In recent years, the world of athletics has witnessed a seismic shift in how athletes train, recover, and perform. At the heart of this transformation is the integration of sports science and cutting-edge technology. From wearable devices and advanced training tools to innovative recovery techniques and personalised nutrition plans, the possibilities for optimising athletic performance have never been more exciting.

Varun Shetty, co-founder, director and high-performance coach at Invictus Performance Lab, shared transformative insights into the profound effects of sports science while speaking to WION. He highlights the significance of wearables, training technologies and recovery tools, showcasing how Invictus is leading the charge towards a future of data-driven, science-backed, personalised training.

<h2>Question: How is sports science transforming the way athletes train and recover?</h2>

The world of sports is undergoing a thrilling transformation, thanks to the powerful combination of sports science and cutting-edge technology. Imagine athletes harnessing wearable devices and innovative training tools that unlock a new realm of performance enhancement.

These game-changing advancements aren't just about raw physical ability; they’re about leveraging data-driven insights that can elevate training, speed up recovery, and boost overall athletic excellence. As athletes tap into these revolutionary resources, the landscape of sports is evolving into a realm of unparalleled potential and achievement.

<h2>Question: Can you elaborate on the impact of wearable technology on athletes?</h2>

Wearable technology has redefined athletic training, acting as a personal coach and performance strategist right on your wrist. Devices like the Polar H10 and Garmin HRM-Pro dive deep into heart rate zones, enabling athletes to fine-tune every workout for maximum effectiveness and safety. Smartwatches go even further, offering a wealth of insights—tracking GPS metrics, VO2 max, and even stress levels—serving as an all-in-one health and performance companion.

Sleep trackers like the Oura Ring also play a pivotal role, aligning recovery strategies with training demands to optimize rest and regeneration. These cutting-edge tools empower athletes to train smarter, reduce injury risks, and turn raw data into actionable insights that accelerate progress. Harness the power of wearables and take your performance to the next level.

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<h2>Question: What role does training technology play in improving athletic performance?</h2>

The evolution of training technology has unlocked exciting possibilities for measuring and enhancing athletic performance in ways we never thought possible. Advanced tools like force plates, GPS trackers, accelerometers, and velocity-based training (VBT) sensors are transforming how athletes train.

For instance, force plates gauge power output during various movements, allowing for tailored strength and explosiveness training that focuses on individual needs. GPS trackers analyze movement patterns on the field, paving the way for game-specific agility drills that can provide a competitive edge. VBT sensors meticulously track lifting velocity, ensuring that athletes produce optimal power with every rep.

<h2>Question: How does Invictus Performance Lab integrate science-backed training into its approach?</h2>

At Invictus Performance Lab, we combine science-based methods with high-performance training to optimize athletic performance. Using advanced tools like motion capture and force plates, we create personalized training plans based on detailed assessments of metrics such as heart rate variability and movement efficiency.

Our holistic approach emphasizes not just training, but also recovery, nutrition, and stress management to ensure long-term well-being and prevent injury. While focused on elite athletes, we apply this same rigorous, data-driven approach to fitness enthusiasts, ensuring safe, effective progress. At Invictus, we’re committed to training smarter, not just harder, for sustainable success.

In recent years, the world of athletics has witnessed a seismic shift in how athletes train, recover, and perform. At the heart of this transformation is the integration of sports science and cutting-edge technology.

In recent years, the world of athletics has witnessed a seismic shift in how athletes train, recover, and perform. At the heart of this transformation is the integration of sports science and cutting-edge technology. From wearable devices and advanced training tools to innovative recovery techniques and personalised nutrition plans, the possibilities for optimising athletic performance have never been more exciting. Varun Shetty, co-founder, director and high-performance coach at Invictus Performance Lab, shared transformative insights into the profound effects of sports science while speaking to WION. He highlights the significance of wearables, training technologies and recovery tools, showcasing how Invictus is leading the charge towards a future of data-driven, science-backed, personalised training. Question: How is sports science transforming the way athletes train and recover? The world of sports is undergoing a thrilling transformation, thanks to the powerful combination of sports science and cutting-edge technology. Imagine athletes harnessing wearable devices and innovative training tools that unlock a new realm of performance enhancement. These game-changing advancements aren't just about raw physical ability; they’re about leveraging data-driven insights that can elevate training, speed up recovery, and boost overall athletic excellence. As athletes tap into these revolutionary resources, the landscape of sports is evolving into a realm of unparalleled potential and achievement. Question: Can you elaborate on the impact of wearable technology on athletes? Wearable technology has redefined athletic training, acting as a personal coach and performance strategist right on your wrist. Devices like the Polar H10 and Garmin HRM-Pro dive deep into heart rate zones, enabling athletes to fine-tune every workout for maximum effectiveness and safety. Smartwatches go even further, offering a wealth of insights—tracking GPS metrics, VO2 max, and even stress levels—serving as an all-in-one health and performance companion. Sleep trackers like the Oura Ring also play a pivotal role, aligning recovery strategies with training demands to optimize rest and regeneration. These cutting-edge tools empower athletes to train smarter, reduce injury risks, and turn raw data into actionable insights that accelerate progress. Harness the power of wearables and take your performance to the next level. ALSO READ | BGT 2024-25: Here's how WTC standings will look if India win, loss or draw Gabba Test Question: What role does training technology play in improving athletic performance? The evolution of training technology has unlocked exciting possibilities for measuring and enhancing athletic performance in ways we never thought possible. Advanced tools like force plates, GPS trackers, accelerometers, and velocity-based training (VBT) sensors are transforming how athletes train. For instance, force plates gauge power output during various movements, allowing for tailored strength and explosiveness training that focuses on individual needs. GPS trackers analyze movement patterns on the field, paving the way for game-specific agility drills that can provide a competitive edge. VBT sensors meticulously track lifting velocity, ensuring that athletes produce optimal power with every rep. Question: How does Invictus Performance Lab integrate science-backed training into its approach? At Invictus Performance Lab, we combine science-based methods with high-performance training to optimize athletic performance. Using advanced tools like motion capture and force plates, we create personalized training plans based on detailed assessments of metrics such as heart rate variability and movement efficiency. Our holistic approach emphasizes not just training, but also recovery, nutrition, and stress management to ensure long-term well-being and prevent injury. While focused on elite athletes, we apply this same rigorous, data-driven approach to fitness enthusiasts, ensuring safe, effective progress. At Invictus, we’re committed to training smarter, not just harder, for sustainable success.

Exclusive: How sports science and technology is redefining athletic performance

All types of insects are born with some kind of defence mechanism. From camouflaging into the leaves to producing repellant odours, insects use all kinds of ways to defend themselves from probable predators. One such defence mechanism also includes, the genitalia of an insect! Yes, you read that right.

Researchers in Japan have discovered that male mason wasps can use sharp spines on their genitalia to restrict being swallowed by predators. The team of researchers came to this conclusion after experimenting on 17 tree frogs with 17 male mason wasps. They noticed that while all the frogs attacked the wasps, just over a third ultimately rejected the insects.

The authors of the study published in the journal Current Biology about the experiment, said, "Male wasps were frequently observed to pierce the mouth or other parts of frogs with their genitalia while being attacked".&nbsp;

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On the contrary, when the three frogs were introduced to the male wasps whose genitalia was removed, all of the frogs ate the insect, despite being still bitten.&nbsp;

<h2>What do researchers say about their observation of male mason wasps?</h2>

Observing this, the team came to an inference and said, "Therefore, genital spines appear to play a role in preventing tree frogs from swallowing male wasps".&nbsp;Further study also shows that these spines do not appear to be used during the time of mating, which further adds volume to the observation made by the researchers.&nbsp;

Mason wasp, also known as potter wasp, generally belongs to the subfamily of Vespidae, but sometimes they are also considered a separate family by themselves, called&nbsp;Eumenidae.

<h2>What defence mechanism do the female mason wasps use?</h2>

The female mason wasps also have a lethal weapon, though it was observed by the team that they were less likely to be attacked by tree frogs and are more likely to be rejected. But if and when they feel threatened, or see a potential predator, they can also use their egg-depositing organ as a weapon. Their egg-depositing organ has a sting which emits venom as a defence against a hostile environment.

<h2>Why is this study important?</h2>

Researchers said that the study highlighted the importance of male genitalia as a defence against predators as there are very few studies which demonstrate such a function. "Males of several hawkmoth species produce ultrasound using their genitalia to jam bat sonar", they said.

Prof Seirian Sumner of University College London, author of Endless Forms: the Secret World of Wasps, said while male wasps did not sting, they could use their genitalia in “mock” stings. Usually, she added, this felt like a “bracing tickle” but it can be spiky enough to cause the wasp to be released from human hands.

(With inputs from agencies)

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All types of insects are born with some kind of defence mechanism. From camouflaging into the leaves to producing repellant odours, insects use all kinds of ways to defend themselves from probable predators.

All types of insects are born with some kind of defence mechanism. From camouflaging into the leaves to producing repellant odours, insects use all kinds of ways to defend themselves from probable predators. One such defence mechanism also includes, the genitalia of an insect! Yes, you read that right. Researchers in Japan have discovered that male mason wasps can use sharp spines on their genitalia to restrict being swallowed by predators. The team of researchers came to this conclusion after experimenting on 17 tree frogs with 17 male mason wasps. They noticed that while all the frogs attacked the wasps, just over a third ultimately rejected the insects. The authors of the study published in the journal Current Biology about the experiment, said, "Male wasps were frequently observed to pierce the mouth or other parts of frogs with their genitalia while being attacked". Also Read | Ready to sign off: Dust on Mars chokes InSight rover as it sends what might be its last image On the contrary, when the three frogs were introduced to the male wasps whose genitalia was removed, all of the frogs ate the insect, despite being still bitten. What do researchers say about their observation of male mason wasps? Observing this, the team came to an inference and said, "Therefore, genital spines appear to play a role in preventing tree frogs from swallowing male wasps". Further study also shows that these spines do not appear to be used during the time of mating, which further adds volume to the observation made by the researchers. Mason wasp, also known as potter wasp, generally belongs to the subfamily of Vespidae, but sometimes they are also considered a separate family by themselves, called Eumenidae. What defence mechanism do the female mason wasps use? The female mason wasps also have a lethal weapon, though it was observed by the team that they were less likely to be attacked by tree frogs and are more likely to be rejected. But if and when they feel threatened, or see a potential predator, they can also use their egg-depositing organ as a weapon. Their egg-depositing organ has a sting which emits venom as a defence against a hostile environment. Why is this study important? Researchers said that the study highlighted the importance of male genitalia as a defence against predators as there are very few studies which demonstrate such a function. "Males of several hawkmoth species produce ultrasound using their genitalia to jam bat sonar", they said. Prof Seirian Sumner of University College London, author of Endless Forms: the Secret World of Wasps, said while male wasps did not sting, they could use their genitalia in “mock” stings. Usually, she added, this felt like a “bracing tickle” but it can be spiky enough to cause the wasp to be released from human hands. (With inputs from agencies) WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.

