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Home How fluids react to surfaces coated with repelling paint
Photo by Yuvraj Singh via Unsplash Fluids are objects that flow, including liquids and gases. Physicists have long studied their motion using the tools of mathematics. Sometimes, fluid motion appears to be predictable, sometimes they are entirely chaotic, defying any mathematical description. Turbulence, or the chaotic motion of fluids, affects seemingly disparate things like air trave l...
- 7 hrs ago
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Home Directions of rotation drive the collective motion of particles
An object can rotate in two ways. For example, a clock's hands move in what we call the 'clockwise' direction. The sense of direction is called 'chirality', which can be either left-handed or right-handed, akin to clockwise and counterclockwise. Biological objects, for example, the double-helix of DNA, inherently twist in a preferred direction. Loxodes is a...
- 7 days ago
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Home Slipping away from the surface: Impact of Kerala 2018 floods on soil erosion
Photo by V Srinivasan In August 2018, the people of Kerala saw one of the worst floods since the great floods of 1924. The state received 96% excess rainfall than predicted, setting off massive floods in most regions. Agriculture, housing, fisheries, animal husbandry and other businesses, and the natural flora and fauna of the state, faced huge losses. The State Land...
- a week ago
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Home Wearable sweat sensors on a bandage
Image by msumuh from Pixabay Metabolism - or the processing and utilisation of energy resources to sustain life - results in a number of by-product molecules called metabolites. Medical practitioners measure the concentration of these molecules in body fluids such as blood, urine, sweat and saliva to test whether the body is functioning normally. While biannual check-ups suffice for the regular population,...
- 2 weeks ago
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Home We need to be aware of privileged caste hegemony in science and its communication
The India International Science Festival (IISF) is an annual event organised by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Like most other events in the pandemic-stricken-present, in 2020, it was held virtually between the 22nd and 25th of December. While the event faced...
- 2 weeks ago
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Home Here's why laboratory science alone cannot solve the extinction crisis
The 'endangered' giant Galapagos tortoise known only from the Galápagos archipelago was threatened with hunting and feral dogs. However, today, due to conservation efforts such as captive breeding and a ban on hunting, their numbers are going up. [Image Credits: CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons] According to scientists, the sixth mass extinction event - defined by...
- 3 weeks ago
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Home A natural process may hold the clue to secure encryption of communications
Solid particles suspended in a fluid are bombarded on all sides by particles of the fluid. They change their direction of motion haphazardly, and the distances they travel between one such collision and another are not predictable. Hence, their motion is said to be random. Discovered by the botanist Robert Brown in 1827 and named after him, Albert Einstein theoretically...
- 3 weeks ago
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Home Recovery from Cyclone Phailin in marine fishing communities
Cyclone Phailin over the Bay of Bengal on October 11, 2013, before making landfall over the east coast of India. [Image Credits: Colorado State Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch, NOAA / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons] Cyclones occur about five times more frequently over the Bay of Bengal as compared to the Arabian Sea. Warmer surface water currents, lower circulation of...
- 3 weeks ago
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Home Merging memory and computing in nanoscale devices for efficient computation
[ Image by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash ] Modern computers carry out computations - also called 'logical operations' - on massive amounts of data that are stored in specialised memory devices. The computing blocks need to exchange significant amounts of data with Random Access Memory, or RAM, a type of temporary memory. Over the years, various applications...
- 4 weeks ago
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Home The laws of electromagnetism at the scale of a few atoms
Photo by Mika Baumeister via Unsplash Physicists discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism more than a century ago. The intricate relationship between these entities, previously thought to be separate, currently goes by the name 'electromagnetism'. It largely governs the world in which we live. From large power grids to fans in our rooms to electronic...
- 4 weeks ago
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