In-Depth – Page 8 – The KGP Chronicle

What’s in my water?

Tomatoes grown with the contaminated water of the Varthur Lake of Bengaluru reach the nearby markets of the city every morning and are bought by unsuspecting city dwellers. Almost a decade of civic activism in Bengaluru has not changed anything for either the farmers or urbanites there. Thousands of miles away, Platypuses, a mammal species commonly found in Australia, happily swim near the coast off Melbourne, unaware that beta-blockers are entering their bodies every day from the ‘safe’ treated water discharged from the city.

Prof. Peter Scales (University of Melbourne)

These were some of the many facts brought to light by the Indo-Australia joint workshop on Integrated Urban Water Management held recently at IIT Kharagpur under SPARC (Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration) program of Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Government of India.

Participants at the workshop included not only faculty and students from IIT Kharagpur and its partner institution, the University of Melbourne, but stakeholders drawn from industry, NGOs, and other academic institutes, including IIT Bombay and Dhanbad, who are all dealing with this scarce resource. The workshop was organized by the School of Water Resources, IIT Kharagpur, and Melbourne School of Engineering, University of Melbourne, Australia and convened by Dr. Manoj K. Tiwari, School of Water Resources, IIT Kharagpur, and Dr. Meenakshi Arora, Melbourne School of Engg, Univ. of Melbourne.

Irrespective of where they came from, all stakeholders were of the opinion that the fundamental issues with the domain of urban water management are similar. Water reserves are shrinking, thanks to climate change. Despite the billions or crores of money spent, an insufficient amount was still being spent on water treatment and management.

And perhaps the worst thing – the existing systems are not ready to deal with the new threats. Take the variety and the increasing number of contaminants, as Prof. Peter Scales of UoM pointed out while recalling the state of the platypuses. In Australia, and everywhere in the world, water management is still not prepared to deal with highly toxic biosolids like PFOs (Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid), heavy metals, microplastics, antibiotics and other substances that are entering the water system.

Dr. Meenakshi Arora, Melbourne School of Engg, Univ. of Melbourne, Co-convenor of the workshop

India presents its own challenges, given that it is a fast-developing economy with a very high population. By 2030, 590 million people in India will live in 2.5% of its area, that is, the cities, warned Mr. Pawan Sachdeva, Director, Water Management International PL, an enterprise that has been involved in water management in Cambodia, Singapore and India among other places. In India, the water supply and distribution systems are struggling to get upgraded from an essentially intermittent system to a continuous supply for its people in the midst of apparently insurmountable financial, operational and management challenges.

Mr. Krishna Kumar (eGovernments Foundation)

Several among the participants believed a greater role for private players was the answer to India’s problems. Many among the speakers at the workshop were, in fact, were drawn from the private organizations such as Orange City Water, Tata Water Mission, Priramal Sarvajal, Suez India and Swach Environment, and they showed how through various partnership models with the Government of India, they were assuring potable water supply for people in rural and urban areas.

There was concurrence that there was a gap in lab-scale testing under controlled conditions and field-scale analysis, and so there had to more pilot-scale studies. The lack of data and information on an easily accessible and reliable platform is also a huge set-back in the water sector. Prof. Manoj Tiwari from the School of Water Resources, which coordinated the workshop, talked on the importance of quantifying the water and energy involved in water distribution system through regular water audits.

Several of the faculty from the School also spoke on the importance of data-based management and the importance of making these systems accessible to all stakeholders, which will create transparency across different domains of the water sector. Besides, as the case of the Varthur Lake demonstrated by Sensing Local, an organization specializing in urban management, and as several of the key speakers highlighted, the lack of proper communication channel among different government bodies was a set-back to the efficient functioning of key stakeholders.

The workshop participants have decided to identify sub-groups within the large domains of urban water that can be the initial area of target to continue their work. This is the first thematic joint workshop on urban water management held by IIT Kharagpur jointly with the University of Melbourne, with which it runs a highly successful Dual Doctoral Degree Program or MIPA.

Lighting up lives

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Although the government of India announced 100% electrification in December 2018, it admitted at the same time that it would continue to identify households left out of the scheme. According to an estimate, around 25 per cent of Indian rural households, that is, more than 45 million people, lack access to electricity. In fact, in some states like Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Jharkhand and Bihar, access to electricity is believed to be even lower.

The problem is not merely the fact that marginal people – many of them living in tribal areas, or forests or coastal areas – are yet to be connected to the power grid. Even if connected, there may be reasons why households are unable to enjoy the utility. Some of them are unable to afford it and thus drop off the grid. Others may find power connection disrupted for days, if not months, during natural disasters.

