2 April 2013:Chinese scientists have developed the world's lightest substance, Carbon Aerogel with a density only one sixth of the air. The solid material produced by scientists at Zhejiang University has a density of only 0.16 mg/cubic cm. The Graphite Aerogel developed by German scientists last year, had a density of 0.18 mg/cubic cm. In addition to pollution control, Carbon Aerogel is expected to become an ideal material for energy storage insulation,catalytic carrier and sound-absorption.The study was published in the journal Advanced Materials.Link:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
3 April 2013: Forty years ago today on 3 April 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper, credited as the inventor of the cellphone, made the world's first public call from a mobile phone, choosing to get in touch with his rival in the race to create the device. Martin Cooper made the call on a New York City street in front of reporters from a device weighing about 1½ kilograms. Ten years later, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved Motorola's first Mobile phone model: DynaTAC , for public use. In 1984, the first DynaTACs became available for consumers.
Link:http://mediacenter.motorola.com
4 April 2013: Japanese scientists at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto developed a computer model to predict dream imagery from MRI scans. Rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, the stage richest in dreams, usually starts about 90 minutes into sleep.This makes it difficult to collect data.The researchers argue that further research should reveal more dynamic and emotional aspects of dreaming. However, it is the first time in the world that dreams have been recorded.The study is published in the journal Science.Link: http://www.cns.atr.jp/en
5 April 2013: Exactly 40 years ago, today, on 5th April 1973, Pioneer 11 blasted off from Cape Canaveral for a mission that would take the small satellite dangerously close to Jupiter's surface and through Saturn's outer rings. After leaving its last transmission on 1995, the spacecraft is now thought to be 13 billion km from the sun and traveling in the direction of the constellation Scutum. Pioneer 11 carries a gold plaque with images of humans on Earth.The plaque was co-designed by SETI founder Frank Drake and Carl Sagan. Link: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov
6 April 2013: Arun Pandey from the Department of Botany, University of Delhi, India and Susanne Renner from the Departments of Systematic Botany and Mycology, University of Munich, Germany have made a checklist of the Cucurbitaceae of India that would bring up-to-date the information available for that plant family.The list includes 94 species (10 of them endemic to India) from 31 genera.The checklist also includes a phylogenetic reconstruction of the Cucurbits in India in relation to the World's remaining Cucurbits. The study is published in the journal PhytoKeys.Link:http://www.pensoft.net
7 April 2013:Jayanta Roy and Bhaswati Bhattacharya, scientists at the Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) has developed a novel technique of 'gated imaging' to find the location of Neutron stars in the galaxy. It can also be used for the location of Pulsars in galaxy. The new technique is thousand times more accurate and faster than the traditional method. It was made possible through NCRA’s Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and it is the first time that such a technique had been created. The discovery is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.Link:http://iopscience.iop.org
8 April 2013: A comet heading towards the planet could derail Indian Space Research Organisation’s Mars Mission project, scheduled to take off in October-November this year. The comet , C/2013 A1, is approaching Mars at a speed of 2 lakh km/hour. As per NASA, the comet will be closest to Mars at a distance of 3 lakh km, but the planet will be engulfed in the tail of the comet, extending to millions of kilometres. So Indian scientists are now exploring the possibility of postponing the launch to allow the comet to pass by before the spacecraft arrives there.Link:http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu
9 April 2013: NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope has captured the clearest view yet of Comet ISON, which experts believe could become one of the brightest comets ever seen when it lights up the sky later this year. Comet ISON was discovered in September 2012 by Russian amateur astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok. The new photos were snapped when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter, at about 634 million km from the Earth. ISON is apparently making its first trip through the inner Solar system from the distant Oort Cloud. Link: http://hubblesite.org
10 April 2013: Robert Edwards, a British Nobel prize-winning scientist known as the father of the fertility treatment called ‘In Vitro Fertilization' ( IVF) and "test tube babies", died aged 87 after a long illness. Professor Edwards began his work on fertilisation in 1955, and by 1968 had managed to fertilise a human egg in a laboratory. He then started to collaborate with Patrick Steptoe. The first so-called test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978. In 1980, Edwards founded Bourn Hall, the world's first IVF clinic, in Cambridge.Link:http://www.bourn-hall-clinic.co.uk
