General Awareness : Science & Technology - January, 2015

(General Awareness For Bank's Exams) Science & Technology

January - 2015

ACRI develops new cluster beans variety

A new variety of cluster beans, which is rich in fibre and vegetable protein, has been developed by the Agricultural College and Research Institute (ACRI).
The new variety, MDU-1, will be formally released in Coimbatore on January 6 after clearance from the State Variety Release Committee. V. Swaminathan, Head, Department of Horticulture, said the new variety was a result of five years of intensive research and field trials.
“Fibre-rich food is recommended for people these days to fight cancer. Our variety takes care of that aspect and, moreover, it has vegetable protein which will not block the coronary blood vessels. Animal protein is risky for blood vessels since the chances of development of blocks are more,” he told.
Dr Swaminathan said that the ACRI had made arrangements with two seed companies to undertake mass production of cluster bean seeds for distribution to farmers. Locally, the production had already started to popularise MDU-1 among the horticultural community.
“This will be the seventh variety release by our department. Earlier, we had developed new varieties of brinjal, snakegourd, bittergourd and onion,” he added.
ACRI Dean C. Chinnusamy said that a decision had been taken to tap solar energy in a big way to meet the power requirements of the campus. A proposal for Rs 1.56 crore to set up a solar plant and solar panels had been submitted to the State government for approval.
‘Big Bang’ to be probed using Antarctica telescopes
A set of six telescopes collectively known as Spider — Sub-orbital Polarimeter for Inflation, Dust and the Epoch of Re-ionization — will circle Antarctica in a bid to observe a haze of faint, radio microwaves that envelops space.
Such waves are thought to be the fading remnants of the primordial fireball in which it all started 13.8 billion years ago and the exercise would help scientists understand the phenomenon of the Big Bang, the most plausible theory explaining the origin of universe.
The telescopes are designed to detect faint curlicues (a decorative curl or design of an object) in microwaves.
Spider will observe the microwaves in two wavelengths that would allow them to distinguish dust from primordial space-time ripples, said William Jones from the Princeton University in the U.S. Mr. Jones is also the leader of the Spider experiment.
The theory propounds that such curls would have been caused by violent disruptions of the space-time continuum when the universe began expanding.
Spider is the sister experiment to a California Institute of Technology-based project known as Bicep, whose investigators made headlines last spring when they announced that they had recorded curlicues in a patch of the sky from a telescope at the South Pole.

NASA report, Tropical forests absorb far more CO2 than thought

Tropical forests may be absorbing far more carbon dioxide in response to its rising atmospheric levels than many scientists thought, a new NASA-led study says.
Tropical forests absorb 1.4 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide out of a total global absorption of 2.5 billion - more than what is absorbed by forests in Canada, Siberia and other northern regions, called boreal forests.
“This is good news because uptake in boreal forests is already slowing, while tropical forests may continue to take up carbon for many years,” said David Schimel of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Forests and other land vegetation currently remove up to 30 percent of human carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere during photosynthesis.
In case the rate of absorption slows down, the rate of global warming would speed up. The study is the first to devise a way to make comparisons of carbon dioxide estimates from many sources at different scales.
Researchers made use of atmospheric models, satellite images and data from experimental forest plots.
“Until our analysis, no one had successfully completed a global reconciliation of information about carbon dioxide effects from the atmospheric, forestry and modelling communities,” said Joshua Fisher of JPL and co-author.
As human-caused emissions add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, forests across the globe are using it to grow faster, reducing the amount that stays airborne. This effect is called carbon fertilisation.
“All else being equal, the effect is stronger at higher temperatures, meaning it will be higher in the tropics than in the boreal forests,” Schimel pointed out.

