SCIENCE OF OCTOBER 2010



COMMON WEALTH! Girl child employed for venue constructing at the  11494 Crore Common Wealth Games in New Delhi.
Photo Courtesy: http://www.modernmom.com/



October 1: Astronomers have discovered an another planet orbiting a red-dwarf star labeled Gliese 581, located 20 light years from Earth in the constellation Libra, that might have liquid water on its surface.If they are actual, this would be the first added planet found exterior our solar system that would be able of sustaining life. Gliese 581g does not rotate on its axis like Earth, so partial the additional planet is always lack of light and half is always light, but water could exist on the border between the two halves.

October 2: The Ig Nobels, designed to honour achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think, are presented in the run up to the real awards next week. They are given out at a Harvard University ceremony by the science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research. The Zoological Society of London scooped the Engineering Prize for "perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote control helicopter".

October 3: To understand the genetic makeup of the Culex mosquito that are involved in the transmission of West Nile virus an international team of scientists, led by geneticists at the University of California, Riverside, has sequenced the genome of Culex quinquefasciatus, a representative of the Culex genus of mosquitoes. A close study of the genome, the researchers say, could give scientists the clues they need to target specific Culex genes that are involved in the transmission of other diseases spread by the Culex group of mosquitoes.

October 4: A Chinese rocket carrying a probe destined for the Moon has blasted into space. A Long March 3C rocket with the Chang'e-2 probe took off from Xichang launch centre at about 1100 GMT. The rocket will shoot the craft into the trans-lunar orbit, after which the satellite is expected to reach the Moon in about five days. Chang'e-2 will be used to test key technologies and collect data for future landings. It is China's second lunar probe - the first was launched in 2007.

October 5: The Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for 2010 has been awarded to the British scientist who pioneered in-vitro fertilisation, a procedure that has helped in the conception and birth of 4 million people around the world since the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown in 1978. IVF is also at the centre of a technique, called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), that screens fertilised embryos for genetic conditions such as Cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease.

October 6: Graphene is the strongest and thinnest known material in existence, and its discovery six years ago has won University of Manchester professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. It's just one atom thick but it's more than 100 times stronger than steel. Nearly transparent, graphene is a highly heat-resistant conductor of electricity that has potential for use in transportation, electronics, and computers.

October 7: The 2010 Nobel prize for Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists who developed an efficient way to create chains of carbon atoms, a critical tool for the synthesis of complex molecules such as drugs and coatings for electronic components. Richard Heck of the University of Delaware, Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University, and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University in Japan came up with efficient ways to link carbon atoms together.

October 8: The first of India's six C-130J Super Hercules airlifters, considered the world's most advanced transport aircraft, has completed its maiden flight. Purchased from the US in a $1 billion deal, C-130J-30s would provide the Indian Army and Indian Air Force 'new special operations capabilities using the world's most advanced airlifter'. It is a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft, is a comprehensive update of the venerable Lockheed C-130 Hercules, with new engines, flight deck, and other systems.

October 9: Researchers at Britain's Kew Botanical Gardens say the plant, Paris japonica, has the largest genome yet recorded, putting it at high risk of extinction. With 152.23 picograms (pg) of DNA, the Paris japonica has around 15% more than the previous record holder, the marbled lungfish or Protopterus aethiopicus, with 132.83 pg. It is also more than 50 times bigger than the human genome, which is 3.0 picograms. A picogram is one trillionth of a gram.

October 10: Results of the first ever Census of Marine Life were unveiled Monday, revealing more than one million species in the oceans, with at least three-quarters of them yet to be discovered. The 650-million-dollar (470-million-euro) international study discovered more than 6,000 potentially new species, and found some species considered rare were actually common. The findings are partially available on the www.iobis.org website.

October 11: The long lost lunar rover Lunokhod 1, has been rediscovered by astronomers using laser pulses, thirty-six years after it disappeared. A team led by Associate Professor Tom Murphy at the University of California, San Diego worked out its position to within a few centimetres using data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).Their paper, which has been submitted to the journal Icarus, and appearing on the pre-press website ArXiv.org.

