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Apple MacBook Air M4 launched with a ₹15,000 price cut, new Sky Blue colour: Details here

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Apple MacBook Air M4 launched with a ₹15,000 price cut, new Sky Blue colour: Details here


Apple’s most popular laptop, the MacBook Air, now features the latest M4 chip. Apple has also reduced prices in both Indian and global markets and introduced a brand-new color, Sky Blue.

Apple MacBook Air with M4 chip launched in India. Here’s everything you need to know.(MacBook)

It supports 18 hours of battery life, a brand-new 12-megapixel Centre Stage camera, and several additions that make it a much more well-rounded product, including better support for external displays. And yes, it does come with Apple intelligence support.

Here’s everything you need to know about the brand-new MacBook Air M4, which comes in both 13-inch and 15-inch sizes.

Apple MacBook Air Gets M4 Chip: Specifications And Features

The MacBook Air M4 is now powered by the M4 chip, which was first introduced alongside the MacBook Pro last year, as well as the Mac mini. But now, the base M4 chip has finally trickled down to the MacBook Air.

This M4 chip features a 10-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU. This means the MacBook Air is now twice as powerful as the MacBook Air M1 model. Compared to the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air, the M4 model delivers a whopping 24 times more performance.

Also read: iPad Air with M3 chip launched at 59900 in India: Know about upgrades, features, and more

Apple says this chipset allows for 18 hours of battery life. It also mentions that the chipset enables the MacBook Air M4 to be three times faster than the MacBook Air M1 when it comes to the Neural Engine. This helps with tasks like editing photos and removing noise from videos.

Apple has also outlined specific instances where the MacBook Air is now more powerful. It states that spreadsheet calculation performance in Microsoft Excel is up to 4.7 times faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air and up to 1.6 times faster than the MacBook Air with the M1 chipset.

Video editing also gets a big boost, with editing in iMovie being eight times faster than on the Intel-based MacBook Air and twice as fast compared to the MacBook Air with the M1 chipset. For those who use Photoshop, it delivers twice the performance of the MacBook Air M1 and 3.6 times faster performance than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air.

Apple has also drawn comparisons with PC laptops, stating that web browsing is 60 times faster compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor.

The MacBook Air M4 comes in two sizes: a 13-inch model and a 15-inch model. It features either a 13.6-inch or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, supporting up to 500 nits of peak brightness.

Also read: iPad 11, iPad Air launch nears: Here’s everything you need to know

Both models have Touch ID for biometrics and feature Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. It also includes MagSafe charging and two Thunderbolt ports for connecting accessories like USB storage. Additionally, it retains the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Coming to the camera, the MacBook Air M4 gets a brand-new 12-megapixel camera with Centre Stage, which Apple says improves video quality. It also features improved support for external displays, now supporting up to 6K external displays while powering the built-in display.

Another major plus with the MacBook Air M4 is that the base model now includes 16GB of RAM. Apple initially introduced this change with the MacBook Pro, and now the MacBook Air M4 continues the trend. The MacBook Air M3 also featured 16GB of RAM after the MacBook Pro made the switch.

Apple Intelligence Support

Being powered by an M-series processor, the MacBook Air M4 supports Apple Intelligence. However, official support for Apple Intelligence is yet to roll out in India for English (India). If users switch their language to English (UK) or English (US), they can access local intelligence, starting from MacBook Air models with the M1 chipset.

MacBook Air M4: Price and Availability in India

Before getting to the price, it’s worth noting that the MacBook Air M4 comes in a brand-new colourway called Sky Blue. It is also available in Silver, Starlight, and Midnight colour options.

Also read: iOS 18.4 beta 2: New visual intelligence, Apple Vision Pro app, emojis, and more features unveiled

The pricing for the base model is 99,900, while students can get it at a discounted price of 89,900. Apple is also offering no-cost EMI for up to 24 months on its official website, along with an instant cashback of 10,000 on select credit cards.

The 15-inch model of the MacBook Air M4 starts at 1,24,900, with the student price set at 1,14,900.

Pre-orders for the MacBook Air M4 are already live, and it will be available starting March 12.



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Not just DNA, proteins: CCMB team finds lipids also guide evolution

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Not just DNA, proteins: CCMB team finds lipids also guide evolution


Our bodies are made of cells. Each cell is a soup of smaller components, all working together to execute the body’s various functions. Perhaps the most well-known of these components are proteins — long chains of amino acids that cells make with instructions from the DNA. When the DNA changes, the cell is able to make new proteins, sometimes with new functions, and in this way proteins are understood to be an integral part of evolution.