IIT Kharagpur has a solution to the problem. In collaboration with the NB Institute of Rural Technology, which is steered by Dr Santi Pada Gonchaudhuri, and with funding from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, IIT Kharagpur has initiated a unique project to push for solar energy adaptation in marginalized rural communities. The PV integrated ‘Micro Solar Dome’ helps to light up the homes of those who have either fallen off or are not connected to the conventional power grid or face irregular power supply for some reason.

The project intends to provide 44,000 MSDs in households of rural marginalized (SC and ST) communities in 10 states – West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Assam, Odisha, Tripura, Manipur, Rajasthan, and Bihar.

Around 20,000 MSDs are to be installed in the first phase stretching from November 2019-February 2020 in the first phase. Some MSDs have already been installed as preparatory work by NBIRT in villages in Agartala and Fani affected villages at Chandaka, Odisha. IIT Kharagpur has visited several villages in Odisha, Tripura and West Bengal for reconnaissance work. The installation work will be done in association with NGOs and other stakeholders. Some 30 NGOs have been identified in 10 states for the work. A team of close to 30 from IIT Kharagpur, including the PIs, and research students, is already involved in the project.

How MSD works:

The MSD is a clean source of energy for both day and night and provides lighting 24X7. It captures sunlight through a transparent semi-spherical upper dome and concentrates it inside a dark room. The light passes through a sun-tube having a thin layer of highly reflective coating on the inner wall of the passage. So the MSD can light up dark rooms or dark passages even during the day.

The solar panels attached to the roof of the houses capture sunlight and charge lithium ion batteries attached to the system. The batteries light up LED bulbs at the other end of the dome and provide illumination either for 4 hours for two nights or 8 hours of illumination for one night.

The USB port, available on the MSD, also provides access to charging of mobile phones. It can also power a USB fan during hot summer months. The MSD is ideal of slums and rural houses.

Initiating a social movement:

The project intends to provide 44,000 MSDs in households of rural marginalized (SC and ST) communities in 11 states. Prof. Priyadarshi Patnaik, joint PI of the project on behalf of IIT Kharagpur, says, “The MSDs will be given to households based on their need. The project has two phases: in the first we will deploy and install these solar domes. The second phase will involve R&D both at the technical level and socio-cultural level.”

Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, former Director IIT Kharagpur, who is steering the project says, “The project aims not only in implementing PV integratedf Micro-Solar Domes in rural households of marginalized areas but also developing a social movement around it.”

The reason he says this is because detailed analysis and assessment will be a part of the project that will also mould itself according to the needs of the population that it is targeted to benefit. Not surprisingly, the project is termed “Socializing the Micro-Solar Dome: Empowering Marginalized Rural ST and Tribal Communities through Solar Illumination and Solar Electricity(EZI)”. There will be pre- and post-installation assessment and analysis of the life of the community. Based on the needs of the people and the need for adaptability, the MSD will also change.

Prof. Ashok Pradhan, the other joint-PI, explains, “We are going to enhance the basic model. We might go for a larger dome or larger battery capacity or might think of a detachable portable system which can be taken around.”

How it will empower communities:

The project is looking at ways to generate employment, for e.g. the installation of the domes would require around 400 fitters who have to be trained. Locals can be trained to repair and undertake necessary repair. Local manufacturers too could be trained to help in repair work.

Two, MSDs when fitted in community spaces, such as schools or the anganwadi, would not only help people to enjoy community space, charge their mobiles, but they would also help children study at night and help women who can congregate in these spaces to carry out activities.

Three, MSDs will further small scale industry as well. At Barhapeta, a tribal village in Odisha, where MSDs were installed by NBIRT earlier, the light at night was used to produce brooms, mats etc on a larger scale.

Gone in a flash?

It is that time of the year. The beginning of a string of festival months that keep both online and offline stores busy. It is also that time when customers are most likely to be wooed with online flash sales (OFS) that give them the opportunity to purchase goods at large discounts.

Big e-tailers prepare for OFS as they would prepare for war as this is also their golden chance to not only attract buyers but also ensure that disloyal customers come back to their site. They spruce up the operations, marketing and logistics components, especially beefing up the technology backbone in preparation for the onslaught.

Most of the preparation is done keeping in mind pre- and during- OFS services, given that such sale invariably carries risk of service failure. However, latest research by a joint team which comprised members from the Vinod Gupta School of Management of IIT Kharagpur, shows that there ought to be as much preparation for post-sales operations for OFS. This is because a responsive recovery protocol does wonders to the buyer’s self-esteem and level of satisfaction, thereby ensuring e-loyalty to the e-tailer.

