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Rare dinosaur-era bird wings found in myanmar

Scientists have discovered specimens of complete wings of tiny, prehistoric birds that were trapped in amber 100 million years ago and preserved in exquisite detail.
•    Thousands of fossil birds from the time of the dinosaurs have been uncovered in China. However, most of these fossils are flattened in the rock, even though they commonly preserve fossils.
•    The new specimens, discovered by researchers including Xing Lida from the China University of Geosciences, and Mike Benton from the University of Bristol in the UK, come from a famous amber deposit in northeastern Myanmar, which has produced thousands of exquisite specimens of insects of all shapes and sizes, as well as spiders, scorpions, lizards, and isolated feathers.
•    This is the first time that whole portions of birds have been noted.
•    The fossil wings are tiny, only two or three centimetres long, and they contain the bones of the wing, including three long fingers armed with sharp claws, for clambering about in trees, as well as the feathers, all preserved in exquisite detail.
•    The Burmese amber deposits are producing a treasure trove of remarkable early fossils, and they document a particularly active time in the evolution of life on land, the Cretaceous terrestrial revolution.
•    Flowering plants were flourishing and diversifying, and insects that fed on the leaves and nectar of the flowers were also diversifying fasts, as too were their predators, such as spiders, lizards, mammals, and birds.
•    The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

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CSIR has launched BGR-34, an anti-diabetic ayurvedic drug designed for type 2 Diabetes mellitus


Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on 27th June launched BGR-34 - an anti-diabetic ayurvedic drug designed for type 2 Diabetes mellitus.
•    BGR-34 is developed jointly by National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) and Central Institute for Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), the research units of CSIR at Lucknow.
•    BGR-34 has been economically priced at Rs. 5 per tablet as compared to latest DPP4 inhibitors globally, a joint release by NBRI and CIMAP and the manufacturer AIMIL Pharmaceuticals (India) Ltd, said.
•    A K S Rawat, Sr Principal Scientist of CSIR-NBRI said six crore of the adult Indian population had been found to be diabetic and there is no effective solution for diabetes as yet.
•    He said CSIR's premier research institutions have developed and established the efficacy of BGR-34.
•    The modern diabetes drugs are known for side-effects and toxicity while BGR-34 works by controlling blood sugar and limiting the harmful effects of other drugs, he added.
•    The scientists of NBRI and CIMAP joined hands in developing the drug and they had in-depth study of over 500 renowned ancient herbs and finally identified the six best herbs listed in Ayurvedic ancient texts to develop an anti-diabetic formulation.

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Newly renovated and expanded Panama Canal was reopened by the Panamanian President, Juan Carlos Varela.

Newly renovated and expanded Panama Canal reopened for bigger business on 26 June 2016.
The first ship to cross the canal using the third set of locks was a modern New Panamax vessel, the Chinese-owned container ship Cosco Shipping Panama.
The 5.25 billion US dollar project was unveiled nearly two years late after construction delays, labour strife and apparent cost overruns.
The project is expected to create demand for ports to handle New Panamax ships.
•    The Panama Canal expansion project is also called as the Third Set of Locks Project.
•    The project was formally proposed by the then-Panamanian President Martín Torrijos on 24 April 2006.
•    A national referendum approved the proposal by a 76.8 percent majority on 22 October 2006.
•    The project formally began in 2007.
•    The project has built two new sets of locks, one each on the Atlantic and Pacific sides, and excavated new channels to the new locks.
•    It also widened and deepened existing channels.
•    It also raised the maximum operating water level of Gatun Lake.
•    The expansion doubled the Canal’s capacity, and has a direct impact on economies of scale and international maritime trade.
•    The project doubled the capacity of the Panama Canal by:
•    Adding a new lane of traffic allowing for a larger number of ships
(b) Increasing the width and depth of the lanes and locks allowing larger ships to pass. The new larger size of ships is called New Panamax. They are about one and a half times the previous Panamax size and can carry over twice as much cargo.
•    The Panama Canal is a man-made 48-mile waterway in Panama.
•    It connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean.
•    The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama.
•    It is a key conduit for international maritime trade.
•    France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate.
•    The United States took over the project in 1904, and opened the canal on 15 August 1914.
•    The Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduced the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
•    Colombia, France and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction.
•    The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama.
•    In 1999, the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government. It is now managed and operated by the government-owned Panama Canal Authority.
•    The American Society of Civil Engineers has called the Panama Canal one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