11 April 2013: As per the budget for the year 2014, NASA proposes to capture a small asteroid and tug it near to the Moon. The asteroid-capturing robot could launch as soon as 2017, with astronauts flying to meet it near the moon by 2021.The mission includes the construction of a new Space Launch System and the building of a human exploration capsule called Orion. Astronauts visiting the captured asteroid could conduct experiments in extracting water, oxygen, metals and silicon and other life-sustaining minerals there that would help “living off the land” during long missions. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
12 April 2013:The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it would launch the fourth, and the heaviest, in a series of cargo-vehicles to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 5.Named Albert Einstein, the freighter has a total mass of 20.235 tonnes, making it the heaviest ever lofted into orbit by an Ariane rocket to the International Space Station. .The launch will be from ESA's base in Kourou, French Guiana. The fifth and last ATV, named after Belgian physicist Georges Lemaitre, the father of the "Big Bang" theory, is due to be launched in 2014.Link:http://www.esa.int
13 April 2013: NASA's Cassini spacecraft has observed an ice cloud taking shape over Titan's South Pole, the latest sign that the change of seasons is setting off a cascade of radical changes in the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon. Made from an unknown ice, this type of cloud has long hung over Titan's north pole, where it is now fading, according to observations made by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) on Cassini. CIRS didn't detect it until about July 2012, according to the study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.Link: http://www.nasa.gov
14 April 2013: NASA has recently green-lighted two new missions: The most anticipated is TESS, the ‘Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite’ .Slated for launch in 2017, TESS will search for planets beyond the Solar System. TESS will be the first exoplanet hunting satellite. Also on the board for launch in 2017 is NICER, the ‘Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer’ to be placed on the exterior of the International Space Station. NICER will specialize in the study of a particular sub-class of neutron star known as “millisecond pulsars”. Link:http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov
15 April 2013: For the first time, scientists, including an Indian-origin physicist, have observed concrete hints of a Dark Matter particle that is believed to hold the cosmos together. It was found out by the international Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (Super CDMS) experiment. The discovery was based on the hint for a WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) signal. WIMPs rarely interact with normal matter and are difficult to detect. The Indian-origin physicist involved was Rupak Mahapatra.Link:http://cdms.berkeley.edu
16 April 2013:A team of Australian scientists involved in the Lazarus Project are aiming to bring the extinct Rheobatrachus silus frog, back to life. Rheobatrachus silus is one of the two species of gastric-brooding frogs or “Platypus frogs” that are native to Australia. They swallow their eggs, brood their young ones in their stomach and give birth through their mouth.The researchers took egg cells from the distantly related Great Barred Frog, Mixophyes fasciolatus and its nucleus was replaced with nucleus from Rheobatrachus silus. The results however are awaited. Link: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au
17 April 2013: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the oldest, most distant supernova ever discovered, which experts say could help scientists better understand the evolution of the universe.A supernova is the explosive death of a star, which emits a dramatic burst of light. The Supernova UDS10Wil named after President Woodrow Wilson as SN Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago.SN Wilson is categorized as a Type Ia supernova, which provide a consistent level of brightness that can be used to measure the expansion of space. Link:http://www.nasa.gov
18 April 2013: A asteroid, 2013 GM3, will pass dangerously close to Earth’s surface on April 14, 2026. The asteroid, 20 m in diameter may bring it within 8,620 km nearer to Earth’s surface. The prediction is made by Francesco Manca of the Sormano Astronomical Observatory near Milan. The 2013 GM3 was discovered by Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona, but calculations by NASA showed it would pass 39,000 km from Earth’s surface. NASA estimates the probability of collision between at 0.018%. Link:http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov
19 April 2013: India expects total monsoon rainfall to be average in 2013.Monsoon rains are vital for the 55 % of the country's farmland that lacks irrigation facilities, and can make the difference between India being an exporter or importer of staples such as rice and sugar. Rainfall is expected to be 98 % of the long-term average during the June to September season. Rains between 96 % and 104 % of a 50-year average of 89 cm for the entire season are considered normal, or average.The last time there was a drought in 2009 and prior to that, in 2004. Link: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov
20 April 2013: Solar Impulse, the solar-powered plane will attempt its first crossing of the United States by next month. Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard and project co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg, are making their final preparations for the flight which is without any fuel, except that the engine will be powered by solar energy. Piccard and Borschberg aim for their plane to take off from near San Francisco in early May and land at New York. Solar Impulse made its first intercontinental flight from Spain to Morocco in 2012 June. Link:http://www.solarimpulse.com
