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China on 16 June fired its longest and heaviest rocket, successfully sending its first woman astronaut Liu Yang along with two male colleagues into space to conduct the maiden manned docking of its space lab being built to rival Russia's Mir International Space Station. In a launch, Shenzhou-9 (Divine Craft) space ship carrying the three astronauts blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu province. About ten minutes later it reached its intended orbit bringing cheers all around. This is the longest and heaviest rocket China used so far. Shenzhou-9 will dock with Tiangong-1 module currently orbiting about 343 km above the earth. This is the fourth time China conducted a manned mission into space. It is regarded as prelude to China's plans to send a manned mission to Moon in the next few years. Liu Yang, an airforce pilot got the honour to become China's first woman astronaut and world's 57th space woman. China conducted the first manned mission in 2003 followed it up in 2005 and 2008. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on 19 June 2012 released its latest update of the Red List of Threatened Species. The report showed that of the 63837 species assessed, 19817 are threatened with extinction, including 41 per cent of amphibians, 33 per cent of reef building corals, 25 per cent of mammals, 13 per cent of birds, and 30 per cent of conifers. From India the IUCN listed 132 species of plants and animals as Critically Endangered, the most threatened category. With as many as 60 different species assessed as Critically Endangered and 141 species as Endangered, plants appeared to be the most threatened life form. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the worlds oldest and largest global environmental organization. Founded in 1948, today it is the largest professional global conservation network of the world. As of now the organization has more than 1200 member organizations including 200+ government and 900+ non-government organizations. The IUCN Red List is a critical indicator of the health of the worlds biodiversity. Headquartered in Gland near Geneva in Switzerland. The Hyderabad-based Dr Reddy's and Germany's Merck on 6 June announced a deal to develop cheap versions of biotech cancer drugs, a move that would give Dr Reddy's the edge in expensive and highly regulated markets. The world community observed the World Environment Day on 5 June 2012. The World Environment Day is observed every year on 5 June to raise public awareness on the issues related to global environment. Theme for the World Environment Day 2012 is: Green Economy: Does it include you? Brazil is the host for World Environment Day 2012. World Environment Day 2012 is the 40th edition of the global. The UN General Assembly started observing the day in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

July
Indian missile technologists are planning to develop a host of advanced missiles, including a low-weight nano missile and a long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) with a range of 300 km. This was disclosed in Hyderabad on 30 July by Avinash Chander, Chief Controller ( Missiles and Strategic Systems), DRDO at a function organised to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Hardware-in-Loop Simulation (HILS) facility at the Research Centre Imarat, a key missile laboratory of DRDO. Referring to Akash surface-to-air missile system, he said the next aim was to develop a 300 km range SAM. Besides, it was also planned to develop air-to-surface missile having a range of 400 km and air-to-air missile of 300 km range. Other excellent systems, including underwater, cruise, sub-sonic and supersonic missiles would also be developed. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has finalised, the standards that promise to revolutionise television viewing with ultra high-definition pictures of stupendous clarity and size in the coming years. Even as high-definition (HD) TV has been gaining ground over the years, displacing, to some extent, the standard definition TV, the ITU has come up with the latest ultra high-definition TV (UHDTV) standards that will push picture resolution manifold. The resolution of a picture depends on the number of dotlike pixels squeezed into a given area and standard definition TV, which has been in use for long, usually

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delivers pictures of a resolution of 704 or 720 of these pixels across 480 scanning lines. High-definition TV, or HDTV, which has been replacing standard definition TV comes in two formats 1280 x 720 pixels and 1920 x 1080 pixels, the latter being often called full HD.The founding father of UHDTV was the Japanese broadcaster NHK, Mr. Wood. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has praised, the Bio toilets developed by DRDO and said that these could go a long way in solving the problem of open defecation in rural India. He said in an award function in New Delhi on 31 July, if these green, cost effective flush and forget technology is successfully implanted, it will give a big boost to our Total Sanitation Campaign. DRDO in collaboration with FICCI has developed a bio toilet. DRDOs biotoilet is based on anaerobic biodegradation of organic waste by unique microbial consortium and works at a wide temperature range. The consortium has been made through acclimatisation, enrichment and bioaugumentation of coldactive bacteria collected from Antarctica and other low temperature areas.The Defence Ministry and the Rural development Ministry have also signed MoUs for installing these toilets in over one lakh gram panchayats in next few years. Russias Soyuz-FG Carrier rocket set Five Satellites into Orbit: Russia's Soyuz-FG carrier rocket set off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan on 22 July 2012. The rocket will put the Russian satellites Canopus-B and MKA-PN1, a Belarusian BKA satellite, the Canadian ADS-1B and German TET-1 into orbit. The Canopus-B satellite, developed by the All-Russia Research Institute of Electromechanics, is designed for remote sensing of the Earth. It weighs about 400 kg and will work on a circular orbit at a height of 510 km. The MKA-PN1 satellite, developed by Russia's NPO Lavochkin aerospace company, will collect data to help meteorologists build models of ocean circulation - particularly in Arctic waters along Russian shores - and climate dynamics. The German TET-1 satellite, a part of the German Aerospace Center's On-Orbit Verification Program, will conduct a test on new space technologies. The ADS-1B satellite, built by the Com Dev aerospace company, will form part of a ship-identification satellite system. Drug for HIV infection Truvada: A U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel of outside experts recommended Gilead Sciences Inc's Truvada as a treatment for preventing HIV infection among people at risk for contracting AIDS, including homosexual and bisexual men. In a move that could lead to a new milestone for treatment in the evolution of the worldwide AIDS epidemic, the FDA advisory committee voted 19-3 to endorse the drug's use for controlling HIV infection among the highest risk group -- men who have sex with men. Sunita Williams begins her second space odyssey: A Russian Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft carrying three astronauts including Sunita Williams, the Indian-American astronaut, took-off for the international space station on 15 July 2012 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Three astronauts on board including Sunita Williams, Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide will take two days to reach to the International space station. NASAs space shuttle programme came to an end in July 2011, which left US astronauts dependent on Russian Soyuz spacecrafts for ferrying to the International Space Station. The Soyuz launch marked the 37th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project that opened the door to US-Russian cooperation in space science. Sunita Williams, the Indian-American astronaut, was born on 19 September 1965 in Euclid, Ohio and was raised in Massachusetts in US. She joined NASA in June 1998.Previously she served as a flight engineer on board the International Space Station. She launched with the crew of STS-116 on 9 December 2006, docking with the station on 11 December 2006. Sunita Williams reached ISS: Record-setting Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams along with two other cosmonauts on 17th July, successfully docked their Soyuz spacecraft with the International Space Station (ISS) for a four-month long stay during which they will conduct over 30 scientific missions. The 46-year-old NASA astronaut Williams, Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide arrived at the ISS after two days in orbit. The crew took off to the ISS successfully from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 15th July, for a four-month long mission to the space station.This is the second space mission for Williams. She also holds the record of the longest spaceflight -- 195 days -- for woman space travellers. The crew, which will return home in mid-November, is expected to conduct over 30 scientific missions during their stay aboard the ISS

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Pearls can now be of help in treating cancer: Pearls rich in essential minerals can help treat killer diseases like cancer, a leading scientist has claimed. In a series of experiments by Ajai Kumar Sonkar at the Pearl Aquaculture Research Foundation in Port Blair, pearls produced through special culture technique have been found to contain traces of several metals and minerals, which are known to have major health benefits. Sunita Williams reached ISS: Record-setting Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams along with two other cosmonauts on 17th July, successfully docked their Soyuz spacecraft with the International Space Station (ISS) for a four-month long stay during which they will conduct over 30 scientific missions. The 46-year-old NASA astronaut Williams, Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide arrived at the ISS after two days in orbit. The crew took off to the ISS successfully from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 15th July, for a four-month long mission to the space station.This is the second space mission for Williams. She also holds the record of the longest spaceflight -- 195 days -- for woman space travellers. The crew, which will return home in mid-November, is expected to conduct over 30 scientific missions during their stay aboard the ISS Stealth warship 'INS Sahyadri' commissioned: Indigenously built stealth warship `INS Sahyadri' was commissioned in the Indian Navy on 21 July, adding firepower to its anti-submarine warfare capabilities. The frigate, last in the series of stealth warships after `INS Shivalik' and `INS Satpura', was commissioned by Defence Minister A K Antony at the Naval dockyard here in presence of Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma and senior Naval officials. INS Sahyadri is the last warship of `Project-17' undertaken by the Navy. Scientists identified First Radio Waves from Middleweight Black Hole HLX-1: A team of scientists at the University of Sydney on 10 July 2012 discovered the first radio emissions from the middleweightblack hole HLX-1, that lies in a galaxy about 300 million light-years away. The research team had used Compact Array radio telescope from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). HLX-1 (hyper-luminous X-ray source 1), lies in a galaxy called ESO 243-49 about 300 million light-years away. As per the new study, the size of HLX-1 is around 20000 times the mass of our sun which makes it an intermediate mass black hole. NASA's claim of 'arsenic life' disproved The claim by NASA scientists that they have discovered a new form of bacteria which thrive on arsenic has been disapproved by two new studies, which say the bugs can't substitute arsenic for phosphorus to survive. Two scientific papers, published in the journal Science, refuted the 2010 NASA finding that bacterium called GFAJ-1 not only tolerates arsenic but actually incorporates the poison into its DNA, swapping out phosphorus. "Contrary to an original report, the new research clearly shows that the bacterium, GFAJ-1, cannot substitute arsenic for phosphorus to survive," the journal said. Nuclear capable Agni-I test-fired India successfully tested domestically built nuclear capable surface-tosurface Agni-I ballistic missile on 13 July. The missile was launched from a test range at Wheeler Island off Odisha coast. The missile was launched by the strategic force command of Indian Army. With a specialised navigation system, the Agni-I can hit the target with accuracy and precision. The 15-metre-long Agni-I, can carry payload up to 1000 kg.Agni-I was developed under the joint work of advanced systems laboratory, the missile development laboratory of the DRDO, Defence Research Development Laboratory and Research Centre Imarat, while it was integrated by Bharat Dynamics Limited, Hyderabad. Sunita Williams begins her second space odyssey: Indian-American record-setting astronaut Sunita Williams, along with her two colleagues, took off for her second space odyssey on a Russian Soyuz rocket, which blasted off successfully from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on15th July. Forty-six-year-old NASA astronaut Ms. Williams, Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide started their two-day voyage at 08:10 a.m. IST for a four-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS). Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos announced that the spacecraft had departed successfully from the carrier rocket and reached intermediate orbit. Born in Euclid in Ohio and raised in Massachusetts, Ms. Williams, who had earlier lived and worked aboard the ISS for six months in 2006-07, will further extend the record for the longest stay in space for a woman astronaut.

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A Soyuz space capsule carrying a three-man multinational crew touched down safely on the southern steppes of Kazakhstan on 30th June, bringing an end to their 193-day mission to the International Space Station. Around a dozen recovery helicopters zeroed into the vast uncultivated land mass, where NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, Russia's Oleg Kononenko and Dutchman Andre Kuipers landed in the Russian-made capsule. Russian space officials quickly surrounded the craft, which performed a perfect upright textbook landing, and erected ladders to begin the process of pulling out the astronauts. UNESCO, the science and cultural body of UN, listed India's 1600-km long Western Ghats mountain in the world heritage sites on 1 June 2012. The Western Ghats mountain chain is globally renowned for its enormous biological diversity. The mountain's chain, which are older than the Himalaya, are widely responsible for the Indian monsoon weather pattern.The Western Ghats are also considered to be one of the world's eight hottest hotspots of biological diversity. Iran on 3 July 2012, test-fired a medium range ballistic missile Shahab-3. The Shahab-3 has a range of up to 2000 kilometres. The Shahab-1 and Shahab-2, the two short-range missiles, with ranges of 300 to 500 kilometres, were also launched.The missile launch was the part of Iran's Great Prophet 7 exercise. Great Prophet 7 exercise was announced by Iran on 1 July 2012 in the wake of latest European Union sanctions on Iran. The exercise, which involved test of dozens of missiles and domestically-built drones came following European Union's decision to ban the purchase of Iranian crude oil. The EU's decision is the clear repurcussion of failed dialogue held between Iran and world powers on Iran's ambitious nuclear programme. Scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, on 4 July 2012, discovered a new subatomic particle called Higgs Boson or God's Particle. The new discovery is being considered as a gateway to a new era in understanding the universe's great mysteries including dark matter.Scientists had predicted the existence of Higgs Boson, which is also referred to as God's Particle, in 1964. The particle was named Higgs Boson after Peter Higgs and Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose. The term God particle was first used by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman.

