2 February 2015:
Investigators at Nationwide Children's hospital have developed a software that
slashes the time it takes to search a person's genome for disease-causing
variations from weeks to hours, faster than all other available technologies.
It took around 13 years and $3 billion to sequence the first human genome. A
new software created by scientists can now do it in hours. Scientists have
developed a computational pipeline called Churchill which allows whole
genome analysis in as little as 90 minutes. Churchill has completed
analysis of 1,088 whole genome samples in seven days and identified millions of
new genetics variants. The output of Churchill was validated using
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) benchmarks. In comparison
with others, Churchill was shown to have the highest sensitivity at
99.7%; highest accuracy at 99.99% and the highest overall diagnostic
effectiveness at 99.66%. Link: http://genomebiology.com
3 February 2015: Researchers from the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with scientists in Australia and the US, have identified a biological clock that provides vital clues about how long a person is likely to live. The study measured each person's biological age by studying a chemical modification to DNA, known as methylation. The modification does not alter the DNA sequence, but plays an important role in biological processes and can influence how genes are turned off and on. Methylation changes can affect many genes and occur throughout a person's life. When researchers compared actual ages with their predicted biological clock age, a pattern emerged. People whose biological age was greater than their true age were more likely to die sooner than those whose biological and actual ages were the same. Each person's biological age was measured from a blood sample. The study is published in Genome Biology. Link: http://genomebiology.com
4 February 2015:
An artificially-intelligent 'robot scientist' has discovered that a compound
shown to have anti-cancer properties can also be used in the fight against
malaria, UK researchers say. The robot scientist, named Eve, could make drug
discovery faster and much cheaper. Robot scientists can automatically develop
and test hypotheses to explain observations, run experiments using laboratory
robotics, interpret the results to amend their hypotheses and then repeat the
cycle. In 2009, Adam, a robot scientist developed by researchers at the
Universities of Aberystwyth and Cambridge, became the first machine to
independently discover new scientific knowledge. The same team has now
developed Eve, based at the University of Manchester, whose purpose is to speed
up the drug discovery process and make it more economical. Eve exploits its
artificial intelligence to learn from early successes in her screens and select
compounds. Link: http://www.cam.ac.uk
5 February 2015:
An international team of scientists has discovered a deep sea microbe that has
not evolved for over 2 billion years. This is the greatest time for which
no evolutionary changes have been observed in any living species till now. The
scientists examined tiny sulphur bacteria that are 1.8 billion years old and
were preserved in rocks from Western Australia's coastal waters. The bacteria
look the same as bacteria of the same region from 2.3 billion years ago, and
that both sets of ancient bacteria are indistinguishable from modern sulphur
bacteria. The environment in which these microorganisms live has remained
essentially unchanged. The fossils analyzed date back to a substantial rise in
Earth's oxygen levels known as the Great Oxidation Event, which scientists
believe occurred between 2.2 billion and 2.4 billion years ago. The findings
are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Link: http://www.pnas.org
6 February 2015:
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has recently captured a rare triple moon
transit of Jupiter. Hubble took a string of images of the event which show the
three of Jupiter's largest moons, Europa, Callisto and Io, in action. The three
moons are known as Galilean moons since they were discovered by the scientist
during the 17th century. With orbits ranging from two to 17 days, it's common
for at least one of the moons to be seen orbiting the Jupiter. However, the
convergence of the three is an occurrence so rare that NASA said it happens
only once or twice per decade. The fourth Galilean moon, Ganymede, was outside
the Hubble's view and was not part of the celestial sight. The moons of Jupiter
have very distinctive colors. The smooth icy surface of Europa is yellow-white,
the volcanic sulphur surface of Io is orange and the surface of Callisto, which
has the most cratered surfaces known in the solar system, is a brown. Link:http://www.wildlifesos.org
7 February 2015:
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has beamed latest images of Pluto, as the probe
makes way towards a historic encounter with the icy dwarf planet. New Horizons
was nearly 203 million kilometres away from Pluto when it began taking images.
