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The story so far: A new lineage of SARS-CoV-2 has been identified in samples sequenced and deposited in public domain from Botswana, South Africa and Hong Kong and was assigned as B.1.1.529. The variant has been designated as a Variant of Concern (VoC) by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and has been named Omicron.
Explained | What is the new coronavirus variant in South Africa?
The Omicron variant is interesting due to the fact that it has a large number of mutations compared to other prevalent variants circulating across the world. This includes 32 mutations in the spike protein. Many of these mutations lie in the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein, a key part of the protein required for binding to the human receptor proteins for entry into the cell, and thus may play an important role in recognition by antibodies generated due to a previous infection or by vaccines.
The variant was reported in South Africa and epidemiologically linked to a recent rise in cases in the Gauteng province of South Africa and has been identified among travellers from South Africa apart from other countries in the region.
Many of the mutations in the spike protein have been previously suggested to cause resistance to antibodies as well as increased transmission. Thus, there is a possibility that this variant could be more likely to reinfect people who have developed immunity against previous variants of the virus. While the behaviour of the virus is not accurately predictable based on the evidence on individual mutations, as the effect of the combination of mutations is not the sum total of individual mutations, such analysis can provide useful insights and directions to explore even further. Further in-depth analysis on the effect of these mutations on transmissibility and vaccine escape is underway.
From a diagnostic point of view, some of the mutations in the spike protein cause primers used in some of the RT-PCR kits to not function as expected. This is otherwise known as a spike gene dropout or spike gene target failure (SGTF). While most kits use multiple primer sets targeting different genes in SARS-CoV-2 RNA for diagnosis, this should not adversely affect the diagnosis, but can be used as a surrogate for quick identification of the variant. Nevertheless this approach is not specific to Omicron, as other variants could also have similar mutations which can cause a spike in gene dropout.
Some of the initial individuals identified to be infected with the variant have been vaccinated for COVID-19 and therefore the variant can indeed cause vaccine breakthrough infections. This should not be of concern, since the prevalent variants of concern including Delta have been shown to cause breakthrough infections. Whether the variant causes more breakthrough infections than Delta is not currently known.
As of date, nine countries have confirmed the presence of Omicron. This includes South Africa, Botswana, England, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy, Israel, Czech Republic, and Belgium.
Suspected cases are being followed up in a number of other countries. Countries have identified the variant through genomic surveillance programmes. The initial reports of the variant has been made possible through the tireless efforts of researchers in Botswana and South Africa as well as countries which reported infections in incoming travellers.
India has a national programme on genomic surveillance (INSACOG) as well as focussed surveillance programmes in Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi and Karnataka, apart from independent research programmes. In INSACOG’s latest Bulletin, none of the sequenced samples in India have the Omicron variant until date. Heightened surveillance of the variant is ongoing.
Enhanced surveillance and genome sequencing efforts are essential to detect and track the prevalence of the Omicron variant. Rapid sharing of genome sequences of the virus and the epidemiological data linked with it to publicly available databases will help in developing a better understanding of the variant. Existing public health and social measures need to be strengthened to control and prevent transmission.
Enhancing vaccination coverage across different regions along with access to testing, therapeutics and support will be essential for combating the new variant. Equitable access to vaccines would be key to controlling the Omicron variant, and slowing down the emergence of any future variants.
Any successful flourish of the bat or a breakthrough with the ball or any defining moment in a match would instantaneously whip up a frenzy in the stands. It would combine the spontaneity that goes with deliriously delighted fans and the craft associated with professionally trained cheerleaders.
When Sundaravel Palanivel ran up a workmanlike hundred recently, there was a rare form of cheering with spontaneity and aesthetics seamlessly woven into it. In that moment when he looked through the viewfinder at a dancing forest wagtail and pressed down the shutter-release button, and reached that magical three-figure mark, the sense of achievement was inescapable. That untrained but delectable cheerleader perfected that moment of glory. For the uninitiated, the forest wagtail does a sideways sway in elegant contrast to the almost frenzied up-and-down tail-bobbing of other wagtails.
It was a hundred counted not by runs, but feathers; and the duration in which it was achieved measured not by balls, but 24-hour days. With the sighting and recording of the forest wagtail, Sundaravel was documenting the hundredth bird species from his hearthstone. He had amassed that score in a two-to-three-year time frame, sedulously applying himself to confiding the sightings to an excel sheet.
Sundaravel travels long and often in the hope of clapping eyes on rarities, but has also stayed faithful to his patch which he watches with eyes peeled back.
The fact that he is domiciled at Kamakotti Nagar in Pallikaranai, and the view outside includes spits of land and water that borrow their character from the Pallikaranai Marsh was surely an incentive.
His apartment is located on Third Main Road Kamakotti Nagar, which is overlooked by the tall NIOT campus ringed by trees that are taller still. While many of the bird sightings happened on this road and the terrace of his four-floor apartment complex, he also ranges around the neighbourhood, heading into streets nearby where nature plays peekaboo with civilisation, giving a fleeting glimpse of its largesse. The entries in the sheet locate each of the streets around his hearth where sightings happened.
The trees that rear up majestically on the NIOT campus serve as cradle for newborns of big waterbirds, which include the black-headed ibis, spot-billed pelican, Eurasian spoonbill and members of the heron and egret families. Though the nest-laden trees — in the breeding season — are out of range for his telephoto lens, Sundaravel has managed to freeze frames touched on the edges with heart-warming domestic scenes of parent-birds leading their young out on trial flights.
An almost permanent collection of water adjacent to the campus functions as a play school for fledglings. These are only the predictable factors his viewfinder is accustomed to. Unexpected feathers are often known to flit across that lucky eyepiece.
Out of the hundred, around 10 would be rarities. The others are regular residents, migrants and local-migrants, notes Sundaravel. No sighting can compete with any other, as each brings with it its own unique insight, with some even completing patterns.
Over the last two years, he has seen the Asian pied starling take ownership of the space, from just one breeding pair to at least four pairs now. The sighting and documentation of these breeding pairs etch a curious picture of the species’ range expansion into Chennai, a recent phenomenon attested by other sightings from birders from other parts of the metro. Not long ago, northern Andhra Peradesh was believed to bring up the southern bounds of this species’ distribution range in India.
There have also been sightings from home that are not exactly grounded. In the hours after cyclone Nivar (November 23-27, 2020) had crossed the coast, an Amur falcon crossed his path, its journey to its faraway wintering grounds in southern and east Africa evidently rescheduled and rerouted through Sundaravel’s “airway”, by the weather system. Interestingly enough, Sundaravel saw the obviously-windblown Amur falcon, winging far above his apartment complex, at the exact moment that he was discussing sightings of storm-tossed and windblown pelagic birds with this writer. Excusing himself, the birder dropped out of the call, and returned to announce his “windfall”.
The best patch-birding day for him arrived this year on April 3, when he watched two rare warblers that are passage migrants in these parts — the large-billed leaf warbler and western crowned warbler. These birds had invited themselves to his apartment, and the unlikelihood of those visits makes one wonder if birds do wise up to human ways: And that these two were probably aware of the excel sheet in Sundaravel’s laptop.
Another passage migrant, one that is discovering new pitstops in Chennai, the chestnut-winged cuckoo features in Sundaravel’s coveted list.
Other notables on the patch-birding list include the gray-bellied cuckoo, red-necked falcon, sooty tern, cinnamon bittern, black bittern, yellow bittern, Caspian tern, lesser cuckoo, Asian brown flycatcher, garganey, long-tailed shrike, brown shrike, wood sandpiper, marsh sandpiper, western yellow wagtail, Blyth’s reed warbler, citrine wagtail, rosy starling, fulvous whistling-duck, striated heron, pheasant-tailed jacana, Indian paradise-flycatcher, white-browed bulbul and an elusive and awkward skulker, the blue-faced malkoha.
Evolution is a process of natural selection in which traits that improve the fitness of the organism to survive the challenges posed by its surrounding environment. However, genes have multiple effects: The very same genes that are responsible for improving an aspect of the fitness of the organism may have other contributions too, such as increasing the risk for a non-communicable disease. A paper published recently in Scientific Reports shows that this may be the case also with some severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The study examined 80 individuals from 80 separate families from southern India, which each had several members affected by severe mental illness. Each of these 80 individuals had at least two first-degree relatives who had a major psychiatric disorder, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, dementia or substance use disorder.
Researchers from NIMHANS, Bengaluru; Institute of Genomics, Tartu, Estonia and ADBS Consortium, analysed the whole exome data from these 80 individuals and identified 74 genes that were positively selected. “Our genetic material or DNA consists of 3 billion [letters] or bases. Of this, only a small portion codes for the proteins that make up our cells,” says Meera Purushottam, from the Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, and a corresponding author of the paper, in an email to The Hindu.
Sequencing the exome means sequencing this, relatively small, portion of the genome, which codes for proteins. Under the premise that differences in the frequency of genetic variants between populations have arisen through natural selection, the researchers compared the exomes of these 80 individuals from families in southern India with multiple members having psychiatric disorders with a second, related population (random members from southern India) and a third set from an African population (which is the ‘parent’ population). This comparison revealed the genes that have been positively selected for in the 80 individuals. “So, these 74 genes that we have identified are different in more than one way in our patients and their families, compared to what we see in the population at large in this part of the world,” says Dr Purushottam.
As to the functionality of the genes, the study revealed that many of the 74 were involved in helping the body fight off diseases. “They are needed to process foreign antigens so our immune cells can recognize them as foreign, and are involved in aberrations like graft versus host disease and autoimmune thyroid disease. Many are known for having potential roles in cancer, liver disease and diabetes,” says Mayukh Mondal of Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, Estonia, who is a corresponding author of the paper. The genes also have another side to them.
As Dr. Mondal explains, “Importantly, about 20 of them were previously associated with elevated risk for schizophrenia, Parkinson disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and cognitive abilities or intelligence. So, there is a suggestion that the risk of all these may be related at some level.”
There is also the question of the effects of ancient DNA. It is an established fact that there has been intermingling of Homo sapiens with Neanderthals and Denisovans, hence each of us carries 2%-3% of DNA from this mixing in our genome.
The group also investigated whether any of the 74 positively selected genes contained such archaic DNA. They found only one gene that contained a sequence of Neanderthal DNA, but that sequence was itself not positively selected for. “Persistence of Neanderthal genes has been linked to risk of disease, as well as persistence of traits and body structure etc. We detected the usual amount of Neanderthal DNA in all the samples, it did not differ between the samples,” says Dr. Purushottam.
Thus, the study concludes that families with several members affected by severe mental illness can be used to detect signatures of evolution. Also, since immune-related genes show a significant positive selection in these families, the study underlines the contribution of immune mechanisms and infection susceptibility to the genetics of severe mental illness.
Dr. Sanjeev Jain of Department of Psychiatry at NIMHANS, who was one of those who designed the study, says that the risks of mental illness may be incorporated and integrated into our genome. “So we should never think of these [effects] as being different. How these widespread changes increase the risk of mental illnesses is a deep biological issue, and needs to be researched across populations. This will help reduce the stigma of mental illness, if we can reassure everyone that this is a problem that needs to be solved, rather than a burden that must be borne.”
He also adds that new treatments may emerge only after this understanding. “Mental illness cannot, and perhaps should not, be ‘eradicated’ or ‘defeated’ but managed with compassion and dignity, and an understanding that is biological as much as it is psychological,” he says.
Scientists now understand how certain animals can feed on picturesque, orange monarch butterflies, which are filled from head to abdomen with milkweed plant toxins.
Milkweed produces toxic cardiac glycosides that can kill a horse, or a human, if consumed in high-enough concentration. However, monarch butterflies have evolved a set of unusual cellular mutations to be able to eat this plant. Now, a study carried out by researchers at the University of California, Riverside shows that the animals that prey on monarch butterflies too have evolved these same mutations (Current Biology).
The research revealed these mutations in four types of monarch predators — a bird, a mouse, a parasitic wasp, and a worm. “Plant toxins have caused evolutionary changes across at least three levels of the food chain. It's remarkable that concurrent evolution occurred at the molecular level in all these animals,” Simon C Groen, the first author says in a press release.
Milkweed toxins target a part of animal cells called the sodium–potassium pump, which helps enable heartbeats and nerve firing. When most animals eat milkweed, the pump stops working. Two years ago, these researchers discovered amino acid changes in three places on the pump that not only allow monarch butterflies to consume milkweed, but also to accumulate the milkweed toxins in their bodies as a defence against attacks. Groen’s team engineered these same amino acid changes in fruit flies, which then became as resistant to milkweed as monarchs. Based on the DNA sequence information, they found black-headed grosbeak, which eats up to 60% of the monarch butterflies in many colonies each year, had evolved the amino acid changes in their sodium pumps.
A small study conducted on 71 individuals who received two doses of Covaxin found that the vaccine generates antibodies and easily detectable memory B cell and T cell responses in many recipients. The study has been posted on a preprint server medRxiv. Preprints are yet to be peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal.
The multi-institutional research, which is led by a team of scientists from Delhi’s National Institute of Immunology, found that immunological memory to the virus and the variants after full vaccination seemed to last up to six months in many individuals. The cellular immune responses in the form of memory B cells and memory T cells seen in most vaccinated people would mean that the immune system can respond swiftly and provide protection in case of a breakthrough infection.
“The study finds that both B cells and T cells develop well after Covaxin administration. This means that even though antibodies may decline with time, the memory compartment will be marshalled quickly in case of a future infection to limit virus multiplication and disease,” virologist Dr. Shahid Jameel Director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University says in an email.
The study also evaluated the cellular immune responses in 73 individuals who have been naturally infected but have not been vaccinated. The samples in the infection group were collected between November 2020 and January 2021, prior to the Delta variant surge in India.
The researchers first measured anti-spike antibodies in the plasma samples from vaccinated and recovered individuals. All vaccinated and recovered individuals had detectable anti-spike IgG antibodies; the IgG titer against the spike protein was not significantly different between the two groups.
The study has measured the RBD-specific memory B cells but not the spike-specific memory B cells.
“We did not measure the spike-specific memory B cells for this study. We are currently undertaking this study. The levels of spike-specific memory B cells may not be very different from the RBD-specific memory B cells but this has to be studied,” Dr. Nimesh Gupta from NII and the corresponding author of the preprint says in an email.
“We have demonstrated that vaccine induces memory T cells in about 85% of the subjects. The T cell responses are largely preserved against the variants, including the Delta variant,” Dr. Gupta adds. According to the preprint, there was about 1.3-fold reduction in the case of memory T cells against the beta variant, with no significant impact against the Delta variant.
“While antibody-based neutralisation is reduced with Alpha, Delta and Beta variants, the memory compartment is not adversely affected,” says Dr. Jameel.
The quantity of memory T cells is comparable to that of natural infection, and the composition of memory subsets is indicative of a long-term durability of vaccine-induced T cell responses, says the preprint.
The analyses are from four weeks post-second dose up to six months, the authors note this is sufficient to gather key information on persistence of immune memory. However, the durability of immune memory cannot be defined due to absence of the longitudinal follow-up.
“Being a killed whole virus vaccine, antibodies and T cells against other viral proteins are also expected. In this paper the authors show this for the nucleocapsid as well. However, this is often wrongly cited as an advantage of Covaxin. Since the nucleocapsid protein is inside the virus, antibodies or T cells against it have little value in protection,” says Dr. Jameel.
“While the data are useful, the conclusions that can be robustly based on them are limited at this stage for a number of reasons,” immunologist Dr. Satyajit Rath, formerly with NII says in an email to The Hindu.
According to Dr. Rath, a major issue with the study is that the numbers of people tested are quite modest. While 71 vaccinated people were tested for antibodies, only 39 of them were apparently tested for memory B cell and T cell responses. The naturally infected group size is even smaller at 27, he says.
“We should note that each individual has been tested only once, so there is no information about the time course of immunity in any given individual,” says Dr. Rath. “Further, both these groups are quite diverse in when they were either infected or vaccinated. On average, naturally infected people were tested over seven months after their illness, while vaccinated people were tested about four months after vaccination. This limits how much meaning we can ascribe to comparisons between the two groups. To add to this uncertainty, the people in each group also have a lot of variation about when they were either vaccinated or infected, further compounding this problem of limited comparability.”
Dr. Rath mentions another important limitation of the study with regard to the measurements made in people belonging to both groups. “The cell-based tests for immunity provide relative rather than absolute measurements in the absence of very painstaking efforts for standardisation,” he says. “This means that quantitative comparisons of the 'levels' of immunity shown by these measurements can be reliably made only within this study. The actual numbers of cellular immunity levels from this study cannot simply be compared to those from other studies elsewhere. This is not a limitation of this study alone, but simply the nature of these tests.”
Since testing was done only when symptoms were reported, the study does not allow exclusion of asymptomatic reinfections and breakthrough infections among the naturally infected and vaccinated groups, respectively. “This introduces a potential variable that remains unaccounted for,” Dr. Rath says.
A recent report in Nature by Ludovic Orlando and his group from the Paul Sabatier University in Toulose, France (P. Librado et al., Nature 598, 636-642; 2021) has been able to collect bones and teeth samples of over 2,000 such ancient specimens from regions from where domestic horses could have originated, namely in the Iberian Peninsula in the southwestern corner of Europe, or the western-most edge of Eurasia (Spain and its neighbours), Anatolia (which is modern Turkey), and the steppes of Western Eurasia and Central Asia. As Tosin Thompson writes in his commentary in Nature of October 28, 2021, Dr. Orlando’s team analysed the complete genome sequences of about 270 samples from these regions, and also gathered information from archeology. In addition, they also dated radioactive Carbon 14, which decays at a fixed rate, to determine the age of these horse samples. These collective data have led them to decide that until about 4200 BCE, many distinct horse populations inhabited various regions of Eurasia.
A similar genetic analysis has also found that horses with the modern domestic DNA profile lived in the Western Eurasian Steppes, particularly the Volga-Don River region.
By around 2200–2000 BCE, these horses spread out to Bohemia (the Czech Republic of today and Ukraine), and Central Asia (Kazhakstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, Iran and Afghanistan) and Mongolia. These horses were bred by breeders from these countries to sell them to countries that demanded them. Riding on horses became popular in these nations by around 3300 BCE, and armies were built using them, for example, in Mesopotamia, Iran, Kuwait and the ‘Fertile Crescent’ or Palestine. Thompson notes that the first spoke-wheeled chariots emerged around 2000-1800 BC.
Now, when did horses come to India, and were they domestic or foreign? Was horse native to India? The answer seems to be ‘no’. The “World Atlas” says that the only animals native to India are the Asian elephant, snow leopard, rhinoceros, Bengal tiger, Sloth bear, Himalayan wolf, Gaur bison, red panda, crocodile, and the birds peacock and flamingo. The website ThoughtCo cites, in the article ‘11 domestic animals that originated in Asia’, lists the antelope, Nilgiri tahr, elephant, langur, Macaque monkey, rhinoceros, dolphin, Garial crocodile, leopard, bear, tiger, bustard (heaviest flying bird), squirrel, cobra, and peacock. Thus, it seems clear from these sources that horse is not native to India. Horses must have come into India through inter-regional trading between countries. Indians might have traded their elephants, tigers, monkeys, birds to their neighbours and imported horses for our use.
So, when did India get its horses? Wikipedia points out that horse-related remains and artefacts have been found in Late Harappan sites (1900-1300 BCE), and that horses did not seem to have played an essential role in the Harappan civilisation. This is in contrast to the Vedic Period, which is a little later (1500-500 BCE). (The Sanskrit word for horse is Ashwa, which is mentioned in the Vedas and Hindu Scriptures). These are roughly towards the end of the late Bronze Age.
It is also worth noting that two recent scholarly books, one by Tony Joseph, titled ‘Early Indians: The Story of our Ancestors and Where we Came From’, and the other by Yashaswini Chandra, titled, ‘The Tale of the Horse’. Dr. Joseph’s recent article in December 2018 in Firstpost examines the evidence to the ‘Aryan’ migrations to India. This would suggest that the horses found in India came from the ‘Stans’ mentioned above.
And Dr. Yashaswini Chandra’s posting in The Print of January 17, 2021 suggests that Indian native horses disappeared by 8000 BCE.
Perhaps the clearest analysis of the debate comes from an article by the historian Michel Danino of IIT Gandhinagar. He writes in his paper titled, ‘The horse and the Aryan debate’, in the Journal of Indian History and Culture, 2006, September 13:33-59, and in the book “History of Ancient India” in 2014, that that the archaeologist Sandor Bokonyi studied samples of horse teeth from Baluchistan dating to pre-Harappan era from Allahabad (2265-1480 BCE), in Chambal Valley (2450-2000 BCE) and the upper molar sample from Kalibangan, and concluded that they came from real domesticated horses. These papers by Professor Danino sets to rest several conflicting claims about domestic horses in India, and we are thankful to him.
Given this background, it will be interesting to check whether in the Harappan sites, there are any remnant bones, teeth or skulls of horses, and perform DNA sequencing on them, just as Orlando’s group did in their Nature article on Eurasian samples.
dbala@lvpei.org
In Pallepalem, a small fishing village near Chirala in Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, children are the ambassadors of a little known wild cat species — the fishing cat.
Here, creative young minds make their own versions of the fishing cats on canvases, and immerse themselves in a compact library filled with books on animals and birds. The library is one of the initiatives of the Children for Fishing Cat project, part of the Godavari Fishing Cat Project. which focusses on community-based conservation of this in the coastal habitats of the region.
Andhra Pradesh is one of the few states in India that still supports a healthy population of the fishing cat, listed as a vulnerable species under the IUCN Red List: The last census in 2018 recorded 115 of them in Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII-Dehradun) in association with the AP State Forest Department has initiated a collaring project at the sanctuary this month to look at the species estimate (census) and study how it is surviving in the sanctuary.
This shy animal weighs a maximum of 15 kilograms and is bigger than a domestic cat. It has a voracious palate for a fish-dominated diet. It is also one of the few felid species that can easily wade through water and survive in wet landscapes. Famously elusive, fishing cats are nocturnal. They have webbing between their toes that helps to catch fish efficiently, which makes them a top predator in mangroves, grasslands and marshes. However, this world is rapidly shrinking.
The enigmatic predator
The fishing cat is usually found in two types of habitat in a wetland: mangroves and marshes. But nearly 50% of the Asian wetlands are in moderate to high degree of threat. Godavari mangroves, which are of global importance with species like Ceriops decandra and Brownlowia tersa as well as almost 264 species of birds, are subjected to encroachment from aquaculture ponds and coastal erosion.
With support from the Small Wild Cat Conservation Foundation (SWCCF), Fishing Cat Conservation Alliance (FCCA), MbZ Species Conservation Fund and Panthera Small Cats Action Fund, the project seeks to conserve this wild animal, as well as the mangroves of Andhra Pradesh. (Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary is also home to another charismatic species of wetlands — the smooth coated otter which is also threatened due to water pollution and loss of habitat.) “One of the most important stakeholders of our initiative are the children belonging to the local communities. We aim to improve conservation by raising awareness about their global importance and habitats. We believe the easiest way to achieve this is by targeting the small children of the local fishing community, as they are highly receptive and can become good ambassadors,” says Giridhar Malla, a member of the Children For Fishing Cat project. “Our aim is to raise awareness and develop a sense of ownership among the local kids of a globally important species that lives just behind their backyards,” he adds.
The library, set up last year in November, has around 1,500 books and is located at a Government centre in the fishing village. “The need for accessible Nature education for the local communities perhaps increased manifold after the pandemic struck. This led us to establishing a library for the children in Pallepalem, with support from the local communities and leaders,” says Giridhar. The project initiatives include a board game Cat in the Creek, which Giridhar says was well-received and kept the children entertained through lockdown from March to May 2020. The books, Fishing Cat! Fishing Cat! What Are You Doing? and Moon And The Little Fishing Cat, written by Paromita Ray and illustrated by Giridhar Malla, explain how everything in Nature is connected. “Additionally, it is also important to raise greater awareness among the coastal communities about the impact of sea-level rise and climate change on their lives and livelihoods,” says Paromita, the author of the book.
“Since 2015, we have reached out to several children who live around the mangrove forests. Our surveys through these years suggest that the attitude of the local communities towards fishing cat conservation and mangrove protection varies across the State,” says Giridhar. He says there has been a marked change in the children’s mindsets, adding “Some of the drawings and paintings of mangroves and fishing cats which they created during the awareness drives are displayed in their homes.”
Nearly 20,000 years ago, a 5-km-long Himalayan glacier “abruptly” changed course and over time fused into an adjacent glacier in present day Pittoragarh, Uttarakhand. This is the first time, say scientists who have described the findings in a peer-reviewed journal this week, that such a turn in glacier’s course has been recorded in the Himalayas. Change in climate along with tectonic movement probably caused this to happen.
Based on remote sensing and an old survey map, the study, which appears in the Journal of Geosciences, assessed that the glacier had been affected by active fault and climate change.
The glacier, which does not have a name and lies in an extremely inaccessible region, was large enough that it formed its own “valley” and the accumulated debris that accompanies the formation of glaciers probably caused it to turn from a north-eastern direction to a south-eastern course, said Manish Mehta of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), a Department of Science and Technology institute, who is among the authors of the study.
The study adds to evidence of the inherent instability of the Himalayan region, among the youngest mountain ranges in the world due to which the underlying tectonic plates that support it are not stable but are jittery and frequently trigger earthquakes and landslides.
The event had “similarities” to the February disaster in Rishiganga valley, Uttarakhand, in which a large mass of rock and debris detached from a glacier and hurtled down the Rishiganga river. In the process two hydropower dams were destroyed and at least 200 were either killed or went missing in Chamoli, Uttarakhand.
“This event that we have described is a much larger event than what happened in February. However, that the Himalayan region is ecologically fragile and prone to events such as these is certain,” Mr. Mehta added.
The WIHG team observed that the 5-km-long unnamed glacier, which covered around 4 sq km in Kuthi Yankti valley (Tributary of Kali River), after changing course moved and ultimately merged with the adjacent glacier named Sumzurkchanki as a result of tectonic forcing during the time between Last Glacial Maxima (19-24,000 years ago) and Holocene (10,000 years ago).
Studies from Israel and the U.S. have documented increased incidence of breakthrough infections a few months after the second dose of the mRNA vaccines. The Israel study showed that the waning immunity after the second dose was not only responsible for breakthrough infections but also severe disease in some people, with older people being particularly vulnerable. Though a small proportion of fully vaccinated people tend to suffer from severe disease and death, all COVID-19 vaccines have so far been found to be largely effective in protecting the fully vaccinated from hospitalisation and death.
The increased incidence of breakthrough infections has led to a few countries administering booster shots.
Now, a small study involving just 33 participants measured the antibody responses before and soon after a booster dose was administered. These participants had already received two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine with or without prior infection. The study found “large antibody responses” soon after the booster dose was administered. The study is posted as a preprint in the medRxiv server. (Preprints are yet to be peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals.)
Studies to measure virus neutralisation against the Delta variant were also undertaken. The researchers found that a booster dose still has “high” capability to neutralise the Delta variant. However, the efficacy to neutralise the Delta variant is relatively low compared to the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 strain found during the early days of the pandemic. In short, the efficacy to neutralise the Delta variant even after a booster shot did not become comparable with the strains that were in circulation early during the pandemic. The ability to neutralise the Delta variant was also lower in older people compared with younger age groups.
“The study indicates that mRNA boosters generate large antibody responses in healthy adults, with post-booster antibody levels that exceed levels documented after natural infection with COVID-19, after two doses of vaccine, or after both natural infection and vaccination,” they write. They add: “These data support the use of boosters to prevent breakthrough infections and suggest that antibody-mediated immunity may last longer than after the second vaccine dose.” But they found that post-booster shot, the IgG level was negatively associated with age; the median age was 43 years. In other words, older people tend to have a relatively lower IgG antibody concentration even after a booster shot compared with younger people.
The very purpose of a booster shot in older people and those who are immunocompromised is because the antibody levels tend to wane faster in these categories of people than in younger people even after full vaccination. But the current study shows that even after a booster shot, the difference in antibody concentration in older people vis-a-vis younger people would continue to persist.
Besides the small number of participants included in the study, there is another limitation — the antibody levels were measured soon after the booster was administered (6-10 days). Since the antibody measured was soon after the booster dose was given, the study only reflects the level of antibody response but not the duration to which the increased immune response persists. Also, the study did not measure cellular immunity such as T cell and B cell-mediated immunity.
The French Institute in India, a part of the Embassy of France in India, is organizing the third edition of the Knowledge Summit (KS3), an online event from November 24 to 26. It is co-hosted by Savitribai Phule Pune University in partnership with France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA).