One might recall with ease “The Big Billion Day” sale introduced by Flipkart in October, 2014 that received a massive backlash from customers due to technical glitches that the site encountered as it’s servers crumbled under the pressure of heavy traffic. A generic apology email issued to all customers post the incident was intended to restore the buyer’s self-esteem and trust in the website.

Why buyer’s self-esteem? This is because, in case of OFS, which is a ‘time-pressured failure-prone environment’, the opportunistic customer enters into play in order to secure a short-term financial gain despite knowing the potential risk of service failure. In case of service failure, the customer attributes the failure to self, which is what makes the failure recovery process more complicated. However, as this study finds, perceived justice with service recovery (PJWSR) in the mind of the customer could go a long way in leading to customer satisfaction (post-recovery satisfaction or SSR). This may even lead to e-loyalty, which is what all e-tailers target.

A few prior studies have explored customer behaviour in familiar online environments, but none have examined e-service failures or the consequences of recovery of those failures. The joint study by the research team not only looks in depth into e-commerce service failure and contributes to customer opportunism literature, but also proposes a new contextual scale for measuring OFS e-commerce service failure and the impact of recovery-induced justice on a customer’s loyalty. The research team consisted of Prof. Saini Das from VGSoM, Prof. Abhishek Mishra from IIM Indore and Prof. Dianne Cyr from the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.

Drawing from previous research by Tan et al., the joint study classifies service failure as functional, information and system failures. The first kind of failure may include website crashing, becoming inaccessible during purchase, or increasing customer efforts for making a purchase. Incorrect or incomplete information regarding product specifications, offers, hidden charges, firm policies, security features etc constitute information failure. System failures include poor overall system quality of an e-commerce website which inhibits effective product/service delivery to end-customers.

It is not that customers are unaware of the risks. “Yet, such failures during OFS cause customer disappointment and have a negative effect on the PJWSR,” says the study, probably more than what would be expected under normal circumstances.

The study defines PJWSR as the “customer’s cognitive and hedonic evaluations of the efficacy of the overall recovery process, including apology and subsequent compensations received after the service failure….” PJWSR is composed of all three – Distributive justice, which indicates the customer’s perception of fairness of the monetary/non-monetary compensation received as part of the post-failure recovery process; Procedural justice, which refers to the customer’s belief about the adequacy of the flexibility and efficiency of the recovery process itself; and Interactive justice, which refers to the extent of fairness, honesty, courtesy and empathy with which service providers communicate with the customers during the recovery process.

The recovery process is crucial in the case of OFS because customer opportunism has such a dominant role to play in this kind of sale. The dynamics of recovery in OFS is very different from that in a regular shopping environment since an opportunistic customer is easier to recover despite her dissatisfaction due to failure. The study says, “…an opportunistic customer, with failure self-attribution and lower expectation of acquisition from an OFS, considers a service recovery as more judicious, compared to a non-opportunistic customer, even though (s)he is equally disenchanted with the failure.”

The study goes on to say that PJWSR, by mitigating the negative experience of the customer in case of an OFS failure, makes the customer satisfied and lowers their intention to switch.

The study has the job cut out for managers of the e-tail business. They must not only ensure that their OFS avoid functional, information and system failures. They should also be extremely concerned about providing appropriate service recovery that includes a high sense of distributive, procedural and interactive justice for customers after a service failure.

In fact, the study suggests, the e-tailer can adopt targeted service recovery efforts for OFS customers. They have to avoid failures, but “if the failure does happen, they need to create justice through effective recovery” in order to “latch” on to customers who engaged with them out of opportunism in the first place.

Get Electric Power from Your Wet Clothes

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Indian scientists have the reputation of innovating unique solutions to global challenges befitting the key factors of affordability and resource availability. While the success of such innovations has made ISRO one of the most respected space agencies in the world, several such innovations by researchers in academia have brought in momentous changes in the lives of people in India.

In one such feat, researchers from IIT Kharagpur have ventured into the avenue of clean energy generation in an unexampled way of sourcing electricity from the drying of clothes in open space. Drying of clothes is a part and parcel of our lives and who could have thought that it can meet the power requirements through Nanoscale Energy Harvesting.

Traditionally woven cellulose-based fabric contains a tiny channel network which has been used by the group of researchers for electrical power generation. They successfully guided the movement of saline water amidst continuous evaporation quite analogous to water transport across the parts of a living plant. The device design inherently exploits a large transpiration surface for achieving a sustainable motion of salt ions, through natural evaporation phenomenon.