What on earth! Male mason wasps can attack predators with their genitalia, study shows

On Thursday, the first comprehensive survey of the Earth's oceans, lakes and rivers will blast off from Southern California.&nbsp;

The NASA-led mission being launched in collaboration with Elon Musk's SpaceX has been dubbed SWOT, or Surface Water and Ocean Topography and is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of around 70 per cent of the Earth's surface.

SWOT, one of the 15 missions listed by the National Research Council as projects the American space agency should undertake in the coming decade, has been designed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) &nbsp;in collaboration with French and Canadian counterparts.&nbsp;

Watch |&nbsp;WION Climate Tracker: Marine life flee warming oceans; climate change heats planet's seas

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It will offer a fresh ground-breaking view of one of our most vital resources: the planet's water bodies and shed new light on the mechanisms of how climate change is affecting them.

To carry SWOT into orbit Billionaire Musk's SpaceX Falcon9 rocket was set to take off before dawn on Thursday from the Vandenberg US Space Force Base.

SWOT as per Reuters has been in development for over 20 years. It incorporates advanced microwave radar technology that according to scientists will collect height-surface measurements of water bodies (oceans, lakes, reservoirs and rivers) in high-definition detail over 90 per cent of the globe.

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It is equipped with Ka-band frequency of microwave spectrum that will allow scanning regardless of cloud cover or darkness and thus will enable 2D dimensions irrespective of weather or time of day.

The project will also help enhance ocean circulation models, bolster weather and climate forecasts, and contribute to managing scarce freshwater supplies in drought-stricken regions.

As per the plan, the satellite will gather data over several months. The data will be compiled from sweeps that'll be done twice every 21 days.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/nasas-orion-capsule-returns-to-earth-following-a-record-voyage-around-the-moon-542120">NASA's Orion capsule returns to Earth following a record voyage around the Moon</a>

"It's really the first mission to observe nearly all water on the planet's surface," said JPL scientist Ben Hamlington.

Collecting such data as per NASA's SWOT freshwater science lead, Tamlin Pavelsky, was akin to "taking the pulse of the world's water system, so we'll be able to see when it's racing and we'll be able to see when it's slow."

We know that the planet's oceans absorb an estimated 90 per cent r more of the excess heat trapped in Earth's atmosphere. SWOT aims to explore how the heat that is resultant of human activities and the greenhouse gas emissions generated from them, impacts climate change and moderates global temperatures.

(With inputs from agencies)

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On Thursday, the first comprehensive survey of the Earth's oceans, lakes and rivers will blast off from Southern California. The NASA-led mission being launched in collaboration with Elon Musk's SpaceX has been dubbed SWOT, or Surface Water and Ocean Topography and is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of around 70 per cent of the Earth's surface.

On Thursday, the first comprehensive survey of the Earth's oceans, lakes and rivers will blast off from Southern California. The NASA-led mission being launched in collaboration with Elon Musk's SpaceX has been dubbed SWOT, or Surface Water and Ocean Topography and is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of around 70 per cent of the Earth's surface. SWOT, one of the 15 missions listed by the National Research Council as projects the American space agency should undertake in the coming decade, has been designed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with French and Canadian counterparts. Watch | WION Climate Tracker: Marine life flee warming oceans; climate change heats planet's seas It will offer a fresh ground-breaking view of one of our most vital resources: the planet's water bodies and shed new light on the mechanisms of how climate change is affecting them. To carry SWOT into orbit Billionaire Musk's SpaceX Falcon9 rocket was set to take off before dawn on Thursday from the Vandenberg US Space Force Base. SWOT as per Reuters has been in development for over 20 years. It incorporates advanced microwave radar technology that according to scientists will collect height-surface measurements of water bodies (oceans, lakes, reservoirs and rivers) in high-definition detail over 90 per cent of the globe. Also read | 'Milestone for clean energy': US announces major nuclear fusion breakthrough It is equipped with Ka-band frequency of microwave spectrum that will allow scanning regardless of cloud cover or darkness and thus will enable 2D dimensions irrespective of weather or time of day. The project will also help enhance ocean circulation models, bolster weather and climate forecasts, and contribute to managing scarce freshwater supplies in drought-stricken regions. As per the plan, the satellite will gather data over several months. The data will be compiled from sweeps that'll be done twice every 21 days. Also read | NASA's Orion capsule returns to Earth following a record voyage around the Moon "It's really the first mission to observe nearly all water on the planet's surface," said JPL scientist Ben Hamlington. Collecting such data as per NASA's SWOT freshwater science lead, Tamlin Pavelsky, was akin to "taking the pulse of the world's water system, so we'll be able to see when it's racing and we'll be able to see when it's slow." We know that the planet's oceans absorb an estimated 90 per cent r more of the excess heat trapped in Earth's atmosphere. SWOT aims to explore how the heat that is resultant of human activities and the greenhouse gas emissions generated from them, impacts climate change and moderates global temperatures. (With inputs from agencies) WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.

Ground-breaking NASA mission to study one of Earth's most important resources to be launched today

Construction of SKA a.k.a world's biggest telescope begins; We might finally have an answer to 'are we alone?'

Scientists in the UK have developed a tool that enables robots to display more realistic and accurate expressions of pain during the physical examination of painful areas.

The Imperial College London team has developed a new physical examination approach that could reduce doctors' errors and bias.

Research published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that this could also teach trainee doctors how to use clues hidden in patients' facial expressions to minimise the force used in physical exams, while also detecting and correcting early signs of bias in medical students by exposing them to a wide variety of patient identities.

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"Improving the accuracy of facial expressions of pain on these robots is a key step in improving the quality of physical examination training for medical students," said Sibylle Rerolle, from Imperial's Dyson School of Design Engineering.

Undergraduate students participated in the study by performing a physical exam on a robotic patient's abdomen. In order to recreate pain-related facial expressions, data about forces applied to the abdomen were used to trigger changes in six different regions of the MorphFace robot face.

The method revealed the order in which different parts of a robotic face, known as facial activation units (AUs), must fire to accurately express pain. Additionally, the study determined the optimum speed and magnitude of AU activation.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/even-a-worm-can-make-decisions-says-a-study-461969" hreflang="en">Even a worm can make decisions, says a study</a>

Researchers discovered that the most realistic facial expressions were created by activating the upper face AUs (around the eyes) before activating the lower face AUs (around the mouth). The most natural results were obtained by allowing the Jaw Drop AU to take longer to activate.

It is crucial for doctors to consider patient facial expressions when performing physical examinations of painful areas.&nbsp;

Most medical training simulators, however, cannot show real-time facial expressions related to pain and only include a limited number of patient identities according to ethnicity and gender.

Based on studies demonstrating racial bias in the ability to recognize facial expressions of pain, the researchers state that these limitations may lead to biased practices on the part of medical students.

"Underlying biases could lead doctors to misinterpret the discomfort of patients - increasing the risk of mistreatment, negatively impacting doctor-patient trust, and even causing mortality, a said co-author Thilina Lalitharatne, from the Dyson School of Design Engineering.

"In the future, a robot-assisted approach could be used to train medical students to normalise their perceptions of pain expressed by patients of different ethnicity and gender."

(With inputs from agencies)

Scientists in the UK have developed a tool that enables robots to display more realistic and accurate expressions of pain during the physical examination of painful areas.

Scientists in the UK have developed a tool that enables robots to display more realistic and accurate expressions of pain during the physical examination of painful areas. The Imperial College London team has developed a new physical examination approach that could reduce doctors' errors and bias. Research published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that this could also teach trainee doctors how to use clues hidden in patients' facial expressions to minimise the force used in physical exams, while also detecting and correcting early signs of bias in medical students by exposing them to a wide variety of patient identities. Also read | Scientists identify formation of three planetary systems around this binary star "Improving the accuracy of facial expressions of pain on these robots is a key step in improving the quality of physical examination training for medical students," said Sibylle Rerolle, from Imperial's Dyson School of Design Engineering. Undergraduate students participated in the study by performing a physical exam on a robotic patient's abdomen. In order to recreate pain-related facial expressions, data about forces applied to the abdomen were used to trigger changes in six different regions of the MorphFace robot face. The method revealed the order in which different parts of a robotic face, known as facial activation units (AUs), must fire to accurately express pain. Additionally, the study determined the optimum speed and magnitude of AU activation. Also read | Even a worm can make decisions, says a study Researchers discovered that the most realistic facial expressions were created by activating the upper face AUs (around the eyes) before activating the lower face AUs (around the mouth). The most natural results were obtained by allowing the Jaw Drop AU to take longer to activate. It is crucial for doctors to consider patient facial expressions when performing physical examinations of painful areas. Most medical training simulators, however, cannot show real-time facial expressions related to pain and only include a limited number of patient identities according to ethnicity and gender. Based on studies demonstrating racial bias in the ability to recognize facial expressions of pain, the researchers state that these limitations may lead to biased practices on the part of medical students. "Underlying biases could lead doctors to misinterpret the discomfort of patients - increasing the risk of mistreatment, negatively impacting doctor-patient trust, and even causing mortality, a said co-author Thilina Lalitharatne, from the Dyson School of Design Engineering. "In the future, a robot-assisted approach could be used to train medical students to normalise their perceptions of pain expressed by patients of different ethnicity and gender." (With inputs from agencies)

UK develops robots with realistic expressions that cut doctors' errors and bias

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would lead a new drive to capitalise on scientific and technological breakthroughs made in Britain with a programme to direct research into areas that will benefit the public good. 
 
Johnson will chair a group set up to "provide strategic direction on the use of science and technology as the tools to tackle great societal challenges, level up across the country and boost prosperity around the world", his office said. 
 
Seeking strategic gains for post-Brexit Britain, the plan looks to build on the success of the country`s coronavirus vaccine programme and identify other areas where the research and development sector can benefit from government funding. 
 
