities as mega universities, promoting inter-disciplinary/ trans disciplinary education, creating value in the education process, addressing the increasing corporatization of education and raising cost of education and finally ensuring excellence in education. A tall order indeed! (The author was founder-editor of Careers 360)
Express Tribune
14-03-2025
- Science
- Express Tribune
Asteroid probe snaps rare pics of Martian moon
This handout photograph released by the European Space Agency shows the surface of Mars and the face of Deimos. Photo: AFP On the way to investigate the scene of a historic asteroid collision, a European spacecraft swung by Mars and captured rare images of the red planet's mysterious small moon Deimos, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Thursday. Europe's HERA mission is aiming to find out how much of an impact a NASA spacecraft made when it deliberately smashed into an asteroid in 2022 in the first-ever test of our planetary defences. But HERA will not reach the asteroid -- which is 11 million kilometres (seven million miles) from Earth in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter -- until late 2026. On the long voyage there, the spacecraft slingshotted around Mars on Wednesday. The spacecraft used the planet's gravity to get a "kick" that also changed its direction and saved fuel, mission analyst Pablo Munoz told a press conference. For an hour, HERA flew as close as 5,600 kilometres from the Martian surface, at a speed of 33,480 kilometres an hour. It used the opportunity to test some of its scientific instruments, snapping around 600 pictures, including rare ones of Deimos. The lumpy, 12.5 kilometre-wide moon is the smaller and less well-known of the two moons of Mars. Exactly how Deimos and the bigger Phobos were formed remains a matter of debate. Some scientists believe they were once asteroids that were captured in the gravity of Mars, while others think they could have been shot from a massive impact on the surface. The new images add "another piece of the puzzle" to efforts to determine their origin, Marcel Popescu of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy said. There are hopes that data from HERA's "HyperScout" and thermal infrared imagers -- which observe colours beyond the limits of the human eye -- will shed light on this mystery by discovering more about the moon's composition. Those infrared imagers are why the red planet appears blue in some of the photos. Next, HERA will turn its focus back to the asteroid Dimorphos. When NASA's DART mission smashed into Dimorphos in 2022, it shortened the 160-metre-wide asteroid's orbit around its big brother Didymos by 33 minutes.
Voice of America
13-03-2025
- Science
- Voice of America
Asteroid probe snaps rare images of Martian moon
On the way to investigate the scene of a historic asteroid collision, a European spacecraft swung by Mars and captured rare images of the red planet's mysterious small moon Deimos, the European Space Agency said Thursday. Europe's HERA mission is aiming to find out how much of an impact a NASA spacecraft made when it deliberately smashed into an asteroid in 2022 in the first test of our planetary defenses. But HERA will not reach the asteroid — which is 11 million kilometers from Earth in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — until late 2026. On the long voyage there, the spacecraft swung around Mars on Wednesday. The spacecraft used the planet's gravity to get a "kick" that also changed its direction and saved fuel, mission analyst Pablo Munoz told a press conference. For an hour, HERA flew as close as 5,600 kilometers from the Martian surface, at a speed of 33,480 kilometers an hour. It used the opportunity to test some of its scientific instruments, snapping around 600 pictures, including rare ones of Deimos. The lumpy, 12.5-kilometer-wide moon is the smaller and less well-known of the two moons of Mars. Exactly how Deimos and the bigger Phobos were formed remains a matter of debate. Some scientists believe they were once asteroids that were captured in the gravity of Mars, while others think they could have been shot from a massive impact on the surface. The new images add "another piece of the puzzle" to efforts to determine their origin, Marcel Popescu of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy said. There are hopes that data from HERA's "HyperScout" and thermal infrared imagers — which observe colors beyond the limits of the human eye — will shed light on this mystery by discovering more about the moon's composition. Those infrared imagers are why the red planet appears blue in some of the photos. Next, HERA will turn its focus back to the asteroid Dimorphos. When NASA's DART