Thursday, December 01, 2022

Quick notes: Anti-drone | R&D spend...

  • Anti-drone predator: Indian Army shows off birds-of-prey trained to destroy armed drones.


  • Where Indian Army Scores Over PLA: An oft-overlooked military advantage that India has against China is the resilience and fighting quality of our combat forces. In contrast, the average Chinese soldier is a lone male child, pampered by an adoring family and ill-prepared for the hazards and discomforts of the Line of Actual Control.

    This man-to-man advantage that Indian jawans on the LAC enjoy over the relatively comfort-loving Chinese soldiers would be eroded once the ranks of hardened jawans, enrolled on long-service tenures, are diluted by significant numbers of so-called Agniveers -- soldiers enrolled on short-service tenures of four years.


  • Kumbhaka (Breath Retention) and Bohr Effect: According to the Bohr Effect, buildup of CO2 during breath retention (hypoxia) triggers release of oxygen. Oxygen is attached to hemoglobin in the blood, and is then unloaded into the tissues.

    Most people have a blood oxygen saturation level of 95-98%, which sounds very high. However, this number is only a measure of oxygen in the blood—not the tissues, where oxygen is needed to energize and repair. Once oxygen is unloaded from hemoglobin due to a breath hold, it can be utilized by tissues. CO2 is then picked up by hemoglobin, escorted to the lungs, and breathed out.


  • Take One Minute to Discover the Timeless:



  • Annual R&D spend as a percentage of GDP: India? We spent it on Sardar Patel and Kempegowda statues.


  • 'Most countries won't forgive deaths of children': 'The deaths of the children in the Gambia would batter India's reputation as the developing world's pharmacy.'


  • Supplement fetish: Intake of popular commercial dietary supplements like nicotinamide riboside (NR), a form of vitamin B3, could actually increase the risk of serious diseases, including cancer. NR could not only increase the risk of someone developing triple-negative breast cancer but also cause the cancer to spread to the brain, the study said.


  • Dylan Patel: China's Biren is a bigger threat to Nvidia’s AI training hardware dominance than the competition from Intel, AMD, Graphcore, SambaNova, or Cerebras. How China is attempting to evade US sanctions.


  • 'There really is more to life than posting on Instagram': "I would find myself scrolling at night, and then having a bad night's sleep, and then waking up not feeling refreshed. Now I'm not making comparisons in my day-to-day life, and I don't really know what celebrities are doing".


  • TikTok is China's Digital Fentanyl: They show a very different version in China than in U.S. “China only allows people to be on TikTok for 40 minutes a day”.


  • Climate hypocrisy: U.S. to auction almost 1 Million Acres off Alaskan Coast for oil drilling.


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