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| Photo Courtesy: http://easyday.snydle.com |
1 April 2015: The Animal Husbandry Department of State has decided to start an Animal Science Museum at Malampuzha in Kerala. Said to be the first in south India, the museum will impart knowledge on the peculiarities of wild, exotic, and domestic animals to students from across the State, apart from tourists. The museum will come up close to the Malampuzha dam and garden, which attracts hundreds of visitors. To be located near the reptile park, the museum will provide people with a glimpse of the biodiversity on our planet and insights into our own place on the globe. The long-pending museum project, which will add to the tourist attractions of Malampuzha, and the State budget that allocated Rs.1 crore for the initial expenses. The museum will have installations on evolution and domestication of animals. The museum will become a reality in two years. Link: http://www.projectstiger.com
2 April 2015: The first human settlers on the moon may live inside giant lava tubes large enough to house cities, which were formed by ancient volcanic eruptions, new research suggests. The volcanic features are an important target for future human space exploration because they could provide shelter from cosmic radiation, meteorite impacts and temperature extremes. Lava tubes are tunnels formed from the lava flow of volcanic eruptions. When the eruption ends and the lava flow stops, the pipe drains leave behind a hollow tunnel. There has been some discussion of whether lava tubes might exist on the moon. Some evidence, like the sinuous rilles observed on the surface, suggest that if lunar lava tubes exist they might be really big. Sinuous rilles are large channels visible on the lunar surface thought to be formed by lava. The researchers explored whether lava tubes of the same scale could exist. Link:http://www.hou.usra.edu
3 April 2015: An early-stage human trial has found an experimental Ebola vaccine safe and it also elicited robust antibody responses in all 40 of the healthy adults who received it.The candidate vaccine was developed by scientists at the Public Health Agency of Canada. It was licensed to NewLink Genetics Corp. of Ames, Iowa, a company collaborating with Merck & Co. Inc., of Kenilworth, New Jersey in the US. The experimental vaccine is based on a genetically modified and attenuated vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), a virus that mainly affects cattle. In the investigational vaccine, a gene for a VSV protein was replaced with a gene segment from a key protein in the Zaire species of Ebola virus. The vaccine does not contain the whole Ebola virus and therefore cannot infect vaccinated persons with Ebola. The finding is reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. Link: http://www.nejm.org
5 April 2015: Scientists at Europe's Particle Physics Research Centre (CERN) today restarted the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), embarking on a new bid to resolve some mysteries of the universe and look for dark matter. The machine had been shut for two years for a refit. Hopes for the second run lie in breaking out of what is known as the ‘Standard Model’ of how the universe works at the level of elementary particles and also a clue for Dark Matter. Scientists are preparing for particle-smashing collisions expected to start in June, though any new discoveries made are unlikely to emerge until mid-2016. During the last run, from 2010 to 2013, physicists tracked down the legendary Higgs boson particle.In two months, CERN will start smashing particles in the LHC with nearly twice the energy compared with that first run from 2010-2013, at close to the speed of light. Link:http://home.web.cern.ch
6 April 2015: Growing awareness about dengue has led to a dramatic increase in sales of mosquito repellents. From mosquito repellent creams to coils, there is a variety of options to choose from. But experts advise caution in selecting repellents due to their high toxic levels and for being carcinogenic. Allergic reaction and skin irritation are some of the most common side-effects of repellents. Most mosquito repellents use synthetic pyrethroids, a structural derivative of naturally occurring pyrethrins (from the flower of Chrysanthemum). Some of them also contain DEET as their active ingredient. DEET poisoning can cause neurological damage leading to disorientation, clumsiness and seizures. The Indian market for various repellants is in the range of over Rs 600 crore with an annual growth of about 10%.
