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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...

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 conser...

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...