New Delhi, Oct 10 : The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has successfully tested guided weapon testing devices which would help improve the accuracy rate of guided weapons of Indian Air Force like Infra-Red Guided Missiles.

Director of DRDO''s Laser Science and Technology Centre, A K Maini said that the matching codes of target designator and seekers in missiles are crucial for the weapon to be accurate. (ANI)

Washington, Jan 23: Scientists have discovered a way to produce hydrogen by exposing selected clusters of aluminum atoms to water.

Scientists at Penn State University and the Virginia Commonwealth University in the US made the findings.

It was found that the proximity of the clusters' exposed sites plays an important role in affecting the clusters' reactions with water.

Washington, Feb 18 : A panel of scientists has predicted that New York will be hotter, rainier and more likely to flood in the coming decades, with sea levels possibly rising more than four feet.

"All of the evidence from the science community is that the seas are going to rise," said New York's Mayor Bloomberg, as he unveiled the panel's report.

"It's pretty hard to not understand something's going on, very worrisome and scary, on this planet," he added.

The landing of space shuttle Discovery was initially called of by the US space agency NASA, because inimical weather and strong winds, but at last, the space shuttle landed safely and soundly at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida on Saturday.

According to NASA, the space shuttle Discovery landed at 3:14 p.m. EDT at KSC, after successfully completing its 13-day mission and three space walks at the International Space Station.

Yes, nearly 4,000 cities/towns in 88 nations turned off their electric lights, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., time zone by time zone, during “Earth Hour” on Saturday! The message was clear; Earth Hour was a “big global success” – claimed the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on Sunday.

Sun appears to have gone into lull! The solar astronomers have noticed that Sun has gone unusually quiet recently, with fewer sunspots and weaker magnetic fields. According to astronomers, Sun has gout into placid period, in which they have not been able to notice its usual solar flares, storms, or spots.

Just after it came out that Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is planning to kidnap or assassinate India’s top scientists, the Government of India beefed up the security of its prominent scientists. The government on Sunday provided "Z" category security to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair, and "Y" category security to six other notable space scientists.

The US space agency NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has stated that it has noted aerosols affecting climate by reflecting or absorbing the radiation of Sun, in the atmosphere. In its recent study, NASA has articulated that Arctic has been warming since 1976, due to the increase of aerosols in Atmosphere.

The NASA study has warned that the growing amount of aerosols could have damaging effects on climate, particularly if the amount of aerosols surpasses maximum-allowed limits. The sources of aerosols can be natural as well as human.

Washington, Apr 21: Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have come a step closer to using gene therapy for Huntington disease.

The team led by Kelvin J. A. Davies, professor of gerontology in the USC Davis School of Gerontology and professor of biological sciences in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences has found that a form of the gene RCAN1, known as RCAN1-1L, is dramatically decreased in human brains affected by Huntington disease.

Washington, Apr 21 (ANI): Our brain makes proteins that act directly on the marijuana receptors in the head, say researchers.

In the new study in FASEB Journal, researchers have discovered that the brain manufactures proteins that act like marijuana at specific receptors in the brain itself.

The discovery may lead to new marijuana-like drugs for managing pain, stimulating appetite, and preventing marijuana abuse.

Global warming and subsequent climatic changes have resulted in tangible changes in the Arctic region, where the sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, as per satellite data provided by the US-based space agency NASA. Global warming caused ice at Arctic sea to thin by 17.8 centimeters in a year and 67 centimeters over four winters.

Data from NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Satellite (ICESat), and an intensive study by the University of Washington in Seattle, have warned against further global warming that can prove fatal both for human beings and vegetation.  

The chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Mr. G. Madhavan Nair, has called for the need to involve more students in space research program.  

The highly potential space field has a number of employments and growth oriented opportunities and it needs more manpower to carry out space exploration for the development of the society.

In a shocking development, a Sri Lankan Minister had claimed that Rajnikanth films like Kuselan and Endhiran have been funded by the LTTE.

According to Sri Lankan Minister for Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services, Abdul Risath Bathiyutheen, funds were being diverted through a London based Tamilian who was passing on the funds to the film makers.

Speaking with Asian Tribune, the Minister said: "The money was not directly sent. millions of US dollars were given to a London-based Tamilian. He was asked to produce Tamil films in Chennai with top stars like Rajnikanth.”

Australian wicket-keeper Brad Haddin has been ruled out of the ODI series against England due to finger injury. Haddin will undergo a surgery on his broken finger in Sydney on Thursday which means he will be out of the action for next few weeks. He is also looking doubtful for the Champions Trophy.

Haddin sustained finger injury during the practice session before the Edgbaston test match against England and he was ruled out of the test match after scan report revealed serious damage to the left finger. Haddin was replaced by Graham Manou in Edgbaston test. Although, Haddin was included in the Australian squad for last two test matches.

Washington  - NASA has delayed the launch of the space shuttle Discovery by 24 hours to allow more time to review data about a suspect valve in the liquid hydrogen fuel tank, officials said Thursday.

NASA earlier this week scrubbed a Tuesday launch to the early hours of Friday morning after detecting a problem with the fill and drain valve. The latest plan is to proceed with the launch about midnight Friday (0400 GMT Saturday).

NASA said more time was needed to determine whether the problem lies with the valve or a gauge that was showing the valve to be open when it was supposed to be closed.

Washington  - The space shuttle Discovery was set for a midnight launch on Friday after problems associated with a fuelling valve that forced previous delays were resolved, NASA officials said.

Discovery is set to blast off at 11:59 pm (0359 GMT Saturday) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, en route to the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA was fuelling the shuttle for the launch and the readings on what had been a suspect valve were normal. But weather was beginning to emerge as a potential challenge.

India's abruptly-terminated lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 gives some plausible clues about the moon's surface and imprints of the activities of astronauts landed here four decades back, through the Terrain mapper camera on board. The unmanned mission captured pictures of the landing site of US spacecraft Apollo 15, and sent the tracks of the lunar rovers used by astronauts to travel on the moon surface.

Washington  - A large piece of space junk flew past the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday without posing any threat, US space agency NASA said.

A piece of a European Ariane-5 rocket passed within 1.3 kilometres of the ISS, but not close enough to pose a risk to the station or its crew.

"The flight control team is continuing to monitor that debris, but again it did pass as expected and is no concern to the orbiting complex," said a NASA spokesperson.

Washington, September 6 : German scientists have come up with a new concept for ultra-flat loudspeakers that can deliver full sound reproduction.

Scientists at the Ilmenau-based Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT) say that such speakers can be integrated inconspicuously on walls or in furniture.

They will present their concept at the Internationale Funkausstellung IFA in Berlin.

Good sound reproduction takes space, at least in the speakers. The loudspeaker membrane must have room to vibrate in order to maintain unimpaired enjoyment.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has finally admitted that country's first lunar mission Chandarayaan-1 was abruptly terminated due to a miscalculation of the Moon's temperature at the orbit height from 100km to 200km. The height was raised to get a better view of moon's surface that led to faulty thermal protection and finally killed the mission.

Dr. T K Alex, Director, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, said, "We assumed that the temperature at 100km above the Moon's surface would be around 75 degrees Celsius. However, it was more than 75 degrees and problems started to surface. We had to raise the orbit to 200km."

Washington  - The space shuttle Discovery undocked from the International Space Station after delivering supplies and equipment to boost the capacity of the orbiting laboratory.

Pilot Kevin Ford backed Discovery away from the station at 1926 GMT for the trip back to Earth. The shuttle is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Thursday.

The shuttle then flew around the station, allowing astronauts one last chance to examine the craft for any damage.

Havana  - Cuban scientists have found a fossil of a 10-metre- long crocodile that lived more than 20 million years ago.

These are the first fossils found on the island of this reptile, which lived in the Miocene period, Alejandro Romero Emperador, a member of Cuba's Speleological Society, told the local news agency Prensa Latina on Tuesday.

The fossils were found in the spillway of Zaza dam, Cuba's largest reservoir, in the central province of Sancti Spiritus.

Washington, September 9 : Scientists have developed electrical circuits that run entirely from power in trees.

According to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Transactions on Nanotechnology, there’s enough power in trees for University of Washington (UW) researchers to run an electronic circuit.

“As far as we know, this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree,” said co-author Babak Parviz, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering.

Melbourne, September 10 : A new research has found that Australian lacewings build tougher silk than silkworms.

Scientists at CSIRO Entomology have learnt that silk made by the common Australian green lacewing can be stretched up to six times further than silkworm silk.

Moreover, its unusual structure makes it potentially much easier to manufacture artificially.

The common Australian green lacewing (Mallada signata) produces silk to create tiny stiff stalks to hold each of its eggs on.

Washington  - Engineers on Thursday completed the first tests of the motor on the rocket that will take NASA's next generation spacecraft into orbit.

The Ares I rocket is designed to take the Orion space craft into low-Earth orbit. The craft is to replace the ageing shuttle fleet and is designed to eventually return humans to the moon. A stronger rocket, known as Ares V, will be used to boost the craft to the moon.

The two-minute test at a facility in Utah will provide engineers with information about the five-segment solid development motor, which provides more thrust than the current motors used by the space shuttle.

London, Sep. 13 : There are thousands of habitable moons orbiting planets in other solar systems trillions of miles from our own, British scientists say.

On the basis of mathematical calculations, scientists at the University College London have said that it should be possible to spot these moons using a space telescope launched by NASA.

Dr David Kipping from the department of physics and astronomy will tell a conference on the search for habitable planets that the first habitable moons could be spotted within the next five years, The Telegraph reports.

Scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization have started decoding data from the Chandrayaan-1 mission to release it by the end of 2009 or early 2010.

Scientists from National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency are assisting ISRO in decoding the compiled data about Moon.

The data received from the Chandrayaan-1 will be converted into international standard format i. e. standard planetary data system format with the help of the conversion software.

Scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization have started decoding data from the Chandrayaan-1 mission to release it by the end of 2009 or early 2010.

Scientists from National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency are assisting ISRO in decoding the compiled data about Moon.

The data received from the Chandrayaan-1 will be converted into international standard format i. e. standard planetary data system format with the help of the conversion software.

Johannesburg  - The launch of South Africa's and southern Africa's first government-owned satellite from the central Asian republic of Kazakhstan was delayed by a day because of a technical error, the government in Pretoria said Tuesday.

A Russian Soyuz rocket had been scheduled to blast off at 20:55:07 Tuesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with both South Africa's 26-million-rand (3.5 million dollar) SumbandilaSat and Russian weather satellite Meteor.

