In Brief – September 2019
NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbiting our solar system’s largest planet has been sending countless breathtaking picture of Jupiter, giving researchers and space enthusiasts an unprecedented look at the mysterious planet. The most recent picture has caused a stir on social media with hundreds of people tweeting about the animal, people and objects they see lurking in the planet’s swirling clouds.
An American physicist, Seamus Blackley, wanted to find out how different a bread that has ingredients from thousands of years ago would taste while compared to a slice bought at the supermarket. He baked some bread using 4,500-year-old yeast that was collected from ancient Egyptian relics. According to Blackley’s taste test, the bread from back then tastes even better than today’s.
After failing to find a job in Dubai, Vilas Rikkala, a paddy farmer from Hyderabad, returned home with raffle tickets worth ₹20,000, and ended up winning over $4 million in the Big Ticket Dubai raffle. Rikkala had earlier been employed in Dubai as a driver. He borrowed ₹20,000 from his wife to buy three tickets under his name.
Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, is worshipped as god in the island-nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific ocean. Followers of the Prince Philip Movement believe the Duke descended from one of their spirit ancestors and some are convinced the cyclone that ravaged the Pacific nation in March was nature’s dramatic curtain raiser to his arrival in 2016.
Japan Government’s Science Ministry has granted scientists permission for research to create animal-human hybrids whose organs can be harvested for people to use. Japanese stem cell scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who is leading researchers at the University of Tokyo and Stanford, plans to place human cells inside mouse and rat embryos and develop animal-human hybrids with organs that can be transplanted into human patients.
