The Daily Brief – 14th August, 2016

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• Chairman of the The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, Gajendra Singh Chauhan has announced that a regional centre of India’s premier film institute will be set up in Kochi.
• On the eve of Independence Day, attention has been drawn to the deplorable state of the National Library in Alipore. The Library houses some of the oldest archives of newspapers and magazines from the Freedom Movement, including the 15th August 1947 edition of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the most popular daily at that point.
• About 400 metres of the remains of a 4,500-year-old mud-brick wall has been damaged by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) when it dug up the area, despite being aware that the wall existed there. The wall lay under the soil in the Harappan city of Dholavira in Gujarat. The Early Harappans had built it as a fortification on the southern side of the city. The Harappan Civilisation existed from about 3000 B.C. to 1500 B.C. 
• Actors Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sonam Kapoor and Fawad Khan have received top honours at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) 2016. Parched bagged the award for Best Indie Film while Kapoor & Sons won the award for the Best Movie. Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sonam Kapoor won the Best Actor and Actress awards respectively, for their work in the movies Raman Raghav 2.0 and Neerja.
• Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an eminent academic, has resigned from the executive council of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) over his apparent disagreement with the recommendation of the search and selection committee regarding the Library’s next director. Currently, Mahesh Rangarajan is serving as the director.
• Researchers from the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) based in Pune have successfully isolated cancer stem cells that cause skin cancer. They have demonstrated that the Andrographolide compound isolated and purified from an Indian herb called Andrographis paniculata, is effective in inhibiting tumour growth both in skin cancer and lung metastasis in mice.
• Fifth Generation Technologies, a multi-national research company that specialises in building “real time intelligence” solutions, has entered into an agreement with Anna University, Chennai, for conducting research to arrive at a useful prediction of the remaining life of critical equipment that are working in high temperature environments. The research is a unique attempt to use physics in three areas — creep, fatigue and corrosion in high temperature regions.
• An integrated optical system that can monitor and detect algal blooms has been developed by a team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. The Hyderabad-based Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) will begin using the optical system for detecting and monitoring algal blooms in ocean waters surrounding India.
• Karichal Chundan, the snakeboat powered by the oarsmen of the Vembanad Boat Club, won the 64th edition of the prestigious Nehru trophy boat race. The race was held at the Punnamda lake in Alappuzha.

• Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna have defeated Andy Murray and Heather Watson of Britain to enter the mixed doubles semifinals at the Rio Olympics.
• Rafael Nadal won his second Olympic Games gold medal at the men’s doubles. He partnered with Marc Lopez. Nadal has also reached the semi-final of the men’s singles tournament.
• World Bio-Fuel Day was observed across the world on 10 August 2016. The day is observed every year with an aim to create awareness about non fossil-fuels. On 10 August 1893, Sir Rudolph Diesel (inventor of the diesel engine) for the first time successfully ran a mechanical engine with Peanut Oil.
• Robert De Niro received the Sarajevo Film Festival’s first lifetime achievement award ‘The Heart of Sarajevo’. At the festival, he presented Martin Scorsese’s restored Taxi Driver, one of his most popular films. 
• A NASA study has revealed that for up to two billion years of its early history, the planet Venus could have hosted life. In those times, Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures.
• The US has announced that the Islamic State’s leader in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed, was killed in July in a strike in the border region between the two countries.

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