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| No more Frogs for Torture in Class Rooms http://moef.nic.in/legis/awbi/awbi10.html |
1 December 2011: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has issued guidelines for the discontinuation of dissection and animal experimentation in Zoology and life science courses in a phased manner. UGC encourages introduction of digital technologies in all such educational institutions to teach animal anatomy and physiology. The experimental animal, to the best extent possible, should be procured from laboratory bred sources, especially breeders approved by Committee for Purpose of Care and Supervision of Experimental Animals (CPCSEA), Department of Environment and Forests. Their use will be under the purview of Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC), Removal of animals from their natural habitats should be best avoided.Link: http://www.ugc.ac.in/
2 December 2011: India today successfully test-fired its nuclear capable Agni-I strategic ballistic missile, with a strike range of 700 km, as part of the Army's user trial from the test range at Wheeler Island off Odisha coast.Agni-I is powered by solid propellants, that can be fired from a mobile launcher.Weighing 12 tonnes, Agni-I, can carry payloads up to 1000 kg. It has already been inducted into the Indian Army. Agni-I was developed by advanced systems laboratory (ASL), the premier missile development laboratory of the DRDO in collaboration with Defence Research Development Laboratory (DRDL) and Research Centre Imarat (RCI) and integrated by Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Hyderabad. The last trial of the Agni-I missile was successfully carried out on November 25, 2010 from the same base.Link: http://drdo.gov.in
3 December 2011: Siddhartha Mukherjee, a New York-based cancer physician and graduate of Stanford, Oxford and Harvard, Mukherjee won the Guardian First Book award for his book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A biography of Cancer. The book is "biography" of cancer which traces the disease from the first recorded mastectomy in 500BC to today's cutting edge research. Siddhartha Mukherjee has called his book, a mix of history, memoir and biography, of science and the personal stories of cancer patients. he same book also received Pulitzer prize in the general non-fiction category, last year. Mukherjee is an oncologist at the Columbia University Medical Center. Link:http://sidmukherjee.com
4 December 2011: According to an analysis released by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists, the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year. Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, .In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009, but rose by just over 4 percent last year. The United States was surpassed several years ago by China, where emissions grew 10.4 percent in 2010, with that country injecting 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emissions are usually measured by the weight of carbon they contain. Link: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org
5 December 2011:In another step toward finding Earth-like planets that may hold life, the Kepler Space Telescope has confirmed its first-ever planet in a habitable zone outside our solar system. The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Spinning around its star some 600 light years away and orbits its Sun-like star every 290 days. Its near-surface temperature is presumed to be about 72 degrees 22 Celsius. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition. Link: http://kepler.nasa.gov
6 December 2011: Within 5 years, a woolly mammoth will likely be cloned, according to scientists who have just recovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone. Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum, and colleagues are now analyzing the marrow, which they extracted from the mammoth's femur, found in Siberian permafrost soil. Grigoriev and his team, along with Japan's Kinki University, have announced that they will launch a joint research project next year aimed at recreating the enormous mammal, which went extinct around 10,000 years ago. Link: http://www.kindai.ac.jp/english
7 December 2011: The following Indian scientists have been selected for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Vishva Dixit of Genentech in South San Francisco; Shree K. Nayar of Columbia University in New York; Amita Sehgal of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Raghunath A. Mashelkar of CSIR, India and president of the Global Research Alliance in Pretoria, South Africa. These are among a total 212 new members selected to join one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research. All the new members earned election for extraordinary individual achievement and are among the world's most influential artists and scholars. Link: http://www.amacad.org