The summit will be opened by Frédérique Vidal, France’s Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister of Education, and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, and Dr. M. Ravichandran, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences and Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. The Knowledge Summit is a bilateral forum dedicated to scientific and academic cooperation between France and India.
“KS3 will focus on research and scientific activities. The main objective is to promote the tools and methods for better structuring our cooperation. It is an opportunity for our respective countries to underline the success of our scientific collaboration, identify new leads of joint research, and discuss ideas on tackling global challenges, the French Institute,” a release said. The online event is free through prior registration at www.ifindia.in/knowledge-summit.
Around 100 speakers will share and exchange ideas on scientific topics as well as transversal challenges such as open science or the dialogue between health sciences and society.
There is no scientific evidence so far to support the need for a booster vaccine dose against COVID-19, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said on Monday, underlining the completion of second dose for India's adult population is the priority for the government for now.
According to sources, the booster dose issue is likely to be discussed in the next meeting of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation in India (NTAGI).
"Administering the second dose of COVID-19 vaccine to all adult population and ensuring that not only India but the entire world gets vaccinated is the priority of the government for now.
"More so, there is no scientific evidence so far to support the need for a booster vaccine dose against COVID-19," Dr. Bhargava told PTI.
On the probability of administering a booster dose, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya recently said that adequate stocks are available and the aim is to complete the vaccination of the target population with two doses. After that, a decision on booster dose would be taken based on expert recommendation, he had said.
"The government cannot take a direct decision in such a matter. When the Indian Council of Medical Research and expert team will say that a booster dose should be given, we will consider it then," he had said, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always depended on expert opinion, be it vaccine research, manufacturing or approval.
According to officials, around 82% of the eligible population in India have received the first dose of the vaccine while around 43% have been fully inoculated.
The total number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has exceeded 116.87 crore, according to provisional reports till 7 am. The government has launched a month-long 'Har Ghar Dastak' campaign for house-to-house COVID-19 vaccination of those who are yet to take a dose and for people whose second dose is overdue.
According to officials, over 12 crore beneficiaries are overdue for their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine after the expiry of the prescribed interval between the two doses.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday inaugurated the Centre for Nanotechnology (CNT) and the Centre for Indian Knowledge System at IIT, Guwahati.
The CNT aims at meeting future challenges and augmenting academic partnerships with industries in the field of nanotechnology.
The majority of funding for the centre, which included ₹ 37 crore for constructing the building, apart from equipment, was received from the Union Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Pradhan congratulated Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati for securing excellent positions in various international and national ranking systems and appreciated efforts of the authorities to create an ecosystem for research and education with a focus on the overall development of the North-East region.
"Rich biodiversity of the region provides a lot of scope for research, which can benefit the entire humanity. There are several policy directions in the NEP 2020, which can modernise our education system.”
"As provided in the National Education Policy, we should create a hub in Guwahati by creating a cluster of institutions in the region," Mr. Pradhan said.
The CNT will host 25 laboratories that will focus on advancements in multi-disciplinary and scientific research.
It presently hosts two centres-for-excellence sponsored by the MeitY and the Indian Council of Medical Research.
The Centre for Indian Knowledge System will focus on preserving, documenting and sustaining the knowledge that is unique in the country.
Top priorities include Indian classical music, yoga, Sanskrit, traditional medicines, temple architecture, ceramic tradition and special agricultural practices and herbal plants of the North-East region.
Mr. Pradhan also inaugurated two hostels at the premier technology institute.
The new Disang hostel adds 1,000 rooms to the existing capacity of IIT Guwahati.
The Dikhow hostel is the first such facility on the campus specifically to provide accommodation for project staffers.
Constructed at a total cost of ₹ 132 crore, these hostels will further help enhance the capacity of IIT Guwahati.
Assam Education Minister Ranoj Pegu said the institute should concentrate on development of entrepreneurship and produce job creators, not only job seekers.
"Institutes like IIT Guwahati should also focus on developing new agricultural technologies to help double farmers' income. I request IIT Guwahati to mentor other educational institutions in the region and create modules for training of teachers," he added.
A statement by the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry in the Lok Sabha, which was reported in The Hindu, conveyed that in the five years till December 31, 2020, there have been 340 deaths due to manual scavenging in sewers and septic tanks in 19 States and Union Territories, with Uttar Pradesh (52), Tamil Nadu (43) and Delhi (36) leading the list. Maharashtra had 34 and Gujarat and Haryana had 31 each, according to the statement. This is despite bans and prohibitory orders.
A group from Mechanical Engineering Department and Center for Non-Destructive Testing (CNDE) of IIT Madras has developed a robot that can, if deployed extensively, put an end to this practice of sending people into septic tanks. The robot, named HomoSEP (“homogeniser of septic tanks”) has taken the group about three years to develop.
The idea of making a robot that can wade through sewers and septic tanks initially led the group to attempt a fish-like model that could provide an inside look into the contents. However, on discussing with workers, they realised that a simpler device more focussed on homogenising the contents of a septic tank would be of greater help and then they set upon the journey of developing HomoSEP.
HomoSEP has a shaft attached to blades that can open like an inverted umbrella when introduced into a septic tank. This is helpful as the openings of the septic tanks are small and the tank interiors are bigger. The sludge inside a septic tank contains faecal matter that has thickened like hard clay and settled at the bottom. This needs to be shredded and homogenised, so that it can be sucked out and the septic tank cleaned. The whirring blades of the robot achieve precisely this.
Further, the latest version of the robot is a lightweight model that can be attached to a tractor and wheeled off to remote and inaccessible areas. The robot is attached to the axis of the tractor and can be run using the power from the tractor’s engine. When needed, it can be detached from the tractor.
“The first version [of the robot] was very bulky and entirely made of steel. It was also a stationary unit and needed external power… from the mains or a battery source. It had to be lifted using a fork lift, placed on top of a tank and then you could perform the operation,” says Divanshu Kumar, an alumnus of the Mechanical Engineering group of IIT Madras and CEO of Solinas Integrity Private Limited, which is a startup that develops the robot. “At the time, we did not understand about the nature of the contents of the septic tanks so the blade profile was quite simplistic.”
Over the three years since 2019 and the pandemic with its associated hurdles, the group worked on this zeroth model, honing its properties, spiralling from concept to computer design, to simulation, to trials and back to the drawing board, until they developed the latest version. “We made some significant innovations to the first proof of concept model: we first improved the blade design to suit the fluid in the septic tank; then we achieved a miniaturisation so that just two people can carry the robot; lastly, we integrated it with a tractor so that it can be portable and run using the power of the engine,” says Prabhu Rajagopal, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras and the Principal Investigator who has anchored the development of the robot.
To mimic the qualities of the contents of the septic tank, they generated material with similar properties which they tested with the help of Prof. Abhijit Deshpande of the Chemical Engineering Department. In the process of development, they also took along with them members of Safai Karamchari Andolan, asking for feedback and validation.
The present model has been tried in a set of septic tanks near the department, in a campaign of field trials in March. One more set of field trials is due, after which plans are afoot to deploy the robot following a pilot testing by the workers themselves. The project has been carried out with Corporate Social Responsibility funding from GAIL foundation, CapGemini, WIN foundation, and more recently from National Stock Exchange foundation.
The researchers plan to distribute eight units in Tamil Nadu, and are in touch with Safai Karamchari Andolan to identify the locations. They are also considering locations in Gujarat and Maharashtra. “Many people ask me why manual scavenging is still there 70 years after independence… It is not sufficient to sit in your homes and wish it will go away. Pious intentions are good, but beyond that we need someone to actually do the work of developing a solution, and people who will support those who do this.,” says Prof. Rajagopal. “I am not saying our group will solve the problem. Our country is too vast and the challenges are too many. But what I hope is to set an example.”
“It may not win rewards in the short term, such as a paper in Nature, or being feted for groundbreaking technology, but this is a problem that needs people to stick their neck out and develop a practical, viable technological solution. It is a question of intention,” he concludes.
In an email, Dr. Gagandeep Kang, Professor of Microbiology at CMC Vellore explains the significance of paxlovid antiviral for treatment, its mode of action, and the need for a combination therapy to reduce the chances of the virus developing resistance.
Both molnupiravir and paxlovid are likely to have a role to play in prevention of hospitalisations and deaths. What we have at the moment are very early data in a few hundred people with each drug showing that the drugs reduce the chances of progression to severe disease. Both trials chose people with at least one risk factor for progression to severe disease which means that they were focused on individuals most likely to need higher levels of care. The fact that both drugs worked well is an advantage to the health-care system, of course, but is a complement to vaccines, which also play a critically important role in protecting the health-care system.
Where these drugs will especially matter is for those people in whom (i) an immune response to infection or vaccination is not mounted because of immunocompromise and (ii) for infection in the unvaccinated or breakthrough infection in the vaccinated.
No drug is 100% safe or 100% efficacious. Therefore, to say any disease is completely treatable in every case is a fallacy. The more drugs we have, the more tools we can use to treat those who acquire infection.
Since both clinical trials were in individuals with risk factors and the drugs worked well, it is likely that they will also work well in people without risk factors, but this will need to be evaluated.
The point estimates for paxlovid are higher than for molnupiravir, but the two drugs have not been directly compared in a clinical trial, so stating that one has an advantage over the other based on two headline numbers is inappropriate at this early stage. With more independent trials we will be better able to compare performance. So far, we have no evidence that molnupiravir has significant side-effects, but as with all drugs, safety monitoring will be critical throughout the lifecycle.
Pfizer’s oral antiviral is a protease inhibitor, originally called PF-07321332, or just 332 for short, given in combination with ritonavir. A protease is an enzyme that cuts a protein at a specific sequence of amino acids. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has a protease which allows it to cut one polyprotein into smaller segments that it needs for its life cycle. This protease called Mpro or the 3CL protease is targeted by 332, Pfizer’s protease inhibitor, which can stop that cleavage, as was shown in Pfizer’s initial publication in Science. With the viral protease out of action, SARS-CoV-2 cannot make more of itself to infect other cells.
You cannot compare two drugs that have different mechanisms of action as being better or worse except in a direct head-to-head clinical trial with the same outcome.
Ritonavir extends the duration for which 332 [paxlovid] can act on the 3CL protease. Essentially, ritonavir slows down the metabolism of 332 [paxlovid]. Ritonavir and lopinavir, which are used in combination for HIV, were evaluated for treatment of SARS-CoV-2 in several large and small early clinical trials and shown to be ineffective.
For any evaluation of enzymatic activity, the general principle is to prolong the duration of action so that the number of doses that need to be given can be reduced. Paxlovid is given twice a day, but without ritonavir’s inclusion, 322 [paxlovid] would have needed to be given much more frequently, which is a key factor in reducing compliance with any treatment.
With most antivirals it makes sense to combine them to reduce the chances of resistance developing. However, with molnupiravir’s mode of action being the induction of mutations through the random replacement of cytidine or uridine with NHC-TP, a molecule generated by metabolism of molnupiravir, resulting in lethal mutagenesis or error catastrophe, the chances of development of resistance are believed to be low. With paxlovid, it targets an essential protease, so if the virus mutates the protease in order to escape the antiviral drug it is likely to have a fitness cost to the virus. One of the advantages of an oral antiviral that targets viral replication is that the spike protein mutations that we worry about with vaccine induced immunity or with monoclonal antibody therapy will not matter, because the drug has a different target.
Pfizer originally started its work on SARS-CoV-2 by synthesising and pre-clinically evaluating protease inhibitors years ago as a potential treatment. The data published by the Pfizer team reported that the Mpro inhibitor showed potent antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 and all the human coronaviruses.
Testing in human cells and mouse models of SARS-CoV-2 suggest that the treatment could limit damage to lung tissue. The first trial in six individuals was published and the recent announcement, not yet published, showed that paxlovid resulted in an 89% protection against progression to severe disease and no patients treated with the drug died, as compared to 10 deaths in the placebo recipients. This is a major advancement for SARS-CoV-2 and potentially for all coronaviruses.
Drugs do not need immunogenicity studies. A small safety and bioequivalence study may be required for the drug to be manufactured in India.
Pfizer has committed a billion dollars to supporting technology transfer and supporting manufacturing capacity to be established through the Medicines Patents Pool (MPP). Given the experience of the Indian Pharma industry, I see no reason why they should not be able to rapidly ramp up manufacturing, not just for India, but for the 95 countries eligible to receive these drugs under the MPP mechanisms.
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology studied the physics of a finger snap and determined how friction plays a critical role. Using an intermediate amount of friction, not too high and not too low, a snap of the finger produces the highest rotational accelerations observed in humans, even faster than the arm of a professional baseball pitcher (Journal of the Royal Society Interface).
Using high-speed imaging, automated image processing, and dynamic force sensors, the researchers analysed a variety of finger snaps. According to a press release, the researchers explored the role of friction by covering fingers with different materials.
For an ordinary snap with bare fingers, the researchers measured maximal rotational velocities of 7,800 degrees per second and rotational accelerations of 1.6 million degrees per second squared. The rotational velocity is less than that measured for the fastest rotational motions observed in humans, which come from the arms of professional baseball players during the act of pitching. However, the snap acceleration is the fastest human angular acceleration yet measured, almost three times faster than the rotational acceleration of a professional baseball pitcher's arm.
Reducing both the compressibility and friction of the skin make it a lot harder to build up enough force in your fingers to actually snap. Surprisingly, increasing the friction of the fingertips with rubber coverings also reduced speed and acceleration, says the release. The researchers concluded that a Goldilocks zone of friction was necessary — too little friction and not enough energy was stored to power the snap, and too much friction led to energy dissipation as the fingers took longer to slide past each other, wasting the stored energy into heat.
In an email, Leena Menghaney, South Asia Head of Médecins Sans Frontières’s Access Campaign, says that the voluntary license will exclude India from even supplying raw materials (active pharmaceutical ingredients) to generic manufacturers in upper middle-income countries, thus compromising their options for securing affordable access.
World over, leaders called for COVID-19 drugs and vaccines to be treated as public goods accessible to all countries. There are no granted patents yet on Pfizer’s antiviral candidate PF-07321332, and ritonavir has been off-patent since last year. India is going to play a vital role in the supply of raw materials and finished formulations of the drug. The MPP-Pfizer license on this new antiviral is business as usual, with supply restricted to just 95 countries, excluding many upper-middle-income countries in Latin America, Central Asia, South East Asia from benefiting from affordable generic supply or using their established generic capacity based on supply of raw materials (API) from countries like India.
Using the chilling effect of patent filings, and restrictive license terms and conditions, pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer set limitations on where and to whom a low-cost generic product can be sold, control the supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and impose other restrictions on licensees. Pfizer’s business strategy has set a negative precedent by offering a voluntary license that excludes nearly half of the world’s population during a global pandemic.
In the current practice of voluntary licenses, most high- and upper-middle-income countries are excluded, including many with a high burden of COVID-19. Almost 50% of the upper-middle-income countries are excluded from the Merck license and more than 70% of the upper middle-income countries are excluded from the Pfizer license. When countries are excluded from voluntary licenses on lifesaving medicines or vaccines, their options for securing affordable access are compromised.
Technically, manufacturers in excluded countries can take a sub-license from the MPP to produce the medicine or its raw material, but they cannot supply it domestically. China is one such country. This licensing practice raises ethical questions about harnessing the capacity of developing countries to develop, produce and supply quality medicines while at the same time prohibiting generic companies from responding to considerable unmet medical needs domestically.
The regulatory pathway for drugs like antivirals is straightforward. Companies with GMP certificates and showing bioequivalence can develop and register low-cost generic versions within months. This has happened in the case of baricitinib, molnupiravir in India and Bangladesh. It is in the business interest to restrict such generic competition. Through the license terms and conditions, pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer set limitations on where and to whom a low-cost generic product can be sold, control the supply of API and impose other restrictions on licensees.
In the case of vaccines, in the absence of access to the regulatory dossier and different kinds of IP, including trade secrets, pharma corporations can delay competition for much longer. Pharma corporations take advantage of these complexities to avoid negotiations on sharing of data, know-how, and IP.
A key issue present in many voluntary licenses, including this one between the MPP and Pfizer, is that the benefits of these agreements are not available to all populations equally due to geographic restrictions imposed on licensees. The determination of the list of countries/territories in a voluntary license is often justified based on country income, driven by business interests of the patent-holding company, which may leave out many countries with a high burden of disease where more affordable generic medicines are desperately needed. For instance, despite facing a global pandemic, people in Brazil and most South American countries, Central Asia, and South-East Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia have been excluded from voluntary licenses on COVID-19.
Voluntary licenses include restrictive terms on active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which are an indispensable part of formulating the final products of medicines and constitute a significant percentage of the total cost of production. The ability to procure API from India plays an important role in ensuring affordable prices for finished products.
This license prohibits Indian companies who may sign the license from supplying API to independent manufacturers in countries like Thailand, Brazil and all other countries which are excluded from the list of territories. Effectively restricting the sources of API blocks potential producers in countries excluded from the license from producing and supplying their health ministries and in their region.
Yes, they can but compulsory licensing takes time, and we need a speedy response in the pandemic. It is crucial that governments continue to use all means, including refusing to grant any patents on this treatment — and the adoption of the IP waiver at the upcoming WTO Ministerial Conference at the end of November — to ensure that there are no restrictions on generic production of this and other COVID-19 treatments anywhere, in order to ensure true global access and save as many lives as possible.
In a vital discovery which will aid in the understanding of “exotic” radio stars and stellar magnetospheres, a team of astronomers from the Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) have used the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) to discover eight stars belonging to a rare category called ‘Main-sequence Radio Pulse’ emitters or MRPs.
Of the total 15 MRPs known so far, 11 have been discovered by the NCRA-TIFR team alone (with three MRPs spotted by them in the recent past) thanks to the wide bandwidth and high sensitivity of the upgraded GMRT, which is a radio telescope located at Khodad in Pune district and which is not operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the U.S.
The MRPs are stars hotter than Sun with unusually strong magnetic fields, and much stronger than stellar wind (a continuous flow of gas from a star’s upper atmosphere). Due to this, they emit bright radio pulses like a lighthouse.
“The success of the GMRT programme has revolutionised our notion about this class of stars. Though the first MRP was discovered in 2000, it was only due to the high sensitivity of the uGMRT that the discovery of more such stars was possible. The success of the survey with the uGMRT suggest that the current notion of MRPs as rare objects may not be correct. Rather, they are probably more common but are difficult to detect,” says Barnali Das, a PhD student at the NCRA-TIFR, who has been actively studying this phenomenon.
In fact, it was Ms. Das and her supervisor, Prof. Poonam Chandra of the NCRA who first introduced the appellation ‘MRP’ last year in an effort to understand the properties of these stars. The duo has performed the most extensive study of MRPs over an ultra-wide frequency range, using two of the world’s leading radio telescopes: the uGMRT and the U.S. based Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA).
Prof. Chandra says the reason for the difficult detection of MRPs was that the radio pulses are visible only at certain times and the phenomenon is mostly observable at low radio frequencies.
“The high sensitivity of the uGMRT and its ability to make high resolution images have been instrumental in enabling the recovery of the pulsed signal from the different types of radiation coming from the sky. This, combined with a strategic observation campaign allowed the astronomers to overcome difficulties, and reveal the true nature of these objects. We found that magnetic field and temperature are two quantities that appear to play the major role in deciding how intense the radio pulse will be,” she observes.
These findings will prove crucial in understanding what switches off the production of radio pulses in a hot magnetic star.
A research paper describing these new discoveries has been recently accepted for publication in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal (ApJ).
The work done by Ms. Das, Prof. Chandra and other members of the NCRA team has shown for the first time that the radio pulses emitted by MRPs contain a vast amount of information regarding the stellar magnetosphere.
“The pulsed radio emission from MRPs are the only visible signatures of the theoretical models which predicts tiny explosions in magnetic massive stars that occur at specific locations in the magnetosphere of the star. These explosions have been predicted to play an important role in regulating the transport of wind materials surrounding the star, and are likely to affect the stellar evolution as well,” Ms. Das observes.
A new tree species of the genus Cryptocarya spotted in Edamalakkudy in Idukki district has been named after a tribe from the locality.
‘Cryptocarya muthuvariana’ has been named so to honour the Muthuvar tribe and as it was discovered in their neighbourhood, researchers responsible for the identification said.
Annales Botanici Fennici, a scientific journal brought out by the Finnish Zoological and Botanical Publishing Board, has published the findings on the new species by R. Jagadeesan, former researcher, Department of Botany, University of Kerala; A. Gangaprasad, Professor, Department of Botany, and Director, Centre for Biodiversity Conservation, University of Kerala; and P. Suresh Kumar and Sam P. Mathew of the Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (JNTBGRI), Palode.
Belonging to the Lauraceae family, the genus Cryptocarya comprises over 300 species that are widely distributed over South America, South Africa, Madagascar, Asia, Australia and Oceania. The researchers came across the new species during surveys on endemic and threatened species of the Western Ghats. Detailed studies showed it to be a distinct species.
‘Cryptocarya muthuvariana’ grows to a height of about 10 to 15 m and is characterised by not-too-broad leaves. The researchers managed to spot only around 10 individual trees of the species in the locality. The Western Ghats is home to around nine species of the genus Cryptocarya, they said.
The team has underscored the need to study aspects related to ecological importance, medicinal value and sustainable use of the new tree species.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have identified molecular mechanisms in water flow.
This, they say, would be useful in designing novel reverse osmosis (RO) systems that use carbon nanotubes-based membranes.
The research involved Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, and the Netherlands-based Delft University of Technology.
The study was sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology as part of Water Technology Initiative. Sarith P. Sathian, professor in the Department of Applied Mechanics and Vishhu Prasad Kurupath from IIT Madras, Sridhar Kumar Kannam from Swinburne University and Remco Hartkamp from Delft University, were in the team that worked on the research.
Their findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Desalination.
Mr. Sarith said there was need for such advanced research as the process of desalination required energy, which leads to the requirement of large amounts of fresh water.
Due to this, a cyclic dependency ensues between freshwater availability and energy availability. The aim of this advanced research on desalination is to reduce the energy consumption.
The researchers investigated novel methods to effect desalination at high energy efficiency.
They also tried to improve state-of-the-art, energy-efficient desalination techniques.
This led to the study on improving the efficiency of RO.
Finding the fossils of a large duck-billed dinosaur in southern Missouri is exciting enough, but a paleontologist who helped lead the dig believes there are many more in the same area.
The latest fossils are a specimen of Parrosaurus missouriensis, first discovered at the same site in Bollinger County nearly 80 years ago but not confirmed as a new species until the latest dig. Experts believe the plant-eating dinosaurs grew to around 35 feet in length. Remains of four of the species have been found in the same area about 180 kilometers south of St. Louis.
Last month, a crane hoisted a 1,130-kilogram chunk of remains from the latest find from the glen of a wooded area. The fossils will go to Chicago’s Field Museum for further research.
University of Minnesota Paleontologist Peter Makovicky, who helped lead the dig, said Monday that he believes the remains of many other dinosaurs will be found at the site.
“We actually have something that’s probably a mass death locality, where we have a herd of dinosaurs dying and being sort of buried together, and individuals of different ages,” Makovicky said.
“We can start looking at how these dinosaurs grew, start to understand a little bit about their biology and their possible herd structure. And that’s unique for a site east of the Great Plains. Most of what we know about the North American dinosaur comes from out west,” Makovicky said.
The first dinosaur fossils at the Missouri site were found in the early 1940s, uncovered by a family digging a well. Experts weren’t sure what sort of dinosaur it was and the bones were shelved for a long time.
A Missouri paleontologist purchased the property in the 1980s. A second set of dinosaur bones were found then.
Meanwhile, Guy Darrough, a fossil enthusiast and curator of the Sainte Genevieve Museum Learning Center in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, got permission to start digging around. About 10 years ago, he found fossils confirmed to be a juvenile dinosaur.
That discovery led Makovicky and his team to the site in 2017. Bones of the latest adult dinosaur were discovered, and experts determined that the Missouri dinosaurs were part of their own species. Makovicky believes they roamed the region 75 million to 90 million years ago.
The latest dig was a slow one, in part because of delays connected to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because the teams had to work cautiously in the wet clay of the Missouri site — fossils are more typically excavated from rock.
“It’s a lot less power tools and a lot more clay sculpting tools you might get an art store,” Makovicky said.
Beyond dinosaur bones, the teams have found remains of massive turtles, prehistoric fish, even crocodiles that may have been to up 15 meters long, Darrough and Makovicky said.
A spacewalk planned for Tuesday to repair a faulty antenna on the International Space Station was postponed indefinitely, NASA said, citing a “debris notification” it received for the orbiting research laboratory.
Two US astronauts had been scheduled to venture outside the space station at 7:10 am Eastern time (1210 GMT) to begin their work, facing what NASA officials had called a slightly elevated risk posed by debris from a Russian anti-satellite missile test this month.
But about five hours before the outing was to have commenced, NASA said on Twitter that the spacewalk had been called off for the time being.
It was not made clear how close debris had come to the space station, orbiting about 402 km above the Earth, or whether it was related to the Russian missile test.
NASA TV had planned to provide live coverage of the 6-1/2-hour “extravehicular activity,” or EVA, operation by astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron.
The outing would be the fifth spacewalk for Marshburn, 61, a medical doctor and former flight surgeon with two previous trips to orbit, and the first for Barron, 34, a US Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer on her debut spaceflight for NASA. The objective is to remove a faulty S-band radio communications antenna assembly, now more than 20 years old, and replace it with a new spare stowed outside the space station.
According to plans, Marshburn was to have worked with Barron while positioned at the end of a robotic arm operated from inside the station by German astronaut Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency, with help from NASA crewmate Raja Chari.
The four arrived at the space station November 11 in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, joining two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut already aboard the orbiting outpost.
Four days later, an anti-satellite missile test conducted without warning by Russia generated a debris field in low-Earth orbit, and all seven crew members took shelter in their docked spaceships to allow for a quick getaway until the immediate danger passed, according to NASA.
The residual debris cloud from the blasted satellite has dispersed since then, according to Dana Weigel, NASA deputy manager of the International Space Station (ISS) program. But NASA calculates that remaining fragments continued to pose a “slightly elevated” background risk to the space station as a whole, and a 7% higher risk of spacewalkers’ suits being punctured, as compared to before Russia’s missile test, Weigel told reporters on Monday.
Although NASA has yet to fully quantify additional hazards posed by more than 1,700 larger fragments it is tracking around the station’s orbit, the 7% higher risk to spacewalkers falls “well within” fluctuations previously seen in “the natural environment,” Weigel said. Still, mission managers canceled several smaller maintenance tasks under consideration for Tuesday’s spacewalk, Weigel added.
Written by Ellie Shechet
When a wildfire plows through a forest, life underground changes, too. Death comes for many microorganisms. But, like trees, some microbes are adapted to fire.
Certain fungi are known as pyrophilous, or “fire-loving.” After a fire, pyrophilous fungi “show up from nowhere, basically,” said Tom Bruns, a mycologist at the University of California, Berkeley, even in areas that haven’t burned for decades. Some sprout in fiery shades of orange and pink. “It’s a worldwide phenomenon, but we don’t really know much about them,” he said.
A new study, published last month in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, aimed to uncover the food source that allows Pyronema, a genus of pyrophilous fungi, to appear so quickly in such big numbers after a fire. What they discovered is that the damage left by the fire itself may allow the fungi to thrive. That could affect how the ecosystem recovers, as well as how much carbon gets released into the atmosphere after wildfires.
During a severe wildfire, a lot of carbon in the top layer of soil goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, while some of it stays put as charcoal, or what scientists call pyrolyzed organic matter. Slightly deeper in the soil, it’s less hot — but hot enough that any living microbes and insects exploded and died, said the study’s lead author, Monika Fischer, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
So, is Pyronema just living off this layer of death? “Or can Pyronema actually eat charcoal?” Fischer said.
Charcoal is difficult for many organisms to break down, said Thea Whitman, an associate professor of soil ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Fischer’s co-author. But, she said, “there are certain microbes that can decompose it.”
To find out if Pyronema can eat charcoal, the authors grew the fungus from samples collected by Bruns’ team after the Rim fire in California in 2013. The Pyronema lived on charcoal, as well as three other nutrient sources for comparison. Then they dunked the fungus in liquid nitrogen and sent it off for RNA sequencing.
“If it’s trying to eat the charcoal, we would see a bunch of metabolic genes getting turned on — which is what we saw,” Fischer said. And many were genes involved in breaking down the complex ring structures that make up charcoal.
