SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS NOVEMBER 2012

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS NOVEMBER 2012

• The Minister of New and Renewable Energy, Dr. Farooq Abdullah informed the Lok Sabha on 30 November that the total installed capacity of renewable energy based power in the country is 26,267 MW. A capacity addition of 30,000 MW is targeted from renewable energy during the 12th Plan period. The contribution of renewable energy based power generation is likely to be in the range of 6-8% in the total electricity mix of the country and major part of power generation would continue to come from thermal and hydro power. He further said the Government is implementing the Jawaharlal Nehru Solar Mission (JNNSM), to promote harnessing/utilization of solar energy for power generation and other applications in the country. The Mission envisages installation of 20,000 MW capacities by the year 2022. Solar projects /systems can be installed throughout the country. The places receiving higher direct solar insulation are better suited for installation solar power projects. A target of 10,000 MW has been fixed for solar power projects during the 12th Plan. So far, 1045 MW of solar power projects have been installed in the country.
  
• Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on 30 November that, the Mother and Child Protection Card (MCP Card) has been introduced through a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India The MCP card is a tool for informing and educating the mother and family on different aspects of maternal and child care and linking maternal and childcare into a continuum of care through the Integrated Child Development Services(ICDS) scheme of Ministry of Women and Child Development and the National Rural Health Mission(NRHM) of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW). The card also captures some of key services delivered to the mother & baby during Antenatal, Intranatal & Post natal care for ensuring that the minimum package of services are delivered to the beneficiary. MCP card has already been disseminated in the year 2010-11 for implementation by the States. The MCP card helps in timely identification, referral and management of complications during pregnancy, child birth and post natal period. The card also serves as a tool for providing complete immunization to infants and children, early and exclusive breast feeding, complementary feeding and monitoring their growth.
  
• Scientists of NASA have discovered a huge mass of ice at Mercury’s North Pole on 29 November 2012. These findings come from the Mercury-orbiting probe of NASA, “Messenger”. Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun. Frozen water is found in the North Pole regions of Mercury which are always found in shadows and mainly affects the craters. It is supposed that the south pole of mercury also has ice but there is no hard and fast data which supports this. Scientist from the Johns Hopkins University opined that if all this is added, the total amount of ice comes out to be 100 billion to 1 trillion metric tons. The only thing that is uncertain is how deep it lies. It is very important to note that presence of ice on Mercury does not necessarily indicate that there is a possibility of life on Mercury. But it is evidence that Mercury might support life, considering the presence of water on its surface. Messenger was launched back in 2004. It is a NASA spacecraft orbiting around Mercury. The observations through NASA’s Messenger will continue in the next year as well.
  
• Indian Coast Guard Ship H-189, the third of the series of twelve Air Cushion Vehicles (ACVs) designed and built by M/s Griffon Hoverworks Limited (GHL), UK was commissioned on 20 November, at Mumbai by Vice Admiral SK Sinha, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command. The 21 metres long Air Cushion Vehicle with 31 tonnes displacement can achieve a maximum speed of 45 knots. The ACV is capable of undertaking multi-farious tasks such as surveillance, interdiction, search and rescue and rendering assistance to small boats/craft in distress at sea. With the commissioning of H-189, the force level of ICG has gone up to 77 ships & boats and with the planned inductions the force level would be doubling by 2018. The Air Cushion Vehicle H-189 will be based at Okha under the Administrative and Operational Control of the Commander Coast Guard Region (North-West).
  
• The Indian-American Sunita Williams, 47, set the record by returning to Earth on 20 November 2012 from the International Space Station (ISS) from Russian Soyuz capsule after having spent 4 months in the orbit. She touched the grasslands of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan after living months in the orbit. This was the perfect landing for Williams as well as flight engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko,when they touched down earth in the chilling expanses of Kazakhstan from the Russian Soyuz capsule.Their return has wrapped a 127-days space sojourn since they were launched in space from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on 15 July 2012, including the 125 days aboard ISS. Williams has a total span of 322 days in space during two long-duration missions. Initially, she served at ISS as an Expedition 14/15 flight engineer from 9 December 2006 to 22 June 2007. Sunita Williams also has the record for highest spacewalking time for the female astronauts. She has in all 50 hours and 40 minutes spacewalking time. There are three more Expedition 34 flight engineers- Nasa astronaut Tom Marshburn, Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield scheduled to be launched from Baikonur on 19 December 2012 for 5-months stay.
  
