2 September 2013: NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has used autonomous navigation software called or 'autonav' for the first time, a capability that lets the rover decide for itself how to drive safely on the red planet. Curiosity is now en route to Mount Sharp, where geological layers hold information about environmental changes on ancient Mars. Curiosity can analyse images it takes during a drive to calculate a safe driving path. This enables it to proceed safely even beyond the area that the human rover drivers on Earth can evaluate ahead of time. The drive began on August 27, the mission's 376th Martian day. After landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity spent nearly two months in 'Glenelg' area, where it worked for the first half of 2013. Curiosity was designed and built by JPL, a division of Caltech, which manages it for NASA. Link: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov
3 September 2013: Frederik Pohl, the American writer, who over decades gained a reputation of being a sophisticated writer of science fiction, has died. He was 93.Pohl died at an Illinois hospital after experiencing respiratory problems at his home in the Chicago suburb of Palatine. His death was first announced by his granddaughter, Emily Pohl-Weary, in a tweet. Born in New York City in 1919, Pohl became a literary agent and an editor before getting his own work published in science fiction magazines of the 1930s. His first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna". During 1936, Pohl joined the Young Communist League. A prolific writer, two of Pohl's better known works were "The Space Merchants,'' written in the early 1950s with Cyril M. Kornbluth, and 1978's "Gateway'' a winner of the Hugo Award for science fiction. Link: http://www.frederikpohl.com
4 September 2013: Astronomers led by Jorge Melendez at at the Universidade de Sao Paulo in Brazil, discovered the oldest 'solar twin' named HIP 102152. Scientists believe that only the study of other stars akin to the Sun could help to discover how the evolution of the Sun took place. The stars akin to Sun could be categorized into three, viz. solar analogues, solar-type stars and solar twins. 'Solar twins' are similar to the Earth's star in varied terms, including temperature, mass and profusion of different chemicals such as Lithum which they destroy as they age. The Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory in Chile was behind the discovery. Two solar twins, viz. 18 Scorpii and HIP 102152, in particular, were studied by Jorge Melendez and colleagues so that the age and chemical compositions of the stars could be identified. Link: http://www.eso.org
5 September 2013: A group of scientists from the National Geophysical Research Institute is one step closer to actually viewing earthquakes and find out what triggers them. A pioneering deep-earth study underway in the Koyna-Warna region of Maharashtra will lead to improved earthquake prediction.The Koyna-Warna region is known for frequent seismic activity, attributed to changes in water levels in water reservoirs present in the region.The objective of the study is to drill holes to depths of 8km to directly visualize and measure rock changes during earthquakes. Fifty researchers from NGRI recently concluded gravity gradeometery studies to get a closer look at Earth's interior, again a first of its kind in the country. Earlier this year, the research team drilled two holes to depths of 1.5km and retrieved samples. Link: http://www.ngri.org.in
6 September 2013: The hole in the earth's stratospheric ozone layer over Antarctica is closing slowly and should be completely recovered in the later half of this century, but its effect on global climate change is still uncertain, as per Dr Adrian McDonald, from University of Canterbury in New Zealand . As per him, the depleted stratospheric ozone might have indirectly protected Antarctica from greenhouse gas-related warming. Ozone recovery should act to move the winds back towards the equator, but greenhouse gases might counteract this effect on the jet-stream positions, which help to control the width of tropical and polar weather belts. The Montreal Protocol, which entered into force in 1989, effectively banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). It is estimated that if the protocol is adhered to, then the ozone layer will repair itself by 2050. Link: http://www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz
7 September 2013: Earth's largest volcano and possibly the second largest in the solar system, has been discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The volcano dubbed Tamu Massif, is located about 1,609 km east of Japan. It covers an area about 310,798 square kms, while Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on Earth, is only about 5,179 square kms in area. Olympus Mons on Mars, the largest known volcano in our solar system, is only about 25 per cent larger by volume than Tamu Massif. Tamu Massif is the biggest single shield volcano ever discovered on Earth. It forms the largest feature of Shatsky Rise, an underwater mountain range formed 130 to 145 million years ago. Tamu Massif, which became inactive within a few million years after it was formed. The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Link: http://www.nature.com
8 September 2013: The Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) will start power generation in 20 days from the day the reactor attains criticality again. The scientists said KKNPP had permission for generating up to 500 MW and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) showed green signal to start the power production up to 500 MW in the first unit. But, the fine tuning works for equipment like cooling system, turbine, water pumps and desalination plant and valves are delayed. The reactor has attained criticality for four times till from July 14. Now, the reactor is being kept in the hot condition, but in a sub critical position. Again, the criticality process will be started only after the fine tuning works.Once criticality process starts, the heat level of the turbine will be increased to 900 MW to generate 300 MW power in 15 days. Link: http://www.npcil.nic.in