October 12: Malaysia could be the first country in Asia to use genetically modified mosquitoes to battle a rise in dengue fever, government authorities said Monday.The program calls for genetically engineered male mosquitoes to be released into the wild that would mate with females and produce offspring that live shorter lives, thus curbing the population.Dengue is transmitted to humans by the Aedes aegypti or more rarely the Aedes albopictus mosquito.

October 13: A speckled, cat-sized mammal has been identified in the nick of time, as its discoverers say the carnivore is one of the most threatened in the world. Known as Durrell's vontsira, or Salanoia durrelli, the animal hides out in the Lac Alaotra wetlands in central eastern Madagascar. It weighs just over a pound (just over 0.5 kilograms) and belongs to a family of carnivores known only from Madagascar. Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands are known as a biodiversity hotspot because of their great richness in species.

October 14: The Experts' Committee set up by the Union environment ministry to study the impact of communication towers on birds and bees has decided to elicit views of researchers who have already done studies on the problem in India and abroad. The existing studies on the issue included that of  Prof.Sainudeen Pattazhy, who argued that electromagnetic waves emitted by towers hampered navigational skills of worker bees, leading to a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Syndrome (CCS), reported worldover.

October 15: While the global community proposed a ban on the use of endosulfan globally at the Stockholm Convention of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee in Geneva, India opposed the move, saying there was not enough evidence to prove the health and environmental impacts of the insecticide. India being the largest producer and user of endosulfan in the world has now called for a technical review of its impacts.

October 16: Switzerland has completed a mammoth engineering project with the 60-year construction of the world’s longest tunnel, bringing to an end a US$10 billion infrastructure investment. The 57 kilometre, or 34 mile, tunnel which links Switzerland’s Zurich to Italy’s Milan under the Alps,though officially completed will be operational in 2017 only. The Seoul Metropolitan Subway's Line 5 is the longest rapid-transit line in the world right now and one of the longest tunnels.

October 17: The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Rustom1 - developed by Aeronautical Development Establishment - was successfully test flown from the Taneja Aerospace and Aviation airfield in Hosur. According to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the aircraft flew for 12 minutes and landed successfully meeting all its objectives. DRDO said that this development is the forerunner to the medium altitude long endurance UAV project RustomH to be taken up by the lab shortly. Last year, the first flight of technology demonstrator RustomI did not meet its objectives.

October 18: An international conference aimed at preserving the planet's diversity of plants and animals in the face of pollution and habitat loss begins Monday in Japan, facing some of the same divisions between rich and poor nations that have stalled U.N. climate talks. At stake is the fate of the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement signed amid great hope and fanfare in the early 1990s, the status of which has fizzled steadily ever since. Over the next 11 days, 193 national delegations will discuss on this.

October 19: India today launched the National Green Tribunal thus becoming the third nation in the world to have special courts for environmental issues. Former Supreme Court judge Lokeshwar Singh Panta assumed charge as the Chairperson of the tribunal which will have, to begin with, four regional benches that would function in the circuit mode. The tribunal has been established by the National Green Tribunal Act passed by Parliament earlier this year. Appeals against the Tribunal can be moved in the Supreme Court.

October 20: A pale green comet will make a close pass by the Earth, one of the closest approaches of any comet in the past century and giving sky-watchers a good view of the cosmic body. Comet Hartley 2, officially designated 103P/Hartley, is a small periodic comet with an orbital period of 6.46 years,is on a course to make its closest pass by Earth at a mere 11 million miles (17.7 million kms). It was discovered by Malcolm Hartley in 1986 at the Schmidt Telescope Unit in Siding Spring, Australia.

October 21: Pitching for declaring Western Ghats as the world heritage site, the state government of Kerala presented its case before an evaluation team of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN team will meet the state forest officials, NGOs and experts dealing with conservation issues in the city on Wednesday before it holds field visits. However, in Karnataka locals gheraoed two UNESCO officials who were on an inspection tour of Western Ghats on Tuesday.

