Category: Science & Tech

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will conduct the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle’s second development flight (SSLV –D2).

Payload details

• The SSLV-D2 is designed to deliver ISRO’s EOS-07, Antaris’ Janus-1, and Chennai-based Space Kidz’s AzaadiSAT-2 satellites into a 450-km circular orbit in 15 minutes.
• ISRO designed, developed, and launched EOS-07, a 156.3 kg satellite. Its mission is to design and develop payload instruments that are compatible with microsatellite buses and new technologies for future operational satellites.
• Janus-1: Janus-1, weighing approximately 10.2 kg, is a technology demonstrator, smart satellite mission based on the Antaris software platform.
• AzaadiSAT-2: An 8.7-kg satellite, AzaadiSAT-2 is a collaborative effort of approximately 750 girl students from across India, led by Space Kidz India in Chennai.

What is SSLV?

• The SSLV is an ISRO-developed small-lift launch vehicle with payload capacity of 600 kg to Low Earth Orbit (500 km) or 300 kg to Sun-synchronous Orbit (500 km)
• It would aid in the launch of small satellites capable of multiple orbital drop-offs.
• A dedicated launch pad called the Small Satellite Launch Complex (SSLC) will be built in Sriharikota in the future.
• When completed, a new spaceport near Kulasekharapatnam in Tamil Nadu will handle SSLV launches.
• After entering the operational phase, the vehicle’s production and launch operations will be handled by an Indian consortium led by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL).

Vehicle details

(A) Dimensions

• Height: 34 meters
• Diameter: 2 meters
• Mass: 120 tonnes

(B) Propulsion

• The vehicle will launch in four stages.
• The first three stages will use a solid propellant based on hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB), with a fourth terminal stage being a Velocity-Trimming Module (VTM).

SSLV vs. PSLV: A comparison

• The SSLV was developed with the aim of launching small satellites commercially at drastically reduced price and higher launch rate as compared to Polar SLV (PSLV).
• The projected high launch rate is based on largely autonomous launch operations and simple logistics in general.
• In comparison, a PSLV launch involves 600 officials, whereas SSLV launch operations are managed by a small team of around six people.
• The SSLV’s launch readiness period is expected to be less than a week rather than months.
• The SSLV can launch satellites weighing up to 500 kg into low-Earth orbit, whereas the tried-and-true PSLV can launch satellites weighing up to 1000 kg.
• The entire project will be completed in a very short period of time, and the cost for SSLV will be around Rs 30 crore.

The Importance of SSLV

• SSLV is ideal for simultaneously launching multiple microsatellites and supports multiple orbital drop-offs.
• The SSLV’s development and production are expected to increase synergy between the space sector and private Indian industries, which is a key goal of the space ministry.

Source: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/isro-successfully-launches-sslv-d2/article66492576.ece

Human progress has relied heavily on public infrastructure. The monopolisation of public infrastructure that plagued previous generations has manifested itself in today’s digital infrastructure’s centralised nature. Although Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) can meet this need, it faces several challenges.

What exactly is the problem?

• There is a concerning trend of data and technology weaponization, also known as digital colonisation (Hicks, 2019), which results in a loss of agency, sovereignty, and privacy.
• As a result, proactive deliberation on how to build good DPI is critical to avoiding such challenges.

What is Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and what does it do?

• The flow of people, money, and information is mediated by three fundamental sets of DPIs.
• First, people will pass through a digital ID system.
• Second, money flows through a real-time, fast payment system.
• Third, the flow of personal information through a consent-based data sharing system in order to realise the benefits of DPIs and empower citizens with real data control.
• These three sets serve as the foundation for creating a functional DPI ecosystem.

India’s DPI

• India was the first country to develop all three foundational DPIs: India, India, and India. Stack is the first country to have developed all three foundational DPIs: digital identity (Aadhar), real-time fast payment (UPI), and a platform for securely sharing personal data without jeopardising privacy (Account Aggregator built on the Data Empowerment Protection Architecture or DEPA)
• In India, technological-legal regulatory frameworks are used to achieve policy objectives through public-technology design.
• For example, India’s DEPA provides people with technological tools to exercise their rights under applicable privacy laws. In a nutshell, this techno-legal governance regime incorporates data protection principles into a public-technology stack.
• DPI is the most feasible model because of its low cost, interoperability, and scalable design, as well as its safeguards against monopolies and digital colonisation.

How DPIs constitute the backbone of a country’s digital infrastructure?

