2 October 2012:Nalsarovar, about 67 km from Ahmedabad, has been notified as a Ramsar site.It is the first Ramsar site in Gujarat and 26th in the country.According to the Ramsar notification, the Nalsarovar Bird Sanctuary is an important stopover site within the Central Asia Flyway for critically endangered Sociable Lapwing (Vanellus gregarius) and the Vulnerable Marbled teal (Marmaronetta angustirostris) during migration, while Sarus Crane (Grus antigone) takes refuge here during summer.The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, called the Ramsar Convention was adopted in Ramsar in 1971.There are 2,056 Ramsar sites across the world.Link:http://www.ramsar.org
3 October 2012:Indian scientists will dig a deep bore hole in Laxmi basin located about 400 nautical miles southeast of Mumbai in the Arabian seabed coast to collect sedimentary samples that would help to understand the monsoon better.The main objectives of the programme is to reconstruct the entire history of the monsoon over a few thousand years and study the evolution of the Himalayas.The project is an Indian alternative to the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program.Two drilling ships, the JOIDES Resolution operated by the US National Science Foundation and Chiyku of the Japan Marine Science and Technology Centre are hired for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme.Link:http://www.iodp.org
4 October 2012:New Zealand researchers are engineering a herd of mutant cows capable of producing high-protein milk with potentially hypo-allergenic properties.AgResearch, the company that successfully cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996, has genetically engineered a cow named Daisy, whose milk carries a reduced amount of milk protein called beta-lactoglobulin (BLG).BLG is not present in human breast milk.Research shows that two to three per cent of infants are allergic to cow's milk, and BLG is a major cause of these allergies.Scientists found Daisy has twice the amount of casein, the common millk protein.Daisy is physically normal apart from missing a tail.Link:http://www.agresearch.co.nz
5 October 2012:SciGenom Laboratories, the company based in Kochi, Kerala has completed the full sequencing and analysis of the first Malayali personal genome, revealing the genetic diversity of the linguistic group and signalling a revolution in disease diagnosis and treatment.The study revealed that the gene sequence of the Malayali varies from Chinese and African genomes but stands closer to the Caucasian (white race).Investigators at SciGenom Labs joined hands with Stephan C. Suschter's laboratory at Pennstate, USA, and others to analyse the genome sequencing data.The data has been deposited at the European Genome-Phenome Archive and the study is published in the journal BMC genomics.Link:http://www.biomedcentral.com
6 October 2012:The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will organize memorial events in 2013 to mark the 500th anniversary of the famous world map of Turkish cartographer Piri Reis.Piri Reis was a an Ottoman admiral, born between 1465 and 1470, and died in 1554 or 1555.UNESCO will also declare 2013 as "Piri Reis Year".Remembering Piri Reis, who has marked his name in the history of the world’s cartography, Turkey will issue memorial coins, stamps.It will also raise a Piri slogan and a Piri logo.Documentary films, will also be part of the celebrations.Piri's map was the one showing America in the most accurate way at that period.Link:http://www.unesco.org
7 October 2012:India hopes to officially become the seventh nation to ratify the Nagoya Protocol which prevents biopiracy and ensures that local communities will benefit from the commercial exploration of their natural genetic resources. The decision will be revealed at the U.N. summit on biodiversity in Hyderabad, on 16 October. India has been a victim of misappropriation or biopiracy of our genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, which have been patented in other countries.India is one of the very few countries which already have a full-fledged laws to regulate the access to genetic resources.Link:http://www.cbd.int
8 October 2012:John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery that adult cells can be reprogrammed back into stem cells which can turn into any kind of tissue - a discovery that may led to new treatments for diseases relating to damaged tissues and those like Parkinson's disease.The discovery paved ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to harvest embryos.The Nobel committee said the discovery has "revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop".Link:http://www.nobelprize.org
9 October 2012:The Nobel prize for Physics has been awarded to Serge Haroche from Collège de France in Paris and David J Wineland of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. The two scientists worked out a way to trap, manipulate and study the fundamental particles of light and matter and their work was a crucial step towards building superfast quantum computers.Their work lead to the measuring of time, a hundred times more precisely than possible through atomic clocks. The Nobel citation stated that they won the prize "for groundbreaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems".Link:http://www.nobelprize.org
