Ripples In A Teacup

NASA has now announced that Sunita Williams will return to earth only by late March or April in 2025. Williams   had flown to the International Space Station aboard a Boeing Starliner in June for what was originally meant to be a 7-to-10-day mission. The expected short stay has turned out to be a months-long ordeal when the Boeing Starliner developed safety glitches and was deemed unfit to return them to Earth. At first, Williams’ stay was initially extended until February 2025. Now, NASA has announced a further delay to late March or April next year . Williams   and Butch Willmore are to return to Earth along with astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who will form part of a four-member Crew-10 mission going to ISS. The Crew-10 mission is expected to take off in late March2025. Originally slated to launch in February, the Crew-10 mission’s launch has been delayed to late March since more time is needed to prepare the new (Dragon) spacecraf...

There has been a regime change in Syria. The Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is not an ideal choice to lead the country , but they are in power now, whether we like it or not. It is unclear to me if they were supported by Turkiye or any other country. What’s even more unclear to me is the fate of the women in Syria. It was well-known that Bashar al-Assad’s regime was cruel and despotic and now the atrocities that have come to light make it very clear that Assad was even more cruel than what people outside Syria knew . However, the Assads, father and son, were relatively secular and did not deny women in Syria basic freedoms, such as the freedom to wear attire of their choice or to work outside their households. When the Taliban recaptured power in Afghanistan a few years ago , women were suddenly in a very dark place. Will the same happen in Syria? Hopefully, No. Just a day after capturing Syria’s capital Dec. 8, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) felt compelle...

  Our planet has been warming up at an unprecedented rate . For the record, last year was the warmest. Ever. Scientists have been scrambling to understand exactly why. We know that the extraordinary heat is fueled by the burning of fossil fuels and El Niño . However, these are not sufficient to explain the unusually rapid temperature rise. Now a new study  published in the journal Science says it has identified one more culprit, namely, the absence of clouds. Clouds reflect sunlight back into space and the fewer clouds results in more sunlight reaching the earth. “Albedo” is the fraction of lightthat a surface reflects . If all the light is reflected, the albedo is equal to 1. If 30% is reflected, the albedo is 0.3. The albedo of Earth's surface (atmosphere, ocean, land surfaces) determines how much incoming solar energy, or light, is immediately reflected back to space. This can have an impact on climate.  Apparently, this recent rapid surge in warming is be...

Australia has banned children under sixteen from using social media. Australia is the first country in the world to have such a ban. The new legislation was passed in the House of Representatives with overwhelming support (102 votes to 13). The Senate too approved the ban by 34 votes to 19. The new law makes social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars if they fail to prevent children below sixteen from holding accounts. The ban, however, does not include YouTube. Social media platforms now have one year to work out how to implement the ban before penalties are enforced. Interestingly, neither underage users nor their parents will face punishment for violations. Mr. Albanese admits that he expects some kids to find workarounds, but he wants to send a message to social media companies to clean up their act. Implementing this ban will be tricky and social media companies are yet to come ...

That New Delhi is the most polluted capital in the world is well-known. Delhi is much more polluted than Beijing ever was. In the middle of November, Delhi’s air quality index (AQI) was around 1,700. At the worst point of Beijing’s pollution crisis, the highest the AQI reached was 1,300. The maximum AQI deemed healthy by the World Health Organization is 50. The toxic smog engulfing Delhi was visible from space as satellite images captured the Indian national capital’s “severe” air pollution crisis continuing for two consecutive days . Schools had to shut down . The Indian government cannot deal with this issue the way the Chinese government did. Closing down factories en masse and stopping other pollution causing activities with a single diktak isn’t easy in democratic India. Also, the state government of Delhi is constantly at loggerheads with the Indian federal government and co-operation and coordination between Centre and State is something that is definitely missing. Each blam...

  Sometime in April, Riyadh was selected as the host of Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals from 2024-2026. The 2024 season-ending Finals took place in Riyadh between November 2-9 and featured the Top 8 singles players and doubles teams. The Women’s Tennis Association apparently selected Riyadh following a comprehensive evaluation process over several months. The agreement between the WTA and the Saudi Tennis Federation offered a record prize money of $15.25 million at the WTA Finals in 2024 with further increases in 2025 and 2026. The partnership will also support broader investment in the future development and growth of women’s tennis, including the WTA’s plans to grow the global fanbase for women’s tennis through increased investment in marketing, digital and fan engagement. The decision to award the WTA Finals to Saudi Arabia, has sparked a significant debate in the tennis world, especially among female tennis players. Players, former legends, and human rights organiz...