In a statement, the ministry of science and technology said the launch been postponed by 24 hours.

Washington  - The shadowy craters of the moon's south pole could be the coldest spot in the solar system, NASA scientists said Thursday.

NASA scientists announced the first data sent back to Earth from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a satellite that will spend the next year making the most detailed maps yet of the moon's surface to prepare for man's eventual return.

The craft is outfitted with instruments to provide a range of scientific data about the moon and to take photographs.

London, September 20 : UK has witnessed more than triple number of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings this year.

According to the country’s Ministry of Defence documents, 394 sightings were reported from January until the end of last month.

Most claims alleged spotting UFOs at night time and describe seeing strange lights in the sky. Some others were seen during the day, reports the Telegraph.

Gary Heseltine, a British Transport Police officer and UFO expert, said: "There has certainly been a big increase in sightings in Britain over the last 12 months.

London, September 20 : UK’s Ministry of Defence had launched an investigation of thousands of UFO sightings in the 1990s in a bid to see if alien spaceship technology could advance engines for the Royal Air Force.

An unnamed wing commander was said to have set off the project in 1993 to explore possibilities for “technology transfer”, according to a book based on the ministry’s “X- files” of thousands of UFO sightings.

London, Sept 20 : Negative attitudes about male primary school teachers are driving men away from teaching, a new study has found.

According to the poll of more than 2,000 people, which was commissioned by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), more than four in ten adults believe that poor perceptions about men working with young children are the reason why so few take up primary teaching roles.

Almost half of the respondents said it was important to ensure that children had both male and female role models, reports The Scotsman.

TDA chief executive Graham Holley said: "Men are under-represented in primary schools and we are keen to improve the balance over time.

Washington, September 22 : Dinosaur hunters have unearthed the jaw of a Tyrannosaurs Rex only to find a tooth from Gorgosaurus, a smaller cousin of T. Rex, dug into the bone, which suggests that the fearsome beasts had a penchant for biting each other’s faces.

According to a report in Discovery News, Phil Bell and Phillip Currie of the University of Alberta, US, discovered the fossil.

Fossil jaw bones raked with tooth marks are not uncommon, and scientists have figured they were leftovers from a familial tiff over territory, a mate or some particularly rough sexual encounter.

Union Sports Minister M S Gill on Tuesday met the winning Indian Davis Cup team.

Gill met country’s tennis sensation Somdev Devvaraman along with Yuki Bhambri and Rohan Boppana and praised their hard work in South Africa.

The Indian team defeated South Africa 4-1 in the World Group play-off tie in Johannesburg last week.

Along with their senior counter-part Mahesh Bhupathi, youngsters Somdev, Rohan Bopanna and Yuki Bhambri steered India to the World Group for the first time in 11 years.

Hamburg  - Mars did indeed once have seas, according to a team of German scientists.

The dried-out seabeds are etched on the face of the planet in long cracks which intersect - exactly like the parched cracks at the bottom of dried-out lake beds on Earth, say the German researchers.

The scientists investigated networks of cracks within 266 crater impact basins and found polygons reaching up to 250 metres in diameter. The cracked shapes are nothing new. But up until now, the polygonal troughs seen on Mars have been attributed to contractions caused by temperature changes in permafrost.

Washington, Sep 30 : Tyrannosaurus rex, popularised by the Hollywood film "The Jurassic Park", suffered from a potentially fatal infectious disease, similar to one that occurs in living birds, known as trichomonosis.

Tell-tale symptoms of trichomonosis include swellings and holes in the back of the lower jaw.

Some of the world's most famous T-rex specimens, such as 'Sue' at the Field Museum in Chicago, and the holotype specimen at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh have holes like these in their lower jaw.

Washington  - Anthropologists in Ethiopia have conducted the most complete analysis yet of one of the earliest known hominids, challenging many of the assumptions about how humans and apes evolved.

More than 110 specimens of the 4.4-million-year-old species, Ardipithecus ramidus, were uncovered, according to a series of articles to be published in the US journal Science on Friday. They included a partial female skeleton nicknamed Ardi, who is more than a million years older than the famous Lucy skelton uncovered in the 1970s.

About a dozen top scientists from across the world, including two Physics Nobel Prize winners, have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to clear a proposed underground neutrino laboratory, billed as one of the most ambitious projects in the history of Indian science.

The scientists said that, with the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) delayed by more than two years, the U. S. and China are thinking of building similar facilities.

London - Archaeologists have uncovered a second stone circle, just a mile from the famous prehistoric Stonehenge, it emerged Sunday - the only difference being, none of the stones are left.

Dubbed "Bluehenge" by the team from Sheffield University because the original rocks would have been tinged blue dolerite from Wales, only the holes where the stones were erected now survive.

Bluehenge is a mile from Stonehenge, in the Wiltshire countryside in south-western England.

The holes were once home to 27 standing stones, archaeologists said, and were discovered this summer.

The site is estimated to date back around 5,000 years, and so would be of a similar age to Stonehenge.

A month ago, Shivdas Watti was afraid to think beyond Chandrapur, the big town 200 km from his village and 877 km north-east of Mumbai.

He knew there was a big world out there, he says, but he felt his place was in his family’s one-acre field.

Now, the 22-year-old Gond tribal is dreaming of travelling to the US to work with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

“It’s just a dream,” he smiles. But it’s a much bigger dream than Chandrapur.

Washington  - A NASA rocket crashed into the moon Friday, sending a huge plume of dust 10 kilometres above the surface in an experiment scientists hope will provide data about ice hidden in the perpetually dark lunar craters.

Major telescopes around the world were aimed at the Cabeus crater on the moon's south pole for the 1131 GMT impact of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS).

Ecole Polytechnique, the elite post-graduate science and technology institute from France, is looking to tap talent from Mumbai’s top colleges.

A delegation from the institute has been meeting college authorities for tie-ups. It has already forged ties with colleges like Presidency College in Kolkata and St Stephen’s in Delhi and conducts entrance exams for study courses in these cities.

The institute will hold an entrance exam for its post-graduate courses in Mumbai in February. Students, who make the cut, will get full funding from travel to tuition.

About 22 top scientists and engineers from different parts of the globe met at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) on Monday to begin deliberations on an international project that will benefit the second phase of India’s biggest basic science project, the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO).

Over the next three days, physicists’ discussions will center on the Neutrino Factory, which is a proposed particle accelerator complex that will study the properties of neutrinos.

Washington, October 16 : NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy.

The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy and sun.

The sky map was produced with data that two detectors on the spacecraft collected during six months of observations.

The detectors measured and counted particles scientists refer to as energetic neutral atoms.

The Director General Indian Council of Agricultural Research Mangla Rai now has a mite - usually a eight legged organism resembling a spider - named after him called "Mangalaus". This newly discovered mite genus strikingly has only two pairs of legs and also a pair of eyes.

The discovery of this entirely new group of mite which is not visible to the naked eye was formally announced today.

K Radhakrishnan, a renowned avionics expert, has assumed the charge as the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization from the outgoing Chairman Mr. G Madhvan Nire. He was working as the Director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) before his elevation in ISRO.

60-year-old Radhakrishnan, a space scientist of international repute, has a vast experience of 35 years in ISRO. He played a key role in developing many projects by the Indian space agency including Chandrayaan-I which gave credible clues of water over the lunar surface.

Scientists at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) have named a new insect they discovered after their current director general, Mangla Rai.

The insect — a new sub species (genus) of the ‘mite’ variety of insect — has been called Mangalaus.

“We decided to name this genus of mite after the director general because of his abiding interest in insect bio systematics,” said NB Ramamurthy, National Coordinator of ICAR’s Network Project on Insect Biosystematics.

In a run up to the world climate change meet at Copenhagen, Environment Scientist and director of Stockholm Environment and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Johan Rockstrom, visited the city on Monday.

Though the professor in natural resource management felt that the outcome at the Copenhagen summit looks ‘gloomy’, he suggested that India should switch to clean technology for its own survival.

“Business has to change if India wants to save its fresh water supplies,” said Rockstrom, claiming that India is a great risk from climate change.

An Indian-American scientist, academic and entrepreneur hired to work with the 67-year-old Council of Scientific and Industrial Research has written to the Prime Minister, saying he was fired for criticising the leadership of India’s largest scientific organisation.

“[CSIR] is attempting to remove me [in] reaction to my addressing well-known, intrinsic leadership issues during the course of my professional duties to serve the cause of Indian Science and Innovation,” said Shiva Ayyadurai in an October 30 letter, a copy of which is with the Hindustan Times.

Within a week of attending “uninspiring” lectures at a Kolkata university, Saranyo Moitra (17) dropped out of his electronic engineering course.

“None of my classmates were there to become engineers. Their focus was only on placements and fat pay packages,” rued Moitra. “Students lacked curiosity and the course was not intellectually challenging,” he added.

Wanting to pursue research, Moitra, enrolled for the five-year integrated MSc programme in physics offered by the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences (CBS – UM) at Mumbai University’s Kalina campus this August.

Madhur Bhandarkar is known as a great story-teller. His films present glimpse of real world either it be fashion world or corporate world.

His recent movie, Jail, show us life led by prisoners in jail and effect of jail atmosphere on its inmates.

Jail revolves around life of Parag Dixit (Neil Nitin Mukesh), a professional who one day finds himself in jail. His world turns upside-down. Parag meets many prisoners in jail, who have story of their own. Nawab (Manoj Bajpayee), a convict, comforts Parag.

Washington, Nov 11 : Zoo Atlanta conducted the world's first ever blood pressure (BP) test on Ozzie, a 150-kg 48-year-old male gorilla.

This breakthrough was made possible by the Gorilla Tough Cuff, a BP reading system devised in partnership with the bio-medical engineering department at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Ozzie's accomplishment is the result of months of patience and diligent voluntary positive reinforcement training on the part of Zoo Atlanta's Primate Team.

Antananarivo, Madagascar  - British and American conservationists have taken a big step toward saving the world's rarest duck species, the Madagascar pochard (Aythya innotata), by hatching eight ducklings in captivity, reports said.

A new study based on the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) data says smaller glaciers are retreating at a faster rate than bigger ones, contrary to an environment and forest ministry report.

The ministry had said depletion of Himalayan glaciers had slowed down and some of the glaciers were even advancing. The joint team of WWF-India and Birla Institute of Technology released the study Witnessing Change: Glaciers in the Indian Himalayas on Tuesday that blamed climate change for faster depletion of glaciers.

