ABBREVIATIONS GOCE: Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer.

WWT: Worldwide Telescope, (The) AWARDS Stree Shakti Puruskar The December 16 Delhi gang-rape victim has been posthumously bestowed with Stree Shakti award as a tribute to her courage and strength. As a measure of recognition of achievements in individual women in the field of social development, the government had instituted of six national awards which are called Stree Shakti Puraskar are given on the Womens Day (March 8) every year. The awards are in the name of the eminent women personalities, namely, Devi Ahalya Bai Holkar, Kannagi, Mata Jajabai, Rani Gaidinliu Zeliang, Rani Lakshmi Bai and Rani Rudramma Devi (which is open to both men and women). The spirit of Nirbhaya, a name by which many remember the Delhi gang-rape victim, has been given Rani Laxmi Bai Award which has been instituted to recognise the spirit of courage and the personal achievement of a woman in difficult circumstances, who has established this spirit of courage in her individual or professional life. The other winners are: Mata Jijabai Award: Ms Sonika Agarwal (Delhi). Rani Gaidinliu Zeliang Award: Mrs Omana T.K. (Kerala). Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Award: Mrs Olga D Mello (Maharashtra). Kannagi Award: Mrs Guramma H. Sankina (Karnataka). Rani Rudramma Devi Award: Mrs Pranita Talukdar (Assam) Each of the six Stree Shakti Awards carries a cash award of Rs 3 lakh. Ayvaiyar Award, 2013 Dr. V. Shanta, chairperson of Adyar Cancer Institute, has been given the award in recognition of her contribution in the field cancer treatment. The award carries a citation, a medallion, a cheque for Rs 1 lakh along with a shawl. Every year, a woman who contributed in the fields of social reforms, women development, religious harmony, language, arts, tradition, culture, science, journalism and administration is presented with Avvaiyar award. National Film Awards, 60th Best Feature Film: Paan Singh Tomar Best Director: Shivaji Lotan Patil for Dhag (Marathi) Best Actor: Irrfan Khan, Paan Singh Tomar and Vikram Gokhale for Anumati(Marathi) Best Actress: Usha Jadhav, Dhag (Marathi) Best Supporting Actress: Dolly Alhuwalia, Vicky Donor and Kalpana, Thanichallanjan(Malyalam). Best Supporting Actor: Annu Kapoor, Vicky Donor Best Male Playback Singer: Shankar Mahadevan for "Bolo Nafrom" fromChittagong Best Female Playback Singer: Samhita for Palakein Naa Moon Don from Aarti Anklekartikekar (Marathi) Best Song: Bolo Na from Chittagong Best Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi for Bolo Na from Chittagong Best choreography: Birju Maharaj for the Tamil film Vishwaroopam. Best Screenplay Writer (adapted): Bhavesh Mandalia and Umesh Shukla for Oh My God! Best Dialogue: Anjali Menon for Ustad Hotel (Malayalam) Indira Gandhi Award for the best debut film of a director: Hindi film Chittagongand Malayalam movie 101 Chodiyangal

Best Telugu Film: Eega Best Hindi Film: Filmistan Best Investigative Film: Inshallah Kashmir Best Child Artist: Master Virendra Pratap for Dekh Indian Circus A special jury award has been conferred on Rituparno Ghosh for Bengali filmChitrangadha and to Nawazuddin Siddiqui for the films Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur, Dekh Indian Circus and Talaash. Parineeti Chopra won a special mention for her performance in Ishaqzaade for her convincing delineation of a daredevil girl, and so did Tannishtha Chatterjee for Dekh Indian Circus Queen Elizabeth Engineering Prize, 2013 Internet pioneers, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreessen, will share the 1 million award. They are the first recipients of the prize. The citation panel said the five men had all contributed to the revolution in communications that has taken place in recent decades. The UK government initiated the QE Prize as a companion to the Nobel Prizes, to raise the profile of engineering. It is endowed by industry and administered by an independent trust chaired by Lord Browne, a former chief executive of BP. The award was announced at the Royal Academy of Engineering in central London. Saraswati Samman, 2012 Manalezhuthu, a collection of Malayalam poems, written by Ms Sugathakumari, has been selected for the award, for her anthology marking a variety of lyrical mode and complexity of metamorphical imagination. The Saraswati Samman is instituted by K.K. Birla Foundation and is given annually to an outstanding literary work in any of the Indian languages that are part of the 8th Schedule of the Constitution. The honour carried a citation and cash award of Rs 10 lakh. Abel Prize 2013 Belgian-born mathematician Pierre Deligne has been awarded the $1 million Abel Prize for mathematics by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Prof. Deligne was cited for seminal contributions to algebraic geometry and for their transformative impact on number theory, representation theory, and related fields. The 68-year-old has contributed to finding connections between various fields of mathematics and his research has resulted in key discoveries and concepts named after him, including the Deligne conjecture. Algebraic geometry concerns the study of the relationship between geometry and algebra. BOOKS Lean In Written by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, it challenges men in the upper echelons of corporate America to take more women under their wing. The book has been praised as an ambitious reboot of feminism and criticized as a manifesto directed to women from a privileged perch. CYBER SPACE The Worldwide Telescope The Worldwide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescopebringing together imagery from the worlds best ground- and space-based telescopes for the exploration of the universe. Students of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the cosmos using WWTs simple and powerful user interface. Microsoft Research has assembled astronomical data from scientists all over the world to build a 3D model that users can actually fly through. NASAs Hubble Images are used liberally, and Microsoft hopes to incorporate data from the James Webb Telescope when it launches in a few years.

