Technology
Eco-friendly aluminium surfaces show promise for industrial, biomedical uses – The Times of India

BENGALURU: A team of Indian researchers has developed a bioinspired aluminium surface with properties that could benefit industries ranging from marine engineering to food packaging and healthcare.
The findings, published in ‘Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces’, highlight how mimicking structures found in nature, such as lotus leaves and insect wings — can yield multifunctional surfaces that repel water, resist corrosion and bacteria, and clean themselves with minimal water.
Led by Harpreet S Grewal, the team from Shiv Nadar University in Delhi-NCR created micro-and-nanostructured aluminium surfaces using a low-cost and environmentally friendly process. The method, which involves imprinting aluminium sheets with micro-patterns and then immersing them in hot water, resulted in two distinct surfaces: “Nano” and “Hierarchy”.
These surfaces were then coated with a fluorinated silane compound to reduce surface energy and enhance water repellency. Tests showed that these treated surfaces could achieve extreme water-repelling (superhydrophobic) or water-attracting (superhydrophilic) states, depending on the treatment.
The “Nano” surface, for example, exhibited a contact angle of 163 degree, indicating water droplets roll off easily. Such characteristics are particularly useful in applications where cleanliness or moisture avoidance is crucial.
One key application explored was corrosion resistance in marine environments. When tested in saline conditions, the nanostructured surfaces showed significantly reduced corrosion current density, as much as 40 times lower than untreated aluminium, suggesting that these surfaces could extend the lifespan of metal components in seawater.
The researchers also evaluated self-cleaning and antibacterial properties. Surfaces with nanostructures required minimal water to remove chalk dust and resisted staining from common liquids like milk and coffee.
When exposed to E coli bacteria, the superhydrophilic nanostructured aluminium showed the greatest antibacterial effect, apparently due to the physical rupture of bacterial membranes upon contact with the densely packed nanoscale features.
“The dense nanoflakes act almost like a bed of spikes,” Grewal told TOI, explaining how the surface deforms and pierces bacterial cells, thereby reducing biofilm formation without the need for chemical disinfectants. Notably, the fabrication method avoids the use of hazardous chemicals and is designed to be scalable, an important consideration for industrial adoption.
“We’ve demonstrated a practical route to multifunctional aluminium surfaces using common materials and straightforward processing,” said co-author Priya Mandal. Beyond marine and food industries, such surfaces could be adapted for biomedical tools, electronics, or packaging materials where contamination control is critical.
Their work was supported by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India. Further development will focus on testing durability in real-world conditions and scaling up production for commercial use.
Technology
Sigmund Freud for Beginners: Meet the man who invented your subconscious | – The Times of India

If Noam Chomsky is the Devil’s Accountant, then Sigmund Freud is the Architect of Dreams. Not the whimsical kind involving rainbows and flying cows, but the kind where you’re chasing your mother through a dark hallway while holding a cigar. And yes, it is just a cigar. Or is it?
Explaining Freud is like trying to explain cricket to an American. At first glance, it’s long, confusing, and seems to revolve around daddy issues. But if you sit with it long enough, you begin to realise the strange beauty of a man who single-handedly turned Western civilisation into a therapy session.
Freud – The Interpreter of Nightmares
Freud didn’t just invent psychoanalysis. He invented the modern notion of the self: that what we are is not just what we do, or say, or post on Instagram, but a bubbling cauldron of instincts, memories, and traumas buried beneath the surface. Born in 1856 in what is now the Czech Republic, Freud was a neurologist by training, but like all true revolutionaries, he broke his field before he built a new one.
What Copernicus did to the Earth, Freud did to the human ego: he displaced it from the centre. His claim? You are not the master of your own house. Your mind is not a palace but a haunted mansion, and the real decisions are made in the basement, by people you’ve never met, in languages you can’t speak.
The Ego, the Id, and the Oh-So-Fraught Superego
Freud’s most enduring contribution is the structural model of the psyche: the id, the ego, and the superego. If the human mind were a dysfunctional family dinner, the id would be the drunk uncle demanding cake, the superego would be the grandmother wagging her finger about cholesterol, and the ego would be the exhausted host trying to keep the peace.
- Id: the primitive, instinctual part of the mind, all hunger, libido, and tantrum.
- Superego: the internalised parent, full of shoulds, musts, and guilt trips.
- Ego: the negotiator, stuck between your inner caveman and your inner priest.
Freud’s model of the psyche is often compared to Plato’s chariot allegory. The id is the wild black horse of passion pulling recklessly, the superego is the white horse of restraint tugging toward virtue, and the ego is the charioteer—struggling to keep both in check while trying not to crash into existential despair.
This model helped Freud explain why civilised people behave in very uncivilised ways—and why your dreams might involve inappropriate thoughts about your chemistry teacher.
Freudian Slips and Other Confessions
Freud was obsessed with the idea that everything we say accidentally is actually on purpose. You didn’t “accidentally” call your boss “mum.” That was your unconscious waving a little flag. These verbal misfires, known as Freudian slips, revealed the darker urges we tried to repress. And repression, for Freud, was the root of neurosis. Forgetfulness, phobias, even physical symptoms—all were expressions of unprocessed trauma lurking beneath consciousness. The mind, he said, was a battleground. And dreams? That was where the war played out.
The Talking Cure and the Couch Revolution
Freud’s great innovation was the couch—not just for naps, but for confessions. He developed psychoanalysis: a method that involved free association, dream interpretation, and long silences where your therapist waits for you to say something meaningful while billing you by the hour.
The “talking cure,” as it was called, wasn’t just about healing. It was about uncovering. Freud believed that to be free, you had to confront what you’d buried. Therapy wasn’t about fixing problems; it was about excavating them.
Freud – The Cultural Prophet
Though he began in medicine, Freud’s impact spilled far beyond psychiatry. His ideas shaped art, literature, feminism, cinema, and even politics. Think of Fight Club and Black Swan, or Hitchcock’s Psycho. Think of advertising’s obsession with desire, or politics’ manipulation of mass psychology. It’s all Freud, baby.
Where Marx saw class conflict and Darwin saw natural selection, Freud saw repression. Civilisation, he argued, was a trade-off. We get security, but we give up freedom. Our lusts are suppressed, our instincts caged, and the result is a society full of frustrated people dreaming of escape.
This was most memorably expressed in Civilisation and Its Discontents, where Freud argued that all of society’s order and beauty is built on top of a reservoir of rage and desire. If Chomsky was the prophet of logic, Freud was the prophet of libido.
Sex and Death: Freud’s Favourite Dinner Guests

