MOVIE OF THE MONTH : APRIL 2013

Director               : J. J. Abrams
Story                   : Roberto Orci
Based on             : Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry
Music                  : Michael Giacchino
Cinematography : Daniel Mindel
Studio                  : Bad Robot Productions
Release date        : May 17, 2013 (United States)
Running time      : 132 min.

Star Trek Into Darkness is the twelfth Star Trek film.Filming began in January 2012. The film was shot entirely in California. The film's visual effects were handled by Industrial Light & Magic.The film was converted to 3D in post-production. The film is scheduled for release on May 17, 2013 in the United States.
 
After being called back home, the crew of the USS Enterprise find a seemingly unstoppable force which has attacked Starfleet and left Earth in chaos. Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise are tasked with leading the deadly manhunt to capture the party responsible and settle an old score.
 
The official poster for the film was released on December 3, 2012, showing a mysterious figure, thought to be Benedict Cumberbatch's villain, standing atop a pile of burning rubble looking over what appears to be a damaged London.He is standing in a hole in the shape of the Starfleet insignia blown out of the side of a building.
 
An international trailer was released on March 21, 2013 with an embedded URL simultaneously revealing an exclusive online-only international poster. On April 8th, Paramount released the final international one-sheet featuring solely Benedict Cumberbatch's character.
 
Movie website: http://www.startrekmovie.com

BOOK OF THE MONTH : APRIL 2013

                                                       

Title          : Mission to Mars: 
                   My Vision for Space Exploration
Author     : Buzz Aldrin, Leonard David
Pages        : 272
Publisher : National Geographic
Published : May 7, 2013
ISBN         :10: 1426210175
 
Pioneering astronaut Buzz Aldrin made history as the second man to walk on the moon in 1969, just after Neil Armstrong during the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. More than four decades later, he wants humans to travel far beyond the moon. In his upcoming book, Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration, Buzz Aldrin argues that NASA should strive to put humans on the Red Planet by 2035.
 
The book delves on Aldrin's past, including his service as an Air Force pilot during the Korean War, his initial rejection by NASA and his voyage to the moon ,but also promises a critique of current space policy, examining the economic, political and technological viability of various options to explore the solar system. In his book he  plots out the path he proposes, ie., how the roadtrip to Mars could be ralized.
 
Aldrin was selected as part of the third group of NASA astronauts selected in October 1963. Because test pilot experience was no longer a requirement, this was the first selection for which he was eligible. On July 20, 1969, he became the second astronaut to walk on the Moon, keeping his record total EVA time until that was surpassed on Apollo 14. There has been much speculation about Aldrin's desire at the time to be the first astronaut to walk on the Moon.
 
Aldrin was the first person to hold a religious ceremony on the Moon. After landing on the Moon, he radioed Earth: "I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way." He gave himself Communion on the surface of the Moon, but he kept it secret because of a lawsuit brought by atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair over the reading of Genesis on Apollo 8.
 
After leaving NASA, Aldrin was assigned as the Commandant of theU.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California. In March 1972, Aldrin retired from active duty after 21 years of service, and returned to the Air Force in a managerial role, but his career was blighted by personal problems. His autobiographies Return to Earth, published in 1973, and Magnificent Desolation, published in June 2009, both provide accounts of his struggles with clinical depression and alcoholism in the years following his NASA career.
 
In 1985, Aldrin proposed the existence of a special spacecraft trajectory now known as the Aldrin cycler.A spacecraft traveling on an Aldrin cycler trajectory would pass near the planets Earth and Mars on a regular (cyclic) basis. The Aldrin cycler is an example of a Mars cycler. He was also instrumental in the idea of training of astronauts underwater in order to better prepare them for the intricate space walks and duties of maintenance while in space.
 
Books co-authored by Aldrin include Return to Earth (1973), Men From Earth (1989), Reaching for the Moon (2005), Look to the Stars (2009) and Magnificent Desolation (2009). He has also co-authored with John Barnes the science fiction novels Encounter with Tiber (1996) and The Return (2000). "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration" is his latest book.
 
