Why in the News?
The Government of India has announced the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar as Padma-style national awards for excellence in science, technology, and innovation.
Key Highlights of 2025 Awards:
- Vigyan Ratna: Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (posthumously) – astrophysicist and cosmologist known for the Hoyle–Narlikar theory.
- Vigyan Shri: Eight scientists including Gyanendra Pratap Singh, Yusuf M. Shaikh, K. Thangaraj, Pradeep Thapalil, A.B. Pandit, Venkata Mohan, Mahan Mj, and Jayan N.
- Vigyan Yuva: Fourteen young scientists across biology, physics, and data science domains.
- Vigyan Team: CSIR Aroma Mission – for contributions to India’s flavour and fragrance sector, enhancing rural livelihood and agro-innovation.
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About Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar (RVP):
- Establishment: Instituted in January 2024 as India’s national Padma-style award for science and technology excellence, recognising scientists, technologists, and innovators of Indian origin, in India or abroad.
- Purpose: Created to replace legacy awards like the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, ensuring transparency, inclusivity, and broader scientific domain coverage.
- Governing Authority: Administered by the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar Committee (RVPC), chaired by the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India, comprising 17 members from major science ministries and research councils.
- Award Calendar:
- Announcement: Every May 11 on National Technology Day.
- Conferment: Every August 23 on National Space Day at Rashtrapati Bhavan, by the President of India.
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- Vigyan Ratna (VR): For lifetime achievement; up to 3 awards annually.
- Vigyan Shri (VS): For distinguished contributions; up to 25 awards.
- Vigyan Yuva – Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (VY-SSB): For scientists under 45 years; up to 25 awards.
- Vigyan Team (VT): For collaborative research groups (≥ 3 members); up to 3 awards.
Coverage & Eligibility:
- Scientific Domains: Thirteen fields including physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, medicine, engineering, agriculture, space science, and innovation.
- Eligibility: Open to Indian citizens and Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs); self-nominations not permitted only institutional, departmental, or peer nominations accepted.
- Award Components: Each recipient receives a Sanad signed by the President, a medallion, and a citation booklet; posthumous awards transferred to next of kin.
| [UPSC 2014] For outstanding contribution to which one of the following’ fields is Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize given?
Options: (a) Literature (b) Performing Arts (c) Science* (d) Social Service |
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Why in the News?
Google DeepMind and Google Research has unveiled Cell2Sentence-Scale 27B (C2S-Scale), an AI model based on the Gemma family, marking a major advance in scientific research.
About C2S-Scale:
- Overview: It is a large-language-model (LLM) foundation system created by Google Research, Google DeepMind, and Yale University, designed to interpret the language of cells by converting single-cell transcriptomic data into textual “cell sentences.”
- Foundation & Architecture: Built on the Gamma family of open models with 27 billion parameters, it is among the world’s largest LLMs for biological data analysis.
- Purpose: Bridges single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and natural-language reasoning, allowing biologists to query models conversationally and obtain mechanistic hypotheses instead of raw statistics.
- Experimental Validation: Predicted a CK2-inhibition (silmitasertib + interferon) pathway that increases MHC-I antigen presentation in “cold” tumours, subsequently validated in live-cell assays.
Key Features:
- Parameter Scale: ~27 B parameters showing clear scaling-law gains in biological task performance.
- Data Representation: Converts ranked gene-expression profiles into gene-name sequences, enabling LLMs to treat transcriptomes as text.
- Multimodal Training: Trained on 50 million + single-cell profiles (human + mouse) plus metadata and scientific literature, aligning molecular data with context.
- Functional Range: Performs cell-type identification, perturbation-response prediction, dataset summarisation, cluster captioning, and biological Q&A.
- Reasoning Capability: Generates new, testable hypotheses, extending AI use from pattern detection to biological inference.
- Open-Source Access: Model weights and code released via Hugging Face and partner labs for community replication and benchmarking.
| [UPSC 2025] Consider the following statements:
I. It is expected that Majorana 1 chip will enable quantum computing.
II. Majorana 1 chip has been introduced by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
III. Deep learning is machine learning.
How many of the statements given above are correct?
(a) I and II only (b) II and III only (c) I and III only * (d) I, II and III |
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