News on Science, Technology and Research in India
The RLV program aims to cut down on launch costs by, well, reusing the spacecraft. ISRO’s current project appears to be using a hybrid design that sits somewhere between NASA’s now-shuttered Space Shuttle program and SpaceX’s reusable rockets.
Two diagnostic kits developed by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) – Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) under the ‘Make in India’ initiative, namely the Bluetongue sandwich ELISA (sELISA) and the Japanese Encephalitis lgM ELISA kit for the control of Swine and Detection of Antigen
Researchers used technique called ‘floating film transfer method’ to obtain ultrathin films of an organic material, squaraine, and to transfer it over the copper articles as layers. The anti-corrosion activity was tested in the presence of hydrochloride using electrochemical techniques as well as surface characterization techniques. The tests showed that nearly 40% corrosion protection is reached with just one layer of squaraine and increased up to 98% with four layers.
“Usually eel-loaches are found in fast-flowing streams of south and south-east Asia. Some species are found in Indonesia and the North-Eastern parts of India. This is the first species found in the Western Ghats and more importantly, this is the first subterranean eel-loach species to be found in the world,” says Rajeev Ragavan, assistant professor at the Department of Fisheries Resource Management at KUFOS, who is leading the team studying the species.
The study includes species such as the spitting spiders (Scytodes thoracica), spiders with ‘natural’ mirrors in their abdomen (Thwaitesia sp) and those that steal others’ food (Argyrodes flavescens) – a phenomenon which scientists term as kleptoparasitism. Then there are species which are found only in India.
The bacterial species namely Exiguobacterium sibiricum strain DR11 and Exiguobacterium undae strain DR14 were isolated from the wetlands adjoining the university.
India’s first ‘Gaganyaan’ human space flight mission is slated to take off in 2022 and the training for its crew, drawn from among experienced Indian Air Force pilots, has already commenced in Russia, according to S Somnath, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC).
The new firework, which cover popularly used sound emitting crackers, flowerpots, pencils, chakkar and sparklers, are based on formulations developed by a consortium of eight laboratories under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) led by Nagpur-based National Environmental Engineering Research Institute.
With over 49,000 plant species reported as of 2018, India holds about 11.5% of all flora in the world. Now, a new fossil record has shown that India is the birthplace of Asian bamboo, and they were formed about 25 million years ago in the north-eastern part of the country.
The study has been done jointly by researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. It included two groups of 30 individuals each, matched in age, gender and education. The first group comprised those with bipolar disorder while the other was control group of healthy individuals.
