Finally another Scientific Endeavor (2012) in this information age had ended. In opinion the ‘TOP 5’ scientific breakthroughs are…..,,,, 

#5 Sky Crane… 

The US’s NASA had landed the 5.5 ton Sky crane on Mars. In future ,on some day.. 

This could be a key for further research in the Red planet 

#4 Majorana fermions 

Scientists had discovered particles-‘Majorana Fermions’ that can act as a matter as well as antimatter, and destroy themselves. This will play a major role in Data storage and processing. 

#3 Neutrinos 

Finally in 2012,The scientists had found the unknown parameters that describes how Neutrinos travel almost at the speed of light…This will explain why there is so much matter and less antimatter. 

#2 ENCODE project 

The ENCODE project, which showed that 80% of human genome is active and helps gene on and off. Many DNA that had been declared as junk proved to be useful. 

And...Obviously The #1 is...

The Higgs Boson 

The discovery of Higgs Boson had explained the mystery of mass.

   

                                     

If you have a better option Plz.. comment

Tiny coral reef wrasses can swim as fast as some of the swiftest fish in the ocean – but using only half as much energy to do so, Australian scientists working on the Great Barrier Reef have found.By flapping their fins in a figure-eight pattern, blue lined wrasses can travel at high speeds while using 40 per cent less energy than tunas of the same size.

“For a long time, people thought the best high-speed swimmers were the fishes cruising in open waters, like mackerel and tunas,” says Dr Chris Fulton from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The Australian National University.

“Our study shows that these coral reef wrasses, by virtue of their unique wing-like fins, can maintain very similar speeds at a dramatically lower energetic cost,” he says.

The researchers’ discovery could help revolutionise robot submarine technology by reducing how much energy is needed to propel objects underwater.

Current Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) use propellers or jets at the back. “By replacing these with fins at the front to mimic how the bluelined wrasses flap their fins, we could propel robots with less power, saving on batteries and increasing their range,” Dr Fulton says.

Dr Fulton explains that fish like tunas and mackerels move their bodies and tails to propel themselves through the water. While this method enables them to swim fast, it can come at a high energetic cost.

“Another way fish swim is to use their pectoral fins, those at the front of their body, to produce thrust,” says Dr Fulton. “Fishes that do this with rounded fins tend to paddle their fins back and forth, almost like how we row a boat: they hold their fins out and pull back in a power stroke, then collapse their fins and bring them forward for a recovery stroke. This means they are producing thrust only half the time.”

Bluelined wrasses, however, flap their tapered fins in a figure eight pattern that produces thrust on every stroke, making it far more energy efficient.

“This figure-eight fin sweep allows the bluelined wrasse to create a lift force as the water flows over their fins, in a very similar way to how birds fly through the air. This means the fish are literally flying underwater.

“They also hold their body rigid while swimming to make it as streamlined as possible. They only flap their fins, slightly adjusting the angle so as to cruise along without burning up a lot of energy.”

The study shows that bluelined wrasses stand out as the highest performing swimmers for their size with respect to optimum swimming speed and energy consumption, Dr Fulton says.

Such extreme performance appears to be linked with the fish’s habitat, he says. Unlike many tail-swimmers that dwell in the open ocean, these wrasses live on shallow coral reefs where they experience some rough treatment from waves breaking over the reef.

“Most people think that coral reefs are idyllic places for fish to live, but dwelling in these shallow waters means they often experience extreme water flows generated from waves,” Dr Fulton says.

“It’s almost like living with constant winds from a cyclone – you can just imagine what it’d be like to try and find food and get home in that sort of weather!”

Having a smart swimming technique has ensured these small reef fish have an evolutionary advantage in the marine environment, Dr Fulton says.

“Fish use up to half of their energy on swimming. So if they can save even just a fraction of this, they can spend it on growing bigger, holding larger territories and producing more offspring,” he says.

“Just imagine if you could save 40 per cent on the petrol bill for your car – how good would it be to spend that spare cash on other things?”

“We know fish with these wing-like fins dominate shallow reefs around the world, where in some cases they can be about 10 times more abundant than fishes with paddle-shaped fins.”

