This Week I Learned - Week 32 2026

This Week I Learned - 

* When unconstrained, the AI model can draw from numerous sources to assess its options on how to proceed in answering a prompt, thereby allowing widely varying outcomes. Any foundational decisions or other instructions—artifacts collectively known as “provenance” when properly preserved—which were formulated during the original context session and then cleared, are lost. This is the key deficiency of vibe coding which spec-driven development and context engineering seek to address.

Context engineering moves a developer from a vibe coding technique to a structured approach to generating code that preserves provenance using key artifacts. This allows context to be restored by other developers, reviewed by other stakeholders, or retrieved at any point if someone wanted to audit the inputs that generated a given codebase or simply wanted to continue building upon them. Different methodologies have emerged that offer different perspectives on how to effectively manage context and preserve provenance. 

BMAD (Breakthrough Method for Agile AI-Driven Development) and GitHub's Spec Kit are methodologies that offer different approaches to engineering context and preserving provenance.  - Code Mag

* Franklin Templeton's outlook - Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving demand for energy, infrastructure and broader economic change; rising investment in defense, national security and energy infrastructure create long-term potential return opportunities. Aging populations will require investment in labor-saving technologies, assisted living and health care innovation.

* India’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), used artificial intelligence to underwrite nearly ₹1 lakh crore in MSME loans of up to ₹5 crore each during 2025-26

* The biggest risk of deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) in banks is the erosion of human judgment and accountability. Meaningful human oversight – the ability to explain, to intervene and, where necessary, to override – must remain a design principle, not an afterthought - Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra 

* Over the last century, India’s annual rainfall has seen significant year-to-year ups and downs, but overall, the total yearly rainfall has stayed mostly steady, with only a slight and statistically insignificant drop. However, average temperatures have clearly been on the rise. - Data for India

* A moderately full freezer, with enough space for air to circulate, tends to stay more thermally stable than one that’s nearly empty. Keeping an ice tray full just to improve refrigerator energy efficiency has only a minor impact on savings. The energy used to freeze the water still has to come from somewhere, and the freezer must work to remove that heat. The payoff in the end is minimal.

* Vultures serve as effective natural “disease firewalls.” The vulture population in India started collapsing from 1994 triggered by veterinary diclofenac after its  patent expiry.  Farmers started using the cheap painkiller on livestock. This led to the  accidentally wipe out of vultures and they were reduced from 50 million to near zero in a decade due to kidney failure in the birds scavenging treated livestock carcasses.

The decline removed a key sanitation service, as vultures' pH 1 stomach acid rapidly destroys pathogens like anthrax and rabies; this led to more feral dogs, rotting carcasses, water contamination, and a 4.7% rise in human death rates in affected districts. The highly acidic stomach environment of Indian vultures  acts as a strong filter that inactivates many microorganisms like Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) & Rabies virus ingested with carrion. Their overall digestive system is highly efficient at processing risky carrion. 

Peer-reviewed research by economists Eyal Frank (Chicago) and Anant Sudarshan (Warwick) estimates the vulture loss caused around 100,000 extra human deaths annually from 2000-2005—totaling half a million—and $69 billion yearly in mortality-related economic damages.

* Rh null (also written Rhnull or Rh₀) is an extremely rare blood type. It is often called “golden blood” because of its extreme rarity and value in transfusion medicine. People with Rh null blood lack all of the Rh antigens on their red blood cells (there are more than 50 Rh antigens; the common Rh-positive/Rh-negative distinction only involves the D antigen).

It is significantly rarer than the uncommon ABO/Rh types (such as AB-negative, which occurs in under 1% of many populations).Because of this rarity, finding compatible blood for transfusion is extremely difficult—individuals with Rh null can generally only receive Rh null blood. Their own blood, however, is compatible with many rare Rh variants, which is why it is considered especially valuable.

It was first identified in 1961. Fewer than 50 people have ever been documented with this blood type.

* The GenomeIndia project collected whole-genome data from 10,000 healthy, unrelated individuals from 83 population groups, revealing an extraordinary level of genetic diversity.

* There is no genetic test yet for mental illnesses. The risk is polygenic: it emerges from the combined influence of thousands of gene variants, along with rare genetic changes, development, environment, and chance. Psychiatric genetics will not identify people before they fall ill but it can replace superstition and blame with a more accurate account of vulnerability.  -  Dr. Alok Kulkarni 

* Over-cautious AI - I used the Microsoft Edge context menu option "Help me rewrite" to rephrase and improve my summary of the above referenced article on psychiatric genetics. It refused with this message - "Request blocked by safety policy"

* Deepak Dhar, a professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was awarded the 2026 Dirac Medal for his work in statistical mechanics. 

* If you bought your vehicle after April 2023, you can fill your petrol tank with E20, shut it and forget it because that’s when the Bharat Stage 6 Phase 2 (Real Driving Emissions) mandate took effect. Vehicles built after this deadline were factory-engineered for E20 — with ethanol-resistant elastomers, fluorinated fuel lines, upgraded pump seals and recalibrated engine control units. These roughly 70 million vehicles, about 23% of India’s active petrol fleet, face little cause for concern.

The remaining 77% — nearly 240 million legacy two-wheelers and cars built for E5 or E10 — are the genuine worry. Ethanol is a polar solvent that degrades older rubber compounds and plastics, hardening and cracking fuel hoses over time. It is also hygroscopic: it absorbs atmospheric moisture, and in vehicles left parked for extended periods, the ethanol-water mixture separates and settles, forming an acidic layer that corrodes tanks, damages fuel pumps and clogs filters with sludge. - The Hindu

* During the Kargil war in 1999, the Time Arc-6 GPS systems in the MiG 21 and MiG 23 BN aircraft let pilots navigate using Indian Everest coordinates. The Indian Army’s maps were also based on the Everest Spheroid, a reference model of Earth first defined in 1830 by Sir George Everest, the Surveyor General. However, handheld GPS units used by Indian Air Force MiG pilots only displayed data in World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84), the global standard coordinate system. For improved accuracy, pilots had to adjust for the differences between the two mapping systems to accurately locate targets and release bombs.

* Every tier 1 city loses more than half its free-flow speed by peak hour. Speed in Hyderabad and Mumbai both drop from 40 km/h to 15 km/h, Bengaluru from 38 km/h to 13 km/h. Hyderabad has 95% of its roads under 10 metres wide. - HT

* Empirical investigation and direct knowledge take priority over mere scriptural authority in Buddhism.

Carl Sagan : ‘What happens if the doctrine of a religion—Buddhism let’s say—is contradicted by some finding, some discovery—in science, let’s say—what does a believer in Buddhism do in that case?’

Dalai Lama: ‘For Buddhists that is not a problem. The Buddha himself made clear that the important thing is your own investigation. You should know the reality, no matter what the scripture says. In case you find a contradiction—opposite of the scriptures’ explanation—you should rely on that finding, rather than scripture.’

Carl Sagan: ‘So, that is very much like science?’

Dalai Lama: ‘Yes, that’s right. So I think that the basic Buddhist concept is that at the beginning it is worthwhile or better to remain skeptical. Then carry out experiments through external means as well as internal means. If through investigation things become clear and convincing, then it is time to accept or believe. If, through science, there is proof that after death there is no continuity of human mind, of life, then—theoretically speaking—Buddhists will have to accept that.’

— Carl Sagan's Interview with The Dalai Lama, 1991

* “A newspaper is text, but what gives it full life, its juice, are the illustrations.” - Ahmed Burić