POTENT CHEMICAL IN PLAY
Why onions make you cry
Onions make us teary because a reaction in the onion releases a chemical called lachrymatory factor, or LF, that irritates our eyes. The onion's cells break open, allowing two normally separated substances to combine. Linked together like pieces of a puzzle, they become a potent chemical weapon. "It turns into a gas. It hits your eyes, and then it hits your sensory nerves in your eyes and causes them to tear up," said Josie Silvaroli, an undergraduate at Case Western Reserve University, USA who helped describe how these pieces fit together in a paper published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology.
But is it possible to avoid the onion feelies? In Japan, scientists engineered a tearless onion. But it lacks that signature onion flavour. With regular onions, there are options like chucking your onion in the fridge before you cut it. Reducing the temperature will slow down the reaction, resulting in less LF.
ECO-FRIENDLY
Building bio-batteries
Irrespective of their shape, size and function, the working principle behind all batteries is uniform: two electrodes connected by an electrolyte, undergo redox reactions to help convert other forms of energy into electrical energy. Now, scientists at IIT Kharagpur have come up with a prototype of a microbial fuel cell, which is not only eco-friendly but can also be made using commonly available materials. The scientists used electrodes made from paper and filled it with a mixture of bacteria and organic fuel. They used eyeliner as a conductive ink and a Whatman filter paper to support the electrodes and separate the microbial fuel cells from each other. The bacteria stored within these biocompatible electrodes, in their active form, can chemically oxidise the organic fuel to generate current.
PREVENTING DEFICIENCIES
Fortifying food with riboflavin
Although found in various foods like eggs, there are numerous cases of riboflavin deficiency. To help solve this, scientists have been looking for ways to supplement the intake of this vitamin through fortified foods like milk. Several bacteria are known to produce riboflavin, but among these, lactobacilli is an ideal candidate. Now, scientists at National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, and Hefei University of Technology, China have studied the influence of incubation time, growth medium and the use of different strains of lactobacilli on the expression of riboflavin genes. They isolated wild strains of lactobacilli from various niches and found that lactobacilli isolated from fermented bamboo shoots exhibited the highest riboflavin producing properties.
RECOVERING VALUABLE METALS
Treasure from liquid trash
The main goal of removing heavy metals from wastewater is environmental protection from harmful substances. Much of what is recovered, such as lead, is of low value. But some treatment processes do recover valuable metals. A review article in The Arabian Journal of Chemistry in 2011, on the ways to treat industrial wastewater, noted that electrodialysis was experimentally effective in capturing copper and chrome. Another technique, combining water-soluble metal-binding polymers with ultrafiltration, has been shown to be effective in selectively recovering various metals. Of interest is recent work on extracting precious metals from wastewater linked to sources such as automobile catalysts and hospitals.
Treatment of water containing small amounts of precious metals hasn't been economically effective, but microbial methods are being studied for the purpose. In a study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology in 2016, a hybrid membrane made of low-cost activated charcoal and whey protein fibres showed promise in selectively removing various metals from water. It could someday play an important role in gold recycling, the researchers said.
DOCUMENTARY
The Quantum Indians
The Quantum Indians explores how in the early part of the 20th Century and over 20 years before India's independence, three Indian scientists — Satyendra Nath Bose, C V Raman and Meghnad Saha — revolutionised the world of quantum physics and science by giving three remarkable discoveries and theories. The documentary explores their individual biographies, collective impact on the world of science and their legacy in Indian science using their own words, archival imagery and footage, interviews with leading Indian scientists and historians and animated visualisations to demonstrate their theories. To watch the documentary, visit www.bit.ly/1laA8fT.
PROCESSING LANGUAGE
The inner workings of neural nets
Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, USA have recently come up with a new general-purpose technique for making sense of neural networks that are trained to perform natural-language-processing tasks, in which computers attempt to interpret free form texts written in ordinary, or natural language. The technique applies to any system that takes text as input and produces strings of symbols as output, such as an automatic translator. And because its analysis results from varying inputs and examining the effects on outputs, it can work with online natural-language-processing services, without access to the underlying software. The researchers applied their technique to three different set types of natural-language-processing system. One was a system that inferred words pronunciation, another was a set of translators, two automated and one human, and the third was a simple computer dialogue system, which attempts to supply plausible responses to arbitrary remarks or questions. The analysis of the translation systems demonstrated strong dependencies between individual words in the input and output sequences. One of the more intriguing results of that analysis, however, was the identification of gender biases in the texts on which the machine translations systems were trained.
