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A group of Indian taxonomists has rediscovered a wild plant after a gap of nearly 100 years. Called Ceropegia omissa H.Huber, the species was last seen in 1916. Prior to this, it was seen and collected only on two occasions—in 1835 and 1914. Interestingly, all the sightings have been made in a narrow region, within a radius of about 50 km in southern parts of the Western Ghats. The area of occurrence of this plant is close to Courtallam (or Kuttalam) in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, a tourism spot known for its waterfalls. The region from where it has been found is a biosphere reserve and thus, there would be not much difficulty in launching efforts to conserve it. Flowers are traded and propagated as ornamental plants. Credit: India Science Wire Flowers are traded and propagated as ornamental plants. Credit: India Science Wire The flowers of Ceropegia genus look like a fountain of wax. The scientific name was derived from this aspect: 'keros', meaning wax and...

India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued its first long-range forecast for the 2017 monsoon in mid-April. Rainfall was to be normal, between 96-104 per cent of the long period average. Last week, in its second long range forecast (LRF) of the season, the IMD reiterated that rainfall during monsoon 2017 will be normal. The onset in Kerala, advanced by a day, seemed to reaffirm met department’s prediction. But in the last 10 days, monsoon’s progression has been more of a start-stop affair rather than the smooth trajectory that we normally see. After stalling in Kerala on the western coast for about a week immediately upon arrival, the monsoon has slowly staggered upwards—halting in coastal Karnataka, Goa and now in Maharashtra. While the latest weather inference issued by IMD indicates continued favourable conditions for further advancement of the monsoon—into inner-Maharashtra and parts of Chattisgarh from the Arabian sea arm of the Indian monsoon—these conditions have been repor...

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have shown groups of cells in plant embryos that function in ways similar to the human ‘brain’, allowing it to assess environmental conditions and determine when seeds will germinate. A plant’s decision on when it will germinate is critical. If it happens early, then it could be subjected to harsh environmental conditions. If it is too late, then it could be outcompeted by other plants. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on June 6, scientists have shown that this ‘decision making centre’ of a plant called Arabidopsis contains two types of cells. One type prefers seed dormancy or inactivity while the other promotes germination. These two groups of cells communicate with each other by moving hormones, which is a mechanism comparable to that used by our own brains when we decide whether or not to move. Mathematical modeling was used to show that communication between the separated groups of cells...

The heavy-lift GSLV Mark III rocket, slated to be launched by space agency ISRO tomorrow, would open up opportunities for India to launch 4-ton class of satellites of foreign countries, according to a senior space scientist. Tomorrow’s launch of the first developmental flight of the rocket is a “great milestone” as ISRO is almost doubling the capacity to launch satellite from 2.2-2.3 tons to 3.5-4 tons, former ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan said. “Today if India has to launch communication satellites beyond 2.3 tons, we have to go abroad (to launch them). We (will) have self-reliance in launching communication satellites (once GSLV Mk III becomes operational), and also we will be able to attract foreign customers,” he said. “It’s rather a simpler vehicle, and a vehicle with better payload fraction. And it’s going to be future workhorse vehicle (of ISRO),” he said. Mr. Radhakrishnan was closely associated with the GSLV Mk III programme, approved in 2000, as director of VSSC (Vi...

European study finds drug residues in high concentrations around specific pharmaceutical units in Hyderabad, but industry rebuts the claim The pharma industry in Hyderabad is polluting the environment with antimicrobials which in turn may contribute to a rise in drug-resistant infections, a new study published in the journal Infection alleges. Claiming that Indian authorities have not done enough to ensure efficient treatment of waste water discharged by the pharma industry, the study also calls upon European regulators to ensure enforcement of regulations during the manufacturing process. Water samples tested Hyderabad is a global market for bulk drug purchasing with 50% of India’s drug exports, pegged at over $3 billion, coming from the city. Researchers from Leipzig University Hospital, Germany, tested 28 water samples from difference places in the city, including sewage from around pharma manufacturing units in Patancheru-Bollaram Industrial Development Area on the outsk...

