In the narrative of productivity enhancement some new concepts have emerged in the Age of Knowledge Economy-linked with the pace at which business was transacted and the induction of technology including Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents for business purposes.

Increased importance of ‘business intelligence’ generated often through competent analysis, elimination of personal corruption within the corporate body and the need for the creation of right organisational environ in which every member would do his or her optimal best to contribute to the desired output, are the other factors that added to productivity.

The speed with which business was conducted has led to valuing of ‘time’ as a new-found resource comparable to money, material and man power since saving of time had become a new productivity enhancer. Information that made a difference between a ‘decision’ and a ‘guess’ must come in time. All ‘time stealers’ have to be consciously eliminated like gaps between information and decision-making, between decision and its communication to the concerned quarters and between the communicated decision and its implementation. Delay in a decision for ‘course correction’ may also affect productivity.

Technology clubbed with the right human intervention is the new means of output enhancement. It is an instrument for injecting ‘smartness’ in the system. By definition smartness lies in increasing the productivity per unit of ‘resource’- money, manpower or time. Being smart means being cost-effective and cost-effectiveness can be achieved through technology as the number of hands needed for an operation or the number of steps needed in a process might be reduced with its help. In fact cost-effectiveness was becoming a major outcome of AI applications which are now extensively used to good effect for inventory management, customer outreach and supply chain maintenance.

Business Intelligence is now a crucial determinant of competitive advantage. Intelligence is reliable futuristic information that indicates what ‘lies ahead’-throwing light on the risks to be avoided and the opportunities that could be availed of. It can either be churned out of openly available information through analysis or accessed directly through the use of Intelligence techniques in an ethical way for gathering information on competitors and the competitive environ. Analysis is helped by ‘imagination’ gift given by nature to the human mind, not to the machine- which enables a bright analyst to visualise what lay beyond the facts in front and not to miss the wood for the trees. Intelligence is ‘exclusive’ information and hence it is to be handled on a confidential note until it was acted upon- otherwise the advantage it brought would be gone.

In any profit- making organisation, the minority of the corrupt can damage productivity by destroying the values of honesty, hard work and loyalty. It can cause laxity in supervision and promote tolerance of inefficiency thus negating the gains of cost-effectiveness. Corruption simply means diversion of the profit of the organisation to one’s personal pocket. All progressive Corporates have a Vigilance set up comprising of trained man power to identify the corrupt elements through confidential enquiries and possible watch, for further action.

A corrupt member is like a subverted insider. The function of Vigilance should be performed on the authority of the top man of the organisation. The Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) helps the organisational head to set ethical norms of behaviour and the Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) in matters involving financial transactions and handling of Tenders.

Finally, a prime responsibility of the leadership of the organisation is to establish a work environment in which every employee or team worked to his or her optimal potential with concentration and freedom from doubts about credit-sharing and favouritism. A test of this is in ensuring that ‘one worked with urgency even when there was no emergency’. A good corporate body creates the right grid for inter- personal relations, ensures that the senior was ‘nurtural’ towards juniors and tries to see that employees did not have issues of ‘work-life balance’. All employees should be treated as ‘knowledge workers’ and there should be systemic evaluation of the feedback provided by them, for the benefit of the organisation.

(The writer is a former Director Intelligence Bureau)

Adani Foundation and Adani Electricity celebrated the National Mathematics Day with a week-long series of engaging and joyful learning activities with students from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools in Mumbai.

National Mathematics Day in India is celebrated annually on December 22 to honour the birth anniversary of legendary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

The celebration, under the flagship education initiative Project Utthan, focused on the theme ‘Math Around Us’, helping students experience mathematics as a part of everyday life rather than a classroom subject to fear.

The programme was designed to make mathematics simple, practical, and enjoyable, especially for primary school students.

“Project Utthan reflects our long-term commitment to the holistic development of children in the communities we serve. Mathematics is fundamental to modern life, technology, and problem-solving. Through the theme ‘Math Around Us’, we aimed to help students see mathematics as useful, relatable, and enjoyable. Our partnership with BMC schools ensures that quality, joyful education reaches every child,” said a spokesperson from Adani Electricity.

Across participating in BMC schools, classrooms transformed into learning hubs where students explored numbers, shapes, patterns, and logic through hands-on activities, games, and group challenges.

