1. Chandrayaan-3 lander on the moon successfully pinged by orbiting NASA spacecraft using laser
A NASA spacecraft has successfully pinged India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander on the moon. According to NASA, a laser beam was transmitted and reflected between its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Vikram lander for the first time on the lunar surface.
The U.S. space agency said that this successful experiment opens the door to a new style of precisely locating targets on the moon’s surface.
‘Finally worked’
“At 3 p.m. EST on Dec. 12, 2023, NASA’s LRO pointed its laser altimeter instrument toward Vikram. The lander was 62 miles, or 100 km, away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the moon’s south pole region, when LRO transmitted laser pulses toward it. After the orbiter registered light that had bounced back from a tiny NASA retroreflector aboard Vikram, NASA scientists knew their technique had finally worked,” NASA stated.
NASA said that sending laser pulses toward an object and measuring how long it takes the light to bounce back is a commonly used way to track the locations of Earth-orbiting satellites from the ground. “We’ve showed that we can locate our retroreflector on the surface from the moon’s orbit.” the space agency said.
“The next step is to improve the technique so that it can become routine for missions that want to use these retroreflectors in the future,” Xiaoli Sun, who led the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that developed the retroreflector on Vikram as part of a partnership between NASA and ISRO, said in a statement.
‘Location marker’
Commenting on this development ISRO said that the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) Instrument on Chandrayaan-3 lander started serving as a location marker near lunar south pole.
“The LRA on the Chandrayaan-3 lander has begun serving as a fiducial point (precisely located markers for reference) on the moon. NASA’s LRO achieved a laser range measurement using the LRA by successfully detecting signals reflected by it on December 12, 2023,” ISRO said in a statement.
NASA’s LRA was accommodated on the Vikram lander under international collaboration. It comprises eight corner-cube retroreflectors on a hemispherical support structure.
This array facilitates lasers ranging from various directions by any orbiting spacecraft with suitable instruments.
The Vikram lander landed in the lunar south pole region on August 23, 2023.
ISRO said that while several LRAs have been deployed on the moon since the beginning of lunar exploration, the LRA on Chandrayaan-3 is a miniature version and is the only one available near the south pole currently.
2. Warmer winter impacts ice hockey, Chadar trek in country’s coldest region of Ladakh
An unusually warm winter this year has impacted extreme winter sports like ice hockey and the 105-kilometre Chadar trek in the cold desert mountains of Ladakh, where the minimum temperature can drop up to -40 degree Celsius and is considered the country’s coldest place.
Ice hockey rinks in Ladakh’s Kargil town witnessed rare scenes over the last weekend when the organisers switched on fans at night to bring down the temperature.
“The formation of the ice surface was not up to the mark this year. It could have proved dangerous for those practicing and playing ice hockey matches. Electric fans helped in the freezing process and made the rink playable and safe,” an ice hockey player from Kargil said. However, ice hockey has not been majorly impacted in Leh.
Officials of the Department of Youth Services and Sports said the extra measure in Kargil was put in place for “the safety of players”. Ice hockey requires a temperature of around -4 degree Celsius for a favourable play environment.
“We have three ice rinks in Nurla, Khalsi and Alchi. There was no ice formation, unlike previous years, at Nurla and Alchi. Only Khalsi, after lots of efforts, became available for practice to locals,” Lobzang Sherab, Councillor of Khaltse, told The Hindu.
This year’s warm weather, he added, is bad news for locals. “Ladakh is the only region where ice formation, not snow accumulation, is a common phenomenon. This helps locals to prepare for national and international events. If they are not able to practice, their participation will go down,” Mr. Sheran said.
The councillor feared that no spell of freezing temperatures will impact the region’s economy.
“The months of November and December have been much warmer than last year in Ladakh. Snowfall is also deficient,” said Sonam Lotus, director of the Meteorological Department in Ladakh.
Figures released by the Meteorological department show that there has been a deviation of four to eight degrees in temperature from the normal weather pattern in Ladakh.
Shorter treks
The impact of unusual weather was also visible on the 105-km Chadar trek this year, where trekkers from across the globe go over the frozen Zanskar river connecting Kargil with Leh.
The Chadar trek was shortened this year due to late formation of ice sheaths. The trek was flagged off on January 8 last year, but this year it was possible only on January 14. In the past, trekkers would walk for eight-nine days when the lake was completely frozen and the temperature dropped below -30 degree Celsius.
A recce conducted in the second week of January by a team of Union Territory Disaster Relief Team and Ladakh Mountain Guides Association found only up to 15 km Chadar trek was “formed very well”.
“We conducted three reviews in January but had to delay the trek it as ice formation was not strong enough. Though trekking has started now, we are allowing only up to 14 to 16 km this year to ensure the safety of all tourists,” Santosh Sukhdeve, Deputy Commissioner, Leh, said.
