1 January 2015: 2015 is the International Year of Light and International Year of Soils. By proclaiming 2015 as the International Year of Light, United Nations has recognized the importance of raising awareness of how light-based technologies promote sustainable development and provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture and health. The resolution proclaiming the Year was adopted during the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly. The same session also declared 2015 as the International Year of Soils. It is aimed at increasing the awareness of soil for food security and ecosystem functions. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been nominated to implement the Year of Soils, within the framework of the Global Soil Partnership along with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Link: http://www.light2015.org
2 January 2015: Today marked 100 days of the Mangalyaan (Mars Orbiter Mission) in the red planet's orbit. Mangalyaan was launched on 5 November 2013 and it it was successfully inserted into Mars orbit on 24 September 2014. Mangalyaan was given a life span of 180 days, but may well continue to study Martian details for up to 15 years. ISRO scientists were looking forward to June, well past the spacecraft's assigned life of mid-March, when it will go through a phase of no communication with earth. This will be a test for the spacecraft's autonomy (the ability to remain in orbit and carry out experiments without orders from Earth). The systems has to pass through an 'infant mortality test,' when it will undergo 168 hours of burn-in under high temperatures. This is to ensure it withstand the extremities of space weather. Link: http://www.isro.org
3 January 2015: Chinese scientists have found a ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule called 'dla-miR18' which they think plays a central role in the coordination of the more than 200 genes suspected of participating in the mass flowering cycles of bamboo. Massive flowering cycles of bamboo are a natural phenomenon that occur approximately every half a century and of which few details are known. The research could help explain the mass flowering of bamboo, a process that has raised more questions than answers and is especially sensitive in China since the plant is the food for pandas, China's national symbol. The team led by Zhenhua Guo at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been working with bamboo since 2007 in the Chinese province of Yunnan. The plants bloom only once and then die, which can deprive pandas of their basic food, something that happened in the 1980s killing 40 percent of the species. Link:http://www.sainonline.org
4
January 2015: Six telescopes will be circling Antarctica to
observe microwave radio waves, believed to be remnants of the primordial fireball
in which it all started 13.8 billion years ago. The set of six telescopes will
be known as SPIDER, for Suborbital Polarimeter for Inflation, Dust and the
Epoch of Reionization, which will be encircleing the continent for the next 20
days. The telescopes, built by an international collaboration led by physicists
from Caltech and Princeton, are designed to detect faint curlicues in the
polarization of the microwaves. Spider is a sister experiment to another
Caltech-based collaboration known as Bicep done towards seeking evidence
for inflation. Both experiments were
conceived by Andrew Lange, a Caltech astronomer who died in 2010. The SPIDER
experiment was supposed to complete last year, and was shipped to McMurdo
Station, run by the National Science Foundation. Link:http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca
5
January 2015: Barely a month after signing in as a full partner in
the Thirty-Metre Telescope (TMT) project jointly developed by five nations,
India is all set to make sensors and actuators that will keep the huge mirror
of the biggest telescope in place.Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA),
Aryabhatta Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital and
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) constitute the
Indian arm of the consortium that also comprises labs from Canada, the US,
China and Japan.The US will make the primary mirror segments, while China comes
up with the tertiary mirror. India will be involved in polishing the primary
mirror and setting up its control system, besides developing electronics, edge
sensors and actuators. Canada will put in place the dome and Japan the telescope structure. TMT
will strengthen the search for intelligent life elsewhere, by direct imaging of
planetary systems. Link: http://www.tmt.org
6
January 2015: A sun-powered plane was loaded onto a cargo carrier
in Switzerland late today heading for the Middle East from where it will
attempt a revolutionary round-the-world trip. The air carrier transporting
Solar Impulse 2 is due to leave for Abu Dhabi, from where the
