NCL – DME fired “Aditi Urja Sanch” unit launched:
- The Union Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Dr. Harsh Vardhan inaugurated the DME fired “Aditi Urja Sanch” unit along with the DME-LPG blended fuel cylinders and handed them over for common public and CSIR-NCL (National Chemical Laboratory) canteen use on a trial basis.
- Dimethyl ether (DME) is an ultra-clean fuel.
- CSIR-NCL has developed nation’s first kind of DME pilot plant with 20-24Kg/day capacity. The conventional LPG burner is not suitable for DME combustion as DME density is different than LPG.
- To address this issue, CSIR- NCL’s “ADITI URJA SANCH” has come up with a helpful, innovative setup. The new Burner is fully designed and fabricated by NCL for DME, DME -LPG blended mixtures and LPG combustion.
- Its efficiency trials and comparison with conventional burners have been done. Trial runs have demonstrated an improvement by 10-15 %, compared to conventional burners using LPG alone.
- The research group carried out research and found catalysts with higher yield, and stability for the ether formation and less tendency to produce carbon soot by-product.
- A clean cooking fuel combination of DME-LPG also safeguards the well-being of women and children.
- The DME process technology is economical, cost-effective, and scalable with in-situ product purification as well as a heat integration unit that produces pure DME.
- This technology developed by CSIR-NCL at present has the capacity of 20-24 kg/ day DME production. It is to be scaled up to 0.5 Ton per day through the CSIR-FTC project.
- The newly designed stove can burn with up to 30 % DME blended with LPG or 100% DME as fuel.
- CSIR-NCL plans under “Aditi UrjaSanch” to launch in future industrial burners for low emission, DME/ DME blended fuel for automobiles and stationery power.
New handy oral cancer screening tool:
- A handheld imaging device will soon make screening, detection, and biopsy guidance of oral cancer, a growing concern in India, easier, quicker, and simpler.
- The handheld oral cancer screening device called OralScan, developed by a startup Sascan Meditech incubated at TiMED, the Technology Business Incubator of Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology, Thiruvananthapuram an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India has been launched by Smt. K.K Shailaja, Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Govt of Kerala.
- Oral Scan is a Make- in- India initiative with seed funding from the scheme National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations (NIDHI) of DST.
- Oral scan was designed and developed entirely in India and supported by the Biotechnology ignition grant of Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), INVENT (DST), and Kerala Start-Up Mission.
- Oral cancer is a growing concern in India, with more than 80,000 fresh cases reported each year. The disease has a high mortality rate because of the delay in detection. Current practice relies on oral examinations using torchlight to detect early-stage cancers of the oral cavity.
- Studies have demonstrated that this screening technique is not very reliable and often facilitates the detection of oral potentially malignant lesions (OPMLs) that go undetected in the early stages.
- Even experienced clinicians find it difficult to locate the optimal site for a biopsy based on conventional oral examination.
NBRC develops ‘ANSH’ Multimodal database for Alzheimer’s disease:
- Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder affecting millions of people worldwide.
- The etiology of AD is not known, and intense research involving multimodal neuroimaging data (e.g., MRI, functional MRI, PET etc.) is extensively used to identify the causal molecular process for AD.
- The existing imaging-based databases in AD lack the integration of MRS modality and, thus, limits the availability of neurochemical information to the AD research community.
- This perspective is an initiative to bring attention to the development of the neuroimaging database, “ANSH,” that includes brain glutathione (GSH), gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels, and other neurochemicals along with MRI-based information for AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and healthy subjects.
- The ANSH database aims to present a single neuroimaging data platform incorporating diverse data types from healthy control and patient groups to provide better insights pertaining to disease progression.
- This data management platform provides flexible data sharing across users with continuous project monitoring.
Astronomers uncover mystery behind decline of star formation rate:
- The decline in the star formation activity, which peaked 8-10 billion years ago, was due to exhaustion of atomic hydrogen, the primary element in creation of a celestial body, researchers have found.
- A team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR), Pune, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bangalore, an institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), have uncovered the mystery behind the decline in star formation activity by measuring the atomic hydrogen of the galaxies.
- For long, scientists have been intrigued by the decrease in the rate at which stars were formed in galaxies after it peaked about 8-10 billion years ago.
- Galaxies are made up mostly of gas and stars. Gas converts to stars with time. Understanding this conversion requires measurement of the atomic hydrogen gas, the primary fuel for star formation in galaxies in early times.
- Astronomers have long known that galaxies formed stars at a higher rate when the universe was young than they do today. But the cause of this decline is unknown, mostly because there was no information about the amount of atomic hydrogen gas at that time.
- The team used the upgraded Giant Metre wave Radio Telescope (GMRT), operated by NCRA-TIFR, to measure the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies seen as they were 8 billion years ago.
