Agrivoltaics: Generate electricity and grow crops simultaneously with tinted, semi-transparent solar panels. The tinted solar panels absorb blue and green wavelengths to generate electricity. Orange and red wavelengths pass through, allowing plants underneath to grow.
While the crop receives less than half the total amount of light it would get if grown in a standard agricultural system, the colours passing through the panels are the ones most suitable for its growth.
Agrivoltaics work best for plants that grow well in partial shade. Potential functioning crops include hog peanut, alfalfa, yam, taro, cassava, sweet potato, along with lettuce.
NEP: Syncing education with practical knowledge and the needs of the times, the policy recommends that from the sixth standard onward, students be taught coding in school... The premium on “English-medium'' should also ease a bit, with the government encouraging early learning in the mother tongue or regional language.
Coding & AI is skill like that of the carpenter and the artist.
India teaching coding only via English is like asking children of merchants to make furniture.
Explains why Indian coders lag those from China, Japan, Russia, or US where coding is taught in via own languages.
Alexa Fund: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products. In some cases, it has met with startups about possible takeovers,
figured out how their technology works and then refused to invest in
them when it launches a competing product at a later stage.
Energy-based-weaponry: Israel's Iron Beam, the laser that could destroy Iranian missiles
Some geologists say instead of relying on dams to stop flooding, we should give rivers space and allow them to expand during the flood season. "Large alluvial rivers naturally flood during the wet season. Floodwater is not a problem, that's simply what rivers do. The problem is when you have a lot of people living in the areas that are subject to flooding".
Many dams in the northwestern coast of the US were actually removed because they blocked the migration of fish from the ocean up the rivers, causing their populations to drop. In the southeast of the country, upstream dams in the mountains created environmental problems, driving fish species to extinction, causing water pollution, and the recession of coastlines due to the blocking of sediments.
Reverse migration: Pandemic triggers reverse migration from India cities to villages. Creating ways to earn a living for migrants who have lost jobs remains
India’s biggest challenge as it grapples with the pandemic and a
faltering economy.
Moon-bathing, to cool off your heat: A kinesthetic experience of nature, close
at hand, that can soothe away anger, which is a pitta condition, and
aggravated vata (of anxiety).
Tectonic shift in Higher education: Many western universities are witnessing erosion of their revenue sources -- tuition, research grants, clinical revenue.. Whatever emerges in the world of higher education, it won't look the same as it did at the start of last academic year.
Gambling addiction and Chinese investors: What can go wrong? Tencent, Alibaba investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian apps that use loopholes in anti-gambling laws.
Debt Trap Diplomacy: Belt and Road debts to China skyrocket after c-virus.. Developing countries’ hidden debts to China estimated at $380 billion and many BRI partner countries face significant debt distress.
Associated Press: China knew of pandemic danger in Wuhan even as officials downplayed it. Without the six-day delay, infections could have been cut by two-thirds.
The Rules of Capitalism: The rules of capitalism are different when CEOs are looking for a bailout
How UV light may protect us: Ultraviolet light can penetrate the cells of pathogens and damage the DNA or RNA that contain their genetic code. “Sunlight is wonderful, but it takes a long time.”
UV LEDs can decontaminate surfaces: "UV-C light in the 260 - 285 nanometre wavelength range most relevant for current disinfection technologies is also harmful to human skin, so for now it is mostly used in applications where no one is present at the time of disinfection".
Fool me twice: Chinese PPE kits fail India safety test.
English language hindering scientific advances: The researchers point out an imbalance in knowledge transfer in
countries where English is not the mother tongue, saying "much
scientific knowledge that has originated there and elsewhere is
available only in English and not in their local languages".
Govt counts cooking gas gains: The country has saved Rs 15,000 crore since the govt started
transferring cooking gas subsidy directly into consumers' accounts.
Bye-Bye Technology Transfer: Four months after PM Modi intervened, Rafale fighter jets deal runs into problems. ... "Tejas would meet our requirements": IAF chief
Defense and aerospace: Hyderabad tech puts aerospace, defense manufacturing in new orbit. ... US Offers Fighter Jets, Aircraft Carrier Technology to India. strings attached?
Domestic helps: Government proposes Rs 9,000 minimum pay, social security cover, mandatory leaves... Minimum hourly pay? Maybe. Minimum monthly pay? I don't know.
Has terror a connection to religion? Christianity and Islam inject the virus of supremacy into their belief system and contempt for “others” who they claim will be thrown into hellfire for all eternity.
All human beings carry divinity inside themselves: 'For us to ignite our spirituality, we need to look inward and transcend our egos. We need to recognize, connect with and integrate the eternal spirit within,' A P J Abdul Kalam wrote in his last book, Transcendence.
