SCIENCE & DEVELOPMENT

Baku COP Flop!

THE climate summit COP29 at Baku, Azerbaijan, once again demonstrated the dominance of global capitalism led by the US over the international negotiations process under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG), especially carbon dioxide, emissions and bring under control resultant climate changes. These are already posing large-scale threats to people and ecosystems and are now on the brink of possibly irreversible changes and even greater dangers ahead.

India’s Shambolic Fighter Jet Procurement

WHAT can you possibly call it when history repeats itself many times over, way beyond tragedy and farce? That old horror story, India’s efforts at “urgent” procurement of fighter aircraft to make up for depleting of fleet strength, is set to start all over again. Authoritative sources have been telling various media outlets that the government will “soon” issue a Request for Proposal (RfP), in other words a tender, for 114 Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) valued at an estimated $20 billion (INR 1 lakh forty thousand crore) to be manufactured in India.

COP 29: The Greed of the Rich Versus the Need of the People in This Climate Crisis

COP 29, the UN Climate Change Conference, started on November 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan, and is slated to finish on the 22nd. It is taking place under the shadow of significant temperature rises this summer across the globe, and the clear warning of what it means for us. It is also taking place at a time in which the US has elected a president, Donald Trump, who, among other things, is also a climate change denier and unlikely to accept any global consensus in COP 29.Global warming, even for the countries in the freezing north, is no longer in the realm of scientific debates.

Will AI Take Over the World and All Our Jobs?

MANY of us have used AI tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E and Mid Journey and have been blown away by what those tools can do. Interacting with ChatGPT feels like talking to a real person who can answer almost any question we can think of, explain complex topics in simple words, summarise articles and even write poetry, Shakespeare-like prose, essays and homework assignments. DALL-E and Mid Journey are capable of producing spectacular images from text prompts making artists out of people with no artistic skills.

Remembering Lenin: Electricity, Logic and Science

THIS year is Comrade Lenin's death centenary year. For those who are socialists and communists, the Soviet Union was the hope of founding a new society in which the working people, and not the capitalist or the feudal classes, would own the means of production. For many, the Soviet Union gave hope for a different social order and the possibility of national liberation from the clutches of the colonial rulers.

Nobel Prize for Non-Profit Open Science: MicroRNAs

ON October 7, US scientists Victor Ambros of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Gary Ruvkun of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of microRNAs, or miRNAs, as key regulators of gene expression, which is a novel physiological mechanism. So far no confirmed applications have emerged from this discovery, despite considerable potential and research.Every cell contains DNA molecules that house genetic information in the chromosomes.

West Asia Spinning into a Bigger Conflagration as Iran Enters Israel’s War on Gaza-Lebanon

ISRAEL’S policy of climbing the escalation ladder has now brought West Asia to the brink of a much larger war. With Israel entering Lebanon and Iran’s missile strikes on Israel, it is no longer about the fate of Gaza and its people, which has been under Israel’s genocidal attack for almost a year. The war is about to enter a new phase with Israel’s threatened response on Iran’s nuclear facilities and full US support. It risks drawing Yemen, Syria and Iraq into a much larger war with global implications well beyond the region.

Scientific Scrutiny - A Stitch in Time

THE recent letter signed by 26 eminent scientists and academics addressed to the principal scientific advisor of the government of India, in response to the 2024 Vigyan Yuva S S Bhatnagar awards  is remarkable and important in many ways.Firstly, because the signatories are among the most distinguished and highly awarded persons in the country in the fields of the physical sciences, life sciences and mathematics.

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