But new research is finding that this may also be a narrow view that misses other ways in which we evolve.

“Lipids make up to 30% [of the dry weight] of living cells. But people think of them only as shells,” Sven Gould, an evolutionary cell biologist at the Institute for Molecular Evolution in Düsseldorf, said.

Time for an updated view

Lipids are fat in cells. A textbook image of the cell membrane (which is what Gould meant by “shell”) shows proteins jostling in a bed of lipids. Scientists know a lot about these membrane proteins. About 25% of all human proteins are estimated to be located in the membranes. They carry out many functions: as receptors, they bind to specific molecules outside the cell; as channels, they allow specific molecules to enter and leave the cell; and as catalysts, they help speed up chemical reactions.

On the other hand, scientists’ understanding of lipids is limited to their role as a packing material, as things that hold proteins. In fact, they’re often imagined to be arranged in a homogenous layer made of round heads and long, flowy tails — readymade for proteins to just be dropped on.

A study published recently in Nature Communications from Swasti Raychaudhuri’s lab at the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, challenges this view.

The RC1 complex

The team’s study focused on a group of membrane proteins called respiratory complex 1 (RC1). RC1 and other similar complexes are essential for cells to produce energy when the body breathes oxygen. They are found in the mitochondrial inner membranes of all eukaryotic cells that require oxygen to respire — including ours.

RC1 is the largest of these respiratory complexes. In humans, it is an obtuse-angled complex made of 44 proteins in humans. Some of the proteins are made in the cell’s cytoplasm and some inside the mitochondria. They find their way to the mitochondrial inner membrane to form the complex.

To study RC1, the scientists divided it into three parts: one that faces the inside of the mitochondria and catalyses reactions for energy production during respiration; one that moves through the lipid-rich mitochondrial inner membrane and acts as a canal for hydrogen ions; and one that extends into the space between the inner and outer mitochondrial membranes and whose exact roles are not yet understood.

Since RC1 is essential for respiration in living cells, mutations in it are expected to cause diseases. When looking for known RC1 mutations associated with diseases, the research team found something unexpected in the inter-membrane RC1 part: half of the mutations were in regions that interact with lipids in the mitochondrial membranes.

Proteins and lipids together

Upon investigating further, the researchers found that the inter-membrane parts of RC1 as well as lipids in the membranes are not the same in all life forms. Plants and animals have different versions. Using precise biochemical techniques, the researchers examined the lipid variety in cells and found that plant lipids have a kinkier structure than their animal counterparts. They attributed this to plant lipids being rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Using computational models, the team then compared the affinities between inter-membrane proteins of human and plant RC1s and a human and plant lipid called cardiolipin. It is the most prominent lipid found in the mitochondrial membranes.

They found that the proteins in human cells preferred human lipids over plant lipids, and vice versa. Similarly, in cultured cells, when team members inserted a part of plant RC1 that faces the lipids in the membranes into human mitochondrial membranes, they found that the complex disintegrated. In other words, the RC1 complex needs cardiolipin from organisms of the same kingdom for it to maintain its physical integrity. The team concluded that certain details in the structures and composition of lipids decide which proteins can exist with them.

Going a step further, the researchers have suggested that membrane lipids have evolved over time to suit the survival needs of different organisms. The kinkier tails of plant lipids offer greater structural flexibility in the membranes. This could have been because plant-like organisms have faced variegated environmental stresses through history, like drought, heat, and salinity, and benefit from having structurally flexible lipids.

Importantly, the proteins would then have had to co-evolve with the lipids to function correctly.

Need for new tools

In fact the new study may be the first to support the idea of lipid-protein co-evolution in mitochondrial membranes. Of course, it also holds up previous research that has demonstrated how lipids and proteins cross-talk in other membranes inside cells.

“Most labs study the roles of DNA, RNA, and proteins in evolution because a large community has grown around it,” Gould said. “However, evolution happens through all kinds of molecules that make up living cells and we need to study them.”

Not just in evolution: the study also opens up the possibility of understanding human health better. Drugs like statins are commonly used to control cholesterol — another prominent lipid — in cells. As scientists develop a fuller understanding of the roles lipids essay, they may assess and optimise the long-term use of substances like statins. The role of lipids in controlling the entry of pathogens into cells also demands attention.

