AFTER a textbook launch on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 is orbiting the earth in a highly elliptical orbit and, at the time of going to press, has executed three out of five orbit-raising burns as per schedule. As of now, the spacecraft is 228 km from Earth at its nearest and 51,400 km from Earth at its farthest. Soon a final burn will make it leap forward till it is captured by the moon’s gravity and starts elliptical orbits around it. There it will execute similar maneuvers in reverse to gradually lower its lunar orbit till it stabilises in a circular 100 km orbit above the moon’s surface.

MODI Government has made a lot of noise about making India self-sufficient in semiconductor production. The Micron deal was announced with much fanfare last week as "historic" and proof of PM Modi's vision finally bearing fruit. A closer look at the deal shows India footing 70 per cent of the 2.75 billion dollar deal while getting Micron to set up a low-end chip assembling and testing facility, while Micron gets 100 per cent ownership of the facility.Last year the government announced a 10 billion dollar scheme for encouraging manufacturing as part of the "Make in India" initiative.

THE BJP government is continuing its relentless assault on the country’s environment and natural resources, especially on forests, with resultant severe impacts on forest-dependent tribals and other forest-dwellers. At the same time, the government proclaims its commitment, loudly but falsely, to environmental protection! A Forest (Conservation) Amendments Bill 2023, introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 29, 2023 does exactly that.

THE three-train accident involving the Shalimar Coromandel Express, Yashwantpur Howrah Superfast Express and a goods train, is India's biggest train accident in the last 20 years. Confirmed deaths – as of June 7, 2023 – are 288 persons.The accident occurred near Balasore – Bahanaga Bazar Station – when the Coromandel Express from Howrah going towards Chennai crashed into a goods train. While the main line was free and the signal green, the Coromandel Express had been diverted onto a loop line where there was a stationary goods train, crashing into it. This was the first collision.

SERENDIPITY and experimentation with what was available often showed us humans that plant products could help treat or prevent certain diseases. But the first modern drug was by Friedrich Sertürner in 1804, who extracted the main active chemical from opium in the laboratory and called it morphine. Till the beginning of the 20th century, only small molecule drugs (SMDs), typically defined as organic compounds with a molecular weight of less than 900 Daltons, were in use. Dalton (Da) is atomic mass and is a measure of the complexity of the molecule.