The Vigyan Gram, to be modelled on the lines of science cities in various cities in India, would be set up at a cost of Rs.35 crore in western Tripura’s Badharghat, a village on the outskirts of Agartala.

The National Council of Science Museums (SCSM), an autonomous society under the ministry of culture, has extended all out supports in setting up of the ’science village’,” Tripura Science and Environment Minister Joy Gobinda Deb Roy told IANS in an interview.

The Tripura State Council for Science and Technology (TSCST), an autonomous body under the state’s government’s science, technology and environment department is the nodal authority to look after the management of the proposed science village, which would be a regional level science hub.

Deb Roy said: “The science village will have a museum, library, planetarium, botanical garden, heritage park, bird sanctuary, aquarium, auditorium, children’s park and a laboratory.”

“It would also have an exhibition zone, educational demonstration arrangement, playing zone for children and science book stalls.”

Already 9.20 acres of land has been earmarked for the science village, which is scheduled to open in the next 33 months, when the first phase gets completed. The entire Vigyan Gram would be completed by four years.

“The science village project seeks to develop awareness among people, the literacy and outlook of young students and people, specifically with respect to science,” the minister said, adding that it will help people to learn about science and scientific works through recreational activities and promote research works. The project will also contribute towards generating employment opportunities and promote eco-tourism.

According to the project report, the Vigyan Gram is envisaged to attract students and science enthusiasts from Bangladesh, especially with the government of India planning to enhance connectivity with the neighbouring country by setting up rail, road and water ways links through the northeastern state.

“The Vigyan Gram would attract students, science enthusiasts, teachers, researchers and tourists from different parts of India and neighbouring countries,” the project report said.

The report also states: “The outreach programmes of the Vigyan Gram are likely to change the mindset of terrorists and surrendered militants by imparting knowledge on various scientific issues pertaining to day to day life and making a habit of logical belief.”

Minister Deb Roy said the Vigyan Gram would also offer “excellent non-formal educational facility” to supplement the formal science education imparted in educational institutions.

“Setting up of Vigyan Gram would be an integrated approach towards free-choice learning of science for all concerned,” the minister said adding that the main objectives of setting up of the Vigyan Gram includes, to grow, nurture and stimulate a culture of science and develop a scientific temper among the people in the northeastern region and to promote innovative and experimental activities through a hands-on learning
process.

IANS

But these things do not disturb him, whether teachers protest for it or students oppose it. After all, he is ready to say the university ‘Good Bye’ in next few days. After that, neither the students nor their problems will be his concerns.
(Chandan Sharma can be contacted at editorial@fachcha.com)

IVF or In-vitro fertilisation is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the womb.

Researchers relied on more than 100 spare embryos left over from treatment at fertility clinics to establish several embryonic stem cell “lines”, reports the Telegraph.

One of them, known as RC-7, was converted into blood stem cells before they were transformed into red cells containing haemoglobin – the oxygen-carrying pigment.

Scientists averred that the objective was to find cells genetically programmed to develop into the O-negative blood group, one of the rarest groups.

This is the universal donor group whose blood can be transfused into anyone without fear of tissue rejection but is only found in seven percent of the population.

According to the researchers, the aim of the project is to establish a manufacturing process to produce more than two million pints a year. A pint is 473 ml.

The research could potentially revolutionise medicine by ending the need to rely on volunteers to provide blood for transfusions.

The synthetic version would also be guaranteed free of infections. The first clinical trial of synthetic blood made from embryonic stem cells could begin within five years. (IANS)

The Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematical Institute has categorised “P vs NP” as one of the seven millennium problems. It is considered the “most difficult” one to be solved.

If his claim is proved correct, Deolalikar stands to earn a $1 million prize.

Many maths calculations involve checking a large number of possible solutions and that could be beyond the current capability of any computer. P vs NP looks at the possibility of whether there is a way of arriving at the answers to the calculations faster in the first place.

Deolalikar’s paper that was posted online Friday claims that P, which refers to problems whose solutions are easy to find and verify, is not the same as NP, which refers to problems whose solutions are almost impossible to find but easy to verify, the report said.

Scott Aaronson, associate professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wasn’t too impressed and vowed to pay Deolalikar an additional $200,000 if the solution was accepted by Clay Institute.

He wrote in his blog: “If P?NP has indeed been proved, my life will change so dramatically that having to pay $200,000 will be the least of it.”

Mathematicians Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin formalised the problem in 1971. (IANS)

“The Perseids is one of the most reliable and spectacular meteor showers of the year and will be at peak on the night of Aug 12 or early morning Aug 13,” Science Popularisation Association of Communicators & Educators (SPACE) director Chandra Bhushan Devgun said.

The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between July 25 and Aug 18, with a peak on Aug 12. It has its origin in the constellation Perseus.

As comets move about their orbits, they leave a trail of dusty and rocky debris. When the earth passes through the comets’ orbit, the debris is attracted towards it because of gravity and burns due to the friction experienced during entry into the atmosphere, leading to a meteor shower.

No telescopes or binoculars are required for watching the meteor shower.

“The shower can be watched with the naked eye. Make sure that you have the widest possible area of sky visible. Try to get away from light pollution,” said N.S. Raghunandan Kumar of the Planetary Society, India.

The source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. Although the comet is far away, currently located beyond the orbit of Uranus, a trail of debris from the comet stretches all the way back to the earth.

Records of Perseids activity date back to 36 AD. In 1839, German astronomer Eduard Heis was the first to take a meteor count and discovered that Perseids had a maximum rate of around 160 meteors per hour.

