Washington, July 22: A team of US geologists has found structurally bound hydroxyl groups in a mineral in a lunar rock returned to earth by the Apollo programme.
Geologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working with colleagues at the University of Tennessee, found the water in a calcium phosphate mineral, apatite, within a basalt collected from the moon’s surface by the Apollo 14 astronauts, Xinhua reported.
New Delhi, July 16: With monsoon playing truant, the country received almost 25 per cent less rains in the past week leading to frayed nerves among the farm community.
The weather office also does not paint a rosy picture for next week as scientists see little chances of a significant revival of the seasonal rains.
However, the weatherman has forecast “fairly widespread” rains in West Madhya Pradesh, Central Maharashtra, Vidarbha, and most parts of Gujarat over the next two days.
Washington, July 16: The “Boule” gene, responsible for sperm production from insects to mammals including man, has remained unaltered for 600 million years that it has been in existence.
“This is the first clear evidence that suggests our ability to produce sperm is very ancient, probably originating at the dawn of animal evolution 600 million years ago,” said Eugene Xu, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at North Western University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Xu had discovered the gene in 2001.
Mumbai, July 15: Indian Medical Association today opposed the Clinical Establishment Bill claiming it would unleash a licence raj and affect family physicians the most.
IMA demanded freeze on its implementation and initiate a nationwide debate. It also demanded exemption of healthcare institutions run by individual doctors from this Act.
The Clinical Establishment Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha.
The proposed Act would unleash a license raj and eliminate family physicians who provide low-cost healthcare, the IMA Mumbai chapter president Shivkumar Utture said.
Sydney, July 15: Scientists have developed a mobile phone that does not need a reception tower to make calls.
Researchers from Flinders University in South Australia built software that incorporates a mobile phone tower into the phone itself.
Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that it used a WiFi interface to carry voice that didn’t need to go back to a central repository.
Los Angeles, July 12: Edward Norton has hit back at studio bosses for publicly ruling him out from the sequel of “Incredible Hulk”.
The actor’s representative has branded the official statement from the Marvel studio as “offensive” and “purposefully misleading”.
Norton was expected to reprise the role for the star-studded superhero blockbuster, due in theatres in 2012, after playing the hot-headed green monster in the 2008 film.
Washington, July 12: Send out those virtual birthday cakes and flowers now – Facebook is closing its Gift Shop.
Jared Morgenstern, Facebook’s product manager for games and credits, said the Gift Shop would shut down on August 1 so the social networking site can “focus instead on improving other products”.
“Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts,” he said in a blog post.
San Francisco, July 12: YouTube announced on Friday that it will invest $5m in promising video-makers.
“Our goal is to catalyse the creation of new ideas and production models from some of our most innovative and original content partners,” said George Strompolos, partner development manager at Google-owned YouTube.
Hanga Roa, July 12: Tourists and scientists poured onto the remote and mysterious Easter Island ahead of Sunday’s solar eclipse, a mixed blessing of sorts for the tiny Pacific outpost.
An estimated 4 000 tourists, scientists, photographers, filmmakers and journalists flocked to the Chilean island of only 160 square kilometres on Saturday, doubling the population of the barren isle that already suffers from water pollution and deforestation.
Beijing, July 12: Social networking sites like Facebook pose a security threat to China and are used as “tools of subversion” by Western nations including the US, a top Chinese think tank said in a report this week.
Ethnic riots in China’s western-most Xinjiang region last year were spurred on by such micro-blogging sites, the state-run China Academy of Social Sciences (Cass) said in its annual report on the development of new media.
“Facebook has appeared as the rallying point for overseas Xinjiang separatist groups,” the report said.
Tokyo, July 12: New Zealand anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune was deported from Japan on Friday after receiving a suspended two-year sentence for obstructing Japanese whaling in the Antarctic Ocean.
Bethune, 45, was sent home on an Air New Zealand flight which left Tokyo’s Narita airport for Auckland at 18:22 (09:22 GMT), airport spokesperson Masaru Motoyama said.
Washington, July 12: Google’s “Street View” cars will return to the road next week but all wireless scanning equipment has been removed after a controversy over the collection of private information.
Google said on Friday that the camera-equipped cars, which drive around taking photographs for the Internet giant’s free online mapping service, would resume operating in four countries next week and in others later.
Port St Joe, July 12: Biologist Lorna Patrick dug gingerly into the beach on Friday, gently brushing away sand to reveal dozens of leathery, golfball-sized loggerhead sea turtle eggs.
Patrick, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, carefully plucked the eggs from the 30cm-deep hole and placed them one-by-one in a cooler layered with moist sand from the nest, the first step in a sweeping and unprecedented turtle egg evacuation to save thousands of threatened hatchlings from certain death in the oiled Gulf of Mexico.