Rare plant species found in Kerala

Scientists at the Centre for Medicinal Plants Research, Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal, have reported the discovery of a rare plant species from the Dhoni hills in Palakkad district.
It was during an expedition to study the floristic diversity of the high mountains in the southern regions of the Western Ghats that the researchers led by scientist K.M. Prabhu Kumar and director Indira Balachandran came across the new species in the grasslands of the Palamala hills in the Dhoni mountain range.
The plant belonging to the genus Chlorophytum of the Asparagaceae family was later reported from the Elival hills of Muthikulam in Palakkad by a team comprising scientists from the Kerala Forest Research Institute, Peechi.
Named Chlorophytum palghatense, after the place of discovery, the plant is a perennial herb endemic to the grassland ecosystem of the Dhoni and Muthikulam forests at a height above 6,000 feet. It flowers and fruits from September to November. The finding has been published in ‘Phytotaxa’, an international journal on botanical taxonomy.
Distributed throughout Africa and India, the Chlorophytum genus is represented by 17 species in India, of which 15 occur in the Western Ghats.
Detailed taxonomic studies carried out at Shivaji University, Kolhapur, revealed that the new species was distinct from C.sharmae endemic to Munnar. Mr. Kumar said C.Palghatense was named thus to highlight the rich biodiversity of Palakkad district, especially as a reservoir of rare plants endemic to the Western Ghats.

Scientists says, Bt cotton not to blame for farm distress

Farmer suicides in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha area and other parts of the country have nothing to do with Bt cotton, scientists said at the Indian Science Congress.
“There is a lot of negative public perception about Bt crops… Even a paper in Nature says linking these two [Bt. Cotton and farmer suicides] is our imagination,” said Dr. Anupam Verma, INSA [Indian National Science Academy] Senior Scientist at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute, speaking on ‘GM crops — use of modern technology in agriculture.’
Some scientists said there were interesting research prospects in the field of biotechnology. “We could be extracting oil from leaves, instead of seeds. Imagine what it would mean for us, when our government is spending over Rs. 60,000 crore on oil import,” Dr. Deepak Pental, former Vice-Chancellor of the Delhi University, said. “We can produce oil indigenously if we use Bt.
But unfortunately, it is caught up in a debate taken up by the Left and now supported by the neo-right.” Dr. Pental is an award-winning genetic scientist who has been credited with major breakthroughs in hybrid seed science.
In the recent past, there had been a sharp increase in the acreage of GM crops in the country, and over 90 per cent of the cotton cultivated was GM crop, scientists said. They refuted arguments about monopolisation and said there were over 1000 Bt Cotton hybrids available in the country.
Dr. Verma referred to Project Sunshine in Gujarat and explained how Bt Cotton had powered the growth in agriculture in Gujarat. He said GM Maize had taken nutrition to Adivasi farmers.

ISRO is gearing up to launch IRNSS 1D

After completing an eventful year, ISRO is gearing up for some satellite launches this year, with the IRNSS 1D being the first, which would put in place India’s own navigation system on par with the Global Positioning System of the U.S.
“The launch campaign for IRNSS 1D has come, which starts on January 16. Within two months, all components from other ISRO labs have to reach Sriharikota. The launch is likely after March 15,” a senior ISRO official told PTI.
IRNSS 1D is the fourth in the series of seven satellites, the national space agency is planning to launch to put in place the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).
While four satellites would be sufficient to start operations of the system, the remaining three satellites would make it more accurate and efficient. The other launches also relate to the IRNSS series with the IRNSS1E and IRNSS1-F satellites to be launched before the year end, he said.
The first three satellites in the IRNSS series were launched from Sriharikota on July 1, 2013, April 4 and October 16 last year respectively.
The fully deployed IRNSS would consist of three and four satellites in GEO stationary and in inclined geosynchronous orbits respectively, about 36,000 km above the Earth.
The system would provide two types of services — Standard Positioning Service, which is provided to all the users and Restricted Service, which is an encrypted service provided only to the authorised users.
The IRNSS system was targeted to be completed by this year at a total cost of Rs. 1420 crore. IRNSS is designed to provide accurate position information service to users in the country as well as the region extending up to 1,500 km from its boundary, which is its primary service area.
Eight new planets found in Goldilocks zone
Astronomers with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have discovered eight new planets within the so-called Goldilocks — or habitable — zone of their stars.
To be considered habitable, exoplanets must orbit within a distance of their stars in which liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface, receiving about as much sunlight as Earth.
“Most of these planets have a good chance of being rocky, like Earth,” lead author Guillermo Torres of the CfA said in a release. The discoveries of Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b are the latest in several advancements scientists have made to find signs of possible life in the universe.
At a panel held last summer at NASA headquarters in Washington, astronomers said they were “very close in terms of technology and science to actually finding the other Earth.”
That’s due in part to the Kepler Space Telescope. The planet-hunting Kepler probe, launched in 2009, finds planets by looking for dips in the brightness of a star as a planet transits, or crosses, in front of that star.
Christine Pulliam of CfA said the team of scientists monitored data from more than 160,000 stars, which led them to the eight new planets. The couple most likes Earth, Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, both orbit red dwarf stars, which are cooler and smaller than the Earth’s sun.
Kepler—438b’s diameter is 12 per cent bigger than Earth and has a 70 per cent chance of being rocky, which means the surface of the planet appears to be like Earth’s.
Kepler—442b is about one-third larger than Earth with a 60 per cent chance of being rocky. Scientists give it a 97 per cent chance of being in the habitable zone, but caution that the estimations aren’t certain.