The new images, taken with New Horizons' telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance
Imager (LORRI) on January 25 and January 27, are the first acquired during the
spacecraft's 2015 approach to the Pluto system, which culminates with a close
flyby of Pluto and its moons on July 14. Closing in on Pluto at about 49,890
kph, New Horizons already has covered more than 3 billion miles since it
launched on January 19, 2006. Its journey has taken it past each planet's
orbit, from Mars to Neptune, in record time, and it is now in the first stage
of an encounter with Pluto that includes long-distance imaging and solar wind
measurements to characterise the space environment near Pluto. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
8 February 2015:
India was put under Swine-Flu alert. More than 200 deaths due to Influenza A (H1N1), known as Swine-Flu, have been recorded within a short period of over a month. The majority of cases and deaths have been reported from the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana, and the capital city, New Delhi. Medical teams in these areas are rushing to assess the situation and help manage the cases.Symptoms of swine flu are similar to those produced by standard seasonal flu - fever, cough, sore throat, body aches and chills. Some people with the virus also experience nausea and diarrhea. The disease originated from pigs, but is now a wholly human disease and is spread by coughing and sneezing. Swine flu first appeared in Mexico in 2009 and rapidly spread around the world. After the pandemic of 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) and researchers warned of sporadic outbreaks of the H1N1 influenza virus. Link:http://www.searo.who.int
9 February 2015:
Researchers at University of Nottingham, have bred a barley variety which
is better able to tolerate water-logging and flooding. The British researchers
and colleagues had previously identified the mechanism used by plants in stress
conditions to sense low oxygen levels.They have now used advanced breeding
techniques to reduce yield loss in barley in water-logged conditions. Plants
starved of oxygen cannot survive flooding for long periods of time. Persistent
flooding and saturated arable land can reduce harvests. So the search for flood
tolerant crops is a key target for global food security. Barley is comparatively
more susceptible to water-logging than other cereals. Average yields can be
reduced by up to 50 per cent as a result of water-logging. Resistance to this
stress is an objective of breeding efforts in high-rainfall areas of the world.
The research is published in Plant Biotechnology Journal. Link:http://www.nottingham.ac.uk
10 February 2015:
The Big Bang never happened and our universe may have no beginning and no end,
suggests a new theory by physicists. The theory applies quantum correction
terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity and may also
account for dark matter and dark energy. The widely accepted age of the
universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the
beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single
infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in
a ‘Big Bang’ did the universe officially begin. Although the Big Bang
singularity arises from general relativity, math can explain only what happened
immediately after - not at or before - the singularity. The Big Bang
singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no
beginning and no end. The work is published in the journal Physics Letters B.
Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com
11 February 2015:
The humble coconut oil has now been found to be the giant slayer of
hypertension. New study in rats shows potential for combining coconut oil and
exercise to successfully reduce hypertension. Coconut oil is one of the few
foods that can be classified as a ‘superfood’. It is unique combination of
fatty acids can have profound positive effects on health, including fat loss,
better brain function and many other remarkable benefits. Researchers working
at the Federal University of Paraiba in Brazil set out to test the hypothesis
that a combination of daily coconut oil intake and exercise would restore
baroreflex sensitivity and reduce oxidative stress, resulting in reduction in
blood pressure. Either coconut oil or exercise training was shown to reduce
blood pressure. However, only combined coconut oil and exercise were able to
bring the pressure back to nonsensitive values. The data is published in The
Lancet. Link: http://www.wildlifesos.org
12 February 2015:
A study has found that smokers have a thinner brain cortex, the outer layer
involved in critical cognitive functions such as memory and language. A thinner
brain cortex is associated with adult cognitive decline. The study by
scientists at the University of Edinburgh and the Montreal Neurological
Institute at McGill University analysed MRI scans of 244 males and 260 females
with an average age of 73. Around half were former or current smokers. Those
participants who had given up smoking for the longest time had a thicker cortex
compared with those who had given up recently, even after accounting for the
total amount smoked in their lifetime. The group tested was part of the Lothian
Birth Cohort 1936, a group of individuals who were born in 1936 and took part
in the Scottish Mental Survey of 1947. Using detailed MRI brain scans,
researchers analysed how smoking habit is linked brain's cortex's thickness.
