Science

Monarch butterflies fly without a map, and use basic orientation and landmarks to find their way to their wintering sites, thousands of miles away.

This was concluded by a team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Guelph, who examined the insects’ flight patterns.

The team, which included researchers from Queen’s University, Germany and Denmark, also analyzed more than 50 years’ worth of migration data to learn how monarchs find their way for the first time to their wintering habitat in Mexico.

Flights across the North Atlantic could get bumpier in the future if climate continues to change, scientists have said.

Planes are already encountering stronger winds, and could now face more turbulence, a research led by Reading University in the UK has revealed.

According to the BBC, the study, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests that by mid-century passengers will be bounced around more frequently and more strongly.

The zone in the North Atlantic affected by turbulence could also increase.

NASA chief Charles Bolden has said that the space agency is not sending astronauts to the moon any time soon.

Bolden’s remarks came during a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week.

According to a report by SpacePolitics.com, Bolden said the focus would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars.

Last week, Russia rekindled its plans for a robotic moon exploration program, unveiling its first new moon mission since the Soviet Union launched Luna 24 in 1976.

A new study of how carbon is trapped and released by iron-rich volcanic magma gives hint about the early atmospheric evolution on Mars and other terrestrial bodies.

The composition of a planet’s atmosphere has roots deep beneath its surface. When mantle material melts to form magma, it traps subsurface carbon.

As magma moves upward toward the surface and pressure decreases, that carbon is released as a gas.

On Earth, carbon is trapped in magma as carbonate and degassed as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that helps Earth’s atmosphere trap heat from the sun.

Washington, Apr. 8 (ANI): A new iPad program is enabling mothers to bond with their babies soon after delivery – even when they are hospitalized on different floors.

Moms who are not ambulatory after delivery, perhaps because of a cesarean section or other complications, are able to see their newborns in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit due to the new iPad initiative in the Maxine Dunitz Children’s Health Center at Cedars-Sinai.

The program, called BabyTime, allows moms to visit with their infants and the medical team over a secured Internet connection.

London, April 8 (ANI): Using a number of cutting edge approaches, including optogenetics, researchers at the University of Calgary”s Hotchkiss Brain Institute have shown that stress circuits in the brain are capable of self-tuning following a single stress.

These findings demonstrate that the brain uses stress experience during early life to prepare and optimize for subsequent challenges.

Jaideep Bains, PhD, and colleagues were able to show the existence of unique time windows following brief stress challenges during which learning is either increased or decreased.

A rotary fuel delivery valve developed by a University of Alabama in Huntsville team just might help manned space flights travel to other planets one day.

Dr. James Blackmon, a principal research engineer at the university’s Propulsion Research Center who led the team, said it could also have practical terrestrial applications.

Researchers have for the first time shown a clear link between the speed at which corals grow, and pollution caused by human activity.

They have found that pollution from fine particles in the air – mainly the result of burning coal or volcanic eruptions – can shade corals from sunlight and cool the surrounding water resulting in reduced growth rates.

London, April 7 (ANI): An artificial ovary created by researchers at the Wake Forest University is a new hope for women with damaged ovaries.

They researchers believe it could make hormone replacement therapy (HRT) a thing of the past, New Scientist reported.

Women with damaged ovaries or who are post-menopausal don”t produce sex hormones, which can lead to osteoporosis.

Though daily HRT helps, it can have side effects.

Tokyo. Apr. 7 (ANI): Smartphone usage in Japan has nearly doubled over the past year to one in every three people, a recent survey has revealed. The findings, compiled by Central Research Services Inc., showed that the proportion of respondents using smartphones came to 35.4 percent in the February poll, compared with 19.5 percent the year before, reports the Japan Times. Usage was highest among people in their 20s, at 72.5 percent. Among those in their 50s it came to over 30 percent and for people in their 60s to more than 10 percent, the survey said.

Odisha, Apr 7 (ANI): Agni II missile was successfully tested for the second time on Sunday, in Odisha , after testing it for the first time in 2010. The surface-to-surface missile, capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets around 2,000 kilometres away, was tested from Balasore, a strategically located military base in the state of Odisha. The missile is 20 metres long and can carry a payload of one tonne. The tests come after flight trials of the Agni II missile in May and November 2009 from the same test range failed. (ANI)

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has given the go-ahead for setting up a Centre of Research and Development in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the state.

The Chief Minister took the decision after meeting a delegation headed by Prof Shikhar Kumar Sarma, Head of
Department of Information Technology and Director In charge, Institute of Science and Technology, Gauhati University recently.

