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GS Paper: GS3-17.Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-technology, Bio-technology and issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights.

  • Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)

     

    Researchers from a Canadian space observatory have been recording the periodic radio waves hitting Earth from a neighbouring galaxy from past few years. These radio waves are called Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).

    Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)

    • FRBs are super intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves produced by unidentified sources in the space.
    • Their discovery in 2007 by American astronomer Duncan Lorimer led to the term ‘Lorimer Bursts’.
    • Since then, just a few dozen similar events have been observed in data collected by radio telescopes around the world, building evidence that points to a variety of potential causes.
    • Only a handful of emissions have been traced to specific areas of the sky, indicating sources in other galaxies.
    • The flash of radio waves is incredibly bright if distant, comparable to the power released by hundreds of millions of suns in just a few milliseconds.
    • This intensity suggests powerful objects like black holes and neutron stars could be involved.
    • The events were once considered to be largely transient – they seemed to happen once, without obvious signs of a repeat emission. However, a number of such bursts have been identified since then.

    Why are they significant?

    • First noticed in 2018 by the Canadian observatory the waves have created ripples across the globe for one reason — they arrive in a pattern.
    • This gave birth to theories that they could be from an alien civilization.
    • Initially, it was believed that the collision of black holes or neutron stars triggers them.
    • But the discovery of repeating FRBs debunked the theory of colliding objects.

  • What is Hantavirus?

    China has reported the death of a person from Yunnan Province who tested positive for the Hantavirus.

    What is Hantavirus?

    • The Hantaviruses are a family of viruses spread mainly by rodents. It is contracted by humans from infected rodents.
    • Cases of the Hantavirus in humans occur mostly in rural areas where forests, fields and farms offer suitable habitat for infected rodents.
    • A person can get infected if he/she comes in contact with a rodent that carries the virus.
    • In the US and Canada, for instance, the Hantavirus carried by the deer mouse is responsible for the majority cases of the Hantavirus infection.
    • Like this, there are various other kinds of Hantaviruses that find hosts in rodents, like the white-footed mouse and the cotton rat among others that may lead to infections in humans if transmitted.

    Its origin

    • The Hantavirus is not novel and its first case dates back to 1993, according to the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC).
    • In the Americas, the family of viruses is known as ‘New World hantaviruses’.

    Symptoms

    • A person infected with the virus may show symptoms within the first to eighth week after they have been exposed to fresh urine, faeces or the saliva of infected rodents.
    • Symptoms may include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, headaches, chills and abdominal problems.
    • Four to ten after being infected, late symptoms of HPS may start to appear, which include coughing and shortness of breath.

    Mortality risk

    • It is the cause of Hantavirus pulmonary disease (HPS), a severe respiratory disease. The HPS can be fatal and has a mortality rate of 38 per cent.
    • It remains unclear whether human-to-human transmission of the virus is possible.
    • There have been no reports of human-to-human transmission of Hantavirus in the US.

  • [pib] National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

    The Union Ministry of Science & Technology has informed about the progress of the National Supercomputing Mission.

    National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

    • NSM is a proposed plan by GoI to create a cluster of seventy supercomputers connecting various academic and research institutions across India.
    • In April 2015 the government approved the NSM with a total outlay of Rs.4500 crore for a period of 7 years.
    • The mission was set up to provide the country with supercomputing infrastructure to meet the increasing computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups by creating the capability design, manufacturing, of supercomputers indigenously in India.
    • Currently there are four supercomputers from India in Top 500 list of supercomputers in the world.

    Aims and objectives

    • The target of the mission was set to establish a network of supercomputers ranging from a few Tera Flops (TF) to Hundreds of Tera Flops (TF) and three systems with greater than or equal to 3 Peta Flops (PF) in academic and research institutions of National importance across the country by 2022.
    • This network of Supercomputers envisaging a total of 15-20 PF was approved in 2015 and was later revised to a total of 45 PF (45000 TFs), a jump of 6 times more compute power within the same cost and capable of solving large and complex computational problems.

    IWhat is a Supercomputer?

    • A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer.
    • The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
    • Since 2017, there are supercomputers which can perform over a hundred quadrillion FLOPS (petaFLOPS).
    • Since November 2017, all of the world’s fastest 500 supercomputers run Linux-based operating systems.

    Why do we need supercomputers?