Contents:
 
Foreword by Andrew Aldrin
 
Chapter 1: The View from Air Force One
Chapter 2: Time for Decision-making
Chapter 3: Your Space: Building the Business Case
Chapter 4: Dreams of My Moon
Chapter 5: Voyage to Armageddon
Chapter 6: The March to Mars
Chapter 7: Homesteading the Red Planet
Chapter 8: The Clarion Call

Book Trailer in Youtube : http://www.youtube.com

Review Courtes : http://press.nationalgeographic.com, www.amazon.com, www.wikipedia.com        

EVENT OF THE MONTH : APRIL 2013

European Geosciences Union: General Assembly 2013

Venue: Vienna, Austria

07 -12, April 2013

European Geosciences Union: General Assembly 2013 

was a great success with 11,167 scientists from 95 countries participated, of which 28% were students. There were 4,684 oral presentations, 8,207 posters and 448 unique scientific sessions.

An interesting paper was that ants could predict earthquakes, even a day or two in advance. Researcher Gabriele Berberich of the University Duisburg-Essen in Germany has proved this to be true with the  Red Wood Ants in Germany.

For three years, Berberich and her colleagues tracked the ants 24-7 with video cameras, using special software to catalog behavioral changes. There were 10 earthquakes between magnitude 2.0 and 3.2 during the study period, 2009 to 2012, and many smaller temblors.

But before an earthquake, the ants were awake throughout the night, outside their mound, vulnerable to predators, the researchers found. Normal ant behavior didn't resume until a day after the earthquake.

The ants only changed behavior for quakes larger than magnitude 2.0. Red Wood Ants have magneto-receptors for electromagnetic fields and these organs help the ants to know about the tremours in advance.

Link: http://www.egu2013.eu

SPECIES OF THE MONTH: APRIL 2013

                      LENIN REVIVED                                     

Phylum: Chordata

Class    : Reptilia
Order: Ichthyosauria
Family: Ophthalmosauridae
Subfamily: Ophthalmosaurinae
Genus   : Leninia
Species : Leninia stellans

Russian scientists have named the recently discovered Ichthyosaur fossil after Vladimir Lenin, the leader of Russia's communist revolution. The prehistoric reptile fossil has been named Leninia stellans. The 'Leninia' part indicates the genus, and the 'stellans' (meaning starry or brilliant) indicates the  species.

Lenin was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He served as the leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR) from 1917, and then concurrently as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1922, until his death on January 21, 1924.

Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles that are thought to have inhabited the Earth's oceans in the Mesozoic era - a period of time stretching from about 251 million years ago to about 65 million years ago.Though the name suggests so, Ichthyosaurs are not considered dinosaurs.

According to the Paleobiology Database, the fossil dates from around 125 or 122 million years ago. Scientists had discovered the incomplete skull near the village of Kriushi in the Sengileevsk region of Ulyanovsk.The skull was over a meter long.

Link: http://journals.cambridge.org

SCIENCE OF THE MONTH: MARCH 2013

                                                        

1 March 2013: European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, the largest space telescope ever launched is stoping its operations later this month. Herschel which was launched in May 2009, was running out of its liquid Helium stored onboard which was used to cool its instruments to freezing temperatures. The freezing temperatures are needed for the prompt operations of the telescope. Once the telescope turns blind in the second half of March, the mission scientists will propel Herschel out of its current orbit into a new orbit around the Sun.Link:http://herschel.esac.esa.int

2 March 2013:Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have found a layer of liquefied molten rock in Earth's mantle that may be acting as a lubricant for the sliding motions of the planet's massive tectonic plates.The scientists discovered the magma layer at the Middle America trench offshore Nicaragua.They found a 25-kilometer-thick layer of partially melted mantle rock below the edge of the Cocos plate where it moves underneath Central America.The discovery is reported in the journal Nature.Link:http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu

3 March 2013:An international team of scientists has discovered how an important natural antibiotic called Dermcidin, produced by the skin which comes out during sweating.Their results could contribute to the development of new antibiotics.Although about 1,700 types of these natural antibiotics are known to exist, scientists did not until know how they work.The study by researchers from the University of Edinburgh and from Goettingen, Tuebingen and Strasbourg, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Link:http://www.pnas.org

4 March 2013:NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, the farthest-flung object created by human hands, is in a new region between our solar system and interstellar space, which scientists are calling the 'Stagnation region'.Voyager 1 was actually the second of NASA's two Voyager spacecraft to launch on historic tours of the solar system. Voyager 2 blasted off on August 20, 1977, with Voyager 1 following a few weeks later on September 5,1977.Both spacecraft carry a gold-plated copper disc containing sounds and images of Earth, expecting to be viewed by intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms.Link:http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

