Research

Modern chemical manufacturing often depends on high temperatures, toxic solvents and energy-intensive processes. These conditions increase cost, environmental burden and industrial complexity. The new nano-catalyst offers a more sustainable route by using light energy to drive chemical reactions under milder conditions. The PIB release says the technology could reduce the use of toxic solvents, lower energy consumption and make chemical production more environmentally friendly.

Traditional immunofluorescence imaging has been one of the most useful tools for studying proteins in their natural cellular environment. Its limitation, however, has been multiplexing capacity. Conventional methods are usually restricted to around four or five protein targets because different fluorescent dyes overlap spectrally and become difficult to separate cleanly. The CLEAR platform tackles this bottleneck by allowing the same sample to be labelled, imaged, erased and labelled again in repeated cycles.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology. The team used a multi-proxy approach that combined palynofacies analysis with advanced molecular techniques such as Raman spectroscopy and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy. In simple terms, the scientists studied tiny fragments of organic matter preserved inside sedimentary rocks and then used molecular tools to identify whether those particles were linked to ancient fire events.

Indian researchers have developed a cost-effective, high-performance thermal energy storage material that could improve the

The specific challenge studied by the researchers is highly relevant to semi-cryogenic propulsion. In such engines, high-temperature gaseous oxygen can come into direct contact with liquid oxygen and must condense before entering the main pump. If the condensation remains incomplete, residual gas can disturb the pump’s performance and affect the smooth feeding of propellants into the engine. This is not a small laboratory curiosity; it is the kind of hidden internal behaviour that can determine whether a high-performance rocket engine runs efficiently and safely.

The Sun’s corona is a strange and extreme region. Although it lies above the visible surface, it reaches very high temperatures and remains one of the most difficult parts of the Sun to understand. NASA also notes that the corona is extremely hot but very dim because it is far less dense than the Sun’s surface. This basic contradiction — a hotter outer atmosphere above a comparatively cooler surface — is known as the coronal heating problem, and scientists have studied it for decades.

The discovery is important because blue straggler stars are already among the more puzzling objects in star clusters. In a cluster where stars are expected to be of broadly similar age, blue stragglers appear brighter and bluer than the main-sequence turn-off point, making them look unusually young or rejuvenated compared to their stellar neighbours. This has long raised questions about whether they are formed through mass transfer, mergers, stellar interactions or more complex multi-star evolution.

The breakthrough is important because future electronics will increasingly depend on lightweight, flexible and low-power materials that can function without heavy batteries. From health-monitoring wearables to environmental sensors and smart photodetectors, next-generation devices need materials that can respond to tiny changes in heat, light and motion while consuming very little energy.

Using Chandrayaan-2’s Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar, scientists examined nine doubly shadowed craters located within the larger Faustini, Haworth and Shoemaker craters near the lunar south pole. The radar instrument used full-polarimetric observations in L-band and S-band, allowing researchers to look for subsurface signatures that may indicate ice mixed within lunar soil.