Mobile nanotweezers can pick, drop live bacteria

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The work of Souvik Ghosh (right) and Ambarish Ghosh overcomes the earlier limitation of nanotweezers that were only able to trap and hold the molecules.
The work of Souvik Ghosh (right) and Ambarish Ghosh overcomes the earlier limitation of nanotweezers that were only able to trap and hold the molecules.

Can be used in microfluidics and in biomedicine.

A team from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, has succeeded in designing a new class of mobile nanotweezers that can pick up, hold and move tiny cargo, the size of molecules, in a fluid. The work by Souvik Ghosh and Ambarish Ghosh of Centre for Nanoscience and Engineering, IISc, overcomes the earlier limitation of nanotweezers that were only able to trap and hold the molecules. Apart from nanoscale assembly – where tiny objects such as nanodiamonds or quantum dots need to be picked up and moved to a desired location — this has applications also in microfluidics, where live bacteria need to be manipulated and in biomedicine.

Limitations

Picking up and moving molecules suspended in a fluid, such as a colloid, is a busy area of research. Plasmonic nanotweezers — nanosized tweezers made of noble metals, which have been studied so far to trap cargo, have the limitation that they are fixed in position. When they are illuminated by light, they develop a ‘potential gradient’ around them. This is like a slope, and nearby particles get attracted to the potential’s minimum just as things roll down a slope. However, the limitation is that it can only capture particles that are within the range of the field.

In the new work, the robotic, mobile nanotweezer can pick up tiny particles and move them over a short distance when the microrobots are subjected to an external magnetic field. “We can tune our trapping and releasing mechanism by subsequently turning the incident illumination on and off. To move these nanotweezers, we use a rotating magnetic field which rotates the helix [of the nanotweezer] and [moves it] like a cork-screw,” says Souvik Ghosh, first author of the study published in Science Robotics.

Thermal fluctuations

The colloidal particles move due to thermal fluctuations, therefore it is very difficult to manipulate the nanoparticles. Also as the size of the particles decreases, so, too, does the trapping force. The researchers’ main challenge was to overcome this and generate sufficient trapping force using a small amount of laser power. To achieve this, small helical structures are grown on a pre-patterned substrate by electron beam evaporation of silicon dioxide (made of mostly glass). “The substrate is kept at an extreme angle to the incoming vapour flux and rotated slowly to achieve the helical shape. Apart from glass, we also combine silver (plasmonic properties) and iron (magnetic properties) nanostructures at appropriate places on the helical body,” explains Souvik Ghosh, in an email to The Hindu.

As a next step, the team is working on parallelising the process. Thus, a series of microrobots will work together like an assembly line. “This will allow us to scale up our technology and will surely have commercial impact, and initial results are promising,” says Mr Ghosh.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Science / by Shubashree Desika / March 03rd, 2018

JNCASR’s novel material to convert waste heat into electricity

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Ongoing effort : We are now trying to increase the efficiency, says Kanishka Biswas (left) .
Ongoing effort : We are now trying to increase the efficiency, says Kanishka Biswas (left) .

With nearly 65% of utilized energy wasted, the focus is on materials to mitigate this

A novel compound that exhibits poor thermal conductivity in the 25-425 degree C range but shows good electrical conductivity has been developed by a team of researchers led by Dr Kanishka Biswas from Bengaluru’s Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). The compound, silver copper telluride (AgCuTe), shows promise as a thermoelectric material for converting waste heat into electricity.

Since nearly 65% of utilized energy is wasted as heat, the focus is on developing materials that exhibit good thermoelectric property with both glass- and metal-like properties. Potential applications of the thermoelectric technology are in automobile industry, chemical, thermal and steel power plants where large quantities of heat are wasted.

Due to the low thermal conductivity of the material developed by JNCASR, one end of the 8 mm-long rod that is contact with waste heat remains hot while the other end maintains cold temperature. The temperature difference is essential for the generation of electrical voltage. At the same time, the material exhibits good electrical conductivity like metal. The results were published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

In the AgCuTe material, the silver atoms (cation) are weakly bound, giving rise to poor thermal conductivity due to the slow vibration of the lattice (soft lattice). At high temperatures, copper in the material further lowers the thermal conductivity along with silver. “Since the silver lattice vibrates slowly, it provides record low thermal conduction of 0.35 W per metre per kelvin, which is actually close to the glass,” Dr Biswas says.

“Both cations [silver and copper] contribute to low thermal conductivity but silver contributes more. Over 170 degree C, both silver and copper ions flow like liquid within the rigid tellurium sublattice, thereby reducing the thermal conductivity to the level of glass without affecting the hole (electrical carrier) transport,” says Subhajit Roychowdhury from JNCASR and first author of the paper.