5 March 2013:European Space Agency released the most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background acquired by ESA's Planck Space Telescope.The new results indicate that the universe is 80 million years older than previously thought.The findings released bolster a key theory called Inflation, which says the universe burst from subatomic size to its now-observable expanse in a fraction of a second.The probe also found that the cosmos is expanding a bit slower than originally thought. 
Link:http://www.esa.int

6 March 2013:The Indian Space Research Organisation is to build a remote sensing satellite, Cartosat-3, capable of taking images of the Earth with a resolution of 0.25 metres.Currently, GeoEye-1,the American spacecraft  produces the highest resolution earth images taken by a commercial satellite.In 1988, ISRO launched India’s first operational Remote-Sensing Satellite, IRS-1A which provided resolution of 36 metres. Seven years later, IRS-1C went into space, with a resolution of 5.8 metres. The Cartosat-2 series of satellites were with 0.8 metre resolution.Link:http://www.isro.org

7 March 2013:People of Maldives will get the benefit of the Ocean Forecast services provided by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) from today onwards.Value addition to the service is provided by the Bangkok-based Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia (RIMES).It would disseminate the information provided by INCOIS through Radio, TV and mobile phones.The Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India recently signed an agreement with RIMES to provide forecast services to its member countries.Link:http://www.incois.gov.in
 
8 March 2013:A deep sea survey near a remote Japanese island in the Pacific has confirmed a rich deposit of rare earth minerals in mud taken from the seabed.Rare earth minerals such as Dysprosium are essential for producing hybrid car motors and mobile phone parts.The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the University of Tokyo analysed mud samples from seven locations on the ocean floor as deep as 5,800 m near Japan's eastern most Minamitorishima island some 2,000 km southeast of Tokyo. 
Link:http://www.webelements.com

9 March 2013:Researchers operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator have confirmed that a particle discovered in July 2012 is indeed the so-called Higgs Boson, a key element in scientists' theories explaining the makeup of all the matter around us.Scientists believe that the Higgs Boson is the last discovered particle outlined by the Standard Model of particle physics, which explains the interaction of all subatomic particles.It is one of the fundamental theories of modern physics, which is why it is sometimes called "the theory of almost everything". 
Link:http://home.web.cern.ch

10 March 2013:The lizard, Jeypore ground gecko or Geckoella jeyporensis which was believed to have become extinct, was recently spotted in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha after 135 years.This lizard species was first detected and collected in 1877 by a Britisher, Colonel RH Beddome from Jeypore Hills in Orissa.The rediscovery was a product of two years of collaborative efforts of scientists from the Centre for Ecological Sciences; the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; the Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, and the America-based Villanova University. 
Link:http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz

11 March 2013:An international research team that has announced that Mariana Trench, one of the most inaccessible places on Earth, harbors highly active bacteria community.The Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean reaches a maximum depth of 36,000 feet (11,000 metres), big enough to swallow up Mount Everest.It was once thought to be too hostile an environment for life to exist.The study conducted by a team headed by the University of Southern Denmark is published in the international journal Nature Geoscience.Link:http://www.nature.com 

12 March 2013:Mars One, the organization with the purpose to establish a human settlement on Mars in 2023, made a concrete step towards that goal by contracting its first aerospace supplier, Paragon Space Development Corporation, for a core component needed on the Red Planet. The contract lets Paragon perform a conceptual design study as the first step towards developing life support systems for the Mars One mission.Mars One will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in 2023 through the integration of existing technologies.Link:http://mars-one.com

13 March 2013:The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the largest astronomical telescope project was inaugurated today.The observatory is based in the arid Chilean desert high up on the Chajnantor plateau at an altitude of 5,000 meters. It will use its 66 high-precision antennas to look for light emitted by some of the coldest objects in the Universe, which has wavelengths around a millimeter, between infrared light and radio waves. ALMA is of importance as Herschel Space Observatory, the largest space telescope ever launched, is stopping its operations this month.Link:http://www.almaobservatory.org

14 March 2013:Scientists say that the Monarch butterfly population is fast dwindling.Their numbers have dropped 59 percent this year, dropping to the lowest level since comparable record-keeping began 20 years ago.Scientists attributed the decline to climate conditions and agricultural practices, especially the use of pesticides that kill off the monarchs' main food source, Milkweed.Monarch butterflies are the only known butterflies that make the 3,000 mile journey from their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada to northern Mexico and southern California.Link:http://www.monarch-butterfly.com

