📰 Nizam made vain bid to buy Marmagoa port from Portugal
As India closed in, Hyderabad ruler sought access to sea via port in Goa
•In the days preceding India’s Independence on August 15, 1947, the Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, had come close to buying the port of Marmagoa from Portugal, according to documents accessed recently at the British Library in London.
•The documents were accessed by a team led by Uday Nagaraju, involved in compiling the history of Telangana for Telangana Jagruthi, an NGO run by Member of Parliament K. Kavitha. The researchers looked at over 10,000 documents, some of them classified ‘Top Secret’ by the Commonwealth Relations Office.
•The documents related to Telangana and Hyderabad came into the public domain under the ‘thirty years rule' which allows declassification after 30 years. These documents became available in India last week when the team brought the copies to Hyderabad.
British middleman
•While the Nizam's interest in purchase of a Goan port is known, the documents, for the first time, shed light on how close the two parties had actually been to striking a deal. The go-between, a Britisher, Sir Alexander Roger, pocketed £17,000 for his efforts at brokering the deal.
•“The Portuguese government had in fact entered into negotiations with the agent for Hyderabad and a draft agreement had gone to Lisbon for approval by the Portuguese Government... it was made clear to the Portuguese Embassy that it suited H.M.G. (His Majesty’s Government) very well to be without cognisance of these negotiations,” these words from a secret Foreign Office document in the British Library, dated April 15, 1948, shows how British diplomacy worked in early days of Independent India. This was barely six months before Hyderabad was amalgamated into India.
•“We were surprised to find these secret documents,” says Mr. Nagaraju, U.K. Adviser to Telangana Jagruthi. One document cites a private letter from the British Viceroy (Lord Mountbatten) in October 1945 about Hyderabad’s effort to buy Goa.
•The Nizam’s Dominion, then spread over 2,15,339 square km, extended right up to Gadag in the present day Karnataka. Marmagoa port lay another 100 miles to the west and would have given sea access to the landlocked Nizam’s province.
📰 Assam gets Rs. 1,250 crore Central fund for inland water transport
Rs. 32 crore will be utilised for constructing 56 terminals
•Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Saturday announced that Rs. 1,250 crore has been sanctioned for overall development of inland water transport of Assam.
•The Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping asked the State water resources department to involve a foreign consultant, if required, for preparing the Detailed Project Report (DPR) within three months.
•“For the development of transport sector, the Central Government has sanctioned Rs. 1,250 crore,” Mr. Gadkari said at a meeting of the Brahmaputra Board and Water Resources Department at Kaziranga.
•Of this amount, Rs. 32 crore will be utilised for constructing 56 terminals and Rs 60 crore for Ro-Ro service, an official release said.
•Ro-ro is ‘roll-on, roll-off’ ferry service in which people and goods including vehicles would be ferried.
Infrastructure development
•Infrastructural development will also be brought about at the terminals at Bogibeel, Nematighat, Kamalabari, Silghat, Jogighopa, Silchar, Dhubri and Pandu, a release said.
•Mr. Gadkari asked the State government to take immediate steps to upgrade the entire network of embankments measuring around 4,474 kilometre and make them road-cum-dykes.
•The expenses of this upgradation job would be borne by the Centre, he said, adding that raw materials should be procured from local markets and local youths should be involved in the project.
•Mr. Gadkari also reviewed the progress of the works related to perennial flood and erosion management, dredging of the Brahmaputra and the express highway, the release said.
•“He also underlined the importance of using the latest technology in implementing all the ongoing projects and lending beauty to the Brahmaputra Express Highway,” it said.
📰 Bihar to form human chain on January 21 to highlight social evils
•Bihar is once again gearing up to form the world’s longest human chain on January 21 to create awareness against social evils like child marriage and dowry.
•Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is currently touring the State, has been appealing to people to join the human chain and make it even longer than the previous one.
•“This year, on January 21, we had formed a human chain in which about four crore people participated to reaffirm their commitment to liquor ban in the state. This year the government has decided to form a human chain against child marriage and dowry. Please join the chain and make it longer than the previous one,” he said in Lakhisarai, Munger and Jamui on Friday.
