Category: Tech

India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier Vikrant was handed over to the Navy by The Cochin Shipyard on Thursday The aircraft, named after India’s first aircraft carrier, the Indian Naval Ship (INS) Vikrant, which played a significant role in the 1971 war, is 262-metre-long with a displacement of close to 45,000 tonnes. Vikrant is powered by four gas turbines and was built on a cost of close to Rs 20,000 crore.

“Indian Navy has created maritime history today by taking delivery of the prestigious Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (AC) ‘Vikrant from her builder Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL), Kochi. Designed by the Indian Navy’s in-house Directorate of Naval Design (DND) and built by CSL, a Public Sector Shipyard under the Ministry of Shipping (MoS), the carrier is christened after her illustrious predecessor, India’s first Aircraft Carrier which played a vital role in the 1971 war. Coinciding with the celebrations to commemorate the 75th anniversary of India’s independence ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, the reincarnation of Vikrant is a true testimony to the country’s zeal and fervour in pursuing capability build up towards enhanced maritime security,” said the Indian Navy.

The carrier will soon be commissioned into the Navy as the INS Vikrant, which will help strengthen the country’s position in the Indian ocean region.

In a strategic partnership model with Indian MDL and L&T defense majors, Daewoo and Navantia have proven air-independent propulsion technologies that can be applied to long-endurance submarines.

Navantia, a company that has proven AIP technology, and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering of South Korea have shown an interest in building the submarines under Project 75 (I) India of the Indian Navy.

It is unclear whether Daewoo and Navantia will be interested in building long-endurance diesel submarines in India under the strategic partnership model, despite the Defence Ministry again extending the deadline for submission of the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the advanced submarine project until November 30. Originally issued in July 2021, the RFP was extended until November 30, 2022, from the June 30, 2022, deadline.

As part of the RFP document, certain clauses concerning “joint and several penalties” need to be amended. Shortly, the Defence Acquisition Committee (DAC) will take up the amended clauses for approval. The Indian government has selected Mazagoan Docks Limited (MDL) and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) to build six air-independent propulsion (AIP) diesel attack submarines for the Indian Navy at a cost of over Rupees 40,000 crores under the strategic partnership model.

A new eye drop has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for age-related near-sightedness. According to the researchers, these eye drop solutions will have better vision throughout the day and might rule out the erst to require reading glasses.

The formulation of Vuity contains a drug known as pilocarpine. In order to facilitate rapid adaptation to tear film pH, researchers developed technology to allow eye drops to rapidly rebalance. By taking advantage of our eyes’ ability to shrink pupil size, we are able to improve near and intermediate vision while retaining distance vision.

750 subjects with presbyopia, aged 40 to 55, participated in two randomized clinical trials where the new eye drops were given to half of the participants. Meanwhile, the other half received placebo eye drops.

In neither of the clinical studies, there were any serious side effects reported apart from minor side effects like mild headaches and eye redness. Using eye drops may also cause the user to have temporary problems adjusting their focus.

These drops can be most effective for people who have trouble seeing clearly when doing daily tasks, such as reading on their phones and computers.

The newly started space tech company, Agnikul Cosmos, today inaugurated India’s first-ever 3D-printed rocket engine factory in Chennai.

The facility, named Rocket Factory 1, was unveiled by the chairman of Tata Sons and Isro, N Chandrasekaran and S Somanath respectively, in the presence of Pawan Goenka, the chairman of IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre). The factory, located at IIT-Madras Research Park, is 10,000-square-foot and will have a 400mm x 400mm x 400mm metal 3D printer from EOS that will make it possible to manufacture a complete rocket engine under one roof.

Agnikul was founded by Srinath Ravichandran, Moin SPM, and SR Chakravarthy (professor of IIT-Madras) in 2017. Its co-founder Srinath Ravichandran said that the factory could make two rocket engines every week and one launch vehicle every month.

“This is a milestone for us as we go from the R&D phase into core manufacturing with the opening of this facility, and begin productionizing the launch vehicle engine making. We have a lot of inbound interest [for launches] from global quarters going up to 2024,” Ravichandran said.

The facility will have 30-35 people working on different processes and machinery, the unit is already staffed with over 90% staff.

NASA’s new space telescope James Webb has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared view of the distant universe ever captured. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is brimming with detail.

For the first time, our view of the universe expanded. The first cosmic image from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is the farthest in terms of time and distance that humankind has ever witnessed. On Tuesday, July 12, the telescope will release four more images of the beautiful galaxy.

Webb’s first cosmic image has thousands of galaxies, including the tiniest and faintest objects with diffused features, ever seen in the infrared. This portion of the gigantic universe covers a patch of sky roundabout the size of a sand grain at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

This deep field, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is an amalgamation made from images at different wavelengths, adding up to 12.5 hours. Researchers will soon know the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s leading space science observatory. Webb will provide solutions to questions related to the solar system and delve further into faraway worlds around other stars.

On Monday, Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh launched the 75th newly developed Artificial Intelligence technologies in the first-ever ‘Al in Defense’. The AiDef symposium and exhibition were a part ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ celebration which was organized by the Ministery of Defense in New Delhi.