15 March 2013:Astronomers worldover are celebrating 50th anniversary of the discovery of Quasars. The first Quasar was discovered by Maarten Schmidt who revealed the discovery to the public in 1963 which was published in an article in the journal Nature.The Palomar Observatory in Southern California is the site of the telescope Schmidt used for his work.Electronics company Motorola used 'Quasar' as a brandname for its televisions.Quasars have "supermassive" black hole at their core which contains as much matter as a billion suns.Link:http://www.nature.com

16 March 2013:A UK-based inventor Peter Dearman claims to have developed the ultimate green vehicle,a car that runs only on cold air,and it can reach speeds of up to 48 km per hour.Peter Dearman has modified his car to run on nothing but air.Dearman's propulsion system is inspired by a steam engine, except he uses very cold liquid air. At first air is converted to liquid form that is stored in insulated, vacuum-sealed containers.When the liquid air courses through the engine, it heats up from its cryogenic temperature and expands to create enough pressure to power a piston.Link:http://www.dearmanengine.com

17 March 2013:Having lost a nano-satellite in a collision with a piece of Chinese debris, Russia is ringing alarm bells over the snowballing problem of space junk.A 17-cm glass-sphere Russian satellite for laser ranging experiments, called Blits, was knocked off its orbit when it hit a piece of a weather satellite destroyed by a Chinese missile in a 2007 weapon test.The collision left the satellite spinning faster and facing the wrong way, rendering it unusable. The Russian space chief called for international cooperation in devising ways to remove junk.Link:http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov

18 March 2013:Pluto’s has10 or more tiny undiscovered moons, a new study suggests.This preliminary finding could make life even more difficult for the team planning NASA’s New Horizons mission, which is slated to take the first-ever up-close look at the Pluto system in July 2015.After Pluto’s fifth known moon, a small satellite known as P5, was discovered last year, officials said they may need to redraw the spacecraft’s path to avoid such obstacles.The new study, led by Scott Kenyon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics is submitted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.Link:http://iopscience.iop.org

19 March 2013:Pharma major Cadila Healthcare has been working on a molecule for Diabetes dyslipidemia, to be called 'Saroglitizar'. The name is believed to have been derived from the Gujarati word 'saro', meaning good.Dyslipidemia is a major concern for people with diabetes as they are more likely to develop atherosclerosis, heart disease, poor circulation and stroke.India is home to 61.3 million diabetics, the highest in the world, followed by China and the US. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu have the highest prevalence of the disease.Link:http://www.zyduscadila.com

20 March 2013:Researchers have discovered a new species of Vietnamese salamander. The new crocodile newt was temporarily identified it as Tylototriton vietnamensis however, the morphology was later found to be different from Vietnamese Crocodile Newt.The scientists have now named the new species as Ziegler's crocodile newt (Tylototriton ziegleri) after Thomas Ziegler of Cologne Zoo who works with amphibians of Vietnam.Eight species of Crocodile newts are now in IUCN Red List. The finding is described in Current Herpetology.Link:http://www.bioone.org

21 March 2013:Malabar Natural History Society, a non-profit voluntary organisation, in Calicut, Kerala, conducted a sparrow Survey as part of the World House Sparrow Day (March 20).The use of pesticides in house compounds, lack of nesting sites and absence of grains as some of the reasons for the decline in the bird’s population.House Sparrows as a ‘biological indicator species,’as their presence indicates the healthiness of the environment.Last year, the Delhi government has made the house sparrow its State bird.The Indian Postal Department has issued a commemorative stamp on the Sparrow.Link:http://www.worldsparrowday.org 

22 March 2013:A team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, completed the sequencing of a Neanderthal genome.The genome produced from remains of a toe bone found in a Siberian cave is far more detailed than a previous "draft" Neanderthal genome sequenced in 2010 by the same team.The researchers could determine which genes the Neanderthal inherited from its mother and which from its father.They are now going to compare the new genome to that of modern humans and Denisovans.Link:http://www.eva.mpg.de

23 March 2013:An international team of scientists around Meteorology Professor Bin Wang at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, examined climate data to see what happened in the Northern Hemisphere during the last three decades.Current theory predicts that the Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon circulation should weaken under anthropogenic global warming.The findings are published in the online publication of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Link:http://www.pnas.org

