SCIENCE OF THE MONTH: JUNE 2013

Photo Courtesy: Philip Ross

                                                           

1 June 2013: India's highest farm science centre (Krishi Vigyan Kendra) will be set up at Nyoma in Leh district of Jammu and Kashmir at a height of about 14,000 feet. People living in Nyoma are mostly nomads and rear pashmina goats.The region is extremely cold and dry and so, it is a challenge to promote agriculture there. There are 631 farm science centres across the country which are funded by the Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR) under the Ministry of Agriculture.Link:http://www.icar.org.in

2 June 2013: Ruth Carter, a 42-year-old UK woman, a psychologist by profession, has become the first in the world to give birth to a baby conceived using a pioneering IVF time-lapse photography technique to pick the best embryo. The child was conceived using a technique which monitors the growth of the embryo, to select the one which is most likely to result in a successful pregnancy. The girl is the first in the world to have been conceived using a technique called Eeva - Early Embryo Viability Assessment.Link: http://www.eevaivf.com

3 June 2013: The tenth anniversary of the launch of European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express was marked by the release of new global maps of the Red Planet which trace the history of water and volcanic activity on Mars and identify sites of special interest for the next generation of Mars explorers. Each map represents a different chapter in the story of geological evolution on Mars.Mars Express was launched on 2 June 2003 and entered the Martian orbit on December 25,2003.Link: http://www.esa.int

4 June 2013: Professor Qin-Bin Lu at the University of Waterloo challenges conventional thinking about the roots of climate change. According to Lu, since 1987 when CFCs were phased out under the Montreal Protocol, there was a decrease in global temperature.There was global warming by about 0.6°C from 1950 to 2002, but the Earth was actually cooling since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline. Link:http://www.worldscientific.com

5 June 2013: Researchers from the University of New South Wales will retrace Sir Douglas Mawson's expedition 100 years ago (1911-1914) to the Antarctica in November 2013. They will take measurements of the ocean water, visit sub-Antarctic islands where they will collect sediment cores from lakes and peat bogs, and study the wildlife. A team of 46 researchers will set out for a six-week journey to repeat measurements made by Mawson's team, including observations of the ocean and wildlife.Link: http://uniken.unsw.edu.au

6 June 2013: Japan has unveiled its first commercial model of a magnetically levitated train (maglev train) designed to travel at speeds of upto 500 kmph today at its test track in Yamanashi Prefecture, central Japan. Commercial runs of the are scheduled to start between Tokyo and Nagoya in 2027. It was in 1964 that Japan unveiled its first bullet train known as "Shinkansen" to coincide with its hosting of the Olympic Games. Tokyo pledging to invest in building high speed railway systems in India too.Link:http://www.maglevboard.net

7 June 2013: The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved a first-of-its-kind, non-surgical circumcision device to forestall the spread of AIDS. The device called PrePex is the only adult circumcision method, aside from conventional surgery, to gain WHO approval to date.PrePex can be quickly put in place by a two-nurse team.The new method of circumcision relies on a rubber band. WHO says that the new nonsurgical circumcision device reduces the chance of AIDS by about 60 per cent.Link:http://www.prepex.com

8 June 2013: Scientists have found a new layer in the cornea and named it after the Indian researcher Harminder Dua of University of Nottingham who made the discovery. It was believed that the cornea is composed of five layers, the corneal epithelium, Bowman's layer, the corneal stroma, Descemet's membrane and the corneal endothelium.The new layer is located between the corneal stroma and Descemet's membrane. The study is published in the journal Ophthalmology.Link:http://www.aaojournal.org

9 June 2013: Nasa's Opportunity rover is heading for its new destination, 2 kilometers to the south, by August,a favorable spot before the next Martian winter. Opportunity has been exploring Endeavour Crater since 2011.Previous studies by Opportunity pointed to a watery past on Mars. Since landing on Mars in 2004, Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have impressed scientists with their longevity. Meanwhile, Curiosity, the latest rover on Mars will soon be heading to a Martian mountain. Link:http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov 

10 June 2013: Scientists have discovered the tiniest galaxy called Segue 2, in the known Universe which contains just 1,000 or so stars with a bit of dark matter holding them together. It is located at the edge of the Milky Way, some 114000 light years from the Sun. Segue 2 was discovered in 2009 as part of the massive Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Measurements of this dwarf galaxy were made by scientists of the University of California-Irvine and the results are published in the Astrophysical Journal.Link:http://iopscience.iop.org

11 June 2013: With futuristic warfare in mind, India is working to develop robotic soldiers, joining a select group of countries in this endeavour. Under the project being undertaken by DRDO, high intelligence robots would be developed enabling them to be deployed in difficult warfare zones, a step that would help avert the loss of human lives. The newly-appointed DRDO chief Avinash Chander listed the project for development of robotic soldiers as one of the priority thrust areas of DRDO.Link:http://drdo.gov.in