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Scientists have developed a new stem cell-containing bio-ink that allows 3D printing of complex living tissues

The new bio ink containing stem cells allows scientists to 3D print of living tissue which is also known as bio-printing. 
•    The ink contains two different polymer components: a natural polymer and a sacrificial synthetic polymer. 
•    The natural polymer was extracted from seaweed. 
•    It provides structural support when the cell nutrients are introduced. The synthetic polymer used in the medical industry helps the bio-ink to change its state from liquid to solid when the temperature is raised. 
•    The special bio-ink formulation has helped scientists to construct complex living 3D architectures after it was extruded from a retrofitted benchtop 3D printer, as a liquid that later transformed to a gel at 37°C. 
•    Stem cell is an undifferentiated cell of a multicellular organism which is capable of giving rise to indefinitely more cells (through mitosis) of the same type and from which certain other kinds of cell may be formed by the cellular differentiation. 
•    In the stem cell treatments new adult cells are introduced into the damaged tissue through the intervention strategy to treat the disease. 
•    These treatments have potential to change the face of curing human diseases and alleviate suffering.

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Chinese supercomputer TaihuLight world's fastest Computer

Chinese supercomputer Sunway TaihuLight with 93 petaflop/second speed was on 20 June 2016 declared as the world’s fastest supercomputer. 
•    It was revealed in the TOP500 list of supercomputers released at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Frankfurt, Germany.
•    The list further revealed that the USA is not home to the largest number of systems. With a surge in industrial and research installations registered over the last few years, China leads with 167 systems and the USA is second with 165.
•    Asian share of 218 systems, up from 173 in November 2015, includes 8 supercomputers owned by Indian-based organizations.
•    This supercomputer can perform 93 petaflop operations per second.
•    It was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC) and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi.
•    It displaced the Tianhe-2, an Intel-based Chinese supercomputer that has claimed the top spot on the previous six TOP500 lists.
•    With 10649600 computing cores comprising 40960 nodes, is twice as fast and three times as efficient as Tianhe-2.
•    Sunway TaihuLight demonstrates the significant progress that China has made in the domain of designing and manufacturing large-scale computation systems as it is completely based on homegrown processors.

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India’s membership of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program approved

The Union Cabinet on 15 June 2016 gave its approval for Indian membership of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) consortium.
The approval clears the path for signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the GFZ - Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (German Research Centre for geosciences). The GFZ is a government-funded, Public Law Foundation of the State of Brandenburg, Germany.
•    The MoU, which will be in force for 5 years, will enable India in engaging internationally renowned experts with profound expertise in different aspects of scientific drilling.
•    The deep drilling and associated investigations will be conducted in Koyna region in Maharashtra.
•    As a part of the membership agreement, India will get a seat on two ICDP panels - Executive Committee (EC) and Assembly of Governors (AOG).
•    ICDP will provide technical / operational support, facilitate capacity building in terms of manpower training in key scientific areas, sample and data management
•    The ICDP will also support workshops for the Koyna scientific deep drilling project undertaken by Ministry of Earth Sciences.
•    As a member of ICDP, scientists/engineers from India would have right to submit proposals, to participate in all ICDP co-funded workshops and drilling projects.
•    They will get access to all data results from ICDP projects. This will shed new light on the genesis of seismicity and better understanding of earthquake processes.
•    It was founded in February 1996 in the German Embassy in Tokyo as a result of the German Continental Deep Drilling Program.
•    It is a multinational program to further and fund geosciences in the field of Continental Scientific Drilling.
•    The research findings will provide direct insight into Earth processes by testing geological models.
•    The GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences serves as the headquarters for the ICDP.
•    Members of ICDP: Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, the USA and UNESCO.

