Science News For The Month April

Kolkata witnesses rare ring around Sun

The phenomenon known as the 22 degree circular halo of the sun, occurs when the sun's or moon's rays get deflected/ refracted through the hexagonal ice crystals present in cirrus clouds. The halo was last observed in April 2013 in the suburbs of the city.
2016-04-30

Weasel temporarily shuts Large Hadron Collider

The world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN outside of Geneva, has suspended operations because a weasel invaded a transformer that helps power the machine and set off an electrical outage on Thursday night, a CERN spokesman said.
2016-04-29

El Nino dries up Asia as its stormy sister La Nina looms

Temerloh, Malaysia, April 29, 2016 (AFP) -Withering drought and sizzling temperatures from El Nino have caused food and water shortages and ravaged farming across Asia, and experts warn of a double-whammy of possible flooding from its sibling, La Nina.
2016-04-29

Workers feeling the heat as climate change slashes productivity: report

Geneva, April 28, 2016 (AFP) -Climate change is exposing millions of workers to excessive heat, risking their health and income and threatening to erase more than $2.0 trillion in annual productivity by 2030, a UN report warned Thursday.
2016-04-28

Putin hails first rocket launch from new cosmodrome after delay

Russia launched the first rocket from its new Vostochny cosmodrome on Thursday, with President Vladimir Putin hailing the event after dressing down officials over a delay caused by a technical glitch.
2016-04-28

SpaceX vows to send capsule to Mars by 2018

SpaceX chief Elon Musk announced Wednesday that he will send an unmanned spaceship to Mars as early as 2018, as part of his quest to colonize the Red Planet some day.
2016-04-27

Chinese scientists claim first dogs originated in China

Chinese scientists claimed that dogs have originated in southern China some 33,000 years ago, disputing US research by Cornell University that domesticated dogs evolved 15,000 years ago in Central Asia. They also said Chinese dogs are genetically closest to gray wolves the modern dog's ancestor.
2016-04-27

Saturn's moon Titan has a methane sea, with methane wetlands on shores

Since arriving in the Saturn system, the Cassini spacecraft has revealed that more than 1.6 million square kilometers of Titan's surface -- almost two percent of the total -- are covered in liquid.
2016-04-27

Nasa astronauts prepare for flight on commercial spacecraft

Five years after the last Nasa astronauts flew from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to the International Space Station, a new group is preparing for a trip, this time on a private spacecraft. Test flights are likely to be launched in 2017
2016-04-27

Carbon dioxide making earth greener, reveals new research

Observations by Nasa satellites over the past 33 years show that there has been a steady increase in leaves on plants and trees, which scientists think is because of the higher CO2 levels. Leaves absorb CO2 and combine it with water to produce food for the plants.
2016-04-26

Einstein's theory of relativity faces satellite test

Einstein's theory suggests that in perfect free-fall, the two objects should move in exactly the same way. But if they are shown to behave differently "the principle will be violated: an event that would shake the foundations of physics", Arianespace added.
2016-04-26

Nasa set to put in the sky an array of new X-planes

Nasa scientists are preparing to put in the sky an array of new X-planes or experimental aircraft -including a quiet supersonic jet -to demonstrate advanced technologies that will push back the frontiers of av iation. Goals include showcasing how airliners can burn half the fuel and generate 75% less pollution during each flight as compared to now, while also being much quieter than today's jets -perhaps even when flying supersonic.
2016-04-25

Delay in diagnosis worsens drug-resistant TB in country

The universal DST is a part of the World Health Organisation's strategy to 'end TB by 2035'.Currently, a patient is first tested for simple TB that needs six to nine months of treatment.
2016-04-24

Space project aims for the stars, wants India on board

The $100-million revolutionary space programme Breakthrough StarShot, which envisages sending ultralight nano crafts to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri - 25 trillion miles away - will seek India's participation, executive director of the project S Pete Worden has said. 'Breakthrough StarShot', which will turn sci-fi into reality, involves a ground-based light-beamer pushing ultralight nano crafts-miniature space probes attached to light sails-to speeds up to 100 million miles an hour.
2016-04-24

Wives become less stressed after husband's death: Study

Wemba, born in 1949, was performing at the FEMUA 2016 festival when he collapsed on stage. He died before reaching hospital, a spokesman for the Ivosep morgue in Abidjan said. The new study found that while men suffer negative consequences when their wife dies, women appear to get healthier.
2016-04-24

Mice in space showed liver damage after two weeks

Lab mice that spent just two weeks in orbit showed early signs of liver damage upon returning to Earth, raising concern about what long-duration spaceflight might do to humans, researchers said Wednesday.
2016-04-20