8 December 2011: Bridging the gap between industry requirements and education imparted by colleges in the country will be one of the main agenda of the 26th Indian Engineering Congress (IEC). The event, which will be held between December 15 and December 18, will reportedly host more than 5,000 participants from India
9 December 2011: As part of its dynamic partnership with India , the United States , through the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), supports evidence-driven and innovative approaches to support India U.S. has funded numerous demonstration projects that subsequently have been adopted and scaled up by the government of India
10 December 2011: Sky-lovers and amateurs will get to witness the celestial event today evening. Starting 7.35pm, the total eclipse of the moon can be sighted from Kolkata and rest of the country for 51 minutes till 8.28pm. The eclipse will be visible from Asia and Australia. Europe and Africa will miss the early eclipse phases because they occur before moonrise. The eclipse will not be visible from South America or Antarctica. After December 10, the next opportunity to observe a total lunar eclipse will be on July 27, 2018. Though there will be another total lunar eclipse on January 31, 2018, the whole country will not experience the total lunar eclipse in its entirety. Link: http://www.astronomia.org
11 December 2011: Durban climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement today on a far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change.It would take effect by 2020 at the latest.Currently, only industrial countries have legally binding emissions targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The deal also set up the bodies that will collect, govern and distribute tens of billions of dollars a year for poor countries. Other documents in the package lay out rules for monitoring and verifying emissions reductions, protecting forests, transferring clean technologies to developing countries and scores of technical issues. The package gives new life to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.Link: http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com
12 December 2011: The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and other allied bodies which are a part of the worldwide 30-m telescope (TMT) are expecting a go-ahead from the Government of India for the project by 2013. The TMT project will take eight more years to get operational, but by the end of next year, the technical demo will be made by IIA to the Department of Science and Technology. The TMT will see “first light” and be operational around 2020. Currently, one of the largest telescopes in the world is the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, which has two 10-m telescopes, and the costs for a single night's viewing are high.The TMT will be placed on Mauna Kea, the highest point in the state of Hawaii. Link: http://www.tmt.org
13 December 2011: The list of elements chemistry students have to memorize is about to get longer. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has announced names for the two newest elements on the periodic table: Flerovium (FL) and Livermorium (Lv). The newly named elements fit in the 114 and 116 spots, down in the lower-right corner of the periodic table, and were officially accepted to the periodic table back in June.For element 114, scientists tried out the name Ununquadium before settling on Flerovium in honor of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, where the element was synthesized, the Silicon Valley Mercury News reported. In 1997, Lawrencium was named after the lab's founder, E.O. Lawrence.Link: http://www.taprobanica.lk/
14 December 2011: One hundred years ago today, Roald Amundsen arrived at the South Pole and planted the Norwegian flag on the spot. Anyone who has read Roland Huntford's 1979 book Scott and Amundsen: The Race to the South Pole is pretty much convinced that Amundsen was an exploring genius, learning from the Inuit how to dress, how to eat, how to use dogs and travel in comfort and style, while another explorer Falcon Scott was there who used horses and automobiles unsuited for the campaign, and had nobody to blame but himself for his death. However, now on the hundredth anniversary of Amundsen's victory, Scott's reputation is on the rise again. Link: http://www.south-pole.com
15 December 2011: Aligarh Muslim University has launched a website focusing exclusively to the field of Information Technology (IT). The "Subject Information Gateway in Information Technology" (SIGIT) provides easy access to quality information to meet the requirements of the scientific and academic community in the digital era. The website also includes e-journals, e-books, list of IT schools, their curriculum links, databases, free as well as open source software, research projects, electronic theses and dissertations, programming languages, forthcoming conferences/workshops, fellowships and grants, training programmes in IT, etc.Link: http://www.itsubjectgateway.com
