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Cancer killing nanoparticles

Cancer killing nanoparticles

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Science


You can kill a cancer cell by sneaking nanoparticles inside it, or in its vicinity. When light shines on the nanoparticles, they absorb the light energy and give it back as heat — the heat kills the cancer cells. This mechanism is well understood, but the challenges are in designing a nanoparticle that is good at absorbing light and emitting heat, and is also small enough to crawl into the cancer cell.

Now a team of researchers led by Prof Jaya Prakash, Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics, IISc, Bengaluru, has developed a hybrid nanoparticle of gold and copper sulphide for this purpose. Copper sulphide pinpoints the cancer cells and the gold destroys them, when light hits the nanoparticles.

A big challenge was to make the nanoparticle tiny enough to sneak into the cancer cell. To overcome this, the researchers used a novel ‘reduction’ method, using Tannic acid and sodium citrate to form gold nanoseeds, which were then deposited on a copper sulphide surface. The nanoparticle they got was 8 nm in size.

“The researchers believe that the nanoparticles’ small size would also allow them to leave the human body naturally without accumulating, although extensive studies have to be carried out to determine if they are safe to use inside the human body,” says a write-up in IISc’s in-house publication, Kernel.

“The researchers have tested their nanoparticles on lung cancer and cervical cancer cell lines in the lab. They now plan to take the results forward for clinical development,” Kernel says.





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Electric-solar hybrid oven

Electric-solar hybrid oven

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Science


A team led by Prasant Saini of the IIT Mandi has developed an electric-solar hybrid oven. The Solar Thermal-Electric Powered Cooking Oven (STEPCO) can cook food in solar, electric or hybrid mode. The device, which has oven, toaster and griller features, costs around ₹12,000; the inventors say that the payback period is 2.3 years in hybrid mode and 3.7 years in only solar mode. It is good for a variety of foods, including cakes and pizza.

“The STEPCO oven demonstrated significantly higher energy efficiency in hybrid mode — 63 per cent — compared with 35 per cent in electric mode and 4 per cent in solar mode,” says a paper on the device, published in Energy.

The main heating chamber has three sides of aluminium alloy; the other three are of toughened glass. The three-glass sides are the top, bottom, and door (front side). The top and bottom surfaces of the heating chamber are made of transparent, toughened glass to allow entry of concentrated solar radiation. This ensures sufficient solar thermal heating of the oven when operating in solar or hybrid mode. “The heating elements present in the oven are responsible for providing electrical heating. They are used only when operating STEPCO in electric/hybrid mode. A microcontroller-based smart control system controls the operation of these elements,” the paper says.

Additionally, the STEPCO oven has the environmental benefit of emitting very little CO2 during the cooking process when used in hybrid mode and zero CO2 emissions when used in solar mode.

As many as 2.8 billion people did not have access to clean cooking in 2015, and this number is expected to decline only to 2.3 billion by 2030.





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Unveiling the secrets of the universe in radio waves 

Unveiling the secrets of the universe in radio waves 

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Science


In 2018, Thoughtworks, a consultancy specialising in software and digital transformation, revealed a two-year collaboration with the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune. Their joint effort was aimed to create, assess, and implement automated data processing software tailored for the MeerKAT radio telescope. Now the efforts have borne fruit.

The MeerKAT Radio Telescope has gained prominence in recent years. Unlike optical telescopes, which capture signals only at night, MeerKAT, a radio telescope, receives signals throughtout the day and night.

Launched in 2018, MeerKAT is operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), a national research facility funded by the Government of South Africa. MeerKAT was later integrated into the global Square Kilometre Array (SKA) initiative, which entails cooperation among numerous nations.

Comprising 64 antennas, MeerKAT plays a pivotal role as a precursor to the SKA, set to be the world’s most sensitive and powerful radio telescope, spanning two continents in the Southern Hemisphere — South Africa and Australia.

MeerKAT was originally named the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT) with 20 receptors. It was later renamed “MeerKAT” when the South African government expanded the budget to build 64 receptors.

The radio telescope showed promising results in February 2023 when scientists using the MeerKAT made a surprising discovery while studying a distant galaxy. They found large hydrogen atoms known as Rydberg atoms, which had never been observed in a distant galaxy before. (A Rydberg atom refers to an atom with an electron in a high energy state). These atoms appear to be scattered throughout the galaxy in ionised interstellar gas clouds. This discovery could provide insights into interstellar gas in galaxies and the formation of Rydberg atoms in space.

ThoughtWorks’ involvement revolves around the creation of an automated radio telescope image processing pipeline(ARTIP). “We have been collaborating with Dr Neeraj Gupta from IUCAA, and he put in a proposal to observe the sky for gas absorptions. This survey is called the MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey,” says Chhaya Dhanani, Portfolio Head Engineering for Research, Thoughtworks. MALS is now studying how active black holes interact with cold gas in galaxies, providing insights into black hole fuelling and galaxy evolution through absorption lines.

