SCIENCE OF THE MONTH: NOVEMBER 2011

Danica Mae Camacho, Philippine's symbolic 7 billionth baby  

1 November 2011:  India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh greeted the arrival of the world's seven billionth baby, yesterday morning . The symbolic seven billionth baby is a girl child named Nargis, born to Ajay and Veenita Yadav of Dhanaur village in Mall block on the outskirts of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. Celebrations were also being held in the Philippines, where Danica May Camacho was named the seven billionth baby.In Bangladesh, authorities named another baby girl Oishee as the world's seven billionth child. With countries across the world, including Combodia, staking claim to being home to the seven billionth baby, UN Chief Ban Ki Moon said his office would not be able to pin-point who the world's seven billionth inhabitant is and where the baby was born. Link: http://planindia.org

2 November 2011: The Forest Department of Kerala has just completed the first-ever ornithological survey for the Malabar region recording 341 species of birds.The survey spaned locations in North Kerala, which covers Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasargode districts.Yellow-browed Bulbul (iole indica) is credited with the highest density (122.4 birds/sq km).22 of the 341 species surveyed belong to globally-threatened category as notified by IUCN. Alarmingly, of the 22 threatened species 17 are residents and, of which 9 are specifically endemic to Western Ghat. The survey was conducted by an efficient team of five ornithologists led by Shri.C.Sasikumar. Link: http://www.keralaforest.org

3 November 2011: A group of thirty-one Indian scientists from Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Institutes, State Agricultural Universities and Banaras Hindu University, have achieved a break through in decoding the genome of Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan), the second most important pulse crop of India. The pulses variety also known as 'Arhar' and 'Tur'is an important grain legume crop of India. About 85% of the world Pigeonpea is produced and consumed in India where it is a key crop for food and nutritional security of the people. India imports Pigeonpea from Myanmar which is the second largest producer.This is the first plant genome sequenced entirely through a network of Indian institutions. Link: http://www.nrcpb.org

4 November 2011: The genome of Wheat- the most important crop globally - will be cracked within the next three years. Indian scientists have joined 16 other nations - the US, the UK, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Norway, Israel, Turkey, Russia, China, Japan, Australia and Argentina - in the initiative.The department of biotechnology (DBT) has sanctioned about Rs 34 crore for over four years to three institutes - Punjab Agriculture University, ICAR and Delhi University, for the project which is likely to be completed in five years. Wheat has 21 chromosomes and each will be decoded by the 21 Indian scientists. Once wheat's genetic code is cracked, it will help in developing disease-resistant wheat faster. Link:http://www.wheatgenome.org 

5 November 2011: Indian scientists are working on a device to detect tuberculosis (TB) in the early stage of the disease by trapping human breath in air-tight plastic jars. An electric nose that would sniff out sick molecules in a person’s breath is being developed by a four-member research team at the Delhi-based International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) to produce a faster diagnosis of the deadly but curable disease.Late detection of this infectious illness means most patients are treated at advanced stage. Available tests take days, sometimes weeks, to show results. Early diagnosis and timely treatment could potentially save lives, reduce medical costs and prevent the spread of infection. Link: http://www.icgeb.org

6 November 2011: Revolutionizing cancer treatment throughout the world and serving as an excellent example of highly effective patient-oriented research, the Eldorado Cobalt-60 radiation technology, nicknamed the "Cobalt Bomb", was first installed at London Health Science Centre on October 23, 1951. This was world's first cancer treatment with Cobalt-60 radiation took place at Victoria Hospital. This marked an important milestone for both the fight against cancer and LHSC's emergence as a leader in the field of radiotherapy.Cancer treatment technologies have steadily progressed since the introduction of the mega-voltage period in 1951. Today, linear accelerators with more penetrating x-rays and built-in 3D imaging capabilities are used in most developed countries. Link: http://www.lhsc.on.ca

7 November 2011: Almost twenty-eight years after it set up the first permanent research station in the South Polar region, India is all set to commission and occupy third such station, named as 'Bharti', in Antarctica by March next year. After 'Bharti' becomes operational, India will join the league of select nations that have multiple operation stations in the region. The new station is located almost 3,000 km away from the existing 'Maitri' station which has been serving the nation since its inception in 1988-89. India’s first station in Antarctica was Dakshin Gangotri (1983. After decommissioning, it had been marked as a historic site.Link: http://www.ncaor.gov.in

8 November 2011:An 400m-wide (1,300ft) asteroid will pass by the Earth today, closer to it even than the Moon. It poses no danger to the Earth and it will be invisible to the naked eye. Asteroid 2005 YU55's closest approach, at a distance of 325,000km, will be at 2328GMT. It is the closest the asteroid has been in 200 years. It is also the largest space rock fly-by the Earth has seen since 1976; the next visit by such a large asteroid will be in 2028. Two radio telescopes - the Goldstone Observatory in California, US and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, US - will be tracking radio echoes off it in a bid to understand better what it is made of and how it is shaped.Link: http://www.gdscc.nasa.gov