•Bihar ranks second in the country, after neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, in dowry-related cases. On Friday, Patna District Magistrate Sanjay Agrawal reviewed the preparation for the proposed human chain in his district.
15 lakh from Patna
•“The target is that about 15 lakh people from Patna district alone will participate,” he said, adding that the main programme will be held at Gandhi Maidan, where a map of Bihar would be formed by participants joining hands.
•The programme would be organised from 12 to 12.30 p.m., Mr. Agarwal said.
📰 Constructive Russia-U.S. talks needed, says Putin
Calls for ‘pragmatic cooperation’
•Russian President Vladimir Putin called for “pragmatic cooperation” in his New Year wishes to his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
•In a statement on the Russian President’s New Year wishes to world leaders, the Kremlin said Mr. Putin told Mr. Trump that “a constructive Russian-American dialogue is especially needed to strengthen strategic stability in the world”.
•According to the statement, Mr. Putin said “mutual respect” should be “a base to develop relations” between the two countries.
•“This would allow us to move towards building pragmatic cooperation, orientated on the long term,” he said.
•The Russian President also sent messages to other heads of State, including leaders of former Soviet countries, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
Changes in Syria
•In his wishes to the Syrian leader, with whom he met with during a surprise visit to Russia’s Syrian air base Hmeimim earlier this month, Mr. Putin “expressed sincere hope that key changes for the better will continue in Syria in the new year”.
•The statement added that Mr. Putin told Mr. Assad that "Russia will continue to show all kind of support to the Syrian Arab Republic in order to protect its state sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity”. Mr. Putin had ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria earlier this month.
📰 Questions around raising the dead
De-extinction, an exciting field of science, is still in its infancy
•There’s a chilling scene in the 2016 Disney masterpiece, “The Jungle Book”, where King Louie, a Gigantopithecus, extends his hand to catch Mowgli before he escapes and the whole temple crumbles in on the ape. Gigantopithecus, literally the “giant ape”, once roamed the plains of Asia, including India, and went extinct due to a lack of food and its giant size. Not much is known about it except that its closest living relatives are orangutans. Can science bring back Gigantopithecus to life? It may sound like science fiction but efforts on “de-extinction” or “bringing animals back from extinction” are well under way.
The science behind it
•Intact cells and years of meticulous experiments helped resurrect the first extinct species, namely the Pyrenean ibex or the Spanish mountain goat (bucardo), in 2003. Scientists achieved this by successfully implanting cloned embryos of the Pyrenean ibex into living species of goats. From the many embryos that the scientists implanted, only one approached a near full-term pregnancy. Although the newborn died shortly after birth, an exciting era of bringing animals back from extinction was born. In order to revive extinct animals by somatic cell nuclear transfer (a process where the nucleus from a donor cell is fused with the enucleated egg cell of a recipient cell), scientists need living cells. Although bones and teeth of extinct animals like Gigantopithecus and Tyrannosaurus rex (T-rex) are found, there are no intact cells available from these animals. Even the DNA obtained from the bones and teeth of extinct animals are not intact and are found chopped into smaller pieces due to attrition by microorganisms, enzymes and harmful radiation. In the absence of intact cells, two methods show promise in de-extinction where the genomes of an extinct species and its closest living species are very similar. In the first, gaps in the genome of an extinct species can be filled by their closest living relative’s genome to make a blueprint of a species that closely resembles the extinct species.
•In the second technique, portions of the genome of the closest living relative are exchanged with that from the extinct species. For example, if we want to resurrect Gigantopithecus, first its genome needs to be sequenced and compared to the orangutan’s genome to identify the sites where the two genomes differ. Subsequently, using genome-editing technology, the specific sites of the orangutan’s genome are exchanged with that from Gigantopithecus. Although this method is currently being tried to clone a mammoth using Asian elephant DNA, it has not been successful. Assuming that the genomes of Gigantopithecus and orangutan are very similar, making Gigantopithecus chromosomes from its DNA and implanting the viable embryos successful in surrogate orangutan females will take a long time.
