Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology
Posted: 01 Dec 2016 10:53
Google doodle ... Jagdish Chandra Bose
Consortium of Indian Defence Websites
https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/
Mumbai/New Delhi: A scientific breakthrough in Mumbai can bring down the cost of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI machines by 100 times, claim scientists.
A team of scientists from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research has discovered that metal Bismuth can conduct electricity without any resistance, making it a superconductor.
The superconducting property, the scientists say, is a unique state of matter that has many applications and is very costly to achieve. The discovery is being touted to rewrite a four-decade old Nobel Prize winning theory that explains how metals become superconducting.
Prof S Ramakrishnan, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, says, “We have discovered superconductivity in Bismuth and to explain this, we need a new theory and a new mechanism. Once that comes out, we will probably have a new class of superconductors.”
After unsuccessful global efforts for decades, the team calls this finding a fundamental scientific breakthrough. In order to achieve this, the scientists placed metallic Bismuth in very cold temperature to make it lose all resistance to electricity.
Currently, the MRI machines use superconductors made of an alloy called Niobium-Titanium and a good machine costs Rs 10 crore.
The team says that the applications of the discovery could take long but it promises to lower the cost of high end diagnostic machines.
Dr Arumugam Thamizhavel, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, says, “Currently, there are no theories that can explain Bismuth’s superconductivity. This is a different type of superconductivity as compared to others. The theorists are working on it now and new theories may come out. Right now, MRI scans are possible only because of a superconducting magnet, so this discovery can find its application in some years.”
According to the scientists, the MRI machines use superconductors made of an alloy called Niobium-Titanium and if superconductors of Bismuth will be used, the cost of an MRI machine could come down by a 100 times.
The current cost of a good MRI machine is Rs 10 crore.
The discovery has been published in the current issue of ‘Science’ journal (Washington DC).
I agree. Not every scientific discovery needs to have an application to be 'important'. This is truly top-notch science that challenges the BCS theory, and I'm proud it came out of an Indian institute. The leader of the study, Prof. S. Ramakrishnan, is a true 'home-grown' talent with all degrees from India.Amber G. wrote:Short comment - No doubt that discovery of super conductivity in Bismuth is significant discovery. But I believe that it's relationship with bringing down the cost MRI machines is somewhat silly. I don't think the scientists in TIFR talked about this and it seems that reporter made just made some silly connection.
'Jugaad' shows the way to a path breaking research paper.What does a sensational scientific discovery about a solar storm in the Earth's magnetic field have to do with old, recycled steel pipes which lay buried for more than a decade under a now-defunct gold mine in India?
Around midnight on June 22, 2015, the GRAPES-3 cosmic ray telescope at Ooty – operated by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai – detected an unusual burst of cosmic rays. It lasted for about two hours, which had the team of high-energy cosmic ray scientists greatly surprised. The team comprised scientists from TIFR, J.C. Bose Institute, Kolkata, and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, and collaborating Japanese scientists. The excess during the burst period was about a million cosmic-ray charged particles called muons (of energy about 1 GeV), over and above the normal emission of about 300 million.
This finding also suggests that cosmic-ray flux data can serve as an accurate ‘early warning’ unto an impending geomagnetic storm. “We are not claiming that we can predict space weather events at this point of time,” Sunil Gupta of TIFR, the lead author of the paper, told The Wire. “The Ooty telescope is not geared for that. That would first require a lot of further research, calibration with observations over a long period, funds and people to operate the instrument in that mode. That was only a suggestion,” he added. At the same time, the GRAPES-3 scientists have also been able to observe over the years that the fluctuations in the rates of muons can serve as a proxy, with high sensitivity, even for normal variations in atmospheric parameters – such as, for example, temperature.
The origin of zero has been an enduring subject of debate because other cultures, including the Mayans, also claim to have used the zero.
“Finding the source of zero is a bit like finding the source of the Nile,” said Dinesh Singh, a mathematics professor at Delhi University and a member of the Indian Society for History of Mathematics. He is not associated with Project Zero. “Nobody has a clue about exactly when and how the zero came into play.”Scholars at Project Zero say the key may lie in early Hindu and Buddhist philosophical discourses about the concept of “emptiness” and “void,” which began many centuries before the mathematical zero came about.“Even though zero popped up in different places in different forms, Indians are credited to have given zero to the world. But zero did not appear all of a sudden,” said Annette van der Hoek, a Dutch scholar on Indian studies and coordinator of the Zero Project. “We find the cultural notion of zero-ness or emptiness in philosophy, arts and the architecture much earlier. We want to trace its steps as far back as we can and look for the bridges between philosophy and mathematics. What was the philosophical mind-set that provided a fertile ground for such an invention?”
