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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - August 2015

Aug 2015

Sep 08, 2019

IFA 2019: Lenovo Launches New Thinkbook, Yoga Laptops

Lenovo is promising in its premium range of Yoga series and Thinkbooks that it unveiled at the annual tech industry event "IFA 2019".
A sleek workstation that sits comfortably on a table or your lap when you are on the move, keeps pace with every finger tap and when you relax, streams movies and videos to give you a theatre-like experience and what's more, it also comes with an enviable battery life.
The Chinese technology major showcased a new range of slim and stylish ThinkBook 14 and ThinkBook 15 aimed at small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), while its Yoga series flexible laptops included the Yoga C940 (14/15 inch), S740 (14/15-inch), C740 (14/15-inch) and C640 (13-inch).

Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter Locates Lander Vikram On Surface Of Moon

In a significant development relating to the lunar mission Chandrayaan-2, the Lander Vikram has been located on the surface of the moon.
The Chairman of the national space agency ISRO, Dr K Sivan has said, a thermal image of the Lander has been captured by the Orbiter of Chandrayaan-2. However, he has clarified that there is no communication yet from the Lander, adding, efforts are on to restore contact with it.
The Lander lost its contact with the ISRO's Mission Control Centre in Bengaluru in the wee hours, just minutes before its scheduled soft-landing. During its final leg of the crucial powered descent near the lunar South Pole, it went silent after reaching up to 2.1 kilometres above the surface.
A senior scientist of the ISRO told that the thermal image has been captured by the 'Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer' that is fitted on the Orbiter.
It was made by detecting the naturally occurring infrared waves from the Lander.
The spectrometer is one of the eight scientific instruments that are onboard the Orbiter.
The Orbiter is meticulously revolving around the moon and has eight important payloads on it including the Infra-Red device.

First IoT In Mini Piped Water Scheme Launched At Amingaon

The IoT pilot project was launched by senior officials of the PHED and Piramal Sarvajal.
The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
The solution is a maiden pilot project not only in Assam but all over India. This is derived using state-of-the art sensors for accurate measurement, micro-controller based control unit and remote monitoring dashboard.
The control unit converts signals from sensors to digital data and sends it to a centralised server.
A remotely managed dashboard helps Government and local administration in tracking the scheme's geo-location with its functional status for monitoring various parameters graphically, such as volume of water extracted from the ground, volume of water distributed to the village, water quality and ground water level.
This integrated solution will help the PHED in taking necessary corrective or preventive action and thereby help in good governance.
In the programme, Dr Siddhartha Singh, Secretary of PHED, Mission Director SBM, Easther Kathar DDC Kamrup, Nayan Das, Chief Engineer PHED, Diganta Baruah, Executive Engineer and Ruchi Agarwal, senior manager of Piramal Sarvajal were present.

Sep 07, 2019

Rakhigarhi Skeletal DNA Largest Source Of Ancestry For South Asians

The lead authors of a new study on DNA findings from skeletal remains excavated from Rakhigarhi, an Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) site in Hisar district of Haryana, claimed that their findings "completely reject the theory of Steppe pastoral or ancient Iranian farmers as source of ancestry to the Harappan population", setting off a debate on the origin of Indians.
The study — 'An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Pastoralists and Iranian Farmers'— was published in the journal 'Cell' on September 5, 2019, and was conducted by a team of archaeologists and geneticists from India and abroad.
The team included Shinde of Deccan College (Pune), Vageesh Narasimhan and David Reich of Harvard Medical School, and Rai of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, among others.
Iranian related ancestry in South Asia split from Iranian plateau lineage over 12,000 years ago, says study.

ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander Goes Silent Seconds Before Touchdown

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has lost contact with Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan-2.
The mission suffered a technical glitch moments before Vikram's scheduled landing on Moon's surface.
ISRO chief Dr K Sivan said everything was normal till the time Vikram lander was 2.1 km above Moon's surface.
He said the communication between Vikram Lander and the ground station was lost thereafter. Data is being analysed.

Sep 06, 2019

YouTube To Pay USD 170M Fine After Violating Kids' Privacy Law

Google agreed to pay USD 170 million to settle charges that it illegally collected and shared data from children on its YouTube video service.
The company agreed to work with video creators to label material aimed at kids and said it will limit data collection when users view such videos, regardless of their age.
Some lawmakers and children's advocacy groups, however, complained that the settlement terms aren't strong enough to rein in a company whose parent, Alphabet, made a profit of USD 30.7 billion 2018 on revenue of USD 136.8 billion, mostly from targeted ads.
Google will pay USD 136 million to the Federal Trade Commission and USD 34 million to New York state, which had a similar investigation.
The fine is the largest the FTC has levied against Google, but it's tiny compared with the USD 5 billion fine against Facebook in 2019 for privacy violations.

