Category: The Sciences

Reproductive Futures: The Promises and Pitfalls of In-Vitro Gametogenesis

Although IVG is still a new technology, its probable risks and potential for misuse in a regulatory vacuum call for caution rather than any call for optimism.

In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) as assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been in vogue for quite a few decades now. While IVF has been hailed as a significant scientific advancement, with many advantages, here are some limitations which bear keeping in mind in discussions about the possibilities and extent of its use in the present and the future.. It is in this context that we discuss in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG) – a new experimental reproductive technology that is currently being developed and refined, and thus debated on a number of different fronts.

The concerns about reproductive autonomy, ethics, and equity ought to be at the forefront of any discussion of advanced and experimental reproductive technologies, including IVG. Although IVG is not currently under research in India, this technology is gaining more attention in the global scientific community. Thus, it becomes imperative to engage with it critically.

Researchers claim that IVG would reduce the risks of IVF procedures by creating sperm and oocytes (eggs) directly in a lab, unlike in the case of the IVF, which requires the retrieval of eggs from ovaries, and hormonal injections. The retrieval of eggs can be painful and risky.

Therefore, unlike traditional methods, which rely on naturally produced sperm and eggs , IVG enables the creation of these reproductive cells, known as gametes (reproductive cell – sperm and egg), artificially. This can be in a laboratory from ordinary body cells such as those from the skin. These cells are changed, or “reprogrammed,” into a special type of cell called stem cells, which can turn into almost any kind of cell in the body. In the lab, these stem cells are further transformed into sperm or eggs. The lab-made (or artificial) sperm and eggs then combine to form an embryo outside the body. This embryo can later be placed into the uterus of the woman, which can grow into a baby. This is the process which is known as in-vitro gametogenesis or IVG. 

At the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing in London in March 2023, a presentation outlined technological advancements in IVG. Skin cells taken from the tails of mice were successfully developed into gametes leading to the growth of healthy mice.One of the pioneers in the field of lab-grown oocytes and sperm is Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the work at Kyushu University in Japan. Relatedly, scientists have also grown embryo-like structures in the lab, made entirely from human stem cells, that are more advanced than any previous efforts.

Some companies and academic institutions with significant private funding are already planning to translate the work for human use. Biotech startups in the United States, funded by venture capitalists and tech investors, have been marketing IVG as a radical new technology that will be available in a few years. 

While still an experimental technology, IVG is being reported as “a milestone for human IVG research and its potential translation into reproductive medicine.” However, this transformation of human reproduction with advanced genetic technologies raises serious ethical, moral, and legal issues, even if they are still in the experimental stage. 

Scientific claims

Researchers have presented IVG as aspirational, claiming that it drastically changes the way families, genetics, and reproduction are conceived and opens up reproductive possibilities for many hitherto excluded from the ability to have genetically related children.

IVG may also  enable older individuals, same-sex persons, and transgender people to have genetically related children without using donor gametes. IVG proponents contend that it gives older women the opportunity to become mothers later in life, as well as women going through an early menopause – which is not the case with the IVF. 

India’s Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Regulation) Act, 2021(ART) Act and Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 defines eligibility criteria for access to ARTs and surrogacy in India. Notably, they include age, nationality, marital status, sexual identity, and (implicitly) gender. 

The focus on IVG is that IVF is not a foolproof way to overcome infertility, especially for women 35 years of age or older who want to have their own child. Also, according to the ART Act, only women and men between 21 and 55 years of age are eligible to access ARTs. The Surrogacy Act requires the intending couple to be a woman aged 23 to 50 and a man aged 25 to 55 years.  And, therefore, the apparent advantage of the IVG, which allows women at a later stage of their life to  conceive, may have little to limited impact in India.

Furthermore, the ART Act has legal limitations for oocyte (naturally – and not artificially produced sperms or eggs) retrieval. According to the law, an egg donor shall donate eggs only once in her life, and no more than seven eggs shall be retrieved from the donor. Similarly, the Surrogacy (Regulation) Rules, 2022, puts a cap on embryo transfer. One embryo is allowed to be transferred into the uterus of a surrogate mother, while up to three embryos may be transferred only in special circumstances. 

With IVG, researchers claim they can create a large number of sperms and eggs, and embryos, in the lab, potentially providing an ‘opportunity’ to persons experiencing difficulties in producing sperms or eggs, naturally, to conceive through IVF.

The IVG is, thus, perceived as an expanded opportunity for ‘non-normative’ reproduction for same-sex partnerships and transgender or intersex individuals who want a child. It does not need natural reproductive cells and is genetically related to both partners. However, some same-sex couples would still require a surrogate to carry the pregnancy. 

Additionally, IVG could generate multiple sperms and eggs, potentially improving success rates for those facing infertility challenges or unable to produce viable sperms or eggs naturally. 

IVG could also be claimed to offer a solution for persons with genetic disorders who wish to have children without passing on their condition. Overall, IVG has the potential to expand options for family-making and address a wide range of reproductive concerns. It could ‘benefit’ diverse populations seeking to start or expand their families.

Concerns

Beginning with IVF in the 1970s, concepts surrounding birth, genetics, reproduction, and family-making have been challenged and transformed, sparking debates about fertility, genetics, family, kinship, and parenthood. Research on infertility, ART, and surrogacy has led to a rethinking of biotechnological reproduction. The use of IVG for genetic parenthood raises concerns about reinforcing genetic essentialism and undermining non-traditional families based on adoption or  gametes or other forms of family.

Advocating the use of these experimental procedures in the name of genetic relatedness may also exacerbate existing inequalities for those already experiencing marginalisation. For example, researchers have claimed that IVG provides equity for same-sex couples and individuals, but legal frameworks still prioritise heterosexual couples. In many countries like India, LGBTI persons are not allowed to access surrogacy legally. 

The Surrogacy Rules in India allow only married couples of Indian origin to access surrogacy. The Act denies the rights of homosexual couples to commission a child and refuses to acknowledge such couples as ‘legitimate’. Thus, the current legal framework limits surrogacy to cis-heterosexual married couples and operates within a cis-heteronormative framework that prioritises and, indeed, normalises a certain experience of childbearing and family-making over all others. If equity were a goal, IVF and surrogacy would be regulated differently.  

Furthermore, IVG’s ability to create large numbers of embryos in a lab allows people to choose from dozens of potential embryos, enhancing embryo screening potential. This further enables the selection or rejection of embryos based on the likelihood of genetic diseases, chromosomal abnormalities, and even characteristics such as skin and eye colour, intelligence, or height. 

While some of these genetic diseases might be patently ‘undesirable’, the procedure raises questions about the desirability of specific traits and genes. There are enough examples historically where the existing reproductive technologies have been misused to promote eugenic selections and discrimination against people with disabilities, intensifying societal disparities and race and caste based discrimination.

Caution over optimism

IVG has the potential to revolutionise families, genetics, and reproduction, but there is a significant gap between speculation about its benefits and the actual outcomes of research studies. Additionally, ongoing research will be necessary to understand this technology’s long-term effects and consequences on society as a whole. It is crucial to consider the potential impact on future generations and ensure that safeguards are in place to protect the rights and well-being of children created through IVG. 

As IVG research progresses, carefully considering this technology’s ethical implications and potential consequences will be crucial. Furthermore, it is important to address discussions about the legal rights and status of children created through IVG.

As this technology advances, it will be essential to have open and transparent conversations about the ethical, social, and legal implications of IVG. These conversations should involve diverse people, including ethicists, scientists, policymakers, and the general public. These discussions and critical analyses can help navigate the complex science, ethics, and policy nexus around IVG. These discussions should distinguish between concepts like therapy and enhancement or disability and disease rather than rely solely on the scientific community to characterise the claims with IVG. 

Although IVG is still a new technology, its probable risks and potential for misuse in a regulatory vacuum call for caution rather than any call for optimism.

Sarojini Nadimpally is a social scientist and public health researcher; Gargi Mishra is a lawyer and public health researcher.  Authors work on the issues of infertility, ARTs, surrogacy, and genetic technologies.

The authors would like to acknowledge Sandhya Srinivasan, Vrinda Marwah, Keertana K.T., and Adsa Fatima for their inputs.

No Rains, No Winds, No Cyclone: A Fisher Science View of Cyclone Fengal’s Flopshow

The everyday science of artisanal fishers like S. Palayam is democratic, freely available and has its own pedagogy of embedded apprenticeship.

Read all stories in the Science of the Seas series here.

December 10, 2024

Fishers view storms with nervous anticipation. Storms, particularly thunderstorms and cyclones, with heavy rains and rough weather that churn the sea bottom-up, are great for fishing. On November 23, the Indian Meteorology Department (IMD) reported the formation of a low-pressure over southeast Bay of Bengal. On November 29, the storm graduated to the status of a cyclonic storm and was named Fengal.

Its imminent landfall, expected rainfall – particularly over Chennai – and its foot-dragging progression were breathlessly tracked by bloggers, reporters and anxious municipal officials. After its landfall on November 30, government officials and political leaders congratulated themselves on having solved Chennai’s long-standing drainage problem by posting photos of dry roads or ongoing work to drain them, even as other parts of the state were devastated by torrential downpours. Detractors posted counter-photos of waterlogged areas in Chennai. Trolls found new targets for their foul content in weather-bloggers and IMD, both of whom did a commendable job in tracking a whimsical weather phenomenon.

But through it all, in Urur Kuppam, the south Chennai fishing village that veteran hook-and-line fisher and elder S. Palayam calls home, fishers slept soundly.

No special measures were taken to pull their boats to safety away from the sea in anticipation of Fengal. Barring frequent visits to the seashore to see the sea and reassure themselves, the fishers let the boats lie where they would on any day; they had been fastened tighter with mooring ropes from the bow and the two sides, and the nets and gear had been weighed down. If any care was taken to pull the boats away from shore, it was out of respect for the New Moon-tide expected on November 30. Contrast that to 2023, when in anticipation of Cyclone Michaung, they had moved their boats and gear up the Besant Nagar beach well beyond the cricket pitch.