Photographs of Sunita Williams, taken on September 24, show her to be in poor shape . She looks noticeably gaunt, with "sunken" cheeks and her facial structure looks pronounced and emaciated. It is cler that Sunita has lost a considerable amount of weight suggesting significant physical deterioration. Images of Sunita taken in October reveal an even thinner frame. What makes this all the more worrying is that Sunita will not be returning to earth for some more months. Sunita and Barry Wilmore went to the International Space Station for a 10-day mission on June 5, 2024. However, the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that was intended to return them to Earth, was deemed unsafe for use and their stay on the ISS had to be extended . Barry and Sunita have now been on the ISS for over six months. Their return is now scheduled for February 2025, when they will be aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9 Dragon capsule. NASA has publicly stated that Williams is in 'good health'. It is unclear if ...

  Geologists say that Africa is progressively splitting in two, a process that will eventually take entire nations away from the continent and result in the birth of a new ocean. The slow separation of the continent is linked to a 35-mile-long crack that formed in Ethiopia’s desert after an earthquake in 2005, and will eventually become a completely new sea. The world witnessed dramatic evidence of this back in March 2018 , when an enormous crack opened in the ground in southwestern Kenya. The tear, which appeared suddenly after heavy rains, measured several kilometres in length and swallowed a section of the Nairobi-Narok highway. The Nubian African Plate, the Somalian African Plate, andthe Arabian Plate are separating at varying rates. The Arabian Plate is separating from Africa at a rate of around an inch per year, while the two African plates are separating at a rate of half an inch to 0.2 inch per year. This geological process will inevitably divide the continent, resulting ...

  A report published by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water says that decades of destructive land use and water mismanagement have collided with the human-caused climate crisis to put “unprecedented stress” on the global water cycle. The global water cycle is off balance “for the firsttime in human history,” fueling a growing water disaster that will wreak havocon economies, food production and lives, according to this report. The water cycle is a global common good (as should be governed as such) since there is interdependence and interconnectedness of communities, countries, and regions across local and transboundary water systems. Some of the key findings of the Report are that: High-population density hotspots such as Northwestern India are particularly vulnerable to challenges associated with water. Poorest 10% of global population obtain over 70% of their annual precipitation from land-based sources. GDP losses from climate change, total water storage, and ...

  Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robotshave found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an acceleratingrate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe forglobal sea level rise. A six-year investigation into the vast Thwaites glacier in Antarctica has concluded with a grim outlook on its future. Often dubbed the “doomsday glacier”, this huge mass of ice is comparable in size to Britain or Florida and its collapse alone would raise sea levels by 65 centimetres. Worse still, this is expected to trigger a more widespread loss of the ice sheet covering West Antarctica, causing a calamitous sea level rise of 3.3 metres and threatening cities like New York, Kolkata and Shanghai. Though the glacier is in anextremely remote and difficult area, the International Thwaites GlacierCollaboration (ITGC), a joint UK-US research programme, has deployed 100scientists there over the past six years, using planes, ships and underwaterrobots...

I just finished the first term of my last year at school. As usual, we had a set of exams before a short break kicked in. I had drastically cut down on my news reading for the last three weeks and couldn’t wait to catch up as soon I got home yesterday after my physics exam. Horrible news from Sweden , a country which I visited once when I was three (I don’t remember a thing) and which I hope to re-visit one day. Apparently Sweden plans to cull 20% of its brown bear population. Licenses have been issued to kill 486 bears. We are told that culling is necessary for sustaining the rest of the bear population and at some level, it does make sense. However, I am very sad to hear this news. The summer of 2024 has been the warmest ever in the Northern Hemisphere, the EU Climate Change monitor has said. This is yet another portent of the disaster we are walking into. In India, thanks to climate change, monsoons have become extremely unpredictable. This year, monsoon rains have continued ...

On August 14, 2024, WHO called the latest mpox outbreak an ‘emergency of international concern’. A UNICEF press release states that children are among those at great risk of contracting Mpox in Congo , one of the most affected countries. Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is a self-limiting viral infection caused by mpox virus (MPXV). At least 99,176 cases and 208 deaths due to mpox have been reported from 116 countries since 2022, according to data from the WHO. This is the second time the infection has received the designation in as many years — the outbreak between July 2022 and May 2023 was also declared as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Mpox was discovered in 1958 (in captive monkeys, hence the original misnomer “monkeypox”) and the first human case was identified in 1970. Then for decades it was largely neglected by the scientific and public health communities, regarded as an uncommon infection in remote rural areas in tropical Africa without releva...