Government approves ‘Neutrino’ Project

Union cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved setting up of India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) in Bodi West Hills, Tamil Nadu.
The INO Project Director, and Senior Professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Naba Mondal, in an email, said, the the cabinet has approved the project "at an estimated cost of Rs. 1500 crore.”
The project will be jointly supported by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology. The infrastructural support will be given by the Government of Tamil Nadu as the project is located in the State.
Prof. Mondal said, “This underground laboratory will be set up near Pottipuram village in the Bodi West Hills of Theni district, Tamil Nadu to study the properties of the neutrino.”
An Inter-Institutional Centre for High Energy Physics (IICHEP) will also be established in Madurai, which is about 110 km from the proposed site of the neutrino observatory.
Along with the setting up of the underground laboratory and the IICHEP, the Government of India has also approved the construction of a 50,000 tonne magnetised iron calorimeter detector (ICAL) to study the properties of the neutrino, in particular the mass hierarchy among different types of neutrino.
A press release from the organisation also said that the INO laboratory will host other experiments such as the neutrino-less double beta decay and the search for dark matter.

SpaceX calls off its flights to space station

SpaceX has called off its flight to the International Space Station. The unmanned Falcon rocket was supposed to blast off before sunrise.
But the countdown was halted with just one minute remaining. The soonest SpaceX can try again is Friday. No reason was immediately given for the launch abort.
The Dragon capsule aboard the rocket contains more than 5,000 pounds (2,200 kilograms) of supplies and experiments ordered by NASA. That’s the primary objective for SpaceX.
But the California—based company plans to attempt an even more extraordinary feat- flying the booster rocket to a platform in the Atlantic. No one has ever pulled off such a touchdown.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope marks 1,000th exoplanet discovery

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope to date has offered scientists an assortment of more than 4,000 candidate planets for further study — the 1,000th of which was recently verified. Thisn was achieved by continuously monitoring more than 150,000 stars beyond our solar system.
The range of distances from the host star where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet are known as the habitable zones. Three of the newly-validated planets are located in their distant suns’ habitable zone. Of the three, two are likely made of rock, like Earth.
Two of the newly validated planets are named Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b. Kepler-438b, 475 light-years away, is 12 per cent bigger than Earth and orbits its star once every 35.2 days. Kepler-442b, 1,100 light-years away, is 33 per cent bigger than Earth and orbits its star once every 112 days.
They both are less than 1.5 times the diameter of Earth orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our Sun, making the habitable zone closer to their parent star, in the direction of the constellation Lyra.
“Each result from the planet-hunting Kepler mission’s treasure trove of data takes us another step closer to answering the question of whether we are alone in the universe,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
The Kepler team has raised the candidate count to 4,175 with the detection of 554 more planet candidates from Kepler observations conducted May 2009 to April 2013. Eight of these new candidates are between one to two times the size of Earth, and orbit in their sun’s habitable zone.
Of these eight, six orbit stars that are similar to our Sun in size and temperature. All candidates require follow-up observations and analysis to verify they are actual planets. “Kepler collected data for four years — long enough that we can now tease out the Earth-size candidates in one Earth-year orbits,” said Fergal Mullally, Kepler scientist who led the analysis of a new candidate catalogue.
Scientists are also working on the next catalogue release of Kepler’s four-year data set. The analysis will include the final month of data collected by the mission and will be conducted using software that is more sensitive to the tiny telltale signatures of small Earth-size planets than software used in the past.
Hubble telescope captures images of Eagle Nebula's 'Pillars of Creation'
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation and has captured high-definition images.
The telescope had earlier captured the three impressive towers of gas and dust in 1995, which revealed never-before-seen details in the giant columns and now the telescope is kickstarting its 25th year in orbit with an even clearer, and more stunning, image of these beautiful structures.
The captured image is part of the Eagle Nebula, otherwise known as Messier 16 and although such features are not uncommon in star-forming regions, the Messier 16 structures are by far the most photogenic and evocative ever captured.
The recent images show the famous pillars, capturing the multi-coloured glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-coloured elephants' trunks with the newer Wide Field Camera 3, installed in 2009.
In addition to this new visible-light image, Hubble has also produced a bonus image, which is taken in infrared light, penetrating much of the obscuring dust and gas and unveils a more unfamiliar view of the pillars, transforming them into wispy silhouettes set against a background peppered with stars.
Although the original image was dubbed the "Pillars of Creation", this new image hints that they are also pillars of destruction. The dust and gas in these pillars is seared by intense radiation from the young stars forming within them, and eroded by strong winds from massive nearby stars.
The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars in the visible-light view is material that is being heated by bright young stars and evaporating away.
The infrared image shows that the reason the pillars exist is because the very ends of them are dense, and they shadow the gas below them, creating the long, pillar-like structures and the gas in between the pillars has long since been blown away by the winds from a nearby star cluster.