mission smashed into Dimorphos in 2022, it shortened the 160-meter-wide asteroid's orbit around its big brother Didymos by 33 minutes. Although Dimorphos itself posed no threat to Earth, HERA intends to discover whether this technique could be an effective way for Earth to defend itself against possibly existence-threatening asteroids in the future. Space agencies have working to ramp up Earth's planetary defenses, monitoring for potential threats so they can be dealt with as soon as possible. Earlier this year, a newly discovered asteroid capable of destroying a city was briefly given a more than 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. However further observations sent the chances of a direct hit back down to nearly zero. Richard Moissl, head of the ESA's planetary defense office, said that asteroid, 2024 YR, followed a pattern that will become more common. As we get better at scanning the skies, "we will discover asteroids at a higher rate," he said. The ESA is developing a second planetary defense mission to observe the 350-metre-wide asteroid Apophis, which will fly just 32,000 kilometers from Earth on April 13, 2029. If approved by the ESA's ministerial council, the Ramses mission will launch in 2028, reaching the asteroid two months before it approaches Earth.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Asteroid probe snaps rare pics of Martian moon
On the way to investigate the scene of a historic asteroid collision, a European spacecraft swung by Mars and captured rare images of the red planet's mysterious small moon Deimos, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Thursday. Europe's HERA mission is aiming to find out how much of an impact a NASA spacecraft made when it deliberately smashed into an asteroid in 2022 in the first-ever test of our planetary defences. But HERA will not reach the asteroid -- which is 11 million kilometres (seven million miles) from Earth in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter -- until late 2026. On the long voyage there, the spacecraft slingshotted around Mars on Wednesday. The spacecraft used the planet's gravity to get a "kick" that also changed its direction and saved fuel, mission analyst Pablo Munoz told a press conference. For an hour, HERA flew as close as 5,600 kilometres from the Martian surface, at a speed of 33,480 kilometres an hour. It used the opportunity to test some of its scientific instruments, snapping around 600 pictures, including rare ones of Deimos. The lumpy, 12.5 kilometre-wide moon is the smaller and less well-known of the two moons of Mars. Exactly how Deimos and the bigger Phobos were formed remains a matter of debate. Some scientists believe they were once asteroids that were captured in the gravity of Mars, while others think they could have been shot from a massive impact on the surface. The new images add "another piece of the puzzle" to efforts to determine their origin, Marcel Popescu of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy said. There are hopes that data from HERA's "HyperScout" and thermal infrared imagers -- which observe colours beyond the limits of the human eye -- will shed light on this mystery by discovering more about the moon's composition. Those infrared imagers are why the red planet appears blue in some of the photos. - Bolstering planetary defence - Next, HERA will turn its focus back to the asteroid Dimorphos. When NASA's DART mission smashed into Dimorphos in 2022, it shortened the 160-metre-wide asteroid's orbit around its big brother Didymos by 33 minutes. Though Dimorphos itself posed no threat to Earth, HERA intends to discover whether this technique could be an effective way for Earth to defend itself against possibly existence-threatening asteroids in the future. Space agencies have working to ramp up Earth's planetary defences, monitoring for potential threats so they can be dealt with as soon as possible. Earlier this year, a newly discovered asteroid capable of destroying a city was briefly given a more than three percent chance of hitting Earth in 2032. However further observations sent the chances of a direct hit back down to nearly zero. Richard Moissl, head of the ESA's planetary defence office, said that asteroid, 2024 YR, followed a pattern that will become more common. As we get better at scanning the skies, "we will discover asteroids at a higher rate," he said. The ESA is developing a second planetary defence mission to observe the 350-metre-wide asteroid Apophis, which will fly just 32,000 kilometres from Earth on April 13, 2029. If approved by the ESA's ministerial council, the Ramses mission will launch in 2028, reaching the asteroid two months before it approaches Earth. ber/dl/rmb