long-winged plane will begin its record-making bid in March with the aim of
completing the trip by July. It is the successor of Solar Impulse, a pioneering
craft which notched up a 26-hour flight in 2010, proving its ability to store
enough power in lithium batteries during the day to keep flying at night. The
forerunner was put through its paces in Europe, crossed the Mediterranean to
reach Morocco and traversed the United States in 2013 without using a drop of
fossil fuel. The masterminds of the project are Bertrand Piccard, the scion of
a dynasty of Swiss scientists-cum-adventurers, and Andre Borschberg, a former
Swiss air force pilot. Link:http://www.solarimpulse.com
7
January 2015: In a landmark achievement,
scientists at the National Diary Research Institute (NDRI) in Karnal, Haryana,
have successfully cloned the Asian Wild Buffallo, raising hope of saving the
endangered species from extinction. This is the first cloning attempt of Asian
wild buffalo species in the world. It was the last surviving female wild
buffalo of Chhattisgarh. The female calf was born on December 11 by normal
parturition. The clone has been named Deepasha. The project was a part of the
mission by the Chhattisgarh government to save the wild buffalo, declared as
state animal. Wild buffaloes have also been sighted in Indravati Reserve forest
in south Bastar of Chhattisgarh in the past. Of the six surviving wild
buffaloes in Udanti reserve forest only
one is female, raising the prospect of extinction of the breed. Following this,
the Chhattisgarh government had approached NDRI, to clone it using domestic buffaloes.Link: http://www.icar.org.in
8 January 2015: In a massive breakthrough, scientists have created the first new antibiotic in more than three decades, Teixobactin, that can treat many common bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, septicemia and C Diff or Clostridium difficilecolitis. The discovery comes at a time when World Health Organization has sent out warnings that humanity is staring at a post-antibiotic era when common infections will no longer have a cure. The first antibiotic, Penicillin, was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, and more than 100 compounds have been found since then, but no new class has been found since 1987. Most antibiotics target bacterial proteins, but bugs can become resistant by evolving new kinds of proteins. What's unique about Teixobactin is that it launches a double attack on the building blocks of bacterial cell walls. This will pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics.Teixobactin could be available in the next five years. Link:http://www.nature.com
9
January 2015: According to Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) project
director, Subbiah Arunan, the Mars-bound spacecraft crossed the deadly Van
Allen radiation belt as many as 39 times while zooming towards the Red Planet
and remained unaffected. Arunan revealed this while addressing a plenary
session of the 102 Indian Science Congress at Mumbai University's Kalina campus
today. The components of MOM were radiation shielded at Isro's Satellite Centre
in Bengaluru while the spacecraft was being prepared for the mission.NASA's
Explorer 1 and Explorer 3 missions confirmed the existence of the radiation
belts in 1958 under Jamas Van Allen of the University of Iowa. The main belts
extend from an altitude of about 1000 to 60,000 kms above the earth's surface.
He added that an advanced version of GSLV Mark 3 also known as LVM3, is being designed to carry payloads upto 20 tonnes to low earth orbit. Link:http://www.isro.gov.in
10 January 2015: In honor of the Hubble
telescope’s upcoming 25th anniversary in April, NASA has provided a clearer
view of the Eagle Nebula's 'Pillars of Creation', the iconic image released in
1995 that changed people’s perception of space. It was unveiled at this week’s
American Astronomical Society meeting. Showing three columns of gas highlighted
by the ultraviolet light emitted from a nearby star cluster in M16, a region of
the Eagle Nebula in the constellation Serpens, the image has inspired everyone
from those behind the recent Star Trek films to children who aspire to study
astronomy. The image of the pillars sheds light on the constantly shifting face
of the universe. The gaseous bodies suggest “creation” but also “destruction,”
according to a release from NASA. The swirling gaseous bodies shown in the
images are what scientists say our own sun’s formation looked like. So, these
kinds of images sheds light on our own origins. Link: http://hubblesite.org
11 January 2015: On June 30th this year, a single second will be
added to the world's atomic clocks, according to the Paris based International
Earth Rotation Service (IERS), which keeps tracks of such things. The leap
second needs to be added because as the Earth spins on its axis - causing days
and nights, it is slowing down by about two thousandth of a second every day.