“Fengal was not a cyclone, if you ask me,” Palayam declared after the storm crossed land far south of Chennai bringing heavy rains to southern districts. A voice note recorded when he was standing at the mouth of the Adyar River on the morning of 1 December was tinged with disappointment:

“The river is not running wide, Anna (brother). One shouldn’t lie about these things. If you’re in doubt, you can send someone to verify. No harm in that. But the river is not running wide. The rains have not been intense enough. I can say this with certainty. Far from running wide, the river mouth is being silted up by the sand [being brought in by sea currents], and there is not much of a discharge of waters from the river’s catchment. It is not as we had feared, not even like what we saw in 2023. It may be a fact that various places may have recorded 22 cm, 30 cm. . .or 13 cm in Meenambakkam leading to closure of airport. But come to the seashore and observe. There’s not much water discharge [from the river]. There is a reduction in salinity which I could sense when I tasted the sea water. There is a small difference in salinity between yesterday and today. It is now a little blander. One must see if this dilution may be a result of discharge from northern rivers pushed ashore by the Vanni karsala [northerly nearshore current]. Our river also may have drained a little freshwater into the sea. Because the current was still (Iruva) near the river mouth, when I tasted the water, it was a little bland.” 

Palayam’s rejection of the cyclone title accorded to Fengal is not a challenge to the World Meteorological Organisation’s carefully worked out system of naming and tracking tropical storms. Rather his statement is founded on another equally carefully worked out, though entirely different way of making sense of and attitude towards the seas.

To understand Palayam’s interpretations of the marine phenomenon, one needs to have some understanding of his science.  But before I give you a background on fisher science, I will share a brief note on how fishers view nature, then present a general account of storms and cyclones as fishers see it. I will then narrate Palayam’s observations on Fengal and explain what it means. Finally, I will engage with some basics of fisher and western sciences and invite you to view the former for what it is rather than through the lens of western science.

Nature as kin

The sciences of artisanal communities are place-based and place-dependent and draw upon generations of embodied knowledge and wisdom accumulated through countless interactions of fishers with the local seas and nature. They provide rich insights into natural phenomena as they play out in hyper-local settings.

In the fishers’ worldview, the wind, as paattan (grandfather), and the sea, as Kadalamma (sea mother), are kin. Both are described as alive, whimsical, prone to provocation and appeasement, powerful and ultimately unknowable. The sea and all of nature are mysterious beings who cannot be understood by ‘knowing’ a few parts. That is why “sensing” or “making sense of” is a better descriptor of the objective of fisher science than “knowing.” The former, when combined with Aṟam (அறம்) – customary norms, rituals and practices of virtuous behaviour and doing right by the sea – provides fishers with ways of living with and surviving the seas, and perhaps even thriving. This is a significant departure from the western scientific method’s objective of generating ‘knowledge’ as a means of demystifying nature, which is described as a knowable, inanimate collection of resources that can be scientifically exploited for human use.

Specifics may vary, but fishers across the coast of India read storms by looking for changing combinations of wind directions and speeds and ocean currents and ocean conditions. IMD uses a god’s eye satellite view and instrumentation to read storms. Fishers use a beach-side view and their senses, and also add IMD’s observation to their database for analyses.

Photo: Science of the Seas + Chennai Map Project supported by Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (University of Toronto).

Winds, currents, storms

Chennai fishers categorise winds based on the directions they blow from – Eeran (Easterly); Kachan Eeran (Southeasterly); Neenda Kachan (Southerly); Kachan Kodai (Southwesterly); Kodai (Westerly); Vadamarai (Northwesterly); Kun Vaadai (North-Northwesterly); Neenda Vaadai (Northerly) and Vaadai Eeran (Northeasterly). The Kun Vaadai is the dreaded storm wind, and Kachan Eeran is the oppositional calming wind, affectionately referred to as the Thennal. Vaadai Eeran, Eeran and Kachan Eeran are sea breezes; Kachan Kodai, Kodai and Vadamarai are land breezes.

Ocean currents are of four kinds also based on the directions of origin – Vanni (Northerly); Thendi (Southerly); Olini (Easterly from sea to land) and Memeri (Westerly). Of particular interest to fishers is the direction and speed of the current in nearshore waters (Karsala), midsea (Mela Vellam), surface current (vellam) and seafloor current (Tharai vellam). Of all these currents, Olini is the strongest. The tsunami is the extreme manifestation of the Olini in this part of the coast.

The fisher calendar divides the year into two distinct seasons, each containing one monsoon within it. The Vaadai season characterised by northerly winds (Vadamarai to Vaadai Eeran) and Vanni currents brackets the primary season of storms and the Northeast monsoon. During the Tamil months of Aippasi (mid-October to mid-November), the sea is expected to resemble a Perunkadal (ocean); during Karthigai (mid-November to mid-December) the sea quietens down and resembles a Sirukadal (sea). The Southwest monsoon, the Kodai naal (hot summer days) and the Kodai Puyal (summer storms) occur within the Kachan season from mid-January to mid-September.

Intense rain and thunderstorm events that qualify as a storm will be announced by roaring Kun Vaadai winds, the onset and/or intensification of Vanni currents from the north. If the storm comes with a lot of rain, the river will run wide flushing out the sandbar at the estuary. The floodwaters will push a muddy brown plume deep into sea; the Vanni current will turn the plume southwards. As the storm progresses, the wind swings anti-clockwise until the Thennal begins to gust from the Kachan Eeran (southeast) side announcing the storm’s landfall. The Thennal weakens the Vanni current, causing it to fold over and turn to a brisk southerly current calming the seas. Fishing is particularly productive on the days of the Thennal following a powerful storm, ideally with thunder and lightning. See here to understand “The Life of a Storm”.

Photo: Science of the Seas and the Chennai Map Project supported by Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (University of Toronto)

Fengal failed as a storm

On November 23, when the IMD announced the formation of a depression off the western coast of Sumatra, Palayam learnt of a strange occurrence when he visited Pulicat, 35 km to the north. The fishers there reported that currents were flowing from the south, instead of north. In Urur Kuppam too the currents were weak and the sea was calm. One Urur fisher who returned with 3 kg of big size prawn, did not set his net again because the net had also brought up large numbers of Paarkattu Nandu, a Red rock crab notorious for snipping through nets. The presence of these crabs meant a clear water column above the seafloor, quite contrary to the expectation of turbid waters and turbulent seas during Karthigai (mid-November to mid-December).

The second flag went up on November 26, when an alert was issued about the possibility of a cyclone forming. Here are excerpts from Palayam’s voice note to me early that morning:

A sea breeze has been howling since last night; the sea is not rough the way it can be with gusty Kun Vaadai winds. Sea breeze should never come. If it does, it means that the storm is weak. If that storm is intensifying, we should be getting gusts of Kun Vaadai winds. Because the storm is not intense, all fishers are sleeping soundly. Yesterday, when I went to the river mouth, I noticed that the Vanni current had cut a deep berm about 4 feet high. By now, if the current had been strong, the currents should have continued cutting the berm right up to the village. I told the postwoman madam when I met her yesterday “Amma, don’t expect the rains of 2023. Don’t be worried that Chennai will drown. Such heavy rains are unlikely. Even if it rains, why complain when waters come. Let the rains come. Every day, I walk to the river. Only if it rains will the river run wide. Who will water the plants? We will also get water to drink. Let’s see what god gives us. Whatever we get, we will live with. This storm is not likely to be intense; that much I can say. When a storm blows from the north at 100 km, a 120 km wind from the south is needed to neutralise it. But this is not like that. In Pondicherry and Cuddalore and other districts, the situation may be different and there may be more damage. But for us, because of the sea breeze, I can say that Chennai will not be harmed much.”

Palayam referred to Fengal as an Ūmai Puyal  (ஊமை புயல்) or mute storm. Cyclonic winds are expected to roar and howl. Fengal did neither. Just a day before the storm’s landfall, when much was being made of the efficient drainage of rainwater in Chennai, Palayam called to say that the absence of discharge from the Adyar, and hence poor rainfall at least in Adyar’s catchment, was proven by the fact that the sand bar blocking the river mouth remained undisturbed.

Once one understands this, it is easy to appreciate how a storm with windspeeds less than 63 kmph may still be called a cyclone or sooravali by Palayam, even though it fails to meet IMD’s benchmark speed for a cyclone, or how this clearly well-qualified, though slow-moving cyclone announced by IMD, fails to meet the fisher standards.

Cyclone or not? But basics first…

Each science has a way of categorising phenomena, a peculiar standpoint, assumptions and myths they subscribe to before using their way of knowing what they define as knowable. Both involve what critical theorist Ogawa calls a “rational perceiving of reality” with a rationality derived from the cultural context within which the knowledge system operates. That rationality is informed by assumptions and intents of the scientific tradition.

Western science is based on an assumption of objective reality and an objectification of nature which is made possible by deploying binary separations between nature and culture, mind and matter, physical and metaphysical. Care is taken to ensure that the reality of the material world of biology, chemistry and physics is viewed untainted by culture or metaphysics. In this world, nature is the sum of all natural resources that can be known, managed and exploited for human good through a process of demystification using the scientific method. 

Also read: Sea Spirit Science

Fisher science is driven by two primal motivations: Finding fish and staying alive. Every fisher that ventures out to fish must be a scientist. A good one returns home alive, and with fish if conditions are right. The test of adeptness with this science is a daily affair of living with, surviving and thriving from the sea. Where western science attempts to generate universally applicable knowledge about nature, fisher science uses current and historical place-based experiences to make sense of a hyper-locality. 

