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| Original Image Courtesy: http://www.lokvani.com/ |
1 April 2011: An exhibition opening in Chennai on today seeks to explore the science behing cricketing incidents and trigger scientific research on the gentleman's game. Organised by the Indian Science Monitor, the exhibition will showcase great cricket controversies and the science behind them. The exhibition will explain the science behind the effect of ball tampering, preparation of a pitch, the effect of sweat on the ball. Indians are yet to understand the science of cricket. Link: http://www.indusarchaeo.com
2 April 2011: Scientists have unveiled the most accurate map of the Earth's gravity, which shows it to be shaped not like a sphere but a potato. Also known as a geoid, the map is the result of two years of orbital surveys by the European Space Agency Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite. The geoid will also assist scienitsts in measuring ocean circulation, changes in sea level and the movement of ice sheets, all of which are affected by climate change. Link: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GOCE/
3 April 2011: Today is the 38th anniversary of the first public call made from a cell phone. The call was made by Martin Cooper the general manager of Motorola's communications systems division. The first cell phones were so big that they were described as a “brick” and weighed 2½ pounds. With the explosion of powerful technology, the cell phone is becoming smaller in size and more and more advanced. Link: http://www.google.com/patentsid=nO8tAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
4 April 2011: April is Global Astronomy Month and this past weekend, Saturn is closest to the Earth in its orbit. There is a phenomenon known as the Seeliger Effect, which might actually be a couple of different effects combining to enhance the brightness of Saturn: Since the Earth is smack dab in the middle of the Sun and Saturn, sunlight is coming from directly behind us and directly at Saturn. And there’s also the phenomenon called coherent backscattering. Link: http://www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/
5 April 2011: New photos from NASA's Messenger spacecraft, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury show that some of its surfaces are extremely cratered. One area of the far north of Mercury had never been seen by previous spacecraft on mere fly-bys. The new images show scatterings of secondary craters. Messenger has been circling Mercury only since March 17. Mercury and Messenger are about 66 million miles from Earth. Link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/index.html
6 April 2011: Tropical mangrove trees are better at storing carbon dioxide than most other forests, and cutting them down unleashes more greenhouse gas than deforestation elsewhere. Mangroves are so efficient at keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that when they are destroyed, they release as much as 10 per cent of all emissions worldwide attributable to deforestation. even though mangroves account for just 0.7 per cent of the tropical forest area. Link: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome
7 April 2011: A team of scientists has developed a new type of atomic clock, which has potential to dramatically improve GPS accuracy and could test the laws of physics.The highly accurate 'optical lattice' atomic clock, developed by Professor Hidetoshi Katori and his team at the University of Tokyo, could also become a useful tool in developing relativistic geodesy and the search for minerals and hydrocarbons. The research is published in Nature Photonics. Link: http://www.nature.com/nphoton/index.html
8 April 2011: Gram-negative bacterial strains with NDM-1 (New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase-1) gene, also called the superbug, have now been detected in drinking water and seepage water samples collected from several sites in New Delhi. Seepage samples were collected from water pools found in streets or rivulets. The findings have been published online in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. NDM-1 was in the news in August last year by the same journal report. Link: http://www.thelancet.com/laninf-about
9 April 2011: The oldest known full-body impression of a flying insect has been found preserved in 300 million-year-old sandstone. Richard Knecht, of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and colleagues, report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The mayfly fossil displaces the previous record-holder from 280-285 million years ago. The fossil was discovered in 2008 when Richard Knecht, then an undergraduate at Tufts University. Link: http://www.pnas.org/
10 April 2011: Almost all the currency notes and coins in circulation in the country may be contaminated with bacteria according to a study published in Current Science. The researchers said 98% of the currency was contaminated, 96% of the coins and 100% of the currency notes were found to be contaminated with different bacterial species, of which Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella spp. and Escherichia coli were considered pathogens, micro-organisms that cause diseases. Link: http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/
11 April 2011: A virus that attacks other viruses has been discovered in a hypersaline lake near Davis station in Antarctica. The virus is only the third ‘Virophage’ discovered. The first one, called Sputnik, was discovered in 2008 and the second one, Mavirus, was discovered earlier this year. The new Virophage, called Organic Lake Virophage or OLV, after the lake in which it was found.The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. Link: http://www.pnas.org/
12 April 2011: It happened 50 years ago today when an air force pilot named Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. It was the Soviet Union's own giant leap for mankind, humiliating America to race for the moon. The handsome Russian with the big smile became a poster boy for the communist world, still a national idol 43 years after his death in a jet training accident, and remembered with enormous affection by the last surviving pioneers of the Soviet space program. Link: http://yurigagarin50.org/
13 April 2011: A rare bacterium has been discovered in the Lonar crater lake sediments in Buldana district of Maharashtra. This could be first biological evidence of the origin of Lonar crater, microbiologist Dr. Dilip Tambekar of Sant Gagdge Baba University claimed. The bacterium Bacillus odysseyi which the scientist discovered was first reported from Mars Odyssey space craft in 2004, he said. U.S. scientists had reported that the bacterium does not have existence on earth. Link: http://www.sgbau.ac.in/
14 April 2011: The surprising discovery of a fossil of a sharp-toothed beast that lurked in what is now the western U.S. more than 200 million years ago is filling a gap in dinosaur evolution. The short snout and slanting front teeth of the find, Daemonosaurus chauliodus had never before been seen in a Triassic era dinosaur. Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and colleagues report the discovery in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Link: http://www.mnh.si.edu/
15 April 2011: In May the World Health Organization will meet to decide on the destroying of the last Smallpox samples left.There are only two remaining samples left, one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and another at a Russian facility in Siberia. The delay in destruction of the samples has been led by the U.S. and Russia, who argue that they could be used in order to create new treatments in the future. Link: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/