Nothing has fascinated humankind as has the vast night sky. With its many stars and planets, it holds within its expanse mystery and intrigue. Little wonder then that movies such as Interstellar have us glued to our seats the entire duration. The fact that there is so much more out there that we may not even know of, is enough to pique our curiosity. It certainly did mine. I once spent the better part of the night in freezing Ooty attempting star trail photography. Another time, I dragged a hapless friend to the planetarium after work. I spend hours browsing through my Instagram feed filled with time lapse videos and star trail pictures. When I’m tired of city life, I often find myself driving to the outskirts in the hopes of finding a dark sky sans all that light pollution. To lie flat on my back and look at a sky teeming with stars is a dream, I hope to realise one day. In the meantime, I’ll keep myself occupied with gleaning as much information as I can about the stars that I can...

In a significant development in research on human evolution, scientists have found that a very primitive ape-like ancestor which was hitherto considered a native of only Eurasia had existed in India too. Scientists discovered the surprise fossil during an excavation in Haritalyangar in Shiwalik hills region in Himachal Pradesh, about 120 km from Shimla on the road to Kangra. The fossils are nine million year old and are in the form of lower molar germs or permanent teeth that are un-erupted and still forming in lower jaw. The crowns of both the molars are fully formed, but there is no root formation. This indicates that they belonged to infants of slightly different ages at the time of their deaths. One specimen is a partial right first molar and other a complete left second molar. The apes seemed to be slightly larger (about 15 kg heavier) than the modern-day Siamang Gibbons, that are found in the Himalaya and South-East Asia. Detailed studies showed that the specimens were sim...

It’s the slow beginning of what will be a violent end for the Cassini mission. At 10.00 BST on April 26, the spacecraft became the first ever to dive between Saturn and its spectacular innermost ring. This marks the start of its “grand finale” consisting of 22 daring orbits – enabling a new era of science. Then, on September 15, it will crash into the planet’s atmosphere and burn up. It is sure to be a sad but proud moment for those of us who have worked on the mission. The Conversation Cassini was initially set on its path to destruction on April 22 when it flew by Saturn’s moon Titan. The spacecraft has used Titan not just as a fascinating scientific target in itself, but also to provide the gravitational slingshots needed to tweak, crank and change its orbit. It is Titan that gave it the impetus to penetrate the 2,400km gap between the rings and the planet every week before the mission ends. During the next few months, the instrument teams have several new observations to make ...

While in North America, Trump’s budget proposal mentions a significant cut in the funds to the UN climate talks, Green Climate Fund and the Clean Power Plan, in South America, we have Brazil cutting its environment ministry budget by 51 per cent to limit the country’s deficit. The decision comes at a time when deforestation rates are rising. The Amazon region, according to researchers from Brown University, has lost about 9,000 square kilometres to deforestation between 2008 and 2012 without even being detected by official monitoring system. The Brazilian government has proposed a steeper cut in spending than the 31 per cent that Donald Trump’s administration recently proposed for the US Environmental Protection Agency. This is not good news for the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA)—the agency that enforces laws to protect forests. Sharp spending cuts for the environment ministry, which oversees this agency, could mean possible weakening ...

Besides increased yield, the treated plants also proved to be more resilient to drought-like conditions Using a novel route, an Indian researcher has been able to increase wheat grain yield by 20% and also improve the resilience of wheat to environmental stress such as drought. By using a precursor that enhances the amount of a key sugar-signalling molecule (trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P)) produced in wheat plant, Dr. Ram Sagar Misra, from the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford and currently with the Department of Chemistry, Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, has been able to increase the amount of starch produced and, therefore, the yield. The technique The T6P molecule stimulates starch synthesis, which in turn, increases the yield. Since the pathway of T6P molecule is the same in other plants, the yield can potentially be increased by using suitable precursors. The results were published in the journal Nature. Dr. Misra is one of the authors of the paper. Dr. Mis...