12 June 2013: Standard atomic weights of chemical elements on the periodic table, were once thought of as unchanging constants of nature.To calculate standard atomic weight, scientists have traditionally averaged the weights of isotopes. But as per International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the atomic weights of five elements Magnesium, Bromine, Germanium, Indium and Mercury has been changed. The report is detailed in the journal Pure and Applied Chemistry.Link:http://pac.iupac.org

13 June 2013: Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has inaugurated the Swiss-based European Laboratory for Particle Physics, or CERN's Wigner data center in Budapest. CERN is famous for owning some of the world’s most powerful particle accelerators. The data center is directly connected to CERN’s Geneva headquarters and will receive and handle data flow of 100 gigabit-per-second. It costs Hungary 8.5 billion forints ($38.7 million) and will ensure security for data produced at CERN.Link:http://information-technology.web.cern.ch

14 June 2013: Naturally occurring human gene sequences cannot be patented but artificially copied and replicated DNA can be, the US Supreme Court ruled today. A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated but cDNA is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring. Nearly 20 percent of identified human genes are currently under patent, some of which are associated with Alzheimer's disease or other cancers. Link:http://www.supremecourt.gov

15 June 2013: The Indian telecom firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has decided to discontinue the 160-year-old telegram service from today.At their peak of service in 1985, 60 million telegrams were sent. It was once a means of urgent communication. This missive comes 144 years after Samuel Morse sent the first telegram in Washington. In India, telegraph was introduced by William O'Shaughnessy,  a British doctor who used a different code in 1850 to send a message. Link:http://www.bsnl.co.in

16 June 2013: Today in 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly into space. Two years after Yuri Gagarin's historic first manned flight, Tereshkova blasted off in a Vostok-6 spaceship, becoming a national heroine at the age of 26. She remains the only woman ever to have made a solo space flight. During her three-day mission, Tereshkova circled Earth 48 times. On the first day, she communicated with Valery Bykovsky who was on another Soviet spaceship, Vostok-5, and even sang him songs.Link:http://www.enchantedlearning.com

17 June 2013: The billion-euro Herschel space telescope has been switched off.Controllers emptied the satellite's fuel tanks and commanded the observatory to stop all communications. The "passivated" spacecraft is now in a slow drift around the Sun, about 2.14 million km from Earth. With its 3.5m mirror, Herschel was the most powerful observatory of its kind ever put in space. Decommissioning became necessary when Herschel used up the last of its superfluid Helium coolant. Link:http://sci.esa.int/herschel

18 June 2013: 30 years ago today, Sally K. Ride, at the age of 32, became America's first woman in space. Ride began her career as an astronaut after answering a NASA newspaper ad in 1978 seeking applicants for the space program. After leaving NASA in 1989, Ride joined the faculty of the University of California, and became director of the University’s Space Institute. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science to encourage girls to pursue careers in science. She died in July 2012  due to pancreatic cancer.Link: https://sallyridescience.com

19 June 2013: Tianhe-2 developed by the National University of Defence Technology in China has become  the world's fastest supercomputer. Tianhe-2  which means Milky Way-2,  is capable of sustained computing of 33.86 petaflops per second,knocking the US Energy Department's Titan which achieved 17.59 petaflops per second. It's the second time a Chinese computer has been named the world's fastest. In November 2010, the Tianhe-2's predecessor, Tianhe-1A, had that honour.Link:http://english.nudt.edu.cn

20 June 2013: The Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (KVASU) has launched a web portal for sharing new technologies and methods being developed by the university to farmers, entrepreneurs and students. The portal is in Malayalam and has provisions for video streaming and web radio. The project, by the Directorate of Entrepreneurship under the university also has content on the various initiatives of the university. The University's new courses were also launched at the function. Link:www.kasavu.in

21 June 2013: 65 years ago, on June 21, 1948, at Victoria University of Manchester, a software was born. The computer with that software was called "Baby", officially designated as the 'Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine' which first ran the first "program" retrieved from random-access memory. "Baby" wasn't the first programmable computer. But the technology proven in "Baby", with its 1,024 bits of cathode-tube based RAM, would become the basis of the first commercial computers. Link: http://www.computer50.org

22 June 2013: Six majestic forts of Rajasthan, including Satyajit Ray's Shonar Kella, have been declared World Heritage Sites by Unesco's World Heritage Committee. The other forts are Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Sawai Madhopur, Jhalawar, Jaipur and Jaisalmer were inscribed on the World Heritage List. UNESCO says the hill forts represent the genius of Rajput Military architecture, tracing the development of the fort typology and evolution of its architectural style from the 15th to 19th century.Link:http://whc.unesco.org

23 June 2013: Today was the day of the Super Moon.The situation is called Super Moon and the scientific term is perigee moon, used when the moon is nearest to the earth. There are three super moons this year, in May, June and July. Super Moons are as much as 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter compared to the normal full moon. Today the moon comes to a distance of 3,56,989 km.  The last Super Moon was on May 6, 2012. Moon will be farthest from earth this year on July 7, at 4,06,491 km.Link:http://planetarysocietyindia.blogspot.in