To confirm that the fungus was actually doing what it appeared to be doing, Whitman’s lab grew pine seedlings in an atmosphere with carbon dioxide containing carbon-13, an isotope whose unusual weight makes it easy to trace, and then put the trees in a specialized furnace to form charcoal, which was fed to the Pyronema. Like us, fungi take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, most of which comes from whatever they are eating. The fungus’s carbon-13-labeled emissions, then, suggested that it really was snacking on charcoal.
The researchers also tracked normal carbon dioxide coming out of the fungus, and substantially more of it than the charcoal, suggesting it was eating something else — maybe the agar it was growing on, or some carbon that entered during inoculation, Whitman said.
Fischer offered this interpretation: “Pyronema can eat charcoal, but it really doesn’t like to.” The fungi may first enjoy that layer of dead organisms, the authors suggested, and then switch to charcoal when it must.
“Fungi are amazing at degrading all sorts of compounds,” said Kathleen Treseder, an ecologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study. “It makes sense that they would be able to break down this pyrolyzed material.” Aditi Sengupta, a soil microbial ecologist at California Lutheran University who also was not involved, added that it would be useful to confirm the experiment outside the lab and in the wild.
If this fungus is breaking down charcoal after a fire, Fischer said — even a little bit of it — then that could help open up a food source for the next generation of microbes and other creatures that can’t eat charcoal, making Pyronema an important player in post-fire recovery. And if Pyronema can do it, she said, maybe other fungi can, too.
“We want these kinds of activities in the soil,” Sengupta said. At the same time, she pointed out that “eventually that might lead to us losing the carbon in the soil.” As climate change and other human actions drive more frequent and intense wildfires, we need to understand whether carbon stored in the ground as charcoal will stay there, Treseder said, “or if that’s not something we can really count on, because the fungus can degrade it and release it as CO2.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
A team of experts has found a mummy estimated to be at least 800 years old on Peru’s central coast, one of the archaeologists who participated in the excavation said on Friday.
The mummified remains were of a person from the culture that developed between the coast and mountains of the South American country.
The mummy, whose gender was not identified, was discovered in the Lima region, said archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen Luna.
“The main characteristic of the mummy is that the whole body was tied up by ropes and with the hands covering the face, which would be part of the local funeral pattern,” said Van Dalen Luna, from the State University of San Marcos.
The remains are of a person who lived in the high Andean region of the country, he said. “Radiocarbon dating will give a more precise chronology.”
The mummy was found inside an underground structure found on the outskirts of the city of Lima. In the tomb were also offerings including ceramics, vegetable remains and stone tools, he said.
Peru – home to tourist destination Machu Picchu – is home to hundreds of archaeological sites from cultures that developed before and after the Inca Empire, which dominated the southern part of South America 500 years ago, from southern Ecuador and Colombia to central Chile.
University of Maine researchers are trying to produce potatoes that can better withstand warming temperatures as the climate changes.
Warming temperatures and an extended growing season can lead to quality problems and disease, Gregory Porter, a professor of crop ecology and management, told the Bangor Daily News.
“The predictions for climate change are heavier rainfall events, and potatoes don’t tolerate flooding or wet conditions for long without having other quality problems,” Porter said. “If we want potatoes to be continued to be produced successfully in Maine, we need to be able to produce varieties that can be resistant to change.”
Around the world, research aimed at mitigating crop damage is underway. A NASA study published this month suggested climate change may affect the production of corn and wheat, with corn yields projected to decline while wheat could see potential growth, as soon as 2030 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario.
Maine is coming off of a banner potato crop thanks in part to the success of the Caribou russet, which was developed by UMaine researchers. But Porter fears that even that variety isn’t as heat tolerant as necessary to resist the future effects of climate change.
Pests are another factor. The Colorado potato beetle and disease-spreading aphids have flourished with the changing climate, said Jim Dill, pest management specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Breeding seemingly small changes like hairier leaves that make it difficult for insects to move around on the plant can cut down on pests’ destruction and also the need for pesticides, he said.
Breeding such characteristics into potatoes is a long process of cross-pollinating different potato varieties. The process is well underway.
They’re in a research testing phase right now at sites throughout the United States. Test potatoes in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida are testing high temperature stress.
“It takes 10 years of selection after that initial cross pollination, and it might take two to five years before enough commercial evaluation has taken place to release a new potato variety,” Porter said.
NASA’s Curiosity rover recently captured two remarkable images from the side of Mars’ Mount Sharp and the mission team has now stitched it together, added colours, and created a ‘postcard’ from Mars. On November 16, 2021, the rover captured a 360-degree view of its surroundings at 8:30 am and again at 4:10 pm local Mars time.
By taking the pictures of the landscape at two different times, the black-and-white navigation cameras were able to capture a variety of details of the area.
The artistic recreation of the two scenes includes “elements from the morning scene in blue, the afternoon scene in orange, and a combination of both in green,” according to NASA.
At the center of the image is Mount Sharp, standing at about 5-kilometer-tall. On August 6, 2012, Curiosity landed next to this mountain, and studying this area has been one of its primary scientific goals.
In 2017, Curiosity found evidence for liquid on ancient Mars on the lower slope of Mount Sharp and that the ancient lake environment may have offered favourable conditions for microbial life. In 2019, the rover collected evidence that the Gale crater on Mars had once hosted a lake and stream system in the past.
Rounded hills, fields of sand ripples known as the “Sands of Forvie” and the “Rafael Navarro Mountain” can also be seen in the picture.
Wings of male and female dragonflies adapt differently to warming climates, a recent study led by researchers from Washington University has found.
The team examined wing ornamentation, colouration and production of melanin in order to assess how individuals had adapted to various climatic requirements and how it offered them an advantage in the mating game.
While the evolution of physiological characteristics, like reproductive cycle and body sizes, have been considered as possible ways a species can adapt to its climate; mate choice has seldom been looked at as a driving force in evolution. Mate choice, however, is a significant way in which selection operates and improves the fitness of the species from one generation to the next.
Dragonflies and their close relatives, the damselflies have for long been used as model organisms in ecological studies. This is due to their short life history and the relative ease with which they can be bred and cared for in the laboratory.
The team found that warmer climates favour lighter colours on wing ornamentation because of obvious reasons: dark wing colours absorb solar radiation that leads to heating.
Both male and female dragonflies and damselflies use wing ornamentation as cues for mating, trying to attract more mates and ward off rivals and competitors.
>While males with greater wing melanisation have been observed to typically attract more females, wing melanisation comes at a certain cost. It can damage wing tissues, reduce the male fighting ability and could even be fatal if it is unusually warm.
An important finding of the study was that although males in warmer ranges have less wing melanisation than those in cooler ranges, no such perceptible difference in melanisation was found for females. Neither is there a relationship between the temperature of a species’ range and the extent of female wing melanisation.
There are a few reasons for this. The current geographic distribution of many of these dragonfly lineages does not reveal how old these species/populations are very accurately.
After the ice sheets retreated following the Last Glacial Maxima ( about 11,000 years ago), dragonfly populations colonised many areas where melanisation was not very costly. This is a phenomenon known as ‘ecological filtering.’
Also, ornamentation is quite ‘evolutionary labile,’ which means it can respond fairly quickly to local climates and is even adjusted over the course of one individual’s lifetime. Indeed, when wing ornamentation of dragonfly populations in different geographical zones, separated for nearly 100 million years, were examined, they revealed the same patterns: male dragonflies in warmer climes had lighter wings than their counterparts in cooler climes, and no such difference was found among female conspecifics.
Similar results were obtained when the study sampled ten widely distributed dragonfly species – the years that were warmer-than-average exhibited less wing melanisation in males and not females.
The authors estimate that male wing melanisation/ornamentation will decline by 2070, but very modestly. Female wing melanisation will not show much difference.
“In particular, female ornaments show no consistent relationship with climatic conditions within or among species, suggesting that ornaments have different thermal consequences for males and females,’ says the study. This is largely due to the typically cooler microhabitats that females inhabit by and large.
That organisms evolve to changing climates is no news, and was something known to evolutionary biologists (Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace) as early as the nineteenth century. However, the study is notable in that it assesses whether or not climatic adaptations lead to tweaking traits that are often used in mating and reproduction.
“Rapid changes in mating-related traits might hinder a species’ ability to identify the correct mate. Even though our research suggests these changes in pigmentation seem likely to happen as the world warms, the consequences are something we still really don’t know all that much about yet,” lead author Michael Moore said in a release.
– The author is a freelance science communicator. (mail[at]ritvikc[dot]com)
Between 2009 and 2019, the number of reported incidents of poaching and seizure of bear parts in India was 149 involving at least 264 bears, notes a new study. The gall bladder of the Asiatic black bear was poached in high numbers for use in traditional medicine, while sloth bears were killed for their skin and claws. The Asiatic black bear Ursus thibetanus, and sloth bear Melursus ursinus are currently listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Both these species are protected under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 and you can be imprisoned for three to seven years and charged a hefty fine or both for the illegal trade. They are also listed in Appendix I of CITES which prohibits international trade of these species.
“Bears are in a lot of trouble. Their gallbladders and bones are used in traditional medicine, while their meat is served as part of the exotic food industry. People like to buy bear claws, teeth, skin, and skulls as trophies. Some even keep it as a talisman,” says Chris R. Shepherd from the Monitor Conservation Research Society, British Columbia, Canada. He is the corresponding author of the paper recently published in Global Ecology and Conservation.
The team writes that live bear cubs were also traded to be kept as pets or supplied to bear bile extraction facilities.
There have also been reports of international trafficking of bear gall bladders from India into Japan as far back as 1981 as well as into Singapore, Taiwan, China, Myanmar, and Nepal.
In 2012, though a National Bear Conservation and Welfare Action Plan was developed, the extent of the illegal bear trade in the country remains poorly documented.
“Our study tried to address this knowledge gap, but still we don’t have the complete picture of the trade. For example, we don’t have much information about how much these sell for. It could really vary along the trade chain. The hunter might get peanuts for it and the end retailer is going to make the big bucks. There must be various levels of middlemen before it reaches the consumers who will spend a lot of money on these items,” says Shepherd.
The study noted that the highest number of bear seizures were reported in Uttarakhand followed by Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra “This is unsurprising considering Uttarakhand shares a long and porous border with Nepal, a known trade route for other wildlife products e.g. big cat skins reach China,” writes the team.
One of the authors of the study, Tito Joseph from the Wildlife Protection Society of India, says that the Trans-Himalayan land route is a hotspot for illegal wildlife trafficking. “The South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN) launched in 2011 has been working with member countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to combat illegal wildlife trade in South Asia. We work with the local police, customs, and sea guards to enhance wildlife law enforcement,” says Joseph.
Chris R. Shepherd adds that tackling wildlife crime needs a three-pronged approach. “You need strong and effective legislation along with good enforcement and public awareness. The public needs to be aware that it’s illegal to purchase bear parts or to kill bears or own them. But they need to go a step beyond that. They need to be involved — by reporting incidents of illegal trade, raising awareness amongst the communities through schools or other local forums,” he says.
India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft performed an evasive manoeuvre to avoid collision with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), according to ISRO.
A very close conjunction between Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter (CH2O) and LRO of NASA was expected to occur on October 20 this year at 05:45 UTC (11:15 a.m. IST) near the Lunar North pole, the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency said in a statement.
Over a span of one week prior to the conjunction, analyses by both ISRO and JPL/NASA consistently showed that the radial separation between the two spacecraft would be less than 100 metres and the closest approach distance would be only about three km at the time of closest approach.
Both the agencies deemed that the situation warranted a collision avoidance manoeuvre (CAM) to mitigate the close approach risk, and it was mutually agreed that CH2O would undergo the CAM.
The manoeuvre was scheduled on October 18. It was designed to ensure a sufficiently large radial separation at the next closest conjunction between the two spacecraft.
The CAM was executed nominally at 14:52 UTC (8:22 p.m. IST), on October 18.
After orbit determination of CH2O with post-manoeuvre tracking data, it was reconfirmed that there would be no further close conjunctions with LRO in the near future with the achieved orbit, ISRO said.
It may be noted that like CH2O, LRO orbits the Moon in a nearly polar orbit and hence, both the spacecraft come close to each other over the Lunar poles.
It is common for satellites in Earth Orbit to undergo CAM to mitigate collision risk due to space objects including space debris and operational spacecraft.
ISRO said it regularly monitors such critical close approaches and execute CAMs for its operational satellites whenever the collision risk is assessed to be critical.
“However, this is the first time such a critically close conjunction was experienced for a space exploration mission of ISRO which necessitated an evasive manoeuvre”, the statement said.
The event highlights the importance of continual assessment of close approach situations for Lunar and Martian missions, and the fact that effective mitigation of close approach risk involves close coordination and synergy among different space agencies, it was stated.
In 2019, astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first ever image of a supermassive black hole (M87*) which was located at the centre of a galaxy Messier 87 (M87). This black hole is calculated to be 6.5 billion times the Sun’s mass and is 55 million light years away from the Earth. The discovery set the world of astronomy on fire and also found a mention in the “popular information” section of the announcement of the Nobel Prize in physics for 2020, when Andrea Ghez and Rheinhard Genzel were awarded half the share of the prize for their study of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*.
Now, a paper published in The European Physical Journal C brings in an alternative explanation for the compact object that was imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope. The authors say it (M87*) is not necessarily a black hole but could even be a “naked singularity with a gravitomagnetic monopole.”
When stars much more massive than the Sun reach the end of their lives, they collapse under their own gravity, and the product of this collapse, most astronomers believe is a black hole. A black hole has two parts: At its core is a singularity – a point that is infinitely dense, as all the remnant mass of the star is compressed into this point. Then there is the event horizon – an imaginary surface surrounding the singularity, and the gravity of the object is such that once anything enters this surface, it is trapped forever. Not even light can escape the pull of the singularity once it crosses the event horizon. That is why, we cannot see the singularity at the heart of a black hole but only see points outside the event horizon. Hence, all the physics happening within the black hole’s event horizon is indeed blocked from the view of the observer.
In many scenarios of stellar collapse, the event horizon does not form, and the singularity is exposed to the outside, without any event horizon shielding it. Pankaj S. Joshi, a specialist in general theory of relativity and cosmology, calls this “naked singularity” a “troublesome sibling” of a black hole in an article by him in Scientific American. If this weird object should exist, observers can, in principle, see the bare, or “naked” singularity as it is called. While many physicists object because of some seriously problematic issues associated with the solutions, these nevertheless exist, puzzling researchers, perhaps embarrassing them. Prof. Joshi is the Founding Director of International Center for Cosmology and Advisor, Charusat University, Anand, in Gujarat, and is not involved in the work under discussion.
In the above paper, Chandrachur Chakraborty, from the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing, China, and his collaborators show that M87* could be either a black hole or a naked singularity and each of these possibilities could be plain or coupled with what is called a gravitomagnetic monopole. In all, that leaves four possibilities in principle.
In the nineteenth century, James Clerk Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism as one combined phenomenon, showing that light is an electromagnetic wave. But there is an asymmetry between electricity and magnetism. While positive and negative electric charges can be found to exist independently, the poles of a magnet are always found in pairs, north and south bound together. Break a magnet and you will get a smaller magnet having two poles. Dr Chakraborty draws upon an analogy between gravitational force and electromagnetism to say that mass is like electric charge and can exist independently, thus it can be called a “gravito-electric charge”. But then, what is the gravito-magnetic charge? He explains that in 1963, Newman, Tamburino and Unti (NUT) proposed a theoretical concept called a “gravito-magnetic charge” also called a gravitomagnetic monopole.
“We have shown that M87* could be a black hole (with or without gravitomagnetic monopole) or a naked singularity (with or without gravitomagnetic monopole) … The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration mapped it to a black hole only and did also not consider that it might contain a gravitomagnetic monopole,” says Dr Chakraborty.
But this is where a difficult situation arises. When you allow the NUT-like solutions, there is a possibility of “closed timelike loops.” These are regions in parameter space of spacetime in which the past merges with the future . The distinction between past, present and future blurs allowing many bizarre situations. Hence, this solution comes in for strong criticism from physicists.
“The Kerr and the Schwarzschild solutions of Einstein's equations [namely black holes with spin and having an event horizon] are considered appropriate for describing astrophysical black holes, like the one that has been recently imaged in M87. However, the Kerr-NUT solutions describing gravitomagnetic monopoles are not regarded in the same way,” says Joseph Samuel, a physicist from Bengaluru-based International Centre of Theoretical Sciences, who has worked in General theory of Relativity and Cosmology. “These solutions suffer from a pathology known as closed timelike curves. In such spacetimes, time is a periodic variable [that is, everything repeats after a period of time]. One can travel into the past and create logical contradictions by killing off one's ancestors,” Prof. Samuel adds.
If a person could travel back in time and kill off their ancestor, that would certainly cause a contradiction, as they will cease to exist as time unfolds and this would mean they cannot go back in time to kill their ancestor, giving rise to a paradox.
Prof. Joshi has this to say. “Some important solutions to Einstein equations do admit closed timelike curves. Despite this, the solutions have been studied because they have some other useful or important or interesting features. So, you have to take them in that spirit. This is why the so-called wormhole solutions that also admit closed timelike curves are very much under study today.”
There is another approach. Why discard the entire solution? Only those regions of parameter space that give rise to the closed timelike loops could be thrown away. This is suggested by Prof. Joshi. “Not all solutions of Einstein equations have closed time like curves, but some have… If you do not like closed time like curves then you have to discard away these solutions. It is as simple as that. That is the status of the theory right now,” he says, clarifying that not all naked singularity solutions have closed timelike curves, many of them do respect causality.
Thus, an old debate resurfaces with this paper: to throw out these solutions or keep them and handle them carefully.
The evolution of land plants has been marked by an increase in the complexity of reproductive structures. A recent study has revealed land plants did not evolve gradually over hundreds of millions of years. Instead, they underwent two major bursts of diversification 250 million years apart. The first occurred early in plant history, giving rise to the development of seeds, and the second took place during the diversification of flowering plants, according to a Stanford University release.
The Stanford research uses a novel but simple metric to classify plant complexity based on the arrangement and number of basic parts in their reproductive structures. The latest study (Science) has shed light on timing and magnitude of those changes.
The researchers analysed the temporal pattern of the increase in the complexity of reproductive structures by studying fossil and extant land plants across the entire paleontological record. They found that reproductive complexity increased in two widely separated pulses that coincides with key developments in reproductive biology: the origin of seeds in the very late Devonian and the origin of flowering plants in the mid-Cretaceous almost 250 million years later. “After the origin of flowers, there was a rapid expansion in the morphological complexity of flowering plants. In contrast to many aspects of animal morphological diversity, which expanded early in evolutionary history, most complexity in plants was achieved relatively late,” the authors say in the paper.
The second burst of complexity was more dramatic than the first, emphasising the unique nature of flowering plants, according to Andrew Leslie, one of authors of the paper from Stanford. That period gave rise to plants like the passionflower, which can have 20 different types of parts, more than twice the number found in non-flowering plants.
Viruses are ubiquitous, most are innocuous and some, such as SARS CoV-2, turn out to be pernicious. Zika virus, first detected in rhesus monkeys in the Zika forest in Uganda in 1947 and then identified in humans after a few years, appears to be re-positioning itself. For the first 60 years after detection, only 14 human cases had been reported, from Asia and Tropical Africa. The first ever outbreak of Zika virus was reported in 2007 in the island of Yap (a federated state in Micronesia) in the Pacific. Zika virus received global attention with the start of a major outbreak in Brazil in March 2015, which then spread to many countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean. The outbreak was associated with higher incidences of microcephaly (a condition which results in a small brain in the fetus) as well as the increased neurological symptoms such as Guillain-Barré syndrome and neuropathies in adults and children infected with the virus. On February 1, 2016, Zika virus outbreak was designated a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization (a classification a step before a disease is declared as pandemic). Between 2015 and 2017, nearly 550,000 suspected and 175,000 confirmed Zika virus cases were reported, which included nearly 2,700 cases of microcephaly in Brazil alone. The outbreak had subsided by mid-2017; however, by late 2019, the Zika virus has been reported from at least 87 countries across the world.
The earliest evidence of Zika virus in India is in 1952-1953. The prevalence studies conducted by the National Institute of Virology, Pune, in different parts of India, had detected the antibodies against the Zika virus from humans.
The first two outbreaks of Zika virus infections in India were reported in 2017. This included three human cases from Ahmedabad, Gujarat (January-February, 2017) and one case from Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu (July 2017). There were two more outbreaks in 2018 from Madhya Pradesh (130 cases) and Rajasthan (159 cases). In 2021, at least three Zika virus outbreaks have been reported. In Kerala (at least 89 cases) and then in Maharashtra (Around 12 cases), both in July, and most recently from Uttar Pradesh in October-November, 2021 (nearly 110 confirmed cases till now).
Zika virus is primarily a mosquito-borne illness, transmitted by the Aedes mosquitoes (which transmit chikungunya and dengue). However, Zika virus is transmitted from infected mother to fetus during pregnancy, through blood and other body floods and organ translation as well as sexual contact. Most people do not develop any symptoms; however, a few may develop fever, rashes, redness in eye, muscle and joint pain, headache, and generalised fatigue.
It is a mild illness for all age groups except for the pregnant women, whose fetus may develop congenital malformation, especially abnormal brain development, microcephaly and other related neurological outcomes.
The symptoms are very similar to other common viral illnesses. Infection is suspected if there is ongoing Zika virus transmission in the area, travel history or contact history with a confirmed case. The laboratory confirmation is done from blood or urine samples.
There is no licensed vaccine to prevent disease and no specific treatment available. People are advised to take rest, eat well and drink plenty of fluids.
The current reports of Zika virus outbreaks are not a matter of immediate concern for citizens in India. However, knowing that the vector for Zika virus, the Aedes mosquito is present in all States of India, there is a need for stepping up preventive and public health measures. India should use the recent disease outbreaks as an opportunity to strengthen the disease surveillance system and health data recording and reporting systems in the country. The laboratory capacity for COVID-19, developed in the last 18 months, needs to be optimally used to conduct testing for other emerging infections.
One of the key considerations is that the outbreak which had started in Brazil in 2015 was caused by a new variant of Zika virus, termed as American lineage. Though originated from South Asian lineage, it has crucial mutation S139N, attributed to higher incidences of microcephaly and other neurological conditions. All previous outbreaks in India have been due to South-East Asian lineage and no case of microcephaly has been reported from the country. However, there is a need for a systematic surveillance of evolutionary trends in Zika virus, which can be built upon newly developed genetic sequencing capacity for SARS CoV2.
Considering most Indian states have reported Zika virus for the first time, there is a need for enhanced surveillance and equipping laboratories with testing kits for Zika virus. In areas where cases are reported, active case findings and surveillance and mosquito control measures (elimination of breeding sites and the public awareness campaigns, especially for specially for pregnant women should be prioritised. It is also the time to ensure coordinated actions between the State government and municipal corporation to develop joint action plans against vector borne diseases and share responsibilities for public health actions.
The emergence and re-emergence of viral diseases is partly unavoidable. However, with a stronger public health system , application of principles of epidemiology and use of data, their impact can be minimised.
(Chandrakant Lahariya, a physician-epidemiologist, is a vaccines and health systems specialist. His forthcoming book ‘The Lighthouse of Peeragarhi: What We Need, To Prevent Diseases And Protect Health’ is scheduled for release in 2022.)
Mosquito-borne diseases have been a scourge for thousands of years, with huge armies defeated, and economies shattered. We were therefore relieved to read reports announcing an effective malaria vaccine, following clinical trials in Burkina Faso conducted by the University of Oxford, the Serum Institute of India and others. This West African country has a long and hot season followed by monsoon rains, when mosquitoes emerge in huge swarms. The R21 vaccine has shown an efficacy of 77%, and targets the ‘circumsporozite’ protein (CSP) of the malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. The sporozite stage of this parasite secretes CSP. Mosquito bites transfer the CSP and sporozites into the human bloodstream, and the CSP nudges the parasite towards the liver, where it enters liver cells, matures and proliferates. The release of mature merozites marks the onset of the symptoms of malaria.
The WHO has just cleared another vaccine, called Mosquirix, from Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) of the U.K. With the involvement of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the vaccine has been tested in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana on over 800,000 children and shows an efficiency of over 50% in the first year, but dropping as time progresses. The Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) is planning to purchase the vaccine for countries that request it. (See a report by Apoorva Mandavilli published in New York Times). Bharat Biotech of Hyderabad has entered into a deal with GSK to develop this vaccine in India, with a dedicated facility at Bhubaneswar.
Another rapidly spreading disease is dengue. It is spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which happily grow in small stagnant pools of water, such as in discarded tyres. Four serotypes of the dengue virus are found. Serotypes make vaccine development difficult, as a different vaccine is needed against each serotype. A vaccine against dengue, DENGVAXIA, from Sanofi Pasteur, is approved in several countries and shows efficacies ranging from 42% to 78% against the four serotypes of the virus.
In India, Zydus Cadilla has been developing a DNA Vaccine against dengue. Dr. Easwaran Sreekumar at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram has modelled a consensus of the four serotypes, which is the basis for Zydus Cadilla’s DNA vaccine, using a platform that the company successfully developed for their COVID-19 vaccine.
Other innovative methods to fight dengue have been in the pipeline. One particularly interesting strategy involves a bacterium, Wolbachia pipientis, an intracellular parasite commonly found in many insects, but not in the dengue-carrying mosquito. When introduced into this mosquito’s cells, this parasite competes successfully against other parasites such as the viruses that cause dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika.
Aedes mosquitoes, doped with Wolbachia in the laboratory, are released in localities where the disease is prevalent. They quickly spread the bacterium to native Aedes mosquitoes, and the incidence of new dengue cases starts to decline. In a controlled release study in Djakarta, researchers from the Gadjah Mada University placed clusters of Aedes mosquito eggs infected with Wolbachia in 12 localities of the city in December 2017 (9 other localities served as controls – no Wolbachia released). By the time the study was halted in March 2020 due to the pandemic, the 12 localities registered 77% fewer cases of Dengue fever compared to the control localities. The intensity of the fever was less, too, with an 86% drop in hospitalisations due to Dengue.
Another way of preventing, rather than curing, mosquito-borne diseases is to accurately predict the next outbreak, and focus your healthcare and mosquito control machinery accordingly.
Both mosquitoes and the Plasmodium parasite need warm, moist weather to flourish. Using data continuously gathered by environmental satellites such as the NOAA-19, scientists at ICMR’s National Institute of Malaria Research have built elaborate models that correlate monthly rainfall data and data on annual state-wise incidence of dengue and malaria with the El-Nino Southern Oscillation, which influences global atmospheric circulation. The result is an early warning tool that forecasts the start of an outbreak and the dynamics of its progression, along with estimates of the likely number of cases. Therefore, health authorities can begin cautionary measures, several weeks in advance, to minimise the impact of an outbreak. This information is currently available for Indian States. Refining it to the district level should be the next step.
(This article was written in collaboration with Sushil Chandani who works in molecular modelling, sushilchandani@gmail.com)
dbala@lvpei.org
The longest partial lunar eclipse in 580 years will occur on November 19 and will be visible from parts of Northeast India, an astrophysicist said on Saturday.
The rare phenomenon will be visible from a few areas in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, Director of Research and Academic at MP Birla Planetarium Debiprosad Duari told PTI.
The partial eclipse will start at 12.48 pm and end at 4.17 pm, he said.
The duration of the eclipse will be 3 hours 28 minutes and 24 seconds, making it the longest in 580 years, Duari said.
“A few areas in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam will experience the last fleeting moments of the partial eclipse just after the moonrise, very close to the eastern horizon,” he explained.
The last time a partial lunar eclipse of such length occurred was on February 18, 1440, and the next time a similar phenomenon can be witnessed will be on February 8, 2669, he said.
The maximum partial eclipse will be visible at 2.34 pm as 97 per cent of the moon will be covered by the Earth’s shadow.
The moon is likely to appear blood-red in colour, which happens when the red beams of the sunlight pass through the Earth’s atmosphere and get least deflected and fall on the moon.
The partial Lunar eclipse will be visible from North America, South America, eastern Asia, Australia and the Pacific region.
The penumbral eclipse, which occurs when the sun, earth, and the moon are imperfectly aligned, will begin at 11.32 am and end at 5.33 pm, Duari said.
The penumbral eclipse will be visible from UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha but it can be seen only briefly from these places, he said.
A penumbral eclipse is not as spectacular and dramatic as the partial eclipse and sometimes does not even get noticed, he said.
The last lunar eclipse was on July 27, 2018. The next lunar eclipse will be on May 16, 2022, but it will not be visible from India, Duari said.