Macaulay shining: State grants ONLY to church run English mediums schools
Tracking Goa Edu news : BJP Govt to confirm state grants ONLY to Church run English mediums schools http://t.co/aqhK31TJS2
$60,000 speeding ticket:
Instead of a flat fine, Finland bases the penalty as a percentage of
daily income. The rationale is that the fine should sting for anyone, even the ultra-rich.
Healthy cows: Butter from grass-fed cows leads to fewer heart attacks
McDonald's to cut use of antibiotics in chicken: Many poultry producers give their birds antibiotics to make them grow faster. But overuse of the drugs could lead to them becoming less effective in treating illness and disease in humans.
It was not the British government that seized India, but a private company, run by an unstable sociopath. Using its rapidly growing security force – its army had grown to 260,000 men by 1803 – it swiftly subdued and seized an entire subcontinent. “What honour is left to us?” asked a Mughal official named Narayan Singh, shortly after 1765, “when we have to take orders from a handful of traders who have not yet learned to wash their bottoms?”
White man's burden: One article describes "Nirbhaya" as "speaking excellent English". What comes through, then, is a sense of India as a place of ignorance and brutality towards women, that inspires both shock and pity, but also call for a rap on the knuckles from the "civilized world" for its "brutal attitudes". Nirbhaya, described patronizingly as a speaker of "excellent English" is marked approvingly as a good subject for the global rescue mission. ..(excuse me for quoting Kavita Krishnan)
This is a long story that started in 1835 when a politician called
Thomas Macauley pleaded in the British Parliament to replace the
Sanskrit gurukuls in India with English education. He argued that if
Britain wants to successfully subdue Indians, they need to be cut off
from their culture.
Macauley got his way. From then on, the Indian elite had to send
their children to English medium schools, if they wanted them to make it
in life. Naturally, the kids didn’t hear much about their own great
culture and whatever little they heard, was negative.
It suited the colonial masters to
have “educated natives” who held them and their lifestyle, including
their religion, in high esteem. In return, they, especially those who
had converted to the western religions, were allowed to feel superior to
the ‘superstitious Indian masses’.
This
is not a healthy state of affairs, but it plays out often on Indian
news channels: Macauley’s children (or should I call them ‘anti-Hindu
brigade’?) accuse and insinuate about Hinduism what the British convent
schools had taught them.
Missionaries have always maligned Hinduism, but in the recent
decades, a new, dangerous insinuation is noisily propagated. Christian
leaders support it and the international media eagerly picks it up.
Hindus (other Indian traditions included) are by
far the most tolerant people on earth. There is no other country, where
minority Christians, Jews and Muslims are as safe as in India. And yet
there seems to be a coordinated effort by Indians and westerners, which
is gleefully supported by the media, to paint Hindus as hateful of other
religions.The point is that the anti-Hindu brigade is not interested in the
truth. They want that ‘Hinduism’ evokes
disgust. What could be the reason?
While
Christianity and Islam indeed have a terrible historical record, Indian
traditions do not. There were many different ways of worship in India
yet all lived peacefully together – till the dogmatic religions, Islam
and Christianity, arrived on the scene, and Hindus became their victims.
The real battle on 7 Feb is betw Modi's top down leadership appeal versus AAP's bottom-up appeal. Delhi has a difficult choice. #BJPRally
— R Jagannathan (@TheJaggi) January 31, 2015
Superbugs Kill India’s Babies: “Five years ago, we almost never saw these kinds of infections. Now, close to 100 percent of the babies referred to us have multidrug resistant infections. It’s scary.”
Newborns are particularly vulnerable because their immune systems are fragile, leaving little time for doctors to find a drug that works. But everyone is at risk. U Srinivas, one of India’s most famous musicians, died Sept. 19 at age 45 because of an infection that doctors could not cure.
What really causes heart disease. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
Cool buildings without air conditioning: Stanford engineers invent high-tech mirror to beam heat away from buildings into space. A team led by electrical engineering Professor Shanhui Fan and research associate Aaswath Raman reported this energy-saving breakthrough in the journal Nature.
Hunt For A Terrorist: The details are so concrete that the NIA has warned the police forces of possible attacks in the coming months.
An ex-Mohammedan writes: Modern Muslims often pride themselves in the uniqueness of Islam, and it’s complete rejection of pre-Islamic paganism, a time referred to as the age of ignorance. And yet, historical study shows that the pilgrimage to the Kaa’ba, the fast and feast of Ramadan, the shahada, and even the crescent star symbol have pre-Islamic origins, to name a few. Only recently did it strike me that ultimately, the doctrines of Islam are not really about universality. Instead, Islam is essentially an Arab pride movement aimed at codifying and preserving Arabic culture. Particularly as modernity challenges the tenets of Islam, Arabian culture clings to Islam as a signifier of status.
English corrodes India: A young girl dropped her ice cream on the carriage floor. Her mother turned round and reminded her of what she evidently thought was an appropriate English word: "Say 'shit!' Say 'shit'!" she said strictly. You won't hear that on the 08:15 to Paddington.