16 December 2011: The most coveted prize in particle physics - the Higgs boson - may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.The particle is purported to be the means by which everything in the Universe obtains its mass.Scientists say that two experiments at the LHC see hints of the Higgs at the same mass, fuelling huge excitement.But the LHC does not yet have enough data to claim a discovery.Finding the Higgs would be one of the biggest scientific advances of the last 60 years. It is crucial for allowing us to make sense of the Universe, but has never been observed by experiments.Higgs Boson is the significant missing component of the "Standard Model" of the Universe.Link:http://public.web.cern.ch
17 December 2011: The Malayali could have a genetic link to the Caucasians more than any other race on earth, a genome sequencing project by a Kochi-based laboratory has revealed. The complete sequencing of the first Malayali genome by SciGenom Labs provides a window into the genetic diversity of this linguistic group. The term Caucasian generally refers to the white race. The announcement of the complete sequencing of the first Malayali genome came on the second day of a conference on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) hosted by the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in rivandrum. SciGenom claimed that this was the first complete genome of a female from South India. Link: http://www.scigenom.com
18 December 2011: Enterovirus 71 (EV71), one of the major causative agents for hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), was reported from Kondotty in Malappuram Dist.,which was first incident in Kerala. It sometimes associated with severe central nervous system diseases and also has the potential to cause severe neurological disease. District Health Department issued special alert to medical team.Enterovirus 71 (EV71) is a virus of the Enteroviridae family notable for its etiological role in epidemics of severe neurological diseases in children.It was first isolated and characterized from cases of neurological disease in California in 1969.There is no vaccine or antiviral agent known to be effective in treating or preventing EV71infection. Link:http://arogyakeralam.gov.in
19 December 2011:A new species of horned dinosaur was announced this month by an international team of scientists - nearly 100 years after the initial discovery of the fossil.Spinops sternbergorum lived approximately 76 million years ago in Alberta, Canada. Spinops was a plant-eater that weighed around 2 tons when alive, a smaller cousin of Triceratops.Parts of the skulls of at least two Spinops were discovered in 1916 by Charles H. and Levi Sternberg, a father-and-son fossil collecting team.It wasn't until paleontologists recognized the importance of the fossil that the bones were finally cleaned for study.Spinops sternbergorum (pronounced "SPIN-ops stern-berg-OR-uhm") means "Sternbergs' spine face."Link:http://www.cmnh.org
20 December 2011: A group of scientists from the UK, China, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have jointly announced the complete sequencing of the Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) and Saker Falcon (Falco cherrug) genomes at the 2nd International Festival of Falconry held in Al Ain, UAE.The study is a part of the Falcon Genome Project, launched and funded by the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi. In particular, the Saker is the national bird of the UAE. In the past century, both falcons have been listed as endangered species with population declines.In the late 1990s, the Peregrine was removed from the endangered species list, but the Saker is still facing this challenge. Link: http://www.falcons.co.uk
21 December 2011: Bureau of Indian Standards based on the past seismic history, grouped the country into four seismic zones. Of these, Zone V is the most seismically active region, while zone II is the least.Broadly, Zone-V comprises of entire northeastern India, Zone-IV covers remaining parts of Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Zone-III comprises of Kerala, Goa, Lakshadweep, remaining parts of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and West Bengal, parts of Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu and Karnataka. Zone-II covers remaining parts of the country.Link: http://www.portal.gsi.gov.in
23 December 2011: Comic legend Stan Leethe, the driving force behind some of the world’s popular comic book heroes like Super-Man, X Men, created first Indian superhero.Lee in collaboration with local artists and writers has created the hero Chakra – The Invincible, that is expected to be lauched in India by April 2012 and would be distributed in India by Liquid Comics' website ‘Graphic India’.The series follows ‘Chakra’ the alter ego of Raju Rai, a genius who is determined to use science to unlock the secrets of human potential. He develops a technically-enhanced suit that activates the mystical chakras of the body unleashing newfound abilities and powers. Link: http://www.liquidcomics.com
