The U.S. space agency NASA has exchanged data of its current Mars mission with its counterparts in China, India, the UAE and the European Space Agency to lower the risk of a collision as their spacecraft were also currently hovering the red planet, a media report said on March 31.

The purpose of exchanges was to lower the risk of a collision, as their spacecraft are orbiting the red planet, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported, quoting a NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) statement as saying.

“To assure the safety of our respective missions, NASA is coordinating with the UAE, European Space Agency, Indian Space Research Organisation and the China National Space Administration, all of which have spacecraft in orbit around Mars, to exchange information on our respective Mars missions to ensure the safety of our respective spacecraft,” NASA’s statement said.

“This limited exchange of information is consistent with customary good practices used to ensure effective communication among satellite operators and spacecraft safety in orbit,” the report said.

ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan, spacecraft remained in Mars orbit since it entered there in 2014.

India is the first Asian country to successfully send a spacecraft to Mars. NASA’s Perseverance has landed on Mars last month and its rover is currently exploring its surface, while China’s Tianwen-1 consisting of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, entered the parking lot of orbit around Mars on February 24 and expected to land there in the next few months.

United Arab Emirates (UAE) spacecraft, Hope, is also orbiting the Mars planet. There are two spacecraft from the European Space Agency in the Martian orbit, the report said.

For information exchange cooperation with China, NASA had sought approval from the U.S. Congress and spoke to CNSA, the U.S. space agency confirmed on Monday, the Post report said.

Previously the U.S., Russia, EU besides India have succeeded in sending spacecraft to Mars regarded as the most complex space mission.

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Deep-sea secrets

Published in Molecular Biology and Evolution

How does the deep-sea clam (Archivesica marissinica) survive thousands of metres below sea level? Scientists collected these clams from a cold seep in the South China Sea and decoded its genome to understand its adaptations. They also studied a bacteria (Candidatus Vesicomyosocius marissinica) that lives in the epithelium cells of the clams. They noticed that symbiosis between these two helps the clam to thrive in deep-sea environments.

Pesticide menace

Published in Nature Geoscience

A study on 168 countries has revealed that 64% of the studied agricultural land was at risk of pesticide pollution. Watersheds in South Africa, China, India, Australia and Argentina were identified as “high-concern regions because they have high pesticide pollution risk, bear high biodiversity and suffer from water scarcity,” writes the team.

Mummified parrot tale

Published in PNAS

Twenty-seven mummified and skeletonised parrots from five archaeological sites in the Atacama Desert, now tell a story of capture and transport of at least five parrot species. Researchers write that macaws, amazons, and conures were kept as pets between 1000 and 1460 CE and their feathers were used for various ceremonies.

Algae analysis

Published in Nature Communications

"Being stuck at home was a blessing in disguise, as there were no experiments that could be done. We just had our computers and lots of time," says Professor Paul Curmi from UNSW Sydney in a release. By analysing several microscopy images of proteins, he was able to identify and reconstruct a key protein that helped evolution of cryptophyte algae billions of years ago. This find serves as a missing piece in the puzzle of the evolution of photosynthetic algae.

Catch a comet

Two papers published in Nature Communications

The comet 2I/Borisov was first discovered in August 2019 and was confirmed to have come from beyond the Solar System. Two papers published last week used high-resolution observations from different telescopes to study the comet and found that the comet most likely never passed close to any star other than our Sun. This means the comet is pristine and has a “composition very similar to that of the cloud of gas and dust it — and the rest of the Solar System — formed from some 4.5 billion years ago,” explains a release. Studying the comet can tell us more about the origin of our Solar System.

Scientists in Argentina have unearthed the well-preserved skull of a meat-eating dinosaur that roamed northern Patagonia about 85 million years ago — a beast with a short snout, keen hearing and stout bite strength that made it a daunting predator.

The dinosaur, named Llukalkan aliocranianus, measured roughly 16 feet (5 meters) long and was a member of a carnivorous group called abelisaurids that prospered in South America and other parts of Earth’s Southern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous Period, researchers said on Tuesday.

Llukalkan, meaning “one who causes fear” in the local native Mapuche language, may have competed directly against a cousin that was equally impressive and slightly larger. Only about 700 meters away from where Llukalkan’s fossilized skull was found, scientists previously had dug up the remains of another meat-eating dinosaur called Viavenator exxoni.

Both were abelisaurids, a group of two-legged predators with short skulls, sharp and serrated teeth, extremely short arms with tiny fingers and heads sometimes featuring unusual ridges and small horns. Abelisaurids generally were medium-sized compared to huge carnivorous dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived in North America approximately 15 million years after Llukalkan, and Giganotosaurus, which lived in Patagonia about 15 million years before Llukalkan.

“Yes, it is very unusual to find two abelisaurids that lived in the same locality and at approximately the same time,” said paleontologist Federico Gianechini of Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the National University of San Luis, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“Llukalkan was a little smaller than Viavenator, although, if they lived together, they surely shared the same ecological niche and fed on the same prey, so they would have competed with each other and — why not — even eaten each other,” Gianechini added. “Today, predators of different species but from the same family co-exist in the same ecosystem, such as lions, leopards and cheetahs.”

Llukalkan’s skull measured about 50 cm long. A large percentage of the cranial bones were found, including a nicely preserved braincase.

“A peculiarity of this dinosaur is that it has cavities in the ear area that other abelisaurids did not have, which could have given this species different auditory capacities, possibly a greater hearing range,” Gianechini said. “The good preservation allowed us to make studies of the internal part of the braincase through tomography and thus infer the shape of the brain.”

Llukalkan had a powerful bite, based on the musculature of its jaws, and its teeth could tear flesh from its prey. Unlike some abelisaurids, its skull was not bumpy.

No bones from the rest of its body were found, though the researchers have a good idea of its body plan based on other abelisaurids. They estimate Llukalkan weighed between one and five tons.

Patagonia has produced important dinosaur finds in recent decades. Llukalkan’s discovery allows for a deeper understanding of northern Patagonia’s ecosystems during the Cretaceous, the final chapter of the dinosaur age. Llukalkan inhabited a semi-arid environment with a seasonal climate, hunting a variety of plant-eating dinosaurs.

Whew, now here's some good cosmic news: NASA has given Earth the all clear for the next century from a particularly menacing asteroid.

The space agency announced this week that new telescope observations have ruled out any chance of Apophis smacking Earth in 2068.

That’s the same 1,100-foot (340-meter) space rock that was supposed to come frighteningly close in 2029 and again in 2036. NASA ruled out any chance of a strike during those two close approaches a while ago. But a potential 2068 collision still loomed.

First detected in 2004, Apophis is now officially off NASA's asteroid “risk list.”

“A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility anymore, and our calculations don’t show any impact risk for at least the next 100 years,” Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, said in a statement Friday.

Scientists were able to refine Apophis' orbit around the sun thanks to radar observations earlier this month, when the asteroid passed within 17 million kilometers.

Apophis will come within 32,000 kilometers on April 13, 2029, enabling astronomers to get a good look.

“When I started working with asteroids after college, Apophis was the poster child for hazardous asteroids,” Farnocchia said. “There’s a certain sense of satisfaction to see it removed from the risk list."

Squids adeptly change the colour and patterns on their skin for camouflage and communication. Like their cephalopod cousins the octopus and cuttlefish, Squids have specialised pigment-filled cells called chromatophores that expand to expose them to light, resulting in various shades of pigmentary colour. Squids shimmer and flicker, reflecting different colours and breaking light over their skin. Researchers have found that proteins called reflectins are responsible for their iridescence. Now, researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, have found (Applied Physics Letters) what allows squids to tune the reflected light.

Daniel Morse’s team from the University had already found that structures (subwavelength-wide grooves) and mechanisms by which light-reflecting cells (iridocytes) in the skin can take on virtually every colour of the rainbow.

The grooves are formed by a cell membrane that folds into nanoscale accordion-like structures called lamellae. The colour reflected depends on the width of the groove, which corresponds to certain light wavelengths (colours).

The width of the grooves can be changed – widened or narrowed – at will by the action of “osmotic motor” driven by reflectin proteins. The researchers then found that the reflectin proteins can not only tune the colour but can also tune the brightness using the same mechanism.

Reflectins are normally very strongly positively charged and so they repel each other. But neural signal causes the reflectins to bind to negatively charged phosphate groups that neutralize their positive charge. Without the repulsion they fold and attract each other, accumulating into fewer, larger aggregations in the lamellae.

Aggregations of the reflectins exert osmotic pressure on the lamellae causing water release from the cells. The release of water in turn collapses the accordion so the thickness in spacing between the folds gets reduced. This causes the light that is reflected to shift progressively from red to green to blue, says a release. At the same time, the membrane's collapse also concentrates the reflectins, causing an increase in their refractive index, amplifying brightness.

Two new species of seaweed have been discovered by a group of marine biologists from Central University of Punjab, Bathinda. Named Hypnea indica (after India) and Hypnea bullata (because of the blisterlike marks on its body – bullate), the seaweeds are part of the genus Hypnea or red seaweeds.

They grow in the intertidal regions of the coast, namely the area that is submerged during the high tide and exposed during low tides. The discovery was recorded in the journal Botanica Marina.

Adding to the number

The genus Hypnea consists of calcareous, erect, branched red seaweeds. “There are 61 species of which 10 were reported in India. With our two new species, the total number of species now would be 63,” says Felix Bast, from the Department of Botany, in the University, who led the research.

While Hypnea indica was discovered Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, and Somnath Pathan and Sivrajpur in Gujarat, Hypnea bullata was discovered from Kanyakumari and Diu island of Daman and Diu.

To rule out the possibility that the species had been around earlier, but that now had been documented, the researchers compared characteristics of these specimens with all the 61 currently accepted species of Hypnea one by one.

“Comparison not only included morphology, but also DNA sequences. Such a polyphasic approach combining morphology (traditional) with DNA sequencing (modern) is the gold standard in species discoveries in taxonomy these days,” says Dr. Bast.

Chance discovery

The researchers were on a routine survey and collected a large number of species. “Our heuristics involve making a checklist of obviously known species (by carefully examining the morphology) and shortlisting unique specimens that do not conform to existing species descriptions. Such unique specimens would be subjected to DNA barcoding to check homology with other sequences worldwide (to reduce the costs).” Dr. Bast explains.

Food industry

Species of Hypnea contain the biomolecule carrageenan, which is widely used in the food industry.

As the two species have been found on the west and south east coasts of India, it suggests good prospects for their cultivation which can be put to good use economically.

The study also reports one other species of Hypnea for the first time in Indian coasts, Hypnea nidifica.

The extensive calcareous deposits on the body that has been observed also provides room for thought. Several recent studies have shown that algae with calcareous mineral deposits are prone for the damage from ocean acidification – an aftermath of climate change.

As carbon dioxide in the atmosphere gets dissolved in ocean waters, the seawater becomes more acidic. Algae like Hypnea cannot survive in acidic seawater, hence, the only way to help these species is to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by adopting sustainable lifestyle choices.

While all COVID-19 vaccines administered through the intramuscular route have been found to reduce the chances of symptomatic disease and death, attempts are being made to develop vaccines that can potentially prevent or at least greatly reduce the chances of being infected and also stop the spread of the virus. Such vaccines are typically administered at the site of infection, and the most efforts are at developing vaccines that can be administered intranasally either as drops or as a spray.

Developed by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the vaccine has been licensed to Bharat Biotech to carry out human clinical trials, manufacture the vaccine and distribute them in all countries except the U.S., Japan and Europe. Bharat Biotech has already begun the phase-1 clinical trials at four sites in India – Hyderabad, Nagpur, Patna and Chennai.

Clinical trial

According to details posted on the U.S. clinical trial registry, the vaccine will be tested on 175 participants as single and double doses in the phase-1 trial. There will be three arms – single dose, double dose and placebo. There will be 70 participants each who will get a single dose and double dose (day 0 and 28), and the placebo arm will have 35 participants.

Much like the Oxford vaccine, the intranasal vaccine has been developed using the vector-based platform and uses a chimpanzee adenovirus (Ad 36) to ferry the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 virus.

A single dose of the intranasal vaccine has been found to induce robust mucosal immunity, which prevents SARS-CoV-2 infection in the upper and lower respiratory tracts of mice when challenged with the virus a few weeks after vaccination. Robust humoral and cell-mediated immune responses were also seen. In the case of hamsters, a single dose of the vaccine provided “superior protection” of the nasal cavity and upper respiratory tract, which may confer protection against both infection and transmission. Even in the case of rhesus monkeys, a single intranasal dose of the vaccine induced neutralising antibodies and T cell responses and was found to limit or prevent infection in the upper and lower respiratory tract once challenged with the virus.

Even if the vaccine is unlikely to confer sterilising immunity, the local mucosal immunity is likely to reduce the possibility of infection and in all probability might prevent transmission. “Whether it confers sterilising immunity or not will become clear only during human trials. But it is more likely to reduce infection though the extent of reduction remains to be seen,” says immunologist Dr. Satyajit Rath, formerly with the National Institute of Immunology, Delhi and now a visiting faculty at IISER Pune.

“The intranasal vaccine is very unlikely to confer sterilising immunity. So far, only the HPV vaccine has been found to confer sterilising immunity,” says virologist Dr. Jacob John, formerly with CMC Vellore. “The vaccine may also not prevent infection but can surely reduce the speed of transmission.”

