About T Cells

• T cell is a type of white blood cell.
• It is also called T lymphocyte and thymocyte.
• T cells are part of the immune system and develop from stem cells in the bone marrow.
• They help protect the body from infection and may help fight cancer.
• There are two main types:
  • Cytotoxic T-cells: Destroy infected cells.
  • Helper T-cells: Send signals that direct other immune cells to fight infection.
• Rather than generically attack any antigens, T cells circulate until they encounter their specific antigen.
• T-cells have many identical T-cell receptors that cover their surfaces and can only bind to one shape of antigen.
• When a T-cell receptor fits with its viral antigen on an infected cell, the Killer T-cell releases cytotoxins to kill that cell.

Q1: What are antigens?

An antigen is any substance that causes your immune system to produce antibodies against it. This means your immune system does not recognize the substance, and is trying to fight it off. An antigen may be a substance from the environment, such as chemicals, bacteria, viruses, or pollen. An antigen may also form inside the body.

About Sperm Whale

• It is the largest of the toothed whales, easily recognized by its enormous square head and narrow lower jaw.
• It has the largest head and the largest brain of any animal on the planet.
• Scientific Name: Physeter macrocephalus
• They are named after the waxy substance—spermaceti—found in their heads.
  • The spermaceti is an oil sac that helps the whales focus sound. Spermaceti was used in oil lamps, lubricants, and candles. 
• Distribution:
  • They have one of the widest global distributions of any marine mammal species.
  • They are found in all deep oceans, from the equator to the edge of the pack ice in the Arctic and Antarctic.
• Features:
  • The sperm whale is dark blue-gray or brownish, with white patches on the belly.
  • It has small paddle-like flippers and a series of rounded humps on its back.
  • Lifespan: Up to 60 years
  • They are highly social mammals that communicate with one another using a series of clicks called codas, and that each coda has a distinct purpose.
  • Ambergris, a material sometimes found floating in the sea, is formed in thesperm whale’s intestines around a core of undigested solid matter such as squid beaks.

What is Ambergris?

• Floating Gold, or Ambergris (commonly identified as a lump of vomit), is a substance extracted from the bile duct in the intestines of sperm whales.
• It is a waxy, solid and inflammable substance.
• The freshly passed ambergris is a light yellowish substance.
• It is produced by about one in every hundred sperm whales. 
• Chemically, ambergris contains alkaloids, acids, and a specific compound called ambreine, which is similar to cholesterol. 
• It is a rare substance, which contributes to its high demand and high price in the international market.
• Uses:
  • It has predominantly been employed in the creation of perfumes and fragrances.
  • Ambergris has a woody scent like sandalwood but also contains ambrein, an odorless alcohol that can fix and extend the life of scents, hence its popularity among perfumers.
• There is a ban on the possession and trade of ambergris in countries like the USA, Australia, and India.

Q1: What are alkaloids?

Alkaloids are a class of basic, naturally occurring organic compounds that contain at least one nitrogen atom. Alkaloids have diverse and important physiological effects on humans and other animals. Well-known alkaloids include morphine, strychnine, quinine, ephedrine, and nicotine, piperine, caffeine etc. Many alkaloids have commercial importance as they have different medicinal properties.

Source: How do sperm whales talk to each other? MIT scientists decode basic elements of communication system

About Kamikaze drone

• These are small unmanned aircraft packed with explosives that can be flown directly at a tank or a group of troops that are destroyed when it hits the target and explodes.
• These are also called Switchblade drones.
• The name comes from the World War 2 era’s feared Japanese kamikaze pilots, who conducted suicide attacks by intentionally crashing their explosive filled aircraft into enemy targets.
• Features
  • The modern drone versions have the capability of surpassing traditional defences to strike their targets and are also cheaper than their larger counterparts.
  • The small lethal drones are difficult to detect on radar, and through the use of facial recognition, can be programmed to hit targets without human intervention.
• Although the US Kamikaze might be the most advanced in this class of drones, Russia, China, Israel, Iran and Turkey all have some versions of it.

What is the Lancet-3 drone?

• It is a type of loitering munition, which integrates the Jetson TX2 — described by Nvidia as the most power-efficient embedded AI computing device.

Q1: What is an explosive?

It is any substance or device that can be made to produce a volume of rapidly expanding gas in an extremely brief period. There are three fundamental types: mechanical, nuclear, and chemical.

Source: Russia's killer Lancet drone are running on US AI'

About Panama

• It is a country in Central America located on the Isthmus of Panama, the narrow bridge of land that connects North and South America.
• It is bordered by Costa Rica and Colombia and is situated between the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean. 
• Embracing the isthmus and more than 1,600 islands off its Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the tropical nation is renowned as the site of the Panama Canal, which cuts through its midsection.
• Most Panamanians are descended from indigenous, or native, people, Europeans, Afro-Caribbeans, and immigrants from all over the world.
• Panama has the largest rainforest in the Western Hemisphere outside the Amazon Basin.
• Capital: Panama City
• Language: Spanish

What is the Panama Canal?

• It is a constructed waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the Isthmus of Panama.
• It is one of the two most strategic artificial waterways in the world, the other being the Suez Canal. 
• It is approximately 80 kilometers long.
• The canal was built by the United States between 1904 and 1914, and it was officially opened on August 15, 1914.
• It is owned and administered by the Republic of Panama since the oversight of the Canal was transferred from the United States to Panama in 1999.
• The Panama Canal consists of a series of locks that raise and lower the water level to facilitate the passage of ships through the continental divide.

Q1: What is the Suez Canal?