Freud’s theories inevitably return to two things: sex and death. Eros and Thanatos. The life drive and the death drive. He believed human behaviour was driven by the need to create and the urge to destroy. Love and aggression were two sides of the same coin, forever intertwined.
He scandalised Victorian Europe by suggesting that children were sexual beings (cue monocle drop) and that even the most upstanding citizen was full of shameful urges. His theory of the Oedipus complex—that boys experience unconscious sexual desire for their mothers and rivalry with their fathers—was less a literal claim and more a metaphor for how identity is formed through conflict and repression.
Still, it didn’t stop generations of undergraduates from looking at their parents weirdly for weeks after Psych 101.
Freud – The Flawed Genius
Let’s be clear: not everything Freud said has stood the test of time. Some of his theories—like penis envy or the seduction theory—have been widely discredited. Feminists have taken him to task. Neuroscientists have rolled their eyes. And even modern psychologists often treat him like a problematic grandfather: respected, but not to be left alone at parties.
Yet, like Shakespeare or Darwin, Freud’s shadow looms over everything that came after. Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, Slavoj Žižek—they’re all riffing off Freud. Every time someone says “you’re projecting” or jokes about daddy issues, they’re paying homage to him.
Freud’s Final Years
Freud fled the Nazis in 1938 and spent his last days in London, dying a year later of jaw cancer after decades of cigar addiction. He asked for euthanasia, and his doctor obliged. A final act of control from a man obsessed with the things we cannot control.
His ashes are stored in a Grecian urn, which, in an almost too-symbolic twist, was nearly stolen in 2014. Even in death, Freud can’t catch a break from people wanting to steal his essence.
Freud’s Enduring Relevance
We live in a time of TikTok therapy, Instagram trauma, and dopamine detoxes. Freud might scoff at the pseudoscience of it all, but he’d also recognise the yearning beneath it. The desire to be understood. To be free. To turn chaos into meaning. As Chomsky gives us the tools to dissect language and power, Freud gives us the mirror. A cracked one, perhaps, but a mirror nonetheless. As Freud once wrote: “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
In 2025, amid AI hallucinations and algorithmic identities, it might be the best exercise of all.
Technology
WWDC 2025: iOS 19, AI and iPadOS upgrades likely to be in focus

Apple’s WWDC 2025 conference is fast approaching, and it’s confirmed to take place on June 9, 2025. Apple is anticipated to announce major updates to its software platforms, including iOS 19. There is also likely going to be a big focus on artificial intelligence. T
hat said, we now have further insight into what to expect at the event, thanks to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who reports that WWDC 2025 will likely revolve around three major themes. The first is redesigned operating systems, the second is the introduction of new Apple Intelligence features, and the third involves major upgrades to iPadOS. Here’s what you need to know
iOS 19 is expected to be a major redesign
Multiple reports so far have suggested that the update will feature translucent and transparent elements throughout the user interface, possibly even new app icons and animations. This shift in design is reportedly inspired by the visual language of visionOS, the software powering Apple’s mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro.
It remains to be seen whether these design elements will be carried over to other operating systems as well, including macOS, iPadOS, and watchOS.
Also Read: iPhone 17 Air likely to come with optional accessories for lasting battery life- Details
Apple to go big with Apple Intelligence?
Apple rolled out Apple Intelligence with iOS 18.1 back in October last year. Since then, it has released iterative updates with each iOS version, including iOS 18.2, iOS 18.3, and iOS 18.4.
However, some features were delayed, such as the revamped Siri experience. It remains to be seen what Apple Intelligence will bring at WWDC 2025, especially since the company needs to catch up with rivals like Google and OpenAI, who currently have a significant lead.
What about iPadOS?
iPadOS is no longer just a scaled-up version of iOS. That distinction became clearer a few years ago when Apple introduced a range of additional features specific to the platform, and renamed it.
However, many users still feel that iPadOS doesn’t offer the same level of productivity as macOS. For more intensive tasks, most users continue to prefer a full-fledged laptop like a MacBook. Given that iOS is set for a major upgrade this year, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to expect that iPadOS will receive a major update as well. Imagine iPadOS more in line with macOS, enabling better productivity for users, that’s the possibility we are talking about.
MOBILE FINDER: iPhone 16 LATEST Price, Specs And More
Technology
Scientists discover new minimoons orbiting Earth – what could this mean for our planet’s future | – The Times of India

