Quick notes: Stirling engine | Chinese GPU...

• France should pay us: France is seeing a spike in Rafale fighter jet orders after India acquired them.



• China's New Mortars: Designed for war with India? The PLA is now announcing the deployment of new self-propelled rapid-fire mortars to conduct “mobile, hit-and-run firing positions”.



• Stirling engine: China claims it developed the world's most powerful heat engine. “The prototype ran at a rated power of 320 kilowatts with a power conversion efficiency of 40%”. In comparison, the Stirling engine used on the Swedish Navy's Gotland submarines is rated at 75KW.. China eyeing deadlier submarines, safer nuclear reactors with new Stirling engine?



• Unstoppable: China's Fenghua-1 GPU aims for GeForce RTX 3060 compute performance. Based on Imagination Technologies' PowerVR architecture.



• Madhav Gadgil: "Most ‘development’ activities now are aimed at benefiting only the rich. The relaxations in ESA will benefit the quarries that make huge, illegal profits. Some mine-owners in Goa had told me about the huge rates they pay to the politicians, right from the bottom to the top. Before the 2014 elections, the BJP strongly supported our report, but the moment they came to power, they took a 180-degree turn".



• Gouging small businesses: For every $100 sellers earn in sales, Amazon is keeping $30 — up from 19% just 5 years ago.



• India's Population Growth: Urban India now has a fertility rate of 1.6, comparable to the European Union. In the relative weight of its states, India’s Parliament has remained frozen since the 1971 census. The average parliamentarian from Uttar Pradesh represents three million people, while a counterpart from Tamil Nadu represents 1.8 million.
  
  If Parliament were reapportioned according to the likely population in 2026, the five southern states would send 26 fewer representatives to the 545-seat Parliament. The four most populous Hindi heartland states would add 31 seats.



• Uddiyana Bandha and Nauli Kriya:




• Crafting sustainable homes: Interlocking blocks — an alternative to burnt bricks and concrete blocks

Quick notes: 1971 war | Chip ecosystem...

• US wanted China to intervene against India in 1971 War: After Indira Gandhi's visit to Washington; Kissinger said the 'Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there [in Bangladesh] ... While [Indira Gandhi] was a bitch, ... she will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception.'
  
  The duo (Nixon, Kissinger) wanted China to put more pressure on India: 'I think we've got to tell [the Chinese] that some movement on their part ... toward the Indian border could be very significant.'



• Develop ecosystem for chip production: The US, South Korea and China have incentives totaling about $50 billion, $100 billion and $450 billion respectively, far higher than India's. So future chip production, if we are to have it, shouldn’t be a one-trick pony and must develop an ecosystem from design to fabrication, to packing and testing.
  
  Given the long gestation periods and rapid technology changes, India must out-strategise on design and functionality as the end product will be out only three-four years from the moment work begins, by which point the prevailing chip shortage would have been resolved, while technology would have advanced further.
  
  Designing is India’s advantage and while we leverage people skills, we must improvise research and development—an area that we are lacking in currently. Importantly, WTO-consistent tariff and non-tariff barriers should be resolved to ensure flow of goods, besides ensuring policy stability, without which our chip production prospects will remain empty.
  
  + Semiconductor capex to hit $152 Billion in 2021 as market on track for $2 Trillion by 2035



• India's Atlantis: Searching for the sunken kingdom of Dwarka




• Narinder Singh Kapany: The relentless innovator behind the science of fibre optics



• New Pfizer drug and ivermectin: Uncomfortable facts for Pfizer, Big pharma and Woke media



• Cryptocurrencies a challenge for emerging markets: "Because a lot of these crypto exchanges are offshore, they are not subject to regulation of a particular country... So, there is a need for a global policy on that front urgently".



• Why Pakistan may want the J-10: While a layperson may think the J-10 appears similar in layout to the F-16, the Chinese aircraft has a delta wing design with 'canards' forward of the fuselage. There is suspicion Israel transferred technology for the Lavi fighter to China.
  
  + Israeli companies exported cruise missiles to China without permit



• Chart buster: Bird songs bump stars off Australian music chart

Quick notes: Expired vaccines | Sigiriya...

• White man's generosity: Europe sent Nigeria up to 1 million near-expired doses of covid-19 vaccine



• Covaxin: Caught in western deviousness

💡[Whisper]… there is actually a proven vaccine for kids age 2-4 that is *CURRENTLY UNDER REVIEW* at the @US_FDA with an EUA app submitted on November 5th—but FDA has not moved yet on approval meeting. ➡️Why is the media not talking about this? #COVAXIN https://t.co/N0PmXMEWtT pic.twitter.com/szLEN8HQoK

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 11, 2021




• Harvard report: “In speech technology, Chinese firms are beating American firms in every language, including English. The world’s top voice recognition startup, China’s iFlytek, has 700 million users, almost twice the number of people who speak to Apple’s Siri.”



