RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

I always thought politeness was a basic tenet. Thank you. Please. Sorry (this word comes hardest to folks). But in the world of AI, apparently saying these words to an AI model, costs money. In response to someone musing how much politeness in general would have cost OpenAI in terms of electricity bills, CEO Sam Altman’s tongue-in-cheek reply still does enough to put things in perspective. “Tens of millions of dollars well spent–you never know,” he wrote.

But it takes me back to what Kurtis Beavers, a director on the design team for Microsoft Copilot, once said. “Using polite language sets a tone for the response,” he says. LLMs, or large language models (the very basis for generative AI) are trained on human conversations and use the tonality as a cue. Has your messenger or email app ever prompted you with the next word suggestion? That also takes cues from your tone and sentence structure till then. LLMs pick make similar assumptions and picks based on your input. When it notices politeness, it’s more likely to be polite in return.

This is a conflicting time for my daughter and myself, but unlikely we’ll change — we take pride in being polite with AI (and humans, let there be little doubt). We’ll not take a risk. What if one day, the machines do take over?

WASTE VS. WISDOM

For years, we were told by tech companies that the traditional hard disk drive (HDDs) were slow and therefore obsolete. The SSDs, or solid-state drives are the future (and have been, for almost a decade now) because they’re faster, more power efficient and have a much smaller footprint. Turns out, the physical footprint is in stark contrast to the environmental one. Seagate Technologies, one of the storage tech giants, in their latest ‘The Decarbonizing Data Report’ seems to be suggesting that we should return to using HDDs more than SSDs.

• SSDs have the highest embodied carbon (rated at 4,915 Kg CO2), both in total and per TB, making it the most carbon-intensive option, with the HDD registering just 29.7 Kg CO2. “Hard drives exhibit the least carbon footprint, both in total and on a per-TB basis, offering the most carbon-efficient sustainable storage solution,” says the report. That is, less than 1 Embodied Carbon per TB, compared to 160 for an equivalent SSD.
• This takes me to the thought of millions of Windows 10 PCs that will likely become obsolete later this year. Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 operating system in the middle of October, post which, many PCs that are incompatible with a Windows 11 upgrade, will end up in landfills. Most of these would be enterprise systems, and equally, quite a few personal systems too. Many of these will have SSDs. That is a significant volume of e-waste that we are potentially generating within a few months. Are we at all prepared?

WHAT’S ON MY MIND?

At some point in the past few days, Airtel and Blinkit had announced that the former would leverage the latter’s quick-commerce platform to deliver SIM cards to buyers, in that ballpark guarantee of 10-minute deliveries. Why I mention this now is, just yesterday, happened to order a few groceries from Blinkit (delivered within 12 minutes, with some ‘surge’ pricing, of course) — but an interesting thing was part of the package. In the carry bag, an interesting add-on. A SIM ejector pin, with unmissable Airtel and Blinkit branding. Suddenly you start contemplating your postpaid and prepaid subscription costs, a cursory glance at Airtel’s website to see the tariff plans (the Airtel Black plans make a lot of sense for most families), and before you know it, a new connection or a port request is in consideration. That is the power of smart branding, and quick-commerce.

These SIM cards, being delivered using Blinkit’s infrastructure, reduces investments and expenditure for Airtel’s own SIM delivery network. These SIMs can be set up as a new prepaid account, new postpaid account, or as a port-in from another network. With an online portal for KYC, or know-your-customer requirements, this also means you’d not have to visit a nearby Airtel store for the same (lesser traction at an Airtel store doesn’t harm the brand).

If you have used Reliance Jio’s iActivate service (as I have), you’ll realise Airtel’s process here doesn’t yet support eSIMs — the key here is, a physical SIM delivered by Blinkit → set up with KYC and choosing prepaid, postpaid or port-in → once active, use Airtel Thanks app to convert connection to eSIM. In Jio’s case, you can start with an eSIM from the off, and the QR is delivered to the registered email address, within a few minutes (or hours, depending on your luck that day) or hours following the KYC completion.

Should Vi or Jio also join the party?

RECALIBRATION

It has been many, many years since India’s broadband space saw tariff wars. We may be in for one. Or this could simply be a worrying sign, that your broadband bills are about to get a little more expensive. I raise the alarm because I’ve regularly checked broadband tariffs, expecting changes at some point (it has been a long wait, admittedly). Is Airtel is getting rid of 200Mbps Xstream Fiber plans?

• Two parts to this story. The standalone Xstream Fiber plans now list four 100Mbps subscription options — ₹799 for just broadband and ₹999 (that is broadband + OTT streaming bundle including Netflix, Amazon Prime and JioHotstar). The erstwhile offering at ₹999 used to be a standalone 200Mbps Xstream Fiber plan, which seems to no longer be around.
• The Airtel Black plans in many circles (I checked multiple, including Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad), which now pegs a 100Mbps plan at ₹899 (that is broadband + digital TV channels worth ₹350 + OTT streaming bundle) and another at ₹1199 (100Mbps broadband + digital TV channels worth ₹350 + OTT streaming bundle including Netflix and Amazon Prime). From the listed Black plans as well, any 200Mbps option is now missing.

For many homes, 100Mbps may be a tad on the lower side in terms of required speeds, considering we have so many phones, tablets, computing devices and smart TVs all scrambling for the same bandwidth. At the same time, a 300Mbps Xstream Fiber broadband line as part of the Airtel Black plan (there seems to be no standalone listed at this time) for ₹1,599 per month, may be an overkill. In my book, 200Mbps was the perfect balance for most home usage scenarios.

Off late, Reliance Jio Fiber has also eliminated its 150Mbps plans, and have a similar structure of 100Mbps and 300Mbps plans. While Jio Fiber also has 500Mbps as an option, Airtel’s Xstream offerings don’t have that balance between 300Mbps and 1Gbps. If at all that is an option (availability is often a question), Tata Play Broadband and ACT broadband may just provide that flexibility that Airtel Xstream doesn’t anymore.

There could still be some realignment in the coming days, but it seems in an urge to bundle OTT streaming subscriptions and digital TV (it could be a choice between DTH and IPTV), Airtel has taken away a crucial part of their Xstream Fiber subscriptions. Simplicity of plans.

Our detailed analysis of India’s broadband space…

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.

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.