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Subject: Science and Technology

  • What is TVS-2M Nuclear Fuel?

    Russia has supplied the first batches of more reliable and cost-efficient nuclear fuel over the existing one, the TVS-2M nuclear fuel, to India for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP).

    What is TVS-2M Nuclear Fuel?

    • The TVS-2M FAs contain gadolinium-oxide which is mixed with U-235 enrichments.
    • The core does not contain BARs (Burnable Absorbers Rods).

    How are they prepared?

    • Once the uranium is enriched, it is ready to be converted into nuclear fuel.
    • At a nuclear fuel fabrication facility, the UF6, in solid form, is heated to gaseous form, and then the UF6 gas is chemically processed to form uranium dioxide (UO2) powder.
    • The powder is then compressed and formed into small ceramic fuel pellets.
    • The pellets are stacked and sealed into long metal tubes that are about 1 centimetre in diameter to form fuel rods.
    • The fuel rods are then bundled together to make up a fuel assembly.
    • Depending on the reactor type, each fuel assembly has about 179 to 264 fuel rods.
    • A typical reactor core holds 121 to 193 fuel assemblies.

    Benefits offered

    • TVS-2M fuel assemblies have a number of advantages making them more reliable and cost-efficient.
    • The new fuel has increased uranium capacity – one TVS-2M assembly contains 7.6% more fuel material as compared to UTVS.
    • Besides, the special feature of the Kudankulam fuel in particular is the new generation anti-debris filter ADF-2, efficiently protecting fuel assemblies.
    • Once the new TVS-2 M fuel is used in the next refuelling, the reactor will start operations with an 18-month fuel cycle.
    • It means the reactor, which has to be stopped for every 12 months for removing the spent fuel and inserting the fresh fuel bundles and allied maintenance, will have to be stopped for every 18 months.

    Back2Basics: India-Russia Energy Cooperation

    • The Soviet Union supplied India with nuclear reactors and fuel when India was denied technologies and was hit with sanctions from the West for its refusal to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
    • In 1988, the Soviet Union agreed, allegedly without an official deal, to build two nuclear reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.  The deal was made official in 1992.
    • In 2000, Russia and India signed another secret MoU, to cooperate on “peaceful uses” of nuclear energy, and for Russia to supply India with low-enriched uranium fuel for the Tarapur reactor in Maharashtra.
    • In 2009, the two countries entered into a major nuclear deal, with Russia agreeing to install four nuclear reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, and one in West Bengal.
    • Two units at Kudankulam are currently operational, and the third and fourth units are being prepared for installation.
    • Russia is also aiding with the ongoing construction of the fifth and sixth units.

     

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  • What is IN-SPACe?

    The Prime Minister inaugurated the headquarters of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) at Bopal, Ahmedabad.

    What is IN-SPACe?

    • The establishment of IN-SPACe was announced in June 2020.
    • It is an autonomous and single window nodal agency in the Department of Space for the promotion, encouragement and regulation of space activities of both government and private entities.
    • It also facilitates the usage of ISRO facilities by private entities.
    • It comprises technical experts for space activities along with safety expert, academic experts and legal and strategic experts from other departments.
    • It also comprises members from PMO and MEA of Government of India.

    Roles and Responsibilities

    • Space activities including building of launch vehicles and satellites and providing space based services as per the definition of space activities.
    • Sharing of space infrastructure and premises under the control of ISRO with due considerations to on-going activities.
    • Establishment of temporary facilities within premises under ISRO control based on safety norms and feasibility assessment

    How is it different from ANTRIX?

    • Antrix Corporation Limited (ACL), Bengaluru is a wholly-owned Government of India Company under the administrative control of the Department of Space.
    • It is as a marketing arm of ISRO for promotion and commercial exploitation of space products, technical consultancy services and transfer of technologies developed by ISRO.
    • Antrix is engaged in providing Space products and services to international customers worldwide.

    What about New Space India Limited (NSIL)?

    • It functions under the administrative control of the Department of Space (DOS).
    • It aims to commercially exploit the research and development work of ISRO Centres and constituent units of DOS.
    • The NSIL would enable Indian Industries to scale up high-technology manufacturing and production base for meeting the growing needs of the Indian space program.
    • It would further spur the growth of Indian Industries in the space sector.