World's oldest message in a bottle discovered

A 108-year-old postcard offering a shilling in exchange for its return to an English marine research institute is now officially the world's oldest message in a bottle after being recovered in Germany.
2016-04-20

Highlights of the climate pact to be signed in New York

Leaders and envoys from more than 160 countries will sign on Friday the climate-change pact the world adopted in principle in Paris last December. The Paris Agreement to try to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius was a stunning political victory for poor countries threatened by climate change. But scientists tasked with explaining how to get there are less than thrilled.
2016-04-20

Cassini captures speeding star dust grain

Alien dust in the solar system is not unanticipated. In the 1990s, the ESA/NASA Ulysses mission made the first in-situ observations of this material. Cassini was able to analyze the composition of the dust, showing it to be made of a very specific mixture of minerals, not ice.
2016-04-15

Zika causes severe birth defects, confirms US

US health officials have concluded that infection with the Zika virus in pregnant women causes birth defect microcephaly and other brain abnormalities in babies."It is now clear that Zika virus does cause microcephaly," said Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
2016-04-13

Human cloning with Chinese characteristics

China's top geneticists say the country should set its own standards and regulations on human genome research, state-run media reported Wednesday, as ethical debate erupted over a Chinese study on modified human embryos.
2016-04-13

Russian billionaire, Hawking unveil plan to reach Alpha Centauri

Billionaire Russian investor Yuri Milner and British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Tuesday announced an ambitious new space initiative for a mission to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth.
2016-04-12

SpaceX delivers world's first inflatable room for astronauts

SpaceX has made good on a high-priority delivery: the world's first inflatable room for astronauts. A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station after launching from Cape Canaveral. Station astronauts used a robot arm to capture the Dragon, orbiting 400km above Earth.
2016-04-11

SpaceX cargo arrives at crowded space station

SpaceX's unmanned Dragon cargo ship, carrying lettuce seeds, lab mice and an inflatable pop-up room, arrived Sunday at a crowded International Space Station where six spacecraft are now docked.
2016-04-10

Nasa's planet-hunting spacecraft enters emergency mode

Nasa's Kepler spacecraft that hunts for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars has gone into emergency mode some 75 million miles from Earth, the US space agency said. This was found during a scheduled contact on April 7.
2016-04-10

North Pole had ice-free summers 6 to 10 million years ago: Study

Within a two-days coring action, researchers took 18 sediment cores from the Lomonosov Ridge. Although the recovered sediment cores were only four to eight metres long, one of them turned out to be precisely one of those climate archives that the scientists had been looking for a long time.
2016-04-09

Maternal obesity, poor nutrition impairs fertility in daughter

This discovery improves scientific understanding of the long-term, generational, effects of obesity and poor nutrition, researchers said. This understanding is the first step toward devising interventions to protect the fertility of females who experienced very difficult womb environments.
2016-04-09

SpaceX lands rocket on water for first time

SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on an ocean platform for the first time Friday, after launching a load of cargo for the astronauts living at the International Space Station.
2016-04-08

Sanders hopes to meet Pope on Vatican campaign break

Democratic White House hopeful Bernie Sanders said Friday he hopes to meet Pope Francis while attending a conference on social and environmental issues at the Vatican next week.
2016-04-08

Solar storm scientists prepare for geomagnetic event that could destroy technology across the world for years

Many people are still unconcerned or even unaware of the possibility of a geomagnetic storm coming from the sun that could cause huge damage to life on Earth. Such a possibility is referred to as a low probability but high-impact event that is being planned for by agencies like Nasa.
2016-04-08

Anti-ageing pill that could see humans living a decade longer moves a step closer

Experiments with fruit flies which also have the GSK-3 protein found that the molecule could be inhibited by low-level lithium use, which extended their lives by 16%. This has raised hopes that lithium could eventually be turned into a tablet to prolong human life.
2016-04-08

3D mini-retinas grown from human stem cells

Scientists have developed an efficient way to make 3D "mini retinas", which mimic the organ's tissue organisation, from mouse or human stem cells. The research offers new perspectives on the growth, injury and repair of retina the part of the eye that is sensitive to light.
2016-04-04

Rare white dwarf will reveal secrets of star evolution

Researchers from Brazil and Germany have discovered a white dwarf that contains no hydrogen or helium whatsoever. This will enable astronomers to study the exposed core of the star unimpeded by these gases, providing a unique view on the lives of stellar bodies in their final stages of existence.
2016-04-03

Moon plays key role in maintaining Earth's magnetic field

The Moon may play a major role in maintaining Earth's magnetic field that permanently protects us from the charged particles and radiation that originate in the Sun. The magnetic field is produced by the geodynamo, the rapid motion of huge quantities of liquid iron alloy in the Earth's outer core.
2016-04-03