Washington: Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic National Convention with a speech in which he called for a new currency standard based on silver rather than gold. Over the next few years, his “Cross of Gold” ideas spread across the country, with thousands upon thousands of newspaper mentions.

Washington: American University School of Communication’s Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) announces new research on the rise of the nationwide Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The study “Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice,” coauthored by AU Communications Professor Deen Freelon, examines how social media drove the biggest push for racial justice the US has seen in decades.

San Diego: A team of scientists is exploring an unusual source of electricity — damaged tomatoes that are unsuitable for sale at the grocery store. Their pilot project involves a biological-based fuel cell that uses tomato waste left over from harvests in Florida.

East Lansing: Cyber thieves who steal credit and debit card numbers are making millions of dollars in profits, fueling a global criminal enterprise marked by the high-profile data breaches of major companies such as Target and Home Depot.

Gravitational Waves (GW) were the last prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. The first direct detection of gravitational waves was announced on 11 February by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). 

Los Alamos: Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity in 1916, and now, almost exactly 100 years later, the faint ripples across space-time have been found. The advanced Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory (aLIGO) has achieved the first direct measurement.

Parth: Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly, say astrobiologists from The Australian National University (ANU).

London: Latest research reveals why geckos are the largest animals able to scale smooth vertical walls - even larger climbers would require unmanageably large sticky footpads. Scientists estimate that a human would need adhesive pads covering 40% of their body surface in order to walk up a wall like Spiderman, and believe their insights have implications for the feasibility of large-scale, gecko-like adhesives.

Washington: When Scott Kelly tweeted a picture of moldy leaves on the current crop of zinnia flowers aboard the International Space Station, it could have looked like the science was doomed. In fact, science was blooming stronger than ever. What may seem like a failure in systems is actually an exceptional opportunity for scientists back on Earth to better understand how plants grow in microgravity, and for astronauts to practice doing what they'll be tasked with on a deep space mission: autonomous gardening.

New Delhi: ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C31, successfully launched the 1425 kg IRNSS-1E, the fifth satellite in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. This is the thirty second consecutively successful mission of PSLV and the eleventh in its 'XL' configuration. (Read in Hindi: पीएसएलवी-सी31 ने सफलतापूर्वक लांच किया आईआरएनएसएस-1ई)