• Facilitate seamless public service delivery: These layers interact with one another to form an ecosystem that allows businesses to design novel solutions on top of the DPI layers and facilitates seamless public service delivery.
• Allows for the development of previously unseen open networks: India is currently developing such open networks for credit (Open Credit Enablement Network), commerce (Open Network for Digital Commerce), open health services networks (UHI), and many more.
• Generate network effects: When DPIs are combined, they can generate network effects that help to build these open networks for various industries.

Three types of institutions must be established for India’s DPI success to become a global revolution.

• An institution that serves as an independent DPI steward: It is critical to have an agile and responsive governance structure. Rather than being controlled by a single entity or group, a multiparty governance process through independent DPI institutions will be accountable to a diverse range of stakeholders. This can boost DPI’s trust and confidence. India developed the Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), which has been adopted by nine countries and has over 76 million active users.
• The need for global standards to be developed through a multilateral dialogue led by India: If standards originating in developed countries were transplanted to the context of emerging economies without regard for their developmental concerns, smaller countries would simply be captive to dominant technology players. Furthermore, without these standards, Big Tech would almost certainly engage in regulatory arbitrage to consolidate power.
• Finally, we need to develop sustainable financing models for developing DPI for the entire world. Such models, which are currently supported by philanthropic funding, run the risk of becoming a tool of philanthropic competition and positioning.

@the end

The world requires a new digital infrastructure playbook that mediates the flow of people, money, and information. This will help countries that want to digitally empower their citizens. They can then quickly build platforms that address people’s specific needs, while also ensuring that people can trust and use the platform without fear of exclusion or exploitation.

Source: https://www.iasexpress.net/editorial-filling-the-physical-gaps-in-indias-digital-push/

Google has finally decided to respond to Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its AI chatbot, ChatGPT.

What is Bard, when can I access it?

• Google’s Bard has been in development for several years and is based on LaMDA, the company’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications system.
• It is a “experimental conversational AI service,” according to Sunder Pichai.
• Google will make it available to trusted testers before making it widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
• It is not yet available to the general public.

What is Bard based on?

• Bard is based on Transformer technology, which also powers ChatGPT and other AI bots.
• Google pioneered transformer technology, which was made open-source in 2017.
• Transformer technology is a neural network architecture that can predict outcomes based on inputs. It is primarily used in natural language processing and computer vision technology.
• A Google engineer previously claimed LaMDA was a’sentient’ being with consciousness.

How does it function?

• Bard uses information from the internet to provide unique, high-quality responses.
• In short, it will provide in-depth, conversational, and essay-style responses, much like ChatGPT does now.
• It requires much less computing power, allowing us to scale to more users and provide more feedback.

How about its processing power?

• Remember that running these models requires a significant amount of computing power.
• ChatGPT, for example, is powered by Microsoft’s Azure Cloud services.
• This also explains why the service frequently encounters errors due to a high volume of users.

The primary distinction between ChatGPT and Google’s Bard

• Google appears to have an ace up its sleeve to take on ChatGPT: the ability to draw information from the Internet.
• Bard uses information from the internet to provide unique, high-quality responses.
• ChatGPT has impressed with its ability to respond to complex queries — albeit with varying degrees of accuracy — but perhaps its most significant shortcoming is that it cannot access real-time information from the Internet.
• ChatGPT’s language model was trained on a massive dataset to generate text based on input, but the dataset is currently only up to 2021.

Is Bard superior to ChatGPT?

• Right now, Bard appears to be a limited release.
• Google is currently soliciting feedback on Bard, so it is difficult to say whether it will be able to answer more questions than ChatGPT.
• Google has also not specified how much knowledge Bard possesses.
• For example, we know that ChatGPT’s knowledge is limited to events until 2021.
• Of course, it is based on LaMDA, which has been making headlines for quite some time.

Why is Google announcing Bard now?

• Bard’s announcement comes as Microsoft prepares to announce the integration of ChatGPT into its Bing Search engine.
• Although Google invented the ‘Transformer’ technology, it is now regarded as a latecomer to the AI revolution.
• ChatGPT has been dubbed the “End of Google Search” because conversational AI can provide long, essay-style, and sometimes elegant responses to user queries.
• Of course, not all of these are correct, but AI is capable of self-correction and learning from mistakes.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/lamda-powered-bard-googles-answer-to-chatgpt-sundar-pichai/videoshow/97697659.cms#:~:text=LaMDA%20powered%20Bard%2C%20Google's%20answer%20to%20ChatGPT%3A%20Sundar%20Pichai,-ET%20Online%20%7C%2007&text=Google%20has%20announced%20Bard%2C%20a,progress%20during%20an%20earnings%20call.

