Scientific Thoughts

Safest Nuclear Reactor?

2005-08-24T08:22:00.000-04:00

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:):).

Model Organism For Humans

2005-08-23T20:33:00.000-04:00

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:):).

Near Miss, Great Gains

2005-08-22T17:38:00.000-04:00

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:):).

Magnetic Chickens

2005-08-21T17:41:00.000-04:00

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:):):).

Light Controlling Light

2005-08-20T17:45:00.000-04:00

A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light – both slowing it down and speeding it up – in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be published in Applied Physics Letters, could have implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.

Let there be light! (Courtesy: Griffith University)On the screen, a small pulse shifts back and forth – just a little bit. But this seemingly unremarkable phenomenon could have profound technological consequences. It represents the success of Luc Thévenaz and his fellow researchers in the Nanophotonics and Metrology Laboratory at EPFL in controlling the speed of light in a simple optical fiber. They were able not only to slow light down by a factor of three from its well – established speed c of 3x10⁶ meters per second in a vacuum, but they've also accomplished the considerable feat of speeding it up – making light go faster than the speed of light:D.
The telecommunications industry transmits vast quantities of data via fiber optics. Light signals race down the information superhighway at about 186,000 miles per second. But information cannot be processed at this speed, because with current technology light signals cannot be stored, routed or processed without first being transformed into electrical signals, which work much more slowly. If the light signal could be controlled by light, it would be possible to route and process optical data without the costly electrical conversion, opening up the possibility of processing information at the speed of light!!
This is exactly what the EPFL team has demonstrated. Using their Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) method, the group was able to slow a light signal down by a factor of 3.6, creating a sort of temporary optical memory. They were also able to create extreme conditions in which the light signal travelled faster than light in vacuum. And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, relativity isn't called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected:):).

Singing Wings

2005-08-19T06:45:00.000-04:00

Fixed-wing aircrafts generate lift by passing air at different speeds above and below the wings. The difference in the wind speed creates the lift, which keeps the wing (and the plane) afloat:). The greater this difference, the more is the lift, which is proportional to the speed of the aircraft; lower the speed, smaller is the lift. Many a small aircrafts stall (lose the lift) when they are moving at slower than recommended speeds or are making sharp turns which reduces the speed.
It seems that when the wings of such airplanes are vibrated using sound-emitting plastic coatings, they stay afloat even at slow speeds! The sound helps control the flow of air over the wings, reducing the chance of the aircraft stalling:):).

Aerofoil (Courtesy: North Sail Sod)The research was conducted by Ian Salmon, an engineer with Qantas Airways in Sydney, while he was at the University of New South Wales. Tests using a barely audible sinusoidal tone of about 400 Hz (vibrations per second) showed a 22% increase in lift, compared with a standard wing. This could translate into a few extra seconds of time for a pilot to boost a plane’s speed before it stalls!
The technique could have other advantages. The size of a small plane’s wings is determined by the need to avoid stalls during take-off and landing. So if you use this device to improve lift at low speed, you can potentially decrease wing size, thereby reducing the plane’s weight and its fuel requirements:):).

1000th Comet!

2005-08-18T06:47:00.000-04:00

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was launched in 1995 and is positioned in a stable orbit at a point between the Earth and the Sun, where the gravitational forces of the two bodies exactly cancel each other. Consequently, the SOHO is fixed in space between Earth and Sun, and thus is at a prime position to monitor the Sun:).
As comets orbit around the Sun and once in a while crash into it, the SOHO takes their pictures. Scores of volunteers pore through the videos from the craft, and often are the first to spot new comets. Toni Scarmato, a high school teacher from Italy, discovered SOHO's 999th and 1000th comet recently, when two comets appeared in the same SOHO image:):).

The twin comets (Courtesy: SOHO)About 85 percent of the SOHO comets discovered so far belong to the Kreutz group of sun grazing comets, named because their orbits take them very close to the Sun. SOHO's 999th and 1,000th comets also belong to the Kreutz group. The Kreutz sun grazers pass within 500,000 miles of the star's visible surface. In contrast, Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is about 36 million miles from the solar surface.
SOHO has also been used to discover three other well-populated comet groups: the Meyer, with at least 55 members; Marsden, with at least 21 members; and Kracht, with 24 members. These groups are named after the astronomers who suggested the comets are related, because they have similar orbits.
Almost all SOHO's comets are discovered using images from its Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument. LASCO is used to observe the faint, multimillion-degree outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona. A disk in the instrument is used to make an artificial eclipse, blocking direct light from the sun so the much fainter corona can be seen. Sun grazing comets are discovered when they enter LASCO's field of view as they pass close by the star.
A large animation of the comets can be found here.

Primordial Hot Soup

2005-08-17T00:48:00.000-04:00

A new theory that explains why the language of our genes is more complex than it needs to be also suggests that the primordial soup where life began on earth was hot and not cold, as many scientists believe:D.

Primordial soup (Courtesy: SpaceDaily)
Our DNA is made up of four nucleotide bases (complex organic molecules called Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, Cytosine). If you imagine the DNA as a sequence of these molecules, every three of the nucleotides is actually a code for an amino acid (a protein is a sequence of amino acids). Such a triplet is called a codon. However, four nucleotides can code for 4³, or 64 different amino acids, while in nature, we only have 20 amino acids! This is a puzzle that has baffled scientists for 40 years, and now researchers from the University of Bath describe a new theory which they believe could solve it:).
One of quirks of the genetic code is that there are groups of codons which all translate to the same amino acid. For example, the amino acid leucine can be translated from six different codons whilst some amino acids, which have equally important functions and are translated in the same amount, have just one.
The new theory extends upon one of Crick's idea, that the three-letter code evolved from a simpler two-letter code. The new theory suggests that the primordial doublet code was read in threes - but with only either the first two prefix or last two suffix pairs of bases being actively read.
By combining arrangements of these doublet codes together, the scientists can replicate the table of amino acids - explaining why some amino acids can be translated from groups of 2, 4 or 6 codons. They can also show how the groups of water loving (hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic) amino acids emerge naturally in the table, evolving from overlapping prefix and suffix codons:).
Such a technique ensures that the DNA is error tolerant! An error in one of the three nucleotides in a codon, is not fatal, as the changed codon will often code for the same protein:):).

