New Evolutionary Law Explains the Development of Living and Non-Living Entities

 In a groundbreaking study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have put forth a novel evolutionary law that can elucidate the evolution of entities, both living and non-living, ranging from minerals to stars. This groundbreaking law reveals the underlying patterns of complexity and diversity in natural systems, shedding light on the interconnectedness of biological and mineral evolution.

Understanding the Evolutionary Law

• Greater Patterning, Diversity, and Complexity: The study notes that natural systems, encompassing both living organisms and non-living entities, evolve towards states characterized by greater patterning, diversity, and complexity.
• Interconnected Evolution: As life on Earth evolved from single-celled to multi-celled organisms, minerals on our planet also underwent increased complexity, leading to greater diversity. This mutual evolution between biology and minerals played a vital role in shaping life as we know it today.

Collaboration Between Scientists and Philosophers

This study stands out for its collaboration between interdisciplinary scientists and philosophers of science. The philosophers’ perspectives were instrumental in refining and developing the ideas presented in the paper.

Three Key Functions in Evolution

• Stability: Systems with stable arrangements of atoms or molecules have a higher likelihood of survival, emphasizing the importance of stability in evolution.
• Dynamic Systems with Energy Supply: Evolution often involves dynamic systems that receive an energy supply, allowing for adaptability and change.
• Novelty: Evolving systems have a tendency to explore new configurations or arrangements, giving rise to new behaviors or characteristics. This concept of novelty is crucial in understanding the evolution of various entities.

Examples of Novelty

• In the biological realm, novelty can be seen in the evolution of single-celled organisms that harnessed light to produce food, as well as the development of new behaviors in multi-cellular species such as swimming, walking, flying, and thinking.
• Early minerals on Earth possessed stable atomic arrangements, serving as foundations for subsequent generations of minerals and their incorporation into living organisms, such as shells, teeth, and bones.

Expanding the Law’s Application

This evolutionary law extends beyond Earth and applies to the broader universe. For example, early stars primarily consisted of hydrogen and helium but went on to produce heavier chemical elements in subsequent generations, contributing to the universe’s diversity.

Implications and Future Collaborations

The proposed evolutionary law has implications for a wide range of complex evolving systems. The researchers aim to collaborate with scientists from various fields, including astrophysics, ecology, and artificial intelligence, to explore how this law may apply to different domains of science.

This Quote Means: Einstein said, ‘The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking’

 

Einstein’s perspective says that science is an evolved form of our common thinking. It is systematically developed to grasp the intricacies of reality and acknowledge its own limitations. Quotes of this nature are also important from a UPSC Essay paper perspective.

The success of India’s lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, has seen the appreciation of ISRO scientists. That India has been able to land a spacecraft on the Moon, becoming only the first country to have done so on its south pole, is a milestone.

As a whole, it is hoped that the idea of promoting scientific research and innovation will get a boost. Moreover, the idea of a scientific temper, also mentioned in the Directive Principles of State Policy under Article 51A of the Indian Constitution. This broadly means that in their day-to-day lives, people must develop the ability and instinct to question and reform things.

In this context, we take a look at a quote from Albert Einstein: “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.” Quotes from notable personalities are also an important part of the UPSC CSE syllabus, particularly from an Essay Paper perspective.

Where is the quote from?

The quote is from a collection of essays, called Out of My Later Years. In an essay titled ‘Physics and Reality’, Einstein explained how physics constitutes a logical system that helps us create theories for understanding the reality around us.

He wrote at the beginning of this essay that it is said that a “man of science is a poor philosopher.” This assertion is not without basis, he wrote, and it can then be argued for a physicist to stick to what he knows and not begin thinking like a philosopher.

However, this assumes that physics has a set of final laws that cannot be further improved upon and that are totally correct and rigid. Einstein argued against this perception of science. A physicist also “…must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities,” he wrote.

He added, “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.” This implies that the skill of critical thinking – related to a thorough analysis of an issue – should not be restricted to one’s own field. Just as we observe and form an understanding of the world around us on a daily basis, and that process is not free from errors, similarly, science should also be constantly analysed and questioned.

What does the quote mean?

The quote basically gives the view that science is not the same as finality, and it is merely a process or a framework through which we can understand the world. It has a structure: there is a hypothesis (an argument or idea that may or may not be correct), there are defined processes of experimentation to test it, and finally, a conclusion is drawn.

Such theories are not direct representations of reality, but rather tools for understanding it. Einstein wrote that scientific theories, despite their role as representations of reality, are inherently constrained by the assumptions and simplifications they rely upon – just as our own perceptions are. We might have our own theories on morality, the politics of the day, or how we or others should live their lives. But these are, at the end of the day, only theories.