In a brief presentation on local language technology development for Information Technology (IT) Prof Sarma

Scientists have measured super-sensitive crocodilian facial nerves to better understand how today’s animals, as well as dinosaurs and crocodiles that lived millions of years ago, interact with their environment.

Crocodilians have nerves on their faces that are so sensitive; they can detect a change in a pond when a single drop hits the water surface several feet away. Alligators and crocodiles use these “invisible whiskers” to detect prey when hunting.

Thin, low-level clouds were instrumental in driving Greenland’s record-shattering ice melt last year, a new study has found.

If the sheet of ice covering Greenland were to melt in its entirety, global sea levels would rise by 24 feet.

Three million cubic kilometres of ice won’t wash into the ocean overnight, but researchers have been tracking increasing melt rates since at least 1979. Last summer, however, the melt was so large that similar events show up in ice core records only once every 150 years or so over the last four millennia.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered signs of star formation perilously close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

If confirmed, this would be the first time that star formation was observed so close to the galactic center.

The center of our galaxy, 27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, is home to a monstrous black hole with a mass of four million Suns.

NASA’s Astrophysics Explorer Program has selected two missions for launch in 2017 – a planet-hunting satellite and an International Space Station instrument to observe X-rays from stars.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) were among four concept studies submitted in September 2012.

NASA determined these two offer the best scientific value and most feasible development plans.

Oxford University scientists have developed a custom-built programmable 3D printer that can create materials with several of the properties of living tissues.

The new type of material consists of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies.

These printed “droplet networks” could be the building blocks of a new kind of technology for delivering drugs to places where they are needed and potentially one day replacing or interfacing with damaged human tissues.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star- a result of Einstein’s general theory of relativity – in binary, or double, star systems.

The dead star, called a white dwarf, is the burnt-out core of what used to be a star like our Sun. It is locked in an orbiting dance with its partner, a small “red dwarf” star. While the tiny white dwarf is physically smaller than the red dwarf, it is more massive.

After a record melt season last year, the Arctic Ocean’s icy cover shrank to its lowest extent on record, continuing a long-term trend and diminishing to about half the size of the average summertime extent from 1979 to 2000.

During the cold and dark of Arctic winter, sea ice refreezes and achieves its maximum extent, usually in late February or early March.

According to a NASA analysis, this year the annual maximum extent was reached on February 28 and it was the fifth lowest sea ice winter extent in the past 35 years.

A team of engineering students in the UAE have designed a car that could potentially travel up to 1,000 km on just one litre of fuel.

The lightweight vehicle — named Eco-Dubai 1 — is in its final stage of construction and will begin testing in the next two weeks.

The product of almost two years of work by students at the Higher Colleges of Technology Dubai Men’s College, the vehicle is half a metre wide, two metres long and half a metre high and weighs about 25 kg.

Washington, Apr. 3 (ANI): Late Apple founder Steve Jobs may have been involved in the design and development of the next two generations of the iPhone. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who had been interviewing cell phone makers and wireless service providers about the rash of phone thefts in Silicon Valley, said he was disheartened by the lack of commitment toward hardware solutions to the problem, such as “kill switch” for stolen devices, reports Fox News.

Hoping that NASA and ISRO will collaborate in the future, US astronaut Sunita Williams on Tuesday said the Indian government should accelerate its space programme as a lot of students and young people are showing interest in the field.

Williams, who holds the record for the longest spacewalk by a female astronaut at 50 hours, 40 minutes, involving seven space missions, said the US and India were developing a positive relationship as far as space was concerned.

Gandhinagar, March 31 (IANS) India’s major roads may double up as solar highways, if an innovative proposal by some scientists gets the government’s approval. The proposal is the brainchild of scientists at the Gujarat Energy Research and Management Institute (GERMI) in the state capital.

In a paper just published in the International Journal of Energy, Environment and Engineering, the scientists say highways can be used to generate solar power, if a roof of solar panels was laid over them, across the length of the roads.

Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, who holds the world record for the longest spaceflight by a female astronaut, will start her India trip on April 1 from the national capital.

Williams will visit the National Science Centre (NSC) in the national capital on April 1 and interact with students and teachers.

“The centre will host Sunita L. Williams (Captain, US Navy) and NASA astronaut on April 1. She will be interacting with a select group of students and teachers,” an official of the NSC said.

The number of people police took action against in Japan last year on suspicion of violating a law banning illegal access to computer networks rose from 40 to 154, the highest since the law took effect in 2000, the National Police Agency said today.

They included people who were suspected of using stolen Internet IDs and passwords.

The number of illegal Internet access cases detected by police surged by 362 to 1,251, including 543 cases where
police identified the suspects, up 295.