Over other forms of treatment, the new CAR T-Cell Immunotherapy holds promise for Ovarian Cancer patients.

What are CAR T-cells?

• Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies represent a quantum leap in cancer treatment sophistication.
• CAR T-cell therapies use a patient’s own cells, as opposed to chemotherapy or immunotherapy, which require mass-produced injectable or oral medication.
• They are genetically modified in the lab to activate T-cells, a type of immune cell, to attack tumours.
• After conditioning the cells to multiply more effectively, they are infused back into the patient’s bloodstream.
• The cells are more specific than targeted agents and directly activate the patient’s immune system against cancer, increasing clinical efficacy.
• This is why they’re called ‘living drugs’.

How does the therapy function?

• CAR T-cell therapy involves drawing the patient’s blood to harvest T-cells, which are immune cells that play an important role in destroying tumour cells.
• In the laboratory, researchers modify these cells so that they express specific proteins on their surfaces, known as chimeric antigen receptors (CAR).
• They have a preference for proteins found on the surface of tumour cells.
• This change in cellular structure allows CAR T-cells to effectively bind to and destroy tumours.
• The patient’s immune system clears the tumour as the final step in its destruction.

Where is it used?

• As of today, CAR T-cell therapy has been approved for leukaemias (cancers arising from the cells that produce white blood cells) and lymphomas (arising from the lymphatic system).
• These cancers are caused by the uncontrolled reproduction of a single clone of cells, which means that after a single type of cell undergoes cancerous transformation, it produces millions of identical copies.
• As a result, the CAR T-cell target is consistent and reliable.
• CAR T-cell therapy is also used in patients whose cancers have returned after a successful initial treatment or who have not responded to previous chemotherapy or immunotherapy combinations.
• Its response rate varies. The efficacy in certain types of leukaemias and lymphomas can reach 90%, whereas it is significantly lower in other types of cancer.

How widespread is its application?

• The difficulty in preparing CAR T-cells has been a major impediment to their use.
• The first clinical trial demonstrating their efficacy was published nearly a decade ago, but the first indigenously developed therapy in India was only successfully performed in 2022.
• This therapy necessitates a significant amount of technical and human resources.
• Treatments in the United States can cost more than a million dollars.
• Trials are currently underway in India, with companies attempting to manufacture CAR T-cells at a fraction of the cost.
• The preliminary findings are encouraging.

What exactly are conventional cancer treatments?

• Surgery (removing the cancer), radiotherapy (delivering ionising radiation to the tumour), and systemic therapy are the three main types of cancer treatment (chemotherapy- administering medicines that act on the tumour only).
• Surgery and radiotherapy have been greatly refined over time, while advances in systemic therapy have been unprecedented.
• CAR T-cell therapy is a new development in this field that is capturing the attention of many researchers worldwide.

Will this therapy be as expensive in India?

• Any new therapy introduced in India faces the twin challenges of cost and value.
• Critics argue that developing facilities in India may be redundant and/or inappropriate because CAR T-cell therapy will be unaffordable to the majority of Indians even if it becomes cheaper.
• Those who can afford it and need it are already receiving it abroad.
• While this is correct, it may be the correct answer to the incorrect question.
• Every patient has the right to access a global standard of care; the next step is to figure out how to make it more affordable.

Source: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cells

NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), an earth-observation satellite jointly developed by NASA and ISRO, is set to be shipped to India later this month for a September launch.

NISAR

• Under a partnership agreement signed in 2014, space agencies from the United States and India collaborated to build NISAR.
• The satellite, weighing 2,800 kilogrammes, is equipped with both L-band and S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments, making it a dual-frequency imaging radar satellite.
• ISRO provided the S-band radar, the GSLV launch system, and the spacecraft, while NASA provided the L-band radar, GPS, a high-capacity solid-state recorder to store data, and a payload data subsystem.
• The satellite’s large 39-foot stationary antenna reflector is also an important component.
• The reflector, which is made of gold-plated wire mesh, will be used to focus the radar signals emitted and received by the upward-facing feed on the instrument structure.

What exactly is the mission?