According to the government release, the celebration falls under multiple domains including Ai Platform Automation; Autonomous/Unmanned/Robotics system; Command; Block Chain-based Automation; Control, Communication, Computer & Intelligence, Cyber Security, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Human Behavioural Analysis; Lethal Autonomous Weapon System; Intelligence Monitoring Systems; Logistics and Supply Chain Management; Manufacturing and Maintenance; Operational Data Analytics; speech/voice analysis using Natural Language Processing.

As part of Raksha Mantri’s release of the book containing details of the 75 products, the Physical as well as the E-version shows the collective efforts put by the Services, Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), and the private sector in the area of AI over the past four years. Rajnath Singh recognized that AI represents a radical step forward in human development; a sign that we are the most advanced creatures in the universe.

Singh also appreciated that the Ministry of Defence, Armed Forces, the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), and the Defense Public Sector Undertakings are developing innovative and indigenous AI solutions.

On Wednesday, the researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras developed an Artificial Intelligence-based tool- PIVOT that can detect cancer-causing genes in individuals. As per WTO, cancer is one of the main causes of death worldwide.

According to the institute, this tool will be beneficial for the strategic treatment of cancer which will predict genes that are responsible for causing it, and details are published in a peer-reviewed journal ‘Frontier in Genetics’.

The statement read, “The prediction is based on a model that utilizes information on mutation, expression of genes, and copy number variation in genes and perturbations in the biological network due to an altered gene expression”.

IIT-Madras Dean (Global Engagement) Raghunathan Rengaswamy, and Professor Karthik Raman, both affiliated with the Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, and members of the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBCDSAI) led the research project. Researcher Malvika Sudhakar was also affiliated with the IIT-Madras.

Core member of RBCDSAI, IIT Madras Dr. Karthik Raman said, “Cancer is a complex disease which does not support one treatment. These models that help in pinpointing differences between patients are very useful as cancer treatment increasingly moves toward personalised medicine

Scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have found three subatomic particles, an unprecedented discovery, as they work to access the functionality of the building blocks of the universe, the European nuclear research center CERN said on Tuesday.

The LHC at CERN, 27 kilometers (16.8 miles) long, is the machine that discovered the Higgs boson particle, which in combination with its linked energy field, is paramount to the creation of the universe after the Big Bang billions of years ago.

Now CERN scientists say they have seen a new type of “pentaquark” and the first-ever pair of “tetra quarks”, adding three new particles to the list of new hadrons discovered at the LHC.

This will enable physicists to understand clearly how quarks bind into composite particles.

Quarks are subatomic particles that usually form in groups of twos and threes to form hadrons, such as the protons and neutrons that make up the atomic nuclei.

Quarks rarely combine into four-quark (tetra quarks) and five-quark (Penta quarks) particles.

“The more analyses we perform, the more kinds of exotic hadrons we find,” physicist Niels Tuning remarked in a statement. “We’re witnessing a period of discovery similar to the 1950s when a ‘particle zoo’ of hadrons started being discovered and ultimately led to the quark model of conventional hadrons in the 1960s. We’re creating ‘particle zoo 2.0’.”

A Virgin Orbit rocket bearing seven U.S. Defense Department satellites was launched from a special Boeing 747 that took off from the Southern California coast and dashed toward space Friday night.

The transformed large airliner set out from Mojave Air and Space Port in the Mojave Desert and set free the rocket over the Pacific Ocean, northwest of Los Angeles.

 The U.S Space Force persuaded the launch of a Defense Department test program. The seven satellites will carry out several experiments.

“And there we have it, folks!” the company’s note on Twitter read, just before 1 a.m. local time, about an hour after the rocket separated from the Boeing. “NewtonFour successfully reignited and deployed all customer spacecraft into their target orbit.”

This was the fourth commercial launch of Virgin Orbit and its first night launch. The launch was to take place on Wednesday night, but could not happen due to a temperature issue.

Richard Branson, a British billionaire founded Virgin Orbit in 2017. Its headquarters are in Long Beach, California, and presently carries out launches from the Mojave airport but is thinking of going international

Towards the end of 2022, the company will launch two satellites, flying out of Newquay Airport in Cornwall, England, to conduct radio signal monitoring tests.

In an attempt to reduce or end CO2 emissions, the 27-member European Union approved and announced its plan early Wednesday to end the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2035.

The step put forward in July 2021 will put an end to sales of petrol and diesel cars and also light commercial vehicles, entirely shifting to electric engines in the European Union from 2035.

The plan is meant to help fulfill Europe’s climate objectives, mostly carbon neutrality by 2050.

The plea of countries including Germany and Italy, the EU-27 also accepted to contemplate a future green light for the use of replacement technologies such as synthetic fuels or plug-in hybrids

While the agreement is intended to achieve the complete elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental NGOs have opposed the technologies.

French Minister of Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher, who chaired Tuesday night’s meeting said, “This is an enormous challenge for our automotive industry” She also said these decisions would “allow a planned and accompanied transition”

The continent’s automotive industry, which is already making tremendous investments in the move to electric vehicles, fears the social impact of a rapid change.

At a press conference, Frans Timmermans, the EU Commission Vice President in charge of the European Green Deal, said “The overwhelming majority of car manufacturers have chosen electric cars”.