Duration of protection

While Dr. Rath is unsure how long the duration of protection conferred by local mucosal immunity might last and thinks that it might be the same as when the vaccine is administered through intramuscular route, Dr. John says the local mucosal immunity will be short-lived, perhaps for months to a year.

Dr. John also points out that for diseases where transmission is either by respiratory or faecal-oral route, vaccines administered through the intramuscular route have been equally effective in either preventing infection or disease onset. In contrast, the oral polio vaccine has to be administered repeatedly to confer continued protection.

A typical example is HPV, where sterilising immunity at the site of infection is achieved even though it is an intramuscular vaccine. “Even if one cell is infected, the process of chronic infection and malignancy continue. This is the only vaccine that prevents even one cell from getting infected, and it is due to sterilising immunity,” says Dr. John.

Case of measles

In the case of measles, which is highly contagious, a vaccinated child can get infected but may not suffer from disease. “Measles spreads only after disease sets in. Since the vaccinated child does not suffer from disease the child does not spread the virus through the nasal route,” he explains.

In the case of whooping cough, it’s the toxin and not the bacteria per se that causes disease. A child can get infected despite being vaccinated intramuscularly, but the vaccine-induced immunity reduces the chances of disease even when infected, says Dr. John.

In the case of diphtheria, where the infection will be sub-clinical, for the disease to get worse large-scale multiplication of the bacteria on the mucosal surface is needed, which is facilitated by the toxin. When the toxin is not effective due to the presence of toxin antibodies, the growth of the bacteria is compromised and disease onset is prevented.

The biggest advantage that intranasal vaccine offers is the ease of vaccine administration, particularly when the vaccine is administered as drops. There will be no need for trained health workers for intramuscular administration. Just like in the case of oral polio vaccination, the use of a cheap dropper to administer the vaccine to multiple people will make the vaccination drive easy, simple and cost-effective.

If any intranasal vaccine is found to be safe and highly efficacious even against variants, and if the vaccine is available in large quantities, the possibility of administering the vaccine to large populations within a short time to check the spread of the virus may be possible. Dr. John is even optimistic of eradicating the virus if the world comes together to administer an efficacious intranasal vaccine within a short time frame. “It all boils down to a design issue for eradication,” he says.

Once in a way, the world of physics is in a state of upheaval – experiments are carried out that reveal limitations to older, established theories, and new physics is born. In this manner, on March 23, a wave of excitement propagated through the particle physics community when researchers from the LHCb experiment at CERN, situated in the Franco-Swiss border, announced the results of their latest analysis of data.

Verge of discovery

While the findings were not sufficiently strong to be counted as a discovery, CERN scientists were excited enough to reveal that if the anomaly they had detected was confirmed, “It would require a new physical process, such as the existence of new fundamental particles or interactions.” Spokesperson for LHCb, Professor Chris Parkes from the University of Manchester and CERN qualified this by saying, “More studies on related processes are under way using the existing LHCb data. We will be excited to see if they strengthen the intriguing hints in the current results.”

What was this excitement all about? It is necessary to delve into the world of elementary particles to understand this.

Particle zoo

Broadly speaking, elementary particles are classified into the particles called baryons – which include protons, neutrons and their antiparticles the antiprotons etc. The “middle mass” particles, roughly speaking, are called the mesons and they include members such as the K and B particles.

You then have the leptons, which include the electron and its cousins the muon and tau particles and the anti-particles. At a still smaller scale, there are tiny particles called quarks and gluons. There are six flavours of quarks: up, down, truth, beauty, charm and strange. They too have antiquarks associated with them.

In this particle zoo, while the baryons are made up of combinations of three quarks, the mesons contain two quarks, more accurately a quark and antiquark pair, and the leptons are truly fundamental and are thought to be indivisible.

Until now it is believed that the electron, muon and tauon and their antiparticles, though they differ in mass, behave similarly in particle interactions.

Colliding particle beams

By interactions here, is meant the following: If a huge particle accelerator such as the LHC were to accelerate beams of hadrons (such as protons) to very high speeds, a fraction of that of light, and then cause them to collide. Basically, smash through the repulsive nuclear forces and shatter them, the hadrons would break up into constituents which would recombine to form short-lived particles, which would decay into stabler states. Roughly speaking, during this process, they are imaged in a huge multistorey detector and the number of specific processes and particles are counted.

One such process that was measured was the decay of a meson B (which contained the beauty quark) into K-meson (which contains the strange quark) and a muon-antimuon pair, and this was compared with the decay of B into K and an electron-antielectron pair.

The expectation is that the ratio of the strengths of these two sets of interactions would be just one. This is because the muons are not essentially different from the electrons as per the Standard Model, the presently accepted theoretical model of all elementary particle interactions. This is called the lepton universality principle.

Anomaly or fluke?

However, what the LHCb has seen is that the ratio is not 1, but it is approximately 0.846. However, the discrepancy is only at the level of 3.1 sigma, which is a measure of the chances that it might be due to a fluke. Scientists have agreed that in order to declare something a discovery, it should have a significance of 5 sigma or more (which is a much lower chance of a fluke).

Commenting on what would happen if, with analysis of more data, this significance was found to increase, Prof. Rahul Sinha of The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, says, “The standard model will no longer be a complete description of particles and their interactions. It assumes as a starting point that electron, muon and tau interactions are universal and hence of the same strength.”

Prof. Rahul Sinha and collaborators have worked on these so-called flavour-changing neutral current penguin decays since the mid 1990s. “These interactions are highly suppressed in the standard model, and they were understood to be important even in the late 1970s,” he says.

According to Prof. Sinha, “It was realised by mid-1990s that they are small but not vanishingly small because of the very heavy top quark… In 1996, we realised that the decay b (quark) to s (quark) and lepton-antilepton pair can result in many observables because of the rich kinematics. Hence, we realised that this was great mode to look for new physics. It took several more years before they were observed.”

Scientists have assessed the course of evolution of seasonal human coronaviruses (HCoV) and predicted that COVID-19 vaccines currently in use across the world may need regular updates to counter new variants of the virus which are capable of escaping the body's protective antibodies.

The results were published in the journal Virus Evolution.

In the research, virologists from Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany studied the genetic evolution of the four currently known 'common cold' coronaviruses, particularly the two longest-known viruses, HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43. They traced changes in the spike protein of the these coronaviruses, which enable them to enter host cells, approximately 40 years into the past.

Based on the analysis, the scientists found one feature which was common to both the coronaviruses and the influenza virus — all three had a pronounced ladder-like shape in their evolutionary paths.

"An asymmetrical tree of this kind likely results from the repeated replacement of one circulating virus variant by another which carried a fitness advantage," explained the study's first author, Wendy K. Jo.

According to Jo, this is evidence of 'antigenic drift', a continuous process involving changes to surface structures which enable viruses to evade the human immune response. "It means that these endemic coronaviruses also evade the immune system, just like the influenza virus. However, one also has to look at the speed with which this evolutionary adaptation happens," she added.

The scientists said the novel coronavirus genome is currently estimated to change at a rate of approximately 10 mutations per 10,000 base molecules per year, meaning the speed at which it evolves is substantially higher than that of the endemic coronaviruses.

p align='justify' > "This rapid genetic change in SARS-CoV-2 is reflected in the emergence of numerous virus variants across the globe," explained study co-author Jan Felix Drexler. "This, however, is likely due to the high rates of infection seen during the pandemic. When infection numbers are so high, a virus is able to evolve more rapidly," Drexler added.

Based on the rates of evolution seen in the endemic common cold coronaviruses, the scientists believe SARS-CoV-2 will start to change more slowly once infections start to die down.

"Once a large proportion of the global population has developed immunity either as a result of infection or through vaccination. We expect therefore that COVID-19 vaccines will need to be monitored regularly throughout the pandemic and updated where necessary," Drexler explained.

According to the virologists, vaccines are likely to remain effective for longer once the pandemic reaches this stable situation.

Ultra-fine plastic particles can become 'hubs' for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pathogens to grow once they wash down household drains and enter wastewater treatment plants, a new study says.

According to the scientists, including those from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in the U.S., these plastic particles less than five millimeters in length, called microplastics, allow the formation of a slimy layer, or biofilm, on their surface which allows bacteria and antibiotic waste to attach and mingle.

The research, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters, noted that certain strains of bacteria have elevated antibiotic resistance by up to 30 times when living on microplastic biofilms that form inside sludge units at municipal wastewater treatment plants.

"A number of recent studies have focused on the negative impacts that millions of tons of microplastic waste a year is having on our freshwater and ocean environments, but until now the role of microplastics in our towns’ and cities’ wastewater treatment processes has largely been unknown," said study co-author Mengyan Li from NJIT. "These wastewater treatment plants can be hotspots where various chemicals, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pathogens converge and what our study shows is that microplastics can serve as their carriers, posing imminent risks to aquatic biota and human health if they bypass the water treatment process."

In the study, the scientists assessed batches of sludge samples from three domestic wastewater treatment plants in New Jersey, U.S., inoculating the samples in the lab with two widespread commercial microplastics — polyethylene and polystyrene.

They then identified the species of bacteria that tend to grow on the microplastics, tracking genetic changes of the bacteria along the way.

The researchers found that three genes in particular — sul1, sul2 and intI1— known to aid resistance to common antibiotics, sulfonamides, were found to be up to 30 times greater on the microplastic biofilms than in the lab's control tests using sand biofilms after just three days.

When the scientists added the antibiotic, sulfamethoxazole, to these samples they found it further amplified the antibiotic resistance genes by up to 4.5-fold.

"Previously, we thought the presence of antibiotics would be necessary to enhance antibiotic-resistance genes in these microplastic-associated bacteria, but it seems microplastics can naturally allow for uptake of these resistance genes on their own," said Dung Ngoc Pham, another co-author of the study from NJIT. "The presence of antibiotics does have a significant multiplier effect however."

Of the eight different bacterial species that the scientists found growing on the microplastics, they found two emerging human pathogens typically linked with respiratory infection.

"We might think of microplastics as tiny beads, but they provide an enormous surface area for microbes to reside," Li said.

According to the researchers, when microplastics enter the wastewater treatment plant and mix in with sludge, bacteria can accidentally attach to the surface and secrete glue-like substances.

"As other bacteria attach to the surface and grow, they can even swap DNA with each other. This is how the antibiotic resistance genes are being spread among the community," Li explained.

The scientists said further studies are needed to better understand the extent to which such pathogen-carrying microplastics may be bypassing water treatment processes.

The octopus is an extraordinary creature — and not only because of its eight limbs, three hearts, blue blood, ink squirting, camouflage capacity and the tragic fact that it dies after mating.

A study by researchers in Brazil published on Thursday shows that this animal, already considered perhaps the smartest invertebrate, experiences two major alternating sleep states eerily similar to those in humans — and it even might dream.

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The findings, the researchers said, provide fresh evidence that the octopus possesses a complex and sophisticated neurobiology that underlies an equally sophisticated behavioral repertoire, while also offering broader insight into the evolution of sleep, a crucial biological function.

Octopuses previously were known to experience sleep and change colours while slumbering. In the new study, the researchers observed a species called Octopus insularis in a laboratory setting. They found that these colour changes are associated with two distinct sleep states: "quiet sleep" and "active sleep."

During "quiet sleep," the octopus remains still, with pale skin and eye pupils contracted to a slit. During "active sleep," it dynamically changes its skin colour and texture and moves both eyes while contracting its suckers and body, with muscular twitches.

A repeating cycle was observed during sleep. "Quiet sleep" typically lasted roughly seven minutes. The subsequent "active sleep" typically lasted less than a minute.

This cycle appears analogous, the researchers said, to the alternating "rapid eye movement," or REM, and "non-rapid eye movement," or non-REM, sleep states experienced by people, as well as other mammals, birds and reptiles.

Vivid dreaming occurs during REM sleep, as a person's eyes move rapidly, breathing becomes irregular, the heart rate increases and the muscles become paralysed to not act out the dreams. Non-REM sleep features more deep sleep and less dreaming.

Study lead author Sylvia Medeiros said the findings suggest octopuses may be dreaming, or experiencing something similar. "If octopuses indeed dream, it is unlikely that they experience complex symbolic plots like we do," said Medeiros, a doctoral student in neuroscience at the Brain Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte.

"'Active sleep' in the octopus has a very short duration, typically from a few seconds to one minute. If during this state there is any dreaming going on, it should be more like small video clips, or even GIFs," Medeiros added.

Scientists are seeking a greater understanding of the origins and evolution of sleep.

Because the last common ancestor of vertebrates, including humans, and cephalopods, including octopuses, lived more than half a billion years ago, it seems unlikely their similar sleep patterns were established before their evolutionary divergence, the researchers said.

That would mean, they added, that this similar sleep pattern arose independently in the two groups, a phenomenon called "convergent evolution."

"The investigation of sleep and dreaming in the octopus gives us a vantage point for the psychological and neurobiological comparison with vertebrates, since the octopus possesses several sophisticated cognitive features that are only seen in some vertebrate species but with a very different brain architecture," said study co-author Sidarta Ribeiro, founder of the Brain Institute.

Ribeiro noted that previous studies showed that octopuses, with the most centralised nervous system of any invertebrate, possess exceptional learning abilities, including spatial and social learning, as well as problem-solving capabilities.

"The understanding of how organisms as different as humans and octopuses can share fundamental traits such as the sleep cycle opens new avenues for the investigation of animal cognition and for the understanding of the general principles that shaped brain design in these groups of highly intelligent animals," Medeiros said.

