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Subject: Science and Technology

  • ISRO’s SSLV-D2 launched successfully

    sslv

    The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will undertake the second development flight of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV –D2).

    Payload details

    The SSLV-D2 is intended to inject ISRO’s EOS-07, U.S.-based firm Antaris’ Janus-1 and Chennai-based space start-up Space Kidz’s AzaadiSAT-2 satellites into a 450-km circular orbit in its 15 minutes flight.

    • EOS-07: is a 156.3 kg satellite designed, developed and realized by the ISRO. Its mission objective is to design and develop payload instruments compatible with microsatellite buses and new technologies that are required for future operational satellites.
    • Janus-1: Weighing around 10.2 kg, Janus-1 is a technology demonstrator, smart satellite mission based on Antaris software platform.
    • AzaadiSAT-2: A 8.7-kg satellite, AzaadiSAT-2 is a combined effort of about 750 girl students across India guided by Space Kidz India, Chennai.

    What is SSLV?

    • The SSLV is a small-lift launch vehicle being developed by the ISRO with payload capacity to deliver:
    1. 600 kg to Low Earth Orbit (500 km) or
    2. 300 kg to Sun-synchronous Orbit (500 km)
    • It would help launching small satellites, with the capability to support multiple orbital drop-offs.
    • In future a dedicated launch pad in Sriharikota called Small Satellite Launch Complex (SSLC) will be set up.
    • A new spaceport, under development, near Kulasekharapatnam in Tamil Nadu will handle SSLV launches when complete.
    • After entering the operational phase, the vehicle’s production and launch operations will be done by a consortium of Indian firms along with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL).

    Vehicle details

    (A) Dimensions

    • Height: 34 meters
    • Diameter: 2 meters
    • Mass: 120 tonnes

    (B) Propulsion

    • It will be a four stage launching vehicle.
    • The first three stages will use Hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) based solid propellant, with a fourth terminal stage being a Velocity-Trimming Module (VTM).

    SSLV vs. PSLV: A comparison

    • The SSLV was developed with the aim of launching small satellites commercially at drastically reduced price and higher launch rate as compared to Polar SLV (PSLV).
    • The projected high launch rate relies on largely autonomous launch operation and on overall simple logistics.
    • To compare, a PSLV launch involves 600 officials while SSLV launch operations would be managed by a small team of about six people.
    • The launch readiness period of the SSLV is expected to be less than a week instead of months.
    • The SSLV can carry satellites weighing up to 500 kg to a low earth orbit while the tried and tested PSLV can launch satellites weighing in the range of 1000 kg.
    • The entire job will be done in a very short time and the cost will be only around Rs 30 crore for SSLV.

    Significance of SSLV

    • SSLV is perfectly suited for launching multiple microsatellites at a time and supports multiple orbital drop-offs.
    • The development and manufacture of the SSLV are expected to create greater synergy between the space sector and private Indian industries – a key aim of the space ministry.

     

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  • CAR T-Cell Therapy for treatment of Cancer

    cancer

    The new CAR T-Cell Immunotherapy holds promise for Ovarian Cancer patients over other forms of treatment.

    What are CAR T-cells?

    • Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies represent a quantum leap in the sophistication of cancer treatment.
    • Unlike chemotherapy or immunotherapy, which require mass-produced injectable or oral medication, CAR T-cell therapies use a patient’s own cells.
    • They are modified in the laboratory to activate T-cells, a component of immune cells, to attack tumours.
    • These modified cells are then infused back into the patient’s bloodstream after conditioning them to multiply more effectively.
    • The cells are even more specific than targeted agents and directly activate the patient’s immune system against cancer, making the treatment more clinically effective.
    • This is why they’re called ‘living drugs’.

    How does the therapy work?

    • In CAR T-cell therapy, the patient’s blood is drawn to harvest T-cells which are immune cells that play a major role in destroying tumour cells.
    • Researchers modify these cells in the laboratory so that they express specific proteins on their surface, known as chimeric antigen receptors (CAR).
    • They have an affinity for proteins on the surface of tumour cells.
    • This modification in the cellular structure allows CAR T-cells to effectively bind to the tumour and destroy it.
    • The final step in the tumour’s destruction involves its clearance by the patient’s immune system.

    Where is it used?