U.S. Scientists find promising new antibiotic

Using a novel technique to culture soil bacteria that previously could not be grown in the laboratory, a team of U.S. scientists has isolated a promising new antibiotic to which resistance may not develop easily.
The research, published this week in Nature, comes at a time when there is growing alarm both at the spread of antibiotic-resistant microbes and the failure to find new classes of antibiotics in recent decades.
During the ‘golden age of antibiotics’ from about 1940 to around 1960, scientists were able to find a number of new drugs by carefully screening soil bacteria, looking for anti-microbial activity.
However, they were able to examine only bacteria that could be grown in the laboratory and more than 99 per cent of the bacterial species in the soil resisted such efforts, with the result that such leads eventually petered out.
Dr. Kim Lewis, director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at the Northeastern University in the U.S., and colleagues used an ‘isolation chip’ (iChip) developed at the university to culture previously uncultivable soil bacteria.
This chip has a larger number of tiny chambers to hold individual bacterial cells. Covered with semi-permeable membranes, the chip could be then placed in the soil, allowing vital nutrients and growth factors to diffuse into its chambers.
With the iChip, the scientists could grow 10,000 bacterial strains. The extract from one such bacterium, provisionally named Eleftheria terrae, yielded an entirely new sort of antibiotic, teixobactin.
Laboratory tests showed that this molecule was effective against many human pathogens, including drug-resistant ones, that come in the category of gram-positive bacteria.
The drug was “exquisitely active” against a number of hard-to-deal-with bugs, said Dr. Lewis during a press briefing. It might also offer a single-drug therapy for tuberculosis, which currently required prolonged treatment with a multi-drug combination.
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4th navigation satellite launch in March 2015
• The fourth navigation satellite of the country is getting ready for launch in March, and it will be another step forward for India in evolving its own navigation satellite system and not depend on the Geographical Positioning System (GPS) service of the U.S.
Cryogenic propulsion systems on board PSLV-C27 rocket that will launch the satellite are being developed by scientists of the ISRO Propulsion Complex at Mahendragiri in Tirunelveli district.
S. Ingersol, group director of the complex, told, “Totally, seven satellites are required to be launched to complete the configuration under the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) and already three had been launched.
Dr. Ingersol said launch of the remaining four satellites would be completed in one year and after that India’s dependency on the U.S. for GPS service would be significantly reduced. “This will trigger the much-needed development in geographic information systems.”
The Mahendragiri complex was developing the second and fourth liquid stages needed for the launch vehicle. “Advance research by ISRO scientists has made India go for launching heavier satellites of three to four tonnes from our own soil,” he said.
Deficient southwest monsoon hits Rabi sowing
A delayed and deficient southwest monsoon has shrunk rabi sowing from last year’s level. If sowing was taken up on 597.15 lakh hectares of land last year, the figure this time was 566.18 lakh hectares.
What is worrisome is the gap of 30.97 lakh hectares between the areas sown in the previous week and its corresponding week last year, higher than the deficit of 26.82 lakh hectares when making such a comparison for the week earlier.
The southwest monsoon was 12 per cent lower than the long period average in the country and 21 per cent in northwest India, hitting kharif crop production by 2-3 per cent. The rain deficit is affecting rabi sowing now.
A meeting in the Agriculture Ministry to review the crop and weather situation noted that wheat has been sown in 4.92 lakh hectares less this year because of lower moisture in the soil. Although the area under wheat will be made up in the next few weeks, the harvest will depend on the weather conditions.
Of particular concern is the lower acreage of pulses. The area under gram is lower this year by 14.8 lakh hectares from last year’s because of the lower minimum support price. Farmers have turned away from sowing gram as the price is low, sources said.
The area under coarse cereals is lower by 4.57 lakh hectares mainly because of reduced sowing of maize and jowar in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