The celebrations witnessed enthusiastic participation from students, teachers, and Utthan Sahayaks, who facilitated the activities on the ground.

A range of thoughtfully curated activities was conducted with clear learning objectives. Through puzzles and games such as tangram challenges, Sudoku corners, logic riddles, and multiplication pyramids, students strengthened number sense, logical reasoning, and problem-solving skills.

Hands-on activities, including creating 2D and 3D shapes using straws and origami-based geometry, helped students understand spatial concepts and apply mathematical ideas in a practical way.

Special sessions, including a short film on the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan and a mathematics pledge, aimed to build respect for the subject and adopt a positive emotional connection with learning mathematics.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday said it is ready to launch the BlueBird Block-2 satellite on December 24.

The launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Center will place the BlueBird Block-2 satellite, also referred to as BlueBird-6, in Low Earth Orbit.

BlueBird communications satellite, developed by the US-based AST SpaceMobile, will be launched on board India’s most powerful rocket LVM3.

It is one of the heaviest commercial satellites, weighing 6.5 tonnes. The Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite arrived in India from the US on October 19.

“Meet #LVM3M6 ISRO’s operational heavy-lift launch vehicle with a proven record of reliable missions. Ready to deliver BlueBird Block-2 to Low Earth Orbit,” ISRO shared in a post on the social media platform X.

Earlier, AST SpaceMobile, in a statement, said that “when launched, it will feature the largest commercial phased array in low Earth orbit at nearly 2,400 square feet. This represents a 3.5 times increase in size over BlueBirds 1-5 and supports 10 times the data capacity”.

This is the second collaboration between the US and ISRO. In July, the ISRO successfully launched the $1.5 billion NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission (NISAR), aimed at taking high-resolution Earth scans with a capacity to penetrate through fogs, dense clouds, and ice layers.

AST SpaceMobile has already launched five satellites -- BlueBird 1 to 5 -- in September 2024. With an aim to expand this network further, the company has partnered with more than 50 mobile operators worldwide.

Meanwhile, as per ISRO BlueBird 6's liftoff, it is being handled by its commercial wing, the New Space India Limited (NSIL).

LVM3, developed by ISRO, is a three-stage launch vehicle comprising two solid strap-on motors (S200), a liquid core stage (L110), and a cryogenic upper stage (C25).

“It has a lift-off mass of 640 tonnes, a height of 43.5 m, and a payload capability of 4,200 kg to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO),” ISRO said.

LVM-3 had recently put India’s heaviest CMS-3 satellite, weighing 4.4 tonnes, into its orbit on November 2.

In its earlier missions, LVM3 successfully launched Chandrayaan-2, Chandrayaan-3, and two OneWeb missions carrying 72 satellites.

Over 18.82 lakh Indian students are currently studying in foreign countries, with the highest numbers in the UAE (2.53 lakh), Canada (4.27 lakh), the US (2.55 lakh), Australia (1.96 lakh), and the UK (1.73 lakh), the Parliament was informed on Thursday

The data, presented in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha by Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh, showed that students are spread across 153 countries, from major education hubs to smaller destinations such as Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Cyprus and others which together host hundreds of Indian medical aspirants.

The ministry also disclosed country-wise figures of students deported or denied entry over the last five years.

The UK deported 170 students, the US deported 45 and denied entry to 62, while Australia deported 114.

Other countries where Indians were deported include Russia (82), Ukraine (13), Georgia (17), Finland (5), and Egypt (2). Kyrgyzstan denied entry to 11 students, while no deportations were recorded from there.

The minister stated that deportations primarily result from violations of visa norms, including taking up illegal employment, engaging in unpermitted business activities, failing to maintain mandatory financial balances, non-payment of university fees, poor attendance, or withdrawing from academic programmes.

Several students were denied entry for incomplete admission documents, failing to meet university enrolment requirements, or inability to answer basic questions about their chosen courses.

The minister underlined that the MEA places a high priority on safeguarding the interests of Indian students abroad.

Missions maintain regular contact with students, hold interactions at universities, and issue advisories warning against fraudulent or unaccredited courses.

Similarly, the reply also highlights the advisories issued by the Ministry to safeguard Indian students from misleading foreign educational courses in countries including Tajikistan, Suriname, Finland, Latvia, Egypt, Canada, China, Malta, Ireland, Uzbekistan and others.