    • Developed and almost-developed countries have begun ensuring high investments in supercomputers to boost their economies and tackle new social problems.
    • These high-performance computers can simulate the real world, by processing massive amounts of data, making cars and planes safer, and more fuel-efficient and environment-friendly.
    • They also aid in the extraction of new sources of oil and gas, development of alternative energy sources, and advancement in medical sciences.
    • Supercomputers have also helped weather forecasters to accurately predict severe storms, enable better mitigation planning and warning systems.
    • They are also used by financial services, manufacturing and internet companies and infrastructure systems like water-supply networks, energy grids, and transportation.
    • Future applications of artificial intelligence (AI) also depend on supercomputing.
    • Due to the potential of this technology, countries like the US, China, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia have created national-level supercomputing strategies and are investing substantially in these programmes.

    When did India initiate its efforts to build supercomputers?

    • India’s supercomputer programme initiated in the late 1980s, when the United States ceased the export of a Cray Supercomputer due to technology embargos.
    • This resulted in India setting up C-DAC in 1988, which in 1991, unveiled the prototype of PARAM 800, benchmarked at 5 Gflops. This supercomputer was the second-fastest in the world at that time.
    • Since June 2018, the USA’s Summit is the fastest supercomputer in the world, taking away this position from China.
    • As of January 2018, Pratyush and Mihir are the fastest supercomputers in India with a maximum speed of Peta Flops.

    What are the phases of the National Supercomputing Mission?

    Phase I:

    • In the first phase of the NSM, parts of the supercomputers are imported and assembled in India.
    • A total of 6 supercomputers are to be installed in this phase.
    • The first supercomputer that was assembled indigenously is called Param Shivay. It was installed in IIT (BHU) located in Varanasi.
    • Similar systems, Param Shakti (IIT Kharagpur) and Param Brahma (IISER, Pune) were also later installed within the country.
    • The rest will be installed at IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad and Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Studies (JNIAS).

    Phase II:

    • The supercomputers that are installed so far are about 60% indigenous.
    • The 11 systems that are going to be installed in the next phase will have processors designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and will have a cumulative capacity of 10 petaflops.
    • These new systems are to be constructed more cost-effectively than the previous ones.
    • One of the 11 proposed supercomputers will be installed
    • at C-DAC exclusively for small and medium enterprises so that they can train employees as well as work on supercomputers at a very low cost.

    Phase III:

    • The third phase aims to build fully indigenous supercomputers.
    • The government had also approved a project to develop a cryogenic cooling system that rapidly dispels the heat generated by a computing chip. This will be jointly built together by IIT-Bombay and C-DAC.

    What are the advantages of the National Supercomputing Mission?

    • The National Supercomputing Mission can ensure accessibility to supercomputers at an affordable rate to the scientific community and medium and small enterprises.
    • It can exponentially enhance the quality and quantity of R&D and higher education in the areas of science and technology.
    • It can solve the current and future challenges that are plaguing the country.
    • Currently, the world’s top supercomputers are mostly under the control of advanced nations like the US, Japan, China and the European Union. This Mission has the potential to bring India into this select league of such nations.
    • These supercomputers can be used in the areas of climate modelling, weather predictions, computational biology, atomic energy simulations, defence, disaster simulation, astrophysics etc.
    • These computers have played a crucial role in scientific and technological advancements in numerous fields.
    • Unlike other computers, these high-performance machines can crunch the most complex of data at a speed, which is millions of times faster than a desktop PC.
    • This mission, aiming to provide supercomputing facilities to about 60-70 institutions across the nation and thousands of active researchers, academicians, is moving fast towards creating a computer infrastructure within the country.
    • This mission can also enhance the country’s capacity to develop the next generation of supercomputer experts.

    How do other countries make use of supercomputers?

    China:

    • Jiangsu Province has a supercomputer called “Sunway TaihuLight”.
    • This supercomputer performs a wide range of tasks, including climate science, weather forecasting and earth-system modelling to help ships avoid rough seas, improve farmers’ yields and ensure the safety of offshore drilling.
    • TaihuLight has already led to an increase in profits and a reduction in expenses that justify its cost ($270 million).

    United States:

    • In the US, supercomputers are radically transforming the healthcare system.
    • The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has used supercomputers to create a far more detailed model of the Hepatitis-C virus, a major cause of the liver disease that costs $9 billion in healthcare costs in the US alone.
    • Using supercomputers, the researchers have now developed a model that comprehensively simulates heart down to the cellular level and can lead to a substantial reduction in heart diseases.

    These are some of the very few cases of how supercomputers have enhanced breakthroughs in various fields.

    How do supercomputers help fight coronavirus?