August
Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) on 27 August 2012 signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a Joint Venture with M/s Rosoboron export, Russia and M/s Splav SPA, Russia to manufacture five versions of Smerch Rockets based on the technology received from Russia. The MoU was signed in New Delhi. The Smerch Rockets are technologically superior having a range of 70-80- kms. With formation of this Joint Venture, the Indo-Russian Friendship will be strengthened. After indigenizing the technology of Smerch Rockets, OFB will attain new heights in manufacturing of advanced Rocket. Identifying TNT explosives present at a very low concentration, has become possible with a nanostructuresized sensor developed by T. Pradeep of the Department of Chemistry, IIT Madras .There is a complete change in luminescence from red to green when TNT is added to the sensor. All that is required to detect the change in luminescence is a fluorescence microscope. The results can be double checked by Raman spectroscopy. Raman spectrum specific to TNT gets enhanced and hence identifying the signature becomes easy. Prof. Pradeep said it is possible to make one billion sensors with one gram of gold. So it is not worth reusing the sensors after cleaning them. A device based on this principle is under development. Scientists on 31 August, have reconstructed the entire genetic makeup of a girl who lived and died in a Siberian cave more than 50,000 years ago. The young woman belonged to a long extinct group of humans called Denisovans their existence known only from meagre fossil remains uncovered at the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains in 2008. They are thought to have occupied much of Asia tens of thousands of years ago. Previous tests on the remains found they were more closely related to Neanderthals than modern humans. Writing in the journal Science , researchers in the U.S. and Germany describe how they sequenced the girls genome with an accuracy once considered impossible with such ancient specimens. The final sequence matched the quality of modern genetic

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tests on living people. They sequenced single strands of DNA taken from a little finger bone found at the scene. The bone fragments, and two fossilised teeth, are the only remains of the Denisovan. Svante Paabo, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, said there was now no difference in what we can learn genetically about a person that lived 50,000 years ago and from a person today, provided that we have well-enough preserved bones. The team from Leipzig and Harvard Medical School in Boston compared the Denisovan genome with similar sequences from Neanderthals and 11 modern humans from around the world. Indias indigenously developed, micro-light pilot-less target aircraft Lakshya-1 was successfully test flown from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur,Odisha on 23 August. The test was carried out to check the validity of its engine and duration enhancement. The aircraft is remote-controlled from the ground and designed to provide training to both airborne and air defence pilots. Lakshya-1, fitted with an advanced digitally controlled engine and is a sub-sonic, re-usable aerial target system. India on 17 august, made a major breakthrough in mounting an electronic eye in the sky, taking delivery in Sao Jose dos Campos in Brazil, of the first Embraer 145 Airborne Early Warning and Control Aircraft, built with Indian technology. The first of the three AEW&C aircraft comes equipped with Indias first-ever airborne Active Electronic Scanned Array (AESA) radar, giving it the capability to detect missiles and hostile fighters at all angles.The aircraft was delivered at an official ceremony held at Embraers headquarters in Sao Jose dos Campos in Brazil in the presence of top Indian and Brazilian defence officials. The new aircraft would give the Indian Air Force capability of operating both the longer range Israeli-made IL-76 Phalcon AWACS as well as the shorter range Brazilian EMB 145. India already has acquired three Israeli AWACS and is in the process of getting two more.India and Brazil signed a deal reportedly worth $ 210 million for the supply of three aircraft by 2014. This includes a comprehensive logistic package that entails training, technical support, supply of spare parts and ground support equipment. Embraer is the worlds third largest commercial aircraft manufacturer, behind American Boeing and Europes Airbus. The Indian Air Force already operates four Embraer Legacy 600 jets to transport government officials and foreign dignitaries. A fifth one is operated by Indias Border Security Force. The Indian Institute of Soil Science developed a web-based system for advising farmers the right quantity of fertilizers that they should use in their soils for a particular type of crop. The software takes into account the soil type in different districts of the country and available nutrient in the soil. It takes into consideration the crop and cropping season in calculating the nutrient requirement. This system is presently available for all the districts in 11 states- Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The US space agency NASA landed Curiosity, a huge new robot rover on Mars on 5 August 2012. The onetonne vehicle touched the surface of Mars after a 345-million-mile expedition. The robot rover will now conduct a study to find out whether the planet was ever hospitable to life. The robot rover is set to spend nearly two years for the mission. NASA undertook the mission with an objective to determine whether Mars has ever had the conditions to support life. The ambitious project costed the US overnment about 2.5 billion dollar. The 900 kg rover has the top speed of about 4cm/s. Plutonium generators installed on the rover will deliver heat and electricity for at least 14 years. It is equipped with tools to brush and drill into rocks, to scoop up, sort and sieve samples. Rover is equipped with 17 cameras, which will identify particular targets, and a laser will zap those rocks to probe their chemistry.The findings of the mission will be delivered to Earth through antennas on the rover deck. India on 9 August 2012 successfully test-fired domestically built nuclear capable surface- to-surface two stage Agni-II ballistic missile. The missile was launched from a test range at Wheeler Island off Odisha coast. It has a strike range of 2000 km and the missile was inducted in the Army on 17 May 2010.The missile was launched by the strategic force command of Indian Army as a routine users trial. Agni-II is 20 metres long and capable of carrying a nuclear warhead weighing one ton. Agni-II was developed under the joint work of advanced systems laboratory, the missile development laboratory of the DRDO, Defence Research Development Laboratory and Research Centre Imarat, while it was integrated by Bharat Dynamics Limited, Hyderabad. The Agni-II missile belongs to the genre of medium range ballistic missiles developed by India under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program.

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A newly discovered Australian spider measuring little more than a millimeter in length has been named after celebrated British scientist and broadcaster David Attenborough. The minuscule arachnid, which is found only on Horn Island, in Australia's Torres Strait, was named prethopalpus attenboroughi by its discoverers. Sources said, Prethopalpus is commonly known as a goblin spider, making this species Attenborough's goblin spider. Attenborough was presented with the honour at a ceremony in Perth where he was given a framed picture of the spider. Attenborough, 86, was chosen for his love of nature and renowned ability to make science accessible over a career spanning six decades. It is not the first time the naturalist has received such an honour -- a 380-million-yearold fossil found in Western Australia in 2008 of a prehistoric mother fish giving birth was named materpiscis attenboroughi. Scientists for the first time found evidence of another oxidant named X, which plays an important role in the formation of gaseous sulphuric acid in the atmosphere. Until now there was a misconception that the combination of OH(hydroxyl radical) oxidant with sulphur dioxide was the reason behind the formation of gaseous sulphuric acid is formed in the atmosphere. The results are published on 9 August 2012 in Nature. The new oxidant is capable of oxidizing suphur dioxide. Experiments done by Scientists showed that the concentration of X also does not remain constant during the day. The Union Cabinet on 3 August, cleared the Indian Space Research Organisations mission to Mars next year. The project, which comes on the heels of the Chandrayaan mission to the moon, envisages putting a spacecraft in the red planets orbit to study its atmosphere, with the help of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).India joins the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and China in undertaking such an effort. The launch is slated for November next year from Sriharikota. The Space Commission gave its clearance in December last. The spacecraft will have a scientific payload of 25 kg and is proposed to be placed in an orbit of 500x80,000 km around the planet. Sources in the ISRO said November was chosen, as the planet would be closest to the earth that time. The next such opportunity will come only in the summer of 2018. NASA is also said to be working on a Mars mission for November next year. The mission is estimated to cost about Rs.450 crore. A group of researchers in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh has claimed to have found traces of a paleo-river near Narmada. A paleo-channel or paleo-river is an inactive river or water stream buried under sediment. Vishal Verma of the Mangal Panchayatam Parishad said, due to geological activities, the nearly 65 million year-old river might have been covered under basaltic lava. The current course of the Narmada is about 10 km from the site of the paleo-river, parallel to it. Russian Ecologists said, Heavy forest fires spurred by hot and dry weather have vanished vast areas of Siberia, and ruined the regions ecosystem. Fires have destroyed 100,000 sq km of forests across Russia , an area bigger than Bihar since the start of the summer season this year, The situation is worst in central Siberia, where fires have ravaged 50,000 sq km of forests. More than 6,000 fire-fighters; a dozen aircraft; and hundreds of volunteers are fighting the fires in Siberia, but have so far failed to contain the calamity. Scientists at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) in Pilani have developed a new bio-sensor device to detect arsenic content in drinking water. The device can be operated by a layman and is based on a rare combination of bio-engineering and electronics. The hand-held device, the size of a mobile phone and presently undergoing field testing, promises to be immensely useful for millions of people inhabiting the river basins of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna in India and Bangladesh reported to be affected by arsenic contamination. Nearly 50 crore people are estimated to be at risk across Utttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Bangladesh due to high arsenic content in drinking water. High intake of arsenic along with malnourishment and lack of medical care worsens the life of people, especially children, in the arsenic-affected regions.

September
Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams has taken over command of the International Space Station (ISS) yet another feather in her cap as she already holds three records for women space travellers, including a new record for spacewalk time by a woman astronaut.Nasa reported that,expedition 32 Commander Gennady

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Padalka handed over control of the space station to Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams in the Destiny laboratory ,in the traditional change-of-command ceremony.Ms. Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko and Japans Akihiko Hoshide remain on the ISS.On September 6, Ms. Williams set the record for total cumulative spacewalk time by a woman astronaut with her sixth space walk to repair a faulty power distribution unit using a toothbrush and a wire brush fashioned out of a spare cableThe spacewalk lasted 6 hours 28 minutes. Ms. Williams has now worked outside the station for a total of 44 hours and 2 minutes. India on 19 september, successfully test-fired the nuclear capable Agni IV missile from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) managed missile launching centre located at the Wheelers Island off the coast of Bhadrak district in north Odisha.Indigenously designed and developed by the DRDO, Agni IV has the capability to hit a target at a distance of 4,000 km, carrying both conventional as well as nuclear warheads weighing around one tonne.The important missile had its maiden successful test flight from the same DRDO facility on November 15 last year. Over the years, access to affordable gluco-meters has eased the process of taking sugar readings at home, here is something that technology has provided for patients to keep track of their blood sugar levels.Diabetois, a nonintrusive bluetooth hardware device, facilitates the transfer of glucose readings from a regular gluco-meter into a specially developed Android app. The readings can then be analysed easily with the help of the application. Patients can select time frames, analyse the shifts and even email the sugar level graph to doctors.Shreekant Pawar, Co-Founder of Diabeto says that, being diabetic is more than just medicines and doctor visits. It is also about managing the condition and ensuring that sugar levels are monitored regularly.Mr. Pawar says,The app is a tiny bird-shaped device that has been designed with ease of use in mind. It easily fits in your palm and can be used not only by patients with diabetes but also diabetics with motor disabilities, visual impairment, senior citizens and even children with type1 diabetes, After China, India has the largest number of persons with diabetes. Endangered birds, the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) and Lesser Florican, are back in their annual breeding lands in Rajasthans Shonkaliya region in Ajmer district. Though the population of GIB, Rajasthans State Bird, cannot be termed sizeable the Lesser Floricans are in greater numbers this time with the males among them displaying their plumes jumping up in the air to attract the females in the middle of the breeding season with copious rains in the area coming as an extra incentive.The nests of both GIB and Lesser Florican are visible in the crop lands. The task ahead for the conservationists in the area is to ensure that the nests and the eggs remain safe and the hatching is successful. A comprehensive atlas of the adult human brain that reveals the activity of genes across the entire organ has been created by scientists. The map was created from genetic analyses of about 900 specific parts of two clinically unremarkable brains donated by a 24-year-old and 39-year-old man, and half a brain from a third man.Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle said the atlas would serve as a baseline against which they and others can compare the genetic activity of diseased brains, and so shed light on factors that underlie neurological and psychiatric conditions.Scientists have constructed similar genetic atlases for rodents in the past, but the shortage of donated human brains, their size and the destructive nature of the tests meant a human equivalent was more of a challenge.Writing in the journal Nature , the scientists describe how they scanned the donated brains and then chopped them into tiny pieces. For each piece, they measured activity levels for all of the 20,000 or so genes in the human genome.The atlas, which overlays the genetic results on to a 3D image of the brain, is freely available for researchers to use online. India on 21 september, successfully test-fired Agni-III missile, which has a strike range of over 3,000 km, from Wheeler Island off the Odisha coast.Within three days, India successfully test-fired a second surface-to-surface nuclear weapons capable ballistic missile Agni-III was fired for its full range of 3,000 km from the Wheeler Island, off the Odisha coast.On 19 september, the 4,000-km range Agni-IV was successfully launched by the missile technologists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).Agni-III, which has already been inducted into the Services, is capable of carrying a payload weighing 1.5 tonnes. It is equipped with an advanced guidance and navigation system to ensure accuracy.In the past five months, all the variants of Agni, from Agni-V to Agni-I, have been successfully test-fired.