Washington, Dec 8 : Stents, normally used to halt tissue growth in arteries, are known to have life threatening side effects such as increasing the likelihood of blood clots and heart attacks. Now, researchers have developed a computer model that explains why those drugs released from stents accumulate in the arteries and cause blood clots.

The model will allow the scientists to predict drug distribution in branched arteries.

The findings explain why drugs can pile up in certain areas, depending on where the stent is placed relative to forks in the artery.

London, Dec 10: Experts in Britain have said halting global warming could cost 150 pounds a year for every human.

According to the Met Office, that is the cost of cutting emissions by five per cent a year from 2020, but this would only give the world a 50 per cent chance of limiting climate change to the current international target.

Computer models have calculated that the cost would be 2.5 per cent of the world''s 36 trillion pound gross domestic product a year, which is the equivalent of 150 pounds for every person on the planet.

India’s mega science project — the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) — will be delayed by almost two years.

The Union ministry of environment and forests has refused to give the nod for an underground laboratory at Singara in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district as it falls in an elephant corridor and tiger reserve area.

The country’s biggest facility for basic sciences to be set up at a cost of Rs 950 crore was scheduled to begin its first physics experiment in 2012 but this will now have to be pushed to 2014.

The Union Power ministry has sought the cabinet’s approval to participate in research on a controversial technology to capture carbon and store it.

India is all set to ink a Memorandum of Understanding with Australia to become a member of the global carbon capture storage (CCS) initiative.

CCS technology involves capturing carbon emissions from power plants from being released into the atmosphere.

London, December 25 : In a new research, astronomers have found tentative evidence of the most distant galaxies yet, which have redshifts of around 10.

In the near infrared, astronomers can detect galaxies that are so distant, and receding so quickly, that their light is stretched longer — or redder — than visible light.

The more distant an object, the more its light is shifted red and the higher its ‘redshift’.

London, Dec 25 : Chimps from Nimba Mountains of Guinea, Africa, use stone and wooden cleavers along with stone anvils to cut up Treculia fruits.

PhD student Kathelijne Koops and Professor William McGrew of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, UK, observed a group of apes living in the Nimba Mountains.

Koops study was about the use of basic technology by chimps.

Washington, December 25 : In a new research, a team of archaeologists has identified traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites, which suggests that the thirst for a brew was an incentive for Neolithic man to start growing crops.

According to a report in Spiegel Online, as early as around 9,000 years ago, long before the invention of the wheel, inhabitants of the Neolithic village Jiahu in China were brewing a type of mead with an alcohol content of 10 percent, archaeologist Patrick McGovern discovered recently.

With the hope to underscore France’s environmental credentials ahead of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to make France the biggest economy to impose carbon tax from January 1. The plan, aimed at lowering the energy consumption, was annulled by the Constitutional Court just 48 hours before it was due to come into force on Wednesday.

The Constitutional Court objected that 93 percent of industrial carbon dioxide emissions would be exempt, arguing that the measure would do nothing to combat global warming and unfairly penalize low earners and crowed victory, going against the principal of equality.

Washington, January 3 : A research by a team of scientists has determined how much ice would be needed to create the land formations observed on Mars.

The research was carried out by William B. Durham and Hendrik J Lenferink from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Some land formations on Mars suggest the presence of water ice.

These features could have been created by viscous creep of ice below the surface in Martian permafrost.

To determine how much ice would be needed to form the observed topography on Mars, Durham and his team conducted laboratory experiments to simulate the frozen Martian sand.

London, Jan 9 : Scientists from Fudan University in Shanghai have suggested that silver-plated nanoparticles suspended in water might provide a soft, tunable metamaterial for invisibility cloak.

According to lead researcher Ji-Ping Huang, the fluid contains magnetite balls 10 nanometres in diameter, which is coated with a 5-nanometre-thick layer of silver, possibly with polymer chains attached to ensure they don’t clump.

The team said that in absence of a magnetic field, the nanoparticles would simply float around in the water, but with the introduction of the field, the particles would self-assemble into chains whose lengths depend on the strength of the field, and which can also attract one another to form thicker columns.

Washington, January 9 : Scientists have discovered ancient painted scallops and cockleshells in Spain, which is the first hard evidence that Neanderthals made jewelry, thus suggesting that they were capable of symbolism, sweeping away age-old thinking that they were stupid.
Body ornaments made of painted and pierced seashells dating back 70,000 to 120,000 years have been found in Africa and the Near East for years, and serve as evidence of symbolic thought among the earliest modern humans.

Washington, January 9 : Studies of two supernova remnants using the Japan-US Suzaku observatory have revealed never-before-seen embers of the high-temperature fireballs that immediately followed supernovae explosions.

“This is the first evidence of a new type of supernova remnant - one that was heated right after the explosion,” said Hiroya Yamaguchi at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan.

A supernova remnant usually cools quickly due to rapid expansion following the explosion.

Then, as it sweeps up tenuous interstellar gas over thousands of years, the remnant gradually heats up again.

London, Jan 9 : A new study has shown that dopamine, a chemical with a key role in setting people''s moods, might also influence people’s decision making power.

Experiments have shown that altering levels of the chemical in the brain influences the decisions people make.

Previous research led by the University College London team had identified a signal in the brain linked to how much someone enjoyed an experience. They found that signal could in turn predict the choices a person made.

In the current study, researchers suspected that he signal was dopamine.

They sought to determine how people make complex decisions when their dopamine system has been tampered with.

Washington, January 9 : In a new research, a team of scientists is studying organisms found in Australian Lakes, which they believe may hold clues to life on Mars.

The research, by microbiologists like Dr. Melanie Mormile from Missouri University of Science and Technology are studying organisms found in the salt-water lakes of western Australia that have an acidic pH because the lakes’ conditions are similar to those found on Mars.

Until recently, it was thought that life could not be sustained in lakes like those Mormile studied in Australia, which tend to have a high concentration of metals and other ions due to the type of rocks that form the lake floors.

Government officials confirmed to the report that ‘’substantial” amount of land along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has been lost to China in the last two decades.

At a meeting attended by the officials of the Jammu and Kashmir government, union ministry of home affairs and the Army confirmed that the maps used by various authorities were different in the absence of proper mapping for the region.

The solar eclipse on January 15 will be seen from the southern tip of the country at Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu and neighboring Sri Lanka as the millennium's longest annular solar eclipse will make the sun appear like a 'Ring of Fire' with the moon covering its disc.

During the eclipse nearly 90 percent of the solar disk will be covered by the moon. Sky watchers will be able to view the eclipse in Sri Lanka from about 11.11 a. m. to 3.12 p. m. while in India the eclipse will start around 11 a. m. and end around 3:15 p. m.

Put on your solar goggles and step out of your home or hop up to your office terrace to watch the millennium’s longest annular solar eclipse which began at 11.30 am. The eclipse is visible in most part of the country.

You can expect to the sun to look like a ‘bitten-off biscuit’ in the city; in some parts of India, it will appear as a ‘ring of fire’.

An annular eclipse is when the sun and moon come exactly in line, but as the moon is smaller, the sun looks like a ring.

In Mumbai, the eclipse will last for four hours, starting at 11.16 am. It will be the most visible at 1.18 pm when 64 per cent of the diameter of the sun will be covered by the moon.

The members of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) have issued its 2009 annual report on the U. S. space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The ASAP report reveals that continuing the NASA space shuttle fleet beyond the current manifest is "ill-advised".

According to ASAP chair Joseph W. Dyer, as stated within the NASA article, “The panel's report provides a summary of key safety-related issues the agency confronts at this time. The most important relate to the future of the nation's human spaceflight program”.

A new and previously unknown species of spider has been discovered in Arava Region in Israel, amongst the sand dunes of the Sands of Samar, by a team of scientists from the Department of Biology in the University of Haifa-Oranim.

The spider named, Cerbalus aravensis, is being said to be the biggest spider that can be found in that particular region of Middle East. However, the researchers have revealed that these seem to be on the verge of becoming extinct.

The researchers claim that the leg of this spider could be as long as 14 cms and they have been detected to be nocturnal in nature. Also they have discovered that this spider is the most active during the hottest months and that it builds and lives in an underground den.

The Food and Drug Administration officials have pledged yesterday to study the chemical Bisphenol A, a chemical found in plastic bottles, soda cans, food containers and thousands of consumer goods, citing concerns about health risks.

Emerging scientific evidence has cited the chemical to a host of problems, including cancer, sexual dysfunction and heart disease. Federal officials have extended their concerns over BPA's effect on the development of foetuses, infants and young children.

Massachusetts Congressman Edward J. Markey, lead author of a bill to ban BPA in all food and beverage containers, said the announcement was important for keeping young children safe.

A prominent British newspaper has claimed that the United Nation body on climate change has made some major blunders in estimating the Himalayan proportion over important evidence with regards to global warming.

According to the claims put forward by The Sunday Times, important findings on melting glaciers that have been shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change might have been simply picked up from a press interview that involved an "obscure Indian scientist".

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, an outside safety watchdog for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has cautioned that NASA could move into serious safety challenges if it depends on private companies to ferry astronauts into space in the near future.

The Obama administration is on the track of speeding up rocket development, saving money and concentrating federal dollars on longer-term expeditions for which it has proceeded with the plan to outsource a chunk of its manned space program to private companies.

The data unveiled last week is likely to provide a boost to NASA officials who support keeping nearly all manned space programs in house.

Differences within the government have escalated the debate over the safety of genetically modified (GM) foods, specifically Bt brinjal.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, biotech regulator, cleared Bt brinjal on October 14, 2009 for commercial use. But Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has voiced concerns that the committee’s safety tests were flawed. Crop in Controversy

Countering him and defending the regulator are his cabinet colleagues — Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar.

A recent research has asserted that there is little, or no, evidence to support the speculation that women must not be allowed to eat and/or drink during labour.

For decades on end now, the ongoing childbirth practices demand that once a woman goes into labour, her intake of food and fluids should be restricted to quite an extent, sometimes limiting it to merely ice chips. The practice was mainly started on the back of concerns that a woman's stomach content could get aspirated into her lungs when she is given general anaesthesia during delivery.

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has successfully testes its largest solid propellant booster, S200.

An ISRO statement released today said, "Solid propellant booster Rocket Stage S200 underwent the test at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in the spaceport of Sriharikota, 80 kms northwest of Chennai."

The S200 is to be used in the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-III (GSLV-Mk III) launch vehicle being developed for putting heavier satellites in space. It is the third largest solid booster in the world after NASA's RSRM solid booster and P230 solid booster of European rocket ARIANE-5.