The next lunar eclipse to be visible from India will be on November 8, 2022.
It was a few years after the 2004 tsunami had struck. Fisherman and YouTuber M Sakthivel, 29, clearly remembers the day when the main street in his shanty in the coastal town of Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, was lit up with five lamp posts powered by solar energy. “Until then, electricity was something we had only heard about. After sunset, all our work would be done with the help of kerosene lamps,” Sakthivel recalls.
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Today, Sakthivel has become a champion of sorts for affordable domestic electrification projects that use solar energy panels. He has invested his earnings from his YouTube channel ThoothukudiMeenavan — which has more than seven lakh subscribers — to install nine domestic solar power units (costing between ₹15,000 to ₹60,000) in his colony and is looking forward to setting up some more in the coming weeks.
In Kochi, Kerala, boatbuilding companyNavAlt, in collaboration with Shell Foundation UK, has been experimenting with ideas for small solar fishing vessels. Having already tasted success with its Adityasolar-powered taxi ferries in Kerala, NavAlt is hoping to come up with boats that will provide a sustainable alternative to the current ones that run on petrol and kerosene guzzling outboard engines.
“A conventional three-foot fishing boat uses 3,600 litres of petrol or diesel when it is operated for five hours daily for 240 days in a year. With nearly two-and-a-half lakhboats in operation, approximately one million litres of fuel is consumed, leading to carbon dioxide emissions of two million tonnes per boat per year,” says NavAlt CEO Sandith Thandaserry.
“We are focussing on clusters of fishermen in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where at least four million people are engaged in short distance fishing. The inadequate size of the catch doesn’t justify the high operational costs of these boats. Solar power is among the best clean energy options for them,” he adds.
Solar energy projects have become a means of empowerment among rural and remote communities, especially those that have never been on the conventional electricity grid.
Statistics published by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy indicate that with about 300 sunny days in a year, India’s land area can be used to generate around 5,000 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) annually. According to International Energy Agency’s Renewables 2020 report, the country has the world’s fifth-largest installed solar power capacity, with 38 gigawatts (GW) in 2019, and productionof 54 TWhof electricity.
Removing fossil fuels from the picture is one of the ways to signal traditional professions like fishing to a more environment-friendly way of operation.
While a traditional ferry boat’s fuel costs come up to ₹30 lakh, for a solar boat, it is just less than ₹1 lakh per year.
“We want to see if we can achieve the same thing in the fishing sector. We are currently working on six models, (three each) of mono-hull and catamaran boats that are being tested out by fishermen in coastal districts. If they can be convinced about the initial higher cost of a solar boat that will eventually pay for itself after a few years, then we can hope to make our target price of under ₹10lakh,” elaborates Thandaserry.
The NavAlt prototypes use material like aluminium and glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) and have flexible solar panels for stability, an electrical steering unit, and twin outboard motors. The models also have assisted wind power devices for night use.
A modular battery design helps in both portability and shore charging.
Like most traditional professions, a fair amount of technology has crept into the fishing industry. Fishermen are more likely to use GPS and apps to find fishing spots rather than rely on old methods honed through years of experience and native wisdom. Despite its advantages, solar power has not been able to make much headway in small-scale fishing due to a variety of reasons, say industry figures.
“Marketing and educating the people about solar power needs funds. Fishermen are not using solar power in their boats. In fact, two fishermen removed thesolar panels from their boats when they modified their boat design,” explains Vincent Jain, deputy chief executive, South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies (SIFFS), based in Karamana,Thiruvananthapuram, that groups nearly 60,000 fishermen in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
“The wide availability of small oil-fuelled generators that cost only ₹25,000 compared to solar power panels worth over ₹2 lakh, has made many fishermen go for the cheaper option. It would be better to see solar energy as a supportive, rather than the main source of power on a boat,” adds Jain.
Companies need to make solar techproducts more economically feasible, especially if they want faster and greater adoption of small-scale fishing across Tier 2 and Tier 3 communities. “Having battery storage and getting charged by solar power adds a lot of value without having to run on petrol or diesel,” points out Rahul Kale, founder-CEO of Sunpower Renewables, an Australian developer of renewable energy solutions. The company’s handheld and grid-connected products are being used in fishing and leisure vessels in Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia.
Being compatible with the fishing technique is essential, says Kale. “In Indonesia, the units have been used in prawn fishing. When the fishermen go into the water, some of them have a small inbuilt torch or lamp. It is handy during nighttime, and is silent and eco-friendly, which is essential for prawn fishing,” he says.
While the company’s pre-pandemic presence in India was confined to the B2B segment in mining, hospitality and healthcare, Sunpower Renewables is now looking at B2C solutions in e-commerce and is marketing its products through online traders like Amazon and Croma.
Innovative technology has allowed solar energy products to be utilised well beyond daytime. “Traditional solar power products can only be used during the daytime, when sunlight is available, leaving backup to diesel-based generators of bulky battery inverters. But when you have the option to store solar power, such as in our products, they become very useful in multiple sectors,” comments Kale. “We are selling portable solar panels which shrink to the size ofa briefcase when you fold them. Ultimately, the product has to be customised to suit the users.”
For fisherman Sakthivel, who has replaced the traditional kaangan kerosene flame torch with a solar lamp when he goes out fishing, change is a constant that he chronicles through his YouTube channel as well.
“Earlier, we used to tear old clothes into strips because we were too poor to buy wicks for our kerosene lamps. Now, we just let solar lamps charge at home during daytime, and take them on our fishing voyages in the night. Many things, from the size of the catch, to the materials we use for nets, have changed since my forefathers started fishing; but solar energy has been a definite plus. I still get excited when I switch on the lights,” he laughs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated more than eight million tonnes of plastic waste globally, with over 25,000 tonnes of it entering the oceans, according to a study.
The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that a significant portion of this ocean plastic debris is expected to make its way onto either beaches or the seabed within three to four years.
A smaller portion will go into the open ocean, eventually to be trapped in the centres of ocean basins, which can become garbage patches and accumulate in the Arctic Ocean.
The researchers noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastics such as face masks, gloves, and face shields.
The resulting waste, some of which ends up in rivers and oceans, is intensifying pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic problem, they said.
The team led by researchers at Nanjing University in China and University of California (UC) San Diego, U.S., used a newly developed ocean plastic numerical model to quantify the impact of the pandemic on plastic discharge from land sources.
They incorporated data from the start of the pandemic in 2020 through August 2021, finding that most of the global plastic waste entering the ocean is coming from Asia, with hospital waste representing the bulk of the land discharge.
The study stresses on the need for better management of medical waste in developing countries.
Also read | NIIST develops system for safe medical waste disposal
“When we started doing the math, we were surprised to find that the amount of medical waste was substantially larger than the amount of waste from individuals, and a lot of it was coming from Asian countries, even though that’s not where most of the COVID-19 cases were,” said study co-author Amina Schartup, an assistant professor at UC San Diego.
“The biggest sources of excess waste were hospitals in areas already struggling with waste management before the pandemic; they just weren’t set up to handle a situation where you have more waste,” Ms. Scartup said.
The Nanjing University MITgcm-plastic model (NJU-MP) used in the study works like “a virtual reality,” said Yanxu Zhang, the corresponding author and a professor at Nanjing University.
“The model simulates how the seawater moves driven by wind and how the plastics float on the surface ocean, degraded by sunlight, fouled by plankton, landed on beaches, and sunk to the deep,” said Mr. Zhang.
The researchers found that most of the global plastic waste from the pandemic is entering the ocean from rivers.
Asian rivers account for 73% of the total discharge of plastics, with the top three contributors being the Shatt al-Arab, Indus, and Yangtze rivers, which discharge into the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and East China Sea.
European rivers account for 11% of the discharge, with minor contributions from other continents, the researchers said.
While most of the pandemic-associated plastics are expected to settle on beaches and the seafloor, a smaller amount will likely end up circulating or settling in the Arctic Ocean.
The model shows that about 80% of the plastic debris that transits into the Arctic Ocean will sink quickly and a circumpolar plastic accumulation zone is modelled to form by 2025, the researchers said.
The Arctic ecosystem is already considered to be particularly vulnerable due to the harsh environment and high sensitivity to climate change, they said.
To combat the influx of plastic waste into the oceans, the researchers urge for better management of medical waste in epicentres, especially in developing countries.
The researchers called for global public awareness of the environmental impact of personal protection equipment (PPE) and other plastic products.
The also emphasised on the development of innovative technologies for better plastic waste collection, classification, treatment and recycling and development of more environmentally friendly materials.
Four astronauts returned to Earth on November 8, riding home with SpaceX to end a 200-day space station mission that began last spring.
Their capsule streaked through the late night sky like a dazzling meteor before parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Recovery boats quickly moved in with spotlights.
“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home to Planet Earth,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed from Southern California.
Their homecoming — coming just eight hours after leaving the International Space Station — paved the way for SpaceX's launch of their four replacements as early as Wednesday night.
The newcomers were scheduled to launch first, but NASA switched the order because of bad weather and an astronaut's undisclosed medical condition. The welcoming duties will now fall to the lone American and two Russians left behind at the space station.
Before November 8 afternoon’s undocking, German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who’s waiting to launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, tweeted it was a shame the two crews wouldn’t overlap at the space station but “we trust you’ll leave everything nice and tidy.” His will be SpaceX's fourth crew flight for NASA in just 1 1/2 years.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and France's Thomas Pesquet should have been back on the morning of November 8, but high wind in the recovery zone delayed their return.
“One more night with this magical view. Who could complain? I’ll miss our spaceship!” Mr. Pesquet tweeted November 7 alongside a brief video showing the space station illuminated against the blackness of space and the twinkling city lights on the nighttime side of Earth.
From the space station, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei — midway through a one-year flight — bid farewell to each of his departing friends, telling Ms. McArthur "I’ll miss hearing your laughter in adjacent modules.”
Before leaving the neighborhood, the four took a spin around the space station, taking pictures. This was a first for SpaceX; NASA's shuttles used to do it all the time before their retirement a decade ago. The last Russian capsule fly-around was three years ago.
It wasn't the most comfortable ride back. The toilet in their capsule was broken, and so the astronauts needed to rely on diapers for the eight-hour trip home. They shrugged it off late last week as just one more challenge in their mission.
The first issue arose shortly after their April liftoff; Mission Control warned a piece of space junk was threatening to collide with their capsule. It turned out to be a false alarm. Then in July, thrusters on a newly arrived Russian lab inadvertently fired and sent the station into a spin. The four astronauts took shelter in their docked SpaceX capsule, ready to make a hasty departure if necessary.
Among the upbeat milestones: four spacewalks to enhance the station's solar power, a movie-making visit by a Russian film crew and the first-ever space harvest of chile peppers.
The next crew will also spend six months up there, welcoming back-to-back groups of tourists. A Japanese tycoon and his personal assistant will get a lift from the Russian Space Agency in December, followed by three businessmen arriving via SpaceX in February. SpaceX's first privately chartered flight, in September, bypassed the space station.
Indian biologist and Padma Bhushan awardee Kamal Ranadive has been featured in Google doodle on November 8, 2021, on her 104th birthday.
The doodle by guest artist Ibrahim Rayintakath shows Dr. Ranadive in a lab with microscope and test tubes. "I wanted to make a piece that feels lively to look at, that would match Kamal's personality. My initial thoughts were around bringing this out, at the same time highlighting her field of achievements," said Rayintakath.
Dr. Ranadive, was born this day in 1917 in Pune as Kamal Samarath. A medical graduate, she pursued biology and went on to receive a doctorate in cytology, the study of cells, while working as a researcher in the Indian Cancer Research Center (ICRC).
After a brief stint in Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Ranadive established the country’s first tissue culture laboratory at ICRC.
As the director of the ICRC and a pioneer in animal modeling of cancer development, Ranadive was among the first researchers in India to propose a link between breast cancer and heredity and to identify the links among cancers and certain viruses.
Continuing this trailblazing work, Dr. Ranadive studied Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, and aided in developing a vaccine. In 1973, Dr. Ranadive and 11 colleagues founded the Indian Women Scientists’ Association (IWSA) to support women in scientific fields.
She has published more than 200 scientific research papers on cancer and leprosy.
After her retirement, she worked in rural communities in Maharashtra, training women as healthcare workers and providing health and nutrition education.
She was awarded the Padma Bhushan for medicine in 1982. Dr. Ranadive passed away on April 11, 2001.
India on Sunday told the UN climate summit here that its solar energy capacity stands at about 45 gigawatts after it increased 17 times in the last seven years, asserting that although the country represents 17% of the global population, its historical cumulative emissions are only 4%.
India said this while giving a presentation on its third Biennial Update Report (BUR) during the 11th Facilitative Sharing of Views (FSV) at the ongoing COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
The BUR was submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in February.
The key highlight of the discussion on India’s third BUR was the achievement of 24% reduction in emission intensity of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the period of 2005-2014, and the significant increase of its solar programme.
Making a statement on behalf of India, J R Bhatt, Adviser/Scientist in the Ministry of Environment, highlighted that India represents 17 per cent of the global population but its historical cumulative emissions are only 4 per cent, while current annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are only about 5%.
“This is complemented by the fact that India is particularly vulnerable to climate change. However, India is nevertheless taking several mitigation actions, spanning across the entire economy and society and has progressively continued decoupling of its economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions,” said Bhatt.
In the last seven years, India’s installed solar energy capacity has increased 17 times, he said, adding that the solar energy capacity now stands at about 45 gigawatts.
All the Parties commended India’s efforts on the BUR and its climate actions, including recent announcements of new measures.
There were questions about India’s multilateral efforts to combat climate change, including the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI).
India responded by saying that disaster risk is increasing in developing countries, and this is a step to enhance international cooperation which is much needed in the current times.
On the question of an increase in forest cover, India responded that people’s participation has played an important role in enhancing its forest cover, and that its forests provide all the four ecosystem services.
India highlighted that it speaks on climate change from a position of strength and responsibility.
“India’s 15% of total carbon dioxide emission in 2016 was removed from the atmosphere by the LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry).
“Between 2015 and 2019, the forest and tree cover increased by 13,031 square kilometer and mangrove cover increased by 235 square kilometer. Populations of Asiatic lion, elephant, rhino increased manifold in the last 5 to 6 years,” according to India’s statement.
“We emphasise that India is particularly vulnerable to climate change, a point which many friends overlook in their eagerness to understand our mitigation efforts.
“To follow a sustainable path to development, India has taken several mitigation actions. There is no sector that has been left untouched while planning and implementing climate mitigation actions. They span across the entire economy and society,” it added.
The story so far: At the ongoing UN Climate Change Conference (the 26th Conference of Parties-COP26) in Glasgow, the United States and the European Union have jointly pledged to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas methane by 2030. They plan to cut down emissions by 30% compared with the 2020 levels. At least 90 countries have signed the Global Methane Pledge, with India and China abstaining so far. Separately, 133 countries have signed a Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use — a declaration initiated by the United Kingdom to “halt deforestation” and land degradation by 2030. China, too, is a signatory to this but India has stayed out.
Methane accounts for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is about 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere. In the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, mainly due to human-related activities. Because methane is short-lived, compared with carbon dioxide, but at the same time potent, the logic is that removing it would have a significant positive impact. Methane is emitted from a variety of anthropogenic (human-influenced) and natural sources. The human sources include landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities as well as livestock rearing, coal mining, stationary and mobile combustion, wastewater treatment, and certain industrial processes. Sources of methane can be harnessed for energy and in principle reduce dependence on energy sources that emit high carbon dioxide but the lack of incentives and efficient energy markets to realise this is an impediment to curtailing methane emissions.
India is the third largest emitter of methane, primarily because of the size of its rural economy and by virtue of having the largest cattle population. India has stated earlier that it plans to deploy technology and capture methane that can be used as a source of energy. In a communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, India said approximately 20% of its anthropogenic methane emissions come from agriculture (manure management), coal mines, municipal solid waste, and natural gas and oil systems. To tap into this “potential,” the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) claims to have invested heavily in a national strategy to increase biogas production and reduce methane emissions. “The biogas strategy includes many policy initiatives, capacity-building, and public-private partnerships. In addition to promoting biogas development, the strategy supports goals for sustainable development, sanitation improvements, and increased generation of renewable energy,” the MNRE notes.
What does the Glasgow Declaration on forest and land use entail?The Glasgow Declaration was signed by 133 countries, which represent 90% of the globe’s forested land. The declaration is also backed by a $19-billion commitment, though whether this translates into legally binding flows remains to be seen. The Glasgow Declaration is a successor to a failed 2014 New York Declaration for Forests — that for a while saw significant global traction — and promised to reduce emissions from deforestation by 15%-20% by 2020 and end it by 2030. However, deforestation has only increased, and is responsible for about 20% of the total carbon emissions. One of the goals of the pledge, to halt deforestation, is to ensure that natural forests aren’t cleared out for commercial plantations. It also aims to halt industrial logging, though several independent estimates say the demand for wood pellets, which stokes deforestation, is only expected to increase. Finally, the declaration seeks to strengthen the rights of indigenous tribes and communities to forestland.
There is again no official reason accorded but reports suggest that Indian officials are unhappy with the wording that suggests meeting the obligations under the pledge could also mean restrictions in international trade. That is unacceptable, they say, as trade falls under the ambit of the World Trade Organization, of which India is a member. India is also mulling changes to its forest conservation laws that seek to encourage commercial tree plantation as well as infrastructure development in forestland. India’s long-term target is to have a third of its area under forest and tree cover, but it is so far 22%. It also proposes to create a carbon sink, via forests and plantations, to absorb 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Do animals have personalities?
Among humans, each individual has a unique personality, but so far, scientists have not found or ascribed personality traits, defined as consistent behaviour over time, to animals. But a recent study (Animal Behaviour) by a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, U.S., has been able to document personality in golden-mantled ground squirrels, which are common across the western U.S. and parts of Canada. They found the squirrels show personality in four main personality traits: boldness, aggressiveness, activity level and sociability.
There are no Myers-Briggs tests for animals, but researchers used standardised approaches to quantifying animal personalities. The lead author Jaclyn Aliperti observed and recorded squirrel responses to four tests: (1) Novel environment: Squirrels were placed in an enclosed box with gridded lines and holes; (2) Mirror: Squirrels are presented with their mirror image, which they do not recognise as their own; (3) Flight initiative: Squirrels were approached slowly in the wild to see how long they wait before running away, and; (4) Behaviour-in-trap: Squirrels were caught, unharmed, in a simple trap and their behaviour briefly observed.
According to a University of California, Davis press release, the study found that bolder squirrels had larger core areas where they concentrated their activity. Bold, active squirrels moved faster. Also, squirrels that were bolder, more aggressive and more active had greater access to perches, such as rocks. Perch access is important because it can provide a better vantage point for seeing and evading predators. Interestingly, perch access was also associated with sociability.
“Accounting for personality in wildlife management may be especially important when predicting wildlife responses to new conditions, such as changes or destruction of habitat due to human activity,” she says in the release.
Nearly 22 months after the first COVID-19 death of a 61-year-old man in Wuhan, China on January 9, 2020, the total number of reported deaths globally has crossed five million on November 1. Each week, more than 50,000 people are continuing to die due to COVID-19. At 0.75 million, the U.S. has reported the greatest number of deaths in the world, followed by Brazil (0.6 million), India (0.45 million), Mexico (0.28 million) and Russia (0.23 million).
The speed at which the virus killed people has decreased a bit since summer this year — it took nearly four months to add another million deaths after the toll crossed four million on July 7. This was despite the Delta variant still being the dominant strain globally. The reason: vaccines were effective in preventing deaths in many countries where a large number of people have been immunised.
The first million deaths were recorded on September 8, 2020, nearly nine months after the first death occurred, while the two-million mark was breached three and a half months later, on January 15, this year. Three million deaths were registered in just three months as on April 17, while the four-million mark was crossed on July 7.
Even with large-scale vaccination in many countries, the death rate is witnessing a sudden rise now in Europe and Southeast Asia. In the last week of October, the weekly increase in deaths in European and Southeast Asian regions has been 14% and 13%, respectively, as compared with the previous week; last week, 56 countries from all WHO regions reported an increase in COVID-19 deaths of more than 10%.
“The global number of reported cases and deaths from COVID-19 is now increasing for the first time in two months,” the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on October 28. “It’s another reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over.”
The increase in deaths across the world is due to inequitable distribution of vaccines to many low- and middle-income countries and vaccine hesitancy in those countries where vaccines are available in plenty. According to the WHO chief, 30 times more vaccines have been administered in high-income countries than low-income countries.
“Since the first COVID-19 vaccines were authorised for use, more people have died from COVID-19 than before they were available. That’s because Delta is a more formidable foe and because far too many people globally haven't had access to vaccines that could have saved their lives,” former Director of CDC Dr. Tom Frieden said in a tweet.
According to a BMJ News, “only 1.3% of people in low income countries have received their jabs. Seventy countries have yet to vaccinate 10% of their populations, and 30 countries — including much of Africa — have vaccinated fewer than 2%. In Latin America, only one in four of the population has received a dose of covid vaccine.” The reason: despite the WHO extending the moratorium on booster doses till the end of the year, to enable every country to vaccinate at least 40% of its population, vaccine inequity continues to persist.
Reacting to five million COVID-19 deaths, WHO’s Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan tweeted the gross undercounting of deaths globally: “Grim statistic. WHO estimates the real number of deaths closer to 15 million.” The WHO Chief too mentioned about the undercounting of COVID-19 deaths. “More than five million deaths have now been reported, and we know the real number is higher,” said Dr. Tedros.
The actual global toll could be twice the reported figure, Dr. Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy told The New York Times.
Two researchers — Ariel Karlinsky from Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, and Dmitry Kobak from the University of Tübingen, Germany — have compiled the World Mortality Dataset which contains all-cause mortality data from over 100 countries to specifically track excess mortality during the pandemic.
Based on data available in the World Mortality Dataset, a team of researchers calculated the excess deaths in 103 countries during the pandemic period; the results are published in eLife.
The authors of the eLife article estimate that several of the worst affected countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Mexico have excess deaths more than 50% above the expected annual mortality rate. In the case of Nicaragua, Belarus, Egypt and Uzbekistan, the underreporting of deaths is more than 10 times.
In the case of India, the underreporting of COVID-19 deaths is estimated to be huge. Based on the Civil Registration System (CRS) data from eight States, The Hindu has estimated excess deaths during the pandemic to be 8.22 times the recorded COVID-19 deaths toll; in absolute numbers that figure will be 3.78 million excess deaths. All excess deaths may not be due to COVID-19, but during a pandemic, a bulk of them could be due to it. This “figure will rank [India] the highest among nations with the most recorded fatalities due to the virus”.
Based on all-cause mortality data from civil registration systems of 12 Indian States comprising around 60% of the national population, Murad Banaji from Middlesex University London and Aashish Gupta from Harvard University have estimated the excess deaths in India during the COVID-19 pandemic to be “around 8-10 times” the officially recorded COVID-19 deaths. The results have been posted on a preprint server medRxiv on October 1. Preprints are yet to be peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal.
On November 4, the fight against COVID-19 to reduce the number of deaths got another booster shot with Britain’s drug regulator MHRA recommending the drug, molnupiravir, for use in adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 and at least one risk factor for developing severe illness, such as obesity, older age (over 60 years), diabetes, or heart disease. The oral drug can be taken at home as soon as possible following a positive COVID-19 test and within five days of the onset of symptoms.
“This will be a gamechanger for the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed, who will soon be able to receive the ground-breaking treatment,” said Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid in a release.
Merck has been producing molnupiravir at risk and expects to produce 10 million courses of treatment by the end of 2021, with at least 20 million courses to be produced in 2022, the company said in a release.
In addition to entering into agreements with several governments to supply the drug, including 1.7 million doses to the U.S. government and nearly 0.5 million doses to the U.K. government, the company has entered into a licensing agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool to make the drug widely accessible to low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). It has also entered into non-exclusive voluntary licensing agreements with eight Indian generic manufacturers to accelerate availability of molnupiravir in more than 100 LMICs following approvals or emergency authorization by local regulatory agencies, the release says.
Meanwhile, on November 5, Pfizer announced via a press release that its oral antiviral PAXLOVID showed 89% efficacy in reducing the risk of hospitalisation or death in non-hospitalised settings in high-risk adults with COVID-19 when treatment was started within three days of symptom onset. In the phase-2/3 trial, through day 28, no deaths were reported in patients who received the drug while 10 deaths were recorded among patients who got a placebo. Similar results were seen when treatment was started within five days of symptom onset. Due to “overwhelming efficacy demonstrated”, the trial was stopped midway by the independent Data Monitoring Committee in consultation with the FDA.
Pfizer “plans to submit the data as part of its ongoing rolling submission to the FDA for emergency use authorization as soon as possible”, the release said.
How effective are climate change pledges made by countries in containing global warming? A study published Friday in the journal Science finds that the latest Nationally Determined Contributions by 120 countries, as of September 30, improve the odds of global temperature rise staying below 2°C by 34% and below 1.5°C by 1.5%.
By way of comparison, the 2015 pledges made by countries at the Paris Agreement promised only a 8% chance of temperatures staying below 2°C, and zero—or no chance—at 1.5°C.
If countries were to follow a more ambitious path beyond 2030, those probabilities rose to 60% and 11% respectively.
The findings while optimistic come amidst the deliberations underway at Glasgow where the greatest global effort is underway to have countries sign on to an agreement to keep temperatures below 1.5°C and, to this end, have most major economies pledge to reach net zero by mid-century. Net zero is when a country's emissions are offset by having an equivalent amount removed from the atmosphere for zero emissions in balance. While countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union have committed to a 2050 time line, China—the world's largest polluter—has indicated a 2060 timeline and India—the third largest—a 2070 timeline.
Only 12 countries have enshrined this commitment in law. These are Germany, Sweden, Japan, United Kingdom, France, Canada, South Korea, Spain, Denmark, New Zealand, Hungary, Luxembourg.
“We are so much closer to getting to the 2-degree goal than six years ago when the Paris Agreement was first signed,” said corresponding author Haewon McJeon, a research scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in a statement. “The wave of strengthened climate pledges and net-zero targets significantly increased our chance of staying under 2 degrees Celsius. And we practically ruled out the possibility of the worst climate outcomes of 4 degrees or higher.”
However, making the 1.5° C limit more likely will take more ambition, cautioned lead author Yang Ou, a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a partnership between PNNL and the University of Maryland.
The researchers relied on a modelling approach and used the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) to simulate a spectrum of emissions scenarios. They then evaluated the likely temperature outcomes for those scenarios.
Several factors influenced near-term emissions trajectories and long-term climate outcomes, the authors noted. These include the global turn away from coal to technological advances that made solar panels and electric vehicles relatively cheaper.
Climate change has already caused global temperatures to rise about 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels.
In the past, it has taken thousands of years for temperature to rise by a few degrees, and dramatic changes, from unpredictable swings in India's monsoon to accelerated heating of the oceans, are already occurring as a result of a 1.2°C increase.
Scientists are calling for climate change to be limited as much as possible to avoid triggering cascading and compounding “tipping points” that could limit our ability to contain global heating.
Pfizer Inc. said Friday that its experimental antiviral pill for COVID-19 cut rates of hospitalization and death by nearly 90% in high-risk adults, as the drugmaker joins the race to bring the first easy-to-use medication against the coronavirus to the U.S. market.
Currently, all COVID-19 treatments used in the U.S. are administered intravenously (IV) or by injection. Competitor Merck’s COVID-19 pill is already under review at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after showing strong initial results, and on Thursday the United Kingdom became the first country to approve it.
Pfizer said it will ask the FDA and international regulators to authorise its pill as soon as possible, after independent experts recommended halting the company’s study based on the strength of its results. Once Pfizer applies, the FDA could make a decision within weeks or months.
Podcast | What works in COVID-19 treatment and what doesn't
Researchers worldwide have been racing to find a pill against COVID-19 that can be taken at home to ease symptoms, speed recovery and reduce the crushing burden on hospitals and doctors.
Pfizer released preliminary results Friday of its study of 775 adults. Patients who received the company's drug along with another antiviral shortly after showing COVID-19 symptoms had an 89% reduction in their combined rate of hospitalization or death after a month, compared to patients taking a dummy pill. Fewer than 1% of patients taking the drug needed to be hospitalized and no one died. In the comparison group, 7% were hospitalized and there were seven deaths.
"We were hoping that we had something extraordinary, but it’s rare that you see great drugs come through with almost 90% efficacy and 100% protection for death,” said Dr. Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, in an interview.
