SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS NOVEMBER 2014
- IIT-Madras joins CERN experiment
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which is part of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, is expected to start collecting data once again around March 2015. But this time, it will include another member from our environs — IIT-Madras. IIT-Madras has been accepted as a full member of the collaboration and is looking forward to make best use of the opportunity. - WB warning on climate change
The World Bank has warned that Climate change could undermine efforts to defeat extreme poverty around the globe. In a new report on the impact of global warming, the bank said sharp temperature rises will cut deeply into crop yields and water supplies in many areas and possibly set back efforts to bring populations out of poverty. The report said on 22nd November that Climate change poses a substantial and escalating risk to development progress that could undermine global efforts to eliminate extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity.
It said, without strong, early action, warming could exceed 1.5-2 degrees Celsius and the resulting impacts could significantly worsen intra- and intergenerational poverty in multiple regions across the globe.
The bank said it is already likely that average temperatures will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, based on the built-in impact of past and current greenhouse gas emissions. The new report, "Turn down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal" focuses on the specific regional impacts of warming. The World Bank has set an ambitious target of eliminating extreme poverty around the world by 2030, and Kim says that can still be done if warming is limited to just two degrees. - Commonwealth science conference held in Bengaluru
President Pranab Mukherjee on 25th November advised Commonwealth nations must join hands in bilateral and international 'mega science' initiatives. He inaugurated the Commonwealth Science Conference in Bengaluru.
The four-day conference is organised by the Royal Society in association the Government of India and The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust. Commonwealth Science Conference was held last in 1967 at Oxford in Merton College.
The Conference is being attended by more than 300 specially invited scientists and 70 PhD students from across Commonwealth, together with local delegates.
Mukherjee also noted that attraction of talented students to study science and pursue carrier in science is a big challenge in many developing countries. Calling Science as one of the creative endeavours of the human mind, Mukherjee said, "Science seeks universal and fundamental truths. - 56 countries seek carbon capture incentives in next climate deal
Fiscal incentives for carbon capture should be part of the global climate change agreement that replaces the Kyoto Protocol, 56 countries belonging to the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said in a statement on 25th October.
The recommendation by the UNECE member states puts the issue formally on the table for a meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015, which aims to agree a legally binding treaty to replace Kyoto. Delegates from almost 200 nations will meet in Peru next month to work on the accord, amid new scientific warnings about risks of floods, heat waves, ocean acidification and rising seas.
The UNECE recommendation says that commercial development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) — taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to reduce the build-up of greenhouse gases — does not have enough political support, and should have at least as much as other low carbon technologies.
Governments should also work together to financially sponsor demonstration projects, UNECE said.
Beefing up alternative energy sources such as wind and solar would not be enough to tackle climate change, since those technologies do nothing to reduce carbon dioxide that has already built up in the atmosphere, which the UN says is causing global warming and dangerous increases in ocean acidity.
The number of big CCS projects has doubled since 2010 to 22 and the technology passed a milestone this year with the start of the first coal-fired power plant equipped with CCS, the Global CCS Institute said earlier this month.
High costs of CCS — such as to capture carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of power plants or to strip carbon from natural gas — have discouraged far wider CCS investments despite worries about climate change. - CAG raps centre
The Government auditor, Comptroller & Auditor General of India, has come out strongly on the Centre’s ineffectiveness in implementing hydrocarbons production-sharing contracts, failure to utilise satellite capacities for direct-to-home services, and allowing misuse of Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy.
CAG has recommended disallowance of cost incurred by the contractor in KG-D6. Bajaj, however, clarified that this cost disallowance of $970 million could have overlaps with the penalty of $2.38 billion already levied on RIL by the Centre. In another report on performance of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), the auditor said the developers misused the SEZ policy to carry out land deals. - Forest owlet spotted in Ghats
Researchers have spotted a critically endangered ‘Forest Owlet’ in Northern part of Western Ghats, 100 km from Mumbai. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List has deemed this bird to be at a high risk of extinction. Till now, Forest Owlet was thought to be endemic to Satpura mountain ranges in central India. Its discovery in the Ghats has renewed hopes of its survival.
Naturalist Sunil Laad, associated with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), spotted the Forest Owlet in the Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra’s Palghar district in October. On subsequent study tours, visitors and conservationists to Tansa were greeted with calls of the bird around 7 km from the location. A research paper authored by Sunil Laad and Rohidas Dagale, based on this finding, will shortly be published in the Journal of BNHS (JBNHS).