At Camp Zero, mathematicians, philosophers, astrophysicists, archaeologists and numismatists will frame research questions for PhD scholars and examine manuscripts, coins, stone tablets and seals. The research, they hope, will produce books, inform school textbooks and offer opportunities for doctoral research.The doctrine of “sunyata,” or “void,” is one of the most profound contributions of philosophy from India, said Sundar Sarukkai, professor of philosophy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore.“Its possible connection to the mathematical zero is also of great interest, and hopefully this kind of work will draw more students into studying and researching these philosophical and mathematical traditions, which ironically has been neglected within India itself,” Sarukkai said.Buddhist philosophical texts in the 3rd century have elaborate verses about emptiness — “sunyata,” in Sanskrit.The ancient Mayans used an empty tortoise-like “shell shape” to depict zero, but Indian historians say that it did not seem to have influenced global numeral systems. Arab merchants encountered the zero in India and carried it to the West.What is widely found in textbooks in India is that a mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata, in the 5th century used zero as a placeholder and in algorithms for finding square roots and cube roots in his Sanskrit treatises.
In my opinion, GoI MUST unambiguously increase the budgetary support for scientific research.India’s 38 premier scientific laboratories are in a budgetary pinch. A jump in expenditures on salaries, pensions, and perks for government employees, recommended by an advisory commission, is leaving little money for new research in the budget of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), based in New Delhi, which oversees the labs and their 4600 scientists. The increase in personnel expenses comes on top of a 2015 call by the government for CSIR to raise 30% to 50% of its total budget itself by commercializing its technologies.
The stark reality is that “we will be left with no funds to support new research projects,” CSIR Director General Girish Sahni wrote in an email to CSIR lab directors obtained by Science.{Not very encouraging. Already a few CSIR grants are help up because of lack of funds}
The budget constraints are grim. Sahni wrote in his email that after covering the roughly 15% increase in salaries, unspecified boosts to pensions, plus capital expenditures and other previous commitments, out of CSIR’s total $683 million budget for the 2017 fiscal year only $31 million will be left to support new research at the 38 labs.{CSIR has limited funds to support new research. I am surprised how much of $683 million goes into capex and salaries/pensions??}
“It’s not that we are going into bankruptcy and closing down labs,” he told Science in an interview. But he adds, “There surely will be an impact on our ambitious programs.” Sahni says CSIR is now studying which new research programs will be affected.
He thinks the government needs to do more to support research, especially because countries like China and South Korea are pumping billions of dollars into science and technology.
“We have great ambitions and great capabilities also, but where is the moolah?” he asks. “If we don’t invest in science, we will lose the opportunity because other nations are whizzing past.”
CSIR hopes to make ends meet by selling research results. “We have identified about 200 technologies which we are putting on fast track for commercialization,” Sahni says. He adds that there are another 600 to 800 technologies that might be sellable. CSIR claims it is currently getting 15% of its budget from marketing its results. Sahni says they aim to raise that to 25% in the next 2 years and possibly to 50% by 2020.
All CSIR labs have been asked to draw up action plans. Sahni favors the trend, believing it will be healthy for the institutes and augment their autonomy. But he concedes that some CSIR scientists and lab heads are resisting the call to raise their own resources. And there are skeptics outside the system as well. “There is no ready market for CSIR technologies,” says Dinesh Abrol, a science policy expert at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development in New Delhi and a former CSIR scientist. “These are all pipe dreams and pipe dreams will not work.” {Seems like a lot of CSIR funded research is not really marketable}
Other institutions outside of CSIR are also being squeezed by the new salary recommendations. “We expect that we would receive proportionately larger allocation to cover these additional costs,” says Soumya Swaminathan, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research in New Delhi. “If not, we will be severely affected,” she says.
At the moment, there is no clear indication the government will increase its support for the research institutes, though Sahni says he remains optimistic.
Indian astrophysicists identify mega-structure of galaxies 4 billion light-years away - several scholars and faculty of Indian Universities involved
When astronomers look far away, they see the Universe from long ago, since light takes a while to reach us. The Saraswati supercluster is observed as it was when the Universe was 10 billion years old.
