Knowledge Update

Sydney, March 23 (IANS) The day when you can look tidy even without washing your clothes does not seem too distant as researchers, including one of Indian origin, have developed a technology to make textiles clean themselves within less than six minutes when put them under a light bulb or out in the sun.

The researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a cheap and efficient new way to grow special nanostructures -- which can degrade organic matter when exposed to light -- directly onto textiles.

"There's more work to do to before we can start throwing out our washing machines, but this advance lays a strong foundation for the future development of fully self-cleaning textiles," said researcher Rajesh Ramanathan.

The research paper was published in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces.

The work paves the way towards nano-enhanced textiles that can spontaneously clean themselves of stains and grime simply by being put under light.

The process developed by the team had a variety of applications for catalysis-based industries such as agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and natural products, and could be easily scaled up to industrial levels, Ramanathan said.

"The advantage of textiles is they already have a 3D structure so they are great at absorbing light, which in turn speeds up the process of degrading organic matter," he explained.

The researchers worked with copper and silver-based nanostructures, which are known for their ability to absorb visible light.

When the nanostructures are exposed to light, they receive an energy boost that creates "hot electrons". 

These "hot electrons" release a burst of energy that enables the nanostructures to degrade organic matter.

The challenge for researchers has been to bring the concept out of the lab by working out how to build these nanostructures on an industrial scale and permanently attach them to textiles.

The RMIT team's novel approach was to grow the nanostructures directly onto the textiles by dipping them into a few solutions, resulting in the development of stable nanostructures within 30 minutes.

When exposed to light, it took less than six minutes for some of the nano-enhanced textiles to spontaneously clean themselves.

"Our next step will be to test our nano-enhanced textiles with organic compounds that could be more relevant to consumers, to see how quickly they can handle common stains like tomato sauce or wine," Ramanathan said.​

​San Francisco, March 21 (IANS) Confirming leaked media reports, Apple on Monday launched its first-ever cheaper and smaller yet powerful iPhone SE especially for the emerging markets like India and China. The 64 GB version will come at $499 while the 16 GB model costs $399. As powerful as iPhone 6S, it has a 64-bit A9 processor and the M9 motion co-processor and will be available in sleek rose gold colour, the company announced as its special "spring lineup" at the packed auditorium at its Cupertino, California-based headquarters. The iPhone SE will be available in 100 countries including India by the end of May and will go on full sale on March 31. The company also dropped the price of it Apple Watch to $299 (Rs.19,295). Last year, Apple sold 30 million 4-inch iPhones.​

Beijing, March 21 (IANS) Beijing's top quality watchdog on Monday announced that German luxury car maker BMW will recall 6,109 vehicles of its imported Mini series in China starting from April 8. The recall was due to a fuel pump problem that could cause engine failure while driving, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement. The vehicles were produced between June 12 and November 19, 2015, Xinhua news agency reported. The BMW China Automotive Trading Co Ltd will fix the problem for recalled cars free of charge, it added.​

​New York, March 21 (IANS) The animal right organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has reportedly filed an appeal against a lower court's decision in January this year that declined to give a macaque monkey the right to his famous selfie taken in Indonesia in 2011.

The appeal brief was filed at the northern district of California and the appeals court will now decide whether or not to uphold the earlier court ruling, Ubergizmo reported on Monday.

In an earlier ruling, a federal judge in San Francisco declined to give a macaque monkey the right to his famous selfie in Indonesia in 2011.

PETA had filed a lawsuit last September asking a US federal court in San Francisco to declare Naruto - a then six-year-old male, free-living crested macaque - the author and owner of the internationally famous monkey selfie photographs that he took himself a few years ago.

The organisation filed the lawsuit against photographer David J. Slater and his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd. - both of which claim copyright ownership of the photos that Naruto indisputably took.

Naruto is known to field researchers in Sulawesi who have observed and studied him for years as they work in the region.

In 2011 in Indonesia, Slater left an unattended camera on a tripod.

