1 August 2014: Marine biologists have discovered a jellyfish lake in Gujarat, called Arambada Lake probably the first such in India.It was discovered by a team of researchers from the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) led by BC Choudhury, during a routine field visit to a small town named Armabada in Gujarat. There are a peculiar kind of jellyfishes known as 'upside down jellyfish' (Cassiopea sp.) as they swim upside down unlike others. The jellyfishes position themselves on their bottom side to receive maximum sunlight as they harbour photosynthetic algae called Zooxanthellae, which have a symbiotic relationship with jellyfish similar to corals. According to experts, the big bloom of jellyfish in the lake might be attributed to low predation. Jellyfish are found through out coastal India but are seen rarely in lakes. The world renowned jellyfish lake is located on Eil Malk Island in Palau. Link: http://www.wti.org.in
2 August 2014: India’s first multi-sensor moored observatory IndARC was successfully deployed in Arctic roughly halfway between North Pole and Norway. IndARC will provide an increased understanding of the response of the Arctic to climatic variabilities and their influence on the Indian Monsoon system. Designed and developed by scientists from the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) and National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), the observatory has been deployed in the Kongsfjorden fjord of the Arctic, roughly halfway between Norway and the North Pole. It was deployed from the Norwegian Polar Institute’s research vessel R V Lance. The Kongsfjorden is considered as a natural laboratory for studying the Arctic climate variability, as it receives varying climatic signals from the Arcitc/ Atlantic in the course of an annual seasonal cycle. Link: http://www.ncaor.gov.in
3 August 2014: Ten years ago, on August 3, 2004, NASA's MESSENGER ((MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a risky mission that would take the small satellite dangerously close to Mercury's surface, paving the way for an ambitious study of the planet closest to the Sun. The spacecraft traveled 7.9 billion kilometers, a journey that included 15 trips around the Sun and flybys of Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury three times, before it was inserted into orbit around its target planet in 2011. MESSENGER is only the second spacecraft sent to Mercury. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of its launch, the MESSENGER team has released a movie acquired during an early stage of it's low-altitude campaign. The movie was assembled from 214 images taken by its camera. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
4 August 2014: Each time we eat chicken, we could be consuming a cocktail of antibiotics, as per the study released by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). The study found antibiotic residues in 40% of chicken samples bought from outlets in Delhi and NCR. While the amount of antibiotics found in each sample was not very high, experts said regular consumers of such meat could be in danger of developing antibiotic resistance. In other words, eating chicken with drug traces over a period of time could make you immune to important antibiotics prescribed to treat common illnesses. The study provides strong evidence for large scale and reckless use of antibiotics by poultry owners, which can also lead to antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in the chicken itself. 22.9% of the 70 samples it collected contained residues of one antibiotic while 17.1% had more than one.Link: http://www.cseindia.org
5 August 2014: NASA's rover Curiosity, the most advanced roving laboratory on Mars, has celebrated its second anniversary on the Red planet. The unmanned spacecraft landed inside the Gale Crater on August 5, 2012 to start a multi-year mission to seek out areas where life could or may once have existed. During its first year of operations, Curiosity fulfilled its major goal of determining if Mars ever offered environmental conditions favourable for microbial life. During its second year, Curiosity has been driving towards long-term destinations on lower slopes of Mount Sharp. Those destinations are in an area beginning about 3 km southwest of the rover's current location. Curiosity carries duplicate main computers. It has been operating on its B-side computer since a problem with the A-side computer prompted the team to command a side swap in February 2013. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
6 August, 2014: After a decade-long journey chasing its target, European Space Agency's Rosetta has today become the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet. Rosetta has been travelling towards the destination for about ten years and five months, looping around the Sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion kilometres. It is currently just 100 km from the comet's surface. The duckling shaped comet, formally named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after its two Russian discoverers, now lies 405 million kilometres from Earth, rushing towards the inner Solar System at nearly 55,000 kilometres per hour. Over the next six weeks, it will describe two triangular-shaped trajectories in front of the comet, first at a distance of 100 km and then at 50 km. Eventually, Rosetta will attempt a close circular orbit at 30 km and, while it will scrutinize for a target site for its Philae lander. Link: http://sci.esa.int/rosetta