  A few weeks ago, I read this interesting piece in the NewYork Times about the possibility of the US, Russia and China resuming nuclear testing. "From 1945 to 2017, nuclear nations carried out more than 2,000 explosive tests in the atmosphere, underground and underwater, mostly in remote places. Some of the atmospheric tests were magnitudes more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan, sickening and displacing thousands." Seven decades after Castle Bravo, the United States’ most devastating nuclear test, the people of Bikini Atoll are yet to  receive fair compensation . The Soviets do not have a better record.  Hundreds of tests were carried out between 1949 and 1989 on the barren steppe near the city of Semey, formerly known as Semipalatinsk, close to the Kazakh-Russian border. The effect of radiation had a devastating impact on the environment and local people's health, and continues to affect lives there today. Scary! Hope this does not come to pass!

I’ve been to Maldives once, on holiday, sometime in 2019, much before the Covid-19 pandemic hit India. I distinctly remember feeling very sad when I left, thinking that the low-lying islands would soon be under water, swallowed by rising sea-levels , brought on by climate change and global warming. So, when I came across a news paper article which said that as many as 1,000 low-lying tropical islands in Maldives, which were once considered doomed to disappear, are now actually growing in size. According to researchers who analysed decades of aerial photos and satellite imagery , most islands have either remained stable or even grown in size. The secret apparently lies in the power of waves and currents. As sea levels rose, waves transported more sand and sediment to the shores, replenishing the land that had eroded. Although the islands' shapes and positions may have changed, they did not diminish in size. This gives me hope. We earthlings can survive climate change. However, some ...

When I hold a test tube over a flame, the chemical reaction accelerates. The same happens in our atmosphere when there is a heat wave. Ground-level ozone is made more efficiently in sunny, hot weather since the reactions that create harmful ozone in our atmosphere require sunlight. Therefore, in summer and during heat waves, ozone often reaches dangerous levels, especially in cities.  This New York Times article discusses this phenomenon in detail. In northern India, cold weather worsens the smog . That’s because pollution in cities mixes vertically in the atmosphere. In winter, the height at which this mixing happens shrinks by more than half, raising the concentration of pollution. Heads you win, tails I lose!

  On June 10 2024, OpenAI and Apple announced a partnership at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference 2024, to integrate ChatGPT into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. This collaboration will allow users to leverage ChatGPT’s advanced capabilities, such as image and document understanding, directly within Apple's ecosystem. Siri will also utilize ChatGPT for enhanced responses, ensuring user consent and privacy protections. Additionally, ChatGPT will be embedded in Apple's system-wide writing tools, aiding in content generation and image creation. This integration, powered by GPT-4o, will be available for free later this year, with premium features accessible to ChatGPT subscribers. Elon Musk wasn’t very happy with this news. "If Apple integrates OpenAl at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation ... And visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage....

As someone who studied French in high school and as a wanna-be computer scientist, I’ve been fascinated by how science terms and phrases translate into French. For starters: Math is “les mathématiques” – feminine and plural too Physics is “la physique” – feminine, singular Chemistry is “la chimie” – feminine, singular Biology is “la biologie” – feminine, singular Botany – “la botanique” – feminine, singular Zoology – “la zoologie” – feminine, singular Physics terms, when translated into French, have a beauty of their own. La chaleur - Heat La force - Force L’accélération - Acceleration La gravité/le pesanteur - Gravity La température - Temperature Radiation électromagnétique - Electromagnetic radiation Le magnétisme - Magnetism Le champ magnétique - Magnetic field La loi de Faraday - Faraday’s law Le courant continu - DC power La physique nucléaire - Nuclear physics La fission - Fission La physique appliquée - Applied physics La physique moléculaire - Molecular physics La science natu...

A couple of days ago, I chanced about this CNN News Article titled “‘Blast-furnace heat every day’: Record temperatures cancel classes, widening learning gaps across Southeast Asia” and my heart sank (as it usually does when I read anything about climate change and global warming). An 11-year-old student studying in Phnom Penh is quoted as saying: “ My classroom does not have air conditioning. It’s very unpleasant and uncomfortable. On some days, it can even get so hot that it feels like your skin is burning ." I can so relate to that. My own school did not have air conditioning till now, but A/Cs are now being installed. My school is situated very close to the sea. On the other side of the road, lies a park and beyond the park, is the sea. One would assume that a building so close to the sea would get enough breeze to avoid air conditioning, but no, it’s sweltering hot inside our classrooms, not all of which have perfect ventilation and voila, A/Cs are here. Fortunately, my scho...