The questions
•Even if science brings back those magnificent creatures to life, there are many unanswered legal, societal and ethical questions related to de-extinction. Foremost among them are: what is the need to revive an extinct species? Can we create a favourable environment for the extinct animals to survive, and should the animals after their resurrection be released into a captive environment?
•None of these challenges is as complicated as the one linked to the hypothetical case of bringing back Neanderthals, the closest of our relatives. Bringing Neanderthals to life will pose additional challenging questions like: should the society of modern humans allow Neanderthals to be captive in the zoos or should they be free in our habitat? As there is evidence that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans in the past, the most important question therefore is, should Neanderthals be allowed to interbreed with modern humans? Whatever the future holds, as Professor George Church of Harvard argues in the 2012 book, “Regenesis”, cloning Neanderthals may provide us with health benefits by understanding whether they are resistant to deadly infectious diseases and their de-extinction “might give us an inkling into another form of human intelligence or different ways of thinking”.
•De-extinction is an exciting field of science but is still in its infancy. Let alone ethical and societal concerns, science needs to have advanced quite a bit before de-extinction of many species becomes a reality. As scientists make progress in their labs, it may take a while before you see a Gigantopithecus or a T-rex next time you visit your local zoo. Till then, we will have to watch Hollywood masterpieces to feed our imagination.
📰 Meet the virtual psychiatrist
Given the abysmal quality of mental health care in rural India,this diagnostic tool can help make a difference
•India has a severe shortage of psychiatrists with the result that those with mental illness in rural areas either remain undiagnosed or do not get proper treatment. However, a “virtual psychiatrist” tool developed by Indian researchers can help address this problem.
•The tool called clinical decision support system (CDSS) for diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders has been developed at the Department of Psychiatry of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. It has been field tested in remote villages in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu & Kashmir.
Findings of study
•A study on its use has evaluated the diagnostic accuracy and reliability of the application at remote sites when used by non-psychiatrists who had limited training in it. The knowledge-based, logical diagnostic tool showed “acceptable” to “good” validity and reliability when used by non-specialists. The diagnosis done by non-psychiatrists was compared with that done by specialists.
•“Our findings show that [the] diagnostic tool of the telepsychiatry application has potential to empower non-psychiatrist doctors and paramedics to diagnose psychiatric disorders accurately and reliably in remote sites,” researchers have said in a study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR).
Disorders covered
•A total of 18 common mental disorders are covered in the tool: delirium, dementia, mania, depression, dysthymia, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias, reaction to severe stress and adjustment disorder, somatoform disorder, dissociative disorder, neurasthenia, sexual dysfunctions, alcohol dependence, substance dependence and mental retardation.
•“Mental health care is mostly unavailable or inaccessible in most parts of the country. About 90% of patients in need of psychiatric treatment do not get it due to a lack of psychiatrists. Our system fills that gap by creating a virtual psychiatrist,” says Dr. Savita Malhotra, who led the research team.
•The expert system can assist a non-medical person in interviewing a patient with mental disorders, leading to an automated diagnosis, she says. It can also assist a general physician in treating mental disorders in remote areas where there is no mental health care. The ICT technology used is very simple — a computer, broadband Internet, Skype and a telephone line. The application software is online and can be accessed by authorised users using a password.
Spread the word
•The researchers hope to disseminate the tool in the country. “We have written to the Central government and State governments to adopt the system. It can be deployed at multiple sites or centres at once and has the potential to quickly solve the problem of deficient mental health care in the country,” says Dr. Malhotra. There are also plans to upscale the system and create mobile platforms so that patients can access services from their homes.
•“Telepsychiatry holds the potential to solve the massive and intertwined problems of underdiagnosing and undertreating persons with mental illness and the lack of trained workforce at the grass-root level. In addition, initiatives must be taken to set up procedural guidelines and recommendations as the field advances,” psychiatry experts have said in a commentary published in the same issue of IJMR . — India Science Wire
📰 Think health financing
•Access to quality health services has remained an abiding challenge for India. Given our complex socio-economic reality and disparities in the quality and availability of health services, the need to focus on health financing is an important economic and social imperative. The key to increasing access to quality health care in India lies in increasing the patient’s ability to pay. The only sustainable way to do this is by increasing insurance cover because price capping, in a country that already enjoys the lowest prices, is simply not sustainable.
