The United States Air Force's newest fifth-generation fighters F-35A Lightning II and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made a debut at Aero India 2023 on February 13-17. Arguably the world’s most advanced fifth-generation fighters, the aircraft arrived at Yelahanka Air Force Station in Bengaluru after their respective journeys from Utah and Alaska air force bases in the USA. Sending a wave of excitement through the crowds at the exposition, the fighter jets were a sight for selfie-clicking. The planes will conduct daily aerial demonstrations at Aero India 2023, a five-day marquee event. “T
The Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has announced that air taxis will start operating in Dubai by 2026. The UAE premier also approved the designs of four aerial taxi "vertiports", one of which will be located near Dubai International Airport. The air taxi fare would be initially high but could be in the range of an Uber eventually, media reports stated. Sheikh Mohammed made the announcement on Twitter, where he revealed that he had approved designs for air taxi stations at the World Government Summit in Dubai this week. A video with the t
Chinese scientists have cloned three “super cows” that are able to produce 18,000 litres of milk per year and over 100,000 litres of milk in their lifetimes. The accomplishment may help reduce China’s dependency on imported dairy cows, say experts. For cloning, the scientists from the Northwest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology took somatic cells from the ears of highly productive Dutch Holstein Frisian cattle and placed them in surrogate cows, read a news release from the university. This technique of somatic cell nuclear transfer was the same used to cr
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune is working on India’s first indigenous family of microprocessors. C-DAC’s roadmap for processors is aimed at helping the country become self-reliant in microprocessors development using indigenous design. C-DAC has made significant progress in the development of the VEGA series of dual-core and quad-core microprocessors, and two designs are ready for fabrication, said Director General Magesh Ethirajan. The first one is a 32-bit embedded processor which could be used in smart energy meters, smart water and gas meters, Intern
Astronomers have observed 12 additional moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing its total number of confirmed moons to 92. The king of the planets, Jupiter is the largest one in our solar system and now also the one with the most known moons. The discovery was made during observations by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and his team. The team used technologies like the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii in September 2021 and the Dark Energy Camera located on the Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in August 2022. The Dark Energy Camera
NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), an Earth science satellite being jointly built by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), got a send-off ceremony in California before it shipped out to India. ISRO Chairman S Somanath, JPL Director Laurie Leshin, and dignitaries from NASA headquarters, including Bhavya Lal, NASA's associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy were present at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the send-off. Outside the facility, NASA's NISAR Project Manager Phil Barela a
In Dubai, businesses across industries are betting big on robotics and automation (R&A), with billions of dollars being reserved for the implementation of these emerging technologies to boost productivity and efficiency. With the opportunities in the area of robotics and automation expected to grow considerably over the next decade, the emirate is setting its sights on becoming a key global player in the industry. It aims for the sector to contribute 9% to its gross domestic product (GDP) in the next 10 years. Under this vision, Dubai is making a concerted effort to develop
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.
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 fo
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