He underscored that no theory can assert itself as an absolute representation of the entire truth regarding all of the universe, because this understanding is in a constant state of progression and refinement, as science progresses.

The essay invites readers to contemplate the relationship between human thought, scientific models, and the objective world. It ultimately seems to convey that there is no absolute truth because of how humans perceive things and the fact that they can never be sure of their own knowledge.

Einstein discussed how scientific theories are mental constructs that help us make sense of our experiences and observations.

Source: Indian Express, 28/08/23

Jharkhand’s Singhbhum region may have been earliest continental land to rise above ocean, reveals study

 

Scientists from India, Australia and the US have found that the Earth’s first continents emerged from the ocean 700 million years earlier than thought.

Researchers have always been intrigued about when the landmasses we reside on came into existence and till recently, it was widely accepted that continents rose out of the ocean about 2.5 billion years ago. However, a recent study has changed that notion.

A recent research has shown that the Earth’s first continents may have risen out of the ocean about 700 million years earlier than previously thought. And to the surprise of many, the earliest continental land to have risen about 3.2 billion years ago may have been Jharkhand’s Singhbhum region. Scientists from India, Australia and the US have found sandstones in Singhbhum with geological signatures of ancient river channels, tidal plains and beaches over 3.2 billion years old, representing the earliest crust exposed to air.

When asked as to how Singhbhum came into the picture of research related to Earth Sciences, Dr Priyadarshi Chowdhury of Monash University, the study’s lead author, told indianexpress.com that the answer to “when the first landmasses were formed lay in the sedimentary rocks of the region”.

“We found a particular type of sedimentary rocks, called sandstones. We then tried to find their age and in which conditions they have formed. We found the age by analysing the uranium and lead contents of tiny minerals. These rocks are 3.1 billion years old, and were formed in ancient rivers, beaches, and shallow seas. All these water bodies could have only existed if there was continental land. Thus, we inferred that the Singhbhum region was above the ocean before 3.1 billion years ago,” Chowdhury said.

But, Chowdhury said, patches of the earliest continental land also exist in Australia and South Africa.

Speaking about how they determined that the region rose above ocean during the timeframe mentioned above, Chowdhury explained: “We studied the granites that form the continental crust of the Singhbhum region. These granites are 3.5 to 3.1 billion years old and formed through extensive volcanism that happened about 35-45 km deep inside the Earth and continued on-and-off for hundreds of millions of years until all the magma solidified to form a thick continental crust in the area. Due to the thickness and less density, the continental crust emerged above surrounding oceanic crust owing to buoyancy.”

“This is the most direct, unambiguous date yet for the emergence of continental land,” Chowdhury said. The findings have appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US research journal.

The research also tends to break another well-accepted notion: continents rose above the ocean due to plate tectonics, which is the major driver today for increases in the elevation of land masses.

“We have plate tectonics today to control the elevation. When two continents’ (plates) collide, you form the Himalayas, you form the Alps,” he said. “That wasn’t the case 3 billion years [ago]. The first continents probably rose above sea level as they were inflated by progressive injection of magma derived from deep in the Earth.”

The researchers believe that the earliest emergence of continents would have contributed to the proliferation of photosynthetic organisms, which would have increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere. “Once you create land, what you also create is shallow seas, like lagoons,” Chowdhury added, accelerating the growth of oxygen-producing life forms that may have boosted oxygen in the atmosphere and ocean.

Exhorting on the importance of such studies, Chowdhury said that at a time when the entire world was debating about changes in climate, it is very important to understand how our atmosphere, oceans and climate came into existence and how they interacted with geological processes operating deep inside Earth to make our planet habitable.

“It allows us to link the interior of Earth to its exterior in deep time. India has three other ancient continental fragments — Dharwar, Bastar and Bundelkhand regions. We need to understand their evolution. What we did in Singhbhum may serve as a template for studying these other cratons,” he added.

Written by Rounak Bagchi

Source: Indian Express, 11/11/21

Lightning may have sparked life on Earth, study finds

 

• Phosphorus is a vital building block of life as we know it, forming basic cell structures and the double helix shape of DNA and RNA.

Lightning strikes may have supplied primordial Earth with enough phosphorus to support the emergence of life, according to new research Tuesday that offered an alternative explanation as to how living organisms were born.

Phosphorus is a vital building block of life as we know it, forming basic cell structures and the double helix shape of DNA and RNA.

Billions of years ago on early Earth, most of the available phosphorus was locked away in insoluble minerals.

However one mineral, schreibersite, is highly reactive and produces phosphorus capable of forming organic molecules.

