Karnataka First

Facility to provide access to astronomical observations from Ladakh and Kodaikanal observatories.

Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said Karnataka, a leader in IT, biotechnology, aerospace and space technology, was well-positioned to benefit from emerging opportunities in the space sector, and described the COSMOS Mysuru LED Dome Planetarium as an important facility to promote astronomy education, research and tourism.

In her welcome address at the inauguration of the planetarium at the foothills of Chamundi Hill, she said the facility would make astronomical observations accessible to students and researchers, offering opportunities for immersive learning and deeper study of astronomy.

Observations from the observatories at Ladakh and Kodaikanal could be accessed at the Mysuru planetarium so that students gain a better understanding of astronomical phenomena, she said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier inaugurated the planetarium and toured the facility.

Besides providing access to actual astronomical observations, the facility would also give a boost to the tourism economy. Schools and educational institutions could bring students in groups to explore India’s journey in space technology, she said.

Through specially curated shows, students would gain a better understanding of India’s landmark space missions, including Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan and Gaganyaan, she added.

Pointing out that the Centre had opened up the space sector to private players in 2020 to encourage research and innovation, Ms. Sitharaman said the move had created new opportunities for young people to pursue careers, establish start-ups and undertake research in space technology.

The national vision of ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan’ had now been expanded with ‘Jai Anusandhan’, highlighting the importance accorded to research and innovation, she added.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Bengaluru and Mysuru on Friday and participate in various programmes, inaugurating projects worth Rs 15,600 crore. Among the projects is India’s largest underground Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) storage cavern in Mangaluru, built at a cost of Rs 850 crore with a storage capacity of 80,000 metric tonnes. PM Modi will virtually inaugurate the LPG storage cavern in Mangaluru.

The country’s largest underground LPG storage facility has been constructed at Bala in Mangaluru. Developed by Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited (MEIL) for Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), the facility marks a significant step towards strengthening India’s petroleum reserves.  

This is India’s second underground LPG storage cavern and is expected to enhance energy security and ensure an uninterrupted supply of clean energy.

The underground LPG storage facility can store six lakh barrels, equivalent to 60 million litres of liquefied petroleum. It has been designed with two separate underground chambers to accommodate 40,000 MT of propane and 60,000 MT of butane. 

Constructed at a cost of Rs 854 crore, the project has successfully cleared all tests. On June 6, Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited announced the successful completion of the project. Following the completion of all tests, the company released a detailed video of the facility on October 31. 

The underground cavern has been designed with an elaborate tunnel network. It features a 1,083-metre access tunnel, upper and lower water curtains measuring 578.2 metres and 804.31 metres respectively, and connecting tunnels spanning 486.2 metres. 

The two main storage caverns, S1 and S2, are located at depths of 220 metres and 225 metres respectively, while the vertical shaft extends to 164.1 metres. 

Construction work on the project began in 2019. A large rock formation was excavated nearly 500 metres below ground level to create the underground tunnels. 

The LPG storage cavern in Mangaluru is expected to help meet India’s growing demand for clean fuel and strengthen the country’s ability to withstand disruptions in energy supplies. 

Mangaluru already has two underground oil storage facilities – one at Permude with a capacity of 1.5 lac metric tonnes and another at Padur with a capacity of 2.5 lac metric tonnes.

The LPG storage facility constructed at Visakhapatnam has a capacity of 60,000 tonnes. With a stated capacity of 80,000 metric tonnes, the Mangaluru facility is the largest underground LPG storage cavern of its kind in the country.

source/content: daijiworld.com (headline edited)

According to researchers, the material could open new avenues of research in bioreactor design, the cleanup of contaminated soil and microbial enhanced oil recovery.

Researchers at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, have developed a transparent porous material that lets scientists image bacteria as they grow, swim, migrate as groups and get transported by flowing water deep inside three-dimensional spaces, even at the single-cell level.

According to the researchers, this could help reveal how speed and direction of flow influence where bacteria attach and form biofilms, how different species colonise porous environments, and how microplastics settle in sand and sediment. The material could also open new avenues of research in bioreactor design, the cleanup of contaminated soil and microbially enhanced oil recovery.

The work, led by Nandhu Krishna Babu under the guidance of Tapomoy Bhattacharjee, has been published in Small Methods, a journal.

Difficult to study in natural settings

Most bacteria in nature live in crowded, maze-like spaces, such as the gaps between soil grains, sediment particles and rock pores, where water and nutrients can move only through narrow channels. Studying them in these settings was difficult because real soil and sand are opaque, and existing transparent substitutes used to mimic the soil fall short, the authors noted.

