International Young Scientist Awards

Ekart, one of India’s leading 4 PL supply chain companies, has introduced a comprehensive ‘Refinish Service’ tailored to address the challenges of returns management in the fashion and lifestyle sector. This initiative marks a significant leap forward in efficient and sustainable return logistics management, offering brands unparalleled solutions to reclaim sellable inventory. In an era where customer returns pose a significant challenge for fashion brands, especially with products like apparel and footwear that have been tried at home or have minor defects, Ekart’s refinish service emerges as a transformative solution. By refurbishing over 90% of returned inventory, Ekart enables brands to mitigate losses and maximize revenue potential. This service targets direct-to-consumer (D2C), e-commerce, and retail players in the fashion and lifestyle segments. In addition to fashion and lifestyle brands, Ekart’s refinish service extends to industries like footwear, handbags, accessories, and ...

Amid mounting concerns over the state of the climate and environment, significant efforts have been spent developing innovative solutions to reduce plastic waste and capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — most addressing one crisis at a time. However, researchers have recently devised a sustainable, closed-loop process for producing and recycling polycarbonate plastic while also capturing carbon, effectively addressing the two challenges simultaneously. Conventional plastics recycling is a mechanical process that involves sorting, cleaning, and granulating the plastic into flakes before heating it at high temperature, and not all plastics can be recycled in this way — though it is more environmentally friendly than incineration or landfill disposal. “However, [mechanical recycling] has a critical issue because repeated exposure to high heat can cause permanent changes in the chemical structure of the plastic, resulting in poor-quality recycled plastics,” explained Hoyong Chung, ...

According to popular theory, dark matter — a hypothetical entity believed to permeate the Universe — is made up of constituent particles that are many orders of magnitude lighter than any known particle in the Standard Model of Physics. While this hypothesis helps explain phenomena such as galactic dark matter halos, regions of increased dark matter density surrounding galaxies, it has a fatal flaw arising from probabilistic and quantum effects, particularly quantum tunneling. Tunneling affects the probability of dark matter particles “jumping” or tunneling from one gravitational potential well to another. Dark matter from smaller satellite galaxies should therefore be steadily migrating to the larger ones they orbit, resulting in the smaller galaxies losing their mass. According to this theory, this should have led to their disappearance. Tiny interactions make a big difference In a study, scientists propose that this discrepancy can be reconciled if tiny interactions between dark ma...

Planetary alignment is a term used to describe the positioning of planets The Moon will play a spoilsport Mercury, and Jupiter will be tricky to see in the sky Weeks after the total solar eclipse amazed people in several parts of the world, stargazers will be treated to a rare alignment of six planets gracing the early morning skies. The alignment will take place in the first week of June as the planets line up in a rare cosmic event. Planetary alignment is a term used to describe the positioning of planets in the solar system such that they appear to be in a straight line or close to one when viewed from a specific vantage point, for us that's Earth. This phenomenon is more an illusion of perspective rather than the planets being in a perfect line in space. WHAT PLANETS WILL ALIGN? Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune will form a near-straight line, offering an extraordinary opportunity to witness this cosmic phenomenon. WHICH PLANETS WILL BE VISIBLE? While six pla...

  The US FDA has approved Neuralink's brain chip for a second patient, a comet fragment dazzled Spain and Portugal's skies, and Blue Origin launched its first crew to space since 2022, including Ed Dwight, the oldest person in space. The U.S. health regulator has allowed billionaire Elon Musk's Neuralink to implant its brain chip in a second person after it proposed to fix a problem that occurred in its first patient, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Earlier this month, Neuralink said tiny wires implanted in the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position. Reuters reported last week, citing sources, the company knew from animal testing that the wires might retract. Comet fragment lights up sky over Spain and Portugal 'like a movie' A bright comet fragment lit up the skies over parts of Spain and Portugal late on Saturday, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), with one Lisbon resident saying the dazzling display "felt like a movie...

Our galaxy is a jewel box of red stars. More than 70% of the stars in the Milky Way are M dwarfs, also known as red dwarfs. These stars are cool and dim compared with our Sun, but they often blast orbiting exoplanets with high-energy radiation, especially early in their lives. And those ‘‘lives’’ last a long time. Stars like our Sun burn for about 10 billion years before turning into hungry red giants devouring any planets too nearby. M dwarfs keep burning for 100 billion years or more, perhaps offering a foothold for life, and an even longer window for life to develop. An international team using robotic telescopes around the world recently spotted an Earth-sized planet orbiting an ultra-cool red dwarf, the dimmest and longest-lived of stars. When the universe grows cold and dark, these will be the last stars burning. The Discovery The exoplanet SPECULOOS-3 b is about 55 light-years from Earth (really close when you consider the cosmic scale!) and nearly the same size. A year there, ...

The world’s oceans have gone “crazy haywire,” according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official, with record-high temperatures imperiling coral reefs. Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program, said in a news briefing Thursday that around 60.5%, or nearly two-thirds, of the world’s coral reefs have experienced heat stress at levels high enough to cause bleaching, a major health threat. Coral bleaching occurs as a result of abnormal ocean conditions, such as when water temperatures are unusually warm or cold, or when oceans are more acidic than normal. Corals respond by expelling tiny photosynthetic algae that live in their tissues, causing the normally colorful marine invertebrates to turn ghostly white. The current threats come on the heels of record-shattering marine heat waves that hit most of the world’s ocean basins last year. Manzello said that conditions last year were so unusually warm in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and...

