Shaastra Issue 03 September-October 2021 Low Res

THE WORLD OF
DIGITAL ART
SHAASTRAMAG.ORG
VOLUME 01 | EDITION 03 | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 | `199

SCIENCE | TECHNOLOGY | INNOVATION
Just
breathe
out
The study of exhaled breath
promises early diagnoses
of killer diseases.
Contents Volume 01 | Edition 03 | September-October 2021
20
shaastramag.org COVER STORY
Editorial
Editor Every
breath you
Hari Pulakkat
Executive Editor
Venky Vembu
Deputy Editor
T.V. Jayan
Contributing Editors
exhale
K.C. Krishnadas
Gauri Kamath Medical advances have put the exhaled breath at the frontlines of
T.V. Padma the effort to diagnose killer diseases, and Indian scientists and
Bishakha De Sarkar
companies have joined the global quest. Gauri Kamath reports
Special Correspondent
Manupriya
on the research and the implications for precision medicine.
Editorial Board
S. Vedantam
B.S. Murty
H.S.N. Murthy
J. Tripathy
R. Rengaswamy
K.M. Sivalingam
G. Jayaraman
H. Ramachandran
D.K. Chand
14
U. Dash
R. Rama
Time for India
Y. Shanthi Pavan
B. Santhanam
to chip in
N. Gupta The global chip shortage
Design provides India with an
Peali Dutta Gupta opportunity to fill the
18
Shamik Kundu vacuum in semiconductor
Karan Khanna
manufacturing. Guest Column
Published by IIT Madras and

supported by its 50,000
A ℞ for COVID-19 drugs by Harish Mysore. And K.C.
Krishnadas recounts the
alumni The world needs to look beyond vaccines to fight COVID-19, history of false starts on
Editor: Hari Pulakkat and Indian scientists are close to making a breakthrough with India’s fab journey.
Advertising enquiries repurposed drugs, notes T.V. Jayan.
advertise@shaastramag.org
Subscription enquiries
subscribe@shaastramag.org
Letters to the Editor
editor@shaastramag.org 28
Copyright: IIT Madras. All
rights reserved throughout Taking a gut check
the world. Reproduction in
any manner prohibited. As scientists turn the lens on
gastrointestinal microbes, a handful
of tests offers ways to assess one’s
Cover Photo
Shutterstock gut and ward off disease. Manupriya
on the possibilities offered by the
gut microbiome test.
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 1

Contents Volume 01 | Edition 03 | September-October 2021
36 42
Waterworld
It pays to New research in India and
capture carbon elsewhere is turning the lens on
the many avatars and possible
Aditi Jain reports on Indian
applications of ice and water.
companies and research
Mywish Anand takes a deep dive
laboratories that are working
into the wondrous world of water.
on innovative systems to
remove carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. And T.V. Padma
interviews climate scientist
Govindasamy Bala on the benefits
and risks of geoengineering.
46
The rock star
Geophysicist Vinod
Gaur’s life’s work,
across disciplines,
is an illustration in
channelling science High-tech art 50
for public good. Digital artists are using a palette
Srinath Perur profiles of emerging technologies such
the many- as blockchain and NFTs to paint
splendoured a picture of success — and big
scientist. money. Jayadevan P.K. on the
state of the art.
Also... that is high on conductivity is the unsung partner that

03 Letter from the Editor and cheaper than copper, enables innovation. Guest
How we sniffed out our Cover Story. reports Tazeen Qureshy. Column by Guru Madhavan.
04 News in Brief 12 Bright sparks 54 Books

A cheaper way to convert CO2 to Profiles of three Reviews of Arthur Turrell’s The
methane; How microalgae can help entrepreneurial ideas in Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion
with treatment of plastic waste; What various stages of evolution. and the Race to Power the
beehives can teach scientists about Planet; Tom Standage’s A Brief
30 ‘Quality control’ in science
acoustics; New insights into prostate History of Motion: From the Wheel to
To improve the quality of science, we
cancer; The discovery of a new the Car, to What Comes Next; and Kai
need to bring rigour to the processes
category of stars fills a gap in the stellar Kupferschmidt’s Blue: In Search of
that enable science. Guest Column by
transition from ‘childhood’ to ‘youth’. Nature’s Rarest Color.
Swami Subramaniam.
10 A material finding 60 First Principles
32 Electric vehicles on the fast lane
Fusing graphene with aluminium, The lowdown on geoengineering, the
There’s a boom in production and
scientists have fashioned a composite world’s back-up plan to counter global
sales of electric vehicles, but batteries
warming.
hold the key to future growth.
62 FunTech
45 Maintenance matters
Science/technology-themed puzzles.
Moonshots are flashy and may inspire
us to attempt the impossible. But 64 TimeMachine
boring as it may be, maintenance 1971: Technology in the rear-view mirror.
2 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

Letter from
the Editor
How we sniffed out
our Cover Story
S
HARI PULAKKAT haastra is a magazine on contem- carbon out of the atmosphere and store
porary science and technology. it away. It is expensive, and scientists are
We report, analyse, and comment only beginning to tackle the technologies.
on current events in those two Aditi Jain’s story on Page 36 describes ex-
realms. Since science and tech- amples of this research: one each for carbon
nology shape the future, reading Shaastra capture, utilisation, and storage. As the sto-
would also provide a glimpse into the fu- ry explains, these technologies have to im-
ture. Occasionally, we take the long view prove substantially to be cost-effective, but
and look at a decadal horizon in technology a beginning is being made in the country.
development. Our Cover Story on breath, Scientists now expect the COVID-19
by Gauri Kamath, is one such instance. virus to be endemic, and so finding good
The story grew out of her previous arti- drugs is considered important. So far,
cle (in the July-August edition) on point-of- most of our attention has been focused on
care diagnostics. While researching that vaccines, but T.V. Jayan’s story on Page 18
story, she realised the power of breath as shows that good drugs are a real possibili-
a diagnostics tool. Interestingly, she found ty. Jayan reports on the state of drug dis-
At Shaastra, we research groups working in India are using

exhaled breath for early diagnosis of killer
covery programmes on COVID-19 in India
and elsewhere, and profiles the drug can-
will occasionally diseases. She was sceptical at first, but, tak- didates that institutions and private com-
look at technology
ing a long-term perspective, realised that panies are developing. As his story shows,
it could transform medical diagnosis and several of these candidates hold promise.
development over treatment within a decade. As a magazine
that believes in the power of technology, we
On Page 50, Jayadevan P.K. reports on
the fascinating world of digital art. Digi-
a decadal time- were excited by the story’s potential. tal artists have so far been languishing on
scale. Our Cover There was more than one reason why
we made it our Cover Story. The first was
the margins because their work could be
easily copied. How do you know the dif-
Story on breath is the potential of medical diagnosis using
breath to transform healthcare. Many
ference between the original and a copy?
For an artist, the answer could make the
illustrative of this. diseases can be treated successfully if difference between a good career and a
detected early, but this is often difficult. life on the margins. The original fetches a
Clinical tests are also intrusive, which huge price while the copy is cheap. Till re-
forces people to avoid them. Blowing into cently, there was no easy way to establish
a device is non-intrusive and convenient provenance. But as Jayadevan reports,
for patients. If scientists work this out, technology has come to the help of the
patients are likely to cooperate. As a for- digital artist, and some Indian artists are
ward-looking magazine, we try to pick up now becoming known around the world.
significant trends early, even if there are On Page 42, Mywish Anand explores the
only a few people working on the problem. mysterious world of water. This molecule
There is another compelling reason accounts for 70% of the Earth’s surface, and
why we believe this story merits your at- is at once both simple and complex. It ex-
tention. It illustrates the recent change in hibits a flexibility of behaviour that scien-
the Indian science and technology land- tists are still working hard to understand. It
scape. More and more Indian researchers exists in a bewildering variety of states, and
now work on contemporary problems, understanding the water molecule deeply
and diagnosis using breath is a case in can develop important applications.
point. However, since the Indian scientif- Beginning with this issue, we will peri-
ic and engineering ecosystem is relative- odically look at the life and work of prom-
ly small, the number of such researchers inent scientists in India. On Page 46, Sri-
is also small, and so India will still have nath Perur profiles Vinod Gaur, India’s
some dependence on other countries for most celebrated geophysicist. Elsewhere,
technology diffusion. our three Guest Columnists comment on
Elsewhere, we have stories on carbon India’s planned semiconductor fab, on the
capture and storage, drugs for COVID-19, need to bring quality to science, and on
and technology and digital art. Carbon cap- the value of maintenance in engineering.
ture and storage have assumed importance In keeping with the theme of our Cover
in the last decade as scientists increasingly Story, we hope that this edition of Shaas-
accept that human beings may have to take tra will take your breath away. 

NEWS IN BRIEF
Now, a cheaper way to

convert CO2 to methane
P
reventing carbon dioxide (CO2) from
escaping into the atmosphere by cap-
turing it is an effective way of fight-
ing climate change (see ‘Cleaning up their
act’, Page 36). This works well in thermal
power stations, where large amounts of
CO2 are produced. But carbon capture
is still not cost-effective for widespread
commercial use. Scientists have been try-
ing to reduce the cost of carbon capture. It
is estimated that the per tonne cost of car-
bon capture has to come down by half – to
$30 per metric tonne – to be cost-effective.
Coal-fired power plants use diverse car-
bon capture methods. They range from
water-rich solvents that douse exhaust
gas, or flue gas, before it is emitted from
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
plant chimneys to more energy-efficient
membranes that filter CO2 out.
A U.S. research team, which included
India-born chemist Jotheeswari Kothan-
daraman (pictured below), recently found
that a solvent it developed at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) of
the U.S. Department of Energy could more When compared to the conventional methane has many applications, ranging
efficiently convert such captured CO2 into method of methane conversion, the new from household use to industrial process-
methane, the primary component of nat- process requires an initial investment es, Kothandaraman, lead author of the
ural gas. Kothandaraman, a chemist at that is 32% lower. Operation and main- paper, said.
PNNL, studied in Chennai’s Stella Maris tenance costs are 35% cheaper, bringing “Right now, a large fraction of the natu-
College before moving to the U.S. for her the selling price of synthetic natural gas ral gas used in the U.S. has to be pumped
doctoral and post-doctoral studies. down by 12%, the team claimed. out of the ground, and demand is expected
The PNNL solvent EEMPA (N-[2- Even though different methods to con- to increase over time, even under climate
ethoxyethyl]-3-morpholinopropan-1- vert CO2 into methane have been known change mitigation pathways,” she said.
amine) can lower CO2 capture cost to for long, most of these processes rely on “The methane produced by this process —
around $47.1 per tonne — from $58.3 a high temperatures and, as a result, are too using waste CO2 and renewably sourced
tonne using traditional technologies. expensive for widespread commercial use. hydrogen — could offer an alternative for
The production of methane became pos- In addition to geologic production, utilities and consumers looking for natu-
sible because EEMPA overcame a serious methane can be generated from renew- ral gas with a renewable component and a
shortcoming that conventional solvents able or recycled CO2 sources and can be lower carbon footprint.”
suffered from. In a traditional solvent, the used as fuel or as a hydrogen ener- Besides, the process offers additional
relatively high water content made gy carrier. Though it is a green- cost savings. According to the scientists,
methane conversion difficult. house gas and requires careful CO2 captured by EEMPA can be convert-
The work by the scientists supply chain management, ed to methane on site. Traditionally, CO2
appeared in August in Chem- is stripped from water-rich solvents and
SusChem journal, published by sent offsite to be converted or stored under-
Chemistry Europe, an associ- The CO2 capture ground. Under the new method, captured
ation of 16 chemical societies
from 15 European countries. cost using CO2 can be mixed with renewable hydro-
gen and a catalyst in a simple chamber,
What is significant about traditional then heated to half the pressure used in
the work is that it not only conventional methods to produce methane.
captures CO2 but also finds technologies is The reaction is efficient, converting
ways to effectively use it.
EEMPA reduces the ma-
$58.3 a tonne; over 90% of captured CO2 to methane, the
authors said. The ultimate greenhouse gas
terial needed to run the the new method footprint depends on what the methane is
can lower it to
reaction and the ener- used for. And EEMPA is capable of cap-
gy required to power turing over 95% of CO2 emitted in flue gas.
it, which lowers the
price of the methane
$47.1 a tonne. The new process gives off excess heat, too,
providing steam for power generation. 
produced. — T.V. Jayan
PHOTO: PNNL

NEWS IN BRIEF
Enlisting microalgae in
plastic waste treatment
T
he littering of plastic treated LDPE sheets with
carry bags made of low the microalgae found that
density polyethylene the microorganism col-
(LDPE) is a serious environ- onised the sheets within
mental concern. The annu- 30 days.
al plastic waste in India is “With the naked eye,
estimated to be 5.6 million we could see green hair-
tonnes, but only 60% of this like structures protruding
is recycled. Carry bags con- from the surface of the
stitute a good chunk of the sheets,” Sanniyasi said. On
plastic waste left behind. examination, the research-
Such bags are often recovered ers discovered occurrenc-
from animal guts and clogged es of abrasions, erosion,
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
water canals, and even find grooves and ridges on
their way into the oceans in the surface of the sheets,
the form of microplastics that which the scientists sub-
threaten marine life. sequently confirmed using
Conventionally, several sophisticated instruments.
methods such as ultraviolet “We found that the algae
radiation, incineration and
chemical oxidation are used to degrade
Microalgae commonly were able to secrete some
sort of degrading exopolysaccharides
polyethylene. But these methods are cost- found in water bodies (complex carbohydrates, synthesised by
ly, complicated and often not eco-friendly.
across the country can be microbes), enzymes and toxins that break
Several studies in the past, however, down the polymer into monomers. While
have shown that microbes such as bacte-
ria and fungi could be an ally in fighting
harnessed for biodegrading some monomers become growth nutri-
ents for the algae, the rest evaporate,”
the plastic menace. LDPE carry bags. Sanniyasi said.
Now, a team led by Elumalai Sanni- The scientists now hope to identify oth-
yasi, Professor of Biotechnology at the “The microalga – Uronema africanum er species of algae that can cleave and de-
University of Madras, has shown that mi- Borge – that we found to degrade LDPE grade LDPE and are exploring the possibil-
croalgae commonly found in water bodies carry bags is commonly found in waste- ity of developing a collection of algae that
across the country can be harnessed for water bodies in many parts of the coun- can do the job more efficiently.
biodegrading carry bags made of LDPE. try. Our laboratory studies showed that According to Sanniyasi, a plastic in-
“As far as I know, this is the first study the algae were able to break down poly- dustry firm from a local industrial estate
that explores the potential of using green mers in polyethylene into monomers in has come forward to support the team for
microalgae for degrading polyethylene,” 30 to 45 days,” he said. further investigations. “We are waiting
said Sanniyasi, the main author of a pa- The researchers isolated the photo- for the university’s approval (for this),”
per recently published in Scientific Re- synthetic microalga from Kallukuttai he said. 
ports journal. lake in Chennai. The scientists who — T.V. Jayan
What’s the buzz? ranges. These, therefore, have potential

application in building acoustics and en-
C
vironmental noise control.
an we learn a thing or two about Many traditional materials are found to
acoustics from honeybee be effective in controlling higher frequen-
hives and implement cies of sound. But natural beehives con-
them in real-life solutions? trol high as well as low fre-
Perhaps, say researchers at the quencies because of their
Indian Institute of Technology Hyder- structure. This is because
abad, who have developed sound-ab- of the beehive’s ability to convert
sorbing panels mimicking beehives. acoustic energy into vibration ener-
The team – led by B. Venkatesham gy. Mimicking this property could
and S. Suryakumar, faculty in the Me- offer cost-effective engineering solu-
chanical and Aerospace Engineering tions for controlling noise pollution.
Department – found that such sheets According to Venkatesham, when
fabricated with paper honeycomb and the researchers examined beehives in
polymer honeycomb are capable of dissi- the lab, they found that there was a 100%
pating acoustic energy to low-frequency absorption of sound in the 400-700 hertz
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK Continued on page 8

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NEWS IN BRIEF
Continued from page 6
range. Their hypothesis (which is yet to

be tested otherwise) is that this is because
these hives are designed in a manner to
provide a quieter environment for the
honeybee queen when worker bees are
buzzing around.
Mimicking this property of the bee-
hive, the researchers fabricated thinner
but strong acoustic panels of paper as well
as of polypropylene. The design method-
ology involved understanding the physics
of a beehive’s acoustic energy dissipation
and its structural design.
The tonal behaviour of most rotating
equipment such as air handling units in
buildings, pumps and blowers is in the
frequency range of 63 hertz to 1,000 hertz.
“We feel that this may become a comple-
mentary solution for the existing acoustic
A team of IIT Kanpur scientists has
found that the DLX1 gene may be used materials which work at higher frequen-
as a drug target in prostate cancer. cies,” Venkatesham said.
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
The team developed a mathematical mod-
IIT Kanpur scientists provide

el and calculated optimised parameters, and
then fabricated the test honeycomb panels.
insights into prostate cancer Researchers have

developed sound-
R absorbing panels using

esearchers at the Indian Institute of get,” said Ateeq, who received the Shan-
Technology Kanpur have established ti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Biological
that a gene associated with jaw devel-
opment in embryonic stages has a key role
Sciences in 2020.
For several years, Ateeq’s group has
paper honeycomb and
in helping people with prostate cancer sur- been working on unravelling biomolecules polymer honeycomb.
vive its severe form. Prostate cancer is the associated with prostate cancer in Indian
world’s second most frequent cancer and patients. “Our studies not only confirmed The polymer panels, for instance, were
fifth leading cause of cancer death among the presence of DLX1 in prostate tissues made by slicing stacked extruded poly-
men. In India, too, the incidence of pros- of cancer patients, but also showed that it propylene straws. The slicing process is
tate cancer is increasing. plays a significant role in the progression done with the help of a hot wire, which
The distal-less homeobox-1 (DLX1) gene of prostate cancer,” Ateeq said. also bonds the straws together. The devel-
has a critical role in body patterning, par- As part of their research, the scientists oped technology provides a mechanism of
ticularly in the formation of the jaw, ner- probed the reason for this over-expression acoustic energy dissipation with a lower
vous system and skeleton. The protein ex- of DLX1 in prostate cancer patients. They thickness and higher specific strength of
pressed by the DLX1 gene has ostensibly found significantly higher levels of DLX1 acoustic panels. As part of the project, Ven-
no role to play once the organs are fully in cancer tissues provided by their U.S. katesham’s team also established a test fa-
developed. But scientists discovered high collaborators – Nallasivam Palanisamy at cility that measures the sound absorption
levels of the protein in people who are suf- the Henry Ford Cancer Institute, and Colm coefficient of large material samples.
fering from advanced and spreading stag- Morrissey at the University of Washington. The development of the technology
es of prostate cancer. What role it plays in “We found that 60% of the prostate can- was supported by the Department of
the progression of prostate cancer, how- cer patients harbour high levels of DLX1 Science and Technology through its Ad-
ever, is still a mystery. In the West, DLX1 protein, which drives tumour progres- vanced Manufacturing Technologies pro-
protein, which is detected through a urine sion and facilitates metastases to bones gramme. The technology, which is in the
test, is in use as one of the biomarkers of and other organs,” said Shakti Goel, a sixth stage of the nine-phase Technology
prostate cancer. PhD scholar in Ateeq’s lab and the first Readiness Level, has been transferred to
In a paper published in Nature Commu- author of the study. an industrial unit in Pune.
nications in September, the IIT Kanpur A significant finding of the study is Venkatesham plans to scale up the tech-
scientists, led by Bushra Ateeq, Associate that DLX1 can be a drug target. There are nology demonstration, develop a batch
Professor of Biological Sciences and Bio- drugs, currently in clinical trials, which production machine for polymer mate-
engineering, however, showed that the target molecular pathways that lead to a rials, fabricate with newer, alternative
DLX1 may have a greater role to play than higher production of DLX1 in prostate can- self-damping materials, and test compli-
that of a simple biomarker. cers. Ateeq has shown that these drugs, ance with other safety requirements such
“Some genes are highly expressed in when administered to mice, reduce DLX1 as flame retarding and weathering tests.
certain cancers but do not necessarily levels and the associated capacity to form He is hopeful that such materials can cor-
have a role in the cancer development. tumours. Thus, the use of such drugs can ner 15% of the traditional sound-absorb-
But we have found that’s not the case with lead to a better clinical outcome for about ing acoustic material market for low-fre-
DLX1. Apart from being a good diagnostic 60% of prostate cancer patients.  quency applications. 
marker, it could also be used as a drug tar- — T.V. Jayan — T.V. Jayan

NEWS IN BRIEF
Indian astronomers identify new

category of stars in transition
S
ix Indian astronomers from Bengalu- Is there an intermediate phase between cilities, says Gourav Banerjee, co-author
ru have identified a new category of childhood and youth in the stellar life of the paper. However, an understanding
stars that fills a gap in the stellar tran- cycle? The question had been haunting of the transition from PMS to main se-
sition from childhood to youth. Astrono- astronomers. Research wasn’t producing quence phase is vital for addressing the
mers so far have not had a complete picture evidence that stars might possess such an astrophysical aspects connected to disc dy-
of this evolution cycle, primarily because unseen phase. namics and the evolution of a star’s rota-
of lack of adequate detecting methods. Bhattacharyya – who “fell in love” with tion rate. Few studies exist in scientific lit-
Stars that have not yet lit up are called astronomy after attending a lecture series erature that examine and attempt to better
pre-main sequence stars, and those that by astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury understand stars in the transition phase.
shine brightly are main sequence stars. at Presidency University, Kolkata – start- After the protostar phase of the stellar
After analysing 15 months of data on 225 ed working with some of his professors evolution cycle, when the star gathers all
pre-main sequence stars and 2,167 main and fellow students on the subject during of its mass, it starts contracting and tem-
sequence stars, PhD student Suman his MPhil when his supervisor, Blesson peratures rise up to millions of degrees
Bhattacharyya and his team at CHRIST Mathew, tasked him to search for those Celsius, causing hydrogen atoms to fuse
(Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, de- rare stars in transition. He used a machine with each other and turn into helium.
veloped a predictive model to find transi- learning algorithm that he had developed This contraction stage of the stellar evo-
tion phases between these two categories. for an unrelated and yet behaviourally lution process is the PMS phase.
So far, they have identified 98 such connected sector: market crash prediction. In the main sequence phase, a star starts
transition phase stars. The team’s re- “The randomness of the market is sim- producing energy from fusion. It was the-
search was published in the Monthly ilar to the randomness of the star-forma- oretically predicted that the evolution
Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society tion process from the dust cloud,” Bhat- from PMS to the main sequence must pass
journal in August. tacharyya says. through an intermediate phase because
“Star formation of massive stars pro- During the protostar and PMS phases, a this is not a sudden jump. Contraction due
ceeds through well-studied, definitive star is usually surrounded by thick discs to gravity stops at some point and then
stages before reaching the youth. Our own of dust and gas. This makes it difficult to stars slowly evolve towards the fusion pro-
Sun is now passing through this youth observe such stars using ground-based fa- cess. This phase has been defined as the
stage,” Bhattacharyya says. Stars pass transition phase by the Bengaluru team.
through infancy (known as protostar), The discovery of the new This discovery will help astronomers
then the so-called child stage (known as
pre-main sequence or PMS) and gradual- category of stars fills a fill a gap in stellar evolution. The study of
the properties of these may reveal some
ly move to the youth stage, which is when
hydrogen burns at their cores to produce
gap in the stellar transition unknown facts about stellar physics in the
near future. 
helium and thus releases energy. from childhood to youth. — Pallab Roygupta
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

IN FOCUS
A matrix-shifting material
Fusing graphene with aluminium, scientists at IIT Bhubaneswar have fashioned a
composite that is high on thermal and electrical conductivity and cheaper than copper.
TAZEEN QURESHY
S
aroj Nayak was working as a Profes-
sor at Rensselaer Polytechnic in New
York State when the wonder materi-
al graphene was made for the first time.
The carbon allotrope – different physical
forms of an element – was the world’s thin-
nest and strongest material, and a study of
its properties convinced him that it might
offer a solution to several unanswered
questions in physics. It took him a decade
and a half to make a material with useful
properties: graphene in an aluminium ma-
trix that can be a substitute for copper.
Around the year 2000, the semi-conduc-
tor industry had started shifting from alu-
minium to copper owing to the degradation
of electrical conductivity in small alumina Prof. Saroj Nayak in his lab at IIT Bhubaneswar. PHOTO: TAZEEN QURESHY
wires. Copper was an adequate substitute

for aluminium due to its conductivity, but Al-Gr can replace copper and graphene-derived materials since 2004,
it cost more. The engineering challenge was
wires in automobiles, but is not connected with Nayak’s work.
to modify aluminium and give it properties Nayak’s research has opened up several
comparable to those of copper, but also
make it economically viable. Nayak, now
laptops, and LED lights. avenues on the application of the modified
aluminium. Al-Gr can replace copper wires
the Dean of the School of Basic Sciences conductivity increased dramatically. for some products in automobiles, laptops
in IIT Bhubaneswar, started working with The Al-Gr (5% weight of graphene) com- or LED lights. It can also be used in several
graphene-incorporated aluminium (Al-Gr) posite has a thermal conductivity of approx- thermal and electrical devices to produce
to find if it could replace copper. imately 410 W/mK, higher than the thermal high-quality, low-cost products.
The high tensile strength and electrical conductivity of copper (approximately 402 For example, high tension wires, mostly
conductivity of graphene have in the past W/mK). However, beyond a certain concen- made of aluminium, can get degraded over
prompted several experiments around the tration of graphene (over 5%), the electrical time due to quantum effects. Al-Gr can be
world. Soon after its discovery, graphene conductivity of the material degraded, while used as a substitute to increase the lifes-
was incorporated with iron and copper the thermal conductivity kept increasing. pan of the wires. In air-conditioners, Al-Gr
to get a new and improved material, with Graphene has an exceptional thermal can substitute copper as a heat exchanger.
better properties than the matrix metal. conductivity, but it is quite expensive “Initially, we didn’t anticipate the ap-
There has also been research on the me- and difficult for large-scale commercial plications. But after our paper got pub-
chanical strength of Al-Gr, but IIT Bhu- production. Copper, on the other hand, lished in 2019, some national and interna-
baneswar is among the first to study its has better conductivity and is stronger tional companies approached us seeking
thermal and electrical properties. than aluminium, but is three times more help on scaling up our technology for dif-
“When you study the nanotechnology of expensive than aluminium. ferent applications,” says Nayak.
aluminium, you see a lot of wonderful prop- So, IIT Bhubaneswar has demonstrat- While Nayak’s group is looking at fur-
erties not found in normal aluminium. The ed a suitable replacement for copper for ther applications of Al-Gr, the challenge
purpose of the research was to use alumin- primarily application in heat sinks, elec- now is to scale up the technology and make
ium in nanoscale with graphene and study trical devices and heat exchangers. Since it commercially viable. “The challenge is to
its emerging properties. We wanted to see if only a fraction of graphene is mixed with take it from the lab to the industrial plant.
we can make aluminium as good as copper aluminium, the modified Al-Gr composite We are looking to collaborate with indus-
at less or the same price,” says Nayak. is also cost-effective. tries to produce and market goods that
Initially, Nayak and his colleagues took “A lot of deep physics and application of can be used by common people,” says Prof.
0.1-0.5% of two to five layers of nanosize graphene has already been explored. But Bijoy Satpathy, visiting Scientist, IIT Bhu-
graphene and incorporated it into the body this study has found that the Al-Gr com- baneswar, also a part of the project.
of aluminium by milling it in a high-ener- posite increases the electrical and thermal The National Aluminium Company
gy ball mill for about 10 hours in an inert conductivity of aluminium, making it bet- Limited (NALCO) has provided `2.5 crore
atmospheric set-up. Over time, the team ter than copper. It is really exciting. If Al- for the project and jointly owns the Intel-
devised new methods that are scalable and Gr can replace copper, it will have a huge lectual Property Rights for the technology
take less time. They found that the electri- commercial impact,” says Prof. Abhishek along with IIT Bhubaneswar. Nayak had
cal conductivity of the modified alumini- Singh at the Indian Institute of Science, received grants from the Ministry of Hu-
um increased marginally, but the thermal Bengaluru, who has worked on graphene man Resource Development as well. 