Measuring Productivity

2005-08-16T01:59:00.000-04:00

A physicist in the US has proposed a new way of quantifying the scientific output of individual scientists. Jorge Hirsch of UC San Diego says that the h-index - which is derived from the number of times that papers by the scientist are cited - gives an estimate of the importance, significance and broad impact of a scientist's cumulative contributions. According to Hirsch the h-index should provide a useful yardstick to compare different individuals" when recruiting new staff, deciding promotions and awarding grants.

Nobel laureates in Physics vs. their h-Index (Courtesy: PhysicsWeb)While the number of papers published by a scientist provides a measure of their productivity, it says nothing about the quality of their work. The number of citations received by a scientist is a better indicator of quality, but co-authoring a handful of articles that are cited widely could inflate the reputation of a scientist. The new technique is supposed to take care of these issues.
Hirsch, who has a h-index of 49, says that a "successful scientist" will have an index of 20 after 20 years; an "outstanding scientist" will have an index of 40 after 20 years; and a "truly unique individual" will have an index of 60 after 20 years. Moreover, he goes on to propose that a researcher should be promoted to associate professor when they achieve a h-index of around 12, and to full professor when they reach a h about of 18:-?. I am not too sure about that, though:):).

Most Chimps Are Lefties

2005-08-15T23:17:00.000-04:00

We humans show a distinct preference for our right hand. It is a big puzzle for scientists, as no other mammal showed a preference for their left or right limb. Till now that is. It seems chimpanzees, our closest relatives, show a preference for their left hand! Does it say something about our past perhaps? Perhaps when our ancestors split from theirs, ours split with a right-handedness, whereas their ancestors split with a left-handedness:-? It is a mystery:).

My other self:D (Courtesy: Strange Zoo)A three-year study of 17 wild chimps in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, found that 12 of them used their left hands when using sticks to probe for termites. Four were right-handed and one was listed as ambiguously handed. The findings (by research team led by William D. Hopkins of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta) are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The paper also looked at previous studies of chimpanzees and found that others had noted a left-handed preference when using sticks to fish for termites, but there had been reports of a right-handed preference when cracking nuts:)).
Because the hands are controlled by opposite sides of the brain, the finding could indicate that this brain division had begun as long as 5 million years ago, prior to the split between humans and chimpanzees:):).

NanoTube Transistors

2005-08-14T23:17:00.000-04:00

NanoTubes are traditionally cylindrical Carbon molecules with properties that make them potentially useful in extremely small scale electronic and mechanical applications. They exhibit unusual strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient conductors of heat.
Scientists Prab Bandaru and colleagues at the UC San Diego, and Apparao Rao, of Clemson University, have now crafted such nanotubes in the shape of a 'Y', which could revolutionise the computer industry, as the nanotubes are easily made and act as remarkably efficient electronic transistors:).

'Y' transistor (Courtesy: New Scientist)Experiments show that applying a voltage to the stem of the Y precisely controls the flow of electrons through the other two branches. The switching capacity of these nanostructures is, in comparable to that of today's silicon transistors.
But whereas current silicon transistors have been shrunk to around 100 nanometres, the Y-shaped nanotubes measure just tens of nanometres in size. Eventually, they could even be shrunk to just a few nanometres, the researchers suggest:D:D.

Triple Asteroid System

2005-08-13T23:27:00.000-04:00

An Asteroid is a small, rocky object (few centimeters to 100s of kilometers in size) that orbits the Sun. Most of the asteroids in the Solar System inhabit the region between Mars and Jupiter (forming the so-called Asteroid Belt), and are suspected to be remnants of a planet that could never form, due to the gravitational pull of the giant Jupiter. Although most of the asteroids are solitary, however, some have moons (binary asteroids). Now for the first time ever, scientists have observed a triple system, an asteroid with two moons:).

Sylvia: Artist's impression (Courtesy: ESO)Described in a report published today in the journal Nature, The asteroid is a 280-kilometer-wide body called 87 Sylvia, and lies in the asteroid belt. The moons have been named Romulus and Remus, after the children of the mythological Rhea Silvia:):). Romulus, the first moon, was discovered on February 18, 2001 using the Keck II telescope by Michael E. Brown and Jean-Luc Margot. Remus, the second moon, was discovered on images taken starting on August 9, 2004 and announced on August 10, 2005. It was discovered by Franck Marchis of the UC Berkeley and his colleagues, using Yepun, one of the telescopes in the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope array.
Remus, measures seven kilometers across and travels around 87 Slyvia once every 33 hours in an orbit about 710 kilometers from the asteroid. Detailed observations of the paths of the moons around Sylvia allowed the team to calculate its mass and density, which is only 20% higher than that of water, and is mostly empty space:)). This suggests that Sylvia is a so-called rubble-pile asteroid, a patchwork of fragments created from a collision that later joined together. The small moons are most likely debris from the same collision that were later captured by the bigger body's gravitational pull:):).