Link:http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov
7 April 2015: Two new species of spiders were discovered in the Western Ghats region in Kerala. The two species discovered include Stenaelurillus albus from the family Salticidae family, also known as Jumping Spiders and one belonging to the Huntsman Spiders of the family Sparassidae that has named as Martensopoda sanctor. 'Sanctor' is the Latin word for 'Sacred Heart'. This spider is the third representative of the genus Martensopoda and the first to be reported from India. Stenaelurillus albus was has been given the name, owing to the presence of a unique whitish area on the copulatory organ of the male spider. This is the first time the occurrence of 'Mating plugs' in spiders is reported from India. The findings were made by Arachnology division at Sacred Heart College in Kochi under the leadership of Dr PA Sebastian. The study is published in Zootaxa. Link:http://www.mapress.com
8 April 2015: Since 1896, reports have been coming in of sporadic instances of red coloured rain over parts of Kerala and Sri Lanka. A recent study by Indian and Austrian scientists has led to the discovery of the cause of the ‘Blood Rain’ phenomenon to be dispersal of spores of micro algae. Since 1896, reports have been coming in of sporadic instances of red coloured rain over parts of Kerala and Sri Lanka. The latest one was in 2013 over Kerala. The recent study confirmed that the red colour in the rain was caused by the presence of spores of a European species of green microalgae, Trentepohlia annulata that was reported previously only from Austria, a Central European country. The DNA sequence of this species from Kerala and that from Austria had very little differences. The study is published in the journal Phylogenetics and Evolutionary Biology. Link:http://www.algaebase.org
9 April 2015: Scientists from the Kerala Agricultural University in collaboration with the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) are now trying to design treatment methods using the anti-cancer properties of a rare genius of medicinal fungus that is widely used as a pesticide in agriculture. The fungus was first reported in 2013 by T. Santhosh Kumar, Assistant Professor, Regional Agricultural Research Station, Pilicode while conducting research on the Coconut Root-grub (Leucopholis coneophora) attacking trees in Kannur, Kozhikode, and Kasaragod districts. This fungus belongs to the Cordyceps genus that is also known as 'Caterpillar Fungus'. Initial studies confirmed that the fungus exhibits tumour suppressing properties and also inhibits the proliferation of lung cancer. The researchers now search for an alternative host for easier multiplication of the fungus.Link:http://medimushrooms.com
10 April 2015: Today marks the 200th anniversary of the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The 1815 eruption at Indonesia’s Tambora was a blast that altered global climate for years afterwards and has been fingered as the trigger of revolutions and migrations. Over 70,000 people perished directly from the event and hundreds of thousands more may have died due to disease and famine that could be linked to the effect Tambora had around the world. The eruption of Tambora produced 175 cubic kilometers of volcanic debris. For Tambora, those 175 cubic kilometers of volcanic debris is worth about 50 cubic kilometers of magma. During the 1815 eruption, the volcano released 60 Tg (teragram, or 1012 grams) sulfur, 100 Tg chlorine (as HCl) and 70 Tg fluorine. It was all these aerosols, especially sulfur, that caused 1816-‘the Year without Summer’. Link:http://news.nationalgeographic.com
11 April 2015: Samples from mummies in a 200-year-old crypt in Hungary have revealed that infections by multiple strains of tuberculosis (TB) gripped 18th century Europe when the disease was at its peak. Analysis of the samples taken from the naturally mummified bodies found in the Dominican church in Hungary yielded 14 tuberculosis genomes, suggesting that mixed infections were common at that point of time. Microbiological analyses of samples from contemporary TB patients usually report a single strain of tuberculosis per patient.The researchers also used the 18th century sequences to date the origin of the lineage of TB strains commonly found in Europe and the US to the late Roman period. The team used a technique called ‘metagenomics’ to identify TB DNA in the historical specimens. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. Link:http://www.nature.com
12 April 2015: Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Polio vaccine. The incredible story of Jonas Salk’s historic breakthrough was remembered today and it holds very relevant lessons for the world. There was a time not too long ago when polio was a scourge that crippled thousands of children all over the globe. The drive to find a cure was boosted in the U.S. with the founding of the March of Dimes by President Franklin Roosevelt. Children collected coins to fund polio vaccine research and ultimately the Salk vaccine. Massive field trials were organized to ensure Dr. Salk’s vaccine was safe and effective, and when the vaccine was formally introduced, hundreds of thousands of volunteers helped to set up vaccination clinics. This remains the biggest American peacetime volunteer effort to date. In a single year alone, 80 million people donated to the program. Link: http://www.polioeradication.org
