The turnaround can be attributed to investor friendly policy, akin to the one that the Government of India took in 1991 with the New Economic Policy. The several steps that Telangana took includes: speedy clearance aided by a single window, 100 per cent refund on VAT and GST, refund on stamp duty, exemption from Land Ceiling Act, exemption from electricity wheeling charges and not running around to get approval from the State Pollution Control Board.
The most visible area of the state’s renewable energy push has been in public transport system. The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) for instance teamed up with TSREDCO to install solar rooftop systems on the bus stations, bus depots and workshops. In all, 97 bus depots and 364 bus stations have been covered and the savings are over Rs 2 crore per annum. What is more! It resulted in reduction in carbon emissions by 7,300 tonnes a year.
KL Deemed-to-be University has developed a path breaking technology for Vitamin-D testing at a very low cost. This creates hope of bringing down the commercial testing charges and also to make testing accessible to even the remote regions that lack facilities of high-end testing labs.
This noteworthy development has been recently published in the Microchemical Journal, Elsevier, which is a reputed international peer reviewed journal specializing in high-quality scientific, technical, and medical content.
Experts say that low levels of Vitamin D are associated with a higher risk of COVID-19 hospitalization. Vitamin D deficiency has been recently postulated to be a factor associated with an increased risk of a poor prognosis in COVID-19. In the light of this the low cost Vitamin-D testing facility is even more crucial service to humankind.
The sensor, created by the team at the University, is developed by designing a paper electrode in a specific dimension and printing the patterned electrode on an A4 photocopy paper with a specially designed ink. The cost of this paper sensor is approximately INR 40 to 50, whereas the cost of commercially available tests for Vitamin-D in hospitals and labs is around INR 1500 to INR 2000. The team at KL University has further tested the proof-of-concept with several real-life samples and concluded that the accuracy of this sensor is at over 94% which is at par with the existing commercially available tests. The sensor produces results and generates the reports within 30 minutes, saving crucial time for diagnoses.