Published in Neuron

What is happening inside your brain as you are reading this? Which areas and which neurons are active? A less-invasive technology called functional ultrasound has now shown the ability to map brain activity even from regions deep within the brain. It produces detailed images of the neural signals that could not be seen with other non-invasive techniques like fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging).

The giraffe puzzle

Published in Science Advances

The tallest land animal has kept biologists busy for years as they struggled to decode its peculiar anatomy and evolutionary adaptations. Now a study of the giraffe’s whole genome has shown that a particular gene known as FGFRL1 may be responsible for its unique features. The team writes that this gene has undergone many changes in the giraffe compared to other animals.

Penguin blood study

Published in PNAS

Penguins are known to contain more haemoglobin in their blood compared to other land-dwelling birds. A new study that looked at ancient and modern penguins found that the haemoglobin evolved such that it can increase the pick-up and drop-off of available oxygen. This is vital for the bird as it has to spend more than 30 minutes holding its breath while hunting.

New basalt from the ocean

Published in Nature Communications

The ocean floor of Amami Sankaku Basin near Japan has yielded a new type of rock. Studies on samples collected from 1.5 km into the ocean floor showed a new type of basalt that had a different mineral composition compared to those found so far on Earth and Mars. The team says that it may be created during volcanic eruptions.

Denisovan DNA

Published in Nature Ecology and Evolution

By studying the genomes of over 400 modern humans and ancient human cousins, researchers have now noted that two cousin species, Homo luzonensis and Homo floresiensis, were present in Island SouthEast Asia when modern humans arrived. Island Southeast Asia includes Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei, and the new nation of East Timor. Further studies revealed that there were no interbreeding events.

The team also found DNA evidence for our mysterious ancient cousins called Denisovans from the region. These findings could tell us more about human evolution and migration across the globe.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX will be landing its Starship rockets on Mars well before 2030, the billionaire entrepreneur said in a tweet on Tuesday.

The private space company had raised about $850 million in equity financing in February even as a prototype of its Starship rocket exploded during a landing attempt after a high-altitude test launch.

The SN9 prototype was a test model of the heavy-lift rocket being developed by SpaceX to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.

Musk, who leads several futuristic companies, including Tesla Inc, Neuralink and Boring Co, said on Tuesday the “really hard threshold is making Mars Base Alpha self-sustaining.”

A first orbital flight is planned for year’s end. Musk has said that he intends to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon with the Starship in 2023.

The four cosmonauts shortlisted for Gaganyaan, India's first manned space mission, have completed their training in Russia, according to an official Russian statement here on Tuesday.

The ₹10,000-crore ambitious project is expected to be launched in 2022, the year of the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence.

The Four Indian Air Force fighter pilots are likely to be potential candidates for the Gaganyaan project.

Dmitry Rogozin, General Director of the State Corporation Roscosmos, on Thursday held a meeting with Indian cosmonaut candidates who successfully completed general space training, the agency said in a statement.

The meeting was also attended by the Ambassador of India to Russia, D.B. Venkatesh Varma and representatives of subsidiaries of the State Corporation Roscosmos, who took part in the training of Indian candidates for astronauts.

The contract for the training of Indian candidates for space flight between the Glavkosmos company (part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) and the Manned Space Flight Center of the Indian Space Research Organisation was signed on June 27, 2019.

Cosmonaut Training Center named after Yuri Gagarin on February 10, 2020 began the planned training of Indian cosmonaut candidates.

The training was paused in the end of March due to the outbreak of COVID-19 infection. It was later resumed in May.

The entire process of preparation and training included a number of elements necessary for future cosmonauts, such as medical and physical training, studying the Russian language, studying the design, layout and systems of the Soyuz transport manned spacecraft.

Russia on Monday put 38 foreign satellites into orbit after a succesful launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan following delays due to technical issues.

Video published by the Russian space agency Roscosmos showed its Soyuz rocket launching against grey and cloudy skies at 0607 GMT.

"The Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with the Fregat upper stage and 38 spacecraft from 18 countries took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome," Roscosmos said on its Twitter account.

Later Monday, Roscosmos said in a statement that the rocket had successfully placed into orbit the 38 satellites from more than a dozen countries, including South Korea, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy and Brazil.

Among them was the Challenge-1, the first satellite made completely in Tunisia, which was created by the Telnet telecommunications group.

The launch was twice postponed from Saturday after a surge in voltage was detected.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian space sector has lagged behind international competitors, plagued by corruption scandals and technological stagnation.

In 2018, a Soyuz rocket carrying a Russian cosmonaut and a NASA astronaut failed mid-flight, forcing the crew to carry out an emergency landing. Both survived without injuries.

At least one in three patients hospitalised with COVID-19 suffer long-term health issues including multiple organ problems and deteriorated mental health, according to a review of studies looking at the lasting impact of the disease.

Published in the journal Nature Medicine on Monday, the review looked at the frequency of symptoms among COVID-19 "long-haulers", the most common of which include fatigue, shortness of breath, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Authors of the research said the data pointed to an underappreciated health emergency that governments needed to study more closely and find ways to manage.

"Given the millions of people infected by SARS-CoV-2 globally, the long-term cost on physical, cognitive and mental aspects of health still remain to be seen," lead author Kartik Sehgal, a medical oncologist at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told AFP. "We may be capturing only the tip of the iceberg."

While severe COVID-19 infects patients' lungs — leaving many with long term breathing issues — studies have shown that the virus also attacks other organs, leading to a variety of complications including cardiovascular illness and chronic inflammation.

Sehgal and colleagues reviewed nine long-term studies from Europe, the United States and China and found that several patients reported multiple organ problems months after they were discharged from hospital.

Overall, they found that 30% of patients studied reported at least one symptom, such as fatigue, shortness of breath and psychiatric conditions.

One study in Italy of 143 patients found that nearly 90% reported lingering symptoms 60 days after they recovered from initial Covid-19 infection.

The most common symptoms were fatigue (53.1%), shortness of breath (43.4%), joint pain (27.3%) and chest pain (21.7%). In total, more than half of patients experienced multiple symptoms two months after leaving hospital.

Three studies from France, Britain and China showed that between 25-30% of patients reported sleep disturbances weeks after recovering from COVID-19.

And approximately 20% of patients had reported hair loss, according to results from multiple studies.

'Medical needs don't stop'

The results regarding mental health were perhaps equally concerning.

In a cohort of 402 survivors in Italy one month after they were hospitalised, 56% tested positive for at least one psychiatric condition such as PTSD, depression or anxiety.

The authors said that around 30% of patients had developed PTSD after being hospitalised with COVID-19.

"It is important to not forget about the mental health effects of long-COVID-19, while taking care of the physical symptoms, as they can be easily missed," said Sehgal, who is also an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

The researchers called for further investigation into long-COVID-19, and the wider establishment of clinics to treat people with lingering, life-altering symptoms.

Sehgal said he hoped the research showed that simply surviving COVID-19 is not necessarily a satisfactory health outcome.

"Although preventing deaths remains the most important goal, it is also important to recognise the multi-organ morbidity of COVID-19," he said. "The medical needs of patients with COVID-19 don't stop at the time of hospital discharge and they also don't necessarily stop after three to four weeks."

Over two weeks at sea, scientists spotted pilot whales and spinner dolphins, orcas and more. But not a single sperm whale had crested the choppy waters of the western Indian Ocean.

Then, an underwater microphone picked up a series of unmistakable clicks and squeaks. A large pod of the endangered whales was nearby. And from the sound of it, they were feeding.

The scientists are on a month long quest to document whales and other marine mammals living around the Mascarene Plateau, hoping to bolster arguments for protecting the remote 2,000-km underwater ridge to both fight climate change and protect ocean wildlife.

“We’re actually generating some of the first baseline data for this area on marine mega fauna, and that feels quite exciting,” said Exeter University biologist Kirsten Thompson, one of the scientists on the Greenpeace research expedition.

For sperm whales, the largest of the toothed whale species, “the only data from this area comes from the whaling days,” she said. The group of researchers hopes also to draw attention to the U.N. campaign aimed at persuading countries to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030.

The plateau is a conservation target partly for the world’s largest seagrass meadow carpeting its Saya de Malha Bank, which absorbs climate-warming carbon dioxide and provides a vast wildlife habitat. Whales, meanwhile, are also key to combating global warming. They release tonnes of iron a year in their faeces, which feeds CO2-absorbing phytoplankton.

The Mascarene research is timely. A March 17 paper in thejournal Nature maps out marine areas teeming with life as conservation targets, and suggests that guarding these zones from fishing, shipping, deep sea mining and other human interference would protect more than 80% of endangered marine species’ habitats.

It would also increase global fish catches by more than 8 million tonnes, according to the study. Most of the target areas are within territorial waters of over 100 countries around the world. But a few like the Mascarene are in international waters.

Protecting the Mascarene, which is larger than the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, would help safeguard fisheries more than 2,000 km (1,242 miles) away in East Africa,another group of researchers argued in a 2019 study in the journal Marine Policy.

“These protected areas do become a bit like savings accounts. It’s not just about protecting turtles and sequestering carbon,” said Douglas McCauley, a former fisherman who is now a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rising from the ocean depths, the Saya de Malha shelf provides a unique shallow habitat in the middle of the high seas, hosting an estimated 3,900 marine species from the square-nosed sperm whales to molluscs, analysis by McCauley and colleagues for a 2020 study in Marine Policy shows.

“Very little is known about the animals that live and feed here,” said marine biologist Tim Lewis, who is running the acoustic surveys on the Greenpeace voyage.

Finding the sperm whales is equivalent to finding much more, he said, “If there are sperm whales around, it means that they’re feeding on squid, and squid are feeding on plankton.”

Creating a global network of marine sanctuaries is not likely to be easy. For coastal waters, governments need to commit and prioritise areas with abundant marine life — those very same areas favoured by fishing interests.

Further out in the no-man’s land of the open ocean, creating a successful conservation area requires countries to give some authority to a central body for its management, said Kristina Gjerde, an advisor for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, who is involved with negotiations over a planned treaty to protect international waters.

“The big challenge is some of the fishing states - will they end up trying to water down the treaty so much that it won’t have the same scope or ambition?” said Ms. Gjerde, who did not name specific countries which may attempt to stymie those efforts.

The United Nations has been working to broker deals on protecting both international and territorial waters. But the coronavirus pandemic has frustrated both sets of negotiations, and has twice delayed the U.N. Biodiversity conference, now set for October in Kunming, China.

The United Nations has held interim discussions on the high seas treaty to help delegations better understand others’ negotiating positions as they wait for formal talks to resume in August.

Nevertheless advocates worry about the loss of momentum.

“There’s more time for certain industry interests to also mobilise” against the effort, said Liz Karan, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’s high seas conservation project.

But experts warn that ring fencing specific ocean areas for protection may not be enough. Underwater species are also being challenged by climate change warming the water and making it more acidic, with some fish species already shifting to new ranges to cope.

“I have a concern that we identify areas today that we think are important, and just draw a line around them, and then say: ‘okay, now everything’s fine’,” said Peter Tyack, a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Chances are, some species will move out of that range.

Back on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, the crew is still scanning the vast ocean horizon through binoculars for evidence of life, while also sampling water for future DNA testing to determine which species frequent the plateau.

Three days after the team eavesdropped on the sperm whales hunting squid, the ocean became glassy flat. Watchers on the bridge spotted a burst of spray — a sperm whale was ploughing through the sunlit waters. It raised its distinctive V-notched tail toward the sky before disappearing back into the depths.

Patrolling and anti-poaching activities in the tiger reserves contiguous to Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu will be intensified with greater coordination among Forest Department personnel in these areas.

This was decided at a meeting involving senior officials and field staff drawn from Bandipur, Nagarahole, BRT, Mudumalai, Sathyamangalam, and Wayanad tiger reserves besides representatives from the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary in Chamarajanagar and held at Bandipur last week.

The outcome of the meeting is significant as it entails greater protection to what is recognised to be the world’s largest tiger habitat that spans across the three States and supports nearly 700 tigers in the wild.

Intelligence gathering mechanism will be stepped up and the information shared among the field staff for greater efficacy in curbing poaching and other illegal activities in the region.

With greater coordination and information sharing, anti-poaching activities will receive a thrust and be more effective. In the past, poachers used to strike in one area of a State and slip away into an other area, taking advantage of lack of coordination among the forest staff. It has been decided to intensify joint patrolling operations along the forest boundaries that span the three States.

Bandipur in Karnataka shares boundary with Mudumali in Tamil Nadu while Nagarahole shares borders with Wayanad in Kerala. The Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary abuts the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve and it was in this part of the landscape (Cauvery–Sathyamangalam) where poachers had a free run owing to lack of patrolling.

The meeting also decided to conduct a special operation or a drive entailing the staff of the three States and crack down on smugglers of wildlife derivatives and poachers suspected to be operating in these regions and strengthen protection to forests and wildlife. This will entail confiscation of unlicensed weapons and it was resolved in the meeting to crack down and seize such weapons, including guns without licence, in possession of people living in the villages bordering the forest region spanning across the three States.

S.R. Natesh, Director, Bandipur Tiger Reserve, said a meeting of senior officers would be held once in two months at the tri-junction — where the borders of Bandipur, Nagarahole, and Wayanad meet — to review their activities and progress. Besides, field staff of the three States where the forests are contiguous would support each other in firefighting operations, he added.

