2 July 2012: The 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (Physics) in Germany has just been opened by Countess Bettina Bernadotte, President of the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings held every year since 1951, a tradition started by her father, Count Lennart Bernadotte. This year’s theme being Physics, the topics discussed over the next few days will include particle physics, cosmology, energy and climate change.Since 2004, the holders of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel have also held meetings on Lake Constance. This year’s 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is attended by 27 Nobel Laureates and 592 young researchers from 69 countries attended this unique forum.Link:http://www.lindau-nobel.org
3 July 2012: The genome of the Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) has been sequenced and it reveals commonalities with other large-brained mammals.Last fall, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine found 228 gene sequences that had changed significantly relative to other mammals. About 10% of those relate to the nervous system.Another set corresponds to genes that in the human brain are related to brain certain disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.The team suggests this relates to characteristics that indicate underlying evolutionary processe that shaped the otherwise widely distinct species. Link:https://www.hgsc.bcm.edu
4 July 2012:CERN scientists reporting from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have claimed the discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson.The particle has been the subject of a 45-year hunt to explain how matter attains its mass.Both of the Higgs boson-hunting experiments at the LHC see a level of certainty in their data worthy of a "discovery".More work will be needed to be certain that what they see is a Higgs, however.The results announced at Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research), home of the LHC in Geneva, were met with loud applause and cheering.Prof Peter Higgs, after whom the particle is named, wiped a tear from his eye as the teams finished their presentations in the CERN auditorium. Link:http://press.web.cern.ch
5 July 2012:A frog has been named after Prince Charles in a reversal of the usual fairytale fortunes for an amphibian.Hyloscirtus princecharlesi, the frog named after Prince Charles.The rare species of Ecuadorian stream frog has been named Hyloscirtus princecharlesi in honour of the royal's environmental campaigning over the years.The brown-coloured amphibian with large orange blotches was discovered by Ecuadorian scientist Dr Luis A Coloma four years ago among preserved museum specimens.Charles has been campaigning for decades to help save the world's remaining rainforests, giving major speeches in the rainforest nations of Brazil and Indonesia on the subject.
Link:http://www.mapress.com
6 July 2012:South Korea's proposal to resume whaling for scientific research has angered other Asian countries and conservationists who said the practice would skirt a global ban on whale hunting.Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would fight the proposal, which was made on Wednesday at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Panama City, while the United States said it planned to take the matter up with the South Korean government.Critics said the move to pursue whaling in domestic waters was modeled on Japan's introduction of scientific whaling after the IWC imposed a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.South Korea says whaling is a long-standing cultural tradition.Link:http://iwcoffice.org
7 July 2012:In a 2010 Science journal publication, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology fellow in residence at the US Geological Survey, claimed that the GFAJ-1(GFAJ stands for "Give Felisa a Job") bacterium when starved of phosphorus is capable of substituting arsenic for a small percentage of its phosphorus and sustain its growth.But now, the same journal, Science, released two papers that rip apart the original research.One team, led by Rosemary Redfield of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, reports that arsenic does not contribute to the bacteria's growth.The other paper, from Swiss researchers, finds the bacteria to be highly resistant to the poisonous effects of arsenic but still dependent on phosphorus to grow.Link:http://www.ironlisa.com
8 July 2012:India is all set to give the go-ahead for an ambitious mission to Mars, expected in November next year. According to ISRO officials, a significant amount of work on the planned Mars mission has been completed and scientific payloads have been short-listed.The project report for Indian Mars orbiter mission has been submitted for government approval.The mission envisages launching an orbiter around Mars using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle ( PSLV-XL). The orbiter will be placed in an orbit of 500 x 80,000 km around MARS and will have a provision to carry nearly 25 kg of scientific payloads on-board.The tentative scientific objective for the Mars mission will be to focus on life, climate, geology, origin, evolution and sustainability of life on the planet.Link:http://www.isro.org
9 July 2012:Dabbling in e-waste may just be the next gold rush.Electronic machines use so much of gold and silver that their waste would make a profitable business, said experts at a meeting organised by the United Nations University and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative in Accra, Ghana. Precious metals such as gold have wide use in electronics because they are efficient conductors of electricity.In fact, experts at the Ghana meeting said that over 320 tons of gold and over 7,500 tons of silver are used in electronic and electrical products worldwide.As recycling methods for e-waste are poor (50% of the gold in e-waste is lost due to crude dismantling processes in developing countries as compared to 25% in developed countries), they cause environmental pollution.Link:http://www.gesi.org
10 July 2012:The oldest and largest meteorite crater ever found on Earth was discovered from Greenland.The crater was "discovered" by Adam Garde, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland as he pored over maps showing nickel and platinum abundance in the target region of West Greenland.Garde think the crater was formed 3 billion years ago.The impact crater currently measures about 100 kilometers from one side to another.The team has calculated it was caused by a meteorite 30 km wide.There were deposits of a melted mineral called K-feldspar (or potassium-feldspar).The discovery is published the results in the July issue of Earth and Planetary ScienceLetters.
