Sonam Kapoor Verve photo

Usually it was the big names in Indian fashion and occasionally some of the middle rung fashion houses internationally that were associated with Bollywood. Now, the latest Sonam Kapoor starrer, Aisha, makes Bollywood – fashion history by tying up with top fashion houses Salvatore Ferragamo and Christian Dior. Related: Sonam Kapoor’s I Hate Luv Storys

The movie revolves around a fashionista, played by Sonam Kapoor, who is known for her fashionable tastes in real life too. According to sources at Christian Dior, there will be around sixty Dior dresses used in the film – by Sonam and other female artistes. This is the first instance of fashion’s brand integration taking the movies a step away from mass market products and closer to high end fashion.

Aisha, budgeted at 20 crore rupees also features other brands like DLF Emporio, L’Oreal Paris and Portico. But sources say that the Dior association is visibly the strongest. Sonam will be seen throughout the movie with a lady Dior purse. The male lead for the movie is Abhay Deol, and Dior’s presence will be seen on him as well – with the dapper young star clad in Dior suits. According to sources at portico, about ten or twelve new designs will be introduced by Portico to tentatively coincide with the movie’s release.

Sources say that the tie ups with the fashion brands took almost six months to work out before and during the scripting stage. Both Portico and L’Oreal have a number of TV commercials lined up that uses imaging from the film to promote their products.

Aisha, which is co-produced by PVR Pictures and Anil Kapoor Films Co. Pvt. Ltd, and directed by Rajshree Ojha is set for release on August 6. India and especially Bollywood has been the focus of intense global interest, especially in the areas of dance and music. This move by fashion houses could be a statement of the fact that Bollywood has a far wider impact and reach than anticipated before.

Photo: Omi Vaidya

Fresh from a fun time of hosting the India International Film Awards in Sri Lanka, Bollywood actor Omi Vaidya is all set to do a longer stint of hosting a show. This time, it’s a TV show on Star Plus.

Best known for his portrayal of a nerd trying to outdo the hero in 3 Idiots, Omi is savoring the success that the hit movie has brought him. The show is set to begin on the 24th of July in the 9 p.m. slot on weekends. Omi Vaidya is reportedly excited about bring on a platform that brings music and children together.

Omi’s highlight in the movie was his difficulty with the Hindi language, but the actor has no qualms about being the anchor of a show that is predominantly in Hindi. He says that far from being paranoid about polishing up his Hindi speaking abilities, he will be keen on bringing his own brand of Hindi to the small screen. Although he does admit that he is getting better at it daily.

Omi is relishing the thrill of being ‘live’ that a reality show brings. He is eagerly anticipating the unexpectedness of events, and children’s as well as judges responses. And getting a live audience response is also part of the thrill of the experience.

Always clear that performing was his forte, Omi took to comedy because he clearly lacked singing and dancing skills. Next in line with him in Bollywood are films with Madhur Bhandarkar and Abbas-Mustan.

Chotte Ustad will have 10 children each from Indian and Pakistan participating and vying for the top honors.  The new twist is that children from the two countries will be paired up to compete with similar duos. The judges for the show are celebrities Sonu Nigam and Rahet Fateh Ali Khan. The show was first aired in 2007, with singers Pritam, Kunal Ganjawala and Shreya Ghoshal as judges. The format is that the participants will be mentored by music experts and will have singing face offs during every weekend.

Cord Life is planning to open sales, marketing and operations forces in Mumbai for collection of samples.

Cord Life expects to start the work on infrastructure and workforce for the collection centre soon. The Mumbai centre would be catering to the entire country for marketing and sales purpose. The company also plans to have further subsequent centres in potential areas of the city, reports said.

“The main purpose of this centre would be to educate our clients and create awareness about the benefits of cord blood banking. We want our clients to make an informed decision on cord blood banking,”  Meghnath Roy, managing director, Cordlife was quoted as saying.

Cord Life has an R&D partner CyGenics’ technology that has developed stem cell expansion and T-cell growth technology which has the ability to grow stem cells outside the human body.

CordLife India has a storage capacity of up to 150,000 cord blood units.

Located in Kolkata, CordLife is the only such facility serving the Eastern part of India.

Cordlife has a network of stem cell banks in Asia Pacific with full processing and cryopreservation storage facilities in Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines and India with marketing offices in Thailand and Macau.

Recently, Cord care, a stem cells bank to store umbilical cord blood of children as a potential resource for treating ailments, including cancer and immune disorders, has been launched in the south Indian city of Hyderabad by PathCare Labs.

Cord Care is a division of PathCare Labs, a Hyderabad based diagnostic service provider with a state-of-the-art central clinical reference laboratory at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.

Cord Care has a facility to store upto one lakh samples said Dr Prasad.

The collection, processing and preservation of cord blood is done at a fee of Rs. 75,000 and the samples are stored in cryogenic vaults for a period of 21 years.