13 April 2015: Yesterday was the International Day of Human Space Flight, also known as Cosmonautics Day, marking the day in 1961 when 27-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world's first man in space. His historic single orbit around Earth, while crouched in the Vostok 1 spacecraft at a speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour, lasted only 108 minutes,. Before Gagarin's flight, space travel had been the purview of science fiction writers. Premier Nikita Krushchev named Gagarin a hero of the Soviet Union, and Gagarin, was dubbed ‘the Christopher Columbus of the Cosmos’. Less than a month later, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepherd became the first American in space. In February of the next year, 1962, U.S. astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. Gagarin died in a plane he was piloting in 1968. Link: http://ntrs.nasa.gov
14 April 2015: The gases used to blow out surgery patients may be puts impact on Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists have discovered that these gases are accumulating and that they could make a small contribution to climate change. Anesthesia gases allow the atmosphere to store more energy from the sun, rather like carbon dioxide. In fact, 2.2 pounds of Desflurane is equivalent to about 5,512 pounds of carbon dioxide in terms of the amount of greenhouse warming potential. This shows their potentiality. That’s why researchers decided to take a closer look at these gases to see how potent they were. The researchers found that the 2014 atmospheric concentration of Desflurane was .3 parts per trillion (ppt). While medical gases are small players in human-generated greenhouse emissions, they could be a growing into a matter of concern in near future. Link:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
15 April 2015: The 10th anniversary of Endangered Species Day was celebrated today. Reversing the human impact on the environment that could lead to the earth's sixth great extinction event is the need of the hour. Humans need to bring changes in their choices at home to prevent habitat and wildlife from getting negatively impacted. Some of the meaningful changes include reducing water use, limiting the use of pesticides and herbicides in our yards, limiting our use of plastics, and making every effort to recycle as much of our household waste stream. Taking small steps together can result in big achievements. There is a consensus among many business and industry leaders now that a positive impact on their bottom line is brought by efforts to conserve resources and minimize environmental impact. The Day intend to connect people to save wildlife and wild places. Link:http://www.endangered.org
16 April 2015: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, set to fly by the Pluto system on July 14, has sent its first colour image of the dwarf planet and its largest moon Charon. Exactly 85 years after Pluto's discovery, New Horizons has now spotted small moons orbiting Pluto. The moons, Nix and Hydra, are visible in a series of images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft at distances ranging from about 201 to 186 million km. The long-exposure images offer New Horizons' best view yet of these two small moons circling Pluto which professor Clyde Tombaugh discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona Feb 18, 1930. Nix and Hydra were discovered by New Horizons team members in Hubble Space Telescope images taken in 2005. Pluto's two other small moons, Styx and Kerberos, are still too faint to be seen by New Horizons at its current range to Pluto. Link:http://www.nasa.gov
17 April 2015: The youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner and girls' education campaigner Malala Yousafzai now has an asteroid named after her. Amy Mainzer, astronomer at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, named Asteroid 316201 after Malala. NASA’s NEOWISE spacecraft discovered this new asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. Previously called 2010 ML48, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently renamed this asteroid to 316201 Malala in honour of Malala. Asteroid 316201 Malala orbits the sun every five years and is composed of a very dark material that is four kilometers in diameter. As per Mainzer, it was his research scholar and student Dr Carrie Nugent prompted him for this, as an honour for Malala. Mainzer discovered the asteroid in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter. It orbits the Sun every 5.5 years. Link:http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
18 April 2015: After more than four years of orbiting Mercury, NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft will crash into the solar system's innermost planet in two weeks when it runs out of propellant. MESSENGER was launched in 2004, will impact the planet's surface, most likely on April 30. The spacecraft will impact Mercury at more than 3.91 kilometres per second on the side of the planet facing away from Earth. The spacecraft travelled more than six and a half years before it was inserted into orbit around Mercury on March 18, 2011. The prime mission was to orbit the planet and collect data for one Earth year. The spacecraft's healthy instruments, remaining fuel, and new questions have resulted in two approved operations extensions, allowing the mission to continue for almost four years. Link:http://www.nasa.gov