However, these studies also require more sophisticated biological tools that don’t yet exist. Lipids are more complex molecules than proteins. While proteins are well-understood polymers consisting of 20 amino acids arranged in different ways, lipids are made of fatty acids that vary in length and chemical composition both. Their composition in particular is only partly controlled by an individual’s genes; the rest is influenced by diet and other environmental factors. Existing tools to study lipids also fall short when accounting for these complexities.

“It is extremely difficult to reconstitute lipids in labs. And membrane proteins are the toughest. But computational methods have developed faster than the biochemical tools,” Gould added. “Will these inspire more scientists to take up lipid biochemistry? That remains to be seen.”

It’s nevertheless clear that textbook images and the scientific imagination both need to change their attitudes towards membrane lipids. LDL, HDL, triglycerides, and cholesterol are already part of our daily consciousness. Studying these and other lipids further can thus help improve medical care as well as enhance our view of evolution. It’s a win-win.

Somdatta Karak, PhD heads science communication and public outreach at the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.



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India to have its own space station by 2035, says ISRO chairman V. Narayanan

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India to have its own space station by 2035, says ISRO chairman V. Narayanan


V. Naryanan, ISRO chairman (fourth from left), and other dignitaries at the commissioning of O-ARM in Chennai on Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: R. Ravindran

 

By 2040, India will be among the developed nations in the field of space and would have its own space station, V. Narayanan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said.

Speaking at the commissioning of O-ARM – a stealth technology equipment for Kauvery Hospital – here on Wednesday, Mr. Narayanan noted that the ISRO looked to place in orbit an independent 52-tonne space station by 2035. “Work is on to building a rocket the size of a 40-story building, which will take people to space…,” he added.

“India is growing in all sectors. I request doctors to adhere to ethics and values, and work to help villagers lead a healthy life,” he further said.  

Aravindan Selvaraj, co-founder of Kauvery Hospital, said the O-ARM machine, installed in the hospital’s Alwarpet branch, helped doctors to precisely operate on tumours. It is especially helpful in treating brain and spine and in orthopaedic surgeries, he added.

Doctors who shared their experience said the technology’s precision would help patients get back on their feet faster, and heal better.



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Meta Ray-Ban AI smart glasses launching in India soon: Details

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Meta Ray-Ban AI smart glasses launching in India soon: Details


Meta Ray-Ban glasses are officially launching in India soon. These AI-powered smart glasses will enable users to make hands-free conversations with the voice assistant, users can ask any question to get real-time answers, listen to music, extract information, and much more hands-free. Including India, the Meta Ray-Ban glasses will also be launched in Mexico and the UAE, expanding their availability to more users. While the company did not reveal any specific date or launch timeline, we expect it to debut in the upcoming months.

Meta Ray-Ban glasses expands live translation feature across market.(Meta )

In addition to the India launch, the tech giant shared a detailed blog post showcasing the new frame designs for the Meta Ray-Ban with Skyler frame and lens colour combos. The company also announced a major software upgrade, bringing new features to the Meta Ray-Ban glasses.

Also read: How to easily compress data on your iPad to save storage space

Meta Ray-Ban glasses coming to India

After Meta Ray-Ban’s official debut in September 2023, the AI-powered smart glasses are officially coming to India. Recently, smart glasses were introduced in several European regions and the UK. Now, Meta has planned to expand its availability to more countries, including India. Meta said, “These stylish glasses offer everyday wearability and help you be more present with friends, family, and the world around you by letting you capture a moment or listen to music, while your phone stays in your pocket.”

Also read: CMF Phone 2 Pro India launch on April 28, here’s how much it may cost

With the India launch, Meta introduced a new design cat-eye, stylish frame for the smart glasses, which the company says “Skyler Shiny” frame. These frames will be available in Skyler Shiny Black with G15 Green lenses, Skyler Shiny Chalky Gray with Transitions Sapphire lenses, and Skyler Shiny Black with Clear lenses.

As part of its software update, Meta is bringing the live translation feature to all markets. As of now, the translation language supports English, French, Italian, and Spanish. Users just have to say, “Hey Meta, start live translation”, and it will provide a detailed translation without the requirement of a WiFi connection. Furthermore, Meta is bringing Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger integration to Meta Ray-Ban glasses, allowing users to “send and receive direct messages, photos, audio calls, and video calls on your glasses.” Lastly, Meta Ray-Ban glasses will bring support for additional music platforms, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Shazam.

Also read: Mobile finder: iPhone 16 LATEST price, specs and all details



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