The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has published the R&D; Roadmap for Green Hydrogen Ecosystem in India. This document was published on 13th October, 2023. One of the central pillars of the National Green Hydrogen Mission is the establishment of a supportive research and innovation ecosystem for green hydrogen …
WHAT happens when a teabag is placed in a cup of hotwater? The colour of tea immediately diffuses into the hot water. But when the same experiment is tried in a cup of cold water, the colour change is significantly slower. Now, a Russian scientist, Vithold Bakhir, has demon- strated …
It is exactly 60 years since the publication of 2 "thought experiments" designed to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum mechanics, and to make physicists come up with a better view of reality than the standard 'Copenhagen interpretation' of quantum physics. The Copenhagen interpretation is the standard way quantum physics is …
All of us are familiar with real numbers. But numbers having both real and imaginary parts are called complex numbers. A complex number (y) can be denoted as y=a+ib Where a and b are real numbers and I is an imaginary number (defined as the square root of -1). In …
TEARS tend to wash away most of the drugs that are administered as drops into the eyes. Now, scientists have developed an ilinproved way of delivering a drug to the eyes by making it tear-resistant, rendering it 4 times more likely to reach its target (New Scientist, Vol 14& No …
BAD roads make for unsafe driving. Now, researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK think that they can relieve the problem of worn- out roads by using a longer-lasting surface made of concrete instead of asphalt (New Scientist, Vol 146, No 1980). Each time a heavy …
T MAY soon be possible to clean up oil spills that contaminate the soil in and around petrol pumps, thanks to the efforts of Dutch researchers. Koen Weytingh and his colleagues from the Technical University of Delft and De Ruiter Milieutechnologie in Halfweg, ,he Netherlands, have developed a technique that …
When oil seeps into water supplies, it is more of a problem than a solution. But a group of American scientists think otherwise. John Hunter and John Cary of the US Department of Agriculture at Fort Collins, Colorado, intend using vegetable oil to help remove nitrate pollution from wells, usually …
RECENT findings by a group of American researchers suggest that even the remote continent of Antarctica exhibits evidence of contamination, mainly due to scientific support activities, an ever increasing number of visitors, ship operations, atmospheric fallout and disposal practices. And all these pose a serious threat to the marine environment …
TILL recently, matter was for scientists a chimera that had 4 known faces -- solid, liquid, gas, and the lesser known plasma, a state of matter that materialises at extremely high temperatures. But 70 years ago, Einstein had posited a new state of matter existent at extremely low temperatures, very …
THE government in Beijing is chanting a new mantra now -- science must create wealth. The Chinese comrades are no longer interested in draining the already cash-strapped state treasury by funding more and more "esoteric" research projects, which, they are convinced, contribute little to the society as a whole. So …
CHINA'S 700-page white paper on scientific research, presented at the recent National Science and Technology Conference in Beijing, calls for the commercialisation of research results, according primacy to marketable advancements. It is a pertinent effort, in tune with the ongoing technological revolution in the world and the upgrading of outdated …
Brazilian researchers claim that they have been able to turn the oil of the African palm into a diesel substitute (Indian Forester, Vol 121,No4). This exceptional fuel possesses thermodynamic properties that are far superior to those of diesel fuel that is obtained from crude oil. It has been tested with …
Tests conducted by us scientists on sea sponges collected from Fiji's waters have brought to light their potentially cancer fighting properties. But Fijian scientists are worried that the country's marine life will be wiped out if researchers from scientific institutions and pharmaceutical firms worldwide flood in to collect samples for …
Myths can sometimes be closer to reality the one would suspect. For instance, in Europeao folklore one finds mention of creatures called werewolves, who are described as peopoo who can change into wolves, with hair as over the body and face. However, there rs a human disorder called the congenital …
A NEW discovery has challenged the age- old belief that flowers came before bees. While the earliest angiosperms, or flowering plants, came into existence about 120 million years ago, the oldest known fossil of a bee is a specimen nearly 80 million years old, found trapped in amber from what …
The tiny fruit fly (Drosophila bifurca) holds the record for the longest sperm. Researcher Scott Pitnick of Bowling Green state university, Ohio, found that the fly produces sperm that are 60mm long - about 20 times its own length. In comparison, the human sperms are just 50 thousandth of a …
Canadian researchers have identified the first species of toilet-trained fish - pikes select secluded areas to deposit their faeces to safeguard against being detected by their prey (New Scientist, Vol 146, No 1976). When pikes attack fat-head minnows, the victims release an alarm pheromone that alerts other minnows to keep …
Caught in the debate over that thin boundary line between life and void is a promising Indian birth control vaccine. The National Institute of Immunology's (nii) unique vaccine "immunises" women against human chorionic gonadotropin (hcg) hormone, which is produced by the cluster of cells that develops from a fertilised egg, …
"Shut up and die," the orchid's flower tells its petals once it is pollinated. But the language used is not known to us - it is chemical talk and in orchids, ethylene does the talking. Now, botanists have found a way of tapping into the chemical talk of plants using …
IS HOMOSEXUALITY in the genes? Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, report that a single gene transplanted into fruit flies made the males show homosexual behaviour. This display of homosexuality is interesting to scientists because a gene similar to that transplanted into the fruit …
