Page 2 - Science

Team including Indian wins 2023 Nobel prize for humorous scientific feats

A team of scientists from India, China, Malaysia and the US has won this year's Ig Nobels, the prize for humorous scientific feats, in the mechanical engineering category for its study of repurposing dead spiders to be used in gripping tools, the organisers said. Counting nose hairs in cadavers, repurposing dead spiders, smart toilets idea, and explaining why scientists lick rocks, were among the 10 winning achievements in the 33rd Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The prizes were announced on Thursday during an online event produced by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research'. The Nobel Prize is the premier award in science, reserved for those that "have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. However, the Ig Nobel Prize celebrates the most trivial and ridiculous achievements that first make people laugh, and then think. Researchers Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, from Rice University in the US, won the prize for their research on ...

BITS Pilani Hyderabad to set up wind tunnel facility for aerospace research

BITS Pilani on Monday said a wind tunnel facility will be set up at its Hyderabad campus for aerodynamic testing and research. The facility is expected to be completed next year, the institute said. With the ability to recreate wind speeds of up to 220 kilometres per hour, the BITS Pilani wind tunnel will provide insights into the dynamics of flight, the institute said in a statement. The tunnel will be able to test aerodynamic effects on a diverse range of subjects, including full-scale drones, automobiles, parachutes and electric vehicle battery management systems. "Leading educational institutions have already seen successful drone startups emerge, such as Ideaforge from IIT Bombay and BotLab Dynamics from IIT Delhi. We envision BITS Pilani joining these institutions in spearheading the development of frontier technologies in drones, UAVs, and space," BITS Pilani Director of Hyderabad campus and off-campus programmes and industry engagement, Prof G Sundar, said. The wind tunnel

US NSF invested $150 mn in India in last 5 years through 200 projects

The National Science Foundation has invested nearly USD 150 million in India in the last five years through more than 200 projects and has launched 35 joint projects in the last one year alone, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said Thursday. Panchanathan travelled to India at the end of August, making stops in three cities: New Delhi, Bengaluru and Gandhinagar. In New Delhi, he announced a new funding opportunity between NSF and the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and signed a bilateral implementation arrangement with the Indian Department of Biotechnology (DBT). He also participated in an industry roundtable organised by the US Embassy. In Bengaluru, he participated in a biotechnology roundtable organised by DBT and in Gandhinagar, his last stop, Panchanathan led the US delegation at the G20 Chief Science Advisers' Roundtable, a media release said. "In the last five years, NSF has invested nearly USD 150 million in India through over 200 ...

LIVE: Chandrayaan-3 landing is 'shankhnaad' of India's glory, says PM

India awaits successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the south pole of the Moon. Catch all the live updates here

Joint call for proposal under MeitY-NSF research collaboration announced

The IT Ministry has announced the first joint call for proposals under the MeitY- National Science Foundation research collaboration, an official release said on Monday. Proposals in the areas of semiconductor research, next-generation communication technologies/networks/systems, cyber-security, sustainability and green technologies and Intelligent Transportation Systems will be considered, under this. The "Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) announced its first joint call for proposals under the MeitY- National Science Foundation (NSF) research collaboration," the release said. MeitY-NSF signed an Implementation Arrangement (IA) on research collaboration in May 2023. "This MeitYNSF collaborative research opportunity focuses specifically upon discoveries and innovations in areas of mutual interest as highlighted in the Joint Statement made by Government of India and USA during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US in June 2023," the release said. Th

Namoh 108: Jitendra Singh unveils new variety of lotus with 108 petals

Union Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday unveiled a new variety of lotus flower with 108 petals, named "Namoh 108", developed by the city-based National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI). The "NBRI Namoh 108" lotus variety flowers from March to December and is the first flower whose genome is completely sequenced for its characteristics. "Considering the religious importance of the lotus flower and 'the digit 108', this combination gives an important identity to this variety," Singh said. Singh lauded the NBRI for naming the lotus variety as "Namoh 108" and termed it a grand gift to the "relentless zeal and innate beauty of Narendra Modi in the tenth year of his tenure as the prime minister". NBRI is a constituent institution of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Singh also released apparel made from lotus fibre and perfume 'Frotus', extracted from lotus flowers and developed by the NBRI under the Lotus Research Programme in ...

