June1: A large number of star-forming areas in our Milky Way galaxy, previously unknown to astronomers, have been discovered. These newfound regions are providing astronomers with important information about the galaxy's structure and are yielding new clues about the process of galaxy evolution. In a separate study, the discovery of enormous hydrogen clouds in portions of the Milky Way will also help astronomers better understand the process of galactic evolution.
June 2: The World Science Festival begins at New York City. Renowned physicist Stephen W. Hawking will be honored in the function. The event will last upto June 6. In conjunction with the opening ceremony, the Kavli Foundation announced the winners of this year's Kavli Prizes, which honor researchers in fields that didn't exist as organized disciplines when the Nobel Prizes started: Astrophysics, Neuroscience, and Nanoscience. The prizes are handed out every other year, and were first awarded in 2008.
June 3: China’s newly installed Nebulae supercomputer at National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen (NSCS) in Shenzhen, has become the world’s second fastest, just behind Jaguar, the world’s fastest located at National Centre for Computational Sciences in United States. Jaguar is used by the US department of energy for calculation and simulation in areas like climate modelling, renewable energy, materials science, fusion , and combustion.
June 4: Climate scientists have expressed surprise at findings that many low-lying Pacific islands are growing, not sinking. The findings, published in the journal Global and Planetary Change, were gathered by comparing changes to 27 Pacific islands over the last 20 to 60 years using historical aerial photos and satellite images. Auckland University's Associate Professor Paul Kench, a member of the team of scientists, says the results challenge the view that Pacific islands are sinking due to rising sea levels associated with climate change.
June 5: India's first home made swine flu vaccine was launched by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Thursday. It will hit the markets on today. Named Vaxiflu-S, it has been manufactured by pharmaceutical major Cadila Healthcare and is an egg-based, single dosed vaccine. It's priced at Rs 350.Over the next few months, another three drug companies will come out with their own versions of the vaccine.It's a vaccine that promises to change the way India will tackle swine flu.
June 6: Astronomers claim to have found hints of life on Saturn's moon Titan which is much too cold to support even liquid water on its surface. According to the 'New Scientist', the two potential signatures of life on Titan were found by Cassini spacecraft, but scientists have pointed out that non-biological chemical reactions could also be behind the observations. Cassini measurements also suggest hydrogen is disappearing near Titan's surface, according to a study by Darrell Strobel of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
June 7: Scientists taking a genomewide view of ancestry have traced the genetic roots of seven Jewish groups. Each of the Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi) has its own genetic signature but is more closely related to the other Jewish groups than to non-Jewish groups, the researchers found. The research was lead by New York University School of Medicine. The study is published in the online issue of American Journal of Human Genetics.
June 8: An UFO was seen moving through the sky just before Saturday's sunrise by people across eastern Australia. The people who have seen the flying object described it as a "lollipop-type swirl". It hovered for a while before gradually moving in an eastern direction until it was out of sight. Those who saw it said photos do not reflect how large it actually was.However scientists say that a bright spiraling light spotted in the sky was probably a satellite, space junk or a rocket.
June 9: Impressed by the global popularity of saffron produced in Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that a national mission to promote research and production of the valuable spice will be set up in the state. Saffron from the Jammu is famous world over for its use in enhancing the taste of food and for its medicinal properties. He was speaking at the convocation of Sher-i-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology.
June 10: The Trappist telescope (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope), the new robotic telescope designed to study planets around other stars has taken its first image. Although based in Chile, the Trappist telescope is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) organisation, which oversees the La Silla facility and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which is also in Chile. As well as detecting and characterising so-called exoplanets, Trappist will also study comets orbiting our Sun.
June 11: The user trials of laser-guided bombs developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) were conducted on Wednesday by Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft over the Pokhran range in Rajasthan. The ADE is a unit of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). A DRDO press release said the flight tests had demonstrated the accuracy, reliability and performance of these precision air-launched bombs.
June 12: A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, has been found in a cave in Armenia. The 5,500 year old shoe, the oldest leather shoe in the world, was discovered by a team of international archaeologists and their findings will publish on June 9th in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE. The oldest known footwear in the world, to the present time, are sandals made of plant material, that were found in a cave in the Arnold Research Cave in Missouri in the US.
June 13: A Swiss solar innovator has been awarded the Millennium Technology prize for his research into the way that plants turn light into energy. Professor Michael Gratzel of the Lausanne Federal Technology Institute received the £660,000 prize in Helsinki. Michael Gratzel said India stands to benefit significantly from a new technology on solar power as it is cheap, green and efficient. Solar cells can also provide energy for water purification. Solar panel is now already capable of charging your mobile phone, he said.
June 14: A vast mountain range that rivals the Alps in majesty buried underneath the ice of Antarctica - is revealed by scientists. They are buried beneath solid ice more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, deep within Antarctica's eastern interior. The existence of this mountain range, called the Gamburtsev Mountains, shocked the Russian scientists who first discovered it more than 50 years ago. At the International Polar Yearconference in Oslo, Norway, scientists unveiled new radar images of the area.
June 15: A capsule thought to contain the first samples grabbed from the surface of an asteroid has returned to Earth. The Japanese Hayabusa container hit the top of the atmosphere just after 1350 GMT, producing a bright fireball over southern Australia. The Hayabusa mission was launched to asteroid Itokawa in 2003, spending three months at the space rock in 2005. The main spacecraft, along with the sample-storage capsule, should have come back to Earth in 2007, but a succession of technical problems delayed their return by three years.