Data | Most COVID-19 deaths occurred within two days of hospital admission in Chennai, Karnataka
Study participants were unvaccinated, with mild-to-moderate COVID-19, and were considered high risk for hospitalization due to health problems like obesity, diabetes or heart disease. Treatment began within three to five days of initial symptoms, and lasted for five days. Patients who received the drug earlier showed slightly better results, underscoring the need for speedy testing and treatment.
Pfizer reported few details on side effects but said rates of problems were similar between the groups at about 20%.
An independent group of medical experts monitoring the trial recommended stopping it early, standard procedure when interim results show such a clear benefit. The data have not yet been published for outside review, the normal process for vetting new medical research.
>A subvariant of Delta that is growing in Britain is less likely to lead to symptomatic COVID-19 infection, a coronavirus prevalence survey found, adding that overall cases had dropped from a peak in October.
The Imperial College London REACT-1 study, released on Thursday, found that the subvariant, known as AY.4.2, had grown to be nearly 12 per cent of samples sequenced, but only a third had “classic” COVID symptoms, compared with nearly a half of those with the currently dominant Delta lineage AY.4. Two-thirds of people with AY.4.2 had “any” symptom, compared with more than three-quarters with AY.4.
AY.4.2 is thought to be slightly more transmissible, but it has not been shown to cause more severe disease or evade vaccines more easily than Delta.
The researchers said that asymptomatic people might self-isolate less, but also that people with fewer symptoms might spread it less easily through coughing and also may be unlikely to get severely ill.
“It is preferentially appearing to be more transmissible,” Imperial epidemiologist Paul Elliott told reporters. “It does seem to be less symptomatic, which is a good thing.”
Imperial had previously released interim results that showed COVID-19 prevalence was at its highest on record in October, with infections highest among children. The full results of the latest round of the study, conducted between October 19 and November 5, confirmed what daily recorded cases and other prevalence surveys have shown – that infection levels dropped from that peak, corresponding with a half-term school holiday in late October.
Elliott said that there was uncertainty over whether that drop had continued, and the next few weeks would establish whether cases were rising again with the return of schools. The REACT-1 study also found that booster doses reduced the risk of infection in adults by two-thirds compared with people who had two doses.
Next time you eat channa masala, thank your ancestors who first domesticated the legume 10,000 years ago. The history of chickpea domestication starts in the Fertile Crescent, a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, known for the Mesopotamian civilisation. Now, by sequencing the genomes of 3,366 chickpea lines from 60 countries, an international team has created a chickpea genetic variation map which will help create better drought- and heat-tolerant and disease resistant crops for the future.
The team identified 29,870 genes that include 1,582 previously unreported novel genes. “We started the study in 2014 and tracked how the legume has changed during domestication, migration and improvement techniques done by plant scientists,” explains lead author Professor Rajeev K. Varshney. He is the Research Program Director at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, India and one of the corresponding authors of the paper published last week in Nature.
The team has identified 56 promising lines that can be used to develop enhanced varieties. They also propose three crop breeding strategies to enhance the crop productivity for 16 agronomic traits e.g. yield, seeds weight, flowering time, plant height, etc. while avoiding the erosion of genetic diversity.
How chickpeas were domesticated and migrated
About 10,000 years ago, chickpeas, wheat and barley were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and around the same time corn was grown in South America and rice in Asia. The first humans chose to grow the varieties that had softer seed coats and were easier to chew and eat. They also looked for bigger seed sizes and those with higher yields. In the early 19th century with a boom in plant breeding, we now have chickpeas that have better seed colour, seed size, and soft coats. “But over the years, the seeds might have lost the genes conferring resistance to diseases and those that helped it survive the heat and drought. We have also lost genetic diversity and majority of varieties developed from only a few lines today,” adds Prof. Varshney.
Though India is today the largest producer and consumer of chickpeas, the legume had to travel a great deal to reach our country. “I guess there might have been two paths -one via North Africa and South Asia, and the other via the Mediterranean region, Black Sea, Central Asia including Afghanistan. The name Kabuli channa is probably derived from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan,” he adds.
Why study chickpeas?
Chickpeas are grown in more than 50 countries and is the world’s third-most cultivated legume. It is an important source of dietary protein for those who don’t consume meat. The researchers note that with the growing global population, there will be less supply and more demands to be met. Producing nutrient rich, climate resistant chickpea varieties could come to the rescue.
“Genomic resources are crucial for accelerating the rate of genetic gains in crop improvement programs. It is hoped that the knowledge and resources made available through this study will help breeders across the world revolutionise chickpea breeding without eroding its genetic diversity,” said Dr Arvind Kumar, Deputy Director General-Research, ICRISAT in a release.
Asked about the future studies needed, Prof Varshney said: “We would like to understand genome architecture and genome diversity of the entire chickpea germplasm collection. It will be great to understand the entire set of genes and haplotypes in the entire germplasm collection…At the same time, it is imperative to start utilisation of genome information from this study for developing climate resilient, high-yielding and nutrition rich varieties.”
A Russian weapons test created more than 1,500 pieces of space junk now threatening the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station, according to U.S. officials who called the strike reckless and irresponsible.
The State Department confirmed Monday that the debris was from an old Russian satellite destroyed by the missile.
“Needless to say, I’m outraged. This is unconscionable,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told The Associated Press. “It’s unbelievable that the Russian government would do this test and threaten not only international astronauts, but their own cosmonauts that are on board the station” as well as the three people on China’s space station.
Nelson said the astronauts now face four times greater risk than normal. And that’s based on debris big enough to track, with hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces going undetected — “any one of which can do enormous damage if it hits in the right place.”
In condemning Russia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said satellites were also now in jeopardy.
The test clearly demonstrates that Russia “despite its claims of opposing the weaponization of outer space, is willing to…imperil the exploration and use of outer space by all nations through its reckless and irresponsible behavior,” Blinken said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment late Monday from Russia about the missile strike.
Once the threat became clear early Monday morning, the four Americans, one German and two Russians on board were ordered to immediately seek shelter in their docked capsules. They spent two hours in the two capsules, finally emerging only to have to close and reopen hatches to the station’s individuals labs on every orbit, or 1 1/2 hours, as they passed near or through the debris.
By the end of the day, only the hatches to the central core of the station remained open, as the crew slept, according to Nelson.
Even a fleck of paint can do major damage when orbiting at 28,000 kph. Something big, upon impact, could be catastrophic.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said the U.S. has repeatedly raised concerns with Russia about doing a satellite test. “We are going to continue to make very clear that we won’t tolerate this kind of activity,” he told reporters.
NASA Mission Control said the heightened threat could continue to interrupt the astronauts’ science research and other work. Four of the seven crew members arrived at the orbiting outpost Thursday night.
NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who’s midway through a yearlong mission, called it “a crazy but well-coordinated day” as he bid Mission Control good night. “It was certainly a great way to bond as a crew, starting off with our very first work day in space,” he said.
A similar weapons test by China in 2007 also resulted in countless debris. One of those pieces threatened to come dangerously close to the space station last week. While it later was dismissed as a risk, NASA had the station move anyway.
Anti-satellite missile tests by the US in 2008 and India in 2019 were conducted at much lower altitudes, well below the space station at about 420 kilometres.
The defunct Russian satellite Cosmos 1408 was orbiting about 65 kilometres higher.
Until Monday, the U.S. Space Command already was tracking some 20,000 pieces of space junk, including old and broken satellites from around the world.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said it will take days if not weeks and months to catalogue the latest wreckage and confirm their orbits. The fragments will begin to spread out over time, due to atmospheric drag and other forces, he said in an email.
The space station is at especially high risk because the test occurred near its orbit, McDowell said. But all objects in low-Earth orbit — including China’s space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope — will be at “somewhat enhanced risk” over the next few years, he noted.
Earlier in the day, the Russian Space Agency said via Twitter that the astronauts were ordered into their docked capsules, in case they had to make a quick getaway. The agency said the crew was back doing routine operations, and the space station’s commander, Russian Anton Shkaplerov, tweeted: “Friends, everything is regular with us!”
But the cloud of debris posed a threat on each passing orbit — or every 1 1/2 hours — and all robotic activity on the U.S. side was put on hold. German astronaut Matthias Maurer also had to find a safer place to sleep than the European lab.
NASA’s Nelson noted that the Russians and Americans have had a space partnership for a half-century — going back to the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.
“I don’t want it to be threatened,” he told the AP, noting both countries are needed for the space station. “You’ve got to operate it together.”
Emily Anthes
Over the past year, coronavirus vaccines have gone into billions of human arms — and into the fuzzy haunches of an ark’s worth of zoo animals. Jaguars are getting the jab. Bonobos are being dosed. So are orangutans and otters, ferrets and fruit bats, and, of course, lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!).
Largely left behind, however, are two creatures much closer to home: domestic cats and dogs.
Pet owners have noticed.
“I get so many questions about this issue,” Dr. Elizabeth Lennon, a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “Will there be a vaccine? When will there be a vaccine?”
Technically, a pet vaccine is feasible. In fact, several research teams say they have already developed promising cat or dog vaccines; the shots that zoo animals are receiving were initially designed for dogs.
But vaccinating pets is simply not a priority, experts said. Although dogs and cats can catch the virus, a growing body of evidence suggests that Fluffy and Fido play little to no role in its spread — and rarely fall ill themselves.
“A vaccine is quite unlikely, I think, for dogs and cats,” Dr. Will Sander, a veterinarian at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said. “The risk of disease spread and illness in pets is so low that any vaccine would not be worth giving.”
A positive pomeranian
In February 2020, a woman in Hong Kong was diagnosed with COVID-19. Two other people in her home soon tested positive for the virus, as did one unexpected member of the household: an elderly Pomeranian. The 17-year-old dog was the first pet known to catch the virus.
But not the last. A German shepherd in Hong Kong soon tested positive, too, as did cats in Hong Kong, Belgium and New York. The cases were exceedingly mild — the animals had few or no symptoms — and experts concluded that humans had spread the virus to the pets, rather than vice versa.
“To date, there hasn’t been any documented cases of dogs or cats spreading the virus to people,” Lennon said.
But the prospect of a pet pandemic sparked interested in an animal vaccine. Zoetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey, began working on one as soon as it heard about the Hong Kong Pomeranian.
“We figured, ‘Wow, this could become serious, so let’s start working on a product,’” Mahesh Kumar, a senior vice president at Zoetis who leads vaccine development, said.
By the fall of 2020, Zoetis had four promising candidates for a vaccine, each of which elicited “robust” antibody responses in cats and dogs, the company announced. (The studies, which were small, have not been published.)
But as vaccine development progressed, it became increasingly apparent that the infection of pets was unlikely to pose a serious threat to animals or people.
In one study of 76 pets living with people who had the virus, 17.6% of cats and 1.7% of dogs also tested positive. (Studies have consistently shown that cats are more susceptible to infection than dogs, perhaps for both biological and behavioral reasons.) Of the infected pets, 82.4% had no symptoms.
“It doesn’t look like cats or dogs would ever be a reservoir for this virus,” Dr. Jeanette O’Quin, a veterinarian at Ohio State University, said. “We believe that if there weren’t sick people around them, they would not be able to continue spreading it from animal to animal — it would not continue to exist in their population.”
Together, these factors convinced experts that a vaccine for pets was not necessary. In November 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates veterinary medicines, said it was not accepting any applications for cat or dog vaccines “because data do not indicate such a vaccine would have value.”
Keeping mink in the pink
As the pet threat was receding, another problem was coming into focus: mink. The sleek, svelte mammals, which are farmed in large numbers, turned out to be highly susceptible to the virus. And not only were they dying from it, but they were also spreading it to each other and back to humans.
“I think that the situation in mink absolutely warrants a vaccine,” Lennon said.
The USDA thought so, too, and in the same November notice in which the agency said it was not considering cat or dog vaccines, it declared itself open to applications for a mink vaccine.
Zoetis pivoted, deciding to repurpose one of its dog vaccines for mink ones. (Several other teams are also developing mink vaccines, and Russia has already approved a shot for all carnivores, including mink, and has reportedly started administering it to animals.)
Studies in mink are ongoing, but when word got out about Zoetis’ work, zoos came calling. Some of their animals — including gorillas, tigers and snow leopards — had already caught the virus, and they wanted to give the mink vaccine a whirl.
“We got a huge number of requests,” Kumar said.
Zoetis, which decided to supply the vaccine to zoos on an experimental basis, has now committed to donating 26,000 doses — enough to vaccinate 13,000 animals — to zoos and animal sanctuaries in 14 countries.
The development means that many zoo-dwelling cats, like lions and tigers, are getting vaccinated, while their domestic cousins are not. In part, that’s because these species appear to be more susceptible to the virus; some have died after becoming infected, although the cause of death is often difficult to conclusively determine.
“The big cats seem to be getting sicker than the house cats,” Lennon said.
The cat vaccine calculus
Although the evidence so far suggests that the virus is not a major threat to pets, there is a lot left to learn, scientists acknowledge. It is still not clear how frequently infected humans pass the virus to their pets, especially because officials do not recommend routine testing for companion animals, and the virus may have health effects in pets that have not yet been identified.
In a paper published this month, scientists raised the possibility that the alpha variant, which was first identified in Britain, might cause heart inflammation in dogs and cats. The evidence is circumstantial, but the virus has been linked to the same problem in humans, and the connection is worth exploring, experts said.
“We need to do more research in this area to find out if this is a real association,” O’Quin said.
There may be individual pets that are at especially high risk from the virus. Lennon and her colleagues recently identified an immunocompromised dog that appeared to become severely ill from the virus. Unlike most infected dogs, this one also shed high levels of the virus for more than a week.
“Of course, that’s one case, but it really does illustrate that COVID isn’t the same in all pets, just like it isn’t in all people,” Lennon said.
It is certainly possible that future research — or changes in the virus — could change the calculus on a pet vaccine. If the virus turns out to be more prevalent, virulent or transmissible in dogs or cats than is currently known, that would make the case for a vaccine more compelling, scientists said. The USDA has said it may reevaluate its position if “more evidence of transmission and clinical disease” emerges in a particular species.
If that time comes, Zoetis is prepared to pick up where it left off with its pet vaccines, Kumar said. He said that if the company’s mink vaccine is licensed, veterinarians might be able to use it off-label in the event of an unexpected outbreak in cats or dogs.
Applied DNA Sciences, a New York-based biotech company, has also developed a promising cat vaccine “as a ‘just in case,’” CEO James Hayward said. (Like Zoetis, the company, which is working in partnership with Italian company Evvivax, is now more focused on a mink vaccine.)
On November 19, the Moon will slip into Earth’s shadow and we can see a partial lunar eclipse and the last lunar eclipse of the year. A partial lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, but not in a perfect line. A small part of the moon gets covered by the Earth’s shadow and we can see a reddish Moon.
The partial lunar eclipse will be visible from North America, South America, Eastern Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Region.
Weather permitting, a small part of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam will experience the partial eclipse, and those from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand can see the end part of the eclipse.
At the maximum partial eclipse, at around 14:34 IST, 97% of the Moon will be covered by the Earth’s shadow.
The duration of the partial eclipse is 3hrs 28 minutes and 24 seconds, making it the longest eclipse of the 21st century and the longest in almost the last 600 years. The last time such a lengthy partial eclipse occurred was on February 18, 1440, and the next time a similar one will occur on February 8, 2669.
If you are in the northeast part of India, you can watch the eclipse using your naked eye. No special equipment or binoculars are needed. You can also watch the live stream of the eclipse on the YouTube channel of Lowell Observatory and timeanddate.com
The next total lunar eclipse will be on May 16, 2022, but it will not be visible from India. India will experience a total lunar eclipse on November 8, 2022.
The full moon on November 19 is also called the frost moon or beaver moon. Full moons in November earned this name as this is the time of first snowfall and frost, and beavers start building their dams or traps. This Full Moon is also celebrated as the Loi Krathong festival in Thailand and Tazaungdaing Festival in Myanmar. In India, Kartik Purnima or Karthika Deepam festival is celebrated on November 19.
Written by Robin George Andrews
The next time the sun is shining, go outside. There may not be a cloud in the sky, but you will be standing in the middle of a spectral rainstorm.
Cosmic rays, emanating from all sorts of high-energy entities, constantly bombard Earth’s atmosphere. Their collisions with gases make tiny particles named pions, which speedily decay into muons, subatomic blobs more than 200 times heavier than electrons. Trillions of muons are shooting toward the ground at close to the speed of light every single second.
When muons encounter an object, some pass right through while others get stopped in their tracks. That means muons can be used to see inside things that would otherwise be inaccessible, from nuclear reactors to the depths of Egypt’s pyramids.
Scientists have long suspected that this technique, named muography, could be applied to volcanoes, whose anatomies determine when and how they will erupt. And researchers show in a paper, published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, that muons have been used to successfully map out some of the arteries and organs of volcanoes across the world, including some of the world’s most hazardous magmatic mountains.
One day, volcanic muography could become the “ultimate detection system for magma,” said Giovanni Leone, a geophysicist at the University of Atacama in Chile and the study’s lead author. He and his colleagues say if you can use muons to track the movement of molten rock in real time, you should be able to forecast when an eruption is about to transpire.
When muons zip through material, their momentum is sapped. The denser the material is, the more likely these muons will lose all their energy, grind to a halt and decay into neutrinos and electrons.
Objects are rarely equally dense throughout. That includes volcanoes, which are made of either magma-filled or vacant passageways, a diversity of rock types and countless cracks, crevices and chasms. To perceive these features, volcanologists could use muon detectors, which range from the size of a suitcase to the area of a small apartment. Scientists could place detectors around a volcano’s flanks, or even fly one around the volcano with a helicopter.
The endless muon rainstorm will shower the volcano at an angle. Some of the muons passing through one side of the volcano’s flanks will reach detectors on the other side; those that don’t will cast subatomic shadows on the detectors, revealing which parts of the mountain’s insides are denser and which are more vacuous.
With one detector, you can get a two-dimensional image of a volcano’s innards, “similar to a medical X-ray,” said David Mahon, a muography researcher at the University of Glasgow who was not involved with the study. “By using multiple detectors positioned around the object, it’s possible to build up a crude 3D image.”
After using muography to see inside an innocuous Japanese mountain in 1995, the technique was eventually deployed at active volcanoes. One of the first successful campaigns was Mount Asama in Japan, where researchers found a buried lava mound sitting atop a Swiss cheese-like magmatic passageway. It has since been used to see into, among others, Italy’s Etna and Stromboli volcanoes, Japan’s hyperactive Sakurajima volcano and the La Soufrière de Guadeloupe volcano in the Caribbean.
Muons have found weaknesses that hint at the site of future flank collapses, landslides and lava escape routes. They have also found fresh pockets of magma that may be primed to erupt and that were overlooked by other instruments.
Volcanic muography isn’t flawless. The detectors can only see the parts of the volcano that the muons are penetrating. “You can only watch from below towards the sky,” said Marina Rosas-Carbajal, a volcano geophysicist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics who was not involved with the study. Muons are unable to penetrate deeper parts of the volcano, leaving those areas largely off-limits to muographers.
Placing detectors around dozens more volcanoes, and subjecting volcanic rocks to muons in laboratories, will improve the technique’s precision as it vies for mainstream use. But even if it does become commonplace, it won’t solve all our volcanic woes.
“Volcanoes are super complex,” said Rosas-Carbajal. Their labyrinthine innards and complex chemistries mean their magma will occasionally evade even the savviest of detectors. Unpredictable eruptions will remain a fact of life, no matter how well scientists wield the magic of muons.
And muography is unlikely to make obsolete the other various instruments used to study volcanoes, like seismic waves and satellite observation. “It may not replace existing techniques,” said Vitaly Kudryavtsev, a particle physicist at the University of Sheffield who was not involved with the study. “But it may complement them.”
Written by Sabrina Imbler
Bees do not scream with their mouths but with their bodies. When giant hornets draw near and threaten their colony, Asian honeybees cock their abdomens into the air and run while vibrating their wings. The noise can sound eerily like a human scream.
In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers describe the Asian honeybee’s unique acoustic signal, which is called an antipredator pipe. The researchers colloquially refer to it as a “bee scream.”
“It’s like a shriek,” said Hongmei Li-Byarlay, an entomologist at Central State University in Ohio, who was not involved with the new research. Li-Byarlay added that her colleagues who have observed the sounds compared the noise to “crying.”
The bees make this sound as their nests are threatened by the Vespa soror hornet, which hunts in packs and can dispatch a beehive in a matter of hours.
Heather Mattila, a behavioral ecologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and an author on the study, first heard the bee scream in Vietnam in 2013. She was studying how Asian honeybees smear animal dung around their nests to ward off V. soror and Vespa mandarinia, more famously known as the murder hornet. The behaviour showed the bees’ highly evolved social organisation, said Lien Thi Phuong Nguyen, a wasp researcher at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi and an author on the new paper.
Mattila noticed that the hives exploded in sound when V. soror hornets drew near. When she stuck a recorder at the entrance of a hive fringed by hornets, she heard a cacophony of noise.
While she recognised some sounds bees are known to make — hisses, beeps and pipes — Mattila, who has studied European honeybees for 24 years, had never heard anything as loud and frenzied as this.
The researchers placed recorders inside hives and video cameras outside the entrances to record the honeybee soundscapes. The whirring, helicopter sounds of the hornets often drowned out the bees, so they also recorded hives reacting to paper glazed with hornet pheromones.
Mattila brought the recordings back to the United States, where Hannah Kernen, now a research technician at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, helped analyse the recordings.
As Kernen and Mattila pored over nearly 30 hours of bee noise, which contained about 25,000 instances of acoustic signaling, they felt confident they were listening to a new sound: a piercing alarm signal that shared traits with animal shrieks, including unpredictable frequencies and loud volumes.
For months, the researchers compared the video recordings inside the hive to the ones outside the entrance to see if they could isolate a moment where the new sound could be first heard in both videos and pinned down to a single bee.
Mattila listened to these recordings for hours into the night.
“I would get chills and start to worry about them, even though the recordings are from years ago and the bees are long dead,” she said. “There is something very human and recognisable in the sounds.”
One day, past 2:30 a.m., a sleepless Mattila finally saw a video that captured a scream and the bee behind it: an agitated worker bee approaching a paper perfumed with hornet. She was raising her abdomen and exposing her Nasonov gland, a thin white strip at her rear end that can release pheromones.
The researchers listened to the audio inside the hive from the same time period and looked at the spectrograms, visualisations of sound frequencies, which showed similar sounds occurring inside and outside the hive. This confirmed that the bees screaming outside the hive were making the same noises as the bees screaming inside the hive.
“It was a eureka moment, and I’ve only had a couple of those,” Mattila said.
The researchers suggest that the antipredator pipe noise functions as an alarm signal, as the production of screams peaked as V. soror hornets hovered outside the colony’s entrance. The data is correlative, so the scream’s exact function is still unknown.
Fifteen years before Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, catapulted himself into space in a rocket, Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist, spending nine days on the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. She is still the only woman ever to have traveled to space on a self-funded mission, which cost her $20 million.
Today, Ansari is CEO of XPrize, a California-based nonprofit that organizes multimillion-dollar competitions to support scientific innovation and benefit humanity. The first competition (sponsored by her family and worth $10 million) was aimed at building the world’s first nongovernment-funded spaceship. The winning design was licensed by Richard Branson, who used it to build the Virgin Galactic rocket that he boarded on a July spaceflight (nine days before Bezos).
Q: There seems to be a space craze going on right now among the world’s billionaires. What motivated you to go on a space mission?
A: Since I was very young, I’ve always wanted to go to space. It’s what inspired me to study sciences, physics, math, and go in the direction I went. It was and still is a big passion of mine to understand our universe, how it’s built, my relationship to it. To me, it’s this extraordinary place of discovery and exploration.
The reason for the current flurry of activity is that in the past, travel to space was something that only government astronauts could do. Now there are new modes of going to space — whether it’s going to the edge of space for five minutes of weightlessness, or orbiting the Earth for a couple of days, or going to a space station. The cost is still very high, but over time, it will drop.
Q: Why do you think Mr. Bezos and Mr. Branson flew to space?
A: I happen to know both of them, and both of them are big space fans. Jeff Bezos grew up reading Jules Verne and has had a passion for space for many years. Branson bought the license for the winning spacecraft design in our XPrize competition, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building Virgin Galactic.
From the outside, it looks like another billionaire splurge. In the case of those two men, I know it’s not just a whim. It’s something they’ve passionately cared about all their life.
Q: What made you spend $20 million on your own space trip in 2006?
A: To me, I would have paid with my life. It wasn’t a matter of money. I felt that this was part of the purpose of my living on this earth.
Q: What was life like on the space station?
A: My time up there was spent partly doing scientific experiments with the European Space Agency, partly talking to a lot of students and telling them how it felt to be there. I also wrote a blog.
For me, it was a moment of reflection on my life, the reason I’m here on this planet. It helped me see the big picture.
Q: What about the practicalities of spending nine days up there?
A: Life on a space station is like being a child and needing to relearn everything — whether it’s washing your hair, eating in space, or working in space. You’re in microgravity, and things are different. You can’t have a shower. Water floats; it doesn’t flow. There’s no cooking going on, and no refrigerator. So all food forms are either dehydrated or in cans. You’re floating and not sleeping in a bed, so you need to get used to that. You’re not walking around, you’re flying around. Realizing that you don’t need to exert that much force to move around takes time. I banged myself around the space station many times, and got bruises.
When you’re orbiting the Earth, you see a sunrise and a sunset every 90 minutes, so your biorhythm is completely out of whack. Your body goes through a lot of changes. You get this surge of fluid that goes to your head and causes headaches and puffiness. Your spine stretches, so you’re taller, but you feel back pain. Your muscle mass changes; your bone density changes. Slowly your body starts adapting and changing as well.
Q: How is space exploration and travel useful to humanity?
A: Space is the answer to our future on Earth. As the population grows, as our way of life requires more consumption of resources, we won’t be able to sustain life as we know it without access to the resources of space. We need to build infrastructures and technologies that will give us access to the continuous energy of the sun to power our cities, for example, and to move some manufacturing into orbit so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on our environment. Space will allow us to understand our planet and be able to predict things better.
Many technologies we use today come from the space program, whether it’s the lightweight material in clothing or shoes, or the lightweight material used in aerospace, satellite entertainment, GPS systems, the banking system.
Q: Three years ago, you moved over to the nonprofit organization XPrize. Can you talk about its mission?
A: XPrize launches massive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges. We focus on specific problems that have been stagnant because of lack of funding or lack of understanding or attention. A lot of our work right now is focused on climate change, energy, biodiversity and conservation.
Q: How do your competitions attract such huge sums?
A: We don’t, the teams do. When we have a $10 million competition, someone who’s been sitting on their couch at home just thinking about something will have a reason to go build it. They form a team, and we connect them with potential investors.
Q: Are you tempted to go back to space again?
A: I would love to go back to space at any point in time. I would be happy and willing to go live in space. I felt at home when I was on the space station; I experienced a freedom I had never felt before.
Q: A spiritual experience?
A: Yes, it was a spiritual experience — but not because I felt closer to God, because I don’t believe that God is up there and that you get close to him if you go into space! I felt like I was reaching a different level of understanding of humanity.
Earlier this week, the International Space Station (ISS) was forced to maneouvre out of the way of a potential collision with space junk. With a crew of astronauts and cosmonauts on board, this required an urgent change of orbit on November 11.
Over the station’s 23-year orbital lifetime, there have been about 30 close encounters with orbital debris requiring evasive action. Three of these near-misses occurred in 2020. In May this year there was a hit: a tiny piece of space junk punched a 5mm hole in the ISS’s Canadian-built robot arm.
This week’s incident involved a piece of debris from the defunct Fengyun-1C weather satellite, destroyed in 2007 by a Chinese anti-satellite missile test. The satellite exploded into more than 3,500 pieces of debris, most of which are still orbiting. Many have now fallen into the ISS’s orbital region.
To avoid the collision, a Russian Progress supply spacecraft docked to the station fired its rockets for just over six minutes. This changed the ISS’s speed by 0.7 metres per second and raised its orbit, already more than 400km high, by about 1.2km.
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Orbit is getting crowded Space debris has become a major concern for all satellites orbiting the Earth, not just the football-field-sized ISS. As well as notable satellites such as the smaller Chinese Tiangong space station and the Hubble Space Telescope, there are thousands of others.
As the largest inhabited space station, the ISS is the most vulnerable target. It orbits at 7.66 kilometres a second, fast enough to travel from Perth to Brisbane in under eight minutes.