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IGNITION
Bright sparks
Three start-ups zoom in on water, motor and antibodies.
T
ImmunitoAI risha Chatterjee and Aridni Shah realised how difficult it was to discover
Founders: Trisha Chatterjee, Aridni Shah met when they joined the Bengalu- antibodies, yet how much of potential
Year: 2020 ru cohort of Entrepreneur First (EF) they had in targeted drug delivery.
Big idea: Using AI to identify and evolve in 2019. The two had different ideas about Antibodies are proteins with two spe-
antibodies what they wanted to do at the accelerator: cial attributes: they are specific about
Shah was a molecular biologist and Chat- the targets they bind to, and they bind
terjee’s expertise was in machine learning very tightly. Scientists harness these at-
and artificial intelligence. Chatterjee was tributes to deliver drugs to specific tar-
drawn to logistics but increasingly interest- gets in the body. For example, in cancer
ed in Shah’s core area — antibodies. Several treatment, instead of chemotherapy that
brainstorming sessions later, the two found affects all cells, antibodies can be used to
a problem they wanted to solve — the lack deliver a drug exclusively to malignant
of antibody-based therapeutics in India. cells. For this, artificial antibodies need
And that was how ImmunitoAI to be designed that target the cancer cells.
was launched in November 2020 with Globally, pharmaceutical companies
pre-seed funding from EF. They have are working on targeted drug delivery.
since raised a seed round of $1 million ImmunitoAI, too, wants to create anti-
from pi Ventures and other investors. body-based targeted therapies. Right now,
Shah was exposed to the world of though, it is putting in place systems that
antibodies as a PhD student at the Na- will allow it to efficiently identify rele-
tional Centre for Biological Sciences, vant antibodies from a vast pool.
Bengaluru. She worked with honeybees, Their first tool is called imRANK, an AI-
which meant she had to develop antibod- based platform that can scan through thou-
ies for many of her experiments. Shah sands of antibodies to find the ones best
Chara Technologies
Founders: Ravi Prasad, Bhaktha
Keshavachar, Mahalingam
Koushik
Year: 2019
Big idea: Efficient, rare-earth-free motor
I
n a two-bedroom flat in Bengaluru, three
men are developing a motor. And not
just any motor. Bhaktha Keshavachar,
Ravi Prasad, Mahalingam Koushik, all
with a background in developing technol-
ogy products in India, have zeroed in on
an efficient, rare-earth-free motor to be
used in air conditioners, drones, electric
vehicles and other machines.
Currently, two types of motors are large-
ly in commercial use: the induction motor,
which is poor in efficiency, and the high-ef-
ficiency Brushless DC (BLDC) motor. BLDC Chara’s motor is an upgrade of the uses electronic controls to deliver current
motors, however, require rare-earth mag- Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM), patent- to the motor. Current delivery should be
nets such as neodymium. At present, neo- ed by W.H. Taylor in the U.S. in 1838. SRMs precise and continuously adjusted. An al-
dymium is mined and processed mostly in are not much in commercial use, possibly gorithm calculates the right amount of cur-
China, which means its price fluctuates with because the output torque in these motors rent in real-time and pushes it out. Recent
changing geopolitical conditions. Mining is hard to control. The motor’s design is advancements have led to the easy avail-
these rare-earth elements also causes envi- such that the output torque tends to rise or ability of high-powered electronics that can
ronmental damage. These factors prompted fall. Researchers call this the high torque be used in these motors. That is why these
the three men to start Chara Technologies ripple. Conventional SRMs are also noisy. are also called “software motors”, Chara
in 2019. The start-up is focused on creating But these problems have largely been re- Technologies CEO Keshavachar says.
an electric motor that is efficient, rare-earth solved in Chara’s SRM 2.2 motor. The SRM 2.2 has innovations in motor
free and entirely made in India. To minimise the torque ripple, Chara design, motor controller hardware and

suited to bind a target antigen. Shortlisted Kritsnam Technologies
antibodies are then ranked in their order of
“binding affinity”, Chatterjee says. To make Founders: K. Sri Harsha, Prudhvi
its predictions, imRANK uses the sequence Sagar, Vinay Chataraju,
as well as the 3D structure of the interacting Neeraj Kumar Rai
antigen and antibody. These predictions are Year: 2015
validated through experiments and the re- Big idea: Counting every drop of water
T
sults are fed back into the AI tool to train it.
Currently, identifying antibodies is echnology, quite like water, is om-
time-consuming and requires consider- nipresent. But has it been put to
able experimental work. Shah says that effective use in managing water
imRANK can help reduce time spent in resources in India? This question led K.
screening and identifying appropriate an- Sri Harsha and three of his friends from
tibodies. Also, the antibodies identified by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
imRANK are likely to perform better. The Kanpur to set up Kritsnam Technologies
tool is expected to be ready by 2022-end. six years ago.
Their second product, imEVOLVE, will As part of his M.Tech thesis, Harsha
improve the functionality or binding af- needed real-time water level data from
finity of existing antibodies. For example, different spots along the Ganga. As some
if an antibody is performing sub-optimal- data was missing, Harsha, who did his
ly, imEVOLVE will introduce mutations B.Tech and M.Tech from IIT Kanpur,
in its sequence, analyse how binding af- visited some stations where hourly read-
finity gets affected due to the mutation, ings were collected.
and then predict an evolved version of the At one station he visited in 2015, he
original antibody. found an elderly man taking the read-
Companies looking to develop targeted ings. “He was so old that he couldn’t read This provider of IoT (Internet of
drugs could use such tools. ImmunitoAI is the gauge,” Harsha recalls. The man also Things) solutions for water management
open to having others use their tools but confessed he checked the readings only recently raised `6 crore in Pre Series A
eventually wants to use them to develop twice a day; he filled in the rest as he said funding from IIT Kanpur alumni, includ-
targeted antibody-based therapeutics for he knew how the water level fluctuated ing BVR Mohan Reddy, Founder Chair-
diseases prevalent in tropical countries.  in the river. At another station, a small man of the Hyderabad-based Cyient Ltd.
— Manupriya boy took the readings once or twice a With grants worth `2.3 crore received
day, and then passed on the information from various ministries and depart-
to his father, who had possibly been as- ments including the Ministry of Human
signed to do the job. Resource Development and Departments
the algorithm used to control the motor. “This is the quality of the data that we of Biotechnology and Science and Tech-
Conventional SRMs are “25-30% poorer in are building sophisticated models on. nology, it demonstrated how artificial
torque density than BLDC motors,” Cha- Unless the data is good, these models are intelligence and machine learning could
ra Technologies CTO Koushik says. Cha- of no use,” Harsha adds. be harnessed for efficient drinking wa-
ra has narrowed this to 5-10%, he adds. His subsequent probe into how water ter and irrigation projects. Irrigation
The team is now in the process of patent- data is collected in different departments efficiency is as low as 38%, reveal official
ing its innovations. convinced him that water management records, indicating the need for a wider
Chara wants to make a range of high was built on nothing but guesswork. adoption of technology in managing wa-
efficiency, rare-earth-free, motors. It is Sensing a business opportunity in re- ter for irrigation.
developing another type of motor called liable water data collection, he teamed Kritsnam recently ventured into the
synchronous reluctance motors and is up with Prudhvi Sagar, Vinay Chataraju commercial market by developing re-
interested in induction motors, which are and Neeraj Kumar Rai to found Krits- motely-monitored water flow meters.
low in efficiency but rare-earth-free. nam Technologies in November 2015. New norms brought in by the Central
Some buyers have shown an interest Kritsnam focused on building tam- Groundwater Authority have also
in Chara’s motors. The team says an In- perproof instruments for monitoring helped the start-up. Under these norms,
dia-based HVAC company, whose name water quality and quantity. “Measuring commercial entities, including
it did not want to divulge, would soon de- level and flow is the core of residential blocks, which
ploy Chara’s motors in its products. Cha- water management. If you withdraw more than 100 kilo-
ra is also designing motors for Bengalu- can measure that, you can litres per day of groundwater,
ru-based E.V. scooter fleet Bounce. almost budget any water should bring down extraction
Chara’s focus is on making motors as resource, from rivers to ca- by 20% over the next three
per customer requirements. There is a one- nals to ponds. So we years. There are over
time design fee and Chara owns the IP. The decided we would 30 lakh establish-
controlling algorithm is provided in the take robust in- ments that need to
form of a software package, for which it struments that install such flow
charges royalty on a per use basis. For now, … would em- meters.
Chara has no plans for large-scale manufac- power water For the start-
ture. It wants to be known as a technology managers with up, clearly, ev-
company specialising in designing high-ef- hardware and ery little drop
ficiency, rare-earth-free motors.  software tools,” matters.
— Manupriya Harsha says. — T.V. Jayan

ON OUR RADAR
Time to chip in
After decades of delays, the reality of the marketplace is
likely shaping India’s effort to establish a semiconductor
manufacturing base.
F
K.C. KRISHNADAS an industry veteran with nearly four de-
cades’ experience in semiconductors. “He
or nearly three decades, every single-handedly built Tessolve, India’s
announcement in India of a first semiconductor testing company,”
stated intention – by the gov- says Muthukrishnan Chinnasamy, CEO,
ernment or by private players Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab
– to invest in semiconductor (SFAL), Bengaluru. The Tatas had also in-
fabs signalled the triumph of ducted Randhir Thakur, President of Intel
hope over bitter experience. That’s be- Foundry Services, as a Director of Tata
cause every such ‘big bang’ announce- Electronics. Industry watchers see these
ment has typically tended to end with a two high-profile appointments as an indi-
whimper when the realities of infrastruc- cation that the Tata Group is backing up
tural shortcomings, the absence of a deep- its stated intentions on the semiconductor
enough market for semiconductor chips, manufacturing space with concrete action.
and just the overall cost inefficiencies
that abound in the system hit home. A COMPELLING NEED
And yet, when Tata Sons Chairman N. For the Tatas, as for India, a foray into
Chandrasekaran announced, on August the semiconductor business is now con-
10, that the Group was planning to invest sidered a necessity. Early this year, the
in a fab, the overwhelming sentiment Group set up Tata Electronics as a sub- was previously with Rambus Chip Tech-
with which industry experts and observ- sidiary to manufacture electronics com- nologies and National Semiconductor.
ers greeted it was not of weary cynicism. ponents. It signed an agreement with the
To many, this time, it felt different. Tamil Nadu government for manufactur- HISTORY OF FALST STARTS
What accounted for this turnaround ing mobile components, with the factory Industry insiders had foreseen this sup-
in sentiments? For starters, this was the to be built near Hosur, about 60 kilometres ply-constrained situation at least three
first time a major Indian company had got from Bengaluru. Last year, the Group had decades ago, and had made repeated at-
behind the project to establish a semicon- set up a medical and diagnostics division, tempts to persuade successive Indian
ductor manufacturing facility. Second, which licensed the COVID-19 test Feluda governments of the merits of setting up
some of the other recent business forays from the Institute of Genomics and Inte- semiconductor manufacturing in In-
by the Tata Group indicated that its fab grative Biology in Delhi. The Group had dia. For instance, in the early 1990s, ex-
enterprise was part of a larger ecosystem also invested in Tejas Networks, a telecom patriate Indian engineers led by Arya
it was building for itself. Indicatively, the equipment manufacturer in Bengaluru. Bhattacherjee – the founder of Arcus
Group had recently ventured into 5G and All of these devices require semicon- Technology (later acquired by Cypress
into electronics manufacturing, and semi- ductor chips in volumes, and the manu- Semiconductor) – proposed a fab under
conductor chips are a vital component in facture of the devices will be affected by the government-owned Indian Telephone
both those businesses. the current global shortage. The demand Industries. It was called off – supposedly
And unlike in the past, when ‘big bang’ for electronics devices has been increas- because of bureaucratic indecision.
fab announcements by prospective players ing steadily in India. According to the There were several other false starts
had not been followed up, the Tata Group Directorate General of Commercial Intel- on the road to establishing a semiconduc-
moved with great alacrity. It had even ligence and Statistics, India’s electronics tor chip manufacturing facility in India.
identified a few potential locations to set imports in 2020 were worth about $60 bil- In the mid-1990s, Texas Instruments had
up an Outsourced Semiconductor Assem- lion, and are expected to rise rapidly over agreed to finance half the cost of setting
bly and Test (OSAT) facility, a third-party the next decade. “It is imperative that pol- up a fab if the government put in the oth-
service offering of semiconductor assem- icymakers consider electronics as a pri- er half, but that offer was not accepted. A
bly and testing of integrated circuits or ority sector,” says K. Krishna Moorthy, few years later, the government sought
chips. The final choice of location is ex- CEO and President, India Electronics and partners in design and fabrication for
pected to be announced soon; and the plant Semiconductor Association (IESA), who what was known as the Semiconductor
itself will likely be in place in a year. Complex Limited (SCL) in Chandigarh,
Even before the August 10 announce-
ment by Chandrasekaran, the Tatas had
There have been several which started operations in 1983. Motoro-
la, STMicroelectronics and Matsushita
been lining up key players for the project. false starts on the road to had expressed interest, but they with-
The Group has brought in P. Rajamanick-
am, who had in 2003 co-founded Tessolve, establishing a semiconductor drew because of the government’s delay
in choosing a joint venture partner and
a semiconductor and solutions company,
to head the new OSAT business. Raja-
chip manufacturing facility the perceived lack of a domestic market.
Later, a fire forced the Semiconductor
manickam, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, is in India. Complex to be shut down.

A proposal by the India Semiconductor Fund manager Next Orbit is working
Association (now the India Electronics on a $3 billion fab in Gujarat: four years
and Semiconductor Association or IESA) ago, it had said it was planning as many
to the government to set up a $1.5 billion as three fabs in India. The failure of these
fund to expressly encourage chip manu- plans has been attributed to a combina-
facturing in India by enabling it (ISA) to tion of factors: lack of serious intent on
take equity was not approved. the part of promotors; the failure at the
In 2006, the foundation stone for a fab top levels of government and bureaucracy
proposed by SemIndia was laid near Hy- to act on investment proposals; the lack
derabad, but the project never really ad- of a strong electronics production eco-
vanced beyond that. That same year, IBM system in the country; high capital costs
and Atmel were reportedly the main bid- and long gestation periods; inadequate lo-
ders for a new government initiative to gistics; and the lack of a strong materials
upgrade the Semiconductor Complex, but science and semiconductor research and
that too fizzled out – in the same way that development ecosystem in the country.
the proposal made a decade earlier had. Over the past three decades, there have
All along, the framing of India’s national been some improvements in many of
semiconductor policy was repeatedly de- these areas.
One additional factor has compelled
governments around the world to secure
their semiconductor supply chains. The
COVID-19-induced supply constraints,
particularly originating in China, have
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
provided an impetus to these efforts. In

India’s case, those problems have been
compounded by a deterioration in rela-
tions with China following the outbreak of
hostilities in the Himalayan border areas.
In 2000, Teamasia Semiconductors pro- OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIA

posed a fab and design centre in Hyder- The ongoing effort to redraw supply
abad, but the plan never came to fruition. chains to reduce dependence on China
In 2004, the Indian government said it was will likely play out over a longer time-
willing to fund part of the costs to set up frame. Base-level materials are available
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
a fab, and held talks with Intel and oth- in India, but they need to be upgraded to
er semiconductor firms. Again, nothing a sufficient level of purity if they are to
came of them. Around the same time, Intel- be used in semiconductor manufactur-
lect Inc., a South Korean company, had ap- ing, says Moorthy. However, he reckons,
proached the Andhra Pradesh government when that is done, the extent of value ad-
Industry experts reckon

with a plan to build a $1.6 billion fab, but dition will be significant, and India can
the project failed to win approval. In 2005, export many of these items and become
a plan for a fab to make memory chips for
mobile handsets and consumer electronics
that with the right policies, a critical link in the global supply chain,
which is currently dominated by China.
products was proposed in Kochi in Kera- India can become a critical India’s semiconductor ecosystem is
la by the locally based NeST Group along
with an unidentified Japanese company. link in the global supply gradually evolving: it now comprises a
few dozen fabless chip firms, nearly a hun-
The Andhra Pradesh government pro-
posed a Fab City (to be located in Hyder-
chain, currently dominated dred captive research and development
centres of global chip firms, chip design
abad) to attract chip firms to set up fabs, by China. services offered by Indian companies such
pitching to IBM and Applied Materials in as Wipro and HCL, and one or two fabless
2005 without success. Intel, which had ex- layed, ostensibly on account of differences chip incubators. The Tata Group’s OSAT
pressed interest in setting up a fab in the between the Finance and the Information business alone can be scaled up to $150 bil-
country, called off plans for an assembly Technology ministries. Understandably, lion by 2025, according to IESA estimates.
and test facility – evidently because the these delays left stakeholders and poten- The global semiconductor industry has
Central government declined to grant it tial investors frustrated in the extreme. several Indian-origin engineers in top lev-
the concessions it had sought. Later, a In 2012, Accenture said it had been tasked els of leadership. “There is a need to lever-
$3 billion fab was proposed to be set up by the government to review investment age the expertise of top executives of Indi-
in Fab City by SemIndia in partnership proposals from global technology providers an origin in the upper echelons of global
with AMD, in which the government was and investors interested in building semi- semiconductor firms and outline a strat-
ready to take 26% equity. conductor fabs in India. In 2014, the govern- egy to develop the overall semiconductor
Over the years, there have been many ment approved plans for two fabs, one by ecosystem in India,” says Satya Gupta,
other reports – and, in some cases, idle Jaiprakash Associates (together with Tow- former Chairman of IESA. It appears that
speculation – of efforts to establish a fab er Semiconductor and IBM) and another by after decades of delays, the harsh reality
in India. STMicroelectronics was report- Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing of the marketplace may stir policymakers
ed to be planning a fab near New Delhi, Company (HSMC) in partnership with ST- to act on this front. 
although the company denied this report. Microelectronics and SilTerra. Also read: A fab roadmap for India, Page 16

GUEST COLUMN
A fab roadmap for India

The global chip shortage provides India an opportunity to fill the vacuum in
semiconductor manufacturing.
T
here is much merit in the ‘commandment’ portunity; investing in gallium nitride (GaN), gallium
that one should never waste a good crisis. The arsenide (GaAs) and graphene will ensure India’s po-
world is in the midst of just such a crisis, with sition as a leading technology destination.
the semiconductor chip shortage disrupting The state has a role to play a role in creating a
electronics production and automobile manufactur- semiconductor ecosystem, both in terms of invest-
ing worldwide. This is more acutely felt because the ment and in creating a regulatory framework. This
global demand for semiconductors has increased is perhaps the right time to make the investments.
consistently over the years, with the advent of 5G, In any case, it will take about three years to ramp
Internet of Things, autonomous systems, medical HARISH MYSORE up production lines. India has good infrastructure,
devices, and so on. The automobile industry, which, efficient supply chain logistics, and is a signatory to
Harish Mysore is
according to market intelligence firm IDC, accounts Senior Director many global trade treaties.
for 9% of the $430-billion semiconductor market, uses of IEEE India India can additionally leverage its engineering
mature chip process technology, not less than 40 nm Operations. workforce. Indian engineers now work at every lev-
and 200 mm wafer. Fabs around the world have not el of the global semiconductor industry, and many
invested much in the older process for a long time. of them could be persuaded to return to India if fabs
Industry experts reckon that the semiconduc- are established here.
tor shortage may continue even into 2023. As a lead- A good roadmap is to start with fabs of 300 mm
ing consumer of electronics and a major automobile wafer size and above, capable of producing chips
market with a large manufacturing base, India is de- with 180 nm and 130 nm or even 90 nm technologies,
pendent on imports for semiconductor components, and progress towards advanced nodes. Several Ra-
and is vulnerable to global shortages. India has had dio Frequency devices are built using these tech-
a presence in semiconductor design and verification nology nodes today, and there is a sizeable market
for over three decades. Almost all the leading semi- for them. They can support the market for the long
conductor design and product companies have estab- haul, providing parts to automotive, consumer and
lished a strong engineering workforce in the country industrial electronics. They can also satisfy the bulk
for chip design and EDA tools for the global markets. of the need for defence, space, and certain special-
Along with this, there has been a significant growth ised and complex hi-tech leading-edge products.
in the VLSI design services industry in India. And yet
A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES
there is no commercial semiconductor manufacturing
in India. The Mohali-based Semi-Conductor Laborato-
The Pure silicon semiconductor fabs are still the domi-
ry, now part of the Department of Space, is a lab-fab semiconductor nant area, and India’s strides in the compound semi-
facility and is not involved in volume manufacturing. chip shortage conductor world also allow it to compete in the world
is acutely felt market. A couple of smaller fabs of this kind – pri-
SEIZE THE MOMENT
around the marily under government control, but with commer-
India’s import of electronics will continue to grow cial capability and accountability – could be used to
with the economy. But the current crisis provides it world because build capability in tomorrow’s technologies. MEMS
an opportunity as well. Given the country’s long-term global demand facilities can be set up alongside the bigger wafer fabs
semiconductor needs and its potential to create a global
electronics manufacturing base, it is never too late for
has increased to cater to this special need. Overall, there is a strong
call to set up a few facilities with all these options.
India to consider becoming a semiconductor manufac- over the years. Without having a semiconductor manufacturing
turing destination. The investment needed can run into base of global standards, it will be difficult for India
billions of dollars, but the benefits far outweigh that. to attain “atmanirbharta” in the technology domain.
Investing in silicon fabs can start with established Besides the large domestic market, India is
technology to ensure that the facility will midway between East Asia and Europe, both large
not be outdated quickly – and can generate markets for electronics products. India has
a high return on investment. Since the bulk access to maritime routes. The costs of in-
of the world demand is for chips dustrial products and support services
with mature process technology, in India are a fraction of what
many types of electronic fabrication can they are in high-cost econo-
be undertaken with minimal invest- mies. Assured market and ac-
ment. Among them are the manufac- cess to major electronics manufacturing
ture of MEMS devices; sensors, ex- clusters around the world provide the
tensively used in IoT and automotive right conditions for the success of semi-
sectors; and power electronics, which conductor fabs in India. 
can help in the transition to electric
vehicles and in power generation and (With inputs from Dr Pradeep Jana, currently with Sky-
distribution. Compound semicon- line Semiconductor Services and working as Principal
ductor chips also provide a good op- Integration Specialist at the Semi-Conductor Laboratory.)