IIT-Madras scientists have blood on their hands and nobody is complaining. A team of scientists from the department of engineering design has been successful in creating enough red blood cells from stem cells to be used as ‘artificial blood’ in people who need transfusion

Having proved their oxygen-carrying capacity, the RBCs will now go into 'mass production' before starting human trials in three years, scientists said. The IIT team recently got a funding approval from the Union ministry of science and technology to produce artificial blood on an industrial scale. This blood would be tested on animals before human trials. If the trials prove successful, it will help hospitals overcome shortage of blood and save many accident victims.

South Korean scientists just developed the world’s first imprintable and bendable battery – and it could pave the way for flexible mobile devices in the near future. According to the researchers, the new lithium-ion batteries are not only flexible, but also more stable and less likely to overheat or catch fire than conventional batteries. This technology could lead to the creation of flexible smartphones or other electronic devices, as well as the development of new apps that could change the way consumers interact with their phones.
The new flexible battery was developed by a team of researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. Led by Professor Lee Sang-young, the team has created a fluid-like polymer electrolyte that, through use of nanomaterials, could be applied to any given surface. The electrolytes are exposed to ultraviolet rays for 30 seconds, resulting in flexible batteries that can be imprinted with various patterns.
Apart from creating more diverse possibilities for practical applications, due to the flexibility of the design, the new batteries show a much higher level of stability than conventional batteries that use liquefied electrolytes.
“Conventional lithium-ion batteries that use liquefied electrolytes had problems with safety as the film that separates electrolytes may melt under heat, in which case the positive and negative [charge] may come in contact,” said the country’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which co-funded the research.
“Because the new battery uses flexible but solid materials, and not liquids, it can be expected to show a much higher level of stability than conventional rechargeable batteries.”

The TDRS Project is building three space communications satellites that are part of a follow-on spacecraft fleet that will replenish NASA's Space Network. The TDRS Project Office at Goddard Space Flight Center manages the TDRS development effort. TDRS is the responsibility of the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) office within the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C. Operations of the network are the responsibility of the Space Network Project at Goddard.

In December 2007, NASA signed a contract for Boeing Space Systems to build two third generation TDRS spacecraft for launch in 2013 and 2014. An option for a third TDRS spacecraft was executed in 2011. Within the contract there were required modifications that would enable the White Sands Complex ground system to support the new spacecraft.

The January 2013 launch of TDRS-K will begin the replenishment of the fleet through the development and deployment of the next generation spacecraft. These satellites will ensure the Space Network's continuation of around-the-clock, high throughput communications services to NASA's missions; serving the scientific community and human spaceflight program for years to come.The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite constellation is a space-based communication system used to provide Tracking, Telemetry, Command, and high bandwidth data return services to its many customers. A major component of the system is the spacecraft itself, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS). Aboard each spacecraft are multiple antennae that simultaneously relay signals between the ground and multiple satellites. As a result, TDRS provides a wide variety of services to meet customers' needs and demands.

The primary payload of each TDRS is the microwave communications equipment, two gimbaled antennae and a phased array antenna. The gimbaled antennae provide forward (to the customer satellite), return (from the customer satellite), and tracking services to one customer at a time.  Each TDRS communicates with customers at S-band and Ku-band microwave frequencies at various data rates.   Through Ka-Band, the 2nd and 3rd generation satellites are able to provide improved overall service potental with substantially higher bandwidth communications services.  The phased array antenna provides low-rate S-band forward, return, and tracking services to multiple customers simultaneously.  The TDRS Payload is designed to communicate through both gimbaled antennae and the phased array antenna simultaneously to customer electronic communication hardware operating at different carrier frequencies and various data-rates. 

Clever use of a microscopic resonator can quickly measure the masses of proteins and gold nano particles.

Physicist Michael Roukes and his colleagues at Caltech have developed a microscopic device that can measure the mass of a single molecule in real time. Chemists use such sensitive weighings to help determine the chemical identities of unknown substances. The Caltech team says that its system could eventually allow scientists to analyze thousands of different proteins in a matter of milliseconds using much smaller samples than before.