7 August, 2014: An effective vaccine against the deadly Ebola vaccine will not be available before 2015. British pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline is planning to start clinical trials of the most promising vaccine next month. According to World Health Organization, there is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola but a candidate is being rushed through the trial process to become available by 2015. Currently there is no registered medicine or vaccine against the virus, but there are several experimental options under development. The world's top medical ethicists will decide whether an experimental treatment for Ebola can be used on patients infected in the outbreak in West Africa. A treatment made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical called Zmapp shown promising results on monkeys and may have been effective in treating two recently infected. Link: http://www.gsk.com
8 August, 2014: The vast mangrove forest in the Sunderbans is fast losing its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases, from the atmosphere due to rise in the salinity of water, rampant deforestation and pollution, a study has found. The stored carbon in the plants is known as "Blue Carbons". The mangroves grow on fresh water, but because of lack of fresh water the height of mangroves has come down substantially, reducing its capacity to absorb carbons. Owing to deposition of silt at the confluence of the Vidyadhari and Matla rivers, fresh water is unable to enter the Matla river, giving rise to its salinity. The other reasons are shrimp farming, mushrooming of brick kiln industry and deforestation which together have added to the reduced growth of Byne mangroves. The study is published in the Journal of Energy and Environmental Science.Link: https://www.academia.edu
9 August, 2014: The search engine Google has created an interactive doodle to celebrate the Perseid Meteor Shower that occurs every August. The spectacular annual celestial phenomenon began today and is expected to finish by 13th while reaching its peak on 12th. It is a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle. The Perseids are so called because the point from which they appear to come, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Perseus. The name derives in part from the word Perseides, a term found in Greek mythology referring to the sons of Perseus. The stream of debris is called the Perseid cloud that stretches along the orbit of the comet. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it travels on its 133-year orbit. Most of the particles have been part of the cloud for around a thousand years. Link: http://www.spacedex.com
10 August, 2014: Formerly conjoined twins Carl and Clarence Aguirre celebrated the 10th anniversary of their separation today with the medical team that successfully separated and cared for them at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM) - the first documented set of twins to undergo a successfully staged separation of craniopagus twins in the world. One in two and a half million live births are craniopagus, twins joined at the head, and when Carl and Clarence arrived at Montefiore from the Philippines in September 2003, they were already dying from complications of their condition. Their delicate separation surgeries, which began in October of 2013 and were performed in four stages over a period of 10 months, represented a new approach to an especially devastating medical condition. Since then, this method has been replicated around the world and has become the standard of care for all such procedures. Link: http://www.montefiore.org
11 August, 2014: The man who discovered DNA fingerprinting has won the world's oldest science prize, Royal Society's Copley Medal. In 1984, Prof Sir Alec Jeffreys discovered a method of showing the variation between individuals' DNA, a technique which he developed and became known as genetic fingerprinting. He made the discovery in his lab at the University of Leicester after looking at an X-ray image of the DNA of the different members of his lab technician's family. It was a discovery that went on to transform forensic science and resolve questions of identity and kinship. He received the medal "for his pioneering work on variation and mutation in the human genome". The Copley Medal was first awarded by the Royal Society in 1731, 170 years before the first Nobel Prize. It is awarded for outstanding achievements in scientific research and has been awarded to eminent scientists such as Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Link: https://royalsociety.org
12 August, 2014: Today was the 95th birth anniversary of Indian physicist Dr Vikram Sarabhai. Dr Vikram Sarabhai who is considered the Father of Indian space program, was born on 12th August 1919 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He matriculated from the Gujarat College and later moved to England and joined University of Cambridge. After returning from Cambridge to an independent India, he founded the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad on November 11, 1947. He was the co-founder of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, is named in his memory. It was from here that the first rocket was launched on November 21, 1963. Dr Sarabhai started a project which resulted in the launch of the first Indian satellite Aryabhata in 1975 from a Russian Cosmodrome. Dr Sarabhai who was awarded Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan, passed away on 31st December 1971 while in Kerala. Link: http://www.isro.org
13 August, 2014: The country's first floating solar power panel will come up on a waterbody beside the Eco Park at at Rajarghat of Kolkata by November. The 15KW solar power generating panel would be set up on a water body located beside Eco Park in New Town. The project will be implemented under central funding by the Arka Ignou College of Renewable Energy. The New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) will also set up a canal-top solar power panel on a link-up canal flowing near Eco Park early next year that will generate 500KW solar power every day. The canal-top solar panel will be the state's first, followed by only a few other states like Gujarat. The canal-top solar project, which is a part of the Union ministry of new and renewable energy's Solar City programme, was prepared by the solar cell of the Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology (formerly known as BESU), Shibpur. Link: http://www.wbhidcoltd.com