October 22: Astronomers believe they've found the oldest thing they've ever seen in the universe: It's a galaxy far, far away from a time long, long ago. Hidden in a Hubble Space Telescope photo released earlier this year is a small smudge of light that European astronomers now calculate is a galaxy from 13.1 billion years ago. That's a time when the universe was 600 million years old. That would make it the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far. The study is published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

October 23: A major neutrino observatory set to be built in India cleared a major hurdle this week, when the Ministry of Environment and Forests formally approved the project. The $250 million underground laboratory, called the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO), will be built in the Bodi West Hills Reserved Forest in the state of Tamil Nadu. INO will be made of 50,000 tonnes of magnetised iron, dwarfing the 12,500-tonne magnet in the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

October 24: Indian students bagged two golds and one silver medal at the the 15th International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) held in Sudak, Crimea, Ukraine. The team was lead by Dr Manojendu Choudhury, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai and Hemant Mone, Aakash Mitra Mandal, Kalyan from Maharashtra's Thane district. A total of 19 teams from 17 countries participated in the Olympiad including China, Korea, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Italy, Indonesia and Thailand.

October 25: Scientists and officials of the Sunderban Tiger Reserve are investigating whether the Sunderban tiger is a different sub-species compared to those found in the sub-continent. The Sunderban tiger exhibits certain distinctive morphological adaptations that make it particularly suited to the mangrove habitat of the Sunderban islands. For this purpose, the mitochondrial and nuclear DNA of the tigers will have to be studied,” said Y. Jhalla, an expert at the Wildlife Institute of India.

October 26: The scientists from Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute, Palode, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala  has identified the Bamboo species with the largest leaf, Ochlandra ebrachteata, measuring 63.1 cm in length and 14.5 cm in breadth. Though the largest in the Old World, it is  the species with the sixth largest leaf among the world bamboos. The bamboo with the largest leaf is Neurolepis elata which is distributed in the Ecuador in the Paramo forest with leaf blades up to 5 m long and 30 cm wide.

October 27: Together with Indian and US colleagues, researchers from the University of Bonn have one of the largest amber finds ever worldwide from Nort-Western India. The insects trapped in the fossil resin cast a new light on the history of the sub-continent; it seems that it did not drift over the Earth’s oceans in isolation for as long as has been assumed so far. In the journal PNAS, the researchers are reporting on the 50 million year-old treasure that has only partially been uncovered so far.

October 28: The number of people killed in a double natural disaster in Indonesia is rising, after a volcano erupted and a tsunami smashed into several islands. Some 182 people are known to have died so far and there are fears the toll could rise much further. Mount Merapi, one of the country's most active volcanoes, spewed out ash, lava, and gas on the main island of Java, killing at least 28 people. Most were burned to death by bursts of hot air.

October 29: Basab Chaudhuri of the University of Calcutta and colleagues have shown that the membrane that lines an eggshell can absorb almost seven times its own weight of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide thus trapped could be stored until energy-effective methods of using the gas could be found. The study has been published in the International Journal of Global Warming.  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ind/ijgw/2010/00000002/00000003/art00005

October 30: Scientists say they've found the first complete skeleton of a dinosaur that is an ancestor to the sauropod, the largest creature ever to walk the planet. The 30-foot-long skeleton, complete with skull, may help reveal the story of how the 120-foot-long, giant-necked sauropods evolved and became solely plant eaters. The bones were found in southern China and the findings will be presented at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver.

October 31: The UN biodiversity meeting in Japan has agreed a 10-year plan aimed at preserving nature. Targets for protecting areas of land and sea were weaker than conservation scientists wanted, as was the overall target for slowing biodiversity loss. The meeting settled on targets of protecting 17% of the world's land surface, and 10% of the oceans, by 2020. About 13% of the land is already protected - while the existing target for oceans is already 10%. Link: http://www.cbd.int/cop10/

BOOK OF OCTOBER

                                                     

Title         : The Grand Design

Author     : Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow

Publisher : Bantam Press
Pages       : 208
ISBN        : 0593058305
Price        : $ 28

In the last thirty years of his life Albert Einstein searched for a unified theory - a theory which could describe all the forces of nature in a single framework. But the time was not right for such a discovery in Einstein's day. Neither was the time right when, in 1988, Professor Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time. Now, in this ground-breaking new work The Grand Design, Professor Hawking and renowned science writer Leonard Mlodinow have drawn on forty years of  Hawking's own research and a recent series of extraordinary astronomical observations and theoretical breakthroughs to reveal the long sought truths.

