2 December, 2015: The Union Cabinet gave its approval for introduction of a Bill to provide legal status to the Regional Centre for Biotechnology in Faridabad. The objective of the bill is to provide a legal status to the Centre so as to function independently as an autonomous body and also an 'institution of national importance' for education, training and research in the areas of biotechnology. The Centre has already been established by an executive order of the Government of India in November, 2008 after the approval by the Union Cabinet. It is currently operational at the NCR Biotech Science Cluster, Faridabad and the enactment does not involve any financial implications at this stage. It would be a hub of biotechnology expertise in the countries in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region, and more generally in the Asia region. Link: http://www.rcb.res.in
3 December, 2015: Until recently, diamond was the hardest known naturally occurring material. But a new process applied to carbon has uncovered a substance that a group of scientists say is even harder. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a technique for creating a substance they are calling Q-carbon, which represents a third phase, or distinct form, of carbon alongside graphite and diamond. The discovery could have many applications, notably in the fields of medicine and industry .The process of creating Q carbon produces minuscule 'synthetic diamond seeds' which can yield gems. The potential for creating synthetic gemstones pales next to possible applications of Q-carbon which is magnetic, fluorescent and electro-conductive. It can also be used in synthetic body parts and long lasting screens for televisions and cellphones. Link: http://scitation.aip.org
4 December, 2015: The Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) onboard India's first multi-wavelength satellite Astrosat has sent the first light images. UVIT was the last payload to be activated on the Astrosat, which was launched on September 28, 2015. For the first light observations, ISRO said that an open cluster of stars ‘NGC 188’, was chosen based on certain preconceived requirements. UVIT is a collaborative effort of Bengaluru-headquartered Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and ISRO from the Indian side, and the Canadian Space Agency. Though this source is not a primary standard, it has been studied in details by the past missions so that a good idea of the performance of UVIT can be obtained from these images. Link: http://www.isro.gov.in
5 December 16, 2015:In a major breakthrough, researchers at Columbia Engineering have harnessed the molecular machinery of living systems to power an integrated circuit. They achieved this by integrating a conventional solid-state complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-powered ion pumps. In living systems, ATP is used to transport energy from where it is generated to where it is consumed in the cell. The advance has opened the door to creating new artificial systems that contain both biological and solid-state components. While other groups have harvested energy from living systems, Shepard and his team are exploring how to do this at the molecular level, isolating just the desired function and interfacing this with electronics. For this project, the researchers isolated the ATPases because they were the proteins that allowed us to extract energy from ATP. The study was published online in the journal Nature Communications.Link: http://www.nature.com
6 December 16, 2015: Japan's space agency’s Akatsuki probe had successfully entered into orbit around Venus after an initial attempt at reaching the second planet from the sun failed five years ago. The success marks the first time a Japanese space probe has entered into the orbit of another planet, according to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Akatsuki, meaning dawn, blasted off in 2010 on a 25.2 billion yen ($205 million at current exchange rates) mission to observe the toxic atmosphere and super-hot volcanic surface of Venus. But the box-shaped probe failed to enter the planet's gravitational pull and shot past it. The successful Venus orbit came a week after another Japanese space probe, ‘Hayabusa- 2’, passed by Earth to harness the gravitational pull to propel it toward a far away asteroid. Hayabusa-2 was launched a year ago on a six-year mission to bring back samples from the asteroid. It is expected to reach Ryugu, named after a mythical castle in a Japanese folk tale, in mid-2018. If all goes well, soil samples will be returned to Earth in late 2020. Link:http://global.jaxa.jp
7 December 16, 2015: To understand its evolutionary history of Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), researchers at the Beijing Genomics Institute and the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) sequenced the genome from a male Namibian cheetah named Chewbaaka, and six other wild cheetahs from Tanzania and Namibia. By sequencing the cheetah’s genome, an international team concluded that the first one came 100,000 years ago when first migrated out of North American across the Beringian landbridge to Asia and then eventually south to Africa. This was a time when all the Pleistocene megafauna went extinct, including Sabretooths, Mammoths and the Woolly Rhino. The second bottleneck came around 10,000-12,000 years ago, causing a major reduction in the gene pool that remains today. A total of 18 cheetah genes showed damaging mutations with one gene in particular, AKAP4. The finding is published in Genome Biology. Link: http://www.genomebiology.com
