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- India's maiden interplanetary mission the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has completed four years orbiting the red planet, according to ISRO.
- The mission, launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on November 5, 2013, successfully placed itself into Martian orbit on September 24, 2014 in its first attempt.
- Although the designed mission life of MOM was six months, the satellite has continued to beam back science data from Mars for the past four years.
- Images are also taken by the orbiter of Olympus Mons the largest known volcano of the solar system.
- MOM is built with full autonomy to take care of itself for long periods without any ground intervention.
- The spacecraft came out of communication 'blackout' during this period.
- MOM is the only Martian artificial satellite which could image the full disc of Mars in one view frame and also image the far side of the Martian moon Deimos.
- The Mars Colour Camera has acquired over 980 images so far. The mission has also helped scientists successfully prepare a global atlas of Mars.
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- Ranjana Sonawane hit the headlines eight years ago when she became the first person to get an Aadhaar number.
- A resident of Tembhali village in north Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district, the 48-year-old mother of three now says the 12-digit unique identity managed to get her one important thing: an LPG cylinder connection.
- The household began to use an LPG cylinder for cooking meals only five months ago.
- Sonawane appears unaware of her distinction. Her husband and three children were also issued their Aadhaar numbers within a fortnight of her receiving it in 2010.
- Ranjana and her husband Sadashiv are farm labourers and their house doesn’t have an attached toilet. All 1,505 residents of the village, about 400 km from Mumbai, now have Aadhaar numbers.
- On 24 sep, the gram panchayat organised the latest round of an exercise to fit households with electric meters.
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- After more than a century of conflicting evidence, Anglo-French animosity and a HG Wells novella involving murder most fowl, scientists said 26 Sep they have finally solved the riddle of the world’s largest bird.
- For 60 million years the colossal, flightless elephant bird Aepyornis maximus stalked the savannah and rainforests of Madagascar until it was hunted to extinction around 1,000 years ago
- In the 19th century, a new breed of buccaneering European zoologist obsessed over the creature, pillaging skeletons and fossilised eggs to prove they had discovered the biggest bird on Earth.
- But a study released 26 Sep. by British scientists suggests that one species of elephant bird was even larger than previously thought, with a specimen weighing an estimated 860 kilogrammes (1,895 pounds) about the same as a fully grown giraffe.
- “They would have towered over people,” James Hansford, lead author at the Zoological Society of London, told AFP. “They definitely couldn’t fly as they couldn’t have supported anywhere near their weight.”
- In the study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Hanson examined elephant bird bones found around the world, feeding their dimensions into a machine-learned algorithm to create a spread of expected animal sizes.
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- In a first, scientists have successfully grown oesophageal organoids miniature, functional versions of the human food pipe using stem cells, paving the way for new ways to study and test drugs against gut disorders.
- The research, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, shows how human oesophageal tissue was grown entirely from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which can form any tissue type in the body.
- The work by researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM) in the US may lead to personalised diagnostic methods and focused in part on developing regenerative tissue therapies to treat or cure GI disorders.
- "Disorders of the esophagus and trachea are prevalent enough in people that organoid models of human esophagus could be greatly beneficial," said Jim Wells, a chief scientific officer at CuSTOM.
- "In addition to being a new model to study birth defects like esophageal atresia, the organoids can be used to study diseases like eosinophilic esophagitis and Barrett's metaplasia, or to bioengineer genetically matched esophageal tissue for individual patients," Wells said.
- The oesophagus is a muscular tube that actively passes food from the mouth to the stomach.
- The organ can be affected by congenital diseases, such as oesophageal atresia a narrowing or malformation of the oesophagus caused by genetic mutations.
- There are several diseases that can afflict people later in life. Some include oesophageal cancer, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), or a rare ailment called achalasia a disease affecting the muscles of the lower oesophagus that prevents contraction of the organ and the passage of food.
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- The Indian Navy 26.Sep. signed a contract with Hindustan Shipyard Limited for construction of two Diving Support Vessels (DSV) to augment its submarine support operations.
- The first vessel to be built over a 36 month period would be followed by the second, six months later.
- The vessels, to be based at Vishakhapatnam and Mumbai respectively, would be 118 metres in length and have a displacement of approximately 7,650 tonnes, a navy press release said
- “In addition to operating submarines to secure our waters, the Indian Navy undertakes diving operations in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
- This necessitates extensive diving operations to facilitate various activities such as submarine rescue, underwater inspection, testing or salvage and recovery of objects/ship aircraft lost at sea,” the release said.
- The DSV is also equipped with a Deep Submergence Rescue Vessel (DSRV), which significantly enhances its Submarine Rescue Capabilities.
- The release said that the contract for procuring two sets of non-tethered DSRVs, capable of effecting submarine rescue upto depths of 650 meters was concluded with James Fisher Defence, U.K. on March 16.
- The first DSRV was delivered at Mumbai in April 18 and the second, slated for Vishakhapatnam, is expected by the end of December 2018.
- Induction of DSVs equipped with DSRV would go a long way in enhancing the Indian Navy’s capability and reach of submarine rescue operations in the IOR, the release added.
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