Contrary to western science’s binary worldview, fisher and other artisanal knowledge traditions are premised on a unitary view of the world where nature, culture, matter and spirit are inseparable and interrelated, and the purpose of making sense of the world – i.e. to find fish and stay alive – can only be realised when science and virtue come together.

As Vareethaiah Konstantine, author and historian of Tamil fisher traditions, so elegantly put it during one conversation, in many of the non-western artisanal science traditions, sense-making (அறிதல் – Aṟital) of the world is incomplete without virtue, morality and faith (அறம் – Aṟam).

Misinformed by half-baked notions of “rationality,” it is easy to dismiss non-western ways of knowing as superstition or cultural belief, or to be blind to the empirical rigour underpinning these traditions. Palayam Anna, for instance, has been maintaining a daily dairy of wind and sea conditions since August 2018, with detailed observations of field conditions for days with out-of-the-ordinary phenomena. Every morning, I receive a short update via WhatsApp with photographs and videos. Every evening, a WhatsApp note arrives containing details of direction and strength of nearshore and midsea currents, winds and rains (if any), sea condition (calm, moderate/normal, rough). Wind and rain details are recorded three times a day – at 5.30 am, 12 noon and 10 pm But Palayam, like other fishers, watches the sea and the winds all the time. When the sea acts up, like it did over the last 10 days, I receive multiple voice notes and written updates as the situation develops.

The Science of the Seas is a collaborative effort, involving the analyses of crowdsourced information gathered by fishers on beaches and boats. It is subject to intense peer scrutiny. Theories about the particular – say, a weather phenomenon and its implications, or the appearance or disappearance of a particular fish – are made in relation to the whole. Analyses that pass peer review are passed on across the community, and those that survive further review and rigours of practice are handed down through generations.

However, there’s more to the science than ‘data’. Palayam echoes this: “We read the waves, sense the winds, estimate the right moment to safely cross the surf zone and all that. All that is what you call ‘data.’ For data to become knowledge, and for us to survive and thrive in the lap of kadalamma (Mother Sea) requires us to do all that, then to do right by her and first to submit to her.” Science without Aṟam or knowledge without faith is pointless.

S. Palayam is a veteran hook-and-line fisher and fisher scientist. Nityanand Jayaraman is a writer, social activist and citizen science enthusiast.

India and Pakistan Share Climate Challenges – But Not Solutions

Choking smog, scorching heat and ravaging floods – at loggerheads geopolitically, India and Pakistan share the same environmental challenges, offering a rare but unrealised opportunity for collaboration, according to experts.

Choking smog, scorching heat and ravaging floods – India and Pakistan share the same environmental challenges, offering a rare but unrealised opportunity for collaboration, according to experts.

The neighbouring nations, which have fought three wars since their 1947 partition and still bitterly dispute Kashmir, are suffocated every winter by a haze of pollution traversing their border.

The countries, together making up a fifth of the world’s population, frequently blame each other for smog blustering into their respective territories.

But this year pollution reached record highs in Pakistan’s eastern and most populous province of Punjab, prompting the regional government to make a rare overture calling for “regional climate diplomacy”.

India did not comment and whether they will unite to face a common foe remains to be seen. But experts agree the two countries cannot tackle climate threats in isolation.

“We are geographically, environmentally and also culturally the same people and share the same climatic challenges,” said Abid Omar, founder of the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI).

“We have to work transboundary,” he told AFP.

‘Urgent shared threat’

India and Pakistan are at the mercy of extreme weather which scientists say is increasing in frequency and severity, owing to climate change.

Heatwaves have regularly surpassed 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit), droughts plague farmers and monsoon rains are becoming more intense.

Pakistan’s 2022 monsoon floods submerged a third of the country and killed 1,700 people.

A year later, more than 70 died in northeastern India when a mountain lake burst its banks, a phenomenon becoming more common as glaciers melt at higher rates.

This July more than 200 people were killed in the southern Indian state of Kerala when monsoon downpours caused landslides that buried tea plantations under tonnes of rock and soil.

In both countries, nearly half of people live below the poverty line, in a state of precarity where climate disasters can be devastating.

“One would like to think that an urgent shared threat would bring the two sides together,” Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute director at the Washington-based Wilson Center, told AFP.

“The problem is that this hasn’t.”

Each side has outlawed agricultural burning, a method to quickly clear crop waste ahead of the winter planting season, but farmers continue the practice because of a lack of cheap alternatives.

Authorities in both countries have also threatened to destroy brick kilns that do not adhere to emissions regulations.

But India, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, and Pakistan, one of the smallest, have never aligned their environmental laws, school or traffic closures, or shared technology and data.

Indian economist and climate expert Ulka Kelkar highlighted the potential to collaborate on electric vehicle technology suited to South Asian needs.

“In our countries, it’s two wheelers and three wheelers which most people tend to use,” she told AFP.

“So research and development of vehicular technologies, battery technologies that are suited for our road conditions, warmer climates, our passenger use – that’s the sort of discussion and common development that can happen.”

Nations growing apart

Experts say the geopolitical rivalry runs so deep that distrust undercuts any prospects of cooperation.

Visas are so sparingly granted that most researchers in one of the countries cannot visit the other, whilst Islamabad and New Delhi frequently poke holes in one another’s data.

The PAQI partnered with an Indian counterpart in 2019 to reconcile findings by installing matching air pollution sensors in each other’s countries.

While breathing toxic air has catastrophic health consequences – with the World Health Organization warning that strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases can be triggered by prolonged exposure – the one-year project was not renewed.

The nations do hold regular discussions on one critical climate issue: sharing rights to the Indus River which bisects Pakistan but is fed by tributaries in India.

However geopolitical posturing in September saw New Delhi lobby Islamabad for a review of their water-sharing treaty, citing cross-border militant attacks, according to Indian media.

But the impetus for cooperation will only increase. India and Pakistan both have exploding population growth rates.

“Being developing economies, there is a growing use of electricity and fossil fuels for industry, for transportation, for urban use,” economist Kelkar said.

Dialogue, trust needed

At a national level, experts also say there may be a crucial imbalance between the two countries.

“Climate-related problems tend to be transnational by nature”, Indian international relations expert Kanishkan Sathasivam said.

“India can do certain things for Pakistan but Pakistan is not going to have much that it can do for India,” he added, explaining that India’s gross domestic product was 10 times larger than its neighbour’s in 2023.

Pakistan was also on the brink of default last year, only saved from bankruptcy by international loans, and is burdened by debt repayments preventing investment to counteract climate challenges.

India, meanwhile, has taken more proactive measures such as banning petrol-powered vehicles older than 15 years from driving on the streets of its capital.

But unilateral measures do not address the root cause.

“The dialogue and the trust has to be built up through many mechanisms,” said Omar of PAQI.

“It should not be limited to government to government discussions, but also between the science and academic community.”

Surgery is Helping Kerala’s Transgender Individuals Find Their Voice – But Challenges Remain

And they are not just restricted to surgical procedures.

Thiruvananthapuram: For Deepa Rani, the decision to go for a sex reassignment surgery or SRS was the essential and final step in her efforts to embrace her true identity. A theatre artiste and model, Deepa underwent the surgery at a hospital in Coimbatore in 2019. The procedure did not go as planned and almost took her life. Correctional surgeries at a Kochi hospital took over a year but were ultimately successful. The ordeal left Deepa grateful, but not quite satisfied.

Deepa Rani. Photo: By arrangement.

“There was something missing, I realised,” Deepa says. “I looked like a woman and I walked like a woman. But the moment I spoke, I could see doubt and confusion in people’s eyes. My voice was still a man’s. It left me frustrated,” she says. 

In 2021, two years after her SRS, Deepa chose to undergo a voice feminisation surgery. This surgery, introduced in Kerala only in the last decade or so, is typically the last stage of the SRS procedure. 

Dr. Jayakumar R. Menon, one of the leading laryngologists in the country, also holds the distinction of being the first doctor to have performed the surgery in Kerala. Laryngologists are doctors who specialise in treating conditions of the larynx or voice box.

“The surgery originated internationally in the 1970s, in Japan. Dr. Nobuhiko Isshiki, a pioneer of laryngology, developed a series of voice alteration and improvement surgical techniques. In India, it took until the early 21st century for the surgery to be implemented along with the SRS,” Menon says. 

The surgery is termed so, Menon adds, because almost all the cases involve a male-to-female voice alteration procedure. The 15 such surgeries Menon has carried out have all been a part of the SRS process for trans women. Menon currently practises at a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.

Dr. Jayakumar R. Menon. Photo: By arrangement.

The basic science behind the voice feminisation procedure can be attributed to string physics, he notes. 

 “When the mass or length of a guitar string is reduced, you get a higher pitch. Now, apply the same physics to our vocal cords,” he says.

“In humans, the pitch for males falls in the range of 90 to 130 Hz [Hertz]. The female pitch ranges from 180 to 250 Hz. By reducing the thickness or the length of the vocal cord, we can increase our voice pitch. Another way to raise the pitch is to increase the tension of the vocal cord,” Menon says.  

Dr. Reshmi M. Nair, a laryngologist based in Kochi, is another one of the few doctors handling voice feminisation surgery in Kerala. She has performed a total of 11 such procedures and started only in 2020. She is part of the SRS team at the Kochi hospital where Deepa was treated.

One of the earliest techniques used was vocal cord stretching, Nair points out. But the problem with that procedure was that it was not always permanent. “In nearly 30% of the cases, the pitch started dropping over time. Thus, more permanent methods to alter the voice by changing the vocal cord, had to be considered. 

“The procedure to increase the tension of the vocal cord is known as a ‘Type 4 Thyroplasty’ or ‘Cricothyroid approximation’. In this, the pitch of the voice is increased by moving the thyroid cartilage close to the cricoid cartilage. Reducing the gap between the two in turn stretches the vocal cord, thus increasing the tension, resulting in a higher pitch. It’s similar to how a guitar string’s tension happens,” Nair says.

