Category: Tech

The Economic Survey 2023, presented on Tuesday ahead of the Union Budget, said that India clocked 200% increase in rural internet subscriptions in six years, compared to the 158 per cent growth clocked by urban areas in the same period. It also said that Unified Payments Interface (UPI) accounted for 52 per cent of the total 8,840 crore financial digital transactions in financial year 2022.

The survey stated that UPI-based transactions in value and volume terms were 121 per cent and 114 per cent, respectively. In December 2022, it was at its highest with 782 crore transactions worth Rs 12.8 lakh crore. The UPI processed 2,922 crore contactless merchants’ transactions with a total value over Rs 21.7 lakh crore in FY23 till December 2022. The facility saw a wide use during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among small and micro merchants. The government is also pushing for its adoption through UPI/RuPay powered apps in international markets such as Singapore, UAE, France, and the Netherlands. It acknowledged dedicated digital drives across rural areas through ambitious government schemes, like the flagship BharatNet Project Scheme, Telecom Development Plan, Aspirational District Scheme, initiatives in Northeastern Region through Comprehensive Telecom Development Plan and initiatives towards areas affected by Left Wing Extremism, etc. The survey also called the rollout of 5G services a “landmark achievement in telecommunications” in India.

Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya and Union Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh launched iNCOVACC, world’s first made-in-India intranasal vaccine on Thursday, as the country marked its 74th Republic Day.

The vaccine has been made by Bharat Biotech. Its chairman and managing director Krishna Ella confirmed this while participating in the ‘Face-to-Face with New Frontiers in Science’ segment of the IISF, organised at the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology on Saturday.

In December, Bharat Biotech had announced that it would sell the intranasal vaccine for ₹325 per shot for procurement by the government, and ₹800 per shot for private vaccination centres. Recently, the company had announced iNCOVACC® (BBV154) as a booster dose in the country.

iNCOVACC® is a recombinant replication-deficient adenovirus vectored vaccine with a pre-fusion-stabilised SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. This vaccine candidate was evaluated in phases I, II and III clinical trials with successful results. The vaccine has been specifically formulated to allow intranasal delivery through nasal drops. The nasal delivery system has been designed and developed to be cost-effective in low- and middle-income countries.

Clinical trials were conducted to evaluate iNCOVACC as a primary dose schedule and as a heterologous booster dose for subjects who have previously received two doses of either Covishield or Covaxin.

Using the data from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) near Pune, astronomers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and McGill University, Canada, have detected a radio signal emitted by atomic hydrogen in an extremely distant galaxy. The signal has crossed an astronomical distance that is the largest so far by a fair margin. The findings were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Atomic hydrogen is the basic fuel required for star formation. It emits radio waves with a wavelength of 21 cm, which can be detected using low-frequency radio telescopes such as the GMRT. So far, the most distant galaxy detected using 21 cm emission was at redshift z = 0.376. However, with the latest GMRT data, Arnab Chakraborty of McGill University and Nirupam Roy of the IISc detected the radio signal with redshift z = 1.29.

The detection of the special radio wavelength from the most distant galaxy will help astronomers investigate how the earliest stars form. As it is the first confirmed detection of strong lensing of 21 cm emission from a galaxy, it also opens up exciting new possibilities for probing the cosmic evolution of neutral gas with existing and upcoming low-frequency radio telescopes.

A 5G and 4G telecom technology stack developed in India will be rolled out in the country this year and the platform will be offered to the world from next year, Union Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Monday.

Speaking at The Business 20 (B20), the official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, Vaishnaw said that only five countries in the world have end-to-end 4G-5G telecom technology stack, but now with the public-private partnership, India has developed its own technology, which has been tested to handle 10 million simultaneous calls.

“Our private and public partnership approach has given us a solution where the core was developed, invested by the public sector, public funds, and everything else sitting on it comes from the private partners. In this entire 2023, we will be rolling it out on about 50,000 to 70,000, towers, sites and then in 2024 will be offering it to the world,” Vaishnaw said.

He said that the government took an approach to create a public-private partnership using public funds and create certain platforms. The model was initially used to create a payment system platform which banks joined, then insurance companies, e-commerce, start-ups and then people came in, democratising the entire digital benefits.

As part of the G20 presidency, a B20 inception meeting began on Sunday with over 600 delegates deliberating on issues ranging from climate change, innovation, global digital cooperation and resilient global value chains. 

Switzerland-based start-up Climeworks has claimed that it has captured carbon dioxide from the open air. The venture used direct-air capture technology and stored it underground in the first of its kind industry discovery.

Climeworks AG has sold carbon credits to companies, including Microsoft and Shopify, in order to offset their emissions. The start-up has commercial carbon capture facilities in Switzerland and Iceland. It announced that it has sequestered carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using its facility in Iceland and stored the substance underground. The action was independently verified by risk management company DNV, and the resulting carbon credits were sold to Microsoft, Shopify and Stripe, the start-up’s first corporate customers.

