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NEWS IN BRIEF

category News in brief Scientific European
Attribution: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
On 27 January 2024, an airplane-sized, near-Earth asteroid 2024 BJ will pass Earth at a closest distance of 354,000 Km.  It will come as close as 354,000 Km, about 92% the average lunar distance. The closest encounter of 2024 BJ with the...
Astronomers have detected the oldest (and the most distant) black hole from the early universe which dates from 400 million years after the big bang. Surprisingly, this is about a few million times the mass of Sun. Under the...
Bacterial dormancy is survival strategy in response to stressful exposure to antibiotics taken by a patient for treatment. The dormant cells become tolerant to antibiotics and are killed at slower rate and survive sometimes. This is called ‘antibiotic tolerance’...
JAXA, Japan’s space agency has successfully soft landed “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM)” on lunar surface. This makes Japan fifth country to have lunar soft-landing capability, after the US, the Soviet Union, China and India.  The mission aims to...
WHO has issued new guidance on the ethics and governance of large multi-modal models (LMMs) for its appropriate use to promote and protect the health of populations. LMMs is a type of fast-growing generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology that...
A recent study on plastic pollution beyond the micron level has unambiguously detected and identified nanoplastics in real-life samples of bottled water. It was found that the exposure to the micro-nano plastics from regular bottled water is in the...
Two decades ago, two Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars on 3rd and 24th January 2004, respectively to look for evidence that water once flowed on the surface of the Red Planet. Designed to last just 3...
Betavolt Technology, a Beijing based company has announced miniaturization of nuclear battery using Ni-63 radioisotope and diamond semiconductor (fourth generation semiconductor) module.   Nuclear battery (known variously as atomic battery or radioisotope battery or radioisotope generator or radiation-voltaic battery or Betavoltaic battery)...
Fast Radio Burst FRB 20220610A, the most powerful radio burst ever observed was detected on 10 June 2022. It had originated from a source that existed 8.5 billion years ago when the universe was just 5 billion years old...
The lunar lander, ‘Peregrine Mission One,’ built by ‘Astrobotic Technology’ under NASA’s ‘Commercial Lunar Payload Services’ (CLPS) initiative was launched into space on 8 January 2024. The spacecraft has since suffered propellant leak. Hence, Peregrine 1 can no longer soft...
Antibiotic resistance particularly by Gram-negative bacteria has nearly created a crisis like situation. The novel antibiotic Zosurabalpin (RG6006) shows promises. It has been found to be effective against drug-resistant, Gram-negative bacteria CRAB in pre-clinical studies.    Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), driven mainly by...
UAE’s MBR Space Centre has collaborated with NASA to provide an airlock for the first lunar space station Gateway that will orbit the Moon to support long-term exploration of the Moon under NASA’s Artemis Interplanetary Mission. An Air lock is an...
The solar observatory spacecraft, Aditya-L1 was successfully inserted in Halo-Orbit about 1.5 million km away from earth on 6th January 2024. It was launched on 2nd September 2023 by ISRO.   The Halo orbit is a periodic, three-dimensional orbit at Lagrangian point L1 involving Sun, Earth...
Mindfulness meditation (MM) can be an effective sedative technique for dental implant operation conducted under local anaesthesia.  Dental implant surgery lasts for 1-2 hours. Patients nearly always feel anxious during the procedure which leads to psychological stress and increased sympathetic...
ISRO has successfully launched the satellite XPoSat which is world’s second ‘X-ray Polarimetry Space Observatory’. This will carry out research in space-based polarisation measurements of X-ray emission from various cosmic sources. Earlier, NASA had sent ‘Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer...
The brine shrimps have evolved to express sodium pumps that exchange 2 Na+ for 1 K+ (instead of the canonical 3Na+ for 2 K+). This adaptation helps Artemia remove proportionally higher amount of sodium to the exterior which enable...
JN.1 sub-variant whose earliest documented sample was reported on 25 August 2023 and which was later reported by the researchers to have higher transmissibility and immune escape ability, has now been designated a variant of interest (VOIs) by WHO. In the last few...
‘Fusion Ignition’ achieved first in December 2022 has been demonstrated another three times to date at National Ignition Facility (NIF) of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). This is a step forward in fusion research and confirms proof-of-concept that controlled nuclear...
Spike mutation (S: L455S) is hallmark mutation of JN.1 sub-variant which significantly enhances its immune evasion capability enabling it to effectively evade Class 1 neutralizing antibodies. A study supports use of updated COVID-19 vaccines with spike protein to further...
The word ‘robot’ evokes images of human-like manmade metallic machine (humanoid) designed and programmed to automatically perform some tasks for us. However, robots (or bots) can be of any shape or size and can be made of any material...
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) has concluded with an agreement named The UAE Consensus, that sets out an ambitious climate agenda to keep 1.5°C within reach. This calls on Parties to transition away from fossil fuels to reach...
The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), popularly known as United Nations Climate Change Conference, currently being held in UAE has announced several initiatives and partnerships aimed at sustainable urban development which...
The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or United Nations Climate Change Conference is being held at Expo City, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It began on 30th November 2023 and will continue...
A new vaccine, R21/Matrix-M has been recommended by the WHO for the prevention of malaria in children.   Earlier in 2021, WHO had recommended RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine for prevention of malaria in children. This was the first malaria vaccine to...
This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded jointly to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov “for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.”  Quantum dots are nanoparticles, tiny semiconductor particles, a few nanometres in size between 1.5 and...

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