LAB JOURNAL
Old drugs,
new hope
The world needs effective drugs to
fight COVID-19, and Indian scientists are
close to making a breakthrough with
repurposed drugs.
M
T.V. JAYAN
edicinal chemist Ram Vishwakarma has his fingers

crossed. For more than a year now, the former Direc-
tor of the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, the
Jammu-based laboratory of the Council of Scientific
& Industrial Research (CSIR-IIIM), has been on a mis-
sion. He seeks to help develop drugs that can save the country
from a further onslaught of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has Convinced that vaccines alone will not be able to beat COVID-19, many in
so far caused over 234 million infections and 4.8 million deaths the scientific community are working on suitable drugs.
across the world.
Like many in the scientific community, he firmly believes that To begin with, CSIR, which has a sound synthetic chemistry lega-
vaccines alone cannot help battle the pandemic. The world needs cy, pulled together teams from its different constituent laboratories
effective drugs that can bring down the severity of the illness, if to synthesise drug molecules that could be potentially useful.
not cure the infection completely. “As we realised that it was not possible to discover and develop
Vishwakarma has pinned his hopes on Niclosamide, an an- new drugs, we decided to repurpose drugs based on the science that is
thelmintic drug first developed in the 1950s. An Aspirin deriv- available and also keeping the pathology of COVID-19 in mind. Based
ative, Niclosamide was among the two dozen drug molecules on our interactions with clinicians as well as scientists working on
that a COVID-19 strategy group at the CSIR had identified for drug molecules, we identified around 25 molecules for synthesis,”
screening and synthesised afresh in various CSIR labs as poten- says Vishwakarma, who retired from CSIR-IIIM in June last year.
tial drugs early last year. “It came up on top during the screening The molecules thus chosen were either approved the world over
along with a few other molecules,” says Vishwa- for other viruses or found to be useful in treating
karma, who has been among those spearheading
the CSIR initiative which was launched soon af-
Niclosamide viral diseases in one way or the other, Vishwakar-
ma explains. “Since we (CSIR) are very good in syn-
ter the pandemic spread in the country last year. was among the thetic chemistry, we synthesised these drugs and
His confidence in Niclosamide stems from
two startling discoveries made in recent two dozen drug kept them ready so that we had the drugs available
to carry out clinical trials or if any of these drugs
months by two groups of scientists – one in In-
dia and the other in the U.K. While researchers
molecules that a got approval elsewhere. If you remember, the sup-
ply chains were completely broken at that time as
at the National Centre for Biological Sciences COVID-19 strategy the world was in a shutdown mode,” he adds.
(NCBS) in Bengaluru for the first time showed
that the drug could inhibit the virus’s entry
group at the CSIR As these molecules were prepared, they scouted
around to find researchers to test them in labs as
into the cells, their counterparts at King’s Col- had identified and well as in animal models. Among the labs that were
synthesised afresh.
lege London found it could tackle inflammation put into use were NCBS and the Bengaluru-based
and damage in lung cells. But both were labora- Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative
tory studies. Medicine (inStem). Their rich experience in cell
Apart from Niclosamide, there are at least three other repur- biology helped the researchers figure out that Niclosamide had the
posed drugs that are in clinical trials in India. These include ability to block the entry of the virus into the cytoplasm of the cells
antivirals Umifenovir and Molnupiravir and psychiatric drug and thus would arrest its propensity to replicate.
Chlorpromazine. “From our studies over two decades, we know that the cell acid-
ifies the materials that it takes in and this acidic environment is
EARLY MOVER what many viruses use to promote a fusion process which allows
Much before the first wave of the pandemic hit India, CSIR had them to dump their ‘payload’ to the cytoplasm,” says NCBS Di-
set up a COVID-19 strategy group to develop diagnostic kits and rector Satyajit Mayor, who led the research effort. “Among the
therapeutics for the infection as well to evolve a genomic sur- bunch of molecules we screened we found that Niclosamide has
veillance mechanism to detect newly emerging mutants of the the ability to short-circuit this acidification process. Nobody had
SARS-CoV-2 virus. While the other verticals found success early identified it as an acidification inhibitor earlier.”
on, identifying drugs that are effective against the viral infection Apart from Mayor’s team, among those who significantly
was understandably a relatively slow process. contributed to the study were research teams led by Varad-

studies are progressing we roped in a Hyderabad-based pharma-
ceutical firm, Laxai Life Sciences, which, jointly with the CSIR
lab in Hyderabad – the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology
(CSIR-IICT) – launched Phase 2 clinical trials of Niclosamide. The
trials launched in June are progressing well,” Vishwakarma, who
is currently an advisor to the CSIR Director General, says.
CSIR-IICT is also carrying out trials on an old antipsychotic
drug called Chlorpromazine, which is seen to be prophylactic
against the infection, says Director Srivari Chandrasekhar, who
heads the COVID-19 therapeutics vertical of the CSIR strategy
group. “The clue about Chlorpromazine came from French re-
searchers who had found that patients taking the drug were not
getting COVID-19 even though the doctors treating them were
COVID-19-positive,” he says. “But as no one there was following
this up, we thought we would,” he adds.
Meanwhile, a consortium of a few Indian pharmaceutical firms,
including Cipla, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Sun Pharma, Natco
Pharma and Hetero, are conducting clinical trials of Molnupira-
vir, an influenza drug originally developed by the U.S. pharma
giant Merck. Merck already has a voluntary licensing agreement
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
with a few Indian generic drug manufacturers to make the drug
widely available if it is found to be effective against COVID-19.
“Molnupiravir has cleared Phase 2 trials in the U.S. But a con-
sortium of Indian companies has done Phase 3 trials and recently
submitted the data to the drug regulator,” Chandrasekhar says.
“The drug is meant for mild and asymptomatic cases. But we
are pushing it because if an asymptomatic person starts it the
moment he or she is positive and prevents the infection from pro-
gressing to the moderate or severe stage, there is nothing like
that,” he observes. Molnupiravir was among the drugs for which
novel synthetic processes were developed by the CSIR labs.
Another drug for which Phase 3 clinical trials are already over in
the country is Umifenovir, also called Arbidol. The Lucknow-based
CSIR lab Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR-CDRI), together
with another CSIR lab, not only developed the process technology
for the drug but also took it through clinical trials. “This could be
one of the cheapest drugs available for treating mild and asymptom-
atic cases,” CSIR-CDRI Director Tapas Kundu says.
The drug is being manufactured and marketed in India by the
Medicinal chemist Ram Vishwakarma, and CSIR-IICT Director Srivari
Chandrasekhar. PHOTOS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Goa-based Medizest Pharmaceuticals. “We have got very signif-
icant data. And we have already submitted it to the Drugs Con-
harajan Sundaramurthy of the NCBS, Arjun Guha of inStem, troller General of India for approval,” Kundu says.
and Vishwakarma. Vishwakarma says that progress is also being seen in a drug
Their study was first published in preprint server bioRxiv in called Colchicine. This is particularly beneficial for those who have
December last year and subsequently in PLOS Pathogens in July cardiac problems. Used to treat gout and extracted from a plant
this year. The first authors of these studies were doctoral students called flame lily (Gloriosa superba), which farmers in Tamil Nadu
Chaitra Prabhakara, Rashmi Godbole, Parijat Sil and Shah-e-Jahan commercially cultivate, Colchicine has been around for a long time.
Gulzar, and post-doctoral fellow Sowmya Jahnavi from the NCBS. “India along with an African country is the biggest supplier of Col-
“Our scientists were able to capitalise on their years of train- chicine, indicating its easy availability,” Vishwakarma says.
ing and expertise and pivot to address the need of the hour. With- The scientist foresees the use of a cocktail of drugs for COVID-19
out this investment over the years and the collaborative spirit, management, similar to the one used for treating HIV. “We will
such an effort would have taken a lifetime to put together from need three or four molecules together that can slow down the
scratch,” Mayor stresses. growth of the virus and thus let the immune system clear it. Vac-
cines are there, but there is an uncertainty around them. Vaccines
FINDINGS ELSEWHERE can save you from developing severe disease, but if you develop a
Around the time the Bengaluru scientists cracked this, a team at severe disease you need a drug that can protect you,” he says.
King’s College London led by eminent clinical microbiologist Mau- Also in the works is an ambitious antiviral therapeutics pro-
ro Giacca identified some unusual features in the lungs of people gramme that the Central government is planning to launch. It is
who had died of COVID-19. Autopsies carried out by them on 41 de- expected to be like a consortium, with those working on antivirals
ceased patients found that, in many of them, cells that line the lungs in any institute or university in the country coming together to de-
were fused, leading to fluid accumulation, which had hampered velop new drugs for diseases caused by viruses. The scope of the
breathing. They found that this fusion process was mediated by the programme is expected to go beyond SARS-CoV-2 but the details are
spike protein that the virus used to gain entry into human cells. Gi- still being worked out. It may be very similar to a $3-billion antivi-
acca’s team then found in lab studies that the Niclosamide molecule ral development strategy launched by the U.S. Administration in
had the ability to prevent this cell fusion process called syncytia. June even though the quantum of funding may vary, according to
“Giacca got in touch with us subsequently, and while these an expert who is privy to the development. 

Just
COVER STORY
breathe
out Medical advances have put the
exhaled breath at the frontlines
of efforts to diagnose killer
diseases, and Indian scientists
have joined the global quest.
A
GAURI KAMATH
few years ago, a team of professors

and research scholars at the Indian
Institute of Technology Roorkee
(IITR) deliberated over a few crucial
questions. Could they create an af-
fordable early warning sign for cancer? What
if it alerted only users with a high probability
of having cancer to seek medical advice be-
fore it was too late? What if it needed neither
technicians nor machines?
There was clearly a felt need. Late detec-
tion compounds many common cancers.
Consider lung cancer, globally the most com-
monly diagnosed type of cancer. A screening
method for early detection, known as low-
dose computed tomography (LDCT),
needs expensive imaging equipment
and trained staff to run it. In India,
it usually costs at least `3,000
per test. In developing coun-
tries, issues of cost and ac-
cess, and the danger of
overdiagnosis, make
mass screenings
using LDCT a
non-starter.

W
hat if instead, the IITR team
wondered, all that a screening
test needed was a good long
exhale?
Their queries — and the search for
answers — led to the BLO detector, an
unassuming, pocket-sized prototype that
uses neither blood nor tissue but exhaled
breath as a sample. A user blows into it
and observes the resulting colour change
in the material inside. This is matched to
a colour sheet to detect the probability of
three common cancers — breast, lung and
oral. The device showed over 90% specific-
ity and sensitivity in an initial study at a
leading cancer hospital in Dehradun. The
inventors envisage a cost of `100-200 per
test though it is not yet final. “This should
ideally be an over-the-counter test,” says
Siddharth Sharma, PhD scholar, Centre of
Nanotechnology, IITR, and a co-inventor.
In New Delhi, Ranjan Nanda, Group
Leader, Translational Health Group at
the International Centre for Genetic Engi-
neering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), has
reached a turning point in a decade-long
quest to identify a set of chemicals in the
breath to detect tuberculosis (TB). He has
finally identified 10 chemicals capable of
discriminating between active TB and
non-TB subjects (who may have some oth-
er respiratory disease) with roughly 90%
accuracy. The ultimate goal, he says, is to
Co-inventors of the BLO detector, (from left) IIT Roorkee Associate Professor Indranil Lahiri,
put the science to work in a device that Associate Professor Debrupa Lahiri, and Professor Partha Roy, say the device detects the
can even screen people at home. probability of breast, lung and oral cancer from exhaled breath. PHOTO: DILEEP PRAKASH
WHIFF OF POSSIBILITIES The BLO detector is an sifting through breath sample data and
In the past decade or so, a growing num- published studies to understand the rela-
ber of researchers and companies glob- unassuming, pocket-sized tionship between exhaled breath and dis-
ally have begun pushing hard to shape a
future where exhaled breath leads to the prototype that uses neither eases. In parallel, researchers and com-
panies are trying a range of approaches
early detection of diseases from infec-
tions to malignancies. It is a long haul,
blood nor tissue but exhaled to convert the science into actual breath
tests. From using sophisticated analyti-
but their efforts are beginning to bear breath as a sample. cal instruments to chemical nanosensors
fruit, encouraging others. “The promise that mimic the human nose, disparate
of being able to mine information from says Perena Gouma, Edward Orton, Jr., systems are being explored, and machine
breath is massive,” says Chandrasekhar Chair in Ceramic Engineering at The Ohio learning and artificial intelligence (AI)
Nair, Chief Technology Officer at the State University (OSU), who has developed are being leveraged.
Goa-based Molbio Diagnostics, which has and published papers on breath sensors With huge advances in instrumenta-
thrown its hat in the ring, too. “It can po- and devices over the past two decades. Her tion, sensing and AI, it is now possible
tentially help pick up disease early and portable breath-testing device for COVID-19 to imagine a future where the mysteries
fairly accurately, so it’s exciting.” is pending emergency approval in the U.S. of breath are unravelled to positively im-
The COVID-19 pandemic has added an- Given the potential of breath analy- pact disease and healthcare. “In the next
other lens, through which breath-testing sis, “it’s important to be in this field and few years, things are going to be good for
turns even more appealing. It is a rare op- have the capacity to do this,” says Anurag the breath diagnostics development com-
portunity for early movers to engage with Agrawal, director of the New Delhi-based munity,” Nanda says. “There is a lot of
regulators and quickly deploy breath Council of Scientific & Industrial Re- activity, and I am quite hopeful.”
tests. Companies working on breath anal- search-run Institute of Genomics and In- Mass-produced, regulator-approved
ysis for cancer have smartly pivoted to tegrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB). “It is now a breath tests for a range of diseases are
COVID-19. A few tests have reached reg- question of effort and funding.” CSIR-IG- only five to six years away, says Hossam
ulatory authorities for approval in Asia, IB is a collaborator in a recent centre of Haick, an expert in nanomaterial sensors
Europe and the U.S. excellence in breathomics funded by the and Full Professor in the Department of
“The lack of an easy, fast and affordable Indian government at the All India Insti- Chemical Engineering at the Technion
way to screen people at airports, arenas and tute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. — Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.
social events has highlighted the need for The world over, scientists and doc- Breath analysis is now “mature” enough
rapid and real-time breath-based sensing,” tors are collaborating — collecting and to begin that journey, says Haick, who has

COVER STORY
developed an AI-enabled electronic nose The world over, scientists

and doctors are collecting
that is being tested in a range of diseases.
Significant challenges, of course, re-
main. But, first, why breath?
and sifting through breath
THE PROMISE sample data and published
studies to understand the
In the 1970s, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Linus Pauling showed that human breath
was a complex gas made up of hundreds
of chemicals known as volatile organic
relationship between exhaled
compounds (VOCs). VOCs are the result breath and diseases.
of the body’s biological processes, which
can be altered by disease. Over the years, Five, it can potentially aid precision med-
researchers have studied the presence icine (see accompanying story: To the point).
and abundance of VOCs in exhaled breath This is particularly useful for doctors treat-
as potential biomarkers — measurable in- ing complex diseases such as asthma where
dicators of disease. Some accepted ones there are differences in how patient groups
are nitric oxide for asthma and carbon respond to the same therapy.
monoxide for neonatal jaundice. Exhaled In the foreseeable future, established
breath also contains aerosolised droplets testing technologies will continue to pro-
from the lungs’ lining and particles that vide the gold standard for diagnosis. The
have non-volatile compounds such as pro- value of breath analysis will lie in ad-
teins, which can also serve as biomarkers. dressing the unmet need to screen large
Breath analysis has several inherent volumes of people rapidly, using mini-
advantages over other methods. One, it is mally trained or untrained hands, and at
non-invasive. This could improve patient an affordable cost.
compliance. “Obviously, it is easier to ex- But if there is promise, there are im-
hale than to suffer a pin-prick to provide a pediments, too. A portable breath-testing device for COVID-19,
blood sample or having to provide a urine developed by Perena Gouma of The Ohio State
sample for testing,” Gouma says. TREASURE HUNT University, is pending emergency approval in
the U.S. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Two, it has wide applicability. The first stumbling block is finding the
Breath-testing can be potentially used to right biomarkers. At ICGEB, Nanda’s re- environment, temperature and humidity
detect a range of diseases from the infec- search has involved collecting exhaled also make a difference. Toluene in breath,
tious TB and COVID-19 to non-communi- breath samples of TB patients and con- for instance, may be from widely-used co-
cable ones such as cancers. Researchers trols (the healthy and those with other lour products such as paint or hair dye.
have also analysed the breath of patients respiratory diseases) from different hos- These variables confound researchers
– with success – in an intensive care set- pitals in the country in specialised steel looking for true biomarkers. The “com-
ting to detect ventilator-associated pneu- tubes and running them through so- plexity and the large variations in people”
monia and organ rejection. phisticated Gas Chromatography-Mass mean that exhaled gas markers for most
Three, disease-linked changes in breath Spectrometry (GC-MS) equipment in diseases remain “obscure”, says Yangong
occur before symptoms appear, thus al- his New Delhi lab. Nanda says there are Zheng, Associate Professor of Electri-
lowing early diagnosis. For instance, in “critical challenges to capturing and an- cal Engineering and Computer Science
studies, Haick’s breath analyser could de- alysing breath”. Faculty in Ningbo University, China.
tect people with pre-cancerous lesions in Human breath is a complex gas contain- His work with sensitive gas sensors and
gastric cancer. ing thousands of compounds in very min- sensing algorithms that could potentially
Four, breath-testing lends itself to the ute quantities. These are known to be influ- be used in an electronic nose for testing
creation of lab-independent, rapid tests. For enced by a range of factors such as diet and exhaled breath has made him an ‘impact
instance, Singapore start-up Breathonix got lifestyle. For instance, eating raw onions creator’ at the Institute of Electrical and
a provisional regulatory nod in May to place or drinking alcohol could lead to a higher Electronics Engineers, a global technical
its breath-testing equipment for COVID-19 concentration of sulphur and ethanol re- body (see box: Nosey marker).
at a checkpoint bordering Malaysia. spectively in the breath. Pollutants in the There are ways to reduce some of these
NOSEY MARKER of nanomaterial-based sensors in a explosives, detect poisonous gases in

Different gases are composed of wide range of applications. Broadly, the air or toxins in sewer systems and
molecules of diverse structures. In the sensors used could be acoustic, even in judging the quality of tea. When
humans, these are matched to receptors colorimetric or chemiresistors. These it comes to breath analysis, the e-nose
in the nose that send a print to the brain, are capable of refined sensing in parts has some advantages over conventional
enabling it to identify a smell. However, per billion, for instance. An e-nose lab testing instruments: it is portable
unlike a dog’s nose, which has many typically has multiple sensors grouped and relatively cheap. However, e-noses
more receptors and, therefore, a wider in a specific way with the for breath analysis are still being
olfactory range, the human nose has machine reading and developed. Efforts are on to
its limitations. E-noses were created recognising patterns. improve sensors and pair
to overcome these shortcomings of E-noses have been them with AI for better speed
human olfaction using various types used to smell out and accuracy of detection.

healthy subjects from New Delhi, Manipur,
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Tripura. He Rapid breath tests for
is preparing to publish his results. COVID-19 that offer hope
With validated biomarkers or breath
prints, the specificity of a test improves
for mass screening
dramatically, Nair says. The higher the Breathonix
specificity, the lower is the rate of false (spin-off from the National University
positives. “You really don’t want to alarm of Singapore)
people (without cause).” HOW IT WORKS
The difficulty in finding and validating • Breath is collected and fed* via
biomarkers is one reason why there is sampler into a portable mass
still a large gap between the information spectrometer
available and actual tests, says T.S. Balga- • Machine learning algorithm analyses
nesh, a veteran Bengaluru-based scientist sample and generates result
with experience driving innovation in STATUS
government and industry labs. Geogra- Provisional approval to test alongside
phy and culture may be important factors rapid antigen tests (RATs) at
in breath biomarkers, requiring longitu- checkpoints
dinal cohort studies in specific groups.
“Given the diversity of populations, with-
out Big Data analysis, we will be doing
PHOTO: BREATHOMIX.COM
thousands of (biomarker) validations and
shooting in the dark,” he says.
MANY ROADS
Equally important is how the science will
reach the patient. Breathomix
It’s open season right now. “Any technol- (formed by a research group from the
interferences. Subjects are asked to fast ogy that can selectively identify the metab- Amsterdam University Medical Center)
and stay away from alcohol or tobacco olite of choice can be used,” says Nair. “Till HOW IT WORKS
for a few hours before a sample is drawn. we do a lot more work on this we will not • Breath is fed* into the SpiroNose**
They may be asked to rinse their mouths know what the best method is.” As Gouma • Nose has 7 metal oxide
with tap water. Taking a sample of the air says, the creation of a new breath test calls semiconductor sensors for detection
in the room to establish a control data set for concerted effort by clinicians, scientists, • Cloud-based AI gives real-time result
also helps. Researchers use special bags sensor and devices experts, and breath STATUS
or tubes to collect and transport samples. analysis visionaries. “You have to identify Deployed commercially
Nanda used tubes from European compa- and validate biomarkers, create selective
nies. During analysis, he discarded peaks sensors for them, validate the sensors with NaNose Medical
on the MS graph formed by known envi- clinical studies and demonstrate a device (Technology developed by Technion-
ronment contaminants, hospital indoor that works in a reliable manner,” she says. Israel Institute of Technology)
chemicals, plasticisers etc. This is how the COVID-19 breathalyser at HOW IT WORKS
In some cases, researchers have OSU was developed, she adds. • Breath is fed* into breathalyser
combed through published studies to Consider Nanda’s example. His lab has • Proprietary smart sensor array
identify a single biomarker for a disease. expensive GC-MS equipment, an effective measures VOCs***
For instance, the BLO detector contains method to separate and analyse VOCs. But • AI algorithm analyses pattern
chemicals that react with a single VOC his goal is a point-of-care (PoC) e-nose for STATUS
in breath that is a product of malignant TB. For this, he needs to collaborate with Exploratory study in Wuhan in March
cells in specifically breast, lung and oral experts in material sciences, sensor de- 2020 showed high accuracy. Further
cancer, says co-inventor Indranil Lahi- sign and algorithms. “Initially we thought validation needed
ri, Associate Professor, Department of it would be easy… But while it looks rosy
Metallurgical and Materials Engineer- from a distance, once we get into the intri- The Ohio State University
ing, IITR. Lahiri, who is on the faculty of cacies, we realise this is a different world HOW IT WORKS
IITR’s Centre of Nanotechnology, did not altogether.” Nanda says he is in talks with • Breath is fed* into a breathalyser
name the VOC, citing confidentiality. He the Kolkata-based Centre for Development • Ceramic sensors specific to
admits that there are “difficulties” in this of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to design biomarkers generate change in
approach as the published literature may a prototype. C-DAC has an e-nose to assess
electrical resistance
• Sensor output is a breath print
often be contradictory. tea quality.
specific to COVID-19
A preferred approach is to look, like Nan- A PoC testing device must be small and
Source: Company/researcher websites
• Change is measured for a reading

da did, for breath prints or signatures. Nan- portable with sensing elements that are
STATUS
da likens using a single marker to judging effective and disposable, says Nair, whose
Pending Emergency Use
a student solely on math scores. A signa- company deals with PoC solutions. “This Authorisation by the U.S. FDA
ture approach ensures that “if one marker puts a lot more technological constraints
underperforms, the others compensate for on the problem.” He explains that lab-based *Exhaled breath via disposable mouthpieces.
it.” Nanda identified a panel of 10 biomark- MS, while naturally suited for breath-test- ** Integrates routine spirometry with electronic
ers after collecting and analysing samples ing, is not rugged and needs trained staff nose technology.
***Volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath.
of patients with active TB, non-TB and and a power source.

COVER STORY
For scientists and

companies in India, there
are challenges such as the
relatively weak academia-
industry linkages and
inadequate risk funding.
Big Data of exhaled breath gas compo-
sition would be needed to fulfil the “ulti-
mate goal” of testing exhaled breath for
several diseases on one set of equipment,
Zheng says. He adds that a “big leap” on
such testing is possible if scientists from
materials science, neural networks and
respiratory medicine work together. Ha-
ick, whose AI Nanoarray has also been
tested in COVID-19, says that with some
modification to the AI, it can potentially
serve as a diagnostic tool in case of a new
disease outbreak.
As more companies get interested in
the commercial potential of breath anal-
ysis, they will look for ways to monetise
the technology. In the U.K., Owlstone
After years of research, Ranjan Nanda, Group Leader, Translational Health, ICGEB, New Delhi, Medical, an early mover in breath test de-
says he has identified a biomarker signature for tuberculosis in exhaled breath. His ultimate goal
is a point-of-care breath test for TB that can be used in low-resource settings. PHOTO: AMIT VERMA velopment, is earning revenues from its
breath collection and analysis products;
Molbio is considering amplifying fluo- specific circuitry to support sensing, per- customers include biomarker research-
rescent polymers (AFPs), or sensors with haps quantification of results in values on ers and pharmaceutical companies pur-
enhanced sensitivity, in an e-nose. An off- a reader and so on. This would increase suing precision medicine. “We are at an
shoot of this research is Beaglez, Molbio’s the cost and the time to develop and defeat interesting cusp,” Owlstone founder Bil-
handheld detector for explosives such as the purpose of an ‘anyone, anywhere’ test. ly Boyle had said in a 2019 podcast. “The
RDX and TNT developed in collabora- technology platform now exists, and we
tion with IIT Bombay. The question, says LOOKING AHEAD are asking where it can be applied.”
Nair, is how to make the sensors selective Despite the hurdles, a future for breath- At IITR, Lahiri says that the team is in
for different compounds so as to increase based testing is within sight. The use of contact with industry partners – of whom
the breadth of detection. Big Data and machine learning to speed up one is keen to take this technology to mar-
At Technion, Haick has added an AI biomarker discovery and pattern recogni- ket after clinical trials and regulatory cer-
layer to the e-nose sensors. The AI Na- tion is on the rise. Some COVID-19 breath tification. For scientists and companies in
noarray has been able to detect more than tests such as one by the Netherlands-based India, there are additional challenges such
23 disease states such as cancers, liver Breathomix use AI and cloud computing for as the relatively weaker academia-indus-
and kidney ailments and pulmonary hy- a real-time analysis; breath profiles are com- try linkages and inadequate risk funding.
pertension through exhaled breath in pared to an online reference database and While the last decade or more has seen
various studies. The AI nanosensors and analysed by machine learning algorithms. an innovation ecosystem emerge, it is
algorithms were trained to recognise pat- Agrawal of CSIR-IGIB says that there is still a work in progress. Government
terns or breath prints on samples of dis- agreement that Big Data and AI are critical funding for diagnostics start-ups is com-
eased and healthy patients. for success. “But we are not at the phase petitive and likely to go to solutions that
For the IITR team, a simple colorimetric where datasets are large or diverse enough can make a big impact with a relatively
test seemed the most likely solution. Lahi- to come out with a reliable solution yet.” Ef- short gestation.
ri explains that an e-nose would require forts such as the centre of excellence should But it is important that the purveyors
multiple inputs such as a sensing element, help generate more India-specific data. of breath analysis stay the course. Given
the diverse factors that influence breath,
Components of breath analysis devices in development a breath test may have to be specific to
a population and/or geography. “You
MOUTHPIECE COLLECTION ANALYTIC may not be able to take something stan-
User exhales DEVICE/ TOOLS dardised in (another country) and expect
into this. To be SAMPLER Methods such it to work,” Balganesh says. If India has to
discarded after Exhaled breath as mass spec- benefit from a solution that checks many
a single use. Key features is fed into this. May be trometry and chemical boxes at the same time, it will have to in-
could include one-way flow engineered for efficient sensors made of nanoma- vest in building it. 
and a trap for saliva. breath collection. terials are used.
(Overseas researchers were interviewed over e-mail.)