Users will be able to do flybys of any star, nebula or planet of which astronomers have gathered data on. There is real data backing this simulation that makes it useful from the elementary school level, all the way up to graduate studies. It has support for visible light, as also X-ray and infrared observations. Microsoft Research has also built WWT with touch interactions in mind. Desktop mouse controls arent forgotten, but pinch-zooming is being held up as the best way to use the maps. The product is currently limited to desktops, but a mobile version is expected soon. Microsoft has created an API that will allow developers and educators to build custom stellar tours entirely within The Worldwide Telescope. It can run in a web browser on PC or Mac, but Silverlight is required. There is also a Windows client that can be installed. WWT represents a major step toward the democratization of science, and it has turned the Internet into the worlds best telescopea veritable supercomputer at your desktop. Microsoft Research has dedicated WWT to the memory of Jim Gray, releasing it as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before. DEFENCE NirbhaySub-sonic Cruise Missile of India Taking an important step forward to make its missile arsenal more potent, India, on March 12, 2013, testfired first indigenously developed sub-sonic cruise missile Nirbhay(fearless). It was test-fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur near here in Balasore district of Odisha. However, the missile failed to hit the target in its maiden test-firing as it had to be terminated midway after deviating from the flight course. DRDO said the missile successfully met the basic mission objectives and performed some of the manoeuvres satisfactorily before being terminated midway. The missile, under development since 2007, has a range of 1,000 kmsimilar to the US Tomahawk, which flies like an aircraft. It has good loitering capability, control and guidance, a high degree of accuracy in terms of impact and very good stealth features. The missile has been developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment, a Defence Research and Development Organisation laboratory based at Bangalore. Successful Test of submarine-launched BrahMos On March 20, 2013, India successfully carried out the maiden test-firing of the over 290 km-range submarine-launched version of BrahMos supersonic cruise missile in the Bay of Bengal, becoming the first country in the world to have this capability. The missile was successfully test-fired from an underwater pontoon. Ship and ground-launched versions of the missile have been successfully tested and put into service with the Indian Army and the Navy. The maiden test of the submarine-launched version of BrahMos came over a week after indigenously built long-range subsonic cruise missile Nirbhay failed to hit its target in its first test. The BrahMos missile is set be the primary weapon for the Navy in the coming years. While the induction of the first version of BrahMos missile system in the Navy started from 2005 with INS Rajput, it is now fully operational with two regiments of the Army. The Air Force version of the missile is also said to be ready and work is going on to modify two Russian Sukhoi (Su-30) fighter jets to make the aircraft BrahMoscompatible. PERSONS