Chinese Shoppers Adopt Facial Payments in Cashless Drive

No cash, no cards, no wallet, and no smartphones: China's shoppers are increasingly purchasing goods with just a turn of their heads as the country embraces facial payment technology.
China's mobile payment infrastructure is one of the most advanced in the world, but the new systems -- which require only face recognition -- being rolled out nationwide could make even QR codes seem old-fashioned.
Customers simply make a purchase by posing in front of point-of-sale (POS) machines equipped with cameras, after linking an image of their face to a digital payment system or bank account.

Sep 03, 2019

1st De-Orbit Manoeuvre For Lander Vikram of Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft Performed Successfully

As a prelude to the landing of Chandrayaan-2 on the lunar South Pole, its Lander Vikram has undergone its first de-orbit manoeuvre. It helped the Lander to arrive at a 104 by 128 kilometres orbit around the moon.
The second and final de-orbit mission scheduled for tomorrow would bring it further closer at 36 kilometres at the closest point and 110 kilometres at the farthest. It would pave way for its soft-landing near the lunar South Pole on 7th of September.
The Lander Vikram was successfully separated yesterday from the Orbiter of Chandrayaan-2, which in effect is the mother-craft. During the separation, the Lander also acquired almost the same orbit of the mother-craft.

Google Hire Is The Next Google Tool To Be Shut Down

Google says it will shut down Google Hire, its G Suite tool built for recruiters at small and midsized companies, on September 1st, 2020, despite launching only two years ago. Google did not give a specific reason as to why it's shutting down the tool beyond saying that it's "focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio."
Hire is the latest of several Google products that have shut down recently, joining social network Google+, chat app Allo, and email app Inbox in the Google graveyard. It's good that Google is trying to hone its product offerings, but it's getting hard to trust that new Google services will stick around for more than a couple of years.
Google says that it will no longer be adding new features to Hire, but existing users can keep using the tool until their contract runs out or on September 1st, 2020, whichever comes first. In a small gesture of goodwill, Google says it will stop charging users for the service after their next bill.

KVIC Launches 'Terracotta Grinder' To Reuse Broken, Wasted Pottery

Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) launched first-ever 'Terracotta Grinder' at Sewapuri in Varanasi. This machine can be used to grind wasted and broken pottery items for re-use in pottery-making.
KVIC Chairman Vinay Kumar Saxena said, "The wasted pottery items were earlier ground in normal Khal-musal (mortar and pestle) and its fine powder was mixed with the normal clay. Mixing this powder in stipulated ratio to normal clay makes the resulting pottery items stronger.''

Sep 02, 2019

ICICI Bank Deploys 'Robotic Arms' To Count Currency Notes

The robots are taking over one more function at the country's second largest private lender. ICICI Bank announced the deployment of industrial 'Robotic Arms' to digitise operations at its currency chests. With this move it has become India's first commercial bank - and among a few across the globe - to customise and deploy industrial robots to automate repetitive high volume steps in handling cash processing on high-end note sorting machines.
They have undertaken a large deployment of 14 industrial robotic arms at prominent currency chests across 12 cities to digitise the currency sorting process and the bank will continue to invest in further mechanisation of note sorting technology and the next generation machines across all its currency chests.
The RBI has authorised select banks' branches - called currency chests - to receive stock rupee notes and coins from the mints and stock them, before onward distribution to all their other branches for dispensing to customers. The currency chests also remit soiled currency notes back to the apex bank. As per the RBI's annual report of 2017-18, there are 3,975 currency chests spread across the country.
The cities where ICICI Bank has deployed the robotic arms are Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Sangli, Mangaluru, Raipur, Siliguri and Varanasi, and they will help sort 1.8 billion banknotes annually. That's over 6 million notes in a single working day. Each industrial robotic arm feeds unprocessed cash in three high-end note-sorting machines simultaneously, picks up processed cash from the output stackers, aligns the loose notes, binds the packets and finally drops them in separate trays as per quality of the note.

Indian Oil To Build 1GW Electric Vehicle Battery Plant

State-run oil refiner Indian Oil Corporation Ltd will set up a 1 Giga Watt (GW) plant to make batteries used for running electric vehicles (EVs) in partnership with an overseas start-up using a non-lithium ion raw material that is locally available.
The move fits well with the government's strategy to facilitate the adoption of EVs in the country's energy basket, and cut the fuel import bill. It also supports a key element of the EVs industry — batteries and their recharge.

Chandrayaan 2 Makes One Last Orbit Around The Moon

Chandrayaan-2 completed its final manoeuvre and achieved an orbit of 119 km x 127 km.
The final and fifth lunar-bound orbit manoeuvre for Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft was performed successfully on September 1, 2019. The orbit achieved is 119 km x 127 km. All spacecraft parameters are normal.
The next move for Chandrayaan 2 will be the separation of the lander Vikram and the orbiter which is scheduled to happen on September 2, 2019. The lander will no longer be controlled by the orbiter after the separation. It is scheduled to happen between 12:45 pm and 1:45 pm.

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