Mars Orbiter Blasts Off

2005-08-12T05:48:00.000-04:00

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is finally on its way:):). It will inspect the red planet in fine detail and assist future landers. MRO established radio contact with controllers 61 minutes after launch and within four minutes of separation from the upper stage. Initial contact came through an antenna at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Uchinoura Space Center in southern Japan.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (Courtesy: NASA)The orbiter carries six scientific instruments for examining the surface, atmosphere and subsurface of Mars in unprecedented detail from low orbit. For example, its high-resolution camera will reveal features as small as a dishwasher!. NASA expects to get several times more data about Mars from MRO than from all previous Martian missions combined:D:D.
Researchers will use the instruments to learn more about the history and distribution of Mars' water. That information will improve understanding of planetary climate change and will help guide the quest to answer whether Mars ever supported life. The orbiter will also evaluate potential landing sites for future missions. MRO will use its high-data-rate communications system to relay information between Mars surface missions and Earth.
On arrival day, the spacecraft will fire its engines and slow itself enough for Martian gravity to capture it into a very elongated orbit. The spacecraft will spend half a year gradually shrinking and shaping its orbit by aerobraking, a technique using the friction of carefully calculated dips into the upper atmosphere to slow the vehicle. The mission's main science phase is scheduled to begin in November 2006.

Remote Controlled Humans

2005-08-11T06:41:00.000-04:00

Now do not get alarmed! I am talking about zombies here:D. But Japanese researchers have taken the first steps towards controlling a human:-?, which predictably enough, they hope to harness into computer gaming!
By remotely stimulating a person's vestibular system - the fluid-filled tubes in the inner ear that guide their sense of balance - with electrodes placed on the skin just below the ear, researchers at NTT's research laboratories in Kanagawa have found a way to turn humans into oversized radio controlled vehicles:)).

Let me make you dance! (Courtesy: New Scientist)The technique, known as galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS), unbalances a person so that they automatically veer left or right in an attempt to rebalance themselves. The NTT team developed a headset and a control unit similar to that used with remote-controlled toy cars.
The technique could be used in gaming, where a person can remotely control another person, or perhaps more nefariously, an animal. Also, it could provide a more realistic gaming experience in games such as car-racing, where you might be able to feel the car taking a sharp left turn or rolling over:D:D:D. Definitely not for the weak-hearted:)):-$.

Incan String Theory

2005-08-10T07:55:00.000-04:00

Since there have been intelligent humans, there has been a need for secret codes and messages. History is full of instances where secret codes have been used in wars, to send messages to far-flung regions of a kingdom, or for just plain fun:). A string-based cryptic communication system was used by the ancient Incan administrators, and at last it might be unravelling, thanks to computer analysis of hundreds of different knotted bundles:):).

Incan strings (Courtesy: Stony Brook University)The discovery provides a tantalising glimpse of bureaucracy in the Andean empire and may, for the first time, also reveal an Incan word written in string. Woven from cotton, llama or alpaca wool, the mysterious string bundles - known as Khipu - consist of a single strand from which dangle up to thousands of subsidiary strings, each featuring a bewildering array of knots. Of the 600 or so Khipu that have been found, most date from between 1400 AD and 1500 AD. However, a few are thought to be about 1000 years old.
Anthropologist Gary Urton and mathematician Carrie Brezine at Harvard University think they may have begun unravelling the knotty code. The pair built a searchable database containing key information about Khipu strings, such as the number and position of subsidiary strings and the number and position of knots tied in them. The pair then used this database to search for similarities between 21 Khipus discovered in 1956 at the key Incan administrative base of Puruchuco, near modern day Lima in Peru:):).
The Khipu were used to collate information from different parts of the empire, which stretched for more than 5500 kilometres. Local accountants would forward information on accomplished tasks upward through the hierarchy, with information at each successive level representing the summation of accounts from the levels below.
Completely deciphering the Khipu may never be possible, Urton says, but further analysis of the Khipu database might reveal other details of life. New archaeological discoveries could also throw up some more surprises:):).

Prehistoric Killing Fields

2005-08-09T05:52:00.000-04:00

The southern part of India (the Deccan region) is covered with a layer of ancient lava flow, often 100s of meters thick. The volcanic eruption that caused this magma to come out of the Earth's interior, possibly also wreaked havoc with the climate of the ancient Earth. French and Indian geologists have now identified a 600 meter thick portion of the lava that may have piled up in as little as 30,000 years - fast enough to have possibly caused a deadly global climate shift:):).

Deccan Rocks (Courtesy: University of Hawaii)According to Anne-Lise Chenet of the Laboratoire de Paleomagnetisme, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), the majority of the total volume of Deccan lava might have been erupted in only a few major events spread over only a small fraction of millennia. To test that hypothesis, the researchers have combined already known ages of the traps gathered from radiometric dating with magnetic fields frozen in the rocks. Volcanic rocks record information about the Earth's magnetic field with magnetic minerals that align with Earth's field like millions of tiny compasses before the lava cools. When the lava solidifies, the compasses are locked in place.
Their study confirms that a rapid eruption did occur, with possibly devastating consequences. It seems that this eruption might weaken the hypothesis that the dinosaurs were wiped out (or in large measure) by a meteorite impact. The time when the meteorite that possibly killed off the dinosaurs crashed into the Earth, is identified by the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) geological boundary in the rock strata, which is rich in Iridium. In the case of the Deccan eruptions, the Iridium layer has been found sandwiched between the lava rocks, suggesting that volcanism started before the impact:).
Now the question is: was the meteorite the cause for the dinosaur extinction, or was it merely the straw that broke the poor dino's back?:-?:-?

Oldest Bilateral Symmetry

2005-08-08T17:43:00.000-04:00

We (as all mammals and many other animals), for the most part, possess bilateral symmetry. This means that our left side and right side of the body are more-or-less identical, when viewed at from outside (symmetric positioning of ears, hands, legs and eyes etc):). Bilateral symmetry is supposed to be an evidence for complex (animal) life, as it requires complex bio-chemical processes to ensure the symmetry.
Certain microscopic fossils in China (width of a few hairs pressed together!) have turned out to be the oldest examples of such a bilaterian. The remarkable discovery pushes back the genesis of complex animal life by as many as 50 million years:D:D.