The reply notes mechanisms such as MADAD portal registration, 24×7 helplines, open houses, email and social media outreach, along with the use of the Indian Community Welfare Fund to assist students in distress.

The ministry also cited recent evacuation efforts — including Operation Ganga (Ukraine), Operation Kaveri (Sudan), Operation Ajay (Israel), Operation Devi Shakti (Afghanistan) and Operation Sindhu (Israel and Iran)— to underline its commitment to the safety of Indian nationals, especially students, during crises abroad.

The bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes the world’s most infectious disease Tuberculosis (TB), can survive antibiotic treatment and live longer by changing their outer fat coating, according to a new study led by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay on Wednesday.

Even with effective antibiotics and widespread vaccination campaigns, TB continues to take lives.

Globally, 10.7 million people developed TB and 1.23 million died from the disease in 2024, while India carries one of the highest burdens -- over 2.71 million cases in 2024.

In the study, published in the Chemical Science journal, the researchers showed that the key to the bacteria's drug tolerance lies in their membranes -- complex barriers made mostly of fats, or lipids that protect the cell.

The team grew the bacteria under two conditions: an active phase, when the bacteria were dividing rapidly as they do in an active infection, and a late stage mimicking dormancy, as seen in latent infections.

When they exposed the bacteria to four common TB drugs: rifabutin, moxifloxacin, amikacin, and clarithromycin, the team found that the concentration of drugs needed to stop 50 per cent of bacterial growth was two to 10 times higher in dormant bacteria than in active ones.

In other words, “the same drug that worked well in the early stage of the disease would now be needed at a much higher concentration to kill the dormant/persistent TB cells. This change was not caused by genetic mutations, which usually explain antibiotic resistance,” said Prof. Shobhna Kapoor from the Department of Chemistry, IIT-B.

Lack of mutations associated with antibiotic resistance in the bacteria confirmed that the reduced drug sensitivity could be linked to the bacteria’s dormant state and most likely their membrane coats rather than genetic changes.

Further, the team identified more than 270 distinct lipid molecules in the bacterial membranes, which showed clear differences between active and dormant cells.

While the active bacteria had loose, fluid membranes, the dormant ones had rigid, tightly ordered structures, indicating its defence mechanism.

“People have studied TB from the protein point of view for decades,” said Kapoor.

“But lipids were long seen as passive components. We now know they actively help the bacteria survive and resist drugs,” she added.

Next, the team found that the antibiotic rifabutin could easily enter active cells but barely crossed the outer membrane of dormant ones.

“The rigid outer layer becomes the main barrier. It is the bacterium’s first and strongest line of defence,” explained Kapoor.

If the outer membrane blocks antibiotics, weakening it could make the drugs work better.

“Even old drugs can work better if combined with a molecule that loosens the outer membrane,” said Kapoor, noting that the approach makes bacteria sensitive to the drugs again without giving them a chance to develop permanent resistance.

Bengaluru: In a landmark scientific breakthrough, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that its lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-2 has made the first-ever observation of the effects of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) from the Sun on the Moon’s exosphere.

The observation was made using the Chandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) instrument onboard the orbiter.

During a rare solar event on May 10, 2024, a series of CMEs impacted the Moon, leading to a significant increase in the total pressure of the dayside lunar exosphere — the extremely thin atmosphere surrounding the Moon.

ISRO scientists reported that the number density of neutral atoms and molecules in the exosphere increased by more than an order of magnitude, confirming theoretical predictions that had never before been validated through direct observation.

The Moon’s exosphere, classified as a surface boundary exosphere, is highly sensitive to solar activity due to the absence of a global magnetic field. The CME event enhanced the liberation of atoms from the lunar surface, temporarily altering the Moon’s atmospheric conditions.

ISRO said the findings not only deepen scientific understanding of lunar space weather but also have implications for future lunar missions and the design of human habitats on the Moon.

The study, titled “Impact of a Coronal Mass Ejection on the Lunar Exosphere as Observed by CHACE-2 on the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter”, was published in Geophysical Research Letters on August 16, 2025.

"The Earth’s Moon has a very thin atmosphere, which falls under the category of ‘exosphere’, implying that the gas atoms and molecules in the lunar environment rarely interact despite their coexistence. The boundary of the exosphere is the surface of the Moon and hence the Moon’s exosphere falls under the category of ‘surface boundary exosphere’," ISRO said.

