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Detecting ammonia is important in many industrial and biomedical applications. A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have synthesized ammonia sensors from filter coffee, the favourite beverage of the city.
Hari Krishna Sadhanala, Ravi Nandan, and Prof. Karuna Kar Nanda from Materials Research Centre, IISc, have reported the synthesis of nanoparticles using filter coffee powder as the starting material. Nanoparticles have a very large surface area for a given volume to capture on their surface, gases in the vicinity. They can be deposited on a substrate like glass, plastic or paper to make the sensors.

When India’s emerging market bubble had burst by 2014, the government launched the “Make in India” initiative to resuscitate the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and popularize entrepreneurship. The initiative would provide skills and create jobs for the workforce while looking to make India a manufacturing hub with modern laws and policies that aid investors and entrepreneurs. In India, MSMEs are the second largest employer and about 12 million people are expected to join the workforce in the next three years. However, this sector is facing a lot of challenges like technological obsolescence, supply chain inefficiencies, increasing fund shortages among others. Now, a new study by the Department of Management Studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has provided some interesting aspects of performance of MSMEs. “Our work studies the role of strategic marketing and innovation to improve the performance of MSMEs and its contribution to the economic development of the country as a whole”, says Mr. Lohith C.P., one of the research team members.

Tumors are often linked to cancer when they become malignant and start to spread. Doctors and researchers throughout the world are continuously seeking better ways to diagnose and treat tumors early on, thus preventing severe damage. In a rare interdisciplinary study, engineers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, have stepped up to help doctors in treating tumors. Prof. Radhakant Padhi from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and his team has designed an automation tool for slow and controlled drug release. It is an intelligent feedback algorithm that can be embedded in a micro-controller and effective in treating solid tumors with minimal side effects.

Many organisms, including yeast, obtain Carbon and energy from carbohydrates and Nitrogen from other nutrients like amino acids. But some types of yeast, like Pichia pastoris, can use amino acids not only as sources of Nitrogen, but also as sources of Carbon too finds a new study at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The team, consisting of Mr. Umakant Sahu and Prof. P N Rangarajan from the Department of Biochemistry, have studied the mechanism behind how P. pastoris can grow happily in a medium that does not contain glucose but only amino acids like glutamate, aspartate, proline, etc.