“From discovery to delivery, our vaccination programme has proven what the UK can achieve at scale and at speed," Johnson said in a statement. 
 
“With the right direction, pace and backing, we can breathe life into many more scientific and technological breakthroughs that transform the lives of people across the UK and the world." 
 
The government`s Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, will head a new public body whose role will be to implement the strategy. 
 
Beyond COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, Britain wants to use its research capability to secure some of the economic benefits of a shift toward greener technology, although competition from other nations is intense. 
 
The majority of research and development spending in Britain is funded by the private sector, and overall investment in 2018 was 1.731% of GDP according to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data - below the 2.419% OECD average. 
 
Since leaving the European Union, the government has announced plans to increase its spending on R&amp;D. 
 
It plans to invest 14.9 billion pounds ($20.58 billion) in 2021/22, rising to 22 billion by 2024/25, and has committed to raise total R&amp;D investment to 2.4% of economic output by 2027.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would lead a new drive to capitalise on scientific and technological breakthroughs made in Britain with a programme to direct research into areas that will benefit the public good.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would lead a new drive to capitalise on scientific and technological breakthroughs made in Britain with a programme to direct research into areas that will benefit the public good. Johnson will chair a group set up to "provide strategic direction on the use of science and technology as the tools to tackle great societal challenges, level up across the country and boost prosperity around the world", his office said. Seeking strategic gains for post-Brexit Britain, the plan looks to build on the success of the country`s coronavirus vaccine programme and identify other areas where the research and development sector can benefit from government funding. “From discovery to delivery, our vaccination programme has proven what the UK can achieve at scale and at speed," Johnson said in a statement. “With the right direction, pace and backing, we can breathe life into many more scientific and technological breakthroughs that transform the lives of people across the UK and the world." The government`s Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, will head a new public body whose role will be to implement the strategy. Beyond COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, Britain wants to use its research capability to secure some of the economic benefits of a shift toward greener technology, although competition from other nations is intense. The majority of research and development spending in Britain is funded by the private sector, and overall investment in 2018 was 1.731% of GDP according to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data - below the 2.419% OECD average. Since leaving the European Union, the government has announced plans to increase its spending on R&D. It plans to invest 14.9 billion pounds ($20.58 billion) in 2021/22, rising to 22 billion by 2024/25, and has committed to raise total R&D investment to 2.4% of economic output by 2027.

With $21 billion spending on R&D, UK launches plan to capitalise on science and technology breakthroughs

Temperature control and lighting are regarded the predominant energy-consuming resources in large buildings and office complexes that use conventional glass windows.

Now, researchers from IIT Guwahati claim to have developed smart window materials that can control the amount of light and heat permeating through, when a voltage is passed thought it. They say this can help develop efficient automatic climate control systems in buildings.&nbsp;

Smart window materials developed by the researchers make use of 'noble metals' and their comparatively inexpensive alternatives.

According to Ashish Kumar Chowdhary, a research scholar at IIT Guwahati, their design involved an electro-optical polymer which&nbsp;was sandwiched between ultra-thin metal layers.

The filtering of light would thus be enabled by applying a voltage and changing the refractive index (how light moves through a material) of the electro-optical polymer.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/india-news/iit-madras-alumnis-startup-3d-prints-600sqft-concrete-home-comprising-hall-kitchen-bedroom-381123" hreflang="en">IIT Madras alumni’s startup 3D prints 600sqft concrete home comprising hall, kitchen, bedroom</a>

While performing simulations, researchers considered using gold and silver as the outer metal layers, but conducted the tests with copper and indium tin oxide.

Researchers claim that under certain conditions, the smart glass was able to selectively filter solar radiation that spans the visible, infrared and shortwave infrared wavelengths, including heat and light reflected from neighbouring buildings and structures.

The results of this study have recently been published in the journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.

The team believes that such smart materials can be applied to obtain efficient automatic climate control in vehicles, locomotives, airplanes and greenhouses of the future.

They claim that the material proposed by their team can easily be fabricated using existing state-of-the-art nanoscale fabrication methods such as e-beam evaporation and graphoepitaxy techniques.

According to the researchers, the working of these materials is dependent on the surface smoothness and other physical properties of the layers. The team plans to conduct further studies on the same.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/india-news/iit-madras-incubated-start-up-pi-beam-launches-made-in-india-e-bike-362688" hreflang="en">IIT Madras incubated start-up ‘Pi-beam’ launches 'Made in India' e-bike&nbsp;</a>

“We believe that our smart windows can provide an alternative solution for maintaining ambient indoor temperature and lighting inside a building or a vehicle by integrating those with usual glass windows or walls, thereby reducing the need of air-conditioning systems", said Dr. Debabrata Sikdar, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering.

Temperature control and lighting are regarded the predominant energy-consuming resources in large buildings and office complexes that use conventional glass windows.

Temperature control and lighting are regarded the predominant energy-consuming resources in large buildings and office complexes that use conventional glass windows. Now, researchers from IIT Guwahati claim to have developed smart window materials that can control the amount of light and heat permeating through, when a voltage is passed thought it. They say this can help develop efficient automatic climate control systems in buildings. Smart window materials developed by the researchers make use of 'noble metals' and their comparatively inexpensive alternatives. According to Ashish Kumar Chowdhary, a research scholar at IIT Guwahati, their design involved an electro-optical polymer which was sandwiched between ultra-thin metal layers. The filtering of light would thus be enabled by applying a voltage and changing the refractive index (how light moves through a material) of the electro-optical polymer. Also read: IIT Madras alumni’s startup 3D prints 600sqft concrete home comprising hall, kitchen, bedroom While performing simulations, researchers considered using gold and silver as the outer metal layers, but conducted the tests with copper and indium tin oxide. Researchers claim that under certain conditions, the smart glass was able to selectively filter solar radiation that spans the visible, infrared and shortwave infrared wavelengths, including heat and light reflected from neighbouring buildings and structures. The results of this study have recently been published in the journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells. The team believes that such smart materials can be applied to obtain efficient automatic climate control in vehicles, locomotives, airplanes and greenhouses of the future. They claim that the material proposed by their team can easily be fabricated using existing state-of-the-art nanoscale fabrication methods such as e-beam evaporation and graphoepitaxy techniques. According to the researchers, the working of these materials is dependent on the surface smoothness and other physical properties of the layers. The team plans to conduct further studies on the same. Also read: IIT Madras incubated start-up ‘Pi-beam’ launches 'Made in India' e-bike “We believe that our smart windows can provide an alternative solution for maintaining ambient indoor temperature and lighting inside a building or a vehicle by integrating those with usual glass windows or walls, thereby reducing the need of air-conditioning systems", said Dr. Debabrata Sikdar, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering.

India's IIT researchers develop smart windows that regulate light, heat to conserve power in buildings

The mouse embryos looked perfectly normal. All their organs were developing as expected, along with their limbs and circulatory and nervous systems. Their tiny hearts were beating at a normal 170 beats per minute.

But these embryos were not growing in a mother mouse. They were developed inside an artificial uterus, the first time such a feat has been accomplished, scientists reported on Wednesday.

The experiments, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, were meant to help scientists understand how mammals develop and how gene mutations, nutrients and environmental conditions may affect the fetus. But the work may one day raise profound questions about whether other animals, even humans, should or could be cultured outside a living womb.

In a study published in the journal Nature, Dr. Jacob Hanna described removing embryos from the uteruses of mice at five days of gestation and growing them for six more days in artificial wombs.

At that point, the embryos were about halfway through their development; full gestation is about 20 days. A human at this stage of development would be called a fetus. To date, Hanna and his colleagues have grown more than 1,000 embryos in this way.

“It really is a remarkable achievement,” said Paul Tesar, a developmental biologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.

Alexander Meissner, director of genome regulation at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, said that “getting this far is amazing” and that the study was “a major milestone.”

But the research has already progressed beyond what the investigators described in the paper. In an interview, Hanna said he and his colleagues had taken fertilized eggs from the oviducts of female mice just after fertilization — at Day 0 of development — and had grown them in the artificial uterus for 11 days.

Until now, researchers were able to fertilize eggs from mammals in the laboratory and grow them for only a short time. The embryos needed a living womb. “Placental mammals develop locked away in the uterus,” Tesar said.

That prevented scientists from answering fundamental questions about the earliest stages of development.

“The holy grail of developmental biology is to understand how a single cell, a fertilized egg, can make all of the specific cell types in the human body and grow into 40 trillion cells,” Tesar said. “Since the beginning of time, researchers have been trying to develop ways to answer this question.”

The only way to study the development of tissues and organs was to turn to species like worms, frogs and flies that do not need a uterus, or to remove embryos from the uteruses of experimental animals at varying times, providing glimpses of development more like snapshots than video.

What was needed was a way to get inside the uterus, watching and tweaking development in mammals as it happened. For Hanna, that meant developing an artificial uterus.

He spent seven years developing a two-part system that includes incubators, nutrients and a ventilation system. The mouse embryos are placed in glass vials inside incubators, where they float in a special nutrient fluid.

The vials are attached to a wheel that slowly spins so the embryos do not attach to the wall, where they would become deformed and die. The incubators are connected to a ventilation machine that provides oxygen and carbon dioxide to the embryos, controlling the concentration of those gasses, as well as the gas pressure and flow rate.

At Day 11 of development — more than halfway through a mouse pregnancy — Hanna and his colleagues examined the embryos, only the size of apple seeds, and compared them to those developing in the uteruses of living mice. The lab embryos were identical, the scientists found.

By that time, though, the lab-grown embryos had become too large to survive without a blood supply. They had a placenta and a yolk sack, but the nutrient solution that fed them through diffusion was no longer sufficient.

Getting past that hurdle is the next goal, Hanna said in an interview. He is considering using an enriched nutrient solution or an artificial blood supply that connects to the embryos’ placentas.

In the meantime, experiments beckon. The ability to keep embryos alive and developing halfway through pregnancy “is a gold mine for us,” Hanna said.

The artificial womb may allow researchers to learn more about why pregnancies end in miscarriages or why fertilized eggs fail to implant. It opens a new window onto how gene mutations or deletions affect fetal development. Researchers may be able to watch individual cells migrate to their ultimate destinations.

The work is “a breakthrough,” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, professor of biology and biological engineering at the California Institute of Technology. It “opens the door to a new age of studying development in the experimental mouse model.”