The gaps
•Health coverage is the target of most health insurance schemes. The unfathomable fact, however, is that adequate and comprehensive coverage for a range of services and diseases remains elusive. Curative- and invasive-interventions, such as surgeries and inpatient care, are covered in most public health insurance policies. However, in spite of non communicable diseases (NCD) being held responsible for 60% of all deaths in India, health insurance schemes seem unprepared to meet this disease burden. The absence of coverage for outpatient care and pre-existing diseases is now an impediment to a comprehensive and affordable health insurance cover. Similarly, coverage for diagnostics and health tests remains patchy. A recent study by Brookings India, “Health & Morbidity in India: Evidence and Policy Implications”, indicates that the latter has been the largest contributor to health expenses in urban India.
•The country has witnessed a significant increase in health insurance coverage across population groups, but this is not nearly enough. The Brookings study indicates that in the decade from 2004 to 2014, the number of Indians insured increased from 55 million to over 350 million. The coverage went from 1% of the population to 15% within a decade. While universal health care through insurance remains some way down the road, the increased coverage is still welcome. India accounts for some of the lowest health insurance coverage among developing and low and middle-income countries. This, along with very low health spends, as a percentage of GDP, has meant that over 7% of the population is pushed to poverty on account of catastrophic health-care expenditures. This is not only unacceptable but also wholly addressable.
Need for incentives
•The current scenario in the country suggests there is a dire need for a movement towards incentives for health coverage. With most incentivised health insurance schemes, premiums are included in the list qualifying for standard deductible. However, this does not benefit the non-tax paying population. Clearly, health coverage needs to be re-evaluated and health insurance needs to become a part of a broader social security bouquet. Similarly, innovative social insurance models also need to be explored.
•At present, a lot of funds are being earmarked for creating infrastructure. While this is important, it limits the availability of funds for health financing schemes and the only solution is to implement a long overdue increase in health-care budget allocation.
•Besides focussing on health insurance, we must add quality and outcomes to the important considerations on which a 21st century health system for India is to be created. As the Brookings Study indicates, catastrophic health expenses continue to rise in India, something that India can ill afford. But price control or even increased insurance coverage cannot address this and other challenges. Focus on quality, outcomes and reliability, coupled with greater budget allocation for health care, must all be central to our combined efforts for an accessible, equitable and effective health system. Lastly, weakening our commitment to intellectual property rights ultimately serves to delay the advent of the newest medications and technologies. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund on drug pricing in the U.S. vis-à-vis 10 other high-income countries suggests innovative centrally negotiated cost control measures and expansion of insurance cover as more effective measures to reduce out-of-pocket spend and control costs.
📰 Textile industry tries to cope with a knotty GST
New indirect tax regime has led to production disruptions
•For the textile industry, the year 2017 was challenging as it faced headwinds in the form of Goods and Services Tax (GST) leading to disruptions in production
•“We started the year getting out of demonetisation,” said S.K. Jain, chairman, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI).
•“During November and December last year, production activities were down (on demonetisation). In January, it picked up. However, in April, concerns related to GST set in and no one wanted to hold stocks. Till September, demand was sluggish. From October, the market has picked up,” he said.
•While retailers and manufacturers reduced inventory with special discount sales before the new indirect tax regime took effect, industries along the textile value chain saw GST-related disruptions in production.
•For an industry that is highly fragmented, runs on cash economy and where products are for mass consumption, the tax regime put a spanner in the works.
•According to industry sources, textile production was affected by about 3% to 4 % this year on account of GST. Though exports are showing growth issues with GST remain.
•“China is reporting positive activity and demand is picking up in the U.S. and the European Union,” said Siddhartha Rajagopal, executive director, Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council.
•“These are expected to augur well for Indian textile and clothing exporters next year. While there might be a small growth in exports this year (2017), there are problems in refunds for GST as even the July refunds are yet to come. The government should clear the backlog.“
•Industry sources say that as more textile units get into the formal tax system, the prices of textile products might go up in the coming months. But, the impact would not be much for consumers. What is of concern to the industry is imports going up after GST.
