Washington, March 15: Rudolf Jaenisch, whose stem cell lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has consistently broken new barriers in the field, is the world’s “hottest” researcher, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
The annual hot list from Thomson Reuters’ Science Watch also names four genome experts at MIT and Harvard University’s Broad Institute – Mark Daly, David Altshuler, and Paul IW de Bakker and Eric Lander.
Singapore, March 15: A vast network of under-sea volcanoes pumping out nutrient-rich water in the Southern Ocean plays a key role in soaking up large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), acting as a brake on climate change, scientists say.
A group of Australian and French scientists have shown for the first time that the volcanoes are a major source of iron that single-celled plants called phytoplankton need to bloom and in the process soak up CO2, the main greenhouse gas.
Balasore, March 15: India’s new Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor missile, capable of destroying hostile missiles, on Monday encountered coordination problem and failed to take off during a planned launch from the Integrated Test Range at Wheeler Island off Orissa coast.
“Coordinated exercise between target missile Prithvi from Chandipur and the indigenously built interceptor from Wheeler Island could not take place properly during the planned trial,” defence sources said.
Bhubaneswar, March 14: The test of an interceptor missile scheduled Sunday from a military base in Orissa was postponed, official sources said. The 3,000 people, temporarily evacuated from the area, have returned home.
The Advanced Air Defence missile (AAD) was to be fired from the Wheeler Island off Dhamra coast in Bhadrak district to destroy an incoming missile fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur-on-sea in Balasore district.
Authorities had shifted about 3,000 people from six villages within two-km radius of the test range to temporary camps as a safety measure.
New Delhi, March 12: Giving a new ray of hope to stroke patients, doctors at AIIMS are now trying to treat brain damage resulting from it with stem cells.
“Doctors here are trying to treat stroke patients who have suffered paralysis or disability with stem cells. It is in the research stage. The results are expected soon,” Dinesh Trivedi, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare said while inaugurating the Fifth National Congress on Indian Stroke Association and International Stroke Conference.
“Treatment for stroke patients has improved rapidly.
New Delhi, March 12: Coinciding with the visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, an exhibition featuring some of the finest art works of top artists of that country from the 19th and 20th centuries was unveiled here today.
The exhibition, mounted by the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, comprises a collection of 33 art works based on winter in Russia.
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit inaugurated the exhibition titled ‘Russian Winter’, at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture here.
Putin is in India on a two-day visit.
Washington, March 12: The United Nations has initiated, in tandem with the Chair of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, “a comprehensive, independent review of the IPCC’s procedures and processes”, including its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday.
London, March 11: Four in five people across 26 countries of the world, including India, believe that access to the Internet is a fundamental right, according to a recent poll.
The survey of more than 27,000 adults in these countries found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.
“The right to communicate cannot be ignored,” Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of International Telecommunication Union (ITU), was quoted as saying by the BBC News.
Germany, March 09: A German woman’s fear Earth is to be sucked into oblivion in a black hole has failed in a court bid to halt the world’s most powerful atom-smasher.
The Constitutional Court in the western Germany city of Karlsruhe threw out the woman’s appeal because she was “unable to give a coherent account of how her fears would come about.”
“The overwhelming scientific opinion is that the experiments carried out at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) present no dangers,” the court added.
New Delhi, March 09: In a bid to conserve energy, the capital’s main civic agency Tuesday launched the country’s first remote-controlled street lights that can be switched on and off using an internet-enabled main server located in the heart of the city.
The first phase of this street light upgradation project, under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), became operational Tuesday and covers a distance of 101 km on 52 city roads.
Brussels, March 08: Women with children earn almost a third less than men and still face too many career obstacles, a global trade union said in a report released today.
The persistent imbalance in household chores can hurt women’s careers, the study of the International Trade Union Confederation concluded. Women with kids earn on average 68 per cent of what men make, and overall, women make 74 per cent of what men bring in, according to the report.
Bhopal, March 07: All India Radio (AIR) listeners here Sunday had a surprise when they heard children anchoring various programmes and expressing their feelings and aspirations on the occasion of the International Children’s Day of Broadcasting.
The day provides a unique opportunity for child broadcasters to use the medium, and an important part of the initiative is that children themselves decide how and in what way they will participate.
Ahmedabad, March 07: With invention of new genetic tools, financial losses incurred due to epidemics caused by diseases like dengue and chikungunya can be substantially reduced in the country, a study released here said.