• The Minister of State in the Ministry Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions and in the Prime Minister’s Office, V. Narayanasamy said to the Parliament on 23 November for a question that, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is designing a satellite – GEO Imaging Satellite (GISAT), which will be placed in geostationary orbit of 36,000 km. GISAT will provide near real time pictures of large areas of the country, under cloud free conditions, at frequent intervals. That is, selected sector-wise imaging every 5 minutes and entire Indian landmass every 30 minutes at 50m spatial resolution. GISAT will carry a GEO Imager with multi-spectral (visible, near infra-red and thermal), multi-resolution (50m to 1.5 km) imaging instruments. It will provide pictures of the area of interest on near real time basis including border areas.
  
  The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is implementing a Scheme on ‘Development of Solar Cities’ which provides support for 60 cities to develop as Solar Cities in the country. The Ministry has given sanctions for 41 cities for developing as Solar Cities. Gandhinagar, Nagpur, Chandigarh and Mysore are being developed as Model Solar Cities. The Ministry has approved the Master Plants for the 28 Cities and the project installations have already started in few cities. In pursuance of the programme, a one day ‘National Meet on Solar Cities’ was inaugurated by Gireesh B Pradhan, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy on 22nd November 2012, at India International Centre, New Delhi. The Secretary asked the Municipal Corporations to enhance the use of renewable energy in their area and save the fossil fuel based energy. They can amend the building bye-laws suitably to promote the solar water heaters, solar SPV rooftop systems, kitchen waste based plants in the various establishments of the city.
  The aim of this meet was to discuss the “Ways Forward” after Master Plan for execution of renewable energy/energy efficiency related projects in respective solar cities. The Municipal Commissioners of Thane, Mysore and Shimla actively participated in the event.
  
• The Interceptor Missile AAD launched on 23 November, by the Scientists of DRDO from Wheeler’s Island, Odisha successfully destroyed the incoming Ballistic Missile at an altitude of 15 Kms. The target missile, a modified version of Prithvi, mimicking the enemy’s ballistic missile, was launched from Launch Complex III, Chandipur. Long Range Radar and MFC Radar located far away could detect the Missile from take-off and tracked it through its entire path. An electronic target with a range of 1500 Kms was launched and the Radars picked up the target missile, tracked the target missile subsequently & launched an electronic interceptor missile. This electronic interceptor missile destroyed the electronic target missile at an altitude of 120 Kms. All the four missiles were tracked by the Radars and all the guidance and launch computers operated in full operational mode for handling multiple targets with multiple interceptor. All the four missiles were in the sky simultaneously and both the interceptions took place near simultaneously. This has proved the capability of DRDO to handle multiple targets with multiple interceptors simultaneously. The complete Radar Systems, Communication Networks, Launch Computers, Target update Systems and state of the art Avionics have been completely proven in this Mission.
  
• Australia approved an "historic" plan on 20 November, to save an ailing river system vital to the nation's food bowl by returning the equivalent of five Sydney Harbour's worth of water to the network each year. Environment minister Tony Burke said he signed into law the final draft of a water reform plan for the Murray-Darling Basin, a river network sprawling for one million square kilometres (400,000 square miles) across five Australian states. The scheme will see 2,750 gigalitres of water, equivalent to five Sydney Harbours, returned annually as environmental flows to the system , short of the 4,000 gigalitres sought by conservationists but more than wanted by farmers. Burke said the figure could reach 3,200 gigalitres with infrastructure improvements to which the government had committed Aus$1.77 billion (US$1.83 billion). Burke said the system had been existing in a state of drought even before the last El Nino weather event triggered a crippling 10-year dry spell that devastated farming communities across southeastern Australia.
  
• Researchers at the Division of Neurology, University of Toronto in third week of November discovered the common gene alternate that can influence the time you wake up every morning as well as the time of the day when you are most likely to die. In the research, the scientists identified that variant of the gene that can virtually affect the whole population. The discovery identifies the variant that can determine when a person will die. The research is said to be surprising and is going to help in planning the medical treatments. This research will also help in analyzing the medical condition of the weak patients.According to the researchers, there is a biological clock within us which can help in regulating various aspects of the human biology as well as behavioral patterns and these include times when a person can perform brilliantly, their preferred sleeping patterns as well as timing of the psychological processes. This biological clock can also influence timings of the medical events such as heart attack and stroke.
  
• Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto in the third week of November 2012 discovered a new planet called Super-Jupiter which is thirteen times enormous than Jupiter. This is the largest planet discovered in the solar system.Super-Jupiter orbits around the star known as Kappa Andromedae that is 2.5 times greater than the Sun’s mass and is situated at 170 light years farther than the Earth. The star is quite young, 30 million years old, while the sun is 5 billion years old.The planet is called Super-Jupiter because it is larger than the Jupiter planet. Kappa Andromedae, which is said to be the host star of this newly discovered planet, is the highest mass star to host a planet that was directly observed.
• Facebook has launched a new application that connects candidates with job vacanciesand recruiters on the world's largest social networking site. The new service claims more than 1.7 million jobs from partners including Monster Worldwide and BranchOut, the company said on its website. The online app follows Facebook's introduction of the Social Jobs Partnership last year with the US Department of Labor and other agencies, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. According to the paper, the new app by Facebook is a direct challenge to LinkedIn, the popular business social network.
  
• Micro Blogging site Twitter on 15 November 2012 launched a new service for Email Sharing of Tweets also known by one-to-many text messaging service. The new email service is now going to allow users to share their favorite Tweets via email. The Company is giving users the ability to share tweets beyond their list of followers on the social media site. Now, with the help of new service you can retweet any (Twitter messages) to your Twitter followers, but sometimes if you want to share with another group, like your college roommates or your parents or a friend who isn't yet on Twitter, Mobile Twitter users already had an access to this features that to for some time. With this, Twitter also revealed that it is going to make available photos, videos and news sharing service on it to top of the search feed. Also, Twitter had made an update of applications for iPhone and Android to improve search results and highlight photos, videos and news shared at the service.
  
• Australia on 16 November, created the world's largest network of marine reserves, protecting a huge swathe of ocean environment despite claims it will devastate the fishing industry.The announcement will significantly expand the protection of creatures such as the blue whale, green turtle, critically endangered populations of grey nurse sharks, and dugongs.The scale of the plan, which will cover more than 2.3 million square kilometres (890,000 square miles) in six marine regions, was first made public in June.
  
• The Indian Diabetes Consortium (INDICO), a Pan-India initiative led by CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) with AIIMS as a principal clinical partner, has recently brought to light an entirely novel candidate gene, TMEM163 implicated in Type 2 Diabetes. TMEM163 encodes a probable vesicular transporter in nerve terminals; and the study established a plausible mechanism of action for TMEM163 through impaired insulin secretion. This lends an unprecedented ‘neural angle’ to diabetes that needs to be explored further and holds immense potential in understanding new pathogenetic mechanisms involved in diabetes causation This effort places India to the list of countries which have the technology and human resource to perform high throughput complex genomic experimentation, at par with leading researchers in the developed world.
  
• US researchers from North Carolina State University in the second week of November found that the navel, also known as belly button could harbour the bionetwork of bacteria, which is quite similar in biodiversity to the rainforests of the world. 2368 such species of the bacteria were found out of which 1458 are absolutely new for science. Among the 60 individuals who were studied, merely eight of the species were frequent in around 70 percent people. These eight species are called oligarchs. Nevertheless what remains doubtful is what factors determine about the kind of species found in the people. The project was launched by the researchers in part in order to investigate claims made over recent years about collection of the organisms on human skin which makes the first line of protection against the pathogens. Researchers are aware of the fact that the immune system will not function properly in the absence of these microorganisms.
  
• Researchers fabricated an all-new paperthin bullet-proof super material, which has the capability to self-assemble into alternating rubbery as well as glassy layers in the second week of November. The nano-material has the ability to translate into the safety beyond the vests. These technological advancements could be used for protective coating for the jet engine turbine blades as well as the satellites. Scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as well as Rice University created the special textures which had the ability to stop bullets from lab. This special texture known as structured polymer composite can reassemble into rubbery layers and alternating glassy layers. According to the Rice University, while the ballistic tests were performed, on this material at MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, a 9 millimetre bullet could be stopped by the 20 nanometre-thick layers.
  