    • As of today, CAR T-cell therapy has been approved for leukaemias (cancers arising from the cells that produce white blood cells) and lymphomas (arising from the lymphatic system).
    • These cancers occur through the unregulated reproduction of a single clone of cells, that is, following the cancerous transformation of a single type of cell, it produces millions of identical copies.
    • As a result, the target for CAR T-cells is consistent and reliable.
    • CAR T-cell therapy is also used among patients with cancers that have returned after an initial successful treatment or which haven’t responded to previous combinations of chemotherapy or immunotherapy.
    • Its response rate is variable. In certain kinds of leukaemias and lymphomas, the efficacy is as high as 90%, whereas in other types of cancers it is significantly lower.

    How widespread is its use?

    • The complexity of preparing CAR T-cells has been a major barrier to their use.
    • The first clinical trial showing they were effective was published almost a decade ago; the first indigenously developed therapy in India was successfully performed only in 2022.
    • The technical and human resources required to administer this therapy are also considerable.
    • Treatments in the US cost more than a million dollars.
    • Trials are underway in India, with companies looking to indigenously manufacture CAR T-cells at a fraction of the cost.
    • The preliminary results have been encouraging.

    What are conventional cancer therapies?

    • The three major forms of treatment for any cancer are surgery (removing the cancer), radiotherapy (delivering ionising radiation to the tumour), and systemic therapy (chemotherapy- administering medicines that act on the tumour only).
    • Surgery and radiotherapy have been refined significantly over time whereas advances in systemic therapy have been unparalleled.
    • A new development on this front, currently holding the attention of many researchers worldwide, is the CAR T-cell therapy.

    Will this therapy be expensive in India as well?

    • In India, introducing any new therapy faces the twin challenges of cost and value.
    • Critics argue that developing facilities in India may be redundant and/or inappropriate as even when it becomes cheaper, CAR T-cell therapy will be unaffordable to most Indians.
    • Those who are affluent and require the therapy currently receive it abroad anyway.
    • While this is true, it may be the right answer to the wrong question.
    • Having access to a global standard of care is every patient’s right; how it can be made more affordable can be the next step.

     

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  • Bard: Google’s answer to ‘ChatGPT’

    bard

    Google has finally decided to answer the challenge and threat posed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its AI chatbot- ChatGPT.

    What is Bard, when can I access it?

    • Google’s Bard is functioned on LaMDA, the firm’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications system, and has been in development for several years.
    • It is what Sunder Pichai termed an “experimental conversational AI service”.
    • Google will be opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
    • It is not yet publicly available.

    What is Bard based on?

    • Bard is built on Transformer technology—which is also the backbone of ChatGPT and other AI bots.
    • Transformer technology was pioneered by Google and made open-source in 2017.
    • Transformer technology is a neural network architecture, which is capable of making predictions based on inputs and is primarily used in natural language processing and computer vision technology.
    • Previously, a Google engineer claimed LaMDA was a ‘sentient’ being with consciousness.

    How does it work?

    • Bard draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.
    • In short, it will give in-depth, conversational and essay-style answers just like ChatGPT does right now.
    • It requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback.

    A user will be able to ask Bard to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.

     

    What about its computing power?

    • Remember running these models also requires significant computing power.
    • For instance, ChatGPT is powered by Microsoft’s Azure Cloud services.
    • This also explains why the service often runs into errors at times, because too many people are accessing it.

    Key difference between ChatGPT and Google’s Bard

    • It appears that to take on ChatGPT, Google has an ace up its sleeve: the ability to draw information from the Internet.
    • Bard draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.
    • ChatGPT has impressed with its ability to respond to complex queries — though with varying degrees of accuracy — but its biggest shortcoming perhaps is that it cannot access real-time information from the Internet.
    • ChatGPT’s language model was trained on a vast dataset to generate text based on the input, and the dataset, at the moment, only includes information until 2021.

    Is Bard better than ChatGPT?

    • Bard looks like a limited rollout right now.
    • Google is looking for a lot of feedback at the moment around Bard, so it is hard to say whether it can answer more questions than ChatGPT.
    • Google has also not made clear the amount of knowledge that Bard possesses.
    • For instance, with ChatGPT, we know its knowledge is limited to events till 2021.
    • Of course, it is based on LaMDA, which has been in the news for a while now.

    Why has Google announced Bard right now?

    • Bard comes as Microsoft is preparing to announce an integration of ChatGPT into its Bing Search engine.
    • Google might have invented the ‘Transformer’ technology, but it is now being seen as a latecomer to the AI revolution.
    • ChatGPT in many ways is being called the end of Google Search, given that conversational AI can give long, essay style and sometimes elegant answers to a user’s queries.
    • Of course, not all of these are correct, but then AI is capable of correcting itself as well and learning from mistakes.

