SCIENCE & DEVELOPMENT

Chip Wars: Breaking the Siege

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×THE chip wars launched by the United States and its allies against China show no signs of abating and have escalated further in 2023 with indications of more to come. These wars are, in effect, a siege on China’s technological progress and economy.

Attempts to Poison and Choke the Indian Science Congress

OVER the decade rather successfully the current government and the Sangh Parivar have poisoned the more than 100 year old Indian Science Congress (ISC) by injecting controversies deliberately since 2014.  As a last blow and an attempt to strangle the ISC, the Modi government’s Department of Science and Technology cancelled the funding for ISC which was to have been held in January 2024.As an economist puts it in the larger perspective “The commitment to promoting scientific temper, self reliance in S & T, and spread of science education was relatively strong in the first three decades f

Secretive US X-37B Military Spacecraft

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×THE highly secretive X-37B military spacecraft of the US Space Force took off on December 28, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on its seventh and hitherto most extensive test.

Medicine Nobel: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind?

ON December 10, 2023, the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, to Dr Katalin Kariko and Dr Drew Weissman jointly “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.” The citation said these “were critical for developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020 and contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.” Presumably, this satisfied the condi

COP28: Small Gains, Big Losses

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×ALL COPs are important and deal with issues vital for the world. Yet some COPs stand out for their special significance, milestones, major decisions to be taken and of course for their outcomes. For instance COP3 in 1997 launched the Kyoto Protocol (KP) which shaped the architecture for the emissions control regime for almost two decades.

OpenAI drama, AI and Big Tech

LAST month witnessed high drama at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The company’s CEO and co-founder, Sam Altman was fired by the OpenAI Board, apparently at the behest of chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever. The move sent shockwaves across the tech world. OpenAI engineers wrote a letter to the board threatening to quit in protest. Microsoft, which had invested more than 10 billion dollars in the company, offered to hire Sam Altman, other key executives and engineers.

COP28: Low Expectations, High Price

THE annual climate summit is upon us, with COP28 taking place in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, 2023. COP28 is a milestone event since it will take up the first five-yearly Global Stocktake (GST) to assess where the world stands with regard to decisions taken under the Paris Agreement (PA). The GST covers mitigation, adaptation, financing and other support to developing countries.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship: Explosive Innovation, Horror for Workers’ Safety

THE massive Starship super-heavy lift launch vehicle by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company took off last week on November 18, 2023 on its second test flight.  The launcher is the largest and most powerful ever built, weights 5,000 tonnes and can carry payloads of 100-150 tonnes. The launcher is a 2-stage vehicle comprising the booster and the spaceship atop, both stages being powered by SpaceX’s own Raptor engine, 33 of which power the booster.

Endemic Disasters in Himalayan Transport Infrastructure

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×ANOTHER highway project in the Himalayan region, this time part of this government’s flagship Char Dham Highway, yet another tunnel, and one more disaster, fortunately with no casualties so far as this goes to print.

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