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On March 28, 2025, a devastating earthquake doublet of moment magnitude 7.7 and 6.7 struck the Sagaing Region of Myanmar, causing extensive damage and significant casualties across Southeast Asia. In the months preceding this seismic event, a continuous radon monitoring system—BhaROSA—installed in Imphal, India, as a part of the Indian Network for Detecting Radon Anomaly signal (INDRA), recorded a pronounced and statistically significant novel radon anomaly signal. The anomaly signal commenced on December 5, 2024, with a gradual buildup, followed by a sharp rise on February 28, 2025. Multiple peak alerts were observed prior to the mainshock (7.7 M w ) on March 28, 2025, after which the signal declined rapidly, returning to baseline levels—suggesting a potential correlation with pre-seismic crustal stress accumulation and release. The anomaly signal exhibited a normalized squared deviation of 35.14 from the baseline value, far exceeding natural variability at the time of main shock. The radon signal, with a build-up period of approximately 109 days and a decay of ~ 96 h, closely matched the spatial and temporal characteristics of the dilatancy-diffusion model. A pooled analysis of radon anomalies from ten earthquake events, including this major event, across multiple Indian observatories of INDRA reveals a robust positive correlation (r = 0.96, R 2  = 0.93) between radon buildup duration and earthquake magnitude. These findings strongly suggest that radon emissions are sensitive indicators of impending seismic activity and radon build up period can be a good indicator of magnitude of earthquake. The study highlights the potential of continuous radon monitoring in tectonically active regions like Northeast India and Myanmar as a viable component of earthquake precursor research and early warning systems.

The low cost of organic starting materials and ease of their fabrication processes have propelled the development of various organic devices and have also generated a considerable research interest in the scientific community. These devices make use of organic materials in the form of dielectrics, conductive polymers, or small organic molecules deposited mainly on flexible substrates to bring about the advantages of stretchability and moldability. Focussed and dedicated R&D activities conducted in this field during the last few decades have led to the development of novel and efficient organic devices that hold tremendous promise of a highly optimistic future. This review provides an insight into the area of organic devices with a particular emphasis on organic light emitting diodes, organic field effect transistors, organic solar cells, and organic thermoelectric devices. It presents a comprehensive survey that includes important milestones, fabrication processes, and applications of these devices. New materials and processes that enabled the recent technological advancements have been highlighted and discussed for each device category. The current challenges of the field are also discussed with a glance at the future prospects and directions for this emerging field.

The creation of a microstructure that allows electron transport while blocking phonons is considered to be ideal for improving the performance of thermoelectric materials. Various thermoelectric materials exhibiting high figure of merit due to decreased thermal conductivity based on a complex crystal structure and the creation of secondary phases that result in coherent interfaces with the matrix have been reported recently. We report herein a Cu2CdSnSe4–CdSe composite that exhibits low thermal conductivity (∼ 0.56 W m−1 K−1), resulting in high thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) of ∼ 0.65 (at 725 K). The extremely low thermal conductivity of the composite is attributed to scattering of a wide spectrum of phonons at (1) coherent interfaces between the Cu2CdSnSe4 matrix and CdSe precipitates, (2) the multiple elements and complex crystal structure of Cu2CdSnSe4, and (3) nanovoids formed due to vaporization of Cd during hot pressing at 1073 K. In addition to the improved ZT, the compatibility factor of this composite material is very close to that of p-type Bi2Se3 at around 573 K, suggesting its importance for the development of segmented thermoelectric power generators for use in the intermediate temperature range with the promise of high efficiency.Graphical Abstract

The interaction of electron-beam with organic materials (e.g. Polymers, organic solvents, organic acids etc.) is known to modify their physico-chemical properties and, in many cases, these electron-beam modified materials are used for variety of societal applications. In this review article, we first describe the various types of accelerators to generate electron-beams of different energies, i.e. low (0.3 – 0.75 MeV), medium (0.75– 5 MeV) and high (5 – 10 MeV) energies, and emphasis is laid on various accelerators developed by Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), Trombay, India. The energetic electrons on interaction with organic materials create free radicals that lead to modifications in material through various mechanisms such as, cross-linking, scissioning, curing and grafting. An overview of these mechanisms is presented by citing appropriate examples. Applications of electron beam-modified organic materials in different areas including bio-medical, textile, environment protection, electrical, radiation dosimetry, etc. are reviewed. The prospects and challenges involved in the electron-beam processing of organic materials are presented.

Enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit is of prime importance for any thermoelectric material. Lead telluride has received attention as a potential thermoelectric material. In this work, the effect of Se substitution has been systematically investigated in PbTe 1− x Se x . The thermoelectric properties of synthesized alloys were measured in the temperature range of 300 K to 873 K. For the particular composition of x  = 0.5, α was highest at ~292  μ V/K, while k was lowest at ~0.75 W/m-K, resulting in the highest dimensionless figure of merit of ZT  ≈ 0.95 at 600 K. The increase in thermopower for x  = 0.5 can be attributed to the high distortion in the crystal lattice which leads to the formation of defect states. These defect states scatter the majority charge carriers, leading to high thermopower and high electrical resistivity. The dramatic reduction of the thermal conductivity for x  = 0.5 can be attributed to phonon scattering by defect states.

At the national power grid in India, stability is one of the most important factors due to disturbances caused by distributed load and time-variant sources. Presently, for monitoring the transmission efficiency and performance of power grids, phasor measurement units (PMUs) are being installed at various locations in the country. Time synchronization, using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), makes PMU an important and reliable data acquisition equipment across the grids. To ensure reliability and accuracy of the acquired data, PMUs must be calibrated. However, recent development of automated PMU calibrator system by NIST and M/s Fluke, USA has revolutionized the calibration process by enhancing the accuracy and consistency of PMU measurements. The CSIR-NPL PMU system is fully operational to calibrate PMUs according to the IEEE synchrophasor standards. The time consumed to perform the PMU calibration is comparatively much less than the conventional method. A traceable PMU calibrator system has great potential in calibrating PMUs used to monitor, control and protect the power grid.