News on Science, Technology and Research in India
Indian Scientists have indigenously designed and developed a low-cost optical spectrograph that can locate sources of faint light from distant quasars and galaxies in a very young universe, regions around supermassive black-holes around the galaxies, and cosmic explosions.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), an organisation which assigns official names and designations to celestial bodies, has recently confirmed the discovery of 18 new asteroids by Indian students as part of a global science programme.
The platform and associated analysis techniques developed by a team of scientists led by Professor Gautam Soni from Raman Research Institute, an autonomous Institute funded by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India can quantitatively assess the distribution of supercoiled branches on DNA plasmids (DNA molecule outside the chromosome). This research work done by researchers Sumanth Kumar, Koushik S., and Dr. Soni has been recently published in the journal ‘Nanoscale’.
Scientists have estimated how the Sun has rotated over a century from data extracted from old films and photographs that have been digitized. This estimation would help study magnetic field generated in the interior of the Sun, which causes sunspots and results in extreme situations like the historical mini-ice age on Earth (absence of sunspots). It could also help predict solar cycles and their variations in the future.
Scientists have developed a small molecule that disrupts the mechanism through which neurons become dysfunctional in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The molecule could be a potential drug candidate to halt or cure the leading cause of dementia (70-80%) worldwide.
Prof Animangsu Ghatak from the Department of Chemical Engineering IIT Kanpur, who developed the mat with the support of Department of Science & Technology, Government of India under Make in India initiative, took inspiration from adhesive pad present at the feet of wall climbing animals, like house lizards.
Expanding the areas of its foray of global scientific leadership into new and emerging areas of science, India has joined the ‘Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI)’ as a founding member to support the responsible and human-centric development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
By analysing sediment from the Bay of Bengal, researchers have found that the present Indian monsoon system, as we have it now, goes back at least 27 million years.
Indian Institutute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati researchers have developed an advanced technique for rapid evaporation of droplets. It is a novel method of controlling the overall lifetime of droplet. The inferences drawn from this study could have far-reaching implications ranging from biomedical engineering to biological sample diagnostics, ink-jet printing, surface patterning and many more, say researchers.
In a bid to bring scientific research in India at par with the global standards, the union government is working on a new playbook for a coordinated high impact research funding. As part of this plan, it is working on developing an ‘Ease of Doing Science Index’ to ensure effective use of both disbursed funds (including flexibility of fund utilisation) and the researchers’ time to weed out sub-standard research.