9 November 2011: A recent butterfly survey in the North Wayanad Forest Division organised jointly by the Ferns Naturalists Society, an environment organisation, and the Forest and Wildlife Department reported the sighting of 140 species, including 17 which had not been hitherto reported in the region.Rare species such as Yellow-Jack Sailer and Club Beak were sighted at the Thirunelly reserve forest. Species such as Orange Awlet, Nilgiri Tiger, Tamil Lacewing, and Malabar Banded Swallow-tail were sighted in the Periya reserve forest, Brahmagiri Hills, Hilldale reserve forest, and at the Kunjome forest.The new species in the region included Black-Veign Sergeant, Dark Pierrot, Nilgiri Tiger, Blue Pansy, Common Banded Demon, and Yellow-Jack Sailer. Link: http://www.butterflieskerala.com

10 November 2011: India-born scientist Har Gobind Khorana, who won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, died in United States. He was 89. Khorana was born in 1922 in Raipur village of that part of Punjab which is now part of Pakistan. He was Massachusetts Institute of echnology(MIT)’s Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry emeritus. In 1976, Khorana achieved the synthesis of the first fully functional manmade gene in a living cell. He was among the pioneers of the now-familiar series of three-nucleotide Codons that signal to the cell which amino acids to use in building proteins, for example, Uracil-Cytosine-Uracil, or UCU, codes for the amino acid Serine, while CUC codes for Leucine. Link: http://www.biochem.wisc.edu

11 November 2011: Russia has launched an audacious bid to scoop up rock and dust samples from the Martian moon Phobos and bring them back to Earth for study.The dusty debris should provide fresh insights into the origin of the 27km-wide moon that many scientists suspect may actually be a captured asteroid.The mission is called Phobos-Grunt - "grunt" means "soil" in Russian.The venture is also significant because it is carrying China's first Mars satellite-Yinghuo-1. But as per the latest report, the probe is stuck in its earth orbit as its engines failed to fire.After the booster rocket put the spacecraft on a support orbit around the earth the probe’s own engines were to start to put it on a trajectory to Mars, but they did not. Link: http://www.russianspaceweb.com

12 November 2011: A "forgotten hero" of Scottish science is to be honoured by the Royal Society of Chemistry.It is to announce the award of a chemical landmark plaque to mark the 200th anniversary of James Young's birth in Drygate, Glasgow.By opening the world's first oil refinery, he laid the foundations for the modern oil industry.His innovation in 1851, nine years before the Americans started drilling for oil, created a shale oil boom around the Bathgate refinery in West Lothian.Young also funded philanthropic projects, financing explorer and anti-slavery campaigner David Livingstone's African journeys.But, since his death in 1883, Young's fame has waned. Link: http://www.rsc.org

13 November 2011: Scientists claim to have discovered two huge sunken islands in the Indian Ocean, which once formed part of the last link between India and Australia. A team from Sydney University, Macquarie University and the University of Tasmania say the two islands, about the size of Tasmania, were once part of the supercontinent Gondwana and are more than 1.5 kilometres underwater. The discovery was made while the scientists were mapping the seafloor of the Perth Abyssal Plain.The islands, called "micro continents", were formed when India began to move away from Australia, 130 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Link: http://www.indianoceanhistory.org

14 November 2011: Scientists from Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad have named their newly discovered bacteria as an honour to India and Indian scientists. Bacillus isronensis was named in honour of ISRO while another microbe from a Himalayan glacier was named after CCMB (Bacillus cecembensis).Another microbe from Antarctica was christened as Arthrobacter gangotriensis in memory of Dakshin Gangotri, the first Indian research station set up in Antarctica. One of the microbes found in Indian Ocean was named in honour of the founder-director of CCMB, P.M. Bhargava (Bhargavaea cecembensis).The other names are Indibacter alkaliphilus, Pedobacter himalayensis, Bacillus aryabhattai, Sphingobacterium antarcticus.Link: http://www.ccmb.res.in

15 November 2011: The Jim Corbett National Park here on Tuesday opened its gates to wildlife enthusiasts for a landmark season, having turned 75. The park will now remain open to visitors till June 15 next year.While Corbett has succeeded in recent times in making the surrounding community active stakeholders in its activities, there was a need to frame central-level policies on tourism to solve problems related to sustainable tourism that is currently faced by parks all over India, including Corbett. To mark the platinum jubilee, there is a newly introduced online reservation system for visitors.Visitors looking to book passes for entry to the park can now log in to corbettonline.uk.gov.in to make their reservations. Link: http://www.corbettnationalpark.in