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Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd has handed over on 21 september, the basic satellite structure of the Mars Orbiter Mission to the ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore. HALs Aerospace Division assembled the structure at its Bangalore facility. ISRO will build the other satellite sub-systems and scientific payload on to this structure.HAL also supplies key sub-systems for ISROs launch vehicle programme.ISRO plans to launch the Mars mission in November 2013.The spacecraft will travel 55 million km over 300 days and study the climate, geology, origin and evolution of the red planet from an elliptical orbit. India test-fires Agni-III : Two days after the successful trial of the long-range Agni-IV missile, India on 21 September test-fired its nuclearcapable Agni-III ballistic missile with a strike range of 3000 km from an island off the Odisha coast.The indigenously developed surface-to-air missile, which can carry a warhead of 1.5 tonne protected by a carbon all composite heat shield, took off at 13:15 hours from a mobile launcher at launch complex-4 of Integrated Test Range at Wheeler Island, defence sources said. The trajectory of the trial was monitored for data analysis through telemetry stations, electro-optic systems and sophisticated radars located along the coast, and by naval ships anchored near the impact point, they said. The launch operation was carried out by strategic forces command of the Indian army with logistic support from Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Agni-III missile is powered by a two-stage solid propellant system. With a length of 17 metres, the missile's diameter is 2 metres and launch weight is around 50 tonnes. The missile is equipped with hybrid navigation, guidance and control systems along with advanced on-board computers. Arctic sea ice shrinks to lowest level: Arctic sea ice has melted to its minimum extent for the year due to climate change, setting a ecord for the lowest summer cover since satellites began collecting data. The 2012 extent has fallen to 3.41 million sq km, which is 50 per cent lower than the 1979-2000 average. Arctic sea ice has long been regarded as a sensitive indicator of changes in the climate. "We are now in uncharted territory," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Center (NSIDC) in Colorado, US. Photographs from NASAs Curiosity rover revealed clear signs of an ancient waterway winding from the northern edge of the Gale crater towards Mount Sharp, a mountain that rises 5km from the crater floor. A shallow river once coursed through a great crater on Mars, according to the latest surface images, which suggest the dusty planet was more hospitable in ancient times. The dried-up riverbed left a trail of pebbles and sand grains that over time became locked in rock. Their size and shape indicate a river that flowed at a metre per second at depths from ankle to waist deep. The $2.5-billion mobile science laboratory began its work on Mars after a dramatic arrival last month in which the rover was winched to the surface from a spacecraft hovering overhead on rocket thrusters. Curiosity is not searching for signs of past or present life, but for evidence that Mars was once habitable. Scores of earlier missions have found evidence of water on the red planet. Snapshots from spacecraft in orbit around Mars have beamed back images of lakes and gullies. The north and south poles are largely frozen water. The rovers destination is the slope of Mount Sharp, where clay and sulphate minerals have been spotted from orbit. These minerals can preserve the organic material that is crucial for life to thrive. GSAT-10, the countrys newest and heaviest satellite, was launched in the early hours of 29 september, from the Kourou launch pad in French Guiana in South America. It will directly boost telecommunications and direct-to-home broadcasting, among others. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said, the satellite, the 9th in ISROs present fleet, will become operational in November and will add 30 transponders to the domestic INSAT system. ISRO launched the 3.4-tonne spacecraft on the European Ariane 5 rocket as the agency cannot currently launch satellites of such mass on its own vehicles. The satellite and the launch fee cost the agency Rs. 750 crore. The agency said it was its 101st mission. ISROs Chairman K. Radhakrishnan and senior scientists were at the Master Control Facility (MCF), Hassan (some 80 km from Bangalore). It is also the first time that the Chairman was not present at the launch site. Indian scientists present at Kourou included Director, Satellite Communications, Prahlad Rao and Project Director T.K. Anuradha.The GSAT-10 carries 30 communication transponders 12 in Ku-band, 12 in C-band and six in extended C-band. The ISRO is currently leasing 95 foreign transponders to meet domestic demand. The INSAT/GSAT system has 168 transponders. The Ku band is vital for seven DTH TV operators and thousands of VSAT operators who provide phone and Internet broadband connections. Public and private telephone and television providers also use the C band.GSAT-10 also has the second GAGAN payload

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which has fine tuned the U.S. GPS signals into far more accurate readings. GAGAN, a venture of the Department of Space and Airports Authority of India, is primarily meant to benefit airlines and their aircraft flying into and out of India. ISRO scores on 100th mission, PSLV rocket launch successful: A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C21) blasted off from from the Satish Dhawan Space Research Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, and placed two foreign satellites in orbit on 9 Septemebr accomplishing the Indian Space Research Organisations 100{+t}{+h}mission, a milestone in the countrys space journey.After a 51-hour countdown, the PSLV lifted off at 9.53 a.m., two minutes behind schedule, to avoid any collision with space debris. In the textbook launch, it carried SPOT-6, a 712-kg French earth observation satellite and injected it into an orbit of 655-km altitude, inclined at 98.23 degrees to the equator. Proiteres, a 15-kg Japanese microsatellite, was put into orbit as an additional payload. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a host of dignitaries watched the flight path on electronic screens, as the 44-metre tall PSLV accomplished its task, reinforcing the fact that it is the ISROs workhorse, with 21 successful missions in a row. The four-stage ignition and the injection of the satellites into the orbit took 18 minutes and 37 seconds. As Proiteres separated at the final moment, the scientists erupted into joyous applause. SPOT-6, an optical remote-sensing satellite capable of imaging the earth with a 1.5-metre resolution, is built by Astrium SAS, a European space technology company. Proiteres is meant to study the powered-flight of a small satellite by an electric thruster and to observe Japans Kansai district with a high-resolution camera. A prototype of an eye-controlled television that uses a sensor placed on a table in front of the user to track the eye movements was unveiled at a recent IFA trade show in Berlin. Haiers Gaze TV uses technology developed by Tobii, a Swedish firm that already offers eye-tracking technology for computers. Users control the set by staring at the top or bottom of the screen to activate a user-interface. The users can then change the volume, switch channel or carry out other functions by looking at icons shown on the display. The technology has the potential to offer an alternative to the traditional remote control. Existing smart TVs offer hand gesture and voice-controls as alternatives but the functions can be hit-and-miss in real-world use. By tracking the shift in gaze and blinks given, it allows the user to point, zoom, scroll, select and navigate menus and features. The device has to be adjusted according to each user before use and becomes less accurate if they are wearing glasses. The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR, India) has collaborated with the UKs Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, UK) and three other European research organisations to launch Indias first multilateral social science research project. The collaboration is aimed at enhancing Europe's efforts to engage with India and produce social science research that can address major global challenges around economic growth, climate change, and health and well-being. The three European research organisations include Frances Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, France), Germanys Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany), and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, The Netherlands). These organisations along with ICSSR and ESRC will launch the first set of projects for networking and social science research cooperation between researchers in India, the UK and Europe. The organisations have agreed for a funding for six projects over a period of three years. The six projects awarded funding will cover areas of growing social concern ranging from ageing and well-being, bullying and pupil-safety, globally accessible medicine to mapping the cultural authority of science, and climate governance. It will also include a research in the quantitative and qualitative explanations of electoral change in rural and urban India Australian scientists along with US experts claimed that they are a step closer to create a treatment for Alzheimer patients following a study finding a link to abnormalities inside brain cells. In a joint study, researchers at Queensland Brain Institute and Havard medical School team found that when a toxic protein builds up, it starves brain cells of energy, causing them to die. Resources say, in the study of over three years, scientiests tried to unveil the mystery surrounding Alzheimer's disease and a section of the brain cell called the mitochondria, the part responsible for metabolising energy, was analysed. This is the first study to directly link toxic levels of Tau, a protein in the brain that is related to dementia, to abnormalities in the mitochondria, which starves them of energy and destroys brain cells. Researchers claimed that the latest development was a promising step towards developing an effective treatment for sufferers.

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Indian-American NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and her Japanese counterpart Akihiko Hoshide have successfully restored power to the International Space Station on their second attempt on 6 September. With this Spacewalk, Williams surpassed Peggy Whitson's record during yesterday's excursion for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut. Whitson worked outside for 39 hours and 46 minutes over the course of six spacewalks. Williams has conducted six spacewalks for a total of 44 hours and 2 minutes. Peggy Whitson, sent up congratulations: "You go, girl!" Williams replied: "Anybody could be in these boots." The astronauts had to go into space for the second time in less than a week. The spacewalk lasted 6 hours 28 minutes. Williams and Hoshide have finally completed repairs on the main power unit switching mechanism, the repairing of which ran into problems earlier this week. As a result of the faults in the system, the astronauts had to save energy by turning off part of the solar cells and de-energised some compartments of the station. This was the second attempt to correct the problem. Earlier, last Thursday(30th August), Williams and Hoside were in space for more than eight hours, but failed to fix the unit and attach it correctly to the ISS.

October
Good year has developed a new self-inflating tire for commercial vehicles. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. is showing off tires that pump themselves for large commercial trucks at a European trade show. Last year, the tire company won a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop the tires. In Europe, governments gave the company grants to develop self-inflating tires for consumer cars and trucks. The Air Maintenance Technology system uses an internal pressure regulator to determine when the tire is low. When pressure falls below a certain parameter, the regulator opens to allow air into a pumping tube. The benefits to an automatic inflation system are obvious. Vehicles with under-inflated tires use more fuel, have worse handling and chew through tread much quicker than their properly maintained counterparts. Goodyear says implementing Air Maintenance Technology on commercial vehicles was particularly difficult due to the higher-than-normal pressures found on large truck tires. Most commercial vehicles run an average of 105 psi compared to the 32 psi of passenger cars. Goodyear is still a few years away from a production version, but hopes to begin real-world tests of the technology next year. IBM scientists are reporting progress in a chip-making technology that is likely to ensure the shrinking of the basic digital switch at the heart of modern microchips for more than another decade. The advance, first described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on 28 October, is based on carbon nanotubes, exotic molecules that have long held out promise as an alternative material to silicon from which to create the tiny logic gates that are now used by the billions to create microprocessors and memory chips. The IBM researchers at the T.J. Watson Research Centre in Yorktown Heights, New York, have been able to pattern an array of carbon nanotubes on the surface of a silicon wafer and use them to build chips that are hybrids of silicon and carbon nanotubes with more than 10,000 working transistors.IBM scientists said they believed that once they have perfected the use of carbon nanotubes sometime after the end of this decade, it will be possible to dramatically raise the speed of future chips as well as dramatically increase the number of transistors.This year, IBM researchers published a separate paper describing the speedup made possible by the new material. A massive radio telescope for use in space observation was unveiled on 28 October, at the foot of Sheshan Mountain in Shanghai. The telescope will be used to track and collect data from satellites and space probes. The newly-built radio telescope can pick up eight different frequency bands and also track Earth satellites, lunar exploration satellites and deep space probes, said Hong Xiaoyu, head of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. The telescope will be used for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), a type of astronomical interferometry used in radio astronomy, as it can collect accurate data and increase its angular resolution during astronomical observation. China's VLBI system is made up of four telescopes in the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Kunming, Urumqi, respectively, as well as a data center in Shanghai. Radio telescopes differ from optical ones in that they use radio antennae to track and collect data from satellites and space probes. Scientists believe they have found a planet made up almost entirely of diamond. Planet 55 Cancri e orbits a sun-like star in the constellation of Cancer. According to ScienceBlog, the planet is also twice the size of Earth,

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with daily temperatures reaching close to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.Nikku Madhusudhan, the Yale researcher whose findings are due to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, "This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth. The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite.Madhusudhan added that at greater depths, the diamond could also be in liquid form. David Spergel, an astronomer at Princeton University told that the discovery of 55 Cancri e may be the first of many exciting planetary discoveries to come.The planet is 40 light years, or 230 trillion miles, away from Earth. Researchers have developed a new method for delivering a variety of vaccines directly into the bloodstream via a soluble film placed under the tongue.The technique was developed after scientists discovered they could use 'good bacteria' to administer various vaccines including flu and tuberculosis. Professor Simon Cutting, of Royal Holloway, University of London, said that rather than requiring needle delivery vaccines based on Bacillus spores could be delivered via a nasal spray or as an oral liquid or capsule. Alternatively, they can be administered via a small soluble film placed under the tongue in a similar way to modern breath fresheners. As spores are exceptionally stable vaccines based on Bacillus do not require coldchain storage alleviating a further issue with current vaccine approaches.' Train-tracking has become easier than ever before with all trains, except those running on the Mumbai suburban network, being covered live by the web-based trainenquiry.com service of the Indian Railways. It has now taken on a new map-based dimension with the addition of railradar.trainenquiry.com. At any point in time, information can be had online or via SMS about the location and schedule of the 9,700-odd trains that run a given week. And what is more fascinating is that the location of any train, except those in the Konkan railway belt, can now be seen on a map anytime, represented by a colour-coded arrow that indicates whether a train is running on time or late. With RailRadar, passengers can now spot trains on a map by clicking on the blue (on time), yellow (delayed) or red (delayed by more than 15 minutes) arrows that represent individual trains, and know where it is at the moment. As per the report released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature on 15 October 2012, twentyfive species of monkeys, langurs, lemurs and gorillas are on the brink of extinction and need global action to protect them from increasing deforestation and illegal trafficking. Six of the severely threatened species live in the island nation of Madagascar, off southeast Africa. Five more from mainland Africa, five from South America and nine species in Asia are among those listed as most threatened. Primates, mankind's closest living relatives, contribute to the ecosystem by dispersing seeds and maintaining forest diversity. The report was released at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity being held in Hyderabad. A humanoid robot with 'common sense', designed to work safely alongside its human co-workers on factory production lines, has been unveiled in the US. Baxter, the robot is priced at USD 22,000 and will go on sale in October. Its makers said, it could apply common sense, adapt to its environment and be trained in less than 30 minutes to complete specific tasks, by workers without robotic expertise. Scientists of the City University of New York have engineered a 'super-hero' sniffer mice that could be used by armed forces and aid workers to smell out landmines and explosives . The "danger mice" have been genetically modified so that their noses are hundreds of times more sensitive to the scent of explosives than house mice. The created mice that have up to 500 times more of nose cells that detect TNT-like chemicals, using the GM technology. The mice could be deployed in future, to countries scarred by war to rapidly snifff out landmines, which are then cleared by a human handler. The project, funded by the US government's health research arm, may sound rather off-the-wall , the idea of super-sniffer rodents is not without precedent. A Belgian charity already uses giant African rats to sniff out TNT and has deployed them in Mozambique and Tanzania and on the Thai-Burmese border. While the so called HeroRATs are very good at their job, however, it takes nine months of painstaking work to train them to detect trinitrotoluene or TNT. The Supreme Court on 16 october, has lifted the ban on tiger tourism in core areas of reserves and sanctuaries. The apex court vacated its interim ban order of July 24 and permitted tourism in core areas. The

