An indigenous design for a Thorium nuclear reactor, which can produce 600 MWs of power for two years without being replenished, was unveiled on Thursday by two Indian scientists at an international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems in Brussels (ICENES 2005).
Designed by scientists (V Jagannathan and Usha Pal) of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), the thorium breeder reactor (ATBR) has been claimed to be far more economical and safer than any other in the world. More importantly, the reactor doesn’t need expensive and scarce Uranium²³⁵. Although it would require Plutonium initially, the reactor will eventually run entirely on Thorium and Uranium-233, the scientists said.

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Courtesy: Wikipedia)In the paper, the scientists explained that the reactor, while annually consuming 880 kg of Plutonium for energy production from seed rods, converts 1100 kg of Thorium into fissionable Uranium-233.
Nuclear analysts say that it may be possible for India to obtain Plutonium from friendly countries wanting to dismantle their weapons or dispose of their stockpiled plutonium:):).

Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living nematode (a roundworm), about 1 mm in length, which lives in a temperate soil environment. Researchers (Shou-Wei Ding, Morris Maduro and others) at the UC Riverside have discovered that this simple worm makes an excellent experimental host for studying some of the most virulent viruses that infect humans:):). The research is published in the journal Nature this month.

Caenorhabditis elegans (Courtesy: UC Riverside)For years researchers throughout the world have studied C. elegans because many aspects of its biology, such as genetics, development and the workings of neurons, mirror the biology of humans. However, no viruses were known to infect the millimeter-long roundworm so it was not used as a model for studying viral infections. The researchers have developed a strain of the worm, in which an animal virus could replicate, allowing them to map the delicate dance of action and reaction between virus and host:).
When a virus infects a living cell, it produces viral RNA, which allows the virus to replicate inside the host cell. When a virus infects the modified elegans worm however, the worm's DNA triggers an antiviral response known as RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi specifically breaks down the virus’ RNA:D. The virus responds by producing a protein acting as a suppressor of RNAi to shut down the host’s antiviral response:-SS. When the researchers introduced a mutation in the elegans genome that shuts down this virus protein generation, the worm did not get infected!!
By studying this interaction between the virus and the worm RNA/DNA, researchers are able to understand how the virus infection works:), as this process of infection has exact parallel in us humans! Viruses like Influenza and HIV are known to produce RNAi suppressors, and so by using the elegans to generate mutated genes, we might be one day able to conquer these days.
On a side-note, we are able to do all this, as we share a lot of our genome with even the lowliest of worms. Another hurrah for evolutionary theory:):).

For the first time in history, scientists will be able to observe how the Earth's gravity will disrupt a massive asteroid's spin:). Scientists (Daniel Scheeres and colleagues) at University of Michigan predict a near-miss when Asteroid 99942 Apophis passes Earth in 2029. An asteroid flies this close to the planet only once every 1,300 years. The chance to study it will help scientists deal with the object should it threaten collision with Earth.

Close Encounter of the rocky kind (Courtesy: Wikipedia)Only about three Earth diameters will separate Apophis and Earth when the 400-meter asteroid hurtles by Earth's gravity, which will twist the object into a complex wobbling rotation. Such an occurrence has never been witnessed but could yield important clues to the interior of the sphere:D.
Apophis is one of more than 600 known potentially hazardous asteroids and one of several that scientists hope to study more closely. In Apophis' case, additional measurements are necessary because the 2029 flyby could be followed by frequent close approaches thereafter, or even a collision:-SS. If NASA places measuring equipment on the asteroid's surface, scientists could for the first time study an asteroid's interior, similar to how geologists study earthquakes to gain understanding of the Earth's core:):).
The asteroid is relatively small, about the length of three football fields. If it hit it wouldn't create wide-scale damage to the Earth, but would cause major damage at the impact site. But readers need not worry, the chance that it might hit is 1 in 300:):).

Many species of birds migrate long distances every year. Not only do they migrate over tens of thousands of miles, they almost always fly an exact route. The route is often independent of the landmarks they might fly over; for example, birds have been found to fly along some ancient riverbed, as if faithfully executing a pattern transferred from generation to generation:).

Chicken Family :D (Courtesy: PhysOrg)It has been known for some time that many species of birds use the Earth's magnetic field to select a direction of movement. However, although such birds clearly have a sense of direction, until now it has not been possible to train birds to move in a certain direction in the laboratory, even if they are motivated by a food reward. The reasons for this failure have been perplexing, but researchers now report that they have been able to successfully accomplish this training task, providing new insight into the evolution of magnetic sensing and opening new opportunities for further study of magnetoreception:):).
In the new work, researchers including Rafael Freire from the University of New England, Australia, Wolfgang Wiltschko and Roswitha Wiltschko from the University of Frankfurt, Germany, and Ursula Munro from the University of Technology in Sydney, demonstrated for the first time that birds could be trained to respond to a magnetic direction. The researchers trained domestic chicks to find an object that was associated with imprinting and was behind one of four screens placed in the corners of a square apparatus, and, crucially, showed that the chicks' direction of movement during searching for the hidden imprinting stimulus was influenced by shifting the magnetic field.
It is expected that this work will facilitate current efforts to understand how birds detect the magnetic field, because the new approach does not rely on complex behaviors, such as migration or homing, that are difficult to study in the laboratory and are dependent on the time of year. The work also shows that the ability to orient with magnetic cues is not only present in an ancient avian lineage dating back to the Cretaceous period, but has also been retained in a nonmigrating bird after thousands of years of domestication:):):).