24 June 2013: Palaeontologists have discovered the fossilised remains of a tiny tree-dwelling creature that lived around 55 million years ago, making it the oldest primate ever found. It has been called Archicebus achilles, a compound name that means "first long-tailed monkey." The "achilles" is derived from the mythical Greek warrior due to its unusual ankle anatomy.The discovery also strengthens the theory that primates originated in Asia. The study is reported in the journal Nature.Link:http://www.nature.com

25 June 2013: Sunjammer, the spacecraft that uses only sunlight to cruise through space, is set to be launched in November 2014. The mission is handled by the NASA’s Space Technology Program. NASA took the name Sunjammer from an Arthur C. Clarke short story, a fictional yacht race in the heavens using solar sails. However, Sunjammer won’t be the world’s first solar sail mission because it was Japan’s Ikaros deployed in June 2010, becoming the first and largest Solar-sail to be manufactured ever.Link:http://www.nasa.gov

26 June 2013: The world's population could reach 11 billion by the year 2100, according to a new statistical analysis. That represents 800 million more people than was forecast in 2011. The United Nations reported that the population hit 7 billion in October 2011. That's an amazing increase from the mere 5 million people who lived on the planet in 8000 B.C. or the 1 billion who were alive in 1805. Africa's population stands at 1.1 billion, but that is expected to increase four-fold, to 4.2 billion, by 2100.Link:http://www.un.org

27 June 2013: The Indian sub-continent may lose close to 14,000 sq.km. of land with the rise of a one metre of sea level due to climate change. Total area loss due to marine intrusion into coastal areas of the Indian sub-continent is estimated at approximately 13,973 sq.km. and 60,497 sq. km. of land area under 1m and 6m sea-level rise scenarios, respectively. Marine intrusion might affect 18 of the 48 eco-regions in India. The report is published in the latest issue of Journal of Threatened Taxa. Link:http://www.threatenedtaxa.org 

28 June 2013: The International Linear Collider Collaboration (LCC) project plans to build an $8.75 billion (830 billion yen) particle accelerator. The next-generation super-collider will be 31-kilometer in length. The project would allow researchers to accelerate electrons and positrons into a beam moving more than 99 % the speed of light.The candidate sites for the particle accelerator in Japan include the Kitakami Mountains straddling Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, and the Sefuri Mountains straddling Saga and Fukuoka prefectures.Link:http://www.linearcollider.org

29 June 2013: According to World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), there is only a small chance of an El Nino or La Nina system developing in the Pacific Ocean this year.The two climate phenomena, which cause an abnormal warming or cooling of the surface of parts of the Pacific Ocean, also cause extreme floods and droughts. El Nino happens every two to seven years. It last occurred from June 2009 to May 2010.  El Nino is often followed by La Nina which was last declared over in April 2012. Link:http://www.wmo.int

30 June 2013: Six exceptional individuals were honored last night at the National Geographic Society’s 125th Anniversary celebration. Hubbard Medal, the highest honour from the Society was presented to explorer and filmmaker James Cameron, oceanographer Sylvia Earle and scientist and author Edward O. Wilson. Cameron also received the Explorer of the Year Award for his record-setting solo dive to the deepest point of the ocean in 2012. National Geographic Society was founded in 1888.Link:http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com

31 June 2013: NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft launched nearly 36 years ago in 1977, now more than 18 billion kilometers from the sun, is entering inter-stellar space. This would make it the first man-made object to wrench itself free of the Sun's powerful magnetic field that extends to over 13 billion kilometers beyond the known planets. Three papers published in the journal Science describe how Voyager 1's entry into a region called the magnetic highway also known as the depletion region.Link:http://www.sciencemag.org

MOVIE OF THE MONTH : JUNE2013

                                                      
Director  : Grigorij Richters
Story       : Grigorij Richters
Camera   : James Kinsman
Running  : 95 minutes
Country  : United Kingdom
Language: English

51 Degrees is an upcoming thriller, science fiction film written and directed by Grigorij Richters and starring Moritz von Zeddelmann, Steve Nallon, Jamie Doyle, Dolly-Ann Osterloh and Steven Cree.The film is visually presented as found footage shot from the perspective of various video recording devices, primarily from a hand-held camcorder operated by the main characters and from CCTV cameras.

Damon Miller (Moritz von Zeddelmann) is a talented, young German filmmaker, living in London, grappling with the pressures of an impoverished profession and a dissolving relationship, who stumbles into the discovery that the Earth stands on the brink of an extraterrestrial disaster.

Damon takes a keen interest in the danger posed by asteroids to the Earth, and believes he has finally discovered the ideal subject for a documentary. His interest quickly turns into an obsession, however, as Damon delves ever deeper into his research, to the increasing distress of his newly pregnant girlfriend Ann (Dolly-Ann Osterloh) and his filmmaking partner Michael (Steven Cree).

They inform Damon that the world will end in less than three weeks when a series of asteroids will strike the Earth. However, a glimmer of hope remains in the form of a secret space station orbiting the Earth that can house up to 2,000 people. In exchange for a ticket to this space station, they task Damon with documenting the final moments leading up to the asteroid strike.