Since most schreibersite on Earth comes from meteorites, the emergence of life here has long been thought to be tied to the arrival of extraterrestrial rocks.

But schreibersite is also contained within the glass-like rock formed by lightning strikes in some types of clay-rich soils.

Researchers in the US and Britain used state of the art image techniques to analyse the amount of the phosphorus-giving mineral formed in each lightning strike.

They then estimated how much schreibersite could have been produced over the eons before and around the time of the emergence of life on Earth, around 3.5 billion years ago.

"Lightning strikes on early Earth may have provided a significant amount of reduced phosphorus," Benjamin Hess, lead study author from Yale's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told AFP.

"And by synthesising the best of our knowledge of the conditions of early Earth, I think our results bear out this hypothesis."

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, Hess and his colleagues estimated that lightning strikes could have produced between 110 and 11,000 kilogrammes of phosphorus a year.

Using simulations of the climate on early Earth, they said that while meteor strikes began to decline after the Moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago, lightning strikes surpassed space rocks for phosphorus production around 3.5 billion years ago.

That timing coincides with the origin of life.

Hess said that the research didn't entirely discount meteorites as another source of life-giving phosphorus.

"Meteor impacts around the time of the emergence of life are far less than thought a decade ago," he said.

"But I don't see our work as a competition against meteorites as a source of phosphorus. The more sources, the better."

He said that he wanted to find out whether lightning strikes produce trace amounts of phosphorous on other planets where meteor strikes are rare.

"Meteor impacts decrease through time whereas lightning, at least on Earth, is relatively constant through time," Hess added.

Source: Hindustan Times, 16/03/21

Researchers accidentally discover extreme life beneath Antarctica’s ice shelves

 Dr Huw Griffiths, marine biologist and lead author of the study, said that the stationary animals are like sponges and potentially several previously unknown species.Researchers accidentally discovered extreme life far underneath the ice shelves of the Antarctic during an exploratory survey, a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science said. At a distance of 260km away from the open ocean, the researchers found out the existence of stationary animals attached to a boulder on the seafloor as they drilled through 900 metres of ice in the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf with their cameras lowered down.

Dr Huw Griffiths, marine biologist and lead author of the study, said that the stationary animals are like sponges and potentially several previously unknown species. In a video shared by the British Antarctic Survey, Griffiths said it was a surprising discovery because they never expected animals that “filter feed their food from the water column to be found this far from a source of food or daylight.”

“This discovery is one of those fortunate accidents that pushes ideas in a different direction and shows us that Antarctic marine life is incredibly special and amazingly adapted to a frozen world,” the biogeographer said in a separate statement.

The first-ever record of a hard substrate community deep beneath an ice shelf throws up more questions than it answers since the researchers don’t know how did they get there, what they have been eating or how long they have been there. The researchers are wondering whether these are the same species seen outside the ice shelf or are they new species. There are also few questions around the survival of these species in case the ice shelf collapses.

The discovery appears to go against all previous theories of what kind of life could survive in such an extreme condition. The dependence on drilling and cameras mean, according to Griffiths, the area underneath the giant floating ice shelves is probably one of the least known habitats on Earth. But getting up close with these animals and their environment remains a challenge for polar scientists.

“We have no idea what species these animals are. We don't know how they are coping with these extreme conditions. And the only way we are going to be able to answer those questions is to come up with a new way of investigating their world,” added Griffiths.

Source: Hindustan Times, 16/02/21

IIT Guwahati ‘develops’ efficient catalysts for transforming industrial waste into valuable chemicals

 

According to the team, tiny amounts of these “pincer catalysts” repeatedly convert large amounts of industrial waste such as glycerol into lactic acid and hydrogen.

Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, have formulated efficient “pincer” catalytic systems that transform industrial or biomass wastes into valuable chemicals.

According to the team, tiny amounts of these “pincer catalysts” repeatedly convert large amounts of industrial waste such as glycerol into lactic acid and hydrogen. Such catalysts also efficiently convert bioethanol, a low-energy density fuel, into high-energy density butanol.

“Pincer catalysts are complex molecules in which, an organic moiety holds on tightly to a metal core, much like the claws of a crab. Such an arrangement not only confers stability to the catalyst, but also selectivity to bring about the intended transformations,” said IIT Guwahati professor Akshai Kumar Alape Seetharam.

“(We) rationally designed and tested a large library of ‘pincer catalysts’ to be used for these transformations. The experiments were carried out under environmentally benign conditions without the use of hazardous reagents and solvents. “The most efficient pincer catalyst was found to be one that had least crowding around the metal centre. Such an arrangement enabled easy removal of hydrogen from the starting materials, glycerol and ethanol, and their selective conversion into lactic acid and butanol, respectively,” he added.