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  • NASA-ISRO partnership’s NISAR and its Mission

    nisar

    An earth-observation satellite NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) jointly developed by NASA and ISRO is all set to be shipped to India later this month for a possible launch in September.

    What is NISAR?

    • NISAR has been built by space agencies of the US and India under a partnership agreement signed in 2014.
    • The 2,800 kilograms satellite consists of both L-band and S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments, which makes it a dual-frequency imaging radar satellite.
    • While NASA has provided the L-band radar, GPS, a high-capacity solid-state recorder to store data, and a payload data subsystem, ISRO has provided the S-band radar, the GSLV launch system and spacecraft.
    • Another important component of the satellite is its large 39-foot stationary antenna reflector.
    • Made of a gold-plated wire mesh, the reflector will be used to focus the radar signals emitted and received by the upward-facing feed on the instrument structure.

    What is the mission?

    • Once launched into space, NISAR will observe subtle changes in Earth’s surfaces, helping researchers better understand the causes and consequences of such phenomena.
    • It will spot warning signs of natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides.
    • The satellite will also measure groundwater levels, track flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets, and monitor the planet’s forest and agricultural regions, which can improve our understanding of carbon exchange.
    • By using synthetic aperture radar (SAR), NISAR will produce high-resolution images.
    • SAR is capable of penetrating clouds and can collect data day and night regardless of the weather conditions.

     

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  • What is the North Star?

    north star

    Vice President said Parliament is the “North Star” of democracy, “a place of discussion and deliberation to realize the aspirations and dreams of the people”.

    What is North Star?

    • North Star is a metaphor to refer to something constant/permanent that leads and provides direction.
    • Polaris, also known as the North Star or the Pole Star, is a very bright star (around 2500 times more luminous than our sun) placed less than 1° away from the north celestial pole.
    • Its position and brightness have made humans use it for navigation since late antiquity.
    • It is a part of the constellation Ursa Minor and is around 323 light-years away from Earth.

    How it helps navigation?

    • It stands almost motionless in the night sky, with all the stars of the northern sky appearing to rotate around it.
    • This makes it an excellent fixed point from which to draw measurements for celestial navigation.
    • Simply the elevation of the star above the horizon gives the approximate latitude of the observer and in the northern hemisphere, if you can see Polaris you can always tell which way is north.
    • Upon crossing the equator to the South, the North Star is lost over the horizon and hence stops being a useful navigational aid.

    When the North Star was first used to navigate?

    • Polaris seems to have been first charted by the Roman mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy, who lived from about 85 to 165 B.C.
    • While there does exist some evidence pointing at how the star was used for navigation in late antiquity, it is during the ‘Age of Exploration’ that it becomes such a central part of human history.
    • Christopher Columbus, on his first trans-Atlantic voyage of 1492, “had to correct (his ship’s bearings) for the circle described by the pole star about the pole”, wrote his son in his biography.
    • As European colonizers set sail for exotic locations across the world, the North Star became an ever-so-important feature.

     

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  • Muons and their use to analyse large structures

    muon

    As per a new study, researchers are examining the fortress wall of Xi’an, an ancient city in China, by using tiny outer space particles ‘Muon’ that can penetrate hundreds of metres of stone surfaces.

    What are Muons?

    • Muons are subatomic particles raining from space.
    • They are created when the particles in Earth’s atmosphere collide with cosmic rays — clusters of high-energy particles that move through space at just below the speed of light.
    • About 10,000 muons reach every square metre of the Earth’s surface a minute.
    • These particles resemble electrons but are 207 times as massive.
    • Therefore, they are sometimes called “fat electrons”. Because muons are so heavy, they can travel through hundreds of metres of rock or other matter before getting absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos.
    • In comparison, electrons can penetrate through only a few centimetres. Muons are highly unstable and exist for just 2.2 microseconds.

    What is muon tomography or muography?

    • Muography is conceptually similar to X-ray but capable of scanning much larger and wider structures, owing to the penetration power of muons.
    • As these high-energy particles are naturally produced and ubiquitous, all one needs to do is place a muon detector underneath, within or near the object of interest.
    • The detector then tracks the number of muons going through the object from different directions, to form a three-dimensional image.

    Muons and archaeology

    • The technique was first used in the late 1960s, when Nobel Laureate and US experimental physicist Luis Alvarez joined hands with Egyptologists to search for hidden chambers in the Pyramid of Khafre, Giza.
    • Nothing was found at the time.