24 December 2011: Scientists at the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling in Irvine says they have recorded drops in groundwater levels in many places across the globe during the past nine years. Water was found to be disappearing beneath southern Argentina, western Australia and stretches of the United States. The findings raise concerns farmers are pumping too much water out of the ground in dry regions, researchers said. The drop is especially severe in parts of India, the Middle East, China and California where expanding agriculture has increased water demand. People are using groundwater faster than it can be naturally recharged.Current water use in many areas has become unsustainable. Link: http://www.ucchm.org
25 December 2011:Our present chronology by which the years are numbered as AD or BC was conceived by the Roman abbot "Augustus" Dionysius Exiguus around 523 A.D. Unfortunately, Dionysius made a significant errors in his calculations. The first was his placement of 1 A.D. immediately following 1 B.C., completely disregarding the mathematically required 0 in between. Back then in Europe, zero was not considered a number. So, for instance, the year we now call 3 B.C., is actually it is 2 BC numerically speaking.In ancient times, Dec. 25 was the date of the lavish Roman 'festival of Saturnalia'. It has been said that early Christians chose the date of the Saturnalia in order to avoid attention and thus escape persecution.Link: http://www.simpletoremember.com
26 December 2011: Inaugurating the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of Ramanujan at the University of Madras, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has declared his birthday, that is December 22, as the National Mathematics Day and the year 2012 as a whole as the National Mathematical Year.India has a long and glorious tradition of mathematics that we need to encourage and nurture.A genius like Ramanujan would shine bright even in the most adverse of circumstances, but we should be geared to encourage and nurture good talent like that of Ramanujan. Link: http://www.archive.org
27 December 2011: A new species of snake has been named after Varad Giri, deputy director (collections) and curator of the herpetological collection, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) - Dendrepahis girii. Herpetological experts from Germany, Dr Gernot Vogel and Dr Johan Van Rooijen have written about the Dendrepahis girii in their scientific research paper, which was published in Taprobanica journal on December 20. The new species was discovered in 2001, by Ashok Captain and Kedar Bhide, from Amboli in Sindhudurg, in Konkan region of Maharashtra.When Dr Vogel had visited BNHS in 2009, Giri had shown him his discovery. Based on the data Dr Rooijen named the snake after Giri.Link: http://www.taprobanica.lk
28 December 2011: In the three weeks that followed Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy’s discovery on Nov. 27, the astronomical world is enjoying the new comet Lovejoy, officially known as C/2011 W3. Comet Lovejoy comes from an exceptional lineage, as a member of the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets: Its brightest relatives, such as the Great Comets of 1843, 1882, and 1965, became visible in full daylight to the unaided eye when near the Sun.Obvious and bright as the tail was, the comet lacked a discernable nucleus, bringing to mind another Kreutz comet, the Great Southern Comet of 1887, also known as the “Headless Wonder.” Australian comet discoverer David Seargent saw the comet on Dec. 23 and described it, as “The Great Christmas Comet of 2011”. Link: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
29 December 2011: Cyclone Thane has made landfall on the southern Indian coast, battering the area with rain and strong winds, officials say. Winds of 140km/h (86mph) have damaged houses and uprooted trees and electricity poles.The wind speed is around 140 km/h at Pondicherry and Cuddalore.Waves 1.5m high are hitting the shores. Last year, at least 23 people were killed when the southern coast was battered by Cyclone Laila, the worst storm to hit the state of Andhra Pradesh in 14 years. More than 50,000 people had to be evacuated. Andhra Pradesh saw its worst cyclone in 1977 in which more than 10,000 people were killed. India's weather office had earlier warned residents along parts of the country's southeastern coast that Cyclone Thane is likely to cause heavy rains and gale-force winds. Link: http://www.imd.gov.in/
30 December 2011: China has declared its intent to send a man to the moon, aiming to become the first nation to reach the lunar surface since December 1972 when American astronauts landed as part of the Apollo 17 mission. The landing is not expected until at least 2020 but human space flight will be achieved by 2016. The country hopes to complete it first space station in the same year, a goal encouraged by the successful mission to dock two unmanned spacecraft in orbit last month. Two Chinese flights are expected in the 2012, nine years after Yang Liwei became the first “taikonaut” to reach space. Although the space programme is being run by the Chinese military, the officials say, country has no ambitions for weapons in space. Link: http://www.cnsa.gov.cn