“The clothes we wear are made from cellulose-based textile which has a network of nano-channels. Ions in saline water can move through this interlace fibrous nano-scale network by capillary action inducing an electric potential in the process,” explained lead researcher Professor Suman Chakraborty, a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department, and a lead researcher of the group.

The device has been tested in a remote village across a surface area of 3000 sq. metre. Around 50 cloth items were put up for drying by washermen in the village. These clothes were connected to a commercial supercapacitor which discharged electricity of around 10 Volt in almost 24 hours. This stored energy is enough to glow a white LED for more than 1 hour.

The novelty of this innovation is in its frugal means instead of energy harvesting from complex resources emphasized Prof. Chakraborty. “It was beyond imagination that a wet cloth being dried in a natural atmosphere could be made capable of generating clean energy. This would be extremely beneficial in addressing the essential power requirements for the underprivileged community and in remote areas,” he opined.

Another novelty of this device is the use of intrinsic surface energy of the fabric for driving the current. In contrast other artificially engineered power generation devices need external pumping resources.

The economy of scale can be achieved by drying a set of regular wearable garments under the sun-light. “This eventually culminates into a utilitarian paradigm of low-cost power harvesting in extreme rural settings,” explained Chakraborty.

India’s summer climate would serve as an enhancer to maximize the flow-induced electrical potential. However, any geographical region with a hot and dry climate would be effective for using this technology seamlessly.

The above research has been recently published in Nano Letters (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02783), a high-impact Journal from the American Chemical Society. The research team consisted of Ph.D student Sankha Suvra Das, MS student Vinay Manaswi Pedireddi and Assistant Professor Aditya Bandopadhyay, under the overall supervision of Professor Chakraborty. The research has been financially supported by the Institute Challenge Grants, a unique initiative from IIT Kharagpur.

India’s Own AI Resource Platform

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IIT Kharagpur today announced that it will collaborate with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, to develop a National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal (NAIRP) platform powered by Amazon SageMaker to promote learning and development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for all AI learners, practitioners, and researchers in India, and to make the search for AI learning resources simpler and more accessible.

IIT Kharagpur will use AWS Promotional Credits and Amazon SageMaker services to facilitate AI learning. In March 2019, IIT Kharagpur adopted the AWS Educate program to help students gain in-demand cloud computing skills, including hands-on AI experience on AWS Cloud.

NAIRP will provide access to computing facilities to users for AI learning and experimentation. Novice machine learning practitioners will be able to quickly search and get access to myriads of learning resources, and prototype the learned concepts into hands-on running modules without being held back by the lack of resources. In addition to this, the opportunity for joint research will facilitate the participation of students and researchers in contributing to open-source educational resources and workbook development for AI-related tasks.

“The contributions from AWS will enable us to provide cloud computing to all learners and reduce the high barrier to make training in AI more available,” said Professor Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, who conceptualized the development of NAIRP.

“There is already a great demand for professionals skilled in AI as well as resources, and this need will only increase in our society. The development of this platform will help boost the AI community in India,” said Professor Sudeshna Sarkar, Head, Centre for Artificial Intelligence at IIT Kharagpur.

Bratin Saha, Vice President AWS Machine Learning & Engines said, “AWS is delighted to work with IIT Kharagpur in developing the NAIRP platform powered by Amazon SageMaker, and we are excited about the opportunity to help make machine learning skills available to every developer. With more than 200 significant machine learning capabilities launched in the last two years, AWS has the broadest and deepest set of machine learning and AI services focused on solving some of the toughest challenges facing developers. We welcome the opportunity to work with IIT Kharagpur on some of those challenges.”

NAIRP was launched with initial funding from the Ministry of Human Resources Development, as part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) platform. NAIRP builds upon and expands NDLI to AI by indexing a wide variety of AI-specific resources such as learning materials, courses, workbooks, datasets, codes, tools and platforms. The resources will be classified by a comprehensive AI classification ontology and metadata standard which IIT Kharagpur is developing. AI resources from AWS as well as a variety of other sources such as Kaggle, GitHub, and National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) will also be indexed.

The National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal will provide search, browse, learning and computation services. The support for learning will be in the form of several structured learning modules with instructional materials and workbooks, as well as through indexing of available courses and materials from NPTEL and other sources. Hands-on AI training will be facilitated through workbooks and the cloud. The system will start off using AWS Cloud, and will also be connected in the future with the in-house cloud developed at IIT Kharagpur.

