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How has Venkatraman Ramakrishnan made India proud?

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, an Indian by birth, is a British structural biologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath in 2009, for his research into the atomic structure and function of ribosomes. Ribosomes are tiny particles made up of RNA and proteins.

Ramakrishnan was born in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. Both his parents were scientists. He graduated from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda after getting the National Science Talent Scholarship. Then he moved to the U.S. Although Dr. Ramakrishnan started with a career in theoretical physics, he later moved towards molecular biology.

He did his postdoctoral research at Yale University and joined as biophysicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Afterwards he joined the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge in England. The next year, he published a series of ground- breaking scientific papers.

Dr. Ramakrishnan was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2004. He was elected a foreign member of the Indian National Science Academy in 2008. Our country then honoured him with the Padma Vibhushan in 2010, and he was knighted by the U.K government in 2012. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2003 and later became the society’s first Indian-born president.

He has a dual citizenship of the U.S.A and the United Kingdom.

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What made Arun Kumar Shukla a renowned scientist?

Arun Kumar Shukla is a famous structural biologist, who rose to fame with his study on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR). GPCR are proteins which are permanently attached to the cell membranes. These respond to sensory or other stimuli from outside the cells and also physiologically respond to hormones.

Shukla’s team of scientists at IIT, Kanpur designed nanomachines which target certain signalling events. Several marketed drugs work with the use of these techniques.

Dr. Arun Kumar Shukla was born on 01 November 1981 in Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. He did his PG degree in biotechnology from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Then he did his doctoral studies under the guidance of Hartmut Michel (Nobel Laureate,1988) of the Max Planck Institute of Bio- physics, Germany.

He started his career at the prestigious Duke University as an assistant professor at their department of medicine. He came back to India and joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK) at the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering (BSBE). He is a professor and heads the Laboratory of GPCR Biology.

Let us have a look at the many awards that Dr. Shukla received.

  • National Bioscience Award for Career Development, 2017-18.
  • 2021 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Biological Science.
  • B.M. Birla Science Prize (2017),
  • NASI-Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award of the National Academy of Sciences, India (2016),
  • CDRI Award (2018),
  • Shakuntala Amir Chand Prize of the Indian Council for Medical Research (2018)
  • EMBO Young Investigator Award (2017).

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Which Indian scientist is considered a pioneer in nanotechnology?

Professor Pulickel Ajayan who hails from Kerala can be called a wizard in the field of nanotechnology. He is armed with the darkest material and the smallest brush. He got into the Guinness Book of World Records twice for these.

The darkest material is out of the wizard book literally – a carpet that reflects only 0.045 per cent of light. It’s made of carbon nano-tubes.

Have you heard about the paper battery? This was also the creation of this Professor from Rice University, Houston. The paper battery grabbed the limelight in August 2007. This is basically an energy storage device on a piece of paper.

Pulickel Ajayan has 400 papers on carbon nanostructures. He is concerned about the environment and in 2012, came up with a hybrid material which could remove contaminants from water. He also developed a green battery made of lithium-ion cathode which is environment friendly.

He is currently working on how nanotechnology can be effectively used for energy storage devices.

Prof. Ajayan has won several awards and is on the advisory editorial board of several leading journals. He is also a board member of many nanotechnology companies. He is a visiting professor in many international universities too.

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What is Bokashi composting?

Bokashi composting provides an effective method of disposing kitchen waste. How is it done? Read on to find out.

Composting is the process of converting organic waste into fertilizer. Bokashi composting is one of the many techniques employed to achieve this.

Bokashi is Japanese for fermented organic matter. This fermenting process needs to be anaerobic, which means there should be no oxygen present during the fermentation.

Organic waste from the kitchen-leftover food, eggs, vegetable peels, even meat- is kept in an airtight container which has a tap at the bottom. A layer of waste is sprinkled with bokashi bran, a dry mixture containing beneficial microbes, and then covered with a plastic/steel plate. Another layer of waste is laid out over it, sprinkled and sealed. The same process is followed until the container is full.