United Kingdom has a new rule from today - any retailer who sells batteries will also be responsible for their recycling. The move which makes the retailers more responsible for the dumping of old cells, is seen as a positive step towards cleaner environment.

Further addition to this, one who sells over 32kg of batteries per year (about 1 pack of 4 AAs a day) is required to provide a free recycling point for consumers to return their used / flat batteries. Pragmatically speaking, this means that most retailers who sell batteries will now have a collection point; making it easier for everyone to recycle.

Union minister for Environment and forest, Mr. Jairam Ramesh has planned to set a panel in order to enhance the scientific capacity of his ministry. The panel will be lead by former chief K .Kastuirangan and the names of the panel members will be announced on Thursday. Before setting the panel a network of scientists has already been launched by Mr. Ramesh.

Mr. Jairam Ramesh informed that the Environment Ministry was established in the year 1980 by the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi, which was conceived as a scientific ministry but the ministry lost it focus over the science as the time passed.

Washington, Feb 7 : In a new study, scientists have described a novel method for reconstructing past ocean chemistry using calcium carbonate veins that precipitate from seawater-derived fluids in rocks beneath the seafloor.

The research was led by scientists from the University of Southampton''s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

"Records of ancient seawater chemistry allow us to unravel past changes in climate, plate tectonics and evolution of life in the oceans. These processes affect ocean chemistry and have shaped our planet over millions of years," said Dr Rosalind Coggon, formerly of NOCS now at Imperial College London.

Washington, Feb 7 : A new study has confirmed that the spiky body of an eyeless sea urchin acts as one big, spine-covered eye.

Sea urchins, like their close relatives the starfish, don''t technically have eyes. Instead, the ball-like invertebrates detect light striking their spines and compare the beams intensities to get a sense of their surroundings.

According to a report in National Geographic News, to explore urchins'' visual capabilities, Sonke Johnsen and colleagues at Duke University, US, collected 20 Strongylocentrotus purpuratus sea urchins from the wild and tested their reactions to sets of black disks.

Washington, Feb 7 : In a new research, scientists have taken the help of mosses to understand how land was conquered by plants 480 million years ago.

The research work was done by scientists at the Washington University in St. Louis.

No would-be colonizer could have survived on dry land without the ability to deal with dehydration, a major threat for organisms accustomed to soaking in water.

Clues to how the first land plants managed to avoid drying out might be provided by bryophytes, a group that includes the mosses, many of which retain remarkable drought tolerance.

Earlier, scientists had showed that seeds depended on both the plant hormone ABA and the regulatory molecule ABI3 to survive drying.

Scientists have now formed a list of special traits that could have enabled these amphibians to take over the world, using an aggressive analysis of 228 toad species, constituting nearly 43 per cent of the known toad species of the world.

Ines Van Bocxlaer, a graduate student of the Free University of Brussels, and her associates list these special traits in the February 5 issue of the journal Science.

A new revolutionary technology, quantum physics trick will be soon advancing the handheld devices like mobile phones, games, and GPS sets by providing them pressure sensitive touch screens and keys.

With this technique the user will be able to scroll through a long list or webpage of items by exerting the equivalent pressure. The quantum trick would be used possibly in the devices like phones, GPS handsets and games.

About half century back, President John F. Kennedy challenged NASA to send a man on the moon. Further maintaining the legend, President Obama has mutilated NASA's Constellation program, thronging a challenge to not to send a man on moon and engage themselves in some other activity, keeping the budget in mind.

However President Obama hasn’t directed this message to NASA, publicly, else sending the signals for the same in the Obama's 2011 budget request.

Green Cement made from waste materials could help cut carbon emmissions and fight climate change. Christened Gen X cement, the new construction material would help mitigate adverse environmental impact, researchers said.

Scientists working for two years with wastes including rice husk, fly ash, lime stone dust, ground slang (a steel manufacturing plant waste), marble dust, quarry dust and paper mill wastes are close to developing Green Cement (Gen X cement) under UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI).

The shuttle 'Endeavour' has undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and heading home after efficiently installing the Tranquility Node at the research centre.

The shuttle and its six-member team will land in Florida at 0316 on Monday.

As the vehicle parted with the ISS at 7.54 p. m. EST, pilot Terry Virts flew the shuttle to 450 feet in front of the station and then in a circle around the station before starting the drive to the earth.

The space operation was set up by the NASA Feb 8.

A food once eaten by long-extinct dinosaurs, European woodmouse has a unique taste for ferns, scientists have determined.

The mouse regularly devours the spores of the endemic European fern Culcita macrocarpa, the only small mammal known to do so, said a report by BBC News.

Due to the toxic chemical defences often contained within them, it is rare for modern vertebrates to eat ferns.

Dinosaurs used to eat them in bulk and these ancient plants were a favourite of huge sauropod.

Ferns are thought to have played an important role in the diet of dinosaurs, particularly huge sauropods such as Diplodocus, the longest dinosaur known from a complete skeleton.

The purple and red variety carrots are as rich in nutrition as orange ones, an appraisal from Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety said.

The review assessed the peak advantages of this food are the phytochemical content and roughage.

Carotenoids are compounds, which are accountable for the multi-shades of carrots ranging from yellow to orange and red. Anthocyanins offer the purple carrots their bluish-red shade.

Scientists from the University of Wisconsin - Madison recommended that red carrots offer the inhibitor lycopene. Yellow carrots may serve as an option bioavailable source of lutein.

Here we have a new planet! Astronomers have recently discovered the youngest extra-solar planet which is six times the mass of Jupiter - 1.9x1027 kg. It is only 35 million years old and the planet orbits active central star at a very close distance which is closer than the distance at which Mercury orbits the Sun. Dr Maria Cruz Galvez-Ortiz and Dr John Barnes from University of Hertfordshire who led an international team of astronomers have made this discovery.

US scientific body had admitted at the weekend that Science has lost public poise after the recent attack on climate research. As per the statement of President of NAS at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego, American Population has lost faith in science.

According to Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, public opinion surveys in the US has shown that the deterioration in the public attitude to climate science has spread over to other areas of science.

Shortly, spacemen may orbit the Earth in inflatable space platforms, now that NASA has made them a main concern.

According to a report published in New Scientist, NASA declared a modification in this route on February 1.

In place of the planned crewed operations to the moon, the organization aims to pour funds into r&d of inflatable space habitats.

The outline listed technologies on National Aeronautics and Space Administration's list but provided only some aspects.

NASA has introduced its most innovative space-weather science instrument called as the Integrated Space Weather Analysis (iSWA) system.

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are clouds of electrified, magnetic gas that weighs billions of tons released from the sun and lunged into space with velocities ranging from 12 to 1,250 miles per second.

Solar researchers think cannibal CMEs may be the basis of 'complex ejecta' CME clouds; those with a bigger and more complicated arrangement as compared to the typical CMEs.

These features result in complex ejecta CMEs to activate protracted magnetic storms when they envelop Earth.

NASA's iSWA system is designed to gather and store information regarding space-weather activity such as CMEs.

Researchers have discovered the female steroid hormone progesterone in a plant.

Thus far, researches believed that only animals could produce progesterone.

Progesterone, which is a sex hormone released by the female internal reproductive organ, prepare the womb for maternity and maintains pregnancy.

A synthetic edition, progestin, is utilized in contraceptive pills and other medicines.

Guido F. Pauli and colleagues reported, "The significance of the unequivocal identification of progesterone cannot be overstated."

Scientists said on Friday that a woman buried in the British city of York 16 centuries ago with signs of great wealth in her tomb was of African descent.

The Guardian reported that a research team examined skeletons excavated in 1901, using modern techniques. At least one-fifth of the bodies appeared to be immigrants or the descendants of immigrants who had come to York from far-flung parts of the Roman Empire, researchers said in an article published in Antiquity magazine.

A team of U. S. and Kazakh scientists have said that conservation strategies for beluga sturgeon should focus on reducing the overfishing of adults.

Scientists from Kazakhstan and New York's Stony Brook University said in a recent issue of the journal Conservation Biology that harvest rates today in the Caspian Sea are four to five times too high to sustain a healthy population of the caviar-producing sturgeon.

Scientists in California said that a planet 800 light years from Earth has been squashed into a football shape by the gravity exerted by its sun.

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, wrote in a recent edition of Nature that the planet WASP-12b is being torn apart by the gravitational pull.

Astronomer Jonathan Fortney said that the process is giving scientists a look at the last stages of a dying planet.

The UN Environment Programme declared that a group of independent researchers will appraise the functioning and the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following mistakes being discovered in its 2007 study on global warming.

The IPCC has been confronting criticism since it was detected during the last month that it had incorporated an alarmist declaration regarding the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers in 2007 report.

According to the new research done by the scientists of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on comet Wild 2, the inner solar system material had been shipped to the comet-forming territory, at least 1.7 million years back, after the oldest solar system solids formation started its take, which is considered for calculating the age of cometary material from a known comet.

An initiative to launch small cube-shaped satellites for educational and not-for-profit organizations is being started by the U. S. space agency.

Nicknamed CubeSats, the satellites are a class of research spacecraft called picosatellites, having a size of approximately four inches, a volume of about one quart and weighing no more than 2.2 pounds, NASA said.

The Monday announcement is NASA's first open announcement to create an agency-prioritized list of available CubeSats. They are planned as auxiliary payloads on launch vehicles already scheduled for 2011 and 2012.

More than 40 ice-filled craters at the moon's north pole have been found by NASA scientists studying radar data from India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

The water ice was discovered in craters ranging from 1 to 9 miles in diameter, said the researchers studying data from NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar. NASA estimates the discovery could involve at least 1.3 million pounds of water ice, although the amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater.

The remains of a new herbivorous sauropod dinosaur near the world-famous Carnegie Quarry in Dinosaur National Monument has been discovered by US Scientists, which may help explain the evolution of the largest land animals ever to walk the earth.

University of Michigan paleontologist Jeffrey Wilson and graduate student John Whitlock, along with coauthors from Brigham Young University and Dinosaur National Monument made the finding.

In the wake of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, Haitians are being helped U. S. scientists for reconstruction and long-term earthquake monitoring.

Geological information that will assist with the establishment of new building codes in the country is also being provided to them, the U. S. Geological Survey researchers said.

Carol Prentice and Rich Briggs, who are working with scientists from the University of Texas to measure coastal uplift, are the most recent USGS scientists traveling to Haiti.

The current study follows the work of USGS geophysicist Walter Mooney and a team that was in Haiti Jan. 26-Feb. 3 to survey Port-au-Prince to identify geologic and engineering factors that contributed to the greatest damage from the shaking.

