Electricity consumption from the manufacture of artificial intelligence (AI) chips has soared by more than 350 percent worldwide between 2023 and 2024, according to new research from Greenpeace East Asia. In East Asia, the global hub for AI semiconductor production, growing electricity demand from AI chipmaking has been met primarily …
SETTING up of an Indian Research and Development Authority (IRDA) and reviving the cabinet committee on science and technology are among the steps expected to be taken soon to boost science research, Union minister of state for science and technology P R Kumaramangalam has told Down To Earth. The minister …
INDIA is probably the most industrialised developing country in the world today, with more than a million trained scientists. But this has only resulted in creating a deeply divided society. The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of institutions set up to promote rural development through science and technology. …
TAKE A small part of a shoot tip and put it in a test tube. Then add some chemicals that will nurture the tissue and lo and behold, the part grows into a full plant. This may sound like witchcraft, but it is precisely what tissue culture technology is all …
The department of science and technology (DST) is to launch three missions to focus on the crucial issues of biotechnology and genetic engineering, improving prediction of natural disasters and increasing leather exports. The missions will function as part of the department but draw on expertise from the department of biotechnology …
HOW do we restructure the economy of the rich world so that it can live in harmony with its environment and with that of the rest of the world? The state of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) in Germany, which includes the cities of Bonn and Cologne, is one of the …
THE GRAND Mughal Akbar, whose 450th birth anniversary was marked this year, once remarked he would venerate the person who could grow two blades of grass where one grew previously. Was he not talking of Appropriate Technology, a term that has come into vogue more than four centuries later? It …
SOME interesting programmes on indigenous science and technology are lined up in the coming months in various parts of the country. The Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha-92, inaugurated in New Delhi on Gandhi Jayanti (Oct 2), will continue till National Science Day, February 28. The objective is to involve voluntary groups, …
Babu Lala Sharma, Chairperson, Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha 92, United Newspapers, 4 Windsor Place, New Delhi 110 001 G N A Nayar, Chairman, M N Sreedharan Nair, General Convenor, Exhibition Committee, Swadeshi Science Expo - 92 Amba, Pongumoodu, Thiruvananthapuram - 695 011 C N Krishnan Patriotic and Pupil-oriented Science and …
HOWEVER imperfect a TV series on the history of science and technology in the subcontinent, it should have a life beyond its one-time telecast. When Bharat ki Chaap (Identity of India) finally made its debut on Doordarshan in 1989, after about four years of preparatory work, the demand for video …
AT 52, Ramachandra S Hegde is a broken man. After more than 25 years as a primary schoolteacher in Karnataka, he recently became a headmaster of a primary school in Kumta, about 150 km from Mangalore. But, at the fag end of his career, this talented teacher and rural technologist …
"A plant in the backyard has no value," says an Indian proverb. This attitude, which has been the bane of Indian society -- and that of the nations of the South -- repeatedly tends to overlook the traditional in pursuit of the modern. These societies often forget that modern technology, …
A MAJOR preoccupation of developing countries that have undergone the colonial experience is to avoid, at any cost, the substitution of political colonialism with economic colonialism. An important and influential theoretico-ideological position of the post-colonial era has been the "dependency theory" of social scientists Immanuel Wallerstein and Andre Gunder-Frank, that …
WHO MERITED the gold medal and world record for the 4,000 metre individual pursuit event in cycling at the Barcelona Olympics -- Chris Boardman or Lotus Engineering, the manufacturers of the bike? And are Nigel Mansell's eight Grand Prix wins this year a reflection of his skills or a credit …
Lichens as pollution monitors Pollution Zone I Pollution Zone II Pollution Zone II Pollution Zone II Lecidea granifera Parmelia Caperata Beacidia convexula Lecidea granifera Parmelia Caperata Pyrenula nitida Graphis scripta Lecidea granifera Parmelia Caperata Pyrenula nitida Graphis scripta Lecanactis premnea Arthania antillarum Catilaria indica Lecidea granifera Parmelia Caperata Pyrenula nitida …
JAPANESE cows now have their personal paging systems... call, and they come -- more eagerly if its piano music that has distinct and individual notes. With cowherds becoming unaffordable in Japan, researchers considered the feasibility of an individual musical call that would be transmitted to the cow via tiny pagers …
INDIAN scientists rank among the 10 most prolific producers of scientific papers in the world; yet their research is among the least cited in international scientific and technological literature. This dismal finding is contained in a paper published in the Journal of Industrial and Scientific Research (Vol 51, No 2) …
WITH INCREASING emphasis being placed on upgrading of technical training, Indian institutes providing such training are seeking help in this area from multilateral agencies. The World Bank is funding two such projects that are being implemented by the ministries of labour and human resource development (HRD). The projects aim to …
EGYPTIAN scientists Y I Hanna and M M Kandil of the National Institute for Standards in Cairo have designed and tested a double-layered curtain using local textiles which absorbs sound and light to a high degree, reports the Indian Journal of Technology (Vol. 30 No. 6). The curtain is not …
SURGEONS may soon be able to call upon living micro-organisms to fight tumours that cannot be reached by the surgeon's scalpel. US scientists are proposing a new form of "molecular surgery" involving the transfer of a viral gene into the tumour and then attacking it with the anti-viral drug, ganciclovir. …
TECHNOLOGY is opening up the world of computers to the blind, everyday activity such as feeding oneself to the spastic and movement to the physically handicapped. A number of government and research organisations are investing ingenuity, time and funds in developing aids for the handicapped. But commercial organisations are lagging …