That was tempting for Naruto, a curious male crested black macaque, who took the camera and began taking photographs -- some of the forest floor, some of other macaques and several of himself one of which resulted in the now-famous "monkey selfie".

In an earlier statement, PETA said: "The US Copyright Act grants copyright ownership of a 'selfie' to the 'author' of the photograph, and there's nothing in the law limiting such ownership on the basis of species."

"Naruto has been accustomed to cameras throughout his life, saw himself in the reflection of the lens, made the connection between pressing the shutter and the change in his reflection, and posed for the pictures he took," PETA said in a statement.​

​London, March 21 (IANS) In a first, researchers have shown that a fungus can transform manganese into a mineral composite with favourable electrochemical properties - paving the way for a better rechargeable battery in the near future.

The findings suggest that fungus Neurospora crassa present in a red bread mold could be the key to producing more sustainable electrochemical materials for use in rechargeable batteries

“We have made electrochemically active materials using a fungal manganese biomineralisation process," said Geoffrey Gadd from the University of Dundee in Scotland. 

The electrochemical properties of the carbonised fungal biomass-mineral composite were tested in a supercapacitor and a lithium-ion battery.

The compound was found to have excellent electrochemical properties. This system, therefore, suggests a novel biotechnological method for the preparation of sustainable electrochemical materials.

Gadd and his colleagues have long studied the ability of fungi to transform metals and minerals in useful and surprising ways. 

In earlier studies, they showed that fungi could stabilise toxic lead and uranium. 

That led the researchers to wonder whether fungi could offer a useful alternative strategy for the preparation of novel electrochemical materials too.

“We had the idea that the decomposition of such biomineralised carbonates into oxides might provide a novel source of metal oxides that have significant electrochemical properties," Gadd added in a paper published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology.

“We were surprised that the prepared biomass-Mn oxide composite performed so well,” he noted. 

In comparison to other reported manganese oxides in lithium-ion batteries, the carbonised fungal biomass-mineral composite "showed an excellent cycling stability and more than 90 percent capacity was retained after 200 cycles," the authors noted.

The team will continue to explore the use of fungi in producing various potentially useful metal carbonates. ​

New York, March 21 (IANS) Using the eye wearable device Google Glass, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Massachusetts, US, have collected promising results as part of technology known as "organs-on-chips".

Kathmandu, March 21 (IANS) Nepal and China have signed 10 Memorandums of Understanding (MoU), including the transit and trasportation treaty, and exchanged letters on various areas of cooperation during Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's ongoing visit to the country.

New York, March 20 (IANS) Micro blogging website Twitter is set to mark its 10th anniversary on Monday. It's time to look back at important milestones achieved and what the future may look like for the platform, which has been documenting the world in 140 characters.

​Beijing, March 19 (IANS) Alibaba Group Holdings's Executive Chairman Jack Ma discussed with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about innovation at the China Development Forum held in Beijing on Saturday.

London, March 20 (IANS) They say that once you have learned to ride a bicycle, you never forget how to do it. But discovery of a new brain mechanism suggests that while learning, the brain also actively tries to forget apparently to make space for new memories to form.

"This is the first time that a pathway in the brain has been linked to forgetting, to actively erasing memories," said one of the researchers Cornelius Gross from European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).

"One explanation for this is that there is limited space in the brain, so when you are learning, you have to weaken some connections to make room for others," Gross said.

"To learn new things, you have to forget things you have learned before," Gross explained.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

At the simplest level, learning involves making associations, and remembering them. Working with genetically engineered mice, Gross and colleagues studied the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is long been known to help form memories.

Information enters this part of the brain through three different routes. As memories are cemented, connections between neurons along the 'main' route become stronger.

When the scientists blocked this main route, the connections along it were weakened, meaning the memory was being erased.

Interestingly, this active push for forgetting only happens in learning situations. When the scientists blocked the main route into the hippocampus under other circumstances, the strength of its connections remained unaltered.​