Students convert waste to wealth for their regions, present them at Bengaluru's Children Science Conference
BENGALURU: Increasing onion prices and crop rotting away in godowns got me thinking about how I could help out, said class nine student Anzleen Kour from Jammu.
Daughter of a food safety officer in Jammu, Anzleen extracted an Ajwain-based oil ‘Thymol’ which has the ability to keep vegetables and fruits fresh for 42 days, upon application.
Anzleen was among the two dozen students from various parts of the country who displayed not just innovations, but love for their regions by solving their respective problems.
They put up their research on display at the Children’s Science Congress exhibition, which concluded on Sunday.
T C Vanlalmalsawma, a class 7 student, Holy Faith School Lunglei, with his friend James Lalruatsanga, developed a portable smoke absorber that one can use indoors. “It saves people from the ill effects of passive smoking,” said Vanlalmalsawma.
R Lalnuntluangi , a class 11 student of St Paul’s Higher Secondary School from Aizwal, did not mind sleeping in the science laboratory overnight to get the desired product results when she and her schoolmate Christina Vanzarliani developed paper from husk.
“There is plenty of areca husk that goes waste in our region and there are plenty of employment opportunities if one upscales this,” she added.
It was a Eureka moment for Ashwani Kumar, a class 8 student of Holy Cross School, Bokaro, when he saw mushroom-growing strawdust boxes drop down onto the floor from where they were hanging just days earlier.
“Earlier, mushroom was cultivated on a block of strawdust back in Bokaro. And that was hung in polythene bags in the backyard. It was as if the plastic would dissolve, over the days,” he said.
He used this observation, combined it with a study from a Japanese university, and created ‘Fumu’ a plastic eater mushroom -- a block of strawdust on which mushroom is being cultivated using Mycelium (from which the mushroom grows), and inside which plastic is stuffed.
“The mushroom has an impact on the plastic and makes it disappear, but the plastic does not enter the mushroom as mycelium only feeds on organic substances,”he added.
‘Women still absent in premier institutes’
Tessy Thomas, Indian scientist and Director General (Aeronautical Systems), Defence Research & Development Organisation, and the former Project Director for Agni-IV missile, inaugurated the Women Science Congress, as part of the 107th Indian Science Congress in Bengaluru on Sunday.
Trilochan Mohapatra, Indian Council of Agricultural Research director, said India still had a long way to go to have a good representation of women in premiere institutes.