Type 4 Thyroplasty: surgical steps. Photo: By arrangement.

“An ‘Anterior or Wendler Glottoplasty’ is carried out to reduce the length of the vocal cord. The procedure shortens the vocal folds, thus raising the pitch,” she adds.

Anterior Glottoplasty: surgical steps. Photo: By arrangement.

The mass of the vocal cord can be decreased through LAVA (Laser-Assisted Voice Adjustment surgery), a laser debulking process. A ‘Thyroid Chondroplasty’ is carried out alongside any of the above vocal cord procedures for a reduction in the Adam’s apple, she adds.

Even after these procedures, voice therapy plays a key role in getting the pitch and the diction correct, Nair says. 

SRS procedures, particularly those involving genital surgeries, have come under a lot of scrutiny over the years in Kerala.

Dr. Sundeep Vijayaraghavan, the head of the department of plastic and reconstructive surgery at a Kochi hospital says that SRS is increasingly being referred to as GAS – Gender Affirmation Surgery – amongst the medical fraternity.

The first sex reassignment surgery in Kerala, performed at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College in 2017, was in the limelight for the wrong reasons. The patient, a trans man, claimed that the procedure endangered their health drastically and that they had to undergo several rectification surgeries later. Ananya Kumari Alex, who became known as the first trans radio jockey from Kerala, died by suicide in 2021 after allegedly facing serious health issues after their SRS. Only one hospital in Kochi now performs SRS. 

According to Dr. Arjun Ashokan, a senior plastic surgeon in a Kochi hospital, the genitalia (also known as ‘down surgery’) and abdominal procedures in SRS can sometimes lead to infections or other complications. The patients are counselled thoroughly, and made aware of such risks before the procedure.

“But the voice feminisation surgery doesn’t really pose such concerns as there aren’t any risks or long-term side effects associated with the voice surgery,” Nair additionally notes.

“One commonly encountered complaint is that the changed voice doesn’t meet the expectations of the patient. That’s where voice therapy and counselling come into the picture,” she adds.

One of the rare issues they have encountered is with the vocal cord reduction procedure, Nair says. If the sutures within the cord get severed, it can create a dual sound effect, known as ‘diplophonia’. 

Another feedback they have received from some patients, she adds, concerns an aspect of appearance. The scar left by an open surgery can bother some, especially if they have undergone other cosmetic surgeries as part of the SRS.

Priya. Photo: By arrangement.

V.S. Priya, an Ayurveda medical practitioner from Thrissur, is a trans woman who had her voice feminisation surgery performed by Nair. 

“For many transgender persons, voice feminisation surgery may not be even an important part of their SRS. For me, the voice transformation was something I was very sure about right from the start,” Priya says. 

Another reason why patients opt for voice feminisation surgery is that hormonal therapy hardly plays a role in voice transition for trans women, Priya adds. “Modulating your voice through therapy techniques can be a constant and conscious effort, and tires you out eventually,” Priya says.

“The first year after my voice surgery was quite a struggle. It was difficult to hold even a normal conversation without straining yourself. I used to sing rather well before that, and I had my doubts as to whether my singing days were over,” she says.

Priya still feels that out of all the surgeries she got, this has been the most beneficial to her. “The stigma associated with a mismatched voice was much greater than the stigma of having to undergo a procedure and changing my voice entirely,” she says.

But both Deepa Rani and Priya unequivocally point out one thing – the need for a better medical system and public health schemes that make gender affirmation surgeries more accessible. As of now, SRS and related surgeries are available only in the private medical sector in Kerala. Under the current state scheme, trans women can be reimbursed up to Rs 2.5 lakh for such surgeries. But this quite often ends up covering only a small part of SRS procedures. For a socially and economically underprivileged trans individuals, there needs to be better state support. 

According to Jayakumar, despite the success rate with the voice feminisation surgeries in the state, the current procedures are still not without flaws. 

“For one,” he muses, “we only focus on the vocal cord right now, not the resonance factor.”

“The structure of a male and a female throat are quite different from each other. And the part of the throat above the vocal cord amplifies the sound, thus playing a significant role in how the voice ultimately comes out. Unless we figure out how to make changes to that, we would not be able to alter the resonance, and obtain the result that we really desire,” he elaborates.

Dr. Unnikrishnan K. Menon, an ENT and laryngology specialist at a Kochi hospital, feels that this is exactly why the procedure is increasingly being referred to as “pitch alteration surgery” these days. Unnikrishnan is another one in a list of few medical experts to have performed voice feminisation surgery in Kerala. According to him, laryngologists, who have also specialised in voice surgeries, are a rare class in the country itself. 

“So it isn’t surprising that Dr. Jayakumar R. Menon and Dr. Reshmi Nair together make up for the majority of the voice feminisation surgeries in Kerala,” he notes.

All the medical experts I talked to agreed that voice feminisation surgery still seems to be one of the “elite procedures” for the transgender community in Kerala. A key reason they noted was the cost of the procedure, which can fall between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh rupees, depending on the hospital and the type of the procedure chosen. The lack of availability of the procedure in government hospitals right now is a significant reason for lesser numbers. The number of private hospitals in the state performing voice feminisation surgery itself can be counted on one hand as of now. Since the procedure is carried out as the last step of the SRS – which consists of a series of other cosmetic surgeries – the patients are often short of money. 

Secondly, voice surgery is generally not deemed to be an indispensable part of transition by many transgender individuals. The doctors noted that only those who felt that voice transition was necessary in their day-to-day – particularly professional – lives opted for it.

Nair cites her patients as an example – most of them are involved in professions where they have to converse and interact with people face-to-face daily. The numbers largely consist of transgender individuals from urban and middle or upper class backgrounds. 

Nair feels that the challenges that we talk about are not just restricted to surgical procedures. While undergoing sex reassignment surgery, a trans person exists in a very complex gender spectrum. “Our healthcare and medical system can be more empathetic and representative of, as well as accessible for, the transgender community,” she adds.

Bharath Thampi is an independent journalist and documentarian based in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

The Role of Desalination in Agriculture’s Future

While challenges like cost and brine disposal remain, advancements in technology could make desalination a viable tool to bolster water resilience and sustain agriculture in increasingly water-scarce regions.

Ralph Loya was pretty sure he was going to lose the corn. His farm had been scorched by El Paso’s hottest-ever June and second-hottest August; the West Texas county saw 53 days soar over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer of 2024. The region was also experiencing an ongoing drought, which meant that crops on Loya’s eight-plus acres of melons, okra, cucumbers and other produce had to be watered more often than normal.

Loya had been irrigating his corn with somewhat salty, or brackish, water pumped from his well, as much as the salt-sensitive crop could tolerate. It wasn’t enough, and the municipal water was expensive; he was using it in moderation and the corn ears were desiccating where they stood.

Ensuring the survival of agriculture under an increasingly erratic climate is approaching a crisis in the sere and sweltering Western and Southwestern United States, an area that supplies much of our beef and dairy, alfalfa, tree nuts and produce. Contending with too little water to support their plants and animals, farmers have tilled under crops, pulled out trees, fallowed fields and sold off herds. They’ve also used drip irrigation to inject smaller doses of water closer to a plant’s roots, and installed sensors in soil that tell more precisely when and how much to water.

In the last five years, researchers have begun to puzzle out how brackish water, pulled from underground aquifers, might be de-salted cheaply enough to offer farmers another water resilience tool. Loya’s property, which draws its slightly salty water from the Hueco Bolson aquifer, is about to become a pilot site to test how efficiently desalinated groundwater can be used to grow crops in otherwise water-scarce places.

Desalination renders salty water less so. It’s usually applied to water sucked from the ocean, generally in arid lands with few options; some Gulf, African and island countries rely heavily or entirely on desalinated seawater. Inland desalination happens away from coasts, with aquifer waters that are brackish — containing between 1,000 and 10,000 milligrams of salt per liter, versus around 35,000 milligrams per liter for seawater. Texas has more than three dozen centralized brackish groundwater desalination plants, California more than 20.

Such technology has long been considered too costly for farming. Some experts still think it’s a pipe dream. “We see it as a nice solution that’s appropriate in some contexts, but for agriculture it’s hard to justify, frankly,” says Brad Franklin, an agricultural and environmental economist at the Public Policy Institute of California. Desalting an acre-foot (almost 326,000 gallons) of brackish groundwater for crops now costs about $800, while farmers can pay a lot less — as little as $3 an acre-foot for some senior rights holders in some places — for fresh municipal water. As a result, desalination has largely been reserved to make liquid that’s fit for people to drink. In some instances, too, inland desalination can be environmentally risky, endangering nearby plants and animals and reducing stream flows.

But the US Bureau of Reclamation, along with a research operation called the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) that’s been granted $185 million from the Department of Energy, have recently invested in projects that could turn that paradigm on its head. Recognizing the urgent need for fresh water for farms — which in the US are mostly inland — combined with the ample if salty water beneath our feet, these entities have funded projects that could help advance small, decentralized desalination systems that can be placed right on farms where they’re needed. Loya’s is one of them.

US farms consume over 83 million acre-feet (more than 27 trillion gallons) of irrigation water every year — the second most water-intensive industry in the country, after thermoelectric power. Not all aquifers are brackish, but most that are exist in the country’s West, and they’re usually more saline the deeper you dig. With fresh water everywhere in the world becoming saltier due to human activity, “we have to solve inland desal for ag … in order to grow as much food as we need,” says Susan Amrose, a research scientist at MIT who studies inland desalination in the Middle East and North Africa.

That means lowering energy and other operational costs; making systems simple for farmers to run; and figuring out how to slash residual brine, which requires disposal and is considered the process’s “Achilles’ heel,” according to one researcher.