10 October 2012:Two Americans, Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka won the 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their groundbreaking discoveries on an important family of receptors, known as G-protein-coupled receptors. It is these protein receptors that let body cells sense and respond to outside signals.Such studies are key for developing better drugs.The human body has about 1,000 kinds of such receptors, and about half of all medications act on these receptors, so learning about them will help scientists to come up with better drugs.Dr. Lefkowitz is from Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Dr. Kobilka is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.Link:http://www.nobelprize.org
11 October 2012:The International Space Station welcomed its first commercial resupply mission Wednesday with the arrival of Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon capsule.The mission marks an important milestone for NASA after it had put an end to the Space Shuttle Program last year.Dragon is carrying cargo for the space station, including 23 designed and built by students.The student projects come through a program run by NanoRacks, a company that arranges experiments in the space station.The company behind this effort is SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) which launched its Falcon 9 rocket.Link: http://www.spacex.com
12 October 2012:Few researchers have given credence to claims that samples of dinosaur DNA have survived to the present day and now, a study of fossils is laying the matter to rest. Palaeogeneticists led by Morten Allentoft at the University of Copenhagen and Michael Bunce at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, examined 158 DNA-containing leg bones of extinct birds called Moa. The bones,600 and 8,000 years old, had been recovered from New Zealand.The researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years.The findings are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B1.Link:http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org
13 October 2012:Keith Campbell, the scientist who helped pioneer the birth of Dolly the sheep, the world's first mammal cloned from fully developed adult cells, has died.He died on October 5, and his funeral has been scheduled for October 24.Campbell was part of a team at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, that cloned Dolly in 1996.While Campbell is not listed in research papers as the principal investigator in papers related to Dolly's cloning, according to Ian Wilmut, Campbell deserved much of the credit.Dolly died in 2003.Dolly's remains are on display at the National Museum of Scotland.Link:http://www.nottingham.ac.uk
14 October 2012:The first ever National Biodiversity Congress will be hosted by Thiruvananthapuram from 27-30 December 2012.The first National Biodiversity Congress will be organised by the National Biodiversity Authority in collaboration with the Kerala State Biodiversity Board ( KSBB). This is an event that will henceforth be conducted annually, bringing together all the academics working on issues of biodiversity.The focal theme of National Biodiversity Congress 2012 would be "Biodiversity for food security".A special session on "Western Ghats in World Heritage Status: Challenges and Opportunities" is also scheduled as part of the congress.Link:http://www.nbaindia.org
15 October 2012:Biodiversity index of Greater Hyderabad, the capital of Andrapradesh, will be released for the first time on today and it will be the first Indian city to do so.As per evaluations, the city’s biodiversity index had got 33 points out of 93 parameters.As of now Brussels stood at the top of index with 55 points.The index aims to serve as a self- assessment monitoring tool to promote better management of resources and conservation of biodiversity and overcome the problems of increased urbanisation, climate change and city planning and management.The UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity going on in the city now.Link:http://www.cbd.int
16 October 2012:Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an annual observation designed to raise awareness of the contributions to this first computer programmer.Groups in the U.S., U.K., Sweden and India are marking the occasion by creating and improving upon the Wikipedia pages of prominent women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.Born in 1815 in England, Ada Lovelace was a mathematician who became interested in computer pioneer Charles Babbage’s “analytical engine.” This machine, which was never actually built, would have been capable performing of the same computations as modern computers.Link:http://findingada.com