The Chadar trek is one of the most extreme sports and is held only when temperature drops to between -30 to -35 degrees. However, the minimum temperature in January has been hovering between -8 degree Celsius and four degree Celsius in Leh this year.
According to the meteorological department, Leh has recorded just 1.2 cm snowfall in November-December compared to 2.6 cm last year for the same period. The highest snowfall of 13.6 cm was recorded here in 2013. Ladakh is also home to the second coldest place in the world, Drass, which sees temperatures dip below -50 degree Celsius.
3. Understanding the body’s perception of pain key to evolving new drugs, says Nobel Laureate David Julius
The sensation of pain, while universal, can also be influenced by culture. Though there is progress in understanding new pathways on how pain is processed at a bio-chemical level in the body, the current class of painkillers that consist of opioids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) will remain the mainstay of treatment for a long time, said David Julius, biochemist, molecular physiologist and co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology.
Dr. Julius addressed scientists and students at a talk on Friday, as part of the annual TNQ Distinguished Lectures in the Life Sciences. In a nearly two-hour discourse, where he spoke on the topic “How we sense pain” and took a range of questions from the audience at the Jawaharlal Nehru Auditorium, All India Institute of Medical Sciences here, Dr. Julius described his scientific journey as a student and biologist and how he discovered a novel pathway and pain receptor — called TRPV1 — that responds to capsaicin, the compound in chilli peppers that gives the sensation of heat.
Unresolved riddle
While capsaicin was already known to activate nerve cells causing pain sensations, how the chemical actually exerted this function was an unsolved riddle. Through his investigations, he discovered a heat-sensing receptor that is activated at temperatures perceived as “painful”.
Understanding how the body manages pain is an extremely important field of investigation because while the pain-pathway system protects the body by acting as a warning system against tissue damage from changes in the environment, such as burns or injuries, it “can also flip” and become hyper-sensitive causing chronic pain. “Lower back pain is a completely different experience from migraine pain and until we know what differentiates one from the other, it will be difficult to come up with new therapeutic options,” he added.
Chilli peppers and capsaicin, the degree to which are they are activated to induce sensations of burning, heat, and discomfort, play a key role in Dr. Julius’s investigation.
Responding to a question on what people in hot climates relishing a fiery chilly could have to do with how the body regulates temperature, Dr. Julius said, “On a hot day in a field, the core temperature in the body would rise. Biting into a chilli would trigger sensations of heat that would then signal to the body to activate responses to lower the core temperature.”
Regulating temperature
“Mice that have been directly injected with capsaicin see their body temperatures rapidly falling. So this (eating spicy foods) is an efficient way to regulate body temperature. However behavioural adaptation is probably why different cultures have taken to it.” Birds and squirrels have a higher core temperature than humans and therefore have a higher tolerance to peppers and hot foods, he said in a response to a query on evolutionary adaptation to heat sensations.
Much of his research was possible due to grants that were generated from public funds.
“The taxes that are paid should also be used to fund curiosity driven research and that’s the only way that we can move the science forward,” said Dr. Julius.
The TNQ lecture series annually invites eminent scientists — several of them Nobel Laureates — in the life sciences for public talks, on their work, in India. Following his talk in Delhi, Dr. Julius will lecture in Bengaluru and Mumbai next week.
4. The problem with India’s science management
Sustained economic progress which can satisfy national ambition is invariably fuelled by scientific advances translated into deployable technologies. This has been the inevitable global experience since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Alive to this reality, the government is overhauling India’s science establishment, which includes setting up the new National Research Foundation (NRF) and restructuring the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). In this scenario, a frank assessment of the current administrative ability to simultaneously optimise Indian science’s efficiency and resilience is necessary.
India’s low overall expenditure on research and development (around 0.7% of GDP, compared to 3.5% for the United States and 2.4% for China) is but one aspect constraining its scientific outcomes. Considering such low expenditure, it is pivotal to allocate money wisely and focus on high-impact projects.
Unfortunately, the scientific administration has failed to do justice to the task at hand. Even the vaunted space programme is witnessing narrowing leads. In 2022, the Indian Space Research Organisation stood a distant eighth on launch numbers, with foreign startups racing ahead on key technologies such as reusable rockets. Likewise, the lead in nuclear energy has been frittered away, being latecomers to small modular reactors; thorium ambitions remain unrealised. On critical science and technology themes such as genomics, robotics, and artificial intelligence, the situation is even more alarming. The direction and organisation of science is inconsistent, even unfit, for the vital role which science must play going ahead.
India’s science is dominated by the public sector. Generic irritants associated with governmental bureaucracy, such as tardiness in approving crucial time-dependent funding, or equitable decision making across different funding levels, are known problems. Added to this, what is absent is the inability to commit to long-term steady funding of critical projects when faced with the inevitable occasional failures. This latter aspect is essential in any robust science management system.