The long-popular “Cold dark matter” model of the evolution of the Universe predicts that small structures like galaxies form first, which congregate into larger structures. Most forms of this model do not predict the existence of large structures such as the “Saraswati Supercluster” within the current age of the Universe. The discovery of these extremely large structures thus force astronomers into re-thinking the popular theories of how the Universe got its current form, starting from a more-or-less uniform distribution of energy after the Big Bang. In recent years, the discovery of the present-day Universe being dominated by “Dark Energy”, which behaves very differently from Gravitation, might play a role in the formation of these structures.
Som every interesting numbers ( India spends more per researcher than Canada/UK but pretty poor output to show for that)Indian science is a study in contrasts. With its vast population and rapidly expanding economy, the country has ramped up scientific production at an impressive rate. India started the twenty-first century well behind Russia, France, Italy and Canada in terms of yearly publications and it now leads them all by healthy margins. It is quickly closing in on Japan.
Despite those gains, India is not yet a major player in world science. Its publications generate fewer citations on average than do those of other science-focused nations, including other emerging countries such as Brazil and China. Relative to its size, India has very few scientists; many Indian-born researchers leave for positions abroad and very few foreign scientists settle in India. The country invests a scant portion of its economy in research and development (R&D), and it produces relatively few patents per capita compared with other nations.
(Wonder if these institutes get recognition they deserve from Indian Press / Bloggers /Forums /)
.....The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India,..
Forty Indian scientists from 13 institutions, including two in Bengaluru, played a crucial role in the discovery of the strongest ever gravity wave signal reported by an international team of astronomers on Monday.
The detection was confirmed by nearly 70 telescopes around the world that studied various forms of radiation from the merger. Observations from three Indian telescopes were also used in the final analysis.
“One of the key contributions from the Indian scholars was to find out ways to find whether a particular signal is of environmental origin or emanating from an astronomical source,” Sanjit Mitra, one of the team members from Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune told DH.
Mitra was one of the 11 Indian scientists, who are the part of the discovery team comprising scientists from US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Europe’s Virgo detector.
The two Bengaluru institutes — Indian Institute of Astrophysics and International Centre for Theoretical Sciences — were part of the discovery.
In the last three decades, several Indian scholars richly contributed to the development of the underlying mathematics that led to the discovery of these extremely feeble waves from the other sides of the universe.
“The latest discovery would help us accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe from which its age can be calculated independently,” Mitra said. There are scientific debates on the Universe's age, which has been calculated as 13.82 billion years.
The Pune centre spearheads the Indian effort to set up another gravity wave observatory, which is to be operational by 2024.
“The observatory needs 350 acres of land. We hope that the land acquisition process would be over in another 6 months,” said Somak Raychaudhury, IUCAA director.
Bade wrote:
from here at IUCAA, which has a lot more details and names of individuals involved from the Indian side.
http://www.gw.iucaa.in/news/gw170817/
Link: S. Chandrasekhar’s 107th Birthday“Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.” Thanks to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, we know! Today marks the 107th birthday of the first astrophysicist to win a Nobel Prize for his theory on the evolution of stars.
A child prodigy, Chandra published his first paper and developed his theory of star evolution before turning 20. By age 34, he was elected to the Royal Society of London, and soon after, became a distinguished service professor of physics.
The Indian-American physicist’s honors are astronomical, including the National Medal of Science, the Draper Medal of the US National Academy of Science, and the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Though originally met with skepticism in the 1930s, Chandra’s theories and equations won the Nobel Prize in Physics 50 years later.
Today’s Doodle illustrates one of the most important of all of S. Chandrasekhar's contributions to our understanding of stars and their evolution: The Chandrasekhar limit. The limit explains that when a star’s mass is lighter than 1.4 times that of the sun, it eventually collapses into a denser stage called a “white dwarf.” When heavier than 1.4, a white dwarf can continue to collapse and condense, evolving into a black hole or a supernova explosion.
Today we honor the original starman whose universal theories propel current space research and modern astronomy on their ambitious missions.
Happy birthday, Chandra!
srinebula wrote:Swarajya carried on article on Chandrasekhar's birth anniversary:
https://swarajyamag.com/science/chandra ... gle-doodle
No awards were given out in the mathematical sciences category this year. /
Hmm. Why so? A little disappointing frankly speaking. I am sure they could have found several from either applied or pure math or even theoretical comp. sci.Amber G. wrote:^^^ From above.No awards were given out in the mathematical sciences category this year. /
Ah, there is still hope. Thanks Supratik. Nice article.Supratik wrote:Economic survey on Indian R&D.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ne ... 891266.cms
Amber G. wrote:Prof Abhay Ashtekar - Inspiration to many.
Good Scientists Solve Problems, but Great Scientists Know What’s Worth Solving’
.Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are