31 Dececember 2011: The first of two gravity-mapping NASA spacecrafts (GRAIL - Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), entered into orbit around the moon today, marking a New Year's arrival in a mission that will study Earth's nearest neighbor from crust to core.After gradually circling down to super-low orbits, the pair will zip around the moon in tandem, working together to map the lunar gravity field in unprecedented detail.Scientists expect the probes' measurements to help unlock some longstanding mysteries about the moon's composition and evolution-mysteries that remain unsolved despite more than 100 missions to the moon over the years.Link: http://moon.mit.edu
12 December 2011: The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and other allied bodies which are a part of the worldwide 30-m telescope (TMT) are expecting a go-ahead from the Government of India for the project by 2013. The TMT project will take eight more years to get operational, but by the end of next year, the technical demo will be made by IIA to the Department of Science and Technology. The TMT will see “first light” and be operational around 2020. Currently, one of the largest telescopes in the world is the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, which has two 10-m telescopes, and the costs for a single night's viewing are high.The TMT will be placed on Mauna Kea, the highest point in the state of Hawaii. Link: http://www.tmt.org
13 December 2011: The list of elements chemistry students have to memorize is about to get longer. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has announced names for the two newest elements on the periodic table: Flerovium (FL) and Livermorium (Lv). The newly named elements fit in the 114 and 116 spots, down in the lower-right corner of the periodic table, and were officially accepted to the periodic table back in June.For element 114, scientists tried out the name Ununquadium before settling on Flerovium in honor of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, where the element was synthesized, the Silicon Valley Mercury News reported. In 1997, Lawrencium was named after the lab's founder, E.O. Lawrence.Link: http://www.taprobanica.lk/
14 December 2011: One hundred years ago today, Roald Amundsen arrived at the South Pole and planted the Norwegian flag on the spot. Anyone who has read Roland Huntford's 1979 book Scott and Amundsen: The Race to the South Pole is pretty much convinced that Amundsen was an exploring genius, learning from the Inuit how to dress, how to eat, how to use dogs and travel in comfort and style, while another explorer Falcon Scott was there who used horses and automobiles unsuited for the campaign, and had nobody to blame but himself for his death. However, now on the hundredth anniversary of Amundsen's victory, Scott's reputation is on the rise again. Link: http://www.south-pole.com
15 December 2011: Aligarh Muslim University has launched a website focusing exclusively to the field of Information Technology (IT). The "Subject Information Gateway in Information Technology" (SIGIT) provides easy access to quality information to meet the requirements of the scientific and academic community in the digital era. The website also includes e-journals, e-books, list of IT schools, their curriculum links, databases, free as well as open source software, research projects, electronic theses and dissertations, programming languages, forthcoming conferences/workshops, fellowships and grants, training programmes in IT, etc.Link: http://www.itsubjectgateway.com
16 December 2011: The most coveted prize in particle physics - the Higgs boson - may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.The particle is purported to be the means by which everything in the Universe obtains its mass.Scientists say that two experiments at the LHC see hints of the Higgs at the same mass, fuelling huge excitement.But the LHC does not yet have enough data to claim a discovery.Finding the Higgs would be one of the biggest scientific advances of the last 60 years. It is crucial for allowing us to make sense of the Universe, but has never been observed by experiments.Higgs Boson is the significant missing component of the "Standard Model" of the Universe.Link:http://public.web.cern.ch