Facebook the leader of social media says a new Survey

Facebook is the leader of social media, says a new survey, adding that the social networking site has also made inroads into becoming the popular choice among the elderly.
The findings of a survey by a US-based global think tank Pew Research Centre that involved 1,597 internet users revealed that 71 per cent of US adults were hooked to Facebook in 2014 - up significantly from 63 percent in 2013, Forbes magazine reported.
It also showed that 56 per cent of Facebook users are in the age bracket of 65 years and older. The social media websites LinkedIn and Pinterest had 28 percent adult users.
For micro-blogging site Twitter, the percentage of users logging in daily decreased from 46 percent in 2013 to 36 percent last year. 53 percent of internet-users, between the ages 18-29, use Instagram, also owned by Facebook.
The survey also found that 45 percent of internet users log in to Facebook several times a day. Of the respondents, 52 percent use more than one social media website - an increase compared with 42 percent in 2013.

Researchers identified Mutations causing abnormal heart muscle protein

An international team of researchers have sought to identify genetic mutations that produce abnormal forms of a key heart muscle protein. As a result of the mutations, the heart muscles weaken and produce a condition known as ‘dilated cardiomyopathy.’
The increased strain that is then put on the heart can lead to heart failure where the organ is unable to pump the requisite quantities of blood.
Changes to titin, a protein that is part of the mechanism muscles use to contract and relax, have been implicated as a cause for dilated cardiomyopathy.
Titin is the largest human protein and is produced by a gene whose genetic information exists as 364 separate segments, known as exons. Variations in how the genetic data from these exons are assembled mean that the protein can exist in a variety of forms.
A 2012 study carried out in severe and familial cases of dilated cardiomyopathy found that disruptive mutations in the gene, resulting in truncated titin variants being produced, were the commonest genetic cause for the ailment.
Researchers who carried out that study have gone on to examine titin gene sequences from over 5,200 individuals, with and without the condition, as well as scrutinising 150 heart tissue samples collected from patients who underwent heart surgery.