For nearly 113 years, the Forest Owlet was considered to be extinct, until researchers rediscovered it in 1997 in Toranmal Reserve Forest near Shahada in the Satpura in the State’s Nandurbar District. - Most abundant mineral, named Bridgmanite
American geologists have named the earth’s most abundant mineral Bridgmanite. It had hitherto remained nameless as a large enough sample of the mineral, found in the earth’s lower mantle, had not been recovered. Under the rules of set down by the International Mineralogical Association, a mineral cannot be given a formal name until a specimen has been found and examined first hand.
A group of American geologists were recently able to extract a sample large enough to analyse from a meteorite. The new name is in honour of Percy Bridgman, a pioneer in the use of high pressure experiments to better understand how many geological formations come about.
Bridgmanite makes up about 70 percent of the earth’s lower mantle and 38 percent of the total volume of the earth. It is made up of high-density magnesium iron silicate.
The lower mantle, which starts at 670 km under the crust, is difficult to access for samples. The researchers looked at a meteorite that had fallen inside Australia in 1879 as a likely candidate for samples, and found what they were looking for.
Scientists had looked at likely candidate meteorites in the past, but electron diffraction — the technique they used to look for perovskite — had always wound up causing it to be destroyed. This time the team used a different, less destructive test — one that involved the use of a micro-focussed X-ray beam in conjunction with electron microscopy.
The researchers noted that the sample had more sodium and ferric acid than expected. Their discovery is expected to aid future geological research, offer clues about what goes on when celestial bodies collide and potentially give hints about the formation of the universe. The research paper was published in the journal Science. - ISRO wins Indira Gandhi Prize
Indian space agency ISRO will be conferred the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development for 2014 in recognition of its contribution in strengthening international cooperation in peaceful use of outer space. The award jury, chaired by Vice President Hamid Ansari, made the announcement on 19th November.
"The Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development is awarded to the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) in recognition of its path-breaking achievement, culminating in the Mars orbiter mission, its significant contribution in strengthening international cooperation in peaceful use of outer space," a statement said.
The jury also noted the pioneering role played by it in the application of advanced technologies in promoting broad based and sustainable social and economic development and addressing basic needs of the people particularly in remote and rural areas of the country. Isro has shown how Indian scientists and talents can be harnessed to international level, catching up with more advanced nations in a highly technical and sophisticated field, it said.
"It has shown how true self-reliance is, often working in adverse circumstances when it was denied adequate access to the latest research and development elsewhere," the statement added. Isro has demonstrated that in space technology, India stands shoulder to shoulder with the best in the world, it said. - First zero-gravity 3D printer installed
NASA astronauts have installed the world's first zero-gravity 3D printer on the International Space Station (ISS). With the 3D printer, astronauts will soon begin experimenting with additive manufacturing technology in microgravity, the US space agency said in a statement.
Commander Barry Wilmore installed the printer, about the size of a small microwave oven, in the Microgravity Science Glovebox on board ISS. The 3D printer will help astronauts manufacture their own components and tools on the ISS itself.
The printer, developed by California-based space start-up Made in Space, was sent to the space station as part of SpaceX's fourth cargo resupply mission in September. - Western Ghats face major conservation concerns: IUCN
According to International Union for Conservation of Nature assessment world Heritage Sites such as the Western Ghats, Manas Wildlife Sanctuary, Kaziranga National Park and Sundarbans are facing significant conservation concerns
The IUCN World Heritage Outlook report, released at the ongoing World Park Congress at Sydney, had assessed 228 World Heritage sites for natural values.
While none of the seven Indian sites qualified to be included in the ‘good’ category, the Great Himalayan National Park, Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks and Keoladeo National Parks were assessed as ‘good with some concerns’. There were no Indian sites in the ‘critical’ category.
The report attempted to “recognize well-managed sites for their conservation efforts and encourage the transfer of good management practices between sites” and identified the “most pressing conservation issues affecting natural World Heritage sites and the actions needed to remedy those issues.”
The 39 serial sites of Ghats, which were inscribed in 2012 “amid some controversy”, are “under increasing population and developmental pressure that requires intensive and targeted management efforts to ensure that not only are existing values conserved, but that some past damage may be remediated,” it said.
The sites that are “traditionally conserved by small populations of indigenous people leading sustainable lifestyles”, face many challenges. The serial sites of Ghats are spread across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Assessing the threats faced by the sites, the IUCN experts observed that there was “extraordinary” pressure on biodiversity remains in the Western Ghats, given the “tremendous population pressure both within and surrounding the property.”
There exist a “large number of threats which severely threaten the Outstanding Universal Value of the property.” It would require coordinated “conservation responses at all levels including political, sociological and biological”, to overcome the challengers, it said.