     

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  • What are Fast Radio Bursts (FRB)?

    In a paper published in Nature, astronomers have reported a fast radio burst (FRB) whose characteristics are different from almost all other FRBs previously detected.

    Such news makes us think about alien and extraterrestrial life at the first. Do not get carried away with such thoughts. Its simply a space based phenomena.

    Fast Radio Burst (FRB)

    • FRBs are super intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves produced by unidentified sources in the distant cosmos.
    • They were first discovered in 2007 when scientists combed through archival pulsar data.
    • Pulsars refer to spherical, compact objects in the universe, which are about the size of a large city but contain more mass than the sun.
    • They often look like flickering stars but are not stars.

    Why in news?

    • The new study in Nature describes FRB 20190520B, first discovered in 2019.
    • What makes it different is that unlike many other FRBs, it emits frequent, repeating bursts of radio waves.
    • And between bursts, it constantly emits weaker radio waves.
    • FRB 190520B is co-located with a compact, persistent radio source and associated with a dwarf host galaxy of high specific star formation.

     

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  • Dostarlimab: The New Wonder Cancer Drug

    A trial on 18 colorectal cancer patients in the US found that cancer could be treated without chemotherapy or surgery. The world is sitting up and taking note of Dostarlimab, which has been called a wonder drug.

    What is Dostarlimab?

    • Dostarlimab is an experimental drug. It contains laboratory-produced molecules.
    • It acts as substitute antibodies. It is sold under the brand name Jemperli.
    • It was approved for medical use in the United States and the European Union in 2021.
    • Its side-effects include vomiting, joint pain, itching, rash, fever etc.

    What are the findings?

    • The trial showed that immunotherapy alone – without any chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery that have been staples of cancer treatment.
    • It could completely cure the patients with a particular kind of rectal cancer called ‘mismatch repair deficient’ cancer”.
    • All 12 patients had completed the treatment and were followed for six to 25 months after.
    • No cases of progression or recurrence had been reported during the follow-up.
    • The response too was rapid, with symptoms resolving in 81% of the patients within nine weeks of starting the therapy.

    Is Dostarlimab actually very effective?

    • Dostarlimab is not a new drug but a combination of drugs that are already approved for use in immunotherapy.
    • There is a possibility that Dostarlimab may improve the outcome and survival rate in rectal cancer patients but to say it as a magic drug for cancer is completely going overboard.

    How does this drug cure?

    • PD1 is a protein that regulates immune function and can sometimes keep T cells from killing cancer cells.
    • The therapy in the trial used PD1 blockades, allowing T cells to kill cancer cells.
    • ‘Mismatch repair deficient’ cancer is most common among colorectal, gastrointestinal, and endometrial cancers.
    • Patients suffering from this condition lack the genes to correct typos in the DNA that occur naturally while cells make copies.
    • Immunotherapy belongs to a category called PD1 blockades that are now recommended for the treatment of such cancers rather than chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

    Will Indian patients get access to the drug?

    • At present, Indian doctors seem to be generally wary of prescribing Dostarlimab for their patients.
    • Experts have termed as optimistic the findings of an ongoing trial—a group of rectal cancer patients showed no signs of a tumour after taking the drug for six months.
    • None of the participants reported any severe side-effects either.
    • Yet, doctors say they want to assess the duration of the response.

    What do we know about the clinical trial?

    • Cancer was treated in all the patients and could not be detected by physical examination, endoscopy, positron emission tomography, or magnetic resonance imaging.
    • Thus, there is a thought that cancer can be treated without chemotherapy or surgery.

    Is it too early to celebrate?

    • Cancer specialists said initial signals show how precision medicine is building the future but they need to test more patients from different areas and other types of cancers.
    • The combination of drugs was administered to a small number of patients and for a specific type of cancer.

     

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  • Chinese astronauts enter Tiangong Space Station

    Three Chinese astronauts floated into the country’s new Tiangong space station for a three-month mission.