COVER STORY
To the point
The study of exhaled breath could aid the cause of precision medicine.
GAURI KAMATH help classify humans. A pre-
W
liminary study, which also
hy do some people employed machine learning,
respond better than on 94 volunteers showed this
others to a given approach to be promising,
treatment, and why do some according to Mahesh Pancha-
experience more severe side gnula, Professor of Applied
effects? Modern medicine con- Mechanics, IIT Madras, and
tinues to grapple with such a co-author of the study being
questions, especially for com- prepared for publication.
plex diseases. Precision medi- The finding can have two
cine is an emerging approach possible uses: one, exhaled
that looks into factors such as breath turbulence signature
genomics, environment and as a unique ID like the finger-
lifestyle that could impact a print or iris. Two, it may be
patient’s response to treat- used to infer the geometry of
ment. It seeks to refine and the ETR. The latter may make
customise therapy for smaller inhalation therapy for diseas-
sub-groups rather than look es such as asthma more effec-
for treatments that work for tive. “In the case of inhaled
the average patient. drugs, not all of it is delivered
Research suggests that to the lungs,” explains Pan-
studying exhaled breath could Progress in breath-sensing methods could help in personalised diagnoses chagnula. A portion is trapped
and treatment, reckons Prof. Hossam Haick. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
aid the cause of precision med- in the ETR, impacting drug
icine. In 2017, in a study in effectiveness. If doctors could
the Journal of Translational Medicine, a
team at the All India Institute of Medical
Breath analysis that could measure this loss, they could recalibrate
dosing to make up for it. But it differs
Sciences (AIIMS) and the Council of Sci- reliably identify sub-types from patient to patient, he points out.
entific & Industrial Research-run Insti-
tute of Genomics and Integrative Biology and help match patients Panchagnula’s department is collabo-
rating with the Sri Venkateswara Insti-
(CSIR-IGIB) could group asthma patients
into three types based on the metabolites
and treatment would be a tute of Medical Sciences, Tirupati, to bet-
ter understand interpersonal variations
identified in their exhaled breath conden- game-changer. in pulmonological functions. In joint ex-
sate (aerosols in exhaled breath from the periments, they have demonstrated how
lungs’ lining fluids that are condensed for in diagnosing or predicting severity in a the presence of radio-labelled inhaled
analysis). These groups were found to dif- cohort of children with asthma. aerosols in the lungs of volunteers dif-
fer clinically as well. Going forward, research needs to be fered from one subject to another. This
Studies such as this prompted the Indi- scaled up. “You need large numbers to be is where inferring the geometry of the
an Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to followed regularly,” Agrawal says. That ETR helps. This knowledge could be used
fund a centre of excellence for breathomics is a key reason why the centre is located to classify patients into smaller groups
just before the pandemic. The focus is on in AIIMS, a public tertiary care hospital. and their inhalation therapy dosage opti-
respiratory diseases such as asthma and At IIT Madras, fluid dynamics experts mised accordingly.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder are studying the flow velocity of exhaled Progress in breath-sensing methods
(COPD). The centre will experiment with breath to identify so-called turbulence sig- too could aid precision medicine. For in-
various techniques for breath analysis. natures that could indirectly help improve stance, at the Technion — Israel Institute
It has two objectives, says Anurag the effectiveness of inhaled drugs. Exhaled of Technology, an AI-enabled breathaly-
Agrawal, Director, CSIR-IGIB, and a breath is pushed out by the lungs through ser was able to classify three sub-types of
co-investigator. One is breath-based diag- the extra-thoracic region (ETR) – the por- gastric cancer patients in a large screen-
nostics. The other is precision medicine tion between the nose and lungs, including ing population of healthy and diseased,
or gauging “who is likely to respond well the nasal and oral passages, pharynx and with 100% sensitivity and 87% specifici-
to a therapy, and who is not.” larynx. The physical characteristics (so- ty, says its inventor Hossam Haick, Full
Breath analysis that could reliably called morphological structures) of the Professor, Department of Chemical Engi-
identify sub-types and help match patients ETR vary from person to person. neering. It was also able to discriminate
and treatment would be a game-changer. Researchers at the IIT Madras hypoth- between volatile organic compounds
For instance, while elevated nitric oxide esised that these physical differences associated with genetic mutations in
level is globally an accepted biomarker could impact breath ‘turbulence’ or how certain diseases such as the K-RAS and
for asthma, a study in an Indian paedi- exhaled breath moved through the ETR. EGFR genes in cancers. This could help
atric cohort by researchers including And, further, that it is possible to identify in personalised diagnoses and treatment,
Agrawal found it had little clinical value unique turbulence signatures that could Haick says. 

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MICROBIOLOGY
What’s
your gut
feeling?
As scientists turn the
lens on gastrointestinal
microbes, a handful of tests
offers ways to assess one’s
gut and ward off disease.
T
MANUPRIYA
he frequent flyer couldn’t under- recommendations and the inclusion of describes the gut health measurement
stand why she faced persistent probiotics and prebiotics in your meals. system as “technically robust”, “trained
gastric problems despite follow- The advice is “hyper-personalised”, tai- on Indian populations”, and reliant on a
ing a healthy diet. She thought lored to the person’s specific needs, says “huge microbiome dataset”.
the irritable bowel syndrome-like LRB chief executive officer Sankaran. Gut microbiome is the sum total of the ge-
disorder plaguing her was related to her ex- Sankaran was the first to test his nomes of all the bacteria, viruses and fungi
tensive travels abroad, but when it persist- own gut microbes when BugSpeaks was living in one’s gut. The gut has trillions of
ed, she got a gut microbiome test done. launched, and others at LRB soon fol- tiny microbes; according to a 2016 estimate,
It turned out she was eating too much lowed suit. His test results indicated he an average human gut hosts some 3.8x1013
broccoli. could develop rheumatoid arthritis. He bacteria. Their number is roughly equal to
The test showed an unusually high con- modified his diet, which reduced the the number of cells in a human body, and
centration of microbes that thrived on number of gut microbes that could in- their total mass is about 0.2 kg.
cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli crease his risk for rheumatoid arthritis. Studies have also shown that the mi-
in the gut. She was advised to eliminate By mid-2018, the test was available to crobes together harbour several times
these vegetables from her diet. She did so the public. The process of testing is sim- more genes than the human genome and
— and the symptoms subsided. ple: a stool sample is collected and tested, play an important role in maintaining a
Like her, many are testing their gut the microbial composition in the sample person’s physical and mental health.
microbes in search of a healthier life. is analysed via sequencing, and finally
The traveller, for one, underwent her mi- gut health is measured based on the di- THE INDIAN GUT
crobiome profile test at Leucine Rich Bio versity of microbes present in the sample. Research on the gut microbiome of Indi-
(LRB), a Bengaluru-based start-up found- The test results contain a gut health ans has been growing in the last decade
ed in 2014 by Kumar Sankaran, Debojyoti score that can range from -5 to +5. The more or so, with studies focusing on the type of
Dhar and Prabhath Manjappa, all three positive the score, the better is a person’s microbes, how they affect people’s health,
of whom have backgrounds in healthcare gut health. The test results also provide a and how different they are from those in
research and delivery. risk prediction for 16 diseases, including the gut of people from other regions. For
LRB focuses on microbes, their genomes diabetes, hypertension, inflammatory bow- example, researchers from the Transla-
and the insights one can glean from poring els, rheumatoid arthritis and depression. tional Health Science and Technology
over microbial genomes. Four years af- The BugSpeaks team has filed a patent Institute (THSTI), Faridabad, and their
ter it was set up, the company launched a for its gut health scoring system and for colleagues found that the types of bacte-
test that the founders claim is the first of the process used in analysing microbial ria and fungus found in Indians vastly
its kind in Asia. Called BugSpeaks, it can diversity. It claims to have information differed from those seen in people from
tell you the names of the many microbes on 200,000 species of microbes in its da- Japan. The Indian gut showed an abun-
housed in your gut and highlight imbal- tabase, which includes not just bacteria dance of the bacterium Prevotella and fun-
ances, if any, in the gut microbiome. but also viruses and fungi. Sankaran gus Candida; the gut of Japanese people
If a particular type of microbe, for in- was abundant in the Bacteroides bacteria
stance, is present in unusually high or
low numbers, the test will tell you if it is The gut microbiome test and the Saccharomyces fungus.
Several other studies have reported the
linked to a certain disease, or can lead to
one. Health experts at LRB will then sug-
results provide a risk dominance of Prevotella in Indians. A 2016
meta-analysis by researchers from Pune
gest ways to fix the imbalance with diet prediction for 16 diseases. and Delhi said the “distinctive feature” of

the Indian gut microbiome was the abun-
dance of “Prevotella and Megasphaera”.
The 2018 study Landscape Of Gut Micro-
biome – Pan-India Exploration found 993
unique micro-organisms across the In-
dian microbiome and the dominance of
Prevotella followed by Faecalibacterium.
Diets clearly have an impact on the kind
of microbes that thrive in one’s gut. The
dominance of Prevotella is most likely be-
cause Indian diets are rich in plant-based In 2014, Prabhath Manjappa, Debojyoti Dhar and Kumar Sankaran founded Leucine Rich Bio, a
carbohydrates, points out Bhabatosh Das, Bengaluru-based start-up that focuses on microbes and their genomes. PHOTOS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Associate Professor, THSTI. Studies also

found clusters of potentially pathogen-
ic microbes in the gut of severely mal-
Some scientists think
nourished children in India. that microbiome
research is still in
Scientists are looking at how
the information about the mi-
crobes may be used to probe gut
health. Researchers at Life Sci-
its nascent stages
ences R&D, TCS Research, Tata in India and there
is not enough data
Consultancy Services (TCS),
recently came up with an in sil-
ico tool named GutFeel, which
looks not at the composition of
for the production of LRC claims that its microbiome profile test
BugSpeaks, which identifies microbes in the
microbes in the gut but at their diagnostic tests. gut and highlights imbalances, is the first test
of its kind in Asia. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
functions. The TCS scientists believe that
different microbes can perform the same “Though we have a long way to go be- research is still in its nascent stages in
functions in different individuals. So, fore we can say that we understand the India and there is not enough data for the
instead of looking for just differences in baseline gut microbiome of Indians, I am production of diagnostic tests. “It is not
types of microbes, GutFeel focuses on the optimistic about the potential of microbi- the right time to introduce such tests as
diversity in the functional potential of the ome research,” Khan adds. data are not substantial (enough) to ex-
microbes and uses that information to as- Khan is working on another area of trapolate it for commercial applications,”
sess gut health. microbiome research where he and his says Rupjyoti Talukdar, Head, Pancreas
Even though understanding of the In- colleagues are trying to develop a micro- Research Group and Division of Gut Mi-
dian microbiome has improved in the biome-based diagnostic test for fatty liver crobiome Research, Asian Healthcare
last decade, there is a lot that is still not disease. They have observed that the pres- Foundation, Hyderabad. “Just taking a
known, largely because of the diversity in ence of two types of gut bacteria – Klebsiella healthy, traditional and balanced diet
diets and environment in India. Take, for and Enterococcus – indicates the initiation could potentially maintain a good micro-
example, people from Assam’s Mishing of liver disease and are using this informa- biome, even without testing,” he adds.
tribe. The dominant gut microbe among tion and other findings to develop a diag- Despite the reservations researchers
them is the Succinivibrio bacteria. nostic kit for early detection of fatty liver might have, direct-to-consumer micro-
“This is highly unusual,” says Mojibur disease. They have filed a patent for their biome-based tests are becoming more
Khan, Associate Professor at the Institute diagnostic technology and once the pat- accessible. In 2019, Bione, a Bengalu-
of Advanced Study in Science and Technol- ent comes through, they plan to bring out ru-based start-up, began selling a di-
ogy (IASST), Guwahati, who has the diagnostic kit through GUTVicinta, a rect-to-consumer microbiome test called
been studying gut microbes in start-up incubated at IASST Social Ven- MyMicroBiome. The test, as well as Bug-
different ethnic populations ture & Entrepreneurship Consortium. Speaks, can be ordered online from their
across the north-eastern re- However, a key step before that respective websites.
gion in India. would be to get an approval from the “Roughly 2,000 people have taken the
Globally, scientists recog- Indian Council of Medical Research or BugSpeaks test,” Sankaran says. He cites
nise three different gut cate- the Drugs Controller General of In- the case of the frequent traveller as among
gories called enterotypes. Each dia, Khan points out. He stresses those who have benefited from it, and also
category is dominated by a that all microbial diagnostic gives the example of a person who was
specific type of bacteria: tests should be approved by prone to depression. The microbiome
Prevotella, Bacteroides, or a regulatory body and only profile showed an excess of fungal popu-
Ruminococcus. But the be prescribed by a doctor lation — double the usual quantity, which
Mishing tribespeople who can also provide ac- is 10% of the total microbiome in an aver-
do not fall in any of the tionable solutions after age Indian gut. The person was then put
three categories. Khan looking at the test report. on a dietary correction programme, after
says the most domi- Some scientists also which the episodes of depression reduced.
nant microbe in their think that microbiome The tests are priced at around `10,000, but
gut, constituting more curiosity about what lies in the gut — along
Mojibur Khan has been
than 30% of the total gut studying gut microbes in with easy access to such tests — is likely to
microbial population, is ethnic populations in the ramp up the demand for microbiome profil-
North-East.
the Succinivibrio bacteria. ing. It is, indeed, the inside story. 
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

GUEST COLUMN
Towards Six Sigma science

To improve the quality of science, we need to bring rigour to the
processes that enable science.
R
ejection rates for research papers submitted of science will abridge freedom and creativity. At one
to top science journals are as high as 80-95%, level, science is not a commodity; scientific research
according to a 2018 analysis of 400 papers sub- is about charting a course with no prior knowledge
mitted to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gyne- of the destination. But the process of science is a
cology of India. The top three reasons cited for rejec- well-understood commodity, with good experimental
tion were “poor methodology”, “no new information” design, proper controls, robust statistics, and logical
and “poor scientific content”. This may suggest that reasoning. The journey of science may be unpredict-
the effort to keep published content pristine is work- able, but that is all the more reason why the ship on
ing well. But it could also point to poor quality of sci- SWAMI which scientists embark on this journey, and the
ence research. This is a problem. SUBRAMANIAM tools of navigation they use (the scientific method),
Global spending on R&D is at a record $1.7 trillion. A clinical should be certifiably sea-worthy.
In India, taxpayers fund R&D to the tune of $30 billion. pharmacologist To improve the quality of science, we need to bring
If much of this spending results in output that jour- and neuroscientist, rigour to the processes that enable science. As with the
Dr Swami
nals find unacceptable, it is a matter of concern. That Subramaniam is
industrial process, the scientific process can be broken
is compounded by the lack of reproducibility of pub- CEO of Ignite Life down into its components and each component studied
lished science: as a 2018 paper in the National Science Science Foundation. for ways to ensure better quality. The backbone of this
Review notes, in cancer biology, almost 90% of results will continue to be the peer review, where senior scien-
published were not reproducible. It is disturbing that tists with proven track records sit in judgement over
even science that has been through the gauntlet of the quality of science. But the peer review process can
peer review can be so unreliable. Self-corrective mech- be systematised. For example, checking and validating
anisms in science may fix this problem sooner or later. the experimental design and the use of controls must
But there is a period during which the findings be made mandatory for all reviews. Likewise, the
of a flawed study can cascade through statistical analysis proposed must be
the scientific community, spawning appropriate. Just as companies run
generations of research studies that simulations on processes before de-
are congenitally flawed. ployment, outcomes of experiments
One measure of evaluating science can be anticipated so that the analysis
quality is the number of citations a and interpretation can be tested for ro-
published paper receives. A high bustness before the real experiment gets
citation score reflects the con- under way. The funding process can be
temporary relevance of the work improved by shifting the focus from the
– and peers’ opinion on the signif- bureaucratic accounting and financial
icance and reliability of the report- aspects of the project to an evaluation
ed results. It is a subjective metric of the quality of ideation and experimen-
that is heavily influenced by the tal approach proposed.
gloss of the author’s seniority One of the bugbears of the peer review
and popular standing. Further- process is the scarcity of scientists will-
more, a citation score is generat- ing to commit time and effort to the
ed post-hoc: it does nothing to ensure the review process, given that reviewers
quality of research. are not adequately compensated. But if we are to get
leading scientists to give quality attention to peer re-
THE ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’ ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
views, some system of compensation – in cash or kind
To improve science research output, we must inter- – must be worked out. Peer reviewers should also be
vene in the manner of its production: the scientific trained and certified in the review process so that they
process itself. The ‘scientific method’ has defined The ‘scientific can give balanced attention to all aspects of the propos-
the principles to be followed in scientific research,
but this is mostly a folksy, cottage industry-style ap-
method’, which al rather than being influenced by their own biases.
proach that has remained untouched by quality con- has defined HARNESSING ‘METASCIENCE’
trol developments in other sectors. Quality became the principles It is time to put metascience – the use of scientific
an aspirational standard for the manufacturing sec- to be followed methodology to study science in order to improve its
tor in the latter half of the 20th century. The efforts
of people like W. Edwards Deming elevated quality to
in scientific quality – to good use. Given the pivotal role that sci-
ence has to play in the success of nations, the scientif-
totemic levels for the global automobile sector. Tools research, will ic enterprise must be improved. As the physician-sci-
for process improvement, such as the Six Sigma stan- be improved by entist John Ioannidis put it, “Science is the best thing
dard, have been widely adopted.
Some scientists may recoil in horror at the men-
the infusion of that has happened to human beings... but we can do it
better.” India does not have a choice. As an emerging
tion of process improvement and science, perhaps ‘quality control’ nation aspiring to be a leader in science, we have to
owing to a misperception that toning up the process parameters. do science better.

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BIG DATA
The E.V. revolution

is revving up
There’s a boom in production and sales of electric
vehicles, but batteries hold the key to future growth.
Globally, there’s a boom in electric vehicle (E.V.) production and sales, thanks to tech-
nological progress, green energy policies and an increase in the number of consumers
preferring eco-friendly mobility even at a premium. The key to future growth lies
in deep research, specifically in battery technology and in wider deployment of E.V. in-
frastructure, including charging points and recycling of batteries. Done right, it could
pay rich dividends for mobility in a greener planet.
howindialives.com
howindialives.com is a database and search engine for public data
The Context
Global sales of electric 8
Global electric vehicle sales (million)
vehicles are tipped to

grow 5-fold in 5 years 6
E.V. sales have boomed in the past 10 years globally,
from 125,000 units in 2012 to 3.24 million in 2020.
Sales are expected to almost double in 2021. 4
While China leads the E.V. market, Europe and
the U.S. have seen significant growth. India’s E.V.
prospects look bright across categories, especially
in two-wheelers. When ride-sharing company Ola 2
announced in July it was launching an electric two-
wheeler, it received 100,000 bookings in 24 hours.
Government data shows that about 120,000 electric 0
vehicles were registered in 2020. 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Note: 2021 figures are estimates; Source: ev-volume.com
India’s battery capacity requirement by 2035 (Gigawatt hours)

India could need
3,400 GWh of
batteries for
electric vehicles
by 2035
With the growth in E.Vs, the demand
for batteries is set to grow. Analysts
from the International Council on
Clean Transportation, in a working
paper, estimate that if E.V. adoption
takes off, India will need about
3,400-4,100 Gigawatt hour batteries
for its E.Vs by 2035. While E.V. plants
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
are coming up across the country,

30 @ 30 scenario* Ambitious scenario*
* EV30@30 global initiative targets a 30% new sales share for electric vehicles by 2030. Under the ambitious scenario, the targets are
India is heavily dependent on imports
higher in select segments, notably 75% for two-wheelers and three-wheelers. Source: International Council On Clean Transportation for battery supplies.

The Challenges
Batteries account for 40% of the cost of an electric vehicle
Many experts believe India should set up giga factories for batteries because they are the critical component in E.Vs, accounting
for about 40% of total costs. To win the E.V. game, India has to win the battery game too. And given the centrality of the battery in
the cost equation, the prime question is: how to lower the cost of a battery?
Non- Vehicle
powertrain interface
components control Power
39.9% 3% electronics
7%
Electric
drive
Battery
40.2% 10%
Source: Status Quo Analysis of Various Segments of Electric Mobility and Low Carbon Passenger Road Transport in India, GIZ
Battery prices have dropped to a fifth of Driving range of

2013 prices, but need to fall further electric vehicles is
Right now, investments into giga factories for batteries are concentrated in China.
Beyond China, manufacturing capacity is spreading to Europe and the U.S. Heavy lower than desired
investments made in China have already brought down battery prices, bringing the
total cost of ownership of E.Vs closer to vehicles running on conventional fuels. This
needs to come down further for mass adoption.
Battery prices (cell+pack) ($/kWh)

800
600
400
Source: International Council On Clean Transportation
200
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 100 200 300 400
Source: BloombergNEF Variable Current 2020 Desired range

BIG DATA
The Next Frontiers

Batteries: Next-generation batteries
will cost less and last longer
To address the range issue, battery technology has to progress: both in im-
proving Lithium-Ion batteries, and in developing new materials and approach-
es. Rocky Mountain Institute projects that costs of Li-ion batteries could
Charging points:
drop to $87/kWh by 2025 driven by innovations. It puts battery technologies 55 million charging
stations may be
in three buckets: a) Solid-state batteries such as rechargeable zinc alkaline,
Li-metal, and Li-sulfur for heavier mobility applications. b) low-cost and
long-duration batteries such as zinc-based, flow, and high-temperature tech-
nologies for grid balancing in a high-renewable and future E.V. applications. c) needed by 2030
High-power batteries for high penetration and fast charging of E.Vs. The growth in E.Vs and batteries should
be matched by growth in battery charging
Technology Specific energy cost ($/kWh) Shelflife (years) infrastructure, which calls for significant
investments. According to McKinsey: “An
Li-ion estimated $110 billion to $180 billion must be
Li-ion 2019 237 10 invested from 2020 to 2030 to satisfy global
Li-ion 2025 (NMC) 176 10 demand for EV charging stations, both in
Li-ion 2030 (NMC) 176 10 public spaces and within homes.” China, the
E.U., the U.K., and the U.S. will need 22 mil-
Advanced Li-ion 2030 90 10
lion to 27 million charge-point units by 2025,
Flow and at least 55 million by 2030. This is the
Flow 2019 350 20 lower end of the demand. At the upper end,
the demand is estimated at 77 million.
Flow 2025 173 20
Flow 2030 50 20 Charging points in buildings (million)
60
Source: Breakthrough Batteries, Rocky Mountain Institute
50
40
30
20
10
0
2022 2025 2030
U.S. E.U. + U.K. China
Source: McKinsey
Recycling: Battery recyling processes have varying performance

Recyling process (effectiveness on a scale of 0 to 100)
Pyrometallurgical Hydrometallurgical Physical
Dimension
(heat-based) (chemical-based) (mechanical separation)
Technology readiness and industrial scale deployment 100 66 25
Range and complexity of recovered materials
33 66 100
Simplicity of input criteria and required pre-treatment 90 66 25
Future economic viability 25 66 90
Environmental friendliness 33 55 50
Efficiency
33 90 90
Source: Batteries on wheels. Element Energy

Healing the feet that carry our nation
The farmer shoe
YAAR
CARBON CAPTURE
Cleaning up their act

Indian companies and research laboratories are working on innovative systems to
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
ADITI JAIN
T
he research team at Breathe Ap-
plied Sciences Private Limited was
looking forward to travelling to
the U.S., all ready to demonstrate
its carbon utilisation technology for the
international Carbon XPRIZE. The compe-
tition required participants to showcase a
material or technology that could capture
carbon dioxide — the heat-trapping gas
that contributes to global warming — and
convert it into useful products.
Then COVID-19 struck.
“We were lucky to get support from an
angel investor who was ready to fund this
expensive trip that required instruments
to be taken along. We were all set,” says
Sebastian C. Peter, Professor at the Jawa-
harlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scien-
tific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru.
Peter had founded the start-up in 2016
on the JNCASR campus since only private
companies could participate in the presti-
gious global competition. The company was Breathe Applied Sciences Private Limited, set up by Sebastian C. Peter, has developed an efficient
among the top ten finalists and the only In- and cost-effective catalyst for converting carbon dioxide to methanol. PHOTO: NAMAS BHOJANI
At the heart of the technology developed by Peter’s team is

dian company to reach the finals.
With the pandemic, flights and events
came to a halt. “We waited, waited and wait-
ed but travel did not resume,” says Peter.
a catalyst that can convert carbon dioxide to methanol, a
The competition organisers then asked clean fuel seen as an alternative to diesel and petrol.
the start-up, which works in the area of
carbon capture and utilisation, for data more than 70% efficiency (against the oth- Breathe Applied Sciences are trying to de-
that would show the efficacy of its tech- ers’ 25%). For the conversion to methanol, velop catalysts that can produce methane,
nology in India. In the last stage of the the carbon dioxide received from carbon ethanol, ethylene, dimethyl ether, plas-
competition, the company was asked to capture plants, together with hydrogen in a tics and other fuels from captured carbon
demonstrate that its technology had the particular combination, is fed over the cat- dioxide. However, carbon capture and
potential to convert at least 2 tonnes of alyst at a high temperature and pressure. utilisation (CCU) wasn’t considered lu-
carbon dioxide per day. While the catalyst patented by the start- crative when it first came up in the 1990s.
With factories and industries closed be- up has an efficiency of 35-38%, the addition- CCU is an energy-intensive and costly
cause of COVID-19, the company struggled al efficiency of about 35% is achieved by affair because the process takes place at
to set up a plant. When it was time for the recycling the residual carbon dioxide and a given pressure and temperature and in
submission, it was able to demonstrate data hydrogen for the same process again. The the presence of a catalyst, points out Dr
for only 89 hours – against the required 720 technology not only reduces the carbon in Malti Goel, chief executive at the Climate
hours. “We continued to capture data after the atmosphere, but a cost analysis shows Change Research Institute, New Delhi.
the deadline and realised that, in terms of that the methanol produced is `10-15 cheap- “Therefore, the initial focus of the en-
fuel production, we were number one,” er than that manufactured in other ways. ergy-constrained world was on carbon
Peter says. “We could not win because the This technology has a readiness level of capture and storage (CCS),” adds Goel,
volume of data was not sufficient.” 7 on a scale of 0-9, which means that a tech- formerly a scientist at the Department of
nology prototype demonstration has been Science and Technology and a member of
UTILISING CARBON conducted in an operational environment. the Indian CO2 Sequestration Applied Re-
At the heart of the technology developed by The company is now in talks with various search (ICOSAR) Network. Since then, In-
the team is a catalyst that can convert car- companies to commercialise the technol- dia and other countries have made strides
bon dioxide to methanol, a clean fuel that ogy. The team has also found ways to pro- in energy production technologies. Addi-
is considered an alternative to diesel and duce other fuels such as dimethyl ether; the tionally, if this energy comes from renew-
petrol. While similar technologies exist, tests for those are in the laboratory stage. ables, it will make carbon utilisation in-
the method developed by Peter’s group has Across the country, companies such as dustrial processes more sustainable.