US researchers have discovered a protein named 'Sestrin', which serves as a natural inhibitor of ageing and age-related health problems in fruit flies.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, also pointed that the protein, whose arrangement as well as biochemical function are preserved between flies and human beings, is required for regulation of a signaling path, which is the central regulator of ageing and metabolic process.

According to an official, Egypt promised to continue building Africa's science and technology agenda when it takes over a council promoting science and innovation.

Maged al-Sherbiny, Egyptian assistant minister for scientific research and incoming chairman of the African Ministerial Council on Science and Technology, told SciDev. Net that Egypt hopes its successful scientific and technological experiences "will be passed to our African colleagues, and we will keep the momentum going."

Scientists have explained in a new study that how a planet-sized version of an electric toaster heats up some exoplanets to puff up to gigantic size.

More than 150 planets have been found orbiting closer to their host stars than Mercury.

These are some times called "hot Jupiters" because they can have surface temperatures of 2000 degree Celsius or more and have a similar mass to Jupiter but can have up to six times the volume.

According to the research conducted by scientists, the arctic frozen sea bed situated in north of Siberia is emitting powerful greenhouse gas, methane, raising the risks that could incline the danger level of global warming.

However, it is quite difficult to assert on the fact whether the methane emission is something that has occurred just in the recent times or is it something which has been creeping for many decades, going un-noticed. Scientists are not sure if the gas release issue has suddenly cropped up, leading to a change in the climatic conditions.

The United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced that the new radio-communication norms for satellite services, which could be utilized to save greater lives after natural calamities, have been sanctioned.

The agency's Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure stated, "Establishing communications in the aftermath of a disaster is vital to facilitate rapid and effective rescue and rehabilitation efforts."

Toure called on satellite operators and others in order to back up the growth of strong, wide-ranging, early admonition and relief systems to mitigate emergencies and catastrophes at the national, regional and global levels.

A space mission that would return samples from asteroid 1999 RQ36, which is literally a 'time capsule' from before the birth of our solar system that could shed light on how life began, has been proposed by NASA.

Bill Cutlip of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, one of the leaders of Goddard's effort to propose a mission called OSIRIS-REx that will return a sample from RQ36, said," This asteroid is a time capsule from before the birth of our solar system."

Indian Science Congress (ISC) at SRM University in Kattankulathur plans to team up with space agencies of different countries for planetary investigations, it said at the 98th edition of the event. ISC also looked seriously at India-US student exchange program.

The Obama government reported that it would tighten the constraints on tick-and-flea products for pets as it cause serious damage to the pets, which may even lead to death.

The Environmental Protection Agency or the EPA will initiate scrutinising the products that boast of increased efficiency. It further added that the products will be closely reviewed in order to provide more information and imply stringent testing and evaluation standards.

A student from IIT- Kharagpur, Manoj Mandelia has devised a way to generate electricity from sewage water.

“I developed a product which uses the concept of microbial fuel cell, a bio-electrochemical system that drives current by mimicking bacterial interactions found in nature,” he said.

Mandelia is 23 years old and is pursuing integrated MTech from the premier institute. His project named Localised Operation of Bio-cells Using Sewage (LOCUS) is able to reduced chemical oxygen demand in sewage water by about 60-80 per cent.

They have awarded contracts to eight aerospace firms for Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition III spacecraft and related services, NASA officials have informed.

Under its Rapid III contract, each contractor has one or more core spacecraft offerings available. All Rapid III contracts have a combined potential maximum value of $4 billion.

International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is being organized in the city of Hyderabad from August 19 to 27 in which the organizers will give the Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize, and the Gauss Prize to various scholars contributing to the advancement of mathematics.

The prestigious award will organized by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in collaboration with and University of Hyderabad. The event is being organized for the first time in the country and seen by many as the recognition of India as a player in the mathematics.

Saying it does not serve as a viable explanation for the origin of the universe, the big bang theory has been questioned by an Indian and an American scientist.

The peer-reviewed Harvard journal, Journal of Cosmology has accepted to publish the research papers of Ashwini Kumar Lal of India's Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and Rhawn Joseph of Northern California's Brain Research Laboratory in its April issue.

The research papers come even as scientists at Geneva's European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are in the midst of experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recreating conditions of the beginning of the universe.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has reached yet another milestone by indigenously developing cryogenic engine that propels satellite launch vehicles into space.

The engine is deployed for the first time for the launching the GSLV-D3 later this month and if the launch is successful then India will join the five countries to have developed engines for satellite launch vehicles. The only countries to have developed such an engine on their own are US, France, Japan, Russia and China.

The 'Science Express' which is a state-of-the-art exhibition on a train has reached Delhi Cantonment Railway Station and received good response and large number of people visit the 16-coach fully air conditioned train.

The exhibition includes more than 150 multi-media exhibits and video clips and more than 300 large-format visual images relating to the highly advanced scientific research. The exhibition will be in Delhi till April 9 and will open every day from 10 am to 5 pm.

A team of scientists have discovered what they claim are the remains of a new hominid species that later evolved into modern Homo sapiens.

The discovery made in South Africa involved remains of a female about 20 and a male about 8 or 9 years old, according to researcher Lee R. Berger. The fossils display features of a new species and also those of Homo erectus.

Mr. Berger has named the species as Australopithecus sediba. He said that the fossils show a significant transition between ape like creatures to human beings. The findings have been reported in the journal Science.

NASA has announced its plans for the next few years. It has announced it next five year's plans, programs of research and space missions and corresponding budgets. NASA has decided to diversify its focus to the missions to the international SpaceStation and flight beyond Earth's orbit in future. Certain new initiatives are expected to be included in the NASA's plan list.

It has been reported that two US astronauts completed their 7-hour-26-minute spacewalk Sunday after struggling with a troublesome bolt that forced them to leave some of their work undone.

Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson, who are visiting the International Space Station on the space shuttle Discovery mission, removed an empty ammonia tank and installed a new one. The tank is vital to keeping the station's cooling system working.

Their spacewalk was started by the astronauts ahead of schedule, at 1:30 am (1100 IST), and finished at 8:56 am.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will continue working with the indigenously developed cryogenic engine even after the failure of the GSLV-D3 mission.

The country has to develop the technology at home because it cannot rely on foreign made engines for all its missions. The agency spent 15 years to develop the cryogenic engine after the country faced technology denial from the US which also forced Russia not to sell the technology to India.

US president, Barack Obama delivered a speech at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida where he promised to have a "leap into the future" for the US space agency NASA.

He has cancelled the $108 billion Constellation programme under which NASA was suppose to return Humans to the Moon by 2020 and send astronauts to Mars by 2030. Under the new arrangement he has set a number of stepping stones for the agency before it reaches Mars by mid 2030's which is about 5 years behind plans.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said the reason behind Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D3) deviating from its path was non-ignition of the cryogenic engine causing failure of the mission.

The spokesperson for the agency, S. Satish said, "The cryogenic engine has not ignited, that is for sure. Why it has not ignited, the reasons have to be found out."

Indian space scientists will be having a meeting at Thiruvananthapuram to discuss the failure of the recent rocket mission. This was the first ever initiative by the Indian scientists to build a cryogenic engine.

The space mission was conducted on Thursday and was a failure one. However, India has become one out of the five countries who have used the technology before for their space mission.

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is planning to launch a satellite in May this year. And the most interesting factor of this venture is the complete project will be handled by the students only. This will be the first time ever, when students will develop an ISRO space venture solely. The estimated project cost will be around Rs.55 lakh.

However, ISRO was quite disappointed after the recent space venture on cryogenic engine. This was the unique technology that has been developed by the Indian scientists. But it could not end up its test successfully.

But despite the failure of its recent space venture, ISRO has shown confidence on Indian students.

The scientists meeting to find out the causes of the failure of the GSLV-D3 mission have said that contrary to initial reports the indigenously built cryogenic engine did infinite during the third stage of the rocket when it entered the vacuum of space.

The scientists from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) met at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram to carry out post mission analysis. After the study of the third stage they found that the mission failed because fuel turbo pump which was supplying fuel to the engine stopped working a second after the engine ignited.

Environmental experts are warning that Global Warming could cause more volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis and other geological events.

A research paper published in the Royal Society says that the rising temperature might cause melting of ice, rise in sea level, heavy storms and rainfall and the earth’s crust could be affected due to these changes. Experts say that minor changes in temperatures could cause earthquakes and tsunamis.

The US space agency, NASA prepared spacecraft, Atlantis for one of the last mission to the International Space Station however its flight schedule is delayed by a month due to bad weather. Atlantis is expected to be launched on May 14. This will be the 32nd and final planned flight of Atlantis.

Meanwhile, another Space shuttle Discovery has landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday morning. Discovery has successfully completed its latest mission to deliver supplies to the space station. The mission was delayed by a day due to the bad weather in florida.

According to some official reports, a biofuel-powered flight of Boeing's F/A-18F Super Hornet will mark Earth Day Thursday, being observed worldwide with millions of "green" acts aimed to raise awareness of climate change.

The Boeing Co., whose teams are helping the flight, said that the unmodified aircraft will take off from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., and will be powered by a sustainable biofuel blend of 50 percent camelina and 50 percent JP-5 aviation fuel.

According to media reports, archaeologists and others are expressing skepticism a team of explorers has found the remains of Noah's ark on Turkey's Mount Ararat.

Paul Zimansky, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York state, told National Geographic, "I don't know of any expedition that ever went looking for the ark and didn't find it."

The alleged discovery was announced in Hong Kong Monday by Turkish and Chinese explorers from Noah's Ark Ministries International.

The 95 million-year-old fossils of a flying reptile have been identified as that of a new pterosaur species.

The pterosaur named Aetodactylus halli is identified on the basis of lower jawbone found outside of Dallas by amateur fossil hunter Lance Hall. A new study claims that the slender jaw filled with thin, needlelike teeth might have helped the create catch fish from the shallow sea which once covered the region.

An 82-year-old yogi named, Prahlad Jani has lived for 65 years with out drinking water and eating any food. The man has undergone medical examination carried out by the experts.

Prahlad Jani claims that he was blessed by a Goddess and he has been living the life of a monk since he was 7 years old.

It has been reported that the French Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to return 16 mummified Maori warrior heads to New Zealand.

The Guardian has reported that the tattooed human artifacts, which had been kept in the National History Museum in Paris for 135 years, will be sent to New Zealand without delay.

The British newspaper quoted French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand as saying in support of the repatriation legislation, "You do not build a culture on trafficking."

