Science

Environment Ministry has constituted a high-level Working Group headed by eminent space scientist and Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan to examine the Western Ghats ecology expert panel report “in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion”.

The nine-member Group will examine the Madhav Gadgil committee report released recently “in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion keeping in view the comments received from the concerned state governments, central ministries, stakeholders”, the Ministry said.

The long-delayed Nag anti-tank missile project of the DRDO has suffered yet another setback as its user trials held recently failed.

In the trials held in Rajasthan in presence of senior Lt Gen-rank officers from the Army and top DRDO officials, the modified carrier of the missile called NAMICA also under-performed, DRDO sources told a news agency here.

In the trials held at the Mahajan firing range, four Nag missiles were fired of which only one could hit the target whereas the remaining failed to do so due to glitches in the equipment on-board the weapon, they said.

An Indian-origin research geneticist has claimed that sexless reproduction is possible in future for humans too. Aarathi Prasad, who has written a celebration of all the eccentric creatures like the whiptail lizard capable of reproducing by themselves without sexual contact, asserted that as the test-tube babies were the stuff of science fiction a generation ago and now they are a reality, similarly babies could be born without sperm donor, let alone contact between the sexes, in future.

Worried by the deficient rains this year, Mumbai’s civic body has decided to resort to ‘artificial rains’ at a cost of Rs.65 million, an official said here Thursday.

Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Sitaram Kunte announced the decision even as the city’s water collection and storage remained around 30 percent deficient, with the peak monsoon drawing to a close by the month-end.

“Cloud-seeding will be carried out for 12-15 days mainly in the catchment areas of the Bhatsa and Vaitarna rivers in Thane district,” Kunte said.

An unmanned American experimental aircraft failed in a hypersonic test flight and dropped into the Pacific Ocean, the US Air Force said Wednesday.

The aircraft, named X-51A Waverider, failed in its bid to reach a speed of Mach 6 (about 7,300 km per hour) Tuesday, Xinhua reported.

The air force said the craft successfully separated in midair from a B-52 bomber served as mother ship, and the rocket booster fired as planned.

About 16 seconds into the test flight, a fault was identified with one of the cruiser control fins.

Russian physicist and popular science TV show host Sergei Kapitsa died Tuesday in Moscow. He was 84.

He made contributions to physics in supersonic aerodynamics, applied electrodynamics, and accelerator physics.

Born in Cambridge, Kapista graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1949. His father is the physicist and Nobel laureate Pyotr Kapitsa.

He was best known as host of the long running science TV show Ochevidnoye-Neveroyatnoye (Evident, but Incredible, launched in 1973) for which was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the Popularisation of Science in 1979.

Contact has been made with an Indonesian telecommunications satellite which went missing following a failed launch last week, a Russian rocket firm said Monday.

The Telkom 3 and another satellite, Russia’s Express MD2, failed to reach their target orbit due to a failure of the Russian Proton-M rocket’s upper stage.

“Contact with the satellite has been established and is being sustained,” the Reshetnev rocket company, which built the craft, said in a press release.

Doctors sporting ‘iconic’ medical symbols like stethoscope during e-consultations seem to win their patient’s trust, says a new Australian research.

The six-month e-health project was undertaken by researchers at the Curtin University Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) and funded by Curtin’s Office of Research and Development.

They investigated the process of providing e-consultations, and whether the presence of ‘iconic’ medical symbols like a stethoscope, surgical scrubs or a reflex hammer would help doctors build a relationship of trust online.

Researchers may have found a promising stem cell therapy to prevent osteoarthritis (painful and stiff joints) after a joint injury.

Injuring a joint greatly raises the odds of getting a form of osteoarthritis called post-traumatic arthritis, or PTA. There are no therapies yet that modify or slow the progression of arthritis after injury.

Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, along with five others living aboard the International Space Station for last two weeks, is enjoying the Olympics from space.

“Watching Olympics from here has been motivating and has turned us all into very good athletes,” said Williams, who was into sports during her days in the US Naval Academy.

Williams, 46, sees no reason why being stationed on the International Space Station should keep her from a good race.

A Delhi boy has discovered a new comet using data from NASA and European Space Agency’s spacecraft-based observatory SOHO that studies the Sun.

Discovered by Prafull Sharma, a Class XII student of Ahlcon Public School, the new comet — SOHO 2333 — is a fragment believed to have separated from a relatively larger comet Machholz when it last came close to the Sun in 2007.

Researchers have engineered a soft robot that inches ahead with earthworm-like peristalsis, crawling across surfaces by contracting segments of its body.

The robot, made almost entirely of soft materials, is remarkably resilient: even when stepped upon or bludgeoned with a hammer, it is able to inch away unscathed.

Sangbae Kim, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says such a soft robot may be useful for navigating rough terrain or squeezing through tight spaces, the journal IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics reports.