POTENT CHEMICAL IN PLAY
Why onions make you cry
Onions make us teary because a reaction in the onion releases a chemical called lachrymatory factor, or LF, that irritates our eyes. The onion’s cells break open, allowing two normally separated substances to combine. Linked together like pieces of a puzzle, they become a potent chemical weapon. "It turns into a gas. It hits your eyes, and then it hits your sensory nerves in your eyes and causes them to tear up,” said Josie Silvaroli, an undergraduate at Case Western Reserve University, USA who helped describe how these pieces fit together in a paper published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology.
But is it possible to avoid the onion feelies? In Japan, scientists engineered a tearless onion. But it lacks that signature onion flavour. With regular onions, there are options like chucking your onion in the fridge before you cut it. Reducing the temperature will slow down the reaction, resulting in less LF.
ECO-FRIENDLY
Building bio-batteries
Irrespective of their shape, size and function, the working principle behind all batteries is uniform: two electrodes connected by an electrolyte, undergo redox reactions to help convert other forms of energy into electrical energy. Now, scientists at IIT Kharagpur have come up with a prototype of a microbial fuel cell, which is not only eco-friendly but can also be made using commonly available materials. The scientists used electrodes made from paper and filled it with a mixture of bacteria and organic fuel. They used eyeliner as a conductive ink and a Whatman filter paper to support the electrodes and separate the microbial fuel cells from each other. The bacteria stored within these biocompatible electrodes, in their active form, can chemically oxidise the organic fuel to generate current.
PREVENTING DEFICIENCIES
Fortifying food with riboflavin
Although found in various foods like eggs, there are numerous cases of riboflavin deficiency. To help solve this, scientists have been looking for ways to supplement the intake of this vitamin through fortified foods like milk. Several bacteria are known to produce riboflavin, but among these, lactobacilli is an ideal candidate. Now, scientists at National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, and Hefei University of Technology, China have studied the influence of incubation time, growth medium and the use of different strains of lactobacilli on the expression of riboflavin genes. They isolated wild strains of lactobacilli from various niches and found that lactobacilli isolated from fermented bamboo shoots exhibited the highest riboflavin producing properties.
RECOVERING VALUABLE METALS
Treasure from liquid trash
The main goal of removing heavy metals from wastewater is environmental protection from harmful substances. Much of what is recovered, such as lead, is of low value. But some treatment processes do recover valuable metals. A review article in The Arabian Journal of Chemistry in 2011, on the ways to treat industrial wastewater, noted that electrodialysis was experimentally effective in capturing copper and chrome. Another technique, combining water-soluble metal-binding polymers with ultrafiltration, has been shown to be effective in selectively recovering various metals. Of interest is recent work on extracting precious metals from wastewater linked to sources such as automobile catalysts and hospitals.
Treatment of water containing small amounts of precious metals hasn’t been economically effective, but microbial methods are being studied for the purpose. In a study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology in 2016, a hybrid membrane made of low-cost activated charcoal and whey protein fibres showed promise in selectively removing various metals from water. It could someday play an important role in gold recycling, the researchers said.
DOCUMENTARY
The Quantum Indians
The Quantum Indians explores how in the early part of the 20th Century and over 20 years before India’s independence, three Indian scientists — Satyendra Nath Bose, C V Raman and Meghnad Saha — revolutionised the world of quantum physics and science by giving three remarkable discoveries and theories. The documentary explores their individual biographies, collective impact on the world of science and their legacy in Indian science using their own words, archival imagery and footage, interviews with leading Indian scientists and historians and animated visualisations to demonstrate their theories. To watch the documentary, visit www.bit.ly/1laA8fT.
PROCESSING LANGUAGE
The inner workings of neural nets
Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, USA have recently come up with a new general-purpose technique for making sense of neural networks that are trained to perform natural-language-processing tasks, in which computers attempt to interpret free form texts written in ordinary, or 'natural' language. The technique applies to any system that takes text as input and produces strings of symbols as output, such as an automatic translator. And because its analysis results from varying inputs and examining the effects on outputs, it can work with online natural-language-processing services, without access to the underlying software. The researchers applied their technique to three different set types of natural-language-processing system. One was a system that inferred words' pronunciation, another was a set of translators, two automated and one human, and the third was a simple computer dialogue system, which attempts to supply plausible responses to arbitrary remarks or questions. The analysis of the translation systems demonstrated strong dependencies between individual words in the input and output sequences. One of the more intriguing results of that analysis, however, was the identification of gender biases in the texts on which the machine translations systems were trained.
