Phoenixcollections

puple rice photo The mysterious ways of genes influencing the character of crop plants through long periods of domestication, selection and modern breeding continues to perplex genomics specialists, as found out by the genome researchers working on coloured rice, Purpleputtu recently. Even the whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) of the Purpleputtu rice variety has not fully opened the windows to the genetic secrets to the researchers. Researchers at the SciGenom Research Foundation, Chennai, said the genome sequencing of Purpleputtu revealed around 65,000 unique genetic mutations compared with the reference sequence, of which about 50 are in the genes of the colour pathway. The question of how specific genes and gene networks control the expression of its uniqueness, the purple colour, still remains an unanswered mystery, say researchers. In most cultivated white grain rice varieties, a regulatory gene, Rc is missing 14 base pairs, which is believed to have changed the ...

an artisitic view of the kepler space. Ever since the first exoplanet (51 Pegasi b) was discovered in 1995 by Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz, there has been renewed activity and interest in this field. The Kepler and K2 missions of NASA have identified thousands of planet candidates. Now there are nearly 5,000 planet candidates, and of these, some 3,397 have been confirmed as planets, according to the NASA exoplanet archive. The latest entry into the list of confirmed exoplanets is Kepler-56 d, which was added on 13 October. This planet has an orbital period of 1,002 days, accurate to five days, and a mass of nearly 5.61 times that of Jupiter. It is a massive planet that orbits its star Kepler-56 whose radius is about 4.23 times the sun’s radius and which is about 1.32 times as massive as the sun. This planet is only the third to be discovered orbiting its star Kepler-56. Being very massive, its presence was originally inferred by the periodic changes in Kepler-...

picture illustration The Delhi High Court on Friday directed instant messaging service Whatsapp to delete from its server all information of users who chose to opt out of its services after September 25. September 25 is the deadline after which Whatsapp said it would be sharing information of users with social media giant Facebook. A bench headed by chief justice G. Rohini directed Whatsapp to delete all information of users who chose to delete their accounts rather than choosing for its new privacy policy. On Wednesday, the bench had expressed concern over what happens to information of users who opt out of Whatsapp services. Advertisement: Replay Ad Ads by ZINC The bench had raised the query while hearing petition filed by Karmanya Singh and one other law student who had moved the court saying that Whatsapp’s new policy was an infringe...

Technology giant Google plans to shut down Panoramio, the location—centric photo sharing service that the company used to augment its Google Maps and Google Earth services, in November, a media report said. Panoramio, the service which Google acquired in 2007, will show its last image on November 4. Google previously tried to shut the service down in 2014. At the time, its users successfully petitioned the company to keep it open, Tech Crunch reported on Saturday. “Today, with photo upload tools in Google Maps and our Local Guides programme, we are providing easy options for you to share your photos with an active and growing community. As such, we’ve decided to now close down Panoramio,” Google wrote in an email to Panoramio users on Saturday. Advertisement: Replay Ad Ads by ZINC Google is also encouraging Panoramio users to join its Local Guides programme and to upload photos directly to Google Maps. The users who have linked their Panoramio and Goog...

picture of the discovered frog Globally,  third of the world’s frogs are threatened with extinction. A new frog species, which closely resembles the Graceful tree frog (Litoria Gracilenta), was discovered in Australia’s largest virgin forest in Queensland, a scientist said on Wednesday. The frog discovered in Queensland’s Cape York was only determined to be a new species on September 27 after undergoing rigorous tests for a year, scientist Jodi Rowley told Xinhua news agency. Rowley said her colleague Keith McDonald from the Queensland museum had first laid eyes on the Cape York tree frog, scientifically known as Litoria Bella, in 2000 during one of his field-work outings. Advertisement: Replay Ad Ads by ZINC However, it was only recently that the frog was determined to be a new species after a science journal verified their work and published the findings of it. “By looking at differences in its appearance, as well as its advertisement call ...

The Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment which was test-flown by the ISRO two years ago.—PHOTO: THULASI KAKKAT It will test how fast and effectively the crew module of an intended space mission could punch out from a spacecraft The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up to conduct a critical ‘crew bailout test’ to see how fast and effectively the crew module of an intended space mission could punch out from the spacecraft safely in the event of an emergency. The test, known as Pad Abort, will be held at the launch pad of Sriharikota High Altitude Range (SHAR) in a month or two, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) Director K. Sivan told The Hindu in an interaction on the sidelines of the ongoing expo in connection with the World Space Week celebrations at Ernakulathappan ground here. The test forms part of a gamut of critical technologies being developed by the space agency as it awaits the nod from the government for the ambitious ‘human in sp...

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house, making me below standard compared to my mate." The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path...