Cord Care is South India’s second and India’s fifth cord blood stem cell banking facility, according to the release.

Cord Care’s stem cell bank has more than 600 collection centers spread across India, PathCare Labs stated in a press release.

The cord blood stem cell bank is expected to be affiliated and certified by regulatory agencies such as DBT (Department of Bio-technology), DCGI (Drug Controller, Government of India), US-FDA and American Association of Blood Banks (AABB).

Custom fit knee replacement surgery has been successfully done on two patients with degenerative disease at Fortis Hospitals Bangalore.

The new custom fit knee replacement technology is an instrumentation system that matches the patient’s knee and ensures lesser pain, less tissue damage and faster mobilization.

The custom fit knee replacement surgery procedures aims to get patients back on their feet faster, compared to  conventional knee replacement surgeries.

Conventional knee replacement surgeries retro-fit predetermined sizes of prosthetics on to the patients’ knee.

Custom fit knee replacement surgery procedure is different because it works on the principle that no two patients’ knees are similar.

The new technology digitally recreates the patients knee with 3D image mapping after taking into account, the bone structure, weight ratios, gender, age and even mechanical alignment. Based on this 3D model, the customized knee is created. This technology ensures greater accuracy and reduces the operation time by almost 40 per cent and also results in less loss of bone & tissues, according to Dr Manish Samson, consultant, Joint Replacement Surgeon.

Around four week duration will be required to get the custom fit instrumentation and the doctor being ready with the perfect procedure, the incision is just about 4 inches which itself minimizes the pain, infection, blood loss, and tissue damage are also reduced to a great extent.

Although a bit more expensive than regular knee surgeries, the economies-of-scale are better in terms of shorter hospital stay and faster access to work for custom fit knee replacement surgery procedure, experts pointed out.

The number of arthritis patients are alarmingly going up in India. While around five lakh knee replacement surgeries are annually in the US, India accounts for only about 45,000 knee replacement which is increasing by 25 per cent every year. Currently seven crore people in the country suffer from knee problem. Around 80 have some form of limitation, and 20 per cent suffer from severe movement restriction. By 2020, the country is expected to have 23 crore knee and joint disease population, experts said.

WHO and World Bank have declared the decade between 2000-2010 as the Bone and Joint Decade. The period was dedicated to study the progress of bone diseases and allow help evolve the science of orthopaedics. In this background, Fortis’s medical breakthrough which would revolutionize knee replacement surgeries has taken medical expertise to a new orbit of patient care.

Picture: The new Rupee symbol.

Initially over 3,000 designs were shortlisted for the competition, which came down to five that were in the running for being chosen. He wins a cash prize of Rs. 2.5 lakhs from the Finance Ministry for his achievement.

The new sign for the Indian rupee was approved by the Union Cabinet, and the government will be incorporating it into the country’s workings over the next two years. The goal is to adopt it nationally within the next six months and on an international scale in 18-24 months.

The Rupee symbol will not appear in the printed currency or the coins used in India, but will be part of the Unicode Standard and in the major scripts used internationally so that it can be displayed and printed with ease. India’s rapid growth and presence in the world economic market had made it increasingly important for the currency of the country to have a symbol. Especially since other countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan also shared the word ‘rupee’ to denote their currency.

The new symbol was chosen because of its design capability to be part of existing software systems. The symbol will now be used on keyboards manufactured in India. Right now, as far as we know, there is no simple way to use the new Rupee sign while creating a document.

Uday Kumar says that he designed the symbol based on the Indian tri color, with the lines added on the top and bottom representing the Indian flag. The symbol is primarily based on the ‘ra’ of the Devanagari script, with an attempt to incorporate the Roman script also, for international appeal.

Udaya Kumar will be joining the dept. of Design at IIT Guwahati as Assistant Professor.

A study, carried out by SMC Capitals, gives statistics showing that there are approximately 3.1 crore people who use social networking sites like Orkut, Twitter and Facebook, as opposed to just 1.7 crore who have a Demat account. A Demat account is mandatory for people who trade in the stock market in India.

The fact that there are twice as many people using social networking sites and only half the number trading stocks is considered to be an incredible finding, especially when one considers that the networking sites have become popular only in the past three years or so. This leads the company to tentatively conclude that the average, Indians are still wary of the stock market. This is seen as a clear indication that though the consumer market in India has grown to huge proportions, India as an investor is still in infant stages.

Another allied area that had interesting statistics is the mobile phone arena. There are almost 2 crore new mobile connections taken in a single month, compared to two lakh Demat accounts taken – another clear indication of the fact that the investing trend is a very low one in India. Factors that are considered responsible for the huge popularity of social networking is are that 60% of India’s population is below the 30 years mark – almost all of whom will definitely link to social networking sites and mobile phones. Also, there is the unbeatable advantage that being part of a social networking site happens absolutely free of cost, whereas taking a Demat account means that the user will have to pay for it.