A new study by researchers from McGill University and the University of British Columbia has revealed that just like humans, mice too express pain through facial expressions.

When subjected to moderate pain stimuli, mice showed discomfort through facial expressions in the same way humans do, McGill Psychology Prof. Jeffrey Mogil, UBC Psychology Prof. Kenneth Craig and their respective teams have discovered.

The study also details the development of a Mouse Grimace Scale that could inform better treatments for humans and improve conditions for lab animals.

Renowned Indian physicist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva has been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for this year. She is the first Indian lady to receive this prestigious award. As per sources, Mrs. Vandana Shiva will receive the award on 4th November. She has been phenomenal in the field of social justice.

Vandana is 57 years old and was born at Dehradun. She is one of the International Forum on Globalisation leader and also associated with the Third World Network.

She is a philosopher, environmentalist, women's activist and author. She has been extraordinary in some issues of the society like the empowerment of women.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space shuttle, Discovery is all set to return on this Monday with its seven-member crew after a safe completion of the successful trip.

The 14-day mission was successfully accomplished and now the NASA managers are determining the apt weather conditions at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before permitting Discovery to land.

And if by chance the space shuttle falters to land on Monday, additional opportunities will be available at Kennedy on Tuesday, and backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Scientists have injected the acetic acid and mustard oil to the mice to measure the facial expression and it was successful to collect some research related information.

The research was held for the first time by the scientists in order to catch the scale of pain of the mice depending on facial expression. This research was named "mouse grimace scale" or "MGS".

Atlantis, the NASA space shuttle, is now completely ready to launch on to the space from the Kennedy Space Center.  As per the NASA officials the space shuttle STS-132 will be lunched on 14th May, Friday 2010.

The Atlantis is one of the oldest space shuttle of NASA. This has been among the first of the three NASA space shuttles send to the space. However this space shuttle is going to be outdated this year or in the next year. This has been informed by the space agency of U.S.

A new way has been developed by the scientists to have a look inside the honeybee home without disturbing them. In this new plan a scan of the bee hive is done with taking series of 3D images to reveal the facts. This technique is called Diagnostic Radioentopology (DR). These pictures are so powerful that it can find out the numbers of bees are inside the hive as well.

It can also say what they are exactly doing inside their colony and it can also provide an all new experience to see the inside of a hive.

As a developing country, India is also improving in the field of nuclear weapon science. India is going on testing new nuclear weapons at regular intervals. After testing Agni I with 12000 kg of explosives, it has now tested Agni II successfully.

According to defense sources, India tested the nuclear-capable intermediate range Agni-II missile with a range of over 2,000 kms from a launch site in Orissa.

Agni II, which is a surface to surface missile, was tested from Bhadrak about 200 kms from Bhubaneswar. This is an aboriginal missile with of 21mtr length and 1 mtr diameter.

It is believed that a solar storm is responsible for knocking out the systems on a TV communications satellite.

The satellite named Galaxy 15 supposedly has moved from its position and scientists are finding it difficult to remotely steer the satellite back to its orbit.

However, the best thing is that Galaxy 15 is still receiving and transmitting television signals. But the problem in hand is that it is now getting closer to AMC 11, a US cable based satellite. If Galaxy 15 is not stopped before May 23, the signals will start to overlap.

The secret behind Egyptian mummy is a fascinating fact for all the researchers. These conserved dead bodies assist researchers to recognize many syndrome that have overwhelmed human society for many years

Frank Ruhli the famous mummy specialist was trying to understand how Egypt's prominent boy pharaoh, Tut had died.

According to scientists from Spain, who claim that they have developed a clone of fighting bull that is fierce and shall possess the killer abilities of its parent.

The cloned version of the animal has been named as 'Got' which means "a glass" in Valencian, was born Tuesday, as the news channel BBC reports.

It is a 53-pound calf which will remain as fierce as his father and shall indicate a strict business machine. To achieve this feat the tem of scientist took a span of three years as stated by the project leader, Vicente Torrent.

A group of scientists in US have developed the first ever synthetic living cell. The scientists made a bacterium's genetic software and then transplanted that to a host cell. The result of that experiment finally looked and also behaved like the species having the synthetic DNA.

This achievement in science is going to be a scientific landmark but some critics have also warned about the dangers posed by synthetic organism.

There were three Indians in the team of 24- member which have created an artificial life cell in US. These three Indian origin scientists are a part of the team which has created a synthetic cell for the first time, which is controlled by genetic man made instructions and it can also be reproduced.

According to the reports, a Canadian amateur astronomer captured footage of an alleged secret U. S. robotic space plane in orbit "by pure luck," he says.

The Globe and Mail reported on Monday that the robotic shuttle known as the X-37B was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., April 22. Kevin Fetter of Brockville, Ontario, pointed his telescope at the night sky on Thursday before leaving for his night job at a PetroCanada filling station.

He also said that he hoped to capture footage of an out-of-service satellite on an attached DVD recorder.

A top UK scientist has said the first synthetic life would give the inventor a monopoly on genetic engineering. It would strain the important research as per Professor Sulston.

Dr. Craig was the leader for the research of the artificial life. Both Dr. Venter and Prof. John Sulston were clashed on the intellectual property as they tried to sequence the genome in the year 2000.

The volcano of Iceland has been reducing its activity slowly which has disturbed the whole Europe's air traffic for more than one month. The volcano named Eyjafjallajokull's temperature has fallen down to 100c and is now producing only steam and not the magma.

The experts and geologists have said it is not sure that the eruption has finished or not. But at any point of time it can get worse and hamper the air traffic. It can be dangerous any time as per the experts. So it is not completely finished yet.

A new study is conducted by Indian scientists on the discovery made two years back by Australian scientist Dr Mark Cregan, who had discovered that human breast milk contains stem cells.

Two Indian doctors, Dr Ramesh Bhonde of the National Centre for Cell Science in Pune and one senior gynaecologist Dr Satish Patki worked together to collect information on the presence of stem cells in breast milk and have recognized the presence of cells. They found that when these cells are kept in isolation, they differentiate into other types of cells like bone cells.

According to a group of scientists nuclear bomb testing that occurred in the 1950s has turned the teeth of all humans on the planet in to radioactive pieces.

This supposed truth was unveiled when the team of researchers was trying to determine the age of deceased individuals. Our teeth were like radioactive clocks.

Scientists have successfully created an artificial living cell. It basically is a bacterium's "genetic software" that can be transplanted it into a host cell to gave rise to a new entity.

According to the US scientists the newly produced microbe resembled and acted like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA, a significant progress in the development.

According to the reports, the possible source of a huge carbon dioxide ''burp'' that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age has been discovered by scientists.

The study's results offer the first concrete proof that carbon dioxide (CO2) was more efficiently locked away in the deep ocean during the last ice age, turning the deep sea into a more ''stagnant'' carbon repository, something scientists have long suspected but lacked data to support.

A recent study has stated that airplanes contribute a major chunk of carbon dioxide emissions and is poised to become a major factor in global warming.

It's based on a projection that states that in the next 10 years carbon dioxide and other gases from air traffic will concentrate up to very high level that will lead to fasten the process of global warming all resulting by 2050.

The team led by Bethan Owen and colleagues noted that aviation is presently the highest contributor of global warming, close to 60 percent of emissions and this has not been included in the Kyoto Protocol.

General Dynamics has been selected by the Federal Aviation Administration to support a program advancing the improvement of safety and security in the U. S. airspace.

The contract with Virginia's General Dynamics is part of the FAA's larger System Engineering 2020 Research and Development/Mission Analysis Support program.

The second step of China's lunar probe project, Chang''e-2, will be launched by the end of 2010, Chinese space scientists have said.

The next step is being considered after the 18-month-long exploration success of the Chang'e-1 between October 2007 and March 2010.

Chinese scientists will study the data collected for a year and then release their findings to the world, China Daily has reported.

Scientists have decided to go on an experiment by trying again to find out the performance at the claustrophobic and cramped conditions. This experiment will be conducted millions miles away from earth. They have taken a point indicating the navigation throughout the Solar System.

The mission is going to be started by 3rd June. In this project, there will be a crew of six members. They will be on for a trip of 520 days to the Black and Red planet i. e. Mars.

The satellites are showing a change in path that has resulted in experiencing hiccups in the service.

It is stated that Intelsat lost maneuvering of the two collided satellites, in April and ever since the two other satellites in the vicinity have been experiencing interference from Galaxy 15, which supposedly is facing difficulty in accepting orders from the surface level.

From the archeological studies in Britain the clues of the Neanderthals have been founded out. Two pieces of flint, which is a hard kind of stone has been discovered. It is a form of silica more opaque than chalcedony and it has been found out by the workers when the highway work was going on. The archeologists have said that it as the clear evidence of Neanderthal's existence Britain.

Botanists has said that the reason behind a number of trees being uprooted after the showers on Monday and Tuesday in Pune is mainly due to damaged roots and limited space for the trees to spread out.

About 40 trees were uprooted in the Pune Municipal Corporation's (PMC) limit and there are about 150 reports in total about fallen branches and uprooted trees. The construction and tarring of roads might have caused damage to the roots making them weaker.

A citizens group organized a musical event to spread awareness about the drying up of the Neela Hauz lake. The Musical event including musical performances by local residents is being held on the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on Tuesday evening.

The citizens groups and environmentalists say that lake started drying up after an over-bridge was constructed by the Public Welfare Department.

Daniel Tammet, 31 years of age show his herculean skills in ABC's 20/20 Superhumans. He possessed an extraordinary brain around the globe.

Daniel Tammet is known for its mathematical genius, he can solve as many mathematical and astrological problems in a short span of time.

Experts believe that Tammet's brain has the capability of seeing and identifying the numbers. He reaches this stage through his heightened sensory experiences.

Tammet express that he can view numbers in the 3D form , for example number 15, he can view it as lumpy, white, yellow, and round.

The Hubble Space Telescope managed by the astronomers is now all set to measure the movement of stars in a stellar cluster.

These clusters constitute most of the stars in the solar system. And in the nebula, NGC 3603, particularly this stellar cluster is one of the largest and densest in the Milky Way.

The scientists have informed that the stars found in this cluster are not moving in the way they were expected to. The evolution and dispersion cycle of the stellar orangeries is yet to be found out.

The Falcon 9 is all set for its debut launch. This rocket will be launched from Florida, US. The Falcon 9 rocket has been developed privately by SpaceX at California in association with the NASA. This 47 meter long rocket is ready to lift off, carrying an unmanned dummy cargo capsule from Cape Canavera.