24 March 2013:Researchers at the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) and Billboard company have devised a new way to provide drinking water to people in Lima, Peru, which is derived from atmospheric humidity.The water-producing panel is strategically located in the village of Bujama, an area south of the capital city that is almost a desert, where some people have no access to clean water.The panel traps humidity in the air and transforms it into water.A panel produces over 9,000 litres of drinking water, about 96 litres a day.The system costs some US$1,200 to set up.Link:http://www.utec.edu.pe

25 March 2013:Scientists sequenced the genome of the Aye-Aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis), a bizarre lemur species for the first time.The Aye-Aye's biology is so strange that scientists did not know what to make of the animal when it was described in 1782. Scientists first classified the Aye-Aye as rodent before realizing that it was really a peculiar lemur, belonging to Daubentoniidae family.In the past, there was larger species of Aye-Aye,but it went extinct after the arrival of humans in Madagascar less than 2,000 years ago.The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).Link:http://www.pnas.org

26 March 2013:The US Department of Energy has produced its first batch of non-weapons grade Plutonium.The U.S. space agency turned to buying radioactive Plutonium-238 from Russia after safety issues prompted the Department of Energy to close its Savannah River Site in the late 1980s.The Russian supply line however ended in 2010.NASA also has been working on the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator, which can produce four times more electrical power per kilogram of Plutonium-238.Link:http://energy.gov

27 March 2013:About 90% of glaciers in Tibet are shrinking because of black carbon pollution transferred from South Asia to the ecologically fragile Tibetan plateau.Tibetan plateau often hailed as the "Third Pole" has the largest number of glaciers outside the polar region and exerts a direct influence on the social and economic development of some of the most densely populated regions on earth, including China and India.The glaciers are at the headwaters of many prominent Asian rivers and thus pose potential geological hazards to people both on and around the plateau.Link:http://english.itpcas.cas.cn

28 March 2013:A new genetic study has revealed that some of the famous cow breeds of the Americas, including the iconic Texas Longhorn, have descended from Indian ancestors, a new genetic study reveals.Indian cows traveled to East Africa, then mixed with local cattle populations up to the North African coast.In 1493, Christopher Columbus took these Indian variants to the Caribbean on his second voyage.Cows were domesticated around 10,000 years ago in two regions,Turkey and India.The study is published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Link:http://www.pnas.org

29 March 2013:India has created a new protected area for tigers within Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary which is in Tamil Nadu.This will be the 42nd tiger reserve in the country.Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary is notable as the largest wildlife sanctuary in Tamil Nadu and it is significant as a wildlife corridor between the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats.Tiger numbers have declined by about 95 percent there are only about 3,000 left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.Link:http://projecttiger.nic.in

30 March 2013:The Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (KVASU) plans to start 10 new courses in 2013-14. Six of them will be started on the Mannuthy campus and the rest, on the Pookkode campus.A postgraduate course in Conservation Medicine is expected to be launched on the Pookode campus in 2013-14.The university plans to open up regional centres in Kannur, Kozhikode, and Thiruvananthapuram for the benefit of farmers.A postgraduate course in Conservation Medicine is expected to be launched on the Pookode campus in 2013-14.Link:http://kvasu.ac.in

31 March 2013:Units 1 and 2 of Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project will be commissioned by April 2013 and October 2013 respectively.Of the 2,000 MW electricity to be generated by the two units, Tamil Nadu has been allocated 925 MW, Kerala (266 MW), Karnataka (442 MW) and Pondicherry (67 MW).The Central Government has also agreed to consider providing additional 100 MW power to Tamil Nadu.The project was the outcome of an agreement between India and Russia in 1988 and construction of the plant began in 1997.Link:http://www.npcil.nic.in

MOVIE OF THE MONTH : MARCH 2013

                                                              

Director    : John Moore
Screenplay: Skip Woods
Starring    : Bruce Willis
Camera    : Jonathan Sela
Studio      : Giant Pictures
Running    : 97 minutes
Release      : February 13, 2013

From 1988 to 2013, action hero Bruce Willis is still dying hard. He never stopped. He got older, sure (taking the mickey out of that very fact in 2010's great retirees-can-still-get-the-job-done tale Red) but he never did anything to cause us to stop believing he was that guy  the guy who could take on a German terrorist and his henchman and single-handedly save the day.

