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 …
THOSE who wax lyrical about the superior sound quality of compact discs over records or vice versa, do so merely for the sake of argument, conclude German music psychologists who found that only one out of 40 persons could distinguish between sounds from the two (New Scientist Vol 139, No …
SCIENTISTS at the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad have recently developed a model to explain the presence of a vast stretch of volcanic rocks -- the Deccan flood basalts -- in the western part of the country. And, they say their model might even explain how dinosaurs became …
ANTS ARE known for their industriousness, but not many people know about their ability to figure out the shortest path between two points -- that is, along a straight line -- without having a bird's eye view of their surroundings. How ants follow a straight path to their food has …
MALE HOMOSEXUALITY seems to run in the family and the trait is passed on by the mother, according to US researchers. Dean Hamer and his colleagues at the US National Cancer Institute interviewed 76 homosexuals and found 13.5 per cent of the brothers of these gay men were homosexual too. …
SLOW AND steady wins the race, goes the moral of one of the most popular of Aesop's fables in which an arrogant hare loses a race to a persevering tortoise. But, two US brain researchers say if the race had taken place at twilight instead of during the day, as …
SHAKESPEARE was wrong when he described Julius Caesar as "constant as the northern star", because the brightness of the North Star is variable, changing by a few per cent every four days. But the Bard will be right next year when the star's brightness will become constant, predict astronomers (New …
A FAT-RICH diet, widely believed to be unhealthy, acts as an elixir for the Japanese, the world's longest-living people, claim old-age researchers. Before World War II, the lifespan of the Japanese was the lowest in the developed world. "Our cholesterol (counts) used to be very low," says Takao Suzuki, director …
DRUG ADDICTION is not a modern age phenomenon for it seems even the ancients knew the pleasures of junkyism, claim scientists (The Lancet, Vol 341, No 8843). Franz Parsche and his colleagues at the Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics in Munich, Germany, examined hair and tissue samples taken from …
AT A SMALL function in New Delhi in August, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) honoured six of its scientists who had obtained international patents for their inventions. Three scientists had patents registered in the US and the others in Europe. N R Subbaram, adviser to CSIR"s patents …
WITH THE claim of having the world's third-largest scientific humanpower, India should have at least three flourishing periodicals with countrywide circulation disseminating science at the popular level. But that is hardly the case. Newspapers fare no better in reporting science news or features. Very often, what they report is only …
LESS THAN a week before he faced a no-confidence motion in Parliament in July, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao found time to keep an appointment with 25 top scientists. The meeting, called at the instance of minister of state for science and technology P R Kumaramangalam, was ostensibly a …
WHILE CHOOSING a fabric, fingers may be the best judge of a cloth's quality, but they are not reliable in predicting the cloth's behaviour after it is tailored. Now, a mathematical technique called fuzzy-set theory, may enable textiles to be designed according to predetermined attributes related to comfort and performance …
DOES eucalyptus harm soil? Environmentalists who say it does may be barking up the wrong tree, says a recent study. A K Srivastav of the Silviculture and Forest Utilisation Division in Rajpipla, Gujarat, found no adverse effects on soil from eucalyptus, which is popularly believed to render soil unfit for …
IS THERE a tenth planet in our solar system? Astronomers who have observed Uranus and Neptune deviate from their calculated orbits, attribute such irregularities to the gravitational pull of an unknown planet, usually referred to as Planet X (Nature, Vol 363, No 6424). But Myles Standish of the Jet Propulsion …
LIFE IMITATES art more than art imitates life, said Oscar Wilde. His statement was borne out recently when US scientists re-enacted in their laboratory the plot of Steven Spielberg's latest film, Jurassic Park, which shows dinosaurs being re-created from their DNA, procured from the blood sucked by mosquitoes and preserved …
WHY DOES popcorn pop and not ordinary corn? Because popcorn has a thicker hull and contains starch with superior puffing quality, say Brazilian scientists who compared four varieties of corn and three kinds of popcorn (Nature, Vol 362, No 6419). They found the popcorn kernel's ability to absorb heat efficiently …
A BIBLIOGRAPHY is useful not only as a guide to further study and research, but also because it gauges the current attitudes and obsessions prevalent in academia. Researchers in the North are slowly waking up to a fact long recognised by activists and writers in the South: that environmental issues …
STEVEN Spielberg's latest science fiction blockbuster, Jurassic Park, has already broken records at the box office. It is a thrilling tale of humans encountering dinosaurs. Though the film may take some time to reach India, last month, STAR Plus telecast an hour-long special programme on the making of Jurassic Park, …
BUGS IN one's body usually mean aches and pains, but researchers studying how some bacteria exist safely in the large intestine of humans by adapting to water-scarce conditions, may come up with clues to new varieties of drought-resistant crops that could flourish in arid regions. J Gowrishankar and his research …
SCIENTISTS have confirmed environmentalists' fears about the depletion of the ozone layer, by measuring a 50 per cent increase in the ultraviolet radiation striking Ushuaia in south Argentina. According to a report recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the increase occurred in December 1990 when a piece of …
