Sci&Tech, Medical and Envirnoment:

The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel has proposed a three-layer system to address the environmental challenges of the Western Ghats:
- the (WGEA) Western Ghats Ecology Authority (as the apex body),
- the State authorities and
- the district ecology committees
The Authority “shall be the apex multi-statal authority for regulation, management and planning of all activities impacting all categories of ecologically sensitive zones within the States of the Western Ghats, namely, Gujarat, Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and shall be constituted under the relevant provisions of the Environment Protection Act,”
The panel has proposed that either a “retired judge of the Supreme Court, preferably from the Western Ghats region, with proven integrity and sympathetic to the cause of conservation and pro-poor sustainable development” or an “eminent ecologist/conservation biologist of the Western Ghats region who has made substantial contribution to the conservation of the region in the last 25 years” be appointed chairman of the WGEA.
The WGEA shall be a “statutory authority whose recommendations are ordinarily binding.
- This could be patterned on the National Board of Wildlife whose decisions are rarely tampered with and by and large approved even by the Supreme Court.”
It will also be the appellate authority for any decision taken by the State authorities, or disputes between two Ghats States.

The idea of favouring experiment and observation over belief, and the empirical over the anecdotal, which was at the core of the evolution of modern science, continues to be its most important guiding principle, Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has said.
It was also not possible to have good science without freedom of thought, which was important for the development of science since the era of The Reformation in the 16{+t}{+h}century.
The scientist, hailed for his path-breaking work on ribosomes that got him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009, pointed out that modern science had its origins in the times of Copernicus and Galileo, who were proponents of the idea that if observation and belief failed to tally, it was the belief that was deemed to be wrong rather than what was observed.
Pointing to the motto — “On Nobody's Word” — of the Foundation of the Royal Society, one of the oldest scientific societies in the world, Dr. Ramakrishnan said this principle had come to define modern science.
The important thing, however, was that science, by its nature, was self-correcting — as new evidence emerged, scientists refined their hypotheses and theories.

The first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) of the Navy was floated out at the Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL)
- named after the legendary INS Vikrant.
The work on the carrier was progressing, albeit not as per schedule, as so many variables were being factored into the extremely complex construction process.
The carrier was ‘technically floated out' as the shipyard needed the dry-dock for ‘some other commercial work.