IISc in the News: The Pins and The Beads

G.S. Mudur in The Telegraph: Tiny brass pins or a flock of birds. A story featuring recent research from Prof. Ajay Sood’s group.

In his physics laboratory, Ajay Sood watches hundreds of tiny brass pins spontaneously align themselves into flower-shaped patterns in experiments where he’s coaxed non-living matter to behave like flocks of birds flying in synchrony.

The millimetre-sized tapered pins, initially scattered in a disordered manner on a smooth metal surface, jump into action when the surface vibrates and align themselves within seconds into a highly-ordered pattern, as if each pin knows exactly where to go.

IISc in the News: Links

1. The New Indian Express: ‘IISc’s Alumni are Global Achievers’. Papiya Bhattacharya interviews IISc Director, Prof. Anurag Kumar.

2. Deccan Herald: IISc experts warn of more PES-like flooding. Besky Khanna cites work by Prof T V Ramachandra (CES) on the health of lakes in and around Bangalore.

3. The Hindu: IISc, ISRO on Mission Monsoon. Divya Gandhi on a Prof. P.N. Vinayachandran’s (CAOS) project “to understand the processes taking place over the ocean, where most cloud formations happen.”

4. The Hindu: IBM, IISc chip in for smart water management in city. Afshan Yasmeen and Divya Gandhi on a recent paper in Procedia Engineering entitled “Analytics Driven Water Management System for Bangalore City” co-authored by M.S. Mohan Kumar and U. Manohar (Department of Civil Engineering and Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and Urban Planning).

IISc in the News: Triple Slit Experiment, Hybrid Supercapacitors, Microneedles

G.S. Mudur of The Telegraph covers a recent paper in Physical Review Letters by Prof. Aninda Sinha (Centre for High Energy Physics) and his colleagues (at the Raman Research Institute): Indians attempt quantum clean-up – Experiment to right old error.

The second news story, by Hari Pulakkat in The Economic Times, covers Prof. A.K. Shukla’s research in the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit: How IISc professor’s hybrid supercapacitor can store electricity & run electric cars in future.

The third story, in The New Indian Express, covers research from Prof. Rajanna’s group in the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics: IISc Reseachers Invent Micro Needle That Stings Less.