14 August, 2014: Researchers have just come one step closer to understanding the mysterious ways of the domestic cat (Felis catus). The cat genome has finally been fully sequenced, with promise to shed light on cat enigmas ranging from disease to evolution. It was a female Abyssinian cat ('Cinnamon' which lives at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA) that was used for sequenceing. The cat genome had been sequenced in bits and pieces previously with 'low-coverage shotgun genome sequencing'. But this effort is the real deal, revealing some 21,865 protein-coding genes. Domestic cats enjoy an extensive veterinary medical surveillance which has described nearly 250 genetic diseases analogous to human disorders. Feline infectious agents offer powerful natural models of deadly human diseases, which include feline immunodeficiency virus, feline sarcoma virus and feline leukemia virus. The research paper is published in GigaScience. Link: http://www.gigasciencejournal.com
15 August, 2014: Almost 1.65 million people across the world die due to heart problems brought on by excess intake of salt, as per a new research analysing populations from 187 countries. The average consumption of salt across the globe was 3.95gm per day, nearly double the 2gm recommended by the World Health Organization. A recent study by the Indian Council for Medical Research, found that the mean salt intake in urban India was 7.6g per day, much higher than the global mean. The study found that four out of five global deaths attributable to higher than recommended sodium intakes occurred in middle- and low-income countries. The 1.65 million deaths meant that nearly one in 10 of all deaths from cardiovascular causes worldwide was due to higher salt ingestion. It concluded that strong policies are needed to reduce dietary sodium across the world. The paper is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Link: http://www.nejm.org
16 August, 2014: Today marked the 20th anniversary of the ‘IBM Simon’, the world's very first smartphone, when it first went on sale. The phone was developed by computer firm IBM and the American cellular company BelSelf. It was called Simon because it was simple and could do almost anything you wanted. With its green LCD screen, it had a stylus with touch screen technology. Software allowed users to write notes, draw, update their calendar and contacts and send and receive faxes, as well as allowing calls. Though it weighed half a kilogram, it was the first device that combined the attributes of PDAs, (Personal Digital Assistants) the favourite of businessmen, with mobile phone technology. It had all the components of a smartphone, including a slot in the bottom to insert different applications, such as spreadsheets and thus really a forerunner to the iPhone. Link: http://research.microsoft.com
17 August, 2014: An Indian-origin graduate student has discovered and measured one of the most elusive and mysterious objects in the Universe, a middling-sized black hole. University of Maryland astronomy graduate student Dheeraj Pasham and two colleagues made the measurements of the rare black hole which they found hiding in the well-known galaxy M82, some 12 million light years away from Earth. The reason why this discovery and the measurement are considered so significant is that these intermediate-mass black holes are hard to measure even their existence is sometimes disputed. Little is known about how they form. Some astronomers question whether they behave like other black holes. A black hole is a region in space containing a mass so dense that not even light can escape its gravity. Their findings were published in the journal Nature. Link: http://www.nature.com
18 August, 2014: In 1614 John Napier, a Scottish landowner and theologian with some mathematical training, published Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio, or 'A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithms'. It introduced a new method for quickly performing complicated calculations. As one logarithm user noted much later, logarithms effectively doubled a mathematician’s useful lifetime. Before that, slide rules were used to perform calculations. Multiplying two numbers, for eg, could be accomplished by a process called prosthaphaeresis. Napier's Logarithms was a method to short-cutting that. Logarithms could also be exploited for calculating square and cube roots. Today’s commonly used base 10 logarithms were introduced in primitive form by Henry Briggs. However, the present-day logarithms comes from Leonhard Euler, who connected them to the exponential function, in the 18th century. Link: http://johnnapier.com
19 August 2014: Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary today as a public company. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 14 percent of its shares but control 56 of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Since then its value has soared to $391.36 billion, making it one of the world’s largest companies. Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". In 2004, Google moved to headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In the 10 years since going public, the company has expanded from its traditional search business into areas as diverse as healthcare and wearable tech such as Google Glass. Link: https://www.google.com