21 April 2013: US Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, has laid out an ambitious plan of setting up a human colony on Mars within the next two decades. He plans to have a human colony on the Red Planet by the mid 2030s using a special space vehicle called the Lynx spacecraft. Aldrin wants the next generation to be Mars generation. Aldrin is also starting a competition that will give Australians the chance to take a once-in-a-lifetime journey into space.One Australian will be granted a seat aboard the Lynx spacecraft.Link: http://buzzaldrin.com
22 April 2013: Chamber A, the largest high-vacuum, cryogenic-optical test chamber in the world, originally built in 1965 to test the Apollo astronauts to the moon is now ready to check the space agency's next-generation telescope: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2014. The James Webb Space Telescope will make observations primarily in the infrared spectrum, but to avoid the telescope's own radiation, its instruments must be made very, very cold. Chamber A is used for this kind of testing. Link:http://www.jwst.nasa.gov
23 April 2013: Scientists have found promising clues towards antibody-based AIDS vaccine. For the first time, scientists were able to follow the full chain of events leading to the patient naturally producing Broadly neutralizing Antibodies (BnAbs), so called because they attack different strains of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. In this study, researchers isolated an antibody named CH103, and found that it was triggered by a specific protein on HIV. The research is published in the journal Nature. Link:http://www.health-e.org.za
24 April 2013: On April 24, 1990, NASA launched the pioneering satellite that would deliver some of the best images of the cosmos to date.Free from the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope was able to see objects clearer and further away. Over the last two decades, Hubble has been instrumental in helping pinpoint the age of the universe to between 13 and 14 billion years old. The Hubble Space Telescope was named after U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble, who first posited that the universe was expanding. Link: http://hubblesite.org
25 April 2013: Three lunar eclipses taking place within a month, it's a rare phenomenon. The partial Lunar Eclipse that occurred today (the eclipse began from 11.33 pm on 25th April and ended at 3.43 am on 26th April) was the first of the three eclipses that will take place over the next one month. Following the partial Lunar Eclipse, two more eclipses will occur on May 10 (Annular Solar Eclipse) and May 25 (Penumbral Lunar Eclipse). In 2009, a total of six eclipses occurred and 2009 also the International Year of Astronomy. Link: http://www.astronomy2009.org
26 April 2013: Seventy-five years ago an amateur scientist made a breakthrough discovery in the field of climate change. Guy Stewart Callendar linked global warming to CO2 emissions but his work went largely unnoticed at the time. Now the anniversary of his discovery has been commemorated. Guy Stewart Callendar, born in Montreal, Canada in 1898, made all his calculations by hand in his spare time, decades before the effects of global warming became widely debated. This became known for a time as the "Callendar Effect".Link: http://www.aip.org
27 April 2013: Today is World Veterinary Day. Livestock producers are being reminded to keep their annual vaccination programs up-to-date to maximize the health of their animals and business.Selected Theme 2013 was “Vaccination: to prevent and protect”. According to the Animal Health Alliance vaccination is arguably one of the greatest scientific achievements of the modern era, and is the theme for this year's World Veterinary Day, which is celebrated on April 27. A pre-calving booster is given to protect the unborn calf. Link: http://www.worldvet.org
28 April 2013: Shakuntala Devi, an Indian mathematical wizard known as “the human computer” for her ability to make incredibly swift calculations, died today in Bangalore, India. She was 83. Shakuntala Devi was born in Bangalore on November 4, 1929. In 1977, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, beating a Univac computer, which took 62 seconds. In 1980, she correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers in only 28 seconds. The feat earned her a place in the 1982 edition of the Guinness Book of World. Link: http://sbioak.org
29 April 2013: Today, Earth will be exactly in between the sun and Saturn. Called ‘Saturn opposition’, this day is when Saturn is the closest to Earth in the whole year. Two celestial bodies (in this case the Sun and Saturn) are said to be in ‘opposition’ when they are on opposite sides of the sky when viewed from Earth.Opposition occurred last year on April 15 and will occur next year on May 10. Though this is a yearly phenomenon, 2013’s Saturn opposition is a little extra special because this will be the closest Earth-Saturn encounter until 2023.Link:http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com
30 April 2013: Today, Worl Wide Web (WWW) celebrated its 20th birthday. It was on April 30th, 1993 CERN released the technology behind the World Wide Web into the public domain. Sir Tim Berners-Lee was a scientist at CERN. His team invented www in 1991, and Berners-Lee developed a version which could send photos the next year. The first picture uploaded to the World Wide Web was in July of 1992..In a celebration of the web's proud history, the CERN team has started up a new project to revive the very first website at its original URL.Link: http://info.cern.ch
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