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
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