The findings of the time have also been featured in the Royal Society of Chemistry journals--Chemical Communications and Catalysis Science and Technology. “Our computational studies have attributed the unprecedented activity of the pincer catalysts to the minimal crowding present at the metal centre and have enabled good understanding of the electronic and steric (crowding) factors that control reactivity,” said Hemant Kumar Srivastava from National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) Guwahati.

The team also included research scholars Kanu Das, Moumita Dutta, Siriyara Jagannatha Prathapa, Eileen Yasmin and Babulal Das.

Source: Hindustan Times, 16/11/20

India takes step closer towards mass production of hydrogen fuel from biomass: IISc Bengaluru

 

The IISc and the Research and Development Centre of Indian Oil Corporation Limited had signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop and demonstrate biomass gasification-based hydrogen generation technology for producing fuel cell-grade hydrogen at an affordable price.

In a boost for the clean energy sector, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in collaboration with Indian Oil Corporation Limited, has developed a process to produce hydrogen fuel from biomass that doesn’t involve combustion.

The IISc and the Research and Development Centre of Indian Oil Corporation Limited had signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop and demonstrate biomass gasification-based hydrogen generation technology for producing fuel cell-grade hydrogen at an affordable price.

Biomass gasification is a controlled process that involves heat, steam, and oxygen to convert biomass to hydrogen and other products without combustion. The technology developed by IISc first produces hydrogen-rich syngas (synthetic gas) from biomass and then separates hydrogen from the syngas.“The technology envisaged under this programme would not only provide a cleaner energy option for India but will also be a step towards addressing the challenge of biomass waste,” the institute mentioned in a statement.

According to the IISc, this is another step to bring hydrogen fuel into India’s mainstream energy matrix while utilising the agrarian strengths of the country.

“The developed technology will be scaled up and demonstrated at Indian Oil’s R&D Centre at Faridabad. Hydrogen generated from this demonstration plant will be used to power fuel cell buses as part of a bigger project being conceived by Indian Oil towards ushering in the country’s hydrogen economy,” an IISc spokesperson said.

Source: Indian Express, 2/11/20

Chandigarh University makes national record in the field of research, files 500 patents in 7 years

Working with a mission to make India a self-reliant nation in developing new technologies and acclaimed top position in global innovation index, Chandigarh University Gharuan has emerged as the leading university of the country which has filed maximum number of patents in 2018-19.

The economic status of a nation depends upon the efforts putting by the respective countries in the field of research and innovation. Developed nations such as US, Japan ,Germany are amongst the top nations which have major share in global innovation index, whereas countries like India lag behind and are dependent on such countries for new age technologies. As per the data available from world intellectual property organization (WIPO) with more than 1.5 million patents filed ,China leads the list of countries who has filed the maximum number of patents in 2019 which is followed by USA with 0.6 million . India has been ranked 7th in this list with more than 50,000 patents being filed in 2019 with just 2.3 % increase over the last year. The main reason attributed to the current situation is that India with 0.85% contribution of its GDP for R&D currently ranks 52nd amongst the nations which contributes higher percentage of their GDP towards research and innovation.

Working with a mission to make India a self-reliant nation in developing new technologies and acclaimed top position in global innovation index, Chandigarh University Gharuan has emerged as the leading university of the country which has filed maximum number of patents in 2018-19.

According to the latest data released by government of India’s Office Controller General of patent design and trademarks for the year 2018-19 , Chandigarh University, Gharial has emerged as the leading university with highest number of 336 patents filed by its students and faculty .According to the statistics ,23 IITs have jointly filed 557 patents which is followed by 336 patents filed by Chandigarh University alone, followed by 239 patents filed by India’s leading IT company Tata consultancy services (TCS). The fourth position in this list is held by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) with 202 patents which is followed by PSU company Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) got fifth rank by filing 135 patents.

While giving details about the patents filed by university students and faculty, Dr. R.S.Bawa, Vice-Chancellor Chandigarh University said,’’ Department of Mechanical Engineering leads the university departments with 176 patents filed which is followed by department of Electronics and Communication Engineering with 59 patents and 44 patents by the Department of Computer Science”. Understanding its Institutional Social Responsibility, students and faculty of Bio-Technology and Pharmacy at Chandigarh University are contributing in the field of research and have filled more than 25 patents in the field of Health Sciences and Medicine which is yet another way of contributing towards society, Vice-Chancellor added.