Vijai Kumar Gogi, PCCF (Wildlife), Karnataka; N.S. Murali, IG Forests, NTCA (South); Nihar Ranjan, Chief Conservator of Forests, Satyamangalam; K.K. Koushal, Field Director, Project Tiger, Mudumalai; Manoj Kumar, Chief Conservator of Forests, Chamarajanagar Circle; officers and other fields staff of the three States attended the meeting.

India needs to strive towards mastering reusable rocket technology, give thrust to global marketing and learn from SpaceX founder Elon Musk's business model to tap full potential in the space field, eminent space scientist G. Madhavan Nair has advocated.

The former Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said there is a vast scope to launch foreign satellites and also provide space-related services in the global market.

"We (India) have basic technology, capability to launch earth observation and communication platforms. But we have missed the opportunity in global marketing," Nair told PTI.

India offers satellite launch services at 30% to 40% lower costs compared to international prices, according to him.

"Naturally, there is a good potential for capturing more and more of launches from countries which have no such capability", he said. "So, there one has to go aggressively and get that market share".

He said Musk has revolutionised space technology by going in for reusable launch vehicle system.

"In fact, India has been talking about it (reusable launch vehicle) for the last 15-20 years, but we have not made headway into it", Nair said. "Unless we go for recoverable and reusable launch systems, we cannot reduce the (space transportation) cost. That's one area which needs a thrust".

India cannot be complacent in the field of space, where technology is changing very fast — in earth observation and communication systems and launch services, he said. Lot of innovations and concepts are emerging and India needs to keep abreast of them. "If we don't use these opportunities, we will lag behind. Living on past glory is not going to help us," he added.

Communication areas such as higher band and digital connectivity needs lot of technology development in which India is somehow not able to pump in resources, he said.

Nair praised Musk for his leadership, vision and innovative management techniques and said India can learn from his business strategy. He said Musk's life-story reminds him about his early professional days when Vikram Sarabhai, regarded as the father of the Indian space programme, used to dream big and motivate youngsters to put in extra efforts to reach the goal.

"But today that type of scenario is not there and more of a bureaucratic control is coming in", Nair said.

On reforms in the space sector initiated by the Government in June last year, he expressed the view it's no more than reconfiguring of ISRO structure. "Somehow, people get carried away by so-called commercialisation, forgetting the research and development part of it", Nair added.

The largest asteroid to pass by Earth this year will swing closest on Sunday, giving astronomers a rare chance for a good look at a space rock that formed at the dawn of our solar system.

While in astronomical terms this marks a close encounter with the asteroid — called 2001 FO32 — NASA says there is no threat of a collision with our planet "now or for centuries to come".

The nearest it will get will be two million kilometres away, according to the U.S. space agency.

That is roughly 5.25 times the distance of the Earth from the Moon but still close enough for 2001 FO32 to be classified as a "potentially hazardous asteroid."

"We know the orbital path of 2001 FO32 around the Sun very accurately," said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies.

NASA says 2001 FO32 will pass by at about 124,000 kilometres per hour faster than the speed at which most asteroids encounter Earth.

The asteroid is estimated to be about 900 metres (3,000 feet) in diameter and was discovered 20 years ago.

Astronomers are hoping to get a better understanding of the asteroid's size and a rough idea of its composition by studying light reflecting off its surface.

"When sunlight hits an asteroid's surface, minerals in the rock absorb some wavelengths while reflecting others," NASA said. "By studying the spectrum of light reflecting off the surface, astronomers can measure the chemical 'fingerprints' of the minerals on the surface of the asteroid."

The asteroid will be at its closest to Earth at around 1600 GMT on Sunday, according to the Paris Observatory, France's largest astronomy research centre. Amateur astronomers in some parts of the globe should be able to conduct their own observations. The asteroid will be brightest while it moves through southern skies, Chodas said.

"Amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and at low northern latitudes should be able to see this asteroid using moderate-size telescopes with apertures of at least eight inches in the nights leading up to closest approach, but they will probably need star charts to find it," he added.

NASA said more than 95% of near-Earth asteroids the size of 2001 FO32 or larger have been catalogued and none of them has any chance of impacting our planet over the next century.

NASA says the next time 2001 FO32 will be close to Earth will be 2052.

Sixty-six million years ago an asteroid roughly twice the diameter as Paris crashed into Earth and wiped out 75 percent of life on the planet.

Scientists have discovered a new species of ancient winged shark, which fed on plankton eons before the emergence of giant manta rays, according to new research published Thursday.

The species, Aquilolamna milarcae, which lived around 93 million years ago, was discovered in the north east of Mexico. The specimen in question measured around 1.65 metres in length and has a fin span of 1.9 metres.

Like modern-day rays, the species, nicknamed "eagle shark", had extremely long pectoral fins reminiscent of wings.

Authors of the study, published in the journal Science, said the "bizarre" creature probably swam very slowly and was unlikely to have been able to hunt for food.

"You could make the analogy of a glider... it wasn't at all adapted to swimming fast and following prey," said Roman Vullo, lead study author from France's National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of Rennes.

Coupled with a large head and no teeth found on the skeleton — suggesting they were very small or missing entirely — Vullo said "it was more a plankton eater than predator".

Until the discovery, scientists had only known of one category of large plankton feeders in the Cretaceous period, a group of large bony fish known as pachycormidae.

The eagle shark is now the second known plankton eating fish discovered from the last epoch when dinosaurs still stalked the Earth. Pachycormidae died out in the extinction event following the Chicxulub meteor strike 66 million years ago.

"Eagle sharks were little by little replaced by manta rays and devil rays, which developed at the beginning of the Tertiary period" after the extinction, Vullo told AFP.

The specimen in the study was found in 2012 in the Mexican region of Vallecillo, which is renowned for its well preserved fossils.

The launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket with 38 foreign satellites on board has been postponed until Monday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

The launch of satellites from more than half a dozen Asian, Arab and European countries, as well as Canada and Brazil, was originally scheduled for 0607 GMT on Saturday.

It was initally postponed until Sunday, but Roscosmos later said it would take place Monday.

Space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin said the launch was delayed after a surge in voltage was detected.

"Having heard reports from the work managers, the State Commission decided to conduct the launch on the morning of March 22, 2021," Roscosmos said in a later statement.

The rocket was due to place in orbit 38 satellites from 18 countries, including South Korea, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy and Brazil.

Among them are the Challenge-1, the first satellite made completely in Tunisia, which was created by the Telnet telecommunications group.

The hummingbird gets its name from the sound it makes when it hovers in front of flowers to feed. The humming sound is generated by the bird's wings.

A new study (published in eLife) noted that the wings beat rapidly at 40 beats per second. The hum originated from the pressure difference between the topside and underside of the wings.

Unlike other species of birds, the hummingbird’s wing was found to generate a strong upward aerodynamic force during both the upward and downward wing stroke. The researchers explained that most birds are relatively quiet because they generate most of the lift only once during the wingbeat at the downstroke. Hummingbirds and insects are noisier because they do so twice per wingbeat.

Using high-speed cameras and over 2,000 microphones, the team from the Netherlands, studied the hummingbirds drinking sugar water from a fake flower in a special chamber. They precisely recorded each wing-beat while the bird hovered in front of the flower and found that the wings generated sounds in a fashion similar to how insects do.

Understanding the hum of the hummingbirds may also help engineer new devices and also improve aircraft and drone rotors.

Bharat Biotech began the phase-3 trial of Covaxin on November 11, 2020 and completed the enrolment of all 25,800 volunteers on January 7, 2021. The last of the phase-3 trial participants received the second dose in the third week of February.

The company had planned to continue the phase-3 trial until 130 study participants developed the disease. The first and second interim analyses of phase-3 trial are planned to be conducted when 43 and 87 cases get reported. On March 3, Bharat Biotech announced the interim analysis of 43 cases; the vaccine was found to have an 80.6% point estimate of vaccine efficacy.

High efficacy

There are a fairly large number of participants in each group — 12,900 people in each arm — and as against 36 cases in the placebo group, there were just seven cases in the vaccine arm. “This is an unambiguous reflection of high vaccine efficacy, calculated as 80.6%. We will have to wait for the announcement of the 95% confidence range, but eyeball assessment is that it has to be fairly narrow on account of the huge denominator,” says virologist Dr. Jacob John, formerly with CMC Vellore.

The next interim analysis will be carried out when the total number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases reach 87. With the phase-3 trial beginning only on November 11, nearly two months after the pandemic had reached a peak in India, it took nearly four months for the first 43 cases to accrue.

“The total number of cases in the 25,800 study participants happened to be only 43 after nearly four months, which is a reflection of the relatively low prevalence of infection in the country during the trial period. The original expectation was that there would be 130 cases by end-February,” says Dr. John. “The epidemic in India peaked on September 16 and the trial started two months later. Hence, the lower-than-expected numbers are no surprise.”

Though an uptick in daily cases has been reported from 21 States, 10 States are witnessing a surge — Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Delhi and Tamil Nadu. Of these, the situation is particularly concerning in Maharashtra, Punjab, Chandigarh and Gujarat. The 39,687 cases reported on March 18 is higher than what was reported on November 29 last year (39,036 cases). “There is a sustained and steady increase in cases in these 10 States, making it clear that the second wave has set in,” says Dr. Rijo John, Health Economist and Consultant based in Kochi. The seven-day average of daily cases has more than doubled from 10,986 on February 8 to 29,334 on March 18, a 167% increase; the test positivity rate has doubled from 1.6 to 3.2% during the same period.

There is a good possibility that the spike in cases in a handful of States would get reflected in the infection/disease frequency in the trial sites and trial participants. Though Bharat Biotech has 25 trial sites spread across 11 States, there are no trial sites in Punjab, Chandigarh and Kerala, which is still reporting high numbers. The company has five trial sites in Maharashtra (two in Mumbai alone), two sites in Tamil Nadu (including one in Chennai), Karnataka (Bengaluru being one), and Haryana but just one trial site in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.

Impending surge

With daily cases increasing spiking in many States, Dr. Giridhara Babu, epidemiologist at PHFI, Bengaluru feels that many more States might witness a surge. How much the increase would be in each State would depend on numerous factors including daily testing rate, adherence to COVID-19 precautions and vaccination rate.

It would have probably taken four-six months for another 43 cases to accrue, but due to the spike currently seen in 10 States that endpoint would be reached earlier. According to reliable sources in Bharat Biotech, the company is expecting to reach 87 symptomatic cases end point earliest by April or latest by June. Dr. Babu thinks the final target of 130 cases too can be reached soon, considering the way the cases are spiking in many States.

Considering that recruitment and complete vaccination of all trial participants has been achieved, the drug regulator has to take a decision on the number of cases required for licensing. It could be either currently available cases, second endpoint of 87 cases or 130 cases as originally planned, for which the trial will have to continue for a longer time.

The challenge

The challenge will be in continuing the trial with the original number of participants when there is a surge in many States. Four priority groups are already eligible for vaccination. “It will be unethical to withhold information from participants about the priority groups that are eligible for vaccination. The participants falling in the priority groups can be requested to continue in the study for the successful completion of the trial but participants should be free to withdraw at any point of time,” says Dr. Anant Bhan, global health and bioethics researcher based in Bhopal. Besides healthcare workers, over 2,400 participants over 60 years and 4,500 people with comorbidities have been included in the trial.

“The vaccine was approved for restricted emergency use under a ‘clinical trial mode’ even when no efficacy data was available. When the first interim analysis of 43 cases showed nearly 81% efficacy, the ‘clinical trial mode’ was removed. Since the vaccine is already rolled out to the priority groups, efficacy data from 87 or 130 cases is only of academic interest. It doesn’t make any difference on the ground,” says virologist Dr. Shahid Jameel, Director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University. “It will be unethical to deny the vaccine to those participants in the placebo group who fall under any of the priority groups and thus eligible to receive the vaccine.”

Dr. Babu too feels it will be unethical to deny the vaccine to trial participants who are eligible to receive the vaccine, particularly when many States are reporting a spike in daily cases.

Second endpoint

Dr. V. Ravi, neurovirologist formerly with NIMHANS says the second wave has already begun in India. He therefore expects another 43 symptomatic cases among the trial participants to show up by end-April. “We should wait for the second endpoint — 87 cases — before unblinding the trial,” he says. “Waiting for 130 cases, especially when cases are surging in many States, will unnecessarily put the trial participants who have received a placebo at great risk. It is unethical.”

“For feeling confident about high vaccine efficacy (80.6%), the available data are sufficient, but whether DCGI will feel confident to license the vaccine or not is a call the drug regulator alone can make,” says Dr. Jacob John.

Helium is colourless, odourless, tasteless, inert and a noble gas. Yet, it finds many applications, mainly in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, in rockets and in nuclear reactors. India imports helium for its needs, and with the U.S. appearing set to cut off exports of helium since 2021, Indian industry stands to lose out heavily. What is the solution? Can India become self-reliant towards its needs of helium gas?

Indian monsoon 25 million years ago resembled present day Australia’s - The Hindu Detecting the unified call of black holes and stars - The Hindu India, Japan space agencies review cooperation - The Hindu What it takes for the conservation of whale sharks - The Hindu Warming oceans may cause sharks to be born smaller, exhausted and undernourished - The Hindu Best from science journals: Catnip as insect repellent - The Hindu Mars on Earth: Turkish lake may hold clues to ancient life on planet - The Hindu

Besides interim results of the double-blind, randomised, multi-centre, phase 2 trial, the publication also covered a 3-month follow-up of the phase 1 trial.

