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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - October 2018

Oct 2018

Oct 18, 2019

IIT Kharagpur Graduate Develops Device To Curb Air Pollution

An IIT Kharagpur graduate has invented a device called "PM 2.5" which he claimed when fitted near the silencer pipe in vehicles will curb air pollution.
Debayan Saha, a mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Kharagpur, who has invented the device claims that one car fitted with the device can neutralise the pollution emitted from 10 cars in its vicinity.
The technology uses a combination of electric energy and wave energy to influence the pollutants like PM 2.5 such that they act like magnet attracting other particulate pollutants from the ambient atmosphere to get attached to it. As they grow bigger in size they become heavy and fall off safely on the ground like soil.
Saha was also a research fellow at AIIMS who worked on air pollution.

Oct 17, 2019

ISRO'S Space Shuttle-Like Reusable Launch Vehicle Will Attempt Its First Landing In Karnataka

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is finally following in the footsteps of NASA and SpaceX by developing a space program for Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV) which it has been testing since 2016.
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.
India's RLV includes a Space Shuttle-like craft that could feature an air-breathing ramjet engine.
This craft will take a payload to space and then glide back to Earth, landing like a normal aircraft, much like the Space Shuttle.
The rocket that will take this shuttle to orbit will return to Earth much like Musk's Falcon 9 rockets. It will return under its own power and make a landing on a floating platform out at sea.
So far, the RLV shuttle has been tested over water. Now, it will be tested over land and make an attempt at an actual landing.

NASA unveils two new spacesuit prototypes for mission to colonize the moon by 2024

NASA showed off two new spacesuits tailored for future moonwalking astronauts, signalling development of a crucial component to the space agency's accelerated drive to return to the moon by 2024.
Two NASA engineers strutted on a stage inside the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters, donning the new spacesuits, modelling and doing squats and crunches in front of a crowd of students and reporters to reveal what the first zero-gravity space-wear under NASA's Artemis moon program would look like.

Oct 15, 2019

IIT Guwahati To Organise International Symposium On Advances In Sustainable Polymerse

Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in collaboration with Kyoto Institute of Technology is organizing an International Symposium on Advances in Sustainable Polymers (ASP-19) from October 14 to 18, 2019 at Kyoto Institute of Technology, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan.
ASP-19 is the fifth international symposium of the ASP series following ASP-17 (Guwahati, India), ASP-16 (Kyoto, Japan), ASP-15 (Guwahati, India), and ASP-14 (Guwahati, India).
ASP-19 will also host the following three bilateral symposia as part of the symposium:

Industrial Forum - Biobased Materials Developed by World-wide Industries
Second India-Nepal-Japan Trilateral Joint Symposium
IITG-KIT Joint Symposium

Oct 13, 2019

UK's First Lunar Rover To Be Spider-Like Bot

The UK's first-ever moon mission will launch into space in 2021 in a step to explore the secrets of the lunar surface. The tiny spider-like robot will be the world's smallest robotic moon rover which will walk across the moon to capture photographs and collect data.
The robot was developed by London based start-up Spacebit. The robot forms a part of a collaborative mission with US company Astrobotic. If the mission is successful, the UK will become the fourth country to put a rover on the moon after Russia, the US and China.
A recent attempt by a private Israeli company ended in disaster when the lander crashed on the surface. The Spacebit founder Pavlo Tanasyuk said that their goal is to reach there and explore what is available there.

Hazzaa AlMansoori Prepares For His Return To Earth

Hazzaa AlMansoori will arrive back on Earth at 3pm (UAE time) on 17 October, 2019, bringing an end to his historic eight-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Returning with Russian commander Alexey Ovchinin and American astronaut Nick Hague, their Soyuz MS-12 descent module is expected to land south east of the remote town of Zhezqazghan, in Kazakhstan, roughly 700-km away from where Hazzaa took off from in Baikonur.

Oct 12, 2019

Scientists Reconstruct Faces Of Indus Valley People

A multi-disciplinary team of 15 scientists and academics from six different institutes of South Korea, UK and India have generated an accurate facial representation of the Indus Valley Civilisation people.
They reconstructed the faces of 2 of the 37 individuals who were found buried at the 4,500-year-old Rakhigarhi cemetery.
The scientists applied the craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) technique using computed tomography (CT) data of 2 of the Rakhigarhi skulls and recreated their faces.
The CFR technology generated faces of the two Rakhigarhi skulls, therefore, is a major breakthrough.
The 3-D video representation of the faces of the two individuals appeared to have Caucasian features with hawk-shaped and Roman noses.

NASA Launches Satellite To Explore Where Air Meets Space

NASA launched a satellite to explore the mysterious, dynamic region where air meets space.
The satellite — called ICON, short for Ionospheric Connection Explorer — rocketed into orbit following a two-year delay. It was dropped from a plane flying over the Atlantic off the Florida coast.
Five seconds after the satellite's release, the attached Pegasus rocket ignited, sending Icon on its way.
The ionosphere is the charged part of the upper atmosphere extending several hundred miles (kilometers) up. It's in constant flux as space weather bombards it from above and Earth weather from below, sometimes disrupting radio communications.
The refrigerator-size ICON satellite will study the airglow formed from gases in the ionosphere and also measure the charged environment right around the spacecraft which is at a level of 580 kilometers above the Earth's surface.

Scientists Undertake Largest DNA Barcoding Of Spiders In India

Scientists from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have managed to barcode at least 100 species of spiders based on their DNA, in the largest exercise of its kind in the country.
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.
This is the largest attempt on DNA barcoding of spiders from India. At least 101 species, with at least five endemic species, have been DNA barcoded. Work on DNA barcoding of at least 100 other Indian spiders is in progress.
The findings of the ongoing exercise have been published in Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journal, Scientific Reports – one of the leading multidisciplinary science journals in the world – in its October 1, 2019 issue.

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