The last half-decade of scientific tinkering is now yielding tangible results, says Peter Fiske, NAWI’s executive director. “We think we have a clear line of sight for agricultural-quality water.”

Swallowing the high cost

Fiske believes farm-based mini-plants can be cost-effective for producing high-value crops like broccoli, berries and nuts, some of which need a lot of irrigation. That $800 per acre-foot has been achieved by cutting energy use, reducing brine and revolutionizing certain parts and materials. It’s still expensive but arguably worth it for a farmer growing almonds or pistachios in California — as opposed to farmers growing lesser-value commodity crops like wheat and soybeans, for whom desalination will likely never prove affordable. As a nut farmer, “I would sign up to 800 bucks per acre-foot of water till the cows come home,” Fiske says.

Loya’s pilot is being built with Bureau of Reclamation funding and will use a common process called reverse osmosis. Pressure pushes salty water through a semi-permeable membrane; fresh water comes out the other side, leaving salts behind as concentrated brine. Loya figures he can make good money using desalinated water to grow not just fussy corn, but even fussier grapes he might be able to sell at a premium to local wineries.

Such a tiny system shares some of the problems of its large-scale cousins — chiefly, brine disposal. El Paso, for example, boasts the biggest inland desalination plant in the world, which makes 27.5 million gallons of fresh drinking water a day. There, every gallon of brackish water gets split into two streams: fresh water and residual brine, at a ratio of 83 percent to 17 percent. Since there’s no ocean to dump brine into, as with seawater desalination, this plant injects it into deep, porous rock formations — a process too pricey and complicated for farmers.

But what if desalination could create 90 or 95 percent fresh water and 5 to 10 percent brine? What if you could get 100 percent fresh water, with just a bag of dry salts leftover? Handling those solids is a lot safer and easier, “because super-salty water brine is really corrosive … so you have to truck it around in stainless steel trucks,” Fiske says.

Finally, what if those salts could be broken into components — lithium, essential for batteries; magnesium, used to create alloys; gypsum, turned into drywall; as well as gold, platinum and other rare-earth elements that can be sold to manufacturers? Already, the El Paso plant participates in “mining” gypsum and hydrochloric acid for industrial customers.

Loya’s brine will be piped into an evaporation pond. Eventually, he’ll have to pay to landfill the dried-out solids, says Quantum Wei, founder and CEO of Harmony Desalting, which is building Loya’s plant. There are other expenses: drilling a well (Loya, fortuitously, already has one to serve the project); building the physical plant; and supplying the electricity to pump water up day after day. These are bitter financial pills for a farmer. “We’re not getting rich; by no means,” Loya says.

More cost comes from the desalination itself. The energy needed for reverse osmosis is a lot, and the saltier the water, the higher the need. Additionally, the membranes that catch salt are gossamer-thin, and all that pressure destroys them; they also get gunked up and need to be treated with chemicals.

Reverse osmosis presents another problem for farmers. It doesn’t just remove salt ions from water but the ions of beneficial minerals, too, such as calcium, magnesium and sulfate. According to Amrose, this means farmers have to add fertilizer or mix in pretreated water to replace essential ions that the process took out.

To circumvent such challenges, one NAWI-funded team is experimenting with ultra-high-pressure membranes, fashioned out of stiffer plastic, that can withstand a much harder push. The results so far look “quite encouraging,” Fiske says. Another is looking into a system in which a chemical solvent dropped into water isolates the salt without a membrane, like the polymer inside a diaper absorbs urine. The solvent, in this case the common food-processing compound dimethyl ether, would be used over and over to avoid potentially toxic waste. It has proved cheap enough to be considered for agricultural use.

Amrose is testing a system that uses electrodialysis instead of reverse osmosis. This sends a steady surge of voltage across water to pull salt ions through an alternating stack of positively charged and negatively charged membranes. Explains Amrose, “You get the negative ions going toward their respective electrode until they can’t pass through the membranes and get stuck,” and the same happens with the positive ions. The process gets much higher fresh water recovery in small systems than reverse osmosis, and is twice as energy efficient at lower salinities. The membranes last longer, too — 10 years versus three to five years, Amrose says — and can allow essential minerals to pass through.

Data-based design

At Loya’s farm, Wei paces the property on a sweltering summer morning with a local engineering company he’s tapped to design the brine storage pond. Loya is anxious that the pond be as small as possible to keep arable land in production; Wei is more concerned that it be big and deep enough. To factor this, he’ll look at average weather conditions since 1954 as well as worst-case data from the last 25 years pertaining to monthly evaporation and rainfall rates. He’ll also divide the space into two sections so one can be cleaned while the other is in use. Loya’s pond will likely be one-tenth of an acre, dug three to six feet deep.

The desalination plant will pair reverse osmosis membranes with a “batch” process, pushing water through multiple times instead of once and gradually amping up the pressure. Regular reverse osmosis is energy-intensive because it constantly applies the highest pressures, Wei says, but Harmony’s process saves energy by using lower pressures to start with. A backwash between cycles prevents scaling by dissolving mineral crystals and washing them away. “You really get the benefit of the farmer not having to deal with dosing chemicals or replacing membranes,” Wei says. “Our goal is to make it as painless as possible.”

Another Harmony innovation concentrates leftover brine by running it through a nanofiltration membrane in their batch system; such membranes are usually used to pretreat water to cut back on scaling or to recover minerals, but Wei believes his system is the first to combine them with batch reverse osmosis. “That’s what’s really going to slash brine volumes,” he says. The whole system will be hooked up to solar panels, keeping Loya’s energy off-grid and essentially free. If all goes to plan, the system will be operational by early 2025 and produce seven gallons of fresh water a minute during the strongest sun of the day, with a goal of 90 to 95 percent fresh water recovery. Any water not immediately used for irrigation will be stored in a tank.

Spreading out the research

Ninety-eight miles north of Loya’s farm, along a dead flat and endlessly beige expanse of road that skirts the White Sands Missile Range, more desalination projects burble away at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The facility, run by the Bureau of Reclamation, offers scientists a lab and four wells of differing salinities to fiddle with.

On some parched acreage at the foot of the Sacramento Mountains, a longstanding farming pilot project bakes in relentless sunlight. After some preemptive words about the three brine ponds on the property — “They have an interesting smell, in between zoo and ocean” — facility manager Malynda Cappelle drives a golf cart full of visitors past solar arrays and water tanks to a fenced-in parcel of dust and plants. Here, since 2019, a team from the University of North Texas, New Mexico State University and Colorado State University has tested sunflowers, fava beans and, currently, 16 plots of pinto beans. Some plots are bare dirt; others are topped with compost that boosts nutrients, keeps soil moist and provides a salt barrier. Some plots are drip-irrigated with brackish water straight from a well; some get a desalinated/brackish water mix.

Eyeballing the plots even from a distance, the plants in the freshest-water plots look large and healthy. But those with compost are almost as vigorous, even when irrigated with brackish water. This could have significant implications for cash-conscious farmers. “Maybe we do a lesser level of desalination, more blending, and this will reduce the cost,” says Cappelle.

Pei Xu, has been co-investigator on this project since its start. She’s also the progenitor of a NAWI-funded pilot at the El Paso desalination plant. Later in the day, in a high-ceilinged space next to the plant’s treatment room, she shows off its consequential bits. Like Amrose’s system, hers uses electrodialysis. In this instance, though, Xu is aiming to squeeze a bit of additional fresh — at least freshish — water from the plant’s leftover brine. With suitably low levels of salinity, the plant could pipe it to farmers through the county’s existing canal system, turning a waste product into a valuable resource.

Xu’s pinto bean and El Paso work, and Amrose’s in the Middle East, are all relevant to Harmony’s pilot and future projects. “Ideally we can improve desalination to the point where it’s an option which is seriously considered,” Wei says. “But more importantly, I think our role now and in the future is as water stewards — to work with each farm to understand their situation and then to recommend their best path forward … whether or not desalting is involved.”

Indeed, as water scarcity becomes ever more acute, desalination advances will help agriculture only so much; even researchers who’ve devoted years to solving its challenges say it’s no panacea. “What we’re trying to do is deliver as much water as cheaply as possible, but that doesn’t really encourage smart water use,” says NAWI’s Fiske. “In some cases, it encourages even the reverse. Why are we growing alfalfa in the middle of the desert?”

Franklin, of the California policy institute, highlights another extreme: Twenty-one of the state’s groundwater basins are already critically depleted, some due to agricultural overdrafting. Pumping brackish aquifers for desalination could aggravate environmental risks.

There are an array of measures, say researchers, that farmers themselves must take in order to survive, with rainwater capture and the fixing of leaky infrastructure at the top of the list. “Desalination is not the best, only or first solution,” Wei says. But he believes that when used wisely in tandem with other smart partial fixes, it could prevent some of the worst water-related catastrophes for our food system.

Lela Nargi is a journalist covering food and agriculture systems, climate science and social justice issues. She is also a 2023-24 Nova Institute for Health media fellow.

This article first appeared on Knowable Magazine, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all. Read the original here.

Piecing Together the Cosmos: String Theory’s Ongoing Quest

While challenges remain and answers are elusive, ongoing breakthroughs suggest that strings might just tie together the ultimate puzzle of existence.

Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better bet would be connecting everything with strings.

Not literal strings, of course – but tiny loops or snippets of vibrating energy. And the “fit together” needs to be mathematical, not via properly shaped pieces of plastic. For decades now, many physicists have pursued the hope that equations involving an especially tiny “string” could provide the theory that solves nature’s ultimate subatomic mysteries.

String theory, as it’s called, has acquired a sort of fuzzy cultural acclaim, showing up in popular TV shows like The Big Bang Theory  and NCIS. Among physicists, reaction to the theory has been mixed. After several promising bursts of discovery in the 1980s and ’90s, strings fell somewhat out of favor for not delivering on their promises. Among those was providing the proper way to include gravity in the quantum theory of subatomic particles. Another was revealing the math that would show nature’s multiple fundamental forces to be just different offspring of one unified force. Still promises unkept.