17 December 2011: The Malayali could have a genetic link to the Caucasians more than any other race on earth, a genome sequencing project by a Kochi-based laboratory has revealed. The complete sequencing of the first Malayali genome by SciGenom Labs provides a window into the genetic diversity of this linguistic group. The term Caucasian generally refers to the white race. The announcement of the complete sequencing of the first Malayali genome came on the second day of a conference on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) hosted by the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in rivandrum. SciGenom claimed that this was the first complete genome of a female from South India. Link: http://www.scigenom.com
18 December 2011: Enterovirus 71 (EV71), one of the major causative agents for hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), was reported from Kondotty in Malappuram Dist.,which was first incident in Kerala. It sometimes associated with severe central nervous system diseases and also has the potential to cause severe neurological disease. District Health Department issued special alert to medical team.Enterovirus 71 (EV71) is a virus of the Enteroviridae family notable for its etiological role in epidemics of severe neurological diseases in children.It was first isolated and characterized from cases of neurological disease in California in 1969.There is no vaccine or antiviral agent known to be effective in treating or preventing EV71infection. Link:http://arogyakeralam.gov.in
19 December 2011:A new species of horned dinosaur was announced this month by an international team of scientists - nearly 100 years after the initial discovery of the fossil.Spinops sternbergorum lived approximately 76 million years ago in Alberta, Canada. Spinops was a plant-eater that weighed around 2 tons when alive, a smaller cousin of Triceratops.Parts of the skulls of at least two Spinops were discovered in 1916 by Charles H. and Levi Sternberg, a father-and-son fossil collecting team.It wasn't until paleontologists recognized the importance of the fossil that the bones were finally cleaned for study.Spinops sternbergorum (pronounced "SPIN-ops stern-berg-OR-uhm") means "Sternbergs' spine face."Link:http://www.cmnh.org
20 December 2011: A group of scientists from the UK, China, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have jointly announced the complete sequencing of the Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) and Saker Falcon (Falco cherrug) genomes at the 2nd International Festival of Falconry held in Al Ain, UAE.The study is a part of the Falcon Genome Project, launched and funded by the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi. In particular, the Saker is the national bird of the UAE. In the past century, both falcons have been listed as endangered species with population declines.In the late 1990s, the Peregrine was removed from the endangered species list, but the Saker is still facing this challenge. Link: http://www.falcons.co.uk
21 December 2011: Bureau of Indian Standards based on the past seismic history, grouped the country into four seismic zones. Of these, Zone V is the most seismically active region, while zone II is the least.Broadly, Zone-V comprises of entire northeastern India, Zone-IV covers remaining parts of Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Zone-III comprises of Kerala, Goa, Lakshadweep, remaining parts of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and West Bengal, parts of Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu and Karnataka. Zone-II covers remaining parts of the country.Link: http://www.portal.gsi.gov.in
22 December 2011: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is sharing its knowledge regarding satellites with the common man. In a unique initiative to spread awareness about how a satellite works and affects our lives, ISRO has put a documentary film on its website. It can be downloaded by anyone who is interested in space science. The film is on Megha-Tropiques, the satellite launched into space in October. The film is 15.2 minutes, including four minutes of animation.After shooting the assembly of satellite at ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC)-Bangalore in early September, the raw footage was brought here to DECU for final editing and dubbing. Link: http://www.isro.org
23 December 2011: Comic legend Stan Leethe, the driving force behind some of the world’s popular comic book heroes like Super-Man, X Men, created first Indian superhero.Lee in collaboration with local artists and writers has created the hero Chakra – The Invincible, that is expected to be lauched in India by April 2012 and would be distributed in India by Liquid Comics' website ‘Graphic India’.The series follows ‘Chakra’ the alter ego of Raju Rai, a genius who is determined to use science to unlock the secrets of human potential. He develops a technically-enhanced suit that activates the mystical chakras of the body unleashing newfound abilities and powers. Link: http://www.liquidcomics.com
