The 34th Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) was opened in the Iranian Capital at Imam Khomeini’s Grand Mosalla on Wednesday.

Deputy Director of the 34th Tehran International Book Fair, Ali Ramezani said that nearly 100 foreign publishers, 200 booksellers, and 2,700 domestic publishers are active in the virtual and in-person section of the book fair.

Referring to the presence of the directors of Muscat, Doha, and New Delhi Fairs, he added that the ministers of Tajikistan and Venezuela partake in the exhibition.

He noted that Tajikistan is a guest of honor at the Tehran International Book Fair

“The Future Is Readable” is the motto of this year’s book fair.

The 34th Tehran International Book Fair is underway from 20 to 30 May 2023 at Imam Khomeini’s Grand Mosalla. /MNA/

After the Iranian genius mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, Tina Turkman became the second Iranian woman to get Ph.D. in pure mathematics from Harvard University.

Turkman focused his doctoral thesis on Geodesic flows on hyperbolic surfaces under the supervision of Professor Curtis McMullen, winner of the Fields Medal.

She completed her bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology in 2017, and in the same year, she was directly accepted to Harvard University’s mathematics doctoral program.

In 2012, Tina Turkman received the gold medal at the National Mathematical Olympiad, and in 2013, she won the silver medal at the World Mathematical Olympiad.

Turkman has the gold medal of the international mathematics competition in 2015, along with a national gold medal and a bronze medal. /MNA/

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Force has successfully test-launched a domestically-manufactured rocket equipped with a thermobaric warhead.

The test of the indigenous Fajr-5 (Dawn-5) rocket with a thermobaric warhead, which operates with a fuel-air explosive (FAE) system, was carried out on Sunday.

Fajr-5 is a 333-mm rocket, whose guided version, known as Fajr-5C, was earlier delivered to the IRGC Ground Force units and is currently furnished with a warhead with more destructive power.

The destructive power of the new thermobaric warhead, which uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion, is reportedly 1.5 times greater than that of trinitrotoluene (TNT) and enhances the rocket’s blast radius and thermal effect.

The thermobaric explosive’s lower sensitivity than TNT has made it a safer option in comparison with conventional warheads.

Fajr-5 is known as the most advanced and longest-range version of the Fajr ground-to-ground rockets that have various classes with different functions. The 333-mm rocket that runs on solid fuel has single- and two-stage versions, with a range of 75 kilometers and 180 kilometers, respectively.

The new thermobaric warhead’s function would make the Fajr-5 rocket a suitable weapon for the fight against terrorist groups in mountainous and impassable terrain, where terrorists usually construct their shelters and trenches.

Iranian military experts and engineers have in recent years made remarkable breakthroughs in manufacturing a broad range of indigenous equipment, making the armed forces self-sufficient.

Iranian officials have made clear that the country will never bow to pressure to scale down its military programs, including its missile power, which are entirely meant for defense.

MNA/

The United World Wrestling (UWW) announced that Iranian free-style wrestler Rahman Amouzad is on top of the world ranking.

According to UWW, Rahman Amouzad in the 65 kg weight category is placed at the top of the world ranking of weights, while Kamran Ghasempour ranked second in the 92 kg weight category.

Reza Atri, Hassan Yazdani, and Amirhossein Zare ranked third in the 61kg, 86kg, and 125kg weight categories respectively.

Also, Younes Emami and Mohammad Nokhodi were ranked fourth in the 74kg and 79 kg weight categories. /MNA/

The 12th International Innovation and Technology Exhibition (INOTEX 2023) opened at Tehran’s Pardis Technology Park on Tuesday and will run until May 12.

With the theme of ‘innovation ecosystem under one roof’, INOTEX is Iran’s biggest technology event and the forerunner in the region, bringing technology and innovation experts around the world together to bridge the gap between innovators, investors, and traders.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Technology and Innovation Report 2021 has placed Iran among upper-middle countries in terms of readiness for frontier technologies.

