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A protective sheath covering the earth, bombarding cosmic rays, violent storms in the upper atmosphere – these are not figments of imagination from a sci-fi novel but are rather accurate descriptions of the space surrounding the earth. In fact, the space around our planet is chock full of high energy particles whizzing around, like the solar wind, a steady stream of charged particles emanating from the sun and Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR), ultra high energy particles of cosmic origins travelling at nearly the speed of light. Why then don’t we have to bother about the effects of such high energy particles that can affect our electronic gadgets and damage our DNA? The answer is the geomagnetic field, the magnetic field of the earth, extending from the core out into space a distance of several earth radii, forming a region around the earth called the magnetosphere.The GMF acts as our natural shield by deflecting high energy charged particles away from the earth.

A team of frog enthusiasts, including scientists from Gubbi Labs, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) - Bengaluru and the National University of Singapore (NUS), have uncovered a widespread population of the endangered Sholiga Narrow Mouthed Frog (Microhyla sholigari) along the west coast of India. Rtd, Prof. Sushil Kumar Dutta of the Utkal University, Orissa and P. Ray of the Zoological Survey of India had originally described this tiny frog, measuring up to 1.7 cm, from the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve (BRTTR) in the year 2000.

How many tropical diseases do you know of? Malaria, dengue and sleeping sickness immediately come to mind. Maybe leprosy, if you think hard enough. But, many of us may not have heard of cutaneous leishmaniasis, a less dangerous but much more prevalent cousin of kala azar or black fever. Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) is caused by the protozoan Leishmania parasites which are transmitted by the bite of infected female sandflies. A team of researchers led by Dr. Shailza Singh from the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune have been studying this disease extensively and have now discovered a new lead compound to help combat this neglected tropical disease. Dr. Sudipta Basu and his team from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune have co-authored this work.

Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Volvo group in India to pursue collaborative research in the field of transportation and automobiles. As per the MoU, Volvo Group Trucks Technology (GTT), the global research, engineering and development arm of Volvo, along with IISc, will embark on research and development in future automotive technologies. The MoU was signed by Mr. V. Rajarajan, Registrar of IISc and Dr. Jan-Ove Östensen, VP Advanced Technology & Research, Volvo Group.

In a major breakthrough in the field of graphene based electronics, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, have shown a big jump in understanding the quantum nature of graphene’s interface with outside world. The research team lead by Prof. Mayank Shrivastava (Department of Electronic Systems Engineering), studied how the overlap of atomic orbitals between Carbon and metal atoms affects the graphene-metal interface. The study has enabled them to invent novel techniques to engineer graphene contact that has the lowest recorded resistance to the external world. Their discovery and subsequent invention, while breaking several records – including the one from IBM’s research centre in T. J. Watson, USA – has eventually allowed achieving the highest transistor performance. This work, which is co-authored by PhD student Adil Meersha and co-investigators Prof. Srinivasan Raghavan and Prof. Navakanta Bhat is showcased at International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM), the world’s most competitive platform in the field of electron devices, which mostly showcases technology and fundamental breakthroughs in the field.

In a society dominated by people who can independently carry out daily activities, the challenges faced by differently abled individuals are rarely acknowledged. With thoughtful design approaches, simple day-to-day activities could be made easier for such individuals. A great example of this is a novel hygiene product designed by Master students Shubham Pudke and Suyog Dhanawade under the guidance of Prof. Dibakar Sen at the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore to aid disabled women with just one functional hand. The newly designed sanitary napkin wearing aid not only meets the hygienic demands, but also enables its use without relying on a caregiver. “Activities of daily lives are primary activities for everyone for their dignity and independence from physical support of others. It enables other family members to explore sources of earnings when the primary bread earner becomes disabled due to any circumstances”, says Prof. Sen, elaborating on the motivation for the study.

Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Volvo group in India to pursue collaborative research in the field of transportation and automobiles. As per the MoU, Volvo Group Trucks Technology (GTT), the global research, engineering and development arm of Volvo, along with IISc, will embark on research and development in future automotive technologies. The MoU was signed by Dr. K. Paneer Selvam, Joint Registrar of IISc and Dr. Jan-Ove Östensen, VP Advanced Technology & Research, Volvo Group.

Product designers have the responsibility of ensuring the product they design goes to production without any issues. There are various snippets of “knowledge” available in the form of historic production documents, shop floor records, case studies, etc., both offline and online, that can greatly help get an early insight into potential issues. However, a major drawback is the lack of identifying “knowledge” based on this due to their fragmented distribution. Now, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Mr. N. Madhusudanan, Prof. Amaresh Chakrabarti and Prof. B. Gurumoorthy, at the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturinghave developed a method for automatically recovering relevant information from document collections. They validated this methodology in the context of aircraft assembly.

A recent collaborative study by the Sigur Nature Trust, Masinagudi, with its partner organizations, has identified a network of elephant corridors in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve using a combination of novel techniques in landscape ecology. The results of this study, led by Dr. J P Puyravaud of the Sigur Nature Trust, could not only help targeted efforts to protect endangered Asian elephants, but also help minimise the damage movements of elephants cause to human settlements and activities in the nearby regions.

Imagine you call a taxi using one of the numerous cab aggregating apps and you find a “ghost” driver - well actually, no driver at all! If you think it is a page out of a science fiction, think again as Autonomous Vehicles (AV) or self-driving vehicles are already in operation in some cities of the world on a small scale. Nutonomy, a Singapore-based startup, became the world’s first company to test a self-driving taxi service in Singapore on August 25, 2016. Just a few weeks later, on September 14, 2016, Uber, the biggest cab aggregator service, launched its first self-driving taxi fleet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. You will hear more such news in the days to come as AVs are expected to replace conventional driver-driven vehicles by 2020 or sooner. A study by Business Insider estimates about 10 million self-driving cars to be on roads by 2020.