Indra’s Drishtikona (Viewpoint)

India: Some Achievements in the field of Science

Posted : February 26, 2005 at 9:22 am [IST]

Here are some extracts from the New Scientist that are example of the ways that a strong will can discover, even against all odds such as sanctions from superpowers. However, Indian science will have to reach much bigger goals to a get respectful position on the global platform. Indians had been innovative through ages. Today Indian scientists are to come up well with others. They cant just shield their inferior performance against lack of facilities and support. In past many, such as Raman and Bose have proved this.

Going it alone

ndia’s most advanced scientific research satellite, Astrosa will measure, among other things, X-ray radiation emitted by matter sucked into black holes and given off at the birth and collision of stars.

India’s six remote-sensing satellites - the largest such constellation in the world, monitor the country’s land and coastal waters so that scientists can advise rural communities on the location of aquifers and where to find watercourses, suggest to fishermen when to set sail for the best catch, and warn coastal communities of imminent storms (”Eyes in the sky”). India’s seven communication satellites, the biggest civilian system in the Asia-Pacific region, now reaches some of the remotest corners of the country, providing television coverage to 90 per cent of the population. The system is also being used to extend remote healthcare services and education to the rural poor.

In 2003, the PSLV launched India’s latest remote-sensing satellite, IRS-P6, capable of imaging the Earth’s surface to a resolution of 5 metres. ISRO’s latest rocket, the Geo-synchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is able to lift large satellites into geo-stationary orbit, 36,000 kilometresup. On 20 September 2004, the GSLV launched the 2-tonne EDUSAT, the world’s first satellite dedicated to providing support for educational projects.For future rockets ISRO engineers are developing their own cryogenic engine. Ground tests have been completed and the plan is to launch a completely indigenous GSLV-Mark 2 by the end of this year.

ISRO is already planning the next-generation GSLV, the Mark 3, which will be powerful enough to launch India’s biggest satellites. A launch on GSLV-Mark 3 should cost about half the rate charged by France, the US and Russia, he says.

ISRO sells infrared images from its remote-sensing satellites to other countries, including the US, where they are used for mapping. And the Technology Experiment Satellite, launched in October 2001, is beaming back images of the Earth’s surface with a resolution of 1 metre, though they are not yet available commercially.

Dishes to savour

India is the home for the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) - the world’s largest, low-frequency radio telescope and India’s biggest basic science project. The telescope consists of 30 antennas, each one 45 metres across. Twelve of them sit in a 1-kilometre-square central region, while the remaining 18 stretch out along three arms, each 14 kilometres long. The central cluster allows the telescope to pick up extremely faint signals, and the arms give it high resolution. The GMRT opens a unique window with its operating frequencies - between 130 and 1500 megahertz - are at the opposite end of the spectrum from gamma-ray astronomy. Through clever innovation, such as using a mesh of fine wires to form the reflecting surface of each dish, the Indian scientists have created a revolutionary, low-cost design. The entire telescope cost $12 million.

One of the GMRT’s main tasks is investigating the clouds of hydrogen gas thought to be the precursors of galaxies. Its biggest asset is its ability to detect a 1420-megahertz radio signal emitted by excited hydrogen gas. In distant galaxies, which are moving swiftly away from us because the universe is expanding, this “spectral line” is shifted to a lower frequency by the Doppler effect. The shifted frequency is well within the telescope’s range, allowing astronomers to use it as a probe for studying the dynamics of evolving galaxies.

GMRT is also valuable for studying pulsars - dense, fast-spinning neutron stars that emit radio pulses at regular intervals. GMRT can pick up pulsars that others who traditionally search at higher frequencies cannot pick up very easily. Lastyear Indian scientists found a “binary system” comprising a pulsar circling another massive object. It has the most eccentric orbit ever seen (www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/0403453). The researchers’ theory is that the pulsar first accumulated matter from a low-mass star, then somehow exchanged that for the more massive one it now orbits. Astronomers believe that a similar process could give rise to a pulsar-black hole binary system.

Vaccines for pennies

Krishna Ella and his wife Suchitra Ella sold their houses in America and India, abandoned their US careers and left for Hyderabad to set up Bharat Biotech, that now sells the vaccine in developing countries for 28 cents a shot. Bharat Biotech owns the second biggest production facility for this vaccine in the world and has an annual turnover of $7.3 million.
A virus that attacks the liver causes Hepatitis B. It can cause lifelong infection, liver failure and cancer. It usually spreads through sex with someone who is infected, or by drug users sharing needles. In 1986 SmithKline Beecham launched a vaccine for hepatitis B, the first in the world to be produced by genetic engineering. It is made by adding genetic material to yeast cells so that they produce a key protein from the surface of the virus. People who are immunised with that protein produce antibodies that protect them should they subsequently encounter the virus.
Krishna Ella found that the purification method SmithKline Beecham, the only producer of thevaccine, used to extract the vaccine protein was relatively inefficient and costly. The multinational was using - and still uses to this day - a technique called ultra-centrifugation, in which samples are subjected to 100,000 times gravity to separate theprotein from DNA. The equipment cost over $1.5 million and only recovered 15 per cent of the protein. What is more, the technique used caesium chloride, which is expensive and has to be completely removed from the final product because it is toxic. That makes disposal costly too.

- Indra

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