9 September 2013: NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) aimed at scientific study of the moon’s atmosphere and lunar dust, lifted off today from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA Wallops Flight Facility. The mission is one of many firsts. It will mark the first lunar mission launched from Wallops and the first flown by Orbital Sciences Corp.; the first flight of Orbital’s Minotaur V rocket comprised of converted intercontinental ballistic missile motors belonging to the Air Force, launched from Wallops; the first five-stage rocket flown by Orbital; and the first test of a high-speed laser communications system. Minotaur V rocket, comprised of converted intercontinental ballistic missile motors belonging to the Air Force. LADEE is the first spacecraft designed and built at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
10 September 2013: For the first time in the history of India’s space flights, two civilian ships will play a supporting role in India’s forthcoming Orbiter Mission. In the earlier 'Space Capsule Recovery Experiment Mission', a naval ship was used. As per, B S Chandrasekhar, Director of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network ( ISTRAC), Shipping Corporation of India's 'Yamuna' and 'Nalanda' ships will be positioned in the South Pacific Ocean. They will depart from will depart for the South Pacific Ocean from Visakhapatnam on September 15 and will support the mission during the launch phase. The launch is slated for lift-off between October 21 and November 19 from Sriharikota. The orbiter is set to be moved to Sriharikota on September 27. The first signal of the Mars orbiter insertion will be acquired by NASA's Deep Space Network in Australia. Link: http://www.istrac.org
11 September 2013: NASA has lost radio contact with the Deep Impact spacecraft that hunted for planets beyond the solar system. The last radio communications with the spacecraft were on August 8, and recent attempts to contact the probe have failed. Deep Impact was launched in January 2005 for a close-up study of a Comet, Tempel 1. As the probe's name implies, the primary mission, which took place in July 2005, involved the release of 379kg metal slug that tore into the comet's nucleus, raising a plume of materials to analyze. Five years later, Deep Impact sailed to a second comet, Hartley 2. It was 'Deep Impact' that returned thevery first images of ISON, the newly discovered comet, in January 2013. With no more fuel left, the probe has been heading towards 2002 GT, the only target it could reach, an asteroid approaching Earth. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
12 September 2013: Ray Milton Dolby, an American engineer and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR is dead. He was 80. Dr. Dolby founded Dolby Laboratories in 1965 and created an environment where scientists and engineers continue to advance the science of sight and sound to make entertainment and communications more engaging. Dr. Dolby's pioneering work in noise reduction and surround sound led to the development of many state-of-the-art technologies, for which he holds more than 50 U.S. patents. In the 48 years since Dr. Dolby founded Dolby Laboratories, the company has transformed the entertainment experience from the cinema to the living room. The industry has awarded Dolby Laboratories with 10 Academy Awards and 13 Emmy Awards for its achievements.Link:http://www.dolby.com
13 September 2013: Iran's hunt for its next animal astronaut may turn to the distinctive and locally named Persian cat, in another possible step by the country's ambitious aerospace programme that has also raised Western concerns about spillover military applications.The report by the official IRNA news agency comes seven months after Iran claimed it launched a monkey out of Earth's atmosphere and successfully returned it home. In 2010, Iranian officials said it sent a mouse, a turtle and some worms on a space flight, part of the country's goals of sending a human into space by 2018 and becoming a leading tech centre for the Islamic world. Ebrahimi said Iran's next space capsule could carry the Persian cat, a long-haired , flat-faced breed named after Iran's former name of Persia. Link: http://en.irna.ir/
14 September 2013: Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, including Indian-origin researchers, have for the first time discovered that Down syndrome may be linked to faulty stem cell regulation in the body. Although the gene, called Usp16, is unlikely to be the only contributor to the disease, the finding raises the possibility of an eventual therapy based on reducing its expression, which is a good hope. As per the researchers, Usp16 overexpression is a major contributor to the neurological deficits seen in Down syndrome. Down syndrome, which is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, affects about 6 million people worldwide. It causes both physical and cognitive problems.The finding marks the first time Down syndrome has been linked to stem cells, and addresses some long-standing mysteries about the disorder. The study was published in the journal Nature. Link: http://www.nature.com
15 September 2013: An international team led by South Korea's Personal Genomics Institute and BGI unraveled the first whole genome of Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), and compared it with the genomes of other big cats including the white Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), Lion(Panthera leo) and Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) . The genomic data provides an invaluable resource for the future studies of big cats and their whole family's conservation.The Amur tiger genome is the first reference genome sequenced from the Panthera lineage and the second from the Felidae species. The genome sequencing was part of the agreement made in 2010 at a Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. The latest study was published in Nature Communication.Link: http://www.nature.com