Vernanimalcula fossil (Courtesy Pharyngula)USC College paleontologist David J. Bottjer was among the group that discovered the fossils - period-sized blobs believed to have skimmed the ocean floor with suction-cup mouths some 580 to 600 million years ago. Looking like teensy gumdrops or squashed helmets, they contain tissue layers, a gut, mouth and anus.
Bottjer, in his Scientific American article, describes the fossils, which measure about 200 micrometers across. He and his team sliced the samples into thousands of see-through-thin layers and examined them under a microscope. Finally, among the 10,000 slides, the collaborators discovered 10 examples of the fossil type they had been seeking. After more months of painstaking analysis, the group confirmed the examples were fossils of miniscule bilaterian animals. They named the find Vernanimalcula, meaning small, spring animal. The name refers to the time they lived after glaciers covered the planet.
The discovery is crucial. It suggests that the earliest ancestors to modern-day animals developed before the Cambrian explosion. That so-called explosion period, 488 to 542 million years ago, envelops the time on Earth when most animal groups first appeared:).

Decoding Spider Silk

2005-08-07T17:47:00.000-04:00

One of the strongest fibers in nature is the spiders' silk. The silk is composed of a variety of proteins, secreted by the spiders using special silk glands. The silk threads are spooled out of the external parts of the glands, known as spinnerets. Spiders often have numerous pairs of spinnerets, which they use to produce different types of silk.
Scientists have uncovered the genetic sequence for one of the strongest silks that spiders produce, a discovery that could one day be used to make super spider-silk products for humans:).

Spider Web (Courtesy: EarthLife)Not all spider silk are created equal. For example, spiders use dragline silk to create the scaffolding for their webs, but another type of silk, known as capture silk, is used to fill out the web. While dragline silk is strong, capture silk is more elastic and also sticky, making it better suited for trapping insects that stray too close.
Using molecular biology lab techniques, Cheryl Hayashi (UC Riverside) and Jessica Garb (UC Berkeley) uncovered the sequence of molecules called amino acids (constituents of proteins) for a major protein component in egg case silk (used by certain spiders to encase their eggs) known as Tusp1. Their finding is important because mechanical properties like the strength, elasticity and durability of a silk is determined by its amino acid sequence, and scientists have been successful in discovering only a handful of such sequences.
Applications of synthetic spider-silk range from better body armor to better sutures for surgery:):).

Primordial Impacts

2005-08-06T19:03:00.000-04:00

A cluster of at least three asteroids between 20 and 50 kilometres across colliding with Earth over 3.2 billion years ago caused a massive change in the structure and composition of the earth's surface, according to new research by Australian National University earth scientists.
According to Dr Andrew Glikson and Mr John Vickers from the Department of Earth and Marine Sciences at ANU, the impact of these asteroids triggered major earthquakes, faulting, volcanic eruption and deep-seated magmatic activity and interrupted the evolution of parts of the Earth's crust.

Impact! (Courtesy: Thinkquest Library)The identification of impact ejecta — materials ejected by the hitting asteroid — is based on unique minerals and chemical and isotopic compositions indicative of extraterrestrial origin, including Iridium anomalies.
The impact ejecta from the Barberton region in the eastern Transvaal (of Australia) indicate the formation of impact craters several hundred kilometres in diameter in oceanic regions of the earth, analogous to the lunar maria basins (large dark impressions on the surface of the moon). The seismic effects of the impacts included vertical block movements, exposure of deep-seated granites and onset of continental conditions on parts of the earth surface:).

Hydrino State?

2005-08-05T07:58:00.000-04:00

The Hydrogen atom consists of a single Proton at its nucleus, and an Electron orbiting it. The closer the electron is to the nucleus, lesser the energy it has. The lowest energy state (according to Quantum Mechanics) that the electron can have, is called its ground state, when the electron is supposed to be closest to the nucleus.
However, according to Randy Mills and co-workers at BlackLight Power, a company based in Cranbury, New Jersey, there might be a still lower energy-state, which they have termed the hydrino state:-?.

Left: Shrunken Hydrino State, Right: Normal Ground State (Courtesy: Blacklight Power)Mills argues that the hydrino state could be used as a new source of energy - a claim that has led to a predictably negative response from other researchers:). Termed it the Blacklight process, the claim is that the process allows the electron to move closer to the proton, to which it is attracted, below the prior-known ground state. According to them, this generates power as heat, light, and plasma (a hot, glowing, ionized gas) with the formation of strong hydrogen products that are the basis of a vast class of new chemical compounds with broad commercial applications.
Earlier this year, Andreas Rathke of the European Space Agency published a paper in which he argued that the theory for the hydrino state put forward by Mills was the result of a mathematical mistake. Now another theorist has joined the debate: Jan Naudts of the University of Antwerp in Belgium argues that the Klein-Gordon equation of relativistic quantum mechanics does indeed permit the existence of a low-energy hydrino state!
A video explaining the Blacklight process is described here. Only time will tell. I, for one, am quite skeptical. Another skeptical look is provided here.

Galactic Zoo

2005-08-04T21:24:00.000-04:00

Hubble is still going strong:). Gazing deep into the sky, it has located a school of galaxies located within a tiny region of space. They are all very different: some are large, some are small. Some are old, and some are new. Most of them have never been seen before, until now:).

Galactic Find (Courtesy: HubbleSite)A handful of large fully formed galaxies are scattered throughout the image. These galaxies are easy to see because they are relatively close to us. Several of the galaxies are spirals with flat disks that are oriented edge-on or face-on to our line of sight, or somewhere in between. Elliptical galaxies and more exotic galaxies with bars or tidal tails are also visible.
Many galaxies that appear small in this image are simply farther away. These visibly smaller galaxies are so distant that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We are seeing these galaxies, therefore, when they were much younger than the larger, nearby galaxies in the image. One red galaxy to the lower left of the bright central star is acting as a lens to a large galaxy directly behind it. Light from the farther galaxy is bent around the nearby galaxy's nucleus to form a distorted arc.
This image is a composite of multiple exposures of a single field taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys. This image took nearly 40 hours to complete and is one of the longest exposures ever taken by Hubble:):).