A collision at that speed with even a small piece of debris could produce serious damage. What counts is the relative speed of the satellite and the junk, so some collisions could be slower while others could be faster and do even more damage.
As low Earth orbit becomes increasingly crowded, there is more and more to run into. There are already almost 5,000 satellites currently operating, with many more on the way.
SpaceX alone will soon have more than 2,000 Starlink internet satellites in orbit, on its way to an initial goal of 12,000 and perhaps eventually 40,000.
If it was only the satellites themselves in orbit, it might not be so bad. But according to the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office, there are estimated to be about 36,500 orbiting artificial objects larger than 10cm across, such as defunct satellites and rocket stages. There are also around a million between 1cm and 10cm, and 330 million measuring 1mm to 1cm.
Most of these items are in low Earth orbit. Because of the high speeds involved, even a speck of paint can pit an ISS window and a marble-sized object could penetrate a pressurised module.
The ISS modules are somewhat protected by multi-layer shielding to lessen the probability of a puncture and depressurisation. But there remains a risk that such an event could occur before the ISS reaches the end of its lifetime around the end of the decade.
Of course, no one has the technology to track every piece of debris, and we also don’t possess the ability to eliminate all that junk. Nevertheless, possible methods for removing larger pieces from orbit are being investigated.
Meanwhile, nearly 30,000 pieces larger than 10cm are being tracked by organisations around the world such as the US Space Surveillance Network.
Here in Australia, space debris tracking is an area of increasing activity. Multiple organisations are involved, including the Australian Space Agency, Electro Optic Systems, the ANU Institute for Space, the Space Surveillance Radar System, the Industrial Sciences Group, and the Australian Institute for Machine Learning with funding from the SmartSat CRC.
In addition, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has a SMARTnet facility at the University of Southern Queensland’s Mt Kent Observatory dedicated to monitoring geostationary orbit at a height of around 36,000km, the home of many communication satellites, including those used by Australia.
One way or another, we will eventually have to clean up our space neighbourhood if we want to continue to benefit from the nearest regions of the “final frontier”.
A recently published study in Nature has established that baleen whales, the largest animals on the planet, eat thrice or even more the amount of food than previously thought.
The study, conducted primarily in the Southern Ocean, monitored multiple individuals from seven baleen whale species – humpback, fin, blue, minke, right and bowhead and the Bryde’s whale – as they went about their daily business.
Baleen whales are so named because they have bristles (baleens) inside their mouth in which their prey (krill) gets stuck. Their close relatives, from the order Cetacea, are toothed whales that have teeth instead of bristles.
Whales were tagged with sensors that tracked their movements, and acoustics were used to identify places where their prey was concentrated.
The methods used are notable as it is the first time that whale movement and diet could be empirically monitored. Earlier studies employed examining the contents of the stomach of killed whales or by employing mathematical models based on metabolic rates of baleen whales. Both these methods suffered veritable disadvantages.
Direct measurements of stomach contents were often done during specific times of the year, which, however, gave a “biased” picture. Some even tried to fill the stomach up with water or gas, but the elasticity of the stomach membrane decreases significantly upon death. As for mathematical models, the metabolism rates involved were often ‘assumed,’ or taken from some captured toothed whales or dolphins.
The new study has observed that baleen whales can consume as much as 16 tonnes of food per day, which constitutes as much as 30% of their total body mass.
Prior studies, researchers maintain, have grossly underestimated the gargantuan appetites of the largest aquatic mammals, wherein “even their highest assumptions…underestimates reality”.
Generalist whales like fin and humpback, as opposed to specialist ones (the blue, right and bowhead whales), may be better buffered against the effects of climate change on marine life, the authors argue.
Different feeding strategies
The researchers highlight differences in the feeding strategies of these species as well. The right and bowhead whales prey on crustaceans by moving through a swarm of crustaceans with an open mouth, a strategy called ‘ram’ or ‘continuous’ feeding.
Another strategy, called ‘lunge’ feeding, involves discrete jumps (lunges) at prey colonies. Lunge feeding is exhibited by the blue, fin and humpback whales. A single whale adopting a lunge strategy can filter up to 17000 cubic metres of water a day, while a ram feeding tends to process four times as much.
Whales and iron cycle
These findings are particularly important as whales are apex predators in food chains they operate and therefore render important ecosystem services and functions.
The foremost among these is the marine iron cycle. Most iron in the ocean exists in biomass. One of the largest reservoirs of iron in the ocean is krill. Krill populations constitute nearly 24% of the total iron in surface waters, an earlier study has established. Upon devouring krill, whales defecate iron-rich faeces. These are then eaten by the planktonic community, which are then, in turn, eaten by krill. And the cycle goes on.
A 2010 study estimated that the amount of iron in whale faeces can be “ten million times that of Antarctic seawater”, while the present study asserts that whales could recycle 7000 to 15000 tonnes of iron each year.
The authors also highlight how whales play the role of ecosystem engineers by mixing iron in the water by virtue of their sheer movement.
This also explains the ‘krill paradox’ whereby it was observed that krill populations actually declined during the whaling years (1910-70), whereas the prey population usually explodes in the absence of a predator.
Even the numbers of competing predator species, which were expected to increase with whaling, have either declined or remained the same (essentially because their food source, krill, was declining).
“Encouraging cetacean populations to recover may restore ecosystem function lost in the 20th century and lead to enhanced oceanic productivity,” authors hope, even as they acknowledge that twentieth-century whaling reduced baleen whales populations by more than two-thirds.
On November 19, stargazers can enjoy a partial lunar eclipse which will also be the last lunar eclipse of the year. The last time such a lengthy partial eclipse occurred was on February 18, 1440, and the next time a similar one will occur on February 8, 2669.
A partial lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, but not in a perfect line. A small part of the moon gets covered by the Earth’s shadow and we can see a reddish Moon. It is also called the frost moon or beaver moon. Full moons in November earned this name as this is the time of first snowfall and frost, and beavers start building their dams or traps.
The partial lunar eclipse will be visible from North America, South America, Eastern Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Region.
In India, a small part of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam will experience the partial eclipse, and those from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand can see the end part of the penumbral eclipse. A penumbral lunar eclipse takes place when the Moon, Sun, and Earth are imperfectly aligned and the Moon moves through the outer part of Earth’s shadow called the penumbra.
Dr Debiprosad Duari, Director, Research & Academic at MP Birla Planetarium, Kolkata explains: “The partial eclipse will start around 12:48 IST and will end at 16:17 IST. The duration of the partial eclipse hence will be for 3hrs 28 minutes and 24 seconds, making it the longest eclipse of the 21st century and the longest in almost last 600 years.”
“The penumbral eclipse preceding and succeeding the umbral partial eclipse will begin at around 11:32 IST and end at 17:33 IST. At the maximum partial eclipse, at around 14:34 IST, 97% of the Moon will be covered by the Earth’s shadow and the Moon may appear to be blood red in colour, which happens when the red part of the sunlight passes through the Earth’s atmosphere get least deflected and falls on the Moon giving it a reddish tinge.”
The next total lunar eclipse will be on May 16, 2022, but it will not be visible from India. India will experience a total lunar eclipse on November 8, 2022.
A study combining linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of the family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in northeastern China about 9,000 years ago.
The findings detailed on Wednesday document a shared genetic ancestry for the hundreds of millions of people who speak what the researchers call Transeurasian languages across an area stretching more than 8,000 km.
The findings illustrate how humankind’s embrace of agriculture following the Ice Age powered the dispersal of some of the world’s major language families. Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle.
There are 98 Transeurasian languages. Among these are Korean and Japanese as well as: various Turkic languages including Turkish in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia; various Mongolic languages including Mongolian in Central and Northeast Asia; and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia.
This language family’s beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across northeastern Asia, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago over thousands of years. The research underscored the complex beginnings for modern populations and cultures.
“Accepting that the roots of one’s language, culture or people lie beyond the present national boundaries is a kind of surrender of identity, which some people are not yet prepared to make,” said comparative linguist Martine Robbeets, leader of the Archaeolinguistic Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.
“Powerful nations such as Japan, Korea and China are often pictured as representing one language, one culture and one genetic profile. But a truth that makes people with nationalist agendas uncomfortable is that all languages, cultures and humans, including those in Asia, are mixed,” Robbeets added.
The researchers devised a dataset of vocabulary concepts for the 98 languages, identified a core of inherited words related to agriculture and fashioned a language family tree. Archaeologist and study co-author Mark Hudson of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History said the researchers examined data from 255 archaeological sites in China, Japan, the Korean peninsula and the Russia Far East, assessing similarities in artifacts including pottery, stone tools and plant and animal remains. They also factored in the dates of 269 ancient crop remains from various sites.
The researchers determined that farmers in northeastern China eventually supplemented millet with rice and wheat, an agricultural package that was transmitted when these populations spread to the Korean peninsula by about 1300 BC and from there to Japan after about 1000 BC.
The researchers performed genomic analyses on ancient remains of 23 people and examined existing data on others who lived in North and East Asia as long as 9,500 years ago. For example, a woman’s remains found in Yokchido in South Korea had 95% ancestry from Japan’s ancient Jomon people, indicating her recent ancestors had migrated over the sea.
“It is surprising to see that ancient Koreans reflect Jomon ancestry, which so far had only been detected in Japan,” Robbeets said. The origins of modern Chinese languages arose independently, though in a similar fashion with millet also involved. While the progenitors of the Transeurasian languages grew broomcorn millet in the Liao River valley, the originators of the Sino-Tibetan language family farmed foxtail millet at roughly the same time in China’s Yellow River region, paving the way for a separate language dispersal, Robbeets said.
The International Space Station(ISS) performed a brief manoeuvre on Wednesday to dodge a fragment of a defunct Chinese satellite, Russian space agency Roscosmos said. On Friday, November 12, 2021, a fragment of the Fengyun-1C spacecraft will approach the International Space Station at about 4 am Moscow time, Roscosmos added.
The station crewed by seven astronauts climbed 1,240 metres higher to avoid a close encounter with the fragment and settled in an orbit 470.7 km (292 miles) above the Earth, Roscosmos said. It did not say how large the debris was.
“In order to dodge the ‘space junk’, (mission control) specialists…have calculated how to correct the orbit of the International Space Station,” the agency’s statement said adding that the minimum distance between the object and the ISS was just over 600 meters.
The station relied on the engines of the Progress space truck that is docked to it to carry out the move.
An ever-swelling amount of space debris is threatening satellites hovering around Earth, making insurers leery of offering coverage to the devices that transmit texts, maps, videos and scientific data.
Researchers have always been intrigued about when the landmasses we reside on came into existence and till recently, it was widely accepted that continents rose out of the ocean about 2.5 billion years ago. However, a recent study has changed that notion.
A recent research has shown that the Earth’s first continents may have risen out of the ocean about 700 million years earlier than previously thought. And to the surprise of many, the earliest continental land to have risen about 3.2 billion years ago may have been Jharkhand’s Singhbhum region. Scientists from India, Australia and the US have found sandstones in Singhbhum with geological signatures of ancient river channels, tidal plains and beaches over 3.2 billion years old, representing the earliest crust exposed to air.
When asked as to how Singhbhum came into the picture of research related to Earth Sciences, Dr Priyadarshi Chowdhury of Monash University, the study’s lead author, told indianexpress.com that the answer to “when the first landmasses were formed lay in the sedimentary rocks of the region”.
“We found a particular type of sedimentary rocks, called sandstones. We then tried to find their age and in which conditions they have formed. We found the age by analysing the uranium and lead contents of tiny minerals. These rocks are 3.1 billion years old, and were formed in ancient rivers, beaches, and shallow seas. All these water bodies could have only existed if there was continental land. Thus, we inferred that the Singhbhum region was above the ocean before 3.1 billion years ago,” Chowdhury said.
But, Chowdhury said, patches of the earliest continental land also exist in Australia and South Africa.
Speaking about how they determined that the region rose above ocean during the timeframe mentioned above, Chowdhury explained: “We studied the granites that form the continental crust of the Singhbhum region. These granites are 3.5 to 3.1 billion years old and formed through extensive volcanism that happened about 35-45 km deep inside the Earth and continued on-and-off for hundreds of millions of years until all the magma solidified to form a thick continental crust in the area. Due to the thickness and less density, the continental crust emerged above surrounding oceanic crust owing to buoyancy.”
“This is the most direct, unambiguous date yet for the emergence of continental land,” Chowdhury said. The findings have appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US research journal.
The research also tends to break another well-accepted notion: continents rose above the ocean due to plate tectonics, which is the major driver today for increases in the elevation of land masses.
“We have plate tectonics today to control the elevation. When two continents’ (plates) collide, you form the Himalayas, you form the Alps,” he said. “That wasn’t the case 3 billion years [ago]. The first continents probably rose above sea level as they were inflated by progressive injection of magma derived from deep in the Earth.”
The researchers believe that the earliest emergence of continents would have contributed to the proliferation of photosynthetic organisms, which would have increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere. “Once you create land, what you also create is shallow seas, like lagoons,” Chowdhury added, accelerating the growth of oxygen-producing life forms that may have boosted oxygen in the atmosphere and ocean.
Exhorting on the importance of such studies, Chowdhury said that at a time when the entire world was debating about changes in climate, it is very important to understand how our atmosphere, oceans and climate came into existence and how they interacted with geological processes operating deep inside Earth to make our planet habitable.
“It allows us to link the interior of Earth to its exterior in deep time. India has three other ancient continental fragments — Dharwar, Bastar and Bundelkhand regions. We need to understand their evolution. What we did in Singhbhum may serve as a template for studying these other cratons,” he added.
NASA and SpaceX, the private rocket company of Elon Musk, launched four more astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station late on Wednesday, including a veteran spacewalker and two younger crewmates chosen to join NASA’s forthcoming lunar missions.
The SpaceX-built launch vehicle, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, climbed into the night sky from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as its nine Merlin engines roared to life at about 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Thursday).
Liftoff of the Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance by the crew, was aired live from Cape Canaveral on NASA TV.
Intermittent rain and clouds over the Cape earlier in the day had cast doubt on launch prospects, but the weather cleared sufficiently by flight time, NASA said.
Live NASA video footage showed the four crew members strapped into the pressurized cabin of their gleaming white SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, wearing their helmeted white and black flight suits in the final minutes before launch.
The three American astronauts and their European Space Agency crewmate were due to arrive at the space station, orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth, on Thursday evening following a flight of about 22 hours.
The flight marks the third “operational” space station crew sent to orbit aboard a Dragon capsule since NASA and SpaceX teamed up to resume space launches from American soil last year, following a nine-year hiatus at the end of the U.S. space shuttle program in 2011.
“Crew 3” includes two members of NASA’s latest graduating class of astronauts – Raja Chari, 44, a U.S. Air Force combat jet and test pilot serving as mission commander, and mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34, a U.S. Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer.
The team’s designated pilot and second-in-command is veteran astronaut Tom Marshburn, 61, a medical doctor and former NASA flight surgeon who has logged two previous spaceflights to the space station and four spacewalks.
Rounding out the crew is European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51, of Germany, a materials science engineer.
Chari, Barron and Maurer were making their debut spaceflights with Wednesday’s launch, becoming the 599th, 600th and 601st humans in space.Both Chari and Barron also are among the first group of 18 astronauts selected for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the moon later this decade, over a half century after the Apollo lunar program ended.
NASA-SPACEX PARTNERSHIP
It is the fourth crewed flight overall in 17 months under NASA’s public-private partnership with SpaceX, the rocket company founded in 2002 by Musk, the billionaire chief executive of electric car maker Tesla IncThe first was a two-astronaut trial run to the space station in May 2020, followed by the maiden NASA-SpaceX operational “Crew 1” in November of that year.
“Crew 2” was launched to the space station in April of this year, and just returned safely to Earth on Monday night with a splashdown capping a record 199 days in orbit.
The latest mission also follows a flurry of recent high-profile astro-tourism flights, including the SpaceX launch in September of “Inspiration 4,” the first all-civilian crew sent to orbit without a professional astronaut on board.
Earlier this month, 90-year-old actor William Shatner, famed for playing Captain James T. Kirk on the original 1960s “Star Trek” TV series, made headlines riding aboard a rocketship launched by billionaire Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin to become the oldest person to fly in space.
The “Crew 3” team, on arriving at the space station, will be welcomed aboard the orbiting laboratory by its three current occupants – two cosmonauts from Russia and Belarus and a U.S. astronaut who shared a Soyuz flight to orbit with them earlier this year.
If you thought the COVID pandemic was disruptive and deadly, climate change will be so much worse. So said a slew of panelists Tuesday at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, warning about escalating climate-linked health threats such as disease, heatstroke and air pollution. But they also called out the health systems in rich nations as part of the problem, with the healthcare sector responsible for up to 5 per cent of global carbon emissions.
“We need to recognise the role of health systems as emitters,” said Rachel Levine, the US assistant secretary of health. “We cannot stand back and only tell others what they should do to protect our patients.”
The main sources of emissions from the healthcare sector include the manufacture and transport of medical goods, as well as the construction and operation of hospitals and clinics.
On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced dozens of governments had committed to reduce emissions in their health systems or to transition entirely to net-zero. Speakers also called on countries to get ready for more climate-linked illnesses and casualties.
Already, climate change is worsening food and water security, while deadly heatwaves and floods are testing communities around the world. Medical systems are often being strained if not damaged by these same types of events.
Fiji’s UN Ambassador Satyendra Prasad described the challenge of keeping medical facilities open in the midst of superstorms and floods that are battering the Pacific island nation. “It’s quite tragic when your doctors and nurses are themselves being evacuated, when they should be providing front-line services,” he said.
Fiji is also seeing more waterborne diseases in the flooding after storms, he said. Vulnerable countries need money to move medical facilities to higher ground and to train health professionals to deal with climate-linked health issues, he said.
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, now the WHO ambassador on global health finance, called on rich countries to keep their promise to provide $100 billion a year in climate financing for poorer nations. That money, he said, could be used to bolster healthcare worldwide.
Doctors have said the best way to prevent spiraling public health dangers is to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
An editorial run in 233 health journals urged the same, saying that passing the 1.5C threshold risks “catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse”.
“Although COVID has been a deadly disease, climate change will take more lives in the next 50 to 100 years than anything that that [the coronavirus] disease will do,” Brown said. “We need to keep 1.5 degrees alive to keep millions of people alive.”
Elon Musk’s private rocket company, SpaceX, is due to launch four more astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Wednesday, including a veteran spacewalker and two younger crewmates chosen to join NASA’s forthcoming lunar missions.
The SpaceX-built launch vehicle, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, was set for liftoff at 9:03 p.m. (0730 IST Thursday) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
If all goes smoothly, the three U.S. astronauts and their European Space Agency (ESA) crewmate will arrive about 22 hours later and dock with the space station 400 km above the Earth to begin a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory.
Liftoff originally was slated for October 31 but has been repeatedly rescheduled due to a spate of bad weather. One delay was attributed to an unspecified medical issue with a crew member, the first such health-related launch postponement for a NASA mission since 1990. As of late Tuesday night the crew, their spacecraft and ground-based launch teams were all ready for liftoff, and “the weather is go for launch,” NASA commercial crew manager Steve Stich told reporters during a pre-flight briefing.
Joining the SpaceX mission’s three NASA astronauts – flight commander Raja Chari, 44, mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34 – is German astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51, an ESA mission specialist. Chari, a U.S. Air Force combat jet and test pilot, Barron, a U.S. Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer, and Maurer, a materials science engineer, are all making their debut spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance.
The three rookies will become the 599th, 600th and 601st humans in space, according to SpaceX. Both Chari and Barron were also among the first group of 18 astronauts selected last year for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the moon later this decade, more than a half century after the Apollo lunar program ended.
Stich said spaceflight experience in low-Earth orbit and aboard the space station “is a great training ground for those kind of skills that we’ll need for return to the moon on Artemis.” Marshburn, a physician and former NASA flight surgeon, is the most experienced astronaut of the crew, having logged two previous spaceflights and four spacewalks. He was part of a 13-member team that helped assemble the space station in 2009 and returned to the orbiting outpost in a 2012-2013 mission.
‘CREW 3’ Wednesday’s liftoff, if successful, would count as the fifth human spaceflight SpaceX has achieved to date, following its “Inspiration 4” launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew to orbit for the first time.
The latest mission would mark the fourth crew NASA has launched to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle in 17 months, building on a public-private partnership with the rocket company formed in 2002 by Musk, also founder of electric maker Tesla Inc.
Their collaboration helped usher in a new era for NASA leading to last year’s first launch of American astronauts from U.S. soil in nine years, since it quit flying space shuttles in 2011.The team set for blastoff on Wednesday has been designated “Crew 3” – the third full-fledged “operational” crew NASA and SpaceX have flown to the space station after a two-astronaut trial run in May 2020.The four astronauts of “Crew 2” safely returned to Earth late on Monday from a record 199 days in orbit, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida after an eight-hour voyage home from the space station.
The latest mission also follows a flurry of recent high-profile astro-tourism flights. In July two SpaceX rivals, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic Holding Inc, launched back-to-back flights with their respective billionaire founders, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, riding along.
Last month, 90-year-old actor William Shatner, famed for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original 1960s “Star Trek” TV series, rode aboard a Blue Origin rocket to become the oldest person to fly in space.
Crew 3 will be welcomed aboard the space station by its three current residents – two cosmonauts from Russia and Belarus and a U.S. astronaut who shared a Soyuz flight to the orbiting platform earlier this year.
NASA is delaying putting astronauts back on the moon until 2025 at the earliest, missing the deadline set by the Trump administration. The space agency had been aiming for 2024 for the first moon landing by astronauts in a half-century.
Announcing the delay Tuesday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Congress did not provide enough money to develop a landing system for its Artemis moon programme. In addition, a legal challenge by Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, stalled work on the Starship lunar lander under development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
NASA is still targeting next February for the first test flight of its moon rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, with an Orion capsule. No one will be on board. Instead, astronauts will strap in for the second Artemis flight, flying beyond the moon but not landing in 2024, a year later than planned. That would bump the moon landing to at least 2025, according to Nelson.
“The human landing system is a crucial part of our work to get the first woman and the first person of colour to the lunar surface, and we are getting geared up to go,” Nelson told reporters.
Officials said technology for new spacesuits also needs to ramp up before astronauts can return to the moon.
NASA’s last lunar landing by astronauts occurred during Apollo 17 in 1972. Altogether, 12 men explored the moon’s surface.
During a National Space Council meeting in 2019, Vice President Mike Pence called for landing astronauts on the moon within five years “by any means necessary.” NASA had been shooting for a lunar landing in 2028, and pushing it up by four years was considered at the time exceedingly ambitious, if not improbable.
Congress will need to increase funding, beginning with the 2023 budget, in order for NASA to have private companies competing for the planned 10 or more moon landings by astronauts, Nelson said.
The space agency also is requesting a bigger budget for its Orion capsules, from USD 6.7 billion to USD 9.3 billion, citing delays during the coronavirus pandemic and storm damage. Development costs for the rocket through the first Artemis flight next year stands at USD 11 billion.
Vice President Kamala Harris will convene her first National Space Council meeting, as its chair, on December 1. Nelson said he updated her on the latest schedule and costs during their visit to Maryland’s Goddard Space Flight Center on Friday.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Bhopal have found the differences in gut bacterial compositions between Indian and Western populations arising due to different diet patterns.
The research conducted in collaboration with a team from South Dakota University in the US has also elucidated the relationship between gut bacteria and inflammatory diseases such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). These variations arise from the differences in the diet patterns in these two regions – the Indian diet being richer in carbohydrates and fibre than the Western.
The study has been published in Biofilms and Microbiomes.
The human gut contains 300-500 types of bacteria that are necessary for survival. These bacteria help in digestion, protect from infections and even produce essential vitamins and neurochemicals.
In 2011, German scientists classified human beings into three “enterotypes” depending on the kind of bacteria that dominates the gut – Prevotella, Bacteroides or Ruminococcus.
“Most enterotype studies are largely based on the western population and have not correlated the type of dominant gut bacteria with the type of diet. In the largest gut metagenome study from India, our team studied the bacterial profile of 200 gut samples taken from people from several Indian locations – Madhya Pradesh, Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, Bihar, and Kerala,” said Vineet K Sharma, associate professor, Department of Biological Sciences, IISER Bhopal.
The researchers found that the Indian gut microbiome has the highest abundance of the Prevotella genus of bacteria. This bacterium also dominates the guts of other populations that consume a carbohydrate-and fibre-rich diet, such as the Italian, Madagascarian, Peruvian, and Tanzanian. The gut microbiomes of people from Western countries like the USA are dominated by Bacteroides.
“This is a pioneering study that investigates the role of Prevotella species on human health in different populations, and reveals the significance in the metabolism of complex polysaccharides and dietary fibres in non-western populations,” Sharma explained.
Talking about the practical implications of his work, he said, “Our insights would help in the development of new probiotics and prebiotics for different health-related conditions associated with the gut which is much needed for non-western populations.”
Written by Gina Kolata
When Sharif Tabebordbar was born in 1986, his father, Jafar, was 32 and already had symptoms of a muscle wasting disease. The mysterious illness would come to define Sharif’s life.
Jafar Tabebordbar could walk when he was in his 30s but stumbled and often lost his balance. Then he lost his ability to drive. When he was 50, he could use his hands. Now he has to support one hand with another.
No one could answer the question plaguing Sharif and his younger brother, Shayan: What was this disease? And would they develop it the way their father had?
As he grew up and watched his father gradually decline, Sharif vowed to solve the mystery and find a cure. His quest led him to a doctorate in developmental and regenerative biology, the most competitive ranks of academic medical research, and a discovery, published in September in the journal Cell, that could transform gene therapy — medicine that corrects genetic defects — for nearly all muscle wasting diseases. That includes muscular dystrophies that affect about 100,000 people in the United States, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Scientists often use a disabled virus called an adeno-associated virus, or AAV, to deliver gene therapy to cells. But damaged muscle cells like the ones that afflict Sharif Tabebordbar’s father are difficult to treat. Forty percent of the body is made of muscle. To get the virus to those muscle cells, researchers must deliver enormous doses of medication. Most of the viruses end up in the liver, damaging it and sometimes killing patients. Trials have been halted, researchers stymied.
Tabebordbar managed to develop viruses that go directly to muscles — very few end up in the liver. His discovery could allow treatment with a fraction of the dosage, and without the disabling side effects.
Dr. Jeffrey Chamberlain, who studies therapies for muscular diseases at the University of Washington and is not involved in Tabebordbar’s research, said the new method “could take it to the next level,” adding that the same method also could allow researchers to accurately target almost any tissue, including brain cells, which are only beginning to be considered as gene therapy targets.
And Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, which helped fund the research, said in a blog post that it holds “potential for targeting other organs,” thereby “possibly providing treatment for a wide range of genetic conditions.”
Tabebordbar’s small office at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has a glass door that opens directly to his lab bench. It is not homey. There are no photos, no books, no papers strewed about on the white counter that serves as a desk. Even the whiteboard is clean. There, fueled by caffeine, he works typically 14 hours a day, except on the days when he plays soccer with a group at MIT.
“He is incredibly productive and incredibly effective,” said Amy Wagers, who was Tabebordbar’s Ph.D. adviser and is a professor and co-chair of the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard. “He works all the time and has this incredible passion and incredible dedication. And it’s infectious. It spreads to everyone around him. That is a real skill — his ability to take a bigger vision and communicate it.”
Tabebordbar and his wife live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He likes to cook Persian food and hosts a feast in his small apartment every Thanksgiving for about a dozen friends. While he works at his lab bench he listens to Persian music, podcasts or audiobooks. He loves biographies, and made mention of a passage he found meaningful in an autobiography of one of his heroes, English soccer player Michael Owen.
Owen writes that when he learned he had been voted European soccer player of the year in Europe, his reaction was muted. “All I wanted to do was score the next goal, the next hat-trick and lift the next trophy,” Owen wrote. “Looking back, I was relentless in that respect and I’ve no doubt that that mindset was key to my success.”
“That is like me,” Tabebordbar said. “It is amazing that we achieved this but now” — he snaps his fingers — “we need to get to work. What’s next?”
At the University of Tehran, he majored in biotechnology. After 4 1/2 years, he had a master’s degree but began applying to Ph.D. programs at top international universities doing research on muscular dystrophies, hoping that would lead to a discovery that could help his father. He ended up in Wagers’ lab at Harvard.
All along the question hovered over him: What caused his father’s illness?
When his father came to Harvard to attend the 2016 graduation ceremony, Tabebordbar seized the moment to have Jafar’s genes sequenced and figure out the mystery. No mutations were found.
