Sci/tech
Global measles cases see 88pc jump in 2023 from 2022: WHO
New Delhi, April 28 (IANS) The number of measles cases worldwide has witnessed a significant increase of 88 per cent in 2023 from 2022, according to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday.
From 171,153 measles cases in 2022, it nearly doubled to 3,21,582 in 2023, said Patrick O’Connor of the WHO, who presented the research at the ongoing ESCMID Global Congress in Barcelona.
The report blamed the lack of vaccinations during the Covid-19 pandemic behind the significant increases in measles worldwide.
“Over the last decade there has been significant progress towards measles and rubella elimination — the Regional Verification Commissions for Measles and Rubella Elimination (RVCs) from all of the WHO Regions will review all national measles and rubella 2023 reports in 2024,” O’Connor said.
“The measles virus is extremely infectious and any gaps in immunisation coverage are potential risks for the outbreak. So, coverage needs to be high but also uniform and equitable,” he added.
2024 is likely to see a further increase in measles cases as some 94,481 cases have been reported up to early April. While 45 per cent of these cases have been in the WHO European Region, Yemen, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan are the countries with the highest reported measles incidence in the world, the report said.
“Worryingly, the number of countries suffering large or disruptive measles outbreaks (defined as 20 cases/million population continuously over a 12-month period) has tripled from 17 to 51,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the report showed that vaccination against measles averted an estimated 57 million deaths globally from 2000 to 2022. Of these, 1.5 million are in the European region where there has been a 98 per cent reduction in annual measles deaths from 3,584 in 2000 to 70 in 2022.
“Over the last 20 years, there has been significant progress toward achieving measles and rubella elimination — in order to solidify and maintain those gains, we need to ensure high, uniform and equitable routine immunisation coverage; and robust outreach and rapid outbreak response,” O’Connor said.
–IANS
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Sci/tech
Musk gets court reprieve in fight against Australian govt, says not trying to win anything
Sydney/New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday won over the Australian government after a court overturned a legal block by the country’s regulator directing the removal of footage of a stabbing attack in Sydney on X social media platform.
The Australian court had earlier granted a two-day injunction, ordering the platform to hide videos of the April 15 church stabbing for its users globally.
X, however, agreed to hide the footage from Australian viewers but kept it accessible for global users.
The Federal Court on Monday overturned the legal block on videos of the Sydney church stabbing on X, reports The Australian.
Musk reacted, saying that he is not trying to win anything.
“I just don’t think we should be suppressing Australians’ rights to free speech,” the tech billionaire posted.
Last month, Musk hit out at Australia over the attempts to ban footage of the Sydney church stabbing on X.
“Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian ‘eSafety Commissar’ is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet,” Musk wrote on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last month told the media that Musk was an “arrogant” billionaire.
–IANS
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Sci/tech
Geomagnetic storms to continue to hit Earth till Sunday night: NOAA
New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) The powerful geomagnetic storms, which hit the Earth on Friday and disrupted GPS, satellite navigation, and other technologies, is expected to continue till Sunday night, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) classified the geomagnetic storm on Friday as “extreme,” or a G5 storm — the highest level.
It’s the first G5 storm to hit Earth since 2003 and caused several coronal mass ejections or CMEs.
Besides allowing many skygazers across the globe to see the beautiful northern lights where they usually can’t, it also led to “major disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field, causing radio blackouts, affecting GPA and satellite systems, including Elon Musk’s Starlink.
“Geomagnetic storming of various intensity will continue overnight,” NOAA shared in a post on X.com
“By early Sunday, and into Sunday night the next major coronal mass ejection (CME) – moving at speeds up to 1800 kilometres per second – will begin to slam into the Earth’s magnetic field and reach the outer atmosphere.
“A G4 Watch remains in effect for May 12,” it added.
What is a geomagnetic storm?
A geomagnetic storm is “a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by solar wind activity.” Wind from these storms can cause aurora in the sky, in addition to possible disturbances in satellite communications.
On a scale from G1 to G5, G5 is the strongest level of geomagnetic storm.
“Widespread voltage control problems and protective system problems can occur,” NOAA warned. “Some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts. Transformers may experience damage.”
The most recent G4 (severe) storm occurred on March 23, 2024, while the Halloween Storms in October 2003 marked the last G5 (extreme) event.
The G5 storm in October 2003 reportedly caused power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.
With the sun building towards a peak in its 11-year solar activity cycle, expected to occur in 2025, experts noted that geomagnetic storms are going to have an increased presence.
