A US-based diaspora body has launched an online campaign urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to reduce the waiting time for various types of American visas being issued from India. Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies, or FIIDS, started a petition campaign on change.org, a worldwide nonprofit petition website, highlighting the contrast in wait times at the US consulates in China for visa appointments.

“We request the State Department, Secretary of State Mr Anthony Blinken and the US embassies in India to eliminate wait times for visa appointments in India,” the petition read.

“Even after a two-year-long Covid-era pause in visa appointments at the US embassies in India, the visa appointment situation is far from normal, requiring 300 to 900 days of wait time based on the visa types,” FIIDS said, adding that the US consulates in China only have an average 3 days wait time.

Citing the data from the US department of state travel, the diaspora body said that there is an average of over 900 days wait time for appointments for visitors’ visa(B1/B2) and an average of 400 days wait time for students (F, M,J). It also highlighted that petition-based temporary workers like H, L, O, P and Q have to wait for an average of 300 days for visa appointments across US consulates in India.

“The 900 days’ delay deprives Indian Americans and Indian immigrants in the USA of having their beloved relatives to visit, whether in the time of difficulties, needs, or for celebrations, impacting their quality of life,” it said.

“The 400 days’ wait time affects students joining the US universities, that not only impacts students’ future but also negatively impacts the US universities,” FIIDS said, adding, the 300 days’ wait time is impacting productivity and success of various industries and businesses due to lack of skilled workers.

The online petition has received over 1,100 signatures at the time of writing this.

In September, India raised the issue of visa delays and hurdles in human mobility with the United States, while the US has promised action within a few months. External affairs minister S Jaishankar said that this was a crucial issue given its centrality to education, technology, business and family reunions. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he was “extremely sensitive” to the issue and if it was any consolation, this was a challenge the US was facing around the world.

“It is a product largely of the pandemic. Our ability to issue visas dropped dramatically during Covid. This is a self financing part of the State Department…When Covid hit, the demand for visas fell..the system as a whole suffered..”

An Indian-American professor of computer science at a university in the US has received an Amazon Research Award to design a tool that minimises negative user experiences. Pavithra Prabhakar, who is the Peggy and Gary Edwards chair in engineering, was one of 74 recipients of the awards from Amazon, which also includes an unrestricted gift, access to more than 300 Amazon public datasets, and Amazon Web Services’ artificial intelligence and machine learning services and tools, the Kansas State University said in a statement.

Prabhakar currently serves as a programme director at the National Science Foundation while on sabbatical from K-State. The tool itself would be utilised to minimise disruptive changes to the user experience of machine learning-based software systems as the product is refined and retrained over time. She explained the issue with an example of a search engine tool being retrained to provide superior automated results but in the process, losing some of the results the end user expects to see.

“The broad objective of the project is to automatically characterise how much two versions of machine learning-based systems are similar or different,” Prabhakar said. “These systems are regularly retrained to achieve superior performance; however, this does not often translate to a better user experience. This can be mitigated by equipping the design team with an automated tool that could highlight where and by how much the systems changed between different versions, thereby aiding the team in making decisions regarding the acceptability of the changes from a user experience perspective.”

The proposed research will build on foundational concepts from process algebra and control theory to define mathematical notions of distance between different versions of machine learning systems and develop algorithms for outputting the similarity and dissimilarity between them. This automated tool will benefit design teams in making critical decisions about improving the user experience of machine learning-based intelligent software systems.

Prabhakar obtained her doctorate in computer science and a master’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, followed by a Center for the Mathematics of Information postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. She was named a Michelle Munson-Serban Simu Keystone research scholar and received the dean’s award for excellence in research from the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering.

Prabhakar’s research has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the NSF CAREER award, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant from the European Union.

Indeever Madireddy, an Indian American student studying at BASIS Independent Silicon Valley, a private school at the Silicon Valley has become the first person to sequence the genome of freshwater angelfish. He did the sequencing after his pet fish died in March this year, NewScientist reported.

The 17-year-old did the sequencing at BioCurious, a community lab in Santa Clara that makes advanced equipment available to anyone for a small membership fee, the outlet continued.

“Although my fish was dead, I wanted to preserve it forever. So I decided to sequence the genome of the angelfish with the hopes that I could contribute that information to the scientific community, while also paying a small tribute to my pet!” said the 17-year-old to NewScientist, while discussing the significance of the project.

The estimated cost of sequencing was around $2000 and Madireddy managed to raise over $1000 by crowdfunding, it was further reported.

The fish was stored at a very cold temperature of -80 degrees celsius in a lab to preserve the DNA. Mr Madireddy spent nearly a month learning how to sequence it. Once he was done, the sequencing took over two weekends with a small sequencer made by Oxford Nanopore. These sequencers read off the sequence of DNA molecules as they pass through tiny pores.

He also wrote a research paper explaining how the DNA was extracted with the NEB Monarch genomic DNA purification kit. “In this work, I sequenced, assembled, and annotated the complete genome of the freshwater angelfish in addition to the full mitochondrial genome with Oxford Nanopore Technologies,” he wrote in his paper.

Angelfish usually live up to 10 years if they are provided with proper aquarium conditions. “The rest of the angelfish are still happy and healthy in my aquarium,” the avid fish-keeper and biologist said to NewScientist.

Mr Madireddy has also received the prestigious Davidson Fellows Scholarship Program for a science project “Stably Integrating CRISPR-Cas9 to Augment the Mammalian Immune System to Protect Against Viral Infections.” This program recognise, nurtures and supports profoundly intelligent young people and provides opportunities for them to develop their talents to make a positive difference.

An Indian-American Republican candidate, who is contesting for the upcoming general election to the New York State Assembly District 16, has apologised for a tweet targeting the Muslim community, saying his intent was never to hurt anyone.

Vibhuti Jha, 70, who has now deleted the tweet, is running against Democrat Gina Sillitti for the New York State Assembly District 16 elections to be held on Tuesday.

“I deleted a tweet that appeared several months ago forwarded by someone to me! I believe some of the Muslim groups were unhappy about the content & comparison made therein. I u/s the joke didn’t go down well. I confirm the intent was never to hurt anyone,” Jha tweeted last week.

“I want to add I have very good Muslim friends – we share mutual respect for each other and share jokes and laughter in these difficult times. Friendship is all about sharing joy, anger and move the life forward. We have to face our challenges together,” he said.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Jha is the Managing Director of New York-based financial services firm Global Capital Service Group. He is also the co-founder of Relaxxapp, a mind and body fitness app.

New York’s 16th State Assembly district is one of the 150 districts in the New York State Assembly. It has been represented by Sillitti since 2021.

District 16 is located in Nassau County within the town of North Hempstead. The district includes the villages of Great Neck, North Hills, East Hills, Flower Hill, Old Westbury, Roslyn Estates, and Lake Success, as well as the hamlets of Roslyn Heights, Port Washington and Herricks.