Movie Webite: http://51degreesfilm.com

BOOK OF THE MONTH : JUNE 2013

                                                           
Title        : Do You Believe in Magic?:
                The Sense and Nonsense of 
                Alternative Medicine 
Author     : Paul A. Offit 
Pages       : 336 
Publisher : Harper
Published : June 18, 2013
Price        : $ 15.98
ISBN       : 10:0062222961

A half century ago, acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, Chinese herbs, Christian exorcisms, dietary supplements, chiropractic manipulations, and ayurvedic remedies were considered on the fringe of medicine. Now these practices, known variably as alternative, complementary, holistic, or integrative medicine, have become mainstream, used by half of all Americans today seeking to burn fat, detoxify livers, shrink prostates, alleviate colds, stimulate brains, boost energy, reduce stress, enhance immunity, eliminate pain, prevent cancer, and enliven sex.

Paul Offit’s new book, Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine is a smoothly written, highly readable take on some important topics from the ever-changing complementary-and-alternative-medicine (CAM) territory. Offit’s primary theme is that treatments can harm as well as help, true of conventional medicine and its potential side effects, but even more true of unconventional treatments, with their untested effects. At several points in the book, Offit repeats the important dictum: there is really no such thing as “alternative” medicine, if it hasn’t been shown to be safe an effective, there’s no point in calling a treatment “medicine”.  

Offit begins the book with chapters considering two factors that help convince the public that an alternative treatment is a good idea: one is the belief that if a substance or procedure is part of an ancient tradition, it must be beneficial, and the other is the belief that whatever is “natural” is good for you. Obviously, these beliefs are unsupported by evidence. We read with horror of the devastation of the Black Death, of scurvy on sailing ships, of death and deformity from smallpox and polio. 

Offit’s final chapter, “The Remarkable, Highly Underrated Placebo Response”, addresses the fact that people sometimes do get better when given alternative treatments. He refers briefly to several explanations of the placebo effect, including cognitive dissonance and regression to the mean. But what I’d hoped for from this chapter does not materialize. I would have liked to see some discussion of the effect of spending time with a patient and of personal interactions that may go a long way to explain the occasional effectiveness of implausible treatments.

Situations where the patient does not “feel better” in spite of treatment are situations that open the door to alternative practitioners. If the patient subsequently “feels better”, the alternative practitioner counts this as a success for his or her method and may report this or publish it in a journal dedicated to alternative medicine. But, in most comparisons of alternative and conventional treatments, the influential common factors go unconsidered. However difficult we might find it to assess warmth, empathy, and so on, it’s reasonable to say that less contact means less exposure to the common factors. 

Paul A. Offit, M.D., is Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. An expert in the field of vaccines, he is a recipient of many awards, including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School. His books include the recent Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. Visit his website at www.paul-offit.com.

Review Courtesy:  http://childmyths.blogspot.in
                                 http://www.amazon.com

EVENT OF THE MONTH : JUNE 2013

NOW LEARN IT IN MALAYALAM

                                                      

                                             
KASVU -the Malayalam Farm Portal cum Web and Radio Channel of Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University was launched by Sri. K.P. Mohanan, Hon’ble Minister for Agriculture and Animal Husbandry at Trivandrum on 17th June 2013. 

Farm portal aims to create awareness and spark interest in the fields of Livestock Development, Dairying, Entrepreneurship, Policy Research, environment and sustainable development through Technology enabled knowledge dissemination mode.

Hon’ble Minister for Dairy Development Sri. K.C. Joseph inaugurated the Regional Training and Research Centre and Livestock Policy and Research Centre of the University. Sri. K. Muraleedharan, Hon’ble MLA  inaugurated the Launch of the Distance Learning Programme. 

Sri. M.V. Sreyamskumar, Hon’ble MLA and Member,Board of Management,KVASU inaugurated the University’s State level Self Help Group based outreach programme. Director of Entrepreneurship Dr.S.Ramkumar and Dr.T.P. Sethumadhavan explained about the project. 

Link: www.kasavu.in

SPECIES OF THE MONTH: JUNE 2013

                                                  

A horse has just taken us further back in time than ever before. The genome of a 700,000-year-old fossil has been sequenced, suggesting we could do the same with other long-extinct creatures – including early hominins like Homo erectus.

Small DNA fragments have survived up to 500,000 years, but until now, the oldest complete genome had come from 110,000-year-old polar bear remains. Pushing that back to 700,000 years is a big jump, says Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Willerslev's collaborator Ludovic Orlando, also at the University of Copenhagen, scoured a horse bone found in the permafrost of north-west Canada in 2003 for pockets of collagen. The protein degrades easily, so its presence is a sign that DNA could have survived alongside it.

The team compared the ancient horse DNA to that of five domestic breeds, plus a donkey and the Przewalski's horse. They found that the last common Equus ancestor lived between 4 and 4.5 million years ago, before the last ice age, making the lineage about twice as old as we thought.

