INCOIS TO ISSUE INDIAN OCEAN CURRENT FORECASTS

 In a first initiative of its kind in the country, scientists would start issuing
forecasts for surface currents of the Indian Ocean from next year.The
government has identified the Hyderabad-based Indian National Centre for
Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), which runs the tsunami warning system,
for the purpose. A knowledge of surface ocean currents is essential for shipping,
fishery and related sectors, and accurate information could help reduce fuel
costs.
 A high computing system is being installed at INCOIS to enable scientists to
process data from various earth observation systems, INCOIS would start issuing
ocean current forecasts for the entire Indian Ocean next year.

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THE SPACE APPLICATIONS CENTRE (SAC)
 The Space Applications Centre (SAC) is an institution of research in
Ahmedabad, India under the aegis of the Indian Space Research Organization
(ISRO). It is one of the major centres of ISRO that is engaged in the research,
development and demonstration of applications of space technology in the field
of telecommunications, remote sensing, meteorology and satellite navigation
(Sat Nav). This includes research and development of onboard systems, ground
systems and end user equipment hardware and software.
 Some of the achievements of the Space Applications Centre include
development of communication and meteorological payloads for INSAT satellites,
optical and microwave payloads for IRS satellites. SAC provides its infrastructure
to conduct training courses to the students of the Center for Space Science
and Technology Education in Asia and The Pacific (CSSTEAP).
 SAC has three campuses, two of which are located at Ahmedabad and one at
Delhi.

CELESTIAL TREAT FOR STAR-GAZERS

 A celestial treat is in store for star-gazers who can look forward to fireworks in
the skies in the form of Perseids meteor shower between August 8 and 14.
Perseids, a prolific meteor shower is associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, said
Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE)
Director C.B. Devgun.

METEOROID
A meteoroid is a sand- to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System.
The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth's (or another body's)
atmosphere is called a meteor. If a meteoroid reaches the ground, it is then
called a meteorite. Many meteors are part of a meteor shower. The root word
meteor comes from the Greek meteōros, meaning "high in the air." It is also
commonly although erroneously called a shooting star.

 The earth is expected to pass through a denser-than-usual filament of dust

from Perseid’s parent comet Swift-Tuttle.Perseids, better known as earth gazers
at its peak, is visible from mid-July each year, with the greatest activity in the
second week of August. During the peak period, the rate of meteors reaches 60
or more per hour.The meteor is named Perseids because the point it appears to
come from, lies in the constellation Perseus.
 The meteors can be seen all across the sky, but because of the path of Swift-
Tuttle’s orbit, Perseids is primarily visible in the northern hemisphere.
 Astronomers have been observing Perseid meteor shower for about last 2,000
years, with the first known information coming from the Far East, Mr. Devgun
said. In early medieval Europe, the Perseids came to be known as the “tears of
St. Lawrence.”
 In 1839, Eduard Heis was the first observer to take a meteor count and
discovered the Perseids had a maximum rate of around 160 per hour.Meteors are
also called “shooting stars,” startling streaks of light that suddenly appear in the
sky when a dust particle from the outer space evaporates high in the earth’s
atmosphere.
 “To watch the meteor shower go to an area where pollution is at its minimum.
The best time would be around midnight, by then Perseus constellation will be
fairly high above the horizon. The hour or two before dawn will be best of all.

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ISRO LAUNCHED BHUVAN - A WEB BASED 3D MAPPING TOOL
 ‘Bhuvan,’ the new web-based 3D mapping tool uses images taken over a year
ago by ISRO’s seven remote sensing satellites, including Cartosat-1 and
Cartosat-2. The satellites can capture images of objects as small as a car on a
road. This would provide a sharper picture of Indian terrain barring sensitive
locations such as military and nuclear installations.

 The degree of resolution showcased is based on the level of popularity of a

place or an area. Most of the terrain is covered up to a resolution of at least six
metres. The least spatial resolution is 55 metres.
 Like Google Earth, the geo-portal, http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in, allows users to
view cities and other places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an
oblique angle, with different perspectives. The site, among other things, offers
tools to measure horizontal, vertical and aerial distances.