I read Merchant of Venice in High School for my ICSE board exams and now as an Higher Secondary (ISC Board) student, I am reading Macbeth. I enjoyed reading both these plays and couldn’t resist writing some fiction based on these plays, in modern, Mumbai settings. Here goes: Macbhai (adapted from Macbeth ) in three parts: Part 1: https://kitaab.org/2024/03/31/short-story-macbhai-by-anika-joseph-part-1/ Part 2: https://kitaab.org/2024/04/07/short-story-macbhai-by-anika-joseph-part-2/ Part 3:   https://kitaab.org/ 2024/04/14/short-story- macbhai-by-anika-joseph-part- 3-final/   Merchant of Vetaverse (Adapted from Merchant of Venice ) https://www. weeklyyarnsthewiseowl.art/ january-yarns (Please scroll down a bit, around 1/4 th of this page, to read Act I which was published on January 15,2023. There are four Acts, all on this page, one below the other.)

I read this headline on CNN and my heart stopped for a moment. Various factors cause Earth’s rotation to slow down. The friction of the tides on the ocean floor is one such factor. The melting of polar ice (driven by humans burning planet-heating fossil fuels) causing meltwater to move from the poles toward the equator, further slows the speed of the Earth’s rotation. Our planet’s liquid core spins independently of its solidouter shell. If the core slows down, the solid shell speeds up to maintainmomentum. So, despite polar ice melt exerting a slowing influence, overall theEarth’s rotation is speeding up. As a result, we will soon need to subtract a second for the first time. Though a second doesn’t sound like much, it is significant since computing systems are set up for activities such as stock exchange transactions and need to be accurate to a thousandth of a second. Apparently, manycomputer systems have software enabling them to add a second, but few have thecapability to s...

Yesterday night, I returned to Mumbai after a week in Switzerland. We had spent four snow-full days in Zermatt before we went to Geneva to spend the rest of our holiday. I love snow and can’t have enough of it. Two years ago, we had gone to Kashmir and I still remember that holiday with nostalgia. Switzerland was even better, mainly because of its better infrastructure. Why did we choose Zermatt? Mainly because it gets more snow than most other places in Switzerland and towards the end of winter, we didn’t want to go to Switzerland and not find any snow. This CNN article on an Italian mountain resort facing a snow crunch drives home the problem. There are so many people in this world, especially in Europe, who are dependant on snow for their livelihood. There are so many animals, especially polar bears, which need snow to thrive. As climate change and global warming reduce the amount of snow that we get every year and as winters turn milder and milder, this problem will become mor...

  Electric vehicles have grown in popularity over the years. As the planet gasps for ways to end pollution, electric vehicles seem to be a partial answer to this problem. Or is it really? In the 1800s when automobiles started to replace horse-drawn carriages, inventors experimented with different fuels. Initially, steam-powered vehicles came to the forefront, but soon gasoline powered vehicles started to dominate. Now, advancements in technology and concern about fossil fuels have put electric vehicles on the map. The global electric vehicle (EV) sector is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.9% between 2023 and 2035, according to new report from data and analytics company GlobalData,  Power Technology ’s parent company. Broken down by vehicle type, the  report  finds that the passenger EV market is expected to register a CAGR of 26.1% during this period, while the commercial EV sector is predicted to grow 15% during the same time f...

  I visited Kashmir in 2021, just after Christmas. We went to Srinagar first and then to Sonamarg. There were many things that I loved about Kashmir, but the best was the snow. There was some snow in Srinagar and a lot of it in Sonamarg. My brother and I made snowmen and threw snowballs at each other. Sonamarg was a snowy wonderland and I was so sad when it was time for us to leave. This winter, I read the news that the Kashmir valley got no snow until late January . The Himalayas had turned brown! The temperature in Kashmir valley was higher than in Delhi! Not just Kashmir, all the Himalayan regions in India faced a similar sitation. In Himachal Pradesh, the Kangra valley is experiencing drought after 17 years. Snow is missing from the Dhauladhar mountain range and in Shimla. In Uttarakhand, Mussoorie and Auli didn’t have any snow. Experts say the lack of snowfall is due to   the prevalence of El Niño and other meteorological conditions . According to a study titled ‘Wes...

Lots of promises are being made with regard to AI Chatbots , setting up sky-high expectations. Last November, when Sam Altman was asked what surprises the field would bring in 2024, he said that online chatbots like OpenAI’s  ChatGPT  will take “a leap forward that no one expected.” It is expected that A.I.-powered image generators  like DALL-E  and Midjourney will soon be able to instantly deliver videos as well as still images. These players will gradually merge with chatbots like ChatGPT. Chatbots will expand well beyond digital text by handling photos, videos, diagrams, charts and other media. They will exhibit behavior that looks more like human reasoning, tackling increasingly complex tasks in fields like math and science. As the AI technology moves into robots, chatbots will also help to solve problems beyond the digital world. AI is being advanced very quickly by tech companies like OpenAI, Google since AI technology relies on  neural networks , ma...