The report also warned that the “constant requirements for development will continue to place the property under high threat. Climate change will probably exacerbate a system already under pressure,” it cautioned.
While the state of World Heritage values in the Ghats could be “considered as ‘good’ at the time of inscription, the current state and trend of World Heritage values are Data Deficient and targeted monitoring is required,” it said. - CO2 emissions must be nil by 2070 to prevent disaster: U.N.
United Nations has warned the nations that unless the world cuts to a specified level, the world is going to experience a global catastrophe. In its report it said that the world must cut CO2 emissions to zero by 2070 at the latest to keep global warming below dangerous levels and prevent a global catastrophe
By 2100, all greenhouse gas emissions — including methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, as well as CO2 — must fall to zero, the United Nationals Environment Programme (UNEP) report says
The UNEP report published on 19th November is based on the idea that the planet has a finite ‘carbon budget’. Since emissions surged in the late 19th century, some 1,900 Gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 and 1,000 Gt of other greenhouse gases have already been emitted, leaving less than 1,000 Gt of CO2 left to emit before locking the planet in to dangerous temperature rises of more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
All scenarios in the UNEP report now require some degree of ‘negative CO2 emissions’ in the second half of the century, through technologies such as carbon capture and storage or, possibly, controversial, planetary wide engineering of the climate known as geo-engineering. UNEP is “extremely interested” in the subject and is planning a report in the months ahead. - INS Vikrant dismantled
INS Vikrant — the county’s first aircraft carrier — has finally faded away into history. The dismantling of the majestic vessel began on 22nd November opposite the Darukhana ship breaking yard. The Bombay High Court had given the go-ahead for Vikrant to be auctioned in January, after it rejected a public interest litigation petition to save the vessel and convert it into a maritime museum. The Centre said it was difficult to maintain the vessel. In March, the Indian Navy sold Vikrant to a Mumbai-based ship breaking company for Rs. 63 crore.
The 16,000-tonne ship, which had helped to enforce a naval blockade of East Pakistan — now Bangladesh — during the 1971 war, was decommissioned in 1997.
It was purchased as HMS Hercules from Britain in 1957 and rechristened INS Vikrant. It was formally commissioned into the Indian fleet at Bombay on November 3, 1961. - Agni-II test fired
India test-fired the nuclear weapon-capable Agni-II ballistic missile for its full strike range of 2,000 km from Wheeler Island off the Odisha Coast around 9.40 a.m. on 9th November. Personnel of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) fired the surface-to-surface missile from a mobile launcher. The 20-metre-tall Agni-II zoomed to an altitude of 600 km and began its descent before splashing near its pre-designated impact point in the Bay of Bengal with “two-digit accuracy.”
The exercise was carried out as regular user training under the supervision of missile scientists from the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), which designed and developed the weapon system. The two-stage missile has been inducted for military use and can carry a one-tone payload. - LRSAM flight tested successfully Israel
The Long Range Surface to Air Missile (LRSAM) is successfully flight tested against a flying target in a range in Israel, on 10th November. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Israel has carried out the test in the presence of DRDO scientists and officials of the Indian Armed Forces. The LRSAM system is jointly developed by DRDO and IAI Israel.
All the systems including the radar, communication launch systems and the missile system have performed as expected and hit the target directly and damaged. The system is developed for both Israel Defense Forces and Indian Armed Forces. - Philae beams first images from comet
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Philae lander beamed back the first images ever from a comet to earth on 13th November. The lander scored a historic first on 12th November when it touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a decade-long journey through space on its mother ship Rosetta.
The probe is now stable but not yet out of danger after getting uprooted from the comet. ESA scientists endured a nervous Wednesday after it emerged that the probe landed not once but three times on the surface of the comet.
On landing the first time, it failed to anchor itself while the second landing did not happen on the planned area. The comet is four billion years old with a mass of 10 billion tonnes, hurtling through space at 18km/s. The Rosetta mission travelled 6.4 billion km to reach the comet over 10 years and was originally conceived 25 years ago.
Philae sent images of the icy grey comet during its approach and is now precariously sitting on the edge of the comet with next to large boulders. - Maharashtra to launch satellite imaging project
Maharashtra government will soon launch an Rs 4,000 crore satellite imaging project to map all land in the state and prepare digital records of land holding. The satellite imaging would include that of land used for agriculture, industry and also urban land. The last comprehensive land mapping exercise was undertaken 150 years ago under the British rule. Now we want to use technology to get an accurate picture which will help bring in transparency in land transactions. The project would be taken up under a centrally funded scheme. The entire state land data will be computerized and available online. The project will also help curb corruption at lower level where amounts ranging from a few hundred to thousand rupees are sought to provide the documents. - Scientific progress in brain to brain communication
The researchers at the University of Washington have established a ‘brain to brain communication’ link using the Internet. The finding provides scientific evidence of the human brain being able to send a signal to another person, leading to a motor action — such as a hand moving. The possibilities of effectively treating cognitive disorders such as autism or making a paralyzed person communicate with others have brightened after this breakthrough.