17 October 2012:The Lion-tailed Macaque (Macaca silenus), one of India’s endangered mascot species, is no longer on ‘the World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates’ list, after the IUCN/Species Survival Commission determined that the state governments of India had acted positively to protect it.The habitat of the lion-tailed macaque continues to be fragmented though it is getting positive attention in the Western Ghats.The Western Purple-faced Langur (Trachypithecus vetulus nestor) in Sri Lanka is still in the list of endangered primates for 2012-14.The Western Hoolock Gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) found in northeast India was also removed from the list earlier.Link:http://www.iucnredlist.org
18 October 2012:Stephane Udry and Xavier Dumusque of the Geneva Observatory, have found a new planet, just 4 light years away, raising the chances of finding a habitable planet in Earth’s neighbourhood.Researchers say the new planet is too close to its sun to support known forms of life, with a surface temperature estimated at 1,200 degrees Celsius. But previous studies suggest that when one planet is discovered orbiting a sun, there are usually others in the same system.The new Earth-sized planet orbits one of the suns in Alpha Centauri, roughly 25 trillion miles away. The study is published in journal Nature.Link:http://www.nature.com
19 October 2012:The Indian Navy Sailing Vessel INSV Mhadei was flagged off from Goa today for Mumbai from where the vessel will begin the Sagar Parikrama-II, a solo circumnavigation of the globe.The solo circumnavigation,under sail,was proposed by Vice Admiral Manohar Awati to reclaim India's glorious maritime history.The vessel was constructed at the boat yard of M/s Aquarius Fiberglas Pvt Ltd., at Divar, and as a tribute to the place where the boat was constructed, the Indian Navy named it INSV Mhadei, after the river Mhadei.Link:http://www.youtube.com
20 October 2012:UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Hyderabad concluded today with the parties agreeing upon a framework for resource mobilization for conservation of biodiversity.India ratified the Nagoya Protocol during the Convention which deals with access to genetic resources and the fair sharing of benefits of biodiversity.But it needs 50 ratifications to make it officially come into force. At the beginning of the convention speculations were rife that at least a dozen more countries would come on-board the protocol. But India was the only party to ratify it. Link:http://www.cbd.int
21October 2012:An international consortium of scientists, led by Prof. Robbie Waugh of the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, has sequenced the genome of Barley (Hordeum vulgare), the fourth most commonly cultivated grain in the world. Barley's most common human food use is in beer, but most barley,about three-quarters of the total yield, becomes animal feed.Barley’s hardiness and its high concentration of soluble dietary fiber have led to its classification as a “true functional food".Barley has fourteen chromosomes but it’s DNA is extremely repetitive.The study is published in Nature.Link:http://www.nature.com
22 October 2012:India's next Green Revolution has just hit another roadblock in its almost snail-like journey towards a hopefully fruitful harvest, with a committee appointed by the Supreme Court recommending a halt to open field trials on all genetically modified crops for 10 years until a new set of conditions is enforced.India's GM dreams received their first rude jolt in February 2010, when the ministry of environment and forests halted the commercial release of Bt Brinjal, a GM-crop that could save farmers from spraying it almost 80 times with pesticides.The case is expected to come up next for hearing on October 29.Link:http://agrariancrisis.in
23 October 2012:Kerala's Periyar Tiger Reserve bagged the India Biodiversity Award for outstanding management of its 'protected area'. The award is jointly sponsored by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the award was given in recognition of agencies' efforts towards managing the Periyar Tiger Reserve which has an estimated population of about 24 tigers.India Biodiversity Awards will now be an annual feature to mark International Biodiversity Day on May 22 of each year.Link:http://www.undp.org
24 October 2012:India’s Goa state is hopeful that forests home to a rare species of bats will be included as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.The rare Wroughton’s Free-tailed Bats have been recorded in this contiguous region, which is already declared protected.The only known roosting site of this bat is located just outside the boundary of the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary in Goa which is in the Western Ghats of South India.Goa is the smallest state through which the Western Ghats pass, its forests are vital to maintain the contiguity of the northern and southern stretches of the ghats.Link:http://www.goa.gov.in