16 September 2013: In today’s Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, Stanford geneticist Stanley N. Cohen, MD, reflects on his role, together with that of Herbert Boyer, PhD, (then at the University of California, San Francisco), in a series of events 40 years ago that led to the first instances of 'DNA cloning' and an explosion in the fields of genetics, biotechnology and medicine. In 1972 researchers, including Boyer, realized that the enzyme EcoRI, which had actually been discovered in Boyer’s UCSF lab, cut DNA in such a way that one severed piece latch on to another piece possessing complementary cuts. November 1972 found both Boyer and Cohen in Hawaii giving papers at a U.S.-Japan joint meeting on plasmids. Link: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu
17 September 2013: This year's Ig Nobel Prizes were announced. This is the 23rd year for the Ig Nobel Prize, sponsored by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research and given out to honour weird and humorous scientific discoveries. The awards ceremonies are usually silly, and this year's was no different. An experiment that proved people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive and another that showed lost dung beetles can use the Milky Way to find their way home won the joint prize in biology and astronomy, given to Marie Dacke and others. Other winners included Brian Crandall of the US and Peter Stahl of Canada and the US, who parboiled a dead shrew, then swallowed it without chewing so they could examine their excrement to see which bones would dissolve in the human digestive system and which would not. Link: http://www.improbable.com
18 September 2013: Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first man-made object to venture into interstellar space. The spacecraft arrived in this cold, unexplored interstellar region on or about Aug 25, 2012, and is now about 19 billion km from our Sun. As per NASA, data indicates that 36 years after it was launched, Voyager 1 has left the heliosphere, the bubble of hot, energetic charged particles surrounding the solar system, and entered into a region of cold, dark space, known as interstellar space.Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft. It is now about 15 billion km away from our Sun. The findings are published in the journal Science. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
19 September 2013: Uttarakhand's famous Rajaji Park which recently got the status of a National Park is likely to become a tiger reserve in a month. The proposal seeking a tiger reserve status for it has already been cleared by the Ministry of Forest and Environment and a notification in this regard is likely to be issued in a month. The status of a tiger reserve will give a boost to tiger conservation efforts at the park with the National Tiger Conservation Authority releasing funds to be used for improvement of patrolling and creation of a separate task force to minimise man-animal conflict. On the recent status of a national park granted to the sanctuary, he said it was pending for years and will go a long way in conservation and management of wildlife at the sanctuary. Link: http://www.rajajinationalpark.co.in
20 September 2013: Veerabhadran Ramanathan, the atmospheric scientist of Indian origin was nominated to receive 'Champions of the Earth award', the UN's highest environmental award, according to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Ramanathan, who hails from Madurai, India received his bachelors degree in engineering from Annamalai University, in 1965, his masters degree from Indian Institute of Science in 1970, and Ph.D. from State University in 1974. His major focus now is on developing practical solutions for mitigating global climate change and slowing down the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. Project Surya, a cook-stove project which attempts to eliminate climate warming pollutants from traditional cooking, was his first climate mitigation project. Link: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu
21 September 2013: The work on a dome meant to protect the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST), now under construction in the US state of Hawaii, has been completed by two Spanish companies. The dome has been designed to allow the telescope to follow the movement of the sun across the sky. Having a diameter of 26 metres (85 ft.), this dome is 24 metres high and weighs 600 tonnes. The ATST is set to begin operations in 18 months at the Haleakala High Altitude Observatory site on the Hawaiian island of Maui.After undergoing trials, the dome will be disassembled for transport to Hawaii by sea in January. The telescope in intended to be the primary scientific tool for understanding the impacts of variations in the solar output on the Earth's climate.Link: http://atst.nso.edu
22 September 2013: In the first series of the Curiosity rover’s analysis of fine Martian soil samples, NASA scientists have found that two per cent of it is water by weight. They have also found other evidence that hint at liquid water having once existed on the planet. The results came from 'Sample Analysis at Mars' (SAM) instrument which analysed the samples of material collected by the rover's arm. The scientists also found carbonates, which are formed in the presence of water, and aluminosilicates, ferric compounds, and sulphates. There was also oxygen which could have come from the breakdown of a perchlorate mineral. Perchlorates are a sensitive marker of past transformation of Martian organic matter. The results were announced in the journal Science. Link: http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov
23 September 2013: At a time when most Indian cities and towns show pollutants in the air due to emissions from different sources, two towns in Kerala, Malappuram and Pathanamthitta, have met the clean air benchmark of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The finding is part of a book: 'Good News Bad News: Clearing the Air in Indian Cities', brought out by Delhi-based research and advocacy organization Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), after making detailed assessment of 227 cities/towns of India. However, 78% of these cities\towns have pollution levels that exceed the acceptable standards. The CSE assessment has reviewed practices across the world, and finds that cities worldwide have started to take action to reverse the trend in travel choices. Link: http://www.cseindia.org