Pope Francis Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina has been elected as the 266th pontiff of the Catholic church. Both an insider and an outsider, he is the first pontiff from Latin America and the first Jesuit. He will be called Pope Francis. The Society of Jesus, as the Jesuits are called, is a teaching and missionary order, long associated with independence from secular authority and a passion for social justice. The new Pope is known for shunning the trappings of high religious office, preferring to travel by bus or subway and to live a humble life. He sent that message Wednesday by wearing a simple white robe for his first appearance as Pope Francis. His name harks back to the legacy of St. Francis of Assisi, the monk who devoted his life to the sick and the poor and who founded the Franciscan order. Known as a conciliator and a man with a strong pastoral vocationunlike Pope Benedict XVI, who was an acclaimed theologian and academicPope Francis faces huge issues: healing divisions in the church; stanching the exodus of parishioners and the dwindling number of vocations among priests; reforming the Curia, the clumsy and scandal-ridden Vatican bureaucracy; and imposing transparency and accountability in the Vatican bank. Born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, he is one of several children of working-class Italian immigrants. As a teenager he suffered from a serious chest infection and had a lung removed. He set his youthful aspirations on a career in chemistry, earning a masters degree at the University of Buenos Aires, before finding his vocation and entering the Jesuit seminary of Villa Devoto. After earning a degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of Buenos Aires in 1960, he taught literature and psychology to high-school students for several years before returning to his own theological studies. He was ordained on December 13, 1969. RESEARCH Higgs boson God particle found, confirm CERN scientists Scientists say they are confident that the subatomic particle discovered in 2012 by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is indeed a Higgs boson or the elusive God particle. It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July 2012, they found that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles, and its quantum properties. For example, a Higgs boson is postulated to have no spin, and in the Standard Model its paritya measure of how its mirror image behavesshould be positive. CMS and ATLAS have compared a number of options for the spin-parity of this particle, and these all prefer no spin and positive parity. This, coupled with the measured interactions of the new particle with other particles, strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson. The detection of the boson is a very rare eventit takes around 1 trillion (1012) proton-proton collisions for each observed events. Coordinating Robots to serve humans in future Scientists are developing a team of coordinating robots that could eventually serve humans in future, relying on networking to accomplish a range of tasks. Researchers in the Sheffield Centre for Robotics of the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, have been working to programme a group of 40

robots, and say the ability to control robot swarms could prove hugely beneficial in a range of contexts, from military to medical. They have demonstrated that the swarm can carry out simple fetching and carrying tasks, by grouping around an object and working together to push it across a surface. The robots can also group themselves together into a single cluster after being scattered across a room, and organise themselves by order of priority. Swarming robots could also have important roles to play in the future of micro-medicine, as nanobots are developed for non-invasive treatment of humans. On a larger scale, they could play a part in military, or search and rescue operations, acting together in areas where it would be too dangerous or impractical for humans to go. In industry too, robot swarms could be put to use, improving manufacturing processes and workplace safety. The programming that the team has developed to control the robots is deceptively simple. For example, if the robots are being asked to group together, each robot only needs to be able to work out if there is another robot in front of it. If there is, it turns on the spot, if there isn't, it moves in a wider circle until it finds one, researchers said. SPACE RESEARCH Astronomers accurately measure distance to nearest Galaxy Astronomers have for the first time accurately measured the distance to one of the Milky Ways neighbouring galaxyand it is just 163,000 light-years away. Scientists using telescopes at European Southern Observatorys La Silla Observatory in Chile as well as others around the globe and found the dwarf galaxy nearby, called the Large Magellanic Cloud, which lies 163,000 light-years away. The new measurement improves scientists knowledge of the rate of expansion of the Universethe Hubble Constantand is a crucial step towards understanding the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion to accelerate. The astronomers worked out the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud by observing rare close pairs of stars, known as eclipsing binaries. As these stars orbit each other they pass in front of each other. When this happens, as seen from Earth, the total brightness drops, both when one star passes in front of the other; and by a different amount when it passes behind. By tracking these changes in brightness very carefully, and also measuring the stars orbital speeds, it is possible to work out how big the stars are, their masses and other information about their orbits. When this is combined with careful measurements of the total brightness and colours of the stars, remarkably accurate distances can be found. This method has been used before, but with hot stars. However, certain assumptions have to be made in this case and such distances are not as accurate as is desirable. But now, for the first time, eight extremely rare eclipsing binaries where both stars are cooler red giant stars have been identified. Third-closest Star System to Sun Discovered In a first-of-its-kind discovery in nearly a century, NASA scientists have found the third-closest star system to the Sun located only 6.5 light-years away. The pair of newly found stars is the closest star system