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Bramble Cay melomys is first mammal declared extinct from human-caused climate change

Scientists in June 2016 declared Bramble Cay melomys found only on a tiny island on the Great Barrier Reef as extinct.
It is the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-induced climate change.
The news was revealed in the report of a survey led by Ian Gynther from Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection in partnership with the University of Queensland.
•    The root cause of the extinction was reported to be high tides and surging seawater, which has travelled inland across the island.
•    As a result of rising seas, the island was inundated on multiple occasions killing the animals. The rising seas also destroyed their habitat.
•    The Bramble Cay melomys are also known as Australian Great Barrier Reef rodent or Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed rat.
•    It was a species of rodent in the family Muridae.
•    It was similar to the Cape York melomys except that it had some protein differences and a coarser tail caused by elevated scales.
•    It was prominent in herdfields and strandline vegetation where it built burrows.
•    It was Australia's most isolated mammal.
•    The Bramble Cay melomys was first discovered by Europeans in April 1845.
•    The species was then apparently in high densities.
•    It was not until the first part of the following century that the species was formally described as Melomys rubicola based on a specimen collected by MacGillivray.

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The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has announced four proposed names for the four new elements

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has announced four proposed names for the four new elements that were added in periodic table in January 2016. 
•    These names and symbols were chosen by the by nuclear researchers who discovered them. They will be finalised after public review and formal nod by the IUPAC Council. 
•    All these four elements are super heavy and are synthetic in nature i.e. they were created in laboratory. 
•    These new elements are Nihonium (Nh), Moscovium (Mc), Tennessine (Ts), and Oganesson (Og). 
•    They were added in the seventh row of the periodic table. Their addition has completed the seventh row of the periodic table of the elements. 
Atomic No – 113 – Nihonium – Nh .
Atomic No – 115 – Moscovium – Mc
Atomic No – 117 – Tennessine – Ts
Atomic No – 118 – Oganesson – Og
•    IUPAC is panel of scientist that governs chemical research and the admission of the new elements in the periodic table. 
•    Under it rules, names of the elements must reflect one of the physical characteristics or chemical properties, a place, a mineral, a scientist (living or dead), or a mythological concept. 
•    The names of elements is finalised by IUPAC which are easy to translate across major languages. The names usually have endings like “-ine”, “-ium,” or “-on,” depending on the grouping of elements they belong to.

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Researchers in Assam developed two rice variants, Ranjit Sub-1 & Bahadur Sub-1, for submerged areas

Researchers at Assam Agricultural University have developed two rice varieties, namely Ranjit Sub-1 and Bahadur Sub-1. 
•    These rice varieties were developed to get better yields under submerged conditions in state mainly Barak Valley.
•    Most parts of the state including Barak valley is prone to periodical flash floods particularly during the monsoon season.
•    These are ideally suited for such submerged areas in the khariff season.
•    These new rice variants are improved forms of the Ranjit and Bahadur varieties which the farmers of the state have been using for years.
•    An additional gene has been incorporated in the new variants which ensure productivity even if the crops remain submerged during flash floods.
•    Assam is a state in northeastern India known for its wildlife, archeological sites and tea plantations. In the west, Guwahati, Assam’s largest city ,features silk bazaars and the hilltop Kamakhya Temple. 
•    Umananda Temple sits on Peacock Island in the Brahmaputra river. The state capital, Dispur, is a suburb of Guwahati. The ancient pilgrimage site of Hajo and Madan Kamdev, the ruins of a temple complex, lie nearby.

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World's first 3D-printed aircraft THOR displayed at International Aerospace Exhibition

Airbus on 1 June 2016 displayed the world's first 3D-printed aircraft THOR at the International Aerospace Exhibition in Schoenefe.
The drone THOR is short for Test of High-tech Objectives in Reality and it resembles a large, white model airplane.
•    Is the world's first 3D-printed aircraft with just 3 parts.
•    It is windowless, weighs 21 kilo grams (46 pounds) and less than four metres (13 feet) long. It is Lighter, faster and cheaper.
•    Except the electrical elements, all other parts are printed (3D) from a substance called polyamide.
•    Thor's inaugural flight was conducted in November 2015 near the northern German city of Hamburg.
•    Airbus and Boeing are already using 3D printing, notably to make parts for their huge passenger jets the A350 and B787 Dreamliner.
•    The new 3D printers can make pieces up to 40 centimeters (15 inches) long and is of most use in particularly complex designs.
•    Apart from costs savings, 3D printing also promises ecological benefits as lighter jets use less fuel and spew out fewer pollutants.
•    It will be a radical technical innovation to reducing carbon emissions in aviation with air traffic expected to double in the next 20 years.

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