It said that Theexosphere on the Moon is produced by a number of processes, which involves the interaction of solar radiation,solar wind (ions of Hydrogen, Helium and a small quantity of heavier ions emanated from the Sun) and the impact of the meteorites with the surface of the Moon. These processes liberate atoms/molecules fromthe surface of the Moon, which become a part of the exosphere.

"In general, the exosphere of the Moon is highly sensitive to even small variations of the factors that are responsible for its creation, and such a factor is the emission of the coronal mass of the Sun, known as CME (short form of Coronal Mass Ejection). CMEs are events when the Sun ejects significant quantities of its building material, comprising mostly Helium and Hydrogen ions. These effects are significant on the Moon, as Moon is an airless body, that too deprived of any global magnetic field, the presence of which would have shielded (even partially) the solar effects on its surface," ISRO said.

It said that this opportunity to directly observe the effects of the CMEimpacting on the Moon came in a rare occurrence, on May 10, 2024, when a series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were hurled by the Sun. This increased quantity of the solar coronal mass that impacted on the Moon enhanced the process of knocking off the atoms from the lunar surface, thereby liberating them to the lunar exosphere, which manifested as the enhancement of the total pressure in the sunlit lunar exosphere.

"This observation would provide scientific insight in the understanding of the lunar exosphere and space weather effects on the Moon. Apart from pushing the edge of our scientific understanding about the Moon and the lunar space weather (effect of the Sun’s emissions on the Moon), this observation also indicates the challenges of building scientific bases on the Moon. Lunar base architects need to account for such extreme events, which would temporarily alter the lunar environment, before the effects subside." ISRO concluded.

Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal will visit Brussels at the end of this week to meet European Commission Director General for Trade, Sabine Weyand, to speed up the ongoing negotiations on the proposed India-EU free trade agreement, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday. The Commerce and Industry Minister said "very good discussions" are going on between EU and Indian officials in Brussels.

India is hoping to work together in a spirit of understanding so that the two sides can conclude a fair and balanced free trade agreement, he added. The minister is currently on a two-day visit to Qatar to boost India’s bilateral trade and investment ties with the Gulf nation. He is accompanied by a team of officials and a business delegation to explore new opportunities for deepening economic relations.

"Once this round gets over, Commerce Secretary, Rajesh Agrawal, will be going to Brussels to meet his counterpart, DG Sabine Weyand by the end of this week. After that, we will be working out what are the next steps," Goyal said. EU President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set the target to conclude the FTA by the end of this year. Goyal said that both sides will make every effort complete the negotiations before the deadline.

"The innovation and technology base of the European Union holds tremendous potential for Indian businesses, and jointly, the EU and Indian companies can leverage each other's strengths so that we can serve the world together," he remarked. A team of Indian officials, led by Special Secretary in the Department of Commerce, L Satya Srinivas, is in Brussels for the 14th round of negotiations. The fresh round of talks between senior officials will extend over a period of five days. This will be followed up by another meeting between Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and his EU counterpart Maros Sefcovic.

Piyush Goyal is expected to visit Brussels on October 27-28 to take the talks further. The proposed India-EU free trade agreement covers 23 policy areas, or chapters, of which at least two – market access and rules of origin – have yet to be resolved. EU Ambassador Herve Delphin said last week that India and the EU should use the free trade agreement (FTA) to increase bilateral trade and investment at a time when “some countries” are raising tariffs or otherwise closing their markets, in an oblique reference to the US.

“The FTA can open new opportunities for EU and Indian businesses and create conditions to significantly increase our bilateral trade and investment. While some countries are raising tariffs or otherwise closing their markets, we should use the FTA to diversify trade, hedge against uncertainties and strengthen our supply chains,” he said. “The EU is ready to conclude a meaningful package. We look forward to the next round and further negotiations towards a mutually beneficial deal,” Delphin said.

Delphin further highlighted that the EU is India’s top trading partner, with bilateral trade in goods of EUR 120 billion, ahead of the US and China. Adding services, our bilateral trade has reached EUR 180 billion. This is an impressive figure, but there is a huge potential for growth considering that the EU and India are the 2nd and the 4th largest economies in the world, he added.