They thrived when the ice sheets advanced, but suffered when temperatures rose. The team is now sequencing a more recent species, which lived shortly before horses were domesticated, to figure out how that process changed its genes. The work is a boost for efforts to recover DNA from fossils. 

Link: http://www.nature.com

SCIENCE OF THE MONTH: MAY 2013

                                                         

1 May 2013:India's hornbill conservator Aparajita Datta has won the Whitley award, often hailed as the 'Green Oscar'. It was in honour of the Datta 's work to protect threatened hornbills in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh. India is home to nine species of hornbill. Arunachal, where Datta mainly works, hosts five species, including the globally endangered rufous-necked hornbill and the brown hornbill. The Whitley awards, made annually by the Whitley Fund for Nature, honour exceptional individuals working in grassroots nature conservation. Link:http://whitleyaward.org
 
2 May 2013:The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, the largest telescope ever seen on Earth has opened its new international headquarters. It is located near to the iconic Lovell Telescope at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom. The elegant and modern 3.34 million pounds building is funded by the University of Manchester. Square Kilometre Array telescope is a radio telescope, the construction which will begin in 2016 in the remote and radio quiet deserts of Australia and Southern Africa. Link: http://www.skatelescope.org
 
3 May 2013:A team of 70 scientists from the U.S., China, Australia and Japan have sequenced and annotated the genome of the "Sacred Lotus" Nelumbo nucifera from China which is believed to have a powerful genetic system that repairs genetic defects, and may hold secrets about aging successfully. The scientists sequenced more than 86 percent of the nearly 27,000 genes of the plant. Scientists believe that Lotus seed’s long life and its genetic repair mechanisms could be very useful if they could be transferred to humans or to crops. Link:http://genomebiology.com
 
4 May 2013:Eminent scientist Dr. Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao has become the first Indian chemist to reach the h-index of 100, revealing the excellency and vastness of his published work.The h-index is based on a scientist's most cited papers and measures the impact of the published work. He is the only Indian scientist among a few in the world who have got nearly 50,000 citations and over 1,500 research papers published in his career. Rao is a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Society of London.Link:http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz
 
5 May 2013:NASA is preparing to send two Space Telescopes to Mars, donated by the National Reconnaissance Office which are comparable in size and appearance to the Hubble Space Telescope. One telescope is called MOST (Mars Orbiting Space Telescope) which has about 100 times better resolution than NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been circling the Red Planet since 2006. The other is called Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) which would probe the mysteries of dark energy and exoplanets. Link:http://salso.msfc.nasa.gov
 
6 May 2013:Cardiff University researchers found that 93% of DNA variants found in tigers shot the period of the British Raj were not present in tigers today. There are fewer than 2,000 tigers left worldwide, 60% of which is in India. The Cardiff university team collaborated with the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India in their research. The study-material was based on the Natural History Museum of London's tiger collection which holds the DNA-library of the tigers killed in the British Raj period from 1858 to 1947. Link:http://www.cardiff.ac.uk
 
7 May 2013:Astronomers have for the first time discovered an exoplanet using a new method that relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity. "Einstein's planet", formally known as Kepler-76b, is a "hot Jupiter" that orbits its star every 1.5 days. Its diameter is about 25% more than Jupiter's. It orbits a type F star located about 2,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The planet is tidally locked to its star, always showing the same face to it, just as the Moon is tidally locked to Earth. The study appears in The Astrophysical Journal.Link:http://arxiv.org
 
8 May 2013:India has developed its first vaccine under public-private partnership - Rotavac. The indigenous low-cost vaccine helps to prevent Rotavirus diarrhoea, will soon be hiting markets in India. Priced at around Rs 54, it will be a boon for fighting the killer virus. The research was done by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), Bharat Biotech (BBIL) and the National Institute of Health (NIH). Rotavirus infection is responsible for 100,000 deaths of children in India every year.Link:http://www.nih.gov
 
9 May 2013: The recently launched digital herbarium of the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI) has become the largest collection of plants including medicinal plants in India, available on the web. The online herbarium is with 10306 specimens. It has been recognized internationally by the International Association of Plant Taxonomists (IAPT). It has a complete collection of medicinal plants of South India and palms and bamboos, including those from Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is the biggest online herbarium portal in India. Link: http://kfriherbarium.org

10 May 2013:Space scientist G Madhavan Nair is broadening his orbit and would soon launch a science school in Kochi, Kerala. The school, the first-of-its-kind in the country, will be run by Vikram Sarabhai Science Foundation under the CBSE stream. Space scientist G. Madhavan Nair, Anil Kakodkar, the chief of Atomic Energy Commission are in the governing body. The students will receive lectures from eminent space scientists around the world. The school will be inaugurated by Yannick d' Escatha, president of the French Space Agency.Link:http://www.isro.org
 
11 May 2013:India is taking part in the biggest scientific collaboration on the planet, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Cadarache, southern France, to produce energy from atomic fusion. The reactor is based on the 'tokamak' concept of magnetic confinement, in which a hot plasma of 150 million degrees Celsius is generated. India is making a component called Cryostat which will be delivered there on December 2015. 34 nations are collaborating to realize the ITER project's First Plasma in November 2020.Link:http://www.iter-india.org
 
