‘Thar Vendor Development Program’

on 20/06/2018

SECMC launches

Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) and Thar Foundation have initiated “Thar Vendor Development Program”.

Narendar Suthar leads the project. The young dynamic Narender Suthar  from Mithi has done ACCA from Karachi and got a degree of Associate in Business Management from the USA through Full Bright scholarship. When he started Thar Vendor program in 2016, there was not a single local vendor working with SECMC.

Within one and a half year he has trained and registered more than 100 local vendors. He conducted a series of trainings which helped them in documentation and quality compliance.

Over the last 18 months, Thari vendors have received business of more than Rs.1 billion from SECMC. Local vendors provide services of catering, local transport, construction and general supplies. They have been networked with Karachi based large-scale suppliers.

These vendors have employed more than 1000 local people from Thar. A new stream of the local economy is benefiting local communities. – PR

 

Coal is back, at least for Japan

on 20/06/2018

As the developed world moves farther and farther away from coal-fired energy, one major economy is breaking the trend. Japan, in a move that few could have foreseen, has opened at least eight brand new coal-burning power plants in the last two years and has plans for at least 36 more in the next ten years.

This ambitious return to coal far outstrips any other developed nation, and it’s only speeding up. Last month the Japanese government made major advancements to officially adopt a national energy plan that would see 26 percent of the country’s total electricity come from coal in 2030, directly contradicting a previous directive to cut back coal usage to just 10 percent of total electricity.

One major reason for the stark turnaround in policy is the 2011 meltdown at  Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The tragedy provided a huge blow to the Japanese public’s support for nuclear energy. After the Fukushima disaster, all 54 of Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut down as they awaited new rigorous safety standards. To date, just seven of the 54 have reopened for business.

In order to fulfil demand, the nation has turned to natural gas and, more surprisingly, coal.

However, despite all the love lost for nuclear, there are also plenty of critics to Japan’s new direction, who say that the government is being weak on renewables and that the return to coal guarantees a major rise in air pollution, standing in direct conflict with Japan’s pledges to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. As it stands now, the country is responsible for a whopping 4 percent of global emissions, and that’s before the impending construction of 36 coal plants over the next decade.

In addition to its bullish building plans, Japan is also backing off on previous promises to shutter existing coal facilities. Instead of looking to clean up coal and invest in ageing infrastructure, local power company Electric Power Development Co Ltd. recently announced that they would forgo a previously announced plan to replace two ageing coal-fired power plants with newer, more efficient facilities in the Takasago region of Western Japan.

Instead of moving forward with their plans to construct two 600-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power generation units the company will continue to use facilities that are now nearly 50 years old.

Japan’s hunger for coal is not purely domestic–last month the government of Wyoming announced that Japan Coal Energy Center and Kawasaki Heavy Industries intend to spend $9 million in grant funding for research of carbon capture near the U.S. city of Gillette. Japan’s relationship with Wyoming coal, however, is nothing new. In 2016 Wyoming governor Matt Mead signed an agreement to collaborate with the Japan Coal Energy Center for coal research and technology. As the U.S. continues to move away from coal despite the administration’s coal-positive rhetoric, the interest and research money coming from Japan is a breath of fresh air in a dying industry.

In addition to their research on carbon innovations in Wyoming, Japan is also looking for other ways to greenify coal, including looking into the fossil fuel as a possible source of energy for hydrogen-powered cars. In fact, Japanese engineering firm Kawasaki Heavy Industries has partnered with Australia to turn their cheap coal into hydrogen gas in a new Melbourne-based $390m pilot plant.

Just a few years ago, any expert would have told you that Japan’s coal industry was on its last legs as well. The nation was leaning heavily into nuclear power, with plans to cut by half what was a 25 percent dependency on coal in 2010 and increase atomic energy from 29 percent to 50 percent by 2030. Now, that trend has done a full 180°.

Unlike other developed nations that now depend heavily on cheap natural gas, for Japan, the math works out to coal’s benefit. Since the island nation has to import natural gas in its relatively pricey liquid form, coal is the more fiscally savvy option.

So far, the turn has been a boon to the economy. In one example, Japanese trading house Itochu Corp recently announced a 13.7 percent boost in annual net profit, and they attribute a large portion of it to higher coal prices thanks to the newfound demand. They’ve predicted that the current financial year will also be one of their best.

Against all odds, coal is making a comeback in at least one major global market, and with China and India (two of the largest markets in the world) continuing to depend heavily on coal, it looks like the once-ailing industry may have some life left in it after all.

– By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

 

A Constellation of foreign, Pakistani engineers, professors participate in 5th IMTIC ’18

on 20/06/2018

Technologies for future generations have helped engineers to develop professionalism: Dr. Uqaili

Japanese Dr Hiroyuki talks about technologies altering life Scientific research not a luxury but a must for dev counties: Ghazaly

Vice Chancellor, Mehran University of Engineering (MUET) Prof Dr Aslam Uqaili has said that IMTIC’18 has raised awareness of state of the art research and provided a platform for Pakistani researchers to express their ideas and research interest and effectively developing professional relations with the experts.

Addressing an International Multi-Topic  ICT Conference 2018 (IMTIC ’18) in the university he said the flagship event having a theme of `Techn ologies for future generations`, has helped engineers in developing the professionalism of ICT by considering quality standards, best practice, training & development for faculty and students.

Due to the technical sponsorship of IEEE, it has provided the opportunity to publish research in IEEE Xplore. He emphasized the need for an indigenous research in advanced technologies which have a significant impact on the economy and national security.