It is a 30 km (120 miles)-long artificial sea-level waterway located in Egypt. It connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Suez, a northern branch of the Red Sea. It provides the shortest maritime route between Europe and the lands lying around the Indian and western Pacific oceans. It is one of the world’s most heavily used shipping lanes.

Source: Panama's next president says he'll try to shut down one of world's busiest migration routes

About Auroras

• These are essentially natural lights that appear as bright, swirling curtains in the night sky and can be seen in a range of colours, including blue, red, yellow, green, and orange.
• These lights primarily appear near the poles of both the northern and southern hemispheres all year round but sometimes they expand to lower latitudes.
• These are called aurora borealis in the north and in the south, it is known as the aurora australis.

Why do auroras occur?

• It is due to activity on the surface of the Sun.
• The star continuously releases a stream of charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, and magnetic fields called the solar wind.
• As the solar wind approaches the Earth, it is deflected by the planet’s magnetic field, which acts like a protective shield.
• However, some of the charged particles are trapped in the magnetic field and they travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into the upper atmosphere of the Earth.
• These particles then interact with different gases present there, resulting in tiny flashes that light up the night sky.
• When solar wind particles collide with oxygen, a green colour light is produced. Interaction with nitrogen produces shades of blue and purple.
• Auroras expand to midlatitudes when the solar wind is extremely strong.
  • This happens when the activity on the Sun’s surface goes up, leading to solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are essentially extra bursts of energy in the solar wind.
  • In such cases, the solar wind is so intense that it can result in a geomagnetic storm, also known as a magnetic storm — a temporary disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field. It is during a magnetic storm that auroras can be seen in the mid-latitudes.

Q1: What is a Solar flare?

It is an intense burst of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots. Flares are our solar system’s largest explosive events.

Source: What are northern and southern lights? Why do they occur?

About Neural Processing Units (NPU)

• An NPU, or a Neural Processing Unit, is a dedicated processor designed specifically for accelerating neural network processes.
  • A neural network is essentially a type of machine learning algorithm that mimics the human brain for processing data.
• Therefore, the NPU is highly capable for handling machine learning operations that form the basis for AI-related tasks, such as speech recognition, natural language processing, photo or video editing processes like object detection, and more.
• In most consumer-facing gadgets, such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets, the NPU is integrated within the main processor, adopting a System-on-Chip (SoC) configuration.
• However, for data centres, the NPU might be an entirely discrete processor, separate from any other processing unit such as the central processing unit (CPU)or the Graphics processing unit (GPU).
• How is NPU different from CPU and GPU?
  • CPUs employ a sequential computing method, issuing one instruction at a time, with subsequent instructions awaiting the completion of their predecessors.
  •  In contrast, the NPU harnesses parallel computing to simultaneously execute numerous calculations. This parallel computing approach results in swifter and more efficient processing.

Q1: What are Semiconductors?

These are materials that have electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. They are the foundation of modern electronics and power a vast array of technologies such as computers, smartphones, solar panels, and medical devices.

Source: NPU: What is it and why is it gaining importance in semiconductor industry

About Deadbots

• These are also known as griefbots, AI-enabled digital representations of departed loved ones.
• Working: These chatbots simulate their language patterns and personality traits using their digital footprint, like emails, social media posts and even voice recordings, to create a conversational AI that reflects their personality. 
• Issues:
  • Researchers have warned that these chatbots, while potentially comforting, could lead to psychological distress if not designed with safety in mind.
  • Solutions that might be enthusiastically adopted in one cultural context could be completely dismissed in another.

What is Conversational AI?

• It is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can simulate human conversation.
• It is made possible by natural language processing (NLP), a field of AI that allows computers to understand and process human language and Google's foundation models that power new generative AI capabilities.
• It works by using a combination of natural language processing (NLP), foundation models, and machine learning (ML).
• These AI systems are trained on large amounts of data, such as text and speech.
• This data is used to teach the system how to understand and process human language. The system then uses this knowledge to interact with humans in a natural way. It’s constantly learning from its interactions and improving its response quality over time.

Q1: What is ChatGPT?

It is a type of artificial intelligence that can understand and generate natural language text. It is trained on large amounts of text data and uses an algorithm called a transformer to learn how to generate text that is similar to human conversation.

Source: Digitally immortalising departed loved ones comes with ethical concerns: Study calls for cautious design of AI ‘deadbots

About Sea Anemone

• It is an invertebrate aquatic animal marked by soft bodies and has an ability to sting. They are close associates of corals and live rocks.
• It is an ocean-dwelling member of the phylum Cnidaria.
• It has a sticky foot or disc that allows them to anchor to rocks on the sea bottom or on coral reefs.
• They have stinging cells which are equipped with organelles known as nematocysts that contain small threads which are forcefully everted when stimulated mechanically or chemically.
• They are known to form symbiotic relationships with other animals; their most well-known alliance is with clownfish.
• They make their homes within the anemone’s tentacles, protected from predators; in return, the anemone eats the clownfish’s leftover meals.
• Anemones can have anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred tentacles. These cnidarians come in a variety of colors, decorating a tide pool or reef like a garden of wildflowers.
• Some species of sea anemones also have a relationship with Hermit crabs. The anemone will attach itself to the crab’s shell and be carried around to find more food, while the crab uses the anemone as protection from its predators.

Q1: What is a Symbiotic relationship?

These are the close associations formed between pairs of species. They come in a variety of forms, such as parasitism (where one species benefits and the other is harmed) and commensalism.

Source: Scientists flag mass sea anemone bleaching off Agatti island