12 May 2013 : India proposes to launch its first navigational satellite, which will provide terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation services and help in disaster management on June 12. The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System-1A (IRNSS) is slated to be launched on board home-grown rocket, PSLV-C22 XL at 1.01 am from Sriharikota spaceport. IRNSS-1 will have a life span of about ten years and will provide satellite-based terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation services, and also help in disaster management and vehicle tracking. Link:http://www.isro.org

13 May 2013 : NASA's asteroid mission called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) has been approved. It will be NASA’s first mission to collect sample from an asteroid and returning to earth. The mission will be launched in 2016. OSIRIS-REx will come together with the asteroid Bennu in year 2018. It is scheduled to return a sample of it to Earth in year 2023. OSIRIS-REx will gather 60 g of surface material. It will plot the asteroid's global features, measuring the non-gravitational forces.Link:http://osiris-rex.lpl.arizona.edu
 
14 May 2013:After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996. They transplanted genetic material from an adult skin cell into an egg cell, the genetic material of which was removed. The technique was announced by scientists at Oregon Health Science University and the Oregon National Primate Research Center, which will be used for harvesting stem cells for research. The study is reported in the journal Cell.Link:http://download.cell.com
 
15 May 2013: A scientific paper has come to light which states that a virus, generally found in domestic livestock, has been spotted for the first time in the lions in Gir. The virus, Peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV), has been detected from a dead Asiatic lion by Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI). The strain is said to be common in domestic livestock, which is more deadly than the Canine Distemper Virus (CDV) that wiped out a third of African Lions in Serengeti. The paper was published in the Journal of Veterinary Science in June 2012. Link:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
16 May 2013:According to Mark Pendergrast the recipe of Coca-Cola was handed down through the family of Frank Robinson, the commercial partner of chemist John Pemberton, who first produced the drink in the summer of 1886. In his book, 'For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It', Pendergrast reproduces the original recipe that Pemberton devised over 125 years ago. In 1903, traces of cocaine were removed after the drink became widely available.Link:http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com
 
17 May 2013: In a joint project of the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE), a Indian Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) laboratory in Chandigarh, and the US army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), a new prototype of wind turbine has been developed to harness wind energy, which can overcome ice and snow accumulation on wind turbine structures. SASE has already installed a 10kW capacity wind turbine project in Banihal Top, Jummu & Kashmir, in which snow riming was observed. Link: http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil
 
18 May 2013: Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science has developed a pen-shaped needleless drug delivery device that promises to be pain free and economical. This was informed to the Lok Sabha by minister of state for HRD Shashi Tharoor in a written reply.The device uses supersonic shock waves for painless delivery of medicines into the body. The new system has multiple advantages in also being easily portable, disposable, safe and economical. Using the new technique, typhoid vaccines were successfully delivered into mice.Link:http://www.iisc.ernet.in
 
19 May 2013: Britain's first "official" astronaut, Major Tim Peake will be going to a five-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015. Major Tim Peake is considered Britain's first official spaceman as previous UK citizens have either secured private funding or have taken out American citizenship. The first Briton in space was Sheffield-born chemist Helen Sharman, in 1991. Three British-born astronauts have flown into space under an American flag are Michael Foale, Piers Sellers and Nicholas Patrick.Link:http://www.esa.int
 
20 May 2013: 24 May 2013: Eesha Khare, 18, of Saratoga, California received the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award of $50,000 for developing a fast-charging supercapacitor that fits inside a cell phone, charge the battery in under a minute, and hold it for long. It can result in batteries that can last for 10,000 charge-recharge cycles, compared with 1,000 cycles for conventional rechargeable batteries. The award description cited Eesha for "Design and Synthesis of Hydrogenated TiO2-Polyaniline Nanorods for Flexible High-Performance.” Link:http://www.intel.com
 
21 May 2013: Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) claim to have recreated the world's tiniest droplets of a primordial state of matter that existed moments after the Big Bang. This represents the type of matter that existed some 13.8 billion years ago. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light. The short-lived droplets are too small that they are of the size of three to five protons. The finding is submitted to the journal Physical Review D. Link:http://prd.aps.org
 
22 May 2013: India's Ministry of Environment and Forests has banned Dolphinariums where dolphins are exhibited in the country. In the strongest stance yet opposing the development of Dolphinariums in India, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has issued a ban, which says 'state governments are advised to reject any such proposal' that comes forward. In January, the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) has issued a directive deeming dolphinariums unlawful under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960. Link:http://www.awbi.org
 
23 May 2013: The Zoological Society of London have for the first time made a list of world's mammals, scoring them according to how Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) they are. India's Gangetic River Rolphin and wild elephants figure as the toppers in the latest 100 mammals on the list. The list includes the world's most threatened species and raises a serious alarm for the largest land mammal in Asia, the elephant. The River Dolphin has been ranked 60th most endangered mammal in the world.Link: http://www.edgeofexistence.org
 