Making Blood Tests Affordable

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Researchers from IIT Kharagpur have developed an ultra-low-cost diagnostic device which can perform various pathological tests by using a tiny drop of blood taken from a finger-prick. The team led by Professor Suman Chakraborty from the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur has adopted this detection method which is virtually instrument-free and requires only a paper strip based kit integrated with a smartphone to enable analytics and readout functions and an LED light for imaging.

The key aspect of the device which has been addressed by Prof. Chakraborty is the operational simplicity of the device and extremely low running cost. The technology, process and limited use of consumables have significantly brought down the cost of each blood test. While under laboratory conditions each test cost Rs. 1 or even less, the cost is expected to marginally vary in case of commercialized product.

On the operational front, the device requires a single drop of finger-prick blood and a drop of reagent on the paper-based reaction chamber. The device is designed to harness the flow of blood from an input source pad to a reaction pad for the diagnosis. This happens by means of capillary action through tiny channels on printed on the paper strip. The reaction is manifested in the form of change in the colour that corresponds to the quantification of blood parameters such as glucose and haemoglobin.

“Compared to other reported portable devices for haemoglobin estimation, this device is implementable without any trained personnel at resource-limited settings and provides quantitative results comparable to the pathological results,” confirmed Prof. Suman Chakraborty.

Despite its simplicity and low cost, the device has been bundled with efficiency parameters which would prove utterly significant to assess public health status. Among these is blood haemoglobin level estimation for a large range of haemoglobin concentration (3.5 g/dL to 19 g/dL with sensitivity 0.1 g/dL) which is critical to maternal and child health assessment. It can also report plasma glucose directly unlike most other available portable devices which statistically estimate glucose from the whole blood. Notably, medical treatment guidelines are based on plasma glucose and not on the whole blood glucose. The designing of the device will further enable it to detect diseases which produces colour signals in a body fluid such as blood, urine, saliva.

A transfer of this unique technology for upscaling and commercialization has already been agreed upon confirmed.

“Those days are not far away when such disruptive technology-driven unique innovations in public health will bring in new hopes to millions of poor and deprived people in the underprivileged world,” opined Prof. Suman Chakraborty.

Extensive validation tests have been conducted for blood glucose and haemoglobin at laboratories as well as in the field, both in clinical environment and villages with limited clinical facilities.

“We have tested it at extreme challenging environments with uncontrolled dirt, dust and humidity, and in the absence of structured clinics or air-conditioned pathological laboratories to work,” said Dr. Satadal Saha, FRCS, medical entrepreneur, and also a Visiting Professor at the School of Medical Science and Technology of IIT Kharagpur who along with Prof. Chakraborty led the joint team for fieldwork.

The background research work has been supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, United Kingdom, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt. of India, Department of Electronics and IT, Govt. of India, Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, Indian Council of Medical Research and Ministry of Human Resources Development, Govt. of India through the IMPRINT India initiative, in various stages.

Take it easy

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People are often pushed for clinical tests that are expensive, time-consuming, uncomfortable and in plain sight even unnecessary. When it comes to life-threatening diseases such as cancer, where no one wants to take chances, there could be a higher risk of being mired in expensive, worrisome tests.

An ideal situation would be one where the advanced tests are recommended only for those who have a fair degree of certainty of carrying the disease. Even better if it can be assured that the preliminary screening for cancer is not only error free but also takes into account the patient’s preferences.

A team of researchers at IIT Kharagpur have done precisely that. They have devised an algorithm for detecting oesophageal cancer that accurately detects the probable cancer suspects. Not merely that, the algorithm also selects what combination of tests an individual patient should go through for this detection depending on the patient’s preference on costs and discomfort.

The outcome of the research was published in a recent Elsevier issue on ‘Artificial Intelligence in Medicine’. The research was conducted by Dr Asis Roy, Prof. Sourangshu Bhattacharya (Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Prof. Kalyan Guin (former faculty at the Vinod Gupta School of Management).

Customized or personalized medical services are becoming increasingly popular the world over in the prevention and treatment of diseases because it considers the patient’s individual genetics, clinical condition, environment and lifestyle in order to be the most effective. The researchers of IIT Kharagpur take this a notch above by proposing personalization of tests, and thus a personalized diagnosis system.

The methodology of customized clinical tests for oesophageal cancer was tested on the electronic medical records (EMRs) collected for more than 3,000 patients as part of a project carried out by a reputed hospital in Mumbai, India. The algorithm was found to yield an accuracy of 99.18% and sensitivity 100% using only demographic, lifestyle, patient history, and basic clinical tests. Among the patient details taken into account are weight, height, average income, lifestyle concerns like tobacco and alcohol consumption and medical history such as the incidence of cancer in the family.