Turning into reality science fiction of films such as “The Terminator” – where machines and men meld into reality – Canadian scientists have successfully connected brain cells to a silicon chip to “hear” conversation between brain tissue.

The neuro-chip, which has been developed by medicine scientists at the University of Calgary, will network brain cells and thus record brain cell activity at a resolution never achieved before, according to Naweed Syed who led the team that made the breakthrough.

The neuro-chip will help future understanding of how brain cells work under normal conditions and thus permit drug discoveries for a variety of neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, a university statement said Tuesday.

“This technical breakthrough means we can track subtle changes in brain activity at the level of ion channels and synaptic potentials, which are also the most suitable target sites for drug development in neuro-degenerative diseases and neuropsychological disorders,” Syed, who is professor and head of the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, has been quoted as saying.

The new neuro-chips are also automated.

“Previously it took years of training to learn how to record ion channel activity from brain cells, and it was only possible to monitor one or two cells simultaneously. Now, larger networks of cells can be placed on a chip and observed in minute detail, allowing the analysis of several brain cells networking and performing automatic, large-scale drug screening for various brain dysfunctions,” the university statement said.

The University of Calgary is excited at the potential of this made in Canada technology, said university vice president Rose Goldsmith.

“The University of Calgary is proud to be the home of this cutting edge Canadian work with a neurochip. The advances in research and healthcare made by possible by this technology are immense. The work and collaboration happening in the lab of Naweed Syed is another example demonstrating our leadership in the field of biomedical engineering.”

The new technology has been published online this month in the journal, Biomedical Microdevices. (IANS)

Scientists hope that injecting cells from discarded human embryos into the spines of volunteers will trigger regrowth of damaged nerve cells and eventually allow the patients to recover feeling and movement, says a Daily Mail report from the US.

The study was cleared by President Barack Obama a year ago, but was put on hold because some animals on which the company was testing the treatment developed cysts. Now Geron claims it has overcome the problem.

Richard Fessler, a neurological surgeon at the Northwestern University who will lead the research, said if the treatment works on humans it would be ‘revolutionary’.

“The therapy would provide a viable treatment option for thousands of patients who suffer severe spinal cord injuries each year,” he said.

Geron has spent 15 years and more than 100 million pounds developing the treatment and hopes to begin the study within the next few months.

Researchers hope the use of highly versatile embryonic stem cells – which can turn into any cell in the body – will revolutionise medicine, from creating organs for transplants to helping to test drugs.

The therapy also has the potential to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Until now, the ethical barrier of using discarded three- to five-day-old embryos has prevented any tests on humans.

The Bush administration, fearing a backlash from its many evangelical Christian supporters, kept embryonic stem cell research tightly shackled, but last year President Obama repealed the block. (IANS)

Scientists, however, expect the rover to be unable to answer for several months because low solar battery power has likely put it into hibernation mode during the winter, which runs from May to November.

Spirit has not phoned home since March 22.

Researchers think it could contact them within the next several months, but admit they may never hear from Spirit again. They said if they have not heard from it by March 2011 they will likely give Spirit up for lost.

“This has been a long winter for Spirit, and a long wait for us,” Cornell University scientist Steve Squyres said. “Even if we never heard from Spirit again, I think her scientific legacy would be secure. But we’re hopeful we will hear from her, and we’re eager to get back to doing science with two rovers again.”

NASA said in January that Spirit had reached its final destination after the failure of efforts to free the space probe from sandy soil where it had been trapped for months. The rover was to live out its life as a stationary science platform.

Spirit is one of two rovers that have far exceeded expectations and are now in their sixth year of what were planned as 90-day missions, exploring the Martian surface and making important discoveries about water on Earth’s neighbour.

Spirit landed Jan 3, 2004, and was followed by sister rover Opportunity three weeks later. Since then, the golf cart-sized craft have provided scientists with valuable information about the Red Planet’s wet history, while sending back 250,000 images and driving more than 21 km.
(IANS)

The discovery of 234 th-238 U radioactive disequilibria in surface waters and 210pb- 226Ra in deep waters of the oceans by Prof. Krishnaswami and colleagues provided a unique, direct and highly-sensitive approach to determine the time scales of chemical scavenging in the oceans. “Their results demonstrated for the first time that the kinetics of these processes are very rapid in the sea and that the removal of particle reactive elements by scavenging occurs on very short time scales, days to weeks in coastal and surface waters and decades in the deep sea, and that chemical scavenging is a ubiquities process in the ocean”, the Ministry of Earth Sciences says in a release.

These ideas and approaches are being used widely in international oceanographic programs to investigate and quantify Trace element scavenging and contaminant transport in the oceans and fluxes of particulate carbon through the water column, it says. Prof. Krishnaswami will receive Rs 1.00 lakh cash prize and a citation.

The Ministry of Earth Sciences has also selected people for Certificate of Merit for Young Scientists/Engineers. These include Dr.D.S.Pai is an experienced operational weather forecaster,
Dr.B.P.Yadav, Dr.S.D.Kotal, Dr.Anguluri Suryachandra Rao, Gopal Raman Lyengar, Dr.P.A.Francis, Dr.Laluraj C.M, M.M.Subramaniam, Dr. T. Shunmugaraj, Dr.G.Dharani and V V Jayakumar.

They have been awarded the Certificate of Merit for his outstanding contribution in the field of Ocean Sciences and Technology.They will also get cash prize of Rs 30,000/-and a citation