19 April 2015: Today marked the 150th Anniversary of the presentation of Gregor Mendel’s Experiments in Plant Hybridization at the Natural History Society of Brno, explaining the laws of genetic inheritance even before the world became involved in molecular studies. It was in the Spring of 1865, Mendel did that. It was with just a monastery garden, Mendel began his experiments on pea. After 29,000 pea plants were studied over seven years, Mendel was able to describe his Laws of Genetic Inheritance: Law of Dominance, Law of Segregation and Law of Independent Assortment. But, Mendel was denied any scientific recognition during his lifetime. His published work ‘Versuche über Pflanzen-hybriden (Experiments in Plant Hybridization)’ went unnoticed. Later his work was rediscovered earning him the title, ‘Father of Modern Genetics’. Link:http://www.mendelgenius.com
20 April 2015: Yesterdayday, just over 50 years ago, Gordon Moore, then the head of research at Fairchild Semiconductor and later one of the co-founders of Intel, was asked by Electronics magazine to submit an article predicting what was going to happen to integrated circuits, the heart of computing, in the next 10 years. Moore predicted that every year we’d double the number of transistors that could be fitted on a single chip of silicon, so you’d get twice as much computing power for only slightly more money. When that came true, in 1975, he modified his prediction to a doubling roughly every two years, and then onwards, his prediction came to be known as the 'Moore’s Law'. According to Moore, who is 85 now, the importance of the internet surprised him and it looked like it was going to be just a minor communications network with certain problems. Link:http://www.intel.in
21 April 2015: Moon may have been created about 4.47 billion years ago, according to a new study of meteorites that provides clues to the giant collision which formed Earth and the lunar body. A giant impact between a large protoplanet and the proto-Earth formed the Moon. The timing of this giant impact, however, is uncertain, with the ages of the lunar samples returned by the Apollo astronauts still being debated. Collisions on these asteroids in more recent times delivered these shocked remnants to Earth, which scientists have now used to date the age of the Moon. The most ancient Solar System materials found in meteorites are about one hundred million years older than this age. The study done by NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) and University of Arizona's Lunar Laboratory is published in Science.Link:http://www.sciencemag.org
22 April 2015: Stephen Haggerty, who works with Youssef Diamond Mining Company as geologist, has found a rare African plant that prefers to grow on diamond-bearing Kimberlite rocks. The plant, identified as Pandanus candelabrum, is the first indicator species for diamond-bearing rocks. The thorny, palmlike plant in Liberia grows on top of Kimberlite pipes- columns of volcanic rock hundreds of metres across that extend deep into the earth, left by ancient eruptions that exhumed diamonds from the mantle. Kimberlite pipes bring the gems to the surface in eruptions that sometimes rise faster than the speed of sound. There are more than 6,000 known Kimberlite pipes in the world, about 600 contain diamonds, and of these, only about 60 are rich in quality diamonds to get mined. The finding is published in the journal Economic Geology. Link:http://econgeol.geoscienceworld.org
23 April 2015: India has added 15 more species to the ‘Red List’ of threatened species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2014, but the country has climbed down a spot to the seventh position. By the year-end, India had 988 threatened species on the list, which lists critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species. In 2013, the number was 973. With 659 species in 2008, the increase over seven years is 50 per cent, in part due to better research identifying more threatened species and deforestation. By adding 37 species, China seemed to have helped India improve its rank. Studies for some endemic species are yet to be conducted in India, to give a better picture of their status. A recent World Bank mapping shows India as having the fourth largest number of threatened species in the world, 31 of them endemic. Link:http://www.iucnredlist.org
24 April 2015: Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the first video uploaded on it. The person who uploaded it was Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube. YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in California, United States. The service was created by three PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, in February 2005. The first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site. YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005, six months before the official launch in November 2005. In honor of its 10th anniversary, YouTube is celebrating for 26 days to be exact, because the company is sharing a video for every letter of the alphabet, from A to Z. The celebrations can be tracked on the YouTube Trends Blog.Link:https://www.youtube.com