EMR is often used by researchers to reveal hidden information through data mining. In fact, EMR has been used to detect heart disease, breast cancer and some diseases although not for oesophageal cancer. The researchers have delineated classifiers trained from EMR and the clinical tests in order to predict a new suspect [Among the 15 tests suggested by the medical practitioner for the screening are pressure, asthma, difficulty in swallowing, alteration of voice, Reflux Gastritis and Haematemesis. The tests suggested for each individual change with the inputs for comfort and costs.]

“The key idea is to design classifiers with near zero false normal rates, possibly at the cost of higher false abnormal,” says Prof Bhattacharya.

This means that there is a chance that cases detected to be positive for oesophageal cancer by the algorithm may turn out to be false after advanced tests, but there is no way that any patient who has oesophageal cancer will go undetected.

This method of screening can be adopted where a suspect is diagnosed initially by any health officer or clinician before approaching any doctor. The doctor can play his role once the system recommends a visit to a medical practitioner after analysing the captured data.

Dr Roy explains, “In third world countries like India, where a lot of the doctors’ time and precious resources are wasted, this model of treatment will reduce the waste since patients will not have to do all tests and will not have to go for unnecessary ones.” This will be particularly beneficial for rural areas, where hospitals are distant and there is acute shortage of doctors.

Besides, Dr Roy says, this model can be used for the detection of many other diseases by selecting appropriate features in EMR data and clinical tests. With minimized costs of healthcare, “more patients can afford to have the treatment either by bearing the cost on their own or by the insurance provider with an assumption that the premium will be low (the cost of overall treatment will be lower as compared to existing procedure).”

Additionally, says Dr Roy, healthcare providers can build a revolutionary new system for medical care by combining the data from diagnostic tests and medical history of patients to deliver enhanced value to patients. The research team expects health care service providers to implement this system as a soft sensor in preventing the disease by keeping the data in a cloud platform and alerting the person using mobile technology. “Undoubtedly the whole system can serve a large population by detecting a disease early with low cost and by giving satisfaction providing a freedom to choose the diagnostic tests,” says Dr Roy.

Combating the threat to humanity

“The biggest threat to human life comes from the smallest bugs,” reminded Prof. Anindya Sundar Ghosh, In-Charge of Molecular Microbiology Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Kharagpur. He was recently at Birkbeck’s (University of London) Department of Biological Sciences to talk on “Penicillin interactive enzymes and tackling ß-lactam resistance in mycobacteria”. The occasion was provided by an international capacity-building workshop on the subject of antimicrobial resistance sponsored by the global challenges research fund (GCRF).

At Birkbeck University (Photo: Mr Harish Patel, Birkbeck School of Science)

Prof. Ghosh says, “The development of antimicrobial resistance is an evolutionary process and is inevitable as it involves the transfer of genes from one bacterium to another. Unless we increase our understanding of how infectious microbes keep evolving and develop resistance towards the antimicrobials used against them, we will never be able to protect ourselves from these life-threatening pathogens. But if we are able to spread awareness among the public and healthcare professionals, we will possibly be able to reduce the excessive use of antibiotics which will, in turn, prevent further aggravation of this problem that is already a serious threat to human existence.”

The Molecular Microbiology Laboratory (MMBL) of the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Kharagpur is involved in antimicrobial research with special emphasis on cell wall modulating penicillin-interactive enzymes including beta-lactamases in four different species of bacteria, namely, E. coli, Acenitobacter baumannii, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Mycobacterium smegmatis. At the workshop at Birkbeck, Prof. Ghosh highlighted his team’s research on Mycobacterium smegmatis.

Antibiotics of the beta-lactam group are extremely popular and hold the lion’s share in the antibiotic market. Due to their property of selective toxicity, beta-lactam antibiotics are extremely effective. These drugs target only the bacterial cell wall – peptidoglycan – and since this is not present in humans and animals, they do not harm the host. It is precisely because they are so effective, and hence popular, that there arises the threat of their misuse.

Prof. Ghosh says, “Mycobactrerial cell wall peptidoglycan (PG) is synthesized and remodelled by a set of transglycosylases and transpeptidases, though very little knowledge is available on their physiological actions. So far the known transglycosylases are PonA1 and PonA2 & transpeptidases are PBPA, PBPB, LdtA and LdtB. The unique feature of mycobacterial PG is that it is crosslinked upto 80% and it contains non-traditional 3–3 peptide crosslinks instead of traditional 4–3 crosslinks. However, very little is known about the remodelling of PG in mycobacteria.”

