Category: Tech

China is set to blast its ambitious ‘mega constellation’ of up to 13,000 satellites that will operate in low Earth orbit, akin to SpaceX Starlink. China is said to be rolling out 5G mobile internet via this network.

The mega constellation plan was dubbed the “Guowang” (GW) when it was first announced in 2021. It was designed in a way that it can complement satellite-based internet services.

This project is a high-level project for the Chinese government which is likely to disturb the internet and communications services around the globe.

Initially, the contracts were awarded to enterprises to commence the development work in China’s city Chongqing. Operation and the network coverage are unclear, however, the project aims to fill the gaps in service rural areas and terrestrial communications. It will be made up of hundreds to thousands of satellites that will work together to cover the entire globe, most of which will operate just a few hundred miles above the Earth’s surface to provide better internet services.

According to an article published by Observer Research Foundation, providing internet service via low-Earth orbit (LEO) has posed a number of challenges, with China emerging as the newest participant along with American corporations and EU nations. This has raised snooping concerns in the west.

A low-cost smartphone was developed by US researchers based on the diagnostic tool for COVID-19 which combines the speed of over-the-counter antigen tests with the accuracy of PCR tests. Researchers at the University of Washington in the US developed the Harmony COVID-19 test by detecting genetic material from the SARS, CoV-2 virus.

The Harmony kit provides results in less than 20 minutes while the conventional PCR tests take several hours. An associate professor at the University of Washington Bary Lutz said, “We designed the test to be low-cost and simple enough that it could be used anywhere. We hope that low-cost will make high-performance testing more accessible locally and around the world”.

Most of the at-home antigen kits earlier detected pieces of protein created instead of the generic material which led to 80-85 percent accuracy. However, PCR tests are usually 95% accurate that need expensive equipment and a long wait for the results. Meanwhile, the Harmony kit is said to be 97% accurate for nasal swabs. The kit detects three different regions of the virus genome.

According to the research, the new test will still be able to detect other mutations, even if a variant has many mutations in one region.

Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) scientists have developed a computer program that can detect those people who are at a higher risk of developing depression. Like Fitbit watches, the predictive program analyses a person’s sleep patterns, physical activity, and circadian rhythms through data from wearable devices.

In 2019, for three months, 290 adults carried a trial that showed the program has an accuracy of 80 % in detecting those with depression. It also shows people who are at a high risk of developing depressive symptoms/depression when compared to healthy individuals. The adults wore a tracking device for two weeks, aged between 21 and 69 years with an average age of 33 years.

Director of the Centre for Population Health Sciences at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Professor Josip Car said that to fine-tune and improve the machine-learning algorithm, his team is planning for larger studies of more than 1,000 participants and monitoring them for two years.

According to the World Health Organisation’s website, 264 million people are affected with depression globally, out of which there are half of the cases that are undiagnosed and untreated.

5G rollout in the US throws airlines across the world into turmoil as the signals from the new 5G phone service are interfering with the airplane navigation system. Some commonly used jets like the Boring 777 are posing a risk to aircraft instruments. They will need to be under retrofitting to avoid the issue.

5G is considered as the new generation mobile internet connection with which one can download and upload data much faster. For this, the 5G services rely on greater use of radio signals.

The radiofrequency used in the US for 5G is a part of the spectrum known as C-Band. It is close to the one used by radio altimeters on airplanes. Some US 5G providers use the C-band spectrum at 3.7-3.98 GHz, close to the international aeronautical band’s 4.2-4.4 GHz.

The airline industries across the world are concerned that interference from the 5G transmission can stop the instruments from working properly and can cause safety problems while landing the aircraft.

A trade association representing major US airlines said this could lead to “catastrophic disruption”.

After last-minute conversations with government officials, AT&T and Verizon agreed to delay the switchover of hundreds of 5G cell towers near U.S. airports. The companies did not specify the length of the suspension or the area around airports.

On January 19, the chairman and chief executive of global pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., Albert Bourla was awarded the most prestigious Genesis Prize for his efforts in leading the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the Genesis Prize Foundation, in an online campaign, Mr. Bourla had received the largest number of votes in which more than 2,00,000 people across 71 countries voted in favor of him. The foundation grants each year $1 million to a person for their professional achievements, contributions to humanity, and commitment to Jewish values.

The citation praised his “leadership, determination, and especially his willingness to assume great risks.” This was in relation to Pfizer’s decision to turn down U.S. government funding early in the pandemic, which was instrumental in reducing bureaucracy and expediting the vaccine’s development.

After Pfizer’s partner BioNTech received funding from the German government, the company signed a large supply contract with the United States. Pfizer was at the forefront of global efforts to combat the coronavirus, with its vaccine the first one to be approved for use in the U.S. and Europe.