For years, the space near Earth was assumed to be fairly well known, particularly in terms of detecting near-Earth objects (NEOs) like asteroids and debris. That perception is being turned on its head by new discoveries. According to a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, there could be an undiscovered population of “minimoons“—small natural satellites—around Earth. And what is interesting about these objects is that some of them seem to be debris from the Moon itself.
The research highlights the recently identified object 2024 PT5, an asteroid-like body that shows lunar-like features such as orbital properties and compositional similarities with Moon rock. This finding by planetary scientist Teddy Kareta and his Lowell Observatory team opens up the thrilling possibility that numerous other such pieces are orbiting Earth in silence, leftovers from old lunar impacts.
What are minimoons and their role in space science
Minimoons are minor bodies temporarily held in Earth’s gravity. In contrast to the Moon, which is a natural permanent satellite, minimoons have transient orbits—occasionally staying within the gravitational clutches of Earth for weeks, months, or years before finally breaking free again into solar orbit.
Until recently, these objects were thought to be very rare. The first clearly established minimoon of possible lunar origin, Kamo’oalewa, was found in 2021. With the discovery of 2024 PT5, the story is emerging. Researchers are starting to see these objects not as oddities, but as possible members of a larger population that hasn’t been seen because they are too small and have too complicated, changing orbits.
New evidence suggests 2024 PT5 could be a piece of the moon
The identification of 2024 PT5 is especially noteworthy due to its possible lunar origin. Its path and spectral character—a method of determining an object’s composition from the manner in which it scatters light—effectively mimic those of rocks brought back to Earth by NASA’s Apollo missions. This heavily indicates that PT5 could be a piece that was ejected from the surface of the Moon, perhaps by a meteoric impact.
Teddy Kareta emphasised the importance of the discovery at the 56th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, saying: “If there were only one object, that would be interesting but an outlier. If there’s two, we’re pretty confident that’s a population.”
In other words, the confirmation of a second minimoon with lunar properties supports the idea that such objects are more common than previously believed.
Understanding lunar debris: How high-energy impacts send moon fragments into Earth’s orbit
Lunar debris is usually created through high-energy impact events, in which meteoroids collide with the lunar surface and send debris into space. A portion of this debris may fall into the Earth’s sphere of gravitational influence, becoming temporarily captured. They have chaotic, highly elliptical orbits that set them apart from both standard NEOs and Earth’s main Moon. Simulations and tracking models imply that these fragments can be trapped for a few months to a few years, after which they will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, escape Earth’s gravity, or be deflected by subsequent gravitational encounters.
What minimoons can reveal
The implications of minimoons from a scientific perspective are significant. Minimoons provide a one-of-a-kind chance to investigate the Moon’s impact record without sending complex sample-return missions to the surface of the Moon. By analysing the composition of the minimoons, scientists can determine the nature of the rock, the age of the rock, and possibly trace it to a particular crater or region of geology on the Moon.
This could greatly improve the knowledge of:
- Geological evolution of the Moon
- Rate and magnitude of lunar impact events
- Orbital dynamics of
Earth-Moon interactions
Kareta compared it to forensic science by saying: “It’s like discovering a crime scene has a completely new type of evidence you didn’t realise you had before.”
These pieces are actually natural sample-return missions already underway.
From sample return to space mining: The strategic value of minimoons
Aside from academic curiosity, minimoons also have significant potential for future missions of exploration. Because they are close and relatively slow-moving relative to other NEOs, they are prime targets for:
- Robotic spacecraft missions
- Sample return programs
- Experimentation with navigation and landing technologies for asteroid mining or deep space missions
They provide a valuable stepping stone to deep-space exploration while also facilitating new types of resource analysis and planetary defense testing.
2024 PT5 highlights the need for advanced detection methods
The detection of 2024 PT5 emphasises the necessity of more sensitive sky surveys and special observation programs. The majority of existing asteroid detection systems are optimized for discovering larger, brighter objects. Minimoons, being small and faint, need different methods and continuous monitoring in order to be discovered.
The development of this capability would greatly improve our knowledge of not just minimoons, but also the dynamic interaction between Earth and its cosmic environment.
Also Read | Top 10 oldest galaxies ever discovered by NASA
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