24 May 2013: An international team of genetic scientists has completed the genomic sequence of the Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii).Also known as chiru, is a native of the high mountain steppes and semi-desert areas of the Tibetan plateau. The Tibetan antelope, the only member of the genus Pantholops is with the unique adaptations to live in the harsh high-altitude climate. The work may also open a way to understand the adaptation of the low partial pressure of oxygen in human activities. The study published in Nature Communications.Link:http://www.nature.com
 
25 May 2013: Researchers in the UK, Germany and the US analysed dried leaves kept in collections in Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, UK, and Botanische Staatssammlung Munchen, Germany to identify the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine, that led to the deaths of about a million people from starvation and disease between 1846 and 1851. Until now, it has been unclear how early strains of Phytophthora infestans are related to those present in the world today. The research, published in the new open-access scientific journal, eLife. Link:http://elife.elifesciences.org
 
26 May 2013: Swedish scientists have mapped the gene sequence of Norway spruce (the Christmas tree) and that is the largest genome to have ever been mapped. The genome is complex and seven times larger than that of humans with about 29,000 functional genes. The greatest challenge in the project has been to get the approximately 20 billion "letters" found in spruce's genetic code into the correct order. The study led by Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC) in Umeå and the Science for Life Laboratory in Stockholm is published in the journal Nature.Link: http://www.nature.com

27 May 2013: A team of genetic scientists led by Dr Shu-Jin Luo from Peking University in Beijing has revealed that a mutation in a single pigment gene, called SLC45A2, is responsible for the unusual coloration of white tigers. The white tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) variant of the Bengal Tigers has the same pigment gene which had already been associated with light coloration in animals like horses, chickens, and fish. The history of white tigers on the India date back to the 1500s, but the last known free-ranging white tiger was shot in 1958. Link:http://www.cell.com
 
28 May 2013: Scientists are building a 40 kg germanium detector, 4,850 feet beneath the earth’s surface in the underground laboratory in South Dakota in the US, to help explain the puzzling imbalance between matter and antimatter generated by the Big Bang. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has begun delivery of germanium-76 detectors with the intention of building the Germanium detector, capable of detecting the theorized neutrino less double beta decay. It is a joint venture of institutions from the US, Russia, Japan and Canada.Link:http://www.ornl.gov
 
29 May 2013: 60 years ago, today, on May 29, 1953, at 11.30am, both Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to stand on the summit of Mount Everest with a peak of 8,848m (29,029 ft) in the Himalaya range, the highest point on Earth. Triangulated as Peak XV in 1856, foreigners first set their eyes on the great mountain in 1849. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were on the ninth attempt on the mountain. There were 13 men (not including Sherpas), led by John Hunt, on the 1953 expedition which first conquered Everest.Link:http://teacher.scholastic.com
 
30 May 2013: An asteroid named 1998 QE2 passed near to Earth at nearly 6 million kilometers away t aabout 4:29 AM(Indian Standard Time). Strangely enough, it was not travelling alone. NASA scientists tracking the asteroid with the giant Deep Space Network antenna in California have found that the asteroid has a small satellite or moon. The asteroid is about 2.7 kilometers in diameter. Such a 'binary' or double system is rare but about 16 per cent of asteroids with diameters 200 meters or more are binary or even triple systems. Link:http://www.nasa.gov
 
31 May 2013: The highly threatened Nicobar islands of India, home to 1,800 animal species has now been designated as a world biosphere reserve. The island is characterized by tropical wet evergreen forest. The International Coordinating Council of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) which is meeting now in Paris also added 12 more sites to the World Network of Biosphere Reserves changing it to 621 in 117 countries. Pakistan's largest Juniper forest the Ziarat Juniper forest has been accorded the same status. Link:http://www.unesco.org

MOVIE OF THE MONTH : MAY 2013

                                                           

Director  : Sebastián Cordero
Producer : Ben Browning
Story       : Philip Gelatt
Studio     : Wayfare Entertainment
Release   : June 27, 2013 (VOD)
Country  : United States
Language: English
 
Europa Report (also known as simply Europa) is an upcoming science fiction film starring Sharlto Copley, directed by Sebastián Cordero. Europa Report tells the story of six international astronauts on a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, in search of alien life. Needless to say, things are unlikely to go according to plan. Following a disastrous technical failure and the death of one of the crew, the remaining crew struggle to regain communication with Earth.
 
Filming took place in Brooklyn. It is now completed and the film is in post-production. The first image from the film was revealed on February 11, 2012. A viral website to promote the film was launched shortly afterward.The film's screenplay was written Philip Gelatt, and the production design was done by Eugenio Caballero.An online trailer was released on 20th May.The film is set to be released on Video on Demand, June 27th, 2013, and theatrically, August 2nd.
 