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court asked all authorities to strictly adhere to the guidelines notified by the National Tiger Conservation Authority. A panel of experts appointed by a Supreme Court has recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all genetically modified (GM) food and termination of all ongoing trials of transgenic crops in India. The committee had scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the National Institute of Nutrition. The recommendation was a giant blow to the future of GM food crops in the country and was the first time a panel such as this has specified the period of moratorium as 10 years. The safety dossiers of all GM crops approved for trials and those in the pipeline were requested by the panel and asked to be reviewed by independent biosafety experts. Several food crops are currently being tested in open fields by various local and multinational companies. If the court accepts the panel's recommendations, all such testing will have to end. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd (HSBC) have joined hands to set up a modern environmental training institute in Alwar, Rajasthan, about 100 km from Delhi. The partnership was announced on 17 October, by CSE Director-General Sunita Narain and Country Head, HSBC, India and Director HSBC Asia-Pacific, Naina Lal Kidwai. The institute will offer short and long-term courses on environmental governance for regulators and decision-makers. These will cover multiple research disciplines such as air pollution, water and waste-water management, climate change, sustainable industrialisation and urbanisation, renewable energy, public transport and mobility and environment impact assessment. The institute will also be developed as an incubation, development and demonstration centre for green technologies. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi. It was founded in 1980. CSE researches into, lobbies for and communicates the urgency of development that is both sustainable and equitable.Centre of Science and Environment uses knowledge-based activism to create awareness about environment related problems and helps in proposing sustainable solution. Showcased as brand ambassador by the Minister of Environment & Forests, Jayanthi Natarajan during her inaugural speech on 19 October, in high level segment of Conference of Parties (CoP), the Science Express: Biodiversity Special - a mobile biodiversity exhibition train is on a mission to create massive awareness on Indias biodiversity. This is an unique, state-of-the-art exhibition train that brings biodiversity awareness to cross section of people, particularly children and youths, as it travels across the country. The express has been able to create unprecedented public awareness on biodiversity across the country. Till date, over 1.8 million people, including 500000 students 25000 teachers from 5000 schools have been able to visit and enjoy one of the most interesting mobile exhibition on wheels. Over 4 lakh people visited the express at Kazipet and Secunderabad. The express was stationed at Secunderabad to coincide with the the express will be on its onward journey and will eventually travel over 18,000 km in the first phase to cover 55 locations. It is expected to be visited by more than 3 million visitors, much higher than the envisaged target of 2 million. That the Conference Brand Ambassador has halted at Secunderabad, during full duration of the conference and has been visited by over 2.5 lakhs visitors thus contributing to unprecedented awareness on biodiversity issues. The express has been greeted with great deal of enthusiasm by the international delegates attending the CoP. Making of the unique brand ambassador has been a collaborative initiative of the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) & Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, with engagement of large number of knowledge partners. Scientists claim to have identified a tiny snippet of genetic material which can promote healthy insulin production, a finding which could lead to new therapies to treat diabetes. Researchers led by Michigan Technological University biologist Xiaoqing Tang found that the genetic material in question is a microRNA molecule called miR-30d, which is the same in mice and people. Researchers found that the protein MAP4K4 blocks the formation of insulin when cells are under adverse conditions. Tang and her research team showed how miR-30d can counteract the tumour necrosis factortriggered production of MAP4K4 and help the pancreas make more insulin. China on 14 October launched two satellites that would be used for "technological experimentation". The Practice-9 A and Practice-9 B were launched at 11.25 a.m. from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in north

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China's Shanxi province, the China Daily reported. The satellites were launched on a Long March-2C carrier rocket and put into a predetermined orbit. The two are the first in a series of civilian satellites designed for technological experimentation, the daily said. Developed by an affiliate company of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the satellites will be used to experiment with domestically developed components, satellite formations and inter-satellite measurement, the centre said. Scientist of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai together made a Projection that India may warm up by 1.7 to 2 C by 2030s and up to 4.8 degree Celsius by 2080s. The Scientist had pointed out more warming over the northern areas, especially the Himalayas and Kashmir. The projections were made for the period of 1860 to 2099 which is based on new climate data, models and new emission scenarios termed as Representative concentration pathways. Also as per the scientist Rainfall is predicted to increase from four per cent to five per cent by 2030s and from six per cent to 14 per cent towards the end of the century in 2080s compared to the 1961- 1990 baseline. All these new projections should be used in future assessment of impact of climate change and adaptation planning. However, also contradicting analysis was presented which has indicated that limiting warming to roughly 2 C by the end of this century is unlikely since it requires an immediate ramp down of emissions. Scientists have discovered that the most likely source of water on Moon is the constant stream of charged particles from the Sun known as the solar wind. The findings came by researchers from the University of Michigan who imply that ice inside permanently shadowed polar craters on the Moon, sometimes called cold traps, could contain hydrogen atoms ultimately derived from the solar wind. Also, The Theoretical models of lunar water stability dating to the late 1970s suggest that hydrogen ions (protons) from the solar wind can combine with oxygen on the Moons surface to form water and related compounds called hydroxyls, which consist of one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen and are known as OH. The researchers have found that the 'water' component, the hydroxyl, in the lunar regolith is mostly from solar wind implantation of protons, which locally combined with oxygen to form hydroxyls that moved into the interior of glasses by impact melting. With this research it is also clear that water likely exists on Mercury and on asteroids such as Vesta or Eros further within our solar system Astronomers have discovered a new intriguing exoplanet about the mass of the Earth, orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri star system the nearest to our planet. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever found around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is the nearest stellar system to our Solar System only 4.3 light-years away. The Navy on 8 October, successfully test-fired the 290-km range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, capable of carrying a conventional warhead of 300 kg, from a warship off the Goa coast. The cruise missile was test-fired from guided missile frigate INS Teg, the Indian Navy's latest induction. The INS Teg, which has been built at the Yantar shipyard in Russia, had fired the missile successfully during preinduction trials in Russia last year. The two remaining warships of the project namely INS Tarkah and INS Trikand will also be armed with the lethal missile in vertical launch mode. Defence officials said, the two-stage missile, the first one being solid and the second one ramjet liquid propellant, has already been inducted into the Army and Navy, and the Air Force version is in final stage of trial. Brahmos Aerospace, an Indo-Russian joint venture company, is also working to develop the air as well as the submarine launch version of the missile system and work on the project is in progress. Nasa's Swift satellite on 7 October, has found evidence of the presence of a previously unknown stellarmass black hole in our Milky Way galaxy. Named Swift J1745-26 after the coordinates of its sky position, the nova is located a few degrees from the centre of our galaxy towards the constellation Sagittarius, Nasa said. While astronomers do not know its precise distance, they think the object resides about 20,000 to 30,000 lightyears away in the galaxy's inner region. AROGYA , an exhibition showcasing the strength, efficacy and affordability of the AYUSH systems of medicine which include Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homeopathy

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was inaugurated in Hyderabad on 12 October. The last Arogya fair at Hyderabad was held in November 2005. India has signed several MoUs for bilateral cooperation in the area of traditional medicine and setting up Ayurveda chairs and AYUSH information centres in various countries, such as South Africa, Malaysia and Trinidad & Tobago. AYUSH has been adopted as one of the core strategies under NRHM to augment effective provisioning of healthcare services. AYUSH services are being introduced at various levels, i.e. in the Primary Health Centres, Community Health Centres, Sub-District and District Hospitals across the country. The aim is to utilize the AYUSH doctors in implementation of the national health programmes. The Department of AYUSH has set up a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library in collaboration with Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This initiative, well acknowledged by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), is a patent compatible instrument for patent search and prevention of wrong patenting of products based on traditional knowledge. The Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh inaugurated the International Seminar on Energy Access at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. Prime Minister said in this regard that, the government aims to provide 24x7 electricity to all households in the country and affordable access to electricity in the next 5 years. Government is striving to light up around 20 million rural households with solar home lighting by 2022. Renewable energy technologies provide probably the most sustainable and economic options for energy access. At present renewable power represents about 12 per cent of the total installed generating capacity in India. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, launched under the aegis of Indias National Action Plan on Climate Change aims to install 20 Gigawatt of grid connected solar power by 2022. The links between access to energy and the various Millennium Development Goals are now well established and they are well documented. Meeting these goals that are fundamental to an existence of minimum dignity and well being all over the world requires access to affordable energy. The United Nations General Assembly has designated 2012 as the International year of Sustainable Energy for All and the 2 days seminar is organized in recognition of the importance of energy access for sustainable economic development and supporting achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. About 30 countries are participating of which 26 Ministers in the ministerial level delegation included the Prime Minister of Guiana, Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius from about 26 countries. Drug multinational Sanofi on 9 October, launched the country's first indigenously manufactured reusable insulin pen, specially tailored for diabetics in India. In another instance of reverse innovation, the insulin pen, which has been developed by Sanofi's medical device development team at Frankfurt, and manufactured in Gujarat, will also be exported to south-east Asia, Latin America and Africa. India becomes the first country outside Frankfurt (Germany) where the reusable insulin device will be produced.The reusable insulin injection is competitively priced at Rs 650, 20% cheaper than what the MNC was importing till now. Most MNCs in the country are importing these insulin devices, with Sanofi becoming the first company to manufacture it locally. Soyuz launches second pair of European Galileo satellites: Two navigation satellites from Europes Galileo programme blasted off on 13 October from French Guiana aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. The rocket lifted off from Kourou Spaceport at 1815 GMT and launched the satellites into orbit after three hours, 45 minutes in flight. Galileo is a joint initiative of the European Space Agency and the European Union, which will provide a European version of the US GPS navigation system. The two 700-kilogramme satellites launched on Friday from South America join a first pair of satellites launched by a Soyuz rocket in October 2011. The ESA described the launch as a significant milestone. The four satellites launched on Arianespaces VS03 (on Friday) and (last years) VS01 missions will form an operational miniconstellation that enables a validation of the Galileo system. Deployment of the full Galileo system of 30 satellites will take several years. Scientists have discovered a bacteria that has the ability to withstand incredible amounts of toxicity and can be the key to creating 24-carat gold. Researchers from the Michigan State University have found that the metal-tolerant bacteria 'Cupriavidus metallidurans' can grow on massive concentrations of gold chloride or liquid gold, a toxic chemical compound found in nature. The researchers fed the bacteria unprecedented

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amounts of gold chloride, mimicking the process they believe happens in nature. In about a week, the bacteria transformed the toxins and produced a gold nugget. The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) will host the sixth international conference on Legume Genetics and Genomics (ICLGG) in Hyderabad. The six-day conference will begin on October 2. About 500 delegates from 44 countries are expected to attend the conference to discuss advances in the area of legume genetics and genomics. William D. Dar, Director-General of ICRISAT; Swapan Datta, Deputy Director-General (Crop Science) of ICAR; and Rick Dixon, Plant Biology Division Director and Senior Vice-President of Noble Foundation, the USA, will address the conference. Earlier editions of the conference have been held in the US (twice), France, Australia and Mexico. Scientists have decoded the deafness gene Scientists of UK claim to have discovered a gene responsible for deafness and hearing loss, paving way for new treatments for the syndrome. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have found a new genetic mutation responsible for deafness and hearing loss associated with Usher syndrome type 1.Usher syndrome is a genetic defect that causes deafness, night-blindness and a loss of peripheral vision through the progressive degeneration of the retina, they said."In this study, researchers were able to pinpoint the gene which caused deafness in Usher syndrome type 1 as well as deafness that is not associated with the syndrome through the genetic analysis of 57 humans from Pakistan and Turkey," said Zubair Ahmed, assistant professor of ophthalmology and lead investigator on this study. The findings were published in the journal 'Nature Genetics'. A newly discovered comet may become one of the brightest lights in the sky even outshining the Moon, astronomers including an Indian-origin scientist have claimed. Russian astronomers recently spotted the comet 2012 S1 (ISON) 90 million km from the Earth. It is currently a faint glow streaking between Saturn and Jupiter, but as the Sun's gravity draws the comet closer, dust and ice will be blasted off, giving it a highly-reflective tail. Depending on how big the tail gets, the 3-km wide comet may become more visible for a few months in late 2013 and early 2014. India on 4 October test-fired its nuclear-capable Prithvi-II ballistic missile with a strike range of 350 km from a test range near Balasore as part of a user trial by the Army. The flight test of the surface-to-surface missile was conducted at around 0907 hrs from a mobile launcher from Integrated Test Range's launch complex-III at Chandipur. The state-of-the-art Prithvi is the first ballistic missile developed under the country's prestigious Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMPD) and has the capability to carry 500 kg of both nuclear and conventional warheads with a strike range of 350 km. The missile uses advanced inertial guidance system with maneuvering trajectory. The test-fire of the sophisticated short-range ballistic missile, which has already been inducted into the armed forces, was a user trial by the Army and monitored by scientists of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The sleek missile is handled by the strategic force command (SFC), a defence scientist said, adding the trial was conducted to gauge the effectiveness of the weapon in a real time situation. The whole exercise was aimed at studying the control and guidance system of the missile besides providing training to the Army. The missile is 9 metre-long and one metre in diameter with liquid propulsion twin engine. 'Dhanush', the Naval variant of the missile 'Prithvi', with a range of 350 km, was successfully flight tested from INS Shubhadra, in the Bay of Bengal between Paradeep and Puri coast on 5 October. Integrated Test Range(ITR) sources said the missile was test fired from INS Shhubhadra at about 1110 hrs and the test fire met all mission objectives. All the operations for the launch were carried out by Naval personnel. Australia on 5 October unveiled a colossal radio telescope that will allow astronomers to detect distant galaxies and explore the depths of the universe with unprecedented precision. The Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, at the remote Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Western Australian desert, is made up of 36 antennas, each 12 metres in diameter. The Aus$140 million ($140 million) facility can survey the sky much faster than existing telescopes, with the antennae sensitive to faint radiation from the Milky Way, giving

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it the ability to detect distant galaxies. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisations ASKAP director Brian Boyle said studying the radio waves would tell astronomers unique details about the cosmos. The telescope is part of Australias contribution to the broader $2.5-billion SKA project, jointly hosted with South Africa and New Zealand, which will have far greater capabilities. It will be 50 times more powerful than current radio telescopes and will explore exploding stars, black holes, dark energy and traces of the universes origins some 14 billion years ago.