Can meditation slow down the effects of age? The results were crystal clear. It was the first indication that feeling stressed doesn’t just damage our health – it literally ages us.
Telangana gets the emblem wrong The emblem of India is incomplete without the motto: "Satyameva Jayate'' inscribed below the profile of the Lion Capital. (.. let's pressure them to also replace Urdu with Devanagari)
Cycle2Work: Why not cycle to work and save the environment? (and the rupee)
Autism linked to male hormones: Exposure to high levels of male hormones in the womb increases the chance of a baby boy developing autism.
Have you ever seen boys in mofussil towns standing around with eyes fixed on the semi-nude girls in the film posters? #rapes
— Devinder Sharma (@Devinder_Sharma) June 4, 2014
Mullah arrested: When he is not sodomising boys, he imparts Islamic education.
Low-end wart in FDI in research: Most of the activities in Indian R&D centres of Foreign corporations are relatively
unimportant with little long-term gains for the country. “Foreign corporations believe our educational system probably does not inculcate
the skills for innovation.” (... Macaulay's children, not supposed to think original)
A proposal to force Reliance Industries to give up 86 per cent of
eastern offshore KG-D6 gas block, including 8 gas discoveries worth at
least $8 billion, has been put up to Petroleum Minister.
NYT Editorial: India in Reverse: Mr. Singh has been an ineffectual leader without much authority. The real power is held by his political patron, Sonia Gandhi, who leads the Indian National Congress Party, which has expressed little concern for the country’s ailing economy. In the nine years that the coalition government has been in power,
several ministers have resigned in corruption scandals; large
infrastructure projects have been delayed by mismanagement; the
government’s budget deficit has ballooned, thanks to wasteful spending
like subsidies for diesel fuel; and politics have thwarted reforms in
labor and education.
Why Electric Cars Are Safer: “An engine block is just too rigid. So the shock wave is
pretty much transferred to the area directly behind the engine, with
minimal energy absorption.”
Splendid counter to Macaulayists: With such a minority in the country being comfortable with English, and
the elite insisting that should be the language of the courts and higher
education exclusively, we end up relying on the knowledge created in
the English speaking world, most of which is outside India.
With higher education on other languages stunted, it is an enormous
waste of a nation’s assets, the brain power of the people, who are more
comfortable in languages other than English. Bi-lingual higher education will solve that.
Why does the universally valid economics work perfectly to depreciate
the rupee, but act the other way round on the dollar despite pervasive
US current account deficits?
UPA’s Food Security Ordinance does not address the
fact that our most fertile food-growing lands are being grabbed by the
government to hand over to builders or to corrupt corporations to be
spoilt by mining or to the industries to be poisoned and polluted. The deliberate annihilation of
India’s small farmers is the end of national food security.
Padre's Perversity: Father Leo Koppala, from Andhra
Pradesh, was arrested in the US on charges
of engaging in sexual contact with a child under 13 years of age.
In our polity where grassroots leaders are not that articulate while speaking in English, and
probably perceived as more corrupt, it was a welcome relief to see
educated folks entering the stage. Shashi Tharoor fitted the bill
perfectly for an Indian middle class which was longing for some suave
and educated faces in politics. But then came the sweat equity issue.
Perhaps for Ashish Nandy, his ilk, and the English media, this was not a
major controversial issue since it involved one of their like-minded
well spoken Mr Tharoor.
Then you have the likes of Harvard-educated Mr
Chidambaram, Oxford-educated Mr Khurshid, and our dear Prime Minister,
the Oxford-educated Dr Manmohan Singh. Interestingly, English media
chooses not to go ballistic on alleged corruption charges on them while
they will demand immediate answers in their kangaroo courts from lesser
suave men. A quick look at the so-called social activists at prime time
debates who have almost zilch to show on their resumes regarding their
"social" contribution get away with absurd arguments by dint of their
fluency.
As the 2014
elections close in, several comparisons will be made between the Gandhi
scion, Rahul Gandhi, and BJP's development mascot Narendra Modi. I have a
feeling that one of those comparisons will be along the lines of
suavity, foreign education and fluency in English. How the future of
India is decided will depend on whether we want to look beyond suavity
and fluent English.
Pretty useful for the Indian context, if we ever show interest in nurturing our own languages.
A startup called Duolingotaps the power of crowds to make learning a language free. It’s clever stuff: an education that pays for itself. Duolingo is a free language-learning site that turns students into an online workforce.
It is the equation of "English" and "Modernity" that must be broken. In this context, India would do well by
taking a leaf out of the books of China and Japan who have developed
all the trappings of modernity – heavy industry, a dynamic economy and
improved standards of living – without embracing the English language as
the pre-eminent mode of instruction in the modern subjects. It is no
paradox that those non-Western peoples who have fared best out of the
encounter with modernity are precisely those who have kept English at
bay. As Altaf observes, “learning a language and learning in a language are two very different things.”