New Orleans, July 12: Using underwater robots, BP engineers worked on Sunday to replace a cap over a gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico as part of a new attempt to contain the worst environmental disaster in US history.
The old cap loosely covering the well was removed by the robots on Saturday as the first step in the operation.
A fleet of about 400 skimmers crowded around the well site to boost shoreline defence during the complex operation, BP said, as the oil giant struggled to put an end to the damaging spill.
Cape Town, July 12: A newly discovered flower has been named after the country’s vuvuzela to honour South Africa’s hosting of the first World Cup in Africa.
The plant’s colourful, flared yellow flowers and their “massed, synchronous appearance” had appropriate associations with the raucous air horn’s name, the SA National Biodiversity Institute said on its website.
A retired staff member suggested the name “and the rest, as they say, is history”, said CEO Tanya Abrahamse.
Hanga Roa, July 12: A total solar eclipse drew an 11 000km arc over the Pacific on Sunday, plunging remote isles into darkness in a heavenly display climaxing on mysterious Easter Island.
The skies grew black in the middle of the day as the moon slipped in front of the sun and aligned with the Earth, blotting out the sunshine that just moments earlier had swathed the island’s silent, ancient stone guardians.
Applause erupted from thousands of stargazers who began gathering days ago on this remote Chilean outpost for the rare four-minute, 41-second eclipse.
New Delhi, July 12: The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C15 carrying five payloads, including India’s remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2B, successfully lifted off from the spaceport in Sriharikota on Monday.
Besides the 694 kg Cartosat-2B, the rocket is carrying Alsat from Algeria, a nano satellite each from Canada and Switzerland and a pico (very small) satellite ‘Studsat’ built by seven engineering students in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Aligarh, July 11: An expert committee has concluded that the radiation level of the radium beryllium (Ra-Be) source stored in the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU was within safe limits, an official said Sunday.
The eight-member committee was appointed by Vice Chancellor P.K. Abdul Azis after Ra-Be a radioactive source lying locked in the physics department of the university caught the attention of media for over a week.
Japan, July 10: Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, who holds the record of the longest spaceflight (195 days) for female space travellers, will head for the stars once again in June 2012.
Williams, 44, would take over as station commander at the International Space Station that was her home in the sky from Dec 9, 2006 to June 22, 2007.
She will be joined on the Soyuz 31 flight to the space station by flight engineers Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, the space agencies of the three nations announced Friday.
Washington, July 10: Researchers have identified a drug that makes new nerve cells grow and replace damaged ones, a discovery that could help treat dementia.
The researchers infused 1,000 different chemicals into the brains of mice to see their effects.
Then, they identified eight potential chemicals before focussing their attention on P7C3, reports Cell.
P7C3 was identified as successful in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is used for learning and memory, says a Alzheimer’s Society release.
London, July 08: A solar-powered plane which can fly without fuel has taken off for its first 24-hour test flight before embarking on circumnavigation of the earth.
The plane, named Solar Impulse, left Payerne airfield in Switzerland Wednesday. Its pilot, Andre Borschberg, will take the prototype to an altitude of 27,900 feet by evening, when a decision will be made whether to fly the plane through the night using solar power stored in its batteries.
Dubai, July 05: If you are still running Microsoft Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2), you have until July 13 to upgrade. The venerable SP2 version reaches the end of its life on July 13, after which there will be no more updates.
Microsoft will no longer shore up security weaknesses in computers using Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows 2000 operating systems after July 13.
London, July 04: Computer scientists in the US are developing technology that will transform cars into intelligent vehicles fitted with aircraft-style black boxes that can record information about driving behaviour during accidents.
The car, which is being developed by researchers at computer chip giant Intel, will record information about the vehicle speed, steering and braking along with video footage from inside and outside the vehicle, The Telegraph reported.
Moscow, July 03: An unmanned Russian space capsule carrying supplies to the International Space Station failed in a docking attempt, Russian Mission Control and Nasa said.
The Progress space capsule is carrying more than two tons of food, water and other supplies for the orbiting laboratory. Three Russian and three US astronauts comprise the current crew.
None of the supplies were deemed necessary for the station’s immediate survival and the outpost is well supplied, said Nasa flight commentator Rob Navias.
Los Angeles, July 03: American scientists have created HIV-resistant cells that could one day pave the way for controlling the virus without using harsh anti-retroviral drugs.
Scientists at the Keck School of Medicine, at the University of Southern California, used mice to test the cells that target one of the two “gateway” molecules that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) uses to enter human cells, Meghan Lewit, spokeswoman for the team of researchers, said.