So, after 23:59:59 on June 30 2015, the world's atomic clocks will tick to
23:59:60 and then on to the standard 00:00:00 which is midnight. From here
onwards it will continue normally to 00:00:01 which will be July 1. The Earth's
rotation, like a spinning top, is affected by many gigantic forces including
earthquakes, tidal pulls and even weather. This year's leap second will be the
26 thadded since 1972. Google has devised a method called leap
smear to get around the leap second problem. This strategy involved
adding very small bits of time, adding up to one second. Link:http://www.iers.org
12 January 2015: United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday visited India's first
'Net Zero Energy' consuming building, Indira Paryavaran Bhawan, which is
constructed in such a way that it can meet most of its annual energy
requirement through solar power. In fact, Ban Ki-moon had expressed his desire
to see the green building when Javadekar had last met him during the UN climate
conference in Lima, Peru in December, 2014 and explained him the features of
the 'Paryavaran Bhawan' from where his ministry works. The building is located
at Jor Bagh in South Delhi. The building was dedicated to the nation by the
then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh early last year. It is focused on increasing
the efficiency of resources like energy, water and materials. The 'Net Zero Building', is a structure with zero net energy
consumption where the total amount of energy used on an annual
basis. Link: http://batchgeo.com
13 January 2015: Today, as India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) completed 113 days in orbit around the red planet, the US National Space Society (NSS) bestowed its Space Pioneer Award in the Science and Engineering category to Team MOM. This was for two significant mission firsts: it has gone into orbit around Mars on the very first try (on September 24, 2014). No other country has ever done this. Two, the spacecraft is in an elliptical orbit with a high apoapsis (farthest point from the planet), and has a high resolution camera which is taking full-disk color imagery of Mars. NSS's Space Pioneer Award consists of a silvery pewter Moon globe cast by the Baker Art Foundry in Placerville, California, from a sculpture originally created by Don Davis, a space artist. NSS, has been giving the Space Pioneer Award since 1988. The award will be given away at NSS's 34th International Space Development Conference in Toronto in May. Link:http://www.nss.org
14
January 2015: Today is the tenth
anniversary of Huygens, an atmospheric entry probe that made a historic landing
on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The probe was operated by European Space
Agency (ESA). According to reports, the size of Huygens is smaller compared to
size of Cassini. If Cassini probe is considered as a wagon, the Huygens probe
can be considered as a tyre of that wagon. ESA’s probe was launched on October
15, 1997 that had landed on Titan on January 14, 2005. The probe was sent with
a mission to gather data for a few hours in the atmosphere. As per Carolyn
Porco, head of the Cassini mission's imaging team, the probe’s entry in
Saturnian orbit in 2004 was an unforgettable moment as it was the first
spacecraft to land on Titan. ESA has released a video that begins with a view
of Saturn and Titan’s atmosphere and then the surface by the
Huygens' Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer. Link: http://saturn.esa.int
15 January 2015: The European Space Agency's Beagle-2 lander, which had been lost on Mars since 2003, has been found. New photos taken by the high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show the lander partially deployed on the surface of the Red Planet, it said. Beagle-2 has not been heard of since it separated from its mother ship, but the images proved the entry, descent and landing sequence did work and that it successfully landed on Mars on Christmas Day in 2003. The discovery of the craft showed its complex landing procedures had worked.The British-built Beagle-2 was launched on ESA's Mars Express orbiter and was supposed to look for signs of alien life. It was released from its mother ship on December 19, 2003, and was supposed to land six days later, but no communications with the lander were ever established. After the project failed, two U.S. spacecraft landed on Mars and sent back extensive scientific data. Link:http://www.beagle2.com
16 January 2015: Scientists have developed a novel instrument that
can reveal the age of meteorites that fall on Earth, offering insight into the
geologic history of the solar system. The instrument can be miniaturized for
spaceflight to reveal the age of planetary materials. The key to understanding
the geologic history of the solar system is knowing the ages of planetary
rocks. Researchers validated the instrument - a laser ablation resonance
ionisation mass spectrometer, by dating a rock from Mars: the meteorite Zagami,
which formed about 180 million years ago, and fell to Earth in 1962. The
advantage of the technique is that it requires little sample preparation, and
the instrument is small and fast. Furthermore, the instrument can simultaneously provide geochemistry measurements and provide
high-sensitivity detection of organics.The study is published in Rapid
Communications in Mass Spectrometry. Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
17 January 2015: NASA has
teamed up with Microsoft to develop a new software that will enable scientists
to work on Mars virtually using a wearable technology. Developed by Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, the software called OnSight will give scientists a means
to plan and, along with the Mars Curiosity rover, conduct science operations on
the Red Planet. OnSight will use real rover data and extend Curiosity's
existing planning tools by creating a 3-D simulation of the Martian environment