“Popular soft hydrogels, for instance, let nutrients seep through the grains themselves, unlike real sand grains, which nutrients cannot penetrate. Stacked glass beads, often used to mimic sand, can only be imaged with the help of chemical additives that can harm the bacteria. Transparent resins and minerals have also been used as soil mimics, but they either allow individual bacteria to be imaged only at shallow depths or require laborious processing to become transparent,” read a statement from the NCBS.

The invisible sandbed

The team turned to a fluorocarbon oil that bends light exactly as water does, making it practically invisible in water. They broke the oil into micron-sized droplets coated with bovine serum albumin, a harmless protein that keeps the droplets from merging. Since the oil is heavier than water, the droplets settle into a tightly packed, clear bed whose pores are filled with a regular bacterial growth broth.

The material can be used to image bacteria at depths not possible before, and its stiffness can be tuned to mimic different bacterial habitats in nature. Importantly, the material shows self-healing properties. Any deformation made to the material is reversed once the applied pressure is removed. This means bacteria can be mixed into it or even 3D-printed within it without leaving any permanent mark on the material.

Better performance

The team observed that within the pore spaces of the oil-based porous material, bacteria tend to migrate longer distances than in conventional hydrogel material. When they 3D-printed a ring of dense E. coli and watched the cells migrate outward in search of nutrients, the bacterial wave travelled much faster in their oil-based material than in the hydrogel-based one.

Since the material holds its shape under flow, much like water percolating through sand, the researchers could pump bacteria-laden broth continuously through it. They could directly image bacteria getting trapped in the pore spaces, forming clusters and progressively clogging the channels — the earliest steps thought to lead to biofilm formation. The material is also built to last. After an experiment, it can be recovered, sterilised and reused, making it a more sustainable choice for a lab.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

The conference will focus on two major themes — women’s safety in the digital and cyberspace environment and strengthening the legislative skills and leadership capabilities of women representatives.

Bengaluru will host the first standalone Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) India Region Conference in the country on November 17 and 18, bringing together around 150 women legislators from across India and representatives from 15-20 countries to deliberate on women’s political leadership, cyber safety and capacity building.

Announcing the event at a press conference at Vidhana Soudha on Monday, Karnataka Legislative Assembly Speaker G S Patil and Legislative Council Chairman Saleem Ahmed said the two-day event would provide a platform for women parliamentarians and legislators to discuss the challenges they face in public life and explore ways to strengthen their participation in legislative and decision-making processes.

“This is a matter of pride for Karnataka. It is the first time that a standalone Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians conference of this nature is being organised in India, and Bengaluru has been chosen to host it,” Patil said.

The conference will be inaugurated by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Chief Minister D K Shivakumar. Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh, Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara and CWP India Region Chairperson D Purandeswari will also participate in the inaugural session.

Around 150 delegates, including women MPs, MLAs, Members of Legislative Councils, Speakers and Deputy Speakers from various States and Union Territories, are expected to attend. Four women legislators from each State are expected to be represented. Representatives from 15-20 countries are also likely to participate.

The conference will focus on two major themes — women’s safety in the digital and cyberspace environment and strengthening the legislative skills and leadership capabilities of women representatives.

The deliberations will cover cybercrimes against women, online harassment, digital abuse, misuse of artificial intelligence, deepfake technology, and protection of personal information and digital privacy. The discussions will also examine the challenges faced by women elected representatives in the digital environment.

The second theme will focus on capacity building, including legislative procedures, lawmaking, policymaking, parliamentary debates, leadership development and the effective use of technology in legislative functioning.

“Women’s representation in legislative institutions is important, but it is equally necessary to strengthen their capabilities and ensure that they have a meaningful role in policymaking and governance. The conference will provide an opportunity to discuss the challenges faced by women legislators and share experiences,” Saleem Ahmed said.

He said the Karnataka Legislature had been asked to host the conference and the detailed agenda was being worked out in consultation with the Lok Sabha Secretariat and the CWP leadership.

Purandeswari has constituted a committee of around 27-28 MPs, which has already held preliminary meetings in connection with the conference preparations, he said.

The event will begin with the inaugural session at 11 am on November 17, at Banquet Hall in Vidhana Soudha, followed by deliberations after lunch. The valedictory session will be held at noon on November 18, with Governor Sudha Yadav participating.

A curtain-raiser programme will be organised on November 14, with Chief Minister D K Shivakumar and CWP India Region Chairperson D Purandeswari unveiling the conference poster and outlining the preparations.