    • Earlier, the US had established COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium that will bring together industry, academic institutions, and federal laboratories to try to identify or create candidate compounds that might prevent or treat coronavirus infection.
    • One of the members of the consortium, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, aimed to look into compounds that are already available in the market that might combat COVID-19.
    • For this purpose, the world’s fastest supercomputer “Summit” was used.
    • Like other viruses, the novel coronavirus uses a spike protein to inject cells.
    • Using Summit with an algorithm to investigate which drugs could bind to the protein and prevent the virus from doing its duty, the researchers have a list of 77 drugs that show promise.
    • Starting with 8,000 compounds, Summit has shortened the time of the experiment exponentially, ruling out the vast majority of possible medications before settling on 77 drugs, which are ranked based on how effective they are likely to be at halting the virus in the human body.

    Way forward

    • It is evident that supercomputers would become a vital part of our lives as it can provide solutions to the current and future problems and India, one of the most populous nations in the world, must ensure that it also has access to this technology for the welfare of its people.
    • Supercomputers, as they operate at such incredible speeds, will encounter numerous barriers like network and interconnectivity hardware that previous generations of designers did not have to deal with.
    • The cooling system is also one of the major design constraints.
    • Hence, India must give a high emphasis on innovation to tackle these challenges.
    • India must also give high emphasis to the application rather than the technology itself.
    • Supercomputing research also requires fundamental research of the next stages of computing like quantum computing that are still in the theoretical stage.
    • Bureaucratic red-tapism must be circumvented and scientists and researchers must be allowed to take bold and radical steps without fear of reprisal.
    • The government must also invest in necessary physical and digital infrastructure.
    • It must also address the challenges of:
    • Limited funding and delayed release of funds
    • The increasing need for imports for necessary hardware components to build supercomputers

    Conclusion:

    • Supercomputers are strategically important for India as it can help the country to become a knowledge-driven economy.
    • This technology also can support cutting edge research that can benefit the economy, society, businesses, environment, etc.
    • Thus, enhancing investments, improving flexibility for research and providing other necessary infrastructures must be ensured for it to grow.
    • Without this technology, India risks being surpassed on the global stage by other nations and will consequently miss the huge benefits that come from having this strategically important technology at the disposal of the country’s best and brightest minds

     

     

  • Picking up the quantum technology baton

    Context

    With the Budget announcement providing direction for the development in quantum technology, the stakeholders need to roll-out the national mission quickly.

    Pushing India into second quantum revolution

    • Budgetary allocation for NM-QTA: In the Budget 2020 speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made a welcome announcement for Indian science — over the next five years she proposed spending ₹8,000 crores (~ $1.2 billion) on a National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications.
    • This promises to catapult India into the midst of the second quantum revolution, a major scientific effort that is being pursued by the United States, Europe, China and others.

    Timeline of the development of Quantum Mechanics

    • Science to describe nature on atomic-scale: Quantum mechanics was developed in the early 20th century to describe nature in the small — at the scale of atoms and elementary particles.
    • Foundation for understanding: For over a century it has provided the foundations of our understanding of the physical world, including the interaction of light and matter.
      • It also led to ubiquitous inventions such as lasers and semiconductor transistors.
      • Despite a century of research, the quantum world still remains mysterious and far removed from our experiences based on everyday life.
    • Second revolution: A second revolution is currently underway with the goal of putting our growing understanding of these mysteries to use by actually controlling nature and harnessing the benefits of the weird and wondrous properties of quantum mechanics.
    • Challenge of experimental realisation: One of the most striking of these is the tremendous computing power of quantum computers, whose actual experimental realisation is one of the great challenges of our times.
    • Quantum supremacy: The announcement by Google, in October 2019, where they claimed to have demonstrated the so-called “quantum supremacy”, is one of the first steps towards this goal.