    Tiangong Space Station

    • Tiangong means “Heavenly Palace”.
    • It was 10.4 metres long and 3.35 metres wide at its widest point, and weighed 8.6 metric tonnes.
    • It was launched on September 15, 2016 and, in late 2016, hosted two Chinese astronauts for 30 days in what was China’s longest manned space mission so far.
    • The recently decommissioned space lab followed the Tiangong-1, China’s first space station, which crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean on April 1, 2018 after Chinese scientists lost control of the spacecraft.
    • China had launched Tiangong-1 in 2011 as proof-of-concept of technologies for future stations.
    • The Tiangong will be fully operational by the end of 2022.

    Features of this Space Station

    • The significant feature of Tiangong is its two robotic arms.
    • The US has previously expressed concern over its ability to grab objects including satellites from space.
    • The 10-meter-long arm was in action previously seen in action successfully grabbing and moving a 20 tonne Tianzhou-2 cargo ship in a test.
    • One of the noteworthy tasks for the Shenzhou-14 crew is to test and operate the large and small
    • The small arm is quite flexible and can perform operations with greater precision.

     

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  • What are eVTOL Aircrafts?

    The Union Civil Aviation Ministry is exploring the possibility of inviting manufacturers of Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft to set up base in India.

    What is eVTOL?

    • EVTOL aircraft is one that uses electric power to hover, take off, and land vertically.
    • Most eVTOLs also use what is called as distributed electric propulsion technology which means integrating a complex propulsion system with the airframe.
    • There are multiple motors for various functions; to increase efficiency; and to also ensure safety.
    • It works on electric propulsion based on progress in motor, battery, fuel cell and electronic controller technologies.
    • It is also fuelled by the need for new vehicle technology that ensures urban air mobility (UAM).

    Features of eVTOL

    • eVTOL is emerging as a runway independent technological solution” for the globe’s transportation needs.
    • There are an estimated 250 eVTOL concepts or more being fine-tuned to bring alive the concept of UAM.
    • Some of these include the use of multi-rotors, fixed-wing and tilt-wing concepts backed by sensors, cameras and even radar.
    • The key word here is “autonomous connectivity”. Some of these are in various test phases.
    • In short, eVTOLs have been likened to “a third wave in an aerial revolution”; the first being the advent of commercial flying, and the second, the age of helicopters.

    What are the developments in powering eVTOLs?

    • The roles eVTOLs adopt depends on battery technology and the limits of onboard electric power.
    • Power is required during the key phases of flight such as take-off, landing and flight (especially in high wind conditions).
    • There is a “Diamond Nuclear Voltaic (DNV) technology” using minute amounts of carbon-14 nuclear waste encased in layered industrial diamonds to create self-charging batteries.
    • There are some industry experts who are questioning the use of only batteries and are looking at hybrid technologies such as hydrogen cells and batteries depending on the flight mission.

    What are the challenges?

    • As the technology so far is a mix of unpiloted and piloted aircraft, the areas in focus include “crash prevention systems”.
    • There are also issues such as ensuring safety in case of power plant or rotor failure.
    • Aircraft protection from cyberattacks is another area of focus.
    • A third area is in navigation and flight safety and the use of technology when operating in difficult terrain, unsafe operating environments, and also bad weather.

     

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  • What is D2M Technology?

    The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and India’s public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati are exploring ‘direct-to-mobile’ (D2M) broadcasting.

    What is D2M Technology?

    • The technology is based on the convergence of broadband and broadcast, using which mobile phones can receive terrestrial digital TV.
    • It would be similar to how people listen to FM radio on their phones, where a receiver within the phone can tap into radio frequencies.
    • Using D2M, multimedia content can also be beamed to phones directly.

    Benefits of D2M

    • It allows broadcasting video and other forms of multimedia content directly to mobile phones, without needing an active internet connection.
    • It promises to improve consumption of broadband and utilisation of spectrum.

    Why need D2M?

    • The idea behind the technology is that it can possibly be used to directly broadcast content related to citizen-centric information.
    • It can be further used to counter fake news, issue emergency alerts and offer assistance in disaster management, among other things.
    • Apart from that, it can be used to broadcast live news, sports etc. on mobile phones.
    • More so, the content should stream without any buffering whatsoever while not consuming any internet data.

    What could be the consumer and business impact of this?