A third of the Earth’s organisms live in our planet’s rocks and sediments – and the amount could even be greater undersea than what we find on the surface, scientists say.

Microbiologist James Holden of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and his colleagues revealed the first detailed data on methane-exhaling microbes that live deep in the rocks and sediments, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

Researchers have documented the role dams play in global warming and the surges of greenhouse gases as water levels go up and down.

Bridget Deemer, doctoral student at Washington State University (WSU)- Vancouver, Canada, measured dissolved gases in the water column of Lacamas Lake in Clark County and found methane emissions jumped 20-fold when the water level was drawn down.

A fellow WSU-Vancouver student, Maria Glavin, sampled bubbles rising from the lake mud and measured a 36-fold increase in methane during a drawdown, according to a university statement.

Google is trying out a new feature which would enable its web search engine results to integrate information from users’ personal email accounts such as Gmail.

“Sometimes the best answer to your question isn’t available on the public web – it may be contained somewhere else, such as in your email,” Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president in charge of search, wrote in a post on the company’s blog.

“Starting today, we’re opening up a limited trial where you can sign up to get information from your Gmail right from the search box,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.

Sharpening its missile teeth, India on Thursday successfully test-fired its medium range nuclear capable Agni-II missile with a strike range of 2000 km as part of a user trial by the Army from the Wheeler Island off Odisha coast.

“The trial of the surface-to-surface missile was conducted from a mobile launcher from the Launch Complex-4 of Integrated Test Range (ITR) at around 0848 hours,” defence sources said.

Describing the launch as a complete success, ITR Director MVKV Prasad said, “All mission parameters were met during the trial of the indigenously developed missile.”

The first Facebook app to allow players to gamble with real money has provoked an outcry from Christian groups, the Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Bingo Friendzy, developed by the British online gambling company Gamesys, was introduced on Facebook Tuesday. It allows players to stake cash in 90 bingo and slot machine games.

The app is marketed with cartoon graphics featuring characters that have been compared to those on Moshi Monsters, the popular children’s social network.

The “screams” of a dying star have been recorded by scientists for the very first time, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

The star let out periodic bursts of light as it was devoured by a black hole, scientists discovered.

Researchers at the University of Michigan picked up semi-regular blips – which they have likened to dying screams – in the light of the star 3.9 billion light years away in the direction of the constellation Draco on orbiting X-ray telescopes.

India is the second-least preferred destination for setting up of data centres by global companies, according to a study conducted by Cushman & Wakefield.

The country ranked at the 29th place in the ‘Data Centre Risk Index’ study conducted among the 30 countries.

A data centre is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecom and storage systems.

The Data Centre Risk index ranked countries based on various risk factors such as energy costs, bandwidth, ease of doing business, cost of labour and political stability.

Cuba is developing a National Forest Programme to increase the nation’s freen cover, the Granma official daily reported.

The director of Cuban ministry of agriculture’s forestry department, Isabel Russo Milhet, said the programme would increase forest land by 2.3 percent to 29.3 percent of the country’s total area by the end of 2015, reported Xinhua.

Cuba has already achieved some “tangible results” in working to increase forest land and is improving an early fire warning system, Russo said.

The Environment Ministry has constituted a new advisory panel to vet proposals related to forest clearances, according to a government official.

The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC), which has been formed after two months of expiry of the last panel on May 28, will soon hold its first meeting to clear 30-35 pending cases.

“The FAC has been set up with seven members. The minister has approved the names of three independent members,” a senior Environment Ministry official told PTI.

Russia’s Proton-M carrier rocket failed to put into orbit two telecommunications satellites due to problems in its booster stage, federal space agency Roscosmos said Tuesday.

Russia Monday night launched Telkom 3 and Express MD2 aboard the Proton-M from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Xinhua reported.

Russia Monday night launched Telkom 3 and Express MD2 aboard the Proton-M from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Xinhua reported.

A string of tweets on behalf of US space agency Nasa’s rover Curiosity tracks the tense moments before the spacecraft landed on Mars.

“I’m safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!,” said an ecstatic tweet after the rover landed safely on Mars.

Moments earlier, another tweet said: “Backshell separation. It’s just you & me now, descent stage. Engage all retrorockets!”

The critical tweets began with the one saying: “Guided entry is begun. Here I go!”.

A Russian water supply utility has “hired” the crustaceans, Australian red claw crayfish, to test quality of treated wastewater before it is dumped into the Neva Bay.

Experts at St Petersburg’s water supply company– Vodokanal water supplier — will observe crayfish’s condition and heartbeat to determine the quality of wastewater that gets treated at the South-western Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Bio-electronic control is a new technology developed and used by St.Petersburg scientists.

Methane gas generated from human waste could be used to light up bio-toilets developed by scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

Acting on suggestions made by Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, the premier research agency is now working to provide lighting solution for the convenience of those who will use bio-toilets in darkness.