• China plans to launch another manned spacecraft including a woman astronaut on board in June next year for a fortnight-long mission to conduct experiments in space station being built to rival Russian Mir station. Like in the Shenzhou-9 mission, the crew on Shenzhou-10 might include two men astronauts and a woman. They are scheduled to enter the Tiangong-1 space lab module, Niu Hongguang, deputy commander-in-chief of China's manned space program, said on the sidelines of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. "They will stay in space for 15 days, operating both automated and manual space dockings with the target orbiter Tiangong-1, conducting scientific experiments in the lab module and giving science lectures to spectators on the Earth," state-run China Radio International quoted him as saying. The selection for the crew will begin in early 2013. Shenzhou-10 will take supplies for Tiangong-1, currently orbiting the earth.
  
• Scientist decoded the Reason for Albert Einstein Being a Genius. A study led by Scientist and Evolutionary Anthropologist, Dean Falk of Florida State University revealed in the Month of October that the Physicist Albert Einstein's brain had an "extraordinary" prefrontal cortex - unlike those of most people which may have contributed to his remarkable genius. It was on Einstein's death in 1955 that his brain was removed and photographed from multiple angles with the permission of his family and was sectioned into 240 blocks from which histological slides were prepared. The researchers came to conclusion after studying 14 newly discovered photographs of Einstein's brain, which was preserved for study after his death. The research concludes that the brain was indeed highly unusual in many ways as it was compared to 85 "normal" human brains and, in light of current functional imaging studies, interpreted its unusual features. It was found that the overall size and asymmetrical shape of Einstein's brain were normal but the prefrontal, somatosensory, primary motor, parietal, temporal and occipital cortices were extraordinary. The study was published in the journal Brain and it also published the "roadmap" to Einstein's brain prepared in 1955 by Dr Thomas Harvey to illustrate the locations within his previously whole brain of 240 dissected blocks of tissue, which provides a key to locating the origins within the brain of the newly emerged histological slides.
  
• Aakash Tablet has made it's rounds in the nation already but its popularity has not been limited to Third World countries alone. This extremely aggressively priced tablet is now on its way to the United Nations to represent the “most competitively priced” tablet PC from India.Hardeep Singh Puri, the Permanent Representative of India to UN, would present the low cost Aakash tablet in a presentation on November 28 in UN which would also have the honor of the presence of the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon.CEO of Canada-based Datawind, Suneet Singh Tuli, who has won the tender of Indian Government to manufacture and supply the tablets would also be invited for the grand occasion.
  
• The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee took the occasion of National Education Day to release and dedicate to the nation, the innovative and modestly-priced Aakash Version 2.0 tablet in New Delhi on 11 November. Unveiled in the presence of Dr. M.M. Pallam Raju, Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Sh Jitin Prasada and Dr Shashi Tharoor, Ministers of State for Human Resource Development, Aakash Version 2.0 is a full-fledged tablet computer. IIT Bombay along with the Ministry of Human Resource Development has created several useful educational applications for the tablet. Teachers and students in the remotest corners of India can join a classroom and benefit from lectures delivered by the best teachers. On National Education Day, which is also the 124th birth anniversary of Independent India’s first Education Minister , Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, rich tributes were paid to the great freedom fighter and eminent educationist.
• Indian-American Sunita Williamsventured out of the International Space Station (ISS) with a fellow astronaut on 2 November, for a 6.5-hour sojourn, her seventh so far, to fix an ammonia leak in the radiator system. The U.S. space agency NASA ordered the space station to change position to avoid a fragment from a communication satellite that was destroyed in a high-speed collision three years ago. Thrusters on a docked Russian supply ship were fired to move the orbiting lab out of harm’s way. But a computer error caused the thrusters to malfunction, and the space station did not reach the desired altitude. NASA officials said the space station and its six residents were safe despite their lower-than-intended orbit.
  
• Researchers have developed a robot that learns to play ping-pong from humans and improves as it competes against them. Katharina Muelling and colleagues at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany suspended a robotic arm from the ceiling and equipped it with a camera that watches the playing area. The arm was physically guided by Muelling through different shots to return incoming balls. The arm was then left to draw on its training to return balls hit by a human opponent, New Scientist reported.