The index yielded results for 158 countries with the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom receiving the highest scores on a scale of 0 to 1. Based on their rankings, countries are placed within one of four 25-percentile score groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high values of the index.

The report has put Iran in the 71st position with a total score of 0.46, higher than Qatar, Oman, and Morocco.

Iran was also placed 82 in ICT, 74 in skills, 37 in R&D, 130 in industry, and 53 in finance sectors, according to Iran National Inventions Team.

Only a few countries currently create frontier technologies, but all countries need to prepare for them.

To assess national capabilities to equitably use, adopt and adapt these technologies this report has developed a ‘readiness index’. The index comprises five building blocks: ICT deployment, skills, R&D activity, industry activity, and access to finance, according to the report.

According to the Global Innovation Index (GII 2022) report, Iran is the second most innovative country in the Central and South Asian region and the third among low-middle income countries.

Iran ranked 53rd in the world with 7 steps up compared to 2021.

According to the 2022 GII, Switzerland, the United States of America, Sweden, England, and the Netherlands are the most innovative economies in the world, and China is on the verge of entering the world’s 10 most innovative countries.

The top global companies increased their R&D spending by almost 10 percent to more than $900 billion in 2021, more than in 2019 (before the pandemic).

The drivers of this increase were mainly four industries of “Information and Communication Technology Hardware and Electrical Equipment”, “Information and Communication Technology Software and Services”, “Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology” and “Construction and Industrial Metals”.

In the annual ranking of innovation capacity and output of world economies, key changes are observed in the top 15 countries. Vietnam (48th), Iran (53rd), and the Philippines (59th) are middle-income economies with the fastest growth in innovation performance to date.

With 7 ranks of promotion compared to 2021, Iran has been ranked 53rd in the world, second in the Central and South Asian region, and third in low-middle income countries, and for the second consecutive year, the innovation development rate is higher than expected.

Iran is leading in indicators such as trademark registration (rank 1) and science and engineering graduates (rank 2). In terms of innovation outputs, Iran has a performance similar to high-income European economies such as Latvia (rank 41) and Croatia (rank 42).

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei designated the current Iranian year (March 2022-March 2023) as “The Year of Production: Knowledge-Based and Job-Creating”. Strengthening knowledge-based companies are on the agenda, raising hope for reducing obstacles on the path to development.

In this regard, a strategic technology development headquarters was formed and 362,000 technological projects and 154 commercialization projects were supported, in addition to the inauguration of 23 national mega projects.

Moreover, in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem development, 65 creative houses and innovation centers, and 30 specialized accelerators have been established with the aim of empowering and strengthening the export capacity of knowledge-based, creative, and technological companies.

Knowledge-based companies and creative startups have grown over the past five years, and Iran has risen 45 places in the Global Innovation Index, according to the UNESCO 2021 Report. /T.T/

Iran came from three goals down to beat Kuwait 6-4 in the 2023 Asia-Pacific Deaf Futsal Tournament final on Tuesday in Tehran.

Earlier in the day, Japan beat Iraq 5-2 in the third-place match.

Team Melli defeated Thailand, Iraq, China, Japan and Kuwait in the event and suffered a defeat against Malaysia.

Iran’s women’s futsal team also won a silver medal in the competition.

The Asia-Pacific Deaf Futsal Tournament 2023 was held in Tehran, Iran from May 1 to 9, 2023. / T.T/

Iran lost to defending champions Thailand 3-1 in the final match of the 2023 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s Asia and Oceania Championship on Sunday.

Team Melli had defeated India 17-1, Kuwait 20-0, Kyrgyzstan 26-0, the UAE 14-0 and Singapore 3-0 in the competition.

Earlier in the day, Singapore beat India 3-1 to win the bronze medal.

The event started on April 30 in Bangkok, Thailand finished on May 7.

The IIHF Women’s Asia and Oceania Championship is an international women’s ice hockey tournament run by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF).