Link:http://www.journals.elsevier.com
11 July 2012:Today researchers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope announced the detection of P5, the smallest moon yet detected orbiting Pluto, just 6 to 15 miles (10 to 24 kilometers) across. P5 brings Pluto's known satellite tally to five, and it comes just a year after Hubble spotted moon number four, the similarly diminutive P4.These two recent discoveries show that the Pluto system is more crowded than scientists had thought.So NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which is due to fly by the dwarf planet in 2015, may have to watch its step. The probe is traveling so fast that a particle the size of a BB could destroy it, so researchers are worried about the broad debris field that Pluto's moons may have spawned.Link:http://www.nasa.gov
12 July 2012:The first satellite TV broadcast celebrates its 50th anniversary. Telstar was the first communications satellite to broadcast a television image.Telstar’s July 1962 launch marked the birth of telecommunications, sending the first global transmission of a television signal. Some of the first public video from the satellite included remarks from then-President John F. Kennedy, and a baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs.The satellite’s launch even inspired an instrumental song by an instrumental group known as The Tornados.The satellite handled over 400 telephone, telegraph, facsimile and television transmissions in its short lifespan. Telstar is still orbiting Earth today but stopped functioning in November 1962. Link:http://www.nasa.gov
13 July 2012:India is markedly absent in Euroscience Open Forum 2012, Europe’s largest science conference. India has recently announced its plans to start building a 300 MWe thorium reactor as a part India’s three-stage programme to utilise its vast thorium reserves that can feed thorium reactors for hundreds of years. But in the absence of any commercial thorium reactor anywhere in the world, a team of nuclear scientists and engineers decided to build the first big thorium reactor from scratch.The proposed reactor will require 52 tonnes of fuel in its core initially.The ESOF’s invitation came because of the curiosity in international scientific community on India’s plans on thorium utilisation, which poses several engineering challenges.Link:http://www.esof.eu
14 July 2012:Some 2,500 of the world’s space scientists are set to come together in Mysore from July 14 to 22.The event, Cospar-2012 or the Committee on Space Research, will discuss papers worked around the theme `Space for the benefit of mankind’. It will formally open on July 16.The highlight will be a roundtable where space agencies will present a vision for space beyond 2020.ISRO is hosting the premier 39th Cospar edition after 33 years. With 75 countries participating, it said the meet was a major platform to present India as a significant venue for space research and innovation. Cospar, founded in 1958, ranks among top space science research promotion bodies. The upcoming assembly offers the largest interdisciplinary platform for exchanging recent results in space research.Link:http://www.cospar2012india.org
15 July 2012:Indian-American Sunita Williams, a record-setting astronaut who lived and worked aboard the International Space Station for six months in 2006, today took off on her second space mission in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 46-year-old Williams is with two flight engineers, Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and Yury Malenchenko of Russia, departed on a two-day voyage to the International Space Station. Ms Williams, a flight engineer on the station’s Expedition 32 crew, will take over as commander of Expedition 33 after reaching the space station.The crew will join the current ISS occupants, Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, who have been in orbit since mid-May.Link:http://www.jsc.nasa.gov
16 July 2012: Scientists have sequenced the complete genome of the banana, an important crop in developing countries that provides a fruit widely enjoyed the world over and is a staple food in some of the poorest parts of the globe.The draft sequence is being published this week in the scientific journal Nature.The completion of the genome sequence was important for India, the world's largest producer of bananas. As most of the present day cultivated varieties were susceptible to fungal, bacterial and viral diseases, it was necessary to develop disease-resistant varieties.The international team has sequenced the genome of DH-Pahang (Musa acuminata), a banana popular in south-east Asia and which is able to resist the devastating Panama disease fungus that has been spreading in Asia.Link:http://www.promusa.org
17 July 2012:Scientists from the Wits Institute for Human Evolution based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (aka Wits University) have just announced the discovery of a large rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of ‘Karabo’, the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the Malapa Site in the Cradle of Humankind in 2009.Prof. Lee Berger, a Reader in Palaeoanthropology lead the team that discovered this species of early human ancestor in the Malapa cave north of Johannesburg and named it Australopithecus sediba.The latest discovery has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.Link:http://www.sciencemag.org