20 August, 2014: Scientists have created the world's first technology that can connect battery-free devices to Wi-Fi. University of Washington says a world will soon become a reality where your wristwatch or other wearable device will communicate directly with your online profiles, storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it - all without requiring batteries. Or maybe battery-free sensors embedded around your home could track minute-by-minute temperature changes and send that information to your thermostat to help conserve energy. The University engineers have designed a new communication system called Wi-Fi backscatter which is the first technology that can connect battery-free devices to Wi-Fi infrastructure. It uses radio frequency signals as a power source and reuses existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to these devices. Wi-Fi-enabled laptops and smartphones could receive these data from the tag. Link: http://www.washington.edu
21 August, 2014: In about 34 days, India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) Mangalyaan will be hiding behind the Red Planet and not be visible from earth. So far it has traveled a total distance of 602 million km in its heliocentric arc towards Mars, says ISRO. It is currently 189 million km away from Earth. Round trip radio signals communicating with MOM take 20 minutes and 47 seconds. Mangalyaan will be into the orbit around Mars on September 24, 2014. The spacecraft is travelling at a speed of 22km/second. The challenge is how the speed could be reduced drastically to 1.6km/second. India will be the first country to taste success on its maiden mission to the Red Planet if this attempt succeeds. Five other countries, the US, Russia, Europe, Japan and China have tried their luck with Mars but have not succeeded in the first attempt. Russia took 10 attempts, while the US managed success after 6, China and Japan are still trying. In fact, only 21 of the 51 missions to Mars have been successful. Link: http://www.isro.org
22 August, 2014: Kerala has been awarded second position for the National Award for Devolution of Powers to the Three-tier Panchayati Raj System under the Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashastikaran Abhiyan (RGPSA) for the years 2013 and 2014. The Union Ministry of Panchayat Raj, RGPSA division announced the award amounting to Rs 1 crore each for five states, namely Maharashtra (first), Kerala (second), Karnataka (third), Andhra Pradesh (fourth) and Arunachal Pradesh (fifth). The award is in tune with the commitment to the masses to fulfil former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's dream to hand over power to the people to for self-governance and speedy development. The Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyan aims at enhancing the capacities and effectiveness of Panchayats and the Gram Sabhas and promote people’s participation for knowledge creation and capacity building of Panchayats. Link: http://www.cgsird.gov.in
23 August, 2014: A new study has found that arrival of modern humans in Europe happened much before than previously thought. Previous estimates have indicated that modern humans arrived in Neanderthal-dominated Europe about 40,000 years ago, and that some Neanderthals remained in the continent until just 32,000 years ago. The modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals for a long time period. This overlapping claim bolsters a theory that the two species met, bred and possibly exchanged or copied vital tool-making techniques. Neanderthals are found to be the closest known extinct relatives of human beings, with about 99.5% of DNA in common with humans. They were also likely better adapted to climate of Europe as they had survived several ice ages. On the other hand, modern humans first left Africa roughly 60,000 years ago, headed eastward and reached Europe from Africa. The study is published in the journal Nature.Link: http://www.nature.com
24 August, 2014: Richard Samuel Attenborough, the Oscar-winning British film director died at the age of 90. Lord Attenborough was one of Britain's leading actors, before becoming a highly successful director. In a career that spanned six decades, he appeared in films including Brighton Rock, World War Two prisoner of war thriller The Great Escape and later in dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic Park. He played the role of a ‘mad scientist’ John Hammond in Jurassic Park. As a director he was perhaps best known for Gandhi, which won him two Oscars. Richard Attenborough was born in Cambridge on August 29, 1923, and won his first acting role at 17 when Noel Coward cast him in a small but decisive role in In Which We Serve. After acting, Attenborough became a notable film director, before pursuing a vast number of positions outside cinema, most notably being chairman of Britain's Channel. Richard Attenborough is survived by his wife, their two surviving children, six surviving grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Link: https://www.bafta.org
25 August 2014: Today marks the second anniversary of NASA’s Voyager 1 reaching interstellar space. It also marks the 25th anniversary of Voyager 2’s encounter with Neptune’s moon Triton which took place on August 25, 1989. It is still the only spacecraft to have visited the two outer giant planets Uranus and Neptune. The probe is now moving at a velocity of 15.428 km/s relative to the Sun. Like an old film, Voyager’s historic footage of Triton has been “restored” and used to construct the best-ever global colour map of Triton. The map was produced by Paul Schenk, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. In 1989, most of the northern hemisphere was in darkness and unseen by Voyager, because of the speed of Voyager and the slow rotation of Triton. Triton might not be a perfect preview of coming attractions, but it serves as a prequel to the cosmic blockbuster expected when NASA’s New Horizons arrives at Pluto next year, which is to happen July 14, 2015. Link: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