8 December 16, 2015: The world's first dengue vaccine has won regulatory approval in Mexico, raising hopes that it could prevent more than 100 deaths there a year and eventually millions around the world. Globally, dengue affects about 400 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization. The Dengvaxia vaccine is being manufactured by French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi. The company has requested regulatory approval in 20 countries across Asia and Latin America, but Mexico was the first to green flag it. While the price tag has yet to be decided, the vaccine is likely to generate more than $1billion a year in revenue for Sanofi, as per the company's vaccines division. Mexico's National Vaccination Council will meet to decide whether Dengvaxia will be among the vaccines the government distributes without cost. Tests, carried out on 40,000 people from 15 countries, have found Dengvaxia can immunize two-thirds of people aged nine years and older. Link: http://www.sanofipasteur.com
9 December 16, 2015: Researchers at Smithsonian Institution have identified a new species of whale that they are naming after the mythic beast of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. It has been called Albicetus oxymycterus meaning ‘White whale’. Researchers have identified a new species of whale that they are naming after the mythic beast of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Researchers have corrected a 90-year-old error and created a new branch of the sperm whale family tree for the fossil. She and co-author Nicholas Pyenson, the Smithsonian’s curator of marine mammal fossils, named the genus ‘albicetus’, meaning white whale. The fossil of the 15 million-year-old, newly named whale was pulled from the storage shelves at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History for the first dedicated study since 1925, when a naturalist named Remington Kellogg put the bones with a bunch of extinct walruses. The study is published Plos One. Link: http://journals.plos.org
10 December 16, 2015: Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island tortoise(Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii), died in 2012. But, the iconic Galápagos tortoise whose death marked the end of his species, is in post-mortem luck. A scientific expedition has discovered some of his close blood relations alive and well. With careful breeding, biologists now hope to revive George’s species and reintroduce the tortoises to the island on which they evolved. Originally there were at least eight species of Galápagos tortoise, scientists now believe. One was discovered only this year. At least three species are now extinct, including tortoises on Pinta Island. The last one, George, was discovered wandering alone in 1972 and taken into loving custody. In 2008, scientists tagged and collected blood samples from more than 1,600 tortoises living on the flanks of the volcano. As per Elizabeth Hunter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Georgia, they have eighty-nine animals with full genetic profile DNA. Link:http://www.nature.com
11 December 16, 2015: Mountains of water ice tower thousands of meters over fields of frozen nitrogen and methane. Glaciers and what appear to be two ice volcanoes punch through the terrain. The alien landscapes of Pluto and its moons dazzled scientists this year. More than eight decades after its discovery, Pluto became much more than a nondescript point of light. After traveling for nine and a half years across nearly 5 billion kilometers, roughly the distance to the moon and back 6,700 times, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, just 12,500 kilometers from its surface. New Horizons, meanwhile, is on course for its next stop: 2014 MU69, a 50-kilometer-wide hunk of ice about 1.6 billion kilometers past Pluto. Unlike Pluto, MU69 is probably pristine, an untouched relic from the dawn of the solar system. There, researchers hope to study an example of one of the fundamental building blocks of the planets.Link:http://meetingorganizer.org
12 December 16, 2015: The United Arab Emirates is working to send a probe to orbit Mars. The UAE Space Agency has called its mission ‘Al Amal’. Various events have been organised in Dubai to give residents an insight into future plans for space exploration: workshops and interactive exhibitions that target families and schools. These activities are designed to encourage students to explore and research. The probe is planned to enter Mars’ orbit in 2021, the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence. It will be the first space exploration mission by an Arab state. The teams are working with scientists and academics at the University of Colorado. The idea is for the team to learn from their academic partners and bring the knowledge back to the UAE for the spacecraft assembly. Mars is thought to be a habitable planet because of the presence of water just like on earth, and recent explorations by NASA state that the Red Planet used to have a cool climate.Once the probe is in orbit around Mars it will study the planet’s atmosphere. Link: http://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae
13 December 16, 2015: Researchers with the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) are looking for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) which are among the leading candidates for dark matter. A new set of calibration techniques have been employed upon the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector that is hunting for the dark matter. Because WIMPs are thought to interact with other matter only on very rare occasions, they have yet to be detected directly. LUX consists of one-third tonne of liquid xenon surrounded with sensitive light detectors. It is designed to identify the very rare occasions when a dark matter particle collides with a xenon atom inside the detector. So far LUX has not detected a dark matter signal, but its exquisite sensitivity has allowed scientists to all but rule out vast mass ranges where dark matter particles might exist. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Link: http://luxdarkmatter.org