CAPTURING CARBON
Before carbon dioxide is used to make other
chemicals or sent for long-term storage, it
has to be captured. Carbon Clean Solutions,
a company started up in 2009 by two engi-
neers from IIT Kharagpur and currently
headquartered in London, has established
38 carbon capture plants across the globe,
including one in India. Its plant in Thoothu-
kudi in Tamil Nadu, set up with Tuticorin
Alkali Chemicals and Fertilizers Limited,
captures close to 60,000 tonnes of carbon
dioxide a year from a nearby coal plant to
produce soda ash, used in detergent, paper
production, the glass industry and so on.
To capture the carbon dioxide, flue gas
arising from the industrial plant is sent
to a pre-treatment unit where nitrous
oxides, heavy metals and other undesir-
able materials are removed. Next, this
pre-treated gas enters a vertical absorber
column. The gases are injected from the
bottom and the chamber is showered with
a patented solvent that absorbs carbon di-
oxide from above. When the solvent and
carbon dioxide meet midway, the solvent
reacts with carbon dioxide, which flows
along with the solvent to the bottom,
while other gases evaporate from the top.
The solvent with absorbed carbon di-
oxide is then taken to a second chamber,
where it is heated at 120° Celsius, a tem-
perature at which the carbon dioxide is
released from the solvent. This purified At IIT Madras, Rajnish Kumar’s research group is looking to mimic the natural process of carbon
sequestration in oceans for commercial use. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
carbon dioxide is then ready to be ei-
ther stored or utilised. The company has
around 55 patents that are related to the
Rajnish Kumar’s laboratory is trying to find a way to
solvent, its use, process design and the replace the methane in hydrates under the sea with
size of the instrument.
While there is no dearth of materials carbon dioxide.
known to capture carbon dioxide from in-
dustrial sources, the bottleneck in the use Although the technology developed by SEQUESTERING CARBON
of carbon capture technologies is the need Carbon Clean Solutions is a good way to While many believe that capturing carbon
for large-sized equipment. This makes it limit the entry of carbon dioxide into the and utilising it to make fuels is the way for-
cost-effective only for large industries. atmosphere, it is restricted to steel, ce- ward for carbon abatement, some feel that
The company’s R&D team has, therefore, ment, chemical and power plants. Many there are better, long-term methods.
been working on smaller equipment that believe that direct air capture, in which “We may have a process where we can
can be used by small industries as well. carbon dioxide is captured straight from convert carbon dioxide into some usable
“We have developed the technology the air, is the technology for the future. chemical, but if the chemical itself is so us-
that is reducing the size of the equipment An economically viable technology de- able and so valuable, why would one like to
to a tenth of what it was and reducing the veloped on these lines can help push for reduce the value of the chemical,” argues
footprint of the carbon capture equip- a net-carbon-zero world. However, devel- Dr Rajnish Kumar, Professor in the Chemi-
ment to a fifth of what it was. This makes oping such technology is an expensive cal Engineering Department at IIT Madras.
the whole unit modular and skid-mount- proposition. Hydrogen, he explains, is one such
ed so that it can be taken to any industrial “Imagine capturing 400 molecules of car- chemical. Hydrogen fuel is itself green,
site,” says Aniruddha Sharma, CEO, Car- bon dioxide from one million air molecules. and thus its use in producing methanol in
bon Clean Solutions. It is a tricky task and hence costly. But if we an effort to utilise carbon dioxide does not
While small industries are the new fo- get a really good absorber or absorber mate- seem reasonable, he holds.
cus, the company is working with estab- rial, we can succeed in this task,” Goel says. Kumar believes that carbon sequestra-
lished players such as Dalmia Cement and A recent breakthrough in this area was tion is the way forward, given the high
was recently awarded a project by NTPC the launch of the world’s largest direct air rate of carbon emissions. Carbon diox-
to demonstrate carbon capture and utilisa- capture plant developed by Climeworks ide can be sequestered at oil wells, saline
tion at its power plant. It is also working in Iceland. The plant can capture 4,000 aquifers, basalt rocks, abandoned coal
with Tata Steel to set up a carbon capture tonnes of carbon dioxide a year; this is mines, oceans, plants and soil.
plant at Jamshedpur Works to capture 5 then injected into nearby basaltic rock His research group at IIT Madras has
tonnes of carbon dioxide per day. formations and turned into stone. taken inspiration from the natural process

CARBON CAPTURE
ALL FOR CLEAN AIR

•C
CUS (Carbon Capture, Utilisation
and Storage) encompasses methods
and technologies that remove carbon
dioxide from its source or atmosphere
and then either utilises it or stores it
for the long term.
•C
CUS technologies are a way to meet
Paris Agreement goals for countries
that are still heavily dependent on
fossil fuels for power generation and
cannot slow down high carbon dioxide-
emitting industries such as cement,
steel and fertilisers.
•A
ccording to the International Energy
Agency’s 2020 report, 20 major
commercial CCUS plants are operating
around the world and can capture up
to 40 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide
every year.
Decarbonisation is the only option for big industries at present, holds Aniruddha Sharma, CEO, Carbon Clean Solutions, which has set up 38 carbon
capture plants across the globe, including one in India. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
of carbon sequestration in oceans and is

working to mimic this process so that it can A Carbon Clean Solutions plant in Thoothukudi captures
be used at a commercial scale. Essentially,
carbon dioxide can exist as gas, liquid and
about 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from a
solid depending on the temperature and nearby coal plant to produce soda ash.
pressure. Deep down in the ocean, at around
300 metres, the temperature and pressure While sequestration looks like a good India was also an active member of the
are just right for carbon dioxide and water way to permanently store carbon dioxide, ICOSAR Network, set up in 2007 to initiate
molecules to combine and form hydrates. its transport from the point of its genera- talks on carbon storage technologies. De-
These hydrates can stay in the oceans for tion and capture to the place of sequestra- spite these efforts, the country still lacks
millions of years without dissociating, lock- tion may pose problems. “Carbon capture technologies that can be adopted by a com-
ing up this greenhouse gas for a long time. storage, which was once considered fea- pany eager to reduce its carbon emissions.
At a commercial level, the flue gas (which sible, could not be pursued due to fewer While India remains committed to cut-
contains plenty of other gases along with potential storage sites in India. Geograph- ting down emissions, the recent report of
carbon dioxide) from power plants and in- ically it is not feasible if source and stor- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
dustries can be transported to the seabed age sites are far apart,” Goel states. Ku- Change (IPCC) underlines the need for
via pipelines. When this flue gas reaches a mar, however, feels that carbon dioxide urgency, pointing to extreme weather
depth of 300 metres, it will get the right con- gas can also be transported the way LPG events. As the pressure to abide by envi-
ditions to form hydrates of carbon dioxide is being moved in pipelines. ronmental agreements mounts, India is
by reacting with water molecules. redrawing its strategy to cut down emis-
This process of carbon dioxide hydrate INDIAN SCENARIO sions. The country’s renewable energy
formation may itself be slow or may be im- India has three CCS plants, with negligible policy may be on track, but it does not
pacted by the presence of other gases in the capturing capacity, that have been operat- have policies that push for the adoption of
flue gas mixture. Kumar’s research work ing for decades and a CCUS (Carbon Cap- CCUS technology.
involves finding out additives that can has- ture, Utilisation and Storage) plant in Thoo- “While one can switch off coal-based
ten the process of hydrate formation and thukudi, and has plans for more. ONGC power plants and shift to solar, hydro, wind
ensure that carbon dioxide molecules react and Indian Oil Corporation have signed an and nuclear energy in a few years, if you
with water to form hydrates and not with MoU to evaluate the feasibility of India’s think about industry – steel, cement, refin-
the other gases such as nitrogen, hydrogen largest CCUS project at the Koyali refinery ing, chemicals – there is no option, and the
and sulphur in the flue gas mixture. in Gujarat. Other public sector companies, only way, for now, is to decarbonise them,”
In its laboratory, the team also studies such as NTPC, BHEL and NALCO, are part- says Sharma of Carbon Clean Solutions.
if these hydrate structures stay stable to nering with consultancies, companies and However, the policies that give incen-
ensure that the carbon remains seques- researchers to explore the feasibility of tives to companies that capture carbon di-
tered for a longer period under the sea. CCUS at their respective sites. oxide or penalise those that don’t are not
His group’s research is being funded Private players such as Dalmia Ce- yet in place.
by GAIL India Limited. The laboratory is ment, Tata Steel and Reliance Industries With various countries having already
also trying to find a way through which it are working towards becoming car- announced their timelines to achieve net-ze-
can replace the methane in hydrates un- bon-neutral. On the R&D front, the coun- ro emission, all eyes are on India. It seems
der the sea with carbon dioxide. This will try is part of Mission Innovation, a global self-evident that the strategy to realise that
have twin benefits: carbon sequestration, initiative to accelerate the development green goal hinges critically on the adoption
and recovery of methane fuel. of climate-friendly technology. of CCUS technologies in the country. 

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INTERVIEW
‘Geoengineering
masks climate
change problem’
Climate scientist G. Bala on the pros and
cons of geoengineering, and why we need
to treat this emerging area with caution
despite the possibilities it offers.
T
he most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) addresses a contentious issue:
carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere to
limit global warming. However, the IPCC’s Sixth Assess-
ment Report, released in August, largely ignores another related
but contentious issue: solar geoengineering. It states that solar The current unknowns about the benefits and risks of geoengineering
geoengineering has the potential to offset global warming, but it are too large, reckons Prof Govindasamy Bala. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
does not say much more. In fact, IPCC didn’t even call the tech-
nique geoengineering; it preferred the phrase ‘solar radiation of solar geoengineering to the various components of the climate
modification’. In spite of the IPCC’s reluctance to discuss geoen- system. It does not give any prescription on if, when and how
gineering thoroughly, scientists have been researching the top- geoengineering should be deployed. I believe that is for govern-
ic for some time now. Solar geoengineering, or reducing global ments to negotiate and reach an agreement.
temperatures by reducing the solar radiation that comes to the
Earth, is accepted by scientists as an effective way to curb glob- What are the geoengineering options available, in theory?
al warming. But the method comes with a variety of side effects The main idea is to reflect sunlight to space by an amount equal
that are not easy to understand. Govindasamy Bala, Professor at to the infrared (IR) radiation trapped by greenhouse gases. In the-
the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, at the Indian ory, there are several options: placing mirrors in space; injecting
Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and a contributor to the IPCC re- highly reflective aerosol particles into the stratosphere; injecting
port, explains the potential of solar geoengineering and its risks. sea salt aerosols into low-level marine stratocumulus clouds to
Excerpts from an interview he gave T.V. Padma: enhance their reflectivity; painting roofs of buildings in urban
areas white; bioengineering to make crop leaves more reflective;
The IPCC Working Group (WG) I report mentions geoengineer- creating microbubbles at the ocean surface to reflect more sun-
ing as a potential option for mitigating climate change. At what light; adding reflective material to increase the reflectivity of the
stage do you think we will need to use geoengineering? world’s desert regions, and so on. Dissipation of high-level cirrus
The recent IPCC WG1 report highlights the recent unprecedent- clouds to allow more IR radiation to escape to space has also been
ed rapid changes in the climate system caused by human activ- proposed. Although the last option is strictly not a solar geoen-
ities such as fossil fuel burning and land-use changes. It also gineering option, recent IPCC reports have included this in the
cautions that the magnitude of these changes will amplify with portfolio of solar geoengineering options. Among all the proposed
additional emissions and the consequent additional warming in options, stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is the most studied
the future. Originally, geoengineering was envisioned as an op- approach. The effectiveness and side effects of these various op-
tion to cool the planet rapidly in case of a planetary emergency tions have been studied using climate models in the past 20 years.
such as the breaking of ice sheets or successive crop failures due However, the technology needed for any of these options to work
to heat stress. However, geoengineering in recent years is being at the required planetary scale has not been developed.
suggested as a short-term option to avoid the overshoot of warm-
ing above thresholds such as 1.5° or 2° Celsius. What are the potential benefits and risks of geoengineering?
Interestingly, as per its mandate, the IPCC does not give any The immediate benefit is the rapid reduction in global warming.
policy prescription regarding what governments should do to ad- Solar geoengineering has the potential to cool the planet in a few
dress climate change. In a similar manner, the IPCC WG1 makes years by about 1-4° C, while conventional mitigation (emission
only a scientific assessment of the effectiveness and side effects reduction) would take decades to cool the system by similar
amounts. The associated benefits are the reduction in the inten-
“Solar geoengineering has the potential sity and frequency of heatwaves, extreme rainfall, tropical cy-
clones, floods and droughts. A reversal in the decline of the Arc-
to cool the planet in a few years by about tic Sea ice extent is also expected. However, reversing the rise in
1-4˚C, while conventional mitigation sea levels and the retreat of glaciers and ice sheets will take time.
Ocean acidification will not be reversed as it is caused by elevat-
(emission reduction) would take decades ed levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and not by global warming.
The offset of climate change by geoengineering would be
to cool the system by similar amounts.” imperfect: climate change in every region and every season on

“(With geoengineering) there will always
Earth would not be offset when global warming is fully offset.
One of the potential risks from all geoengineering options is the
reduction or shift in rainfall patterns. This could be particularly
severe in the case of more localised options such as increasing
be some winners and some losers, which
the reflectivity of marine clouds and ocean and land surface. could cause tension among nations.”
Thus, there would be some winners and some losers. Injecting
aerosols into the stratosphere could cause depletion of strato- ogy for lifting the aerosols to a height of 20-25km does not exist
spheric ozone, which could lead to more lethal UV radiation today. Note that we are talking about injecting millions of tonnes
reaching the Earth’s surface. This could be detrimental to hu- of aerosols into the stratosphere using thousands of aircraft each
man health and crop productivity. The recovery of the Antarctic year. Cost estimates are available. It is estimated that the technol-
ozone hole may be delayed. ogy for aircraft specifically built for this purpose could be devel-
We should also note that geoengineering is a “mask” to the oped in 10-20 years, and the cost of operating a large-scale deploy-
climate change problem. Geoengineering does not address the ment would be in the order of $10 billion per year. This is much
root cause of the problem, which is the increase in greenhouse cheaper when compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars per
gases. If the mask is ever removed abruptly for some reason, we year that are required for conventional mitigation options.
would suddenly be exposed to a world with very large amounts
of greenhouse gases. Such an abrupt and sustained termination What are the implications for India if other countries imple-
of geoengineering would result in an extremely rapid rate of in- ment some form of geoengineering?
crease in temperature that would far exceed the rate of climate It is likely that the severe impacts of climate change such as
change without SRM (solar radiation manage-
ment). Water cycle changes could also be abrupt.
Such an extremely rapid rate of climate change
caused by a “termination shock” could put se-
vere stress on human and natural systems.
What is the status of research worldwide?

How much of it do we understand?
Advance in geoengineering research is at pres-
ent limited mostly to indoor climate modelling
activity. This activity is at a very advanced
stage now because scientists at major climate
modelling centres around the world have spent
more than a decade on this simulation science,
and models have also become more sophisti-
cated. Field experiments have been proposed
in the past, but they have not taken off on a big
scale because of resistance from environmental
groups. Without large-scale field experiments,
it would be challenging to assess the benefits
and risks of geoengineering.
Major volcanic eruptions provide natural analogues for stratospheric aerosol
Interestingly, in the case of stratospher- geoengineering. Such eruptions inject SO2 into the stratosphere; the gas gets oxidised to
ic aerosol geoengineering and marine cloud form highly reflective sulfate aerosols. ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
brightening, there are natural analogues, and
we can learn a lot from them. Major volcanic eruptions provide heatwaves, intense cyclones, extreme rainfall, floods, droughts
natural analogues for stratospheric aerosol geoengineering, and and a sea-level rise in vulnerable tropical countries such as In-
ship tracks seen in satellite images in the marine cloud regimes dia could be reduced or averted if solar geoengineering is de-
provide the analogue for marine cloud brightening. Major volca- ployed. However, as discussed earlier, geoengineering could al-
nic eruptions inject the gas SO2 into the stratosphere, which gets ter the regional precipitation patterns and cause a reduction in
oxidised to form highly reflective sulfate aerosols. The most re- the Indian monsoon rainfall – with severe consequences for wa-
cent major volcanic eruption, at Mount Pinatubo in 1991, caused ter resources and agriculture in India. Plant productivity and
a global mean cooling of about 0.5° C in 1992. Coordinated obser- crop yields could also be reduced because of a slight decrease in
vations of major volcanic eruptions in the future could help us the sunlight that reaches the surface. Indeed, some studies have
understand the benefits and risks of stratospheric aerosol geoen- shown a likely decrease in crop productivity in India if geoengi-
gineering. Similarly, studying ship tracks in the marine environ- neering is implemented.
ment would help us gain insights into the marine cloud bright- Further, climate modelling studies have shown that if aerosols
ening option. Most of the current scientific uncertainty about are injected into the stratosphere in the northern hemisphere,
the effectiveness of geoengineering stems from our incomplete Indian and North African monsoon rainfall would decrease, but
understanding of aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions. These in- these monsoon regions would see an increase in rainfall if the
teractions are also the major sources of uncertainty in our quan- same aerosols are injected in the southern hemisphere. The oppo-
tification of global warming using models. site response is simulated by models for monsoon regions in the
southern hemisphere. Thus, there would always be some winners
How long do you think it will take to scale up geoengineering and some losers, which could cause tension among nations. To
technology to planetary-level intervention if shown to be useful? sum up, I would say that the current unknowns are too large. For
Most research has focused on the injection of stratospheric aero- now, I would suggest more research to understand the benefits
sols. This option has the potential to offset the global mean warm- and risks of geoengineering for India as there has been little in-
ing either fully or partially in the future. However, the technol- vestment in this emerging research area in the country. 

SPECIAL FEATURE
The wondrous
world of water
New research in India and elsewhere is turning the lens on the many
avatars and possible applications of ice and water.
MYWISH ANAND
A
counted over 70 such traits. It
lchemists have for long sought to is, for instance, the only com-
turn lesser metals into gold. Pavel pound that exists in all its three states
Jungwirth of the Institute of Or- — solid, liquid and gas — at normal ter-
ganic Chemistry and Biochemis- restrial conditions. Not surprisingly, sci-
try, Prague, has no such plans. He’d rath- entists are fascinated by water. They are
er create gold out of water. also finding useful applications to these
Here’s how. Water is an insulator in properties.
A tetrahedral structure of water molecules and
its pure state because its electrons are Take Hans Jakob Wörner, who studies hydrogen bonds, liquid water’s most stable
tightly bound to the atom. Metals, on the the ‘social life’ of water molecules at ETH structure. IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA
other hand, have electrons that move Zürich. He has developed sophisticated
around freely. Creating a metal out of instruments and lasers that can mea- MYSTERIOUS BOND
an insulator requires squeezing the elec- sure a water molecule’s motion within a Then there is the hydrogen bond.
trons under intense high pressures, only billionth of a billionth of a second, or an A topic very close to Arunan Elangan-
available in the cores of large planets attosecond. At such time-scales, only elec- nan’s heart, hydrogen bonding is a feeble
such as Jupiter. trons can be observed moving. attraction between a hydrogen atom of
But Jungwirth has found a way to do To observe the motion, Wörner with one molecule and a highly electronega-
so on Earth. Alkali metals such as sodi- his attosecond laser knocked off an elec- tive atom like oxygen, fluorine, sulphur
um and potassium shed their outermost tron from a molecule in distilled water etc. in the other.
electrons easily, making the reaction and did the same with a water molecule Oxygen in a water molecule attracts
between water and an alkali metal ex- in a gaseous phase. the shared electrons of the two hydro-
plosive. Jungwirth put a tiny bit of water The light emitted by the knocked elec- gens covalently bonded with it. This
on an alkali metal drop, from which the tron in liquid water reached the detector unequal sharing makes these two hy-
water molecules borrowed electrons and 50-70 attoseconds later than that emit- drogens attain a slight positive charge
became metallic. ted by an electron in the gaseous phase. and oxygen a slight negative charge. The
“I think that’s a nice trick we did,” he Photons emitted in liquid water mix and partial positive charge of one molecule
says. dissolve in the water, thereby struggling attracts the partially negative site of
He amalgamated sodium and potassi- to reach the detector. “This shows us a di- another molecule, creating a bond that
um into an alloy that flows like mercury rect picture of the chemical environment is called the hydrogen bond. It is ubiqui-
at room temperature. He introduced wa- in liquid water,” Wörner says. tous in nature and yet scientists do not
ter vapour in an experimental chamber He used these time delays of the solvat- always understand it. Arunan sought
while dripping drops of this silver-co- ed electron to probe into the life of water to catch the deeper mysteries of these
loured alloy from a nozzle. The vapour molecules and found that water exhibits bonds. Because of its highly jumbled up
mixed with the alloy droplet as the latter a very lively social life. Water molecules picture in water, he looked to hydrogen
grew. The water vapour formed a thin lay- are the happiest when they are connected bonding in other molecules and chemical
er on the droplet surface, giving it a gold- to four other water molecules. He mea- systems for a clearer image.
en sheen. “It is water, and it has metallic sured the attosecond signal for many wa- He found the bond playing mischief
properties, and you don’t have to go to Ju- ter groups and found it increasing from a in hydrogen sulphide gas. Hydrogen sul-
piter for that,” Jungwirth says. single molecule to a four-molecule clus- phide is a molecule similar to water, with
Water, scientists stress, is full of sur- ter, which is the most stable configura- sulphur replacing oxygen. The Professor
prises. It can be made into metal. It can so- tion of water. at the Indian Institute of Science, Benga-
lidify into ice at room temperature or re- luru, confirmed that hydrogen sulphide
main in a liquid form even at -40° Celsius.
Normally, compounds become heavier in
Water exhibits a very lively molecules exhibit hydrogen bonding.
Such a feeble bonding is rare in a gas.
their solid-state. But ice floats on water. social life. Water molecules Arunan says that a single molecule of this
are the happiest when they

Such anomalous properties are unique gas forms 12 hydrogen bonds with its sur-
to liquid water and scientists have so far rounding hydrogen sulphide molecules.
are connected to four other
water molecules.