In April, US President Barack Obama had inspected this standing rocket on its pad. He has visited to this space coast.

The Information Commissioner's Office has taken its hand off from imposing fine on Lampeter Medical practice for breaching the Data Protection Act.

It appears that the medical practice has been under constant enquiry after a member of staff at the practice had misplaced a memory stick that contained unencrypted medical data of 8,000 patients in March.

According to sources, this is a breach in the code of conduct under the Data Protection Act.

NASA scientists claim to have found key elements that state that primitive aliens could be living on Titan, one of Saturn's biggest moons.

It is as per the various chemical compositions found on Titan's surface the scientists at US space agency NASA have concluded that forms of life may be viable and very much present in the planet's atmosphere.

According to the recent studies performed by boffins it was stated that lasers are presently being considered as "non-light" emitters as opposed to piercing bolts of laser-light.

The dark pulse lasers are composed of minuscule quantum dot crystals, where these minute crystals convert into light once an electrical current strikes them. Each crystal dot behaves as an individual atom and then emits dark light at the same frequency. And these beams of light are shorter but more stable.

In a press release, Space Research Organization (ISRO) said that highly developed rocket RH200 was launched from Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) at 3.50 p.m. and achieved its intended altitude of 60 km in 2 minutes.

ISRO has successfully launched an RH 200 technology rocket from the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS). The rocket, which was launched with a payload taken from the students of Vellore Institute of Technology University (VITU), achieved a height of 60 km within just a couple of minutes.

The students' payload consisted of tri-axial accelerometers and a power switching module, along with a safe arm relay unit.

This is the first time a students’ indigenous rocket was launched, with the VSCC’s experts’ guidance.

According to reports, demonstration satellites built by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon successfully tracked a ground-based missile launch in a systems test last month.

Northrop Grumman said in a news release that tracking data generated by satellite sensors was transmitted to the Missile Defense Integration and Operation Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., which serves as the ground station for the two demonstration spacecraft.

Solar based postal delivery vehicle, ‘Soleckshaw’ was introduced by Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology on Friday. During the launching ceremony, Pilot said that it is a moment of honor for India to use green technology for delivering services in an efficient and eco-friendly manner.

Chennai, July 11 (IANS) Even as Indian space scientists are working on the partial restoration of communications satellite INSAT-4B, they are worried because of the recurring failure of their satellites due to power supply glitches.

The reason may be the failure of imported components, according to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists.

ISRO has lost two of its satellites earlier -- Chandrayaan in 2009 and INSAT-2D in 1997 -- and INSAT-4B partially now.

New Delhi, July 11 : This year's total solar eclipse on Sunday will be missed by sky gazers in India as the celestial phenomenon will not be visible in Asia.

The eclipse will be visible from parts of the South Pacific Ocean area and South American countries like Argentina and Chile. A total solar eclipse occurs every 18 months.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the earth, and the moon fully or partially covers the sun as viewed from the earth.

Indian Space Research Organization has made another flourished episode by launching PSLV (Polar satellite Launch vehicle) on Monday. The rocket has successfully released five satellites into the orbit. Among these five satellites, cartography satellite Cartosat-2B is the advanced high resolution satellite which is the main cargo.

K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of ISRO is very happy at the successful flight of PSLV 16.

ISRO or the Indian Space Research Organization recently placed five satellites in their exact orbits with the help of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C15), thereby proving how much they can be relied upon.

Their efficiency was displayed by how errorless the entire mission was, right from the ignition to the separation through the rocket's four stages. The taking off was also precise and punctual. This was PSLV's 16th consecutive successful flight.

Recently, India has launched a remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2B into the space and it has captured few high quality images of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh and Madurai in Tamil Nadu.

Cartosat-2B satellite is loaded with panchromatic camera, which has a high resolution of 0.8 metre, which means it is capable of taking images of small objects like cycles and mopeds on the road, and sheep and cattle grazing on meadows.

Earth absorbs trucks sized asteroids daily. But most of them are too big to get bent out of shape by the Earth's atmosphere.

The smallest asteroid that can harm the planet is about 30 meters [98 feet], but according to a NASA research, these huge asteroids have a chance of hitting the Earth once in every 200 years on an average.

Recently, in a virgin venture, NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson sent out a message in the American Sign Language (ASL) to the deaf group from the International Space Station, in the form of a video.

Through this video, Tracy Caldwell Dyson has responded to a few questions about how she has been living and working on the space station and why she was engrossed in sign language in the first place.

A new variety of tomatoes have come up in market that has been developed the US by Indian-origin scientists.

The hybrid variety of this breed helps stays longer than usual varieties precisely up to 1 week than any other variety.

Scientists have said that NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has spotted and photographed its first dust devil in six years of traveling around the planet.

SPACE. com reported on Thursday that unlike Spirit, its robotic twin on Mars, which has captured numerous snaps of dust devils, Opportunity has always come up empty, until now.

The rover science team also said that the July 15 photo was taken with Opportunity's mast-mounted panoramic camera.

It resonance like something out of science invented story however this week the information that meat from cloned cows might land on the dinner plates or in carry away burgers crafting it very much science verity.

The disclosure has crafted a tornado of incongruity but what the entire squabble about cloning. The big question however is that how come one can notice if the Sunday bake is from a cloned cow and if it is, then is it really a matter to be apprehensive about it.

An Indian origin Scientist working in HP computers, Vinay Deolalikar claimed that he has successfully solved P vs NP problem. The P vs NP problem has been graded in the list of the world's most difficult problems and a cash price of $1 million dollar is associated with its solution, so if someone proves P vs NP problem practically, he will be honored with a cash price of $ 1 million.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of United Kingdom is planning to collaborate with Indian Universities to do more research in applied and pure sciences.

In an interview with media, Vivienne Blackstone who is manager of EPSRC mathematical science said that they are eagerly waiting to do something new with Indian universities in the next couple of years after the government of India finalizes the budget. Dr. Blackstone is presently representing some European universities in International congress of Mathematicians.

The initial and the oldest advanced education institute in India, which is the Indian Institute of Science is not only identified for its 400 acre plush green university grounds, but also for its miscellany in science with approximately 40 departments including both applied and fundamental science.

Standing high, the 100-year-old institute has famous names such as Sir CV Raman, Dr Vikram Sarabhai, Dr Homi J Bhabha, Professor CNR Rao and Professor Satish Dhawan, linked with it.

Turmeric yesterday we have seen that market has moved -0.48% on heavy selling at higher levels. Weak demand at higher levels amid higher production estimation and sluggish export demand added bearish cues. Demand from the local stockiest is gradually improving ahead of festivals. In Nizamabad, a major spot market in AP, the price ended at 14676.2 rupees gained by 81.2 rupees. Market has opened at 14630 & made a low of 14500 versus the day high of 14730. The total volume for the day was at 5465 lots and the open interest was at 11335.Support for turmeric is at 14490 below that could see a test of 14380.

The everyday air effluence information getting produced in the city is evidence that everything is not moving smooth with the city's surroundings.

The majority of the Games sites are depicting continuously elevated heights of particulate matter (PM) with stages of ozone and NO2 mounting by evening.

For Asian Cities, Clean Air Initiative (CAI) is a Philippines-originated association, has in addition figured out in its most recent account that Delhi's air smog is advanced than the regular of Indian cities.

London has initiated the act of spraying its roads with a dust suppressant in order to fight against increased air pollution levels.

The capital is almost near to European Union legal limits for particulate matter (PM10), a pollutant released essentially by engine emissions which comes out of the tire and brake wearings.

London Mayor Boris Johnson aims for a six month trial for spraying the dust suppressant, designed to stop vehicle emissions re-circulating and choking citizens, which will lower the PM10 levels by 10 to 20 percent.

Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has decided to conduct a placement drive for recruiting more scientists in the defense sector.

The Ministry of Defence reported that about 1,582 scientists had moved to other sectors from DRDO between the year 2006 and 2010.

The reason behind this trend is that scientists want to gain experience in DRDO.

Moreover, the high salary packages offered by private research companies attract them.

The globe's northern magnetic pole is shifting gradually but progressively in the direction of Russia and it's tossing off airplanes in Florida. Tampa International Airport was enforced to re-regulate its runways Thursday to give an explanation for the progress of the Earth's magnetic grounds; data that directs dependence to steer planes.

All gratitude to the variations in the power, the airport has congested its initial runway till Jan. 13 to re-route taxiway indications to report for the shift, as per the Federal Aviation Administration.

A new study has suggested that water that was found on moon may have come from comet. These comets must have pelted the lunar surface after it was formed.

These moon water samples were collected from lunar rock samples during NASA's Apollo missions. This water is different from the one that is found on Earth and has many properties that show that these are from three known comets.

India's third permanent station in Antarctica, "Bharati", would soon be developed and fully functionally running accommodating 70 scientists and claimed that the back satellite pictures on ocean conditions back home in real time.

A shipment carrying heavy apparatus in the Antarctica will be constructed at a cost of Rs 200 crore, "Bharati" and at the same time with an accompanying earth station to acquire satellite images and transmitting them back to India in actual time. It is further claimed that the Larsemann Hills on the eastern coast of Antarctica.

The number of South Bay researchers, researching on all topics ranging from close-to-Earth asteroids to pollen-based drug delivery, got national honours last Wednesday. This team of scientists comprised of a record number of researchers, and all of them are high school seniors.

A few of their projects are extremely cutting-edge, such that there isn't any scientific literature for them to infer on, like for instance the work done by Roshni Bhatnagar at The Harker School.

Astronomers have found Henize 2-10, a minute dwarf galaxy 30 million light years far from Earth. Faltering in the lead of new galaxies is so ordinary that scientists believed that this one might be more or less the same. However Henize 2-10 hold an astronomical covert - a super huge concealed black hole.

The minute galaxy does not reveal a single indication of a usual galaxy that holds a black hole, for instance a protuberance of stars. Astronomers could inform there's a big black hole in Henize 2-10 by considering the quantity of cosmic substance that it ingests up. This might not seems extremely special, they confess.

It’s going to be a special moment for skygazers as after 18 years the moon will appears bigger. It is said that on March 19. Moon will be closets to the earth and will look 16% larger than usual.

M P Birla Planetarium Director, Mr D. P. Duari, said that last time it was on March 8,1993was the full moon day when moon was closest to the earth.

Mr. Duari explained that moon goes round in an elliptic orbit around the earth which makes it come closer to the blue planet and the closest point being termed as the perigee.

There has been a great tragedy in Japan which is caused by the massive earthquake following tsunami. Number of Indian companies has large businesses all over the Japan. After this havoc, some of the Indian companies have issued statements on the status of their employees and offices in Japan.

