SCIENCE OF JULY 2010

                                                                              

Karimeen (Etroplus suratensis) - the newly declared State fish of Kerala

July 1: Despite technical snags in the indigenous cryogenic engine that powered the Geo-stationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) which was flight-tested in April, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is expected to launch Chandrayaan-2 on an indigenous cryogenic engine on schedule by 2013. ISRO is also developing a satellite that would have instruments on board to test traces of greenhouse gases to enable a better understanding of  atmospheric chemistry.

July 2: The fossilised remains of an extinct sperm whale with teeth each more than a foot long has been unearthed in Peru by scientists who believe the great predator ate other whales to survive.The new species has been named Leviathan melvillei after the Hebrew word Livyatan, meaning a large, mythical sea monster, and in honour of the American novelist Herman Melville, author of  The Whale, also known as Moby Dick. it was a classic tale of 19th-century.

July 3: An international project aims to genetically modify the C3-type of photosynthesis rice uses. If the scientists are successful in creating rice that follows the C4-type of photosynthesis like some plants including maize and sorghumthe, they could produce 50 per cent more grain, and would require less water and fertiliser. The study is coordinated by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, under 'Project Sunshine', a programme that investigates how the power of the sun can be harnessed.

July 4: World's first flying car cleared for take off. The Terrafugia Transition is a car that can fly but with wings like a normal airplane. Once airborne, the speed of the car-plane powered by 100 hp Rotax 912S engine is expected to be around 115 mph with a payload of around 430 lbs. The first finished vehicle is expected to be delivered in late 2011. US Federal Air Authority have given the car-plane a special weight exemption, paving way for the mass production.

July 5: Using sensors onboard the Kaguya spacecraft, which was placed in orbit around the Moon in 2007, Japanese astronomers found abundant signatures of the mineral in concentric rings in three big craters. The mineral, called Olivine, the deep inner layer of Iron- and Magnesium-rich rock lies beneath the Moon's crust. Headed by Satoru Yamamoto of the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, the study appears online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

July 6: British engineers are developing new technology that would soon allow paralysed patients to operate bionic limbs with the aid of implanted brain transmitters. The technology uses tiny microchips to sense nerve messages, decode the signals, and turn thought into movement. Scientists believe within the next five years patients with damaged spinal cords would be using robotic devices that will allow them to move their arms or legs at will. The study is led by a team in University of Leicester headed by Prof. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga.

July 7: The proton seems to be 0.00000000000003 millimetres smaller than researchers previously thought, according to work published in Nature. Protons are among the most common particles out there. But despite its everday appearance, the proton remains something of a mystery to nuclear physicists, says Randolf Pohl, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and an author on the Nature paper.

July 8: Karimeen (Etroplus suratensis) will be the official State fish of Kerala. The State Government has also declared 2010-11 is being observed as ‘The Year of Karimeen'. The National Bureau of Fish Genetics Resources had in 2008 suggested that States adopt a State fish and already, a dozen States have an official fish. The Kuttanad region in Alappuzha district is considered the "family home" of the fish. However, Karimeen (Green Chromide)  is one of the most expensive fish. It is too beyond the pocket of the poor.

July 9: Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala launched successfully an advanced sounding rocket RH 200 at 3.50 p.m.on Wednesday. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said the rocket was developed part of the payload in the flight “as a co-passenger,” with the guidance of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC). The students' payload comprised tri-axial accelerometers, power switching module and safe arm relay unit matching the requirements of the rocket.

July 10: In a major triumph for alternative energy researchers and enthusiasts, an experimental, solar-powered plane successfully completed a 26-hour flight powered by 12,000 solar cells and sunlight-powered lithium batteries. The Solar Impulse landed where it had taken off -- in Payerne, Switzerland. Andre Borschberg, 57, a former Swiss air force fighter pilot, flew the plane. The solar plane project was under the guidance of Bertrand Piccard, the first person to complete a nonstop balloon flight around the world.