Dhanani says the ARTIP pipeline is completely automated. “In the past, processing a 1 TB dataset manually would take several months and could lead to errors. With automation, we can analyse such data in just 30 minutes to an hour, ensuring accurate results,” she adds. This has also led to critical discoveries. It helped identify a “OH radical” outside Milky Way galaxy. The finding hints at the possibility of finding water (H₂O) in outer space.

However, there is a long way to go. “The scientist has an observation time of about 1,600 hours (about 2 months). We are expecting our data size of around 1.7 beta byte to come along, and the pipeline is going to be used to process it,” says Dhanani.

Radio astronomy, a branch of astronomy focused on studying the sky using radio frequencies, involves handling large volumes of data. This presents a hurdle for radio astronomers as it demands substantial data processing and analysis to convey scientific findings effectively. “From a scientific perspective, it attempts to answer many theories around the origin of life and cosmology, and from a technological perspective, it has given rise to a lot of innovation in terms of high-end computers,” adds Dhanani.





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Making space on earth, for life on Mars

Making space on earth, for life on Mars

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Science


What does a human need to live on the Moon or Mars someday apart from rockets and stuff?

Practice!

For astronauts, or for those who want to pretend to be one, ‘spaces’ are being built on earth where conditions approximating the intended destination (Moon, Mars or a space station) are created. While you may not have conditions like weightlessness in these dwelling units, there will be plenty of make-believe features to fool you into trusting that you’re very far from home — like the ‘Mars-inside-a-tent’, pictured here.

These ‘analogue space facilities’ — there are around 20 of them — are not for fun. While training astronauts, they also help researchers study things like how people behave in confined isolation in hostile and unpleasant settings. Studies even look at how their gut microbiome changes, stress levels and immune responses, from samples of spit, urine, blood and faecal matter.

Some of these analogue facilities are in desolate places on earth—one 1,200 sq ft analogue station is on a mountain desert in Hawaii, 8,200 ft above sea level, which resembles the Martian landscape. To give a real, out-of-the-world feel, dwellers sometimes communicate on the phone that sends and receives signals with a 20-minute delay; they eat frozen foods and compost their own poop. Tough life indeed. One lady volunteer, who lived in confinement in a Russian analogue facility for 8 months, had difficulty in re-integration, upon coming out, an article in Undark notes.





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Motionless tracker technology that can revolutionise solar industry

Motionless tracker technology that can revolutionise solar industry

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Science


Renkube, a Bengaluru-based start-up, is gearing up to unveil its proprietary ‘motion-free optical tracker’ technology in the solar energy market. The technology has the potential to revolutionise the solar energy industry.

The conventional tracker-based system to keep the solar panels always facing the sun — as the sun moves from east to west across the firmament — is not a great one as the mechanical trackers on the system, with motors and many moving parts, makes maintenance a headache.

But, Renkube’s trackers are motionless. “The tracking capability is embedded inside the glass,” says Dr Lakshmi Santhanam, Co-Founder and CEO, Renkube.

The heart of the system is an AI-based proprietary software, with more than 2,00,000 lines of code. With the help of the software, grooved patterns are created on glass to make it behave like a prism. Once the design is done, the glass is manufactured and assembled with the solar panels.

The critical part of the fixture is the ‘grooving’ on the glass. Dr Santhanam, a software professional who has a PhD in network security from the University of Cincinnati, US, says the company applied the team’s expertise in machine learning algorithms to design the grooves in a manner that capture more sunlight — the grooves impart certain geometric design on the glass, which enables it to harvest and redirect sunlight.

The team comprises the Founder, Balaji Lakshmikanth Bangolae, the lead inventor of the motion-free tracker technology and three co-founders—Janardhana Vittalrao Kshirsagar, who has a PhD in microwave communications and Deepika Gopal, who has a Masters in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.

Solar prisms

The team’s collective expertise has come up with a unique geometry on glass that can bend the path of light to make it fall on the solar panels. These light-redirecting ‘prisms’ are assembled on the solar panels at a module manufacturing plant. Once fixed, there is no tilting or adjusting needed, and the panels will generate more energy throughout the year. Conventional mechanical trackers have motors, actuators, sensors, etc, but Renkube’s system is just a special sheet of glass. They can be cleaned with water.

The architecture has been piloted for a year in Bengaluru and the company is now preparing to get the product contract-manufactured. The company has tied-up with Swelect Energy for using their module plant in Coimbatore for producing the panels.

Dr Santhanam told Quantum that the system would cost 5-10 per cent more than a tracker-less solar plant, but generation will be higher by at least 20 per cent. The company reckons that a 100 MW solar plant would cost $5 million more with Renkube’s products, but the additional cost will be paid back in two years.

