Research

Methanol is utilized as a motor fuel, to power ship engines, and to generate clean power all over the world. Methanol is also used to generate di-methyl ether (DME), a liquid fuel that is very similar to diesel — existing diesel engines simply need to be minimally changed to use DME instead of diesel. 

India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, which has completed more than 9,000 orbits around the Moon, has detected minor elements of chromium and managanese through remote sensing, officials of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Monday.

Giloy is an important multipurpose medicinal plant in Ayurvedic science. It has been used in various health conditions due to its immune-modulatory, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, anti-microbial, anti-viral, and anti-cancer properties, among others.

In a study published in Acta Astronautica, the team has shown how the device can be used to activate and track the growth of a bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii over several days with minimal human involvement.
“Understanding how such microbes behave in extreme environments could provide valuable insights for human space missions such as ‘Gaganyaan’, India’s first crewed spacecraft set to be launched in 2022,” IISc said in a statement shared with TOI.

The team of researchers at IIT-Madras led by Prof. R. Sarathi of the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, and Prof. N.J. Vasa of the Department of Engineering Design has developed a new method that can measure the contents and thickness of the deposits remotely.

IIT Madras researchers are working to develop the model which, they estimate, can potentially open doors to a $50 billion economy. The initiative is being spearheaded by the Chennai-based Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS) which is located at the IIT-Madras campus. The Centre researches sustainability challenges. It is funded by the Government of India’s Department for Science and Technology (DST), and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati have invented a biodegradable low-cost composite transparent wound dressing film. This material, based on the integration of a synthetic polymer, is non-toxic and will create a moist environment that would enable the body to heal on its own through the endogenous enzymes, according to recent research. Some of the findings have been published in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules journal.

Researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc)-Bangalore have discovered a marker for determining severity of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) as a probable therapeutic mechanism by studying genomic data from patients’ nasopharyngeal swab.

As part of its preparations for the ambitious India’s first human spaceflight mission (Gaganyaan), the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Saturday said it successfully conducted a hot test of the system demonstration model (SDM) of the service module propulsion system.

Roorkee: Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union minister of electronics and information technology, launched the country’s first ‘Quantum Computer Simulator (QSim) Toolkit’ on Friday. According to the ministry, the toolkit will enable researchers and students to research quantum computing cost-effectively.