July 11: Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, who holds the record of the longest spaceflight (195 days) for female space travellers will head for the stars once again. She will be joined on the Soyuz 31 flight to the space station in 2012. Daughter of  Indian born neuroanatomist Deepak Pandya and Slovak mother Bonnie Pandya, among the personal items Sunitha took with her on her last trip were a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and a small figurine of Ganesha.

July 12: Indian Space Research Organisation on Monday sent PSLV-C15 soaring into space to place in orbit Cartosat-2B, a remote sensing satellite with applications in mapping and infrastructure planning. PSLV-C15 also launched Algeria's 116-kg ALSAT-2A, Canada's 6.5 kg NLS-6.1 and AISSAT-1, Switzerland's NLS-6.2 TISAT, and picosatellite STUDSAT designed by 35 undergraduate engineering students from seven colleges in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

July 13: An Octopus named "Paul" living in  Sea Life Centre in Germany, has become a World Cup sensation by correctly forecasting the results of semi-finals and predicting the Spanish victory in the final. The octopus made his prediction by choosing between two containers of food marked with the flags of the competing countries. But experts say  "Paul" (Octopus vulgaris) and octopuses in general are colourblind, so the colour of the flag is irrelevant to them.

July 14: A team of scientists led by Professor Yoel Fink of  Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States have created a cloth madeup of  fibers that can detect and produce sound. The development, described in the August issue of Nature Materials, transforms the usual passive nature of textiles into a virtually all-singing, all-dancing version. The "cloth" can be used for for capturing speech or monitoring bodily functions, or could measure blood flow in capillaries or pressure in the brain.

July 15: Thirty-two scientists from India have been selected by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to contribute to the fifth edition of its assessment report that is known to be the most exhaustive analysis of existing knowledge in climate science. The report is slated to come out in 2013-14. Among the omissions is Prof Murari Lal, whose was the lead author for the chapter that had the controversial prediction about the Himalayan glaciers. Almost 60 per cent of the scientists selected are new to the IPCC.

July 16: Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean appear to be at least partly a result of human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases, says a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The sea level rise which may aggravate monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India could have far-reaching impacts on both future regional and global climate, according to a University of Colorado. Along the coasts of the northern Indian Ocean, seas have risen by an average of about 13 mm per decade.

July 17: The European Space Agency’s (ESA) comet-chasing probe Rosetta has captured the first close-up images of the asteroid Lutetia. Lutetia is the largest asteroid ever visited by a space probe. Lutetia is located between Mars and Jupiter, some 454 million km away from Earth. Rosetta will now continue its course towards its main destination: the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After orbiting alongside the comet for a few months, it will send a lander to the surface in November 2014.

July 18: Yet another milestone in mobile communication when the 5 billionth mobile subscription added to the count, largely thanks to emerging markets like India and China. According to Ericsson estimates based on industry information, the 5 billionth subscription was added Thursday 8 July. Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing at similar pace and are expected to amount to more than 3.4 billion by 2015. Studies show that soon 80 % internet users will be doing so using their mobile device.

July 19: First web browser for India called Epic launched by Hidden Reflex, a Bangalore based software startup. Any internet user can now download the browser for free by logging onto the website http://www.epicbrowser.com/. Epic’s India sidebar supports Indian content by providing users access to the latest national and regional news. Users can instantly write in Indian languages on any webpage or in write, Epic’s free built-in word processor. Twelve Indian languages are currently supported.

July 20: Two new bacterial species that produce enzymes which could have application for biotech industry have been discovered in the Arctic region by a senior scientist from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad. The bacteria can grow at 2 degrees Celsius and produce enzymes such as protease and lipase which can be used in detergents and washing machines. These bacteria produce anti-oxidants and unsaturated fatty acids that could be used as nutrient supplements also.

July 21: David Warren, who is widely credited with creating the prototype of the flight data recorder, or “black box,”died in Australia. He was 85. David Ronald de Mey Warren was born to missionary parents on March 3, 1925, on Groote Eylandt, an island off northeastern Australia. He was said to be the first European child born there. His father died in one of Australia’s earliest air disasters, in 1934. It inspired him to invent the "ARL Flight Memory Unit” in 1957 which was later called the "Black Box".