Prof Dr Hiroyuki Sato of the University of Tokyo Japan talked about advanced technologies which dramatically altered life. In his keynote “Internet Trust: Design and Deployment” he presented that as the Internet has become pervasive, the cyber-physical world has obtained its ground in human lives. A problem on the Internet is that all entities on the Internet can be hypothetical, meaning that we do not need any “real” entity in the interactions on the Internet. This kind of anonymity sometimes causes crimes including theft, fraud and spoofing in worse forms than those in our physical society.

For about thirty years, computer science has provided technologies of encryption that have enabled us to communicate in secure ways and to authenticate the counterparts on the Internet. This was the first lodgment for establishing trustworthy communications. Particularly, we can say that we owe the success of e-commerce to SSL.

In order to establish trust in the Internet, we must consider how we design assurance levels, which is a challenge of technologies including risk analysis, and how we deploy the framework of trust, which is rather a challenge of social systems. Various talents for security, audit, privacy and legislation have been and are being collected to establish a framework of trust. That is, we are witnessing the emergence of modern trust engineering for the Internet. We must review the Internet trust for various fields in view of technologies and social systems, and may discuss its future directions.

Guest of honour and keynote speaker Prof Samir M. El-Ghazaly, from University of Arkansas USA said advanced technologies dramatically altered life as they impacted the way people performed daily functions. He said they had a significant impact on the economy and national security. “Scientific research” is not a luxury that only developed countries could afford. It is a vital necessity for every modern society. It is even more essential in the developing countries and for societies aspiring to catch up with advancement, ` he said.

Technical Papers
IEEE Karachi Section Chair Prof Dr Shahid Shaikh appreciated the quality of papers submitted in the conference. He said organizing committee was only able to accept around 34 technical papers out of the total 200 to maintain high technical standards. This represents an acceptance rate of less than 20 percent. He said the conference brought researchers and industrialists together to bring out solutions to problems being faced by this modern society of social media.

Others who also spoke on various topics regarding Design and Optimization of New Generation of Optical Sensors, smart grid, energy solutions, Big Data Management, Machine learning, Power Electronics, Robotics and UAVs social media problems and their solutions, included Prof Dr B.M.A Rahman of City University UK, Dr Tariq Masood of University of Bath United Kingdom, Prof Dr Mohammad Shafry Mohammad Rahim of University Teknologi Malaysia, Dr Fauzia Abro,City University UK, Dr Nadia Yasir Qadri, COMSATS Taxila, Dr Kashif Nisar, University Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia, Dr. Lorenzo Luini,Politecnico di Milano, Italy,  and general manager (technical) Dr Mohammad Yasir Qadri.

Prof Dr Manzoor Hussain Soomro, President, ECO Science Foundation, Islamabad was the chief guest at the Concluding ceremony.

Two parallel sessions including Innovation and entrepreneurship were also organized at MUET ZAB Campus Khairpur. Highlighting the importance of the event, Prof Dr MukhtiarUnar, Pro Vice Chancellor MUET ZAB Campus said IMTIC’18 is a celebration of achieving academic and research goals. Five years back it coincided with the Golden Jubilee of MUET, Jamshoro; a remarkable journey that started fifty-five years ago for excellence in academic pursuit.

Poster competition
The poster competition was inaugurated by Javed Memon, Director HEC Regional Centre Karachi. There were more than 40 posters participated by students of several universities. Prof Dr Faisal Karim Shaikh, Conference Chair shared the data of  IMTIC18. Around 200 papers were submitted by researchers through online Easy Chair system. The event participation was very huge. More than  500 participants including delegates, authors, researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students, IEEE Executive Committee members, and industry professionals participated in the event.

 

5th International Multi-Topic ICT conference Held at MUET

on 14/06/2018

Continuing the tradition at the Education Hub of Pakistan – Jamshoro, Mehran University of Engineering & Technology (MUET),  organized International Multi Topic  ICT Conference 2018.

(IMTIC ’18)  was organized with Technical Collaboration and support of  Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre (IEC) MUET, IEEE Inc USA Karachi Section, Erasmus Mundus LEADER (Leading Mobility between Europe and Asia in Developing Engineering Education and ReSearch), Erasmus Plus CAPRIO (University of Malaga, Spain), and  Centre for Telecommunication Infrastructure (CTIF) GLOBAL CAPSULE, Future Technologies for Business Ecosystem Innovation ( FT4BI ), Aarhus University, Denmark.

Prof BS Chowdhry, the chief organizer of the event told the conference that IMTIC mission had completed its history spread over a decade.

The 1st International Multi-Topic ICT Conference which began its voyage in 2008 in collaboration with Aalborg Univ Denmark is now a history. He said: IMTIC gave us Chance to avail EU Erasmus Mundus Programs “Mobility for Life”, Strong Ties, INTACT, LEADERS, CAPRIO, Erasmus Plus ICM. More than 200 UG, Masters and PhD students, faculty /staff members availed fully funded exchange visits from 1 month to 3 years.

It offered us to publish our Conference Proceedings in Springer CCIS series; to organize collaborative conferences in other countries such as Spain, Ireland, Denmark, and Nepal. “I am very happy to have a huge participation in IMTIC over the last decade. Its more than 30 International speakers  from USA, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Malaysia, China, Canada, Germany, Cyprus, Romania, UAE, Qatar delivered keynote, more than 70 Invited speakers from  various universities within country shared their research work and Chaired Technical sessions and more than 30 national and International  Tutorials organized during IMTIC, UG students and PG students participation in Poster session encouraging them how to embark upon research work and PhD symposium. It is yet another aspect of IMTIC value addition.” T

he goal of the PhD Symposium is to provide a supportive atmosphere for PhD students to present and receive feedback on their ongoing work. Students at different stages in their research get an opportunity to present and discuss their problem statements, goals, methods and results. IMTIC has also resulted in carrying out joint PhD supervision.