“How is that even possible?” Tabebordbar asked.
More detailed and sophisticated testing finally revealed the answer: His father has an extraordinarily rare genetic disorder, facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy or FSHD, that affects an estimated four to 10 out of every 100,000 people. It is not caused by a mutation in a gene. Instead, it is caused by a mutation in an area between genes, resulting in the excretion of a toxic chemical that kills muscle cells.
To Tabebordbar’s horror, he learned that he had a 50-50 chance of inheriting the mutation from his father. If he had it, he would get the disease.
He was tested by a friend, who called him with the result.
Tabebordbar had inherited the mutation but — amazingly — the mutated gene was missing the last piece of the toxic DNA, which prevented the condition from emerging.
“You are the luckiest guy among the unlucky,” he recalled his friend saying.
In Wagers’ lab, Tabebordbar worked on muscular dystrophy, using CRISPR, the gene editing technique. He attempted to use AAV to transport the CRISPR enzymes to muscle cells where it might correct the mutation. As others found before him, that was not so simple.
Tabebordbar’s project at Harvard suffered from the high dose problems, too. Although he managed to correct muscular dystrophy in mice — a feat reported at the same time by two other labs — that was no guarantee the gene therapy would work in humans. Different species — even different strains of mice — can have different responses to the same gene therapy. And the AAV doses were perilously high.
After he graduated from Harvard, Tabebordbar thought he had a chance to develop a gene therapy for muscular dystrophy at a biotech company. But after about a year, the company called everyone into a conference room to tell them there was going to be a reorganization and the muscular dystrophy program was being dropped. Tabebordbar knew he had to go somewhere else.
He got a position in the lab of Pardis Sabeti at the Broad Institute and set to work. His plan was to mutate millions of viruses and isolate those that went almost exclusively to muscles.
The result was what he’d hoped — viruses that homed in on muscle, in mice and also in monkeys, which makes it much more likely they will work in people.
As scientists know, most experiments fail before anything succeeds and this work has barely begun.
“I will do 100 experiments and 95 will not work,” Tabebordbar said. But he said this is the personality that is required of a scientist. “The mindset I have is, ‘this is not going to work.’ It makes you very patient.”
He hopes his work will spare others from suffering. Yet his father’s fate hangs over him. Jafar Tabebordbar has missed the window when it might still be possible to help him.
“He was born too soon,” his son said.
Four astronauts returned to Earth on Monday, riding home with SpaceX to end a 200-day space station mission that began last spring.
Their capsule streaked through the late night sky like a dazzling meteor before parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Recovery boats quickly moved in with spotlights.
“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home to Planet Earth,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed from Southern California.
Their homecoming _ coming just eight hours after leaving the International Space Station _ paved the way for SpaceX’s launch of their four replacements as early as Wednesday night.
The newcomers were scheduled to launch first, but NASA switched the order because of bad weather and an astronaut’s undisclosed medical condition. The welcoming duties will now fall to the lone American and two Russians left behind at the space station.
Before Monday afternoon’s undocking, German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who’s waiting to launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, tweeted it was a shame the two crews wouldn’t overlap at the space station but “we trust you’ll leave everything nice and tidy.” His will be SpaceX’s fourth crew flight for NASA in just 1 1/2 years.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and France’s Thomas Pesquet should have been back Monday morning, but high wind in the recovery zone delayed their return.
“One more night with this magical view. Who could complain? I’ll miss our spaceship!” Pesquet tweeted Sunday alongside a brief video showing the space station illuminated against the blackness of space and the twinkling city lights on the nighttime side of Earth.
From the space station, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei — midway through a one-year flight — bid farewell to each of his departing friends, telling McArthur “I’ll miss hearing your laughter in adjacent modules.”
Before leaving the neighborhood, the four took a spin around the space station, taking pictures. This was a first for SpaceX; NASA’s shuttles used to do it all the time before their retirement a decade ago. The last Russian capsule fly-around was three years ago.
It wasn’t the most comfortable ride back. The toilet in their capsule was broken, and so the astronauts needed to rely on diapers for the eight-hour trip home. They shrugged it off late last week as just one more challenge in their mission.
The first issue arose shortly after their April liftoff; Mission Control warned a piece of space junk was threatening to collide with their capsule. It turned out to be a false alarm. Then in July, thrusters on a newly arrived Russian lab inadvertently fired and sent the station into a spin. The four astronauts took shelter in their docked SpaceX capsule, ready to make a hasty departure if necessary.
Among the upbeat milestones: four spacewalks to enhance the station’s solar power, a movie-making visit by a Russian film crew and the first-ever space harvest of chile peppers.
The next crew will also spend six months up there, welcoming back-to-back groups of tourists. A Japanese tycoon and his personal assistant will get a lift from the Russian Space Agency in December, followed by three businessmen arriving via SpaceX in February. SpaceX’s first privately chartered flight, in September, bypassed the space station.
Written by Jonathan O’Callaghan
Star systems come in all shapes and sizes. Some have lots of planets, some have larger planets and others have no planets at all. But a particularly unusual system about 150 light-years from our own has scientists scratching their heads.
In 2016, astronomers discovered two planets orbiting the star HD 3167. They were thought to be super-Earths — between Earth and Neptune in size — and circled the star every one and 30 days. A third planet was found in the system in 2017, orbiting in about eight days.
What’s unusual is the inclinations of the outer two planets, HD 3167 c and d. Whereas in our solar system all the planets orbit in the same flat plane around the sun, these two are in polar orbits. That is, they go above and below their star’s poles, rather than around the equator as Earth and the other planets in our system do.
Now scientists have discovered the system is even weirder than they thought. Researchers measured the orbit of the innermost planet, HD 3167 b, for the first time — and it doesn’t match the other two. It instead orbits in the star’s flat plane, like planets in our solar system, and perpendicular to HD 3167 c and d. This star system is the first one known to act like this.
“It was clearly a surprise,” said Vincent Bourrier, from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who led the discovery published last month in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. “This is something radically different from our own solar system.”
While none of the planets are thought to be habitable, were you to stand on one you would see a rather intriguing view of this peculiar system. “If you had a telescope and you were looking at the trajectory of the other planets in the system, they would be going vertically in the sky,” Bourrier said.
Finding exoplanets in polar orbits is not wholly unusual, said Andrew Vanderburg of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the initial discovery of HD 3167 c and d but was not involved in the new research. But the perpendicular nature of this system “is odd,” he said.
The latest discovery was made possible by an instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile, called ESPRESSO. Using extremely precise measurements of the star, the scientists were able to track the direction in which the innermost planet was passing in front of its star relative to us, known as a transit, and work out the angle of its orbit.
The misalignment in the system may result from an unseen object in its outer reaches. Shweta Dalal, from the University of Exeter in England, has studied the system and said there was evidence of a Jupiter-size planet orbiting the star every 80 days. The gravitational effect of this world could have pushed the outer two planets into their unusual orbits, while the innermost planet remained locked to the star owing to its tight orbit.
“A Jupiter-sized planet could be massive enough to tilt the planets,” Dalal said.
While our solar system has its own massive Jupiter, the wider orbits of our planets means the same fate has not befallen Earth or the other planets. In contrast, the planets that orbit HD 3167 “are all within the orbit of Mercury,” Dalal said, and thus close together, magnifying the effects of their interactions.
Upcoming observations may reveal more systems like this. The European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope, which is mapping billions of stars in the Milky Way, is expected to reveal data soon on thousands of giant planets in other star systems, including inclination data for those that transit. Bourrier and his team also hope to use ESPRESSO to make similar observations of other systems.
The unusual configuration of HD 3167 highlights just how weird and wonderful other stars and their planets can be. “It puts in perspective again what we think we know about the formation of planetary systems,” Bourrier said. “Planets can evolve in really, really different ways.”
Wang Yaping has become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk as part of a six-month mission to the country’s space station.
Wang and fellow astronaut Zhai Zhigang left the station’s main module on Sunday evening, spending more than six hours outside installing equipment and carrying out tests alongside the station’s robotic service arm, according to the China Manned Space (CMS) agency.
The third member of the crew, Ye Guangfu, assisted from inside the station, CMS said on its website.
Wang, 41, and Zhai, 55, had both traveled to China’s now-retired experimental space stations, and Zhai conducted China’s first spacewalk 13 years ago.
The three are the second crew on the permanent station, and the mission that began with their arrival Oct. 16 is scheduled to be the longest stretch of time in space yet for Chinese astronauts.
The Tianhe module of the station will be connected next year to two more sections named Mengtian and Wentian. The completed station will weigh about 66 tons, much smaller than the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 450 tons.
Three spacewalks are planned to install equipment in preparation for the station’s expansion, while the crew will also assess living conditions in the Tianhe module and conduct experiments in space medicine and other fields.
China’s military-run space program plans to send multiple crews to the station over the next two years to make it fully functional.
China on Saturday successfully launched three new remote sensing satellites from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in the country’s southwestern Sichuan province, official media reported.
The satellites, belonging to the Yaogan-35 family, were launched by a Long March-2D carrier rocket and entered the planned orbit successfully, according to the Xinhua news agency.
This launch marked the 396th mission for the Long March series carrier rockets.
In March 2019, China’s Long March-3B rocket — regarded as the main stay of the country’s space programme since 1970 — had successfully completed its 300th launch by putting a new communication satellite into orbit.
The Long March carrier rocket series, developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, is responsible for about 96.4 per cent of all the launch missions in China.
It took 37 years for the Long March rockets to complete the first 100 launches, 7.5 years to complete the second 100 launches, and only about four years to accomplish the final 100, with the average number of launches per year increasing from 2.7 to 13.3 and then to 23.5, Xinhua reported in 2019.
Even if the world limits warming to 1.5°C, many climate risks remain and will be irreversible, a latest UNEP report released on November 4 said, while warning that the gap between costs of adaptation and the current financial flow is widening.
'The Adaptation Gap Report 2021: The Gathering Storm' released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) during the ongoing COP26 at Glasgow said at the current 1.1°C warming, the world has witnessed climate-related devastation in 2021 ranging from floods in Europe and China, heatwaves in Pacific North West, wildfires in Greece and floods and monsoon variabilities in India. “While strong mitigation is the best way to lower impacts and long-term costs, raising ambition in adaptation, in particular for financing and implementation, is critical to keep existing gaps from widening,” it said.
The report found that the costs of adaptation are likely in the higher end of an estimated $140-300 billion per year by 2030 and $280-500 billion per year by 2050 for developing countries only. “Climate finance flowing to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation planning and implementation reached $79.6 billion in 2019. Overall, estimated adaptation costs in developing countries are five to 10 times greater than current public adaptation finance flows, and the gap is widening,” the report said.
Calling for urgent efforts to increase the financing and implementation of actions designed to adapt to the growing impacts of climate change, the UNEP report found that the opportunity to use the fiscal recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic to prioritise green economic growth that also helps nations adapt to climate impacts such as droughts, storms and wildfire is largely being missed.
“As the world looks to step up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions -- efforts that are still not anywhere strong enough -- it must also dramatically up its game to adapt to climate change,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. He said, “Even if we were to turn off the tap on greenhouse gas emissions today, the impacts of climate change would be with us for many decades to come. We need a step change in adaptation ambition for funding and implementation to significantly reduce damages and losses from climate change. And, we need it now.” It said that $16.7 trillion of fiscal stimulus has been deployed around the globe, but only a small portion of this funding has targeted adaptation.“Fewer than one-third of 66 countries studied had explicitly funded COVID-19 measures to address climate risks as of June 2021. At the same time, the heightened cost of servicing debt, combined with decreased government revenues, may hamper future government spending on adaptation, particularly in developing countries,” the report said.
It, however, said that there was some progress in planning and implementation.
“While early evidence suggests that National Adaptation Plan development processes have been disrupted by COVID-19, progress is being made on national adaptation planning agendas.
“Around 79% of countries have adopted at least one national-level adaptation planning instrument, such as a plan, strategy, policy or law. This is an increase of seven per cent since 2020,” the report said.
Nine per cent of countries that do not have such an instrument in place are in the process of developing one, the report said, adding that at least 65% of the countries have one or more sectoral plans in place, and at least 26% have one or more sub-national planning instruments, it said.
Despite this progress, the report finds that further ambition is needed in financing and implementation.
“The world needs to scale-up public adaptation finance through direct investment and by overcoming barriers to private sector involvement. More and stronger implementation of adaptation actions is needed to avoid falling behind on managing climate risks, particularly in developing countries,” the report said.
It suggested that governments should use the fiscal recovery from the pandemic to prioritise interventions that achieve both economic growth and climate change resilience. “They should set up integrated risk management approaches and establish flexible disaster finance frameworks. Advanced economies should also help developing countries to free up fiscal space for green and resilient COVID-19 recovery efforts through concessional finance and substantive debt relief,” it said.
A solar flare that occurred on the Sun triggered a magnetic storm which scientists from Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India (CESSI), in Indian Institutes for Science Education and Research, Kolkata, had predicted will arrive at the Earth in the early hours of November 4, and they said that the magnitude of this storm would be such as to trigger spectacular displays of aurora (the coloured bands of light seen in the North and South poles) in the high-latitude and polar regions, just in time for the Deepavali celebrations in India. This prediction, which was based on models built by them and data from NASA’s observatories, seems to have come true, as people from several countries were tweeting pictures of aurorae.
Judging by data from the NASA DSCOVR satellite, the scientists observed a steep jump in transverse magnetic fields, density and speeds of the plasma wind that are tell-tale signatures of the arrival of a coronal mass ejection shock front, according to Dibyendu Nandi of CESSI Kolkata whose team predicted the event.
“This happened at 1.00 AM IST. We will know whether this is the CME flux based on its evolution as it passes through. These observations are taken at Lagrange Point L1,” he said on November 4, in a message to The Hindu.
Dipankar Banerjee, a solar physicist and Director of Aryabhata Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) based in Nainital said about the prediction, “This is quite promising. It appears their predictions are matching the observations.” He was not involved in this work.
The solar magnetic cycle that works in the deep interior of the Sun creates regions that rise to the surface and appear like dark spots. These are the sunspots. Solar flares are highly energetic phenomena that happen inside the sunspots. In a solar flare, the energy stored in the sun’s magnetic structures is converted into light and heat energy. This causes the emission of high energy x-ray radiation and highly accelerated charged particles to leave the sun’s surface. Sometimes solar flares also cause hot plasma to be ejected from the Sun, causing a solar storm, and this is called Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Coronal Mass Ejections can harbour energies exceeding that of a billion atomic bombs.
The energy and radiation and high energy particles emitted by flares can affect Earth bound objects and life on Earth – it can affect the electronics within satellites and affect astronauts. Very powerful Earth-directed coronal mass ejections can cause failure of power grids and affect oil pipelines and deep-sea cables. They can also cause spectacular aurorae in the high-latitude and polar countries. The last time a major blackout due to a coronal mass ejection was recorded was in 1989 – a powerful geomagnetic storm that took down the North American power grid, plunging large parts of Canada into darkness and triggering spectacular aurorae beyond the polar regions.
The process of prediction takes place in two steps: First the researchers analyse the possibility of a strong solar flare from an active region – that is, clusters of sunspots – using
a machine learning algorithm which has been developed in CESSI, IISER Kolkata. “This algorithm needs observations of the sunspot magnetic fields, from which we extract various parameters to train the algorithm. We use data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, specifically, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument, for this purpose,” says Dibyendu Nandi, who, along with his PhD student Suvadip Sinha, developed the algorithm at CESSI.
The second step is estimating the time of arrival on Earth of coronal mass ejections and forecasting the geomagnetic storm. The group uses the near-Sun evolution of the coronal mass ejections through European Space Agency’s SOHO satellite and NASA's STEREO satellite to extract their speed. There is an associated flare, and its position on the Sun is used to extract the location of origin of the CME. The location of the source of the CME and the velocity are used as inputs by the group in a publicly available model widely called the Drag Based Ensemble Model to calculate the CME arrival times and speed. “This latter step has uncertainties as the physics of CME propagation is quite complex, but this is treated in a simplified manner in this model,” explains prof. Nandi. “When ISRO’s Aditya-L1 satellite is launched, we would be receiving similar data on solar storms from this observatory,” he adds.
Commenting on the work done by Prof Nandi and group, Dr Banerjee said, “This is their first comprehensive work on this… the basic physics input and the model seems to be robust.”
Some have been tweeting pictures of the aurorae seen in places such as Alberta in Canada, and Alaska, to name just a few. Prof Nandi further said, “Reports are already coming in which indicate we hit bull's eye with the prediction. Storm arrived within one hour of our forecast time with similar speeds to what we had estimated. Aurorae are being reported from unexpected countries such as Scotland, Ireland and states in the U.S. apart from the high latitude regions. Now NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center had upgraded the information on the geomagnetic storm resulting from the CME impact to be hazardous.”
The sun may well add to this year’s Deepavali celebrations, if predictions made by solar physicists come true. A solar flare that occurred on the Sun has triggered a magnetic storm which scientists predict will arrive at the Earth in the early hours of November 4, and this can give rise to spectacular displays of aurora in the polar regions, just in time for the Deepavali celebrations in India.
The solar magnetic cycle that works in the deep interior of the Sun creates regions that rise to the surface and appear like dark spots. These are the sunspots. Solar flares are highly energetic phenomena that happen inside the sunspots. In a solar flare, the energy stored in the sun’s magnetic structures is converted into light and heat energy. This causes the emission of high energy x-ray radiation and highly accelerated charged particles to leave the sun’s surface. Sometimes solar flares also cause hot plasma to be ejected from the Sun, causing a solar storm, and this is called Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Coronal Mass Ejections can harbour energies exceeding that of a billion atomic bombs.
The energy and radiation and high energy particles emitted by flares can affect Earth bound objects and life on Earth – it can affect the electronics within satellites and affect astronauts. Very powerful Earth-directed coronal mass ejections can cause failure of power grids and affect oil pipelines and deep-sea cables. They can also cause spectacular aurorae in the high-latitude and polar countries. The last time a major blackout due to a coronal mass ejection was recorded was in 1989 – a powerful geomagnetic storm that took down the North American power grid, plunging large parts of Canada in to darkness and triggering spectacular aurorae beyond the polar regions.
A team of solar physicists from CESSI, in IISER Kolkata, which included PhD student Suvadip Sinha and Prof. Dibyendu Nandi, have predicted that a collection of sunspots denoted active region 12887 and 12891 could erupt into a so-called X-class flare and several M-class flares. These are the types of flare that are strongest and second strongest in terms of the intensity of x-ray radiation that they carry. This prediction has already proven to be true. The team expects the CME triggered by the M class flare that occurred in sunspot 12891 to impact the Earth with speeds upwards of 700 km/s late in the night of November 3 or early on November 4. According to Dibyendu Nandi, “This storm may well be dubbed the “Diwali solar storm,” in keeping with the naming of storms after Bastille Day (2000), Halloween Day (2003) or St Patrick’s Day (2015).”
If the storm is strong enough, it could cause lighting effects or aurorae in the polar regions. Prof Nandi said, “Often when the solar wind speed is high and the magnetic field component in the wind is in the right orientation, auroras are triggered. For example, there is an auroral oval which is confined just over the poles which is often visible from space crafts. However, only during a storm does the aurora become more spectacular and become visible in countries like Canada, Northern USA, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Siberia etc.”
Vaccine maker Bharat Biotech on Wednesday said the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has approved the extension of shelf life of its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin up to 12 months from the date of manufacture.
"The CDSCO has approved the extension of shelf life of Covaxin up to 12 months, from the date of manufacture. This approval of shelf life extension is based on the availability of additional stability data, which was submitted to CDSCO," Bharat Biotech said in a tweet.
The shelf life extension has been communicated to "our stakeholders," it added.
NASA announced on Monday a rare, health-related delay in its SpaceX rocket launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station.
This is the second postponement of the mission in a week,citing an unspecified medical issue with one of the crew. NASA said the issue was "not a medical emergency and not related to COVID-19," but the space agency declined to elaborate on the nature of the problem or say which astronaut was involved.
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In Chile's Atacama desert, stargazers search for alien life and 'dark energy'
In Chile's dry Atacama desert, stargazers are scanning the clear night skies to detect the existence of life on other planets and study so-called 'dark energy,' a mysterious cosmic force thought to be driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Central to the race to peer into distant worlds is the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), a $1.8 billion complex being built at the Las Campanas observatory and which will have a solution 10 times higher than the Hubble space telescope.
Researchers in Indonesia have found a way to fight disease-bearing mosquitoes by breeding a species of the insect which carries a kind of bacteria that prevents viruses like dengue from growing inside them.
Wolbachia is a common bacteria that occurs naturally in 60% of insect species, including some mosquitoes, fruit flies, moths, dragonflies and butterflies. It is not, however, found in dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, according to non-profit World Mosquito Program (WMP), which initiated the research.
"In principle we are breeding the 'good' mosquitoes," said Purwanti, a WMP researcher. "The mosquitoes carrying dengue will mate with mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia, which will produce Wolbachia mosquitoes — the 'good' mosquitoes. So even if they bite people, it won't affect them".
Since 2017, a joint study conducted by WMP at Australia's Monash University and Indonesia's Gadjah Mada University has been releasing lab-bred Wolbachia mosquitoes across a few dengue fever 'red zones' in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.
The trial results, published by the New England Journal of Medicine in June, showed that deploying mosquitoes with Wolbachia reduced dengue cases by as much as 77% and hospitalisations by up to 86%.
"We're confident in this technology, particularly for areas where the Aedes aegypti mosquito is the most responsible [infection] factor," WMP lead researcher Adi Utarini, who has been working on Indonesia's Eliminate Dengue Program since 2011, told Reuters.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global dengue infections have risen rapidly in recent decades, with about half of the world's population now at risk. An estimated 100-400 million infections are reported every year.
"All three of my children have been infected with dengue and hospitalised... It's always on my mind, thinking about how to keep my village healthy and clean," said 62-year-old Sri Purwaningsih, whose family volunteered for the WMP programme.
A study published in August in the journal Cell has shed light on the evolutionary history of the rhinoceros. The rhinoceros family belongs to the Rhinocerotidae clade, which also includes the tapirs. A clade includes species from a single common ancestor.
The rhinoceros family diverged from the tapir family some 55-60 million years ago. The family then evolved into over a hundred species distributed across the world, but only nine of them survived to the Late Pleistocene age (14 to 12000 years ago).
The DNA of ancient and existing species of rhino has been analysed to investigate the evolutionary relationships between them
— Nature News & Views (@NatureNV) October 20, 2021
Subsequent extinctions resulted in five extant species – the black, white, Sumatran, Indian, and Javan rhinoceroses – and four extinct ones – the Siberian, Merck, narrow-nosed and woolly rhinoceroses.
There are primarily three theories governing the story of rhinoceros evolution. One theory, known as the ‘horn hypothesis’, emphasises horn morphology, and puts the Sumatran, the black, and the white rhinoceros species together for they have two horns.
The ‘geographical hypothesis’ clubs species according to their geographical origins; for e.g., it puts the Sumatran, Javan, and Indian species together. The third hypothesis puts Sumatran rhinoceros with the other extant species.
Genomic analyses
The study assembled and examined genomes from eight rhinoceros species. The findings lend support to the geographical hypothesis and identify three major clades for the rhinoceros family.
One clad comprises the black and white rhinoceros species, both from Africa. A second clade comprises Sumatran, Merck, and woolly rhinoceroses. The third clade comprises the Indian and Javan species. The paper asserts that “the principal divergence among the rhinoceros lineages is related to the geographical division between species on the African and Eurasian continents.”
However, the paper further establishes that there was gene flow between the ancestors of the African (black and white species) and the Indian-Javan species, which “may have been enabled by the Eurasian origin of both African species”.
Loss of genetic diversity
A major finding of the study, important from the point of view of conservation efforts, is that of the loss of genetic diversity in rhinoceros populations in recent years due to rapid population declines.
“We find that present-day rhinos have lower genetic diversity, and higher levels of inbreeding, compared to our historical and prehistoric rhinoceros genomes. This suggests that recent population declines caused by hunting and habitat destruction have had an impact on the genomes. This is not good, since low genetic diversity and high inbreeding may increase the risk of extinction in the present-day species,” explains one of the authors, Love Dalén, of the Centre for Paleogenetics and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, in a release.
Shedding further light on the evolutionary history of the rhinoceros, vis-à-vis the history of the Earth, the paper states that the three major clades of the rhinocerotinae family diverged 17-14 million years ago, an ‘epoch’ in geologic history when the climate was 3-4 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today.
The authors hypothesise that a land-‘bridge’ connecting Afro-Arabian and Eurasian land masses formed 20 million years ago, which ‘enabled dispersal events.’ But this was followed by the creation of geographical barriers to the movement of species, a phenomenon known as vicariance or allopatric speciation.
While the authors acknowledge that only a small fraction of the entire Rhinocerotinae group was studied here, they hope that genomic studies can aid the understanding of the rhino genetic history and augment efforts in population recovery.
– The author is a freelance science communicator. (mail[at]ritvikc[dot]com)
A US survey of astronomers puts the search for extraterrestrial life at the top of their to-do list for the next 10 years.
In a report issued Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, astronomers stressed the need to continue the hunt for potentially habitable planets circling other stars, building on the “extraordinary progress” already made. The ultimate goal, they noted, is to capture pictures of any Earth-like worlds that might be out there.
“Life on Earth may be the result of a common process, or it may require such an unusual set of circumstances that we are the only living beings within our part of the galaxy, or even in the universe. Either answer is profound,” the report stated. “The coming decades will set humanity down a path to determine whether we are alone.”
Also ranked high: exploring the origins and evolution of black holes, neutron stars, galaxies and the entire universe.
At the same time, the 614-page report stressed the need for greater diversity among astronomy’s ranks — still predominantly male — and suggested that NASA consider a science team’s diversity when doling out money for research or projects.
The survey is done every 10 years and draws input from scores of mostly US-based scientists.
The latest report recommends that NASA create a new office to oversee space observatories and overlapping missions in the coming decades. First up should be a telescope that’s significantly bigger than the Hubble Space Telescope that would be capable of spotting planets that are 10 billion times fainter than their stars, the report stated. Once the necessary technologies are ready, this telescope could be ready to launch in the 2040s for around $11 billion, followed by other mega observatories in the billions of dollars.
But the report emphasised the need for smaller, more modest missions as well. Launching one spacecraft per decade with a cost cap of $1.5 billion, it stated, balances science with timeliness.
The report noted the threat in years past of cost overruns and delays in major projects. Due to finally blast off next month, the NASA-led James Webb Space Telescope — designed to scan the early universe and explore the atmospheres of other worlds — is a prime example of that. Yet its launch promises to be “a momentous occasion that will shape the course of astronomy and astrophysics in the coming decades,” the report noted.
The report — sponsored by NASA, National Science Foundation, Energy Department and Air Force — noted that the survey was conducted during a health crisis. While the pandemic has underscored the importance of science, “the ultimate economic and social impacts of the pandemic remain unclear, adding to the uncertainty of the future landscape.”
The report urged NASA, the National Science Foundation and Energy Department to treat harassment and discrimination “as forms of scientific misconduct,” add more diversity to its upper levels, and consider diversity when funding a project.
The fossil remains of an early hominid child have been discovered in a cave in South Africa by a team of international and South African researchers.
The team announced the discovery of a partial skull and teeth of a Homo naledi child who died almost 250,000 years ago when it was approximately four to six years old. The remains were found in a remote part of the cave that suggests the body had been placed there on purpose, in what could be a kind of grave, said the announcement Thursday.
Homo naledi is a species of archaic human found in the Rising Star Cave, Cradle of Humankind, 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. Homo naledi dates to the Middle Pleistocene era 335,000–236,000 years ago. The initial discovery, first publicly announced in 2015, comprises 1,550 specimens, representing 737 different elements, and at least 15 different individuals.
“Homo naledi remains one of the most enigmatic ancient human relatives ever discovered,” said Berger. “It is clearly a primitive species, existing at a time when previously we thought only modern humans were in Africa. Its very presence at that time and in this place complexifies our understanding of who did what first concerning the invention of complex stone tool cultures and even ritual practices.”
The new discovery is described in two papers in the journal, PaleoAnthropology.
Written by Rachel Chaundler
As wildfires ravaged the Cerro de Monserrate in Colombia in 2015, Juan Carlos Sesma, a Spanish retail consultant working in Bogotá, started thinking about reforesting the planet.
With experience in improving systems for restaurant chains, supermarkets and for the department store El Corte Inglés, he imagined his know-how could be applied to the task of reversing deforestation.
“I knew that if reforestation could be made efficient and profitable, the world would have a lot more trees,” he said.
