Reply by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in compliance to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated January 21, 2024 in the matter of ‘News item titled “Feeling anxious? Toxic air could be to blame” appearing in Times of India dated 10.10.2023’. NGT had directed CPCB to file a …
WITH the successful testfiring of the liquid engine to be used at the strap-on-stage of India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), yet another milestone has been reached by scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The test-firing was conducted at the Mahendragiri space centre, Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, on July …
Recently 2 major commercial agreements with leading US companies have boosted the morale of Indian space programme to great heights. The first is with "Intelsat", the 135-nation Washington-based International Inter-Governmental Telecommunications Satellite Organisation, to which India will lease 11 36mnz C-band communication transponder units on its prestigious Insat-2E satellite scheduled …
THERE comes a day when every American president has his shot at immortality. Twenty years ago, in August 1975, Jimmy Carter, one of bullyboy America's rare presidential doormats, desperately wanted an unique event to pump steroids into his image of a gentle, bumbling urpacifist. He also wanted something to immortalise …
Atlantis and Mir did an intimately interlocked fandango for 5 days, and its crew of 6 Americans and 4 Russians sprinted through an impeccably and precisely scheduled series of 28 experiments, 15 of them aboard the Atlantis shuttle: the Atlantis' 60-feet-long bay carried a huge (by spartan extraterrestrial standards) laboratory …
THOMAS Crapper, the inventor of the commode, had never anticipated the headache involved in the act of hitting the pot in space. There has been a steady and gainless drain of US $3 million on R&D; on the no-gravity commode before every blastoff. The Russians, with more on their minds …
Aircraft flying over Calcutta lose precibus time awaiting instructions from overburdened ground con- trollers. The Calcutta air corridor is a notorious bottleneck in international air traffic, and airline carriers, Iiike Qantas, lose millions of dollars due to delay there, each year. But this may soon change with a new satellite-based …
IN A French government report on the space sciences, strong recommendations have been made to the authorities to move away from the European Space Agency (ESA) partners who are allegedly holding "enterprising French scientists" back with their feet-dragging tactics when it comes to coughing up funds for research. The report …
NASA is sorely disappointed with its European partners. The European Space Agency (ESA) appears to be dragging its feet over its proposed contribution to the setting up of an international space station. A meeting of the ESA council, in late March in Paris, was expected to thrash out differences and …
The Peru-Ecuador war is now travelling down the superhighway of information, with the Ecuadorian government bamboozling its bete noire by putting government communiques and local press clippings on the Internet, providing graphic details of their version of the conflict. Initially nonplussed, the Peruvian foreign ministry recovered swiftly and launched the …
The UK-based NEC Corporation and Ezaki Glico, a Japanese confectionary company, claim to have mastered the art of controlling and altering the catalytic properties of enzymes. For instance, the structure of neopullunase, a sugar producing enzyme found in starch, can be made to produce 30 per cent more sugar than …
The ongoing US-Russia joint space programme negotiations are progressing, quite literally, at lightspeed. The 2 countries are now shipping hardware to each other. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) space shuttle and Mir, the decade-old Russian space station in orbit, have a dance ahead of them. The purpose of …
INSERT this: you are a scientist who must travel frequently but your presence in a static laboratory is essential every breathing moment. Delete that: you are a cybernetic organism, a brain, almost electronic in its stamina, that must also refer to the scientific information busily accumulated by your research group …
(Attn: No literary liberties have been taken with this piece because techno-slapdash is another lingo altogether). BIT: One bit is the smallest piece of information for a computer and just sufficient to tell the difference between "yes" and "no": 8 bits make 1 byte. MODEM (MOdulator-DEModulator): A device through which …
The modest telephone lines -- with their constantly evolving technology -- are going to stay as the backbone of the revolution in information technology. Right now, fibre optics is making a big difference in telecommunications -- sophisticated lasers transform electrical representations of conversations, faxes, or data into light pulses, which …
An abbreviation for "users network", USENET is a collection of electronic bulletin boards or conferences called "newsgroups" -- where users all around the world read and post articles containing news, analysis and opinions. USENET, started in 1979, has around 300,000 users worldwide. The discussions are categorised into different newsgroups according …
For the victims of Alzheimer's disease, Japan's Eisai Co brings good tidings. It has teamed up with the American Pfizer Inc to develop a drug to treat the disease. The medicine, to be manufactured from Eisai's compound E2020, is currently in phase II trials in Japan. It functions by increasing …
EVEN without the dramatic discovery of spies at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) last fortnight, it could always be said that the most important scientific programmes run by the Union government have a spooky air about them. Their vital operations are invariable concealed from the public which pays for …
The age of the universe is an enigma that only becomes more puzzling with time. If the Big Bang theory, the raison d'etre of the universe, is to be believed, then it should be 15-20 billion years old. But 2 recent measurements, one by the earth-bound Kitt Peak telescope at …
South Africa is all set to foray into the field of high-tech telescope. The Astronomical Observatory in Johannesburg is brimming with confidence after its spectacular success in capturing the images of Comet Shoemaker Levy crashing into Jupiter earlier this year and it is now trying its best to woo partners …
With the coming of the fibre optics revolution, information can now be transmitted at the speed of light. At the heart of this revolution is a glass or plastic fibre no thicker than a human hair. A fibre optic cable often only as thick as a pencil can carry a …