As per the study carried out by IIM-Ahmedabad, India’s estimated annual burden of dengue and chikungunya is Rs 6,120 crore and dengue haemorrhagic fever is said to be the leading cause of hospitalisation and death among children in the country.
New Delhi, March 07: Maker of memory products, Kingston has released its Data Traveler 310 USB Flash Drive. The drive comes with large memory capacity of 256GB.
The Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company claims that this version is far more superior to its forerunner, Kingston 300.
The device has faster reading and writing capacities.
In the list of what it offers is a total storing capacity of 54 DVDs, a reading speed of 25 MB per second and a writing speed of 12 MB per second.
Kanpur, March 07: A nano satellite “Jugnu” built by students and faculty of IIT Kanpur, was today handed over to the Indian Space Research Organisation.
The three kg satellite is one-foot long and 10 centimetre wide and will be launched by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from Sriharikota and take high resolution images.
IIT scientists said the satellite, which was handed over to the space agency at a function in the presence of President Pratibha Patil to celebrate its golden jubilee, is expected to last for about a year and will help combat drought.
More than 10 billion messages have been sent through Twitter since the microblogging service launched in 2006
The milestone, which was reached last night, underlines Twitter’s meteoric growth and increasing popular appeal. In November 2008, it broke the billion tweets mark, and reached five billion tweets last November.
However, Twitter users have been unable to identify who sent the 10 billionth tweet, as it came from someone with a “protected” profile, meaning their messages cannot be viewed by the general public.
Washington, March 06: No more fumbling in your pocket to silence your ringing phone in the cinema – a quick wave of your hand could now suffice. That’s thanks to researchers at Deutsche Telekom (DT) in Berlin, Germany, who have developed software that makes it possible to control a cellphone by moving a magnet around near it.
It works on devices with a compass sensor, now a standard feature of smartphones such as the Apple iPhone or Google’s Nexus One.
Washington, March 06: According to a new research by internet giant Yahoo, the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center topped the list of online news searches during the last 15 years.
Cloning and the Iraq battle accompanied the attack at twin towers, in the maximum search file.
The survey also discovered that the overall number of internet sites have reached around 200 million from just 18,000 in the year 1995.
San Francisco, March 06: Google is to add automatic captions to the tens of millions of English-language videos it hosts on YouTube, the web search giant said Friday.
The move will make the videos more accessible to deaf viewers but will also help Google index the content and supply relevant ads alongside it, analysts said.
Houston, March 06: Scientists have discovered moon’s biggest and deepest crater – some 2,400 km long and 9 km deep – using data from a NASA instrument that flew aboard India’s maiden unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan—I.
The US Space agency’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) detected the enormous crater – the South Pole -Aitken basin – that was created when an asteroid smacked into moon’s southern hemisphere shortly after the formation of earth’s only natural satellite.
San Francisco, March 06: Software giant Microsoft is to launch its own mobile phones in the US later this year as it aims to challenge the growing smartphone dominance of its main rivals Apple and Google, the technology blog Gizmodo reported Friday.
New Delhi, March 05: Diclofenac is the “major cause” behind the rapidly declining vulture numbers in the country, the government said today.
“Studies have indicated that use of Diclofenac in livestock is the major cause of vulture decline. Vultures are exposed to Diclofenac when they consume carcasses of cattle that were administered this drug,” Minister of State for Health Dinesh Trivedi informed Lok Sabha in a written reply.
He said the government has already banned the use of Diclofenac and its formulations for animal use under Sector 26A of Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940.
New Delhi, March 05: While many people are already spending thousands of rupees to repair old air conditioners or even more to buy new ones, M. B. Lal prefers a cheap solution and a green one in that.
Harnessing ice as a cooling agent, the retired journalist converted his humble desert cooler into a rudimentary yet effective air conditioner.
Though the unique machine decreases the average room temperature by as much as seven degrees more than a cooler, it consumes the same electricity and costs between just Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000.
New Delhi, March 05: Those who find the touchscreens on their ever- shrinking gadgets too fiddly to handle, will be glad to hear that scientists are developing a new touch surface — your own arm.
Developers at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University are working together to create an armband — named Skinput — that projects an interface directly on your skin.
They have combined a mini projector, which creates a changing display, with a sophisticated sensor that can tell which part of your arm is being tapped.
Bangalore, March 05: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully conducted the flight testing of its new generation high performance sounding rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) on Wednesday.
Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV-D01), weighing 3 tonnes at lift-off, is the heaviest sounding rocket ever developed by the ISRO. It carried a passive scramjet engine combustor module as a test bed for demonstration of Air- Breathing propulsion technology.