Test Post

Please download "Bitti-Bittu (PDF)" from this link

Download Bitti-Bittu.pdf

Science off the Sphere: Dancing Droplets

An uber-cool experiment!



NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, aboard the International Space Station,
demonstrates some interesting interplay between water droplets and
charged knitting needles in microgravity.

Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice

Fruits hoarded by ancient ground squirrels give new life to prehistoric plants.

Thanks to Scrat! :D

During the Ice Age, Earth’s northern reaches were covered by chilly, arid grasslands roamed by mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and long-horned bison. That ecosystem, known by palaeontologists as the mammoth steppe, vanished about 13,000 years ago. It has no modern counterpart.

Yet one of its plants has reportedly been resurrected by a team of scientists who tapped a treasure trove of fruits and seeds, buried some 30,000 years ago by ground squirrels and preserved in the permafrost (S. Yashina et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118386109; 2012). The plant would be by far the most ancient ever revived; the previous record holder was a date palm grown from seeds roughly 2,000 years old.

The squirrels’ burrows, 70 in all, were found on the banks of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, 20–40 metres below the current surface of the tundra and surrounded by the bones of mammoths and other creatures. Some burrows contained hundreds of thousands of fruits and seeds, wonderfully preserved by the cold, dry environment.

Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature News, PNAS 10.1073/pnas.1118386109, copyright 2012

Flower image on the right adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature News, PNAS 10.1073/pnas.1118386109, copyright 2012