A private company, SpaceX successfully launched a rocket which placed a dummy payload into the Earth’s orbit. The founder of the company Mr. Elon Musk, an internet entrepreneur born in South Africa was elated at the launch and said “We have made Orbit.....It was a flawless launch”. 

Washington, September 30 : Remains of rotten fish entrails have helped establish the precise dating of Pompeii’s destruction, as 79 A. D., according to the analysis of the town’s last batch of garum, a pungent, fish-based sauce.

According to a report in Discovery News, frozen in time by the catastrophic eruption that covered Pompeii and nearby towns nearly 2,000 years ago with nine to 20 feet of hot ash and pumice, the desiccated remains were found at the bottom of seven jars.

The find revealed that the last Pompeian garum was made entirely with bogues (known as boops boops), a Mediterranean fish species that abounded in the area in the summer months of July and early August.

Washington, September 30 : A new research has attributed the thinning of one of Greenland''s largest glaciers to ocean warming preceded by atmospheric changes.

According to the research published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the sudden thinning in 1997 of one of Greenland''s largest glaciers, was caused by subsurface ocean warming.

The research team traces these oceanic shifts back to changes in the atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic region.

Washington, Sept 30 : The more green spaces are there in a college campus, the better satisfied are students with their lives, says a new study.

According to the research, campus green spaces can help students feel better about life and improve learning.

In the study led by L. McFarland, a graduate student in the Department of Agriculture at Texas State University, the researchers surveyed 373 undergraduates at the San Marcos campus.

The respondents were then ranked as "low users", "medium users", or "high users" of campus green spaces.

Washington, September 30: Biological engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a method of producing smell receptors in the laboratory, showing the possibility of creation of “artificial noses” for use in a variety of settings.

The breakthrough may also be helpful in discerning how the senses of smell can recognize a seemingly infinite range of odours, say the researchers.

Washington, September 30: A scientist of Indian origin, along with his team, is designing a robotic aircraft inspired by a 225-million-year old crested pterodactyl.

According to a report in Discovery News, the scientist in question is Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, US.

The dinosaur that has inspired Chatterjee is the Tapejara wellnhoferi, whose body looked like the typical flying lizard frame - light, airy wings stretched taut with skin, and a slender avian neck, with an 8-inch-high fleshy crest on its head.

Chatterjee said that recently discovered fossils of the dinosaur found in Brazil showed the crest intact, and that it probably functioned as a form of rudder.