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Up to 90% reduction in severity of fungal infection in tomato plants was seen Researchers at the University of Hyderabad have found that harpin biopesticide brought about 80-90% reduction in severity of fungal infection in tomato plants when it is encapsulated in chitosan nanoparticles. The fungal infection was caused by Rhizoctonia solani.  The reduction in disease severity is only about 50-55% when the biopesticide is used without loading it in nanoparticles. The results were published in the journal Carbohydrate Polymers. Though harpin is used against several bacterial, fungal and viral infections, poor bioavailability is a major hurdle when harpin protein, taken from the bacteria  Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae, is just sprayed on the leaves like any other pesticide. Chitosan to the rescue To address the issue of poor bioavailability of harpin arising from the inability to permeate into plants, the researchers led by Prof. Appa Rao Podile from the Depa

Technology has been infused into our lives so much so that it gets difficult to imagine a life without smartphones. The moment they enter early adolescence they raise a demand for smartphones. According to a recent study, on an average college going students check their mobile phones more than 150 times a day. THE RESEARCH: Aligarh Muslim University and the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) together went to over 20 central universities and interviewed 200 students. The study conducted by researchers at AMU has been funded by the ICSSR with an aim to understand various facets of smartphone dependency and addiction among college-going students. The title of the research paper is "Smartphone Dependency, Hedonism and Purchase Behaviour: Implications for Digital India Initiatives". "Anxiety and fear of missing out on information make university students check their mobile devices as many as 150 times a day on an average, an activity which can hav

NASA plans to install ECOSTRESS on the International Space Station (ISS)  that will measure the temperature of plants from space, enabling researchers to determine plant water use and to study how drought conditions affect plant health. ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometre Experiment on Space Station, or ECOSTRESS  will hitch a ride to the space station on a SpaceX cargo resupply mission scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on June 29, NASA said on Tuesday. ECOSTRESS is one of two instruments selected in July for NASA's Earth Venture-Instrument series of missions. These missions are part of the Earth System Science Pathfinder program, managed by NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The water is released through pores on the plants’ leaves through a process called transpiration. If there is not enough water available to the plants, they close their pores to conserve water, ca

Access to mobile technology can be both a blessing and a curse. Smart phones are used to make calls, run businesses and organise social lives. But they also raise concerns over their potential impact on our health, society – and education. The UK’s culture secretary has suggested it would be a good idea for schools to ban mobile phones. Matt Hancock, who is in charge of digital policy,  said : “I admire headteachers who do not allow mobiles to be used during the school day. I encourage more schools to follow their lead. The evidence is that banning phones in schools works.” He went on: Studies have shown mobile phones can have a real impact on working memory and fluid intelligence, even if the phone is on a table or in a bag. As a teacher, I personally witnessed the impact that rapidly evolving mobile phones had in the classroom. A new behavioural issue fast became a key challenge – how to deal with yet another distraction. However, those same phones also became a valua

Do you want to know when are you going to die? Google is telling the death date of people by analysing their medical history. This report was published in a scientific journal -- Nature. As of now, Google has analysed 216,221 hospitalisations and 114,003 patients, which comes to more than 46 billion data points. HOW WILL GOOGLE EXAMINE OUR FATE? Google has an artificial intelligence system that helps in analysing the huge pile of the database and automatically learn and improve. In May, Google scientists published the medical conditions of a woman who came to a hospital with late stage breast cancer and fluid building in her lungs. While the hospital estimated that 9.3 per cent death chances, Google predicted 19.9 per cent. Google learnt about 175,639 data points on the woman including past health records and her current vital signs. And, the prediction proved right when she died after a couple of days. Since Google's algorithm is way faster than the compu

What if one day, while you are sitting with your dog in the veranda reading a newspaper, having a hot cup of tea with almond cookies and suddenly an asteroid hits the planet destroying everything including you and your dog? Sounds sinister? We know but you can relax. NASA got us all covered. "The nation already has significant scientific, technical and operation capabilities that are relevant to asteroid impact prevention," Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defence officer said in a statement. "Implementing the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan will greatly increase our nation's readiness and work with international partners to respond effectively, should a new potential asteroid impact be detected," Johnson added. WHAT'S THE PLAN? The US space agency along with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and several other governmental agencies have coll

Right to Education The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002 inserted Article 21-A in the Constitution of India to provide free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right in such a manner as the State may, by law, determine. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which represents the consequential legislation envisaged under Article 21-A, means that every child has a right to full time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school which satisfies certain essential norms and standards. Article 21-A and the RTE Act came into effect on 1 April 2010. The title of the RTE Act incorporates the words ‘free and compulsory’. ‘Free education’ means that no child, other than a child who has been admitted by his or her parents to a school which is not supported by the appropriate Government, shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE), is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India under Article 21a of the Indian Constitution. India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the Act came into force on 1 April 2010. The Act makes education a fundamental right of every child between the ages of 6 and 14 and specifies minimum norms in elementary schools. It requires all private schools to reserve 25% of seats to children (to be reimbursed by the state as part of the public-private partnership plan). Kids are admitted in to private schools based on economic status or caste based reservations. It also prohibits all unrecognised schools from practice, and makes provisions for no donation or capitation fees and no interview of the child or parent for