Water turns into jelly, that’s what. This four-year-old video from the International Space Station has suddenly gone viral on social media for some reason. Back in 2013, the ISS posted a video of the (now retired) Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield performing an experiment with a wet towel. He squirts some water into a towel and then wrings it, leading to the water to just accumulate — first on the outside of the towel and then on his hand. “It’s becoming a tube of water,” says Hadfield. The experiment was designed by two standard 10 students from Nova Scotia, Canada, who won a national science contest held by the Canadian Space Agency. So why, exactly, is water behaving like jelly? Watch and find out.

Fantasilandia in Chile, one of Latin America’s largest theme parks, has replaced its most frequently touched surfaces with copper to help reduce the spread of germs and protect the health of its visitors. But why? Because copper and its alloys exhibit impressive antibacterial, antiviral and anti-fungal properties. The Conversation Copper has been exploited for health purposes since ancient times. Egyptian and Babylonian soldiers would sharpen their bronze swords (an alloy of copper and tin) after a battle, and place the filings in their wounds to reduce infection and speed healing. Copper was also used to cure medical problems in ancient China and India and is an important component of Ayurveda medicine today. Hippocrates in Greece and the Aztecs used copper oxide and copper carbonate, combined with other chemicals such as sodium carbonate, olive paste and honey, to treat skin infections Copper workers in Paris were protected from several cholera epidemics and French wineries even...

The as-yet-unnamed giant could win a spot in the top ten global list, and improve weather forecasting Come June, India will likely unveil its most powerful supercomputer. If its processors operate at the full capacity of 10 petaflops (1 followed by 15 zeroes of floating point operations per second), a clock speed a million times faster than the fastest consumer laptops, it could earn a place among the world’s top 10 fastest supercomputers. Though India has built or hosted supercomputers since the 1990s, it held a ‘top 10’ spot only once, in 2007, thanks to the EKA built by the Computational Research Laboratories, which is part of the Tata group. This position was lost, though several ultra-fast machines exist in Indian academic institutions: they feature in the 100s or 200s in global rankings. The as-yet-unnamed machine will be jointly hosted at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting at Noida in Uttar Pra...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on February 23 the discovery of a solar system with seven Earth-sized exoplanets about 39 light years away from our sun. The discovery is being seen as very significant as the planets found orbiting dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 could potentially harbour life. NASA has called the newly discovered solar system a ‘sister solar system’ to our own. The dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 is a low-mass, dim, ultracool star (with an effective temperature under 2,430 degrees Celsius) in the Aquarius constellation. All seven planets, apparently, have earth-like masses and could potentially host liquid water- considered a critical factor for the existence of life. While the presence of water largely depends on other properties of the planets, six of the inner planets are thought to be made up of rock and having surface temperatures ranging from 0-100 degrees Celsius, deemed conducive for life. The TRAPPIST-1 solar system is a compac...

In a historic feat, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched a record 104 satellites today (February 15) from the spaceport of Sriharikota of Andhra Pradesh. With this, India surpassed Russia, which previously held the record for the most satellites launched in a single mission (37), and became the first country to launch 104 satellites in a single rocket. The ISRO also outdid itself by a huge margin as the highest number of satellites it had previously launched was 20. However, it used the same rocket this time—XL version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). View image on Twitter View image on Twitter  Follow  ISRO ✔ @isro PSLV-C37 Successfully launched Cartosat-2 Series Satellite along with 103 co-passenger satelliteshttp://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c37-cartosat-2-series-satellite … 10:23 AM - 15 Feb 2017   6,006 6,006 Retweets   9,046 9,046 likes Announcing the success of the programme, ISRO chariman AS Kiran Kumar said, “This was a v...

