Bangalore, Sept.27 : The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch its maiden mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-I, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on April 9, 2008.

"We are looking for a launch on April nine," Mylswamy Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-I, said, adding that a launch windows are available for the next two days in case the launch does not happen on that day.

Washington, Sept 27 : A team of two British scientists have conceptualised a radical plan that calls for placing giant pumps in the ocean to pump up cold, nutrient-rich water from deep below, encouraging surface algae to bloom and suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

James Lovelock and Chris Rapley claim that such climate engineering solutions might be the only way to hold global warming at bay given its current progress.

Tehran, Sept 27 : Iranian archaeologists have identified 100 ancient sites at the Seimareh Dam reservoir in the country’s western Ilam Province.

The sites have been identified as belonging to Neolithic, Bronze Age, Copper Age, Stone Age, Parthian, Sassanid, and early Islamic eras, said team director Rasul Seyyedin Borujeni.

Washington, Sept 27 : Scientists at Yale University have achieved two major steps towards putting quantum computers into real practice – sending a photon signal on demand from a qubit onto wires, and transmitting the signal to a second, distant qubit.

Over the past several years, the research team of Robert Schoelkopf and Steven Girvin have explored the use of solid-state devices resembling microchips as the basic building blocks in the design of a quantum computer.

Washington, September 27 : Researchers at the University of California, Riverside say that plants can be used to study why prescription medications work successfully to cure an ailment in some people, while the same dose of the same drug can cause an adverse reaction in others.

“The genetics behind variable drug responses is not peculiar to humans but exists also in other branches on the tree of life,” Nature Chemical Biology quoted Sean Cutler, an assistant professor of plant cell biology at UC Riverside, as saying.