Science & Tech 🧿

Broadly, in-flight connectivity systems use two kinds of technologies. One, an onboard antenna picks up signals from the nearest tower on the ground, and unless the aircraft flying over a large space with no towers (such as a water body), the connection will remain seamless up to a certain altitude.

Otherwise, satellites can be used to connect to ground stations in the same way that satellite TV signals are transmitted. Data is transmitted to a personal electronic device through an onboard router, which connects to the plane’s antenna. The antenna transmits the signals, through satellites, to a ground station, which redirects the traffic to a billing server that calculates the data consumption. It is then relayed to the intercepting servers, and to the World Wide Web.

The organism is Henneguya salminicola, a fewer-than-10-celled microscopic parasite that lives in the salmon muscle. According to the researchers, as the organism evolved, it gave up breathing and stopped the consumption of oxygen for the production of energy — which means it relies on anaerobic respiration (through which cells extract energy without using oxygen). It also challenges what may be generally thought of as evolution in organisms — that they become more complex as they evolve. In the case of this non-oxygen breathing organism, evolution turned it into a simpler organism that shed “unnecessary genes” responsible for aerobic respiration.

When your cell phone is connected to the Internet, electromagnetic waves travel from your device through the air to a cell tower. You could think of this as a giant antenna. The electrons in this antenna bounce up and down. When they do this, they produce their own electromagnetic waves, which travel to a central location managed by your service provider. At this location, the waves get ‘processed’ in some way, and are sent either to the optical fibre network (the Internet) or another phone (phone call, text message, etc.).

Essentially, the lift-off is a flight test to certify if SpaceX’s crew transportation system can be used to ferry crew to and from the space station regularly.

This is a plan to bring broadband -- with download speeds of at least 25Mbps -- to six million homes and businesses, which currently have no broadband

TESS will look for dips in the visible light of stars, which requires that planets cross stars in our line of sight. “Repetitive, periodic dips can reveal a planet or planets orbiting a star. Transit photometry, which looks at how much light an object puts out at any given time, can tell researchers a lot about a planet,” says NASA.

NASA said the mission “encompasses all of our efforts to return humans to the Moon -- which will prepare us and propel us on to Mars.”

“Through the Artemis programme, we will see the first woman and the next man walk on the surface of the Moon. As the ‘torch bringer,’ literally and figuratively, “Artemis will light our way to Mars,” NASA said in a statement.

With the mission, NASA plans to explore regions of the Moon never visited before, unlock mysteries of the universe and test the technology that will extend the bounds of humanity farther into the Solar System.

SIM swap in cyberspace fraud is the latest technique adopted by cyber criminals to gain access to the customer’s bank accounts, credit cards and other personal data,"

Fraudsters get the SIM swapped when they want to steal personal data—obviously, without your consent—to misuse it. “Fraudsters obtain your personal information through a wide variety of techniques, like shimming, vishing and phishing. Once that’s done, they immediately contact your mobile operator, block your existing SIM card, and obtain a new SIM card,"

Typically, the fraudster calls you and poses as your service provider and offers some fake upgrades or information related to services. To make you eligible for these upgrades, the fraudsters ask you to confirm a few important details. You then get an SMS or email with some kind of Trojan or malware, which can easily access your basic bank details, among other information. Once the fraudsters have your data, they approach your service provider, posing as you, along with some fake documents, and fill in the SIM swap request. On verification of the fake papers, the company deactivates the old SIM and issues the new SIM to the fraudster. The new SIM is activated within a few hours. In the meantime, your SIM will show no signal or network. Since the deactivation usually happens at night, you wouldn’t be alerted to your mobile phone having no network. “Once the SIM is swapped and the fraudster is in possession of the new SIM card, the fraudster will have access to the victim’s phone number and will be able to operate his bank account etc.