• NISAR will observe subtle changes in Earth’s surfaces once launched into space, allowing researchers to better understand the causes and consequences of such phenomena.
• It will detect natural disaster warning signs such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and landslides.
• The satellite will also measure groundwater levels, track glacier and ice sheet flow rates, and monitor the planet’s forest and agricultural regions, which will help us better understand carbon exchange.
• NISAR will generate high-resolution images using synthetic aperture radar (SAR).
• SAR can penetrate clouds and collect data day and night, regardless of weather conditions.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/nasa-hands-over-payload-of-nisar-satellite-to-isro-101675535710282.html#:~:text=NISAR%20(NASA%2DIsro%20Synthetic%20Aperture,said%20Isro%20in%20a%20statement.

According to a new study, researchers are investigating the fortress wall of Xi’an, an ancient Chinese city, using tiny outer space particles known as ‘Muon,’ which can penetrate hundreds of metres of stone surfaces.

What are Muons?

• Muons are subatomic particles that fall from the sky.
• They are formed when particles in the Earth’s atmosphere collide with cosmic rays, which are clusters of high-energy particles moving through space at slightly slower than the speed of light.
• Every minute, approximately 10,000 muons reach every square metre of the Earth’s surface.
• These particles are similar to electrons but 207 times more massive.
• As a result, they are also known as “fat electrons” at times. Muons are so heavy that they can travel hundreds of metres through rock or other matter before being absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos.
• Electrons, on the other hand, can only travel a few centimetres. Muons are extremely unstable, lasting only 2.2 microseconds.

What is muon tomography, also known as muography?

• Muography is conceptually similar to X-ray, but due to the penetration power of muons, it can scan much larger and wider structures.
• Because these high-energy particles are naturally produced and abundant, all that is required is to place a muon detector beneath, within, or near the object of interest.
• The detector then counts the number of muons passing through the object from various angles to create a three-dimensional image.

Muons as well as archaeology

• The technique was first used in the late 1960s by Nobel Laureate and US experimental physicist Luis Alvarez, who collaborated with Egyptologists to search for hidden chambers in Giza’s Pyramid of Khafre.
• Nothing was discovered at the time.

Recent accomplishments

• In 2017, modern archaeologists repeated the experiment using more sophisticated and advanced muon detectors and made a significant discovery.
• The archaeologists discovered a previously unknown chamber at least 30 metres long by strategically placing detectors.
• It was the pyramid’s first major inner structure discovered since the nineteenth century.

Muography’s applications outside of archaeology

• Apart from archaeology, muography has found applications in customs security, internal volcano imaging, and other fields.
• After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, scientists used the technique to look inside the Fukushima nuclear reactors around 2015.
• Because the site was highly radioactive, they placed the two muon detectors in 10-centimetre-thick boxes to protect them from radiation before scanning.
• Researchers are also using muography to study Mount Vesuvius, an Italian volcano.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329546244_Applications_of_muon_absorption_radiography_to_the_fields_of_archaeology_and_civil_engineering

• Vice President said Parliament is the “North Star” of democracy, “a place of discussion and deliberation to realise the aspirations and dreams of the people”.
• The term “North Star” refers to something constant/permanent that leads and provides direction.
• Polaris, also known as the North Star or the Pole Star, is a very bright star (about 2500 times brighter than our sun) located less than one degree north of the celestial pole.
• Because of its location and brightness, humans have used it for navigation since late antiquity.
• It is located in the constellation Ursa Minor, approximately 323 light-years from Earth.

How does it aid navigation?

• It appears to rotate around all the stars in the northern sky as it stands almost motionless in the night sky.
• This makes it an ideal fixed point for drawing measurements for celestial navigation.
• Simply raising the star above the horizon gives the observer’s approximate latitude, and in the northern hemisphere, if you can see Polaris, you can always tell which way is north.
• The North Star is lost over the horizon when crossing the equator to the south and thus no longer serves as a useful navigational aid.

When was the North Star first used for navigation?

• Ptolemy, a Roman mathematician and astronomer who lived from about 85 to 165 B.C., appears to have charted Polaris first.
• While there is some evidence that the star was used for navigation in late antiquity, it is during the “Age of Exploration” that it becomes such an important part of human history.
• On his first trans-Atlantic voyage in 1492, Christopher Columbus “had to correct (his ship’s bearings) for the circle described by the pole star about the pole,” his son wrote in his biography.
• As European colonists set sail for exotic locations around the world, the North Star became increasingly important. 

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/this-word-means-north-star-8426034/

With the release of Open AI’s ChatGPT late last year, the impending changes in the nature of work, creativity, and the economy as a whole moved from the realm of futuristic jargon to an immediate challenge.

