New policy coming for Scientific Social Responsibility - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

New policy coming for Scientific Social Responsibility.

India is going to be possibly the first country in the world to implement a Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) Policy on the lines of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to encourage S&T institutions and individual scientists in the country to proactively engage in science outreach activities to connect science with the society.

The policy aims to harness latent potential of the scientific community for strengthening linkages between science and society, and for making S&T ecosystem vibrant. It is aimed at developing a mechanism for ensuring access to scientific knowledge, transferring benefits of science to meet societal needs, promoting collaborations to identify problems and develop solutions.

A draft of the new has been made available by the Department of Science and Technology on its website for public comments.
This draft policy builds upon traditions of earlier policies (Scientific Policy Resolution 1958, Technology Policy Statement 1983, Science and Technology Policy 2003 and Science Technology and Innovation Policy 2013) while proposing more pragmatic provisions to make institutions and individual scientists socially responsible.
Under the proposed policy, individual scientists or knowledge workers will be required to devote at least 10 person-days of SSR per year for exchanging scientific knowledge to society. It also recognizes the need to provide incentives for outreach activities with necessary budgetary support. It has also been proposed to give credit to knowledge workers/scientists for individual SSR activities in their annual performance appraisal and evaluation. No institution would be allowed to outsource or sub-contract their SSR activities and projects.
When most research is being done by using taxpayers’ money, the scientific establishment has an ethical obligation of “giving back” to the society. “SSR is not only about scientific impact upon society but also about the social impact upon science. SSR would therefore strengthen the knowledge ecosystem and bring efficiencies in harnessing science for the benefit of society”, says the draft policy.
The draft defines SSR as “the ethical obligation of knowledge workers in all fields of science and technology to voluntarily contribute their knowledge and resources to the widest spectrum of stakeholders in society, in a spirit of service and conscious reciprocity”. A central agency will be established at DST to implement the SSR. Other ministries would also be encouraged to make their own plans to implement SSR as per their mandate.
For implementation of the policy, a national portal will be developed up to capture societal needs requiring scientific interventions and as a platform for implementers and for reporting SSR activities.


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New policy coming for Scientific Social Responsibility.

New WATER HARVESTER delivers fresh water from DESERT AIR in major scientific breakthrough - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

New WATER HARVESTER delivers fresh water from DESERT AIR in major scientific breakthrough.

CALIFORNIA scientists have discovered a unique way to extract clean, pure water out of air in an astonishing discovery which could save millions of people living in water-starved regions across the world.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkley managed to successfully extract clean, drinkable water at very low humidity and at a low cost using their newly built next-generation water harvester.
Omar Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter chair in chemistry at UC Berkeley and inventor of the technology said: "There is nothing like this.
"It operates at ambient temperature with ambient sunlight, and with no additional energy input you can collect water in the desert.
"This laboratory-to-desert journey allowed us to really turn water harvesting from an interesting phenomenon into a science."
In October 2017, scientists created a prototype water harvester, which they propped into the backyard of a tract home as the device sucked water out of the air using just sunlight as energy.
Their initial discovery led them to create an even larger water extractor machine, brining them closer to their goal of providing life-long clean and drinkable water to people living in water-scarce areas.
Mr Yaghi, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and his team are set to report the results of the water-collecting harvester's first field test in the June 8 edition of the scientific journal, Science Advances.
The trial was conducted in Scottsdale, where the relative humidity drops as low as 8 percent a day.
Despite low humidity levels, the harvester demonstrated its ability to extract water from even the most scarce places, after scientists added more of the machine's water absorber - a highly porous material comprising of a metal-organic framework, or MOF.
Researchers estimate that the harvester's current MOF (MOF-801), made out of the expensive metal zirconium, will be able to extract about 200 millilitres of water per kilogram of MOF.
Mr Yaghi also created a new MOF made out of aluminium, called MOF-303, that is almost 150 times cheaper and captures twice as much water compared to MOF-801.
This will enable scientists to produce a new generation of harvesters capable of producing more than 3 cups of water per day from one kilogram of MOF.
Mr Yaghi said: "There has been tremendous interest in commercialising this, and there are several startups already engaged in developing a commercial water-harvesting device.
"The aluminium MOF is making this practical for water production, because it is cheap."
He added: "The key development here is that it operates at low humidity, because that is what it is in arid regions of the world.
"In these conditions, the harvester collects water even at sub-zero dew points."
Mr Yaghi is awaiting his next field test, where he is set to test the alumnium-based MOF (MOF-303) in the Death Valley in late summer, where temperatures reach up to 43 degree Celsius in the day, with humidity levels as low as 25 percent.


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New WATER HARVESTER delivers fresh water from DESERT AIR in major scientific breakthrough.