June 16: An international meeting has given the green light to the formation of a global "science policy" panel on biodiversity and ecosystem services, viz., Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). More than 230 delegates from 85 nations backed the proposals at a five-day UN meeting in Busan, South Korea. The international panel is expected to be formally endorsed in 2011.
It is expected that the IPBES will be modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
June 17: By building a machine that uses 2,000 bouncing beads to spin a paddle and perform work, researchers from the University of Twente have finally realized a long-debated thought experiment. A similar machine was first proposed in 1912 by the Polish physicist Marian Smoluchowski. However, several years later, physicist Richard Feynman argued that, in reality, the bouncing beads would not be capable of doing meaningful work. The details of their study are published in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters.
June 18: The world's oldest known example of a fig wasp has been identified from the Isle of Wight. Dating back 34 million years, the fossil wasp looks almost identical to the modern species, suggesting the specialized insect has remained virtually unchanged for at least that long. Steve Compton, a fig wasp expert at the University of Leeds in England says that molecular evidence shows that fig wasps and fig trees have been evolving together for over 60 million years. The research will be published this week in Biology Letters.
June 19: A team of Korean researchers at Jeju National University led by Professor Park Se-pill cloned a "Black Bull" native to Jeju Island. Black bulls and cows from Jeju were near extinction in the 1980s. In an effort to revive the black cow, the National Institute of Animal Science and the Jeju government started a breeding program in 1993. Black bulls and cows are known for a high unsaturated fat content of their meat, which is considered healthier for consumption.
June 20: Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) will be releasing the India’s first intra-nasal indigenous H1N1 flu vaccine, this week. The vaccine, to be marketed under the brand name Nasovac, can be administered to anyone above the age of three. The vaccine is likely to be available in the market in a week’s time. It will cost around Rs 150. The first swine flu case in the country was reported on May 13 last year. Pune schoolgirl Reeda Shaikh was the first victim of the virus.
June 21: Today is the longest day of the year. It is the Summer Solstice. Solstice is an astronomical event which occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the earth's axis is most inclined towards or away from the sun. So, Northern Hemisphere points directly towards the sun while the Southern Hemisphere points directly opposite the sun. The sun rose at 5:24 AM and set at 7:22 PM, marking a 14-hour-long day. Students from various schools would perform experiments such as measuring the sun's angle etc.
June 22: Japanese researchers have created a baby robot to understand the behaviour and development of humans. Named Noby, short for “nine-month-old baby”, it has 600 sensors across its body to feel touch, cameras and microphones fitted into its head for vision and hearing, and is hooked up to a powerful computer. Noby is one of the humanoids created under a broader project headed by Minoru Asada, robotics engineering professor at Osaka University.
June 23: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced that it will make a detailed study on the green house gases and forest fire for which the fund comes from Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. This will be the first effort from the ISRO to conduct a study like this and if this comes successful then India will equal the US in these types of studies. Former ISRO chief Dr K Kasturirangan said that this is under designing stage and will be implemented in two to three years.
June 24: Scientists have sequenced the genome of the body louse (Pediculus humanus humanus). The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed the louse had the smallest genome of any insect. The body louse is an important vector for human diseases, including epidemic typhus, relapsing fever, and trench fever. In turn a tiny microbe, the bacterium Candidatus riesia pediculicola, lives inside it and produces Vitamin B5, an essential nutrient for its host's survival.
June 25: A bill, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2010 (ART Act),drafted by the Indian Council of Medical Research is before the Indian parliament. The Bill has been scanned by the law ministry and their suggestions have been taken into account. Assisted Reproductive Technology is defined as all techniques that attempt to enable a pregnancy by handling or manipulating the sperm or the egg outside the human body and transferring the embryo into the reproductive tract.
June 26: Two teams of scientists in the US have taken major strides in developing lung tissue that could be used for future transplants or testing the effects of new drugs. In one study, a team at Yale University in Connecticut implanted engineered lung tissue into rats. In another, a team at Harvard University in Massachusetts developed a tiny lung device from human tissue and synthetic materials. Both studies, published in the latest issue of the journal Science.
June 27: India has joined the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) project, the next generation astronomical observatory that will be located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The observatory is scheduled to begin operations in 2018. The proposal to join the TMT project was initiated by three Indian institutes engaged in astronomy: the IUCAA, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore, and the Aryabhata Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital.
June 28: Taking up the cause of endangered Great Indian Bustard, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh asked Gujarat government to conserve one of the last remaining habitats of the golden birds - the Adbassa grassland in Kutch. IUCN has warned that the Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) could become extinct within a decade. Listed in Appendix-I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, international trade and killing of the bird is prohibited.
June 29: Australian researchers calculate that Southern Ocean sperm whales release about 50 tonnes of iron every year. This stimulates the growth of tiny marine plants - phytoplankton - which absorb CO2 during photosynthesis. The process results in the absorption of about 40,000 tonnes of carbon - more than twice as much as the whales release by breathing, the study says. The researchers note in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B that the process also provides more food for the whales, estimated to number about 12,000.
June 30: The X Prize Foundation wants to make fixing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a multimillion dollar competition. It has done the same for space, fuel efficient cars and gene-mapping.They've already received 35,000 unsolicited ideas for fixing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. X Prizes are usually $10 million or more. The X Prize Foundation is a non-profit prize institute that designs and manages public competitions intended to encourage technological development that could benefit mankind.
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