A new, advanced weather prediction model was made operational on January 16 by the Ministry of Earth Science for more accurate forecasts. The very high resolution (12 km) global deterministic weather prediction model has been on trial since September 2016. The model, as per the ministry, has shown significant improvements in skill of daily weather forecasts. The new model replaces an earlier version which was responsible for predicting the path and intensity of Vardah cyclone and the North Indian cold wave. While the previous model had a horizontal resolution of 25 km, its successor has been upgraded to 12 km resolution. The ministry’s Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) will also be upgraded from 25 km resolution to 12 km. The EPS helps overcome the uncertainties in forecasts. It involves the generation of multiple forecasts using slightly varying initial conditions. The EPS also help generate probabilistic forecasts and quantify the uncertainties.  State of weather forecast...

Electronic spies come in all shapes and sizes, but none is as funny looking as an oyster impersonator called the ‘Flex Spy’ now infiltrating the waters off western France. Looking for all the world like the bivalves it is protecting, the plastic imposter is fitted with a circuit board that allows it to snitch on thieves. Invented by French start-up Flex-Sense, the device has been in the market since September. After the first prototypes were tested in Vietnam, the gadgets are now making their (undercover) appearance in the oyster beds off France’s Atlantic coast, with a major deployment planned in February. Several dozen tonnes of oysters are stolen each year out of France’s total production of 1,00,000 tonnes. “It may not be a big proportion, but it is a lot for the operator who is robbed”, said oyster farmer Gerald Viaud, president of National Shellfish Farmers’ Association. Theft is a “real problem” in the sector, which is “always on the lookout for solutions”, from surveillance ca...

The ‘Legion’ hacks expose the dire state of cybersecurity in India. Frequent data breaches will steadily erode the confidence of Internet users and deter them from using digital gateways An expansive cyberattack on critical information infrastructure in India — communications, banking technologies, healthcare services — may be currently under way. What’s worse, many of these operations have likely attained their objective. If that sounds hyperbolic, sample the comments made to news outlets by a representative of the group ‘Legion’, which has claimed responsibility for hacking emails and Twitter accounts belonging to the Indian National Congress, the industrialist Vijay Mallya, and journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar. Buried in their profanity-laced correspondence with The Washington Post and FactorDaily, this group has claimed access to “over 40,000 servers” in India, “encryption keys and certificates” used by some Indian banks, and confidential medical data housed in “server...

India's solar mission will study the Sun's outermost layers — the corona and the chromosphere — and collect data about coronal mass ejection After a seven year long wait, Aditya, India’s first dedicated scientific mission to study the sun is likely to get a go-ahead from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) this week. The ambitious solar mission will study the sun’s outer most layers, the corona and the chromosphere, collect data about coronal mass ejection and more, which will also yield information for space weather prediction. The project costs approximately Rs 400 crores and is a joint venture between ISRO and physicists from Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru; Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and other institutes. Shubashree Desikan Though the project was conceptualised in 2008 itself, it has since morphed and grown and is now awaiting clearance with the government. It now aims ...

Telecom satellite GSAT-15 launched The 3,164-kg spacecraft will replace the ageing Insat-3A and 4B spacecraft that are in the same orbital slot when they expire.  GSAT-15, the nation's newest communications satellite, was launched in the wee hours of Wednesday from Kourou in French Guiana in South America. The 3,164-kg spacecraft will replace the ageing Insat-3A and 4B spacecraft that are in the same orbital slot when they expire. Its 24 transponders in the Ku-band will mainly cater to public and private direct-to-home broadcasters besides VSAT operators. (A majority of private operators use capacity leased on foreign spacecraft). GSAT-15's lone GPS-augmentation or GAGAN transponder in the L1 and L5 bands will ensure back up for GPS-based satellite navigation across the region. The Indian Space Research organisation said GSAT-15 was put into space at 3.04 a.m. IST by the European launch vehicle Ariane VA-227; it had Arabsat-6B as a co-passenger. The initial e...