18 July 2012:The UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences, controversially endowed by Equatorial Guinea, was finally awarded in Paris after years of wrangling and postponements.The winners were: Rossana Arroyoa, a Mexican professor, for her work on parasitic diseases; Felix Dapare Dakora, a plant scientist from South Africa, for his work on food scarcity; and Maged El-Sherbiny, a vaccines and diagnostics specialist from Egypt, for his work on endemic diseases.The three prize winners will receive US$100,000 from Equatorial Guinea's vice president, Ignacio Milam Tang.The award has deeply divided UNESCO member states since it was first proposed in 2008.Link: http://www.unesco.org
19 July 2012:Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston found an association between increased concentrations of phthalates - chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system - and an increased risk of diabetes in women.Phthalates are found in moisturizers, nail polishes, soaps, hair sprays and perfumes, and they are also used in adhesives, electronics and toys.They found that women with higher concentrations of the chemicals were more likely to have diabetes.Women who had the highest levels of two chemicals - mono-benzyl phthalate and mono-isobutyl phthalate - had nearly twice the risk of diabetes.
Link:http://www.diabetesandenvironment.org
20 July 2012:Experts attending the workshop of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission in Antanarivo, Madagascar's capital announced that Lemurs are the most threatened mammals in the world.Ninety-one percent of the 103 known lemur species are threatened, twenty-three of the species are now considered "critically endangered," 52 are "endangered," and 19 are "vulnerable" on the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species.In fact, one of the 103 species of Lemurs, the Northern Sportive Lemur (Lepilemur septentrionalis) has only 18 known individuals left.Madagascar is the only place on Earth to which lemurs are native.Link:http://www.primate-sg.org
21 July 2012:Scientists have given a 21st-century makeover to the nickel-iron battery, a gadget conceived by Thomas Edison during the era of the steam engine and horse and buggy.Because it can store and release energy so quickly, the battery could be a boon for the renewable-energy industry and also help power cars as Edison originally envisaged, the researchers sayDevised by Edison and fellow inventor Waldemar Jungner in 1902, the Nickel-iron batteries were marketed for cars until the 1920s, but then dropped out of the picture because they were not as powerful as petrol and diesel fuel engines.The new-generation battery comes courtesy of a team led by Hongjie Dai, a chemistry professor at Stanford University in California.The research was published in Nature Communications.Link:http://news.stanford.edu
22 July 2012:The science world has added an unusual tribute to the long list of accolades bestowed on Nelson Mandela, naming a prehistoric woodpecker after South Africa's first black president, who turns 94 Wednesday.Mandela has already seen his name conferred on a species of spider, a nuclear particle, an American rescue dog, a tree, several sub-groups of flower, numerous race horses and a flat in a television sitcom.The latest on the list is Australopicus nelsonmandelai, a woodpecker species which is believed to have lived in the early Pliocene period about five to three million years ago. The remains were unearthed by French and German scientists at the Langebaanweg fossil site on South Africa's southwest coast.Link:http://www.bioone.org
23 July 2012:Sally Ride, the first U.S. female astronaut (American woman) to fly in space, died at the age of 61 from pancreatic cancer. First launching on the Challenger space shuttle in 1983, Ride has become an enduring inspiration to people everywhere, particularly women working in science and engineering.She joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1978, the same year she earned a Ph.D in physics at California's Stanford University. Ride was in the first astronaut class that included women, and trained for five years.After leaving NASA founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, to inspire girls and young women to pursue careers in science and technology.Link:https://www.sallyridescience.com
24 July 2012:Dumping iron in the seas can help transfer carbon from the atmosphere and bury it on the ocean floor for centuries, helping to fight climate change, according to a study released.The report, by an international team of experts, provided a boost for the disputed use of such ocean fertilisation for combating global warming.When dumped into the ocean, the iron can spur growth of tiny plants that carry heat-trapping carbon to the ocean floor when they die.Burying carbon in the oceans would help the fight against climate change, caused by a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.But the researchers failed to answer questions over possible damage to marine life.The study is published in the Nature journal.Link:http://www.nature.com