Mr. Bourla said that he accepts the prize humbly and on behalf of all his Pfizer colleagues who answered the urgent call of history.

On Tuesday, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Florida witnessed a two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off topped with 49 Starlink satellites.

The landing marked the booster’s 10th successful landing after previously carrying out six Starlink missions, the GPS III-3 satellite for the U.S. military, the Turksat 5A satellite for Turkey, and the Transporter 2 rideshare mission, which launched 85 small satellites and three Starlink craft.

It took 15 minutes for Falcon 9’s second stage to deploy the 49 satellites into orbit after launch. As the second stage was out of range of ground stations when that happened, confirmation of deployment success did not arrive until an hour later.

A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast, was a perfect landing spot for the rocket’s first stage about nine minutes after launch.

Among the 36 dedicated Starlink missions flown by SpaceX today, more than 2,000 Starlink satellites have been lofted. Except for two prototypes known as TinTin A and TinTin B, all the other spacecraft have been launched since May 2019.

Before the launch, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said, “1,469 Starlink satellites are active. 272 moving to operational orbits. Laser links activate soon”. According to reports, there are many more Starlink launches that are going to happen in the coming weeks and months.

On Monday, for the first time in medical history, doctors transplanted a pig’s heart into a patient. To save patience’s life, the last-ditch effort was made at Maryland hospital where he is said to be doing fine after three days of highly experimental surgery.

57-year-old Maryland handyman, David Bennett was aware of the fact that this experiment has no guarantee. However, he agreed as he had no option and he was dying, and ineligible for a human heart transplant. He said that it was a do-or-die situation for him and he wanted to live.

On Monday, he was able to breathe on his own while being connected to a heart-lung machine that supported his new heart. He is under the doctor’s careful observation.

However, it is too early to know if the operation will really work. It answered the long quest of using animal organs for saving human lives. The lack of human organs shortage for an organ transplant, driving scientists to try animal organs instead.

United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, says there were just over 3,800 heart transplants last year, a record number.

In the face of an outbreak of the Omicron coronavirus that threatens Beijing’s zero-Covid policy, the race for a messenger RNA vaccine has become even more urgent in China. In China, the progress of domestic mRNA vaccine had been low as the nation’s pharmaceutical companies initially opted for traditional inactivated virus technology in vaccines.

In November, to test mRNA vaccine candidates in a booster trial, Chinese biotech company Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and its partner Walvax Biotechnology received a green signal from the higher authorities. These vaccines provide higher levels of protection against the new Omicron variant than the existing shots made by China. Suzhou’s vaccine contains the same technology that is used in the Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines.

China’s pandemic strategy, in which authorities impose strict lockdown measures on areas with local outbreaks, is believed to have prevented the deaths suffered by some western countries from a recent pandemic. However, it left China isolated and confined its own millions of citizens in their homes to prevent the outbreak. Director-general Jerome Kim of the International Vaccine Institute in South Korea said that the “old-fashioned [inactivated] vaccine” was used by the Chinese pharmaceutical industry as the existing one was easily available and was used by billions of people.

Britain surely is separating itself from Europe, but it has initiated to connect with Norway through a widening web of undersea cables which will tap the nation’s important power source to the continent fulfilling its aspirations of clean energy.

Recently, the longest and the strongest of all the cables has been laid down across the North Sea. The cable stretches 450 miles from a Hydroelectric plant based in the Rugged mountains of Norway to an industrial port in Northeast England called Blyth. There are twin cables, each about 5 inches in diameter. Its massiveness can carry enough power for almost 1.5 million homes.

This initiative will balance the power systems of the two nations and be advantageous in terms of fulfilling the differences between their resources. Britain would be able to tap into Norway’s hydropower, while Norway would be able to take advantage of surges of electricity from the Britain wind farms that would be wasted otherwise.

With the rapidly increasing demand for renewable energy sources, this endeavour would help spread the use of clean energy sources by both nations and also connect Britain to the continent in a productive manner.

Last Sunday, Germany gave a nod to the plan of the European Union where they are going to label some of their natural gas energy projects as “green investments.” However, it is stuck on the fact that it would not support the same kind of projects concerning nuclear power in the country.

On Friday, Germany shut down three of its six nuclear power stations as it proceeds to completely withdraw from nuclear energy because of its increased risk, especially after the accident caused by the meltdown of the reactor in Japan in 2011. Although nuclear power plants emit the lowest amount of CO2 gas, it is still not a safe source of energy for the nation as it is prone to several hazards that could prove to be fatal for the nation. 

The German government believes that greenhouse gas can be a useful environment-friendly resource that can help in reducing CO2 emissions. One of their government spokespeople said that natural gas is a sustainable source of energy and therefore it is supporting the EU in its operations. But its government has confirmed that it would never support the nuclear power projects as they do not believe it is a sustainable source of energy and can be harmful to the nation.