•Post-GST, import of many textile items have increased, affecting the domestic industry and exports have become less competitive. The Centre has to restore the pre-GST import duty and export incentives. It should also focus on Free Trade Agreements, Mr. Jain says.
Cotton production
•The production of cotton, has, however, has picked up.
•Cotton continues to be an advantage for the Indian textile sector as the current season’s production might be 380 lakh bales or a little more, said P. Nataraj, Chairman, Southern India Mills’ Association. “Capacity utilisation in spinning should go up if yarn exports improve. Yarn exports are approximately 70 million kg a month now and are likely to increase to 100 million kg next year,” Mr. Nataraj said.
•“Investments continue in the textile sector in States such as Gujarat and Telangana, mainly because of the support extended by the State governments. The Union government should focus on the entire sector instead of specific ones such as garments,” he said.
•Exports saw 3% rise between April and October, according to according to Kavita Gupta, Textile Commissioner. Though garment exports saw a slight decline in October, yarn and fabric exports have been better so far this year.
•Also, Rs. 1,400 crore was disbursed as subsidy under the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS), supporting investments in the textile sector. GST would benefit the industry in the long run. With regard to technology mission on cotton, the office of the Textile Commissioner had submitted a proposal to the Textile Ministry, she said.
📰 Artificial intelligence diagnoses asthma, identifies subtypes
The algorithm has 80% sensitivity and 75% specificity in identifying childhood asthma
•Using machine learning, a field closely related to artificial intelligence, upon nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra of exhaled breath condensate, Delhi-based researchers have been able to improve the diagnosis of childhood asthma and even identify three asthma subtypes. This pushes the current understanding of childhood asthma towards having metabolomic (study of chemical processes involving metabolites) subtypes, which have been largely unknown so far.
•A team of researchers led by Dr. Anurag Agrawal from Delhi’s CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrated Biology (IGIB) and Dr. Tavpritesh Sethi from IIIT-Delhi and AIIMS has now achieved a measure of success. Theresearchershave been able to correctly identify children with asthma and also the subtypes along with potential biomarkers.
•The study included 89 asthmatic children below 18 years and 20 healthy individuals with no history or clinical manifestation of asthma to identify the NMR signatures of asthmatic children; the NMR spectra of 61 asthmatic children with clinical data were used for identifying the subtypes. In an ongoing cohort at AIIMS, the children have been followed up for five years now, says Dr. Koundinya Desiraju from CSIR-IGIB and one of the first authors of thepaper publishedin the Journal of Translational Medicine .
•Unlike other researchers who looked for specific metabolites in exhaled breath using NMR, Dr. Agrawal and Dr. Sethi looked for global NMR signatures of all metabolites from exhaled breath that was condensed at -80 degree C. “Unknown and highly variable dilution of exhaled breath has been a major problem in this field. Unlike in the case when specific metabolites are looked for, the overall shape of the signature will remain the same immaterial of the dilution of exhaled breath,” says Dr. Agrawal.
•But the challenge with studying global signatures is that human eye is not equipped to seeing hundreds of peaks and picking out a pattern. This is where artificial intelligence came in handy. The algorithm was able to differentiate the total NMR spectrum (which was normalised) of healthy children and those who had asthma. It could also identify three subtypes of asthma. The algorithm has 80% sensitivity and 75% specificity in identifying children with asthma.
•“We could correlate the different subtypes with different clinical manifestations,” says Dr. Agrawal.
•Children belonging to subtype 1 showed a typical signature of ammonia metabolite but had no family history of asthma. “This asthma subtype is more like the typical allergic form of asthma,” says Dr. Sethi. “But subtype 3 had lower blood eosinophilia and elevated neutrophilia compared with the other two subtypes. Children belonging to this subtype had a stronger family history of asthma and suffered from more acute asthma episodes even when on treatment.” Subtype 3 showed a peak corresponding to formic acid.
•Subtype 2 had high eosinophil count but was otherwise similar to subtype 1, but very different from subtype 3. “Not every chemical difference in exhaled breath will translate into clinical difference. To know if there is any clinical difference in children belonging to subtype 1 and 2, more children have to be followed up for a longer period of time,” Dr. Agrawal says.