16 November 2011: A team of scientists at the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP) here has developed a new technology to convert environmentally-hazardous plastic into petroleum products. After nearly a decade-long experiments, the team of six scientists of IIP led by its Director Madhukar Omkarnath Garg has managed to achieve a breakthrough in developing a "combination of catalysts" which can convert the plastic either into gasoline or diesel or aromatics along with LPG as a common byproduct. Moreover, the process is completely environmental friendly as no toxic substances are emitted. The unique features of the technology is that liquid fuel- gasoline and diesel, meets Euro III fuel specifications and different products can be obtained from the same raw material simply by changing the catalysts and operating parameters. Link: http://www.iip.res.in

17 November 2011: GP Birla Observatory and Astronomical Research Centre, one of the amateur observatories in the country will be opened in Hyderabad today. The G P Birla Observatory and Astronomical Centre is situated within the sprawling B M Birla Science Centre, which is a tribute to one of the greatest visionaries and philanthropists of India, Padma Bhushan Late Mr. Ganga Prasad Birla. The roof of the building the Astronomical Observatory houses the powerful C-11 Telescope which is an ultra modern compact telescope instrument capable of detecting even Exoplanets. This has been set-up in collaboration with Uranoscope De France. The Observatory is an Indo-French collaborative effort and is one of the few public observatories in India. Link: http://www.birlacorporation.com

18 November 2011: According to scientists from the University of Texas at Austin –a pleasant city by the way– as well as other contributing scientists, they’ve discovered what they believe to be a large body of liquid water on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The body of water is so large, they compare it to the North American Great Lakes. The water could represent a potential habitat for life, and many more such lakes might exist throughout the shallow regions of Europa’s shell, lead author Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, writes in the journal Nature.Based on similar processes seen here on Earth, the researchers developed a four-step model to explain how the features form on Europa. Link: http://www.nature.com

19 November 2011: India’s longest distance travelling train, Dibrugarh-Kanniyakumari Vivek Express was flagged off at Dibrugarh Railway Station, Assam today. The weekly train (15905/15906) will travel a distance of 4,286 kilometres from Dibrugarh railway station to Kanniyakumari through the states of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The train will reach its destination in about 82:30 hours.The train has been christened as Vivek Express in the name of the great saint Swami Vivekananda. Earlier, the longest distance travelling train was the Himsagar Express, which travels from Jammu Tawi to Kanniyakumari, covering a total distance of 3715 kilometres in about 71 hours. Link: http://www.indianrail.gov.in

20 November 2011: Two species of frogs found in Kerala are endangered, a study has found. The Green-eyed Bush Frog and the Resplendent Shrub Frog, found in the Western Ghats and in Munnar, have been listed as ‘critically endangered’ species in the paper published in the November issue of the IUCN magazine.The Bush frog, whose scientific name is Raorchestes chlorosomma, is found in the hilly areas of Munnar. Another is the "Shrub frog" found only in certain parts of Anamudi. Its scientific name is Raorchestes resplendens. The "Shrub frog" was found in 3 sqkm of the Eravikulam National Park in Munnar. Redline Torpedo Barb (Puntius denisnii-colloquially named "Miss Kerala", an ornamental fish found in the Western Ghats and in certain parts of South India, was also termed critically endangered. Link: http://www.iucn.org

21 November 2011: A group of international scientists from India, Tanzania and Thailand are doing a research to find out ideal variety of 'Bitter gourd’ that could beat diabetes.Today, India has the highest rate of diabetes in the world. The city of Hyderabad as been selected for ‘Project bitter Gourd’ as it has emerged as the diabetes capital of the country. As many as 10 hybrids of the Indian bitter gourd are being studied for their germplasm and chemical constituents, particularly Momordicin. The higher the content of Momordicin, the higher is the anti-diabetes effect.Along with the Indian hybrids, 10 hybrids from Thailand are also included in 'Project Bitter Gourd' that is sponsored by the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Centre. Link: http://www.bitter-gourd.org 

22 November 2011: Assam has declared tea as the ‘state drink’ in a bid to encourage the industry. Going one step forward, former president APJ Abdul Kalam described tea as India’s ‘national drink’ saying over 22% of tea produced worldwide is consumed in India. The declaration came at inaugural function of the three-day World Tea Science Congress. Indian Tea Board's main focus in the 12th Plan was to brand Indian tea under one umbrella and one logo. As the country was losing out major markets due to inadequate promotions, she said, an aggressive programme called "555" would be introduced five focus countries for five years and for five identified activities. The five countries are Russia, Kazakhstan, USA, Iraq and Egypt which are the biggest buyers of Indian tea. Link: http://www.tocklai.net/teacongress