November
The Minister of New and Renewable Energy, Dr. Farooq Abdullah informed the Lok Sabha on 30 November that the total installed capacity of renewable energy based power in the country is 26,267 MW. A capacity addition of 30,000 MW is targeted from renewable energy during the 12th Plan period. The contribution of renewable energy based power generation is likely to be in the range of 6-8% in the total electricity mix of the country and major part of power generation would continue to come from thermal and hydro power. He further said the Government is implementing the Jawaharlal Nehru Solar Mission (JNNSM), to promote harnessing/utilization of solar energy for power generation and other applications in the country. The Mission envisages installation of 20,000 MW capacities by the year 2022. Solar projects /systems can be installed throughout the country. The places receiving higher direct solar insulation are better suited for installation solar power projects. A target of 10,000 MW has been fixed for solar power projects during the 12th Plan. So far, 1045 MW of solar power projects have been installed in the country. Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on 30 November that, the Mother and Child Protection Card (MCP Card) has been introduced through a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India The MCP card is a tool for informing and educating the mother and family on different aspects of maternal and child care and linking maternal and childcare into a continuum of care through the Integrated Child Development Services(ICDS) scheme of Ministry of Women and Child Development and the National Rural Health Mission(NRHM) of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW). The card also captures some of key services delivered to the mother & baby during Antenatal, Intranatal & Post natal care for ensuring that the minimum package of services are delivered to the beneficiary. MCP card has already been disseminated in the year 2010-11 for implementation by the States. The MCP card helps in timely identification, referral and management of complications during pregnancy, child birth and post natal period. The card also serves as a tool for providing complete immunization to infants and children, early and exclusive breast feeding, complementary feeding and monitoring their growth. Scientists of NASA have discovered a huge mass of ice at Mercurys North Pole on 29 November 2012. These findings come from the Mercury-orbiting probe of NASA, Messenger. Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun. Frozen water is found in the North Pole regions of Mercury which are always found in shadows and mainly affects the craters. It is supposed that the south pole of mercury also has ice but there is no hard and fast data which supports this. Scientist from the Johns Hopkins University opined that if all this is added, the total amount of ice comes out to be 100 billion to 1 trillion metric tons. The only thing that is uncertain is how deep it lies. It is very important to note that presence of ice on Mercury does not necessarily indicate that there is a possibility of life on Mercury. But it is evidence that Mercury might support life, considering the presence of water on its surface. Messenger was launched back in 2004. It is a NASA spacecraft orbiting around Mercury. The observations through NASAs Messenger will continue in the next year as well. Indian Coast Guard Ship H-189, the third of the series of twelve Air Cushion Vehicles (ACVs) designed and built by M/s Griffon Hoverworks Limited (GHL), UK was commissioned on 20 November, at Mumbai by Vice Admiral SK Sinha, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command. The 21 metres long Air Cushion Vehicle with 31 tonnes displacement can achieve a maximum speed of 45 knots. The ACV is capable of undertaking multi-farious tasks such as surveillance, interdiction, search and rescue and

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rendering assistance to small boats/craft in distress at sea. With the commissioning of H-189, the force level of ICG has gone up to 77 ships & boats and with the planned inductions the force level would be doubling by 2018. The Air Cushion Vehicle H-189 will be based at Okha under the Administrative and Operational Control of the Commander Coast Guard Region (North-West). The Indian-American Sunita Williams, 47, set the record by returning to Earth on 20 November 2012 from the International Space Station (ISS) from Russian Soyuz capsule after having spent 4 months in the orbit. She touched the grasslands of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan after living months in the orbit. This was the perfect landing for Williams as well as flight engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko, when they touched down earth in the chilling expanses of Kazakhstan from the Russian Soyuz capsule.Their return has wrapped a 127-days space sojourn since they were launched in space from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on 15 July 2012, including the 125 days aboard ISS. Williams has a total span of 322 days in space during two long-duration missions. Initially, she served at ISS as an Expedition 14/15 flight engineer from 9 December 2006 to 22 June 2007. Sunita Williams also has the record for highest spacewalking time for the female astronauts. She has in all 50 hours and 40 minutes spacewalking time. There are three more Expedition 34 flight engineers- Nasa astronaut Tom Marshburn, Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield scheduled to be launched from Baikonur on 19 December 2012 for 5-months stay. The Minister of State in the Ministry Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions and in the Prime Ministers Office, V. Narayanasamy said to the Parliament on 23 November for a question that, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is designing a satellite GEO Imaging Satellite (GISAT), which will be placed in geostationary orbit of 36,000 km. GISAT will provide near real time pictures of large areas of the country, under cloud free conditions, at frequent intervals. That is, selected sector-wise imaging every 5 minutes and entire Indian landmass every 30 minutes at 50m spatial resolution. GISAT will carry a GEO Imager with multispectral (visible, near infra-red and thermal), multi-resolution (50m to 1.5 km) imaging instruments. It will provide pictures of the area of interest on near real time basis including border areas. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is implementing a Scheme on Development of Solar Cities which provides support for 60 cities to develop as Solar Cities in the country. The Ministry has given sanctions for 41 cities for developing as Solar Cities. Gandhinagar, Nagpur, Chandigarh and Mysore are being developed as Model Solar Cities. The Ministry has approved the Master Plants for the 28 Cities and the project installations have already started in few cities. In pursuance of the programme, a one day National Meet on Solar Cities was inaugurated by Gireesh B Pradhan, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy on 22nd November 2012, at India International Centre, New Delhi. The Secretary asked the Municipal Corporations to enhance the use of renewable energy in their area and save the fossil fuel based energy. They can amend the building bye-laws suitably to promote the solar water heaters, solar SPV rooftop systems, kitchen waste based plants in the various establishments of the city. The aim of this meet was to discuss the Ways Forward after Master Plan for execution of renewable energy/energy efficiency related projects in respective solar cities. The Municipal Commissioners of Thane, Mysore and Shimla actively participated in the event. The Interceptor Missile AAD launched on 23 November, by the Scientists of DRDO from Wheelers Island, Odisha successfully destroyed the incoming Ballistic Missile at an altitude of 15 Kms. The target missile, a modified version of Prithvi, mimicking the enemys ballistic missile, was launched from Launch Complex III, Chandipur. Long Range Radar and MFC Radar located far away could detect the Missile from take-off and tracked it through its entire path. An electronic target with a range of 1500 Kms was launched and the Radars picked up the target missile, tracked the target missile subsequently & launched an electronic interceptor missile. This electronic interceptor missile destroyed the electronic target missile at an altitude of 120 Kms. All the four missiles were tracked by the Radars and all the guidance and launch computers operated in full operational mode for handling multiple targets with multiple interceptor. All the four missiles were in the sky simultaneously and both the interceptions took place near simultaneously. This has proved the capability of DRDO to handle multiple targets with multiple interceptors simultaneously. The complete Radar Systems,

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Communication Networks, Launch Computers, Target update Systems and state of the art Avionics have been completely proven in this Mission. Australia approved an "historic" plan on 20 November, to save an ailing river system vital to the nation's food bowl by returning the equivalent of five Sydney Harbour's worth of water to the network each year. Environment minister Tony Burke said he signed into law the final draft of a water reform plan for the Murray-Darling Basin, a river network sprawling for one million square kilometres (400,000 square miles) across five Australian states. The scheme will see 2,750 gigalitres of water, equivalent to five Sydney Harbours, returned annually as environmental flows to the system , short of the 4,000 gigalitres sought by conservationists but more than wanted by farmers. Burke said the figure could reach 3,200 gigalitres with infrastructure improvements to which the government had committed Aus$1.77 billion (US$1.83 billion). Burke said the system had been existing in a state of drought even before the last El Nino weather event triggered a crippling 10-year dry spell that devastated farming communities across southeastern Australia. Researchers at the Division of Neurology, University of Toronto in third week of November discovered the common gene alternate that can influence the time you wake up every morning as well as the time of the day when you are most likely to die. In the research, the scientists identified that variant of the gene that can virtually affect the whole population. The discovery identifies the variant that can determine when a person will die. The research is said to be surprising and is going to help in planning the medical treatments. This research will also help in analyzing the medical condition of the weak patients.According to the researchers, there is a biological clock within us which can help in regulating various aspects of the human biology as well as behavioral patterns and these include times when a person can perform brilliantly, their preferred sleeping patterns as well as timing of the psychological processes. This biological clock can also influence timings of the medical events such as heart attack and stroke. Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto in the third week of November 2012 discovered a new planet called Super-Jupiter which is thirteen times enormous than Jupiter. This is the largest planet discovered in the solar system.Super-Jupiter orbits around the star known as Kappa Andromedae that is 2.5 times greater than the Suns mass and is situated at 170 light years farther than the Earth. The star is quite young, 30 million years old, while the sun is 5 billion years old.The planet is called Super-Jupiter because it is larger than the Jupiter planet. Kappa Andromedae, which is said to be the host star of this newly discovered planet, is the highest mass star to host a planet that was directly observed. Facebook has launched a new application that connects candidates with job vacancies and recruiters on the world's largest social networking site. The new service claims more than 1.7 million jobs from partners including Monster Worldwide and BranchOut, the company said on its website. The online app follows Facebook's introduction of the Social Jobs Partnership last year with the US Department of Labor and other agencies, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. According to the paper, the new app by Facebook is a direct challenge to LinkedIn, the popular business social network. Micro Blogging site Twitter on 15 November 2012 launched a new service for Email Sharing of Tweets also known by one-to-many text messaging service. The new email service is now going to allow users to share their favorite Tweets via email. The Company is giving users the ability to share tweets beyond their list of followers on the social media site. Now, with the help of new service you can retweet any (Twitter messages) to your Twitter followers, but sometimes if you want to share with another group, like your college roommates or your parents or a friend who isn't yet on Twitter, Mobile Twitter users already had an access to this features that to for some time. With this, Twitter also revealed that it is going to make available photos, videos and news sharing service on it to top of the search feed. Also, Twitter had made an update of applications for iPhone and Android to improve search results and highlight photos, videos and news shared at the service. Australia on 16 November, created the world's largest network of marine reserves, protecting a huge swathe of ocean environment despite claims it will devastate the fishing industry.The announcement will significantly expand the protection of creatures such as the blue whale, green turtle, critically endangered populations of grey nurse sharks, and dugongs.The scale of the plan, which will cover more than 2.3 million square kilometres (890,000 square miles) in six marine regions, was first made public in June.

