White paper on Promoting Domestic Manufacturing of Medical Devices

India’s medical device market is the fourth largest in India and one of the top 20 worldwide; however import dependence to the tunes of about 80 percent of overall sales is an impediment to achieve self-reliance vis-a-vis domestic manufacturing of medical devices and equipments. This high reliance on imports presents a grand opportunity to domestic manufacturers. An enabled ecosystem that promotes indigenous manufacturing of medical devices is crucial for the growth of the health care sector. The current white paper analyses various scenarios for manufacturing capability of different medical technologies and probable recommendations to augment and strengthen production within each scenario.The four scenarios described in the paper includes (1) those medical devices for which there is a high domestic demand that is fulfilled through imports even if domestic manufacturing capacity exists, implying low production in the country (2) relatively low-end technology medical devices for which there is domestic demand with high reliance on imports (3) high-end technology devices which are imported to satisfy domestic need and for which there is no domestic manufacturing capacity (4) medical devices which are being exported to rest of the World. The paper recommends for a comprehensive regulatory overhauls, review of existing taxation structure, calibrated customs duty, fixed term capital subsidy, extended coverage of PLI scheme, strengthening the research and innovation ecosystem, emphasis on technology transfer and building brand India as some of the measures that can potentially favour promotion of domestic manufacturing of medical devices and allow the India Med-Tech sector to grow into global champions.

Establishing priorities for Pennsylvania community flood resilience

This white paper provides an overview of priorities related to community resilience to flooding that emerged during a 27 September 2019 meeting with local, regional and state representatives in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. The document compiles workshop details, participants and a summary of discussions and outcomes. It does not, however, attempt to provide a comprehensive listing of every topic raised by participants. In addition, this workshop was held before the advent of covid-19; the impacts of this pandemic are not addressed in this document.

Data-driven approaches to the evaluation of hadronic contributions to the (g − 2)μ

In this talk I reviewed the data-driven theoretical calculation of the hadronic contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon in the Standard Model mainly as it has been presented in the White Paper, but also including the most recent developments. All this is presented in the light of the new measurement of (g − 2)μ recently released by the Fermilab experiment, which led to an increase of the discrepancy with the Standard Model from 3.7 to 4.2σ.

Brain-Computer Interface

Launched in 2017 to widespread publicity due to the involvement of tech magnate and outspoken futurist Elon Musk, Neuralink Corp. aims to develop an advanced brain-computer interface (BCI) platform capable of assisting in the treatment of serious neurological conditions with longer-term goals of approaching transhumanism through nonmedical human enhancement to enable human-machine “symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” The first published description of a complete prototype Neuralink system, detailed by Muskin the company's only white paper to date, describes a closed-loop, invasive BCI architecture with an unprecedented magnitude of addressable electrodes. Invasive BCI systems require surgical implantation to allow for directly targeted capture and/or stimulation of neural spiking activity in functionally associated clusters of neurons beneath the surface of the cortex.