Tellurium lattice

In contrast, the tellurium atoms (anion) are strongly bound and the lattice is very rigid. The strongly bound tellurium provides a conduction channel for holes thus rendering good electrical conductivity as seen in metals.

“By combining silver and copper with tellurium we have made our material as a combination of glass and metal — poor thermal conductivity and good electrical conductivity,” Dr Biswas says.

“Silver telluride does not have good thermoelectric property because it has higher thermal conductivity than our material,” says Roychowdhury.

It is a challenging task to have glassy and metallic properties in a single material, which is the fundamental challenge in the field of thermoelectrics. “We addressed this challenge through structural chemistry by creating a bonding hierarchy in the material,” Dr Biswas says.

The calculated efficiency to convert heat into electricity is 14% for the new material developed by JNCASR researchers. The lead telluride (PbTe) has higher efficiency of 18%. “But unlike lead telluride that contains lead, which is toxic, our material is lead-free,” he adds. The theoretical calculation to know the electronic structure was done in collaboration with Prof. Umesh V. Waghmare of JNCASR and coauthor of the paper. “We are trying to increase the efficiency by doping with different cations and anions,” Dr Biswas says.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Science / by R. Prasad / Bengaluru – March 03rd, 2018

This Anglo-Indian settlement was football’s birthplace in Bengaluru

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Austin Town has changed. As in many erstwhile British Cantonment and Anglo-Indian localities, the early settlers have sold off property to migrate elsewhere. Colonial homes with monkey-tops and tiled roofs have made way for more ‘practical’ buildings.

For 50-year-old engineer, Kevin Vieyra, the biggest drawback of these changes is the fragmentation of the community. Vieyra’s grandmother Enid Wilson, an Irish woman was the sergeant of the locality in the 1900s, was one of the earliest residents of the Anglo-Indian quarters. She was the go-to person for anyone with a problem that needed solving. “Even when I was growing up, Austin Town was a close-knit community where it did not really make a difference which home you belonged to,” Vieyra recalled.

Austin Town was built in the early 1920s when the British authorities decided to re-settle workers and lower-income residents in the aftermath of the bubonic plague of 1898. The locality was made up of small cottages. Original settlers included the Anglo-Indian community and a large Tamil population that traced its ancestry to the soldiers and workers brought to the Cantonment by the British after the fall of Tipu Sultan in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799.

According to Mansoor Ali, founder of Bengaluru By Foot, “The locality is named after Sir James Austin Bourdillon who was born in Madras in 1848 and was educated at Marlborough, England. He held multiple official posts in Bengal and Patna before becoming the Resident of Mysore between 1903 and 1905.”

The sanitary works in Austin Town were designed by WH Murphy, an engineer in the British cantonment, after whom Murphy Town is named. While James Austin himself enjoyed cricket and rifle shooting, the locality named after him is known to be the birthplace of football in Bengaluru.

 It is said that the Italian prisoners of war, held here during World War II, passed the game on to the locals. Among the first Olympians from India (in the Games of 1948 and 1952) were footballers Anthony, Kanniah, Raman and T Shanmugam — all of who were from Austin Town. So were other football greats Ulaganathan and former India football captain Carlton Chapman.

Even today, the children of the locality practise football with as much fervour as they play cricket. Twenty years ago, the locality was renamed as F Kittel Nagar, after 18th century German missionary Rev Ferdinand Kittel.

source: http://www.economictimes.indiatimes.com / The Economic Times / Home> News> Sports / by Divya Shekhar, ET Bureau / March 01st, 2018

CM inaugurates first phase of Pavagada Solar Park

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Chief Minister Siddaramaiah inaugurated the first phase of Pavagada Solar Park at Thirumani in Pavagada taluk of Tumakuru district on Thursday.

Addressing a large gathering, Mr. Siddaramaiah termed the solar park as the “eighth wonder of the world.” He said that “we are thankful to all those farmers who have leased out their land to the government for the project.”

In the first phase, the solar park will produce 600 MW. A total of 2,300 farmers of Pavagada have leased out 13,000 acres of land at Rs.21,000 per acre per annum. This will help to boost the economic activities in the most backward taluk. Before the solar park was established, the land rates were around Rs. 25,000 per acre but now they have risen to Rs. 4-5 lakh.

Energy Minister D.K. Shivakumar said that Karnataka will become self-reliant in the production of power and there will be no need to depend on other States. Pavagada Solar Park will be completed by December 2018 and will generate 2000 MW of power, he added.