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The Indian Diabetes Consortium (INDICO), a Pan-India initiative led by CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) with AIIMS as a principal clinical partner, has recently brought to light an entirely novel candidate gene, TMEM163 implicated in Type 2 Diabetes. TMEM163 encodes a probable vesicular transporter in nerve terminals; and the study established a plausible mechanism of action for TMEM163 through impaired insulin secretion. This lends an unprecedented neural angle to diabetes that needs to be explored further and holds immense potential in understanding new pathogenetic mechanisms involved in diabetes causation This effort places India to the list of countries which have the technology and human resource to perform high throughput complex genomic experimentation, at par with leading researchers in the developed world. US researchers from North Carolina State University in the second week of November found that the navel, also known as belly button could harbour the bionetwork of bacteria, which is quite similar in biodiversity to the rainforests of the world. 2368 such species of the bacteria were found out of which 1458 are absolutely new for science. Among the 60 individuals who were studied, merely eight of the species were frequent in around 70 percent people. These eight species are called oligarchs. Nevertheless what remains doubtful is what factors determine about the kind of species found in the people. The project was launched by the researchers in part in order to investigate claims made over recent years about collection of the organisms on human skin which makes the first line of protection against the pathogens. Researchers are aware of the fact that the immune system will not function properly in the absence of these microorganisms. Researchers fabricated an all-new paperthin bullet-proof super material, which has the capability to selfassemble into alternating rubbery as well as glassy layers in the second week of November. The nano-material has the ability to translate into the safety beyond the vests. These technological advancements could be used for protective coating for the jet engine turbine blades as well as the satellites. Scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as well as Rice University created the special textures which had the ability to stop bullets from lab. This special texture known as structured polymer composite can reassemble into rubbery layers and alternating glassy layers. According to the Rice University, while the ballistic tests were performed, on this material at MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, a 9 millimetre bullet could be stopped by the 20 nanometre-thick layers. China plans to launch another manned spacecraft including a woman astronaut on board in June next year for a fortnight-long mission to conduct experiments in space station being built to rival Russian Mir station. Like in the Shenzhou-9 mission, the crew on Shenzhou-10 might include two men astronauts and a woman. They are scheduled to enter the Tiangong-1 space lab module, Niu Hongguang, deputy commander-inchief of China's manned space program, said on the sidelines of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. "They will stay in space for 15 days, operating both automated and manual space dockings with the target orbiter Tiangong-1, conducting scientific experiments in the lab module and giving science lectures to spectators on the Earth," state-run China Radio International quoted him as saying. The selection for the crew will begin in early 2013. Shenzhou-10 will take supplies for Tiangong-1, currently orbiting the earth. Scientist decoded the Reason for Albert Einstein Being a Genius. A study led by Scientist and Evolutionary Anthropologist, Dean Falk of Florida State University revealed in the Month of October that the Physicist Albert Einstein's brain had an "extraordinary" prefrontal cortex - unlike those of most people which may have contributed to his remarkable genius. It was on Einstein's death in 1955 that his brain was removed and photographed from multiple angles with the permission of his family and was sectioned into 240 blocks from which histological slides were prepared. The researchers came to conclusion after studying 14 newly discovered photographs of Einstein's brain, which was preserved for study after his death. The research concludes that the brain was indeed highly unusual in many ways as it was compared to 85 "normal" human brains and, in light of current functional imaging studies, interpreted its unusual features. It was found that the overall size and asymmetrical shape of Einstein's brain were normal but the prefrontal, somatosensory, primary motor, parietal, temporal and occipital cortices were extraordinary. The study was published in the journal Brain and it also published the "roadmap" to Einstein's brain prepared in 1955 by Dr Thomas Harvey to illustrate the locations within his previously whole brain of 240 dissected blocks of tissue, which provides a key to locating the origins within the brain of the newly emerged histological slides.

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Aakash Tablet has made it's rounds in the nation already but its popularity has not been limited to Third World countries alone. This extremely aggressively priced tablet is now on its way to the United Nations to represent the most competitively priced tablet PC from India.Hardeep Singh Puri, the Permanent Representative of India to UN, would present the low cost Aakash tablet in a presentation on November 28 in UN which would also have the honor of the presence of the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon.CEO of Canada-based Datawind, Suneet Singh Tuli, who has won the tender of Indian Government to manufacture and supply the tablets would also be invited for the grand occasion. The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee took the occasion of National Education Day to release and dedicate to the nation, the innovative and modestly-priced Aakash Version 2.0 tablet in New Delhi on 11 November. Unveiled in the presence of Dr. M.M. Pallam Raju, Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Sh Jitin Prasada and Dr Shashi Tharoor, Ministers of State for Human Resource Development, Aakash Version 2.0 is a full-fledged tablet computer. IIT Bombay along with the Ministry of Human Resource Development has created several useful educational applications for the tablet. Teachers and students in the remotest corners of India can join a classroom and benefit from lectures delivered by the best teachers. On National Education Day, which is also the 124th birth anniversary of Independent Indias first Education Minister , Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, rich tributes were paid to the great freedom fighter and eminent educationist. Indian-American Sunita Williams ventured out of the International Space Station (ISS) with a fellow astronaut on 2 November, for a 6.5-hour sojourn, her seventh so far, to fix an ammonia leak in the radiator system. The U.S. space agency NASA ordered the space station to change position to avoid a fragment from a communication satellite that was destroyed in a high-speed collision three years ago. Thrusters on a docked Russian supply ship were fired to move the orbiting lab out of harms way. But a computer error caused the thrusters to malfunction, and the space station did not reach the desired altitude. NASA officials said the space station and its six residents were safe despite their lower-than-intended orbit. Researchers have developed a robot that learns to play ping-pong from humans and improves as it competes against them. Katharina Muelling and colleagues at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany suspended a robotic arm from the ceiling and equipped it with a camera that watches the playing area. The arm was physically guided by Muelling through different shots to return incoming balls. The arm was then left to draw on its training to return balls hit by a human opponent, New Scientist reported.

December
India Successfully Test Fired Air to Air Interceptor Astra Missile India on 21 December 2012 test launched its indigenously developed beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air interceptor missile Astra at the interim test range (ITR) at Chandipur in Odisha. The missile was fired from the launch pad number two of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) run missile testing centre at around 13.30 hours to confirm its reconfigured propulsion, control and guidance systems. The launch was carried out against an electronic target and it destroyed its target - a small pilotless Lakshya aircraft - which was launched from the same base just minutes before the firing of the missile. The missile had already been test-fired from the Chandipur facility several times in the past. The test on 21 December 2012 was just development trial of the missile. After completing all the developmental trials, Astra would be ultimately integrated with combat fighter aircraft Sukhoi-30, MIG-29 and the Light Combat Aircraft. China inaugurated Worlds Longest High-speed Rail Route linking Beijing with Guangzhou China on 26 December 2012 inaugurated world's longest high-speed rail route linking its capital Beijing with the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, covering a distance of 2298 kms. It runs at an average speed of 300 km per hour and it will save nearly 12 hours by bringing down the travel time between Beijing and Guangzhou from more than 20 hours to around eight. The route connects five provinces and has 35 stops in major cities, including Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, Wuhan and Changsha. With the opening of the Beijing-Guangzhou high-

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speed railroad, China now has a network of more than 9300 km of operating high-speed railways. This is the longest high speed network China launched after the Beijing-Shanghai Bullet train in 2010, which brought down travel time to around five hours, covering over 1300 km distance between two of China's largest cities. The new train covers Beijing with China's most industrialised province Guangdong where most developed cities like Guangzhou close to Hong Kong and Maccau are located. The line is expected to be extended to Hong Kong by 2015. India on 21 December 2012 tested successfully its indigenously developed beyond visual range (BVR) airto-air interceptor missile Astra at the interim test range (ITR) at Chandipur in Odisha.The launch was carried out against an electronic target and it destroyed its target - a small pilotless Lakshya aircraft - which was launched from the same base just minutes before the firing of the missile.The missile had already been test-fired from the Chandipur facility several times in the past. The test on 21 December 2012 was just development trial of the missile.After completing all the developmental trials, Astra would be ultimately integrated with combat fighter aircraft Sukhoi-30, MIG-29 and the Light Combat Aircraft. Astra has the capability to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft at a supersonic speed and can be fitted into any fighter aircraft. 3.8 metre long, it is considered as one of the best of its kind in the world as it weighs about 160 kg and can carry explosive loaded conventional warheads up to 15 kg. It is designed to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft at supersonic speeds (1.2 to 1.4 Mach). India on 20 December 2012 successfully test-fired its indigenously developed nuclear capable surface-tosurface Prithvi-II missile with a strike range of 350 km from a test range at Chandipur near Balasore.The missile was test fired from a mobile launcher. The missile launch was conducted as part of operational exercise by the Strategic Force Command (SFC) of the defence services. The Prithvi-II missile, developed by the DRDO, is already inducted into the Indian Armed forces. The last trial of Prithvi-II was successfully carried out from the same base on 4 October 2012.Prithvi is India's first indigenously built ballistic missile and one of the five missile developed under Indias prestigious Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP). It is capable of carrying 500 kg to 1000 kg of warheads and thrusted by liquid propulsion twine engines, uses advanced inertial guidance system with manoeuvring trajectory.The Prithvi-II missile is equipped with advanced high accuracy navigation system and guided by an innovative guidance scheme. India Developed Indigenous Japanese Encephalitis (JE) Vaccine First vaccine of the world was developed against Japanese Encephalitis (JE) using the Indian strain of virus. National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune offered the strain of JE virus to Bharat Biotech. This JE virus was gathered from Kolar in Karnataka. Bharat Biotech had submitted results from final human trials to Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) so that it could have marketing clearance. The vaccine is an injectable one and offers protection rate of more than 90 percent. It can be used for age group of 1-15 years. The application has been sent for marketing approval to DCGI. Clinical data about the same would also be put forward to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for reviewing which would take place in January 2013. The scientific committee of ICMR would provide technical support to government in context of the effectiveness of this JE vaccine, after which decision to introduce this in public health programme would be taken. Country Programme Leader of PATH (the organisation which plays a crucial role in conducting the vaccination of JE in India in 15 states as well as 118 districts since 2006), informed that apart from providing protection against Indian strains of JE, the vaccine would also be effective against Nakayama strain (the strain from Japan) as well as Biken strain (which circulates in the Asian countries). Currently, India imports the stock of JE vaccine from National Biotech Group of China. The arrival of this indigenous Indian vaccination will help in protection of the Indian population against the disease which is largely growing in the country. NASA Scientists have spotted the longest extra-terrestrial river system ever , on Saturns moon Titan and it appears to be a miniature version of Earths Nile river. Reports says that,the river valley on Titan stretches more than 400 kilometres from its headwaters to a large sea. In comparison, the Nile river on Earth stretches about 6,700 kilometres. Images by NASAs Cassini mission have revealed for the first time a river system this vast and in such high resolution anywhere other than Earth. Titan is known to have vast seas the only other body in the solar system, apart from Earth, to possess a cycle of liquids on its surface. However, the thick Titan atmosphere is a frigid one, meaning liquid water could not possibly flow. The liquids on Titan are

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therefore composed of hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. The radar image taken on September 26, 2012 shows Titans north polar region, where the river valley flows into Kraken Mare, a sea that is, in terms of size, between the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea on Earth. India on 12 December 2012 successfully test-fired its indigenously developed nuclear capable Agni-I ballistic missile with a strike range of 700 km from a test range off Odisha coast. The missile was test-fired under a practice trial by the Strategic Force Command of the Indian Army from a mobile launcher on 12 December 2012 from Wheeler Island, about 100 km from Balasore,Orissa .Agni- I is a single-stage missile which is powered by solid propellants and has a specialised navigation system which ensures that it reaches the target with a high degree of accuracy and precision. It Weighs around 12 tonnes and is 15-metre-long which is capable of carrying payloads up to 1000 kg.Agni-I has been developed by advanced systems laboratory, the premier missile development laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in collaboration with Defence Research Development Laboratory and Research Centre Imarat and integrated by Bharat Dynamics Limited, Hyderabad. The last trial of the Agni-I missile was successfully carried out on 13 July 2012 from the same test range off Odisha Coast. Scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed a prototype laser device capable of detecting tiny traces of explosive vapour, an invention that has the potential to put bomb sniffer dogs out of a job.The prototype -- a pulsed, quantum laser-based, cavity ring-down spectrometer -- is being tested at the US government's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.The laser machine is "about 100 times more sensitive and 100 times faster than any other detection device," Associate Professor Charles Harb from UNSW's School of Engineering and Information Technology said in an interview with UNSW's quarterly publication Uniken.The laser device could sniff bags travelling along a conveyor belt and instantly alert security personnel if it detects explosive vapours from a passing object, such as a suitcase.The device could replace intrusive airport security checks such as pat downs and full body scans and bomb sniffer dogs, UNSW said. Scientists expected that it would take two years of testing and calibrating the prototype -- to detect "unique signatures of other substances and different types of explosives" -- before it's ready for commercial use.Harb and his team at UNSW began working on the device in 2005 when they were asked by the Australian Federal Police to create a machine that could assist with forensic investigations and detect explosive residue at crime scene.Harb and his team, Scientia Professor Ian Peterson and research associates Dr Toby Boyson and Dr Abhijit Kallapur, developed the device after receiving a grant from the Australian Research Council in 2005. Indian Coast Guard Ship H-188, the second in the series of twelve Air Cushion Vehicles (ACVs) designed and built by M/s Griffon Hoverworks Limited (GHL), UK was commissioned by Deputy Director General of Coast Guard, Inspector General Rajendra Singh at Haldia in West Bengal on 12 december. The 21 metres long Air Cushion Vehicle with 31 tonnes displacement can achieve a maximum speed of 45 knots. The ACV is capable of undertaking multifarious tasks such as surveillance, interdiction, search and rescue and rendering assistance to small boats/craft in distress at sea. With the commissioning of H-188, the force level of ICG has gone up to 77 ships & boats and with the planned inductions the force level would be doubling by 2018. The Air Cushion Vehicle H-188 will be based at Haldia under the Administrative and Operational Control of the Commander Coast Guard Region (North-East). NASA plans to send a new rover to Mars in 2020 as it prepares for a manned mission to the Red Planet.The announcement came on 4 deceme, a day after NASA released the results of the first soil tested by the Curiosity rover, which found traces of some of the compounds like water and oxygen that are necessary for life. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement that the administration of President Barack Obama is committed to a robust Mars exploration program. With an aim to equip the Airmen with requisite skill sets enabling them to seek sustainable and befitting career prospects in civil industry sector post retirement, Indian Air Force (IAF) in collaboration with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has embarked on a project of setting up a Vocational Training Centre (VTC) named Happy Landings. This project is one of the many HR initiatives undertaken by the