24 December 2011: Scientists at the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling in Irvine says they have recorded drops in groundwater levels in many places across the globe during the past nine years. Water was found to be disappearing beneath southern Argentina, western Australia and stretches of the United States. The findings raise concerns farmers are pumping too much water out of the ground in dry regions, researchers said. The drop is especially severe in parts of India, the Middle East, China and California where expanding agriculture has increased water demand. People are using groundwater faster than it can be naturally recharged.Current water use in many areas has become unsustainable. Link: http://www.ucchm.org
25 December 2011:Our present chronology by which the years are numbered as AD or BC was conceived by the Roman abbot "Augustus" Dionysius Exiguus around 523 A.D. Unfortunately, Dionysius made a significant errors in his calculations. The first was his placement of 1 A.D. immediately following 1 B.C., completely disregarding the mathematically required 0 in between. Back then in Europe, zero was not considered a number. So, for instance, the year we now call 3 B.C., is actually it is 2 BC numerically speaking.In ancient times, Dec. 25 was the date of the lavish Roman 'festival of Saturnalia'. It has been said that early Christians chose the date of the Saturnalia in order to avoid attention and thus escape persecution.Link: http://www.simpletoremember.com
26 December 2011: Inaugurating the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of Ramanujan at the University of Madras, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has declared his birthday, that is December 22, as the National Mathematics Day and the year 2012 as a whole as the National Mathematical Year.India has a long and glorious tradition of mathematics that we need to encourage and nurture.A genius like Ramanujan would shine bright even in the most adverse of circumstances, but we should be geared to encourage and nurture good talent like that of Ramanujan. Link: http://www.archive.org
27 December 2011: A new species of snake has been named after Varad Giri, deputy director (collections) and curator of the herpetological collection, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) - Dendrepahis girii. Herpetological experts from Germany, Dr Gernot Vogel and Dr Johan Van Rooijen have written about the Dendrepahis girii in their scientific research paper, which was published in Taprobanica journal on December 20. The new species was discovered in 2001, by Ashok Captain and Kedar Bhide, from Amboli in Sindhudurg, in Konkan region of Maharashtra.When Dr Vogel had visited BNHS in 2009, Giri had shown him his discovery. Based on the data Dr Rooijen named the snake after Giri.Link: http://www.taprobanica.lk
28 December 2011: In the three weeks that followed Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy’s discovery on Nov. 27, the astronomical world is enjoying the new comet Lovejoy, officially known as C/2011 W3. Comet Lovejoy comes from an exceptional lineage, as a member of the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets: Its brightest relatives, such as the Great Comets of 1843, 1882, and 1965, became visible in full daylight to the unaided eye when near the Sun.Obvious and bright as the tail was, the comet lacked a discernable nucleus, bringing to mind another Kreutz comet, the Great Southern Comet of 1887, also known as the “Headless Wonder.” Australian comet discoverer David Seargent saw the comet on Dec. 23 and described it, as “The Great Christmas Comet of 2011”. Link: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
29 December 2011: Cyclone Thane has made landfall on the southern Indian coast, battering the area with rain and strong winds, officials say. Winds of 140km/h (86mph) have damaged houses and uprooted trees and electricity poles.The wind speed is around 140 km/h at Pondicherry and Cuddalore.Waves 1.5m high are hitting the shores. Last year, at least 23 people were killed when the southern coast was battered by Cyclone Laila, the worst storm to hit the state of Andhra Pradesh in 14 years. More than 50,000 people had to be evacuated. Andhra Pradesh saw its worst cyclone in 1977 in which more than 10,000 people were killed. India's weather office had earlier warned residents along parts of the country's southeastern coast that Cyclone Thane is likely to cause heavy rains and gale-force winds. Link: http://www.imd.gov.in/
31 Dececember 2011: The first of two gravity-mapping NASA spacecrafts (GRAIL - Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), entered into orbit around the moon today, marking a New Year's arrival in a mission that will study Earth's nearest neighbor from crust to core.After gradually circling down to super-low orbits, the pair will zip around the moon in tandem, working together to map the lunar gravity field in unprecedented detail.Scientists expect the probes' measurements to help unlock some longstanding mysteries about the moon's composition and evolution-mysteries that remain unsolved despite more than 100 missions to the moon over the years.Link: http://moon.mit.edu
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