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STEM CELLS
Stem cells are cells found in most, if not all, multi-cellular organisms. They are
characterized by the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and
differentiating into a diverse range of specialized cell types. Till in the 1960s.The
two broad types of mammalian stem cells are: embryonic stem cells that are
isolated from the inner cell mass of blastocysts, and adult stem cells that are
found in adult tissues. In a developing embryo, stem cells can differentiate into
all of the specialized embryonic tissues. In adult organisms, stem cells and
progenitor cells act as a repair system for the body, replenishing specialized
cells, but also maintain the normal turnover of regenerative organs, such as
blood, skin or intestinal tissues.

ASTRONAUTICAL SOCIETY OF INDIA

The Astronautical Society of India (ASI) was set up in 1990 to foster the
development of astronautics in the country. ASI is engaged in the dissemination
of technical and other information related to astronautics by conducting
technical meetings, bringing out technical publications and organising
exhibitions. The society is also playing an active role to promote the interests of
other developing countries in the field of astronautics through the International
Astronautical Federation, Paris, in which the ASI is a voting member.

WIKIPEDIA
 Wikipedia web-based and collaborative multilingual encyclopedia project
supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
 Wikipedia's 13 million articles (3 million in English) have been written
collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can
be edited by anyone who can access the Wikipedia website.

 Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it is currently the

largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.
 within the next week or so to hit the mark of three million articles in English.

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BAR-CODING PLANTS
 The Plant Working Group of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL)
recently reached a consensus on the portions of the genes that would be used as
the plant DNA bar-code. This came after four years of work by 52 scientists from
10 countries. It may soon be possible to classify a majority of the more than
400,000 species of land plants in the world on the basis of genetic variability.
 The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) is an international
initiative devoted to developing DNA barcoding as a global standard for
the identification of biological species.
 DNA bar-coding, a technique proposed by the University of Guelph, Ontario,
Canada, uses a short genetic sequence from a standard part of the genome to
quickly identify different plant species. To become usable the chosen genetic
sequences of the bar-code must vary with species but must also be conserved
enough in plants for identifying most of them. Bar-coding has been used since
2003 to identify animal species, and a bar-code library of nearly 60,000 animal
species has been created.

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AMINO ACID ‘DISCOVERED’ ON A COMET
 NASA Astronomers claim to have found an amino acid on a comet. The
discovery confirms that some of life’s building blocks were delivered to the early
earth from space.
 A team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has analysed the samples from
the agency’s Stardust mission and traced the amino acid called glycine to an icy
comet for the first time

STARDUST
Stardust is an American interplanetary mission of the NASA Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, whose primary purpose was to investigate the makeup of the comet
Wild 2 and its coma. It was launched on February 7, 1999 by NASA, travelled
nearly 3 billion miles (5·109 km), and returned to Earth on January 15, 2006 to
release a sample material capsule. It is the first sample return mission to collect
cosmic dust and return the sample to Earth. On July 3, 2007 a second mission
was approved to revisit the comet Tempel 1.

3G
3G or 3rd Generation, is a family of standards for mobile telecommunications
defined by the International Telecommunication Union, which includes GSM
EDGE, UMTS, and CDMA2000 as well as DECT and WiMAX. Services include wide-
area wireless voice telephone, video calls, and wireless data, all in a mobile
environment. Compared to 2G and 2.5G services, 3G allows simultaneous use of
speech and data services and higher data rates. Thus, 3G networks enable
network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while
achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency.

EDGE
Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) (also known as Enhanced GPRS
(EGPRS), or IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC)) is a backward-compatible digital mobile
phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates, as an extension
on top of standard GSM. EDGE is considered a 3G radio technology and is part of
ITU's 3G definition.[
INDIA TO TAP NAMIBIAN URANIUM RESERVES
 India and Namibia will sign an agreement on mineral resources during the five-
day visit of Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba.Under the pact, India will
be able to access the African country’s abundant uranium reserves.
 Through this agreement, India will also be looking at Namibia’s healthy
reserves of diamond, copper, gold and zinc. The cooperation over uranium will be
covered under an umbrella framework for development of mineral resources and
promote investments in geology and mines in both countries.

