My Science School

Arunachal Pradesh has gifted India with a fifth brown pit viper with a reddish tinge. Herpetologists discovered the new species of pit viper – a venomous snake with a unique heat-sensing system – from a forest in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. India has four other brown pit vipers – Malabar, Horseshoe, Hump-nosed and Himalayan – discovered 70 years ago. The new species, Trimeresurus arunachalensis, makes Arunachal Pradesh the only Indian state to have a pit viper named after it. As only one male has been found so far, this single known specimen of the species currently makes it the rarest pit viper in the world.

Comparative analyses of DNA sequences by Mr. Deepak and examination of morphological features by Mr. Captain suggested that the snake belonged to a species not described before.

Mr. Bhatt, a scientist of the Arunachal Pradesh forest department, said that the single known specimen of this species makes it currently the rarest pit viper in the world. The specimen was donated to the museum of the State Forest Research Institute in Itanagar.

 

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Scientists have for the first time successfully raised laboratory-bred colonies of a critically endangered Caribbean coral species to their reproductive age, a step towards sustainable restoration of degraded reefs.

An estimated 80 per cent of all Caribbean corals have disappeared over the last four decades. The elkhorn coral (Acropora palmate) was one species whose decline was so severe that it was one of the first coral species to be listed as critically endangered under The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened species.

Due to its large size and branching shape, elkhorn corals created vast forests in shallow reef waters that protect shores from incoming storms and provide a critical habitat for a myriad of reef organisms, including ecologically and economically important fish species.

Elkhorn corals reproduce only once or twice a year, synchronously releasing their gametes (reproductive cells) into the water column. SECORE International researchers collected a small proportion of these gametes and produced coral embryos by in-vitro fertilization. Coral embryos develop into swimming larvae within days and eventually settle onto specifically designed substrates. After a short nursery period, researches outplanted the substrates with the newly-settles corals onto the reef.

 

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This Japanese firm, Spread, is to open the world’s first automated farm with robots handling almost every step of the process, from watering seedlings to harvesting crops. The only part of the process that would require human inputs is seeding.

The farm, measuring about 4,400 square metres, will have floor-to-ceiling shelves where the produce is grown. The robots will also monitor levels of carbon dioxide in the air and adjust lighting and temperature to optimize growth. The use of LED lighting means energy costs will be slashed by almost a third, and about 98% per cent of the water need to grow the crops will be recycled.

The indoor grow house will start operating by the middle of 2017 and produce 30,000 heads of lettuce a day. It hopes to boost that figure to half a million lettuce heads daily within five years.

 

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Last recorded in the wild in 1870, Jerdon’s tree frog was feared extinct. But an expedition led by Indian biologist S. D. Biju found the elusive Frankixaius jerdonii in the East Khasi district of Meghalaya. They observed the frog hiding in hollow bamboo stems and tree holes around 19 feet above ground, where it carries out the remarkable breeding antics. Females attach their eggs to the insides of tree hollows which hold pools of water. When the tadpoles hatch, they fall in the water, where the females feed them unfertilized eggs until they turn into froglets.

 

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The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence, s developing self-destructing electronic components as part of its Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) programme. Its recent ICARUS project is dedicated to the development of air vehicles that disappear upon mission completion. The programme is named for the Icarus of Greek mythology, whose waxy wings melted when he flew too close to the sun.

The VAPR team developed electronic-infused glass strips that can be triggered to shatter into dust and small polymer panels that disappear when they convert from a solid to a gas phase. The team found it was theoretically possible to build larger structures that could be engineered to self-combust.

Self-destructing systems are useful for a range of situations, e.g., destroying sophisticated technologies that are used on battlefields and then left behind. Discarded electronics also pose a threat to the environment as they rust and decompose. The flying vehicles could also be used to deliver food, water and vaccines to people living in remote areas, or to transport supplies to people stranded by natural disasters.

 

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Creators of Living Ink Technologies have created an eco-friendly “timelapse” ink that magically appears after exposure to sunlight.

The plant pens contain cyanobacteria, algae and chlorophyll in tiny amounts that are invisible to the naked eye at first. But when exposed to sunlight, the organisms reproduce at astonishing rates, bolstering their numbers to the point where they finally appear dense and green, thanks to the chlorophyll that harvests light energy and reflects light.

There are two types of ink: pink or “fast ink” which grows in 1-2 days, and blue or “slow ink” that takes 3-4 days to appear. This allows you to create a two-stage secret reveal over the course of a week which could find use in greeting cards or even a proposal!

The creation is housed inside a compact ‘greenhouse’ (which doubles as a picture frame) filled with a nutrient-dense material called agar that promotes the ink’s growth. When removed from the frame the algae and bacteria will eventually die, but the resulting image stains the paper so that it won’t fade away.