So here he is, 25 years later, strapping on John McClane's guns and world-weary demeanour for a fifth go on the Die Hard merry-go-round.Though some might try to tell you A Good Day to Die Hard marks a passing of the baton - introducing Aussie 26-year-old Jai Courtney as McClane's equally tough son Jack - Willis is not ready to give the franchise away. And who'd be game enough to take it from him?

Rewind to the mid-'80s and Willis  who, it's strange to think now, started out in the theatre  was just finding his fame feet with Moonlighting. Willis played a sarcastic private investigator in the TV hit, and his will-they-ever chemistry with Cybill Shepherd was the water-cooler talk du jour.

Released in 1988, Die Hard set a new benchmark for action films and grossed a burly $135.7 million worldwide. Die Hard 2 followed in 1990, Die Hard: With a Vengeance in 1995, and Die Hard 4.0 in 2007.Willis was 33 when Die Hard was released. This week, as A Good Day to Die Hard opens in Australia, he turned 58.

Movie Website: http://www.diehardmovie.com

Review Courtesy: http://www.cairns.com.au

BOOK OF THE MONTH : MARCH 2013

                                                      

Title         : A Life Decoded:

                  My Genome - My Life

Author    : J. Craig Venter

Pages       : 400 

Publisher: Viking Adult

Price        : $25.95.

ISBN        :10-0143114182

April of 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of completing and publishing the Human Genome Project. And, here is a scientist who raced for it while the US government's National Institute of Health was still stumbling over it: Craig Venter. A Life Decoded is the autobiography of him who has become one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in science today.It is one of the key scientific chronicles of our lifetime, as told by the man who beat the odds to make it happen.
 
In his riveting and inspiring account Venter tells of the unparalleled drama of the quest for the human genome, a tale that involves as much politics (personal and political) as science. He also reveals how he went on to be the first to read and interpret his own genome and what it will mean for all of us to do the same. He describes his recent sailing expedition to sequence microbial life in the ocean, as well as his groundbreaking attempt to create synthetic life.

Growing up in California, Craig Venter didn t appear to have much of a future. An unremarkable student, he nearly flunked out of high school. After being drafted into the army, he enlisted in the navy and went to Vietnam, where the life and death struggles he encountered as a medic piqued his interest in science and medicine. After pursuing his advanced degrees, Venter quickly established himself as a brilliant and outspoken scientist.

In 1984 he joined the National Institutes of Health, where he introduced novel techniques for rapid gene discovery, and left in 1991 to form his own nonprofit genomics research center, where he sequenced the first genome in history in 1995. In 1998 he announced that he would successfully sequence the human genome years earlier, and for far less money, than the government-sponsored Human Genome Project would  a prediction he kept in 2001.

The scientific heart of Venter’s story begins after he adopted new technologies to hunt for adrenaline-related genes in the late 1980s, then leapt into genomics. (A genome is an organism’s entire string of DNA, present in most human cells.) Independently, if not uniquely, as he notes, Venter developed a clever shortcut for identifying genes out of long stretches of DNA.Venter recounts this while lambasting National Institute of Health leaders,especially James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA for not fully backing his work.

But he never found a comfortable place in the fledgling government project to chart the human genome and in 1992 joined a new private group, the Institute for Genomic Research. There, Venter and colleagues became the first researchers to chart the whole genome of any organism (a bacterium, Haemophilus influenzae, once thought to cause flu), among other landmarks, and refined a technique allowing scientists to piece together genomes from small bits of DNA, minimizing the ponderous genetic surveying then in use.

In 1998, Venter helped form Celera to sequence a human genome (largely based on his own DNA) before the government could.The hype over the genome race thus both overrates and underrates Venter’s career. The contest itself did not exactly revolutionize genomics, but Venter’s aggressive insistence upon faster sequencing methods throughout his career would have been influential even if no such race had occurred.

Chapters:

1. Writing My Code

2. University of Death

3. Adrenaline Junkie

4. Starting Over in Buffalo

5. Scientific Heaven, Bureaucratic Hell

6. Big Biology

7. TIGR Cub

8. Gene Wars

9. Shotgun Sequencing

10. Institutional Divorce

11. Sequencing the Human

12. Mad Magazine and Destructive Businessmen

13. Flying Forward

14. The First Human Genome

15. The White House, June 26, 2000

16. Publish and Be Damned

17. Blue Planet and New Life

Review Courtesy: http://www.nytimes.com

                              http://www.goodreads.com

Link to download: http://www.acad.bg