A recent development provides another opportunity. Researchers have directly created mouse embryos from mouse fibroblasts — connective tissue cells — making early embryos without starting with a fertilized egg.

Combine that development with Hanna’s work, and “now you don’t need mice to study mouse embryo development,” Meissner said. Scientists may be able to make all the embryos they need from connective tissue.

If scientists could make embryos without fertilizing eggs and could study their development without a uterus, Meissner said, “you can get away from embryo destruction.” There would be no need to fertilize mouse eggs only to destroy them in the course of study.

But the work might eventually extend beyond mice. Two other papers published in Nature on Wednesday report on attempts that edge near creating early human embryos in this way. Of course, Meissner said, creation of human embryos is years away — if it is permitted at all. For now, scientists generally refrain from studying human embryos beyond 14 days of fertilization.

In the future, Tesar said, “it is not unreasonable that we might have the capacity to develop a human embryo from fertilization to birth entirely outside the uterus.”

Of course, even the suggestion of this science fiction scenario is bound to horrify many. But it is early days, with no assurance human fetuses could ever develop entirely outside the womb.

Even assuming they could, Tesar noted, “whether that is appropriate is a question for ethicists, regulators and society.”

The mouse embryos looked perfectly normal. All their organs were developing as expected, along with their limbs and circulatory and nervous systems. Their tiny hearts were beating at a normal 170 beats per minute.

The mouse embryos looked perfectly normal. All their organs were developing as expected, along with their limbs and circulatory and nervous systems. Their tiny hearts were beating at a normal 170 beats per minute. But these embryos were not growing in a mother mouse. They were developed inside an artificial uterus, the first time such a feat has been accomplished, scientists reported on Wednesday. The experiments, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, were meant to help scientists understand how mammals develop and how gene mutations, nutrients and environmental conditions may affect the fetus. But the work may one day raise profound questions about whether other animals, even humans, should or could be cultured outside a living womb. In a study published in the journal Nature, Dr. Jacob Hanna described removing embryos from the uteruses of mice at five days of gestation and growing them for six more days in artificial wombs. At that point, the embryos were about halfway through their development; full gestation is about 20 days. A human at this stage of development would be called a fetus. To date, Hanna and his colleagues have grown more than 1,000 embryos in this way. “It really is a remarkable achievement,” said Paul Tesar, a developmental biologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland. Alexander Meissner, director of genome regulation at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, said that “getting this far is amazing” and that the study was “a major milestone.” But the research has already progressed beyond what the investigators described in the paper. In an interview, Hanna said he and his colleagues had taken fertilized eggs from the oviducts of female mice just after fertilization — at Day 0 of development — and had grown them in the artificial uterus for 11 days. Until now, researchers were able to fertilize eggs from mammals in the laboratory and grow them for only a short time. The embryos needed a living womb. “Placental mammals develop locked away in the uterus,” Tesar said. That prevented scientists from answering fundamental questions about the earliest stages of development. “The holy grail of developmental biology is to understand how a single cell, a fertilized egg, can make all of the specific cell types in the human body and grow into 40 trillion cells,” Tesar said. “Since the beginning of time, researchers have been trying to develop ways to answer this question.” The only way to study the development of tissues and organs was to turn to species like worms, frogs and flies that do not need a uterus, or to remove embryos from the uteruses of experimental animals at varying times, providing glimpses of development more like snapshots than video. What was needed was a way to get inside the uterus, watching and tweaking development in mammals as it happened. For Hanna, that meant developing an artificial uterus. He spent seven years developing a two-part system that includes incubators, nutrients and a ventilation system. The mouse embryos are placed in glass vials inside incubators, where they float in a special nutrient fluid. The vials are attached to a wheel that slowly spins so the embryos do not attach to the wall, where they would become deformed and die. The incubators are connected to a ventilation machine that provides oxygen and carbon dioxide to the embryos, controlling the concentration of those gasses, as well as the gas pressure and flow rate. At Day 11 of development — more than halfway through a mouse pregnancy — Hanna and his colleagues examined the embryos, only the size of apple seeds, and compared them to those developing in the uteruses of living mice. The lab embryos were identical, the scientists found. By that time, though, the lab-grown embryos had become too large to survive without a blood supply. They had a placenta and a yolk sack, but the nutrient solution that fed them through diffusion was no longer sufficient. Getting past that hurdle is the next goal, Hanna said in an interview. He is considering using an enriched nutrient solution or an artificial blood supply that connects to the embryos’ placentas. In the meantime, experiments beckon. The ability to keep embryos alive and developing halfway through pregnancy “is a gold mine for us,” Hanna said. The artificial womb may allow researchers to learn more about why pregnancies end in miscarriages or why fertilized eggs fail to implant. It opens a new window onto how gene mutations or deletions affect fetal development. Researchers may be able to watch individual cells migrate to their ultimate destinations. The work is “a breakthrough,” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, professor of biology and biological engineering at the California Institute of Technology. It “opens the door to a new age of studying development in the experimental mouse model.” A recent development provides another opportunity. Researchers have directly created mouse embryos from mouse fibroblasts — connective tissue cells — making early embryos without starting with a fertilized egg. Combine that development with Hanna’s work, and “now you don’t need mice to study mouse embryo development,” Meissner said. Scientists may be able to make all the embryos they need from connective tissue. If scientists could make embryos without fertilizing eggs and could study their development without a uterus, Meissner said, “you can get away from embryo destruction.” There would be no need to fertilize mouse eggs only to destroy them in the course of study. But the work might eventually extend beyond mice. Two other papers published in Nature on Wednesday report on attempts that edge near creating early human embryos in this way. Of course, Meissner said, creation of human embryos is years away — if it is permitted at all. For now, scientists generally refrain from studying human embryos beyond 14 days of fertilization. In the future, Tesar said, “it is not unreasonable that we might have the capacity to develop a human embryo from fertilization to birth entirely outside the uterus.” Of course, even the suggestion of this science fiction scenario is bound to horrify many. But it is early days, with no assurance human fetuses could ever develop entirely outside the womb. Even assuming they could, Tesar noted, “whether that is appropriate is a question for ethicists, regulators and society.”

Scientists grow mouse embryos in a mechanical womb

It was a February day so overcast that noon looked like dusk, and Frances McDormand felt a little rattled. She told me this as we ambled down the main street of the small coastal town where she lives, a modest, hidden place so far from Hollywood that studio searchlights would have a hard time finding it. Still, someone had managed.

Earlier that day, the phone rang at McDormand’s house, and while she didn’t recognize the man on the other end, he certainly knew who &lt;em&gt;she &lt;/em&gt;was. When the caller told her he was watching “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the 2017 movie in which she plays an avenging mother named Mildred, McDormand realized she was on the phone with a fan who had tracked down her unlisted landline.

“It was the first creepy call I’ve gotten in 16 years here,” she told me. Though she hung up right away, McDormand now wondered what she might have asked him: “OK, what part were you watching? The scene where I threw the Molotov cocktail at the police station?”

Maybe the fan had hoped to speak with righteous Mildred, who harangues priests and cops and hurls fire bombs in the pursuit of justice. Instead, he reached Frances McDormand, a 63-year-old woman who chats up everybody she comes across in her small town, doesn’t like to think of herself as famous, and has won two Oscars.

This is the tricky thing about how persuasively McDormand embodies her characters: You think you know&lt;em&gt; her&lt;/em&gt; because you’re certain you know them. Whether it’s kindhearted Marge from “Fargo,” tetchy Olive from “Olive Kitteridge,” or bohemian Jane in “Laurel Canyon,” McDormand specializes in playing women with worldviews. You can tell right away what they like and don’t like, who they would be friendly with and who they can’t stand.

Since she rarely grants interviews, most people only see the real McDormand blazing an iconoclastic streak through televised awards shows, where she is barefaced instead of Botoxed and once wore her own jean jacket in lieu of borrowed couture. (In Hollywood, this mild noncompliance is tantamount to a declaration of war.) McDormand is highly skeptical of any ceremony where actors are done up like glamorous gladiators, and when her husband, filmmaker Joel Coen, was once asked to produce the Oscars alongside his brother, Ethan, McDormand suggested they set the telecast at Coney Island, which would have forced Hollywood glitterati to mingle with the freak show.

That irreverence is McDormand’s most endearing trait: On the day we met, she ducked into a liquor store to satisfy her craving for Fritos — “You know they’re gooood, right?” she teased — and before we sat together on a concrete wall by the coastline, McDormand clambered on top of it and used the length of her splayed body to measure a pandemic-appropriate distance between us. She makes a concerted effort not to treat herself like a precious movie star in the hopes that you won’t, either.

That’s why she lives where she lives and why, as she perched on the wall opposite me in an olive puffer jacket, she asked me not to divulge the name of her town. That morning’s phone call aside, “I get to live my more authentic self here,” she said, “and I don’t have to pretend to be anybody else.”

She nodded toward the beach, where a handful of people cavorted with their dogs and surfboards. “I don’t mind being&lt;em&gt; their&lt;/em&gt; movie star,” she said. “I’m just not going to be yours.”

STILL, THE LINE BETWEEN McDORMAND and her characters will only grow blurrier with the release of her intimate new film, “Nomadland.” In this sunset-dappled drama from the director Chloé Zhao, McDormand plays Fern, a widow who packs her things into a van and joins up with a tribe of older itinerant workers to spend their golden years working odd jobs all across the American West.

“Nomadland” would eventually require more from this private star than she is used to giving, but when McDormand first met with Zhao in early 2018, she was mostly curious what the up-and-coming director would think of her: “I was like, ‘Man, I just want to be relevant. Do you think I’m relevant?’”

Perhaps that’s a surprising admission for a woman who was then on the verge of winning her second Oscar, for “Three Billboards,” but McDormand had just entered her 60s and worried that good opportunities could prove harder to find. Even before that, most of her best-known roles had required some hustle to obtain, which is part of the reason McDormand has lately become a producer, too.

“Our industry is such an ageist industry,” Zhao told me by phone. “Someone like Frances McDormand who is just so authentically herself, who has not tried to erase those lines on her face or cover that up to fit into the industry — to me, she’ll be relevant forever.”

And it was exactly that authentic self that intrigued Zhao. In her previous films, “The Rider” and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” Zhao had cast nonprofessionals and built character arcs for them that were inspired by their actual experiences. “Nomadland,” based on a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder, would offer her the same opportunity: Real nomads from Bruder’s book, like Linda May and Swankie, were enticed to play pivotal supporting roles in the film.