    Applications and challenges

    • Applications: Besides computing, exploring the quantum world promises other dramatic applications including the creation of novel materials, enhanced metrology, secure communication, to name just a few.
      • Some of these are already around the corner.
      • Application in communication: China recently demonstrated secure quantum communication links between terrestrial stations and satellites.
      • Applications in cryptography: Computer scientists are working towards deploying schemes for post-quantum cryptography — clever schemes by which existing computers can keep communication secure even against quantum computers of the future.
      • Exploring fundamental questions: Beyond these applications, some of the deepest foundational questions in physics and computer science are being driven by quantum information science. This includes subjects such as quantum gravity and black holes.
    • The need for collaboration: Pursuing these challenges will require unprecedented collaboration between physicists (both experimentalists and theorists), computer scientists, material scientists and engineers.
    • Challenges on the experimental front: On the experimental front, the challenge lies in harnessing the weird and wonderful properties of quantum superposition and entanglement in a highly controlled manner by building a system composed of carefully designed building blocks called quantum bits or qubits.
      • These qubits tend to be very fragile and lose their “quantumness” if not controlled properly, and a careful choice of materials, design and engineering is required to get them to work.
    • Challenges on the theoretical front: On the theoretical front lies the challenge of creating the algorithms and applications for quantum computers.
      • These projects will also place new demands on classical control hardware as well as software platforms.

    Where India stands

    • India late in starting work on technology: Globally, research in this area is about two decades old, but in India, serious experimental work has been underway for only about five years, and in a handful of locations.
    • What are the constraints on Indian progress in this field? So far we have been plagued by a lack of sufficient resources, high-quality manpower, timeliness and flexibility.
      • Resource and quality manpower problem: The new announcement in the Budget would greatly help fix the resource problem but high-quality manpower is in global demand.
      • In a fast-moving field like this, timeliness is everything — delayed funding by even one year is an enormous hit.
    • A previous programme called Quantum Enabled Science and Technology has just been fully rolled out, more than two years after the call for proposals.
    • Laudable announcement: One has to laud the government’s announcement of this new mission on a massive scale and on a par with similar programmes announced recently by the United States and Europe.

    Limits and way forward

    • But there are some limits that come from how the government must do business with public funds.
    • Role of the private sector: Here, private funding, both via industry and philanthropy, can play an outsized role even with much smaller amounts.
    • For example, unrestricted funds that can be used to attract and retain high-quality manpower and to build international networks — all at short notice — can and will make an enormous difference to the success of this enterprise.
    • Private participation is the effective way: This is the most effective way (as China and Singapore discovered) to catch up scientifically with the international community, while quickly creating a vibrant intellectual environment to help attract top researchers.
    • Connection with industry: Further, connections with the Indian industry from the start would also help quantum technologies become commercialised successfully, allowing the Indian industry to benefit from the quantum revolution.
    • We must encourage industrial houses and strategic philanthropists to take an interest and reach out to Indian institutions with an existing presence in this emerging field.
    • For example, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), home to India’s first superconducting quantum computing lab, would be delighted to engage.

  • Stages in a COVID-19 Pandemic

    Over the past few weeks, India has been dreading the possibility that the novel coronavirus outbreak will move to the stage of community transmission.

    What are the stages of a pandemic?

    Stage I

    • In the first stage of a disease epidemic that eventually takes the form of a pandemic sweeping the globe, cases are imported into a country in which the infection did not originate.
    • An infection whose spread is contained within the boundaries of one or a few countries is obviously not a pandemic.

    Stage II

    • The second stage is when the virus starts being transmitted locally.
    • Local transmission means that the source of the infection is from within a particular area and the trajectory the virus has taken from one person to the next is clearly established.

    Stage III

    • The third stage is that of community transmission. It is usually localised.
    • According to the WHO community transmission is evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through sentinel samples.
    • In layman terms, it means that the virus is now circulating in the community, and can infect people with no history either of travel to affected areas or of contact with an infected person.
    • If and when community transmission happens, there might arise the need for a full lockdown because in that situation it is theoretically possible for every person, regardless of where they are from and who they have been in contact with, to spread the disease.

    Stage IV

    • There is also a fourth stage in every pandemic. It is when the disease, COVID-19 in this case, becomes endemic in some countries.
    • The Indian government’s containment plan takes this possibility into account.
    • Among diseases that are currently endemic in India — meaning they occur round the year across the country — are malaria and dengue.

    How does categorising an outbreak in this manner help?

    • The stages of a pandemic are uniform the world over.
    • This is so because, in today’s interconnected world, it is important to have a standardised phraseology that conveys the same thing to every person around the world, and helps countries prepare better.
    • The categorization helps countries take specific actions that are necessary to target just that particular scenario.
    • For example, India imposed travel restrictions to China from very early on as the cases they were all imported from China.
    • Later, as cases started being imported from other European countries, flight and visa restrictions were put in place for those countries.
    • India has now shut itself to individuals coming from all countries — this is because the virus is now confirmed as circulating in at least 177 countries and territories.

    Worldwide, in which stage is the COVID-19 pandemic now?