•Currently, there is no difference in treatment for children belonging to three subtypes. “Knowing the difference between subtype 1 and 2 as one group and subtype 3 will help in better treatment strategies, which is the goal of precision medicine,” Dr. Sethi says. “Children with subtype 3 asthma may need more aggressive therapy or alternative treatment strategy. But at this stage of the study we don’t know the details.”
•The next step will be to validate the signatures as biomarkers of asthma subtypes. For this, the subtype 1 and 2 will be looked together and contrasted with subtype 3.
📰 New endemic ants from the Andamans
•There's more to the Andamans than magical beaches and colourful corals. Scientists have discovered two new ant species of the genus Tetramorium in the evergreen forests of the archipelago.
•Scientists of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan have discovered the new species Tetramorium krishnani and Tetramorium jarawaduring a detailed island-wide survey of Havelock Island, a part of the Andaman archipelago. The species are named in honour of late scientist K.S. Krishnan of the NCBS, and after the Jarawas, an indigenous people of the islands, who are thought to have inhabited the islands for at least several thousand years.
•The newly discovered ants dwell in leaf litter in the evergreen forests of Havelock Island and are endemic to the Andamans. In total, the study recorded the presence of 50 ant species, many of which have been recorded for the first time.
•The study published in PeerJ also provides accounts of all Tetramorium ant species seen in India and an illustrated identification 'key' for these Indian species, which allows ant enthusiasts to use the distinct features of an ant to identify what species it belongs to.
•In a first for India, the team used a novel X-ray micro CT technology to build 3D models of the ant specimens to observe anatomical structures in detail for easier taxonomic identification of the species. These 3D images can be mapped with the genetic profiles of species using the new technology to study the evolution of ant morphology.
•“We are excited about the discovery, though we did expect to come across new species because we know very little about India's ant species, they are not well-documented,” says Gaurav Agavekar, one of the authors. “I hope to sample other islands of the archipelago in future, as well as mainland India to generate quality baseline data for ants across the country, which can be used to answer interesting ecological and evolutionary questions.”
📰 Nanogenerators go wireless
Over 2,000 volts were generated, transferred wirelessly
•Scientists from Clemson University, U.S. have developed a new tribolelectric nanogenerator that can generate over 2,000 volts just by tapping on it and also wirelessly transfer the energy produced to a nearby battery. The scientists say that this is the first time wireless transmission of electrical energy has been achieved. It is also the first time a triboelectric nanogenrator has been directly 3D printed from biodegradable materials.
•The nanogenerator harvests mechanical energy and converts into electrical energy and transferred wirelessly over a distance of three metres to a storage device like capacitor or battery.
•“We can install the nanogenerator at airports, sidewalks and place the battery on the nearby walls to store the energy. Because there are no wires involved, there is no need of power outlets and can be installed easily,” says Prof. Ramakrishna Podilla at the Laboratory of Nano-Biophysics and Clemson Nanomaterials Institute, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, U.S.
•These generators have a wide range of applications. They can be used to light up our homes, control doors and even set burglar alarms. The scientists are now working on developing fingerprint sensitive generators for home-security applications.
Generator set-up
•The main component of the generator is polylactic acid, a plant derived polymer. Since polylactic acid has a high electrical resistance, the scientists incorporated graphene to improve the conductivity while retaining the polymers ability to be polarized.
•“The generator is made of graphene-polylactic acid layer on the bottom and a Teflon layer on top. When these two materials with very different electro negativity come into contact, they produce large voltages. Just one hand tap is enough to produce current of 2000 volts,” explains Prof. Podilla who is corresponding author of the paper published in Advanced Energy Materials . The nanogenerator was capable of producing an instant peak power up to 70 milliWatts.
•“The device produces electric fields at two unique frequencies. Using these frequencies, we custom built an inexpensive wireless signal processing circuit with an inbuilt filter. This will help avoid interference from the environment including WiFi routers, mobile phones, and AC power outlets,” Sai Sunil Kumar Mallineni, a graduate student at Clemson Nanomaterials Institute and first author of the paper published in Advanced Energy Materials says in an e-mail toThe Hindu .