24 September 2013: A group of Stanford researchers has moved a step closer to answering the question of what happens when silicon, the standard material in today's microelectronic circuits, reaches its fundamental limits for use in increasingly small transistors. The researchers reported that they had successfully built a working computer, entirely from transistors fashioned from carbon nanotubes. The computer can right now perform only basic functions at speeds likened to a 1950s computer, but nano-computer was hailed as a an alternative to silicon transistors. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are rolled-up, single-layer sheets of carbon atoms, tens of thousands can fit into the width of a single human hair. They have the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any known material. Link: http://news.stanford.edu
25 September 2013: Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards for 2013, given by Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) were announced today. This year's awardees include Dr Sathees Chukkurumbal Raghavan (Biological Sciences) from IISc Bangalore, Dr Yamuna Krishnan (Chemical Science) from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Dr Bikramjit Basu from IISc and Dr Suman Chakraborty from IIT Kharagpur (Engineering Sciences), Dr Eknath Ghate (Mathematical Science) from TIFR, Dr Amol Dighe from TIFR and Dr Vijay Balakrishna Shenoy from IISc (Physical Science). However, this year, there is no recipient in the category of Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean & Planetary Sciences. The Prize was instituted in 1957 in honour of late Dr Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, founder Director of CSIR. Link: http://www.csir.res.in
26 September 2013: A plant which produces both potatoes and tomatoes, described as a "veg plot in a pot", has been launched in the UK. The Tom-Tato can grow more than 500 sweet cherry tomatoes while producing white potatoes. Horticultural mail order company Thompson & Morgan, which is selling the plants for £14.99 each, said the hybrid plants were individually hand-crafted and not a product of genetic engineering. Grafted potato-tomato plants have already been produced in the UK, but Thompson & Morgan says this is the first time they have been successfully produced commercially. According to the company, the idea of TomTato emerged 15 years ago in the US, when he visited a garden where someone had planted a potato under a tomato as a joke. Link: http://www.thompson-morgan.com
27 September 2013: Humans are not the only primates who whisper. Zoologists know that some animals like to whisper, or do something like it, under certain circumstances. But it's never been observed in nonhuman primates, until now. The primate in question is the cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus), one of the world's smallest primates. It lives in the tropical forests of northwestern Columbia in South America. Its whisper-like behavior was discovered at New York City's Central Park Zoo. When the researchers analyzed audio spectrograms, they realized that the tamarins were in fact communicating, but at low amplitude vocalizations. It is the potential evidence of convergent evolution in communication strategies among the highly social animals. The study is published in Zoo Biology. Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
28 September 2013: Today marked 85th anniversary of the development of Penicillin which happened on Sept. 28, 1928. The discovery of Penicillin, one of the world's first antibiotics, marked a true turning point in human history when doctors finally had a tool that could completely cure their patients of deadly infectious diseases. Penicillin was discovered by Dr. Alexander Fleming(1881 - 1955), the bacteriologist on duty at St. Mary's Hospital, London. Upon examining some colonies of the bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus, Dr. Fleming noted that a mold called Penicillium notatum had prevented the normal growth of Staphylococci. Fourteen years later, in March 1942, Anne Miller became the first civilian patient to be successfully treated with the antibiotic Penicillin. Link: http://www.chemheritage.org
29 September 2013: Bill Gates has described the decision to use Ctrl+Alt+Del as a command was a mistake. The shortcut, also known as the three-finger salute - came to prominence in the early 1990s as a quick fix for the infamous "blue screen of death" on PCs. Originally designed to trigger a reboot of a PC, it survives in the Windows 8 operating system as the command to access the task manager toolbar and is still used in older versions to log on. The keyboard shortcut was invented by IBM engineer David Bradley. During IBM's 20th anniversary celebrations, he said that while he may have invented it, Bill Gates making it famous. His involvement in the invention has made him something of a programming hero, with fans asking him to autograph keyboards at conferences. Link: http://www.computerworld.com
30 September 2013: Keeping its commitment of regularly adding more science centres, the National Council for Science Museums (NCSM) has proposed 18 more science centres taking the total to 66. Work on five of them has already started and will be completed by 2017 and the others in next five year plan. The five science centres include centres at Kottayam (Kerala), Mysore (Karnataka), Kumaon (Uttarakhand), Udaipur (Tripura) and Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh. The others which will be developed in next five year plan include Tumkar in Karnataka, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, Udaipur in Rajasthan, Chandigarh and Dadar Nagar Haveli (UTs), Bavgarh in Odisha, Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir, Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, Ambala in Haryana. Besides these, Guwahati will have a science city. Link: http://ncsm.gov.in
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