It was the IIHF women’s debut for Iran and Kyrgyzstan. /T.T/

The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2023 has placed 29 Iranian institutions among the world’s top 1,000 universities, ranking the country fourth in Asia after China, India, and Japan.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia (18), South Korea (18), Taiwan (16), Russia (15), Switzerland (15), Pakistan (14), Netherlands (13), Egypt (13), Finland (12), Belgium (12), and Sweden (11) follow Irn in the ranking.

The United States (154), the United Kingdom (94), China (59), Italy (49), Germany (49), Australia (44), India (38), Spain (36), France (36), Japan (33), and Canada (32) ranked first to eleventh.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023 include 1,799 universities across 104 countries and regions, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date.

The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.

This year’s ranking analyzed over 121 million citations across more than 15.5 million research publications and included survey responses from 40,000 scholars globally. Overall, we collected over 680,000 data points from more than 2,500 institutions that submitted data.

In the 2023 ranking of the Times Higher Education Institute, which was published in 2022, the names of 66 Iranian institutions were included in the list of the world’s top institutions in 10 different scientific fields, and in total, the names of these institutions were repeated 167 times in scientific fields.

These 10 scientific fields include “arts and humanities”, “business and economics”, “clinical medical sciences, basic medicine and health”, “computer sciences”, “educational sciences”, “biological sciences”, “physical sciences”, “engineering and technology”, “law and psychology” and “social sciences”.

In the 2023 ranking of the Times Higher Education Institute, which was published in 2022, the names of 66 Iranian institutions were included in the list of the world’s top institutions in 10 different scientific fields, and in total, the names of these institutions were repeated 167 times in scientific fields.

These 10 scientific fields include “arts and humanities”, “business and economics”, “clinical medical sciences, basic medicine and health”, “computer sciences”, “educational sciences”, “biological sciences”, “physical sciences”, “engineering and technology”, “law and psychology” and “social sciences”.

Reviewing the status of universities worldwide shows that the number of Iranian universities has increased in nearly all subject rankings.

At the beginning of its formation, rating systems provided a comprehensive view of institutions and evaluated them from all aspects and as a whole. But in the past few years, many of these systems evaluate and rank institutions in various scientific fields.

This new ranking method has emerged to meet the needs of users who seek to know the position of an institution in a special field.

Some of these systems evaluate broad scientific fields such as humanities and social sciences, technical and engineering, and medicine, and others measure special fields such as chemistry, mathematics, artificial intelligence, anthropology, and nursing in institutions.

According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, 1,452 scientific journals are being published in the country.

Out of all the mentioned journals, 289 are indexed in the Scopus database and 67 journals are indexed in the Web of Science database./T.T/

A group of eight social media influencers from Kuwait has recently arrived in Iran for a familiarization tour, IRNA reported on Friday.

The group is scheduled to visit travel destinations in the provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Kordestan, and Hormozgan, the report added.

As part of the tour, Kuwaiti influencers will be exposed to tourist attractions, the hospitality of Iranians, and the development of cities in addition to attractive local events.

They are also obliged to publish the received content on a wide level on social media after completing their trip and visiting the provinces.

In addition, after completing their trip and visiting the provinces, they are required to share the received content widely on social media.

One of the main programs of the foreign tourism marketing section of the tourism ministry is to organize fam tours of the target tourism market countries in order to provide their people with an opportunity to visit and become familiar with Iran’s tourism capability.

The average of international travel to and from Iran fell by 80 percent during the Iranian calendar year 1399 (ended on March 20, 2021) from a year earlier caused by various coronavirus restrictions.

Optimistic forecasts, expect the country would achieve a tourism boom after the coronavirus is contained, believing its impact would be temporary and short-lived for a country that ranked the third fastest-growing tourism destination in 2019.

Some experts believe Iran is still somehow “unknown” to many potential travelers due to the Western “media war”. Several estimates have been released so far on the extent of the tourism-related losses incurred by the pandemic.

Iran is potentially a booming destination for travelers seeking cultural attractions, breathtaking sceneries, and numerous UNESCO-registered sites. /TT/