But since Zhao wanted those women to simply be themselves in front of the camera, she decided that for the sake of coherence, McDormand would need to play a version of herself, too. “It’s very interesting, the layers of it,” Zhao said. “Fran is playing Fern, but even the name ‘Fern’ came from herself and who she thinks she might be if she hit the road.”

In fact, McDormand had long harbored a fantasy of turning her back on Hollywood, changing her name, and setting off in an RV upon reaching her 60s. “Chloé tapped into the truth of it,” McDormand said, “which was at different points of my life, I’ve said to my husband, ‘I can’t take this anymore, I’m dropping out.’”

“Nomadland” let McDormand play out that dream and a few others. Many of the people McDormand interacts with in the film had no idea she was a famous actress — they figured she was just another nomad, and spoke to her like a normal person in exactly the way that she craves.

In some ways, all that verisimilitude could be grueling, too — McDormand was surprised at how exhausted she would feel after long days of simply being present in front of the camera, reacting to the stories real people unspooled. Zhao also asked McDormand to put in actual hours at Fern’s odd jobs, like harvesting beets in Nebraska or working at a warehouse in California.

But the result is a performance that McDormand has never given before, one that has less to do with acting and more to do with simply &lt;em&gt;being&lt;/em&gt;. As Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wrote in his “Nomadland” review, “McDormand doesn’t disappear into Fern; she’s revealed by Fern, and Fern is revealed by her.”

That sort of ineffable, hard-to-pin-down portrait was exactly Zhao’s intention. “I like to think that we have captured a great performance,” she said, “but also, an essence of Fran as well.”

Still, the director and her star sometimes disagreed on just how much of that essence to use. Details both large and small have been pulled directly from McDormand’s real life: Fern proudly shows off a set of plates that McDormand’s father bought her as a college graduation gift, and Zhao cast one of the actress’s oldest friends as Fern’s sister so the recriminations they air in the film could have a real weight.

But when Zhao floated the idea of finding a role in the film for McDormand’s son, Pedro, or suggested that Fern’s dead spouse, glimpsed only in a photograph, should be played by McDormand’s actual husband, Joel Coen, her lead drew a line in the sand. “I have to believe that it’s not just a documentary of me,” McDormand said. “I did create a character, just like I’ve created myself in 63 years, too.”

FOR MOST OF HER LIFE, McDormand has been fascinated by the formula through which one concocts a self-image. How much does it have to do with authenticity, and to what extent is it constructed by playing pretend?

“I would say probably fifth grade is the first time I can remember, ‘Oh, I know what they think I am, and I’m going to subvert it,’” she told me.

What they knew about McDormand then was that she was the adopted daughter of Vernon McDormand, a minister for the Disciples of Christ. That sort of role in that sort of family required a certain amount of public respectability, but as she got older, and an English teacher at McDormand’s school in Monessen, Pennsylvania, asked her to read the role of Lady Macbeth in a workshop, she found herself thrilled to leave propriety at the door.

“That was the hook,” McDormand said. “It was the power of being a really shy, slightly suspect seventh-grader who could stand in front of a group of people and keep their attention.” She loved, too, that Shakespeare’s female characters were as power-hungry as the men: “It’s like I used to say to Joel, ‘Why don’t you guys write better roles for women? In fact, why don’t you just write a role for men and then let me play it?’”

She had married Coen not long after making her screen debut in the 1984 noir “Blood Simple,” which he directed with Ethan. Twelve years later, the Coen brothers would give McDormand her signature role, one that could only be played by a woman: Marge, the chirpy, pregnant police chief in “Fargo.”

That film made her famous, a condition that McDormand considered a fire to be stomped out: After hiring a publicist, she almost immediately instructed him to turn down most requests.

“I made a very conscious effort not to do press and publicity for 10 years in what other people would think would be a very dangerous moment in a female actor’s career, but it paid off for exactly the reasons I wanted it to,” she said. “It gave me a mystery back to who I was, and then in the roles I performed, I could take an audience to a place where someone who sold watches or perfume and magazines couldn’t.”

To her, “Nomadland” is the culmination of that effort to keep herself unspoiled in the public eye. “That’s why it works,” she said. “That’s why Chloé could bear to even think of doing this with me, because of what I’ve created for years not just as an actor, but in my personal life.”

We traipsed back through town, and as we walked up a hill covered in overgrowth and eucalyptus trees, McDormand drew one final line: “So I’m going to pass my house, and then I’m going to leave you,” she said. She asked if I had dinner plans, and directed me to a farm stand I could stop by on the way home. “They’ve got gorgeous little gems and some good old arugula,” she said, “but no eggs right now because the chickens are all cold.”

As McDormand offered me kindly advice while standing in front of a felled eucalyptus trunk, I could have sworn I was talking to Fern, who is so practical and self-reliant. It reminded me of a story she had told me earlier: Not long ago, for the drive-in premiere of “Nomadland” in Pasadena, California, McDormand had decided to pull the van from the film out of storage. She thought it would be fun to sit in during the screening, but when she came face to face with the car she had lovingly named “Vanguard,” McDormand found herself overcome.

She had considered that van “the interior life of Fern, and therefore me,” she said, and to see Vanguard dirty and filled with junk after two years apart was almost too much to bear. An hour and a half into their reunion, Coen found McDormand still scrubbing the car, dripping sweat, insisting that she needed just a little more time with Vanguard. “I’m cleaning her,” McDormand told him. “I can’t let her go!”

It isn’t easy to move on when you’ve made something that requires so much of you. Before we parted ways, I asked McDormand how she felt after making “Nomadland.” I thought she scoffed at me, but she was laughing at the very idea.

“Well, at what point?” she said. “&lt;em&gt;Is&lt;/em&gt; it afterwards? I don’t know!” Then she shoved her hands into the pockets of her puffer jacket and disappeared into the eucalyptus grove, taking Fern with her.

It was a February day so overcast that noon looked like dusk, and Frances McDormand felt a little rattled. She told me this as we ambled down the main street of the small coastal town where she lives, a modest, hidden place so far from Hollywood that studio searchlights would have a hard time finding it.