Patil said Karnataka had accorded prominence to women’s participation in public life and the conference would send a strong message on women’s empowerment across the country.

When asked about the absence of women in the State Cabinet, Patil said there were two  vacancies at present and women would be accommodated.

As part of the conference-related programme, delegates will also be taken on a visit to Mysuru on November 19, including to Chamundi Hills.

The conference is expected to provide a national and international platform to discuss ways of making legislative institutions more inclusive and strengthening women’s leadership in democratic governance.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

Karnataka has become the first State in the country to officially declare Malabar Tree Toad (Pedostibes tuberculosus), locally known as Malenadina Mara Gantikappe, as the State’s official amphibian.

The declaration was signed by the Karnataka Forest, Ecology and Environment Department on Oct. 27, after being declared as the State Amphibian in May during the celebration of International Biodiversity Day. 

This species is native to the Western Ghats and is an indicator species for the health of the evergreen forests. 

The Malabar Tree Toad is a rare tree dwelling amphibian that is native to the wet evergreen forests in the Western Ghats. It has been found in Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Due to its tree dwelling nature it is an ecologically important species. 

The Malabar Tree Toad is listed under Schedule II of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. It has a Least Concern (LC) conservation status according to the IUCN Red List (2020).  

This announcement puts the spotlight on the Western Ghats, one of the world’s major biodiversity hotspots. This area is infamous for having high numbers of endemic plant and animal species.

source/content: starofmysore.com (headline edited)

The documentaries, spanning 1982 to 2026, capture 117 places across 94 hours of viewing and have been catalogued by regions and themes such as communities, music and art, livelihoods, politics and protest, and so on.  

Varun Nagesh, a Bengaluru-based marketer who hails from Shivamogga, calls himself a documentary freak. So, when he decided to make a contribution to mark 70 years since the formation of the Mysore State, renamed Karnataka in 1973, the choice was pretty obvious: a dedicated website ‘Karnataka on Film’ which brings together 220 documentaries on Karnataka, capturing the land that is “one State, many worlds”. 

The documentaries, spanning 1982 to 2026, capture 117 places across 94 hours of viewing and have been catalogued by regions and themes such as communities, music and art, livelihoods, politics and protest, and so on.  

Understanding the diversities

For Mr. Nagesh, the idea of the project originated from “a sense of being South Indian and a Kannadiga”. 

“As you grow older, you begin to understand why certain things are important to maintain social harmony and structures,” he said. According to him, the idea was to create awareness that Kannada and Karnataka exist in many forms.

There is no single, fixed version of Kannada. The language has evolved into different dialects, with influences from other languages, he pointed out, citing the example of ‘Aravu Kannada’, a dialect spoken in parts of Bengaluru, which has influences from Telugu, Tamil and Kannada. 

“That is the beauty of this diversity. Unity in diversity can endure only when the diversity is recognised. Otherwise, it becomes a struggle over who gets to define that unity,” he said.  

Portals to layers of history

But why documentaries? 

“Because documentaries involve going to a place, capturing footage and building a story around what has actually happened. You cannot change the scene simply because you want to as a director,” explained Mr. Nagesh.  

A staunch believer that people should explore different perspectives and understand the social context rather than use history to prove how knowledgeable they are or to attack someone else, he pointed out that Karnataka’s history has several layers.  

For him, documentaries are the perfect portals to discover these layers.  

“I built it because I enjoy watching these documentaries. It is almost like a time machine that takes you back to another era,” he said.  

The roots of the idea stemmed on a Saturday when he sought documentary recommendations from a Kannada movie community. Despite the number of community members being in thousands, the number of Kannada documentary recommendations he got was just 10-15. Most documentaries were scattered across the internet and difficult to discover. 

“That made me realise that there could be others who wanted to discover such content but didn’t know where to look. So, I built the website for myself and for them,” he stated.

Mr. Nagesh plans to make the website an open-source platform where people can contribute. 

“I don’t want the website to reflect only my perspective. I’d like people to have healthy discussions and debates about history, without them turning toxic,” he said, adding, “I feel people should learn about their history not to feel superior to others or use it to attack them, but to feel humbled. We should draw confidence, not rage, from that pride.” 

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

She didn’t go to makeup school or follow a well-worn path into the film industry. What she did have was an eye for beauty, an appetite for learning, and the determination to find her place in a world she had always wanted to be part of.

Some people know exactly what they want to be. Others spend years discovering it. Jessica Hemanth Peter seems to have been collecting clues since childhood.