NEW DELHI: CBI has filed an FIR against Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd, one of the top buyers of electoral bonds, and officials of ministry of steel in relation to alleged corruption in execution of a Rs 315-crore project. Those named in the FIR have been accused of receiving alleged bribe of around Rs 78 lakh in clearing bills worth Rs 174 crore of Megha Engineering in connection with works related to an integrated steel plant in Jagdalpur. According to the FIR, which was filed on March 31 on the basis of the preliminary probe report on the alleged bribery, related to works of intake well and pump house and cross-country pipeline at the plant, which was awarded to the company. CBI has named eight officials of NISP and NMDC Ltd - retired executive director Prashant Dash, director (production) DK Mohanty, DGM PK Bhuyan, DM Naresh Babu, senior manager Subro Banerjee, retired CGM (finance) L Krishna Mohan, GM (finance) K Rajshekhar and manager (finance) Somnath ...

Scientists have discovered that the boundary between liquid and metal in a gallium-copper alloy (CuGa2) is less stable than was previously thought, with spontaneous liquefaction of the gallium metal observed for the first time. “The outer layers of a solidified intermetallic are surprisingly unstable to the depths of several nanometers, fluctuating between a crystalline and a liquid state,” wrote the researchers in their paper paper published in Advanced Science. Alloys are blends of different metals, often outshining their individual components in terms of their mechanical, chemical, and thermal properties. “Most alloys begin their journey as a molten metal, which then cools to form a solid,” the team wrote. “The process of solidification is crucial as it dictates the final physical, chemical and mechanical properties, which are profoundly impacted by the final crystalline structure, size, and shape.” But something unexpected happened when studying the interface between the CuGa2 al...

Dr. Hee Jung Lee's research team from the Department of Functional Composites in Composites Research Division at Korea Institute of Materials Science(KIMS) has successfully developed electromagnetic wave absorbers based on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that enhance dielectric and magnetic losses in the gigahertz (GHz) frequency band. They have compounded MOFs with thermoplastic polyurethane to produce a high-performance and broadband-absorption composite. Previous research focused on developing electromagnetic wave absorbing materials using highly conductive and dielectric materials, however, it faced challenges in achieving appropriate complex permittivity and permeability during the fabrication of the composites. This resulted in increased thickness and limited narrow-band absorption performance. The electromagnetic wave absorbing material developed by Dr. Lee’s team not only improves the absorption performance compared to conventional materials but also exhibits high reflect...

Lactanet and Ontario Pork are two recent victims of ransomware attacks, joining other agri-food businesses such as JBS, Sollio Agriculture and Maple Leaf Foods . Why it matters: Cybersecurity risks are increasing in the agri-food industry. According to Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence Ali Dehghantanha, a key reason attacks on agriculture are increasing is on the rise is the industry’s increased data reliance, the Internet of Things and cybercriminals looking for easy, profitable targets. “If it takes attackers 10 minutes to compromise your infrastructure, get into your network, initiate ransomware and ask you to pay for it — they won’t hesitate.” He said most cybercriminals are opportunistic. They initiate a data breach, then monetize information on the dark web and extort the target to release encrypted information. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small producer or a multimillion-dollar health care, financial or agricultural operation — if your system is ...

Approximately 550 million years ago, the first terrestrial plants evolved from algae and began to transform the Earth’s landscape, drastically altering the planet’s surface and atmosphere.. A significant breakthrough in understanding these origins has been achieved through the collaborative efforts of an international research team, which includes a computational biologist from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln . This team has successfully decoded the genomic sequence of Zygnema algae, the closest living relatives to these pioneering land plants Cracking the genomic code The recent research published in Nature Genetics brought together approximately 50 scientists from eight different countries. This collaboration led to a significant achievement: the first complete genomic sequencing of four different strains of Zygnema algae. By accomplishing this, the team has provided crucial insights into the evolutionary adaptations that enabled aquatic plants to transition and thrive on land, ma...

NASA has selected four proposals for concept studies of missions to help us better understand Earth science key focus areas for the benefit of all including greenhouse gases, the ozone layer, ocean surface currents, and changes in ice and glaciers around the world. These four investigations are part of the agency’s new Earth System Explorers Program – which conducts principal investigator-led space science missions as recommended by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2017 Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space. The program is designed to enable high-quality Earth system science investigations to focus on previously identified key targets. For this set of missions, NASA is prioritizing greenhouse gases as one of its target observables. “The proposals represent another example of NASA’s holistic approach to studying our home planet,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ...

  The inside of a cell is a busy place filled with a web of interactions between proteins, membranes, DNA, and other molecules to keep our bodies functioning. Mapping these connections is vital for understanding health and how to repair this network when it is disturbed. Unfortunately, the tools to track proteins within a living cell struggle to keep up with the traffic. To see proteins at work in real time, researchers are building a universal set of probes to find specific proteins among the organized chaos in order to explore some of the busiest corners of the cell. Mapping proteins throughout a cell Current protein visualization techniques are frozen in time and only work with dead and fixed cells, providing a single snapshot of protein interactions in a cell. Some live  imaging techniques exist  and rely on fluorescent antibodies designed to bind a protein and emit a colorful signal. However, the problem with antibodies is their size. Within a cell the...