It has been stated by the Technology giant Infosys that after the huge earthquake of 8.9 magnitude and resultant Tsunami in Japan they are pleased to inform that all their employees in Japan are safe.

Infosys has a facility in in Tokyo and has several employees in the cities of Fukuoka and Nagoya. Their local teams in these cities are supplying the necessary needs of the employees at this time.

Technical analyst Husseini Wadharia of Techno Shares is bullish on Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and has maintained 'buy' rating on the stock with a target of Rs 347.

According to Wadharia, the stock can be purchased with a stop loss of Rs 330.

Today, the stock of the company opened at Rs 330 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 55.45 and a low of Rs 298 on BSE.

Current EPS & P/E ratio stood at 34.60 and 9.68 respectively.

Technical analyst Nikita Surekha has maintained 'buy' rating on Jain Irrigation Systems Limited stock to achieve a target of Rs 197-200.

The analyst said that the stock can be purchased with a stop loss of Rs 184.

The stock of the company, on March 23, closed at Rs 184.50 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 264 and a low of Rs 158.10 on BSE.

Current EPS & P/E ratio stood at 6.82 and 27.41 respectively.

According to a new study, the 'biomats' of photosynthetic bacteria that save oxygen-rich sediment in a hostile environment for small organisms, may have triggered the evolution of animals capable of moving.

"Slug and worm-like animals lived on, within and immediately beneath the mat," said lead author Murray Gingras of the University of Alberta, Canada, which "served as a food and oxygen resource for the early animals".

UK’s government is set to announce new plans to drastically cut carbon emissions across the country.

The deal, which is set to raise concerns among manufactures, is being welcomes by the environmentalists. Prime Minister David Cameron appears serious on the issue and will bring forward a radical "carbon budget".

Stephen Hawking has caused a controversy and backlash after he said that there is no heaven and it a myth.

Hawking is a theoretical physicist whose body is paralyzed by motor neurone disease. He says that humans are like a computer that will stop working when its components fail. “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he said while speaking to a media company.

Scientists have said in a new study that there might be a lot more planets in the universe than earlier thought.

The new study says that there are many more planets that have escaped their solar systems and are wandering freely in space. This challenges the notion that a planet is something that orbits a star. The Jupiter-like planets found are roaming without association with any stars in space.

It was believed that about 20% of stars had massive planets attached to them. However, the new study said that that there are at least twice as many planets as stars.

The six crew members aboard Endeavour space shuttle have begun making preparations for landing on Earth after their mission at the International Space Station (ISS).

Endeavour with its crew members, including Commander Mark Kelly, pilot Greg Johnson, spacewalkers Andrew Feustel, Michael Fincke and Greg Chamitoff, and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori are expected to land on June 1 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA’s next rover designed to explore the red planet, Curiosity could require additional $44 million in funds before too e ready or launch this fall.

An internal audit prepared by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin revealed that the Mars Science Laboratory might not be ready for the scheduled launch between Thanksgiving and Christmas f it does not receive additional funding.

Scientists with the help of data collected from the satellites have revealed that ice of Arctic sea is melting. It has been told that the scientists collected data from the European Space Agency's CryoSat spacecraft.

In recent years, scientists have consistently warned that the sea ice extent will shrink dramatically in the decades to come, primarily as a result of global climate change. These warnings are based on models and observations of the sea ice extent — that is how much of the Arctic Ocean the ice covers.

There was an announcement made by the NASA that an asteroid is going to pass really close to Earth tonight. This announcement had raised a number of concerns and speculations from world over.

The NASA has come forward and is of the revelation that this asteroid is going to pose no danger to our planet. It is going to move about 12000 kilometers above the Earth from over the Southern part of the Atlantic Ocean.

They are of the view that this asteroid shall pose no harm to humanity. It is going to pass away quietly and shall be visible from Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand.

GSAT-12, a 1,410kg India’s communications satellite will be launched on July 12. The Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) engineers are preparing the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C17) at Sriharikota Space Centre so that it can carry GSAT-12. Finally, the long wait of 9 years is about to be over for the researchers.

The Indian Space Research Organization, falling short of transponders, was planning to take transponders on rent from other countries. The ISRO department required 200 transponders and the association will acquire them on rent till the time their new satellite is developed and ready to take up the operations.

During the year 2007, ISRO had 211 transponders; their targets were to launch 500 transponders in the satellite by March 2012, but due to defect in the transponders and premature terminations of transponders, the target became unable to be achieved.

According to a new study, cities and urban centers can be of great help in soaking up carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the main greenhouse gas resulting in global warming.

The study says that even as the urban centers, which account for about four percent of the world's land surface and is rising due to increasing population of the world, are believed to lack "sinks" where vegetation soaks up CO2 naturally, they can make a significant contribution.

Conservationist groups are campaigning against an appeal from Japan to resume small-scale commercial whaling near its coasts and are urging all countries to oppose the move.

The Russian Space Agency is scheduled to launch a space telescope, which was planned during the cold war era, on Monday when the telescope is expected to be raised to the almost halfway to the moon.

The scientists tool more than 30 years to develop RadioAstron, which has a 10-meter antenna. This may see small but when RadioAstron’s signals are combined with that of earthbound telescopes, the process creates images as sharp as those produced by a single satellite whose dish was as wide as the distance between the space telescope and Earth.

One of the five General Purpose Computers that run the shuttle awakened the Atlantis malfunctioned today, triggering an alarm that woke up the crew members about an hour and half after they went to sleep.

The crew members are not in any danger. The space agency said the crew performed a standard 30-minute malfunction procedure to transition systems management from GPC-4 to GPC-2. The GPC-4 malfunction caused the system to go off the shuttle’s network.

Scientists have offered two different explanations associated to the decline in the growth of methane in the atmosphere in the last decade of the 20th century, before it rose again.

Two papers that are published in today's issue of the journal Nature, present two very different theories related to the possible cause of the decline in Methane, but both the researches agree that human activities are the key element.

The first theory suggests that the decline was caused by greater commercial use of natural gas. The study was led by Dr Murat Aydin from the University of California, Irvine.

Paris, Aug 20 : Marine scientists would soon meet at the Paris-based Unesco to discuss measuring the impact of noise on marine life, the UN agency said.

The main agenda of the meeting - to be held Aug 30-Sep 1 - would be to discuss the programme of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment, Xinhua reported.

"This decade-long project aims to fill the considerable knowledge gaps in this area, so that management of ocean noise can be more informed and effective," Unesco said in a statement.

The American space agency, NASA has estimated that it requires more funding for developing the James Webb Space Telescope in time for its launch, which is scheduled for 2018.

NASA estimate shows that it will cost around $8.7 billion to finish the telescope, which is slated to operate at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point for about five years. The agency says that it would've already spent $3.5 billion on the telescope in this financial year. It requires more funding for development and launch operations as well as science costs.

A team of scientists have created 3D models of two 305-million-year-old fossil harvestmen or Opiliones in scientific language, which were the first land-based animals to evolve modern bodies.

According to the report in the online journal Nature Communications, the 3D models were created with the help of a CT scanner at the London's Natural History Museum. The team of scientists from different countries, led by scientists at Imperial College London took more than 3000 X-rays of the harvestmen fossils from France.

American space agency has released a set of impressive new photos of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon.

The images taken by the robotic Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), clearly shows hardware parts left over by the astronauts in the 1960s and 70s. Several probes have send pictures before but these are the best yet.

According to anew research, much of the gold on Earth came to the planet from out space after a big explosion of meteorites around 4.3billion years ago.

Scientists say that they have evidence t prove that Earth's reserves of precious metals including gold and platinum landed on earth as a result of meteorite strikes. Researchers from the University of Bristol studied four-billion- year-old rocks from Greenland and found evidence of huge meteorite bombardments that created deposits.

Online gamers have achieved a new feat by deciphering the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus, which has been troubling scientists since years.

The target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV. It is important to figure out the structure of proteins to investigate many diseases and developing drugs against them.

Retailer, Morrisons is facing criticism after it was discovered that it is offering apples imported from China in a outlet which is situated under a mile from the lush Kent orchards that produces English varieties of Apples.

The company's Herne Bay store is selling Fuji apples from China, instead of those from local apple suppliers in the area, commonly referred to as the garden of England. The retailer's decision to stock Chinese grown apples in apple season in Britain angered local buyers as well as apple growers.

A team of scientists have found a particle that travels at a speed great that that of light, raising fundamental questions on the principles of modern physics.

Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity has stated that there is not particle that travels faster than the speed of light. However, neutrinos haven been recorded traveling at a comparatively faster rate.

An American scientists working in Antarctica, who was apparently stranded for about two months following a suspected stroke, has been airlifted from the South Pole to Christchurch, New Zealand and is now undergoing treatment.

Renee-Nicole Douceur is suspected to have suffered a stroke in August. She was working at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole research station. Raytheon Polar Services, the employer of the scientist, has not commented on the nature of her illness.

American space agency, NASA is planning to launch its most powerful and advanced robotic rover designed to explore Mars and look for signals of life on the red planet.

The Mars Science Laboratory is a six wheel vehicle that is powered by nuclear fuel. NASA is set to launch the robotic rover at 10:02 am from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on an Atlas V rocket.

A team of scientists from the Harvard University have developed a new flexible robot that is capable of squeeze under obstacles and reach tight places.

The new robot has several advantages over earlier robots that are more rigid with wheels and are difficult to navigate in difficult terrain. The robot, which is inspired by squid and starfish, was manufactured with soft materials and is driven by compressed air.

Two almost identical probes are set to orbit the moon in order to measure the uneven gravity field and the composition of the natural satellite down to its core.

The Grail spacecrafts were launched from Florida coast in September and are set to reach their destination. The two spacecrafts will arrive 24 hours apart and they are found to be on their tracks.

Researchers have achieved a new breakthrough in exploiting electromagnetic waves and will prove useful in further research for more advanced medical diagnosis.

The new research will allow researchers to build smaller more portable, easier to operate as well as cheaper terahertz waves (T-rays) systems for medical diagnostics. T-rays are used in airports scanners, medical scanning devices as well as in spectroscopy systems for materials analysis.

The rays will be able to sense molecules as every molecule has its unique signature in the THz range, according to a report in the journal Nature Photonics.

Respected expert from the field of space science, scientist Professor Roddam Narasimha has resigned from the Space Commission in order to protest a decision by the central government to oust ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair along with three other scientists in the case relating to the controvercial Antrix-Devas deal.