Pig kidney in a human body? This experiment is working fine a month later

This marks the longest a pig kidney has survived and functioned in a person, although a deceased one

LIVE: PM lays foundation stone for redevelopment of 508 railway station

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Climate change made July hotter for 4 of 5 humans on Earth: Scientists

Human-caused global warming made July hotter for four out of five people on Earth, with more than 2 billion people feeling climate change-boosted warmth daily, according to a flash study. More than 6.5 billion people, or 81% of the world's population, sweated through at least one day where climate change had a significant effect on the average daily temperature, according to a new report issued Wednesday by Climate Central, a science nonprofit that has figured a way to calculate how much climate change has affected daily weather. We really are experiencing climate change just about everywhere, said Climate Central Vice President for Science Andrew Pershing. Researchers looked at 4,711 cities and found climate change fingerprints in 4,019 of them for July, which other scientists said is the hottest month on record. The new study calculated that the burning of coal, oil and natural gas had made it three times more likely to be hotter on at least one day in those cities. In the US, whe

AI powered tool GPT-3 found to reason as good as undergraduate students

GPT-3, the popular AI-powered tool, was found to reason as well as college undergraduate students, scientists have found. The artificial intelligence large language model (LLM) was asked to solve reasoning problems that were typical of intelligence tests and standardised tests such as the SAT, used by colleges and universities in the US and other countries to make admissions decisions. The researchers from the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), US, asked GPT-3 to predict the next shape which followed a complicated arrangement of shapes. They also asked the AI to answer SAT analogy questions, all the while ensuring that the AI would have never encountered these questions before. They also asked 40 UCLA undergraduate students to solve the same problems. In the shape prediction test, GPT-3 was seen to solve 80 per cent of the problems correctly, between the humans' average score of just below 60 per cent and their highest scores. "Surprisingly, not only did GPT-3 do about

Debris on ocean floor could be from alien civilisation: Harvard scientist

Harvard University professor Avi Loeb had launched a dredging project two weeks ago to explore the depths of the Pacific searching for signs of a mysterious object labelled "IM1"

India's space prog to transform planet's connection to final frontier: NYT

Hailing India's ambitious space programme, The New York Times has said the country, currently home to about 140 registered space-tech start-ups, "stands to transform the planet's connection to the final frontier" and can emerge as a "counterweight" to China. "When it launched its first rocket in 1963, India was a poor country pursuing the world's most cutting-edge technology. That projectile, its nose cone wheeled to the launchpad by a bicycle, put a small payload 124 miles above the Earth. India was barely pretending to keep up with the US and the Soviet Union. In today's space race, India has found much surer footing, the NYT article said. The article titled 'The Surprising Striver in the World's Space Business' notes that India has become home to at least 140 registered space-tech start-ups, comprising a local research field that stands to transform the planet's connection to the final frontier." "The start-ups' growth has been explosive, leaping from five when the pandemic ...

India, France launch Strategic Space Dialogue to strengthen partnership

India and France have launched the Strategic Space Dialogue, seeking to further deepen their nearly-six-decade-old partnership in the sector. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the inaugural India-France Strategic Space Dialogue was held in Paris on Monday. Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra led the Indian delegation for the talks with French Secretary-General, Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs Anne-Marie Descotes. The nearly-six-decade-old Indo-French space partnership spans collaborations in technologies for satellite launches, research, operational applications, innovation and NewSpace partnerships for deep space exploration. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) have been partnering in the fields of space medicine, astronaut health monitoring, life support, radiation protection, space debris protection and personal hygiene systems. Earlier this month, CNES President Philippe Baptiste travelled to

Majority students under Southern boards take Science in Class 11: Study

South India accounts for four of the five sizable states where students in grades XI-XII prefer Science, the study said

National technology day 2023: History, significance, quotes and more

National Technology Day is observed every year on May 11, PM Modi inaugurated multiple projects on marking the 25th National Technology Day.

Reconstructing bacterial genomes offers potential source of antibiotics

Reconstructing ancient bacterial genomes can revive previously unknown molecules offering a potential source for new antibiotics

DST report favours govt support to innovation even in case of failure

In a bid to promote innovation in manufacturing, a state-backed report has suggested that the government co-fund to pursue research even if it fails to improve their risk appetite to embrace new technologies and processes. The report on National Manufacturing Innovation Survey, released by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the UN Industrial Development Organisation, also suggested that the government launch an 'Innovate to Make in India' strategy and support pre-competitive, industry-focussed research and innovation. According to the report, 25.01 per cent of the 8,074 firms surveyed were considered innovative and had successfully implemented either new or significantly improved products or processes between 2017 and 2020, the period under review. The survey found that close to 80 per cent of innovators were able to improve the firm's turnover, open up new market opportunities, respond to market and cost pressures whereas only 53.59 per cent were able to respond to

Making the World a Better Place With Data Science and Artificial Intelligence - Rathnakumar Udayakumar

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ISRO expected to touch 424 foreign satellite launches on Saturday

ISRO on Saturday is likely to successfully launch two Singaporean satellites with its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), taking the total number of foreign satellites put into orbit to 424

This summer, NASA puts four humans on Mars with their feet on Earth

The experiment that simulates Mars habitat may put humans on track to be an interplanetary species