Negative Information

2005-08-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

What is information? According to the Webster dictionary, it is the knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction. In our everyday world, when we gain information, that means we have learnt something new to add to our existing knowledge. It seems things are a bit murkier (as usual!) in the world governed by Quantum Mechanics:). Quantum Mechanics describes the world of the smallest, of the Protons, Neutrons and Electrons, and it is possible to have something called Negative Information in that world:)).

Electron Cloud around a Sugar Molecule (Courtesy: Actuality Systems)So what is Negative Information? According to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, at the quantum level, we cannot accurately compute both the position and the velocity of a particle (say, an electron). When we try to accurately find the position, there will be a large error in (our knowledge of) the velocity, and vice-versa. That is how the sub-atomic world works, and there is no way around it. Thus, there is a fundamental limit on how much we can know about a particle, and therefore about any set of particles. Since we cannot pin-point the electrons (or any other particle), we can only estimate their probabilities of being at any place at any given time, and can visualize this probability as a electron cloud.
However, there are situations when one might be able to know more than they are supposed to:D. The Uncertainty Principle, that stops us from knowing too much, also allows us to know too much for a while, and then let us know too less:)). So, over time, the principle is satisfied, but for small durations of time, you might be able to know more than you are supposed to know. The principle cancels out this extra knowledge by providing misleading, or negative information. Funny thing is: since you do not know when the system is providing accurate or inaccurate information, you do not know if you are getting more, or less:D:D.
This discovery, that quantum knowledge can be negative was made by three researchers, Drs Michal Horodecki, Jonathan Oppenheim and Andreas Winter, of the Universities of Gdansk, Cambridge and Bristol. Their work was published in Nature in August 2005:):).

Robotic Catcher

2005-08-02T21:20:00.000-04:00

Robots have a big step at kicking us humans into the dustbin of history;);). They have learnt how to catch!! A robotic catcher, developed by scientists at the University of Tokyo, Japan, can comfortably grab a ball careering through the air at 300 kilometres per hour, or 83 metres per second, according to its creators, Akio Namiki and his colleagues:).

Robotic Hand (Courtesy: NewScientist)he robot does not even need a catching mitt. It resembles a single metallic claw, with just three fingers instead of the human complement of five. An array of 32 by 48 individual photo detectors in its “palm”, tracks a ball's trajectory at high speed. And a series of specialised image processing circuits recognise this movement almost instantly.
An approaching ball triggers the robot's three fingers into action. Actuators embedded in each joint use a burst of high current to move through 180 degrees in less than one tenth of a second. This enables the machine to snatch the ball in the split second it takes to arrive.
A video of the robotic hand catching the ball can be seen here:):).

Discoveries At Parion

2005-08-01T16:48:00.000-04:00

Parion (also known as Parium) is an ancient city (3000 years old) in western Turkey. The city was named after the famed warrior Paris, son of King Priam of Troy (in Iliad, Homer's epic):):). There were a number of architectural structures, towers and four temples in the city. Recently, archaeologists unearthed a number of works of art including crowns of a prince or a king under that city, which were buried in four sarcophagi (stone coffins bearing sculpture and inscriptions).

Ancient Parion Coins (Courtesy: Snible)Inside the coffins, there were two crowns of a prince or a king who was believed to have lived some 2000 years ago, two golden coins bearing figure of the sun god and several other pieces of jewelry. Also unearthed were 150 pieces of works of art during the excavations. All these findings reveal the importance of Parion in ancient times.
The findings will be exhibited in the Canakkale Museum of Archaeology. Also, the ancient city of Parion is expected to be opened to tourism like famous ancient city of Efes (Ephesus):):).

Faster DNA Sequencing

2005-07-31T06:33:00.000-04:00

Once it was in the realm of science-fiction. Yes, DNA sequencing (and its associated field, called Bioinformatics) has come a long way:). The first attempt at sequencing begun in 1990, and it took nearly 14 years to complete. Now scientists are getting much better at it, and faster and more accurate genome deciphering techniques are on the horizon. A report published online by the journal Nature describes one such method that is 100 times faster than conventional ones:):).

Microscopic Image of human chromosomes (Courtesy: BBC)The new technique has been developed by Jonathan M. Rothberg of 454 Life Sciences Corp. in Branford, Connecticut and his colleagues. The technique uses tiny fiber-optic vessels (55 microns x 50 microns) to detect and sequence hundreds of thousands of DNA molecules simultaneously. The results indicate that the setup can sequence 25 million base-pairs (each human chromosome is about 51 to 245 million base-pairs long, and we have 46 chromosomes) in a single four-hour run with greater than 99% accuracy:):).
A single such run of the system was able to sequence entire genome of the parasitic bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium (one of the organisms with the smallest genome), which includes 580,069 base-pairs!! And with an accuracy of 99.96%, that is just plain astounding:).

Earliest Dino Embryos

2005-07-30T13:53:00.000-04:00

Dinosaurs were reptiles that dominated the Earth during the Mesozoic Era (250 to 65 mya, or million years ago). The initial dinosaurs were small (less than a meter to few meters in size) during the Triassic period (upto 202 mya), but they grew much larger during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when the fearsome T. Rex roamed the Earth.