Taking time out from work, he bought a box of Empress tree seeds — a fast-growing species, capable of reaching 20 feet in one year — and flew back to his hometown in Spain determined to learn to plant trees and put his idea into practice.
Sesma, 38, is among a growing group of world citizens who are not only concerned about the future of the planet but are also trying to find innovative solutions to save it. Thanks in part to the influence of young environmental activist Greta Thunberg and initiatives such as Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, they are getting more attention.
But it was not always the case.
At the beginning, only one person believed in Sesma’s scheme: a Cistercian monk who tends to the orchards at the Monasterio de la Oliva, close to Sesma’s family home.
On a recent morning, Friar Enrique Carrasco, 83, pushed a wheelbarrow around the monastery’s vegetable plot. Dressed in blue overalls rather than a cassock, he explained how he had taught Sesma to nurture and plant his Colombian seeds on a field that lay fallow within the monastery’s grounds.
Together, Sesma and Carrasco watched the seeds grow into saplings and then into trees so tall the Spanish government’s State Meteorological Agency complained they were overshadowing a nearby meteorological station.
There was another problem. The seeds were too invasive a species to be compatible with Sesma’s dreams of biodiverse reforestation. But he was not deterred.
Now the 3-year-old startup he co-founded, CO2 Revolution, is using big data analysis and sophisticated drone technology to sprinkle — over inaccessible deforested terrain — millions of lab-enhanced seeds for trees that are native to Spain’s forests and suited to re-creating lost ecosystems.
It is a challenge. According to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, 95,000 hectares of forests — almost 0.35% of Spain’s total surface area — are devastated by more than 11,000 wildfires every year. Traditional reforesting methods are slow and costly because disaster zones are often inaccessible or inhospitable to machinery.
With governments around the world having set a goal of netting zero — that is, balancing emissions with removal of greenhouse gases — by 2050, forests will be at the center of discussions at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, over the next few days.
Marc Palahí, CEO of the European Forest Institute, hopes the talks will focus on policies to scale up global reforestation by attracting investment in a new bio-economy. He said he believed that sustainably produced wood products — such as biopharmaceuticals, bio-textiles and construction materials — could provide more than $1 trillion worth of business opportunities and jobs.
In a phone interview, he agreed that “drones are a big help in remote areas.” But key to meeting global reforestation targets, he said, is sustainable forest management.
“Planting trees is not as difficult as managing them over the next few decades,” Palahí said.
When Sesma and his co-founder Javier Sánchez set up CO2 Revolution in February 2018, their goal was simple enough: plant trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The company has three lines of business. It offers consulting services to businesses keen to measure and reduce their emissions. Clients can also mitigate their carbon footprint by hiring CO2 Revolution to plant on degraded land, using a mix of modern machinery and traditional methods and often involving local communities. In the third line of business, both more revolutionary and challenging, CO2 Revolution sows entire forests with cost-efficient drone technology. Then it sells carbon credits.
Things moved slowly at first. Sánchez, 33, who gave up his job as a sales manager at a German supermarket company to join forces with Sesma, said, “It was such an innovative idea that people saw it as surreal.”
During those first months, the entrepreneurs met in cafes and threw their savings into their company. They hired machinery to encapsulate seeds with nutrients to help them germinate. They fitted drones with tailor-made dispensers. And they sought permissions from landowners and Spanish authorities to sow.
But on their first attempt at aerial reforestation, only a tiny percentage of the seeds took root: Some landed on stones; others rolled down slopes; those that did nestle into the soil were eaten by mice and rabbits.
Soon after, CO2 Revolution landed its first big client, the multinational corporation, LG Electronics Iberia, which hired them to sow trees on burned land outside Madrid. An agreement was also signed to use LG’s screen technology for improved drone flight precision.
The client list began to grow, and investors, such as the Regional Government of Navarra, were attracted.
Sesma and Sánchez brought on board a hand-picked group of microbiologists, engineers and software programmers.
On a recent morning, in his sun-drenched lab in central Spain, a forestry engineer, Jaime Olaizola, gestured toward a stack of plastic dishes containing samples of pine and cedar seeds.
Olaizola, 47, who specializes in researching microorganisms in the soil, explained that the seeds, which he calls iseeds, are designed to anticipate problems they will encounter when dropped into the wild. Their clay coating is the key. It contains a potent mix: plant extracts to dissuade rodents; dried hydrogel to retain humidity; fungi to boost defenses; and Bohemian truffle to capture nutrients and stimulate root development.
Once the seeds grow into seedlings, photosynthesis kicks in and nature takes over.
Andrew Heald, director of NGPTA, a forest restoration company, is wary. He agrees that while drones may reforest the planet faster than humans, many seeds must be scattered for just one to germinate.
Olaizola acknowledged the concern but said, “If 10% take root, it’s a success.”
His expectation, based on experiments in his lab, is for 50% of this year’s air-sown iseeds to grow into trees. He will not know for sure until the November-to-April seeding season is over.
Similar initiatives have cropped up across the globe. A Canadian startup, Flash Forest, has developed a mechanical device that shoots seedpods from drones deep into the soil. In Australia, Dendra Systems is using aerial seeding techniques to restore koala forests.
Stéphane Hallaire’s Paris-based company, Reforest’Action, has used rudimentary tools — shovels and spades — to plant 17 million trees in 40 countries over the past decade. Hallaire said using drones was a viable method for capturing CO2 in countries with vast unpopulated areas, like Canada or China. But he said he favored involving local communities and empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs to develop a more sustainable form of reforestation.
“The trees need to improve people’s living conditions so that they are not cut down,” he said.
In keeping with the European Union pledge to plant an extra 3 billion trees within its member states before 2030, Sesma and Sánchez said they would be satisfied when there was one extra tree planted for every person on the planet, every year.
An ambitious goal but, Sánchez said, not unattainable: “With technologies like ours, it is possible.”
Written by Annie Roth
If there is one place you don’t want to stick your finger, it’s the mouth of a Pacific lingcod. These fearsome fish, which can grow up to 5 feet in length and weigh 80 pounds, have around 500 needlelike teeth sticking out of jaws that are strong enough to crush crustaceans.
Having so many sharp chompers allows these ambush predators to subdue everything from slippery squid to heavily armored crabs. How lingcod maintain the sharpness of their terrifying teeth has long been a mystery. But a study, published in October in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, claims that Pacific lingcod keep their teeth sharp and shiny by replacing about 3% of them every day. For a lingcod, that’s a whopping 20 teeth replaced daily. If you replaced your teeth at the same rate, you might lose and gain a new tooth every day — ouch!
Much of what scientists know about tooth replacement in fishes comes from sharks, which have multiple rows of teeth inside their jaws that are constantly being replenished, and other fish with unusual teeth. But shark teeth differ in significant ways from those found in the majority of fishes, which is why the lingcod findings could help scientists better understand the phenomenon of tooth replacement in fishes.
Around 20% of Pacific lingcod have fluorescent green or blue meat, and scientists aren’t sure why this happens. The fish are considered a smart seafood choice, and delicious when battered and fried. But otherwise, they are fairly average. Their teeth are similar to many other fishes’, which is one of the reasons “they serve as a really nice model for studying teeth in fish,” says Karly Cohen, a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington and a co-author of the new study.
In order to determine the frequency at which lingcod replace their teeth, Cohen and her colleagues kept 20 lingcod at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories and tracked how many teeth they lost and regrew over several days.
The fish were placed in a tank of seawater infused with a red dye that stained their teeth, then returned to their regular tank for 10 days. When the 10 days were up, the fish were placed in a tank containing a green dye, then euthanised and examined. The teeth that were present since the start of the experiment were both red and green, whereas the new teeth were only green.
After collecting and examining a total of 10,000 teeth, the scientists were able to determine how quickly lingcod lost and regrew their teeth and which teeth were replaced most often.
“It’s absolutely crazy how many teeth they replace,” said Emily Carr, an undergraduate researcher at the University of South Florida and the lead author of the study. Carr, who counted all 10,000 teeth by herself, noticed tooth replacement did not occur at the same frequency across the lingcods’ jaws.
Lingcod, like most fish, have two sets of jaws: oral jaws and pharyngeal jaws. Their oral jaws are used to capture and crush prey while their pharyngeal jaws, which are positioned in their throats, are used to chew their food and move it from their mouths to the stomach. Carr and colleagues found that teeth are replaced more frequently in the back of the mouth, where most of the chomping and crushing take place.
The way lingcod replace their teeth is likely crucial to their hunting strategy, says Kory Evans, a fish ecologist at Rice University in Houston. “The duller a lingcod’s teeth are, the harder it is going to be for it to hold on to its prey. So having the ability to shed teeth and replace them is pretty important.” In order to make it as a lingcod, Evans said, “you need sharp pointy teeth and all your teeth need to be on point.”
The researchers also found that, much like in humans, tooth replacement in lingcod is predetermined, which means teeth are replaced by teeth of the same type and teeth don’t grow bigger over time.
Cohen and her colleagues hope that their study will help scientists demystify the world of fish dentition and inspire others to study more fish species. Evans said he hopes some enterprising researchers will take a closer look in the mouth of the sheepshead fish.
“They have these weird, gross, humanlike teeth and I’ve got to know what’s going on there,” he said. “The people deserve to know.”
Written by Benjamin Mueller
Coronavirus vaccines were significantly less effective in protecting people with weakened immune systems than they were for other people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday, buttressing the agency’s call for immunocompromised adults to receive third or fourth doses of vaccines.
Two doses of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines were 77 per cent effective against COVID-related hospitalisation for immunocompromised people. That was a significant degree of protection, the agency said, but far lower than the shots’ benefit to people without immune deficiencies: In those people, the agency said, the vaccines were 90 per cent effective against COVID hospitalisations.
The Moderna vaccine also offered more protection to people with weakened immune systems than did the Pfizer shot, mirroring results seen across American adults. And certain people with immune deficiencies — especially organ or stem cell transplant recipients, who often take drugs to suppress their immune systems and prevent rejection of the transplant — showed weaker responses to COVID vaccines than other categories of immunocompromised people did.
The study did not examine recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
To help immunocompromised people mount a more aggressive immune response, the CDC suggests that they be given three doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, plus an additional booster shot six months after the third dose. In addition, the agency’s scientists wrote, they should take precautions like wearing masks, and be considered for treatments like monoclonal antibody therapy as early as possible after a COVID diagnosis.
The study released Tuesday used a circuitous experimental design. The researchers examined roughly 20,000 immunocompromised adults and 70,000 people without immune deficiencies hospitalised this year with COVID-like illness. Of the immunocompromised patients in the study, 43 per cent were fully vaccinated. Of the other participants, 53% were vaccinated.
The researchers then determined how many of those hospitalised patients were indeed infected with the coronavirus, and compared the odds of a positive test result between fully vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.
The immunocompromised patients included those with cancer, inflammatory disorders, organ or stem cell transplants and other immune deficiencies.
The study’s authors cautioned that there could have been cases in which patients were misclassified as immunocompromised, and that there could have been biases in which patients sought out coronavirus tests.
Written by Veronique Greenwood
Strawberries are not always red. Fragaria nubicola, native to the Himalayas, can produce a vivid red fruit or a ghostly white one; another species, F. vesca, can produce a white fruit with brilliant scarlet seeds, as well as a conventional red type. What gives some strawberries such a ghostly pallor?
One answer has been uncovered by scientists curious about the humble strawberry’s genetic material. There are numerous species of the fruit, and some sport five times as many chromosomes as others. Strawberry scientists think this means that as the plants evolved, they acquired extra genes that could provide a playground for unusual new traits.
While the core genes kept the day-to-day affairs of the plant running, the extras could be tweaked to yield a new shade of pink, a new hardiness to drought or particularly prickly leaves — whatever the strawberry’s unique environment demanded.
In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologists reported that they have sequenced the genomes of a handful of strawberry species and identified a set of genes that are common across all of them, representing the core genome of the strawberry. Along the way, the researchers identified a set of mutations that turned strawberries white while keeping the taste and aroma the same.
The findings open the door to understanding how strawberries manage their bulky genetic inheritance, as well as suggesting the possibility of more targeted breeding.
Strawberries grow wild in places as varied as Alaska and Southern California beaches, said Patrick Edger, a professor of horticulture at Michigan State University and an author of the new paper. But they likely originated in Asia. For this study, the scientists collected samples from 128 wild strawberry plants in China and sequenced their genes, looking for commonalities across species.
As they pored over the data, they made a surprising discovery. “It was very clear there was another species” that no one had detected before, Edger said.
Alongside a number of strawberries already known to science, a new species was found among the samples collected in the wild. The genetic analysis showed it was different from the others, and the plant looked different, too, with thicker leaves that had a light green underside, among other changes. (The new species was named Fragaria emeiensis.)
The scientists found that as many as 45% of a strawberry’s genes were shared among the 10 species examined in the paper. That implies that the remainder — more than half of a strawberry’s genetic material — is used to adapt a species to its particular location and situation. Breeders could bring these genes to existing commercial species in the future, helping strawberry farmers address problems like drought.
“It’s something that myself and collaborators in the larger strawberry community are going to start diving into this data set to understand,” Edger said.
The research also pieced together the genetic puzzle of what makes some strawberry species turn white. The team found that lighter fruits were linked to mutations in a gene called MYB10, which controls the production of pigments called anthocyanins. Lower levels of anthocyanins would be expected to result in a paler color.
In this study, the strawberry species had two sets of chromosomes apiece. Next, Edger and his colleagues plan to focus on species with eight sets of chromosomes, to explore how that extra genetic material is used and continue to clarify the core genome’s composition.
As scientists understand more about what makes the fruits the way they are, Edger expects strawberry breeding to become more precise, and not just on matters of practical importance to farmers.
“A lot of breeding efforts have been focused on yield,” he remarked. But more and more, breeding programs are delving into improving strawberries’ flavor.
Apples are infamous for having reached a low flavor appeal decades ago, when beautiful, hard-traveling but tasteless Red Delicious apples were one of the few options available in grocery stories. These days, thanks to the efforts of plant breeders, it’s not hard to find apples bursting with flavor, and in a wide variety of colors and shapes, too.
“I imagine,” Edger said, “strawberry is going to be the same way in 10 to 20 years.”
Written by Franz Lidz
For the past few centuries, the Yup’ik peoples of Alaska have told gruesome tales of a massacre that occurred during the Bow and Arrow War Days, a series of long and often brutal battles across the Bering Sea coast and the Yukon.
According to one account, the carnage started when one village sent a war party to raid another. But the residents had been tipped off and set an ambush, wiping out the marauders. The victors then attacked the undefended town, burning it and slaughtering its inhabitants. No one was spared.
For the past 12 years, Rick Knecht has led an excavation at a site called Nunalleq, about 400 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska.
“When we began, the hope was to learn something about Yup’ik prehistory by digging in an average village,” said Knecht, an archaeologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. “Little did we know that we were digging in something approaching the Yup’ik equivalent of Troy.”
Their most astonishing discovery was the charred remnants of a large communal sod house. The ground was black and clayey and riddled with hundreds of slate arrow points, as if from a prehistoric drive-by shooting.
In all, the researchers and native Yup’ik people who live in the area unearthed more than 100,000 well-preserved artifacts, as well as the singed carrion of two dogs and the scattered bones of at least 28 people, almost all women, children and elders. Several of them had evidently been dragged out of the house, bound with grass rope and killed — some beheaded.
“It is a complex murder scene,” Knecht said. “It is also a rare and detailed archaeological example of Indigenous warfare.”
Until recently, the site had been deep-frozen in the subsoil known as permafrost. As global temperatures gather pace, permafrost and glaciers are thawing and eroding rapidly across vast areas of Earth, releasing many of the objects that they had absorbed and revealing aspects of life in a once-inaccessible past.
“The circumpolar world is, or was, full of miraculously preserved sites like Nunalleq,” Knecht said. “They offer a window into the unexpectedly rich lives of prehistoric hunters and foragers like no other.”
Glacial archaeology
Glacial archaeology is a relatively new discipline. The ice was literally broken during the summer of 1991 when German hikers in the Ötztal Alps spotted a tea-colored corpse half-embedded on the Italian side of the border with Austria. Initially mistaken for a modern-day mountaineer killed in an accident, Ötzi the Iceman, as he came to be called, was shown through carbon-dating to have died about 5,300 years ago.
In 2006, a long, hot autumn in Norway resulted in an explosion of discoveries in the snowbound Jotunheimen mountain range, home to the Jötnar, the rock and frost giants of Norse mythology. Of all the dislodged detritus, the most intriguing was a 3,400-year-old proto-Oxford shoe most likely fashioned out of reindeer hide.
The discovery of the Bronze Age shoe signified the beginning of glacial surveying in the peaks of Innlandet County, where the state-funded Glacier Archaeology Program was started in 2011. Outside of the Yukon, it is the only permanent rescue project for discoveries in ice.
Glacial archaeology differs from its lowland cousin in critical ways. Researchers with the program usually conduct fieldwork only within a short time frame, from mid-August to mid-September — between the thaw of old snow and the arrival of new.
“If we start too early, much of the snow from the previous winter will still cover the old ice and lessen the chance of making discoveries,” said Lars Holger Pilo, co-director of the program. “Starting too late is also hazardous. We might get early winter snow, and the field season could be over before we begin.” Glacial discoveries tend to be limited to what archaeologists can glean on the previously ice-locked ground.
When the program started, the finds were mainly Iron Age and medieval, from 500 to 1,500 years ago. But as the melting widens, ever older periods of history are being exposed. “We have now melted back to the Stone Age in some places, with pieces as old as six millenniums,” Pilo said. “We are speeding back in time.”
Spectacular glacial finds invariably involve luck, as Craig Lee, an archaeologist at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, can attest. Fourteen years ago, in the mountain ice outside Yellowstone National Park, he spotted the foreshaft of a throwing spear called an atlatl dart, carved from a birch sapling 10,300 years ago. The primitive hunting weapon is the earliest organic artifact ever to be retrieved from an ice patch.
“In the Yukon, ice patch discoveries have given us new insights into the pre-European tradition of copper-working by Indigenous peoples,” said William Taylor, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History in Boulder. “In the Rockies, researchers have recovered everything from frozen trees that document important changes in climate and vegetation to the hunting implements of some of the first peoples of the continent.”
Ice patches turn out to be where most discoveries are made. The basic difference between a glacier and an ice patch is that a glacier moves. An ice patch does not move much, which makes it a more reliable preservationist.
“The constant movement inside glaciers damages both bodies and artifacts, and eventually dumps the sad debris at the mouth of the ice floe,” Pilo, of the Glacier Archaeology Program in Norway, said. “Due to the movement and the continuous renewal of the ice, glaciers rarely preserve objects more than 500 years.”
Lee, of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, likens the destruction wrought by glacial degeneration to a library on fire. “Now is not the time to stand around pointing fingers at one another trying to lay blame for the blaze,” he said. “Now is the time to rescue what books can be saved for the edification of the future.”
It’s a grim inside joke among glacial archaeologists that their field of study has been one of the few beneficiaries of climate change. But while retreating ice and snow makes some prehistoric treasures briefly accessible, exposure to the elements threatens to swiftly destroy them.
Once soft organic materials — leather, textiles, arrow fletchings — surface, researchers have a year at most to rescue them for conservation before the items degrade and are lost forever. “After they are gone,” Taylor said, “our opportunity to use them to understand the past and prepare for the future is gone with them.”
E. James Dixon, former director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, agreed. “The sheer scale of the loss relative to the number of archaeologists researching these sites is overwhelming,” he said. “It’s like an archaeological mass extinction where certain types of sites are all disappearing at approximately the same time.”
NASA announced on Monday a rare, health-related delay in its SpaceX rocket launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station, the second postponement of the mission in a week, citing an unspecified medical issue with one of the crew.
NASA said the issue was “not a medical emergency and not related to COVID-19,” but the space agency declined to elaborate on the nature of the problem or say which astronaut was involved.
The launch, originally set for Sunday but then postponed until this Wednesday because of unsuitable weather conditions, has now been rescheduled for Saturday night, NASA said. The last time NASA delayed a scheduled launch over a medical issue involving the crew was for a Space Shuttle Atlantis flight in 1990, when mission commander John Creighton fell ill. The countdown was halted for three days until he was cleared to fly, according to NASA. That delay was followed by two additional weather-related postponements.
The SpaceX-built vehicle set to fly this weekend, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, is now set for liftoff at 11:36 p.m. on Saturday (0336 GMT Sunday) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. If all goes smoothly, the three U.S. astronauts and their European Space Agency (ESA) crewmate will arrive 22 hours later and dock with the space station 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth to begin a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory.
For the time being, the four crew members will remain under routine quarantine at the Cape as they continue launch preparations, NASA said. Joining the mission’s three NASA astronauts – flight commander Raja Chari, 44, mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34 – is German astronaut Matthias Maurer, 51, an ESA mission specialist.
Chari, a U.S. Air Force combat jet and test pilot, Barron, a U.S. Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer, and Maurer, a materials science engineer, are all making their debut spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endurance. Marshburn, a physician and former NASA flight surgeon, is the most experienced astronaut of the crew, having logged two previous spaceflights and four spacewalks.
Saturday’s liftoff, if successful, would count as the fifth human spaceflight SpaceX has achieved to date, following its inaugural launch in September of a space tourism service that sent the first ever all-civilian crew into orbit.
The latest mission would mark the fourth crew NASA has flown to the space station with SpaceX in 17 months, building on a public-private partnership with the rocket company formed in 2002 by Musk, founder of electric maker Tesla Inc.
In Chile’s dry Atacama desert, stargazers are scanning the clear night skies to detect the existence of life on other planets and study so-called ‘dark energy,’ a mysterious cosmic force thought to be driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Central to the race to peer into distant worlds is the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), a $1.8 billion complex being built at the Las Campanas observatory and which will have a resolution 10 times higher than the Hubble space telescope. The telescope, expected to begin operation by the end of the decade, will compete with the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope – located further north in the same desert – as well as the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) being built in Hawaii.
“This new generation of giant telescopes is aimed precisely at detecting life on other planets and to determine the origin of dark energy,” said Leopoldo Infante, director of the Las Campanas observatory. “It’s a race by these three groups for who makes it first and who makes the first discovery.”
Infante said the new giant telescope would be able to detect organic molecules in the atmosphere of distant planets. “That is the expectation,” he said. “And whoever detects life on another planet will win the Nobel Prize, I assure you.”
The other prize is studying dark energy – separate from the similarly enigmatic dark matter – which is considered to be a property of space and is driving the universe’s accelerated expansion. It makes up a huge amount of the universe, but remains mostly an unsolved mystery.
“There is an energy that is causing the universe to expand, but also to accelerate that expansion,” said Infante, adding scientists knew that this energy must exist, though they did not understand its origin. “So this telescope is designed to be able to study precisely what is called the dark energy of the universe, to be able to understand physically what that energy is and where that energy comes from.”
Written by Joey Roulette. Karen Weise contributed reporting
Amazon is getting ready to go to space.
The first two prototype satellites from Project Kuiper, the internet-from-space venture from the e-commerce giant, are scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2022, Amazon announced Monday. That will formally kick off its competition with SpaceX, the space company owned by Elon Musk, and OneWeb, among other rivals, for beaming high-speed internet connections to customers from low Earth orbit. It will also be a crucial test of the satellites’ design before the company launches thousands more devices into orbit.
Amazon first announced its goal of deploying a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit in 2019. This was the second pursuit in space by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and former CEO who also owns Blue Origin, the rocket company. A handful of other firms are also racing to offer high-speed internet to governments, other companies and consumers whose access is hampered by the digital divide in remote locations.
Like SpaceX, Amazon plans to spend $10 billion on the project, which sits within its devices unit. But the company has been slower to start than SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rockets have lofted nearly 2,000 internet-beaming satellites into orbit for its own venture, Starlink. Thousands of customers are testing the SpaceX service for $99 a month with $499 antenna kits.
Amazon unveiled a customer antenna concept in 2020 and has been testing prototype satellites on the ground for years.
“You can test all the stuff you want in your labs, which we do — we have spent, unfortunately, a lot of money to build infrastructure to test these things,” said Rajeev Badyal, a vice president at Amazon overseeing the Kuiper project. “But the ultimate test is in space.”
Competition among the companies is fierce, and their plans have drawn interest from investors and analysts who foresee tens of billions of dollars in revenue once the constellations become fully operational. But those same plans have also drawn criticism from space safety advocates who fear collisions of satellites adding to pollution in orbit; astronomers, whose ground-based telescope observations of the night sky could be disrupted by the satellites; and dark skies advocates who fear light pollution from sunlight reflecting from the constellations.
The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates satellite communications to the ground, approved Amazon’s network in 2020 and gave the company a deadline to launch half of its 3,236 satellites by mid-2026. Amazon bought nine launches from the rocket company United Launch Alliance in a deal likely worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But Amazon has been talking to other launch companies, Badyal said, including its competitor, SpaceX, whose rapid Starlink deployment is partially attributable to its ability to use its own reusable rocket boosters for launches.
The first two prototype satellites, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, will launch separately on rockets from ABL Space Systems, one of a handful of startups building smaller launch vehicles to sate demand from satellite companies. The market for smaller rockets, designed to deliver payloads to space quickly and affordably, is packed with competitors, making ABL’s Amazon contract — good for up to five launches on ABL’s RS1 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida — a boost for the company.
“The selection process was a long, arduous, tough one, that was many days of popping the hood and seeing what’s underneath,” said Harry O’Hanley, ABL’s CEO. “I’d say that they went as deep, or deeper, as we’ve ever seen a company go.”
The pair of Amazon prototype satellites will test internet connections between space and the company’s flat, square antennas for consumers on the ground for the first time in Amazon’s Kuiper program. Regions for the test include parts of South America, the Asia-Pacific region and central Texas. Past experiments involved flying drones with satellite hardware over antennas on the ground, and connecting ground antennas to other companies’ satellites already in space, drawing internet speeds fast enough to stream high-definition video.
Like other parts of Amazon’s device business, employees working on Kuiper face pressure to keep costs down as they develop a final version of the company’s consumer antenna. The company is considering a range of pricing options, from charging customers for the antenna and all the wires that come with it, to an “extreme” case in which it gives the antenna to customers for free, Badyal said.
“We’re hyperfocused on getting the cost down so the total cost of ownership for customers is low,” he said, adding that engineers have updated the antenna design since Amazon revealed it last year. “When you build satellites, you don’t necessarily count pennies, but when you build a customer terminal, we are counting pennies and sub pennies.”
The penny-counting comes from the playbook of its devices unit, where Amazon has experience producing consumer electronics like Alexa smart speakers and Fire sticks for streaming TV.
At a conference last month, Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, cited the Kuiper project as an example of the company’s efforts to innovate even as it has grown so large. He said Amazon needed some “blind faith” that it could figure out the complex new technology. But he added: “You’ve got to make sure in the way that you’re thinking about operating it, and what the customer experience is going to be, that customers will adopt it and find it easy enough and attractive to use.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Researchers in Indonesia have found a way to fight disease-bearing mosquitoes by breeding a species of the insect which carries a kind of bacteria that prevents viruses like dengue from growing inside them.
Wolbachia is a common bacteria that occurs naturally in 60% of insect species, including some mosquitoes, fruit flies, moths, dragonflies and butterflies. It is not, however, found in dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, according to non-profit World Mosquito Program (WMP), which initiated the research.
“In principle we are breeding the ‘good’ mosquitoes,” said Purwanti, a WMP community cadre. “The mosquitoes carrying dengue will mate with mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia, which will produce Wolbachia mosquitoes – the ‘good’ mosquitoes. So even if they bite people, it won’t affect them”.
Since 2017, a joint study conducted by WMP at Australia’s Monash University and Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University has been releasing lab-bred Wolbachia mosquitoes across a few dengue fever ‘red zones’ in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.
The trial results, published by the New England Journal of Medicine in June, showed that deploying mosquitoes with Wolbachia reduced dengue cases by as much as 77% and hospitalisations by up to 86%.
“We’re confident in this technology, particularly for areas where the Aedes aegypti mosquito is the most responsible (infection) factor,” WMP lead researcher Adi Utarini, who has been working on Indonesia’s Eliminate Dengue Program since 2011, told Reuters.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global dengue infections have risen rapidly in recent decades, with about half of the world’s population now at risk. An estimated 100-400 million infections are reported every year.
“All three of my children have been infected with dengue and hospitalised … It’s always on my mind, thinking about how to keep my village healthy and clean,” said 62-year-old Sri Purwaningsih, whose family volunteered for the WMP programme.