PHOTO: KANNAN KRISHNAMURTY
PHOTO: DEEPAK PAWAR
Above: Hydrogen bonding is a topic close to scientist Arunan Elangannan’s heart; Right: Clathrate hydrates can form in an ultra-cold environment
where pressure is one-tenth of a trillionth of a bar, says Thalappil Pradeep, Professor of Chemistry at IIT Madras.
CLATHRATE HYDRATES
“Physicists like to unify things. Chem-
ists like to classify them,” says Arunan,
Water at -123°C and lower Scientists are also fascinated by clathrate
who chairs a task group formed by the exists in a ‘glassy state’, hydrates, ice-like natural compounds in
where it looks like liquid

International Union of Pure and Applied which different guest molecules are trapped
Chemistry to redefine hydrogen bonding. in hydrogen-bonded water cages. These
“Directionality is very important for a hy-
drogen bond,” Arunan says.
but behaves like a solid guest molecules can be methane, carbon di-
oxide, hydrogen and so on. Deep ocean floors
For its many anomalies, ice has been object. To top it, there are abundant with methane clathrates.
are two forms of ‘glassy

at the centre of research, too. The most The energy content of methane trapped
common form of ice seen on Earth — such in these clathrates is higher than that in
as a glacier — floats on water, defying the
norm that matter becomes solid upon in-
states’, distinguished by petroleum, points out Thalappil Pradeep,
Professor at IIT Madras. Their extraction
creasing its mass. There would have been their densities. from the bed of the Indian Ocean can take
no life if ice sank in water, for ice forms a care of India’s major requirements for
blanket over a water body in colder tem- moons of the gas giants to comets. Chris- clean energy.
peratures, protecting life underneath. toph Salzmann of University College Lon- After separating methane, he finds
It has several fascinating avatars. Sci- don is excited about the moons of Jupiter that the leftover hydrate is a cage of cu-
entists estimate that ice can exist in over and Saturn. With space missions planned bic crystalline ice or Ice Ic. “Ice Ic is a
74,000 different structural forms. Till now, to these planets, he hopes to investigate high-density ice. It can solve many of our
scientists have discovered only 18 crys- the unique geysers of ice jets on Saturn’s pure water woes,” Pradeep says.
talline and two amorphous forms of ice. moon Enceladus as well as the icy crust of Different compounds of ice can be ob-
They name the crystalline polymorphs Europa and the subsurface oceans of wa- tained from these clathrate hydrates, he
with Roman numerals. The ordinary ice ter ice on Callisto, both moons of Jupiter. adds. But these demand high pressure. Such
abundant in our biosphere is Ice Ih. Not Salzmann creates extreme pressure conditions are readily available in continen-
all ice structures float on water; Ice III, V and temperature conditions in his labo- tal shelves, deep ocean floors and perma-
and VI sink. ratory to study how ice configures itself frost of Earth and other moons and planets.
Ice is a complex of numerous water into a new outlook. He experimentally Pradeep’s lab recently made clathrate
families and their tetrahedron homes. discovered the structures of Ices XIII, hydrates mimicking conditions prevail-
These homes may be spacious or packed. XIV, XV and is at present investigating a ing in an interstellar medium. Clathrate
In many, a tetrahedral network enters new form, Ice XIX. hydrates, he explains, can form in an ul-
into the empty space of another, making Ice doesn’t exist alone in nature but tra-cold environment where pressure is
it denser than the liquid water. is found mixed with other elements. Ice one-tenth of a trillionth of a bar. “This
In superionic ice, oxygen lets go off its VII, for instance, is seen in diamonds. discovery can help us understand how
hydrogens completely. Called Ice XVIII, it Amorphous ice is ubiquitous in space. chemistry happens in such adverse astro-
is black, extremely hot and can only ex- Salzmann has now started mixing ice nomical conditions,” he says.
ist at extraordinarily high pressures. It is with other matter. He made a comet’s ma- Water, indeed, is an unusual liquid. It
thought to exist in the mantle of Uranus terial by mixing buckyballs — 60-mem- is heaviest at 4°C. If cooled below that, it
and Neptune. bered rings of carbon atoms — in disor- starts to expand. Pure water can be cooled
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
Ice is found everywhere in the solar sys- dered ice. to crystallise to -41°C. Water thriving in
tem — from the poles of inner planets and this metastable liquid state is known
as ‘supercooled water’.

SPECIAL FEATURE
The Professor says that water mole-

cules in these nanoconfined reverse mi-
celles fall short of forming four hydrogen
bonds. As their number increases, they
get more options for bonding and try their
best to stabilise themselves in a network
of four hydrogen bonds. Water in its bulk
tetrahedral structure shows the fastest
hydrogen bond dynamics.
“A minute signature of such water is
observed in the largest reverse micelle,”
Chakraborty says.
THE FUTURE
What is the long-term outcome of these
observations? Wörner’s experiment will
tell us how many chemical and biochem-
ical reactions can occur in liquid water.
Water, being a very good solvent, is the
template for all these reactions to happen,
adds Salzmann.
The research tells us that nanoconfined
Sudip Chakraborty of Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, is exploring the fundamental drops can have potential applications in
science underlying confined water. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT many future technologies. They can act
as bioreactors for biochemical and nan-
Water at -123°C and lower exists in a Wörner’s experiment will tell otechnological reactions. Chakraborty
us how many chemical and

‘glassy state’, where it looks like liquid plans to tailor these reverse micelles into
but behaves like a solid object. To top it, drug delivery agents for future biomedi-
there are two forms of ‘glassy states’, dis-
tinguished by their densities. The -123°C
biochemical reactions can cal applications.
Water in many biological systems is
to -41°C range is seen as an unchartered occur in liquid water. of a confined nature. Water molecules
territory. playing around the hydrophilic sites of
a carbon nanotube. Physical conditions proteins show a unique behaviour, bind-
CHANGING FORMS don’t allow the entry of water in carbon ing their active sites with other proteins,
How water becomes ice or ice becomes nanotubes. But water finds a way in by DNA and biomolecules.
water is the region of maximum anoma- aligning its hydrogens and wagging its Such research can throw light on forms
lies, an area once considered ‘No Man’s oxygen atoms. It enters the nanotubes in of life, too. The current understanding of
Land’. “We have (now) conquered this a single file, like soldiers entering a nar- life is that wherever there is liquid wa-
territory,” says scientist Anders Nilsson. row burrow. ter, there will be life. “Life can be possi-
He prepared amorphous ice samples in How water diffuses into a nanotube is ble on Enceladus, Europa and Callisto,”
his laboratory at Stockholm University still not clear. Sudip Chakraborty of Cen- Salzmann says. It can be in the oceans
and heated them by shooting an infra- tral University of Punjab, Bathinda, says underneath ice beds.
red laser into them. As the ice melted, that water molecules show mixed diffu- “Water is the molecule of evolution.
it rapidly passed through many of its sive properties — those of bulk water as That’s why life happened in it,” Arunan
‘supercooled’ phases, in just a matter of well as of the single-file chain. adds. The greenhouse effect tailored life
nanoseconds. Nilsson shot unimaginably Chakraborty is exploring the funda- around water. If there was no greenhouse
fast X-ray pulses to probe how ice became mental science underlying confined wa- effect and temperatures dropped below
liquid water. ter. In his computational laboratory, he -60°C, hydrogen sulphide may then have
What he found was baffling. traps water molecules in nanometre-sized been a good liquid for hosting life. “It is
“Water exists in two different ‘wa- water droplets made with organic sol- our closed-mindedness and limited expe-
ters’,” Nilsson says. Water under these vents — reverse micelles — and simu- rience that we can’t think of life beyond
high pressures and very low tempera- lates them to understand how water’s water,” Arunan holds.
tures develops into two macroscopic liq- behaviour changes as he increases the There’s no dearth of mystery — or mag-
uids. These two ‘waters’ themselves are number of water molecules. ic — in the study of water. European re-
two states of matter. One of them is about Water in the smallest reverse micelle, searchers have joined forces to form a con-
20% denser than the other. In a glass, they he says, is completely trapped and shows sortium, the Centre for Molecular Water
would seem like oil in water. “No other an ice-like solid structure. As he added a Science (CMWS), which hopes to achieve
substance can do this,” he says. few molecules of water in the nano-sized a detailed molecular understanding of
Further, at normal room temperature droplet, it started to relax. Water mole- water. Nilsson says that it will attract and
and pressure conditions, water shows an cules then attempted to move. Increasing train younger talent in this field. For them,
ice-like ordering when paraded through water molecules showed a tetrahedral the glass will always be half full. 
connectivity in the largest droplet, depict-
ing how confined water approaches bulk
behaviour.

GUEST COLUMN
The marvels of maintenance

Moonshots are flashy and may inspire us to attempt the impossible. But boring as it
may be, maintenance is the unsung partner that enables innovation.
T
he 1853 World’s Fair, at the shimmering New bold challenge, it’s time to elevate showmanship to
York Crystal Palace, showcased many tech- “do the other things” that he gestured at, perhaps the
nological wonders of the age. One that still necessary things that are less sexy and more vexy.
resonates today can be traced to a demon- Showmanship for prosocial needs could move people
stration by engineer Elisha Graves Otis, who made to action if the emphasis is on mindful mending rather
bedframes. In his trim Victorian suit, lush beard, and than blank boosterism. Just imagine a prime-time com-
silk stovepipe hat, Otis mounted a wooden platform mercial for public works and sanitation that inspires
secured by notched guide rails. His assistant hoisted infrastructure improvements rather than promoting
the platform some fifty feet above the ground, grab- GURU MADHAVAN the latest new feature or flavour. Or a modern-day Eli-
bing the crowd’s attention. Guru Madhavan is the
sha Otis demo that captures the public’s attention about
Otis was there to correct a fault of his own mak- Norman R. Augustine the powers of safety standards, quality management,
ing. Although he had developed an elegant solution to Senior Scholar and and preventive maintenance in elevators?
the problem of cable failure in platform elevators that senior director of
made use of a hoist with a passive automatic brak-
programs at the
National Academy of
…BUT MAINTENANCE MATTERS
ing system, none had sold. It wasn’t because people Engineering. But when the dazzling prominence of innovation
didn’t need them: Elevators often catastrophically overshadows the subtler, kinder, and attentive acts
@BioengineerGM
broke down in granaries and warehouses, killing and that characterise maintenance, it leads to the col-
maiming their passengers. Otis realised that his de- lapse of everyday expectations. And these minor
sign, though superior and straightforward, needed maintenance misfortunes may ultimately put a stop
showmanship. The World’s Fair was his moment to to the legitimate big-picture innovations. Why, after
flaunt his vertical flight of fancy and function. all, build a system if there is no ethic to maintain
When the assistant dramatically used an it well? Maintenance is not a static process; it
axe to cut the suspension cable holding the builds on change, and just like innovation,
platform, the crowd gasped in shock. It it fuels change. Innovators often claim to
appeared to be an act of lunacy—and sui- make history, but maintainers start
cide for Otis, who stood on the platform. from and sustain the necessary conti-
However, the platform stopped with a nuities of history. There can be no
jerk as the braking system arrested helpful innovation without a vast,
the freefall. “All safe,” Otis reas- invisible infrastructure of mainte-
sured the viewers, “all safe.” nance activity that keeps civilisa-
And thus, the crucial safety tion running.
innovation that led to the launch Nestled between the duties of innova-
of the modern vertical city was en- tion and maintenance is a responsibility
abled by a now-legendary stunt. It’s for cultural engineering that does not end
impossible to imagine life without it. when a commission or contract comes to com-
pletion. It is a perpetual effort to be attentive to
SHOWMANSHIP SELLS… future neglect and decay in our shared dependen-
Otis’s demonstration exemplifies cies. Very few subjects are as relevant, and neglected,
a time-honoured formula that mixes technology and ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK as care and maintenance — acts integral to our survival
design with entertainment. In some fields, “demo or and progress and as crucial as the creation itself. Main-
die” has come to supplant “publish or perish”—high- tenance over a system’s life cycle may consume more
lighting the fact that products or people, no matter than it took to make a new system. But the result is
how deserving, will not advance unless they are first When the often a catastrophe avoided. Engineers are full of such
noticed. From Thomas Edison’s electric theatrics to dazzling half-jokes: today’s innovations are tomorrow’s vulnera-
Steve Jobs’s turtle-necked stage flair, the demo cul- prominence bilities. Without maintenance, failures flourish.
ture has thrived on symbolism, spotlight, and special
effects in which pomp is the essence of persuasion.
of innovation Moonshots may inspire us to attempt the impos-
sible. Still, far more practical value has come from
Still, magicians will tell you that a trick will fail if it overshadows suitcase wheels than Ferris wheels, no matter how
lacks meaning, no matter how incredible. There must the attentive flashy the latter are. Maintenance is the unsung part-
be a link between the magic and its purpose. acts that ner that enables innovation. It is both life and—in its
While showmanship is frowned upon when it is
pursued too overtly, it is sometimes unavoidable.
characterise connection to history, present, and the future—larg-
er than any single life. And, it needs showmanship to
Consider the rousing words of President Kennedy maintenance, attract the attention it requires to assume its proper
in 1962. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade it leads to place in our civic priorities.
and do the other things, not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.” The showmanship in his
the collapse Otis never thought he would become a showman
at the Crystal Palace, but the brisk ballyhooer P.T.
words is apparent, and it got us to the moon. But what of everyday Barnum did. Otis received a hundred dollars for his
of “the other things?” If we are to take up Kennedy’s expectations. stunt. There was no need for an elevator pitch. 

PROFILE
Rock of Ages
Meet geophysicist Vinod Gaur, a Renaissance man whose life’s work, across
disciplines, is an illustration in channelling science for public good.
I
SRINATH PERUR a life-time of working among them. Gaur After stints at the Sorbonne in Paris
often brings up symmetry and parsimony and the National Physical Laboratory in
n the winter of 1955, Vinod Gaur, all as organising principles underlying the England, Gaur returned to India in 1962
of 20 and fresh from a master’s in geo- universe. In philosophy, he has an affin- to join Roorkee University (now IIT Ro-
physics from Banaras Hindu Univer- ity for the fairness of Kant’s categorical orkee), where a new position equivalent
sity, set off to Bengal on his first re- imperative and the unifying tendencies of to Associate Professor of Geophysics had
search project. Shankara’s advaita. been created. He would stay at Roorkee
At the time, it was beginning to be un- This broad embrace of life may have for 21 years, rising to become Dean of
derstood that the Earth’s magnetic poles subtly shaped Gaur’s work. In London, Research. His wife Eryl worked in the
flipped from time to time, that these Gaur’s PhD problem came from a com- humanities department for a while and
changes were recorded in rocks, and that pany that wanted to prospect for mineral staged plays with students on campus.
such records from across the world could deposits by flying a plane with an electro- Gaur remembers his time from Roorkee as
help reconstruct the Earth’s history. The magnetic transmitter and detector. The a particularly vibrant one, surrounded by
first such study in India had just begun assumption at the time was that since students, frequently visited by scientists
at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Re- these deposits were more than a thousand from abroad who would stay at his house.
search (TIFR) in Bombay, where they times more conductive than the earth Pravin Gupta began working as a re-
were collecting rock samples from the around them, the surrounding material search fellow with Gaur at Roorkee Uni-
nearby Deccan Traps. Inspired by this, could simply be ignored. Gaur says his versity in 1976. He went on to retire as a
Gaur decided to do the same from the Ra- discomfort with this assumption was professor there. He credits Gaur with sin-
jmahal Traps in the east. mainly aesthetic. It was a reductive ap- gle-handedly setting up Roorkee’s geophys-
Gaur did not have access to a magne- proach, and if all the literature and books ics programme, later taken up by other uni-
tometer to check the direction in which about art and architecture he had read versities. He says that at the time geophysics
rocks were magnetised. So he impro- in the BHU library had taught him any- was a niche area taught only in Banaras and
vised, using a twig to separate two halves thing, “the world is not reductive”. Gaur Waltair (now Visakhapatnam), but Gaur’s
of a magnetised razor blade, suspending followed up with experiments that proved efforts saw it spread to something like a doz-
the assemblage in a bottle with a length his hunch right, and revealed what is now en universities across the country.
of hair he had persuaded a ghodawalla called the host rock effect. The centre of the Earth is around 6,400
to pluck from a horse’s tail. He camped kilometres from its surface; the deepest
in the waiting room of Tin Pahar railway When Inverse Theory hole dug by humans is only about 12 ki-
was becoming popular

station. Over the next few weeks of field
work, he had his belongings stolen and al-
most lost his life in a ravine, but when he
returned to Banaras, it was with a crate of
internationally in the 1970s
rock samples. for geophysical analyses,
Soon after, Gaur left for a PhD at Im-
perial College, London, on a scholarship Gaur ensured it spread to
and nothing came of those samples. Since
then, Gaur’s contributions over more
geophysics departments
than six decades as an Earth Scientist, across the country.
administrator and educator have been
wide-ranging and foundational. But that
initial foray into research showed traits
that would recur in his work: tenacity,
the vision to contribute to larger scien-
tific endeavours, and the ingenuity to
transcend local constraints.
Gaur’s house in Bengaluru reflects
the wide range of interests of its occu-
pants: books, plants, paintings by art-
ist friends, a piano that his wife Eryl
plays, figurines, rocks collected from
Vinod Gaur on the terrace of his house

in Bengaluru. The dark rock to his right
is basalt from the Deccan Traps. The
bench he is sitting on, he says, was made
from granite from around Bengaluru,
among the oldest rock in the Indian
subcontinent. PHOTO: SRINATH PERUR

lometres deep. So, a little like shaking a
box to guess what’s in it, scientists rely on
indirect observations – such as how fast
waves from earthquakes travel – to arrive
at possible models for the Earth’s interi-
or. Inverse Theory consists of mathemat-
ical tools to go from such observations
to likely models, and takes into account
errors or incompleteness in data. Ac-
cording to Gupta, when Inverse Theory
was becoming popular internationally in
the 1970s for geophysical analyses, Gaur
assembled a core team for it at Roorkee.
Then, through seminars and workshops,
he ensured it spread to other geophysics
departments in the country.
Similarly, Gupta says, Gaur’s empha-
sis on numerical modelling and the use
of computers meant that they were able
to do 3D modelling in the early 1980s, con-
sidered frontline research at the time. Ac-
cording to him, the seismic zoning maps
we have today, which warn of the vulner-
ability of a place to earthquakes, are built
on the foundations that Gaur laid.
Gupta admires Gaur for his vision and Gaur at the snout of Milam Glacier, Uttarakhand. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
his knack for finding good people. He

says, “His biggest quality was that by na- Gaur oversaw a project that geophysics and with colleagues produced
used British-era survey data

ture he was a scientist, but he was also an a significant finding about a sea-mount in
excellent administrator. Generally, good the Indian Ocean. He says, “The import-
scientists are not good administrators.”
In 1983, Gaur was offered the director-
and modern GPS technology ant thing was that this was the first time
we applied elastic fracture theory to any
ship of the National Geophysical Research to measure the rate at geophysical problem in the country.”
Institute (NGRI) – without his having ap-
plied for the position – with a mandate to which the Indian tectonic Similarly, the first work in India that
used waves from earthquakes to ‘look’
shake things up. Somewhat grudgingly,
he left his students and the mountains and
plate was advancing into the Earth – seismic tomography –
happened at NGRI during this time. They
towards the Eurasian plate.
T
went to Hyderabad. found that the lithosphere under the Dec-
can Traps was thicker than expected. Gaur
he April 12, 1984 issue of Nature will never talk about them.” He put an end says, “It was more about the historical sig-
carried a special feature on sci- to several practices of the sort. nificance than the details of the result. We
ence in India, including a visit The changes Gaur brought in inevitably attempted it for the first time in India. You
to NGRI. Nature’s correspondent faced a backlash from some quarters of the do a thing like that, and other people start
finds an “energetic youngish institute. But in the meanwhile, he was ac- thinking, and that’s how it multiplies.”
man” who has taken up a “deliberately cruing goodwill from Eryl’s work on cam- Reliable dating of rock samples had
subversive spell” as Director. “Gaur’s pus. She started a school for the children proved to be a problem in India. Gaur bat-
arrival at Hyderabad will be long remem- of less well-off workers, organised medical tled red tape and spent his entire year’s
bered,” the article says. “He began by tell- camps. Once, when Gaur asked his office budget of `35 lakh on a commercial mass
ing the 180 scientist members of the staff why he was expected to meet a group of spectrometer. He also recruited, despite
that they should spend the following three gardeners who had a grievance with their stiff resistance from within the institu-
months in the library, reading the recent contractor, he was told, “Mrs Gaur is the tion, the geochronologist K. Gopalan,
literature in their fields, deciding what head of the delegation.” who had in the United States worked on
they should be doing.” Then there were those who responded meteorites and lunar rocks. As Gopalan
Gaur’s early years were spent in East- positively to the changes, like Rishi Nara- writes in an e-mail, “I can take credit for
ern Uttar Pradesh. He recalls: “I grew up in Singh, a scientist at NGRI then and now the first precise dating of Indian rocks in
in a feudal society, but was never able Visiting Professor at IIT Gandhinagar. NGRI to tough international standards.”
to accept its tenets or its culture. So I re- He describes how at the time there was He went on to help several other Indian
belled.” In Gaur’s experience, government an international research focus on the institutions make effective use of their
institutions too tended to develop stiff and lithosphere – the rigid outer layer of the spectrometers.
hierarchical cultures – and NGRI was no Earth, divided into tectonic plates that Singh brings up what he believes is an-
exception. He did not want people to stand move over a less rigid layer below. Singh other far-reaching contribution by Gaur.
at attention when the Director passed, or says the institute’s research too turned Put in charge of the CSIR-UGC NET ex-
find routine leave applications on his desk towards the Indian lithosphere, making amination for Earth Sciences, Gaur com-
“only so that I would have the privilege to observations, modelling it and explaining bined the various branches into a single
say no”. In such an environment, “young- earthquakes. Singh himself, until then a paper. Singh says that while the tenden-
er people, even if they have bright ideas, theoretician, became involved in marine cy in Earth Sciences now is increasingly

PROFILE
holistic, it was not the case then. Gaur,

he feels, was ahead of his time in this re-
spect, and since the NET exam is a prereq-
uisite for fellowships and for becoming a
college lecturer, he has deeply influenced
the study of Earth Sciences in India. In a
similar vein, Gaur contributed to NCERT
textbooks by integrating lessons in phys-
I
ics, chemistry and biology.
n 1989, Gaur was invited to meet the

then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He
recalls the venue being a flight from
Delhi to Nagpur. Gandhi told Gaur that
he wanted him to take charge of the De-
partment of Ocean Development, adding
that there had been many objections to
his name. “Then you must heed those ob-
jections,” Gaur says he told him. Gandhi
laughed, and by the time the flight landed
in Nagpur, he had persuaded Gaur to take
the offer seriously.
A week later, Gaur moved to Delhi and
joined as Secretary to the Government
of India. Gandhi had asked him to find Gaur supervising the installation of a GPS station at Kodaikanal in 2002. PHOTO: KABIR ROY
ways in which the benefits of science

and technology could reach the ordinary In 1989, Prime Minister Rajiv In Bangalore, Gaur was also associated
person. To this end, Gaur conceived of a with the Indian Institute for Astrophysics.
service that would tell fishermen around Gandhi invited Gaur to take In addition to overseeing the installation of
the country where fish were to be found
in the sea. The idea was that fish occupy
charge of the Department telescopes at Hanle in Ladakh, he used the
pristine location to set up a high-precision
nutrient-rich waters, which can be identi- of Ocean Development. carbon dioxide monitoring station. While
fied in satellite images from their higher
temperature gradient. Gaur enlisted the Using remote sensing earlier European estimates had held the re-
gion to be a carbon source, measurements
National Remote Sensing Agency to de- technology, Gaur conceived made here helped to show it was actually a
of a service that would tell

velop such maps and installed over a hun- sink, absorbing more than it released.
dred fax machines in coastal districts. The According to R. Srinivasan, who
maps would be updated every two or three
days and made available to fishermen.
fishermen where fish could worked with Gaur at NGRI and is now
Visiting Professor at the Divecha Cen-
Other programmes included drugs be found at sea. tre for Climate Change, IISc, Bengaluru,
from the sea, sea-bed mining and a large geophysics activity in India is largely
multi-institution project to monitor a triangle through the subcontinent. Some focussed on two areas: mineral explora-
25-kilometre-wide band of the sea near of their markers were still identifiable, tion, particularly oil and gas; and trying
the coast from Gujarat to the Andamans with their coordinates accurately record- to understand and forecast earthquakes.
for physical, chemical and biological ed more than a century ago. Comparing Gaur’s work has been pioneering for both
characteristics. At the time, India’s mis- those coordinates with modern GPS coor- these applications in the Indian context,
sions to Antarctica had come in for crit- dinates allowed Gaur and his colleagues first in terms of measurements – GPS,
icism in parliament. Gaur wrote a policy to establish that the southern part of the broadband seismic data – and then in
paper on why India should assert its pres- Indian plate had stayed rigid. They es- terms of how they are analysed and mod-
ence in Antarctica through science, and tablished a GPS reference station in Ban- elled. Srinivasan says Gaur has been
went on to develop a strong programme galore, and for the first time confirmed far-sighted and mentored people who con-
for Antarctic research. Characteristical- by direct measurement that Bangalore, tinue to carry this work forward. “To my
ly, he included one place on the ship for on the Indian plate, advanced towards mind,” he says, “Prof. Gaur was a very ef-
an artist or a writer – which was elimi- the Eurasian plate at a rate of around 5 fective and great institution builder.”
nated after he left. cm per year. It was in the region around As Honorary Scientist at CSIR Fourth
After three years in Delhi, Gaur joined the Himalaya that rocks deformed and Paradigm Institute (formerly C-MMACS),
the newly started CSIR Centre for Math- strains accumulated in complex ways to Gaur continues to work with students and
ematical Modelling and Computer Simu- be later released as earthquakes. give talks. Now 85, he recently travelled to
lation (C-MMACS) in Bangalore. An im- In a broad sense, the rock samples that Kashmir and visited seismic stations that
portant new project he took up used the Gaur had collected as a young man in the could help understand earthquake hazards
fact that GPS accuracy had improved to Rajmahal Traps could have been used there. Asked if anything from his long list
the point where it could reliably measure to answer questions about plate move- of contributions gives him particular sat-
the relative motion of tectonic plates. The ments. Now, he was answering some isfaction, he says, “None. I am an eternally
British had in the 19th century conducted of those questions in great detail using dissatisfied person.” He does admit to mo-
the great trigonometrical survey, begin- methods that would have been hard to ments of joy while working, though, quite
ning in Madras and extending triangle by imagine at the time. often when he is out in the mountains. 