A team led by an Indian-origin Professor of Computer Science, Rajesh Rao, had taken up the path-breaking research in the University of Washington. PLoS One , a scientific journal, published the study recently.
The “brain-to-brain” connection was established between two persons sitting in different buildings of the university. The signal from the sender’s brain, recorded using electroencephalography, was interpreted by a computer and transmitted over the Internet to a transcranial magnetic stimulation machine, which delivered a magnetic impulse to the receiver’s brain. Internet transmits brain signals in scientific breakthrough
A team led by an Indian-origin Professor of Computer Science, Rajesh Rao, has taken up path-breaking research in the University of Washington which allows two brains to communicate with each other through signals transmitted over the internet. - Prithvi-II missile test fired
India on 14th November successfully test-fired its nuclear-capable surface-to-surface Prithvi-II missile from a military base in Odisha. The indigenously-developed ballistic missile with a maximum range of 350 km was fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur-on-sea in Balasore district, about 230 km from Bhubaneswar. The test was a part of the regular training exercise by the Indian armed forces. - Emissions must be cut to zero by 2100, warns grim UN climate report
The unrestricted use of fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, an UN-backed expert panel says.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in a stark report that most of the world's electricity can - and must - be produced from low-carbon sources by 2050. If not, the world faces "severe, pervasive and irreversible" damage. The UN said inaction would cost "much more" than taking the necessary action.
The IPCC's Synthesis Report was published on 2nd November in Copenhagen, after a week of intense debate between scientists and government. It is intended to inform politicians engaged in attempts to deliver a new global treaty on climate by the end of 2015.
The report says that reducing emissions is crucial if global warming is to be limited to 2C - a target acknowledged in 2009 as the threshold of dangerous climate change. The report suggests renewables will have to grow from their current 30% share to 80% of the power sector by 2050. In the longer term, the report states that fossil fuel power generation without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology would need to be "phased out almost entirely by 2100".
The Synthesis Report summarises three previous reports from the IPCC, which outlined the causes, the impacts and the potential solutions to climate change.
It re-states many familiar positions:- Warming is "unequivocal" and the human influence on climate is clear
- The period from 1983 to 2012, it says, was likely the warmest 30 year period of the last 1,400 years
- Warming impacts are already being seen around the globe, in the acidification of the oceans, the melting of arctic ice and poorer crop yields in many parts
- Without concerted action on carbon, temperatures will increase over the coming decades and could be almost 5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century
Green House Effect: The greenhouse effect refers to the way the Earth's atmosphere traps some of the energy from the Sun. Solar energy radiating back out to space from the Earth's surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases and re-emitted in all directions. The energy that radiates back down to the planet heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface. Without this effect, the Earth would be about 30C colder, making our planet hostile to life.
Scientists believe we are adding to the natural greenhouse effect with gases released from industry and agriculture, trapping more energy and increasing the temperature.
The most important of these gases in the natural greenhouse effect is water vapour, but concentrations show little change. Other greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which are released by burning fossil fuels as well as through cutting down carbon-absorbing forests.
Since the industrial revolution began in 1750, CO2 levels have risen by more than 30% and methane levels have risen more than 140%. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.
Rising temperature: Temperature records going back to the late 19th Century show that the average temperature of the Earth's surface has increased by about 0.8C (1.4F) in the last 100 years. About 0.6C (1.0F) of this warming occurred in the last three decades.
Satellite data shows an average increase in global sea levels of some 3mm per year in recent decades. A large proportion of the change in sea level is accounted for by the expansion of warming oceans. But the melting of mountain glaciers and the retreat of polar ice sheets are also important contributors.
Most glaciers in temperate regions of the world and along the Antarctic Peninsula are in retreat. Since 1979, satellite records show a dramatic decline in Arctic sea-ice extent, at an annual rate of 4% per decade. In 2012, the ice extent reached a record minimum that was 50% lower than the 1979-2000 average.
