Category: Tech

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”.

After the reforms in the Space sector, NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) launched GSAT-24 in its first “demand-driven” communication satellite mission. They leased the entire capacity on board to Direct-to-Home (DTH) service provider Tata Play.

GSAT-24 is a Ku band communication satellite that has coverage for meeting DTH application needs across the country. Built by the Indian Space Research Organization for NSIL, the satellite, which weighs 4180 kgs, was positioned successfully into geostationary orbit by the Ariane 5 rocket, operated by Arianespace, a French Company from Kourou in French Guiana (South America), on Thursday.

NSIL, formed in March 2019, is a Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) under the Department of Space (DOS) and is the commercial arm of ISRO.

The satellite’s entire capacity on board GSAT-24 will be leased, for meeting their DTH application needs, to its dedicated customer Tata Play, the DTH business of Tata Group.

“The entire mission is fully funded by NSIL — satellite, launch, launch campaign, insurance, transportation, in-orbit maintenance, and support. Once the satellite is up in orbit, this will be fully owned and operated by NSIL,” NSIL Chairman and Managing Director Radhakrishnan Durairaj told PTI. “So, we will be the satellite operator for this particular satellite,” he said.

South Korea launched its first home-grown space rocket on June 21 in the country’s second attempt, months after its first take-off proved unsuccessful to position a payload into orbit.

If the mission is successful, South Korea will earn the reputation of becoming the 10th nation in the world to put a satellite into space with its domestically created technology. According to experts, the success of the launch would also boost the nation’s increasing space ambitions and prove, especially to its rival North Korea, that it has the potential to create technology to build space-oriented surveillance systems and powerful missiles.

As per an official report, the three-stage Nuri rocket has a functioning “performance verification” satellite that lifted off at 4 PM from South Korea’s only space launch site on a tiny island off its southern coast. Live TV telecast showed the rocket with the South Korean flag going up into the air with dazzling flames and thick white smoke. Officials said the Nuri rocket is not intended for military purposes. The result of the Launch will be announced by the officials later on Tuesday.

The first attempt in October 2021 failed as even though the rocket’s dummy payload got to the intended altitude, the rocket’s third stage engine got exhausted earlier than expected, due to which the payload couldn’t enter the orbit.

SpaceX created a record in U.S. commercial space launch after launching a hat-trick of Falcon 9 rockets in just over 36 hours from California and Florida. The incredible spaceflight triple-header launches were carried out from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Station and placed communications, military, and Starlink satellites into orbit. According to a report from Space.com, the three launches in just 36 hours, makes it the quickest sequence of triple missions by any commercial launch company in history.

On Friday, June 17, SpaceX launched 53 of its Starlink internet satellites from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and kicked a radar satellite from Vandenberg Space station in California for the German military on Saturday (June 18).

The pace at which SpaceX has made launches in 2022, even before the triple launches, is remarkable. Sunday morning’s takeover was the company’s 26th this year, with over six months still to go.

The success of SpaceX has given a reason for excitement to space enthusiasts. It was in 2015 when the first Falcon 9 core made a successful landing, and now in just seven years, SpaceX has achieved three separate launches and retrieved boosters on land and at sea. That makes it commendable for a company that, not too long ago, was related mainly to unsuccessful rocket launches.

US space agency NASA will launch three research rockets into space from a remote Australian private space port for scientific research. This will be NASA’s first blast off from a non-American commercial space port and first from Australia since 1995.

The rockets will be launched from the Arnhem Space Center, near the mining town of Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory, between June 26 and July 12, said NASA and Equatorial Launch Australia, the owner of the launch pad.

The aim of the mission is to investigate heliophysics, astrophysics, and planetary science phenomena which are observable only from the southern hemisphere.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrived in Darwin after a short visit to Indonesia on Wednesday night and will announce the rocket launch with the NT Chief Minister, Natasha Fyles, on Thursday. Albanese stated that this project would bring together the global and indigenous industries to take Australia’s space sector into new beginnings. He added that “This is a really exciting project” and is not just about the rocket launch but also about signaling a message to the next generation Australians and, indeed, Australians of any age, to understand how important science is for Australia’s future.

India placed its first order for indigenous air to air missiles worth Rs. 2,971 crore. The move was taken to cut the dependency on Russia by giving its fighter jets a fighting edge that lacked during the Balakot air engagements with Pakistan.

The order was signed with Bharat Dynamics Limited for ASTRA MK-I Beyond Visual Range (BVR) and Air to Air Missile (AAM) for an undisclosed number of missiles. They will be fitted in the Su 20 MKI fighter jets of the Indian Air Force and the naval MiG 29/KUB carrier-borne combat aircraft.

The Astra MK1 developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and outranges the current set of Russian-origin air-to-air missiles, which were used by the air force and were missing in the Balakot airstrikes in 2019.

The missiles developed by DRDO will have a range of over 100km allowing the air force more time to respond to threats from the other side of the border. In the future, these missiles are expected to gradually replace all Russian imports of long-range air-to-air missiles, and further variants are being designed that will extend their target range beyond 200 kilometers.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured images of two spiral galaxies. IC 563 and IC 564, collectively known as Arp 303, are more than 275 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sextans.

An image was created using data from two separate Hubble observations of Arp 303. The first observation used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to study the pair’s star-forming regions in infrared light. Galaxy clusters such as IC 563 and IC 564 are very bright at infrared wavelengths and show many bright star-forming regions.

Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) was used to observe bright, interesting galaxies in the sky for the second time. Hubble, the James Webb Telescope, and other telescopes will examine these new observations to find promising candidates for further study, and they will fill gaps in Hubble’s archive.

The recent discoveries helped Hubble fill in the gaps in its archive of potential materials to analyze further with Hubble, the James Webb Telescope, and other telescopes.

The Hubble Telescope also recently captured a stunning image of a giant elliptical galaxy that’s more than 2.5 times the size of our own Milky Way galaxy, which is located approximately 100 million light-years from Earth.