“Higher Education Institutions or Universities have major role to play in the field of research which contributes towards the economic prosperity of any nation” said Satnam Singh Sandhu, Chancellor. We at Chandigarh University are through our intensive R&D initiatives are trying to convert Make in India dream turn into a reality so that our country no longer has to be dependent on other nations like USA, Japan for the transfer of technology, he added. Due to robust work being undertaken by Core Research Groups, the number of patents filed by Chandigarh University has increased from 336 to 500 in 2019.

The campus of Chandigarh University hosts more than 30 ultra modern R&D Labs and Innovation Centers established by top notch companies such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, SAP Labs, IBM, Honda, Hyundai, Volvo-Eicher, Virtusa, IHG Academy, The Taj Academy, Piramal Foundation and others where students are given hands-on practical exposure on the new age technologies under the guidance of Industry Experts. The University has earmarked an annual budget of Rs. 6.5 crores for the Research & Innovation which is assigned to the Core Research Groups for the development of futuristic products and technologies.

Source: Hindustan Times, 26/02/2020

Scientists have finally been able to record what atoms do when they collide

The study which took place, took rubidium variety of atoms, which bond to form molecules of dirubidium. Till this, the project was a bit easy, but to model how the changes take place is the challenge.

To understand the finer points of various atomic interactions physicists had to calculate correlations based on averages amongst a crowd of atoms that have been chilled down to the point that they all share an identity. Now, a team of physicists from the University of Otago, New Zealand seem to have bypassed this, by forcing atoms to pause long enough for their exchanges to be recorded.

To do this, you are required to have a tiny pair of tweezers, which can hold isolated atoms still and record the changes as they meet. Such pair of tweezers are made from specially aligned polarised light, which acts as optical traps for tiny objects. The atoms need to be cooled down to make them easier to catch. Such a process requires the right technology and a lot of patience to achieve.

“Our method involves the individual trapping and cooling of three atoms to a temperature of about a millionth of a Kelvin using highly focused laser beams in a hyper-evacuated (vacuum) chamber, around the size of a toaster,” said physicist Mikkel F Andersen.

We slowly combine the traps containing the atoms to produce controlled interactions that we measure,” he added.

The study which took place, took rubidium variety of atoms, which bond to form molecules of dirubidium. Till this, the project was a bit easy, but to model how the changes take place is the challenge. The experiment requires three atoms, in which two atoms bond, whereas the third, takes away the excess bonding energy to leave them connected.

Using three atoms, in theory, causes the atoms to be forced out of their trap. This experiment was captured using a special camera, which magnifies the changes. They were able to capture the moment when the rubidium particles came close together, revealing the rate of loss was not anywhere near as expSuch a low rate of loss shows that the molecules weren’t coming together as quickly as existing models. This could be explained by the fact that the atoms were confined and had short-range quantum effects.ected.

The team said that the technique used “could provide a way to build and control single molecules of particular chemicals.” Further experiments will help to refine those models, which will be able to better explain how groups of atoms operate together to meet and bond under various conditions.

Source: Indian Express, 22/02/2020

This solar panel could generate electricity even at night

Researchers from University of California explain how a new kind of thermoradiative cell could design an anti-solar panel to generate power at nigh

With Climate Change knocking at our door, countries around the world are trying to reduce their dependence on fossil fuel and embrace renewable energy. Some parts of the world have taken the solar panel technology quite seriously but as beneficial as these panels are, solar power plants cannot generate electricity at night.

But what if these solar panels could operate around the clock? According to a study published in the ACS Photonics, it is possible to design solar panels that can produce energy during the night.

How do the anti-solar cells work?

A regular solar cell generates power when it absorbs photons of light from the sun to generate a voltage across the device for the current to flow. However, in these specially designed photovoltaic cells, light is instead emitted to generate current and voltage, which go in the opposite direction but still produce energy.

The drawback of these “anti-solar cells” or thermoradiative cells, at the moment, is that the electricity producedAccording to the authors of the paper — Jeremy Munday, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Davis and graduate student Tristan Deppe — photovoltaic cell could generate up to 50 watts of power per square meter under ideal conditions at night, which is about a quarter of what a conventional solar panel can generate in daytime.

Munday says that an object that is hot compared to its surroundings will radiate heat as infrared light. Since space is cold, if you have a warm object and point it at the sky, it will radiate heat toward it. He says that people have been using this phenomenon for nighttime cooling for hundreds of years and researchers have been exploring the use of thermoradiative cell that generates power by radiating heat to its surroundings. is way lower than the power generated by the conventional solar cells.

Munday says that the thermoradiative cell pointed at the night sky would emit infrared light because it is warmer than outer space. According to the study, the device would work during the day as well, if steps were taken to either block direct sunlight or point it away from the sun.