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TECHNOLOGY
Digital
goes the
easel
With emerging
technologies embracing
art, digital artists are
tasting success – and
raking it in.
A
JAYADEVAN P.K.
mrit Pal Singh has been a de-

signer for nearly a decade now.
Until recently, though, not many
knew of him outside the world of art, as in this case, and buy and sell it. imation. But when he came back to India,
design. But that was then. To simplify the concept of fungibil- he found that most of the opportunities
Today, he is not just a hugely popular ity, consider the rupee. The value of a were in designing apps; thus began his
figure in the world of digital art but has `2,000-note and that of four `500 notes is career with start-ups and tech companies.
also sold artworks worth about `2.9 crore the same. So instead of using the former, On the side, he started on 3-dimension-
so far. “Things changed so much in the you can use four `500 notes. Or if you ex- al mock-ups that other designers could
last six months I don’t even know where change a set of `500 notes with another license from him and use in their own
to begin,” says Singh, 32. set, they still hold the same value. This designs. By 2019, he was tired of the start-
To a large extent, behind his sudden means currency is fungible. up ecosystem and wanted a break. Among
success are emerging technologies such But a physical product, say a Raja Ravi these mock-ups were a set of toy faces that
as blockchain and non-fungible tokens Varma painting, has only one original companies and designers could license
(NFT). NFTs were hardly a matter of pub- and several copies. The copies can never and use. Singh called it the Toy Faces
lic discourse even earlier this year. But in replace the original in value. That is, the Library and launched it in June 2020 on
recent times the phenomenon has swept original object is non-fungible and unique. Product Hunt, a product discovery site
across the globe, as if to make up for the The value of art lies in the ability of the where users vote for items uploaded by
standstill in the real world. seller and buyer to establish provenance its creators. The library became popular
“At the beginning of the year, I had no and, thereby, uniqueness. In the world of with nearly 1,400 upvotes and was the talk
idea what those were,” Singh recalls, refer- digital art, it was hard to verify the prov- of the design and tech community. Adobe,
ring to NFTs. He’s richer for the knowledge. enance of a piece since you couldn’t dis- which sells software to creators, funded
Blockchain is a digital ledger that keeps tinguish between copies. But that changed Singh’s Toy Faces project.
a record of entries that are validated by all with the NFT. Every piece of digital art In February 2021, life took a new turn.
participants on the chain who agree to a that is an NFT can be uniquely identified. Someone told him on Twitter about a
set of rules or protocols. An NFT is simply “thing called NFT” and that Toy Faces
an entry on a blockchain that is tied to a CHANGING TRENDS would make great NFTs. Singh released
digital asset. In this case, the blockchain Growing up in Delhi, Singh had a passing toy faces that looked like artists Frida
used to create NFTs is a decentralised, interest in drawing. His parents, who run Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh first as
open-source platform called Etherium. a business, allowed him to pursue a cre- NFTs later that month. “Suddenly I saw
When an asset changes hands, the token ative career and it became a serious pur- bids on those,” he says.
reflects that change, thus proving the own- suit after school. He joined the Vancouver A bidding war ensued and eventually
ership of that asset. This means people can Film School, Canada, in 2012, wanting to the two pieces sold for a total of 7.6 ETH
now uniquely identify digital assets, or become a motion designer and work on an- (ETH is short for Ether, the popular cryp-

In the world of digital art, it was hard to verify the
provenance of a piece since you couldn’t tell fake from
original. But that has changed with NFT.
‘Masked Reality’ (left), a dramatic installation

by Harshit Agrawal, one of India’s first artists
to co-create art with artificial intelligence.
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
data from Nonfungible.com, which tracks

the NFT market. While some speculate
that the market could slow down or even
crash, it has been growing at an explosive
pace until now.
An early attempt at creating and selling
digital goods using the blockchain dates
back to 2017, where a game built on Ethe-
reum called CryptoKitties allowed users
to buy, collect and breed virtual cats. The
CryptoKitties frenzy died down but, in
May 2020, Dapper Labs, the developers of
CryptoKitties, launched a marketplace
called NBA Top Shot where fans could
buy video highlights of some of the great-
est NBA plays. By May 2021, fans had
bought clips worth over $700 million.
In February, Chris Torres, the creator
tocurrency built on top of the Ethereum Raghava, however, argues that there of a 2011 viral meme called Nyan Cat, sold
blockchain). At today’s prices, it roughly are more speculators buying digital art a unique re-mastered version of the video
translates to `21 lakh. “I just had a great today than people who appreciate art. for nearly $600,000 on Foundation, an NFT
start and then I just went all out,” he says. “What we need is more believers. That platform. The original Nyan Cat meme
Since then, he has created and sold digital way we can create a new asset class that was a YouTube video of a cartoon cat with
art worth 100 ETH (roughly `2.9 crore). will sustain art. That requires serious a Pop-Tart body oozing a rainbow as it
Singh’s growth is indicative of a wider commitment,” says the artist who has flew through space with a Japanese pop
shift: the melding of the worlds of tech- been commissioned to create several piec- song in the background. In March, Twitter
nology and art, and thrusting art into the es of digital art across the world. co-founder Jack Dorsey sold the NFT of his
future. For the first time, digital artists first-ever Tweet for $2.9 million. Edward
have a way to bypass the traditional art NFT FEVER Snowden’s NFT — an image of his face
scene centred on art galleries and cliques Driven by liquidity in the markets and made from the pages of a U.S. court deci-
— not only for the artistic value of their fewer avenues for high-risk, high-re- sion on his mass surveillance exposure —
creations but also for its growing impor- ward bets, several investors have poured was sold for $5.4 million in April.
tance as an investable asset for collectors. money into cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan
“No one took me seriously seven years Deal-making on such platforms is moving and Sunny Leone are also launching their
ago when I was talking about blockchain at a feverish pace. own NFT collections. Bachchan’s collec-
and art. Now everyone is waking up be- The process of creating an NFT is called tion will include his father Harivansh
cause there’s money in it, and I love how minting and several platforms enable this Rai Bachchan’s poem Madhushala and
it is throwing up some complex ethical di- for a fee. In the first half of this year alone, signed film posters. Leone will share a set
lemmas,” says New York-based Raghava NFTs worth nearly $2.5 billion were sold of collectibles, including curated art and
K.K., one of the earliest artists to work at on such platforms, up from $13.7 million costume designs, on her site. Indian cryp-
the intersection of technology and art. in the first half of last year, according to tocurrency exchange WazirX launched

TECHNOLOGY
an NFT marketplace in June and has sold

over 1,000 NFTs so far.
“Collectibles that have a piece of histo-
ry or meaning for a generation of people
who grew up online fetch a high price,”
says Nitin Sharma, an early-stage inves-
tor in crypto start-ups. He adds that some
of the emotions and values that buyers
associate with digital art today are fame,
cuteness, sex and even dankness (dank
memes refer to unique or odd memes).
Sharma stresses that there is a “gold
rush” for NFTs. “And that’s because there’s
too much liquidity in the market; people
have made millions in crypto and some
amount of speculation,” says Sharma, who
runs a fund called Antler in India and is
seeking to invest in start-ups that make
“the picks and shovels” in this gold rush.
The big breakthrough in the field came
when auction house Christie’s sold an
NFT called Everydays: The First 5000 Days
by artist Michael Winkelmann, who goes
by the alias Beeple, for $69 million. It was
later revealed that the buyer was a Tamil
Nadu-born crypto entrepreneur called Vi-
gnesh Sundaresan, who goes by the name
Metakovan in the virtual world. The auc-
tion was prime-time news on nearly every
top television channel and newspaper. The
internet was abuzz with the story for days.
CHANGING DEMOGRAPHIC
The changing demographic of prospective
art buyers and people who want to experi-
ence art is also promoting innovation. “Gal-
leries have no choice but to evolve. There’s Amrit Pal Singh, who has sold artworks
worth about `3 crore, traces his success as a
a whole demographic that experiences art digital artist to emerging technologies such as
in digital forms and they’re now starting to blockchain and non-fungible tokens.
buy,” says Aparajita Jain, co-director of Na- PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
ture Morte, a leading contemporary art gal-

lery in New Delhi. Jain recently launched
Terrain.art, an NFT platform that has cu-
Bollywood actors Amitabh
rated the works of several digital artists. Bachchan and Sunny Leone
That new demographic is already
spending a considerable amount of time
are also launching their own
in the metaverse — a virtual shared NFT collections. Bachchan’s
space — through video games or on vid-
eo conferences. “For my 16-year-old son NFT collection will include
or my daughter, video games and plat-
forms such as Instagram are where a lot
his father Harivansh Rai
of their time is spent. They’re already in Bachchan’s poem Madhushala
and signed film posters.
the metaverse,” Jain adds.
Most NFT collectors are crypto enthu-
siasts or even crypto millionaires who are
fascinated by art. They also look at an NFT THE METAVERSE
as an investment. A typical collector would Harshit Agrawal is one of India’s earliest
invest in several artists and hope that these artists to co-create art with artificial intel-
artists earn fame in the future, making ligence. He recently curated an art show
their own collections more valuable. They titled Intertwined Intelligences for Terrain.
also invest in collectibles such as the Nyan art. The idea took shape when he tried to
Cat or projects that sell a limited number of create what a digitally native future would
collectibles such as CryptoPunks and the look like. “We’ve already started spending Aparajita Jain, co-director of Nature Morte, a
Bored Ape Yacht Club, Dorsey’s first Tweet much of our time in digital worlds. More leading contemporary art gallery in New Delhi,
has launched an NFT platform that has curated
or computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee’s so during the pandemic. Given that, I the works of digital artists.
source code for the World Wide Web. wanted to try and show how humans can PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

The gallery model is also
changing. In the NFT
community, artists work
on their own promotions,
marketing and building an
audience.
this trade typically charge a fee between
2.5% and 15% of the value of the art piece.
Also, unlike in the traditional art world,
in the world of NFTs, artists can also earn
from secondary sales. That is, every time
the artwork changes hands, and there’s an
appreciation in its price, artists stand to
benefit. In the non-digital world, proceeds
from secondary sales often go to collectors
or galleries. “With NFT, on every sale you
get 10%,” says Singh.
What Metakovan plans to do with the
Raghava K.K. was an early evangelist for artwork he has purchased offers a glimpse
digital art, but reckons that only the infusion of the future. He imagines setting up an art
of money has given traction to his ideas.
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT museum in the metaverse where users can
see some of the digital world’s most im-
TOP 5 ART NFT MARKETPLACES portant artworks, including Beeple’s art.
His company, Metapurse, plans to hire
Platform No. of art NFTs sold Volume ($m)
some of the world’s best architects and
Art Blocks 2,05,666 936.4 build a virtual world of art. “We intend
SuperRare 25,097 127.3 to create a monument that this particular
piece [Beeple’s work] deserves, which can
MakersPlace 18,865 26.1 only exist in the metaverse,” Metakovan
Known Origin 22,994 14.3 told The Art Newspaper in March.
CryptoArte 18,533 19.6 Organisations such as Metapurse them-
Source: Nonfungible.com selves could be run on the blockchain. This
new type of a body is called a decentralised
human experience of art is detached from autonomous organisation where the com-
all that,” Raghava says. pany rules and governance are burned
“In the East, we live art,” he adds. “We onto smart contracts on the blockchain
experience it in a truly democratic way. It’s without a central authority controlling it.
a conceptual and radical shift. NFTs are say- “How we deal with technologies like
ing that we want artists to rise to that occa- blockchain and artificial intelligence
sion. This is the sentiment. Not the gold rush will be the most defining aspects of how
where people are hedging from one curren- humanity moves forward. The idea of
Nitin Sharma reckons that liquidity is driving cy to another. Where is the art in that?” post-human and decentralised ownership
a “gold rush” for NFTs. He hopes to invest in That his work was finally considered as is very much here and artists will engage
start-ups that make the “picks and shovels” in
this gold rush. art and not a product mattered to Singh. “For more and more with it,” says Agrawal.
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT the majority of my career, digital art was not The current sentiment throws up stim-
seen as art. It was always considered more ulating dilemmas for artists. Raghava
co-imagine a future with artificial intelli- commercial even though it is as intense as, holds that just because it is easy to com-
gence which will be a big part of our dig- say, painting on a canvas,” says Singh, who modify art now, it doesn’t mean that it
ital worlds,” says Agrawal, whose solo recently created a series of NFTs called Mar- must be sold. “If everything is digitisable
exhibition at Kolkata gallery Emami Art, tian Bunkers X Bored Elon in which he cap- and commodifiable, should everything be
which got under way in mid-September, tures an imaginary future on Mars. put up for sale?” he wonders.
explores some of these themes. The true job of an artist, according to
With digital art, the possibilities for THE FUTURE OF ART Raghava, is to make art more inclusive,
artists to engage with the future have also The gallery model is also changing. In the not exclusive; hopeful, not hopeless; heal-
grown, giving those from the global South NFT community, artists work on their ing, not anxiety-inducing; future-facing,
a bigger platform of expression. “Unlike own promotions, marketing and building not backward-looking. It must be relevant
in the West, the Eastern world does not an audience. In the traditional world, the and not academic and a way of life more
look at anything as binary. The binary gallery does most of that work for artists in than a commodity, he holds. Even as it
view, which is big in academic circles, is exchange for a hefty fee. In NFTs, the ma- throws up ethical dilemmas for artists,
crumbling because they are based on ab- jority of the proceeds from a sale will go to the world of digital art and NFTs make all
solute truths in a conceptual world. The the artist. The marketplaces that facilitate this possible. 

BOOKS
Race for
power
Nuclear fusion energy as a
carbon-neutral source or
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
power is no longer a distant
dream, reckons a former
fusion community insider.
Hari Pulakkat British economist and data scientist but had The world uses 620 exajoules
I
of energy a year. Since solar
done his PhD from Imperial College London
n 1957, British physicist John Lawson on plasma physics. He was, strictly speaking,
published a paper that established the
conditions for creating sustained fusion
once an insider of the fusion community.
The major teams he describes are the Na-
and wind energies cannot
reactions by combining elements in a reac- tional Ignition Facility at Livermore in Cali- meet much of this demand,
nuclear energy — and
tor that finally produced more energy than fornia, the Joint European Torus based near
what it consumed. Lawson had concluded Oxford in the U.K., the Max Planck Institute
that there were no physics-based limitations
for achieving nuclear fusion in a reactor.
for Plasma Physics in Germany, the Interna-
tional Thermonuclear Experimental Reac-
particularly fusion energy —
Atomic fusion was the pro- tion in southern France, remains the best bet.
cess through which stars and a few private compa-
produced their energy, and nies such as the U.K.-based plains the fusion projects well, with scepti-
Lawson’s paper was a shot First Light Fusion and cism thrown in only occasionally.
in the arm for proponents of Tokamak Energy. Each of The major stumbling block for fusion,
fusion energy. In fact, many these institutions or com- as Turrell describes it, is the unpredictable
scientists then believed panies thinks that theirs behaviour of plasma that exists at the high
that the technology would is the best approach and temperatures required for fusion (in excess
be used widely to produce most likely to succeed. of 100 million degrees Celsius). Many of the
energy. It didn’t quite work The private companies, scientists interviewed say that if we under-
out that way. especially, are extremely stood plasma better, we would have had com-
For the next six decades, optimistic and talk about mercial fusion reactors a few decades ago.
at least three generations operating commercial fu- Physicists have come a long way in under-
of scientists tried hard to sion reactors by the 2040s. standing plasma instabilities. But have they
achieve fusion inside re- Early in the book, Tur- understood enough? Probably not.
actors, spending billions rell establishes the need
of taxpayer dollars in the to develop commercial NOT QUITE THERE YET
process. Sustaining a fu- nuclear fusion. The world In the end, the book is a good introduction
sion reaction in a confined is hungry for energy, and to current fusion research, but the reader
space had technological The Star Builders: Nuclear that demand will only in- is no nearer to concluding that fusion will
challenges that physicists Fusion and the Race to crease in the near future. be a reality soon. In the final chapters, Tur-
and engineers had not fore- Power the Planet The world uses 620 exa- rell examines the dangers and the econom-
seen in the 1950s. So much By Arthur Turrell joules of energy a year (1 ics of fusion energy. Fusion does not pro-
so that the joke around the exajoule = 1018 joules), and duce large amounts of dangerous waste.
Published by Scribner
world was that fusion was this would increase by The raw materials of fusion – two differ-
an energy source that was 272 pages; $28 50% by 2050, according to ent forms of hydrogen – are so abundant
always 30 years away. the U.S. Energy Informa- that there is enough supply on Earth for a
But that’s about to change, says Arthur tion Administration. It is hard to imagine so- billion years at least. Unlike the raw ma-
Turrell in The Star Builders. lar and wind energies supplying a major part terials of fission, terrorists cannot make
of this demand. If fossil fuels can supply no a bomb if they get the raw materials of fu-
BULLISH ON FUSION more than 30% of the world’s energy by 2050, sion. While solar and wind will remain the
Coming at a time of increasing storms and as the IPCC says, there is no option but to pur- cheapest forms of energy, fusion can be the
fires driven by climate change, The Star sue nuclear energy. Nuclear fission is risky next best, better than fossil fuels.
Builders infuses optimism into the quest for a and creates dangerous waste. So the best op- It is worth noting that last month, after
carbon-neutral source of energy. The book is tion is fusion, if we could make it work. the book was published, the National Igni-
about people and companies trying to achieve The main argument in the book is that tion Facility created 700 times the energy
nuclear fusion around the world and, in their it would work, and sooner than we think. generation capacity of the U.S., but only
own opinion, on the verge of succeeding. In Although Turrell remains aloof and rarely for a fraction of a second. It is far from
fusion time-scales, the term ‘on the verge’ expresses strong opinions, he is optimistic achieving ignition, the point at which fu-
means about 15-20 years. The author is a about the future of fusion energy. He ex- sion becomes self-sustaining. 

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BOOKS
Where there’s a wheel,

there’s a way (ten kilograms) of manure a day, plus a quart
(about a liter) of urine,” he writes. The stench,
he adds, was unbearable, and cleaning up was a
A delightful history of mobility vehicles over time, mammoth task.
and their profound influence in steering societal If the manure produced by the 15,000 horses in
Rochester, New York, was piled up each year, it
and political change. would cover an acre of ground to a height of 175
feet and breed 16 billion flies, city health officials
Bishakha De Sarkar had estimated. And Rochester, he underlines,
B
was small compared to New York City, which
ack in those days when cable was merely a had ten times as many horses.
bulky knitting pattern and surfing was what “To advocates of a newly emerging technolo-
Archie and his pals did, a friend had found gy, the solution seemed obvious: get rid of horses
a good way of whiling away time as a schoolboy and replace them with self-propelling motor ve-
in Delhi. He would stand on the road outside his hicles, known at the time as horseless carriages.
house in the early 1960s, counting the number of Today we call them cars,” he writes.
cars that went by. If he was lucky, he recalls, he And cars, he adds, ushered in unimaginable
would get to see 10 or 12 vehicles in an hour. changes. “Today it is the motor vehicle, rather
Then came the Maruti, and India saw a revo- than the horse, that seems unsustainable.”
lution on the roads, in more ways than one. Any
child who may now want to count Delhi’s vehicles HISTORY ON WHEELS
is asking for trouble. For one, there are few pave- The author of such works as A History of the
ments in the city. Two, the fumes are toxic. And, World in Six Glasses and The Victorian Internet
three, you can’t keep up with the cars in any case. delves deep into history to tell us the story of
Many of the changes that the so-called family car motion. The first wheeled vehicles were possi-
A Brief History of ushered in come up – though in different contexts bly hand-pulled Carpathian mine carts – as ev-
Motion: From the – in journalist Tom Standage’s A Brief History of idenced by vessels with four wheels from 3500-
Wheel to the Car, to Motion: From the Wheel to the Car, to What Comes 3000 BCE found on the southern flanks of the
What Comes Next Next. Packed with information and anecdotes, this copper ore-rich mountains in Central and East-
By Tom Standage book by the digital editor at The Economist and ed- ern Europe. Producing an ingot of the metal en-
itor-in-chief of its website steers us through time tailed processing large amounts of ore, which, he
Published by Bloomsbury
and geography to narrate a remarkable story. He points out, had to be dug out of the mountains by
272 pages; £18 tells us how wheels morphed over time, how cars hand. The carts were invented to ease the shift-
changed landscapes and were an effective tool for ing of heavy loads.
feminism and civil liberty and about the future of What’s significant is that the story of vehicles
driverless automobiles. He looks at companies’ – from carts and automobiles to bikes and elec-
efforts at luring women customers by marketing tric cars – is not just about evolving modes of
cars as fashion items and mentions the impact of transport. More absorbing still is his account of
the quest for oil on geopolitical equations. the socio-economic changes that followed or were
The story of He answers, often with understated humour, prompted by new forms of transport.
vehicles is not just

questions that we may have on the different The bicycle, for instance, was a great leveller
modes of transport. Ever wondered, for instance, in the late 19th century. “It let people travel as
about evolving what pushed horse-led carriages out of England
and the United States?
quickly as they could on horseback, but without
the expense of buying, feeding, and maintaining
modes of transport, It was horse manure. a horse,” Standage writes. The American month-
but about the socio- “By the 1890s around 300,000 horses were
working on the streets of London, and more than
ly The Century Magazine said it enabled the poor
man to “sing the song of the open road” as freely
economic changes 150,000 in New York City. Each of these horses
produced an average of twen-
as the millionaire.
that followed. ty-two pounds
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

PEDAL POWER
Not surprisingly, bicycles emerged not just as a
cheaper alternative for the people, but also as a
liberating tool for women. “This was not simply
because women cyclists challenged the impracti-
cality of Victorian clothing and took to wearing
trousers or bloomers instead. Beloved of suffrag-
ettes and socialists, bicycles became more broad-
ly associated with personal emancipation and
social progress.”
And, if you saw Paul Newman woo his lady
love on a cycle in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, or, nearer home, watched Dev Anand on a
bicycle pursue Nutan in Paying Guest, you would
know the role the two-wheeler played in promot-
ing romance.
“They broadened people’s social circles, letting
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
cyclists travel beyond their own communities and

greatly increasing the number of potential mar-
riage partners. Cycling … allowed young men and
women to escape the oversight of chaperones. As
one newspaper explained in 1899, ‘The chief mer-
it of the bicycle in the eyes of the young is that it
dispenses with the chaperon … It imparts open air arms had to be raised and lowered manually –
freedom and freshness to a life heretofore cribbed, raised meant vehicles and horses had to stop to Cars were an
crabbed, cabined and confined by convention.’”
The impact of automobiles on the right to
allow pedestrians to pass, lowered arms meant
vehicles and horses had to exercise caution.
effective tool
movement of Black Americans makes for a fasci- And just what was Detroit police officer Wil- for channelling
feminism and civil
nating read, too. He recounts the story of the jit- liam Potts’s contribution to traffic lights? In 1917,
ney – a form of ride-sharing that was popular for a Potts added an amber light to the traffic pole to
spell in the 20th century. An economic slowdown,
which began in 1913, prompted many who had
warn people that the signal was about to change.
liberty: companies
lost their jobs to drive their cars as cabs to earn SOCIAL MOBILITY lured women
customers by
money. They would ply their vehicles on the main The book focuses largely on the U.S. and Britain,
street of a city, ferrying three or four passengers but much of what he writes brings to mind the
to or from the central business district. There
were also all-Black jitney routes, operated by
far-reaching changes that India has been wit-
nessing over the years. Towns got connected to
marketing cars as
Black drivers for Black riders, in Southern cities. cities, villages to towns. The Metro in Delhi en- fashion items.
Then came activist Rosa Parks. On December abled Muslim women living in the Walled City
1, 1955, she resisted segregation in a bus – Blacks to come out of their homes, just the way bicycles
had to sit at the back and give up their seats if brought women out in the West.
a white person was without one – by refusing to Then, of course, we have seen highways and
vacate her seat. She was arrested, which led to a expressways trample over villages, pavements
boycott of buses in Montgomery. African-Ameri- and shanties, the rise of pollution and smog, and
cans who owned cars supported the Montgomery citizen campaigns for restricting traffic.
Bus Boycott by carrying people who needed to Where do we go from here? The COVID-19 pan-
travel for 10 cents – which was the bus fare. demic has brought back the past – the magic of
“The boycott was widely observed… as empty roads and unpolluted air – and many ex-
near-empty buses plied the streets. The organiz- pect a restriction on traffic and cars in the com-
ers decided to continue the boycott and estab- ing years. Consultancy group KPMG predicts
lished a new body, the Montgomery Improve- that the pandemic will result in a world of “fewer
ment Association (MIA), to oversee it. Martin trips, fewer miles, and fewer cars”.
Luther King Jr., a young local minister, was The future perhaps lies in one’s hands – in the
elected as its leader,” he writes. smartphone. The movement towards ride-hail-
Standage, clearly, has done a thorough study of ing, car-pooling, bike-sharing and other mobility
his subject. The indices point to the large number services may lead to the use of a single app for a
of books, academic notes, journals, newspapers, host of transport options, Standage states.
civic body notes and political committee minutes “This approach, known in the industry as mo-
that he consulted for this volume. bility as a service (MaaS), can be seen in action
While it must be a historian’s delight, there’s in Helsinki, where trains, trams, buses, bike
a lot for the trivia lover, too. Standage tells traf- rental, taxis, e-scooters, and car rental can all be
fic light enthusiasts (there has to be a fan club accessed through a single app,” he says.
somewhere!) that the first signal was installed “The smartphone, rather than any particular
on Westminster Bridge in London in 1868. Rail- means of transport, is the true heir to the car,”
way engineer John Peake Knight invented a set he writes.
of semaphore arms. Placed on a tall post, these It’s all about mobility, after all. 