Once Climeworks’ carbon-capture plant in Iceland is at full scale, it will remove 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which is roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 800 cars in a year.

Climeworks has also committed to creating a carbon-capture hub in the Gulf Coast of the US. The company says that the facility will remove 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by the end of the decade.

European officials and Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf inaugurated the European Union’s first mainland orbital launch complex in Arctic Sweden on Friday. The members of the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, were a visit to Sweden.

The new facility at Esrange Space Center near the city of Kiruna should complement the EU’s current launching capabilities in French Guiana. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said small satellites are crucial to tracking natural disasters in real time and help guarantee global security, especially post Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The first satellite launch from the new launch complex is expected next year. The total number of satellites could reach 100,000 by 2040, much higher than the current 5,000 operational satellites, said the Swedish Space Corp. (SSC).

The SSC chief executive Stefan Gardefjord called the new launchpad a giant leap for SSC, for Sweden, for Europe and the rest of the world. “Satellites are decisive for many functions of the daily lives of today’s modern world, and the need for them will only increase in the years to come with space playing an even more important role,” he added.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a new process to convert two common types of plastic waste into biochar that can potentially be used as a soil additive. The process promises a solution to the problem of the massive plastic waste causing pollution of our streams, rivers and oceans, and affecting marine life severely.

The method converts two common forms of plastic – polystyrene, which is used in styrofoam packing and PET, which is commonly used to make water bottles – into a highly porous form of charcoal, or char. The highly-porous biochar formed from the new process has a high surface area and could potentially be used for purposes such as soil remediation or as a fuel. The researchers believe it could also be added to soil to improve its water retention capability or aerate farmlands, and fertilise the soil as it breaks down naturally. Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz, who led the research at the university, said further work needs to be done to test the actual effects of this compound on the soil.

The process begins with the mixing of the two common types of plastic with corn stover – corn waste including leaves, husks and cobs of corn. The mixture is then treated with highly compressed hot water in a process called hydrothermal carbonisation.

India successfully carried out a test launch of tactical ballistic missile Prithvi-II from a test range off the Integrated Test Range, Chandipur off the coast of Odisha on Tuesday.

The Prithvi-II Short Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM) missile, with a range of around 350 kilometres, struck its target with “high accuracy,” said the Defence Ministry in a statement. It said the “user training launch” successfully validated all operational and technical parameters of the missile.

A well-established system, the SRBM has been an integral part of India’s nuclear deterrence. The training launch of the nuclear-capable Prithvi-II struck its target with high precision.

The Prithvi-II SRBM was inducted into the Strategic Forces Command in 2003. It is the first missile to be developed under Defence Research and Development Organization’s prestigious Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMDP). The surface-to-surface missile is powered by light propulsion twin engines. It uses an advanced inertial navigation system to engage its target with enhanced precision and is capable of carrying payloads weighing 500 kg to 1000 kg.

A one-of-its-kind ‘Interactive Science Park’ being developed in Hyderabad will be ready by the end of January 2022.

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is giving final touches to the park, located in the midst of guesthouses, hospitals and residential apartments, beside Medicover Hospital at Patrikanagar in Serilingampally.

The park spread over three acres of land includes science theme-based facilities as well as charging points and Wi-Fi access and open interactive seating areas for individuals to work on their laptops. There will be a children’s play area, a café, ramps for senior citizens and specially-abled, walkways, gazebos, posh seating arrangements, a water cascade, lush greenery, washrooms, and a security room.

“People can learn about Newton’s laws of motion through the equipment available here. Similarly, other science concepts based on physics can be learned by visiting the park,” a GHMC official said.

Besides learning the concepts of science, the park also offers recreational facilities to people of all age groups. With IT companies, hostels, guest houses, hospitals and residential apartments located around the park, the GHMC officials have built public spaces like a cafeteria to cater to the needs of all visitors.

India is ‘Number 1’ in terms of artificial intelligence (AI) projects, said Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella. He said that if the next big age is going to be AI, India has the required human capital, which is already doing innovative things.

Nadella was speaking at the Microsoft Future Ready Leadership Summit in Mumbai early this month. He said that India is the second biggest contributor to the developer ecosystem, and will be the third largest economy by the end of this decade.

Nadella added that AI is going to accelerate human creativity, human ingenuity and human productivity across a range of tasks. By 2025, most applications will be built on cloud-native infrastructure. He also spoke about ChatGPT, an AI-driven chatbot.

He said, as India embarks on its digital journey, Microsoft wishes to move in and provide every part of its tech stack to the country and its innovators, to help it become the $1 trillion digital economy. He also said that India’s tax spend as a percentage of its GDP is becoming normalised compared to the developed world, and is now among the top 10 countries.

In another statement, the Microsoft CEO said that the company is investing capital in India, such as in building new data centres.