Background

• Since at least 2015, when Klaus Schwab popularised the term Fourth Industrial Revolution at that year’s World Economic Forum, terms like 4IR, AI, Internet of Things, and Future of Work have entered the lexicon of politicians, bureaucrats, consultants, and policy analysts.
• Take a look at what has happened in the last few days.
• A Colombian judge included his conversations with ChatGPT in a ruling; Microsoft is integrating the bot with its search engine, Bing, and other products; Google is reportedly developing a similar tool, and there are reports that ChatGPT can already code at an entry level for Google engineers.

Concerns

• Concerns about plagiarism in universities and beyond, as well as the fear that many white-collar jobs will become obsolete in the coming years as AI becomes more ubiquitous and sophisticated.
• Implications for labour, education, and authenticity: The AI revolution is likely to have serious implications for labour, education, content authenticity and authorship, and many other areas.
• A case study of social media’s impact on US elections: Concerns about social media’s influence on politics and society grew in the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential elections, when foreign agents were accused of voter manipulation. Much of the world is still grappling with the issues raised at the time.

ChatGPT 

• Simple explanation: ChatGPT is a chatbot that is built on a large-scale transformer-based language model that has been trained on a diverse text dataset and can generate human-like responses to prompts.
• A model of human-like language: It is based on GPT-3.5, a deep learning-based language model that generates human-like text.
• It is more engaging with details: However, ChatGPT is more engaging, whereas the older GPT-3 model only took text prompts and tried to continue with its own generated text. It produces much more detailed text and can even generate poems.
• Remembers conversations: Memory is another distinguishing feature. The bot can recall previous comments in a conversation and relay them to the user.
• Similarity to humans: A conversation with ChatGPT is similar to conversing with a smart computer that appears to have human-like intelligence.

Anticipating possible futures requires engagement with the opportunities

• The Struggle to Keep Up with Technology in Policymaking: Creating policies that keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancement is a challenge for governments all over the world.
• Policymakers must recognise the importance of bridging the gap between technology and regulation, as a growing divide could lead to problems.
• Preparing for technological change in education and the workforce: It is critical to plan for the changes that new technology will bring to education and the workforce, in addition to creating regulations that support innovation.
• This includes anticipating new job types and required skills, as well as updating the education system to better prepare future workers.

The Importance of Technological Change Preparation for India:

• For several years, India has struggled to strike a balance between privacy and regulation in data handling.
• Adapting to technological changes successfully is critical for India to make the most of its large, young workforce. If not addressed in a timely manner, the consequences may be severe.

@the end

The transformations that new technology is inevitably causing must be met with rapid adjustments in the broader national and international legal and policy architecture. The lag between technological innovation and policy, as seen with the rise of Big Data and social media, can serve as a cautionary tale.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/chatgpt-and-the-ai-challenge-8422879/lite/

A slew of recent studies has revealed that an in-body phenomenon known as immune imprinting may be making new booster vaccines far less effective than expected for coronavirus infection.

What is Immune Imprinting?

• Immune imprinting refers to the body’s tendency to repeat its immune response based on the first variant encountered.
• When our body encounters a newer or slightly different variant of the same pathogen, it does so through infection or vaccination.
• The phenomenon was first observed in 1947, when scientists noted that “people who had previously had flu, and were then vaccinated against the current circulating strain, produced antibodies against the first strain.
• It was known as the “original antigenic sin” at the time, but it is now more commonly known as imprinting.

How imprinting works for immune system?

• Imprinting serves as a database for the immune system, allowing it to respond more effectively to repeat infections.
• When our bodies are first exposed to a virus, it produces memory B cells, which circulate in the bloodstream and quickly produce antibodies whenever the same strain of the virus infects us again.
• The issue arises when the body encounters a similar, but not identical, variant of the virus.
• In such cases, the immune system activates memory B cells rather than generating new B cells.
• This results in cross-reactive antibodies, which bind to features found in both the old and new strains.

Are booster doses completely ineffective?

• These cross-reactive antibodies provide some resistance to the new strain.
• They are, however, not as effective as the ones produced by B cells when the body first encountered the virus.

How can immune imprinting be avoided?

• Several ongoing studies are currently attempting to find a solution to imprinting.
• Some scientists believe nasal vaccines may be more effective than injected vaccines in preventing infections.
• Despite carrying some imprint of previous exposure, they believe the mucous membranes will provide stronger protection.
• Researchers are also investigating whether spacing out coronavirus vaccine shots on an annual basis could help with imprinting.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-health/immune-imprinting-boosters-effective-explained-8397721/