Research

A team of Indian scientists have developed an environmentally friendly, non-toxic, biodegradable polymer using guar gum and chitosan, both of which are polysaccharides extracted from guar beans and shells of crab and shrimps. The fabricated guar gum-chitosan film having high water stability, high mechanical strength, and excellent resistance to harsh environmental conditions can potentially be used in packaging applications.

Indian researchers have developed a method that can help large scale synthesis of a special class of semiconductor nanocrystals. These nanocrystals called two-dimensional layered perovskite and perovskite nanocrystals, which have bright emission colours and are not affected by or corroded by the environment, are useful for both high colour purity and low-cost solution processability.

While two of them — EOS-4 (Risat-1A) and EOS-6 (Oceansat-3) — will be launched using Isro’s workhorse PSLV, the third one, EOS-2 (Microsat), will be launched in the first developmental flight of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), marking the beginning of a new class of launch vehicles in India.

Indian Scientists have developed a novel high-performance bioreactor system integrated with sustainable pre-treatment process for enabling anaerobic digestion of complex fat-rich sludge from dairy industry. It has been further integrated with membrane bioreactor based-wastewater treatment to enable zero liquid discharge in the dairy industry.

ISRO’s first mission dedicated for astronomy, AstroSat, launched on 28 September 2015 with its design life of five years, on Tuesday completed six years of its operation. “It (AstroSat) is expected to last some more years”, A S Kiran Kumar who as the then Chairman of ISRO led the mission team, and is presently serving as the chair of the apex science committee at the space agency, told PTI. “We can expect some more results to come which will be path-breaking”, he said.

Wearable motion sensors are made of materials that convert the mechanical strain that arises from human movement into electrical signals. The material must be flexible, robust, and highly sensitive to both large and subtle movements.

The INST team has been working in this area of photocatalytic water splitting to generate hydrogen for quite some time now. “The energy crisis and ever-threatening climate crisis urged us to work on this promising way of hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting. The stability and chemical flexibility of having different organic groups in carbon nitrides triggered us to work on these cost-effective organic semiconductor materials for sustainable hydrogen production,” added Dr. Kamalakannan.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is preparing for multiple flights of the specially designed test vehicle that will be used to test the Crew Escape System (CES), which will be a crucial element of India’s first human space flight mission (Gaganyaan).

A team of scientists led by Dr. Neelotpal Sen Sarma from the Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology, Guwahati, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, has filled the gap.

ISRO has been continuously monitoring the spacecraft and its five scientific instruments, and officials said scientific analysis of the data being received from MOM spacecraft is in progress.