Yet during the time since string theory’s retreat from the limelight, a considerable cadre of string devotees have labored to tie all the loose ends together. Success remains elusive, but real progress has been made. Questions plaguing physicists about not only the smallest bits of matter but also the properties of the entire universe may yet yield to string theorists’ efforts.

“Many of the unsolved problems in particle physics and cosmology are deeply intertwined,” write physicists Fernando Marchesano, Gary Shiu and Timo Weigand in the 2024 Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. String theory may provide the path to solving those problems.

Reality’s equations

One major approach in this quest is figuring out whether string theory can explain what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics. Developed in the last part of the 20th century, the Standard Model provides a sort of roster listing all of nature’s basic particles. Some provide the building blocks of matter; others transmit forces between the matter particles, governing how they behave.

Source: CERN. Graphic: Knowable Magazine.

It’s pretty simple to draw a chart displaying those particles. You need 12 spots for matter particles — six quarks and six leptons. You need four spots for force particles (collectively known as bosons) plus a spot for the Higgs boson, a particle needed to explain why some particles have mass. But the mathematics underlying the chart is unfathomably complex, a combination of equations that make hieroglyphics seem self-explanatory.

Those equations work superbly for explaining the results of virtually all particle physics behavior. But the Standard Model cannot be the whole story of the universe. “Despite the incredible success of the Standard Model in describing the observed particle physics up to the currently accessible energy scales, there are compelling arguments for why it is incomplete,” Marchesano and collaborators write.

For one thing, its equations do not encompass gravity, which has no spot on the Standard Model chart. And Standard Model math leaves many questions unanswered, such as why some of the particles have the precise masses that they do. Standard Model math also does not include the mysterious dark matter that lurks within and between galaxies, nor does it explain why empty space is infused with a form of energy that causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

Some physicists investigating these problems believe that string theory can help, since a string version of the Standard Model will contain additional math that could account for its shortcomings. In other words, if string theory is correct, the Standard Model would be just one segment of string theory’s full mathematical description of reality. The problem is that string theory describes many different versions of reality. That’s because the strings exist in a realm with multiple dimensions of space beyond the ordinary three. Kind of like the Twilight Zone on steroids.

String theorists concede that daily life proceeds just fine in a three-dimensional world. Therefore, the extra dimensions of the string world must be too small to notice: They have to shrink, or “compactify,” into submicroscopic size. It’s like the way an ant living on a vast sheet of paper would perceive a two-dimensional surface without ever realizing the paper had a third, very small dimension.

Not only must string theory’s extra dimensions shrink, but they also can shrink into innumerable different configurations, or geometries, of the vacuum of space. One of those possible geometries might be the right shape of the shrunk dimensions to explain the properties of the Standard Model.

“Standard Model … features, questions, and puzzles can be reformulated in terms of the geometry of extra dimensions,” Marchesano and collaborators write.

Because string theory math can be expressed in several different forms, theorists have to explore multiple possible avenues to find the most fruitful formulation. So far, string approaches have been found that describe many features of the Standard Model. But different compactification geometries of the vacuum are needed to explain each feature. The challenge, Marchesano and colleagues point out, is to find one geometry for the vacuum that combines all those features at once, while also incorporating features that describe the known universe.

A successful compactification of the extra dimensions, for instance, would produce a vacuum in space that contained the right amount of “dark energy,” the source of the universe’s accelerating expansion. And candidates for the cosmic dark matter should appear in the string math as well. In fact, a whole additional set of force and matter particles emerges from string equations involving a mathematical property called supersymmetry. “Almost all string theory models that resemble the Standard Model display supersymmetry at the compactification scale,” write Marchesano and his coauthors.

Versions of string theory containing supersymmetric particles go by the moniker “superstring theory.” Such “superparticles” have long been suspected of comprising the universe’s dark matter. But attempts to detect them in space or create them in particle accelerators have so far been unsuccessful.

As for gravity, particles conveying the gravitational force appear naturally in string theory math — one of the theory’s big attractions to begin with. But the fact that many formulations of string theory include gravity does not tell you which formulation provides the correct description of the real world.

Tests are possible

If string theory is correct, fundamental particles of nature would not be the zero-dimensional pointlike objects of standard theory. Instead, different particles would result from different modes of vibration of a one-dimensional string, either a loop or a snippet with ends attached to multidimensional spatial objects called branes. Such strings would roughly be smaller than an atom to the extent that an atom is smaller than the solar system. Very small, with no feasible way of detecting them directly. The amount of energy needed to probe scales so tiny is far beyond the reach of any practical technology.

But if string theory can account for the Standard Model, it would also contain other features of reality that would be accessible to experiments, such as types of particles not included on the Standard Model chart. “String constructions that realize the Standard Model always contain additional sectors … at an energy scale that could be tested in the near future,” Marchesano and colleagues write.

Ultimately, string theory remains a hopeful candidate for putting all the pieces of the cosmic puzzle together. If it works out, scientists could finally unravel the mysteries about how quantum physics’ relation to gravity, and the properties of nature’s particles and forces, are all deeply linked. “String theory,” write Marchesano and colleagues, “has all the ingredients to help us understand this profound connection.”

Tom Siegfried is a science journalist in Avon, Ohio. His book The Number of the Heavens, about the history of the multiverse, was published in 2019 by Harvard University Press.

This article first appeared on Knowable Magazine, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all. Read the original here.

ISRO and SpaceX: India Needs to Realise There’s No Such Thing as a Free Launch

The key question now is whether ISRO has its priorities in order.

On November 18, 2024, India‘s most advanced communications satellite was launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The rocket used for the launch of this satellite was the Falcon-9. This satellite – GSAT-N2 (or GSAT 20) – was put in geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO).  This communications satellite will provide broadband services in remote areas and in-flight Internet in passenger aircraft. Now the satellite is on its way towards geostationary orbit (36,000 km about the Earth’s surface).  This satellite is a project of New Space India Limited, which is the Indian Space Research Organisation’s commercial arm.

GSAT-20’s mission life is 14 years. It has been reported that this is for the first time ISRO has built a satellite that only uses the advanced Ka band frequency, a range of radio frequencies between 27 and 40 gigahertz (GHz), which enables the satellite to have higher bandwidth.

This is the first time ISRO has used SpaceX’s services for launching a heavy satellite into GTO. For many years, ISRO used the services of Ariane Space for launching such satellites. This is a French company founded in March 1980 as the world’s first commercial launch service provider.

ISRO has an old connection with Ariane Space. Its Apple satellite was launched by the Ariane-1 launch vehicle in 1981. Subsequently, Ariane-3 and Ariane-4 vehicles were used for launching around six to seven Indian satellites during the 1980s-1990s. Since 2000, ISRO has been using the Ariane-5 for launching its heavy satellites. The notable launches were the launch of the 5854 kg GSAT-11 satellite in December 2018 and the 4181.3 kg GSAT-24 satellite in June 2022. Now, with the arrival of the Ariane-6 rocket, perhaps ISRO was not able to avail the services of this new vehicle when the requirement arose and thus opted for SpaceX.

The Falcon-9 is a partially reusable rocket and can lift up to 8,300 kg to GTO. The first launch of the Falcon-9 was in June 2010. Till date, this rocket has undertaken around 400 launches, with a 99.26% success rate.   On average, the costs of a launch are about $70 million. Ariane-5 cost about $178 million per launch. But, interestingly Ariane-6’s costs are less, around $80 million per launch.

Recently, ISRO had asked a European space consulting firm, Novaspace, to undertake a ‘Socio-Economic Impact Analysis of the Indian Space Programme’. As per this report the investment made in the space programme has immensely benefited society and the economic impact of money spent in space in India has been 2.5 times the investment. The report indicates that cumulatively over the last decade the Indian space sector has stimulated the national economy to the tune of $60 billion, supported 4.7 million jobs, and boosted public funds to the tune of $24 billion in tax revenues. From ISRO’s point of view, there would have been additional savings during the last few decades, if it did not have to depend on outside agencies for launching their heavy satellites.

ISRO’s inability to develop a heavy satellite launch vehicle is actually impacting the progress of India’s space programme. Money saving is only one aspect, but what is more concerning is that the inability to carry heavy payloads in higher orbits limits ISRO’s capabilities in various fields. For example, they can undertake missions to the Moon and Mars, but such missions mostly remain as technology demonstration missions. ISRO did carry a few scientific payloads during these missions and during the first mission to the Moon (2008) was able to identify the presence of water on the Moon. However, they had major limitations in regards to payload carrying capability and hence could undertake very limited scientific experimentation.  The Mars and Chandrayaan-3 missions cost around $75 million each. However, the total weight of the payload for the Mars mission was 15 kg and the rover which operated on the lunar surface was 26 kg in weight. This has restricted much of our scientific experimentation.

Development of heavy satellite launch vehicles is one arena where ISRO has been struggling for many years. ISRO has had a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) program in place for more than two decades. Since 2001, ISRO has undertaken few launches by using the GSLV Mk I system. GSLV Mk II has been used for undertaking space launches to GTO since 2010. This vehicle can carry up to 2,250 kg payload to GTO and till date more than 10 launches have taken place.  However, the process to develop the next version of this vehicle has been very slow.  GSLV-Mk III which is also known as LMV Mk-III is known to be capable of launching 4-ton (4000 kg) class satellites to GTO. In June 2017, GSLV-Mk III-D1, the first developmental flight of this vehicle, launched a 3136 kg GSAT-19 satellite and in November 2018, the 3,423 kg GSAT 29 was launched. All this indicates that for launching modern commutations (and weather) satellites – which are mostly in the 4 to 6-ton class – ISRO still has to depend on other agencies.