23 November 2011: Four of the seven countries bordering the Himalayas, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan have agreed to work together to deal with the harmful effects that climate change is expected to bring to the region. They were meeting at the Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas in Thimphu, Bhutan, last weekend. There, they agreed to work together on issues including food and water security. All four countries rely on melt water from Himalayan glaciers. Historically, Himalayan countries have rarely worked together, but to have a lasting impact, though, the group will need to include China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Link: http://www.bhutanclimatesummit.org.bt/main/index.php

24 November 2011: The first night-flowering orchid known to science has been discovered by botanists on the island of New Britain, near Papua New Guinea. The new species, called Bulbophyllum nocturnum, is the first which has flowers which consistently open up at night and close in the morning, say botanists. It was found by Dutch orchid specialist Ed de Vogel. According to de Vogel, the buds would flower at 10pm before closing again around twelve hours later. The flowers only last one night. Botanists aren't sure why this species flowers after dark but suggest it might be because its pollinators are midges which forage at night.The newly-described orchid belongs to a group of species called Epicrianthes. Link: http://www.kew.org

25 November 2011: Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have released the full genomic sequence of Monarch butterfly. This adds a new fame to this iconic butterfly, which is famous for its ability to travel up to 2,000 miles from North America to central Mexico every fall.  The new genome is the first for any butterfly. It is also the first complete genome of any long-distance migrant.The researchers focused their genome analysis on pathways known to be critical for this migration, including those responsible for vision, the circadian clock, and oriented flight.The genome also revealed the complete set of genes required for synthesizing juvenile hormone.The findings appeared in November 23rd issue of the Cell.Link:http://www.sciencedirect.com 

26 November 2011: Noted professor and Dean of Core Academic Programmes at Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Thanu Padmanabhan, have been selected for the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Prize in Physics for 2011.Thanu Padmanabhan to be honoured with TWAS Award. Padmanabhan has been awarded for developing a thermodynamical perspective in which gravity arises as an emergent phenomenon and for contributing significantly to understand dark energy, TWAS said in a statement. TWAS is an autonomous international organisation, based in Trieste, Italy, that promotes scientific excellence for sustainable development in the South. He is also currently the Chairman of the Astrophysics Commission of International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Link: http://www.iucaa.ernet.in
 
27 November 2011: The world's biggest extraterrestrial explorer, NASA's Curiosity rover, rocketed toward Mars on Saturday on a search for evidence that the red planet might once have been home to itsy-bitsy life. It will take 8 1/2 months for Curiosity to reach Mars following a journey of 354 million miles.An unmanned Atlas V rocket hoisted the rover, officially known as Mars Science Laboratory, into a cloudy late morning sky. A Mars frenzy gripped the launch site, with more than 13,000 guests jamming the space center for NASA's first launch to Earth's next-door neighbor in four years, and the first send-off of a Martian rover in eight years. It is the first astrobiology mission to Mars since the 1970s-era Viking probes. Link: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

28 November 2011: Representatives from 194 countries and thousands NGOs are gathering today in Durban, South Africa, to participate in a new round of climate negotiations, including how to extend the Kyoto Protocol. The Durban Conference, the COP 17, will hold from November 28 to December 9, aiming to make efforts to reduce greenhouse gases emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).Efforts to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed industrialized nations to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a set amount by 2012, have been on hold since the failure of the climate conference in Copenhagen.The conference will also consider ways to raise $100 billion a year for the Green Climate Fund to cope up with global warming.Link: http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com


29 November 2011: The International Cooperation to Sequence the Atlantic Salmon Genome (ICSASG, the "Cooperation") has awarded the Phase II contract for next-generation sequencing and analysis of the Atlantic salmon genome to the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Maryland. JCVI will be sequencing the Salmon genome using next-generation technologies, including assembly to integrate Sanger and next-generation sequence, and comparative genomics. This effort is expected to generate a high-quality resource for those responsible for the management of wild salmon stocks and the salmon aquaculture industry, as well as providing a reference genome for work with other Salmonids. The salmon genome is large and contains repetitive sequences which make it a more difficult sequencing effort. Link: http://web.uvic.ca/grasp/

30 November 2011: The 24th Kerala Science Congress will be held in Kottayam at the Rubber Research Institute of India (RRII), also a co-organiser, at the latter's premises  from January 29 to 31, 2012. The Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment is the primary organiser for the event, which is the only established State-level science congress. The special theme for the impending event is ‘Climate change: Plantation crops and spices of Kerala'. There will be a panel discussion exclusively on ‘Science communication and Journalism'.Particular thrust will be given to encourage young researchers through Young Scientist Awards and the Children's Science Congress. Link: http://ksc.kerala.gov.in/