The authors convincingly argue that scientific obsession with formulating a single new model may be misplaced, and that, instead, by synthesising existing theories we may discover the key to finally understanding the universe's deepest mysteries. Written with the clarity and lively style for which Hawking is famous, The Grand Design is an account of Hawking's quest to fuse these different strands of scientific theory. It examines the differences between past and future, explains the nature of reality and asks an all-important question: How far can we go in our search for understanding and knowledge?

The authors write: Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.  The book concludes with the statement that only some universes of the multiple universes (or multiverse) support life forms. We, of course, are located in one of those universes. The laws of nature that are required for life forms to exist appear in some universes by pure chance, Hawking and Mlodinow explain.

Chapters: 1. The Mystery of Being 2. The Rule of Law 3. What is Reality 4. Alternative Histories 5. The Theory of Everything 6. Choosing Our Universe 7. The Apparent Miracle  8. The Grand Design. About the Authors: Professor Hawking is now Director of Research for the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. His books include the bestselling A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell and A Briefer History of Time. Leonard Mlodinow has taught at Cal Tech, written for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and is the author of Euclid's Window, Feynman s Rainbow and Some Time with Feynman.

Review text Courtesy: www.ft.com  http://www.reuters.com, www.qbd.com.au, www. wikipedia.com.



                                                                           

SCIENCE OF SEPTEMBER 2010

Cocoa farmers from West Africa. Scientists decoded Cocoa Tree Genome on 19th September. Picture Courtesy: http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/

September 1: Officials at the Indian Space Research Organization finally announced the instruments for the next lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2. Some of the instruments and suites experts recommend for the orbiter include the Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) and the Solar X-ray monitor (XSM). Both of these payloads are meant to give the orbiter the ability to map out the most interesting elements of the lunar surface in great detail. As far as the experts are concerned, the orbiter could include only two scientific payloads.

September 2: The majestic animal,long perceived as an icon of India,is facing a severe threat from human-animal conflict,lack of movement corridors and trade in ivory,among others. To tackle this problem,the elephant task force constituted by the ministry of environment and forests recommended to the Centre that it be declared a national heritage animal. It also recommended the setting up of a new body called the National Elephant Conservation Authority (NECA) on the lines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

September 3: The fossil of a stocky new dinosaur with two sets of claws on its feet unearthed in Romania has given researchers a window into what European predators looked like in the final years of the Age of Dinosaurs. It prowled Romania during the Late Cretaceous period -- about 90 to 65 million years ago- when warm temperatures and high sea levels fragmented Europe into small islands. The new dinosaur was described in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

September 4: The latest chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians has revealed that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer. This is the strongest evidence that even if the penicillin was invented in 1928, the art of making antibiotics was no secret 2,000 years ago. The research led by Emory University anthropologist George Armelagos and medicinal chemist Mark Nelson of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Inc is published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

September 5: Today is the 25th anniversary of buckyball. A molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere called buckyball. The discovery of buckyball helped lot to understand the chemistry and technological applications in material sciences, electronics and nanotechnologies. The invention of buckyball was made in 1985 and was named buckminsterfullerene after Richard Buckminster Fuller.On this occasion, the search engine giant Google has converted its famous doodle into a buckyball.

September 5: God no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the universe due to a series of developments in physics, according to a new book by Stephen Hawking.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists,why we exist," he writes in The Grand Design. The publisher is Bantam Books. Website: http://bantam-dell.atrandom.com/  

September 6: People have been using antibiotics for nearly 2000 years, suggests a new study, which found large doses of tetracycline embedded in the bones of ancient African mummies. What's more, they probably got it through beer, and just about everyone appears to have drank it consistently throughout their lifetimes, beginning early in childhood. Thestudy was conducted by biological anthropologists at Emory University in Atlanta.The team reported their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.                                                                                                 
September 7:  The first entire genome of an Irish individual has been sequenced. The sequence is reported in BioMed Central's open access journal, Genome Biology and provides insight into the evolutionary history of this distinct lineage. The research team from UCD Conway Institute in conjunction with collaborators from Trinity College Dublin, Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI), Beaumont hospital, the MRC Human Genetics Unit and University of Edinburgh.

