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 …
JUST BEFORE 4 am on September 30, the stylus tracing out the narrow, wavy line on the seismographs at the Indian Meteorological Department's (IMD) seismological observatory in Delhi began to oscillate violently. As the graphs rolling out of the machine's printer began to indicate an earthquake 1,400 km away, the …
Three years ago, an Orissa engineer's claims to have solved Fermat's Last Theorem was ignored by the state government. However, news that Andrew Wiles of the US has solved the long-standing puzzle has now prompted the state government to sponsor the engineer's trip to England to present his finding to …
AS THE global warming debate heats up, scientists are looking towards the most unlikely source for clues -- penguins. They suspect the availability of fish on which penguins feed is increasing in the waters of the Antarctic Ocean, which are warming slightly. Therefore, fatter penguins would indirectly confirm the greenhouse …
DOES A hare flee when it spots a fox? Interestingly, no. Instead, it stands upright and signals its presence by flashing its ventral fur. As a brown hare can run much faster, once the fox knows it has been spotted, it desists from chasing the hare, thereby saving a lot …
PEOPLE with strong body odour may probably be carrying a faulty gene, according to researchers from London's St Mary's Hospital Medical School. The researchers say they are close to nailing the gene defect because of which the carriers cannot process a chemical called trimethylamine, a product of digestion that smells …
FOR MOST girls, fear emanates from an under-the-bed-world. In an experiment in which children aged three to four years were asked about their night-time fears, significantly more girls than boys referred to an underworld peopled with ogres and monsters, says Richard Coss, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis. …
IN THE wake of economic liberalisation, the need to streamline the country's research and development (R&D;) institutions acquires a sense of urgency. However, ongoing protests by scientists at two leading institutions over who should head these bodies highlight the difficulties of implementing such measures. In the first case, relating to …
IN RUDYARD Kipling's The Jungle Book, the sagacious elephant reveals to a rapt animal audience the mystery of the black stripes on the body of Sher Khan, the tiger: They were nothing but bramble scratches. That was Kipling's pigment of imagination. Scientists now believe the designer of colourful patterns on …
SCIENTISTS have discovered a gene that could make a person more prone to developing Alzheimer's disease -- a brain disorder that induces premature senility -- after the age of 65. The suspected gene codes for a protein that transports cholesterol through the bloodstream and researchers have found abnormally high levels …
A GROUP of Japanese companies has developed a robot that can wash and wax 2,000 sq metres of floor in an hour. The machine is first guided around the area to be cleaned, after which it memorises the cleaning route and then automatically washes or waxes the floor, stopping only …
SEVEN minutes. That's how much every cigarette reduces a person's life, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US. A study conducted by the institute's researchers found that every minute spent in smoking robbed the smoker of one minute of life and it took, on an …
The successful completion of all launch preparations for the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) did much to dispel the shadow of gloom in the Indian space establishment, cast in July by the US forcing Russia to withhold transfer of cryogenic technology to India. In a more cheerful mood than he …
THE BELIEF that economic liberalisation and competition will motivate India's industry to upgrade its research and development has become almost axiomatic. However, a study of private sector R&D;, carried out by the Delhi-based Centre for Technology Services (CTS) and sponsored by the department of science and technology (DST), shows this …
EVERY DAY, in all weather conditions, scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) receive data about the earth from spaceborne satellites that use specialised RADAR equipment. But converting these data into high resolution image of the earth is a mindboggling task: To process an image of a 100 km …
AS A FRONTIER technology today, genetic engineering is attracting the best scientific minds the world over. The ability to manipulate the genetic make-up of living things has the potential, theoretically at least, to transform human health and world agriculture. It also has immense ethical and safety implications for humankind and …
MEDICAL wisdom has it that parasites evolve to become less harmful to their hosts. For if they became more virulent and killed off their hosts, they would be terminating their own lives, too. But, a recently published 10-year field study of the relationship between Panama's fig wasps and roundworms that …
RESEARCHERS working on ozone depletion are being attacked increasingly by critics who say the fears they have aroused concerning ozone depletion due to release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all part of a politically motivated sham. One of the first such attacks was made by a Brazilian meteorologist who pointed out …
DESPITE its travails, pregnancy is commonly perceived as a delicate give-and-take between a woman and the embryo she carries. But now David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University in Boston, challenges this view by suggesting that conception is a long evolutionary struggle between the mother and the foetus. Says …
ASPIRIN -- the world's most popular pain-killer -- if consumed regularly, may reduce the risk of cancer of the digestive system, suggests a study undertaken by Michael J Thun and his team from the American Cancer Society and the Emory University School of Public Health in Atlanta. They found a …
Paralysing geneUS SCIENTISTS have homed in on a gene defect linked to a debilitating nerve disorder known as Lou Gehrig's disease (Cambridge University Alumni Magazine). The disease, a celebrated victim of which is physicist Stephen Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time, gradually paralyses its victims by killing …
