Research

Searching for renewable energy resources with reduced carbon emissions is one of the most urgent challenges due to the increasing threat of global warming and energy crisis. Some of the unconventional methods to generate electricity include piezoelectric, thermoelectric, and electrostatic techniques used in devices like touch screens, electronic displays, and so forth.

IIT Indore has recently conducted a study that found that the popular succulent plant aloe vera known for its properties to soothe sunburns and other skin issues and even for improving digestive and oral health, surprisingly has a chemical that can be used to make memory chips and data storage devices.

A new non-precious metal-based bi-functional electrocatalyst (capable of catalyzing two different types of reactions) can decrease cost and increase the efficiency of metal air batteries.

The abundance of heavy metals in oldest metal-poor stars that are born from the ejecta of first stars has intrigued astronomers for long as already known processes of reaction of chemical elements by nuclear fusion within stars (nucleosynthesis) could not explain it. Scientists have now found a clue to this abundance in a nucleosythesis process called the i-process.

Researchers have developed a non-expensive way to coat carbon on lithium metal oxide electrodes for lithium-ion batteries. The life of the lithium-ion cells prepared using these electrode materials is expected to be doubled due to protective carbon coating.

Professor Amitabha Lahiri of S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (SNBNCBS) an autonomous institute under the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India showed in a paper published along with Subhasish Chakrabarty, his student, that the geometry of space-time can cause neutrino oscillations through quantum effects even if neutrinos are massless. It was published in the journal ‘European Physical Journal C’.

A team of researchers from IIT Mandi, led by Dr Prosenjit Mondal, Associate Professor, School of Basic Sciences, has used complementary experimental approaches to establish the underlying biochemical relationship between the consumption of excessive sugar and the development of ‘fatty liver’, medically known as Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). This research comes at a time in which the Government of India has included NAFLD in the National Programme for Prevention & Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS).