Urban areas are currently responsible for ~70% of the global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and rapid ongoing global urbanization is increasing the number and size of cities. Thus, understanding city-scale CO2 emissions and how they vary between cities with different urban densities is a critical task. While the relationship …
Science and rationality have taken a beating in the unfolding of the recent events surrounding the controversial mega marine project called the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project (SSCP) of the Government of India. The project envisages the dredging of the shallow ocean region in the south-eastern Bay of Bengal to create …
The National Democratic Alliance government did it-undermining the autonomy of a scientific department called the Archaeological Survey of India. The United Progressive Alliance has compounded it by withdrawing a scientific body's opinion on a matter on which it is eminently competent, and statutorily obliged, to give its view. The issue …
In the third week of August, hurricane Dean battered America's mid-western and southern states, and raced through the Gulf of Mexico. Weathermen did not expect the hurricane to intensify sharply. Dean was the third most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall since record keeping began in the 1850s. A week …
wireless charge:Your mobile phone may soon recharge itself in the same way it transfers information: wirelessly. Marin Soljacic and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US had previously used computer simulations to show that electromagnetic energy stored in one coil can be drained by another of the …
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa), usa, has announced a new open-source project called Cosmoscode. The project, which will be open to the public in coming weeks, aims to recruit volunteers who will write code for live space missions. The project has been initiated by CoLab, which is an effort …
Scientists recently presented fresh evidence of the possibility of water having once flowed on Mars. A nasa spacecraft currently orbiting Mars has captured photographs that depict equatorial ridges on Mars that could have been formed by running water. Geologists believe the ridges were created through chemical changes caused by the …
A small group of students in Brooklyn, usa, have designed a plan for living with climate change. The students look ahead 50 years to see how rising seas might flood the Brooklyn waterfront neighbourhood of Dumbo, in a small exhibit called
Environment: "Geo-engineering" is the direct use of technology to counteract climate change. The idea is highly controversial IF MAN is inadvertently capable of heating the entire planet, surely it is not beyond his wit to cool it down as well? Although most climate scientists do not like to talk about …
the brown haze over north-India's sky could portend a dry future. Caused by liquid pollutants suspended in air, the aerosol cloud, infamous for its effects on crops and human health, may result in localised decrease of rainfall. Aerosols reduce speed of winds near the earth's surface, thus leading to reduction …
birth and death of stars has intrigued scientists all along. A recent study has dispelled the notion that massive stars die with violent accompaniments such as bursts of light and ejection of chemicals (also called supernova explosion). Astronomers have stumbled upon a class of such stars that die silently. On …
older, the better: Researchers studying chimpanzee-mating preferences have found that male chimpanzees prefer older females. The study, published in Current Biology , found that older females were more likely to be approached for copulation, were more often in association with males during oestrus periods and copulated more frequently. The findings, …
A new study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa) scientists has found that the world temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years. The study, led by James Hansen of nasa 's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, along with scientists from other …
oceans have cooled substantially during some of the warmest years in recent times, claims a study. During the years 2003 and 2005, which saw the highest global average surface temperatures in more than a century, the top 750 metres of the oceans lost around one-fifth of the heat accumulated over …
using gadgets available on three satellites, scientists at the us National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa) have measured the complete water cycle of an entire continent
Till 1999, India's space programme was focussed on application-driven projects. Sending satellites to space with an eye to immediate benefits. But that didn't mean that space scientists weren't nursing the desire to explore space from more of a pure science perspective. At an annual meeting of the Indian Academy of …
Harvest order: The Supreme Court recently issued notices to the Union and the state governments, urging them to conserve rainwater. The move came in response to a petition filed by Tap-Rejuvenate Earth's Ecology and Environment, a non-governmental organisation. The petition sought rooftop rainwater harvesting structures over 200 square metres in …
Marine life in the Arabian Sea might be in grave danger. A Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (modis) image, taken by us space agency nasa on February 22, 2005, shows high chlorophyll concentration in the sea (ribbons and swirls of yellow). This denotes high presence of phytoplankton, tiny ocean plants, near …
Children in parts of Siberia near the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan are suffering serious health problems due to pollution caused by unburned rocket fuel. This fuel is sprayed by rockets launched at the cosmodrome, used by the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos, the European Space Agency (esa) and the us- based …
An unmanned supersonic jet has startled the world with a flight speed seven times more than that of sound (Mach 7). The us' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa) successfully tested the x-43 a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet), which flew at a speed of 7,700 kilometres per hour. The scramjet …
