Saturday, December 21, 2024
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Sci-Tech

“The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.”

– Edward Teller

Trump Inauguration Universities Students
EducationPoliticsTechnologyWorld
Tridivesh Singh Maini

US Universities Caution International Students Before Trump’s Inauguration

US colleges and universities have asked international students to return to the US before the inauguration of Donald Trump. According to estimates, it is the 4,00,000 international students who are undocumented who may face serious problems. Students on F-1 and J-1 Visas are unlikely to face any problems. Significantly, during the election campaign, Trump had even mooted the idea of Green Cards to international students who graduate from US universities.

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AI in India's Judicial System
Editor's PickSci-TechSocietyTechnology
Apoorv Agarwal

Navigating the Complex Terrain of AI in India’s Judicial System: A Pragmatic Inquiry

Without careful oversight and mitigation strategies, AI applications in the judiciary could inadvertently perpetuate biases, affecting the fairness and impartiality of legal outcomes. Ensuring that AI systems are used as a tool rather than a definitive authority is crucial to maintaining the balance between efficiency and the human judgment essential to justice.

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Vulnerability to Energy to Climate
Editor's PickEnvironmentSci-TechTechnologyWorld
Sneha Yadav

Vulnerability of Energy to Climate: A Perspective on Thermal Power Plant & Scope of Renewable Energy

Climate change’s severity in India is escalating, driven largely by the country’s dependence on coal-based power plants. Recognizing this, the government aims to satisfy 50% of energy needs through renewable sources by 2030 and has taken steps to limit pollution with clean coal technologies. However, the transition from coal presents challenges, including fluctuating costs of natural gas and the reliability of renewable energy. Implementing new technologies and shifting towards renewables requires strong local institutions, community involvement, and private sector participation.

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AI Chatbots may devitalize ingenuity
Editor's PickEducationSci-Tech
Onkar Singh

AI Chatbots May Devitalize Ingenuity: Arrival of New Disruptors in Education

There is a lot of buzz around ChatGPT, a language model software capable of responding to queries with human-like intelligence. However, AI poses the threat of the diminishing use of human cognitive skills. The absence of ample thinking before writing and the sheer utilization of AI tools for generating reports and documents may make one devoid of skill and imagination to create new things. Spoon-feeding by artificially intelligent systems is enfeebling metacognition and promotes a lackadaisical attitude in students in the education process. Analyzing, report writing, etc. is likely to get reshaped with the evolving AI chatbots based on disruptive technology that redefines the ontology and epistemology of teaching, learning, examination, and research. There is a thin line between someone requiring support and someone becoming parasitic to the support. The likelihood of loss of ingenuity, and diminishing cognitive skills need to be investigated thoroughly at every activity level.

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Cyber Security attack education
Editor's PickEducationPublic PolicySci-TechTechnology
Onkar Singh

Darkness of Cyber Attacks Requires the Light of Cyber Security Education

Statistics show that cyberattacks occur every 39 seconds. The total damage caused by cyber-attacks amounted to $6 trillion in 2022. Growing adaptation to smartphones is heightening security vulnerabilities. Ransomware as a service (RaaS) is evolving as a business model. The formal education system must trigger well-crafted education programmes for rolling out a cyber defence army that understands the creativity behind cyber attacks and can protect society at large. Galloping advances in the cyber world push not just for cyber hygiene to become part of formal education at the school level, but also for the ineluctable rigorous campaigns to update every individual to remain cyber safe.

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The Chip War US China
Editor's PickPoliticsSci-TechWorld
Sapna Elsa Abraham

The Chip War: US Restrictions, China’s Ambitions and the Semiconductor Industry

Semiconductor chips form a very crucial part of the technological and strategic competition between the US and China. The disruptions in the supply and value chain due to the pandemic and trade tensions with China have brought out the significance of semiconductor chips. These are crucial for technological progress and responsible for the country’s growth as an economic power. The present article looks at the present US-China tensions and the implications of such spillover on the semiconductor ecosystem.

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We the Guinea Pigs of the World
Editor's PickHealthSociety
Furqan Qamar

We, the Guinea Pigs of the World

As the pandemic hit, governments all over the world imposed severe lockdowns, clamping down everything to naught. This was a mega experiment of making people sacrifice their freedom of movement, right to livelihood, and right to learning in order to save their lives. Did community transmission help in checking the spread of the virus? We have no conclusive evidence of that. Did it help in developing immunity from the virus amongst a large section of the population? We can’t say. If there was some immunity amongst some people, was it lasting and reliable? We don’t know. These were all experiments conducted on people who were treated no better than guinea pigs.

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Vegetarian Healthy Climate Change
Food & HealthHealthSociety
Anugyan Sharma , P. B. Sharma

Major Shift to Vegetarian Diet Needed for a Healthy Life and Mitigating Climate Change

The global community is facing some of the most monumental challenges that relate to the herculean task of mitigating climate change and mopping out enormous air and water pollution with which many nations of the world, including India, are suffering. A 2019 IPCC report states that non-animal sourced food, including meat, poultry, and seafood alone account for reducing eight gigatons of CO2 per year. Further, the World Cancer Research Fund has recommended that people around the world should reduce their intake of red meats to less than three portions per week, and all intake of processed meat should be eliminated. Today, when the dependence on allopathic medicines for curing ailments and diseases is causing a serious concern due to multi-drug resistance and their side effects, the natural system of a healthy vegetarian diet integrated with herbs and spices forms a more natural solution for creating high immunity and, thus, assuring good health and longevity. Be Vegetarian, Be Healthy.

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Metamorphosing Industry requires engineers
CareerEditor's PickEducationSci-Tech
Onkar Singh

Metamorphosing Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 Requires Engineers From All Domains

Why do engineering aspirants opt only for Computer Science and Engineering when the future Industry 5.0 shall require engineers and technologists from all disciplines to sustain and upgrade civilization?
The future lies in the application of digital know-how to the existing and upcoming systems from various domains.  
The cross-fertilization of a variety of concepts may call for technical professionals possessing a broader range of expertise which is enabled by the new policy framework. This enjoins technical professionals from every engineering discipline with vital competencies, and the same can not be merely taken care of by computer and IT-related professionals alone.

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Protect the Protectors of Ecological Wealth
Editor's PickEnvironmentHealthIndia
Oishimaya Sen Nag

Protect the Protectors of Indian Ecological Wealth

The second wave of the pandemic has claimed many of these valuable employees of the IFS ranging in rank from senior officers to daily wagers. But unfortunately, although the forest departments of several protected areas have requested the administration to include foresters in the list of frontline workers, no action has been taken in this regard. Lack of concern towards the health of foresters reflects general apathy of policymakers. As a progressive nation, it is our duty to address the issues and protect the protectors of our ecological wealth.

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