His team has discovered the physiology of two enzymes – MSMEG_2433 and MSMEG_2432 – possessing DD-carboxypeptidase activities that help in the peptidoglycan remodelling activities. The physiological role of these enzymes is established through various molecular genetics and biochemical studies, including mutational analysis. These two enzymes together help in the maintenance of 3-3 crosslinks in mycobacterial PG, the deletion of which converts the cross-link pattern from 3-3 to 4-3 and renders the cell wall leaky (Pandey et al, Journal of Bacteriology, 2018).

At the workshop Prof. Ghosh brought attention to the fact that MSMEG_2433 is a dual enzyme possessing both DD-carboxypeptidase and beta-lactamase activities (Bansal et al, Microbiology, 2015). These activities are influenced by a glutamic acid residue (G75) present in the omega-like loop of this enzyme, which in turn makes G75 a potential target for synthesis of inhibitory peptides that can be used in the future antimicrobial chemotherapy against mycobacterial infections.

A key area of research in MMBL is the discovery or synthesis of novel and efficient antibacterial drug molecules. In fact, a group of researchers in MMBL is exploring the antibacterial efficacy of various combinations of antibiotics and nano-particles. Birkbeck University features prominently in its scheme of things. Prof. Ghosh is already working in collaboration with Birkbeck’s faculty in designing inhibitors for beta-lactamases and other proteins that interact with penicillins and prevent their antibiotic action. At the workshop he set out several more opportunities for collaborative research, including finding molecules that prevent the formation of drug-resistant microbial biofilms.

Prof. Ghosh pointed out, “We need a worldwide drive against the menace of antimicrobial resistance. This may be through direct and indirect collaborative research that might subsequently help develop a combined front in antimicrobial research with sufficient funding from the international and national funding authorities.”

In this context it would be important to point out that IIT Kharagpur’s Department of Biotechnology organized an international conference entitled “International Conference on Contemporary Antimicrobial Research (ICCAR-2018)” in association with the Society for Antimicrobial Research (SAR). The conference focussed on the development of public awareness on antimicrobial resistance, networking of researchers around the globe, effective antibiotic effluent treatment, increased involvement of healthcare professionals and above all, the urgent requirement of sufficient funds for antimicrobial research.

Way to Zero Waste

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While passing through the newly developed, urban elite settlements, the dumpsites waiting treatment are becoming increasingly common. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in India continues to remain a neglected area with inefficient source segregation. Further, the moisture content in waste adds to India’s challenge in solid organic waste management because of our food habits and socio-cultural habits. This is leading to environmental hazards of pollution of air and nearby water bodies, surface and subsurface soil. Added to this, decomposing organic waste generates methane which is the single largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. With the Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan set for a new lease of life, a crucial avenue which is now being explored is efficient urban waste management.

A team of researchers led by Prof. Brajesh Kumar Dubey from the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Kharagpur has adapted a process called Hydro Thermal Carbonization (HTC) for Indian conditions which can effectively manage mixed MSW with high moisture content.

Through the process, most of the mixed MSW can be converted into biofuel, soil amendment and absorbents.

The current waste incineration processes adopted from the developed nations are primarily focused on treating drier waste content. This requires high energy input to combust mixed MSW with high moisture content.

“India’s tropical weather, open collection systems and mixed waste make the output yield much less fuel-efficient. Only 20-30% of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste is being recycled to biofuel. Hence there is a need to develop treatment system which can address the challenge indigenously,” opines Prof. Dubey.

Here is the goal which has been scored by the research team. They have developed a technology to convert the organic fraction of MSW into ‘Hydrochar’ by using a batch reactor. The moisture in the waste is used to the advantage of the process which uses water for the reaction. The process has increased the resource recovery yield to 50-65% of urban organic waste.

“The process novelty lies in the use of water for the reaction thus the moisture in the MSW gets used during the recycling process without requiring any removal of moisture from the segregated waste or high energy intake. This is effective for mixed municipal solid waste management in India,” explained Hari Bhakta Sharma.

For example, 1gm yard waste and 4gm water are being used in the laboratory reactor. The waste output is 1gm of biofuel with a calorific value of upto 24.59 MJ/kg, while the water remains available for reuse.

The key to the success of the technology lies in designing a proper industrial-scale HTC reactor with improved heat integration system. The technology can be deployed by municipalities at various locations within a city thus ensuring easy management of logistics of waste.

Another novelty of this technology is the zero waste scale reached through this process.

“Once the yard waste is entered into the process, the outputs generated are all usable including the water which can either be reused in the processor can be converted to biogas or methane through anaerobic digestion,” explained another researcher Sagarika Panigrahi.

