Science This Week | IIT Madras uses seawater to produce hydrogen, how space travel impact brains and more

Check out The Hindu’s science wrap featuring top 7 stories on new discoveries, findings, and studies in the scientific world from this week.

From a new investigation against Chennai’s Saveetha Dental College to finding molecular fossils of the primordial forerunners of all the organisms on Earth, here are this week’s important science-related news and discoveries.

A new NASA-funded study provides a deeper understanding of space affects the human brain. Researchers said that astronauts who travelled on the International Space Station (ISS) or NASA space shuttles on missions lasting at least six months experienced significant expansion of the cerebral ventricles - spaces in the middle of the brain containing cerebrospinal fluid. This colourless and watery fluid flows in and around the brain and spinal cord. It cushions the brain to help protect against sudden impact and removes waste products. Based on brain scans of 30 astronauts, the researchers found that it took three years for the ventricles to fully recover after such journeys.

Researchers from the Department of Physics at IIT-Madras have developed critical components for a highly efficient, cost-effective way to electrolyze seawater to generate hydrogen. In place of pure or fresh water, the team has developed an electrolyser using alkaline seawater. They used a carbon-based support material for the electrodes instead of metals to almost eliminate the possibility of corrosion. They also designed and developed transition metal-based catalysts that can catalyse both oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions.

A group of researchers has developed a portable supercapacitor that can be charged using light in a collaborative project involving institutions in India and South Korea. The invention holds promise for replacing the conventional lithium-ion batteries in portable and wearable devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and smartwatches. Researchers point out that supercapacitors are an alternative charge storage device which can store electric charge similar to traditional batteries.

Fossil remains of a cell membrane component identified in rocks dating back about 1.6 billion years are opening a window into what scientists are calling a "lost world" of microscopic organisms that were the primordial forerunners of Earth's fungi, algae, plants and animals - including people. These remains, researchers said, date to a time span during what is called the Proterozoic Eon that was crucial in the evolution of complex life but has been shrouded in mystery because of a spotty fossil record of the microscopic organisms that inhabited Earth's marine realm.

New research in the small islands of the Bahamas has found that evolutionary change in the leg length of a lizard species, in turn, fed back into the environment by making ecological changes to aspects like vegetation growth and spider populations. The idea of this study was to separate short- and long-legged lizards on islands of their own, and then look for differences in how the lizard populations affect the ecology of their island homes. After eight months, the researchers found substantial differences in the ecology of both the islands.

According to a new investigation by Science and Retraction Watch, Saveetha Dental College in Chennai may have engaged in an unethical practice called extreme self-citation to boost its citation score, a common but fallible measure of research quality, and propel itself to the top of these and other ranking schemes. For example, Science and Retraction Watch reported that the introduction of a 2022 paper coauthored by SDC researchers contains an innocuous line followed by 15 citations to other SDC papers.