26 August, 2014: A new study by NASA shows that someone is putting an awful lot of Carbon tetra chloride (CCl4) into the atmosphere. Back in 1987, the compound was one of many ozone-depleting chemicals regulated under the Montreal Protocol. Worldwide emissions currently run at an average of 39 kilotons per year, approximately 30 percent of peak emissions prior to the international treaty going into effect. Instead of declining at 4 per cent annually since 2007, the CCl4 concentrations in the atmosphere is only falling by 1 per cent per annum, even though reported emissions in that period were zero. The study also discovered that CCl4 remains in the atmosphere 40 per cent longer than was previously believed. The good news is that while CCl4 is rising, it only accounts for 11 per cent of remaining ozone-depleting substances and the overall trend is still downwards, which is good news for southern hemisphere countries affected by the Antarctic ozone hole. Link: http://www.nasa.gov
27 August, 2014: A flightless fly from Antarctica has been found to have the smallest insect genome sequenced to date. The wingless midge, Belgica antarctica, lives on the rocky outcrops of the Antarctic peninsula and is the only insect and fully terrestrial animal endemic to the continent. This Antarctic midge can survive high levels of salt, freezing and intense ultraviolet radiation, which are all common to the Antarctic climate. This is the first insect extremophile to be sequenced, which means it is a fantastic foundation for future comparative studies. The midge, Belgica antarctica, is the only insect endemic to Antarctica, and thus it offers a powerful model for probing responses to extreme temperatures, freeze tolerance, dehydration, osmotic stress, ultraviolet radiation and other forms of environmental stress. The fly's genome has just 99 million base pairs, compared with 3.2 billion in the human genome. Results from the study are reported in Nature Communications. Link: http://www.nature.com
28 August 2014: Three conservation groups are asking the Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States of America to list the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) as a threatened species. The monarch is the most familiar North American butterfly which belongs to the family Nymphalidae. They are also known as ‘milkweed butterfly’ as they rely upon milkweed for feeding and breeding. Although the Monarch is not an endangered species the annual migration is considered a threatened phenomenon by IUCN. Since there are very few overwintering sites, their populations become vulnerable. These sites are threatened by human activities in Mexico and California. Logging, development, and agriculture are the most serious threats. In order to save these sites the Monarch Project was created in 1984. Although the breeding grounds of the Monarch in the northern regions are not seriously threatened, development, pollution and the use of pesticides might have a negative effect on them. Link: https://courses.cit.cornell.edu
29 August, 2014: The Higgs boson, which provides mass to elementary particles, could also explain the expansion of the Universe in the moments after the Big Bang.The Universe started with a giant explosion known as the Big Bang, and has been expanding ever since. The expansion is balanced such that its shape is flat and not bent, which can only be the case for a very specific distribution of matter density. Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) have shown that the mass of the Higgs boson is very close to a critical value that separates two possible types of Universe - the stable one we know or a potentially unstable alternate. The Big Bang is thought to have created many gravitational waves, which act like ripples in space and time, and it is these waves that are amplified for a Higgs of near-critical mass. The studies came from RIKEN-BNL Research Center in the US and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com
30 August 2014: Today marked the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Discovery which made its maiden take off on August 30, 1984. It flew 39 times over the next 27 years, more than any other shuttle vehicle. The spacecraft takes its name from four British ships of exploration named Discovery, primarily HMS Discovery, one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook during his third and final major voyage from 1776 to 1779.Many space history firsts occurred on board Discovery: it took the first Senator to space in 1985, it took the first Latina to space in 1993 and it flew the oldest man into space, 77-year old John Glenn. Discovery took its last space mission in 2011 and it takes rest at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. And relating to the anniversary news, NASA has publicized their upcoming Space Launch System (SLS). This rocket will be having its debut test flight on November 2018. Link: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov
31 August 2014: Responding rapidly to the deadly outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa, a team of researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard University, working with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation and researchers elsewhere, has sequenced the Ebola virus’s genomes. The researchers sequenced 99 Ebola virus genomes collected from 78 Ebola patients in Sierra Leone during the first 24 days of the outbreak. The present outbreak has manifested in more densely populated West Africa. The genomic data also shed new light on how the virus, officially called EBOV, one of five ebolaviruses known to infect humans, has caused at least 12 outbreaks in Central Africa and Gabon since 1976. Until this year, though, it had never been identified in West Africa.The new analysis say that the virus spread, via animal hosts. Researchers aren't sure which animal to blame, but fruit bats they suspect. The finding is reported in Science. Link: http://www.sciencemag.org