    • For consumers, a technology like this would mean that they would be able to access multimedia content from Video on Demand (VoD) or Over The Top (OTT) content platforms.
    • This will be without having to exhaust their mobile data, and more importantly, at a nominal rate.
    • The technology will also allow people from rural areas, with limited or no internet access, to watch video content.
    • For businesses, one of the key benefits of the technology is that it can enable telecom service providers to offload video traffic from their mobile network onto the broadcast network.
    • It thus helps them to decongest valuable mobile spectrum.
    • This will also improve usage of mobile spectrum and free up bandwidth which will help reduce call drops, increase data speeds etc.

    What is the government doing to facilitate D2M technology?

    • The DoT has set up a committee to study the feasibility of a spectrum band for offering broadcast services directly to users’ smartphones.
    • Band 526-582 MHz is envisaged to work in coordination with both mobile and broadcast services.
    • DoT has set up a committee to study this band.
    • At the moment, this band is used by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting across the country for TV transmitters.

    What are the possible challenges to the technology’s rollout?

    • Bringing key stakeholders like mobile operators onboard will be the biggest challenge in launching D2M technology on a wide scale.
    • A mass roll out of the technology will entail changes in infrastructure and some regulatory changes.

     

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  • International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT)

    The four-meter International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) saw the first light recently, gazing out from its vantage on Devasthal, a hill in Uttarakhand.

    What is the ILMT?

    • The telescope has been built by a collaboration of scientists from Canada, Belgium and India.
    • It is located at an altitude of 2,450 metres on the Devasthal Observatory campus of the Aryabhata Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital district.
    • A large pool of mercury placed in a vessel is spun around so fast that it curves into a parabolic shape. Since mercury is reflective, this shape helps in focusing the reflected light.
    • Nearly 50 litres of mercury, weighing close to 700 kilograms, is spun hard to form a paraboloid mirror of just 4 mm thickness and a diameter of about 4 metres.
    • A thin sheet of mylar protects the mercury from the wind.
    • Once it starts making observations, the telescope will collect gigabytes of data, which will need to be analysed using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML) tools.

    It’s utility

    • The telescope will make sky surveys possible and obtain images that can help observe transient phenomena.
    • It will help analyse events such as supernovae and record the presence of space debris or meteorites — basically, watch the skies.

    What is the first image?

    • The first image made by the telescope consisted of several stars and a galaxy, NGC 4274, which is 45 million light years away.
    • The telescope, having a primary mirror that is liquid, cannot be turned and pointed in any direction.
    • It “stares” at the zenith and watches the sky as the earth rotates, thereby giving a view of different objects.
    • This property can be used to scan and survey the sky, and observe transients and moving objects such as meteorites.
    • It will work in tandem with the existing 3.6-metre Devasthal Optical Telescope.

     

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  • Astra MK-I Air-to-Air Missile: Features, strategic significance

    The Ministry of Defence has signed a contract with Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) for the supply of the Astra Mark-1for deployment on fighter jets of the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy.

    Astra Missile

    • The Astra Mk-1 is a beyond visual range (BVR), air-to-air missile (AAM).
    • The Astra project was officially launched in the early 2000s with defined parameters and proposed future variants.
    • The missile has been designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
    • It will be deployed on fighter jets like Sukhoi-30 MKI and Tejas of the IAF and the Mig-29K of the Navy.
    • BVM missiles are capable of engaging beyond the range of 20 nautical miles or 37 kilometres.

    Range and its Variants

    • While the range for Astra Mk-1 is around 110 km, the Mk-2 with a range over 150 km is under development and Mk-3 version with a longer range is being envisaged.
    • One more version of Astra, with a range smaller than Mk-1 is also under development.

    Strategic significance

    • The missile has been designed based on requirements specified by the IAF for BVR as well as close-combat engagement, reducing the dependency on foreign sources.
    • AAMs with BVR capability provides large stand-off ranges to own fighter aircraft.
    • It can neutralise adversary airborne assets without exposing adversary air defence measures.
    • Stand-off range means the missile is launched at a distance sufficient to allow the attacking side to evade defensive fire from the target.
    • Astra is technologically and economically superior to many such imported missile
    • The missile can travel at speeds more than four times that of sound and can reach a maximum altitude of 20 km, making it extremely flexible for air combat.