    Recent feats achieved

    • In 2017, modern archaeologists repeated the experiment with more sophisticated and advanced muon detectors and stumbled upon a major finding.
    • By placing several detectors, the archaeologists were able to discover a previously unknown chamber at least 30 metres long.
    • It was the first major inner structure to be found in the pyramid since the 19th century.

    Uses of muography beyond archaeology

    • Apart from archaeology, muography has found use in customs security, internal imaging of volcanoes and others.
    • Around 2015, scientists used the technique to look inside the Fukushima nuclear reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
    • As the site was highly radioactive, they put the two muon detectors in 10 centimetres thick boxes to protect them from radiation and then carried out the scanning.
    • Muography is also being used by researchers to analyse Mount Vesuvius, a volcano in Italy.

     

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  • Artificial intelligence(AI): An immediate challenge flagged by ChatGPT

    AI

    Context

    • With the launch of Open AI’s ChatGPT late last year, the impending changes in the nature of work, creativity and economy as a whole have moved from being the subject of futuristic jargon to an immediate challenge.

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    Background

    • Since at least 2015 when Klaus Schwab popularised the term Fourth Industrial Revolution at that year’s World Economic Forum terms like 4IR, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things, Future of Work, entered the lexicon of politicians, bureaucrats, consultants and policy analysts.

    Sample developments over just the last few days

    • A judge in Colombia included his conversations with ChatGPT in a ruling;
    • Microsoft is integrating the bot with its search engine, Bing, and other products;
    • Google is reportedly trying to launch a similar tool and there are reports that ChatGPT can already code at entry level for Google engineers.

    What are the Concerns?

    • Lifestyle may become redundant: Concerns about plagiarism in universities and beyond, as well as the fear that many white-collar jobs may become redundant in the coming years, as AI becomes more ubiquitous and sophisticated.
    • Implications on labour, education and authenticity: The AI revolution is likely to have serious implications on labour, education, authenticity of content and its authorship, and much else.
    • Case of Social media’s influence in US elections: The concerns around social media’s influence on politics and society became sharp in the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential elections and accusations of voter manipulation by foreign agents. Much of the world is still struggling with the questions raised then.

    AI

    Do you what exactly ChatGPT is?

    • Simple definition: ChatGPT is a chatbot built on a large-scale transformer-based language model that is trained on a diverse dataset of text and is capable of generating human-like responses to prompts.
    • A human like language model: It is based on GPT-3.5, a language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.
    • It is more engaging with details: However, while the older GPT-3 model only took text prompts and tried to continue on that with its own generated text, ChatGPT is more engaging. It’s much better at generating detailed text and can even come up with poems.
    • Keeps the memory of the conversations: Another unique characteristic is memory. The bot can remember earlier comments in a conversation and recount them to the user.
    • Human- like resemblance: A conversation with ChatGPT is like talking to a computer, a smart one, which appears to have some semblance of human-like intelligence.

    AI

    Anticipating possible futures requires engagement with the opportunities

    • The Struggle to keep up with technology in policymaking:
    1. Governments worldwide face a challenge in creating policies that keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancement.
    2. Policymakers should understand that they must work to bridge the gap between technology and regulation, as a growing divide could lead to problems.
    • Preparing for technological change in education and workforce:
    1. In addition to creating regulations that support innovation, it’s crucial to plan for the changes that new technology will bring to education and employment.
    2. This includes anticipating new job types and skills required, as well as updating the education system to prepare future workers.
    • Importance of Preparing for technological change for India:
    1. India has been facing the challenge of balancing privacy and regulation in the handling of data for several years.
    2. Successfully adapting to technological changes is crucial for India to make the most of its large, young workforce. If not addressed in time, the consequences could be severe

    Conclusion

    • The transformations the new technology is bound to bring about must be met with swift adjustments in the broader national and international legal and policy architecture. The lag between technology innovation and policy that was seen with the rise of Big Data and social media can serve as a lesson.

    Mains Question

    Q. With the rapid innovations and launching of Artificial intelligence models everyday will change the nature of work, creativity and economy as a whole. comment

  • Project ELLORA to preserve ‘rare’ Indian languages with AI

    Microsoft’s Project ELLORA is helping small languages like Gondi, Mundari become eloquent for the digital world.

    Project ELLORA

    • To bring ‘rare’ Indian languages online, Microsoft launched the Project ELLORA or Enabling Low Resource Languages in 2015.
    • Under the project, researchers are building digital resources of the languages.
    • They say that their purpose is to preserve a language for posterity so that users of these languages “can participate and interact in the digital world.”

