Saturday, January 17, 2009

Probeless Deposit of Nanomaterials

An Indian research team has developed electron-beam-induced deposition method to deposit tiny structures without the need of fine probes. The method relies on the build-up of surface potential on an insulating surface exposed to an electron beam. Feature sizes as small as 20 nm can be deposited without the need to use fine probes. This helps overcome the limitation of probe size imposed on the resolution. The use of pure metal vapor also renders the process inherently clean, say the researchers in the 29th September 2008 issue of Applied Physics Letters.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Morphine Could Cure TB


A research team from National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research has discovered that morphine could battle out tuberculosis infection in mice. The team found that morphine exerted maximum effect at a dose of 5 mg per kg body weight of the mice.

Morphine boosted the immune cells of mice and initiated macrophage-mediated protective mechanism against mice tuberculosis. The study has shown that morphine alleviated mice tuberculosis infection at a dose dependent manner. The study results might be helpful in developing new opioid-like chemicals against tuberculosis, write the researchers in 30 January 2008 issue of Life Sciences.


Every second someone new is infected with TB. Overall, one-third of the world’s population is currently infected with TB. People with HIV and TB infection are much more likely to develop TB. In 2005, 8.8 million people fell ill with TB and 1.6 million died from it. TB is primarily a disease of people living in the developing world: 98% of TB deaths are in low- and medium-income countries. But no country is TB-free.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the largest number of new TB cases in 2005 occurred in the South-East Asia Region, which accounted for 34% of incident cases globally. However, the estimated incidence rate in sub-Saharan Africa is nearly twice that of the South-East Asia Region, at nearly 350 cases per 100 000 population. Add to it emergence of drug resistant TB bugs. Under these circumstances, the present study is important as it highlights a novel way out to get rid of TB.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Black Carbon – A Menace

Recent study suggests that black carbon deposition in Arctic regions may contribute to global warming by reducing the albedo of snow. This not only reduces the amount of solar energy reflected by snow in Arctic regions, but also increases the rate of snow melt, revealing dark substrates like vegetation and soil earlier in the year and thus amplifying black carbon’s effect on climate.

And also new observations show that in some regions black carbon is as culpable as CO2 for the warming, and in some cases, has a greater effect. In the winter and spring, heavily polluted air masses are transported over the Indian Ocean from central Asia, where the majority of black carbon is from cooking fires. Black carbon has been found to be part of brown cloud hovering over the Indian Ocean and it also contributes to warming of atmosphere.