This would allow this new type of solar cell to operate around the clock and provide an intriguing option to balance the power grid over the day-night cycle.

Source: Indian Express, 5/02/2020

Researchers claim eye-tracking technology could help make driving safer

“Prior to a crash, drivers can be easily distracted by an alert from a collision avoidance warning -- a popular feature in new vehicles -- and we feel this could be a growing problem in distraction-related vehicle crashes,” said researcher Jung Hyup Kim, Assistant Professor Fom University of Missouri in the US.

Researchers have developed two new applications of eye-tracking technology which could help make driving safer.

“Prior to a crash, drivers can be easily distracted by an alert from a collision avoidance warning -- a popular feature in new vehicles -- and we feel this could be a growing problem in distraction-related vehicle crashes,” said researcher Jung Hyup Kim, Assistant Professor Fom University of Missouri in the US.

“Therefore, a two-way communication channel needs to exist between a driver and a vehicle. For instance, if a driver is aware of a possible crash, then the vehicle does not have to warn the driver as much,” Kim said.

However, if a vehicle provides an alert that, by itself, creates a distraction, it could also lead to a crash, said the researcher.

For the study, the researchers watched how people’s pupils changed in response to their physical reactions to a collision avoidance warning by a vehicle-assisted safety system.

Researchers believe they have enough data to begin the next step of developing a two-way communication model.

A person’s pupil could also help scientists find a way to decrease distracted driving crashes through a first-hand perspective into a driver’s behaviour, said the study.

Using a driving simulator, the researchers evaluated a driver’s physical behaviour in real-time by focusing on the driver’s eyes as the crash happened.

“We saw the size of a person’s pupil changed depending on the behavioural response to the severity of the accident,” Kim said.

The study was presented at 2019 International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics in Washington.

Source: Hindustan Times, 25/09/2019

Professor makes model to convert Hindi, English, Gujarati text to Braille

“With the help of this model, the visually impaired will be able to easily communicate with everyone and pursue normal education as the model will be able to convert Hindi, English and Gujarati text into Braille. Not only texts but the model will also convert drawings and mathematical equations, and text to speech as well,” she told ANI.

A professor has successfully made a model to help visually impaired people gain more knowledge by translating the text of Hindi, English and Gujarati language to Braille language.

This model which will convert Hindi, English and Gujarati text into Braille language has been made by Dr Nikisha Jariwala.

“With the help of this model, the visually impaired will be able to easily communicate with everyone and pursue normal education as the model will be able to convert Hindi, English and Gujarati text into Braille. Not only texts but the model will also convert drawings and mathematical equations, and text to speech as well,” she told ANI.

Nikisha, a Professor at a Women’s College said that she worked day and night to develop this model.

“This model invention is going to be like a boon for the visually impaired,” she said.

The professor said that she made this model while doing her PhD on the topic of “Design and Development of the model to transliterate digitalised multilingual text into braille and speech - an aid for visually impaired people”.

“It took me four and a half year to complete my PhD. I also learned Braille. There are numerous digital documents on the internet which these students cannot read but now they will be able to gain knowledge through them as well,” she said.

Nikisha’s model has received acclamation from the students who affirm that the invention will be very helpful for them.

“Earlier, our teachers used to read out newspapers for us. Now, we will be able to read them after the invention of this model,” a student Zeel Rathod said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 16/09/2019

Engineering students develop technology to print without using ink, toner

They have come up with a Plasma Carburization Inkless Printing Technology that can print on paper without using any kind of toxic, consumable and expensive inks or toners.

Aura Labs team of SRM Institute of Science and Technology has developed a prototype of an inkless printing technology machine.

The brains behind the invention are Shilpa Thakur (MTech, robotics, dept. of mechanical engineering, SRM KTR) and Shylesh Srinivasan (BTech, dept. of electrical and electronics engineering, SRM) They plan to float a startup in a few months’ time once the prototype is perfected for commercial applications. They have come up with a Plasma Carburization Inkless Printing Technology that can print on paper without using any kind of toxic, consumable and expensive inks or toners.

The technology is perceived to be very effective in reducing the generation of plastic and e-waste. “We used plasma energy to carbonize the paper surface instead of chemical inks and toners which pose health hazards when discarded,” said Srinivasan.

Aura Labs of SRMIST was awarded the Chairman’s Award, the First Prize at IICDC conducted by Texas Instruments India, DST India, IIM Bangalore and My Gov India for the Best Innovation and Technological Impact.

Source: Hindustan Times, 21/08/2019

IIT- Guwahati develops low-cost hand-held device to detect bacteria

The hand-held device, with bio-compatible sensor, can also diagnose time-critical illnesses such as meningitis, Parameswar K Iyer, one of the lead researchers, said.