September 8: Global software major Microsoft has designed a computer programme that allows you to scan the universe and zoom into outer space through its Windows. Touted as a worldwide telescope, the programme enables students and scholars to conduct astronomical research, promote science education and create entertainment. The data from sky, planets, solar system and the earth are categorised to access information easily. Website: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

September 9: An international consortium of researchers has completed the majority of the genome sequence of the domesticated turkey, publishing it in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology next week. The research team hopes that the turkey genome will provide a model for creating gene- and chromosome-level assemblies. The complete genome sequence, rapidly acquired using 'next-generation' sequencing technology, promises new data for avian researchers and, ultimately  for turkey producers and consumers.

September 10: Six months after a failed test, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the second static testing of its liquid core stage (L110) of Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk -III), according to a press release. The test lasted 200 seconds at ISRO's Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) test facility at Mahendragiri today (September 8, 2010) at 15:50 hrs. L110 is one of the heaviest earth storable liquid stages ever developed by ISRO.

September 11: China is on track to launch its second lunar satellite by year's end, as the country pursues its plans for a manned mission to the moon by 2020. Preparations for the launch of the Chang'e-2 probe, which will go into orbit within 15 kilometres of the moon, are going smoothly as per media.  The lunar probe will test soft-landing and other technologies in preparation for the launch of the Chang'e-3, which is slated for launch in 2013 and aims to be China's first unmanned landing on the moon.

September 12: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may soon approve Genetically Modified Salmon for humans to eat, against consumer advocates who consider the fish a threat to both health and the environment. The panel of experts call it "as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon." The Genetically Modified Salmon is called  AquAdvantage Salmon and is developed by AquaBounty Technologies. The FDA is scheduled to hold public hearings on the issue from Sept. 19 to 21.

September 13: A team from University College Dublin successfully sequenced the entire genetic code of an Irish person for the first time in history. They used sophisticated sequencing technology to map 3.1 billion sub-units of DNA that comprise the human genome. Specifically, it is hoped that experts may finally be able to understand why the Irish are more susceptible to diseases such as cystic fibrosis than other European nationals. The landmark study is published in the journal Genome Biology.

September 14:  Scientists at University of California, Berkeley have engineered electronic skin that can sense touch, in a major step towards next-generation robotics and prosthetic limbs. The lab-tested material responds to almost the same pressures as human skin and with the same speed, they reported in the British journal Nature Materials. The "e-skin" comprises a matrix of nanowires made of Germanium and Silicon rolled onto a sticky polyimide film can respond to chemicals, biological agents and temperature.

September 15: Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, (BARC) is developing mutants lines of wheat and getting ready for testing in the fields of Kenya in Africa, to check if these will be resistant to the virulent strain of wheat stem rust 'Ug99'. The evolving pathogen Ug99 may pose even greater threat to global wheat production than the original Ug99 (identified first in Uganda in 1999), according to Food and Agricultural Organisation. If BARC succeeds it will be a significant development as wheat scientists all over the world

September 16: ISRO is gearing up to launch eight spacecrafts annually to increase revenue and meet global demand, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre Director P.S. Veeraraghavan said on Tuesday. PSLV will carry three satellites and GSLV will carry INSAT 5C, he said. Chandrayaan-2 mission would be launched by GLSV instead of PSLV. In Chandrayaan-2 there would be an orbiter, lander and a rover.

September 17: Scientists developed the world's first artificial ovary. The study is  published in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics, could help thousands of cancer sufferers who become infertile through treatment. The scientists from Brown University on Rhode Island, also said the artificial organs could be used to help discover why some women find it difficult to conceive. The breakthroughs also raise the prospect that women will one day use the techniques to side-step the menopause.

September 18: The protective ozone layer in the Earth's upper atmosphere has stopped thinning and should largely be restored by mid-century thanks to a ban on harmful chemicals, say UN scientists. The Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010 report says a 1987 international treaty that phased out Chloro Fluoro Carbons (CFC) - substances used in refrigerators, aerosol sprays and some packing foams - has been successful. Ozone provides a natural protective filter against harmful ultra-violet rays from the Sun.

September 19: Scientists have sequenced the genetic code of the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao), which they say could triple the yield of the disease-prone crop and transform the lives of millions of poor farmers in Africa and around the developing world who rely on it for their livelihood. The US chocolate firm Mars, working with the computer firm IBM and the US Department of Agriculture, took two years and two months to unlock the genetic code of the tree. Web: http://www.cacaogenomedb.org/

September 20: Scientists have discovered some of world's biggest, strongest spider webs, as wide as 82 feet (25 meters)-about as long as two city buses in Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in Madagascar. Made of the world's strongest known biological material, the web is the product of a new species, the Darwin's Bark Spider, which makes the world's largest webs of any single spider, according to new studies. The findings appear in the Journal of Arachnology and PLoS ONE.