Besides being fun, Living Ink is also nontoxic. “Carbon black is the most common pigment used in black inks. It’s most commonly made from the incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products such as tar,” says the company, who sidestepped this by making its product out of the ultimate organic material – living organisms.

 

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Research has identified the tiny chameleon Rhampholeon spinosus as having the ultimate high-speed tongue. When it flicks its tongue at a fly, it reaches peak acceleration 264 times the force of gravity. In comparison, NASA’s shuttle delivered astronauts into orbit with a peak acceleration of only 3g. The F-16 jet fighter only reaches 7 g in pulling out of a dive. The acceleration of a chameleon’s tongue is the equivalent of getting from 0 to 60 mph in a hundredth of a second. But in the course of sticking out its tongue to 2.5 times its own body length, at a peak acceleration of 486 m/sec2, it generates the highest yet measured acceleration and power output per kilogram of muscle mass of any reptile, bird or mammal: 14,040 watts per kilo, making it second only to the most powerful vertebrate tongue of all, that of the salamander.

 

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A tiny mollusc in Borneo is the new record holder for the world’s smallest known snail. It is so small that the researchers couldn’t see it in the wild without a microscope! Its shiny, translucent, white shell has an average height of 0.027 inches. The former champion – the Chinese snail Angustopila dominikae – is the world’s second-smallest snail, with an average shell height of 0.033 inches. Dutch and Malaysian researchers have named the snail Acmella nana; its species name (nana) is a reference to the Latin nanus, or “dwarf”.

But the researchers knew exactly where to hunt for unknown mollusks: Snails tend to live on Borneo's limestone hills, likely because their shells are made of calcium carbonate, the main component of limestone, said study co-researcher Menno Schilthuizen, a professor of evolution at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"When we go to a limestone hill, we just bring some strong plastic bags, and we collect a lot of soil and litter and dirt from underneath the limestone cliffs," Schilthuizen told Live Science.

They sieve the contents, and dump the larger objects (including the snail shells) into a bucket of water. "We stir it around a lot so that the sand and clay sinks to the bottom, but the shells- which contain a bubble of air - float," Schilthuizen said.

Then, they scoop out the floating shells and sort them under a microscope.

"You can sometimes get thousands or tens of thousands of shells from a few liters of soil, including these very tiny ones," he said.

It's unclear what Acmella nana eats, because the researchers have never seen it alive in the wild. But the researchers have observed a related snail species from Borneo, Acmella polita, foraging on thin films of bacteria and fungi that grow on wet limestone surfaces in caves.

 

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Researchers at the University of Michigan have created a lattice-like solar cell that can stretch like an accordion, allowing it to tilt along the sun’s trajectory and capture more energy. The unique solar cell is inspired by the ancient art of paper cutting, known as kirigami.

The new design helps fix a problem with most solar power systems – the sun moves and the panels don’t. the kirigami cells are made of flexible, thin-film gallium arsenide strips that have been cut in a simple, two-dimensional pattern. When the cells are stretched using a motorized mechanism, the sheets twist open into three dimensions, offering raised surfaces to track the sun over a radius of about 120 degrees. The patterned film can collect 30 per cent more solar energy than conventional cells would.

The idea has the potential to make rooftop solar much more efficient, but in the near future, researchers say it would be more feasible for smaller aerospace applications.

 

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Mars may one day have rings similar to Saturn’s famous halo, new research suggests.

The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are named after the children of the god Ares, the Greek counterpart to Mars, the Roman god of war. The larger, inner moon, Phobos is the only remaining inwardly migrating moon known to exist today.

Phobos, is just 22 kms wide and orbits the Red Planet rapidly, rising and setting twice each Martian day. The tiny moon is slowly drawing closer to Mars by 6.5 feet every century which may result in a dramatic crash into the Martian surface within 30-50 million years, previous research has shown.

Researchers now suggest that instead of going out in a single, enormous impact, the moon will be pulled apart by Martian gravity. After simulating the stresses caused by the tidal pull of Mars, found that the moon would break up over the course of 20-40 million years, forming a ring of debris around the planet. The rubble would continue to move inward towards the planet, and over the span of 1 million to 100 million years, the particles would rain down on the equatorial region of Mars. Initially, the ring could be as dense as Saturn’s, but it would become thinner as the particles fall down onto the planet over time.

What would the Martian ring look like? “From one angle, the ring will reflect extra light towards a viewer, and it will look like a bright curve in the sky,” says Tushar Mittal, one of the authors of the research paper. “From another angle, the viewer might be in the ring’s shadow, and the ring would be a dark curve in the sky.”

 

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Out of 425,000 e-buses worldwide at the end of last year, 421,000 were in China, a Bloomberg report found. The e-fleet is projected to rise to over 600,000 buses by 2025. Electric buses have become the norm in many Chinese cities. Shenzhlen, a city of 13 million people, has a fleet of over 16,000 electric buses, and it’s making a huge difference. China’s electric buses save more diesel than all the world’s electric cars combined.

To achieve this wide-scale implementation, China used a top-down approach (as is usually the case with the Asian country). National objectives were implemented, both for manufacturers and municipalities, and the policy was used to nurture a productive competition between major cities. Meanwhile, in the US, the opposite is happening — the current administration discourages the national implementation of low-emission transport, and local markets are trying to fill in the void. Even in Europe, which is doing a bit better than the US with 2,250 electric buses, policy has not been decisive enough to fuel a revolution in electric transportation. The rest of Asia, despite some progress, also lags behind.

Buses are excellently suited for transitioning to electric engines: they follow a relatively short and stable route and can be easily recharged between rides. They also transport many more people than a regular car, which means that the positive impact is maximized.

 

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Billed as “one of the most exciting artists of our time”, Ai-Da is the brainchild of Aidan Meller, who claims she is the world’s first ultra-realistic humanoid artist, able to draw creatively thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).

Ai-Da is named after Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician and writer often called the world’s first computer coder.

Ai-Da uses her camera “eyes” to capture what is in front of her, which an internal computer translates into coordinates of the image to be plotted on paper. She ran currently hold only hard tools like pencils, not brushes. Her paint works are printed onto canvas with a human painting it over. Her works of art include abstract images and pencil sketches of historical figures from Leonardo da Vinci to Alan Turing.

Ai-Da can move, allowing what Meller calls “performance art”. He hopes that she will eventually be able to intuitively communicate and describe her own artwork. For the moment she is given voice by a human helper.

Art work created by Ai-Da for her first exhibition has already sold for over 1 million.

 

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Researchers from Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, in a study carried out in Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh noted that hornbills, one among the large-sized frugivores (fruit-eaters), are the most effective seed dispersers.

“They were found to swallow and disperse most of the fruits they handled. They also removed maximum number of fruits – and therefore seeds – in every visit to a fruiting tree,” explains Dr Rohit Naniwadekar, author of the study. “They swallow the fruit as a whole causing no damage to the seed. They are known to disperse seeds far away from the parent plant and our previous studies have shown that they can disperse up to 13 kms.”

Sadly, hornbills are also the most threatened because they are hunted for meat, and tribal communities use their feathers for headdresses.

“Seeds that fall under the parent tree face heavy competition, predation by rodents and insects, and fungal infections. So their chances for survival are very low. Plants depend on frugivorous birds to disperse the seeds at favourable sites. And so the decline of frugivores could severely affect the ecosystem,” he added.

 

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Between October 2011 and November 2017, at least 259 people around the world died taking selfies, according to the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care in India, compared to just 50 people killed by sharks in the same period.

And the death toll is increasing incrementally each year as smartphones become more sophisticated and Selfie-sticks increase the range at which people can snap themselves, prompting them to take bigger risks for the perfect shot.

In October 2018, an Indian couple fell to their deaths trying to take a Selfie a Taft Overlook at Yosemite National Park (U.S). The couple’s Instagram account often showed them in dangerous situations.

While woman take the most selfies, young men, who are more prone to taking risks, make up three quarters of “selfecides”. Most deaths are caused by drowning, being hit by vehicles, falling, posing with loaded weapons or wild animals or while driving.

India, with a population of more than 1.3 billion and 800 million cell phones, had the highest number of deaths (159 so far) partly because the country has a high number of people younger than 30, and because selfies in India are especially trendy.

The study concluded that ‘no Selfie zones’ should be declared across tourist areas, especially water bodies, mountain peaks and tall buildings to decrease the incidence of Selfie-related deaths.

 

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The Indian Institute of technology (IIT) Indore has developed a prototype robot resembling a jellyfish to document marine life at close range. Conventional motor-based bio-inspired robots are noisy, limiting their applicability for marine life monitoring as they disturb marine species.

IIT Indore’s Mechatronics and Instrumentation Laboratory has developed a shape memory alloy (SMA) polymer-based soft robotic jellyfish for noiseless marine life monitoring. The continuous heating and cooling of the SMA wire-based polymer structure is responsible for expansion and contraction of its body with tentacles which generate thrust to make the 250 gm robot move in the water. A combination of soft and smart materials allows it to mimic complex motions like real underwater living creatures.

These robots can be used to study the functioning of certain underwater species that are highly conscious of artificial cameras or understanding the behaviour of coral reefs.

 

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