India requires a heavy satellite launcher for scientific, commercial and strategic reasons. For long, ISRO faced challenges due to sanctions, particularly from the US, which prevented the transfer of critical cryogenic engine technology for launchers from Russia. It took ISRO a significant amount of time to indigenously operationalise this technology. Another crucial area for enhancing the GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) system is semi-cryogenic technology, which ISRO has been working on for several years.

The key question now is whether ISRO has its priorities in order. Over the years, ISRO has achieved significant success by innovating and making efficient use of available resources. However, there is a limit to what can be achieved by merely modifying and refining existing technologies. The US, Russia, China, the European Space Agency, and even private players like SpaceX remain dominant in the space arena due to significant investment in the development of a wide range of launch vehicles.

While ambitious goals such as sending an Indian astronaut to the Moon, establishing an Indian space station, and planning a mission to Venus are commendable, these missions are likely to remain technology demonstrations rather than breakthroughs in space science. The global community will undoubtedly celebrate ISRO’s achievements, and there will be a sense of national pride. However, one must ask: how much substantial contribution to science (technology) can these missions make on a global scale? India’s first mission to the Moon in 2008 was followed by the second mission in 2019, with a gap of more than 10 years. We have conducted just one mission to Mars in 2014. India wants to become the third nation to land on Mars and undertake helicopter flying there as was done by NASA. However, there is not much clarity about when this mission would take place. Now, ISRO is planning a sample return mission from the Moon, which is indeed a positive step forward. But the ability to plan such missions is constrained by the limitations of our launcher systems. The age of only demonstrating capabilities is over. What is important is the value addition an agency can make to existing knowledge about the Moon and Mars.

The question arises: has ISRO spread itself too thin? Are they doing too many things together? Shouldn’t the organization first focus on mastering the fundamentals before venturing into highly ambitious goals?

Many years ago, India’s former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam argued that the country’s innovations were suffering from a “fifth-nation syndrome”. He pointed out that India has often been seen as the fourth or fifth nation to contribute new ideas, whether in space exploration or nuclear technology. If ISRO aims to be a true global leader, it must move beyond this syndrome and aim for the top. This is only possible if ISRO develops the capacity to undertake heavy satellite launches.

Ajey Lele researches space issues and is the author of the book Institutions That Shaped Modern India: ISRO. He is Deputy Director General at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

India Highlights ‘Breach’ of Carbon Space By Developed World, Says Finance Goal Must Be ‘Ambitious, Unambiguous’

It also said that principles of equity, climate justice and common but differentiated responsibilities must govern the decisions at the UN climate summit.

New Delhi: India, in its national statement on Tuesday (November 19) at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, highlighted the “breach” of carbon space by developed nations and specified that the new finance goal – the New Collective Quantified Goal, which developing countries must receive for climate action and has to be finalised at the UN climate summit – must be “ambitious” and “unambiguous”.

Calling COP29 an “important juncture of our collective fight against climate change”, Kirti Vardhan Singh, minister of state of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, delivered India’s national statement on the evening of Tuesday at the UN’s 29th Conference of the Parties or COP29, that is ongoing at Baku.

He said that the decisions taken at COP29 should be backed by the “core principles of equity, climate justice and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, as provided in the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] and its Paris Agreement”.

“The context of different national circumstances, sustainable development goals and poverty eradication, particularly in respect of the Global South, should not be lost sight of,” he added.

Decreased carbon space

According to the 2024 Global Carbon Budget report by the Global Carbon Project, carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement will rise around 0.8% in 2024, reaching a record 37.4 billion tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), 0.4GtCO2 higher than the previous record that was set in 2023.

Total carbon emissions – including both fossil and land-use emissions – will also set a new record at 41.6 GtCO2, reflecting a growth of 2% over 2023 levels.

At this rate, the remaining carbon budget for the world – the amount of carbon that can be emitted to achieve the 1.5°C warming limit as per the Paris Agreement – will be exhausted in six years. And carbon budgets to limit warming to 1.7°C and 2°C would be used up in 15 and 27 years.

“The hard carbon emission development pathways of the Global North in the past have left very little carbon space for the Global South,” Singh said, reading out the national statement at COP29.

However, India’s growth trajectory to fulfil the “primary needs” of sustainable development and poverty eradication cannot be compromised, he underlined.

“The breach of carbon space seems imminent to us at the end of this critical decade,” he added later in the speech. “It is imperative, therefore, that the developed countries show leadership in mitigation actions, as required under [the] Paris Agreement, by not just advancing their net zero targets, but providing enough carbon space for developing countries like ours to develop.”

India has undertaken “ambitious climate action”

Despite not contributing to the problem, India and countries in the Global South are bearing a “huge financial burden on account of climate actions”, not just for mitigation but also dealing with losses and damages caused by climate change. This “severely” limits India’s ability to meet its developmental needs, Singh said.

However, this has not dampened India’s resolve or commitment to take “ambitious climate actions”, Singh claimed.

He went on to list some steps India has taken as part of climate action, such as launching several coalitions, including the International Solar Alliance, with other countries.

“We achieved our 2050 NDC [Nationally Determined Contributions] targets on emission intensity reduction and non-fossil fuel based electricity generation capacity much earlier than 2030 and have further enhanced our ambition in these sectors. India’s renewable energy capacity has nearly tripled from its 2014 levels and we are on course to achieve the 500 GW target by 2030,” he said.

India has also launched mission LIFE to encourage lifestyle practices at the global level; Singh also claimed that one billion saplings have been planted as part of the programme “Ek Ped Ma ka Naam”.

However, raising climate ambitions must be preceded by the “free availability of green technologies, releasing them on scale, and the availability of finance for their deployment, particularly in the Global South”, Singh said.

“On the contrary, some of the developed countries have resorted to unilateral measures making climate actions more difficult for the Global South. The emergent situation we are in, there is no option but to break all barriers to the flow of technology, finances and capacity to the developing countries,” he added.

The European Union (EU)’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is one such unilateral measure that India and several other developing countries have not taken kindly to.

The CBAM is a kind of carbon tax that the EU imposes on select, imported emission-intensive products such as cement, aluminium and fertilisers. The importer of goods has to purchase certificates to compensate for the emissions produced in the manufacturing or production of the imported goods.

Since October last year, the CBAM has been in a transitional phase where importing companies only need to report the emissions associated with their products. However, it will be fully operational by January 2026: after this month, importers will have to not only declare the emissions produced by their products, but also forgo – based on the emissions involved – free allowances that the EU offers for these products.

Given that these carbon costs will have to be borne by the developing countries where the products are being manufactured and imported from – while developed countries have already contributed more than their share of emissions globally – some developing countries have already raised concerns regarding the impact this will have on their economies.

For instance, around a week before COP29 kicked off at Baku, China submitted concerns on behalf of the BASIC countries – India, China, Brazil and South Africa – to the UNFCCC that talks about “unilateral restrictive trade measures” be added to the COP29 agenda.

On the NCQG

Agreeing and finalising on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) – which developed countries must mobilise for developing countries to implement climate action – is one of the main aims of the UN climate summit that is ongoing at Baku.

India, a developing country, is experiencing “huge costs” while also undertaking climate actions, Singh said in India’s statement.

“What we decide here on the NCQG must be founded on the principle of climate justice,” he said. “The decision must be ambitious and unambiguous, taking into consideration the evolving needs and priorities of the developing countries and their commitment to sustainable development and eradication of poverty.”

Halfway Into COP29, Finance Deal Still Far Away; India ‘Dissatisfied’ With Progress

India did not mince words on November 16 while delivering a statement at a plenary, saying that there was no progress at COP29 on matters that were important to developing countries; it also came down heavily on developed countries not ‘engaging’ enough on crucial matters.

Bengaluru: Saturday, November 16, marked the completion of the first six days of COP29, this year’s iteration of the UN’s largest annual climate conference. One of the main aims of this year’s COP is to ensure that countries agree on a New Collective Quantified Goal: an international fund that developing countries can tap into, to implement climate action. 

However, countries still differ in their points of view regarding several aspects of the climate fund – including the total amount that should be mobilised every year, and how much developed countries need to contribute for this. So even halfway into the COP, the crucial finance deal still seems far away. 

Meanwhile, India has not minced words regarding its dissatisfaction at the progress – or lack of it – for developing countries during the ongoing COP, and the “unwillingness” of Developed countries to engage in discussions pertaining to climate finance and mitigation. In a statement delivered during one of the closing plenaries on November 16, India said that developing countries were being asked to increase mitigation ambition by those who had not shown any.

Academics, in an open letter to the UN Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the UN Framework  Convention on Climate Change on November 15, have called for a complete reform of the COP process. Among the points they’ve highlighted is improving the selection process for COP presidencies. And that’s not surprising: the last COP witnessed a record 2,456 fossil fuel-associated lobbyists attending the COP. This year, it is more than 1,700: fewer, but still significant.

Finance deal still far away

It’s halfway into this year’s UN Conference of Parties, but an agreement on the New Collective Quantified Goal – an international fund that developing countries can use for climate action, and one of the main aims of COP29 that is ongoing at Baku, Azerbaijan – is still far away. Currently, the agreement is that developed countries will mobilise US $ 100 billion every year for climate finance, but this ends in 2025. The NCQG will then take over next year – and this is why countries agreeing to the operationalising and other details of this climate fund is crucial. India had said in a statement on behalf of Like-Minded Developing Countries on November 14 at the COP that developed countries should commit to provide and mobilise at least US $ 1.3 trillion every year till 2030, through grants, concessional finance and non-debt-inducing support that caters to the evolving needs and priorities of developing countries. The statement had also called out developed countries: it said that they had committed to jointly mobilise US $ 100 billion per year by 2020. But this deadline was extended to 2025. And while the amount is already inadequate when compared to the actual requirements of developing countries, “the real amount mobilised has been even less encouraging”.