     

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  • [pib] Param Ananta Supercomputer

    Param Ananta, a state-of the art Supercomputer was commissioned at IIT Gandhinagar.

    Param Ananta

    • Param Ananta is capable of offering peak performance of 838 teraflops.
    • It is a joint initiative of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST).
    • This facility is established under Phase 2 of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
    • The system is equipped with a mix of CPU nodes, GPU nodes, High Memory nodes, High throughput storage and high performance Infiniband.
    • The supercomputer will rank behind C-DAC’s Param Siddhi-AI, which as of November 2021 was the 102nd most powerful supercomputer in the world — with peak performance capability of 3.3 petaflops.

    What is a Supercomputer?

    • A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer.
    • The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
    • Since 2017, there are supercomputers which can perform over a hundred quadrillion FLOPS (peta FLOPS).
    • Since November 2017, all of the world’s fastest 500 supercomputers run Linux-based operating systems.

    Specific features

    • Param Ananta system is based on Direct Contact Liquid Cooling technology to obtain a high power usage effectiveness and thereby reducing the operational cost.
    • Multiple applications from various scientific domains such as Weather and Climate, Bioinformatics, Computational Chemistry, Molecular Dynamics, Material Sciences, Computational Fluid Dynamics etc. have been installed on the system for the benefit of researchers.
    • This high end computing system will be a great value addition for the research community.

    Back2Basics: National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

    • NSM is a proposed plan by GoI to create a cluster of seventy supercomputers connecting various academic and research institutions across India.
    • In April 2015 the government approved the NSM with a total outlay of Rs.4500 crore for a period of 7 years.
    • The mission was set up to provide the country with supercomputing infrastructure to meet the increasing computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups by creating the capability design, manufacturing, of supercomputers indigenously in India.
    • Currently there are four supercomputers from India in Top 500 list of supercomputers in the world.

    Aims and objectives

    • The target of the mission was set to establish a network of supercomputers ranging from a few Tera Flops (TF) to Hundreds of Tera Flops (TF) and three systems with greater than or equal to 3 Peta Flops (PF) in academic and research institutions of National importance across the country by 2022.
    • This network of Supercomputers envisaging a total of 15-20 PF was approved in 2015 and was later revised to a total of 45 PF (45000 TFs), a jump of 6 times more compute power within the same cost and capable of solving large and complex computational problems.

    When did India initiate its efforts to build supercomputers?

    • India’s supercomputer program was initiated in the late 1980s, when the United States ceased the export of a Cray Supercomputer due to technology embargos.
    • This resulted in India setting up C-DAC in 1988, which in 1991, unveiled the prototype of PARAM 800, benchmarked at 5 Gflops. This supercomputer was the second-fastest in the world at that time.
    • Since June 2018, the USA’s Summit is the fastest supercomputer in the world, taking away this position from China.
    • As of January 2018, Pratyush and Mihir are the fastest supercomputers in India with a maximum speed of Peta Flops.

    What are the phases of the National Supercomputing Mission?

    Phase I:

    • In the first phase of the NSM, parts of the supercomputers are imported and assembled in India.
    • A total of 6 supercomputers are to be installed in this phase.
    • The first supercomputer that was assembled indigenously is called Param Shivay. It was installed in IIT (BHU) located in Varanasi.
    • Similar systems, Param Shakti (IIT Kharagpur) and Param Brahma (IISER, Pune) were also later installed within the country.
    • The rest will be installed at IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad and Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Studies (JNIAS).

    Phase II:

    • The supercomputers that are installed so far are about 60% indigenous.
    • The 11 systems that are going to be installed in the next phase will have processors designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and will have a cumulative capacity of 10 petaflops.
    • These new systems are to be constructed more cost-effectively than the previous ones.
    • One of the 11 proposed supercomputers will be installed
    • at C-DAC exclusively for small and medium enterprises so that they can train employees as well as work on supercomputers at a very low cost.

    Phase III:

    • The third phase aims to build fully indigenous supercomputers.
    • The government had also approved a project to develop a cryogenic cooling system that rapidly dispels the heat generated by a computing chip. This will be jointly built together by IIT-Bombay and C-DAC.

     

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