It was a February day so overcast that noon looked like dusk, and Frances McDormand felt a little rattled. She told me this as we ambled down the main street of the small coastal town where she lives, a modest, hidden place so far from Hollywood that studio searchlights would have a hard time finding it. Still, someone had managed. Earlier that day, the phone rang at McDormand’s house, and while she didn’t recognize the man on the other end, he certainly knew who she was. When the caller told her he was watching “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the 2017 movie in which she plays an avenging mother named Mildred, McDormand realized she was on the phone with a fan who had tracked down her unlisted landline. “It was the first creepy call I’ve gotten in 16 years here,” she told me. Though she hung up right away, McDormand now wondered what she might have asked him: “OK, what part were you watching? The scene where I threw the Molotov cocktail at the police station?” Maybe the fan had hoped to speak with righteous Mildred, who harangues priests and cops and hurls fire bombs in the pursuit of justice. Instead, he reached Frances McDormand, a 63-year-old woman who chats up everybody she comes across in her small town, doesn’t like to think of herself as famous, and has won two Oscars. This is the tricky thing about how persuasively McDormand embodies her characters: You think you know her because you’re certain you know them. Whether it’s kindhearted Marge from “Fargo,” tetchy Olive from “Olive Kitteridge,” or bohemian Jane in “Laurel Canyon,” McDormand specializes in playing women with worldviews. You can tell right away what they like and don’t like, who they would be friendly with and who they can’t stand. Since she rarely grants interviews, most people only see the real McDormand blazing an iconoclastic streak through televised awards shows, where she is barefaced instead of Botoxed and once wore her own jean jacket in lieu of borrowed couture. (In Hollywood, this mild noncompliance is tantamount to a declaration of war.) McDormand is highly skeptical of any ceremony where actors are done up like glamorous gladiators, and when her husband, filmmaker Joel Coen, was once asked to produce the Oscars alongside his brother, Ethan, McDormand suggested they set the telecast at Coney Island, which would have forced Hollywood glitterati to mingle with the freak show. That irreverence is McDormand’s most endearing trait: On the day we met, she ducked into a liquor store to satisfy her craving for Fritos — “You know they’re gooood, right?” she teased — and before we sat together on a concrete wall by the coastline, McDormand clambered on top of it and used the length of her splayed body to measure a pandemic-appropriate distance between us. She makes a concerted effort not to treat herself like a precious movie star in the hopes that you won’t, either. That’s why she lives where she lives and why, as she perched on the wall opposite me in an olive puffer jacket, she asked me not to divulge the name of her town. That morning’s phone call aside, “I get to live my more authentic self here,” she said, “and I don’t have to pretend to be anybody else.” She nodded toward the beach, where a handful of people cavorted with their dogs and surfboards. “I don’t mind being their movie star,” she said. “I’m just not going to be yours.” STILL, THE LINE BETWEEN McDORMAND and her characters will only grow blurrier with the release of her intimate new film, “Nomadland.” In this sunset-dappled drama from the director Chloé Zhao, McDormand plays Fern, a widow who packs her things into a van and joins up with a tribe of older itinerant workers to spend their golden years working odd jobs all across the American West. “Nomadland” would eventually require more from this private star than she is used to giving, but when McDormand first met with Zhao in early 2018, she was mostly curious what the up-and-coming director would think of her: “I was like, ‘Man, I just want to be relevant. Do you think I’m relevant?’” Perhaps that’s a surprising admission for a woman who was then on the verge of winning her second Oscar, for “Three Billboards,” but McDormand had just entered her 60s and worried that good opportunities could prove harder to find. Even before that, most of her best-known roles had required some hustle to obtain, which is part of the reason McDormand has lately become a producer, too. “Our industry is such an ageist industry,” Zhao told me by phone. “Someone like Frances McDormand who is just so authentically herself, who has not tried to erase those lines on her face or cover that up to fit into the industry — to me, she’ll be relevant forever.” And it was exactly that authentic self that intrigued Zhao. In her previous films, “The Rider” and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” Zhao had cast nonprofessionals and built character arcs for them that were inspired by their actual experiences. “Nomadland,” based on a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder, would offer her the same opportunity: Real nomads from Bruder’s book, like Linda May and Swankie, were enticed to play pivotal supporting roles in the film. But since Zhao wanted those women to simply be themselves in front of the camera, she decided that for the sake of coherence, McDormand would need to play a version of herself, too. “It’s very interesting, the layers of it,” Zhao said. “Fran is playing Fern, but even the name ‘Fern’ came from herself and who she thinks she might be if she hit the road.” In fact, McDormand had long harbored a fantasy of turning her back on Hollywood, changing her name, and setting off in an RV upon reaching her 60s. “Chloé tapped into the truth of it,” McDormand said, “which was at different points of my life, I’ve said to my husband, ‘I can’t take this anymore, I’m dropping out.’” “Nomadland” let McDormand play out that dream and a few others. Many of the people McDormand interacts with in the film had no idea she was a famous actress — they figured she was just another nomad, and spoke to her like a normal person in exactly the way that she craves. In some ways, all that verisimilitude could be grueling, too — McDormand was surprised at how exhausted she would feel after long days of simply being present in front of the camera, reacting to the stories real people unspooled. Zhao also asked McDormand to put in actual hours at Fern’s odd jobs, like harvesting beets in Nebraska or working at a warehouse in California. But the result is a performance that McDormand has never given before, one that has less to do with acting and more to do with simply being. As Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wrote in his “Nomadland” review, “McDormand doesn’t disappear into Fern; she’s revealed by Fern, and Fern is revealed by her.” That sort of ineffable, hard-to-pin-down portrait was exactly Zhao’s intention. “I like to think that we have captured a great performance,” she said, “but also, an essence of Fran as well.” Still, the director and her star sometimes disagreed on just how much of that essence to use. Details both large and small have been pulled directly from McDormand’s real life: Fern proudly shows off a set of plates that McDormand’s father bought her as a college graduation gift, and Zhao cast one of the actress’s oldest friends as Fern’s sister so the recriminations they air in the film could have a real weight. But when Zhao floated the idea of finding a role in the film for McDormand’s son, Pedro, or suggested that Fern’s dead spouse, glimpsed only in a photograph, should be played by McDormand’s actual husband, Joel Coen, her lead drew a line in the sand. “I have to believe that it’s not just a documentary of me,” McDormand said. “I did create a character, just like I’ve created myself in 63 years, too.” FOR MOST OF HER LIFE, McDormand has been fascinated by the formula through which one concocts a self-image. How much does it have to do with authenticity, and to what extent is it constructed by playing pretend? “I would say probably fifth grade is the first time I can remember, ‘Oh, I know what they think I am, and I’m going to subvert it,’” she told me. What they knew about McDormand then was that she was the adopted daughter of Vernon McDormand, a minister for the Disciples of Christ. That sort of role in that sort of family required a certain amount of public respectability, but as she got older, and an English teacher at McDormand’s school in Monessen, Pennsylvania, asked her to read the role of Lady Macbeth in a workshop, she found herself thrilled to leave propriety at the door. “That was the hook,” McDormand said. “It was the power of being a really shy, slightly suspect seventh-grader who could stand in front of a group of people and keep their attention.” She loved, too, that Shakespeare’s female characters were as power-hungry as the men: “It’s like I used to say to Joel, ‘Why don’t you guys write better roles for women? In fact, why don’t you just write a role for men and then let me play it?’” She had married Coen not long after making her screen debut in the 1984 noir “Blood Simple,” which he directed with Ethan. Twelve years later, the Coen brothers would give McDormand her signature role, one that could only be played by a woman: Marge, the chirpy, pregnant police chief in “Fargo.” That film made her famous, a condition that McDormand considered a fire to be stomped out: After hiring a publicist, she almost immediately instructed him to turn down most requests. “I made a very conscious effort not to do press and publicity for 10 years in what other people would think would be a very dangerous moment in a female actor’s career, but it paid off for exactly the reasons I wanted it to,” she said. “It gave me a mystery back to who I was, and then in the roles I performed, I could take an audience to a place where someone who sold watches or perfume and magazines couldn’t.” To her, “Nomadland” is the culmination of that effort to keep herself unspoiled in the public eye. “That’s why it works,” she said. “That’s why Chloé could bear to even think of doing this with me, because of what I’ve created for years not just as an actor, but in my personal life.” We traipsed back through town, and as we walked up a hill covered in overgrowth and eucalyptus trees, McDormand drew one final line: “So I’m going to pass my house, and then I’m going to leave you,” she said. She asked if I had dinner plans, and directed me to a farm stand I could stop by on the way home. “They’ve got gorgeous little gems and some good old arugula,” she said, “but no eggs right now because the chickens are all cold.” As McDormand offered me kindly advice while standing in front of a felled eucalyptus trunk, I could have sworn I was talking to Fern, who is so practical and self-reliant. It reminded me of a story she had told me earlier: Not long ago, for the drive-in premiere of “Nomadland” in Pasadena, California, McDormand had decided to pull the van from the film out of storage. She thought it would be fun to sit in during the screening, but when she came face to face with the car she had lovingly named “Vanguard,” McDormand found herself overcome. She had considered that van “the interior life of Fern, and therefore me,” she said, and to see Vanguard dirty and filled with junk after two years apart was almost too much to bear. An hour and a half into their reunion, Coen found McDormand still scrubbing the car, dripping sweat, insisting that she needed just a little more time with Vanguard. “I’m cleaning her,” McDormand told him. “I can’t let her go!” It isn’t easy to move on when you’ve made something that requires so much of you. Before we parted ways, I asked McDormand how she felt after making “Nomadland.” I thought she scoffed at me, but she was laughing at the very idea. “Well, at what point?” she said. “Is it afterwards? I don’t know!” Then she shoved her hands into the pockets of her puffer jacket and disappeared into the eucalyptus grove, taking Fern with her.

What Frances McDormand would (and wouldn’t) give to 'Nomadland'

Judit Polgar might be the one woman in the world who knows how Beth, the heroine of the hit Netflix series 'The Queen’s Gambit,' really feels. Like Beth, Polgar, who is from Hungary, stood out during her career because she regularly beat the world’s top players, including Garry Kasparov, in 2002, when he was ranked No&nbsp;1.

Polgar, the only woman to ever be ranked in the Top 10 or to play for the overall world championship, retired from competitive chess in 2014. Watching the series, which she described as an “incredible performance,” gave her a sense of déjà vu, particularly in the later episodes.

But there was one respect in which she could not identify with Beth’s experience: how the male competitors treated her.

“They were too nice to her,” Polgar said. When Polgar was proving herself and rising in the world rankings, the men often made disparaging comments about her ability and sometimes jokes, which they thought were funny but were actually hurtful, she said.

And no one ever resigned to her, as Shapkin did to Beth in Episode 7 by gallantly holding her hand near his lips.

“There were opponents who refused to shake hands,” she recalled. “There was one who hit his head on the board after he lost.”

Not every woman has had negative experiences. Irina Krush, who won her eighth US&nbsp;Women’s Championship last month, said she felt as if the chess community and men in particular were supportive of her when she was an up-and-coming player. She said of the series, “The spirit of what they are showing conforms to my experience.”

Whether what happens to Beth is typical or not, the popularity of 'The Queen’s Gambit' has inspired anew a debate about inequality and sexism in chess and what, if anything, can be done about them.

Though chess would seem like one area where men and women should be able to compete on equal footing, historically, few women have been able to do so. Among the more than 1,700 regular grandmasters worldwide, only 37, including Polgar and Krush, are women. Currently, only one woman, Hou Yifan of China, ranks in the Top 100, at No&nbsp;88, and she has been playing infrequently, even before the pandemic.

The superiority of men in the game is so well established that the best female players have freely acknowledged it. In a recent issue of Mint, in an article titled 'Why Women Lose at Chess,' Koneru Humpy, an Indian player currently ranked No&nbsp;3 among women, said men are just better players. “It’s proven,” she said. “You have to accept it.”

The dearth of women at the top of the game is one reason that there are separate tournaments for women, including a world championship; the World Chess Federation even created titles for women, such as women grandmaster.

Having such institutionalized, second-class status might seem like a bad idea, but not according to Anastasiya Karlovich, a grandmaster who was the press officer for the World Chess Federation for several years. She said the women’s titles permit more female players to earn a living as professionals, thereby increasing their participation in the game.

Karlovich said the Netflix show has helped her indirectly: It has made the parents of her chess students look at her differently.

“They have more respect for me. They understand better the life of a player,” she said.

While some men have speculated that the reason there are so few top female players is because they are not wired for it — Kasparov once said that it is not in their nature — women think the overriding reason is cultural expectations and bias.

Krush said the cultural cleaving between boys and girls happens at a young age. Scrolling through lists of the top players in the United States who are 7, 8 and 9, Krush pointed out that there are only a handful of girls in the Top 10.

That creates and reinforces another problem that discourages women’s participation: too few social contacts. Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. women’s champion who has written two books about women in chess ('Chess Bitch' and 'Play Like a Girl!') and is the women’s program director at the US Chess Federation, said teenage girls tend to stop playing chess because there are so few of them and they want the social support. That Beth is a loner is likely an important reason she does not quit playing in tournaments.

Of 74,000 members in total, the US Chess Federation said it has about 10,500 female members. Shahade wants to increase that number, as well as their participation. To that end, she and the federation started an online chess club in April to keep female players engaged during the pandemic. In the last few weeks, there have been between 80 and 140 participants, with quite a few older players. The last meeting also had a special guest: Kasparov, who has become a big booster of women’s chess since his retirement from competition in 2005. He was also a consultant on the Netflix series.

To keep the momentum going, Shahade is launching a new online group called the “Madwoman’s Book Club.” The title refers to a pejorative name used for the queen in the 15th and 16th centuries after it became the most powerful piece on the board. The first meeting, this Friday, already has 100 people signed up.

The subject of the discussion should come as no surprise: 'The Queen’s Gambit'&nbsp;by Walter Tevis, the book on which the Netflix series is based. 
&nbsp;

Judit Polgar might be the one woman in the world who knows how Beth, the heroine of the hit Netflix series 'The Queen’s Gambit,' really feels. Like Beth, Polgar, who is from Hungary, stood out during her career because she regularly beat the world’s top players, including Garry Kasparov, in 2002, when he was ranked No 1.