Link: http://www.nature.com
13 February 2015:
NASA has recently developed a concept to send a submarine to explore Saturn's
moon Titan, which has mysterious vast lakes of liquid methane and ethane. At
2015's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium, a Titan submarine concept
was showcased by Nasa Glenn's COMPASS Team and researchers from Applied
Research Lab. Envisaged as a possible mission to Titan's largest sea, Kracken
Mare, the autonomous submersible would be designed to make a 90 day, 2,000 kilometer
voyage exploring the depths of this vast and very alien marine environment.
Communicating with Earth would not be possible when the vehicle would be
submerged, so it would need to make regular ascents to the surface to transmit
science data. Titan is the only moon in the solar system to have a significant
atmosphere and this atmosphere is known to possess its own methane cycle.
Methane exists in a liquid state, raining with hydrocarbons, forming rivers,
valleys and seas. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
14 February 2015:
It was on February 14, 1990, that the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back
at the Solar System and snapped the first-ever pictures of the planets beyond
Neptune. In the course of taking this, Voyager 1 made several images of
the inner Solar System from a distance of 40 astronomical units (1 AU = 150
million km). These images are the last that Voyager 1, which launched in 1977,
returned to Earth. The Sun is not large as seen from Voyager 1, only
about 1/14 of the diameter as seen from our planet, but is still almost 8
million times brighter than the brightest star in Earth’s sky, Sirius. Carl
Sagan wrote in his Pale Blue Dot book: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every
human being who ever was, lived out their lives…There is perhaps no better
demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our
tiny world.” Link:http://visibleearth.nasa.gov
15 February 2015:
Three Indians, two women and one man, have made it to the list of 100
applicants who will move on to the next round of an ambitious private mission
that aims to send four people on a one-way trip to Mars in 2024. From the
initial 202,586 applicants, only 100 hopefuls have been selected to proceed to
the next round of the selection Process. The project aims to set up a human
colony on Mars and eventually around 40 people will be sent to the red planet
on a permanent basis. The finalists will train for seven years and Mars One
will begin sending out four at a time from 2024. The Indian candidates include
29-year-old Taranjeet Singh Bhatia. The other two are Ritika Singh, 29, who
lives in Dubai, and Shradha Prasad, 19, from Kerala. The next selection rounds
will focus on to endure all the hardships of a permanent settlement on Mars.
The candidates are to perform well in a team also. Mars One has published
a list of the 100 on their website. Link: http://www.mars-one.com
16 February 2015:
Life may have begun on Earth 3.2 billion years ago and not 2 billion years ago
as currently thought. This is the startling conclusion emerging from analysis
of some of the planet's oldest rocks by researchers from the University of
Washington. Life can exist without oxygen, but without plentiful nitrogen to
build genes, essential to viruses, bacteria and all other organisms, life on the
early Earth would have been scarce. The ability to use atmospheric nitrogen to
support more widespread life was thought to have appeared roughly 2 billion
years ago. But analysis of ancient rock samples from Australia and South
Africa, showed chemical evidence of life pulling nitrogen out of the atmosphere
and converting it into a form that could support larger communities. This may
be further evidence that some early life may have existed in single-celled
layers on land, exhaling small amounts of oxygen that reacted with the rock to
release molybdenum to the water. Link: http://www.washington.edu
17 February 2015:
Showing the world how to move forward in chalking out climate action plan,
Switzerland today became the first member country to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to submit its Intended Nationally
Determined Contribution ahead of the Paris climate talks, scheduled for
December 2015, where a new climate deal is expected to be signed. It is
committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% relative to 1990 levels by
2030. Switzerland promised that at least 30% of this reduction must be achieved
within Switzerland itself while the rest may be attained through projects
carried out abroad. Under the INDCs, all countries are expected to submit their
target-plans in terms of their emission cut goals in advance ahead of Paris
climate talks. The new agreement will come into effect in 2020 and will
pave the way to keep a global temperature rise this century under 20 Celsius.
