News on Science, Technology and Research in India
The 40th Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica (40-ISEA) hosted by the Ministry of Earth Sciences successfully returned to Cape Town on 10 April, after completing a journey of around 12 thousand nautical miles in 94 days, including stopovers.
The study has been carried out by a team of researchers led byan alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad, Dr Brince Paul. As a postdoctoral researcher, he conducted this study in the Écolepoly technique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. The study was conducted in collaboration with the Swiss Olympic Medical Center. This study has been published in advanced material technologies journals.
Space agencies of India and France on Thursday signed an agreement for cooperation for the country’s first human space mission Gaganyaan, the French space agency CNES said.
The launch of the 2,268-kg satellite was earlier aborted in the first half of this month due to a technical glitch.
Indian space research organisation (Isro) chairman K Sivan told TOI, “The technical glitch related to a voltage fluctuation issue in the satellite is being fixed. Thereafter, the satellite will be assembled in the launch vehicle and tested again. All these things will take time and the launch is likely to happen in the first half of next month. The delay in the launch of Gisat-1 by GSLV-F10 and the Covid situation will, however, postpone other launches, including the first test-flight of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV or mini PSLV), this year.”
Responding to this challenge, scientists from the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS), Bangalore, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, in collaboration with their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, have developed an exceptionally sensitive and selective H2S Gas sensor developed by impersonating the neuron responsible for identification of airborne molecules or olfactory receptor neuron (ORN).
A group of B.Tech students at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in Kerala have developed a ‘forest fire early detection system’, using UAV and advanced computation technology, to detect fires at an early stage and alert officials quickly by relaying the GPS location.
This is the first time that the experimental validation of variations predicted using physics-based modeling has been reported. The predictions can be integrated with circuit design software, thus making it possible to design better-performing circuits. This work was partially funded by the Indian Institute of Technology Nano Fabrication Lab (IITBNF Lab), the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
Astronomers have discovered a new active galaxy identified as the farthest gamma-ray emitting galaxy that has so far been stumbled upon. This active galaxy called the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy, which is about 31 billion light-years away, opens up avenues to explore more such gamma-ray emitting galaxies that wait to meet us.
The four Indian astronaut-elects have successfully completed their training in Russia and have arrived in Bengaluru recently. Having familiarised themselves with basic astronaut training the four IAF test pilots, now employees of Isro, will soon start with the mission-specific training that will happen in multiple Indian cities.
Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)-Delhi receives research funding from National Super Computing Mission (NSM) under HPC Applications to work on the project titled ‘Orbit computation of Resident Space Objects for Space Situational Awareness’ for two years. The NSM project has been implemented by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITy) to ensure the country’s leadership in supercomputing.