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IAF to ensure the well being of Air Warriors and address their professional and personal aspirations. Towards this, a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between Air Vice Marshal Amit Aneja AVSM VM VSM, Asst Chief of Air Staff (Training), IAF and Ms. Supriya Banerji, Deputy Director General, CII on 07 December 2012 at Air Headquarters, New Delhi. Air Marshal Anil Chopra AVSM VM VSM, Air Officer-inCharge Personnel, Indian Air Force presided over the MoU Signing ceremony which was also attended by delegates from CII as well as the industry. According to the MoU, CII will train Airmen due for retirement in the near future, focusing on bridging the gap between existing skills possessed by the airmen and those required by the civil industry and also facilitate suitable placements for the personnel in civil sector. A drone that can put out a country's electronics system From sci-fi to reality! A new missile which uses electromagnetic pulses to target buildings can permanently shut down a country's electronics without harming people, Boeing has claimed. The US aircraft manufacturer claims to have successfully tested the weapon on a one-hour flight during which it knocked out the computers of an entire military compound in the Utah desert. It's thought the missile could penetrate the bunkers and caves believed to be hiding Iran's alleged nuclear facilities, the 'Daily Mail' reported. However, experts have warned that the technology could be used to bring Western cities to their knees if it falls in the wrong hands. During Boeing's experiment, the missile flew low over the Utah Test and Training Range, discharging electromagnetic pulses on to seven targets, permanently shutting down their electronics. Boeing said that the test was so successful that even the camera recording it was disabled. Codenamed the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), it is the first time a missile with electromagnetic pulse capability has been tested. Boeing declined to release a film of the test, citing security reasons, but instead issued an artist's impression of it on video.A stealth aircraft in the clip deploys a missile that emits radio waves from its undercarriage which knock out the computer systems inside the buildings below, the report said. The company also released a real film showing a row of computers that can be seen shutting down when the electromagnetic pulse is switched on.Experts believe the missile is equipped with an electromagnetic pulse cannon, which uses a super-powerful microwave oven to generate a concentrated beam of energy which causes voltage surges in electronic equipment, rendering them useless before surge protectors have the chance to react. The Minister of New and Renewable Energy, Dr. Farooq Abdullah informed the Lok Sabha on 30 November that the total installed capacity of renewable energy based power in the country is 26,267 MW. A capacity addition of 30,000 MW is targeted from renewable energy during the 12th Plan period. The contribution of renewable energy based power generation is likely to be in the range of 6-8% in the total electricity mix of the country and major part of power generation would continue to come from thermal and hydro power. He further said the Government is implementing the Jawaharlal Nehru Solar Mission (JNNSM), to promote harnessing/utilization of solar energy for power generation and other applications in the country. The Mission envisages installation of 20,000 MW capacities by the year 2022. Solar projects /systems can be installed throughout the country. The places receiving higher direct solar insulation are better suited for installation solar power projects. A target of 10,000 MW has been fixed for solar power projects during the 12th Plan. So far, 1045 MW of solar power projects have been installed in the country. Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on 30 November that, the Mother and Child Protection Card (MCP Card) has been introduced through a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India The MCP card is a tool for informing and educating the mother and family on different aspects of maternal and child care and linking maternal and childcare into a continuum of care through the Integrated Child Development Services(ICDS) scheme of Ministry of Women and Child Development and the National Rural Health Mission(NRHM) of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW). The card also captures some of key services delivered to the mother & baby during Antenatal, Intranatal & Post natal care for ensuring that the minimum package of services are delivered to the beneficiary. MCP card has already been disseminated in the year 2010-11 for implementation by the States. The MCP card helps in timely identification, referral and management of complications during pregnancy, child birth and post natal period. The card also serves as a tool for providing complete immunization to infants and children, early and exclusive breast feeding, complementary feeding and monitoring their growth.

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Scientists of NASA have discovered a huge mass of ice at Mercurys North Pole on 29 November 2012. These findings come from the Mercury-orbiting probe of NASA, Messenger. Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun. Frozen water is found in the North Pole regions of Mercury which are always found in shadows and mainly affects the craters. It is supposed that the south pole of mercury also has ice but there is no hard and fast data which supports this. Scientist from the Johns Hopkins University opined that if all this is added, the total amount of ice comes out to be 100 billion to 1 trillion metric tons. The only thing that is uncertain is how deep it lies. It is very important to note that presence of ice on Mercury does not necessarily indicate that there is a possibility of life on Mercury. But it is evidence that Mercury might support life, considering the presence of water on its surface. Messenger was launched back in 2004. It is a NASA spacecraft orbiting around Mercury. The observations through NASAs Messenger will continue in the next year as well. IIT develops software to detect Diabetic Retinopathy IIT Kharagpur has developed software that will be beneficial in detecting Diabetic Retinopathy, a disease that can lead to loss of eye-sight, in a patient in the early stages. The disease, whose root cause is diabetes, can be detected as well as categorised by just scanning the retina and taking multiple frames of it, Chandan Chakrabarty of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur said in Kolkata on 28 November. "The software uses data analytics capabilities to automatically compare and analyse retina images of the patient. It can not only tell if the patient has Diabetic Retinopathy but also provides risk categorisation ranging from low to medium and high," he said. Called the "Computer Vision Approach to Diabetic Retinopathy Screening", the project is being funded by IBM India. Started in March, 2011, the project is at present being used on a pilot basis at Susrut Eye Foundation and Research Centre (SEFRC)."The solution is being used in our clinic and the results are very encouraging. In fact, the accuracy level is as high as 92 per cent," said Anirudh Maity of SEFRC. Chakrabarty said that the project would take another year to be commercially viable. "It should take a year to be ready completely. We are using the results generated by the prototype at the SEFRC to enhance its operations. Once operational, the solution will help prevent and cure DR which has been increasingly spreading across the country," he pointed out. Sea level rising 60 percent faster than estimated Satellite measurements show the sea level is actually rising at a rate of 3.2 mm a year compared to the estimate of two mm a year in the IPCC report. Results were obtained by taking averages from the five available global land and ocean temperature series, the journal Environmental Research Letters reports. The study was led by Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. It included researchers from Tempo Analytics, US, and Laboratoire d'Etudes en Geophysique et Oceanographie Spatiales, France The researchers believe the findings are important for keeping a track of how well past projections match the accumulating observational data."This study shows once again that the IPCC is far from alarmist. But in fact has underestimated the problem of climate change. That applies not just for sea level rise, but also to extreme events and the Arctic seaice loss," Rahmstorf said. Biggest Ever Black Hole Discovered in the Small Galaxy NGC 1277 Astronomers claimed that they have discovered the biggest ever black hole in the small galaxy called NGC 1277 which is situated around 250 million light years away from our planet. This galaxy constitutes the mass equal to 17 billion suns. The biggest ever black hole sits in the NGC 1277 galaxy in Perseus constellation. This gigantic black hole forms around 14 percent of the mass of host galaxy. When compared with the 0.1 per cent of the usual black hole, this massive black hole adds the mass which is equal to 17 billion suns. The NGC 1277 galaxy as well as many others would alter the theories about how these galaxies and black holes evolve. This galaxy is merely 10 percent of the mass as well as size of the Milky Way, the galaxy in which Earth is situated. Even though the size of NGC 1277 galaxy is small, but the gigantic black hole which sits in the galaxy is 11 times wider as the orbit of Neptune around the Sun. A team member of the discovery at The University of Texas at Austin claimed that the galaxy is almost the black hole and possibly this was the first object in the genre of galaxy-black hole systems. Apart from this, the gigantic black holes were also observed in huge blobby galaxies known as ellipticals.

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Awards 2012
January
The Padma awards for the year 2012 were announced on the eve of Indias 63rd Republic Day. The Awards comprises 5 Padma Vibhushan, 27 Padma Bhushan and 77 Padma Shri Awards. Padma Vibhushan 1. Shri K G Subramanyan - Art-Painting & Sculpture - West Bengal 2. Late Shri Mario De Miranda - Art-Cartoonist - Goa 3. Late (Dr.)Bhupen Hazarika - Art- Vocal Music - Assam 4. Dr. Kantilal Hastimal Sancheti - Medicine - Orthopedics - Maharashtra 5. Shri T V Rajeswar - Civil Service - Delhi

Padma Bhushan

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6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. Smt. Shabana Azmi - Art - Cinema - Maharashtra Shri Khaled Choudhury - Art - Theatre - West Bengal Shri Jatin Das - Art - Painting - Delhi Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta - Art - Instrumental Music - Sarod - West Bengal Shri Dharmendra Singh Deol alias Dharmendra - Art - Cinema - Maharashtra Dr. Trippunithwra Viswanathan Gopalkrishnan - Art - Classical vocal and instrumental music - Tamil Nadu Ms. Mira Nair - Art - Cinema - Delhi Shri M.S. Gopalakrishnan - Art - Instrumental Music-Violin - Tamil Nadu Shri Anish Kapoor - Art - Sculpture - UK* Shri Satya Narayan Goenka - Social Work - Maharashtra Dr. (Judge) Patibandla Chandrasekhar Rao - Public Affairs - Germany* Shri George Yong-Boon Yeo - Public Affairs - Singapore* Prof. Shashikumar Chitre - Science and Engineering - Maharashtra Dr. M S Raghunathan - Science and Engineering - Maharashtra Shri Subbiah Murugappa Vellayan - Trade and Industry - Tamil Nadu Shri Balasubramanian Muthuraman - Trade and Industry - Maharashtra Dr. Suresh H. Advani - Medicine - Oncology - Maharashtra Dr. Noshir H Wadia - Medicine-Neurology - Maharashtra Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty - Medicine-Cardiology - Karnataka Prof. (Dr.) Shantaram Balwant Mujumdar - Literature and Education - Maharashtra Prof. Vidya Dehejia - Literature and Education - USA* Prof. Arvind Panagariya - Literature and Education - USA* Dr. Jose Pereira - Literature and Education - USA* Dr. Homi K. Bhabha - Literature and Education - UK * Shri N Vittal - Civil Service - Kerala Shri Mata Prasad - Civil Service - Uttar Pradesh Shri Ronen Sen - Civil Service - West Bengal

Padma Shri awardees are 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. Shri Vanraj Bhatia - Art - Music - Maharashtra Shri Zia Fariduddin Dagar - Art - Music - vocal - Maharashtra Smt. Nameirakpam Ibemni Devi - Art - Music- Khongjom Parba - Manipur Shri Ramachandra Subraya Hegde Chittani - Art - Yakshagana dance drama - Karnataka Shri Moti Lal Kemmu - Art - Playwright - Jammu and Kashmir Shri Shahid Parvez Khan - Art - Instrumental Music-Sitar - Maharashtra Shri Mohan Lal Kumhar - Art - Terracotta - Rajasthan Shri Sakar Khan Manganiar - Art - Rajasthani Folk Music - Rajasthan Smt. Joy Michael - Art - Theatre - Delhi Dr. Minati Mishra - Art - Indian Classical Dance-Odissi. - Orissa Shri Natesan Muthuswamy - Art - Theatre. - Tamil Nadu Smt. R. Nagarathnamma - Art - Theatre - Karnataka Shri Kalamandalm Sivan Nambootiri - Art - Indian Classical Dance- Kutiyattam - Kerala Smt. Yamunabai Waikar - Art - Indian Folk Music-Lavani. - Maharashtra Shri Satish Alekar - Art - Playwright - Maharashtra Pandit Gopal Prasad Dubey - Art - Chhau dance and choreography - Jharkhand Shri Ramakant Gundecha and Shri Umakant Gundecha# - Art - Indian Classical Music- Vocal Madhya Pradesh Shri Anup Jalota - Art-Indian Classical Music- Vocal - Maharashtra Shri Soman Nair Priyadarsan - Art - Cinema- Direction - Kerala Shri Sunil Janah - Art-Photography - Assam Ms. Laila Tyebji - Art-Handicrafts - Delhi Shri Vijay Sharma - Art-Painting - Himachal Pradesh Smt. Shamshad Begum - Social Work - Chattisgarh