–IANS
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Sci/tech
Indian tech leaders stand behind Ola's Bhavish in his fight against Microsoft & LinkedIn
New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) Indian tech industry leaders have come out in support of Ola Founder and CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, after his tirade against Microsoft-owned LinkedIn for deleting his posts and “bullying Indians” into agreeing with the Big Tech platforms or cancelling them out.
Homegrown IT software company Zoho’s CEO Sridhar Vembu agreed with Aggarwal, saying “we in India have to strongly resist this woke imperialism”.
“It is best understood as a fanatical religious doctrine that masquerades as a socio-political movement,” Vembu posted on X social media platform.
Edtech company Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal earlier posted that this is so “f***** up on LinkedIn’s part”.
An angry Ola CEO on Saturday announced the termination of Microsoft Azure cloud’s services and moved the entire workload of his company to his own AI venture called Krutrim.
“We’ve decided to move our entire workload out of Azure to our own Krutrim cloud within the next week,” he said in a blog post.
When reached, LinkedIn or Microsoft did not comment on Aggarwal’s blog post.
The tussle began when Ola CEO shared his thoughts on gender pronouns, with a LinkedIn post on “pronoun illness”.
The LinkedIn AI chatbot used “they” and “their” to address the founder.
The professional networking platform later deleted Aggarwal’s posts “without notifying him”, leading to an outburst from the Ola founder.
“Proud of you Bhavish. When CEOs like you show the way, I’m sure many will emulate you. It is one thing to coax people to be inclusive but quite another to use bullying and cancelling techniques to impose a fake inclusiveness with dubious benefit. May Dharma always guide you,” Author Sahana Singh posted on X.
Aggarwal has said he will work with the domestic developer community to build a digital public infrastructure (DPI) social media framework and the only ‘community guidelines’ should be the Indian law.
“Woke” was a word earlier used within Black communities in the US to refer to an “awareness of inequality”.
It is now being frequently used in political parlance to describe anything that appears too liberal or progressive.
–IANS
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Sci/tech
Meta ‘super greedy’ at claiming credit for ad campaigns: Elon Musk
New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday said that Mark Zuckerberg-run Meta is “super greedy” at taking credit for advertisers who run campaigns on its platform.
A Musk follower raised this issue in a post, saying several of his advertisers noticed that while running campaigns on both X and Meta, nearly all conversions are attributed to Meta, “with X reporting almost no conversions.”
“Interestingly, when X ads are turned off, total conversions significantly drop, including those reported on Meta. No research is needed to understand what’s going on here,” the follower commented.
The X owner replied that “we are terrible at claiming credit, and Meta is super greedy at claiming credit.”
Another Musk follower posted that eventually, “Meta will need to revise their attribution model, revealing the truth to advertisers who are already noticing a decline in results.”
“For X, refining the attribution model to align more closely with reality is relatively straightforward. This will show even better outcomes for advertisers,” the X user suggested.
The rivalry between Musk and Zuckerberg is well known.
They were apparently set for a “cage fight’ some time back — dubbed as the fight of the century.
However, the much-anticipated showdown between the duo was cancelled.
–IANS
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Sci/tech
Hyundai Motor beats Volkswagen in Q1 operating profit
Seoul, May 12 (IANS) South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group beat Volkswagen Group to rank second after Toyota Group in operating profit for the January-March period, their earnings data showed on Sunday.
In the first three months, Hyundai Motor Group posted an operating profit of 6.98 trillion won ($5.08 billion), higher than 6.78 trillion won reported by the German carmaker, according to their earnings results.
The won’s weakness against the US dollar and strong sales of high-end models in the US and other major markets helped push up Hyundai’s operating income in the past quarter, reports Yonhap news agency.
Toyota Group, which has Toyota Motor Corp. as its flagship affiliate, posted an operating profit of 9.8 trillion won in the January-March period.
The first three months are the fourth quarter of the 2023 fiscal year for the Japanese company.
Among the world’s five biggest carmakers, that include GM Group and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, Hyundai Motor Group topped others in terms of operating profit margin in the January-March period, the data showed.
Hyundai Motor Group’s two major car-manufacturing affiliates — Hyundai Motor and Kia — reported a combined operating profit margin of 10.4 per cent, followed by Toyota Group with 10 per cent, GM Group’s 8.7 per cent, Volkswagen’s 6.1 per cent, and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance’s 4.3 per cent.
–IANS
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