The beaches of Henderson Island, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean about 5,000 km away from the nearest population centre, are heavily littered with plastic waste. The beaches have an estimated 38 million plastic debris items weighing 17.6 tonnes. The largest of the four islands of the Pitcairn Island group, Henderson Island is... Continue Reading →
Euro VI diesel emission norms can avert nearly 174,000 premature deaths
Despite tighter nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission norms for diesel cars, buses and trucks in several countries, the actual amount of NOx emitted by diesel vehicles is far more during on-road driving conditions than under laboratory testing carried out at the time of certification. As a result, the excess NOx emitted over certification limits caused nearly... Continue Reading →
Soon, plastic can be biodegraded more efficiently
Polyethylene, which is a widely used plastic and the toughest to be degraded, has met its match. Larvae of wax moth Galleria mellonella has been shown to degrade polyethylene into ethylene glycol at an unbelievably fast rate. Other methods of biodegrading polyethylene using a culture of fungus Penicillium simplicissimum after treating with nitric oxide and... Continue Reading →
IIT Kanpur finds more aerosol in the atmosphere produces heavier, widespread rainfall
Contrary to the general notion that pre-monsoon aerosol loading results in decrease in seasonal rainfall, a long-term (2002-2013) satellite observational study and model-based analysis by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur has found that higher aerosol loading results in delayed but more rainfall over Central and Northern India. Higher aerosol loading changes... Continue Reading →
Indian researchers use graphene sieves to turn seawater into drinking water
Producing potable water through desalination may become more efficient and less energy intensive if researchers at the University of Manchester are able to successfully use graphene oxide (GO) membranes to filter common salts present in seawater on a commercial scale. When the spacing between two successive graphene oxide sheets was nearly 10 Å (1 angstrom... Continue Reading →
IISc researchers’ novel, eco-friendly way of recycling e-waste
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) researchers have found a novel way of recycling the mounting pile of electronic waste more efficiently and in an environmentally friendly manner. According to the United National Environmental Programme, about 50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated annually across the world. The new approach is based on the idea of... Continue Reading →
Plastic waste found in fish meant for human consumption
In a first, researchers have found plastic debris in fishes in Indonesia and California, U.S. meant for human consumption, raising a red flag for human health. According to a paper published in September 2015 in the journal Scientific Reports, man-made debris was found in 28% of individual fish and in 55% of all species samples... Continue Reading →
IIT Madras researchers prove the superiority of arsenic water filter which got $18 million funding
An exhaustive research carried out by a team of researchers led by Prof. T. Pradeep from the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, spread over four years has put to rest the scepticism about the merits of the arsenic water filter developed by them. The water filter has been in... Continue Reading →
Chennai researchers turn leather waste into electrode-grade carbon
Researchers at the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) University, Chennai have successfully converted leather solid waste (wet blue leather splits) containing chromium (III) into porous carbon matrix for use as electrodes in supercapacitors using a simple, sequential, two-step process. This approach not only yielded “excellent porous electrode material for supercapacitors”, but also effectively addressed the... Continue Reading →
