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“There is no such thing as ‘away’. When we throw something, it must go somewhere”, said Annie Leonard, a famous critic of consumerism. But what happens around “somewhere” when we throw out our wastes? A recent study by a team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, has analyzed the composition of the water that passes through landfills and has dissolved and suspended matter from it, called leachate, from the infamous Mavallipura landfill and has examined its effects on the nearby lakes and wells. Prof. T. V. Ramachandra from the Centre for infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP) and his team have also highlighted the resulting ill effects and suggested some steps to minimize the same.

Vigyan Prasar is preparing to start a new series on sustainable development, to be aired on the radio and supported by All India Radio (AIR) and Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST). Various researchers, conservationists and AIR broadcasters from various states met on November 3rd, 2016, in Bangalore for a two-day workshop to discuss the format and the content of the programme. Several luminaries attended the inauguration of the workshop including Dr. R. Gopichandran, Director of Vigyan Prasar, Dr. B. K Tyagi, Scientist-E at Vigyan Prasar, Mrs. B.V. Padma, Station Director of AIR, Bengaluru, Prof. H N Chanakya, the chief research scientist at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, IISc and Prof. S. Subramanian, Secretary of KSCST.

Researchers have, for the first time, reported in detail a little known source of water among great apes and Old World monkeys – a family of primates that inhabit the forests of Asia and Africa. The team, led by Prof Anindya Sinha of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, observed eight species of great apes and Old World monkeys (belonging to the Cercopithecidae family), drinking water accumulated in tree-holes.

Most entrepreneurs with a pioneer product face a common set of challenges - knowing how their product would be received in the market, finding the best strategy to advertise it and identifying the initial set of “seed users” who would use the product and provide feedback on its improvements. In the age of social media where information diffuses at massive speeds, how should one identify the set of users who have the maximum influence in reaching out to a larger crowd? In a recent collaborative study, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and IBM India Research Labs have studied how information diffuses on social networks and have identified strategies to answer this question.

The campus of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, was buzzing with an air of tender enthusiasm and aspiration, thanks to the visit of “Chetana” scholars. “Chetana” is a novel initiative to encourage and inspire talented young girls studying in government-run higher secondary schools across Karnataka, to take up a formal education in science. The Department of IT, BT and S&T, Government of Karnataka, has organized this program in collaboration with the Karnataka State Council for Science & Technology (KSCST) and IISc, Between 17th October and 27th October, 28 students selected in this program, visited IISc for 10 days and were provided with an opportunity to visit the research facilities and labs as well as interact with students and academicians of this prestigious institute.

Prof. Gautam R. Desiraju, Dr. S. P. Gopi and Dr. S. Ganguly, at the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, IISc have designed a new multicomponent solid which is a combination of the antibacterial norfloxacin and the antimicrobial sulfathiazole in the form of a salt.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have studied the behaviour of insulators that protect overhead power transmission conductors, in the presence of fog and mist. Polymeric insulators, which are made of various kinds of rubber, have been used in recent times because they are light weight, require lesser maintenance, and resist wetting of surface. However, they are also more sensitive to certain environmental and physical conditions. This study, led by Prof. B. Subba Reddy from the High Voltage Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, has shown some light on the effect of environmental factors like fog and mist on these insulators.

An international team that included Indian researchers has analyzed the published results on Gamma rays in the immediate aftermath of the recent detection of Gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) – called the GW150914 event, and has concluded that the non-detection of High Energy Neutrinos (HEN) during that event suggests an upper limit to the energy of the associated short Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).

The vivid and myriad colours of the natural world captivate our eyes and benefit life on earth. Learning how nature colours its palette advances our understanding of the world around us and hence scientists ubiquitously are trying to imitate designs inspired by nature, to fabricate better devices. Now, a collaborative study between researchers at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, has proposed a novel technique to build better display devices that imitate naturally occurring colours.

The flourishing Complex Systems Research Programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, headed by Prof. Janaki Balakrishnan aims to understand and explain the dynamical behaviour of complex systems of diverse kinds by constructing appropriate predictive mathematical models. The work done by Prof. Balakrishnan and her collaborators deals with a variety of disciplines and hence is highly interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary in nature. Some of her recent works on ecological modelling and impact of climate change on ecological population dynamics have met with considerable success.