discovered since 1916. Both stars in the new binary system discovered by NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) are brown dwarfs, which are stars that are too small in mass to ever become hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. As a result, they are very cool and dim, resembling a giant planet like Jupiter more than a bright star like the Sun. The star system is named WISE J104915.57-531906 because it was discovered in an infrared map of the entire sky obtained by WISE. It is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnards star, which was discovered 6 light-years from the Sun in 1916. The closest star system consists of: Alpha Centauri, found to be a neighbour of the Sun in 1839 at 4.4 lightyears away, and the fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1917 at 4.2 light-years. Grey Mars could have supported life: NASA An analysis of rock samples collected by the Curiosity rover indicates that Mars could have supported living microbes, the American space agency NASA has said. Scientists identified sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbonsome of the key chemical ingredients required to support life in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet in February 2013. The data indicates that the Yellowknife Bay area, which the rover is exploring, was the end of an ancient river system or an intermittently wet lake bed that could have provided chemical energy and other favourable conditions for microbes. The rock is made up of a fine grain mudstone containing clay minerals, sulphate minerals and other chemicals. This wet environment, unlike some others on Mars, was not harshly oxidising, acidic, or extremely salty, NASA said. Scientists were surprised to find a mixture of oxidised, less-oxidised, and even non-oxidised chemicals providing an energy gradient of the sort many microbes on Earth exploit to live. The $2.5 billion nuclear-powered Curiosity has been exploring the planets surface since its dramatic landing on August 6, 2012, for an anticipated two-year mission. Scientists do not expect Curiosity to find aliens or living creaturesthe rover does not have the capability to identify microbial life or fossils, even if they were present today. Japans earthquake heard in space The colossal earthquake that sent a devastating tsunami barrelling into Japan in 2011 was so big it could be heard from space, a study has said. A specially fitted satellite circling the Earth was able to detect the ultralow frequency sound waves generated by the massive shift in the planets crust, when the 9.0-magnitude quake struck. The Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is a super-sensitive satellite run by the European Space Agency. Scientists say earthquakes not only create seismic waves that travel through the planets interior, but large tremors also cause the surface of the planet to vibrate like a drum. This produces sound waves that travel upwards through the atmosphere. GOCE is designed to capture and register these signals, acting like an orbital seismologist. The satellite first recorded the signal as it passed over the Pacific Ocean about 30 minutes after the quake and then again 25 minutes later as it moved across Europe.

AlmaLargest Radio Telescopebecomes operational At a cost of US$1.4bn, the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, which opened on March 13, 2013, in Chile, promises to start a new era in science by offering insight into unexplored stars and galaxies. It comprises 66 giant radio telescopes destined to observe the sky in millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths. They are located more than 5,000m high in the Atacama Desert. That makes it the secondhighest construction in the world, after a train station in the Himalayas. The telescopes are scattered on a large field where rain is very rare; the dry atmosphere facilitates good observations. To achieve the same result of Alma with a traditional telescope, scientists would need to build one so big that it would take up 15 sq km in surface space. Alma will observe galaxies millions of light-years distant. It will study the clouds of gas and dust that go into making stars and planets. The hope is that its pictures will enable scientists to watch planets actually in the process of construction. Other key objectives include trying to observe important new details about black holes, and attempting to study a galaxy that produces up to 100 suns a day. NASAs Swift satellite helps discover youngest-known supernova remnants NASAs Swift satellite has uncovered the previously unknown remains of a shattered star while performing an extensive X-ray survey of our galaxys central regions. Designated G306.30.9 after the coordinates of its sky position, the new object ranks among the youngest-known supernova remnants in our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers estimate that a supernova explosion occurs once or twice a century in the Milky Way. The expanding blast wave and hot stellar debris slowly dissipate over hundreds of thousands of years, eventually mixing with and becoming indistinguishable from interstellar gas. Like fresh evidence at a crime scene, young supernova remnants give astronomers the best opportunity for understanding the nature of the original star and the details of its demise. Supernova remnants emit energy across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to gamma rays, and important clues can be found in each energy band. Using an estimated distance of 26,000 light-years for G306.30.9, the scientists determined that the explosions shock wave is racing through space at about 2.4 million km/h). Express ride to Space Station On March 28, 2013, a crew of two Russians and an American blasted on a Russian rocket for the International Space Station (ISS), in a trip that was the fastest ever manned journey to the facility. The journey time was just six hours, compared with the previous time of over two days. The slash in travel time has been made possible because technological improvements resulting in the Soyuz needing to orbit the Earth four times before docking with the ISS, compared to some 30 orbits that had to be made earlier. The manned express flight came after Russia successfully sent three Progress supply capsules in August, October and February to the station via the short six hour route. The shortened flight time has several advantages for the crew. Firstly, as the crew only start to experience the tough effects of weightlessness after 4-5 hours of flight they will be in better shape when they arrive at