16 April 2011: The removal of a massive iceberg from the Mertz glacier in East Antarctica has revealed a huge diversity of new life. The 78-kilometre long iceberg separated from the Mertz glacier after it was rammed by another giant iceberg. Scientists discovered new species of marine life, including sponges and fish as well as sea stars. Oceanographers from the Australian Antarctic Division also found that the salinity of the ocean around the glacier has decreased. Link: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/
17 April 2011: A two-year-old boy from the U.K. has become the only person in the world to be diagnosed with an extra strand in his DNA.Brave Alfie Clamp was born blind and with severe disabilities, which led doctors to carry out various tests.They revealed his seventh chromosome has an extra strand of material which has never been documented anywhere in the world before. Doctors are baffled at his condition, which is so rare it does not have a name. Link: http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/syndication/services.html
18 April 2011: Scientists at National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal and Shere-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Kashmir are striving hard for the clone of Pashmina male goat. The serious shortage of fertile Pashmina male goats is on account of the age-old practice to castrate the male goat in order to achieve more natural fibre from the animal.The natural fibre yielded by the Indian Pashmina goats is considered the finest in the world. Link: http://www.ndri.res.in/19 April 2011: Indian-American doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee's book on cancer has been awarded the Pulitzer prize in the general non-fiction category. Mukherjee's book, The Emperor of All Maladies, recounts the history of the disease and how the war against it is being fought by doctors. The India-born doctor teaches medicine and is a cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Centre. The Pulitzer in the general non-fiction category carries an award of $10,000 (£6,152). Link: http://sidmukherjee.com/
20 April 2011: India's PSLV-C16 rocket today successfully launched into orbit the latest remote sensing satellite Resourcesat-2 that would study and help manage natural resources along with two nano satellites.ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) placed in a 'Polar Sun Synchronous Orbit' Resourcesat-2, Youthsat and X-Sat about 18 minutes after it blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre launch pad in Sriharikota. Link: http://www.isro.org/satellites/irs-p6resourcesat-1.aspx
21 April 2011: In celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers pointed Hubble at an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light. The interaction was imaged on 17 December 2010, with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Link: http://hubblesite.org/
22 April 2011: An event sometimes dreaded by the residents of North East India, is bringing cheer to the people here with bamboo species flowering across the state. The flowering of Bamboo occurs once in 35-40 years across all the forests including Bandipur, Coorg and Dandeli. It is a simultaneous occurrence every 3540 years. As the bamboos die after such gregarious flowering, the seeds sprouted before its death take root within a year. Link: http://iwst.icfre.gov.in/divisions/tip/indextip.html
22 April 2011: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered that the atmosphere on Mars changes dramatically as the tilt of the planet's axis varies. Researchers using the orbiter's ground-penetrating radar identified a large, buried deposit of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, at the Red Planet's south pole. The scientists suspect that much of this carbon dioxide enters the planet's atmosphere and swells when Mars' tilt increases. The findings are published in the journal Science. Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/
23 April 2011: The discovery of four individuals of a new species could shed light on human evolution.
The discovery of the new species of early human, Australopithecus sediba by South African researchers has caused quite a stir. The researchers said that the hominin shows some surprisingly modern traits and its species may even be an ancestor of our own genus. But most thought it important to compare Au. sediba directly with other fossils of early Homo. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_sediba24 April 2011: Chinese scientists have sequenced the genome of the Crested Ibis(Nipponia nippon), an achievement which may aid efforts to protect the endangered bird. By understanding the genetic make-up of the crested ibis, researchers may be able to explain the species' low birth rate and high mortality rate. It was done by researchers from the university and the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) in Shenzhen, China's flagship genome center. Link: http://www.genomics.cn/en/index.php
25 April 2011: Kerala government has declared observation of Anti Endosulfan Day today. Kerala Chief Minister, V S Achutanandan, has declared that he will be observing fast from 10 am to 5 pm today near the Memorial for Martyrs at in Thiruvananthapuram, in support of the state’s demand for the union government to exert pressure on the participating nations to enforce a blanket ban on this insecticide, at the Stockholm Convention Meet being held at Geneva from April 25 to 29. Link: http://www.kerala.gov.in/
26 April 2011: On April 26, 1986, a botched routine safety test at the control room of Reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility led to an explosion and a fire that burned for 10 days. The infamous nuclear accident devastated the lives of millions of people in Western Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine. 25 years on, and the nightmare for thousands of people is still frightening. It remains the world's worst nuclear disaster to date.Link: http://chernobyl.undp.org/english/
In the draft statement, India says that significant adverse health and environmental effects of Endosulfan have not been established. However, the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee of the Convention chose to rely on selective use of data to recommend a ban. Link: http://chm.pops.int/default.aspx
29 April 2011: The Stockholm Convention today approved the draft proposal for elimination of production and use of endosulfan and its isomers worldwide, subject to certain exemptions.Exemptions will apply to 22 crops: cotton, jute, coffee, tea, tobacco, cow peas, beans, tomato, eggplant, onion, potato, chillies, apple, mango, gram, pigeon pea, maize, paddy, wheat, groundnuts and mustard. However, the decision will not be binding on India unless specifically ratified by the country. Link: http://chm.pops.int/default.aspx
30 April 2011: When it makes its final launch, NASA's space shuttle Endeavour will carry will carry the AMS-02 (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) that will search space for some of the biggest mysteries of physics- antimatter and dark matter. The AMS particle detector was built and is operated by an international team from 60 institutes in 16 countries. Scientists at CERN were also focusing on more information about antimatter. Link:http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/shuttleoperations/orbiters/endeavour-info.html
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