Geography has come to help government again.
The border between the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan has been surveyed by government officials, to officially determine where the taxes of the people living in the border area should be paid.
Precision surveying equipment is increasingly being used to determine long-disputed boundaries across the globe, and has now been turned to settle ancient contentious borders in India.
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Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, are mapping India’s solar hot spots—where round-the-year sunlight makes it viable for companies to set up solar power plants. This mapping project is supported by the Environment Ministry, Government of India (GOI).Solar potential maps, depicting monthly variations over the topography of India, were obtained using the GIS for mapping.
A group of students at Hong Kong’s Chinese University have developed a way to store complex information in bacteria.This opens up a way to saving text, images, music, and even video within living cells.One gram of bacteria could store the same amount of information as 450 2,000-gigabyte hard disks.Biostorage — the art of storing and encrypting information in living organisms — is a young field, having existed for about a decade…
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State-of-the-art seismological techniques applied to Apollo-era data suggest our moon has a core similar to Earth’s.
Uncovering details about the lunar core is critical for developing accurate models of the moon’s formation. The data sheds light on the evolution of a lunar dynamo — a natural process by which our moon may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field.
The team’s findings suggest the moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles. Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles. The research indicates the core contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the presence of light elements — such as sulfur and oxygen — in a layer around our own core.
The researchers used extensive data gathered during the Apollo-era moon missions. The Apollo Passive Seismic Experiment consisted of four seismometers deployed between 1969 and 1972, which recorded continuous lunar seismic activity until late-1977.
Future NASA missions will help gather more detailed data. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, is a NASA Discovery-class mission set to launch this year. The mission consists of twin spacecraft that will enter tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure the gravity field in unprecedented detail. The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth’s moon and provide scientists a better understanding of the satellite from crust to core, revealing subsurface structures and, indirectly, its thermal history.
NASA and other space agencies have been studying concepts to establish an International Lunar Network — a robotic set of geophysical monitoring stations on the moon — as part of efforts to coordinate international missions during the coming decade.
Read more at Source:http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars
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