While the draft text of the NCQG shot up to 34 pages in the first two days of COP29, the number of pages has now reduced to 25 in the second draft as of November 16. Experts prefer a shorter and clearer draft that does not include many brackets, which portray indecision. Currently, the 25-page draft has more than 400 bracketed items as per Carbon Brief. Crucial negotiations on this have been pushed to the second week, beginning Monday. The IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported that on November 16 the Arab group bloc and the bloc of Like-Minded Developing Countries said that some of the paragraphs they submitted as part of a streamline joining proposal, for the NCQG draft, were missing. A lot of important aspects of the NCQG are also currently options or sub-options, which means they are different points of view that countries still do not agree on. As per the latest iteration of the NCQG draft text (as of November 16, 16:00 hours), a goal of US $ 1.3 trillion per year (the number that India has asked as the NCGQ goal in a statement delivered on November 14) from 2025 to 2029 to be mobilised by developed countries for developing countries is part of one sub-option; part of the same sub-option is that developed countries cough up at least 600 billion per year out of this US $ 1.3 trillion for climate finance. As per Carbon Brief’s calculation there are 43 options in the entire text; each option contains several sub-options as those mentioned above. 

Also read: COP29: Developing Countries Other Than China Need Around $ 2.4 Trillion Each Year for Climate Action by 2030

Hopes from the G20 Summit

The G20 summit kicks off in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, today, and many are looking to the summit to direct negotiations at COP29. The Rio G20 Leaders’ Summit will be held on November 18 and 19 under the theme “Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet”. 

Ana Toni, National Secretary for Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of Brazil, said in a press conference at COP29 that “a signal should come out from the G20 leaders’ summit”. 

“This signalling is very important,” Indian Express reported her as saying.

Executive secretary of the UN, Simon Steill, wrote a letter to the G20 on November 16, saying that the negotiations ongoing at Baku for a new climate finance goal still have a “long way to go”. 

“There is a long way to go, but everyone is very aware of the stakes, at the halfway point in the COP,” he wrote. “Climate finance progress outside of our process is equally crucial, and the G20’s role is mission-critical. Next week’s Summit must send crystal clear global signals. That more grant and concessional finance will be available. That further reform of multilateral development banks is a top priority, and G20 governments – as their shareholders and taskmasters – will keep pushing for more reforms. That debt relief is a crucial part of the solution, so that vulnerable countries are not hamstrung by debt servicing costs that make bolder climate actions all-but impossible – the G20 forum should make progress on this.”

Other agendas under discussion

Meanwhile, the head of the UN’s Adaptation Fund told Down To Earth on November 17 that the Adaptation Fund had received only US $ 61 million so far from developed countries during COP29, just one-sixth of their targeted US $ 300 million. The Adaptation Fund provides finances to developing countries to implement actions that help communities adapt to climate change. The actual funds required for adaptation amount to between US $ 200-400 billion, Mikko Ollikainen told DTE. He also added that the decision to double adaptation finance by 2025, compared to 2019 — taken at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland — is likely to be missed and in fact pushed back by around five years.

Other agendas that are still being discussed and negotiated on include the National Adaptation Plans (discussions on these have been pushed into the second week despite hosts Azerbaijan deciding that this would not be discussed as per the IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletin), and taking forward the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake that occurred at the last COP, at Dubai, UAE. 

COP29 progress unsatisfactory for developing nations, says India

Another section of events ongoing at COP29 pertains to the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP). Called the Sharm El Sheikh mitigation ambition and implementation work programme, the MWP is aimed at urgently scaling up ambition and implementation when it comes to mitigation measures, in a way that complements the Global Stocktake (the first of which was conducted at COP28 at Dubai, UAE, and measured the progress on global climate action; one of its findings was that there is currently a huge gap in reducing emissions by nations).

India, speaking at the closing plenary of one of the MWP events expressed dissatisfaction at the “unwillingness” of developed countries to engage with the MWP. 

“We notice a tendency to ignore the decisions taken in the past – related to the Sharm el-Sheikh mitigation ambition and implementation work programme at CoP27 and the context of the Global Stocktake in the Paris Agreement, where it informs the parties for undertaking climate actions,” a press release, that detailed India’s statement delivered on November 16 at Baku, read. 

Per the press release, India stressed that the MWP was established with the specific mandate that it shall be operationalised through focused exchanges of views, information and ideas. It said that the outcomes of the work programme will be non-prescriptive, non-punitive, facilitative, respectful of national sovereignty and national circumstances, while taking into account the nationally determined nature of nationally determined contributions and will not impose new targets or goals. 

“If there are no means of implementation, there can be no climate action. How can we discuss climate action, when it is being made impossible for us to act, even as our challenges in dealing with the impacts of climate change are increasing?,” India asked.

India added that developed countries were being asked to increase mitigation ambition by those who have not shown any.

“We now have to meet our developmental needs in a situation of increasingly depleting carbon budget and increasing impacts of climate change,” India’s statement said. “We are being asked to increase mitigation ambition by those who have shown no such ambition, either in their own mitigation ambition and implementation, nor in providing the means of implementation.”

India also added that at COP29, there has so far been no progress on matters that are important for developing countries.

“We have seen no progress in matters that are critical for developing countries,” said India’s statement. “Our part of the world is facing some of the worst impacts of climate change, with far lower capacity to recover from those impacts or to adapt to the changes to the climatic system for which we are not responsible.”

Reform COP process: Academics in open letter

In an open letter to the UN Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the UN Framework  Convention on Climate Change on November 15, academics have called for a complete reform of the COP process. Signatories include Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW); Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Their main demands number seven. These are: transforming the COP into “smaller, more frequent, solution-driven meetings where countries report on progress, are held accountable in line with the latest science, and discuss important solutions for finance, technology and equity”; improving implementation and accountability by actions including strengthening mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their climate targets and commitments; ensure robust tracking of climate financing; amplify the voice of authoritative science by having a scientific body specifically for the COP and recognising the interdependencies between poverty, inequality and planetary instability.

Their first demand is about improving the selection process for COP presidencies:

“We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy. Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris Agreement,” the letter said.

And their last, about enhancing “equitable representation”: 

“Improving the management of corporate interests within COPs proceedings will require stronger transparency and disclosure rules and clear guidelines that require companies to demonstrate alignment between their climate commitments, business model and lobbying activities,” per their letter.

Also read: Trump Is President Again, and It’s Bad News For the Climate

Fossil fuel lobbyists still in large numbers at COP29

These two demand are hardly surprising: the last COP, at Dubai, UAE, witnessed 2,456 fossil fuel-related lobbyists attending the event, as per an analysis by Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO), a coalition of more than 450 organisations across the world that are “united in demanding an end to the ability of Big Polluters to write the rules of climate action”.

This year, KBPO has reported that at least 1773 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to COP29. Their analysis released November 15 shows that fossil fuel lobbyists have received more passes to COP29 than all the delegates from the 10 most climate vulnerable nations combined (1033). Chevron, ExxonMobil, bp, Shell and Eni, which have brought a combined total of 39 lobbyists to COP29, are also linked to enabling genocide in Palestine by “fueling Israel’s war machine”, the report noted.

Similarly, the last three COPs have been conducted in countries that are hugely dependent on oil to run their economies: Egypt, UAE and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has also come under fire just before COP29 kicked off after a senior official linked with the current COP allegedly used his position to discuss potential fossil fuel ideals. On Tuesday, Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev had also said that oil and gas are a “gift of god”. He said that countries “should not be blamed” for having resources including oil and gas, and that they “should not be blamed for bringing the resources to the market, because the market needs them”.

Here Are the 2024 Infosys Prize Winners

‘This year, we refocused to reward early career researchers under the age of 40, recognising their immense potential and the promise of paradigm-changing work.’

New Delhi: The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) revealed the winners of the 2024 Infosys Prize on Thursday, November 14, celebrating excellence in research across six categories: economics, engineering and computer science, humanities and social sciences, life sciences, mathematical sciences and physical sciences. The awards ceremony took place at the ISF office in Bengaluru. Winners were chosen by an international panel of scholars and experts.

Arun Chandrasekhar, professor at Stanford University, was awarded for his study of social and economic networks. His research, drawing from data on village networks in Karnataka, has enhanced understanding of development economics and contributed insights for policymaking.

Shyam Gollakota, Professor at the University of Washington, received the prize for developing impactful technologies like smartphone-based healthcare tools, battery-free computing, and AI-enhanced auditory sensing for low- and middle-income countries.

Mahmood Kooria, lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, was honoured for his work on maritime Islam and Islamic law’s influence on economic, political and cultural shifts across the Indian Ocean, particularly in Kerala’s pre-modern era.

Siddhesh Kamat, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, was recognised for his discoveries on bioactive lipids, shedding light on their role in cellular function and implications for human health.

Neena Gupta, professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, was awarded for her work on the Zariski Cancellation Problem in algebraic geometry. Her research has addressed a fundamental question in the field, posed in 1949 by Oscar Zariski.

Vedika Khemani, associate professor at Stanford University, was celebrated for her pioneering contributions to non-equilibrium quantum matter, notably her discovery of time-crystals, which may hold significance for quantum computing.

Also read: Infosys Announces Winners of 2023 Prizes Across Six Categories

The Infosys Prize, the largest science and research award in India, has gained international prestige, with past winners going on to receive honours such as the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal and MacArthur ‘genius’ Grant.

Reflecting on this year’s awards, ISF president Kris Gopalakrishnan noted, “This year, we refocused to reward early career researchers under the age of 40, recognising their immense potential and the promise of paradigm-changing work.”

Founded in 2009, the Infosys Science Foundation is a not-for-profit trust that annually awards the Infosys Prize to honour achievements across six research categories. The prize serves to promote scientific excellence and recognise contributions that significantly impact human life. Each laureate receives a gold medal, citation and $100,000 to support their work.