Massospondylus carinatus (Embryo and Adult) (Courtesy: Sciam)
Scientists have discovered the oldest fossilized dinosaur embryos yet, which reveal tantalizing clues about dinosaur evolution. The embryos indicate that some of the prehistoric creatures started out on four legs before growing into bipedal behemoths. They also support the notion that newly hatched dinos did not fend for themselves and instead relied on their parents for nourishment:):).
Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto at Mississauga and his colleagues studied five fossilized embryos inside dinosaur eggs recovered from Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa. The eggs are about 190 million years old, which was the beginning of the Jurassic period, and illustrate the development of Massospondylus, a creature that grew to five meters in length.
Scientists were able to compare the fossils of fully grown Massospondylus with the embryos, and chart the growth of the animal. They suggest that Massospondylus's horizontal neck, heavy head and immature limb proportions would have led to it walking on all fours shortly after hatching. As it matured, its neck grew faster compared with its head and forelimbs, resulting in a body type more suited to bipedal locomotion:):).

NanoTube Circuits

2005-07-29T20:26:00.000-04:00

Nano-Technology deals with the materials at size of a nanometer (10^-9 meter) and smaller. NanoTech, which allows the creation of devices a 1000-fold smaller than those possible today, is sure to transform the world within the next few decades:).
Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have overcome a major hurdle in the race to create nanotube-based Electronics. The researchers (Alan Johnson and colleagues) have used Carbon NanoTubes to create functional electronic circuits.

NanoTube Substrate (Courtesy: PhysOrg)NanoTubes are so small, that the conventional procedure of etching the electronic components onto the substrate does not work anymore. The new method creates circuits by dipping semiconductor chips into liquid suspensions of carbon nanotubes, rather than growing the nanotubes directly on the circuit:):). The chips are pre-treated with a glue, on which the nanotubes stick when the chips are dipped into the suspension. The excess glue is then washed away using some solvent, and only the nanotube circuits remain!
The resulting circuits take advantage of unique electrical properties of nanotubes and can be produced in bulk. Since the researchers can create nanotubes via processes separate from the chips, this process allows for a better control of the quality and diameter.
Bulk creation and quality control are two essential ingredients that should lead to a wider application of this research to manufacturing of large-scale nano-electronic devices in the near future:). Such devices, for example, promise computers on a thumbnail running at 1000s of GHz speeds. The possibilities are infinite!

Tenth Planet!!

2005-07-28T16:32:00.000-04:00

Since childhood, it has been drilled into our heads that there are nine planets in the Solar System. However, there is nothing magical about the number 9, and it has always been assumed that there might be more planets lurking out there. Now, 75 years after Clyde Tombaugh discovered the ninth planet Pluto, a tenth one has been found:):). Observed through the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California, even though it is a typical member of the Kuiper Belt, it is possibly larger than Sedna (largest object beyond Neptune other than Pluto), has a moon, and thus is a planet in its own right.

Tenth Planet (Courtesy: CalTech)Tentatively named as 2003 EL61, the planet is about 97 times farther from the Sun than the Earth. It was first observed on October 31, 2003 and again observed in January of this year. In the last seven months, scientists have gathered enough data to make sure the size and orbit of the object, which conclusively pins it down as the tenth planet of the Solar System.
The size of the planet is limited by observations using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has already proved its mettle in studying the heat of dim, faint, faraway objects such as the Kuiper-belt bodies. Because Spitzer is unable to detect the new planet, the overall diameter of the planet has to be less than 2,000 miles. A name for the new planet has been proposed by the discoverers (Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz) to the International Astronomical Union, and they are awaiting the decision of this body before announcing the name:):).

Instant Evolution

2005-07-27T17:54:00.000-04:00

Evolution is normally a painstakingly slow process, by which organisms adapt to their surroundings through a slow but steady tinkering in their genes. As generations pass, the new traits are passed on to descendants, and only those that adapt the best, survive.
However, there are scenarios when evolution happens in a so-called 'blink of an eye'. Scientists have recently discovered that a new species of insect might have been created as a result of cross-species mating:). The process, called hybridisation, is common among plants (and indeed has been used to artificially create many interesting fruits). But this is the first time an animal species has evolved in nature, in this way.

Blueberry Maggot (Courtesy: USDA)The probable new species belongs to a group of flies known as fruit maggots – highly specialised fruit parasites in which each species infests its own particular plant species. Bruce McPheron and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University found that a particular species, called the Honeysuckle maggots, looked like the result of hybridisation between two fruit maggot pests of native species, the Blueberry maggot and the Snowberry maggot:)). The honeysuckle maggots, it seems, contain a blend of genes found only in the blueberry and snowberry maggots.
The first hybrid generation of Snowberry and Blueberry offsprings would have exactly half the genes of each kind. The discovered Honeysuckle maggots have a wide variety of gene ratios, suggesting that they have been inter-breeding for at least a hundred generations or so!
If such hybridisations can lead to totally new insect morphology and behavior, this would mean a much faster evolution in insects than previously suspected. We therefore need to think if insects in the past have also indulged in such practices, and if yes, what modifications and re-evaluation it would bring to the currently accepted hierarchical classification of insects in the Animal Kingdom.

Probing Earth

2005-07-26T17:53:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest mysteries lies right beneath our feet. We have uncovered secrets of alien planets and galaxies, yet the secrets locked inside our own Earth is largely unknown. I am referring to the composition of the planet Earth. Part of the problem is that there is no direct way to sample the interior: so one has to resort to indirect means, such as seismology or mining. Until now:):).
Scientists have for the first time detected tiny particles called geoneutrinos coming from deep within the Earth. Neutrinos are nearly massless particles that are emitted as by-products of nuclear reactions, such as fusion reactions at the solar core, or radioactive decaying of metals such as Uranium and Thorium.

