Under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the Union Ministry of Education has come up with a plan to create unique ID numbers for school students across India. The ‘One Nation One Student ID’ called Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) will be for every student, from pre-primary to higher education. This is in addition to the 12-digit Aadhaar ID that every student has. The APAAR ID, an Education Ecosystem Registry or edulocker, is to be treated as a lifelong ID number and will track students’ academic journey and achievements. The Union Ministry has directed
A family’s quest to find a missing gold earring in Norway led its members to well-preserved artifacts from the Viking era in their garden, piquing the interest of the Cultural Heritage of Vestfold and Telemark County Council and shedding new light on the history of Jomfruland, Norway. The Aasvik Family in Jomfruland stumbled upon relics dating back more than 1,000 years when they activated their metal detector. Settlements have existed on Jomfruland for many years. It is believed that the island was inhabited during the Viking era, but evidence previously extended only to the early Middl
To own a car in Singapore, a buyer must bid for a certificate that now costs $106,000, as a post-pandemic recovery has driven up the cost of its vehicle quota system to record highs. The city-state has a 10-year “certificate of entitlement” (COE) system. Introduced in 1990, the COE controls the number of vehicles in the country, which is home to 5.9 million people and can be covered by road in less than an hour. The quota, offered through a bidding process, has made it the most expensive city in the world to buy a car, with the COE more than quadrupling from 2020 prices for a large
Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman (Medicine); Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier (Physics); Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov (Chemistry); Jon Fosse (Literature); and Claudia Goldin (Economics) are the winners of Nobel Prize for 2023. The US-based duo of Hungarian-born Kariko and American Weissman won the Nobel Prize in Physiology on October 2 for research that led directly to the first mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19. They began researching this in the late 1990s and published a key finding in 2005. Their research enabled the development of COVID-19 vaccines by
Scientists from the University of Southern California have discovered a sixth basic sense the human tongue can feel - ammonium chloride. Their research published in the journal Nature Communications on October 5 suggests that protein receptors on the tongue that help detect the sour taste also respond to ammonium chloride, which is a popular ingredient in some Scandinavian candies. Salt licorice has been a popular candy in some northern European countries at least since the early 20th century and its ingredients consist of salmiak salt, or ammonium chloride. The recent research uncovere
Singapore has become the newest and sixth member of the Blue Zone – an elite club of regions in the world where people live healthier and longer lives – according to Dan Buettner, a journalist and researcher who popularised the use of the term. Regions in the Blue Zone have several traits in common that let them achieve longevity. The traits include moving regularly, depending on a plant-based diet, and living with purpose. The original five Blue Zone regions are Okinawa in Japan, Sardina in Italy, Ikaria in Greece, Nicoya in Costa Rica, and Loma Linda in California. Unlike the o
Indians are in a race to buy luxury homes at 10 times the price under a revived project on Dubai's Palm Islands, says a Bloomberg report. In September, investors and brokers were spotted outside the sales centre of Nakheel PJSC where five-to-seven bedroom villas are being sold on the yet-undeveloped Palm Jebel Ali. Luxury homes here start at 18.7 million dirhams ($5.1 million), which is an estimated Rs 42.21 crore. The cheapest plots of land are available at about 40 million dirhams (Rs 90.30 crore approx). The media report said that luxury real estate has revived tremendously even as D
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced the funding and building of one of the largest computing systems dedicated to nonprofit life science research in the world. The effort will provide the scientific community with access to predictive models of healthy and diseased cells, leading to groundbreaking new discoveries that could help cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century. The high-performance computing cluster, which is planned to comprise more than 1,000 GPUs, will enable artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models for biomedicine at scale.
The oldest-known aquarium fish tanked at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco Bay Area for the past 85 years is 92 years, announced the California Academy of Sciences in September. A cutting-edge DNA analysis found the age of the female Australian lungfish, Methuselah. The analysis was led by researchers of two Australia-based government agencies. The 4-foot long, 40-pound Methuselah, named after the oldest person mentioned in the Bible, came at the aquarium via a Matson Navigation Company shipping liner in 1938. The fish earned its name ‘lungfish,’ as it distinguishes itself fro
Geoscientists have discovered the eighth continent on planet Earth. After almost 375 years, a team of geologists and seismologists has created a newly refined map of Zealandia or Te Riu-a-Maui. The researchers found it by using the data obtained from dredged rock samples recovered from the ocean floor. The details of the research have been published in the journal Tectonics. Zealandia is a continent of 1.89 million sq miles (4.9 million sq km) - around six times the size of Madagascar. It is 94% underwater, with just a handful of islands, similar to New Zealand, says Andy Tulloch, a geolog