District-in-charge Minister T.B. Jayachandra, MP Chandrappa, MLA Thimmarayappa, former Minister Venkataramanappa and others were present.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Staff Reporter / Tumakuru – March 01st, 2018

Remembering Gopalakrishna Adiga

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Chaduranga
Chaduranga

Chaduranga, a writer and director, was Gopalakrishna Adiga’s close companion. They addressed each other in the singular and had no secrets between them. This is a piece that Chaduranga wrote when Adiga passed away in 1992.

M. Gopalakrishna Adiga and I were friends for over 50 years. It felt like he was a part of my body itself. A companion with whom I shared my inner most feelings. When Devraj Urs (former chief minister of Karnataka) passed away, I was enveloped by the same emptiness as I am now in Adiga’s death.

The days Adiga and I spent in Mysore are fresh in my memory. Even when we were poor, we shared the groundnut and coffee on which we subsisted, wrote together, read and discussed together. Just as we loved each other, we respected each other. With all our differences and individual opinions, we remained intimate.

When Adiga wrote his first novel Akasha Deepa (Sky Light), he read it in Mysore’s Anand Bhavana. I had teased him, “this has gone straight into the sky, not on the earth at all.” Responding to the novel, “The prose is good, it is poetic. But there is no life in it,” I had told him. Adiga didn’t take offence to my blatant criticism. “You are right,” he agreed with me and took the novel home. Then he came with the manuscript of his second novel, “Anathe”. He read this also in Anand Bhavan. This was a novel that gave me happiness. You could see the influence of Shivaram Karanth in it, yet, it retained Adiga’s signature style.

Adiga was a man of enormous self-esteem. I have not met another human being who was like him. Call it arrogance if you please. It is important for a writer to have this quality. But his self pride was not the kind that looked down upon others, it was that which treated everyone like an equal: he had a rare dignity that didn’t treat the self as any different from the other.

Many lines from Adiga’s poetry have been guiding beacons of my life. “Ninage Neene Geleya, Ninage Neene” (You are your own friend, You for yourself) has filled me with so much courage. And the line, “Iruvudellava Bittu Iradudaredege Tudivude Jeevana” (Life is about yearning for all things that you do not have), has conveyed so many things to me!

In those days, “Yaava Mohana Murali Kareyitu” was my favourite poem. I used to constantly hum it in the bathroom. Aa. Na. Kru. would make me sing this and experience a great deal of happiness.

“Where is he now, that friend whose shoulder was the one to lean on.”

November, 1992.

Translated from Kannada by Deepa Ganesh

These essays — Gourish Kaikini, Chaduranga, and Ramachandra Sharma (on Page 11) — have been published in Mohana Murali (2009), a collection of essays on Gopalakrishna Adiga, edited by N. Vidyashankar and M. Jayaram Adiga

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment / February 15th, 2018

Preservation of statue is in expert hands

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GomateshwaraBF28feb2018

ASI has been giving chemical wash and chemical treatment to the statue since Independence

There is a belief that the holy bath of the Gomateshwara statue, using sugarcane juice, sandalwood paste, and milk during the Mahamastakabhishekha is essential to preserve the 58.8-ft monolithic statue at Shravanabelagola. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), however, does chemical wash and chemical treatment regularly as part of its conservation efforts.

Experts from the Science Branch of the ASI did chemical treatment of the statue a few days before the scaffolding for the Mahamastakabhishekha was erected. D. Ambethkar, Deputy Superintending Archaeological Chemist, told The Hindu, “We will repeat the treatment once the anointing ceremony is over.”

Alkaline cleaning liquids are used to clean the statue. Once the event is over, experts will wash the statue again and treat it with water repellents. “Water repellents are used to avoid moisture penetration,” he said.

Mr. Ambethkar said that pouring sugarcane juice, coconut water, or sandalwood paste on the statue would not harm it in any way. At best, it would clear the dust deposited on the statue. Further, he said abhisheka of statues or idols is quite common among Hindus and Jains.

The statue was installed in 981 and since then the anointing ceremony has been conducted once in 12 years. This is the 88th ceremony. The ASI has been conducting chemical wash and chemical treatment of the statue whenever the anointing ceremony has been held, since Independence.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Satish G.T. Hassan / February 27th, 2018

Celebration of Kannada ‘power’ at BIFFes

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Posters of Kannada films at the 10th Bengaluru International Film Festival at Orion Mall in Bengaluru on Monday. | Photo Credit: Sudhakara Jain
Posters of Kannada films at the 10th Bengaluru International Film Festival at Orion Mall in Bengaluru on Monday. | Photo Credit: Sudhakara Jain

12 films are in the competition section of the Kannada cinema category

The tenth edition of Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes) has become a carnival for the celebration of the eight-decade-old Kannada film industry.