Then the container’s lid is closed and it is set aside for a few days for the fermentation to take place. The liquid released during fermentation is drained through the tap at the base.

Once the week is up, the contents of the container can be emptied in the garden. But the mixture shouldn’t touch the roots of any plant yet. To become an effective fertilizer, the fermented matter needs to mix well with the soil for a couple of days..

Bokashi composting is popular because it takes up less space and provides an effective method of disposing kitchen waste. Also, during fermentation, the mulch in the container does not give out a bad odour.

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What is the ELIZA effect?

Eliza was one of the first computer programs that could convincingly prompt a response from humans, similar to what happens in a normal conversation

It is a tendency to ascribe human behaviour to non-human beings. For example, we have talking animal characters in fables who act, behave and talk like humans. This is called anthropomorphism. In computer science, a similar tendency is called the ELIZA effect.

The effect is named after ELIZA, a chatbot (computer program that conducts conversations) developed by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. Weizenbaum had intended to prove the shallow nature of interactions between man and machine. But that did not stop people, including Weizenbaum’s personal assistant from believing that ELIZA could think and feel like a human.

Following is an excerpt from a transcript of a conversation between ELIZA and a young woman:

ELIZA: I am sorry to hear you are depressed.

Woman: It’s true. I am unhappy.

ELIZA: Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

Woman: I need some help, that much seems certain.

ELIZA: What would it mean to you if you got some help?

Woman: Perhaps could learn to get along with my mother.

ELIZA: Tell me more about your family. The program primarily rephrased the human’s lines and repeated them in a seemingly intelligent manner, prompting an emotional response from the human, similar to what happens in a normal conversation.

While communicating with the machine, people tend to forget that it is simply following a computer program. For example, after you withdraw money from an ATM, the ATM displays the words ‘THANK YOU’ at the end of the session. A layman may think that the machine is actually expressing thanks when in reality it is only following a pre-programmed coded set of instructions without any emotions.

The ELIZA effect plays an important role in the development of artificial intelligence.

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What are the contributions of Dr. Amit Singh, in the field of microbiology?

Amit Singh is a famous Indian microbiologist. An associate professor at the department of microbiology and cell biology of the Indian Institute of Science, he studied how Mycobacterium causes tuberculosis and is well known for this.

Amit Singh was born on 18 March 1976. After graduating in science from the University of Delhi, he joined IIT, Roorkee for his Master’s degree in biotechnology. He received his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Delhi and went to the U.S for post-doctoral studies.

He came back to India in 2010 and joined the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology as a Wellcome Trust-DBT intermediate fellow. After four years, he joined the IISc, Bangalore where he is working now.

He is the head of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research. Research is done there on tuberculosis, AIDS and other chronic or long-lasting not infections.

He has received many prestigious awards. You can specially note these two:

  • National Bioscience Award for Career Development – 2017-18
  • CSIR- Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award-2021 (for bio-scientific research).

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What makes Prof. C.N.R Rao a notable figure in the Indian scientific field?

Prof. C.N.R. Rao is a world-famous Indian scientist specialising in solid state and structural chemistry.

He did research in superconductivity, and his latest research is on the wonder material graphene and artificial photosynthesis.

Prof. Rao was a single child. His father was an Inspector of Schools, but surprisingly, he did not go to elementary school. He was coached at home by his mother. His parents saw to it that he was fluent in both English and his mother-tongue, Kannada.

Rao’s passion for chemistry started during his high school years and he chose Chemistry for his higher studies, and went to the Banaras Hindu University for his Master’s. Later, he got scholarship offers to do Ph.D. from four foreign universities: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Penn State, Columbia and Purdue. He went to Purdue and completed his Ph.D in 2 years and nine months in 1958. He was only 24!

84 universities have given him honorary doctorates. He has 54 books and around 1,774 research publications.

