Hmm, interesting article in the express about how Kaajal can be used as cheap source of carbon nano-tubules

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, announced that kajal constituted carbon nano tubes (CNT). So? Now consider this: till now the generation of CNT was an expensive affair in which an organic compound like benzene was vapourised and CNT extracted from the deposition of the smoke. The equipment used in the process alone costs over Rs 10 lakh. And how much does it cost to burn oil in an ordinary lamp and catch the soot on a plate—the way kajal is made at homes all over India?

I had to dig up what the hell are these carbon nano tubes, and business week threw this up

Measuring between one and five nanometers in diameter — that’s roughly 1/50,000 the width of a hair — they’re nearly 100 times stronger, one-sixth as heavy, and 20% more flexible than steel. They far exceed copper’s heat-retaining capacity, accounting for almost no thermal leakage, and they can carry an electrical charge at twice the speed of circuits embedded in silicon. Together, these attributes suggest an enormous potential for smaller, faster, cooler-running chips.

Ok, so this means that we can have faster, cheaper, better sillicon chips. What else? Turns out these tubes can be used for targeted drug delivery. According to Dr. Sabyasachi Sarkar, who is working on Kaajal as a source for nano tubes, the tubes can be filled with drugs, sent to the site of disease, e.g. cancer, by magnetic targeting, and then blast them off at site! Thats cool.