25 October 2012:Scientific maverick J. Craig Venter says he is confident there is life on Mars and this week announced plans to send a "biological teleporter" to the Red Planet to find Martian DNA and beam it back to Earth.The alien genome could then be reassembled in a super-secure space lab. However, Venter is not the only one to consider such a plan.Jonathan Rothberg, founder of the genome sequencing company Ion Torrent, is working with Harvard and MIT to modify the company's personal genome machine for use on Mars as part of a NASA-funded project called SET-G or Search for Extra-Tterrestrial Genomes.Link:http://www.jcvi.org
25 October 2012:Scientists at the Pune-based National Center for Cell Science recently completed the DNA decoding of Janibacter hoylei, a bacterium that was discovered in the upper stratosphere in 2009 and named after the distinguished astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. The genome sequence was able to tell scientists about the possible existence of life in other planets, including Mars.The genome sequencing revealed that the organism has 70 genes, which are responsible for its DNA repair and 54 genes contributing to its stress response due to the exposure to the high UV radiation in the stratosphere.The research paper was recently accepted by Journal of Bacteriology.Link:http://jb.asm.org
26 October 2012:After producing world's first cloned buffalo calf in 2009, scientists of Animal Biotechnology Centre with National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal (Haryana), are researching on cloning the endangered Wild Buffalo (Bubalus arnee) which is the State Animal of Chhattisgarh.Scientists from NDRI, collected genetic samples of the lone Wild Buffalo female Asha from Udanti-Sitanadi tiger reserve.Udanti is left with only nine Wild Buffaloes including eight males and a lone female. An in-situ breeding programme to save wild buffaloes is going on for the past five years in Udanti.Link:http://www.ndri.res.in
27 October 2012:The seasonal ozone hole above the Antarctic was the second smallest in 20 years as warm temperatures slowed depletion of the layer that shields the planet from ultraviolet radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.The average size of the ozone hole this year was 17.9 million square kilometers and reached a maximum of 8.2 million square miles on Sept. 22.The Antarctic ozone hole first appeared in the 1980s.Last year’s gap stretched 10.1 million square miles and was the ninth largest.The biggest was in 2000 at 11.5 million square miles.Link:http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov
28 October 2012:University of Illinois is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the invention of the LED or Light-Emitting Diode.Nick Holonyak invented the LED in 1962 and has been a professor in Electrical Computer Engineering at the University since 1963.Holonyak’s invention of the LED has led to greener technology because there is no mercury present in LED lighting. The lighting is also longer-lasting and more durable. October 24, 2012 has been declared as Nick Holonyak Day in connection with the 50th anniversary.Link: http://www.led50years.illinois.edu
29 October 2012:Swedish researchers from Uppsala University have sequenced Collared Flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis). They also sequenced the genomes of Pied Flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) which is believed to have diverged from Collared Flycatchers within the past two million years.Collared Flycatchers and Pied Flycatchers are known to breed with one place where their ranges overlap.Aspects of divergence between the two bird species have been explored in the past, but, little to no research has been done on the genomic events underlying it.The paper is published in the Nature.Link:http://www.nature.com
30 October 2012:Researchers from the Imperial College London have developed a new ultra-sensitive sensor and cheaper test to detect the early stages of several cancers and viruses, including HIV, with the naked eye. The visual sensor technology is ten times more sensitive than the current gold standard methods for measuring biomarkers.The team tested the effectiveness of the sensor by detecting a biomarker called p24 in blood samples, which indicates HIV infection.Researchers also tested samples for the biomarker called Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), which is an indicator for Prostate Cancer.Link:http://www3.imperial.ac.uk
31 October 2012:Researchers at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences have traced the evolution of sight in ancient species to a Jellyfish , which first developed the ability to detect light 700 million years ago.The researchers looked at a newly sequenced group of sponges named Oscarella carmela, and the jellyfish type Cnidarians, a group of animals thought to possess world's earliest eyes.Scientific opinion was divided over which sponges or jellyfish types species first possessed opsins, the group of light-sensitive protein-coupled photoreceptors in retina.Link:http://www.bristol.ac.uk