14 December 16, 2015: India’s second lunar probe Chandrayaan II will land on moon in 2017 and the country’s first solar mission Aditya L1 is likely to be launched in 2019. Chandrayaan II will land on the surface of moon in 2017 and this second lunar mission will help explore the possibilities of signs of extra-terrestrial life. The Aditya L1 mission is aimed at studying the sun from an orbit around the sun-earth lagrangian point (L-1) which is about 1.5 million km from earth. It will carry seven payloads including a coronagraph to observe the outermost layers of the sun, the corona. Aditya L1 will be launched during 2019-20.The approved cost of the solar mission is Rs. 378.53 crore. So far, India has earned $15 million and €80 million by launching satellites of other countries, with $ 5 million and €65 million in the pipeline, while apparently referring to the launches proposed in the future. Rs. 1420 crore has been approved by the government for realisation of Indian Regional Navigation Satellite (IRNSS) programme, including satellites and ground segment. Link: http://www.isro.gov.in
15 December 16, 2015: NASA is now accepting applications for future explorers and the final selection list will be announced in mid-2017. Those chosen may fly on any of four different US spacecraft during their careers, the International Space Station (ISS), two commercial crew spacecraft currently in development by the US companies and NASA’s Orion deep-space exploration vehicle to Mars. Today, NASA opened the application process for our next class of astronauts, extraordinary Americans who will take the next giant leap in exploration. This group will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) from Florida’s Space Coast on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and the SpaceX Crew Dragon. Astronauts will lift off again from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orion spacecraft, to unprecedented missions in lunar orbit.To help accomplish this work, NASA will select qualified astronaut candidates from a diverse pool of US citizens with a wide variety of backgrounds, including engineers, scientists and physicians. Link: https://www.nasa.gov
16 December, 2015: Scientists have begun a worldwide hunt for for Earth's undiscovered carbon minerals, known by the name: the Carbon Mineral Challenge. Carbon is one of the most chemically diverse elements, and occurs in compounds with almost every element of the periodic table. Some carbon-containing minerals form ores, which are mined for metals such as iron, nickel, and copper. Carbon-bearing minerals can contain rare Earth elements, critical components of smart phones and tablets. The new carbon-bearing mineral discoveries, the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is challenging both amateur collectors and professional mineralogists around the world to find these rare specimens. Today, mineralogists recognize 406 carbon minerals out of more than 5000 known mineral species on Earth. The Carbon Mineral Challenge will continue until September 2019. DCO will publicly recognize each discovery as it happens and celebrate the final suite of newly discovered carbon minerals at the culmination of its decadal program in late 2019. Link: http://mineralchallenge.net
17 December, 2015: Today marks the 112th anniversary of the world's first flight of a aircraft. On the morning of December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North California, two amateur mechanical engineer brothers by name Orville and Wilbur Wright, two brothers, successfully flew the first mechanical aircraft. It all started from a cork-made toy helicopter, gifted by their father, had sparked interest in aviation among the Wright Brothers. The brothers started to design an aircraft, which they named as The Flyer. The design for The Flyer was inspired by a German engineer, Otto Lilienthal. The Wright Brothers also sought help from a bicycle machinist Charlie Taylor. Taylor made the four-cylinder aluminum engine in only six weeks. The engine of the Wright Brothers' aeroplane weighed over 400 kilograms with around 12 horsepower.Neil Armstrong had taken a piece of The Flyer to the Moon, to commemorate the invention of aircraft. The US President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared the day as the Wright Brothers Day on September 24, 1959. Link: http://wrightbrothers.info
18 December 2015: Renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking launched an award for science communication that will bear his name. The 'Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication' will be awarded to those who help promote science to the public through media such as cinema, music, writing and art. The first medals will be awarded next summer in three different categories: the scientific, artistic and film communities. The winners will be announced at the Starmus Festival, a gathering celebrating art and science in Spain's Canary Islands that will take place from June 27 to July 2 next year. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009 and has achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general. His book A Brief History of Time is a best seller. Link: https://www.hawking.org.uk