Movie Website: http://www.magnetreleasing.com
Source: http://www.movie-moron.com, http://www.wikipedia.com

BOOK OF THE MONTH : MAY 2013

                                                                

Title         : The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: 
                   A 21st Century  Bestiary
Author     : Caspar Henderson
Pages       : 448
Publisher : Granta Publications Ltd
ISBN-10  : 184708172X
Price        : 25 (Pound)
 
From Axolotl to Zebrafish, meet a world of 'barely imagined beings': real creatures that are often stranger and more astonishing than anything dreamt in the pages of a medieval bestiary. Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the earth, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizarreness of the many living forms we thought we knew and some we could never have contemplated, and invites us to better imagine the world around us. An extraordinary, vivid combination of natural history and spiritual primer, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is a mind-expanding, wonder-inducing read.
 
Caspar Henderson says us that "for much of human history attempts to understand and define ourselves have been closely linked to how we see and represent other animals." Bestiaries are not just classical or medieval works, but part of a tradition that stretches back to the cave paintings of Lascaux and Chauvet, art that is painstakingly accurate as well as possessed of great symbolic power. In his introduction he observes that we have so little knowledge of most of them that, for the most part, we have "barely imagined them".
 
So begins Henderson's project: a spellbinding book that seeks to astonish us with the sheer intricacy, diversity and multiplicity of life forms that share our planet. He fuses zoology, literature, mythology, history, paleontology, anecdote and art through 27 brilliantly executed essays. Each concludes with a philosophical reflection. So a discussion of turtles leads to an exploration of the place of Brahma in Hindu cosmology. A passage on the Cuban missile crisis leads into an account of Russian attempts to impregnate chimpanzees with human sperm. An encomium to octopuses leads into a reflection on the value of a happy childhood.
 
There are other similarities with the original bestiaries. Beautifully illustrated with photographs and diagrams, with each chapter decorated by artwork in the style of a medieval folio illumination, Henderson's book is packed with marginalia, printed in red ink and relating back to red lettering within the body of the text. Some examples: octopuses use copper instead of iron in their haemoglobin; the word for "tortoise" in Hungarian means "bowl-frog"; phytoplankton productivity is intimately related to the prevalence of whale shit; there are diatoms in the sea with names such as "the Fathead Congregant" and "the Crucial Pocket-Compass".
 
Caspar Henderson is a journalist and writer who has worked for the Financial Times, the Independent, and the New Scientist. From 2002 to 2005 he was a senior editor at OpenDemocracy. He received the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors in 2009, and the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award in 2010. He is currently writing a bestiary for the 21st Century called The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. He lives in Oxford, England. The book is with specially commissioned illustrations by Golbanou Moghaddas.
 
Review Courtesy: http://grantabooks.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk

EVENT OF THE MONTH : MAY 2013

WHITLEY AWARDS 2013

2nd of May 2013

The Royal Geographical Society, London

The Whitley Awards is a prestigious international prize awarded annually to individuals working in nature conservation at a grassroots level. This year, the prestigious prize was awarded to the Horbill Conservator from India, Dr. Aparajita Datta. It was for her project, "threatened hornbills as icons for the conservation of the Himalayan forests of Arunachal Pradesh, India". 

Princess Royal Anne, presented the award to Datta at a ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London. "Every winner has a close connection with their community, as well as experience and an understanding of the issues, which often relates to human-wildlife conflict, but they also know how to make an impact through practical solutions, engaging people and initiating change at government level", Princess Anne said. 

Nine species of hornbills live in India and Arunachal Pradesh is home to five of those, including the globally endangered rufous-necked hornbill and the brown hornbill. The state has more than 80% of its geographic area under forest cover. Dutta's project has also involved asking common people to adopt nests and so far he has found 70 donors who have ‘adopted’ nests. 

The Whitley Awards were first awarded in 1994 and over the past two decades.These awards are known as the ‘Green Oscars’ and are often awarded to conservationists working in conflict-torn and developing countries. This year was the 20th anniversary of the Whitley Prize and it saw a huge surge in submissions. 

Link: http://whitleyaward.org

News Courtesy: http://news.mongabay.com

SPECIES OF THE MONTH: MAY 2013

ITS SALTY! NEW FROM KERALA 

                                                        

A group of researchers from Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Cochin has discovered a new species of fish from the sea off the Kollam coast. The new species is named Chelidoperca maculicauda. The researchers involved in the discovery of Chelidoperca maculicauda are E M Abdussamad and N G K Pillai. 

Chelidoperca maculicauda represents the third known species in the genus Chelidoperca from the Arabian Sea. It is a new species of Serranid fish and was found out from the bycatch of a commercial deep-sea shrimp trawler operated off Kollam at depths 180-320 m, and landed at Sakthikulangara Fishing harbour.

Researchers said that the combination of caudal fin shape and a unique colour pattern of five red bars on a pinkish body and pale yellow fins with a bright red margin on the anal fin distinguish the new species from other congeners. 

Another discovery, Opistognathus pardus, is a jaw fish. This is the fourth species of Opistognathus known from the coast of India or Sri Lanka. The researchers involved in the discovery of Chelidoperca maculicauda are K K Bineesh, K V Akhilesh.

Link to Original Paper: http://www.aqua-aquapress.com

News Source Courtesy:http://newindianexpress.com