where scientists from world over can meet. The OnSight system uses holographic
computing to overlay visual information and rover data into user's field of
view.The tool will assist researchers in better understanding the workspace of
robotic spacecraft. JPL plans to begin testing OnSight in Curiosity mission
operations later this year. Future applications may include Mars 2020 rover
mission, and support of Nasa's journey to Mars. Link:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
18 January 2015: Scientists
have for the first time showed unambiguously that the propagation of light can
be slowed below the commonly accepted figure of 299,792,458 metres per second,
even when traveling in air or vacuum. Researchers from the University of
Glasgow and Heriot-Watt University demon started that applying a mask to an
optical beam to give photons a spatial structure can reduce their speed.The
team compare a beam of light to a team of cyclists who share the work by taking
it in turns to cycle at the front. Although the group travels as a unit, the
speed of individuals vary. The group formation can make it difficult to define
a single velocity for all cyclists, and the same applies to light. A single
pulse of light contains many photons and light pulses are characterized by
different velocities. The experiment involved two photons released
simultaneously across identical distances towards a defined finish line. Link: http://www.sciencemag.org
19 January 2015: An
Interstellar-style space-time tunnel may exist in the Milky Way and we could
even travel through it, according to a new theory proposed by an international
team of scientists, including those from India. Based on the latest evidence
and theories our galaxy could be a huge wormhole and, if that were true, it
could be stable and navigable.If we combine the map of the dark matter in the
Milky Way with the most recent Big Bang model to explain the universe and we
hypothesize the existence of space-time tunnels, what we get is that our galaxy
could really contain one of these tunnels, and that the tunnel could even be the
size of the galaxy itself. We could even travel through this tunnel, since,
based on our calculations, it could be navigable. The paper authored by Farook
Rahaman from University in Kolkata and a group of Indian and North
American researchers is published in the Annals of Physics. Link:http://www.sciencedirect.com
20 January 2015: A team of
researchers has unveiled closest-ever details about the evolution of a comet
that was in headlines last year when the European Space Agency's Rosetta
mission helped its Philae lander touch down on the surface of
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (C-G). The study helps scientists better understand
how comets form in the first place, how their surfaces evolve over time and how
to potentially predict their lifespans. The authors are from the team for
Rosetta's Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS). Comets have very little gravity, dust and gas flow freely into the
space.The comet will be most active when it reaches perihelion or the single
point in C-G's orbit that is the closest and most intensely affected by solar
radiation.It will reach this point August 13, 2015 after which it will head away
from the Sun once again.The series of papers appeared in a special issue of the
journal Science.Link:http://www.sciencemag.org
21 January 2015: An international team of scientists have found exactly what is tarnishing Taj Mahal's white marble. In the published study, the scientists have concluded that black carbon and brown carbon from the burning of trash and fuels are among the primary pollutants tarnishing Taj Mahal. Every several years, the Archeological Survey of India apply a clay mask to India's iconic but yellowing Taj Mahal to remove layers of grime and reveal the white marble underneath. Mike H Bergin and Sachchida Nand Tripathi from the American Chemical Society note that Indian officials have tried to reduce the effects of pollution on the Taj Mahal by restricting nearby traffic and limiting local industrial emissions. But despite regulations, the domes and minarets continue to accrue a layer of soot. The team estimated how these specks reflect light and therefore affect the color of the building. Link:http://www.acs.org
21 January 2015: An international team of scientists have found exactly what is tarnishing Taj Mahal's white marble. In the published study, the scientists have concluded that black carbon and brown carbon from the burning of trash and fuels are among the primary pollutants tarnishing Taj Mahal. Every several years, the Archeological Survey of India apply a clay mask to India's iconic but yellowing Taj Mahal to remove layers of grime and reveal the white marble underneath. Mike H Bergin and Sachchida Nand Tripathi from the American Chemical Society note that Indian officials have tried to reduce the effects of pollution on the Taj Mahal by restricting nearby traffic and limiting local industrial emissions. But despite regulations, the domes and minarets continue to accrue a layer of soot. The team estimated how these specks reflect light and therefore affect the color of the building. Link:http://www.acs.org
22 January 2015: Germany will provide 3
million Euro to support India's ongoing Ganga rejuvenation plan and explore
various options to develop the country's national river.One of the options is
to explore an option of extending co-operation for Ganga rejuvenation on the
lines of Indo-German Energy Forum - a dedicated platform to support India's
energy needs through various measures including government-private
partnership.The matter of financial support and other options for partnership
were discussed during a bilateral meeting of the German minister of
environment, conservation and nuclear safety Barbara Hendricks. It was
discussed that the co-operation on Ganga on the lines of the Indo-German Energy
forum may include river basin planning, institutional setting and researches.