19 December 2015: NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has found high concentrations of silica, a rock-forming chemical commonly seen on Earth as quartz which could help scientists learn more about the ancient wet environment on the red planet. Curiosity found much higher concentrations of silica at some sites it has studied in the past seven months. Silica makes up nine-tenths of the composition of some of the rocks.Water that is acidic would tend to carry other ingredients away and leave silica behind. Alkaline or neutral water could bring in dissolved silica that would be deposited from the solution. The recent findings on Mount Sharp have intriguing threads linked to what an earlier Nasa rover, Spirit, found halfway around Mars. Some silica at one rock Curiosity drilled, called Buckskin, is in a mineral named tridymite, rare on Earth and never seen before on Mars. Link: http://mars.nasa.gov
20 December 2015: China’s Yutu moon rover has discovered a new kind of rock on the lunar surface. The find suggests the moon’s make-up is more diverse than previously thought. China’s Chang’e 3 lander mission touched down on the moon in December 2013 and released the Yutu rover to explore the edge of a nearby crater, which was nicknamed Purple Palace at the time but is now formally known as Zi Wei. The landing site was in the Mare Imbrium, a large area on the moon’s northern hemisphere thought to have been formed around 3 billion years ago when lava flooded a giant crater. The concentrations of minerals including iron oxide, calcium oxide and titanium dioxide differ from those seen in the samples gathered by the Apollo astronauts and the Russian Luna probes in the 1970s. The finding is published in Nature Communications. Link: http://english.cntv.cn
21 December 2015: A new technology for quickly identifying deadly bacterial strains of infectious disease has been developed by researchers at McMaster University in Canada. The technique shows promise for detecting specific strains of bacteria and tracking their specific trail of illness. The test can be done in less than an hour, compared to the current 48 hours, allowing for rapid, more accurate treatment of patients. The research team's first success was the development of a molecular probe that precisely recognizes the strain which caused the 2011 Hamilton-outbreak of Clostridium difficile infection. Instead of having to do several different tests to narrow down to a positive identification of the specific strain, the researchers can now quickly pinpoint this superbug using their new molecular probe. The finding is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
22 December 2015: Scientists, including those of Indian-origin, have proposed a new 'hydricity' concept for round-the-clock power by not only generating electricity from solar energy but also producing and storing hydrogen from superheated water. Hydrogen can be com bined with carbon from agri cultural biomass to produce fuel, fertiliser and other pro ducts.Hydricity uses solar con centrators to focus sunlight producing high temperatures and superheating water to operate a series of electricitygenerating steam turbines and reactors for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would be stored for use overnight to superheat water and run the steam turbines, or it could be used for other applications, producing zero greenhouse-gas emissions.In superheating, water is heated well beyond its boiling point - in this case from 1,000-1,300 C. Link: http://www.futureentech.com
23 December 2015: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has placed a breed of lion found in India and Africa in the endangered species list in a bid to curb the dramatic decline of their population. It has listed Panthera leo leo located in India and western and central Africa as endangered, and Panthera leo melanochaita, located in eastern and southern Africa, as threatened. Research had concluded that the western and central populations of African lion were more genetically related to the Asiatic lion. These lions are now considered the same subspecies, Panthera leo leo. The rule aligns with U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking. The final 'Lion rule' was be published today and will go into effect 30 days after publication on January 22, 2016. Link: http://www.fws.gov
24 December 2015: For the first time, a Chinese news channel has employed an artificial intelligence robot as a weather reporter on its live breakfast show, raising concerns among the country's journalists as it could threaten their jobs. The robot is called Xiao-Ice. Xiao-Ice is actually a piece of software developed by Microsoft using smart cloud and big data. In the first two days of her work, Xiao-Ice impressed many with her cute voice. According to Microsoft, breakthroughs in text-to-speech artificial intelligence (AI) have helped Xiao-Ice score high points for linguistic naturalness, with hers being closer to the human voice than other speech synthesisers. Through unique emotional technology, she can make comments instantly based on weather data. After her successful debut, people are worried that Xiao-Ice could cause anchors to lose their jobs. Link: http://robots.lessthunk.com
25 December 2015: Environmental contaminants may be partly to blame for the rise in anti biotic-resistant bacteria, a new US study suggests. J Vaun McArthur from the Universi ty of Georgia tested his hypothesis in streams on the US department of energy's Savan nah River Site (SRS). The 802-sqkm site near Ai ken, South Carolina, east o the Savannah River, was closed to the public in the early 1950s to produce materials used in nuclear weapons. This production led to legacy waste, or contamination, in limited areas of the site. This waste impacted some of the streams in the industrial areas. The results showed high levels of antibiotic resistance in eight of the 11 water samples.The highest levels were found at the northern location of Upper Three Runs Creek, where the stream system enters the site, and on two tributaries located in the industrial area, U4 and U8. Link: http://environment-today.org