September 21: The timetable for China's first manned moon landing, as well as the launch of a space station, lab and probes to explore Mars and Venus, was announced by scientists over the weekend.China will launch its first manned moon landing in 2025, a probe to Mars by 2013 and to Venus by 2015. China plans to launch the country's first unmanned space laboratory, Tiangong-1, next year, which is expected to accomplish the country's first unmanned docking with Shenzhen-8, a step toward building a space station.

September 22: Scientists have discovered a new species of ape living in the treetops of the rugged mountains along the Vietnamese, Laos and Cambodian borders. The "Yellow-cheeked Crested Gibbon" has been given the name Nomascus annamensis. It is is the seventh Nomascus species to be identified. Van Ngoc Thinh at German Primate Centre which is part of central Germany's Goettingen University, observed the gibbons and wrote up the findings in the Vietnamese Journal of Primatology.

September 23: The United Nations launched the 'Year of the Bat' (2011-2012) hoping a bit of positive publicity can foster better understanding of the role the mammals play in pollination and dispersal of seeds.
From insect-eating bats in Europe that provide important pest control to seed-dispersing bats in the tropics that help sustain rainforests, bats deliver vital ecosystem services. An estimated 134 plants that yield products used by humans depend on bats for seed dispersal or pollination. Website: http://www.yearofthebat.org/

September 24: Scientists said they've discovered fossils in the southern Utah desert of two new dinosaur species closely related to the Triceratops, including one with 15 horns on its large head. The discovery of the new plant-eating species — including Kosmoceratops richardsoni, considered the most ornate-headed dinosaur known to man — was reported  in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE. The other dinosaur, which has five horns and is the larger of the two, was dubbed Utahceratops gettyi.

September 25: Centuries after Leonardo Da Vinci sketched designs of a giant bat-shaped craft that used a pilot's arms and legs to power the wings, Canadian engineering students say they have flown an engineless aircraft that stays aloft by flapping its wings like a bird. International aviation officials are expected to certify next month that "The Snowbird" has made the world's first successful, sustained flight of a human-powered ornithopter. It sustained both altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds, in an 2 August test flight near Toronto.

September 26: Nine scientists were on sunday chosen for the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2010 for their achievement in the field of science and technology, with three of the awardees being women for the first time. The awards were announced at a function to mark the foundation day of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. The CSIR also said its award for S&T Innovations for Rural Development 2009 will go to Indian Oil Corporation Ltd's Research and Development Centre in Faridabad.

September 27: Subhra Chakraborty and her team from the National Institute of Plant Genome Research in New Delhi, India, have "successfully" combined genes from the amaranth plant with those of the common potato, a feat which the team says increases potato protein content by up to 60 percent. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study explains that it helps potatoes to develop high amino acid and protein levels. And they claim that the genetically modified crop is safe for consumption.

September 28: Solar cells that mimic "green leaf" have been created at North Carolina State University where water-gel-based artificial leaves containing chlorophyll produce electricity. The light-sensitive molecules get "excited" by the sun's rays to produce electricity, similar to plant molecules that get excited to synthesize sugars in order to grow, explains Velev, whose work has been published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

September 29: ‘Project Aadhar’, which is seen as the symbol of modern India by the government, was launched by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh as ten adivasis from the tribal area of Tembhli village in Maharashtra received their Unique Identification Number. Four-year-old Hitesh Sonawane became the youngest member to receive the UID card from the Prime Minister. 12 digit numbers will be given to the person as his identity which will be kind of link to all demographic details and bank accounts.

September 30: A decline in pollinating insects in India is resulting in reduced vegetable yields and could limit people's access to a nutritional diet, a study warns. The loss of the natural service could have a long-term impact on the farming sector, which accounts for almost a fifth of the nation's GDP. Globally, pollination is estimated to be worth £141bn ($224bn) each year. The findings were presented at a recent British Ecological Society meeting, held at the University of Leeds.