One of the two vaccines given emergency use authorisation by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), it is being used immunisation programmes launched underway mid-January. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among those who took the vaccine in the second phase of the immunisation programme on March 1.

The publication in the Lancet journal said the phase 2 trial to evaluate immunogenicity and safety of the vaccine was conducted in 380 healthy children and adults (aged 12–65 years) at nine hospitals in India. Two-intramuscular doses of the vaccine were administered four weeks apart.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has completed development of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capable of producing extremely high-resolution images for a joint earth observation satellite mission with the U.S. space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a joint collaboration for a dual-frequency L and S-band SAR for earth observation.

“NISAR will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band) to measure changes in our planet’s surface less than a centimetre across”, according to NASA.

NASA and Bengaluru-headquartered ISRO signed a partnership on September 30, 2014, to collaborate on and launch NISAR.

The mission is targeted to launch in early 2022 from ISRO’s Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district, about 100km north of Chennai.

NASA is providing the mission’s L-band SAR, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder and payload data subsystem.

ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band radar, the launch vehicle and associated launch services for the mission, whose goal is to make global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes using advanced radar imaging.

The S-band SAR payload of NISAR satellite mission was flagged off by the Secretary in the Department of Space and ISRO Chairman K Sivan on March 4 through virtual mode.

The payload has been shipped from ISRO’s Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre (SAC) to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Pasadena in the U.S. for integration with the latter’s L-band SAR payload, an ISRO statement said.

“NISAR would provide a means of disentangling highly spatial and temporally complex processes ranging from ecosystem disturbances to ice sheet collapses and natural hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides”, ISRO said.

NASA added that the mission will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces and ice masses, providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise and groundwater, and will support a host of other applications.

“NISAR will observe Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces globally with 12-day regularity on ascending and descending passes, sampling Earth on average every six days for a baseline three-year mission”, NASA said on the mission’s website.

“This allows the mission to observe a wide range of Earth processes, from the flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets to the dynamics of earthquakes and volcanoes”.

NISAR uses a sophisticated information-processing technique known as SAR to produce extremely high-resolution images. Radar penetrates clouds and darkness, enabling NISAR to collect data day and night in any weather.

“The instrument’s imaging swath the width of the strip of data collected along the length of the orbit track is greater than 150 miles (240km), which allows it to image the entire Earth in 12 days,” it was stated.

“Over the course of multiple orbits, the radar images will allow users to track changes in croplands and hazard sites, as well as to monitor ongoing crises such as volcanic eruptions. The images will be detailed enough to show local changes and broad enough to measure regional trends.”

“As the mission continues for years, the data will allow for better understanding of the causes and consequences of land surface changes, increasing our ability to manage resources and prepare for and cope with global change,” according to NASA.

“NASA requires a minimum of three years of global science operations with the L-band radar, and ISRO requires five years of operations with the S-band radar over specified target areas in India and the Southern Ocean”, it said.

For us, 365 days make up a year because Earth takes as many days to complete one orbit of the Sun. But have you ever wondered how many days make up a year on other planets?

What determines the length of a year?

The length of a year on any planet depends on where the planet is orbiting. Planets that are closer to the Sun than Earth will have fewer days in a year, while those rotating farther away will take many more days to make up a year. This is because of two reasons – planets that are closer to the Sun will take a shorter time to orbit it than those farther away, and the closer a planet orbits the Sun, the Sun’s gravity can pull on the planet, making the planet orbit faster.

Why should we care?

To send a spacecraft to another planet, we need to know where the planet is in orbit. This will help us plan and manoeuvre the spacecraft accordingly. Imagine not knowing where a planet is in orbit; we’d be looking all over the universe for that one planet!

How long each planet takes to orbit the Sun (in Earth days):

Mercury: 88 days

Venus: 225 days

Earth: 365 days

Mars: 687 days

Jupiter: 4,333 days

Saturn: 10,759 days

Uranus: 30,687 days

Neptune: 60,190 days

Neanderthal fossils from a cave in Belgium believed to belong to the last survivors of their species ever discovered in Europe are thousands of years older than once thought, a new study said Monday.

Previous radiocarbon dating of the remains from the Spy Cave yielded ages as recent as approximately 24,000 years ago, but the new testing pushes the clock back to between 44,200 to 40,600 years ago.

The research appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was carried out by a team from Belgium, Britain and Germany.

Co-lead author Thibaut Deviese from the University of Oxford and Aix-Marseille University told AFP he and colleagues had developed a more robust method to prepare samples, which was better able to exclude contaminants.

Having a firm idea of when our closest human relatives disappeared is considered a key first step toward understanding more about their nature and capabilities, as well as why they eventually went extinct while our own ancestors prospered.

The new method still relies on radiocarbon dating, long considered the gold standard of archeological dating, but refines the way specimens are collected.

All living things absorb carbon from the atmosphere and their food, including the radioactive form carbon-14, which decays over time.

Since plants and animals stop absorbing carbon-14 when they die, the amount that remains when they are dated tells us how long ago they lived.

When it comes to bones, scientists extract the part made up of collagen because it is organic.

"What we have done is to go one step further," said Deviese, since contamination from the burial environment or through glues used for museum work can spoil the sample.

Instead, the team looked for the building blocks of collagen, molecules called amino acids, and in particular selected specific single amino acids they could be sure were part of the collagen.

'Reliable framework'

The authors also dated Neanderthal specimens from two additional Belgian sites, Fonds-de-Foret and Engis, finding comparable ages.

"Dating all these Belgian specimens was very exciting as they played a major role in the understanding and the definition of Neanderthals," said co-lead author Gregory Abrams, of the Scladina Cave Archaeological Centre in Belgium. "Almost two centuries after the discovery of the Neanderthal child of Engis, we were able to provide a reliable age."

Genetic sequencing was meanwhile able to show that a Neanderthal shoulder bone previously dated at 28,000 years ago was heavily contaminated with bovine DNA, suggesting the bone had been preserved with a glue made from cattle bones.

"Dating is crucial in archaeology. Without a reliable framework of chronology we can't really be confident in understanding the relationships between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens," added co-author Tom Higham of the University of Oxford.

Certain stone tool use has been attributed to Neanderthals and has been interpreted as a sign of their cognitive evolution, said Deviese.

But if the timeline for Neanderthals' existence is being pushed back, Deviese added, then Paleolithic industries should be re-examined to determine if they really were the work of the extinct hominid species.

Some mutations in the novel coronavirus may not only enable it to evade antibodies, but also make the virus unrecognisable to the immune system's T-killer cells, says a new study which could aid in the further development of vaccines.

While antibodies dock directly onto viruses to neutralise them, the scientists, including those from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, said the T-killer cells recognise viral protein fragments on infected cells and subsequently kill them to stop virus production.

In the current study, published in the journal Cell Immunology, the researchers sequenced 750 genomes of the novel coronavirus from infected individuals and analysed mutations for their potential to alter T cell epitopes.

These are regions on the virus recognised by the body's T cells.

"Our results show that many mutations in SARS-CoV-2 are indeed capable of doing this," said study co-author Andreas Bergthaler. "With the help of bioinformatic and biochemical investigations as well as laboratory experiments with blood cells from COVID-19 patients, we were able to show that mutated viruses can no longer be recognized by T-killer cells in these regions."

According to the researchers, there are several epitopes available for recognition by T-killer cells in most natural infections, and if the virus mutates in one place, other sites on its surface may still indicate its presence to T cells.

They said the spike protein of the virus, which it uses to enter cells and against which most vaccines are targeted, has, on average, one to six of these T cell epitopes.

"If the virus mutates in one of these regions, the risk that the infected cells will not be recognized by the T-killer cells increases," explained Johannes Huppa, another co-author of the study.

"Especially for the further development of vaccines, we therefore have to keep a close eye on how the virus mutates and which mutations prevail globally. Currently, we see few indications that mutations in T killer cell epitopes are increasingly spreading," added Judith Aberle, another of the study's co-authors from the Medical University of Vienna.

The scientists believe the findings provide important insights on how the novel coronavirus interacts with the immune system.

"Furthermore, this knowledge helps to develop more effective vaccines with the potential to activate as many T-killer cells as possible via a variety of epitopes," the scientists said. "The goal is vaccines that trigger neutralizing antibody and T killer cell responses for the broadest possible protection."

India plans to launch on March 28 an earth observation satellite that will provide it near real-time images of its borders and also enable quick monitoring of natural disasters.

GISAT-1 is slated to be lofted into space by GSLV-F10 rocket from Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district, about 100 kms north of Chennai.

“We are looking to launch this Geo imaging satellite on March 28, subject to weather conditions”, an official of the Bengaluru-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told PTI on Sunday.

The rocket will place the spacecraft in a geosynchronous orbit. It will be subsequently positioned in geostationary orbit, about 36,000 kms above earth’s equator, using its onboard propulsion system.

The launch of GISAT-1 onboard GSLV-F10 rocket was originally planned for March 5 last year but postponed a day before the blast-off due to technical reasons.

Experts said positioning the state-of-the-art agile earth observation satellite in geostationary orbit has key advantages.

“It’s going to be a game-changer in some sense for India”, a Department of Space official said.

“With onboard high resolution cameras, the satellite will allow the country to monitor the Indian land mass and the oceans, particularly its borders continuously”.

Listing the objectives of the mission, ISRO has earlier said the satellite would provide near real-time imaging of the large area region of interest at frequent intervals.

It would help in quick monitoring of natural disasters, episodic and any short-term events.

The third objective is to obtain spectral signatures of agriculture, forestry, mineralogy, disaster warning, cloud properties, snow and glacier and oceanography.

GISAT-1 will facilitate near real-time observation of the Indian sub-continent, under cloud-free condition, at frequent intervals, ISRO said.

The planned launch of GISAT-1, weighing about 2,268 kg, comes close on the heels of the successful February 28 PSLV- C51 mission that orbited Brazil’s earth observation satellite Amazonia-1 and 18 co-passengers, including five built by students.

Secretary in the Department of Space and ISRO Chairman K Sivan told PTI last week that the technical issues that led to postponement of GISAT-1 mission have been resolved and the further delay in the launch was due to COVID-19-induced lockdown which affected normal work.

According to sources, GISAT-1 will be followed by the maiden flight of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, ISRO’s compact launcher, likely in April.

SSLV has been designed to meet “launch on demand” requirements in a cost-effective manner for small satellites in a dedicated and ride-share mode.

It is a three-stage all solid vehicle with a capability to launch up to 500 kg satellite mass into 500 km low earth orbit (LEO) and 300 kg into Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO).

By comparison, PSLV — the workhorse launch vehicle of ISRO — can take up to 1,750 kg payload into SSO of 600 km altitude.

With lower per kg launch cost, the mini launcher will have multiple satellite mounting options for nano, micro and small satellites.

Sivan had earlier termed the SSLV an innovative vehicle which can be assembled in just 72 hours.

“Instead of 60 days (for building a PSLV), it (SSLV) will be assembled in three days; instead of 600 people (needed to build a PSLV), it (SSLV) will be done by six people”, he had said.

Researchers from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru, have developed a small molecule that helps disrupt and reduce formation of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s Disease. The group is planning to take this molecule, which is a potential drug candidate, forward for clinical studies. The results of their study were published in the journal Advanced Therapeutics.

Alzheimer’s worldwide

The World Alzheimer Report 2015 which was an analysis of the prevalence, incidence, cost and trends in Alzheimer’s Disease documented the fact that in 2015, over 46 million people worldwide were living with dementia. The report estimated that this number would increase to more than 131.5 million by 2050. Alzheimer’s Disease is a progressive and irreversible disorder of the brain, which affects memory and thinking skills. One main feature of the disease is the deposition of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain.

Amyloid precursor proteins play a role in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease by producing the Amyloid-beta peptides of which in particular Amyloid Beta peptide 42 is particularly toxic in the formation of the amyloid plaques. This was targeted by the researchers, using the small molecule TGR63. Usually, in people, the symptoms start manifesting when they are in their sixties, though the onset is much earlier.

In research that spans the course of a decade, the group led by T Govindaraju of JNCASR selected six candidate molecules TGR60-65, all of which had the same core structure, and put them through in vitro tests to see whether these could check the growth of amyloid plaques and also dissolve preformed ones. “All the designed compounds were screened through in vitro and cellular assays.

The data from these experiments revealed superior activity of TGR63 and hence we took this molecule forward for animal studies,” says Prof. Govindaraju, who heads the Bioorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the institute.

Effect on mice

Mice are often used as model animals to study Alzheimer’s Disease. When genetically modified to show Alzheimer’s, the disease starts manifesting at about 4-5 months, by 8-10 months there are mild symptoms and by 12-14 months they reach advanced stage of disease as indicated by amyloid plaques and cognitive decline and loss of memory. The experiment involved using transgenic mice which had Alzheimer’s Disease induced in them. The animals were subjected to three behavioural tests to verify that TGR63 really did reduce the amyloid burden and, furthermore, was not toxic to the mice. In one of the tests, the animals were let to swim in relatively large pool of water. A small plank was placed in a specific spot and the mice learnt to swim towards to spot and save themselves by climbing on to the plank.

Later the mice were made to repeat the task, but the plank had now been removed. The behaviours of four categories of mice were observed – mice without Alzheimer’s, mice without Alzheimer’s which had been treated with TGR63, mice with Alzheimer’s which were treated with TGR63 and mice with Alzheimer’s which had not been treated with TGR63. In the above task, while the first three categories of mice swam back to the spot where they had learned to find the plank, the last category – mice with AD and no treatment – did not remember the way back.