Inside the KamLAND Detector (Courtesy: PhysicsWeb)The decay of radioactive metals inside Earth result in a stream of neutrinos, called geoneutrinos. For the first time ever, these particles were detected by a Japanese apparatus called KamLAND:):).
The detector used in the new study is buried under a mountain, to shield it from other neutrinos that arrive from space. It consists of 2,000 specialized light sensors inside a 59-foot (18-meter) balloon filled with, in lay terms, baby oil, benzene and a fluorescent stuff. When a geoneutrino interacts with the cocktail, it emits little flash of light. Over the past two years, the setup spotted about one of the elusive geoneutrinos a month. Each geoneutrino carries a signature of its chemical origin.
By building larger detectors, more such neutrinos might be detected. That will give us a peek into the interior workings of the Earth, by allowing us to locate the layers where the decays are taking place, and whether this layer is stationary/moving, its temperature, age and so on:). It will not happen overnight, but within a few decades, this new technique might just revolutionize our understanding of our planet Earth:).

PetaFlops!

2005-07-25T19:36:00.000-04:00

Move over Teraflops (1,000,000,000,000 flops), Petaflops is here:D:D. In the computer world, the word flops refers to FLoating point Operations Per Second, which is used as a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating point calculations. Currently, United States has the fastest supercomputer (IBM's Blue Gene/L), that runs at 136.8 teraflops. However, soon Japan might have the fastest one! According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry of Japan, the planned supercomputer will operate at a maximum speed of 10 petaflops (10,000 teraflops!!).

Blue Gene/L Supercomputer (Courtesy: ITNews)The total amount for the project is likely to reach $716 million to $895 million by the time the project is completed in 2010, if all goes as planned.
Such high-speed computers are necessary for simulating experiments that are difficult to conduct or take too much time in real life. Researchers hope to use the computer to develop new drugs, to simulate the formation of galaxies and to predict the paths of typhoons and intense rainfall.
The Japanese supercomputer held the title of world's fastest until last September but as of June it had fallen to fourth place. USA is also planning a petaflop computer by 2010:):).

Evolution And Butterflies

2005-07-24T07:27:00.000-04:00

According to the theory of Evolution, the traits of living organisms change over generations to adapt to their surroundings. Members of the same species, living under different circumstances, evolve in different ways. Over time, the species splits into two (or more) branches. This process is known as Speciation.
For this speciation to occur, the branches must refrain from interbreeding. The most obvious way this can happen is through Geographical Isolation (the branches are separated by a river, mountain, etc.), but it can also happen even when the branches are living side-by-side! Why it could be so was a mystery, until now:).

Agrodiaetus iphigenia nonacriensis (Courtesy: Sommerfugle)Even when the branches are living together, they might choose not to interbreed, a process termed Reproductive Isolation. Researchers from Harvard University, while studying a family of butterflies, think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between such newly formed branches/species.
They found that closely related butterfly species (of genus Agrodiaetus, in Asia) living in the same geographical space displayed unusually distinct wing markings. These wing colors apparently evolved so as to allow the butterflies to easily identify the species of a potential mate.
It seems that if closely related species of Agrodiaetus are geographically separate, they tend to look quite similar. But when they are living side-by-side, they look strikingly different! This has the effect of discouraging inter-species mating, thus encouraging genetic isolation and species divergence:):).
However, at least to me, it is not obvious what is cause and what is effect. It could very well be, that because the species has developed the distinct markings while living in close quarters, that speciation was able to happen, rather than the other way round! Perhaps more research is needed to pin that one down:):).

Earthquake Rumbles

2005-07-23T07:22:00.000-04:00

The December 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake triggered a tsunami, that ravaged that nearby countries in a most tragic way:(:(. At least 240,000 people were killed, and countless went missing forever. In fact, the whole Earth rang like a bell, and even the rotation of the Earth was affected, albeit in a minute way. Recently, researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) analyzed recordings of the underwater sound produced by the magnitude 9.3 earthquake. Their unique approach enabled them to track the rupture as it moved along the Sumatra-Andaman Fault, raising the possibility that scientists could one day use the method to track underwater earthquakes in near real time and opening new avenues in seismologic research.

Frequency spectrogram of the earthquake sound (Courtesy: LDEO)The researchers found that the first phase encompassed the first three minutes of the eight-minute earthquake, during which the rupture proceeded north at about 1.7 miles per second (2.8 km/sec) from the epicenter. During the second phase, the rupture slowed to 1.3 miles per second (2.1 km/sec) and continued north for another five minutes until it reached a plate boundary where the fault changed from subduction (where one plate is sucked under another) to strike-slip (where the two plates rub against each other). This suggests that had the subduction zone continued, this longest-ever-recorded earthquake might have been even longer!!
The analysis that Maya Tolstoy and her co-author DelWayne Bohnenstiehl used also shows promise for helping officials quickly determine where relief activities are needed. In the case of the Indonesian earthquake, early seismic data indicated that only the southernmost third of the fault was involved. Later analysis revealed that about 750 miles actually ruptured, a finding that was supported by their study:).
A recording of the earthquake can be heard here.

Windows Vista

2005-07-22T16:15:00.000-04:00

The next version of the Windows Operating System (codenamed LongHorn) has finally got a new name: Windows Vista. A Beta version will be available on August 3, according to Microsoft.

Windows Vista (Courtesy: Microsoft)The new Operating System should a) launch applications 15% faster than Windows XP does, b) boot PCs 50 % faster than they boot currently and will allow PCs to resume from standby in two seconds, c) allow users to patch systems with 50% fewer reboots required, d) reduce the number of system images required by 50%, and e) enable companies to migrate users 75% faster than they can with existing versions of Windows.
On the security front, it will deliver more than a dozen new security enhancements. New security features include everything from Network Access Protection quarantining and browser lock-down, to protected user accounts and anti-malware protection.
But I am quite sure new viruses and bugs will continue to plague this version of Windows as well, as similar promises were made before the launch of Windows XP too ;).

Stone Age In Borneo

2005-07-21T18:12:00.000-04:00

French and Indonesian archaeologists and cavers have discovered evidence of Stone Age human settlements in caves on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. Human and animal bones, ceramics, and charcoal found in the caves suggest that humans cooked and ate there some 10,000 years ago. Several of hitherto unknown paintings dating from the same period have also been discovered:):).