 Namibia is south African region’s biggest producer of uranium and the sixth
largest in the world. India has already signed Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU) in the civilian uclear sector with Russia, France and the US. It is
negotiating similar pacts with Kazakhstan and Canada.

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CHANDRAYAAN-1 MISSION TERMINATED
The spacecraft was launched on October 22
 The Chandrayaan-1 moon mission has been formally called off, as the Indian
Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has lost radio contact with the craft. There
was no possibility of retrieving it, ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair said.
 A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) of ISRO put Chandrayaan-1 in its initial
orbit. The spacecraft carried 11 instruments on board. One of them named the
Moon Impact Probe (MIP) “impacted” on the lunar surface on November 14,
2008, signalling India’s success in reaching the moon.
 However, the Chandrayaan-II mission would be on the track as per schedule
(2012\13), albeit with “valuable lessons learnt in the Chandrayaan-1 expedition,”
Due to very high radiation in the atmosphere, power-supply units controlling
both the computer systems on board failed, snapping the communication
connectivity. Some devices were more susceptible to radiation and temperature
fluctuations, which resulted in the computer power supply being cut. The kind of
radiation problem faced was not anticipated,
 Mr. Nair considered the moon mission a success; 95 per cent of its objective
was met. “We could collect a large volume of data, including more than 70,000
images of the moon. In that sense, 95 per cent of the objective was completed.”
 India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission, the country’s first effort at deep space
exploration, has come to a premature end. Radio contact with the lunar probe
was lost 312 days after it travelled into space aboard the Polar Satellite Launch
Vehicle. According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), data were
received from the probe till shortly after midnight on August 29. About an hour
later, all communications ceased abruptly.

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FIZZLE’ CLAIM FOR THERMONUCLEAR TEST REFUTED
POKHARAN-II
Pokharan-II refers to test explosions of five nuclear devices, three on 11 May and
two on 13 May 1998, conducted by India at the Pokhran test range. These
nuclear tests resulted in a
variety of sanctions against India by a number of major states. On 18 May 1974
India exploded its first nuclear device code named Smiling Buddha. After about
a quarter century, on Buddha Jayanti, 11 May 1998, Operation Shakti was
carried out. Shakti was the codename for Pokhran-II.
The government strongly refuted claims that the 1998 test of a thermonuclear
device had been a failure, with Principal Scientific Adviser R. Chidambaram
telling that those questioning the tests yield had an obligation to back up their
charge with scientific evidence.
He was responding to the recent statement by a former defence scientist, K.
Santhanam, that “the yield in the thermonuclear device test was much lower
than what was claimed.” Mr. Santhanam, who cited only unspecified “seismic
measurements and expert opinion from world over,” went on to say that this was
the reason India should not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The stated success of the second generation nuclear device tested on May 11,
1998, was questioned at the time by a number of Western seismologists who
said the seismic signatures detected by them were at variance with the claimed
yield of 45 kilotons. Although the controversy subsided somewhat once scientists
from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre — which designed the weapon —
published their scientific evidence, it is likely to be reignited once again since Mr.
Santhanam represented the Defence Research and Development Organisation
(DRDO) team at the Pokhran-II tests and is the first member of that group to
echo the arguments of those who say the thermonuclear device failed to work
properly.
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GALILEO’S TELESCOPE; 400 TH ANNIVERSARY.
On August 25,1609 Galileo demonstrated his first telescope.
Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and
philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His
achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent
astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been
called the "father of modern observational astronomy," the "father of modern
physics," the "father of science," and "the Father of Modern Science." Stephen
Hawking says, "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was
responsible for the birth of modern science."
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