The overall co-operation under such proposed dedicated forum may also include
technical supports like river rejuvenation strategies. Link: http://energyforum.in
23 January 2015: In its move to push higher use of alternative fuels, India
will soon notify the emission standards for vehicles that can ply on 85-95%
ethanol-blended fuel. This will pave way for manufacturing of new engines that
can use cleaner fuel and Indian vehicle testing agencies will give 'type
approval' certificates. The vehicle manufacturers will define the level of
ethanol blend and it will be displayed on vehicles by putting a clearly visible
sticker unlike CNG vehicles which cannot be identified quickly. The road
transport ministry has issued a draft notification setting emission standards
for flexi-fuel ethanol (E85) and ethanol (ED95) vehicles. E85 is commonly used
by Flexible-Fuel Vehicles (FFV) in the United States and Europe. Ethanol is a
cleaner fuel and producing less Carbon.The apex advisory body on setting
vehicle standards, CMVR TSC, also took up the issue of facilitating introduction
and manufacturing of bio-CNG vehicles. Link:http://www.acma-act.in
24
January 2015: Coastal dwellers and
fishermen of Kerala were warned that High Swell Waves (HSW) measuring over two
metres from the Southern Ocean may hit the Kerala coast. The warning came from
the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Telangana,
which issued 'high wind-wave alert' to Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala,
Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu, Andaman, Nicobar and Goa upto January 26. Last week,
wave surges were reported on the Kollam, Alappuzha and Kochi coasts. Flooding
was reported in many parts of Vypeen, Nayarambalam, and Edavanakad in Kochi.
The high-energy HSWs, which originate from the Southern Ocean and the Indian
Ocean, travel over 4,000 km to reach the Kerala shores. The coasts of
Vizhinjam, Kollam, Alappuzha, Kochi and Kasaragod are said to be vulnerable to
HSW. Besides the Spring Tides, wind plays a crucial role in formation of
wave surges. Link: http://www.incois.gov.in
25
January 2015: NASA's Mars Opportunity
rover celebrated its 11th anniversary on the Red Planet today with a
spectacular panorama of a Martian crater. Opportunity landed on Mars on January
25, 2004 in the Meridiani Planum region.Since that time, the spacecraft has
trekked 25.9 miles across the surface of the planet, further than any other
off-planet vehicle. From a low segment of the rim that it crossed in mid-2013,
called 'Botany Bay', it climbed about 135 meters in elevation to reach the top
of Cape Tribulation. It has placed an US flag there which is intended as a
memorial to victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre
in New York. Opportunity rover is also known by (Mars Exploration Rover, MER-1)
and is actually a robotic rover active on the planet Mars since 2004. The
scientific objectives Opportunity mission are to search and characterize a variety of rocks and soils
that hold clues to past water activity.Link: http://mars.nasa.gov
26 January 2015: The asteroid 2004 BL86, that flew past the Earth today has its own small moon, as per NASA's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California. Its primary body is approximately 325 metres across and has a small moon approximately 70 metres across. The flyby was the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries. It is also the closest a known asteroid this size will come to the Earth until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past our planet in 2027. In the near-Earth population, about 16% of asteroids that are about 200 metres or larger are a binary (the primary asteroid with a smaller asteroid moon orbiting it) or even triple systems. In 2016, NASA will launch OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid (101955) Bennu, one of the most potentially hazardous of the known near-Earth objects (NEOs). The OSIRIS-REx mission will be a pathfinder for future spacecraft designed to perform reconnaissance around NEOs. Link:http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
27 January 2015: Charles Townes, who shared