26 December 2015: A man believed to be the world's most obese passed away in Mexico, barely two months after undergoing a weight-loss surgery. Andres Moreno, 38, died of a heart attack and peritonitis (inflammation of the abdominal lining) in Ciudad Obregon, in Sonora state. Moreno, who at one time tipped the scales at 450 kilos, had bariatric surgery on October 28, in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, in hope of shedding the excess weight and leading a normal life. The surgery involved removing three-fourths of his stomach and reshaping what was left into a tube to prevent him from eating too much. The most obese man in the world' had shed 100 kilos to be able to undergo the surgical procedure in October. Last November, Moreno had emergency surgery at the local State General Hospital in Obregon, due to severe peritonitis. Link: https://uk.yahoo.com
27 December 2015: A British couple have made history by having puppies cloned from their dead pet, using tissue taken two weeks after it died. Ms Laura Jacques, 29, and Mr Richard Remde, 43, were grief-stricken when their boxer dog, Dylan, died at the age of eight in June, having been diagnosed earlier this year with a brain tumour. Scientists warned them that the technique which costs £67,000 per procedure had never worked on dogs that had been dead for more than five days. But against the odds, it was a success, producing two puppy embryos. The couple enlisted the services of the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in South Korea, which offers a commercial dog-cloning service. The male puppy has been named Chance, after a character in Disney's Homeward Bound. It was joined by a second cloned puppy to be named Shadow, also a character in the same film. Link: http://en.sooam.com
28 December 2015: It was today, in 1612, Galileo located Neptune, the Icy Planet.Galileo however failed to recognise Neptune as a planet and drew it as a star in one of his paintings. Le Verrier and Adams, on the other hand, theoretically proved the existence of Planet X, situated beyond Uranus. When astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle actually found Neptune in 1846, Le Berrier and Adams took the credit. Neptune is the coldest planet in the Solar System. Neptune has the fastest planetary wind speed in the Solar System. Wind speed on Neptune reaches up to 2,100 kilometre per hour on an average. So far, only one spacecraft has visited Neptune. NASA's Voyager-2 made a flyby near to the North Pol. NASA is planning another space mission 'Argo' to fly past Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. The space probe would be launched in 2019 and is likely to reach Neptune by 2029. Link: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov
29 December 2015: Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) is embarking on a survey, cataloguing archaeological objects discovered from the Periyar river basin to map its rich archaeological record. Aimed at adding a new layer of information on the Iron-Age sites along the riverbanks, KCHR is embarking on an extensive survey, cataloging the archaeological objects discovered from the region. The study, being held in view of the archaeological discoveries reported from some villages here, will be carried out by ensuring local participation. A study of this region is crucial for a broader understanding of the Pattanam urban settlement, as such a system could not have functioned in isolation. The study will also shed more light on the short-distance trade connections of Pattanam and the transformation of these Iron-Age settlements overtime. Link: http://www.keralahistory.ac.in
30 December 2015: Technical snags have forced the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to put off the first test on a scaled-down prototype of India’s futuristic space shuttle. The Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), under development at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram, developed a minor leak during a test, forcing the ISRO to postpone the mission. The ambitious RLV-TD, the first small step to building a ‘space shuttle’ which can return to earth after accomplishing space missions, is likely to be delayed up to April 2016. ISRO had originally planned a mid-2015 launch for the RLV-TD. It had later been postponed to January 2016. RLV-TD will be the first of a series of tests planned by ISRO. The utilisation of the reusable launch vehicle will cut the mission costs considerably for ISRO. Link: http://www.isro.gov.in
31 December 2015: Members of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) and the ATLAS detectors working with the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have independently identified signals that could lead to the discovery of a new fundamental particle of nature. Both experiments have observed an excess of pairs of photons which could arise from the decay of heavy particles created during the collision. With the discovery of the Higgs boson, all the particles in the Standard Model of particle physics have been seen. So if a new particle is discovered, it would mean evidence for physics beyond the established mode of thinking about elementary particles from the mid-1970s onwards, namely the Standard Model of particle physics. In 2016, the LHC will continue experiments that probe not only the two-photon decay channel, but also others which will strengthen these searches. Link: http://home.cern
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