In its 2007 assessment, the IPCC forecast a global temperature increase of 1.8C to 4C by 2100. Even if we cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically now, scientists say the effects will continue because parts of the climate system, particularly large bodies of water and ice, can take hundreds of years to respond to changes in temperature. It also takes greenhouse gases decades to be removed from the atmosphere. - Scientists find mechanism for spontaneous HIV cure
As many as 1,482 French scientists on 4th November unveiled the genetic mechanism by which they believe two men were spontaneously cured of HIV, and said the discovery may offer a new strategy in the fight against AIDS. In both asymptomatic men, the AIDS-causing virus was inactivated due to an altered HIV gene coding integrated into human cells, they wrote in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection. This, in turn, was likely due to stimulation of an enzyme that may in future be targeted for drug treatment to induce the same response
Neither of the men, one diagnosed HIV positive 30 years ago and the other in 2011, have ever been ill, and the AIDS-causing virus cannot be detected with routine tests of their blood. In both, the virus was unable to replicate due to DNA coding changes that the researchers proposed were the result of a spontaneous evolution between humans and the virus that is called "endogenisation". - Mystery of bizarre object in galaxy solved
A bizarre object in the centre of the Milky Way which has puzzled astronomers for years is most likely a pair of binary stars that merged together, a new study has found.The object, known as G2, in the centre of Milky Way was believed to be a hydrogen gas cloud headed toward our galaxy’s enormous black hole. Having studied it during its closest approach to the black hole this summer, University of California, Los Angeles astronomers believe that they have solved the riddle of the object.
Astronomers had figured that if G2 had been a hydrogen cloud, it could have been torn apart by the black hole, and that the resulting celestial fireworks would have dramatically changed the state of the black hole. - Ebola vaccine successful on animal
The world's first inhalable Ebola vaccine in development has proved highly successful in animal studies.
Scientists from the University of Texas have confirmed that a potentially breathable, respiratory vaccine in development has been shown to provide long-term protection for non-human primates against the deadly Ebola virus. Results from a recent pre-clinical study represent the only proof to date that a single dose of a non-injectable vaccine platform for Ebola is long lasting, which could have significant global implications in controlling future outbreaks. - Curiosity finds first mineral match
The Mars rover Curiosity has discovered the first mineral match from the Martian surface. The reddish powder from the hole drilled into a mountain yielded the mission's confirmation of a mineral mapped from orbit.This connects us with the mineral identifications from orbit which can now help guide our investigations as we climb the slope and test hypotheses derived from the orbital mapping," said Curiosity project scientist, John Grotzinger from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.Curiosity collected the powder by drilling into a rock outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp in late September. The sample contained much more haematite than any rock or soil sample previously found during the two-year-old mission. Haematite is an iron-oxide mineral that gives clues about ancient environmental conditions from when it was formed. - Reactors to reactive in Japan
The governor of Japan's Kagoshima prefecture on 7th November approved the reactivation of two nuclear reactors at the Sendai plant.Sendai was the first plant in Japan on which new regulations were imposed by Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) after the accident at the Fukushima plant triggered by an earthquake and tsunami Mar 11, 2011. The plant is expected to start its commercial activities from 2015 after the NRA completes its last security reviews in Sendai.
The approval granted is almost the final step for the reactivation of the power stations, whose 48 commercial use reactors are currently non-functional until they adopt the NRA norms. The Fukushima accident was the worst since the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine in 1986. - Planet formation picture captured
Using an international astronomy facility, astronomers have captured what is claimed as “the best image ever” of planet formation around an infant star. The image was captured during the testing and verification process for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array’s (ALMA) new high-resolution capabilities. This new image reveals in astonishing detail the planet-forming disk surrounding HL Tauri, a Sun-like star located approximately 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
These structures suggest that planet formation is already well underway around this remarkably young star. HL Tauri is no more than a million years old.
All stars are believed to form within clouds of gas and dust that collapse under gravity. Over time, the surrounding dust particles stick together, growing into rocks, which eventually settle into a thin protoplanetary disk. Once these planetary bodies acquire enough mass, they dramatically reshape themselves into tighter and more confined zones.
All about ALMA- The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an astronomical interferometer of radio telescopes in the Atacama desert of northern Chile.
- Since a high and dry site is crucial to millimeter wavelength operations, the array has been constructed on the Chajnantor plateau at 5,000 meters altitude, near Llano de Chajnantor Observatory and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment.
- Consisting of 66 12-meter (39 ft), and 7-meter (23 ft) diameter radio telescopes observing at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, ALMA is expected to provide insight on star birth during the early universe and detailed imaging of local star and planet formation.
- ALMA is an international partnership between Europe, the United States, Canada, East Asia and the Republic of Chile. Costing about US$ 1.4 billion, it is the most expensive ground-based telescope in operation.
- ALMA began scientific observations in the second half of 2011 and the first images were released to the press on 3 October 2011. The array has been fully operational since March 2013
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