Link:http://newsroom.unfccc.int
18 February 2015:
The ozone layer faces a new threat as certain chemicals that are not controlled
by a United Nations treaty designed to prevent ozone depletion are increasing
rapidly. Scientists report the atmospheric abundance of one of these 'Very
Short-Lived Substances' (VSLS) is growing rapidly. VSLS can have both natural
and industrial sources. Industrial production of VSLS is not controlled by the
United Nations Montreal Protocol because historically these chemicals have
contributed little to ozone depletion. Researchers from the School of Earth and
Environment found a rapid increase in atmospheric concentrations of
dichloromethane, a man-made VSLS used in a range of industrial processes. Ozone
depletion arising from VSLS in the atmosphere today is small compared to that
caused by CFCs. VSLS-driven ozone depletion was found to be almost four times
influencing the climate. The study is published in the journal Nature
Geoscience. Link: http://www.nature.com
19 February 2015:
India faces the imminent threat of malaria parasites that are resistant to the
drug Artemisinin, the frontline treatment against malaria, spreading from
Myanmar into its territory, putting thousands of lives at risk, researchers
have warned. The research team confirmed resistant parasites in Homalin,
Sagaing Region located only 25 kms from the Indian border. If drug resistance
spreads from Asia to the African sub-continent, or emerges in Africa
independently, millions of lives will be at risk. The researchers examined
whether parasite samples collected at 55 malaria treatment centres across
Myanmar carried mutations in specific regions of the parasite's kelch gene
(K13), a known genetic marker of artemisinin drug resistance. Drug resistant
malaria parasites in the 1960s originated in Southeast Asia and from there
spread through Myanmar to India. The study appeared in Lancet Infectious
Diseases. Link: http://www.ox.ac.uk
20 February 2015:
NASA is planning a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa called the Europa
Clipper to search for signs of alien life on the icy, ocean-harbouring
world. Europa Clipper want to search for evidence of alien life in the
plumes of water vapour that apparently blast into space from Europa's south
polar region. These plumes, which Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope spotted in
December 2012, provide a possible way to sample Europa's ocean of liquid water,
which is buried beneath the moon's icy shell. As currently envisioned,
Europa Clipper would travel to Jupiter orbit, then make 45 flybys of Europa
over 3.5 years, at altitudes ranging from 25km to 2,700km. Spotting a set of
amino acids that all display the same chirality, or handedness, in plume
material would be strong evidence of Europan life. If the plume exists, it is
not continuous like the powerhouse geysers that erupt from the south pole of
Saturn's moon Enceladus. Link: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
21 February 2015: Ford Motor Co. is helping
to pull aluminum from the bear markets afflicting most commodities by adding to
an increase in industrial use. The company is hiring workers to expand
production of its F-150 pickup after a switch to an aluminum body helped spur
demand that has exceeded the company’s plans. As auto use increases, U.S. consumption
of the metal will rise about 7 percent in 2015 from 2014 to 5.38 million tons,
the highest since 2006, according to Morgan Stanley. Even as the Bloomberg
Commodity Index trades near a 12-year low, aluminum prices are up about 2.4
percent in the past 12 months, the biggest gain behind cattle. Ford’s move to
go with the lightweight metal will help to improve fuel mileage. Aluminum for
delivery in three months slid 2.3 percent in 2015 to $1,810 a metric ton as of
2:16 p.m. on the London Metal Exchange. Cash prices, which settled today at
$1,791.25, will climb 16 percent this year to an average $2,072. Link:http://www.ford.com
22 February 2015:
Japanese researchers have built a pair of clocks which they say are so accurate
they will lose a second only every 16 billion years, longer than the Earth has
been around. The new clocks are called 'Cryogenic Optical Lattice Clocks' and they look more like giant stripped-down desktop computers than
ordinary wall clocks. The new clock uses lasers to trap strontium atoms in tiny
grid-like structures. It then measures the frequency of the vibration of the atoms,
using them like ‘the atomic pendulum’. The system is so delicate that it must
operate in a cold environment, around -180 Celsius (-292 Fahrenheit), to reduce
the impact of the surrounding electromagnetic waves and to maintain the
machine's accuracy. The researchers at the University of Tokyo connected the
two clocks for a month, and estimated that it would take 16 billion years for
them to develop a one-second gap. The new research is published in Nature
Photonics. Link:http://www.nature.com
23 February 2015: Scientists gathered today for an unveiling ceremony at the Roslin Institute of Edinburgh University, where Dolly, the sheep was born and lived. Her birth on 5 July 1996 was initially kept a secret while a formal scientific paper about the process that created her was prepared and the news did not leak until the following February, days before the document was due to be published. The plaque will read: "Dolly the Sheep, 1996-2003. First mammal to be cloned from an adult cell." Dolly was named after the American singer Dolly Parton, because the original cell used to create Dolly came from a mammary gland. It is not the first time an animal has been honoured - Nipper, the HMV dog, was immortalised with a blue plaque in Piccadilly, central London. Other plaques commemorate scientists including Dorothy Hodgkin, the only female British scientist to be awarded a Nobel, and fellow winner Alan Hodgkin. Link: https://www.societyofbiology.org
24 February 2015:
Astronomers have found the largest black hole till date, as big as 12 billion
times bigger than the sun and 420 trillion times more luminous than our sun.