BOOKS
In search of blue
An authoritative biography of blue gives a new tint to
the ongoing quest for the rarest colour on Earth.
Vijaysree Venkatraman the all-encompassing sky is not blue. Some
T
plants make blue flowers and berries by
he first time he saw the colour, M.A. modifying red pigments. There are a few
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
Subramanian could not believe his blue minerals. Still, extracting a durable
eyes. The U.S.-based professor had blue pigment from natural sources is diffi-
asked a graduate student to grind a trio of cult. Blue has always demanded ingenuity.
dull oxides and bake the mixture at around Before YInMn Blue, another blue pig-
1,200° Celsius. The goal was to make a multi- ment had wowed the world. Ultramarine,
ferroic or high-efficiency electronic materi- once worth its weight in gold, was processed
al. What stared back at him from the furnace from lapis lazuli found in the Hindu Kush
the next day was a dazzling blue powder. mountains. Michelangelo used ultrama- ‘Mas’ Subramanian in his Oregon State
The solid-state chemist at Oregon State rine to depict the blue of the heavens in the University office. PHOTO: JTANGOSU/WIKICOMMONS
Most blue in nature is

University, with a PhD from IIT Madras, Sistine Chapel. Later, synthetic ultramarine
had worked in DuPont for over 20 years. He became a mass commodity. People use it for
recalled colleagues from
the pigment division saying
mundane activities such
as making white laundry
illusory. Even the all-
that it was hard to make appear whiter. Its manufac- encompassing sky is not
blue. Some plants make
a blue compound in the ture, however, is not ecolog-
lab. His industry instincts ically friendly. And other
kicked in. Though it was
not multiferroic, he pat-
synthetic blues have their
own shortcomings.
blue flowers and berries by
ented the material, which Scientists know how light modifying red pigments.
proved to be inert, non-tox- interacts with the arrange-
ic and heat-reflecting. ment of atoms in an existing white sunlight and reflects (or rejects)
‘Mas’ Subramanian, it mineral to give it a distinct the rest. The eye transforms the reflected
turns out, had discovered hue, but they cannot predict light, which appears blue, into electrical
the first new blue pigment what colour any new mate- signals for the brain to process. Language
in more than two centu- rial will be without actually provides the beholder with the prescribed
ries. YInMn (pronounced making it in the lab. Having shade of colour. “Where then is the blue,”
Yin-Min) Blue — a mix of pinned down the structure Kupferschmidt muses philosophically.
Yttrium (Y), Indium (In) of YInMn Blue, Subramani- But even the visually impaired can sense
and Manganese (Mn) — has an’s group is changing com- blue light. They grow more alert in its pres-
captured the imagination of ponents of the pigment to try ence. So, what is its impact on the sighted,
the creative community. In Blue: In Search of and create other hues. who are increasingly bathed in the blue glow
the U.S., YInMn Blue was Nature’s Rarest Color Elsewhere, researchers of electronic devices, often well into the night?
approved for use in indus- are on a quest for blue food Can patients rest well in clinical wards, un-
By Kai Kupferschmidt
trial coatings and plastics colourants from plants. der artificial lights, rich in blue wavelengths?
in 2017. It was marketed as Published by The Experiment Consumers are wary of the Such research is already changing internal
paint earlier this year. 224 pages; $24.95 fact that a blue chemical — lighting in homes and hospitals.
The story of YInMn Blue synthetic indigo — colours In the closing pages, when you learn that
figures prominently in Blue: In search of Na- both their candy and jeans. Currently, the the Berlin-based author, born in 1982, has
ture’s Rarest Color, by Kai Kupferschmidt, only source of natural blue is spirulina, an tested HIV-positive, you cannot help feel-
a correspondent for Science magazine. The extract of blue algae, which is neither vi- ing blue. When he resolves to look out into
author writes engagingly of the science and brant nor durable, Kupferschmidt writes. A the world more often, as if he were seeing
aesthetics of blues in nature, the history of British scientist has succeeded in making a all its colours for the very first time, you
blue dyes and pigments, and the ongoing safe and eye-catching blue from the petals feel relieved, and even inspired. Thanks to
quest for blues. Viewing the world through of the butterfly pea flower, but the food in- this authoritative biography of blue, most
the lens of his favourite colour, he presents dustry needs a more durable colourant. curious readers will get a new understand-
his information in five sections: ‘Stones’, Meanwhile, Suntory, the Japanese whis- ing of the science of colour. Scientists too
‘Seeing’, ‘Plants’, ‘Speaking’, and ‘Animals’. ky manufacturer, is backing an effort to cre- may begin to appreciate works of art.
The peacock on the book jacket rep- ate a blue rose through genetic engineering. These days, Subramanian accompanies
resents the idea that most blue in nature In over two decades, researcher Yoshikazu his wife to art museums, to see what magic
is illusory. Blue-coloured birds, beetles Tanaka has developed a mauve rose, and the old masters created — especially with
and butterflies have tiny patterns on the hopes to get to true blue before retirement. blue pigments. YInMn Blue, he says, has
surface of their bodies. These structures Two sections of the book — ‘Seeing’ and enriched his life in more ways than one. 
reflect light, so the blue wavelengths (380- ‘Speaking’ — deal with how we perceive
500 nanometres) get exquisitely enhanced, and describe colour. Take the cornflower. Vijaysree Venkatraman is a Boston-based
while other wavelengths cancel out. Even It absorbs the red part of the spectrum from science journalist. @vijeescijo

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FIRST PRINCIPLES
The world’s back-up plan

to counter global warming
Geoengineering is a deliberate attempt to change the Earth’s features on a global scale.
I
n 1896, Swedish physicist Svante Ar- not on a global scale. For example, Amer- U.S. politicians feared a day when the So-
rhenius published an article in the ican meteorologist James Pollard Espy viets would learn to control the weather
Philosophical Magazine, where he pos- published a book called The Philosophy before the American scientists did.
ited that atmospheric carbon dioxide of Storms (1841), in which he claimed to Over the 20th century, as it became clear
absorbed heat and therefore warmed have discovered methods to produce rain that global warming would become a seri-
the Earth. It was a novel argument. Before at will. It was not climate modification. ous problem, various people had proposed
him, although scientists knew that the at- Arrhenius was among the first scientists interfering with the Earth’s climate sys-
mosphere absorbed heat, they did not fully to propose deliberately toying with the tem deliberately. Such suggestions were
understand the mechanism of absorption. Earth’s climate for our comfort. not taken seriously because even scien-
Arrhenius, a Nobel Prize winner credited Current definitions of geoengineering tists had underestimated the extent of
with developing the branch of physical do not consider Arrhenius’s suggestion warming over the 21st century. When they
chemistry, was also the first scientist to as an example of geoengineering, because realised that global warming would be
quantify the contribution of carbon diox- fossil emissions and the consequent global catastrophic to life and the world econo-
ide and water vapour to the greenhouse warming are unintentional. As physicist my, scientists started talking in whispers
effect, which heats up the Earth. David Keith, now at Harvard, explained about geoengineering. It was not a topic
Arrhenius had come to the problem as in one of his papers in 2000, geoengineer- that the community considered good for
a way of understanding how the Earth ing is a deliberate attempt to change the debate. Talking prematurely about geoen-
warmed up after the ice ages. If carbon Earth’s features on a global scale. Both gineering would get the world, many sci-
dioxide – which he called carbonic acid the intention and scale are important entists argued, to become complacent and
– helped the Earth get out of the ice ages parts of the definition. Burning coal is not not cut fossil fuel use.
(an assertion that was not true), it was primarily aimed at changing tempera- By the 1990s, things had begun to
logical to suppose that burning coal would tures. Experiments such as cloud seeding change. In a 1992 report called Policy Im-
increase the Earth’s temperature over do not result in global change. Neither is, plications of Greenhouse Warming: Miti-
the centuries. Arrhenius thought that an therefore, geoengineering. Curiously, the gation, Adaptation, and the Science Base,
increase in temperature would be a good ability to modify weather was considered the U.S. National Academy of Sciences de-
thing, and that “we may hope to enjoy ages of strategic value by some policymakers. voted a chapter to geoengineering. By the
with more equitable and better climates”. end of the century, scientists had begun
The more we burn coal, the faster we will
achieve a balmy climate. Living in cold
If there is a global to propose geoengineering projects for re-
search and research papers had begun to
Sweden, Arrhenius didn’t quite expect climate emergency, be published with regularity. In 2009, Rus-
global warming to be a big problem.
Ideas about tinkering with the Earth’s spewing aerosols into the sian scientists did the first published field
experiment in geoengineering, spraying
processes had originated long before Ar-
rhenius. There were scientists who had
stratosphere will be the aerosols in the stratosphere and mea-
suring the radiation that passed through
proposed tampering with the weather but best way to cool it down. them. There is now widespread accep-

injecting tiny particles high in the strato- Volcanic eruptions show that the tech-
sphere to reflect sunlight; creating more nique of injecting reflective aerosols into
reflecting clouds by spraying sea water the stratosphere works. Big eruptions
into the atmosphere; putting a shade in throw up large amounts of aerosols and ash
space that blocks sunlight; and dispersing into the atmosphere. These linger in the
cirrus clouds that block infrared radia- air for a few years and cool the Earth. In
tion to space. Scientists have suggested 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted
painting buildings white – especially in and plunged the northern hemisphere into
cities – or building up foam on the sea long-lasting wintry conditions, causing
surface, both of which would reflect sun- historians to dub it as the year without a
light back into space (see ‘Geoengineering summer. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted
masks climate change problem’, Page 40). in the Philippines and global temperatures
The first category (removing carbon di- plunged by 0.6° Celsius for a year and a half.
oxide from the air) includes proposals to It is now widely accepted that blocking
reduce ocean acidification by dissolving al- solar radiation through aerosol will work
kaline minerals in the ocean, which would — and work quickly. If there is a global cli-
in turn get more carbon dioxide from the mate emergency, spewing aerosols into the
air to dissolve in the oceans. Increasing the stratosphere will be the best way to cool it
ocean biomass, by iron seeding to increase down, while the world reduces carbon diox-
algal growth or cultivating seaweeds on a ide levels over decades. However, scientists
large scale, has been proposed as a way of need to understand the mechanism well.
fixing carbon dioxide. Australian scientists How much aerosol and how often? How can
are trying to remove carbon dioxide by we do this without affecting the ozone lay-
enhancing the weathering of the mineral er? Computer simulations have given sci-
olivine, which reacts with carbonic acid in entists deep insights into the effects of solar
Geoengineering is now mostly
understood as solar radiation
the sea water through a set of reactions and radiation management, but field experi-
management, which means sinks to the sea floor. ments are the gold standard in science. Spe-
measures to reflect sunlight Among the second category, injecting cifically, the physics of aerosols and chem-
back into space
reflective aerosols into the stratosphere istry of the atmosphere are not understood
is the most researched field for blocking enough for the simulations to work well.
radiation from the sun into the Earth.
tance among scientists and policymakers A small drop in radiation from the sun BALLOON TRIAL ON THE ANVIL
that research into the topic is necessary can have global consequences. Recent Scientists have been planning several field
because the world needs a back-up plan. research suggests that a rapid drop in so- experiments to gather data and improve
Geoengineering ideas are roughly clas- lar radiation may have caused the entire their understanding. Harvard Univer-
sified into two categories: those to remove planet to be covered in ice around 700 mil- sity scientists led by physicist Keith, a
the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and lion years ago, and that such drops can longtime proponent of geoengineering re-
those that control their impact. The first happen in the future. A drop in solar ra- search, had planned an experiment called
category consists of a set of measures rang- diation is thought to be one of the causes the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation
ing from growing more trees to sucking of the ice ages, too. There has been spec- Experiment (SCoPEx), which would use
carbon dioxide out of the air and burying ulation that the Earth is about to enter a a balloon at an altitude of about 20km to
it underground (see ‘Cleaning up their act’, mini-ice age because of low solar activity; study how artificial aerosols injected into
Page 36). In the second category are pro- scientists, however, have rejected that the stratosphere would affect the strato-
posals to reduce solar radiation hitting the possibility. spheric chemistry. The first part of the
Earth, most of them being ideas to reflect experiment was just to test a balloon with
sunlight back into space before it heats up
the atmosphere. Some scientists are reluc-
Scientists believe that a payload of 600 kilogram. If the balloon
stays for a day in the thin atmosphere,
tant to call the first category geoengineer- painting buildings white Harvard will scatter 1.8 kilos of calcium
ing; they consider it a safe “mitigation”
option devoid of serious negative impacts. would reflect sunlight carbonate particles and observe how they
interact with each other chemical species.
Geoengineering is now mostly under-
stood as solar radiation management,
back into space. The first part of the experiment was to
happen last year, but had to be postponed
which means measures to reflect sun- because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
light back into space. Some site of the experiment was then moved to
of the moves pro- Sweden, but it was cancelled due to public
posed in the last two resistance. “Bill Gates wants to spray mil-
decades are these: lions of tonnes of CHALK into the strato-
sphere to reflect sunlight and slow global
warming,” claimed a headline in the Brit-
ish paper Daily Mail. Bill Gates is only one
of the 30-odd philanthropists who support
Harvard’s geoengineering research.
The date for the experiment is not spec-
ified, but it won’t happen before next year.
Scientists now have the onerous job of get-
ting public support for their research. 
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

112
FunTech
2 3 4
THEME
Biology, biotech, medicine
ACROSS 2 European Union divided over
1C ore component of 8 - A PC, new work (6)
5 mostly refurbished (9) 3 One unable to speak aloud, had
6 Essential diet for adolescent, to change (6)
6
say (7) 4 Integration puzzle she is trying
7
7 Winner verily demonstrates oddly, after end of class (9)
courage (5) 5S pot cryptic clue: “A small
8F undamental unit of trade, particle” (8)
reportedly (4) 8 Cruel, ultimately tyrannical
889 9 10 10 Second eccentric queen with leaders destroyed heritage (7)
extremely comprehensive
9 Stolen stuff includes camera
order (8)
accessory (4)
11 P assionate, carnal, illicit way
11 10 Platform to lecture,
to test a new drug (8,5)
welcoming a fine fellow (8)
12 15 S tarting to clean dirty rooms in
12 A small quantity injected into
houses — we have 46 of them (11)
vein, perhaps providing a
13 14 17 One visiting sick lady with
sibling for critical treatment (8) cure (7)
15 16 18 U ncle dancing with American 13 W ager a model under test (4)
in the centre (7) 14 P aper uses it after editing (6)
19 C unning enemy hiding 16 Way to reach lake, for example (5)
17 unknown biological catalyst (6) Solution to Crossword (July-August 2021)
Across: 1 Furnace; 3 Gibbs; 5 Rammed; 9 Muon;
18 DOWN 10 Perovskite; 11 Etch; 12 Fatigue; 16 Rockwell;
17 Alloy; 18 Crucible; 19 Eutectic
1H
eads of computer networks Down: 2 Composite; 3 Graphene; 4 Quench; 6
19 log in illegally for making Doping; 7 Temper; 8 Dielectric; 12 Fracture; 13
copies (7) Plastic; 14 Polymer; 15 Crystal
COMPILER: KrisKross
PopScience
QUIZ CLUB, IIT MADRAS
Where science intersects with popular culture
2 Native to Thailand, this

species of wasps stings its
prey – cockroaches – and releases
4 This computer-
aided design
(CAD) tool for
Pyrochroidae
family of fire-
coloured beetles,
a toxin into their neural nodes, synthetic biology found only in
which blocks the roaches’ receptor lets the user draw Australia. These
to the octopamine hormone. and analyse genetic were identified
This leaves the cockroach alive circuits. Its name in 2020 by Yun
but with impaired motility. What is a word-play on a PHOTO: HSIAO AND POLLOCK Hsiao, a PhD
phenomenon is this similar to, in character from a 1904 play, student at the Australian National
a literary context, from which the who is an unofficial mascot of The University, and his collaborator
wasp gets its name? Walt Disney Company. The name Dr Darren Pollock, professor of
is derived from the fact that the entomology at the Eastern New
3 This Python package, whose

name is inspired by a 1985
sci-fi film, has a documentation
CAD tool allows users to fiddle
around with components within
the system.
Mexico University. They named
three Binburrum species of
beetles, of which there were only
that is filled with references to a few specimens, after three
1 The 2006 film The Prestige,

set in the late 19th century,
the movie. The Python package
aims to simplify and increase
convenience in handling
5 The Binburrum genus of
beetles belongs to the
rare legendary birds in a “pocket
monster” gaming franchise that
Hsiao was fond of as a child. What
depicts the lives of two rival
datetime-related code in the are the three names, and what
stage magicians. Each of them
programming language. According franchise are they a part of?
tries to outdo the other; often,
to the documentation, what it
they come up with various ways
does is “Pretty much make you a
PHOTO: JMORTONPHOTO.COM/OTOGODFREY.COM
of performing the same trick.

badass time traveller.” Name the
This is analogous to a real-life
8-letter package, and the film that
rivalry, where two scientists
inspired it all.
involved came up with different
ways to perform a similar task.
Interestingly, the two scientists
are depicted in the film,
although they perform slightly
different tasks. Which two
scientists are these?
car in Back to the Future); 4. TinkerCell (inspired by Tinker Bell); 5. Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos; the Pokemon franchise.
1. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison (AC vs DC); 2. Dementor’s Kiss from the Harry Potter series; the wasp is called Ampulex dementor; 3. Delorean (named after the

SPOONERISMS IT’S ALL G(R)EEK TO ME!
A spoonerism is
a pair of phrases
that acquire two
different meanings
when their initial
sounds/syllables are
interchanged. Find a The given word or phrase or sentence
WORD GAMES CLUB, IIT MADRAS

pair of words/phrases that fits in with the holds two clues: taking away a Greek
definitions given in the clue such that they alphabet from a synonym of the first half
have two different meanings when their yields a synonym of the second half. The
initial sounds/syllables are interchanged. numbers in brackets indicate the number
The numbers in brackets indicate the of characters in each of the two synonyms.
number of letters in the spoonerism Example: Letter’s wager (8, 3)
phrase. At least one of the words/phrases Solution: From the word Alphabet,
has a science/technology theme. which is an eight-letter word synonym ANAGRAMS
Example: String jumbo chess pieces for Letter, take away the Greek alphabet
together, to peruse literature (4,5; 4,5) Alpha, and you’re left with Bet, a three- Scramble the given phrase to get the
Solution: Bead rooks; read books letter word synonym for Wager. names of renowned scientists.
Alphabet – Alpha = Bet Example: Narwhales cried
1. Reimburse close mathematician (3,4; 6) Solution: Charles Darwin
2. Metal bags for programming rules (3,5; 6) NOW, CRACK THESE:
3. Cheese grab leads to coastal 1. Atypical or normal (7, 5) NOW, TAKE A SHOT AT THESE:
phenomenon (4,5; 3,6) 2. Alumina, magnesia and chromia for 1. Beach bar bagels
4. 24-hour period, Ronald’s nickname for example, get poems (6, 4) 2. Unclean liars
inert gas (3,3; 5) 3. Greatest adage (7, 5) 3. A family charade
5. Fundamental science rectifies water 4. Dung, female horse (6, 4) 4. Frail Ron links DNA
body (7; 3,3) 5. Gemstone’s electrical component (8, 5) 5. Red wishing corner
3. Brie seize; Sea breeze 5. Diopside – Psi = Diode 3. Michael Faraday

5. Physics; Sea fix 2. Tin sacks; Syntax 3. Maximum – Mu = Maxim; 4. Manure – Nu = Mare; 5. Erwin Schrodinger 2. Carl Linnaeus
4. Day Ron; Radon 1. Pay near; Napier 1. Unusual – Nu = Usual; 2. Oxides – Xi = Odes; 4. Rosalind Franklin 1. Charles Babbage
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is looking for writers with the motivation to build a career in
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TIME MACHINE
The Intel chip that

re-engineered the world
PHOTO: INTEL
The 4004, the world’s first microprocessor, has kept the
gears of computer technology grinding.
1971 I
n November 1971, an advertise- It was late on the project ex-
ment (at right), spread across ecution, which left Busicom
two pages in Electronic News, engineer Masatoshi Shima
an influential trade journal, an- fuming. Intel later scrambled
nounced the arrival of “a new to salvage the project.
era of integrated electronics”. Three Intel engineers –
The claim, from Intel, a compa- Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor, and
ny that had then been around Federico Faggin – are cred-
for only three years, may have ited with the success of the
sounded hyperbolic at the time. 4004 (although Intel briefly tried
The global shortage of
PHOTO: INTEL
But, in fact, it understated the to play down Faggin’s contribu-

significance of the product whose tion). Patents number 3,821,715 semiconductor chips,
THE ARTIST’S MARK
launch was being advertised: “a and 3,753,011 list their three which has disrupted
technology supply chains
micro-programmable computer names, but Shima is also widely
Chip designer Federico on a chip!” The 4004, the first mi- acknowledged as a driving force
Faggin, who perhaps croprocessor to be commercially behind the 4004. Hoff and Mazor for the automotive,
saw himself as an artist,
etched his initials ‘F.F.’
launched, has over the past 50 were in charge of the chip archi- personal computing and
into the design of the
years had a profound effect on
the personal computer industry;
tecture, and Faggin was brought
onto the 4004 team in April 1970
consumer goods sectors,
pre-production 4004. Later,
he moved it to the chip’s more importantly, it has touched to design the chip. shows just how central
border (at bottom right in ordinary people’s lives in ways By all accounts, Faggin’s cre- the microprocessor is.
picture above) evidently beyond measure. Successive dentials, and in particular, the
because he wanted to generations of microprocessors ‘silicon gate technology’, which he Faggin recalls, “that CPU was not
pack in additional circuits. have found widespread appli- had developed earlier, were criti- a single chip and was never com-
In contemporaneous cations in devices that simplify cal to the development of the 4004. mercialised separately.” Texas
interviews, Faggin said: and enrich everyday life. The The silicon gate technology for Instruments was working on a
“I felt it was a true work current global shortage of semi- integrated circuits was far supe- microprocessor project based on
of art, where each stroke
conductor chips (see ‘Time to chip rior to the incumbent metal oxide the Computer Terminal Corpora-
was not only aesthetic but
in’, Page 14), which has disrupted semiconductor (MOS) ‘alumini- tion (CTC) architecture. That chip
also function-specific and
meaningful.” technology supply chains for the um gate technology’: it allowed for was completed in mid-1971, barely
automotive, personal computing twice the number of random-logic months after the 4004.
and consumer goods industries, transistors and increased process- Although it was custom-de-
COWLARS & KA-CHING! is ironically a testament to just ing speed by up to 10 times. Two signed for use in calculators, the
The 4004 chip was used in how central the microprocessor other inventions by Faggin – the 4004 could be used for other appli-
a variety of applications. is in keeping the gears of comput- bootstrap load with silicon gate, cations. Busicom had exclusive
Ted Hoff, who was in er technology grinding. and the “buried contact” (a meth- rights to the microprocessor, but
charge of the Applications Designing the 4004 also put In- od to make direct ohmic Intel offered it a price concession
Research group, recalled at
tel, which had until then been contact between the poly- if it would drop the exclusivity
a Computer History
Museum event in preoccupied with memory silicon gate material and clause, which it accepted. Conse-
2006 that the chip chips, onto a higher orbit of the junctions) – made it quently, the 4000 family was un-
found early growth. And yet, the compa- possible to improve speed veiled in November 1971. It found
applications ny was oblivious to the po- and circuit density. wider application in many areas
in pinball tential significance of In the late 1960s, (see box ‘Cowlars and Ka-ching’
machines, the microproces- there was a race alongside).
traffic light controllers, sor. In fact, when among companies Today, the global microproces-
cash registers, bank teller Busicom, a Jap- to develop the first sors market is valued at about
terminals, and blood anese calculator microprocessor. $85 billion. Microprocessors are
analysers. Gas stations
manufacturer, Fairchild, for ubiquitous – in PCs, cameras,
used it for inventory
control. Farmers too approached instance, devel- cellphones, automobiles, air bags,
outfitted cows with collars it with a con- oped a CPU us- elevators, beepers, agricultural
(‘cowlars’) embedded with tract to de- ing MOS chips equipment, key chains, and so
microprocessors to record velop custom with four-phase on. Former Intel Chairman Andy
the cows’ nutrient input chips for its ma- logic, but as Grove said the 4004 “gave Intel its
— to correlate it with milk chines, Intel consid- Chip designer future”. But more strikingly, it
production. ered it a distraction. Federico Faggin re-engineered the world. 
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK PHOTO: DICKLYON/WIKICOMMONS

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THE WORLD OF

VOLUME 01 | EDITION 03 | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 | `199

Published by IIT Madras and

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 1

Also... that is high on conductivity is the unsung partner that

04 News in Brief 12 Bright sparks 54 Books

2 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

At Shaastra, we research groups working in India are using

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 3

Now, a cheaper way to

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What’s the buzz? ranges. These, therefore, have potential

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Qualcomm Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

range. Their hypothesis (which is yet to

IIT Kanpur scientists provide

insights into prostate cancer Researchers have

R absorbing panels using

8 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

Indian astronomers identify new

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 9

wires. Copper was an adequate substitute

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A Advance your career

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In 2000, Teamasia Semiconductors pro- OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIA

Industry experts reckon

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 15

A fab roadmap for India

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edicinal chemist Ram Vishwakarma has his fingers

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SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 19

few years ago, a team of professors

20 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 21

developed an AI-enabled electronic nose The world over, scientists

NOSEY MARKER of nanomaterial-based sensors in a explosives, detect poisonous gases in

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The E.V. revolution

vehicles are tipped to

India’s battery capacity requirement by 2035 (Gigawatt hours)

• Change is measured for a reading