Oxygenation by Sponges in the deep Ocean

• Life began by oxygenation in ocean and the atmosphere
• Oxygen at the upper layer of atmosphere >> bottom layer
• To sustain life the oxygen demand ~ oxygen supply
• At the botton: when demand gets high, lifeforms struggle to evolve

Role of Sponges: 

• Helped in reducing oxygen consumption and creating conditions suited for the evolution of more complex, multi-cellular life with higher oxygen needs 
• Also helped in “removing” phosphorus found in the ocean
• This led to a rise in oxygen supply in the deep ocean for the animals to evolve.

*Courtesy: Nature Geoscience

300-day Mars of odyssey

From: Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO),Sriharikota
By: Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25)

• It was a debut attempt to send a spacecraft to Mars, about 40 crore km away.
• On Tuesday PSLV had put the Mars spacecraft first into an earth-bound orbit after a flight duration of 43 minutes.
• The spacecraft will voyage for 300 days before it reaches the Martian orbit.
• This totally indigenous mission — the rocket and the five payloads come from various ISRO centres across the country.
• It is the silver jubilee launch of the PSLV (25th launch).
• K. Radhakrishnan, – Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)

What is BRI-62?

• Bangladesh has become the first country to release seeds of the Zinc rich rice variety known as - "BRI-62"

• BRI-62 is world's first zinc enriched rice variety capable of fighting diarrhea and pneumonia-induced childhood deaths and stunted growth.

• Bangladesh Rice Institute (BRI) invented it.

CNT-Cu boosted ampacity to 10,000 per cent

What is Ampacity?

Ampacity is the maximum amount of current a conductor can carry before losing its electrical properties. A large ampacity is vital to good performance. 

What's the News?

An Indian scientist from-Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, has found that when carbon nanotubes are embedded in copper, the resulting new material’s ampacity gets boosted to a massive 10,000 per cent, with an electrical conductivity comparable to copper’s.

Other benefit of reinforcing Carbon Nano Tube into Copper:

Less Dense

(The new material, dubbed CNT-Cu (for carbon nanotubes–copper), consists of 45 per cent CNTs by volume, and is less dense than a pure copper conductor by 42 per cent.)

Problem:

Huge processing cost.

How CNT-Cu helps in attaining higher ampacity:

CNT-Cu achieves higher ampacity by suppressing electromigration that occurs in copper wires, where electrons are scattered off their path by copper atoms. 

In case of CNT-Cu, the negatively charged particles are channeled to move through a continuous mesh-like network formed by the nanotubes, averting scattering.