The device, a microscopic resonator measuring 2 micrometers long by 120 nano meters wide, consists of a metallic layer 1 on top of a silicon carbide layer 2, attached to a silicon substrate 3 by minuscule supports 4. To “weigh” a molecule, a solution containing the molecule is sprayed onto the resonator. When a single molecule lands on it, it causes a change in the way the resonator vibrates. The resonator is connected to an electric circuit that registers the vibration change and transmits it to computers that then calculate the molecule’s mass. Each time a molecule lands on the resonator, it produces a mass measurement; eventually, hundreds of molecules can pile up on the resonator, allowing the scientists to obtain additional data for increased accuracy.

So far, Roukes has used this system to measure the masses of gold nano particles and three proteins found in the blood serum of cows. He is now working on a resonator that can vibrate in more complex ways, yielding even more precise readings.

The outflows were detected by astronomers from 
Australia, the USA, Italy and The Netherlands. They report their finding Nature."These outflows contain an extraordinary amount of energy — about a million times the energy of an exploding star," said the research team's leader, CSIRO's Dr Ettore Carretti. But the outflows pose no danger to the Earth or Solar System.The speed of the outflow is supersonic, about 1000 kilometres a second. "That's fast, even for astronomers," Dr Carretti said."They are not coming in our direction, but go up and down from the Galactic Plane. We are 30,000 light-years away from the Galactic Centre, in the Plane. They are no danger to us."From top to bottom the outflows extend 50,000 light-years [five hundred thousand million million kilometres] out of the Galactic Plane.That's equal to half the diameter of our Galaxy (which is 100,000 light-years—a million million million kilometres—across).Seen from the Earth, the outflows stretch about two-thirds across the sky from horizon to horizon.The outflows correspond to a "haze" of microwave emission previously spotted by the WMAP and Planck space telescopes and regions of gamma-ray emission detected with NASA's Fermi space telescope in 2010, which were dubbed the "Fermi Bubbles".The WMAP, Planck and Fermi observations did not provide enough evidence to indicate definitively the source of the radiation they detected, but the new Parkes observations do."The options were a quasar-like outburst from the black hole at the Galactic Centre, or star-power—the hot winds from young stars, and exploding stars," said team member Dr Gianni Bernardi of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Massachusetts."Our observations tell us it's star-power.In fact, the outflows appear to have been driven by many generations of stars forming and exploding in the Galactic Centre over the last hundred million years.The key to determining this was to measure the outflows' magnetic fields."We did this by measuring a key property of the radio waves from the outflows—their polarisation," said team member Dr Roland Crocker of the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Australian National University.The new observations also help answer one of astronomers' big questions about our Galaxy: how it generates and maintains its magnetic field."The outflow from the Galactic Centre is carrying off not just gas and high-energy electrons, but also strong magnetic fields," said team member Dr Marijke Haverkorn of Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands.

"We suspect this must play a big part in generating the Galaxy's overall magnetic field."

Here are some interesting, but true facts, that you may or may not have known.

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.

2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.

4. Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight. 

5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans. 

6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny.

7. The word "set" has the most number of definitions in the English language; 192 Slugs have four noses.

8. Sharks can live up to 100 years.

9. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.

10. Kangaroos can't walk backwards                                                   .

11. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday.

12. The largest recorded snowflake was 15 Inch wide and 8 Inch      thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.

13. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.

14. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency.

15. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints.

16. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human.

17. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.

18. The world's largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002.

19. Octopus have three hearts.

20. If you ate too many carrots, you would turn orange.

21. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.

22. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old.

23. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands.

24. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs.

25. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother's womb. The survivor is born.

26. Most cats are left pawed.

27. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

28. A Blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant.

29. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling! 

30. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours

1. India never invaded any country in her last 100000 years of history.

2. Chess was invented in India.

3. Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus are studies, which originated in India.

4. India has the largest number of Post Offices in the world.

5. The largest employer in India is the Indian Railways, employing over a million people.

6. The world's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

7. Until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds in the world 

8. India was one of the richest countries till the time of British rule in the early 17thCentury. Christopher Columbus, attracted by India's wealth, had come looking for a sea route to India when he discovered America by mistake.

9. The Art of Navigation & Navigating was born in the river Sindh over 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word 'NAVGATIH'. The word navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word 'Nou'.

10. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to mankind. The Father of Medicine, Charaka, consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago.

THEY ARE........ 

Adam.....

Newton....

Steve Jobs.......