The biofuel generated as the recovered output is comparable to lignite coal which could significantly address the fossil fuel depletion issue and helping to curb air pollution issues, pointed out Prof. Dubey.

The product can further be used as an absorbent to manage soil contamination.

The calorific value or energy yield and quantity yield however are inversely correlated and depends on the end-use of the product.

“So if you are looking for biofuel, the temperature at which the reaction is conducted needs to be kept very high which will increase the calorific value of the fuel however decreasing quantity yield, while in the case of the soil contamination absorbent, the low temperature will increase the product quantity yield with low energy yield,” confirms Hari Bhakta Sharma.

“This could significantly help brownfield sites or contaminated industrial sites or landfills,” added Prof. Dubey.

According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) estimates, there exists a potential of about 1700 MW of energy from MSW and sewage. Of this, only about 24 MW have been exploited, according to MNRE. Thus, less than 1.5% of the total potential has been achieved. The waste to energy mandate of Govt. of India could also be met through this innovative process.

“As of July 2017, thermal-based Waste-to-Energy plants in India have a capacity to process 5,300 tons of garbage and produce 53.5 MW/day. There is a big market on waste treatment and this technology can serve well for the organic fraction of municipal solid waste,” hoped Prof. Dubey.

Sights and sounds

India Education Diary

Medical imaging is a multi-billion-dollar industry today and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.7% by 2025. Both India and China are expected to majorly contribute to this growth. A rapid advancement in medical and diagnostic imaging devices has enhanced the diagnosis and treatment of several diseases, including cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

In addition, medical imaging and image guided therapy are important sources of employment, with a large number of electrical, computer, and biomedical engineers being employed in both the public and private sectors. However, today there are only a handful of academic programs (mostly in medical imaging or medical physics) that focus on training students to enter these fields.

An ongoing short term course at IIT Kharagpur addresses this problem by not only trying to keep students abreast of the latest trends in the imaging sciences but also in helping generate an interest in this particular field. Dr. Soumyajit Mandal, T. and A. Schroeder Assistant Professor from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of Case Western Reserve University , is currently taking the week-long course on “Instrumentation and algorithms for biomedical imaging: MRI and Ultrasound”. The course is aligned towards instrumentation and signal processing algorithms (or strategies) while focusing on physics and engineering of the applicable methods.

Dr Mandal said at the inaugural lecture, “The typical course on imaging methods deals either with the physics of the problem (how images are created or what is the physical phenomenon involved) or the clinical aspects. I will talk about the engineering of the system, say what sort of circuits are used, and such like.”

Dr Mandal is a recognized expert in the area of bioinspired electronic circuits and medical imaging. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, and won the President’s Gold Medal when he graduated in 2002. His doctoral thesis at MIT won him the MTL Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2009. Last year, he was awarded the Young Achiever Alumni Award by his alma mater.

The course is being hosted under the Institute’s SGR International faculty/expert outreach program that funds distinguished researchers or faculty members of highly-ranked international universities to teach and do collaborative research in IIT Kharagpur. Since its launch in 2015, SGRIP (Shri Gopal Rajgarhia International Programme) has facilitated the visits of more than 40 international faculty and led to about 25 collaborative short courses and workshops at IIT Kharagpur.

Prof. Anandaroop Bhattacharya, Associate Dean, International Relations, said, ““The SGRIP program, set up with the generous funding received from our Distinguished Alumnus, Mr. Shri Gopal Rajgarhia, aims at bringing eminent researchers across the world to IIT Kharagpur to share their research work with our students and faculty. The initiative goes a long way in stimulating the learning environment and promoting collaborative research. This particular course work exposes our students to cutting-edge research in one of the emerging fields of science.”

Prof. Sudip Nag of the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering, who facilitated the course being taken by Dr Mandal, pointed out, “This course is an awesome platform to learn about basic medical imaging physics, smart circuit design approaches, and futuristic signal processing strategies. This course has been expanded through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound imaging as the prime thematic areas, while simultaneously dealing with the latest and upcoming trends in portable healthcare image acquisition, reconstruction methods, and machine learning integration in healthcare. The course will certainly and immensely benefit students, researchers, and faculties at IIT Kharagpur who are directly or partially engaged in related areas of research.”

The course is being attended mostly by senior students doing their MTech or PhD. Baisakhee Saha, a woman scientist associated with the Institute’s School of Medical Science and Technology, who is attending the course said, “I am interested in micro-CT imagery and keen to know about the advance of cellular imagery. I am looking forward to the course for new directions.”