He is the founder president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, and was the chairman of the science advisory council to the prime minister for many years. He is also Founding Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences.

Now, have a look at some of the awards and honours received by this great man:

  • Marlow Medal
  • Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology
  • Hughes Medal
  • India Science Award
  • Dan David Prize
  • Royal Medal
  • Von Hippel Award
  • ENI award
  • Padma Shri
  • Padma Vibhushan

On 16 November 2013, the Government of India selected him for Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India. Thus he became the third scientist after C.V. Raman and APJ. Abdul Kalam to receive the Bharat Ratna.

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The secret behind and ant’s gravity-defying grip!

We see them everywhere on the floor, up the ceiling, inside the sugar jar, outside the half-open pouch of a half-eaten snack… Ants are moving constantly, on different surfaces, and make it look so very easy. How do they do it? A biologist studying ants for three decades tells us how.

Ants have six feet, and each foot has five jointed segments. Each of these segments has spines and hairs, which provide the ants traction on rough surfaces such as barks. The last segment also has a pair of claws that help with a good grip on irregular surfaces. Together, both spines and claws act like our shoes – protect ants from hot and sharp objects. But the true magic of how ants conquer almost any surface lies between their claws.

Located between each pair of their claws is an inflatable sticky pad called arolium (plural arolia). When an ant climbs a wall or walks across a ceiling, gravity will pull it. But before that happens, its “leg muscles pump fluids into the pads at the end of its feet, causing them to inflate”. This sticky fluid-called hemolymph- is similar to our blood and circulates throughout its body. A little bit of this liquid oozes out of the arolium when an ant places its leg on the surface, allowing it to stick to the surface. And when it removes its leg from the surface, the leg muscles contract and absorb the liquid back in the body. So, the liquid is used over and over again. Since ants are light-weight, these six pads are adequate enough to give them their gravity-defying grips on any surface “In fact, at home in their underground chambers, ants use their sticky pads to sleep on the ceiling By sleeping on the ceiling, ants avoid the rush hour traffic of other ants on the chamber floors.’’

Did you know?

When we walk, our left and right feet alternate, meaning one foot is on the ground and the other in the air to help us move forward. Ants do the same thing too- when they move, three of their legs are on the surface and three in the air at a time.

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What are sunspots of the Sun?

Sunspots are regions on the sun that appear dark. They occur in regions where the magnetic field of sun is strong. The temperature of a sunspot is super hot-something around 6,500 degrees Fahrenheit

The Sun, the centre of our solar system and our closest star, is 4.5 billion years old. This fiery glowing orb of hydrogen and helium sustains life as we know it

Sunspots

Sunspots are regions on the sun appear dark. These parts appear darker as they are cooler when compared to other parts of the sun. They occur in regions where the sun’s magnetic field is highly concentrated or strong.

The centre of the sunspot is dark and this is called the umbra while the outer and lighter ring is called the penumbra. Spots vary in sizes. They could be larger than the Earth, or so tiny that it will be difficult to pick them up in telescopic observation. The sunspots could stay on for months. Most of the sunspots can be seen in pairs or groups but single spots also do occur. When they occur in pairs, they have opposite magnetic polarity.

Why are sunspots cooler

Sunspots form in areas on the sun where the magnetic field is very strong and powerful. These magnetic fields will prevent the heat within the Sun from reaching its surface. Even when we say that the sunspots are cooler, this is just in comparison to the other regions of the Sun. The temperature of a sunspot is super hot something around 6.500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Why do sunspots matter

In most cases, sunspots precede the occurrence of a solar flare. Solar flares are sudden bursts or explosions of energy from the sun’s surface. This occurs when the magnetic field lines near the sunspots reorganise or cross. These solar flares will release huge amounts of radiation into space. The more intense the solar flare, the more intense will be its radiation. This can affect radio communication on Earth. Studying and monitoring the sunspots are required to understand the reason behind the occurrence of solar flares.

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