A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT-G) has developed a portable device to detect bacteria without cell culture or microbiological assays.

The hand-held device, with bio-compatible sensor, can also diagnose time-critical illnesses such as meningitis, Parameswar K Iyer, one of the lead researchers, said.

“The research has enabled rapid detection of bacteria, which is not just important in healthcare, but also in anti- bioterrorism measures and environmental monitoring,” he said.

Bacterial infection is a common cause of morbidity and mortality across the world, Siddhartha S Ghosh, another team member, maintained.

“Despite development of a range of antibiotics, the challenge continues to lie in diagnosing bacterial infection early on with the present techniques being extremely time- consuming,” Ghosh explained.

Currently, cells derived from a patient are cultured or grown in laboratories to detect and microanalyse bacteria in body fluids.

The new portable device, however, can instantly detect the charges on the cell walls of bacteria, Iyer said.

“These rapid detection kits are like those used for blood sugar monitoring and pregnancy detection. The sensor can detect the charges on the cell walls of bacteria,” he said, adding that the team work has been recently patented as well as published in the July 2019 issue of ‘Journal of Materials Chemistry of the Royal Society of Chemistry’.

Source: Hindustan Times, 7/08/2019

India Moves Up Five Places to 52 on Global Innovation Index

 AN UPWARD MOMENTUM This is the biggest jump in rankings by any country in the last five years

India climbed five places up in a global index of innovation, buoyed by improved productivity growth and exports of services related to information and communication technologies. India’s jump to the 52nd spot in the 129-nation Global Innovation Index (GII) in 2019 is the biggest for any country in the last five years, a report released by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), along with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), showed on Wednesday. “I am happy that significant progress has been made and the culture of innovation is taking centre stage in the country,” commerce and industry Piyush Goyal said at the launch of the report. He said while India was still a couple of ranks lower than what it was aiming at (rank of 50 or below), the country was well poised to focus on R&D and increase spending there. India has maintained its top place in the Central and Southern Asia region and from 81in 2015, its 29-place move up the GII represents the biggest jump by any major economy. The list continues to be topped by Switzerland. Israel has found a place in the top ten for the first time. “This innovation will help us find sustainable solutions to challenges such as growing pollution, climate change and water crisis. We will do 1,00,000 patents every year from next year and bring down the timelines,” Goyal said. He said India would not rest on past laurels until it achieved its target of positioning itself among the top 25 countries in the index in the next four years. India improved its ranking in four out of the seven pillars of the index, such as knowledge and technology outputs (up 11 spots to 32nd), market sophistication (up 3 spots to 33rd), human capital and research (up 3 spots to 53rd) and institutions (up 3 spots to 77th). However, in business sophistication (65th), infrastructure (79th) and creative outputs (78th), it lost one, two and three spots, respectively. In the “knowledge and technology outputs” criterion, which saw the highest 11-spot jump, India’s ranking improved for IP-related variables. India also lost relative strength to other countries with largest drops in logistics performance (down 9 spots to 43rd), women employed with advanced degrees (down 10 spots to 103rd) and printing and other media (down 12 spots to 88th).

Source: Economic Times, 25/07/2019

Now, an app to help the visually impaired

In a bid to assist visually impaired people to easily determine denomination of currency notes, the Indian Institute of Technology at Ropar in Punjab has developed an Android App “Roshni”, using image processing and analytics.

The App was launched on Wednesday at the IIT Ropar. Assistant professor Puneet Goyal, said that ‘Roshni’ is the first Android App that works successfully with new currency notes that were released after demonetisation and it works well in broad range of light conditions and holding angles.

“This App utilises an adaptable deep learning framework, which further uses the patterns and features embedded on the notes to differentiate and determine the currency denomination. Our IPSA (Image processing, Security and Analytics) lab prepared a rich dataset of more than 13, 000 images of currency notes under varied real-world conditions. The user has to bring the currency note in front of phone camera and the App would provide audio notification intimating the currency note denomination to the user," said Mr. Goyal.

The team includes Dr. Puneet Goyal, Ph.D scholars Mandhatya Singh and Joohi Chauhan, and student R. Ram of the CSE & Engineering department.

The Seeing AI App by Microsoft is the only other App that facilitates recognition of both old and new Indian currency notes, but it is an iOS App and not available for school for visually impaired recently and performed the App testing there.

Ms. Nirmala, faculty member of the school, in a statement added “Earlier the visually impaired persons, differentiated the currencies based on the length and width of the note. But after demonetisation it became very difficult for them to identify the denomination, due to similarity in the sizes of new and old notes. Also, for those individuals who lost their vision due to old age or some other conditions, 'Roshni' will be very beneficial.”