Growing up in Bengaluru, India, she was the little girl who played dress up with her dolls, secretly used her older sister’s lipgloss before heading to school and wore a full beat by the time she was seventeen.

However, her interest in makeup took a more unexpected turn. As a teenager, she watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and found herself fascinated by the special effects makeup. While the film left a powerful impression on her for its story, the physical transformations happening on screen opened up an entirely new world. She wanted to understand how an artist could make an actor look wounded, aged, or completely unlike themselves.

Years later, that curiosity brought her to the New York Film Academy. She worked on student films, got a taste of life on set, and began finding her way into the industry. She did not come with a professional makeup qualification or a carefully structured career plan. Much of what she knows has come from independent learning, research, experimentation, and the experience of actually doing the work.

It is a route that has demanded initiative. There is no classroom quite like a working film set, and no substitute for figuring out how to deliver a creative result with a camera waiting and a production schedule ticking away.

A Little Bit of Everything, Always for the Story

Today, Peter works as a makeup artist across films, editorial photoshoots, music videos, infomercials, and fine-art photography. Her work moves between the very different demands of beauty makeup and special effects. One day might call for a polished editorial look; another might require an actor to appear as though they have lived through an entirely different reality.

She has worked with independent filmmakers in New York and Los Angeles, including on Side by Side, directed by Thorne Daniels featuring Hollywood’s newest up and coming talent Michael Bradway, Sleepwalkers with award winning DP Piero Basso (AIC), on the NYFAxSony music video for The Thing with internationally renowned director Liz Hinlein and has also worked with Indian celebrity fashion designer Manish Malhotra.

Peter is equally interested in what happens beyond the makeup chair. Production design is another important part of her creative life, particularly the process of world-building. She loves the research, the visual references, and the small details that make a fictional place convincing. A room should tell you something about the person who lives in it. A street should feel as though people have been walking through it long before the camera arrived.

For Peter, makeup and production design involve looking closely at the world and imagining how it could be presented differently.

Making Room for More Than One Dream

Peter’s ambitions are not confined to securing the next film project. She is developing Casual Color Science, a makeup brand informed by her interest in color theory, film and television makeup and everyday complexion. It is part of a series of coffee-table books about makeup for film and television, as well as an online database intended to bring makeup literature and professional knowledge together in one accessible resource.

There is another direction she hopes to explore: working with doctors to help patients who want to camouflage vascular anomalies, scars, birthmarks, and tattoos. She is interested in how the techniques used by professional makeup artists might be adapted, in collaboration with medical professionals, to give patients more choices in how they present themselves.

It is a natural extension of her interest in makeup, but one with a very different audience. On a film set, makeup helps an actor inhabit a character. In a medical setting, it could help someone feel more comfortable in their own skin.

Her Christian faith is part of how she understands this work. Raised in India in a Christian family, Peter believes beauty is part of God’s creation. As a member of a religious minority, her journey has also involved finding the confidence to pursue her interests and ambitions while holding on to the convictions that matter to her.

It is perhaps no surprise that she is also a writer. Her young-reader adventure series, The Seekers Guild, draws on her love of storytelling and imaginative worlds. Its fictional coastal town of Marlowe, Maine, is being developed with the same attention to atmosphere and detail that she brings to production design.

The Life You Have to Go After

Moving from India to the United States and finding work in the creative industries has not followed a predictable script. Peter has had to make her own opportunities, keep learning, and be willing to take on projects that broaden her experience. She is still building, still experimenting, and still figuring out what the next chapter might look like.

Perhaps that is what makes her story interesting. She didn’t wait until she had every qualification, every connection, or every detail worked out. She started with an interest and kept following it.

For someone who once spent afternoons reimagining her face in front of a mirror, the possibility of creating entire worlds for film seems a fitting destination. And for the teenager captivated by the makeup in The Passion of the Christ, working in special effects and beauty makeup in the United States is a dream that has taken tangible shape.

Peter’s advice to aspiring creatives would be less about finding the perfect moment and more about having the courage to begin. A dream doesn’t arrive with a guarantee, and the road towards it rarely looks the way you expect. But sometimes, the life you’ve imagined is waiting on the other side of the decision to go after it.

Jessica Hemanth Peter is currently based in Los Angeles–but is bicoastal when needed. Her work and creative projects can be explored at JHPeter.com, YourCasual.com, and TheSeekersGuild.com.

source/content: daijiworld.com (headline edited)

Bengaluru-based artist-curator Ajitvar Kumar Douglas, who represented India at the 11th Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art, discusses the influences behind his research-driven art.