• StarFive: Chinese company delivers the world’s highest performance RISC-V CPU Core IP, codenamed “Dubhe”
  - 2GHz @ TSMC 12nm
  - SPECint2006: 8.9/GHz
  - Dhrystone: 6.6 DMIPS/MHz
  - CoreMark: 7.6/MHz.



• Ancient Engineering Marvel: Sri Lanka's ancient water gardens of Sigiriya are a complex masterpiece of irrigation engineering design. During excavation, water conduits were found at different depths, likely to achieve varying water levels; something that required a masterful knowledge of physics and engineering.




• Jugaad ain't no innovation, stop romanticising it: India cannot become a world-beating economic force by under-investing in fundamental scientific research and celebrating stop-gap survival mechanisms (jugaad) as path-breaking innovation. Such celebration and characterisation should be left to advertising agencies and other creative types looking for a story to tell.
  
  The state should commit itself to turning India into a magnet for top scientific talent from around the world, increasing investment in fundamental science and engineering and creating infrastructure which will give Indian scientists the choice of working in their home country instead of moving to more hospitable climes abroad.



• Socialization of losses: PSBs lost Rs 2.85 lakh cr due to loan default of 13 firms. "Time and again public sector banks have been used to bail out ailing private sector banks such as Yes Bank, Global Trust Bank, United Western Bank, Bank of Karad, etc. Private sector's largest NBFC, IL&FS, was bailed out again by public sector SBI and LIC".



• Semiconductor subsidies: "How do you compete with a 30 to 40% subsidy? Because that means we are not competing with TSMC or Samsung, we are competing with Taiwan and Korea. The subsidies in China are even more significant."



• Ban glyphosate: Glyphosate is "reportedly" being used both for weed control and to desiccate crops prior to harvesting. The weedicide and its adjuvants are absorbed by the plant and consumed by humans.



• Market Dominance: Italy fines Amazon $1.3 Billion for abuse of dominant market position.
  
  FTC complaint: Amazon misleading consumers with 'deceptive' ads in search results.

Quick notes: Make-in-India | Israel's ally...

• Make-In-India? Yes, No, Maybe: India won’t go ahead with building Russian helicopters locally opting for off-the-shelf purchases instead. IAF needs to make immediate replacements to its fleet of over 320 aging helicopters.



• Has Israel become a top Chinese ally? Not surprisingly, China appears to have a vested interest in the Israeli tech sector, especially its advances in quantum technology. Chinese investment in Israeli technology “could lead to leaks of sensitive technology and cyber-espionage.”



• Ascendant China: Toyota turns to Chinese tech to reach its electric holy grail
  
  Chinese stranglehold: Tesla has concluded that no company in the United States is currently capable of producing artificial graphite to the required specifications and capacity needed for Tesla’s production. It said only mainland China could provide the quantity of graphite it needs in flake or powder form to manufacture its batteries in the U.S.



• Global Gateway: BRI rival from EU. Can Europe compete with China?
  
  Why US, EU are pitching an alternative to Chinese ‘hidden debts’
  
  Contaminated fertilizer: Sri Lanka bows to Chinese pressure again



• Remittance seeking mindset: Retaining - and attracting - talent is critical for India's future.

A lot has changed / is changing in India. What hasn’t change much is the Government’s remittance seeking mindset.

When GDP was <$1T it made sense to export human capital. With GDP at ~$3T, and India aiming to boost it to $10T+, retaining - and attracting - talent is critical. https://t.co/ZVwygfXpdM

— Rajeev Mantri (@RMantri) November 29, 2021




• RISC-V phones: SiFive's new chip could lead to revamped phone brains in 2023



• Semiconductor Independence Is Impossible: The EU produces cars, consumer electronics, and other things that do not need chips made using the latest nodes. Thus, the bloc wants to expand production of chips for these products to protect its economy.



• New game in town: Ola's electric scooter



• Vaccine durability: Antibody levels fall quickly in the months after people get their Pfizer and Moderna shots. The RNA in these vaccines does not last very long in the body. DNA is more stable than RNA, and might allow for a more prolonged, low-level activation of our immune system that provides longer-lasting protection.



• Not White Man's Burden: UK 'nowhere near' meeting targets agreed at Glasgow climate summit



• The return of ‘naati’ ragi: Karnataka farmers revive forgotten ragi varieties. Hundreds of local ragi varieties disappeared with the arrival of the high-yielding indaf variety of ragi.



• Why soil is one of the most amazing things on Earth: Due to intensive farming, we are losing soil 50 to 100 times faster than it is able to rebuild.