An outsized role by scientists
The defining feature of India’s science administration is the centrality of its senior scientists. Their activities are bewildering in range. Some pretend to be top international level academics. Others delight in micromanaging their institutions’ accounts, while still others circumambulate courts to battle frivolous charges from disgruntled colleagues. Several flit around the country to sit in a variety of institutional committees (Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Defence Research and Development Organisation, Universities), which would fare better without external members. Many try to become directors, vice-chancellors and secretaries to the Government of India. The list goes on. These top scientists, and not government bureaucrats, are at the helm of India’s science administration. Therefore, they must be held accountable for its failings.
The basic assumption behind the outsized role played by scientists in Indian science administration is that a good scientist will also be a good science administrator. The argument goes that only scientists can appropriately run scientific institutions, considering the importance and technical rigours of the science that is supposed to go on in these places. The actual performance of these institutions is proof enough that this paradigm is faulty.
First, administering an organisation as complex as a national lab or a university cannot be relegated to becoming a side-project of a ‘working’ scientist doubling up as a director or vice-chancellor. Administration requires a particular skill set, most importantly, the allocation of money, resources and time. Indeed, attributes associated with good scientists, such as individuality, constructive ego, and erudition, have little congruence with the demands of administration — tact, realism, flexibility and firmness. The fundamental role of an administrator is to prioritise one undertaking over another in line with policy and to ensure that resources assigned to one project do not starve others. How then can a good scientist, who is generally driven by individual attribution, be a good administrator, who must be organisationally driven?
Second, the lack of comprehensive training in selecting which particular metrics are appropriate under what circumstances leads to absurdities such as an entire project getting derailed due to a single invoice or acquisition. Who is accountable for all the lost time, shelved projects, and wasted money? Scientists, by their very training, are not geared to juggle between several approximate solutions to human and financial problems. Administration is the art of translating policy into outcomes — scientists are simply not trained to prioritise between time, cost, or precision, and certainly not in what proportions.
Third, the scope for conflicts of interest in the present dispensation is huge. Being an academic within the same institution in which one wields administrative control is a sure recipe for disaster. Unsavoury examples abound of science administrators engaging in red tapism to mire rivals in unnecessary strictures. Likewise, the culture of Indian science has descended into a quagmire of quid pro quos and shoddy quality control. Thus, scandals such as high plagiarism rates, paid publications in disreputable journals, and under-the-table dealings to garner government funding have become normalised.
More maliciously, careers and projects of scientific and strategic importance have been devastated due to reasons that range from competition to egotism. The fact that there is no system of all-India transfers of both scientists and science administrators only magnifies institutional capture and factionalism. There are obvious downsides in allowing system insiders to be chimeric regulators of the same said system.
The seeds of this rot were planted soon after Independence. Poverty forced the country to concentrate high-end equipment in a handful of institutions, primarily the Indian Institutes of Technology in the 1960s. Since only these institutions had exclusive access to certain equipment, a system of gatekeepers emerged. These gatekeepers slowly began to capture positions, government patronage and institutional power on the back of their monopoly over critical equipment. Thus, all young scientists had to pay their nazranas at the durbars, in other words, their tributes in the royal courts, to these gatekeepers, making them indebted forever to these bestowers of favours. This system has replicated itself over time to such a degree that appointments, awards, foreign accolades and support from the system overall, depended on continuing to aggrandise the inheritors of these gatekeepers. Many bright scientists’ careers and lives have been destroyed due to their conflicts with this oppressive network of gatekeepers. Genuine scientific outcomes became the obvious collateral casualties.
The system in the U.S.
The separation of administrators and scientists is something which most robust science establishments generally embrace. Even the U.S., with labs being embedded in the university ecosystem and run by scientists, selects scientists for an administrative role quite early on in their careers. Such selected science administrators, by and large, only carry out administrative tasks thereon, and are groomed for the task, with very few of them ever going back to active science.
Such a separation has obvious benefits for all stakeholders, except of course the entrenched gatekeepers. As India remoulds its science establishment, one must really question the utility of scientists being given administrative tasks, whether as additional assignments or as full-time vice-chancellors or directors. Perhaps an American middle-way arrangement, where scientists are selected and trained in an all-India pool of a science administration central service, is the answer. In such a dispensation, university vice-chancellors would have greater bargaining power vis-à-vis the bureaucracy within the university as well as that of the ministries if they belong to an all-India service having received the appropriate training.
At some point, India has to come to the same conclusion that the world of business did in 1908 when the Master of Business Administration (MBA) course was established at Harvard. Administration is something which has to be taught and practised separately from the subject matter being administered. The administrative setup of any complex is its central nervous system, and the same is true for science establishments. Without addressing these core concerns, India’s science establishment will continue to do injustice to its economic and strategic aspirations.
