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Just over five years ago, on 22 February 2019, an unmanned space probe was placed in orbit around the Moon. Named Beresheet and built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, it was intended to be the first private spacecraft to perform a soft landing. Among the probe’s payload were tardigrades, renowed for their ability to survive…
As the world rushes to make use of the latest wave of AI technologies, one piece of high-tech hardware has become a surprisingly hot commodity: the graphics processing unit, or GPU. A top-of-the-line GPU can sell for tens of thousands of dollars, and leading manufacturer NVIDIA has seen its market valuation soar past US$2 trillion as demand for…
Only two countries in the world have persisted with a breeder reactor programme: Russia and India. Recently, India loaded the core of its long-delayed prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) vessel, bringing it to the cusp of stage II of its three-stage nuclear programme. At the end of this programme, India hopes to be able to…
Read More “What is nuclear waste and what are the challenges of handling it? | Explained” »
In this photo provided by Chip Michalove, LeeBeth, a white shark, is tagged on Dec. 8, 2023, off Hilton Head Island, S.C. Scientists say the animal has been tracked further into the Gulf of Mexico than any white shark they’ve ever tagged before. | Photo Credit: AP As sharks go, LeeBeth is something like a…
Read More “How a wandering white shark’s epic journey could provide clues for protecting them” »
In a new study involving a group of polyglots, the brain activity of the participants was monitored using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging as they listened to passages read in various languages. Image for Representation. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto While most people speak only one language or perhaps two, some are proficient…
Read More “Study of polyglots offers insight on brain’s language processing” »
Intelligence is the capacity of living beings to apply what they know to solve problems. ‘Artificial intelligence’ (AI) is intelligence in a machine. There is currently no one definition of AI. A simple place to begin is with AI’s materiality, as a machine-software combination. What does the machine do? A simple example-problem in AI is…
Read More “A (very) basic guide to artificial intelligence” »
The image of Earth captured by INSAT-3DS on March 7, 2024. ISRO’s meteorological satellite, INSAT-3DS, has initiated Earth imaging operations with the meteorological payloads (6-channel Imager and 19-channel Sounder) capturing the first set of images on March 7. The INSAT-3DS satellite was launched on February 17. After completing orbit-raising operations, it reached the designated geostationary…
A file photo of Agni 5 missile. | Photo Credit: The Hindu In a major technological breakthrough and building in redundancy into the country’s nuclear weapons programme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 11 announced the successful test firing of Agni-V ballistic missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology by the Defence Research…
Read More “Proud of our DRDO scientists: PM Modi on first flight test of Agni-5 missile” »
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a roller-coaster for vaccinology — from a rare show of truly global collaboration between governments, multilateral agencies, the scientific community, and industry to huge public demand for rapid vaccine development against the new virus that had brought the world to its knees to sudden concerns of “too rapid” development when…
Read More “A man received 217 COVID shots — what does his body teach us?” »
The fruit-fly (Drosophila melanogaster) has been among the favourite organisms of genetics researchers for more than a hundred years. Many years of intense research with these diminutive creatures have led to many breakthroughs in our understanding of biology and evolution. Recently, researchers from Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology reported yet another such…
Read More “Why it matters that scientists modified a ‘sexual’ fruit fly to be asexual” »