Brain analysis

“Further, reduction of amyloid plaques was studied by brain analysis,” says Prof. Govindaraju. The ten-year-long research broadly evolved in five stages, according to him: design of the set of molecules; in vitro evaluation, in cellulo evaluation, computational study and in vivo evaluation and cognitive assessment.

“I am in discussion with pharma companies to take TGR63 to clinical studies,” says Prof. Govindaraju.

Using brain organoids – mini brains developed in a lab – built using stem cells, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers have been able to compare modern humans to other primates, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, which until now was not thought possible, particularly when the species is already extinct.

The researchers catalogued the differences between the genomes of diverse modern human populations and the Neanderthals and Denisovans, who lived during the Pleistocene Epoch, approximately 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. Mimicking an alteration they found in one gene, the researchers used stem cells to engineer ‘Neanderthalised’ brain organoids.

The team initially found 61 genes that differed between modern humans and our extinct relatives (Science). One of these altered genes – NOVA1 – caught the researchers’ attention because it is a master gene regulator, influencing many other genes during early brain development. The researchers used CRISPR gene editing to engineer modern human stem cells with the Neanderthal-like mutation in NOVA1. Then they coaxed the stem cells into forming brain cells and ultimately Neanderthalised brain organoids, says a University press release.

Neural network changes in Neanderthalised brain organoids parallel the way newborn non-human primates acquire new abilities more rapidly than human newborns.

From mid-February, a spike in daily new cases was reported from a few States including Maharashtra. For days on end, the Health Ministry kept repeating the message that Kerala too was “witnessing an upsurge of daily new cases”. Even as recently as March 6, the Health Ministry wrongly implicated Kerala for the surge in cases when it said “Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Karnataka continue to report a surge in the COVID-19 daily new cases.”

Kerala continues to contribute a high number of cases on a daily basis. However, there has not been any surge or spike in daily cases, as seen in other States. In reality, Kerala has been witnessing a steady decline in daily cases since end-January.

“From a second peak of 6,078 seven-day moving average of daily cases as on January 23, we have been seeing a steady decline in cases in Kerala. There has been a 50% decline in the seven-day moving average of daily cases from the fourth week of January to March 4,” says Dr. Rijo John, Health Economist and Consultant based in Kochi, Kerala. “The seven-day moving average of daily cases in Kerala as on March 4 was 2,996. The absolute number of daily cases on March 4 was 2,616.”

While other States have reduced the number of daily tests in recent months, Kerala has been continuing with the same number of daily tests. “The seven-day average daily tests conducted was over 60,000 when the test positivity rate was 15% during the peak in the first half of October last year. Now, even when the test positivity rate is under 5% seven-day average, the average testing has increased to 70,000 since the first week of February,” says Dr. John.

“Keeping daily testing at high levels even when daily cases are declining inspires more confidence that the decline in daily cases is real and is not due to reduced testing,” Dr. John adds. Maharashtra and Gujarat have not increased testing despite reporting more cases on a daily basis.

While the rest of the country witnessed a peak in mid-September when the daily fresh cases touched nearly 98,000 on September 16, Kerala witnessed a peak a month later in mid-October. Unlike other States that witnessed a steady decline in daily cases, there were a reduced number of daily cases in Kerala since mid-October, but the numbers continued to stay high and did not steadily decline to low levels.

First wave

“The first wave is yet to decline in Kerala. The daily cases have plateaued in the State for a long time and are now seeing a decline,” says Dr. Raman Gangakhedkar, former chief epidemiologist of ICMR who was a part of the national COVID-19 task force till he retired in June last year. “There has not been any resurgence of cases lately [in Kerala].”

According to Dr. Giridhara Babu, epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, Bengaluru, the decline in cases since late January could be due to high infection rate that is close to herd immunity needed for the decline to begin.

As on March 5, over 0.8 million people have been vaccinated in the State. “It is too early to say that vaccination could have contributed much to the decline. The number of people vaccinated is not large enough to have significantly contributed to the decline,” says Dr. Babu.

“If the seven-day average test positivity rate stays below 5% for a few weeks it indicates that the pandemic is under control,” says Dr. Gautam Menon, Professor of Physics and Biology at Ashoka University and co-author of COVID-19 modelling studies. Dr. Menon attributes the decline in daily cases to the long duration of background seroprevalence across the State, and so new infections are only expected to decline.

“The long plateauing of cases has ensured a good fraction of people have experienced an infection. In the circumstances, one can expect a decline in daily numbers across the State. But the only way to check this is through serosurvey,” Dr. Menon adds. “My guess is that about 40% of the population would have been infected. This is just my guess.” Based on anecdotal evidence, Dr. Menon says aggressive tracing and quarantining would have contributed to the decline in cases. “Unlike Kerala, other States have not been able to pick up a steady increase in cases in the rural areas,” he says.

Herd immunity?

Refuting the possibility of widespread infection in the population taking it close to herd immunity contributing to the decline in cases, Kerala Health Secretary Dr. Rajan N. Khobragade says that as per the third countrywide serosurvey conducted by the ICMR between December 17, 2020 and January 8, 2021, the seropositivity in the State was only about 11.5%. “So nearly 82% of the population in the State have not got infected,” Dr. Khobragade says.

Dr. Khobragade’s assertion of low seroprevalence in the State is supported by Dr. Anurag Agrawal, Director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), a CSIR lab in Delhi. “The second serosurvey carried out across CSIR labs found Kerala had the lowest seropositivity,” says Dr. Agrawal.

National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) envisions establishing large multidisciplinary universities to promote research directed to solve contemporary national problems, and provides the option of setting up clusters of higher education institutes. Cluster-based universities would increase faculty strength, both in terms of numbers and diversity of disciplines, and facilitate conduct of research on real life problems.

Mainstay of research

Doctoral students are the mainstay of research in universities. In many countries including India, universities also conduct off-campus doctoral programmes in research laboratories. The Indian Institute of Science pioneered a variant of off-campus programme called External Registration programme which enabled employees working in laboratories or industries to register for a doctoral programme under the supervision of its faculty and carry out a major part of research at their workplace. The external registration programme has now been adopted by more higher education Institutes. The topic of research taken upunder off-campus programmes is always of relevance to the workplace. One could go a step further and make workplaces pursuing knowledge-based work a part of a cluster-based university.

Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), Mumbai, established in 2005, by the Department of Atomic Energy, is a cluster-based university and I have had a long association with it. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California, U.S., is a federally funded research and development centre managed by California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The intellectual environment and identity of JPL are profoundly shaped by its role as a part of Caltech. A large laboratory, JPL has about 6,000 full time employees, and Caltech was placed eighth in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by Shanghai Rankings in 2020.

SOKENDAI (the Graduate University for Advanced Studies) established in Japan in 1988 and running only doctoral programmes, brings together several research institutions and museums such as the National Museum of Japanese History.

The Paris-Saclay University received its legal status in 2019, though it has been functioning as a “university system” since 2015. The university shares 275 laboratories with several research organisations, including CEA (Atomic Energy and Alternate Energies Commission), INSERM (French Institute of Health and Medical Research) and others. Though just accredited, Paris-Saclay university was placed fourteenth in ARWU by Shanghai Rankings in 2020. It is now one of the Europe’s biggest research universities.

Common objective

All countries have their unique legal framework for establishing universities, and therefore, while there are differences in the structure of HBNI, SOKENDAI, Paris-Saclay University, and Caltech, the objective is to benefit from synergies. It enables conducting academic research on focussed areas. It also enables pursuit of academic research and post-academic research in the same university, and results in faster deployment of results of research. Benefits can be seen from the growth and success of HBNI, which was ranked fourteenth a,pmg universities by NIRF-2020. Nature Index ranked HBNI at second position among all academic institutions in India during the period October 1, 2019 to 30 September 2020. Another example of a cluster-based university in India is the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research established in 2011. Nature Index has ranked it at eighth position in India.

Different concepts

India needs to earnestly pursue this model. Institutions for clustering in a university can be selected based on different concepts; some examples could be institutes managed by a Department or a Ministry or a Public Trust, institutes located in close proximity, institutes pursuing similar objectives etc. Many industry associations have established research centres and more could be encouraged to do.

I will like to add a note of caution as well. In a cluster-based university, the ‘rewards system’ has to recognise all aspects of talent and all knowledge-based output. One may recall the advice given by P. B. Medawar to young scientists that “technicians are colleagues in a collaborative research”, and “despite their paper degrees”, young scientists have a lot to learn about research. This advice is more important today when complexity of experimental facilities is growing, and need not only competent technicians, but highly competent engineers, called scientific officers in national laboratories, for their design, construction, safe operation and maintenance. Scientific officers have deep insights about research capabilities of facilities.

For moving away from single-discipline institutions to multi-disciplinary universities, clustering is a promising model to achieve a critical mass in a university to invigorate research.

(R. B. Grover is Emeritus professor, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, and Member, Atomic Energy Commission, Government of India..)

NASA's latest Mars rover, Perseverance, performed its first test drive on the Red Planet, covering a distance of about 6.5 metres across the Martian landscape, a "major milestone" before it begins its science operations.

The drive lasted about 33 minutes, propelling the rover forward by four metres, where it then turned to the left by 150 degrees and backed up 2.5 metres into its new temporary parking space, the American space agency noted in a statement.

According to NASA, the drive served as a mobility test to check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on the Perseverance rover, which it said is a major milestone before the science operations get underway.

Also read | Decoded: the secret message on Mars rover’s giant parachute

"When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive," said Anais Zarifian, the mobility test bed engineer of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

"This was our first chance to 'kick the tires' and take Perseverance out for a spin. The rover's six-wheel drive responded superbly. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years," Zarifian said.

Regular commutes of over 200 metres are expected once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life, NASA said.

As part of its mission, the rover would characterise the Red Planet's geology and past climate, and pave the way for human exploration of Mars.

It is also expected to be the first to collect and cache Martian rock and soil.

Also read | Perseverance rover's exciting work to happen in coming weeks: NASA's Vishnu Sridhar

Since its landing on Mars on February 18, the rover has undergone several routine checks, including a a software update, replacing the computer program that helped land Perseverance with one NASA will rely on to analyse the planet.

On March 2, NASA said its engineers unstowed the rover's 2-metre-long robotic arm for the first time, flexing each of its five joints over the course of two hours.

All the while, the space agency said the rover continues to send down images from Mars using the most advanced suite of cameras ever to travel to the Red Planet.

"Every picture from Perseverance is relayed by either the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter, or NASA's MAVEN, Mars Odyssey, or Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They are important partners in our explorations and our discoveries," said Justin Maki, chief engineer for imaging and the imaging scientist for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at JPL.

In 1926, a seventeenth-century trunk containing over 2000 unclaimed letters was bequeathed to the Dutch postal museum. The letters were closed using an ancient technique called letterlocking, in which the writing paper is intricately folded and secured to become its own envelopes. Now an international team of researchers has virtually unfolded and unlocked the contents of one of the letters and the findings were published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.

The team used a technique called X-ray microtomography. “The scanning technology is similar to medical CT scanners, but using much more intense X-rays which allow us to see the minute traces of metal in the ink used to write these letters,” explains one of the authors Dr. David Mills from the Queen Mary University of London in a release.

The team developed algorithms to virtually separate the different layers of the complicated folds in the letters.

“We were not interested in working on the project if the endgame was to tear open the unopened letters. The unopened letterpackets preserve invaluable letterlocking evidence,” explains lead author Jana Dambrogio in an email to The Hindu. She is from the Wunsch Conservation Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries, Cambridge, and has been studying the intricate details of letters for twenty years.

Content of the letter

The study revealed that the letter, dated July 31, 1697, was written in French by a legal professional named Jacques Sennacques, from Lille (a city in northern France), who requires a “legalised” death certificate for a relation, Daniel Le Pers.

“Jacques doesn’t say why he needs this document, but it’s clearly an urgent request as he reminds Pierre that he’s asked for it before. The letter is important because it shows that family members were able to communicate across borders thanks to an efficient postal system. It also sheds light on the worries of ordinary people – most letters we have are by the elites, but this mundane letter reveals the more day-to-day business of people at the time.” says one of the authors David van der Linden, from Radboud University (The Netherlands), in an email to The Hindu.

“This is a great example of the everyday business of a lawyer more than 300 years ago. The people whose lives are recorded in the trunk were ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances - often separated from their friends, families, and patrons for reasons of religious persecution, or simply the enduring need to make money. These letters poignantly capture their attempts to maintain vital human connections across vast and sometimes dangerous distances,” adds Dr. Jana Dambrogio.

The studied letter required at least eight folding and locking steps to transform the flat sheet of paper into a compact letterpacket. Dr. Dambrogio explains that there are hundreds of folding sequences in the collection and the virtual unfolding pipeline has helped study them

She says that the team is also interested in using this X-ray technique to study origami. “A challenge in origami is to accurately measure folded objects so that we can better understand if they truly ‘exist’ from a mathematical standpoint - if they can be folded without stretching the paper in any way. Another area of interest is to study important origami works whose designers have long since passed away and we have no record of how they were constructed,” she adds.

The third time appeared to be the charm for Elon Musk's Starship rocket - until it wasn't.