Judit Polgar might be the one woman in the world who knows how Beth, the heroine of the hit Netflix series 'The Queen’s Gambit,' really feels. Like Beth, Polgar, who is from Hungary, stood out during her career because she regularly beat the world’s top players, including Garry Kasparov, in 2002, when he was ranked No 1. Polgar, the only woman to ever be ranked in the Top 10 or to play for the overall world championship, retired from competitive chess in 2014. Watching the series, which she described as an “incredible performance,” gave her a sense of déjà vu, particularly in the later episodes. But there was one respect in which she could not identify with Beth’s experience: how the male competitors treated her. “They were too nice to her,” Polgar said. When Polgar was proving herself and rising in the world rankings, the men often made disparaging comments about her ability and sometimes jokes, which they thought were funny but were actually hurtful, she said. And no one ever resigned to her, as Shapkin did to Beth in Episode 7 by gallantly holding her hand near his lips. “There were opponents who refused to shake hands,” she recalled. “There was one who hit his head on the board after he lost.” Not every woman has had negative experiences. Irina Krush, who won her eighth US Women’s Championship last month, said she felt as if the chess community and men in particular were supportive of her when she was an up-and-coming player. She said of the series, “The spirit of what they are showing conforms to my experience.” Whether what happens to Beth is typical or not, the popularity of 'The Queen’s Gambit' has inspired anew a debate about inequality and sexism in chess and what, if anything, can be done about them. Though chess would seem like one area where men and women should be able to compete on equal footing, historically, few women have been able to do so. Among the more than 1,700 regular grandmasters worldwide, only 37, including Polgar and Krush, are women. Currently, only one woman, Hou Yifan of China, ranks in the Top 100, at No 88, and she has been playing infrequently, even before the pandemic. The superiority of men in the game is so well established that the best female players have freely acknowledged it. In a recent issue of Mint, in an article titled 'Why Women Lose at Chess,' Koneru Humpy, an Indian player currently ranked No 3 among women, said men are just better players. “It’s proven,” she said. “You have to accept it.” The dearth of women at the top of the game is one reason that there are separate tournaments for women, including a world championship; the World Chess Federation even created titles for women, such as women grandmaster. Having such institutionalized, second-class status might seem like a bad idea, but not according to Anastasiya Karlovich, a grandmaster who was the press officer for the World Chess Federation for several years. She said the women’s titles permit more female players to earn a living as professionals, thereby increasing their participation in the game. Karlovich said the Netflix show has helped her indirectly: It has made the parents of her chess students look at her differently. “They have more respect for me. They understand better the life of a player,” she said. While some men have speculated that the reason there are so few top female players is because they are not wired for it — Kasparov once said that it is not in their nature — women think the overriding reason is cultural expectations and bias. Krush said the cultural cleaving between boys and girls happens at a young age. Scrolling through lists of the top players in the United States who are 7, 8 and 9, Krush pointed out that there are only a handful of girls in the Top 10. That creates and reinforces another problem that discourages women’s participation: too few social contacts. Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. women’s champion who has written two books about women in chess ('Chess Bitch' and 'Play Like a Girl!') and is the women’s program director at the US Chess Federation, said teenage girls tend to stop playing chess because there are so few of them and they want the social support. That Beth is a loner is likely an important reason she does not quit playing in tournaments. Of 74,000 members in total, the US Chess Federation said it has about 10,500 female members. Shahade wants to increase that number, as well as their participation. To that end, she and the federation started an online chess club in April to keep female players engaged during the pandemic. In the last few weeks, there have been between 80 and 140 participants, with quite a few older players. The last meeting also had a special guest: Kasparov, who has become a big booster of women’s chess since his retirement from competition in 2005. He was also a consultant on the Netflix series. To keep the momentum going, Shahade is launching a new online group called the “Madwoman’s Book Club.” The title refers to a pejorative name used for the queen in the 15th and 16th centuries after it became the most powerful piece on the board. The first meeting, this Friday, already has 100 people signed up. The subject of the discussion should come as no surprise: 'The Queen’s Gambit' by Walter Tevis, the book on which the Netflix series is based.

How 'The Queen's Gambit' started a new debate about sexism in chess

Dr VK Saraswat, member of the Niti Aayog said that India needed to focus on small satellites (smallsats). He said small satellites would play a major role in the coming years. He was speaking at an international space conference on 'Ushering the new in Indian Space Sector'

Small satellites (smallsats) is a generic term used to refer to satellites that weigh lesser than 500kg.&nbsp;

“709 satellites were launched in the short interval between November 2018 and March 2020” Dr. VK Saraswat. He projects that 7,038 Small satellites would be launched between 2018 and 2027, where most of them would be used for earth observation, technology and telecommunication purposes. For context, there are only 2,666 in orbit as of March 2020 and a three-fold increase in being foreseen by 2027.&nbsp;

Speaking about the way the space business was evolving, he said that reusable rockets (one-stage or two-stage) and small expendable vehicles were going to be of immense value, as there was tremendous growth in re-usable and low-cost rockets. He also made a mention of ISRO’s upcoming Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) which is aimed at this segment.

It is notable that the world record of launching maximum number of satellites into orbit is held by the Indian PSLV rocket - which placed 104 satellites in orbit. Over 80 satellites carried by that rocket were owned by an American firm that operates small satellites for imaging purposes. It is such constellations of small satellites that are being touted as the future.&nbsp;

Small satellites make technology accessible to all, by ensuring it is affordable and it serves as a platform to test new technologies. While larger satellites serve multiple purposes, smaller ones can be made for a single-purpose and can reduce the complexity, cost and development time.&nbsp;

According to statistics shared by Saraswat, there were about 1000 Smallsats launched between 2012-17 and about 700 of them were Cubesats. Cubesats are an even smaller category of Smallsats that are cubes with dimensions in multiples of 10cm.&nbsp;

However, Saraswat also referred to some challenges for the SmallSat category, in terms of new technologies for telemetry, tracking and command, besides network for ground and space segment. Also, the Prague Declaration of 2015 showed the need for smallest developers to adhere to international laws, regulations and procedures. &nbsp;There are also challenges in the domains of authorization, registration, frequency allocation, risk, liability, insurance and space debris mitigation.

Dr VK Saraswat, member of the Niti Aayog said that India needed to focus on small satellites (smallsats). He said small satellites would play a major role in the coming years.

Dr VK Saraswat, member of the Niti Aayog said that India needed to focus on small satellites (smallsats). He said small satellites would play a major role in the coming years. He was speaking at an international space conference on 'Ushering the new in Indian Space Sector' Small satellites (smallsats) is a generic term used to refer to satellites that weigh lesser than 500kg. “709 satellites were launched in the short interval between November 2018 and March 2020” Dr. VK Saraswat. He projects that 7,038 Small satellites would be launched between 2018 and 2027, where most of them would be used for earth observation, technology and telecommunication purposes. For context, there are only 2,666 in orbit as of March 2020 and a three-fold increase in being foreseen by 2027. Speaking about the way the space business was evolving, he said that reusable rockets (one-stage or two-stage) and small expendable vehicles were going to be of immense value, as there was tremendous growth in re-usable and low-cost rockets. He also made a mention of ISRO’s upcoming Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) which is aimed at this segment. It is notable that the world record of launching maximum number of satellites into orbit is held by the Indian PSLV rocket - which placed 104 satellites in orbit. Over 80 satellites carried by that rocket were owned by an American firm that operates small satellites for imaging purposes. It is such constellations of small satellites that are being touted as the future. Small satellites make technology accessible to all, by ensuring it is affordable and it serves as a platform to test new technologies. While larger satellites serve multiple purposes, smaller ones can be made for a single-purpose and can reduce the complexity, cost and development time. According to statistics shared by Saraswat, there were about 1000 Smallsats launched between 2012-17 and about 700 of them were Cubesats. Cubesats are an even smaller category of Smallsats that are cubes with dimensions in multiples of 10cm. However, Saraswat also referred to some challenges for the SmallSat category, in terms of new technologies for telemetry, tracking and command, besides network for ground and space segment. Also, the Prague Declaration of 2015 showed the need for smallest developers to adhere to international laws, regulations and procedures. There are also challenges in the domains of authorization, registration, frequency allocation, risk, liability, insurance and space debris mitigation.

India needs to focus on small satellites for Digital India: Niti Aayog member

On June 21, the entire world was witnessing the annular solar eclipse after more than a decade but there was a minister of Pakistan who thought it otherwise.

Chaudhary Fawad Hussain, who serves as the Science and Technology Minister in Pakistan, shared a document containing information on solar eclipses three days before the actual event, on June 19.

The document that he had shared to give information on the supposed lunar eclipse talked all about the solar eclipse, it's timing, etc. 
&nbsp;

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
چاند گرہن کے متعلق مزید معلومات <a href="https://t.co/3betuh3agy">pic.twitter.com/3betuh3agy</a>
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) <a href="https://twitter.com/fawadchaudhry/status/1273998496702619648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

This is quite opposite to the natural assumption of people that a Science Minister must have - at least - basic knowledge of the subject, especially the difference between solar and lunar eclipses.

Social media users immediately started trolling the Pakistani minister. Some trolled him for sharing wrong information while some asked him to delete tweet immediately.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Sir it is Sooraj Girhan. Hope you rectify. It is human error
— Ahmar Aftab, PMS (@AhmarAftab28) <a href="https://twitter.com/AhmarAftab28/status/1274000671101116416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
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<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Who made him a minister of science and technology lol. He don't even know the difference between solar and lunar eclipse.
— CattierJungle03 (@CattierJungle01) <a href="https://twitter.com/CattierJungle01/status/1274727568487440385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
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(With inputs from agencies)

On June 21, the entire world was witnessing the annular solar eclipse after more than a decade but there was a minister of Pakistan who thought it otherwise. Chaudhary Fawad Hussain, who serves as the Science and Technology Minister in Pakistan, shared a document containing information on solar eclipses three days before the actual event, on June 19.

On June 21, the entire world was witnessing the annular solar eclipse after more than a decade but there was a minister of Pakistan who thought it otherwise. Chaudhary Fawad Hussain, who serves as the Science and Technology Minister in Pakistan, shared a document containing information on solar eclipses three days before the actual event, on June 19. The document that he had shared to give information on the supposed lunar eclipse talked all about the solar eclipse, it's timing, etc. چاند گرہن کے متعلق مزید معلومات pic.twitter.com/3betuh3agy — Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) June 19, 2020 × This is quite opposite to the natural assumption of people that a Science Minister must have - at least - basic knowledge of the subject, especially the difference between solar and lunar eclipses. Social media users immediately started trolling the Pakistani minister. Some trolled him for sharing wrong information while some asked him to delete tweet immediately. Sir it is Sooraj Girhan. Hope you rectify. It is human error — Ahmar Aftab, PMS (@AhmarAftab28) June 19, 2020 × Who made him a minister of science and technology lol. He don't even know the difference between solar and lunar eclipse. — CattierJungle03 (@CattierJungle01) June 21, 2020 × (With inputs from agencies)

Pakistan’s 'Science and Technology' minister confuses solar eclipse with the lunar eclipse, gets trolled on Twitter

A Chinese researcher has claimed that he helped make the&nbsp;world's first gene-edited babies and that he did so with a new tool capable of altering DNA, the&nbsp;Associated Press reported Monday.