The black hole's mass is 12.8 billion light years away, the most luminous
object ever seen in such ancient space. It's also from just 900 million years
after the big bang. The hole was found at the centre of a quasar that pumped
out a million billion times the energy of our Sun. A quasar is an extremely
bright cloud of material in the process of being sucked into a black hole. As
the material accelerates towards the black hole it heats up, emitting an
extraordinary amount of light which actually pushes away material falling
behind it. This process, known as radiation pressure, is thought to limit the
growth rate of black holes. As per Dr Fuyan Bian at the Australian National
University, the discovery challenges theories of how black holes form and grow
in the early universe. Link: http://www.nature.com
25 February 2015: Today marks 85 years since Clyde Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet Pluto while working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. This year will also mark a new milestone in our history of Pluto. After traveling for nine years, NASA's New Horizons probe will have a close encounter with Pluto this summer. It is expected to take the best and closest photographs of the dwarf planet, which is 3 billion miles away from Earth. It will pass so close to Pluto that if New Horizons were over Denver, you would be able to clearly see Interstate 25 and Mile High Stadium.Alan Stern is New Horizons' principal investigator and is based at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. We'll be getting an update on the first, distance images New Horizon has sent back as it gets closer to Pluto. This time-lapse 'movie' of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was recently shot at record-setting distances with the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. Link:http://www.nasa.gov
26 February 2015:
Although the trial stages are on for the Krishna Phase III project, another
water scheme, the Godavari Phase I is facing a roadblock due to land
acquisition troubles. Planned to reach the trial stage by July, the project is
crucial for Hyderabad as it will supply areas in the city’s fringes. Facing
land acquisition issues from the forest department, the project is held up at
Mallaram Ring Main II, where land acquisition is essential. The matter has been
brought to the Chief Minister’s notice by the Water Board. Inside sources
reveal that other components are moving at a rapid pace but only the land
acquisition for Ring Main II is yet to be done. Rs 2.7 Crore has already been
paid to the Forest department by the Water Board for the 50 acre of land
acquired. The Board is providing the amount for plantation of trees in the
compensatory afforestation land at Murmur. Link:http://www.scribd.com
27 February 2015:
A molecule derived from an Asian herb may protect against Ebola by switching
off channels which the virus uses to enter and infect cells, a study suggests.
The molecule called Tetrandrine has shown to be potent in inhibiting infection
of human white blood cells in vitro or petri dish experiments and prevented
Ebola in mice. Scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute have been
working on stopping the virus before it has a chance to enter or interact with
cellular factors.The Ebola virus begins its entry into a cell by first binding
to several types of cell surface proteins. Then the virus is taken into the
cell and follows an endosomal route, or membrane-bound route that transports it
to various cell compartments. Two Pore Channels (TPCs) are needed to be turned
on in order for the virus to function properly. Tetrandrine was the best
candidate for further animal testing, as it gave little proof of cytotoxicity.
Link:http://www.txbiomed.org
28 February 2015:
A team of scientists from the Kerala State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC) and
Geological Survey of India (GSI) rushed to Karumaloor village in Ernakulam
district on today evening to collect samples from a possible meteor impact site
but failed to come up with material evidence. Experts, meanwhile, have
concluded that the fireball seen in the sky across the State yesterday night
was caused by a meteoroid. Alerted by the district administration, the police
later cordoned off the area. The scientists received samples reportedly
collected by local people from another possible impact site at Valamboor. There
were unconfirmed reports of another fireball seen in the sky over Pathanapuram
in Kollam district on today night. Scientists believe that it is a fragmented
part of the meteoroid. Meanwhile, Indian Space Research Organisation sources
ruled out the possibility of any man-made object falling to earth. Link: http://disasterlesskerala.org
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