July 22: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has started receiving high-quality images from the advanced remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2B. The space agency had successfully launched Cartosat-2B – the 17th remote sensing satellite of India – into orbit onboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on July 12.
The multiple spot scene imagery sent by Cartosat-2B camera would also be useful for village/cadastral level resource assessment and mapping and detailed urban and infrastructure planning and development.

July 23: India will launch its first scientific expedition to the South Pole this November to commemorate the centenary of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen's feat. An eight-member team of scientists will embark on the treacherous journey to the South Pole from 'Maitri', India's research station in the Antarctic region. India is also in the advanced stages of building its third research station named 'Bharti' in the Larsemann Hills region in the eastern part of the frozen continent. The station is expected to be functional by 2012.

July 24: According to US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the world is gearing up for the hottest year since 1880. According to them, 2010 will break all records of rising temperatures. The first six months of the year indicated so. It also said that June 2010 was the hottest June in the history. Earlier, 1998 was the hottest year in the recent history. The combined land and ocean temperature for the first six months of  2010 are 14.2 degrees Celsius. It is above the above the 20th century average of 15.5 C.

July 25: India develops world's cheapest computer, Priced Rs.1,600. Jointly developed by IIT-Rajasthan and IIT-Kanpur, the cheapest computer in the world, weighs 400 grams, which has all the applications of a regular computer. The laptop is equipped with touch-screen device and is also wi-fi enabled to access Internet. Interestingly, without hard disk it has 2GB memory and can be connected to external memory of 32 GB. The laptop will be available for students under the National Mission on Education.

July 26: Astronomers have found the largest star yet detected - up to 20 million times brighter than the Sun - using the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Named R136a1, the star is thought to have started off with a mass of up to 320 times that of the Sun and the new discovery has doubled the previously accepted limit of solar mass. The research, conducted by scientists from Britain, Malaysia and Germany, was published in scientific journal  The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

June 27: Scientists have for the first time collected venom from octopuses captured from the waters of Antarctica. In the process they have discovered four new octopus species and two new types of cephalopod venom. Researchers hope the new venoms will lead to the development of drugs for pain management, fighting allergies and treating cancer. The study was led by Dr Bryan Fry of the University of Melbourne with researchers from the University of Hamburg and the Norwegian University of Technology and Science.

July 28: Physicists are planning their next atom-smasher which they hope to start building in 2012. Physicists will meet in Paris this week for a conference on high-energy physics, and they're expected to discuss plans for the 20-mile-long International Linear Collider (ILC). The ILC would collide electrons with positrons. In terms of particle energies, it would be less powerful than the LHC and the Tevatron at Fermilab, but it would allow for more accurate measurements. Details: http://www.linearcollider.org/

July 29: A team of scientists will launch an expedition to the Titanic next month to assess the deteriorating condition of the world's most famous shipwreck and create a detailed three-dimensional map that will "virtually raise the Titanic" for the public. The 20-day expedition is to leave St. John's, Newfoundland, on Aug. 18 under a partnership between RMS Titanic Inc., which has exclusive salvage rights to the wreck, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

July 30: India's latest supercomputer 'Annapurna' was unveiled at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) in Chennai today. Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee unveiled the country's seventh fastest high-performance computation (HPC) cluster having 1.5 Tera Byte (TB) memory and 30 TB storage space cluster capacity. Among broad-based scientific institutions in India, the Annapurna cluster is the third fastest, ranking below the IISc Bangalore and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

July 31: The milk of the indigenous Vechur cow is more beneficial to health than the milk from cross-bred bovine varieties. This has been revealed in a study conducted for a thesis at the College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Trissur, Kerala by EM Muhammed for his thesis. Among 12 milk protein beta Casein variants, two common types have been identified as A1 and A2. The A2 variant is found to be safe for human consumption which is protective against Diabetes and Heart diseases.