the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the MASER died at age 99. In 1953, Townes, James P. Gordon, and H. J. Zeiger built the first ammonia MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) at Columbia University. This device used stimulated emission in a stream of energized ammonia molecules to amplify of microwaves at a frequency of about 24.0 gigahertz. For his creation of the MASER, Townes along with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov received the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics. Four years later,
he and a brother-in-law, Arthur Schawlow, conceived of a variation on that
invention to amplify a beam of optical light, instead of microwave energy, and
Bell Laboratories patented it as LASER. As
member of the United Church of Christ, Townes considered that "science
and religion are quite parallel, they must converge". Link:http://www.nobelprize.org
28
January 2015: Today marks the 29th
anniversary of NASA's 'Challenger' shuttle disaster. The accident happened on
January 28, 1986, 73 seconds into flight, nine miles above the Atlantic for all
to see, remaining as NASA's most visible failure. The Challenger explosion was
the world's first high-tech catastrophe to unfold on live TV. Adding to the
anguish was the young audience: School children everywhere tuned in that
morning to watch the launch of the first schoolteacher and ordinary citizen
bound for space, Christa McAuliffe. The other members of the crew were Dick
Scobee, Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair and
Gregory Jarvis, the first of the shuttle astronauts to die on the job. NASA
paid tribute to the crews of Challenger, Apollo 1 and space shuttle Columbia.
Today was the Annual Day of Remembrance, the day that honors those who lost
their lives for the cause of exploration and discovery.Link:http://www.challenger.org
29 January 2015:
Today was the 89th birth anniversary of Prof Dr Abdul Salam who was
the first person to win Nobel Prize in science from the Muslim world. Salam was a science advisor to the Government of Pakistan from 1960 to 1974, and during this tenure he played an integral role in Pakistan's development of peaceful use of nuclear energy, and may have contributed to development of atomic bomb project of Pakistan in 1972.Salam's major and notable achievements include the Pati–Salam model, magnetic photon, vector meson, Grand Unified Theory, work on supersymmetry and, most importantly, electroweak theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In
1974, Abdus Salam departed from his country, in protest, after the
Pakistan Parliament passed a controversial parliamentary bill declaring
the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as not-Islamic. Link:http://www.nobelprize.org
30 January 2015: The Planetary
Society, a nonprofit that promotes space exploration, announced that it would
send the first of two small spacecraft testing the technology of solar sails
into orbit this May, tagging along with other small satellites on an Atlas 5
rocket. When photons, particles of light, bounce off a shiny surface, they
impart a tiny bit of momentum, an effect that comes directly from the equations
of electromagnetism published by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in the
1860s. Next year, a second LightSail is to be lofted higher, to an altitude of
450 miles, by a Falcon Heavy rocket from Space Exploration Technologies Corp,
or SpaceX. That flight is to be the first to demonstrate controlled solar
sailing while in orbit around Earth.In his 1865 novel, 'From the Earth to the
Moon', Jules Verne appears to have been the first to realize that this force
could be harnessed for travel in space. Link: http://sail.planetary.org
31 January 2015: The Bannerghatta Biological Park has become the first fenced, forested elephant sanctuary in the country which is set up at 49.5 hectare (122 acres). Home to 15 elephants, this innovative project has been funded by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India. Elephants can move about freely in the enclosure. This comes as a big relief to jumbos that were either chained or kept in small enclosures after they were rescued or captured from different places. Sunder, 15, who was famously liberated by the Supreme Court in 2014 after being subjected to a harsh life at a Maharashtra temple, is one of the celebrated inmates here. Designed by PETA consultant and elephant expert Carol Buckley, based on the US elephant expert Margaret Whittaker, there is a solar-fencing running all along the specially designed enclosure. India, home to over 27,000 elephants as per the year 2007-08 estimates. Link: http://www.petaindia.com