The AP report said the twin girls were born to a&nbsp;couple whose embryos were altered during fertility treatment. The researcher, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, said he took part in the work in China.

Jiankui however refused to disclose any further&nbsp;information&nbsp;about the couple or where the gene editing might have taken place.

AP reported Jiankui as further claiming that embryos for seven couples were altered for the experiment but that only one pregnancy had so far given the desired result.

The researcher made the claims in Hong Kong, a day before an international conference on gene editing which is set to begin Tuesday.

Gene editing technology is banned in many countries including the US and is also denounced by various scientists who term it as "unsafe" and unethical.

China outlaws human cloning but not specifically gene editing.

In recent years scientists have discovered ways to edit genes. A tool call&nbsp;CRISPR-cas9 makes it possible to operate on DNA to supply a needed gene or disable the one that’s causing problems.

If the claims get confirmed then it&nbsp;will be a groundbreaking research in the medical field as it can be used by doctors to cure or prevent inherited disease.

However, gene alteration so far has only been experimented on adults to treat badly diseases.

The AP report further states researcher saying that his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but to try to bestow a trait that few people naturally have — an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus.

He chose embryo&nbsp;gene editing for HIV as these infections are a big problem&nbsp;in China. 
&nbsp;

A Chinese researcher has claimed that he helped make the world's first gene-edited babies and that he did so with a new tool capable of altering DNA, the Associated Press reported Monday.

A Chinese researcher has claimed that he helped make the world's first gene-edited babies and that he did so with a new tool capable of altering DNA, the Associated Press reported Monday. The AP report said the twin girls were born to a couple whose embryos were altered during fertility treatment. The researcher, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, said he took part in the work in China. Jiankui however refused to disclose any further information about the couple or where the gene editing might have taken place. AP reported Jiankui as further claiming that embryos for seven couples were altered for the experiment but that only one pregnancy had so far given the desired result. The researcher made the claims in Hong Kong, a day before an international conference on gene editing which is set to begin Tuesday. Gene editing technology is banned in many countries including the US and is also denounced by various scientists who term it as "unsafe" and unethical. China outlaws human cloning but not specifically gene editing. In recent years scientists have discovered ways to edit genes. A tool call CRISPR-cas9 makes it possible to operate on DNA to supply a needed gene or disable the one that’s causing problems. If the claims get confirmed then it will be a groundbreaking research in the medical field as it can be used by doctors to cure or prevent inherited disease. However, gene alteration so far has only been experimented on adults to treat badly diseases. The AP report further states researcher saying that his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but to try to bestow a trait that few people naturally have — an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus. He chose embryo gene editing for HIV as these infections are a big problem in China.

First gene-edited babies born in China: Report

It may not change how you buy bananas, but scientists have voted to redefine the value of a kilogram, in what they called a landmark decision that will boost the accuracy of scientific measurements.

Since 1889, a kilogram has been defined by a shiny lump of platinum-iridium kept in a special glass case and known as the International Prototype of the Kilogram. It is housed at the headquarters of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (whose French acronym is BIPM), just outside Paris.

Members of the BIPM, which groups some 60 nations, agreed on Friday after a week-long meeting at the nearby Palace of Versailles to redefine a kilogram in terms of a tiny but unchanging value called the "Planck constant".

They also voted to update definitions for the ampere (electrical current), the kelvin (thermodynamic temperature) and the mole (amount of a substance).

All modern mass measurements are derived from the kilogram, whether micrograms of pharmaceutical medicine or gold dust, kilos of fruit or fish, or tonnes of steel.

The problem is the prototype doesn't always weigh the same. Even inside its three glass bell jars it picks up microparticles of dirt and is affected by the atmosphere. Sometimes it needs cleaning, which can affect its mass.

That can have profound implications. If the prototype were to lose mass, atoms would in theory weigh more since the base kilogram must by definition always weigh a kilogram.

Scientists have been trying for decades to define a constant value for the kilogram that is derived from immutable physics, in the same way they have done for other standard units (SI units) overseen by the BIPM.

For example, a metre isn't 100 centimetres, it's actually "the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second".

The "Planck constant", which derives from quantum physics, can be used along with a Kibble balance, an exquisitely accurate weighing machine, to calculate the mass of an object using a precisely measured electromagnetic force.

"The SI redefinition is a landmark moment in scientific progress," said Martin Milton, director of the BIPM.

"Using the fundamental constants we observe in nature as a foundation for important concepts such as mass and time means that we have a stable foundation from which to advance our scientific understanding, develop new technologies and address some of society's greatest challenges."

Barry Inglis, who heads the committee for weights and measures, said the implications were immense.

"We will now no longer be bound by the limitations of objects in our measurement of the world, but have universally accessible units that can pave the way to even greater accuracy, and even accelerate scientific advancement," he said.

It is arguably the most significant redefinition of an SI unit since the second was recalculated in 1967, a decision that helped ease communication across the world via technologies like GPS and the internet.

The new definitions agreed by the BIPM will come into force on May 20, 2019. 
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It may not change how you buy bananas, but scientists have voted to redefine the value of a kilogram, in what they called a landmark decision that will boost the accuracy of scientific measurements.

It may not change how you buy bananas, but scientists have voted to redefine the value of a kilogram, in what they called a landmark decision that will boost the accuracy of scientific measurements. Since 1889, a kilogram has been defined by a shiny lump of platinum-iridium kept in a special glass case and known as the International Prototype of the Kilogram. It is housed at the headquarters of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (whose French acronym is BIPM), just outside Paris. Members of the BIPM, which groups some 60 nations, agreed on Friday after a week-long meeting at the nearby Palace of Versailles to redefine a kilogram in terms of a tiny but unchanging value called the "Planck constant". They also voted to update definitions for the ampere (electrical current), the kelvin (thermodynamic temperature) and the mole (amount of a substance). All modern mass measurements are derived from the kilogram, whether micrograms of pharmaceutical medicine or gold dust, kilos of fruit or fish, or tonnes of steel. The problem is the prototype doesn't always weigh the same. Even inside its three glass bell jars it picks up microparticles of dirt and is affected by the atmosphere. Sometimes it needs cleaning, which can affect its mass. That can have profound implications. If the prototype were to lose mass, atoms would in theory weigh more since the base kilogram must by definition always weigh a kilogram. Scientists have been trying for decades to define a constant value for the kilogram that is derived from immutable physics, in the same way they have done for other standard units (SI units) overseen by the BIPM. For example, a metre isn't 100 centimetres, it's actually "the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second". The "Planck constant", which derives from quantum physics, can be used along with a Kibble balance, an exquisitely accurate weighing machine, to calculate the mass of an object using a precisely measured electromagnetic force. "The SI redefinition is a landmark moment in scientific progress," said Martin Milton, director of the BIPM. "Using the fundamental constants we observe in nature as a foundation for important concepts such as mass and time means that we have a stable foundation from which to advance our scientific understanding, develop new technologies and address some of society's greatest challenges." Barry Inglis, who heads the committee for weights and measures, said the implications were immense. "We will now no longer be bound by the limitations of objects in our measurement of the world, but have universally accessible units that can pave the way to even greater accuracy, and even accelerate scientific advancement," he said. It is arguably the most significant redefinition of an SI unit since the second was recalculated in 1967, a decision that helped ease communication across the world via technologies like GPS and the internet. The new definitions agreed by the BIPM will come into force on May 20, 2019.

How much does a kilogram weigh? Depends on your 'Planck constant'

China is reportedly in the process of launching "artificials moon"&nbsp;into orbit which will be bright enough to illuminate Chengdu, the southwestern province of Sichuan in China.

According to reports, Chinese scientists are planning to launch three satellites into orbit by 2020 with claims that the light the "moons" give&nbsp;off will be enough to replace the streetlights of Chengdu city.

These manmade moons will reportedly be eight times brighter than the real moon and will&nbsp;be made from a&nbsp;reflective material like glass with solar panel-like wings to reflect light from the sun.

According to reports, the angles of these wings can also be adjusted&nbsp;to focus light on a particular location.

The testing of these devices reportedly&nbsp;started years ago and now they are ready to send into space.

According to local media reports, these artificial moons will save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in electricity costs.

China's local media agency, Xinhua has reported that the idea for the man-made moon originated from a French artist who imagined hanging a necklace made of mirrors in the sky to light up the streets of Paris at night.

Russia in 1999 had also attempted a similar project in which it was planning to&nbsp;launch a 25-metre "space mirror" to light up cities in Siberia. However, later the project was cancelled.

Meanwhile, scientists have shown concern that it could disturb wildlife and disrupt systems that observe the earth's atmosphere.

Details related to the project's cost, maintenance and the launch date is not revealed yet.&nbsp;

 
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China is reportedly in the process of launching "artificials moon" into orbit which will be bright enough to illuminate Chengdu, the southwestern province of Sichuan in China.

China is reportedly in the process of launching "artificials moon" into orbit which will be bright enough to illuminate Chengdu, the southwestern province of Sichuan in China. According to reports, Chinese scientists are planning to launch three satellites into orbit by 2020 with claims that the light the "moons" give off will be enough to replace the streetlights of Chengdu city. These manmade moons will reportedly be eight times brighter than the real moon and will be made from a reflective material like glass with solar panel-like wings to reflect light from the sun. According to reports, the angles of these wings can also be adjusted to focus light on a particular location. The testing of these devices reportedly started years ago and now they are ready to send into space. According to local media reports, these artificial moons will save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in electricity costs. China's local media agency, Xinhua has reported that the idea for the man-made moon originated from a French artist who imagined hanging a necklace made of mirrors in the sky to light up the streets of Paris at night. Russia in 1999 had also attempted a similar project in which it was planning to launch a 25-metre "space mirror" to light up cities in Siberia. However, later the project was cancelled. Meanwhile, scientists have shown concern that it could disturb wildlife and disrupt systems that observe the earth's atmosphere. Details related to the project's cost, maintenance and the launch date is not revealed yet.

China to launch 3 'artificial moons', will replace streetlights of city