    How is ELLORA creating a language dataset?

    • The researchers are mapping out resources, including printed literature, to create a dataset to train their AI model.
    • The team is also working with these communities on the project.
    • By involving the community in the data collection process, researchers hope to create a dataset that is both accurate and culturally relevant.

     

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  • What is Immune Imprinting?

    A slew of recent studies has shown that a phenomenon in our bodies, called immune imprinting, might be making new boosters vaccines far less effective than expected for coronavirus infection.

    What is Immune Imprinting?

    • Immune imprinting is a tendency of the body to repeat its immune response based on the first variant it encountered.
    • Our body does this through infection or vaccination — when it comes across a newer or slightly different variant of the same pathogen.
    • The phenomenon was first observed in 1947, when scientists noted that “people who had previously had flu, and were then vaccinated against the current circulating strain, produced antibodies against the first strain.
    • At the time, it was termed the ‘original antigenic sin’ but today, it’s commonly known as imprinting.

    How imprinting works for immune system?

    • Imprinting acts as a database for the immune system, helping it put up a better response to repeat infections.
    • After our body is exposed to a virus for the first time, it produces memory B cells that circulate in the bloodstream and quickly produce antibodies whenever the same strain of the virus infects again.
    • The problem occurs when a similar, not identical, variant of the virus is encountered by the body.
    • In such cases, the immune system, rather than generating new B cells, activates memory B cells.
    • This in turn produce antibodies that bind to features found in both the old and new strains, known as cross-reactive antibodies.

    Are the booster doses completely useless?

    • These cross-reactive antibodies do offer some protection against the new strain,.
    • However they are not as effective as the ones produced by the B cells when the body first came across the original virus.

    How to circumvent immune imprinting?

    • Currently, several ongoing studies are trying to find a way to deal with imprinting.
    • Some scientists have said nasal vaccines might be better at preventing infections than injected ones.
    • They believe the mucous membranes would create stronger protection, despite carrying some imprint of past exposure.
    • Researchers are also trying to find if spacing out coronavirus vaccine shots on an annual basis, could help with the problem of imprinting.

     

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  • Aditya-L1: India’s first mission to Sun to be launched soon

    aditya

    The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch the Aditya-L1 mission by June or July this year.

    What is Aditya-L1 Mission?

    • ISRO categorizes Aditya L1 as a 400 kg-class satellite that will be launched using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in XL configuration.
    • It will observe the Sun from a close distance, and try to obtain information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
    • The space-based observatory will have seven payloads (instruments) on board to study the Sun’s corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and will carry out round-the-clock imaging of the Sun.

    L1: Behind the name

    • L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system.
    • Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.
    • The L1 point is about 1.5 million km from Earth, or about one-hundredth of the way to the Sun.

    Major payloads

    • In total Aditya-L1 has seven payloads, of which the primary payload is the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), designed and fabricated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru.
    • The satellite carries additional six payloads-
    1. SUIT, the solar ultraviolet imaging telescope
    2. ASPEX (Aditya Solar Wind Particle Experiment),
    3. PAPA (Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya),
    4. SoLEXS (Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer),
    5. HEL1OS (High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray spectrometer) and
    6. Magnetometer — with enhanced science scope and objectives possible by extensive remote and in-situ observation of the sun.

    Why is studying the Sun important?

    (1) To understand space weather

    • To learn about and track Earth-directed storms, and to predict their impact, continuous solar observations are needed.
    • Every storm that emerges from the Sun and heads towards Earth passes through L1, and a satellite placed in the halo orbit around L1 of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.

    (2) Observing corona

    • The VELC payload will be able to observe the corona continuously and the data provided by it is expected to answer many outstanding problems in the field of solar astronomy.
    • No other solar coronagraph in space has the ability to image the solar corona as close to the solar disk as VELC can.
    • It can image it as close as 1.05 times the solar radius.
    • It can also do imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry at the same time, and can take observations at a very high resolution (level of detail) and many times a second.

    Why are solar missions challenging?

    • Distance: What makes a solar mission challenging is the distance of the Sun from Earth (about 149 million km on average, compared to the only 3.84 lakh km to the Moon).
    • Heat: More importantly the super-hot temperatures and radiations in the solar atmosphere make it difficult to study.

    Major missions to Sun till now

    • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has already gone far closer — but it will be looking away from the Sun.
    • The earlier Helios 2 solar probe, a joint venture between NASA and space agency of erstwhile West Germany, went within 43 million km of the Sun’s surface in 1976.

     

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