The latest heavy-duty launch vehicle prototype from SpaceX soared flawlessly into the sky in a high-altitude test blast-off on Wednesday from Boca Chica, Texas, then flew itself back to Earth to achieve the first upright landing for a Starship model.

But the triumph was short-lived. Listing slightly to one side as an automated fire-suppression system trained a stream of water on flames still burning at the base of the rocket, the spacecraft blew itself to pieces about eight minutes after touchdown.

It was the third such landing attempt to end in a fireball after an otherwise successful test flight for the Starship, being developed by SpaceX to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.

For Musk, the billionaire SpaceX founder who also heads the electric carmaker Tesla Inc, the outcome was mixed news.

The Starship SN10 came far closer to achieving a safe, vertical touchdown than two previous models - SN8 in December and SN9 in February. In a tweet responding to tempered congratulations from an admirer of his work, Musk replied, "RIPSN10, honorable discharge."

The video feed provided by SpaceX on the company's YouTube channel cut off moments after the landing. But separate fan feeds streamed over the same social media platform showed an explosion suddenly erupting at the base of the rocket, hurling the SN10 into the air before it crashed to the ground and became engulfed in flames.

The complete Starship rocket, which will stand 394-feet (120metres) tall when mated with its super-heavy first-stage booster, is SpaceX's next-generation fully reusable launch vehicle - the center of Musk's ambitions to make human space travel more affordable and routine.

A first orbital Starship flight is planned for year's end. Musk has said he intends to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon with the Starship in 2023.

Today, more than ever, we are quite aware of the significance of handwashing in disease prevention. We have Ignaz Semmelweis to thank for introducing this life-saving procedure in the mid-1800s.

Ignaz Semmelweis (1818 - 1865) was an Hungarian physician who discovered the cause of puerperal fever (postpartum fever) and was the first to propose an antiseptic policy for physicians. It involved handwashing before and after each medical examination.

Ignaz Semmelweis was born in Hungary. After receiving his doctor of medicine degree from Vienna in 1844, Semmelweis decided to specialise in obstetrics. He began work at the Vienna Hospital, Austria, in 1846. At the time, the maternal mortality rate in Europe was as high as 25–30%. The leading cause was puerperal fever, an infection of the female reproductive organs, that was killing postpartum women.

Semmelweis noticed that women delivered by physicians had a much higher mortality rate than those delivered by midwives. He concluded that the problem was that physicians were handling corpses during autopsies before attending to pregnant women.

Dr Semmelweis theorised that cadaverous particles — microscopic particles from the corpses — would have transferred from doctors’ hands to the pregnant women, who would then fall victim to the same disease. In 1847, he directed his colleagues to start cleaning their hands and medical instruments with a chlorinated lime solution before each examination.

No sooner than not, the mortality rates due to puerperal fever began to drop drastically. But his superiors refused to accept his theory and he was met with harsh criticism.

In 1855, he was appointed professor of obstetrics at the University of Pest. Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis' observations were largely dismissed. In 1861, he published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.

In 1865, he suffered a breakdown and was taken to a mental health facility, where he died. It was not until two decades later, when Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur produced more evidence of the germ theory and antiseptic techniques, that the value of hand washing was appreciated.

Published in PNAS

How does the slime mold Physarum polycephalum, with no nervous system, save memories? How does it remember where it found food and which environments were harmful? Researchers found that the network-like tubes in the body of the organism encode this information. “These tubes grow and shrink in diameter in response to a nutrient source, thereby imprinting the nutrient’s location in the tube diameter hierarchy,” says the paper.

Of life and leafy vegetables

Published in Circulation

Do you want a long healthy life? Start eating five daily servings of fruits and vegetables (two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables). Green leafy vegetables, citrus fruits, berries and carrots showed benefits; while peas, corn, fruit juices and potatoes were not associated with a reduced risk of death. Researchers arrived at this recommendation after studying over 100,000 adults for 30 years and also analysing 26 studies that included about 1.9 million people from 29 countries.

Flavour receptor

Published in Current Biology

Most people prefer their ice-cream to be creamy and not frozen. Though the flavour is the same, the change in texture makes it less appetizing. By studying fruit flies, researchers have now found that a family of proteins called OSCA/TMEM63 plays an important role in sensing particle sizes in food. These proteins are also found in humans and researchers say that the new findings could help shed light on some of the nuances of our own sense of taste.

Rice resistance

Published in Nature Communications,

Researchers from China have discovered a rice plant variant called astol1 that thrives in arsenic-contaminated fields. The team exposed about 4,000 rice variants to water containing arsenic and found that the grains of the astol1 plant accumulated far less arsenic than other plants.

Space hurricane

Published in Nature Communications

If you thought hurricanes on land were scary, meet space hurricanes that have been seen in the upper atmosphere of Earth. In 2014, using satellite data, researchers saw a hurricane several hundred kilometres above the North Pole. Now the team has created 2D and 3D images of the 1,000 km-wide swirling mass. The analysis revealed that the space hurricane was spinning in an anticlockwise direction and lasted almost eight hours before gradually breaking down.

Australian conservationists on Wednesday unveiled plans to build the world’s first refuge for the platypus, to promote breeding and rehabilitation as the duck-billed mammal faces extinction due to climate change.

The Taronga Conservation Society Australia and the New South Wales State government said they would build the specialist facility, mostly ponds and burrows for the semi-aquatic creatures, at a zoo 391 km (243 miles) from Sydney, by 2022, which could house up to 65 platypuses.

“There is so much to learn about the platypus and we know so little,” Taronga CEO Cameron Kerr told reporters.

“These facilities will be critical in building our knowledge so that we don’t let this iconic creature slip off the earth,” he said.

Concerns about the platypus going extinct have been heightened since once-in-a-generation wildfires devastated 12.6 million hectares (31 million acres) of bush, nearly the size of Greece, in late 2019 and early 2020.

Scientists estimate nearly three billion animals died in what the Prime Minister called the country’s “black summer”. A government inquiry found bushfires would likely occur more often because of warming temperatures.

A Himalayan mammal, somewhere between a goat and an antelope, has been confirmed as the newest creature to be spotted in Assam.

A couple of nature guides had spotted the Himalayan serow, a goat-antelope, in the 950-sq. km. Manas Tiger Reserve on December 3. The animal — a high-altitude dweller usually found 2,000-4,000 metres above sea level — was seen being chased by wild dogs.

“We have now confirmed the animal as the Himalayan serow, spotted close to the border with Bhutan in Manas’s Bansbari-Mathanguri forest. The sighting augurs well for the health of the tiger reserve,” Anindya Swargowari, additional principal chief conservator of forest for areas under the Bodoland Territorial Council, told The Hindu on Tuesday.

He said the serow has been spotted for the first time in the tiger reserve or anywhere else in Assam, but “this does not mean the animal never visited our forests before”.

According to Mr. Swargowari, the sightings of rare animals and birds in Manas is an outcome of better access to remote parts of the protected area where extremists and hunters once ruled.

“There are chances of more faunal species, found in the higher reaches, being spotted in the park.”

The Reserve is contiguous with the 1,057-sq. km. Royal Manas National Park in Bhutan.

After the serow, a medium-sized mammal with a large head, long and coarse hair and mule-like ears, the black-necked crane was sighted in Manas.

A pair each of such cranes was sighted on January 10 and February 18. The Buddhists revere the bird that nests in the Tawang region.

Officials in Manas said the critically endangered white-bellied hero was also seen a few weeks ago in the Latajhar area of the park.

In February, birders had sighted the colourful Mandarin duck in the Maguri-Motapung wetland near eastern Assam’s Dibru-Saikhowa National Park. This duck was last spotted in Assam 118 years ago.

Sophisticated scanning technology is revealing intriguing secrets about Little Foot, the remarkable fossil of an early human forerunner that inhabited South Africa 3.67 million years ago during a critical juncture in our evolutionary history.

Scientists said on Tuesday they examined key parts of the nearly complete and well-preserved fossil at Britain’s national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source. The scanning focused upon Little Foot’s cranial vault — the upper part of her braincase — and her lower jaw, or mandible.

The researchers gained insight not only into the biology of Little Foot’s species but also into the hardships that this individual, an adult female, encountered during her life.

Little Foot’s species blended ape-like and human-like traits and is considered a possible direct ancestor of humans. University of the Witwatersrand paleoanthropologist Ron Clarke, who unearthed the fossil in the 1990s in the Sterkfontein Caves northwest of Johannesburg and is a co-author of the new study, has identified the species as Australopithecus prometheus.

“In the cranial vault, we could identify the vascular canals in the spongious bone that are probably involved in brain thermoregulation - how the brain cools down,” said University of Cambridge paleoanthropologist Amélie Beaudet, who led the study published in the journal e-Life.

“This is very interesting as we did not have much information about that system,” Beaudet added, noting that it likely played a key role in the threefold brain size increase from Australopithecus to modern humans.

Little Foot’s teeth also were revealing. “The dental tissues are really well preserved. She was relatively old since her teeth are quite worn,” Beaudet said, though Little Foot’s precise age has not yet been determined.

The researchers spotted defects in the tooth enamel indicative of two childhood bouts of physiological stress such as disease or malnutrition.

“There is still a lot to learn about early hominin biology,” said study co-author Thomas Connolley, principal beamline scientist at Diamond, using a term encompassing modern humans and certain extinct members of the human evolutionary lineage. “Synchrotron X-ray imaging enables examination of fossil specimens in a similar way to a hospital X-ray CT-scan of a patient, but in much greater detail.”

Little Foot, whose moniker reflects the small foot bones that were among the first elements of the skeleton found, stood roughly 4-foot-3-inches (130 cm) tall. Little Foot has been compared in importance to the fossil called Lucy that is about 3.2 million years old and less complete.

Both are species of the genus Australopithecus but possessed different biological traits, just as modern humans and Neanderthals are species of the same genus — Homo — but had different characteristics. Lucy’s species is called Australopithecus afarensis.

“Australopithecus could be the direct ancestor of Homo — humans — and we really need to learn more about the different species of Australopithecus to be able to decide which one would be the best candidate to be our direct ancestor,” Beaudet said. Our own species, Homo sapiens, first appeared roughly 300,000 years ago.

The synchrotron findings build on previous research on Little Foot.

The species was able to walk fully upright, but had traits suggesting it also still climbed trees, perhaps sleeping there to avoid large predators. It had gorilla-like facial features and powerful hands for climbing. Its legs were longer than its arms, as in modern humans, making this the most-ancient hominin definitively known to have that trait.

“All previous Australopithecus skeletal remains have been partial and fragmentary,” Clarke said.

A new study that links extreme rains with lower birth weights in Brazil’s Amazon region underscores the long-term health impacts of weather extremes connected to climate change, researchers said on Monday.

Exceptionally heavy rain and floods during pregnancy were linked to lower birth weight and premature births in Brazil’s northern Amazonas state, according to the researchers from Britain’s Lancaster University and the FIOCRUZ health research institute.

They compared nearly 3,00,000 births over 11 years with local weather data and found babies born after extreme rainfall were more likely to have low birth weights, which is linked to worse educational, health and even income attainment as adults.

Even non-extreme intense rainfall was linked to a 40% higher chance of a child being low birth-weight, according to the study, published on Monday in the Nature Sustainability journal.

Co-author Luke Parry said heavy rains and flooding could cause increases in infectious diseases like malaria, shortages of food and mental health issues in pregnant women, leading to lower birth weights.

“It’s an example of climate injustice, because these mothers and these communities are very, very far from deforestation frontiers in the Amazon,” Parry told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “They’ve contributed very little to climate change but are being hit first and worst,” he added, saying he had been “surprised by just how severe these impacts are”.

Severe flooding on the Amazon river is five times more common than just a few decades ago, according to a 2018 paper in the journal Science Advances.

Last week, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited the neighbouring state of Acre in the Brazilian rainforest, which is under a state of emergency after heavy flooding.

Parry said local people had adapted their lifestyles to deal with climate change, but that “the extent of the extreme river levels and rainfalls has basically exceeded people’s adaptive capacities”.

The negative impacts were even worse for adolescent and indigenous mothers. The study said the “long-term political neglect of provincial Amazonia” and “uneven development in Brazil” needed to be addressed to tackle the “double burden” of climate change and health inequalities.

It said policy interventions should include antenatal health coverage and transport for rural teenagers to finish high school, as well as improved early warning systems for floods.

At least 1,500 deaths in Britain can be directly linked to climate change since 2000, as the country grappled with severe heatwaves, while four major floods caused billions in financial losses, Oxford University scientists said on Tuesday.

In a study, they analysed existing data from two deadly heatwaves in 2003 and 2018, as well as four floods between 2000 and 2016 that cost about an estimated $18 billion in losses.

They found that at least half of the total damages and deaths that occurred could be attributed to climate change.

Friederike Otto, acting director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and one of the study’s authors, said far more data needed to be collected and analysed worldwide for the true consequences of climate change to be understood.

If metrics were agreed, “I think it would become far more obvious to everyone that the impacts of climate change are real and not something that will happen in the future and to someone else ... but that they are upon us and costing lives here and now”, Otto told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The authors looked at the two specific British heatwaves because the influence of climate change on them had already been analysed, although others also occurred in the time frame.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels, more than 190 countries must submit action plans setting out measures to combat climate change. They include not just targets to reduce climate-heating emissions but also ways to adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas, in a bid to limit losses and damage.

About 5.2 million homes and other properties in England are at risk of flooding, according to Britain’s Environment Agency, as sea levels have risen about 16 cm (6 inches) in Britain since 1990.