Reservation, directed by Nikhil Manjoo, which bagged the Rajat Kamal for the best Kannada film, and T.S. Nagabharana’s Allama, recipient of best make-up and best music direction national award, are among the 12 films in the competition section in the Kannada cinema category.

Beti (which dispels the myth that gender discrimination has religious sanction and cultural intolerance) by P. Sheshadri, Dr. Sukanya (about female foeticide)by Srinath Vasistha, March 22 (on water conversation) by Koodlu Ramakrishna, Mooka Hakki (on cow slaughter) by N. Manjunath, Mookanayaka (which discusses relationship between art and social life) by Baraguru Ramachandrappa, Moodalaseemeyali (on patriachy) by Shivarudraiah, Neeru Tandavaru (on water and caste system) by Asif Kshatriya and Nemodaya Boolya (a Tulu film set in a village nearly two centuries ago) by Gangadhara Kirodian are competing for the coveted prize.

In a further proof of the celebration of Kannada films, renowned film maker N. Lakshminarayana, who was influenced by directors De Sica and Satyajit Ray, is being honoured with the screening of Bettada Huvu, Abachurina Post Office, Naandi and Uyyale. These movies are milestones in Kannada film and art cinema. Naandi, for instance, was the first ever Kannada film to be screened in an international film festival.

Besides these films, Bhakta Kanakadasa, Mithileya Seetheyaru, Edakallu Guddadamele, Avale Nanna Hendti, Chigurida Kanasu and Vijayanagarada Veeraputra are being screened in the homage section to pay tributes to departed artistes Krishna Kumari, B.V. Radha, Edakallu Chandru, Kashinath, Parvathamma Rajkumar and R.N. Sudarshan.

In its attempt to remember classics, BIFFes has chosen Samskara by Pattabhirama Reddy. The path-breaking film is supposed to have pioneered the parallel cinema movement in Kannada. In 50th year of making Samskara, Tom Cowan, the renowned cinematographer from Australia who worked for this film, shares his experience.

Besides these, mainstream Kannada films are being screened in the popular entertainment section.

Tulu film in Asian section

Paddayi, a Tulu film by national award winning director Abhaya Simha, is competing in the Asian Section. This is one among the Indian language contingent including Paathi (The half) by debutant Chandran Narikkod, which arrests the attention with its straightforward presentation, and Ashwathama by Pushpendra Singh, which explores undertones of superstition. Paddayi is a modern day adaptation of the epic drama Macbeth by Shakespeare.

Similarly, Hebbettu Ramakka by N.R. Nanjunde Gowda is the only Kannada film figuring in the Indian cinema section. The film deals with a village woman standing up to the patriarchy and caste systems of her village.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Bengaluru / by Muralidhara Khajane / February 26th, 2018

Bengaluru-based firm saves kids with birth defect

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Bengaluru :

The year is 2012. Dr Meenakshi Bhat, a clinical genetics consultant at Centre for Human Genetics, approached the country’s premium research institutes to devise low-cost nutrition products for children with the birth defect Phenylketonuria (PKU), but to no avail.

Enter Bengaluru-based Pristine Organics, and today at least 5,000 children aged below 9, and who are suffering from 27 different conditions, have benefited from ‘Metanutrition’. This is a formula powder for those whose body cannot turn food into energy for the lack of specific enzymes or proteins.

On the sidelines of Blue Ribbon Rare Diseases Symposium held here, Dr Meenakshi told The New Indian Express, “It costs Rs 16,000 to get a tin of this powder meant for PKU-1 children from outside India. Pristine offers it for Rs 1,000.”

PKU is a birth defect that causes an amino acid called phenylalanine to build up in the body. Untreated PKU can lead to brain damage, intellectual disabilities, behavioural symptoms or seizures. Treatment includes a strict diet with limited protein. It can last for years or be lifelong. In India, one lakh children are diagnosed with it annually. In December last year, Pristine was one of the five companies that the country’s food regulator Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) gave licence to, to manufacture specialised diet for inborn errors of metabolism (IEM).

Of these five companies, Pristine was the only Indian company. In India, the prevalence of IEM is one in 2,497 newborns. Children affected by IEM don’t survive beyond the age of one, due to complications caused by protein build-up in the body.

Shruti Kumbla, senior nutritionist, Pristine Organics, said, “Previously, parents would import it from US-based Nutritia, Abott, Mead Johnson Nutrition and Switzerland-based Nestle that would cost a lot.”

Low-cost nutrition solutions for children suffering from rare diseases can do wonders if Indian companies take up manufacturing, Dr Meenakshi said.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bangalore / by Suraksha P / Express News Service / March 15th, 2018