25 July 2012:Scientists have conducted the most in-depth analysis of the genome of Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) genome to date, revealing that past climate change events left their mark on the threatened animal population. An international group of researchers led by biologist Charlotte Lindqvist of the University at Buffalo investigated how the polar bear arose and developed, using DNA from an ancient polar bear and a modern one, as well as modern brown and black bears.Contrary to past evidence from maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, which had suggested a fairly recent origin for the polar bear, the new comprehensive DNA tests showed that polar and brown bears diverged into distinct species 4 million to 5 million years ago.Link:http://www.pnas.org
26 July 2012:When the Franco-Polish Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium in 1898, she set off a craze for the luminescent metal among Parisians, who started using it for everything from alarm clock dials to lipsticks and even water fountains.The companies that manufactured these slightly radioactive objects have long gone out of business, but they left small doses of radium.These doses, after prolonged exposure, could prove toxic though, officials say, they do not pose serious health risks.ANDRA, the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management has identified some 130 sites in France suspected of being at risk.Link:http://www.andra.fr
27 July 2012:Using data derived from more than 900 scientific papers, a team of researchers led by Markus Covert has opened new doors in computational biology by creating a full computer simulation of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world's second smallest bacterium, and that which has the smallest genome of any free-living organism.It's now also renown for being the first organism in the world to have a complete computer model of itself. The model of the Mycoplasma genitalium has 525 genes and it has more than 1,900 experimentally determined parameters.With computational models like this, it will be easy to create experimental model organisms for "personalised medicine" research.Link:http://www.cell.com
28 July 2012:Scientists from various disciplines would be felicitated for their excellence and commendable contributions on account of Earth Sciences Foundation Day.The day is being marked since the year 2004 for signifying that sea has a lot to deliver to the 37% of the population residing near the 7500km coastlines.The Government of India had set up a Department of Ocean Development (DoOD) as an independent scientific department on July 27, 1981.It was later found that the department benefitted people residing near the coastlines with greater unknown benefits that the oceans and seas offer.The DoOD was later notified as the Ministry of Ocean Development in February 2006.Link:Link:http://dod.nic.in
29 July 2012:Researchers have decoded the deadly 2011E. coli outbreak in Germany, which killed 54 people and sickened more than 3,800, tracing it to a particularly virulent strain.A team led by Shannon Manning, molecular biologist and epidemiologist at the Michigan state University, suggests a way to potentially tame the killer bug, named as E. coli O104:H4, shares some characteristics as other deadly E. coli bacteria, but its combination is novel.Increased production of the Shiga toxin is the probable culprit that contributed to so many incidents of kidney damage and death during the 2011 outbreak, Manning said, according to a university statement.The report appeared in the journal Public Library of Science ONE.Link:http://www.plosone.org
30 July 2012:Physicists at the University of Texas in collaboration with colleagues in Taiwan and China have developed the world’s smallest semiconductor LASER, a technology for emerging photonic technology with applications from computing to medicine. The newly developed is the world’s smallest semiconductor LASER, a breakthrough which could lead to the development of faster, smaller and lower energy photon-based technologies such as ultrafast computer chips. It can be used in highly sensitive biosensors for detecting and treating diseases and next-generation communication technologies.The study is published in the journal Science.Link:http://www.sciencemag.org
31 July 2012:Scientists have identified a new type of white blood cell which activates a killing immune response to an external source paving the way for better vaccine strategies to treat cancer.
Researchers in Newcastle and Singapore have identified a subset of Dendrite cells that can generate a response to an external source of antigen, for example bacteria, vaccines and tumours.Most cells can only present antigens from within themselves , and so only elicit an immune response if they are infected themselves.The new human tissue Dendritic cell is capable of presenting external antigen to activate T cells which eliminate cancerous or infected cells, a process termed 'cross-presentation'.The study was published in the journal Immunity.Link:http://www.sciencedirect.com
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