    • The pandemic has spread to nearly every country on the planet. In most, though, it is in the stage of either imported cases or local transmission.
    • Among the countries where community transmission seems to be operating are China, Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan.
    • China adopted a graded approach in dealing with the infection but the epicentre, Hubei, was in a state of complete lockdown at the peak of the infection.
    • It something that Italy has now effected in a bid to stop the virus from wreaking more havoc, given the country’s ageing population.

    How long before India enters community transmission?

    • It is totally unpredictable. Some doctors perceive that community transmission is inevitable; other experts feel it may have already happened.
    • There are some reports of one strain having less mortality. If indeed a milder strain has come to India, it could change the course of the epidemic.
    • There is another theory that all the various viruses circulating in South Asia and the generally lower levels of hygiene may give us some immunity.

  • Can Vitamin C prevent or cure novel Coronavirus infection?

  • [pib] How lipids play critical roles in infectious diseases

    A researcher from IIT Bombay is using biologically active lipid molecules as chemical biology tools to elucidate their biological disease-causing function.

    About the research

    • The research is focused to explore how lipids play critical roles in infectious diseases by intervening in cellular signaling, membrane trafficking, and protein function all of which are intimately involved in host-pathogen interplay.
    • The research works with lipids from Mycobacteria tuberculosis (Mtb), which synthesizes atypical lipids predisposed on its surface to interact with the human host membrane.
    • Using Mtb lipids as tools, the research elucidates a direct correlation between human host lipid membrane modification and modulation of associated signaling pathways by these exogenous Mtb lipids.

    What are Lipids?

    • A lipid is a biomolecule that is soluble in nonpolar solvents.
    • Non-polar solvents are typically hydrocarbons used to dissolve other naturally occurring hydrocarbon lipid molecules that do not (or do not easily) dissolve in water, including fatty acids, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins (such as vitamins A, D, E, and K), monoglycerides, diglycerides, triglycerides, and phospholipids.
    • The functions of lipids include storing energy, signaling, and acting as structural components of cell membranes.
    • Lipids have applications in the cosmetic and food industries as well as in nanotechnology.

    Role of Lipids

    • Lipids are important components of living cells and are responsible for maintaining the integrity of our cell membrane, which allows nutrients and drugs to pass through the cell.
    • These are commonly breached during infection and in diseases.
    • Lipids play a major role in altering cell membrane properties modulating lipid and protein diffusion and membrane organization.
    • Thus, changes in membrane properties control the proper functioning of cells and are harnessed by pathogens for their survival and infection.
    • Lipids critically dictate the molecular interactions of drugs with membranes influencing drug diffusion, partitioning, and accumulation, thereby underpinning lipid-composition specificity.

  • Time for a powerful display of humanity

    Context

    India is unprepared for dealing with the outbreak of coronavirus.

    Is India really faring better than the other countries?

    • 45 days for first 100,000: Globally, it took roughly 45 days for the first 100,000 cases. It is likely to take nine days for the next 100,000.
    • Death count: The global death count is now doubling every nine days and stands at 8,248, with 207,518 confirmed cases.
    • That is how epidemics work — they gather steam as infected individuals go on to infect even more people. Confirmed cases in India, as of today stand at 169.
      • It is much lower than in small countries such as Iceland (around 250). Could this really be the case that we have fared better than everyone else?
    • Probably India is not performing better: Testing in India remains abysmally low. Only about 10 in a million people in India have been tested, compared to say nearly 120 in a million in Thailand or 40 per million in Vietnam.
    • Why testing in not being done in India? The stated explanation is that the limited number of test kits are being conserved for when they are truly needed but when is the need greater than right now?
      • There are probably shortages even in being able to procure adequate supplies given that many countries are seeking to buy the limited stocks.
    • Importance of testing: Testing is the most important thing we could be doing right now.
      • As the Director-General of the World Health Organization, said recently about the need for more testing, “You cannot fight a fire blindfolded.”

    Avoiding undercounting

    • Timely identification is essential to prevent secondary infection: We need to identify coronavirus-infected patients in a timely manner in order to increase our chances of preventing secondary infections.
      • There is no shame in saying that we have far more cases than what we have detected so far.
    • K.’s admitted undercounting: Even the United Kingdom, which has a far better health system than India, has admitted that it is probably undercounting its true infections by a factor of 12, and is likely have about 10,000 cases.
      • Is it possible that India with 20 times their population has only 169 cases?
    • Preparedness to deal with a higher number of cases: If widespread testing were to commence in India, the number of confirmed cases would likely climb to the thousands very quickly. This is something we have to be prepared for without panic or fear-mongering.
    • Positive action: This is how epidemics move and the real numbers should spur us into positive action.
    • Strict measures by the government: At some stage, it is possible that the government may have to put in place very strict measures on quarantining and closures, much like what China had to do to control the epidemic in Wuhan.