The new study, published in the scientific journal Climate Risk Management, said other countries also faced extreme weather costs exacerbated by climate change, both human and financial.

For example, in Puerto Rico the increased intensity of Hurricane Maria in 2017 led to the deaths of up to 3,670 people, it noted.

Separately, Stanford University researchers in January found climate change boosted the cost of flood damage caused by heavy rainfall in the United States by $75 billion over the past three decades, accounting for about a third of total losses.

Ben Clarke, lead author of the Oxford study, said he hoped the research would help governments think about how to reduce the impact of future extreme weather events. “There are deaths occurring as a result, and policy should be based on that,” he said. “It’s all about distributing resources to effectively mitigate that as much as we can.

An exotic and highly invasive earthworm — Amynthas alexandri of the Megascolecidae family — has been collected and reported for the first time from Karnataka. Its original home is believed to be Southeast Asia.

It has been found to be distributed at four sites in the State — Hosabale and Hosanagara in Shivamogga district, Kaimara in Chikkamagaluru district, and Konaje in Dakshina Kannada.

Earlier, the same earthworm was recorded in 15 States/Union Territories in India, according to a study published in the January issue of the Canadian journal Megadrilogica, an international scientific journal devoted to publishing earthworm studies from across the world.

The study — Amynthas alexandri Beddarad, 1901 (Clitellata: Megascolecidae), a new addition to the earthworm fauna of Karnataka State, Southern India — was conducted and reported in the journal by four researchers, including two from Mangalore University.

They were Vivek Hasyagar, a research scholar in the Department of Applied Zoology, Mangalore University; K.S. Sreepada, chairman and researcher, Department of Applied Zoology, Mangalore University; S. Prasanth Narayanan, researcher, Advanced Centre of Environmental Studies and Sustainable Development, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala; and John W. Reynolds, research associate, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

Prof. Sreepada and Mr. Hasyagar told The Hindu that the distribution of Amynthas alexandri was also found at Puttur in Dakshina Kannada recently.

The four authors concluded in the journal: “…being large, fast-moving and highly invasive in nature, this species has practically inhabited all the districts of Kerala. As has happened in Kerala, soon it may invade the northern portions of the Western Ghats in Karnataka.”

Amynthas alexandri is a medium-to-large-sized worm and its colour is brownish in light and dark at dorsum. Its length varies from 132 mm to 169 mm, and it is 5 mm to 6 mm in diameter.

Earthworms are important for maintaining the soil fertility of forests, grasslands, and agro-ecosystems.

The origins

The original home of Amynthas alexandri earthworms is believed to be Southeast Asia, though the type of specimen observed for the first time in India by Beddard in 1901 had its origin in Kolkata.

Their distribution in Asia earlier was in China, Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand, Europe and England.

Their distribution in India earlier was in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal.

(Source: Megadrilogica, January 2021)

Vishnu Sridhar, a 27-year-old Indian-American lead system engineer with NASA's Perseverance rover, has said that the most exciting work on the awe-inspiring Mars mission will happen in the coming weeks.

Mr Sridhar, who is from Queens, New York, is a lead system engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California for SuperCam on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which is on a mission to search for signs of past life on the Red Planet.

He said some of the rover’s most exciting work will be done in the coming weeks.

"We're going to be taking more images of Mars, we're going to be shooting lasers with the SuperCam instrument, we're going to be recording audio with our microphone, and eventually, soon in near future, we are going to deploy our helicopter, and do the first powered flight on Mars," Mr Sridhar told ABC7 channel.

SuperCam is a remote-sensing instrument that will use laser spectroscopy to analyse the chemical composition of rocks on the Martian surface. It analyses terrain that the rover cannot reach. It is an instrument designed to scan rocks and minerals-from up to 20 feet away-to determine their chemical makeup.

The Perseverance rover was launched on July 30 last year and successfully landed on Mars on February 18 this year. The rover, the SuperCam, and its other devices together will help scientists search for clues of past life on Mars. Its predecessor Curiosity is still functioning eight years after landing on Mars. The two-year Perseverance mission is NASA’s latest and most advanced mission to find evidence of past life on Mars.

Mr Sridhar said it was important that the mission was happening despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"NASA missions are clearly trying to explore and answer the basic question. Perseverance is also trying to seek that, and eventually answer the question that was there life on Mars, was there life outside Earth, and it was definitely a tough period for us during COVID-19 and for everyone else around the globe," he said.

"And that's why I love the name of Perseverance because we persevered through the pandemic and there was a paradigm shift, we learned a lot about how to do engineering remotely. And we went through all that we learned and now we are successful on Mars and it's a great achievement for humankind," he said.

Mr Sridhar’s time at JPL over the past five years has been dedicated to Mars and is currently the instrument engineer for SuperCam on the Mars 2020 Rover.

"Summer 2019 was when instruments came in from France and Los Alamos and when we physically integrated SuperCam with the Perseverance rover. That's something I will cherish for the rest of my life, to have touched and worked on a piece of hardware that's on its way to Mars,” he reminisced.

The US space agency on Monday released the first audio from Mars, a faint recording of a gust of wind captured by the Perseverance rover. Perseverance will attempt to collect 30 rock and soil samples in sealed tubes to be sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for lab analysis.

The rover is only the fifth to set its wheels down on Mars. The feat was first accomplished in 1997, and all of them have been American. The US is aiming for an eventual human mission to the planet, though planning remains preliminary.

Mr Sridhar attended Aviation High School in Queens and grew up in Rego Park. He graduated in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech and has always been fascinated by flight and space exploration.

“One of the key events that sparked my interest in space and exploration was watching National Geographic. The Carl Sagan TV show Cosmos,” he said.

According to his NASA profile page, while in elementary school he wanted to become a National Geographic photographer and travel the world.

Indian-American woman scientist Swati Mohan had also played a key role in NASA Mars rover landing.

Ms Mohan, who leads the guidance, navigation, and control operations of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, was the first to confirm that the rover had successfully touched down on the Martian surface.

"Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking signs of past life," Mohan announced, prompting her colleagues at NASA to fist-bump and break into celebrations.

“The pain we feel is real. It is not in the head,” says Dr Dr Deepak Ravindran who is set to launch his book The Pain-Free Mindset (published by Vermilion) shortly. Presently the Lead for Pain Medicine in Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading and Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust in Reading, UK, Deepak helped develop and lead the Longcovid (Post-COVID) Service for the county of Berkshire.

After he found himself giving 20-30 speeches and talks to general practitioners and allied health care professionals on pain management, Deepak realised the need to pen it all down.

“There is a huge knowledge gap amongst healthcare professionals and the public when it comes to understanding and treating pain because we are going by a 400-year-old medical model which is flawed and outdated, according to the latest advances in neuroscience. My book addresses that failed model and presents a more hopeful way forward,” says this alumnus of Hyderabad Public School and Little Flower Junior College, Hyderabad.

Over an email interview Deepak unravels the many variants of pain, its management and what the book has to offer.

Can you elaborate on the title of the book?

The Mindset is both an acronym and an indication of a need to reframe our way of thinking rather than just believing that it is “all in the mind”. Within social sciences, business, health and well being, we are aware of a concept of growth mindset where we can use the powerful capacity of the brain to rewire itself (neuroplasticity).

The pain that we feel is very real. It is not in the head. However, the pain we often refer to is a complex output rather than just coming from a part of the body.

I want to introduce to the general public this word called nociception, which is the sensation produced by released chemicals when we get injured/hurt physically.

If we learn that there is a difference between nociception and pain then we automatically become aware of so many equally powerful methods to overcome pain with fewer side effects.

One of the biggest mindset shifts that the general public and healthcare fields have to make (and are starting to make) is that pain is an evolutionary mechanism of protection and not a sign of danger.

How is longcovid (post-COVID) treatment different from other viruses?

Longcovid is a very different condition to present known viral diseases. We generally understand that some viral infections can leave people with post-viral fatigue syndrome. Longcovid is thought of being four different kind of problems — there are those who have been in ICU/hospital and been very sick; those with long-standing organ complications, the group with post-viral fatigue and finally, the large group of people with fluctuating symptoms coming from different organ systems that don’t seem to have a satisfactory explanation right now.

Has pain endurance and management been more of a challenge with the pandemic?

In the UK and the US, it has been difficult to see the primary care doctor because of restrictions and lockdown.

In India, things are much better, but the choices are endless and often it is restricted to mainstream options like surgeries because we are told that every pain can be seen on a scan and can be fixed which is unfortunately not true.

During the pandemic, people have been more cautious to go to hospitals and have been looking and reading around other options to self-manage. And the Internet can be a very confusing and worrying place for someone in pain.

This is where my book can make a difference in showing the positive aspects and can aid self-management and support in an evidence-based fashion.

How different is an anaesthetist from a pain doctor? Is pain medicine gaining ground now globally?

In the UK and EU and generally in the US and Australia, most pain docs have a background PG training in anaesthesia and then super specialise in Pain Medicine. The US is more advanced in having other specialities as well as taking up pain medicine.

In India, most pain doctors will have an anaesthesia background. Pain Medicine is an established speciality in most countries. In the UK and Australia, they usually have Royal Colleges, which will have the exams and they are run by faculty so you pass it and become a Faculty Fellow. India has the same level of accreditation, though recognised training schemes are still evolving. There is unfortunately a larger focus on giving injections or interventions as the reimbursement incentives are skewed in that direction. This is unsustainable in the long run, so holistic treatment options and integrated centres of care are the future.

Can you throw light on psychological stress manifesting in physical pain and how it is dealt?

Stress in the acute phase is good but chronic stress (physical or psychological like work pressures, worries related to health, family, anxiety/depression, bullying, isolation) will activate the protection mechanisms and make them hypervigilant. In that situation, even a trivial nociceptive problem can be amplified by the sensitised nervous system as a big pain experience. So if just nociception is there — which happens after acute pain or injury — then medications and interventions (M I) can help but when that is not the case, then understanding how the brain and nervous system works (N), what is the right kind of diet (D), sleep hours (S), specific exercises (E) and mind-body therapies (T), which also include traditional Indian modalities like yoga/meditation/Ayurveda/mindfulness. We also know that harnessing the power of the brain and using neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain and nervous system to be plastic and adapt) can be quite powerful and the right way forward for comprehensive pain control.

What are the challenges faced by a pain management doctor?

The biggest challenge is the lack of a common ecosystem and a similar outlook from all healthcare professionals. The broad theme is that often when a patient gets pain, we always assume that it must be coming from only one structure and then we spend lots of money hinting for that one structure when the issue can be managed from the beginning in a more integrated fashion. By the time, my patients come to see me, it has become more than 1-2 years and they have spent their money or insurance money with no idea of what all they could have done to make it better. By the time they see me, they are desperate or don’t have insurance/money for their care and that anxiety and anger only fuels the pain. I realised that this is a challenge faced by many pain doctors and clinicians hence this book is a way to address that challenge.

A colossal dinosaur dug up in Argentina could be the oldest titanosaur ever found, having roamed what is now Patagonia some 140 million years ago at the beginning of the Cretaceous period, scientists said Sunday.

The 65-foot lizard, Ninjatitan zapatai, was discovered in 2014 in the Neuquen province of southwest Argentina, the La Matanza University reported on its analysis.

"The main importance of this fossil, apart from being a new species of titanosaur, is that it is the oldest recorded for this group worldwide," a statement quoted researcher Pablo Gallina of the Conicet scientific council as saying.

Titanosaurs were members of the sauropod group — gigantic plant-eating lizards with long necks and tails that may have been the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.

The new discovery, the statement said, meant titanosaurs lived longer ago than previously thought — at the beginning of the Cretaceous era that ended with the demise of the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago.

Fossils from 140 million years ago are "really very scarce" said Gallina, main author of a study published in the Argentinian scientific journal Ameghiniana.

The creature was named after Argentinian paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia, nicknamed "El Ninja," and technician Rogelio Zapata.

Russia launched its space satellite Arktika-M on Sunday on a mission to monitor the climate and environment in the Arctic amid a push by the Kremlin to expand the country’s activities in the region.

The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average over the last three decades and Moscow is seeking to develop the energy-rich region, investing in the Northern Sea Route for shipping across its long northern flank as ice melts.

The satellite successfully reached its intended orbit after being launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome by a Soyuz rocket, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, said in a post on Twitter.

Russia plans to send up a second satellite in 2023 and, combined, the two will offer round-the-clock, all-weather monitoring of the Arctic Ocean and the surface of the Earth, Roscosmos said.

The Arktika-M will have a highly elliptical orbit that passes high over northern latitudes allowing it to monitor northern regions for lengthy periods before it loops back down under Earth.

At the right orbit, the satellite will be able to monitor and take images every 15-30 minutes of the Arctic, which can’t be continuously observed by satellites that orbit above the Earth’s equator, Roscosmos said.

The satellite will also be able to retransmit distress signals from ships, aircraft or people in remote areas as part of the international Cospas-Sarsat satellite-based search and rescue programme, Roscosmos said.

“As more activity takes place in the Arctic and as it moves into higher latitudes, improving weather and ice forecasting abilities is crucial,” said Mia Bennett, a geographer at the University of Hong Kong.

“There is also an element of data nationalism that is feeding into all this. Countries, especially those that see themselves as space powers, want to be able to rely on their own satellites and data to inform their activities, whether commercial or military in nature,” she said.

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