the station for the docking procedure. Also, the reduced time means that the Soyuz capsule will be able to deliver biological materials for experiments aboard the ISS in time before they spoil, something that would not have been possible with a two day trip. MISCELLANEOUS Times Higher Education ranks top-10 institutions in India In its latest World Reputation Rankings for 2013, Times Higher Education magazine, (THE) UK, for the first time, has released an India top-10 list. According to THE India Reputation Rankings, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, is in the first position, followed by IIT Bombay, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi, respectively. The University of Delhi takes the sixth placethe first full-fledged university on the list. IIT Madras (7), IIT Kharagpur (8), Aligarh Muslim University (9) and University of Hyderabad (10) are the other names, which feature in the list. The reputation rankings, a spin-off of the annual THE World University Rankings, are based on subjective, but expert judgement of senior, published academics. However, globally, not a single Indian institution has made it to the top 100 of the World Reputation Rankings 2013. While Harvard University tops the list, it is followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. THE revealed that if the rankings were to list more than top-100, IISc Bangalore would be 130th, IIT Bombay in the 192nd place, with all other Indian institutions falling outside the global top-200. Facebook like may tell a lot about your personality Clicking those friendly blue like buttons strewn across the Web may be doing more than marking you as a fan of Coca-Cola or Lady Gaga. It could out you as gay. It might reveal how you vote. It might even suggest that youre an unmarried introvert with a high IQ and a weakness for nicotine. Thats the conclusion of a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers reported analysing the likes of more than 58,000 American Facebook users to make guesses about their personalities and behaviour, and even whether they drank, smoked, or did drugs. Cambridge University researcher David Stillwell, one of the studys authors, said the results may come as a surprise. Facebook launched its like button in 2009, and the small thumbs-up symbol has since become ubiquitous on the social network and common across the rest of the Web as well. According to Facebook, roughly 2.7 billion new likes pour out onto the Internet every day endorsing everything from pop stars to soda pop. That means an ever-expanding pool of data available to marketers, managers, and just about anyone else interested in users inner lives, especially those who arent careful about their privacy settings. When researchers crunched the like data and compared their results to answers given in the personality test, patterns emerged in nearly every direction. Since the study involved people who volunteered access to their data, its unclear if the trends would apply to all Facebook users. The study found that Facebook likes were linked to sexual orientation, gender, age, ethnicity, IQ, religion, politics and cigarette, drug, or alcohol use. The likes also mapped to relationship status, number of Facebook friends, as well as half a dozen different personality traits. Some likes were more revealing than others. Researchers could correctly distinguish between users who identified themselves as black or white 95 percent of the time. That success rate dropped to a still impressive 88 percent when trying to guess whether a male user was homosexual, and to 85 percent when telling Democrats from Republicans. Identifying drug users was far trickier researchers got that right only

65 per cent of the time, a result scientists generally describe as poor. The linkages ranged from the self-evident to the surreal. Men who liked TV song-and-dance sensation Glee were more likely to be gay. Men who liked professional wrestling were more likely to be straight. Drinking game aficionados were generally more outgoing than, say, fans of fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett. People who preferred pop diva Jennifer Lopez usually gathered more Facebook friends than those who favoured the heavy metal sound of Iron Maiden. Among the more poignant insights was the apparent pre-occupation of children of divorce with relationship issues. For example, those who expressed support for statements such as Never Apologize For What You Feel Its Like Saying Sorry For Being Real or Im The Type Of Girl Who Can Be So Hurt But Still Look At You & Smile were slightly more likely to have seen their parents split before their 21st birthday. Jennifer Golbeck, a University of Maryland computer scientist who wasnt involved in the study but has done similar work, endorsed its methodology, calling it smart and straightforward and describing its results as awesome. Facebook users can change the privacy settings on their likes to put them beyond the reach of researchers, advertisers or nearly anyone else. For the unknown number of users whose preferences are public, the researchers had this advice: Look before you like.