Source: The Hindu, 24/01/2019

We are challenging our evolution

We have just entered the era of designer babies with China’s first gene-edited baby. The question is whether they can use this newfound superpower in a responsible way that will benefit the planet and its people.

A Chinese scientist from a university in Shenzhen claims he has succeeded in creating the world’s first genetically edited babies. He told the Associated Press that twin girls were born earlier this month after he edited their embryos using CRISPR technology to remove the CCR5 gene, which plays a critical role in enabling many forms of the HIV virus to infect cells.

We have just entered the era of designer babies. We will soon have the ability to edit embryos with the aim of eliminating debilitating disease, selecting physical traits such as skin and eye colour, or even adding extra intelligence. But our understanding of the effects of the technology is in its infancy.

The technology is CRISPR: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Discovered by scientists only a few years ago, CRISPRs are elements of an ancient system that protects bacteria and other single-celled organisms from viruses, acquiring immunity to them by incorporating genetic elements from the virus invaders. CRISPRs evolved over millions of years to trim pieces of genetic information from one genome and insert it into another. And this bacterial antiviral defence serves as an astonishingly cheap, simple, elegant way to quickly edit the DNA of any organism in the lab.

Until recently, experimenting with DNA required sophisticated labs, years of experience, and millions of dollars. The use of CRISPRs has changed all that. CRISPRs work by using an enzyme — Cas9 — that homes in on a specified location in a strand of DNA. The process then edits the DNA to either remove unwanted sequences or insert payload sequences. CRISPRs use an RNA molecule as a guide to the DNA target. To set up a CRISPR editing capability, a lab only needs to order an RNA fragment and purchase off-the-shelf chemicals and enzymes— costing only a few dollars.

Because CRISPR is cheap and easy to use, it has both revolutionised and democratised genetic research. Thousands of labs all over the world are experimenting with CRISPR-based editing projects. China has taken the lead, largely because it lacks the regulations and moral constraints that other countries abide by.

In 2014, Chinese scientists announced that they had successfully produced monkeys that had been genetically modified at the embryonic stage. In April 2015, another group of researchers in China published a paper detailing the first ever effort to edit the genes of a human embryo. The attempt failed, but it shocked the world: this wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. And then, in April 2016, yet another group of Chinese researchers reported that it had succeeded in modifying the genome of a human embryo in an effort to make it resistant to HIV infection.

This transgressed a serious boundary. We know too little to predict the broader effects of altering or disabling a gene. In the 1960s, we imagined rather naïvely that as time went by, we would understand with increasing precision the role of each gene in making us what we are. The foundation of genetics for decades, once biology’s Central Dogma, was the hypothesis that each gene codes for a single protein. Knowing the correspondences, we would have tools useful not only for research but also for curing and preventing disease with a genetic basis and perhaps for augmenting human evolution.

The one-gene-one-protein Central Dogma, though it continues to pervade our common beliefs about genetics, underwent conversion when scientists realised that many proteins comprise several polypeptides, each of which was coded for by a gene. The Dogma therefore became one gene, one polypeptide. But what sounded the entire Dogma’s death knell was the discovery in the early 1970s that a single gene can code for more than one protein. The discovery that the human genome contains only about 30,000 genes to code for some 90,000 proteins brought that home; but what makes our understanding appear spectacularly inadequate is the discovery in 2000 that a single gene can potentially code for tens of thousands of proteins.

In a nutshell, we don’t know the limits of the new technologies, can’t guess what lifetime effects a single gene alteration will have on a single individual, and have no idea at all what effects alteration of genes in sperm or ova or a foetus will have on future generations. For these reasons, we have no knowledge of whether a particular modification of the human germline will be ultimately catastrophic, and no basis for considering that tampering with heritable genes can be humane or ethical.

Because of technologies such as obstetric ultrasonography, India already has a gender imbalance: for every 107 males there are 100 females. Given the disposition of parents to favour males, preference for fairer skins and higher intelligence, and even extra height and strength, there will soon be competition to create perfect children with these technologies. Except we don’t know what perfection is; intelligence and physical traits aren’t what make humans what they are, the greatest people are usually the most imperfect.

The reality is that we have arrived at a Rubicon. Humans are on the verge of finally being able to modify their own evolution. The question is whether they can use this newfound superpower in a responsible way that will benefit the planet and its people.

Vivek Wadhwa is a distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University at Silicon Valley and author of Driver in the Driverless Car, how our technology choices will create the future

Source: Hindustan Times, 27/11/2018