Quick notes: Missile story, Cycle sharing...

• India's Missile Story: In autumn 1982, Kalam presented his findings to the defence minister at that time, R Venkataraman. If Kalam was a hard-driving visionary, so too was Venkataraman. Dismissing all talk of a "phased programme", he ordered all programmes to be taken up simultaneously. The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme was formally sanctioned in July 1983, and funds were pre-allocated for a 12-year period up to 1995.
  
  Those were heady days for the DRDO's idealistic young scientists, buoyed by the 1971 victory over Pakistan and the "peaceful nuclear experiment" of 1974. In 1972, two young IIT graduates, VK Saraswat and Avinash Chander joined the DRDO just ten days apart. They were amongst more than a hundred young scientists who joined the DRDO's missile complex after graduating from premier institutions like the IITs, and Jadhavpur University. Within three years, Saraswat was heading propulsion development, while Chander spearheaded the development of navigation and guidance systems.
  
  "Wherever we have worked without the option of import - be it on strategic missiles, nuclear weapons, atomic energy or the space programme - we have achieved self-reliance. In the super-secret world of electronic warfare, where import is not an option, we have built world-class systems. We should ourselves ban imports, and we will indigenise. Necessity is the mother of invention."



• Debájit Sarkar explains: How good is LCA Tejas compared with other fighter jets in its category?



• Urban mobility: Zoomcar launches PEDL, India's first technology enabled cycle sharing service 



• Hydrogen is right choice as fuel for automobiles: G Madhavan Nair, former chairman of ISRO: "Lithium, you cannot throw it around. That becomes the most polluting thing. There has to be an adequate mechanism for collection and reprocessing. The availability of lithium is scarce and that's why the cost of LiBs is high. That's why I say for the long-run, one should look for (Hydrogen) fuel cell "



• Nerdy and proud of it: The smartest Americans are heading west



• Foreign languages not to be part of 3-language formula: Students who are keen on learning foreign languages should opt for the subject as fourth or fifth language 



• Better to learn to code than learn English as a second language: Programming encourages students of all disciplines to be inventive and experimental: “It’s not just for the computer scientists. Creativity is in the front seat; technology is in the backseat.”