The spacecraft send information and pictures back to Earth using the Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN is a collection of big radio antennas in different parts of the world.
Spacecraft send images and other information to these big antennas. The antennas also receive details about where the spacecraft are and how they are doing. At the same time, NASA uses the DSN to send lists of instructions out to the spacecraft.

The father simply injects his genes through the sperm. (Sperm cells do have mitochondria in their tails, powering the speedy movement of the sperm. But when the sperm enters the egg, this tail with its mitochondria is discarded). An important point to note here is that the developing baby inherits its mitochondria from the mother — from her egg cell which contains mitochondria.

What if her mitochondria had defects?

Why not remove the defective mitochondria from the mother’s egg and replace them with healthy ones from a donor lady who is willing to offer her egg cells or embryo? This way we have the genetic or nuclear mother (who passes on her genomic DNA to the baby) and the ‘mitochondria mother’ (who has donated healthy cellular powerhouses). Now when the sperm of the father-to-be enters and fertilizes the modified egg, the baby has three ‘parents’: the geno-mom, the mito-mom and the geno-dad.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling novel forms of deception. AI algorithms can produce realistic “deepfake” videos, as well as authentic-looking fake photos and writing. Collectively called synthetic media, these tools have triggered widespread concern about their potential in spreading political disinformation

How this technology can facilitate financial harm

Three malicious techniques appear in multiple scenarios and should be prioritized in any response. Deepfake voice phishing (vishing) uses cloned voices to impersonate trusted individuals over the phone, exploiting victims’ professional or personal relationships. Fabricated private remarks are deepfake clips that falsely depict public figures making damaging comments behind the scenes, challenging victims to refute them. Synthetic social botnets are fake social media accounts made from AI-generated photographs and text, improving upon the stealth and effectiveness of today’s social bots.

The Artemis Accords are an international agreement between governments of participating nations in the Artemis program on the principles for cooperation in the civil exploration and use of the Moon, Mars, comets, and asteroids for peaceful purposes

"The Outer Space Treaty forbids nations from staking claim to another planetary body, but the policy of the US is that countries and companies can own the materials they extract from other worlds." Frans von der Dunk from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln claims that the accords strengthen "the US interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty".

The satellite will identify and count alpha particles and beta particles in the rays, and measure the radiation energy around Earth.The satellite will identify and count alpha particles and beta particles in the rays, and measure the radiation energy around Earth. The team said that as the satellite is 'smaller than a loaf of bread,' it costs orders of magnitude less than large-scale satellites.The team's CubeSat BLAST is a scientific investigation mission to map the distribution of galactic cosmic radiation across the night sky.

5G differs from prior cell phone standards in having a much wider radio dial than before, capable of tuning in many more types of frequencies — and multiple types of frequencies at the same time

CDMA is one of the newer digital technologies used in Canada, the US, Australia, and some South-eastern Asian countries (e.g. Hong Kong and South Korea). CDMA differs from GSM and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) by its use of spread spectrum techniques for transmitting voice or data over the air

In order to clone a GSM phone, knowledge of the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) or instrument number is sufficient.

USP of 3D printing are flexible design ,Print on demand , Minimising waste and Cost effectiveness, Rapid Prototyping and Areas of Improvment are making available selection of raw materials as exhaustive

XR or extended reality includes technologies like AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality ). XR was not just a tool to make Pokémon Go, or to show you a car in different colours, it was something that could make paralyzed war veterans walk, or the sightless “see", much like what ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interface(BMI) was promising.

Over a century ago, at the time of the Spanish Flu when people were isolating themselves, many (mostly Americans) turned to telephone to get in touch with friends and family. The Spanish Flu underscored how essential the technology of telecom was to modern society. Possibly we are at a similar inflection point in time today.

Tech enabled learning can not only bring in transformational change in online education experience, it can also enhance and supplement regular classroom based pedagogy. It could offer more flexibility and learning support than the traditional formats.

COVID-19 underscored how Aadhaar enabled Direct Benefit Transfer — facilitated quick and targeted action.