India’s ‘Mars Orbiter’ team wins award

India’s Mars Orbiter programme team has won the 2015 Space Pioneer Award in the science and engineering category from the US based National Space Society (NSS), the society said.
In a statement issued in Washington, the NSS said its 2015 Space Pioneer Award in the science and engineering category has been won by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Mars Orbiter Programme team.
“This award will be presented to an ISRO representative during the National Space Society’s 2015 International Space Development Conference, the 34th ISDC, to be held in Toronto, Canada,” the statement said.
The conference will run form May 20-24. According to the NSS, India’s Mars Orbiter launched on Nov 5, 2013 that went into Mars orbit on Sep 24, 2014 achieved two significant mission firsts in terms of an Indian spacecraft that has gone into orbit around Mars on the very first try and that no other country has ever done this.
Secondly, the spacecraft is in an elliptical orbit with a high apoapsis, and has a high resolution camera which is taking full-disk colour imagery of Mars.
Very few full disk images have ever been taken in the past, mostly on approach to the planet, as most imaging is done looking straight down in mapping mode.
These images will aid planetary scientists. The Mars Orbiter programme team located in Bangalore is headed by Mylswamy Annadurai, the statement said.
Britain's "Beagle 2" spacecraft found on Mars
Britain's infamous "Beagle 2" spacecraft, once dubbed "a heroic failure" by the nation's Astronomer Royal, has been found on Mars -- 11 years after it went missing searching for extraterrestrial life.
Beagle 2, part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission, had been due to land on Mars on Christmas Day 2003, but went missing on December 19, 2003. Until now, nothing had been heard from it since then.
But in an announcement made to a packed news conference at London's Royal Society scientific institution, space experts said the tiny Mars lander has been found on the surface of the red planet.
"Beagle 2 is no longer lost," said David Parker, chief executive of the UK Space Agency. He said scientists now had "good evidence" that the spacecraft successfully landed on Mars on the date it was due -- December 25, 2003 -- but had only partially deployed.
"This find shows that the entry, descent and landing sequence for Beagle 2 worked and the lander did successfully touch down on Mars on Christmas Day 2003," the UK space agency said in a statement.
Beagle 2 -- which measures less than 2 metres across -- was named after the ship Charles Darwin sailed when he formulated his theory of evolution. It was built by British scientists for about 50 million pounds ($85 million)
The plan was for it to report back from the Mars' surface using instruments designed to help search for signs of life, but nothing was heard after it was dropped off to make its landing.

2014 Earth's hottest year on record: scientists

2014 was Earth's hottest on record in new evidence that people are disrupting the climate by burning fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases into the air, two U.S. government agencies said.
The White House said the studies, by the U.S. space agency NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), showed climate change was happening now and that action was needed to cut rising world greenhouse gas emissions.
The 10 warmest years since records began in the 19th century have all been since 1997, the data showed. Last year was the warmest, ahead of 2010, undermining claims by some skeptics that global warming has stopped in recent years.
Record temperatures in 2014 were spread around the globe, including most of Europe stretching into northern Africa, the western United States, far eastern Russia into western Alaska, parts of interior South America, parts of eastern and western coastal Australia and elsewhere, NASA and NOAA said.
"While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York.
"The data shows quite clearly that it's the greenhouse gas trends that are responsible for the majority of the trends," he told reporters. Emissions were still rising "so we may anticipate further record highs in the years to come."
U.N. studies show there already are more extremes of heat and rainfall and project ever more disruptions to food and water supplies. Sea levels are rising, threatening millions of people living near coasts, as ice melts from Greenland to Antarctica.

Agni-V missile to be test-fired on January 31

India's strategic missile, Agni-V, will test-fired from the Wheeler Island, off the Odisha coast, on January 31.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which has developed the missile, will launch it from a canister mounted on a road-mobile launcher, which is a TATRA truck.
A gas generator at the bottom of the canister will push the 17-metre long, 50-tonne Agni-V out of the canister.
The missile, which can take out targets situated more than 5,000 km away, can carry a nuclear warhead weighing 1.1 tonnes. In the launch on January 31, 2015, it will carry a dummy payload.
The missile was earlier scheduled to be test-fired in the second week of January but was postponed to the last week of January or the first week of February due to “non-technical” reasons.

Novo Nordisk launches Ryzodeg in India

Denmark based pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk on Monday launched it’s combination diabetic drug Ryzodeg, priced at Rs.1,595 for 300 units, for people with Type-II diabetes in India.
Apart from India, Ryzodeg has been approved for marketing in Aruba, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, EU, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Mexico, Norway, Russia, South Korea and Switzerland, Novo Nordisk said.
As Ryzodeg is a combination product, it requires fewer daily injections than administering basal and mealtime insulin in separate injections.
Major cause of blindness identified
Microscopic spheres of calcium phosphate have been linked to the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a major cause of blindness. AMD affects 1 in 5 people over 75, causing their vision to slowly deteriorate.
Agni-V to be test-fired from canister today
Agni-V, India’s most powerful strategic missile, developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will lift off from a canister mounted on a TATRA truck stationed on the Wheeler Island off Odisha.
This is the third launch, but the first from a canister, a method that will allow the missile to be fired even from roads. Avinash Chander, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and DRDO Director-General, has called Agni-V “a game changer.” Mr. Chander, the architect of the Agni series, will be present at the launch scheduled for 8 a.m. Agni-V can carry a 1.1-tonne nuclear warhead over 5,000 km.