SCIENCE & DEVELOPMENT

Annual Air Pollution Festival

SO here we are once again, regular like the seasons, with Delhi and the entire Indi-Gangetic plains right down to West Bengal shrouded in a grey haze of pollutants as visible in photographs from space.  13 of the world’s 20 worst polluted cities or towns in the world are in India, including Delhi, satellite towns and other urban centres in northern and eastern India. This has now become such a hardy and recurrent annual feature that it may as well be declared yet another festival of which we already have so many in this country.

White Hydrogen: Not the New Saviour

THE energy and climate change universe is abuzz with the new developments around discovery of large deposits of natural or “white” hydrogen, with many commentators hailing it as great news and a potential game-changer in the battle against climate change. Fossil-fuel related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are today, even after so many international emissions control agreements and considerable installed capacity in renewable energy, still 91 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

ISRO’s Successful Test of Crew Escape System

ONE thing that has always been known about human space flight is that it is very dangerous. So far, 19 astronauts or cosmonauts (we will use the former term here for simplicity) have died in space accidents, which is a relatively high 3 per cent approximately compared to other forms of transportation. Significantly, only 3 of these fatal crewed space flights had flown above the Karman line, symbolically marking the edge of space at 100 km above the earth. Most fatalities have occurred during the launch phase or during re-entry, especially the former.

Global Stocktake Pre-report: Glass Quarter Full

THE Paris Agreement (PA) had mandated a periodic five-yearly cycle of assessments of climate action called the Global Stocktake (GST) starting in 2023. GST is a process involving both country parties i.e., governments, as well as non-party stakeholders to review progress made on the different actions agreed upon in the international negotiations under the aegis of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to tackle the greatest crisis to confront humankind, namely climate change.

Remembering Allende and His Project Cybersyn

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×FIFTY years back, Pinochet's coup destroyed Allende's government and the structure of liberal democracy in Chile. Allende died with a machine gun in his hands, defending his attempt to build socialism in Chile against the combined power of the US and the forces of reaction in Chile, including the military.

Dangerous Renewed Thrust on Biofuels

AS one of the outcomes of the recently concluded G20 Summit in New Delhi, a new Biofuels Alliance was announced, with India, Brazil, the US and other countries taking the lead towards a programme of action aiming to increase the uptake of sustainable biofuels especially in the transport sector.  Here in India, much has been made of this initiative as another triumph showcasing the growing global leadership of the present government, and also as a step towards a big push to India’s already sizeable and ambitious biofuels programme.  The impression is that this new global alliance would work

Technology Denial Regimes Don’t Work: Not for Countries as Large as India or China

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×THE chip wars between the US and China show no sign of abating as the US tries to stop the flow of advanced chips – sub 7 nm chips, graphical processor units (GPUs), 5G chipsets – and the lithographic machines that manufacture such chips. The US had started with sanctions that made it impossible for Huawei to manufacture its top-of-the-range processors at the heart of the 5G mobile phones.

The Many Colours of Hydrogen and the Scam of Carbon Capture

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×THE fossil fuel industry, particularly the oil and natural gas lobby, always has new cards. Earlier, the fossil fuel industry came up with carbon credits: We, the rich countries, will burn coal, oil and natural gas so that we can continue with our current lifestyles but "compensate" by planting trees in poor countries.

Rush to the Moon: New Equations In Space

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×SUDDENLY it feels as if every space-faring nation is heading to the moon! India’s Chandrayaan-3 will hopefully succeed in executing a soft landing on September 23. In a rather sudden decision, the long-postponed Russian Luna 25 mission, also for soft landing of a lander, was given the green signal and launched on August 10 on a direct path to the moon, slated to land any day between August 21 and 23.

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