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56. Smt. Reeta Devi - Social Work - Delhi 57. Dr. P.K. Gopal - Social Work - Tamil Nadu 58. Smt. Phoolbasan Bai Yadav - Social Work - Chattisgarh 59. Dr. G. Muniratnam - Social Work - Andhra Pradesh 60. Shri Niranjan Pranshankar Pandya - Social Work - Maharashtra 61. Dr. Uma Tuli - Social Work - Delhi 62. Shri Sat Paul Varma - Social Work - Jammu and Kashmir 63. Smt.Binny Yanga - Social Work - Arunachal Pradesh 64. Shri Yezdi Hirji Malegam - Public Affairs - Maharashtra 65. Shri Pravin H. Parekh - Public Affairs - Delhi 66. Dr. V. Adimurthy - Science and Engineering - Kerala 67. Dr. Krishna Lal Chadha - Science and Engineering - Agriculture - Delhi 68. Prof. Virander Singh Chauhan - Science and Engineering - Delhi 69. Prof. Rameshwar Nath Koul Bamezai - Science and Engineering - Jammu and Kashmir 70. Dr. Vijaypal Singh - Science and Engineering - Agricultural Research - Uttar Pradesh 71. Dr. Lokesh Kumar Singhal - Science and Engineering - Punjab 72. Dr. Yagnaswami Sundara Rajan - Science and Engineering - Karnataka 73. Prof. Jagadish Shukla - Science and Engineering - USA* 74. Ms. Priya Paul - Trade and Industry - Delhi 75. Shri Shoji Shiba - Trade and Industry - Japan* 76. Shri Gopinath Pillai - Trade and Industry - Singapore* 77. Shri Arun Hastimal Firodia - Trade and Industry - Maharashtra 78. Dr. Swati A. Piramal - Trade and Industry - Maharashtra 79. Prof. Mahdi Hasan - Medicine-Anatomy - Uttar Pradesh 80. Dr. Viswanathan Mohan - Medicine - Diabetology - Tamil Nadu 81. Dr. J. Hareendran Nair - Medicine - Ayurveda - Kerala 82. Dr. Vallalarpuram Sennimalai Natarajan - Medicine - Geriatrics - Tamil Nadu 83. Dr. Jitendra Kumar Singh - Medicine - Oncology - Bihar 84. Dr. Shrinivas S. Vaishya - Medicine-Healthcare - Daman and Diu 85. Dr. Nitya Anand - Medicine - Drugs Research - Uttar Pradesh 86. Late Dr. Jugal Kishore - Medicine - Homoeopathy - Delhi * 87. Dr. Mukesh Batra - Medicine-Homeopathy - Maharashtra 88. Dr. Eberhard Fischer - Literature and Education - Switzerland* 89. Shri Kedar Gurung - Literature and Education - Sikkim 90. Shri Surjit Singh Patar - Literature and Education - Poetry - Punjab 91. Shri Vijay Dutt Shridhar - Literature and Education - Journalism - Madhya Pradesh 92. Shri Irwin Allan Sealy - Literature and Education - Uttarakhand 93. Ms. Geeta Dharmarajan - Literature and Education - Delhi 94. Prof. Sachchidanand Sahai - Literature and Education - Haryana 95. Smt. Pepita Seth - Literature and Education - Kerala 96. Dr. Ralte L. Thanmawia - Literature and Education - Mizoram 97. Shri Ajeet Bajaj - Sports - Skiing - Delhi 98. Smt. Jhulan Goswami - Sports - Women's Cricket - West Bengal 99. Shri Zafar Iqbal - Sports-Hockey - Uttar Pradesh 100. Shri Devendra Jhajrija - Sports - Athletics- Paralympics - Rajasthan 101. Shri Limba Ram - Sports - Archery - Rajasthan 102. Shri Syed Mohammed Arif - Sports - Badminton - Andhra Pradesh 103. Prof. Ravi Chaturvedi - Sports- Commentary - Delhi 104. Shri Prabhakar Vaidya - Sports-Physical Education - Maharashtra 105. Shri T. Venkatapathi Reddiar - Others-Horticulture - Puducherry 106. Dr. K. (Kota) Ullas Karanth - Others-Wildlife Conservation and Environment Protection - Karnataka 107. Shri K Paddayya - Others-Archaeology - Maharashtra 108. Shri Swapan Guha - Others-Ceramics - Rajasthan 109. Dr. Kartikeya V. Sarabhai - Others - Environmental Education - Gujarat President of India Pratibha Patil conferred the Ashoka Chakra on Lt. Navdeep Singh (posthumous) on the occasion of the 63rd Republic Day Parade 2012 in New Delhi. He was awarded the Ashoka Chakra for single-

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handedly eliminating four infiltrating terrorists on 20 August 20 2011.He was Ghatak Platoon Commander of 15 Maratha Light Infantry deployed in the High Altitude Area near the Line of Control. President also approved the award of three Kirti Chakra. For Lt. Col. Kamaldeep Singh , Capt. Ashutosh Kumar and Lt. Sushil Khajuria. Bollywood music director Rajesh Roshan was elected for the Latamangeshkar award-2011 which was sponsored by government of Madhya Pradesh. 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards were held in Beverly Hills, California on 15 January 15 2012. The Artist, the French movie , directed by Michel Hazanavicius won three awards. Some of the winners of the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards is as follows. Best Picture: Drama- The Descendants, Best Actor: Drama- George Clooney (The Descendants), Best Actress: Drama- Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Best Director- Martin Scorsese(Hugo), BestForeign Language Film- A Separation (Iran), Best Animated Film- The Adventures of Tintin. Ramnath Goenka Awards for Excellence in Journalism 2012 function was held in New Delhi on 16 January 2012. Vice President of India, Hamid ansari gave away the awards. The Pioneers J Gopikrishnan and CNBCTV18s Udayan Mukherjee were adjudged Journalist of the Year at the 5th Ramnath Goenka Awards for Excellence in Journalism.CNN-IBN bagged three prestigious awards in various categories. The awards will cover the entire range of Indian media, Print & Broadcast, in English & Indian languages.The Ramnath Goenka foundation was set up in 1992 in the memory of late Ramnath Goenka, founder of The Indian Express, to encourage and propagate high-quality, objective journalism. Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, conferred an honorary Doctor of Literature (honoris causa) of Tripura University on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Secretary to the Ministry of culture, India Jawahar sirkar was awarded the British Museum Award .It was given for his reforms in the field of Indian museum. Senior Indian diplomat D. Bala Venkatesh Varma a key member of the negotiating team that saw the IndoU.S. nuclear deal, was given the first S.K. Singh award. Award was given for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen India's position in the global nuclear order .Award was given by UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi at a high-profile function in New delhi. The award for excellence in the Indian Foreign Service is named after the former foreign secretary and Governor, Shailendra Kumar Singh. Mr. Varma was selected as the first recipient of the prestigious award. Tibetan spiritual leader, Dalai Lama was presented the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation on 4 January 2011. The granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, Ila Gandhi, presented this award,which was instituted in 2003.The Gandhi Development Trust that gives the award is chaired by Ila Gandhi. Sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan was presented the Mallikarjun Mansur award which was instituted by the Karnataka government on 3 January 2012.

February
The National Tourism Awards 2010-11 were conferred by the President of India Pratibha Patil on 29 February 2012 in New Delhi. Madhya Pradesh received the National Tourism Award for its efforts in developing tourism related infrastructure and programmes in the state. North-Eastern state Sikkim bagged the award for the best among Northeast states and J&K category. It also got the new award under Campaign Clean India. Best heritage city award was bagged by HYDERABAD. Hyderabad airport received the award in the Best Airport award category. New Delhi railway station named the most tourist friendly railway station.

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The 84th Oscar Awards ceremony for 2011 took place at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Hollywood, California on 26 February 2012. The Artist' directed by Michel Hazanavicius won five Oscars including those for Best Picture, Director and Actor. The Artist is a silent French romantic comedy drama directed by Michel Hazanavicius, starring Jean Dujardin. Pakistan got its first Oscar as Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy received the Oscar for Saving face (Best documentary -short subject) along with Daniel Junge. Some of the awards in different categories areo Best Picture - The Artist o Best Actor - Jean Dujardin for The Artist o Best Actress - Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady o Best Director - Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist o Best Supporting Actor - Christopher Plummer for Beginners o Best Supporting Actress - Octavia Spencer for The Help o Best Adapted Screenplay - The Descendants ( Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash) o Best Original Screenplay - Midnight in Paris ( Woody Allen) o Best Animated feature film - Rango o Best foreign language film - A Separation ( Iran) o Best documentary (feature) - Undefeated o Best art direction - Hugo o Best visual effects - Hugo (Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning)

The Dr. Y Nayudamma Memorial Award for 2011 will be conferred on Rajendra Singh Pawar, chairman of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) for his contribution to IT industry. The award will be presented to Pawar at a function at Tenali, A.P the native town of Dr. Nayudamma. He will deliver the 20th Dr. Nayudamma Memorial Lecture on IT for national development at the function. The Public Relations Council of India (PRCI) recently gave Shabnam Asthana the prestigious national public relations Hall of Fame award for her contributions in the field of public relations. The award was presented to her at the Sixth Global PR Conclave 2012 in Mumbai. The former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, and the former Lokayukta of Karnataka, Justice N. Santosh Hegde, have been selected for the S.R. Jindal Prize for their outstanding contributions in their fields. While Mr. Kalam gets the award for his contributions in science and technology, Justice N. Santosh Hegde will be bestowed the prize for his exemplary service in social development. The prize carries a cash of Rs. 1 crore. The Sitaram Jindal Foundation, which has instituted the award, will felicitate 25 others also. Veteran Hindi film music composer Rajesh Roshan was honoured with the Lata Manageshkar award 201011 by the Madhya Pradesh government on 8 February 2012. Previously this award was awarded to the legends like late Jagjit Singh, Asha Bhonsle and Naushad. The 54th Annual Grammy Awards were held on 12 February 2012, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The British female singer, Adele won six golden gramophones for her Album, 21.The other winners are -Album of the Year: 21 Adele; Record of the Year: Rolling in the Deep by Adele ;Song of the Year:Rolling in the Deep by Adele ;Best New Artist: Bon Iver The sixty-fifth annual BAFTA(British Academy Film) awards, was held at the Royal Opera House in London 12 February 2012.Black and white silent movie, The Artist won six awards, including best film, best actor and best director.Best Actress was awarded to Meryl Streep for her amazing acting as former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher in the Iron Lady. Some of the other winners are-Best Picture: The Artist; Best Actor: Jean Dujardin The Artist Best Actress: Meryl Streep The Iron Lady;Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius The Artist Best Film not in the English language: The Skin I Live In (Spanish); Academy fellowship: Martin Scorsese

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Noted Hindi writer Professor Ramdarash Mishra was selected for the 21st Vyas Samman award for his poetry collection Aam Ke Patte published in 2004. India's Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen was awarded the 2011 US National Humanities Medal. He is the first Indian to be honored with the medal that is typically awarded to US nationals. The 2012 Laureus Sports Awards were given in London on 6 Febreaury. The winners were chosen by 47 sports stars who make up the Laureus sports academy. The winners were- Sportsman of the Year: Novak Djokovic; Sportswoman of the Year: Vivian Cheruiyot; Team of the Year: FC Barcelona; Breakthrough of the Year: Rory McIlroy; Comeback Award: Darren Clarke; Disability Award: Oscar Pistorius; Action Sportsperson of the Year: Kelly Slater; Lifetime Achievement Award: Bobby Charlton; Sport for Good Award: Rai. Indian Union Minister for Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge was presented with Pride of India award by the Indian-American community in Washington on 1 February 2012. He was honoured with the award for his over four decades of public service.The award was presented jointly by the Indian American Friendship Council (IAFC) and India Association of North Texas (IANT). Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan received a Green Globe for Outstanding Efforts by a Celebrity Award for his efforts toward a greener future at the fourth edition of the Panasonic Green Globe Foundation Awards on 2 february 2012. He received the award from Hollywood actor and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger.During his visit Schwarzenegger also attended the day-long Delhi Sustainable Development Summit presided over by the Indian Prime Minister. Veteran environmental filmmaker Mike Pandey was honoured with the prestigious V. Shantaram Life Time Achievement Award at the Mumbai International Film Festival 2012 on 3 February 2012. He received the award for his documentaries on wildlife conservation and environment. Shri Khamliana from Mizoram and Md. Abdul Bari from Odisha have been jointly selected for the National Communal Harmony Award 2011. The Jury headed by the Vice President Shri Hamid Ansari made the selection. National Communal Harmony Awards were instituted in 1996 by the National Foundation for Communal Harmony, an autonomous organization set up bt the Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs. The Award in the individual category carries a citation and a cash award of Rupees two lakhs.

March
Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, Dalai Lama was selected for the Templeton Prize, 2012. The Buddhist leader who lives in exile in India had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for advocating nonviolent liberation for Tibet. The Dalai Lama is founder of the Mind & Life Institute for Research on Science and Buddhism. Tamil writer A.A. Manavalan is bestowed with the 21st Saraswati Samman for his work Irama Kathaiyum Iramayakalum (Ramakatha and Ramayanas) published in 2005. The K K Birla Foundation announced the award on 22 March 2012. Legendary Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee was on 21 March 2012 selected for India's highest film honour the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2012. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India`s highest award in film industry which is given for lifetime achievement in Indian cinema by the Central government. Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on 11 march, announced a national award for sanitation and water in the name of Maharashtrian saint Sant Gadge Baba. The award was constituted in the name of the Saint who strove to serve the society through cleanliness. The award is to honour villages, individuals or organisations working in the field of sanitation and drinking water. Maharashtra's Sant Gadge Baba Swachta Abhiyan (cleanliness scheme) encourages villages to be open defecation-free. Well performing villages are awarded through the Nirmal Gram Yojana. The 59th National Film Awards were announced in New Delhi on 7 March 2012. The Chairperson of the jury, Rohini Hattangady, announced the awards.

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