However, Renkube’s system would need to be manufactured right when the modules are produced — no retrofit is possible. At present, the grooved glass is manufactured in Singapore and brought to the Coimbatore module plant. However, Dr Santhanam sees the scope for further cost reduction if the glass could be locally-produced. For that, Renkube is in talks with Saint Gobain, Chennai, for making the glass. The glass does not have to be special; a regular, tempered borosilicate glass will be fine, says Santhanam. Logistics is a big cost driver as the imported glass would need to be packed and shipped with extra care and costs.

The product could be further customised for rooftops, building facades and balcony windows, says Santhanam.

Agri-Friendly

The start-up is pitching Renkube for agro-photovoltaic—where the solar panels are put up at a height, allowing regular farming to be done on the ground below. A typical agro-PV lets about half of the land for cropping, but Rekube’s redirecting prisms sends the excess sunlight to the ground below. The panels are mounted so high that tractors can ply below them, notes Santhanam.





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How AI helps Tata Steel save billion in EBIDTA

How AI helps Tata Steel save $2 billion in EBIDTA

by | Oct 1, 2023 | Science


Guess what the crucial raw materials for running a profitable steel company are? Iron ore, coke, a lot of energy and data.

Tata Steel, for one, will never face any shortage or cost spike of the last. And, with artificial intelligence (AI), the company is squeezing data to extract profits.

Around 2018, the $33 billion steel major set itself a somewhat direction-giving target of achieving EBIDTA savings of $2 billion only from using its data, over an unspecified number of years. Today, it reckons, it has milked $1.4 billion and is all set to move the goal post to a higher level of ambition.

One does not readily connect AI with something as ‘physical’ as steel making, but Jayanta Banerjee, Chief Innovation Officer at Tata Steel, explains how data and AI have become as important as iron ore and coke.

Banerjee is a steel-outsider. An IT professional, he wrote a paper on AI back in the early 1990s before joining Tata Consultancy Services, where he worked for a quarter century in TCS’s overseas offices.

In 2018, Tata group’s Chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, hand-picked a few IT wizards from TCS and put them into various other companies of the group. Banerjee ended up in Tata Steel.

“I knew nothing about steel,” says Banerjee. But he knew data, and Tata Steel is always drowned in a flood of data.

A date with Data

Steel making is a heavily sensorised business; Tata Steel uses several lakhs of sensors in its five (Indian) plants. Most of them are electronic, but some chemical and acoustic sensors too. In 2018, the company had about 6 terabytes of data; today it has 5.2 petabytes (roughly, thousand times more).

Humongous amounts of data implies you need to keep them somewhere. That is where ‘cloud’ enters the picture. “We invested heavily in cloud in 2018 and 2019,” says Banerjee, adding, “today 95 per cent of my estate is on multiple clouds.” The company uses the cloud services of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Tata Communications and IBM. Multiple providers are necessary for reasons of security and building redundancy.

So, Tata Steel had data and cloud, and Banerjee brought in AI, to make use of the former. Banerjee calls data, cloud and AI ‘three macros’. An in-house team developed about 260 algorithms on which the business runs. Alongside, the company scrapped the individual control rooms in its various mines and plants — each blast furnace had its own control room — and consolidated them under one IT building, the integrated remote operations center (iROC), in Jamshedpur. This brought in an added advantage — employees didn’t have to be transferred to different places, as all the operations of the company are controlled from here.

AI is used a lot in decision making. Take raw material procurement for example. As Banerjee explained, questions such as which raw material to buy; when, where and what is the best route to ship it into the plant;how to efficiently allocate the raw materials to different plants, are best answered by AI models.

Furthermore, AI is used in optimising chemical mix in blast furnaces. This is important because when raw materials like coal are transported across long distances, some impurities (moisture, foreign materials) will inevitably seep in. The quality of the raw material will determine what else should go into the furnace — how much manganese, zinc, among others. “Impurities in the output product will be much lesser if I have better chemistry upstream,” explains Banerjee adding that fine-tuning the mix is done by AI.

Fault finder

Further along the production line, AI also helps in identifying the origin of a defect. All products are fully imaged to find defects (crack, bubble) before it becomes final . If a defect shows up in an image, the product is not supplied to the customer. The image is then image is compared with an outsourced library of defect images, to see which one it resembles the most. This gives them an idea of what could have gone wrong. Once the origin of the defect is known, it is created on the ‘digital twin’ of the plant, where an AI model learns about the defect and its origin — it won’t let it happen another time.

All this happens on the production side. Tata Steel also uses AI in a whole lot of areas like forecasting and planning, HR and customer and financial analytics as well.

Banerjee keeps a sharp eye on the costs. Technology is used only when it positively impacts at least one of yield, energy, throughput, quality and productivity. Over the years, cost-benefit has improved. “When I started the transformation (around 2018) it used to be in the range of 1:4.3, today we’re almost running 1:10. Every dollar I spend, I get $10 back,” he says.





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