The conversation begins on a cheerful note, with anecdotes about travel and artistic encounters coming in quick succession. Contemporary artist and curator Ajitvar Kumar Douglas is particularly animated when discussing history, a subject that informs most of his work. He sees history as an evolving account of events and ideas that are open to interpretation across time and geography. “I’m interested in understanding these changes and looking at what remains. Even when I use figures of gods and goddesses, I’m not necessarily making a religious painting. I’m using the iconography that we see in temples and giving it a different context,” he explains.

Recently selected for the 11th Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Uzbekistan, Douglas sees the experience as another chapter of a journey that has taken him to more than 28 countries. This event brought together 70 artists from 29 countries, with Douglas and Hyderabad-based artist Priti Samyukta representing India. Going to Tashkent held personal significance, he shares, “When I spoke to my father about the invitation, he told me I had to go to Samarkand because that is where our family had migrated from many years ago. I had always wanted to travel along the Silk Road, so this was an opportunity to connect with that part of our history.”

Since making Bengaluru, which he calls his karmabhoomi, his permanent home around 15 years ago, his artistic language has also undergone a significant change. The temple sculptures and everyday life here have since influenced his paintings, particularly his use of colour.

The three works he exhibited at the biennale belong to his Solitude series, exploring the tension between isolation and connection. Abstract forms, deep colours, textured surfaces and small human figures set against vast landscapes capture the experience of turning inward. The series viewed solitude as a crossing through which one comes into force.

His international exposure began with invitations to art symposiums in India that later took him to Qatar, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Egypt, South Korea and other countries. His exhibition history includes the 9th Biennale de Sarria in Spain, exhibitions in South Korea and a solo show at SPC Kunstraum Gallery in Copenhagen. He also participated in the PaRDeS project in Mirano in 2024. “Travel opens a different perspective. The India you know while living here is different from the India you understand when you go out and compare. You meet artists from different countries, see how they work and understand their cultural references. It makes you question your assumptions and gives you new ways of looking at your practice,” reflects Douglas.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

Dr. Sarah is the granddaughter of the late J.H. Shamsuddin Jukaku, a lawyer from Bhatkal who served as Deputy Finance Minister in the erstwhile Mysore State government, led by the then Chief Minister B.D. Jatti, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Sarah Jukaku, a doctor and wife of Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections, traces her family roots to Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada district, of Karnataka, according to media reports.

Dr. Sarah is the granddaughter of the late J.H. Shamsuddin Jukaku, a lawyer from Bhatkal who served as Deputy Finance Minister in the erstwhile Mysore State government, led by the then Chief Minister B.D. Jatti, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Shamsuddin was also the Deputy Minister for Electricity in the then government led by then Chief Minister S. Nijalingappa, reports said.

It is said that following the death of Shamsuddin, his family members shifted to different parts of India, including to Bengaluru.

Reports said that Dr. Sarah is the daughter of Jukaku S. Tayeb, also a doctor, who was among four sons of Shamsuddin, who also had six daughters. Dr. Tayeb moved to the U.S. in the 1980s.

They said that Dr. Sarah met EI-Sayed in the University of Michigan and they got married in 2006. Reports said that their family has still maintained relations with family members in India.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

Fifteen members of the informal birding group, ‘Kudla Birders,’ recorded 73 bird species during an outing to the wetlands of Manjalpaade and Bondel in Mangaluru on Sunday.

The bird count was organised as part of the Karnataka Rajyotsava Bird Count 2026, a State-wide citizen-science initiative organised by Bird Count India, said a release.

The morning’s sightings were documented through an e-Bird checklist. Notable species included the Grey-headed Bulbul and Malabar Flameback, both endemic to the Western Ghats, along with the Western Marsh Harrier, Changeable Hawk-Eagle and Black-throated Munia.

Deepika Prasad, M. Vivek and Rohit S. Rao of Kudla Birders coordinated the outing. The walk was led by Mr. Rao, who has been observing the birdlife of the Manjalpaade area for more than 40 years.

Mr. Rao said that Mangaluru had several small pockets of natural habitat, such as Manjalpaade, which supported a surprising variety of birds and other wildlife. “Many of these spaces are increasingly coming under pressure from urbanisation, trespassing and littering, making greater public awareness and collective efforts to protect them essential,” he said.

Through its participation in the State-wide count, Kudla Birders hopes to encourage wider public interest in birdwatching while highlighting the ecological importance of Mangaluru’s urban forest patches and wetlands and the need to conserve them for future generations.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)