News on Science, Technology and Research in India
Space PSU NewSpace India opened the commercial bids of the three shortlisted entities — HAL-L&T, BHEL (single firm) and the BEL-Adani Alpha Design-BEML consortium — on Wednesday. The winning bid quoted Rs 824 crore, BHEL Rs 1,129 crore and the third group Rs 1,218 crore, a source said. These figures exclude taxes.
Scientists from the Indian Institute of Nanoscience and Technology (INST), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), have suggested new 2D semiconducting monolayers (MgX X=S, Se, Te) having high charge carrier mobility.
The scientists have found that the region was seismically active before the disaster hit. They also found a noteworthy sequence of precursory signals of rock-ice detachment preceded by a formation of a new structure via self-assembly or self-organization called the dynamic nucleation phase.
Efforts to fabricate better and more effective energy sources for sensors and other low power electronics is expected to get a boost with a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, and Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), South Korea, developing a set of new materials for devices that help convert biomechanical energy into electrical energy.
Efforts to build fuel-efficient and less polluting next-generation gas turbines are expected to get a major boost with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras and the American multinational firm, General Electric (GE), establishing a state-of-the-art expanded gas turbine combustor testing facility at the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development (NCCRD) at IIT-Madras.
In a significant development in environmental pollution, a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Mandi, has developed a method that promises to help transform plastic into hydrogen when exposed to light. The generation of hydrogen from plastics is expected to be more useful because hydrogen is considered the most practical non-polluting fuel of the future.
EOS-02 is Technology demonstration satellite for various new technologies with applications that include agriculture, forestry, geology, hydrology, miniaturised power electronics, reaction wheels etc. and forming the payload for SSLV-1.
The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) which is being steered jointly by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeiTY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has progressed significantly. The four major pillars of the NSM, namely, Infrastructure, Applications, R&D, HRD, have been functioning efficiently to realize the goal of developing indigenous supercomputing eco system of the nation.
As it awaits the arrival of its successor in August this year, Chandrayaan-2 has once again found new developments happening under the surface of the Moon. Chandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) instrument onboard Chandrayaan-2 has found Argon-40 in the tenuous lunar exosphere.
A team of researchers at the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) in Australia have addressed this question by developing a mathematical model that predicts how antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines confer protection against symptomatic infections. The team has published a report of their study in Nature Computational Science.