25 April 2015: Today marks 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. The idea for Hubble is usually traced back to astronomer Lyman Spitzer, who pushed for a space telescope beginning in 1946. Though the Congress approved the project in 1977, its launch date was set back more than 3 years by the 1986 loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It finally lifted off in the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990, which released it into space the next day. The telescope takes its name from Edwin Hubble who, in 1923, discovered the first definitive proof that the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies in the universe. Hubble Telescope played a critical part in the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. NASA and ESA are celebrating the Hubble's 25th anniversary by unveiling a firework of nature, a giant cluster of 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2. Link:http://hubble25th.org
26 April 2015: Norway is to become the first country in the world to switch off FM radio in 2017 as it goes completely digital. The government is scrapping the traditional broadcasting method in favour of DAB radio, which it claims will allow more channels to go on air. Norway's culture ministry also said that digital radio offered an advantage over FM during emergency situations because it is less vulnerable to transmitter failure and can be used to communicate with people underground with simultaneous broadcasts.Proposals laid down in the Norwegian parliament in 2011 set down criteria to be met by January this year in order for radio digitization to go ahead. The Independent DAB was launched publicly in the UK in 1995 and the country is now believed to have the biggest digital radio network in the world. Now about 27.8 million listen to it, digitally.Link:http://www.worlddab.org
27 April 2015: China plans to build a huge solar power station 36,000km above the ground in an attempt to battle smog, cut greenhouse gases and solve energy crisis, much on the lines of an idea first floated in 1941 by fiction writer Isaac Asimov. If realized, it will surpass the scale of the Apollo project and the International Space Station, and be the largest-ever space project. The power station would be a super spacecraft on a geosynchronous orbit equipped with huge solar panels. The electricity generated would be converted to microwaves or lasers and transmitted to a collector on Earth. But the space power station would weigh 10,000 tons. In 1941, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story Reason in which a space station transmits energy collected from the sun using microwave beams. Link:http://www.power-technology.com
28 April 2015: The world's first viable malaria vaccine could be available by as early as October, after final trial results showed it can potentially prevent millions of cases of the deadly disease every year. The vaccine candidate (RTS,S/AS01) is the first to reach phase 3 clinical testing and is partially effective against clinical disease in young African children up to 4 years after vaccination. The results suggest that the vaccine could prevent a substantial number of cases of clinical malaria, especially in areas of high transmission. The RTS,S/AS01 vaccine was developed for use in sub-Saharan Africa (Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and United Republic of Tanzania) where Malaria still kills around 1,300 children every day. There is currently no vaccine against malaria anywhere in the world. The data was published in the journal Lancet. Link:http://www.thelancet.com
29 April 2015: A new crab species discovered by Indian researchers, has been named after Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III-the visionary ruler who had initiated and entrusted the research on marine animals of Okhamandal in 1900. He had also played an important role in the development of education system in the erstwhile Baroda state The researchers at MS University's Department of Zoology discovered the species at Kamboi village in the northern part of the Gulf of Khambat. Named as 'Ilyoplax Sayajiraoi', the researchers say it is for the first time in the world that this crab species has been discovered. The discovery of the species was made under a research project titled 'Crustacean Biodiversity of Gujarat State' supported by Gujarat Biodiversity Board. The species was discovered from the mud flat surfaces of Kamboi village by professor Kauresh Vachhrajani and his team of students. Link:http://www.sciencedirect.com
30 April 2015: An international team of scientists has sequenced the complete genome of the woolly mammoth. Though the researchers who have done the sequence have no plan to clone a Mammoth, an US team is attempting to insert mammoth genes into elephant stem cells, which could help those trying to bring the creature back to life. It is the Long Now Foundation, an organisation based in San Francisco, that is fully involved into this. The foundation is supporting a team based at Harvard University, which is using genetic engineering techniques to insert mammoth genes into living elephant cells. The researchers hope to produce mammoth red blood cells to see how much oxygen they might have carried and so learn more about the physiology of the animals. Mammoth cloning attempts can begin latest by 2018. The study is published in Current Biology. Link:http://www.cell.com
