TCS to roll out e-passports by the end of the year; Volvo Trucks testing H2 fuel cells; AI detects autism in children

Tata Consultancy Services, which recently extended its contract to operate India’s passport services, expects to roll out chip-based e-passports by the end of the year, Economic Times reports. Volvo Trucks is testing hydrogen fuel cells that could offer ranges up to 1000 km, CNBC reports. And scientists have shown that machine learning can help detect autism in children by studying their speech. Notes: Tata Consultancy Services, which recently extended its contract to operate India’s passport services, expects to roll out chip-based e-passports by the end of the year, Economic Times reports. TCS is also setting up a command and control centre with the Ministry of External Affairs, and a data centre to support the backend requirements of the project, Tej Bhatla, the head of the company’s public sector business unit, told ET. Platform.sh, a web hosting platform provider, has raised $140 million in series D funding, led by Digital Partners, with participation from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and others, TechCrunch reports. This brings Platform.sh’s total funding to $187 million. Co-founder and CEO Fred Plais told TechCrunch the Paris-headquartered company will use the money for hiring and deepening automation capabilities. Volvo Trucks has begun to test vehicles that use fuel cells powered by hydrogen, with their range extending to as much as 1000 km, CNBC reports, citing a statement from the Swedish company. Volvo Trucks said refuelling the vehicles would take under 15 minutes. Customer pilots are set to begin in the next few years, with commercialisation planned within the next 10 years, according to CNBC. Fuel cells for the vehicles will be provided by Cellcentric, a joint venture with Daimler Truck that was established in March 2021, according to CNBC. The Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, has launched a rural entrepreneurship incubation programme. The programme aims to focus on action for balanced, inclusive development and to bridge socio-economic gaps, creating sustainable livelihoods and employment opportunities in remote rural areas, the centre said in a press release. A new study led by Northwestern University researchers used machine learning to identify speech patterns in children with autism, and showed that the patterns were consistent between English and Cantonese, suggesting that features of speech might be a useful tool for diagnosing the condition, Neuroscience News reports. Undertaken with collaborators in Hong Kong, the study yielded insights that could help scientists distinguish between genetic and environmental factors shaping the communication abilities of people with autism, potentially helping them learn more about the origin of the condition and develop new therapies, according to Neuroscience News. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds