Curiosity April 2024

E54

The monthly roundup of the latest science stories.

From the Latin verb Aperire, to open. When the leaves of plants open up in spring. First month of spring in NH while autumn in SH. The second Quarter of the year starts today.

The month of Daisy flower (Bellis perennis). Florigraphy: Language of flowers

Solar eclipse month; April 8 is the solar eclipse. Also, the month of Mother Earth Day, April 22. The full moon of this month is The Pink Moon.

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Last month’s science news

1. Melting polar ice is slowing the Earth’s rotation, days started getting longer, and substantial consequences to our timekeeping and global warming.
2. 50,000 years old history of human migration in India unveiled by large sample human genome study. Priya Moorjani, UCB lead the study. The surprise finding is remnants of Neanderthal and Denisovan genome in India, around 2%. more than 90% of all known Neanderthal genes are found in India, highest in the world. Indian population is an admix of ancient hunter-gatherers in south, and two immigrants from north; Iranian farmers arrived around 4700 BCE, and gatherers from central Eurasian steppe around 1900 BCE
3. 50,000 years old Magnetotactic bacterial fossils discovered in bay of bengal, nature communications
4. Woolly mammoth de-extinction inches closer after elephant stem cell breakthrough
5. 215884 Asteroid will now be called Jayantmurthy named after eponymous IISc professor. He says: ‘Our world is built on basic science, and part of basic science is rationality’ | 13 billion year old streams of stars near Milky Way’s centre discovered, composed of particles which Indian origin authors at MPI named Shiva and Shakti
6. Twisted magnetic field at the centre blackhole of of milky way, Sagitarius A*. Via Event Horizon Telescope
7. Polar vortex above Arctic is now spinning backwards-counter clockwise due to global warming, causing a spike in ozone levels.
8. Japan’s SLIM lander survives the second lunar night. Odysseus and Chandrayan 3 both have failed to survive a night. | After 4 months of hyatus and gibberish, NASA’s Voyager 1 sends readable message!
9. Pushpak reusable landing vehicle by ISRO unveiled and tested | ‘Samudrayaan set to explore ocean bed by 2025 end’
10. Rhodamine B is banned in Karnataka. Color in cotton candies and gobi manchurian, carcinogen and renal and hepato toxin.
11. Risk of AFib tied to sugary and artificially sweetened drinks
12. Resurgence of mumps in Kerala due to vaccine hesitancy. MMR. Over 200 cases in Kasaragodu in one month alone. Measles outbreak in Britain too
13. India’s Life Expectancy in 2022 was 67.7 years, as per the latest World Bank report. Down from 70.9 in 2019. Vs. 84.45 in Japan. Japan was 67.7 in 1960
14. Association between microplastics and cardiovascular diseases | Microplastics accumulate in cancer cells and help them to spread, metastasis.| Boiling tap water can remove nearly 90 percent of microplastics, new study finds
15. 1st Neuralink recipient can play chess by thinking alone
16. Extreme heat at work can double stillbirth risk
17. Cheetah Gamini gives birth to five cubs at MP’s Kuno National Park; big cat count rises to 26
18. Garbhini GA2, India-specific AI model, to give accurate gestational age of foetus
19. Computing paradigm shift by parallel processing between GPU, CPU etc can make phones and laptops twice as fast while 50% more energy efficient.
20. AI models that can talk to each other to spread the skills invented
21. There is no evidence that CBD products reduce chronic pain, and taking them is a waste of money and potentially harmful to health, according to new research
22. Human brains are getting larger. Study participants born in the 1970s had 6.6% larger brain volumes and almost 15% larger brain surface area than those born in the 1930s. The increased brain size may lead to an increased brain reserve, potentially reducing the overall risk of age-related dementias. JAMA Neurology
23. Google launches 5 million USD to find uses for the buzzword quantum computing
24. Daniel Kahneman dies aged 90. 2022 Nobel, Psychology and Behavioural Economics. Thinking Fast and Slow. | Dr. Anthony Epstein, Pathologist Who Discovered Epstein-Barr Virus, Dies at 102
25. Pig kidney transplanted to human for the first time, Boston| Delhi Painter Gets Hands Back As Organ Donation Meets Surgical Excellence, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

Ms. Meena Mehta, a teacher, donated her hands and surgery was done at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi

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Observances

• 2 Autism, International Dark Sky Week
• 5 Conscience
• 6 Moon-Mars Conjunction
• 7 Health
• 8 Total solar eclipse. Annular solar eclipse on Oct 2. Both not visible in India. But 18 Sep partial lunar eclipse will be visible here.
• 11 Saturn-Mars and Moon-Jupiter Conjunctions
• 21 Comet 12P, Creativity and Innovation
• 22 Mother Earth, Lyrid meteor shower
• 23 Pi Puppid meteor shower, Book
• 24 Pink Moon
• 25 Malaria
• 26 IPR
• 28 Safety and Health at Work

Opportunities

• ICMR-Inserm France Bilateral Grant scheme, 15th April
• ICGEB Research Grants, 30th April
• Prof. M. K. Bhan Mid Career Research Fellowship program, 30 April
• Cyprus Govt Post Graduate Fellowships, 15th May
• UNESCO Prize for Girls and Women in Science, 30th April
• Several JRF/Project position calls shared in Facebook group

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