    How prepared is India?

    • There is not an easy answer to how worst things could go.
    • Mutation or sensitivity of virus: If we escape the worst, either because this virus mutates to a less virulent form or because there is something about its temperature or geographical sensitivity that we know nothing about, then we should count our blessings.
      • Viruses do mutate and generally to be less lethal.
    • Projection from Europe: If the projections from Europe are applicable in India, our ‘namastes’ and clean hands notwithstanding, the prevalence in India would be upwards of 20%.
    • In other words, we should expect to see about 200-300 million cases of COVID-19 infections and about four and eight million severe cases of the kind that are flooding hospitals in Italy and Spain at the moment.
    • More importantly, these cases are projected to appear in just a two to the four-month window.
      • In the current scenario, we are not ready.
    • India has somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 intensive care unit beds and probably a smaller number of ventilators.
      • That is simply inadequate.
    • What should be done? The next two weeks should be spent on planning for large, temporary hospitals that can accommodate such numbers. If we are lucky, we will not need them.

    Unprepared for pandemics

    • Catastrophic event with highest probability-Pandemic: This all sounds doomsday-like. But we have known for decades now that of all catastrophic events to befall humanity, between an asteroid hit and a nuclear war, a disease pandemic has always been the highest on our list of impact and probability.
    • Not enough changes in preparedness: There were some changes after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) but not nearly enough.
      • Pandemic preparedness always took a backseat to the crisis of the moment.
      • And in fairness, there is truly no amount of preparation that can fully mitigate such an occurrence.

    Conclusion

    Things are about to get a lot worse. Let us hope that this brings out the best in us, and not the worst. Whether we know this or not, these events are just a dress rehearsal for the more challenging events such as climate change that are likely to be with us this century. And if we take care of each other, we will survive both these challenges with our humanity intact.

     

  • [pib] Friction-reducing Nanocomposite Coatings

    A group of scientists at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New Materials (ARCI) have developed a process for size-selective deposition of nanocomposite coatings which can reduce friction of these dynamic systems.

    What are Nanocomposites?

    • Nanocomposite coatings are formed by mixing two or more dissimilar materials at nanoscale to improve the physical, chemical and physicochemical properties of the new materials.
    • The scientists have found that nickel tungsten-based coatings with infusion of particular sized Silicon Carbide (SiC) submicron particles using a pulsed electroplating can provide an excellent combination of wear and corrosion resistance.

    Applications

    • Many aerospace, defence, automobile, space devices need to reduce friction, wear, and tear to enhance the life of components.
    • Lubricating these dynamic systems add to the cost, complexity, and weight of these systems.
    • The coating could help in reducing the friction of such devices.

  • [pib] Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) Advisories

    The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad has reported that Oceansat Satellite data from ISRO are used to prepare the PFZ advisories on the potential rich fishing areas and provide to the sea faring fishermen in all states.

    Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ)

    • This is the first advisory service started by INCOIS. The backbone of this service is the real-time data for ocean color and SST provided by the OCEANSAT and NOAA respectively.
    • This service was started because there was a need to identify the potential fishing zones to help the fishermen to get better catch while they were at the sea.
    • This service was started by the Ministry of Earth Sciences with the help of the Department of Space and several institutions under the Ministry of Agriculture.

    How it works?

    • This service makes use of parameters such as sea surface temperature and chlorophyll content provided by NOAA-AVHRR and Oceancolor satellites.
    • Features such as oceanic fronts, Meandering Patterns, Eddies, Rings, Up Welling areas etc. are identified sites for fish accumulation.
    • These features can easily be identified from Sea Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll data.
    • The availability of Chlorophyll from OCEANSAT and MOdDIS has further enriched these advisories in the recent years.
    • Hence, PFZ advisories have helped the fishing community to locate the fishing zones with accuracy.

    Special advisories for fisherman

    • Another feature of PFZ service is the generation of species-specific advisory to enable the fishermen folk to distinguish between the exploited and under-exploited species in the potential fishing zones.
    • This enables them to have sustainable fishery management by targeting only the under-exploited species in the fishing zones.
    • This approach enables them to avoid fishing the over-exploited species over and over again.