Boats and Dancing, Niah Great Cave, Sarawak (Courtesy: Sarawak Museum)A National Geographic team set out to survey six of the most ornately decorated caves located in limestone formations spread through some 60 miles (100 kilometers) of dense jungle in the Marang mountains on the Mangkalihat peninsula of east Borneo. Three more caves were discovered during the expedition.
Inside the rock shelters, the researchers excavated stone tools and artifacts made of ceramic, animal bones, and freshwater shells. In some places, they found human bones. Animal bones found with charcoal lead researchers to surmise that humans cooked and ate the animals as food.

Electron Hopping

2005-07-20T19:17:00.000-04:00

Things zoom around pretty fast in the sub-atomic world. This is especially with one of the lightest particles, the electron:). All chemical reactions depend on the speed with which an electron makes a transition from one atom to another, and therefore timing such a transition is of extraordinary importance if one were to understand the processes in play behind a chemical reaction. Such research could help develop new catalysts, and also provide a boost to the relatively new field of spintronics.

Electron Cloud (Courtesy: University of Guelph)
Wilfried Wurth, a physicist from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and his team used short X-Ray pulses to watch an electron moving away from a Sulphur atom stuck to a Ruthenium metal surface. The electron took just 320 quintillionths of a second (320x10^-18 seconds) for the jump:D!
Quantum Mechanics makes it very tricky to observe such transitions. Electrons are not really point particles, but are smeared over a region of space. These regions can be viewed as clouds, and the goal therefore is to track these clouds.
The team used X-Rays to boost the energy of an electron close to the core of a Sulphur atom. This pushed the electron towards the Ruthenium surface, leaving the remaining electrons in the Sulphur atom to shuffle around. By watching how the X-Ray pulses were absorbed, the researchers tracked how long it took for the electron's cloud of probability to shift entirely from the Sulphur to the Ruthenium:):).

Bird-Like Dinosaurs

2005-07-19T19:35:00.000-04:00

It seems that the pulmonary (of the lungs) systems of birds and dinosaurs may have been more similar than scientists previously thought:). According to new research from Ohio University and Harvard University, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, the ancient beasts boasted a much bigger, more complex system of air sacs similar to that in today's birds. The finding is one of several studies in recent years to paint a new, more avian-like portrait of meat-eaters such as T. rex: The creatures may have had feathers, incubated their eggs, grown quickly and perhaps even breathed like birds:).

Bird and Dinosaur bones are similar (Courtesy: Ohio University)According to one of the authors (Leon Claessens), the pulmonary system of meat-eating dinosaurs such as T. rex in fact shares many structural similarities with that of modern birds, which, from an engineering point of view, may possess the most efficient respiratory system of any living vertebrate inhabiting the land or sky.
The authors visited museums in New York, Berkeley, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Berlin and London to examine the bones of ancient beasts, and also studied a 67 million year old dinosaur, Majungatholus Atopus. They compared the dinosaur skeletons with those of modern birds to draw comparisons of how the soft tissues in the dinosaurs may have been structured.
The scientists are part of a reinvigorated movement of researchers who are examining dinosaur bones and comparing them with modern animals to learn more about the anatomy of these extinct beasts.

Enceladus Boulders

2005-07-18T19:36:00.000-04:00

The wonders of space are a plenty. We have only just begun to scratch the surface:). The unmanned missions of NASA are leading the way in our understanding of the planets and moons in our Solar System, and foremost today in this pack is the Cassini spacecraft.
Cassini recently passed within a mere 170 kilometers (110 miles) of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The daring flyby was the closest encounter ever by any spacecraft with any body in the outer solar system (excepting, of course, Huygens' landing on Titan).

Boulders on Enceladus (Courtesy: Planetary)Cassini's viewpoint on Enceladus for this flyby -- its third chance to view the icy moon up close -- yielded the first-ever views of Enceladus' south polar regions. These regions are intriguing because earlier, more distant views showed a striking terrain.
Among the images is a unique one captured near closest approach, at a range of only a few hundred kilometers. At this range, the sharp-edged ridges of Enceladus' terrain break up into distinct tumbled boulders, a completely new view of the surface of Enceladus. It will undoubtedly take scientists some time to unravel the puzzle of what this morphology means for the geology of the little icy moon:):).

Two-Faced LCD

2005-07-17T02:42:00.000-04:00

Sharp has developed a new LCD, which can simultaneously display different information and image content in right and left views in a single unit by directionally controlling the viewing angle of the LCD. This feature makes it possible to provide information and content tailored to specific users depending on the angle at which they view the screen.

Two-Faced LCD! (Courtesy: PhysOrg)Volume production of the LCD will begin in July 2005, marking the introduction of the world’s first practical application of this technology. A new LCD television technology will allow two different programs to air at the same time depending where one sits.
Using a number of proprietary technologies, such as a parallax barrier superimposed on an ordinary TFT LCD, the LCD sends the light from the backlight into right and left directions, making it possible to show different information and visual content on the same screen at the same time depending on the viewing angle. Controlling the viewing angle in this way allows the information or visual content to be tailored to multiple users viewing the same screen.

Electronic Paper

2005-07-16T00:53:00.000-04:00

For anyone who is a fan of Harry Potter books, the magical wonders in its pages are miracles to marvel at. We non-magic folks can however recreate much of that using science:). Case in point: Moving Pictures. Fujitsu Laboratories Limited, Fujitsu Frontech Limited, and Fujitsu Limited have announced their joint development of the world's first film substrate-based bendable color electronic paper:):). The new electronic paper features vivid color images that are unaffected even when the screen is bent, and features an image memory function that enables continuous display of the same image without the need for electricity:D.

Bendable Electronic Paper (Courtesy: PhysOrg)The thin and flexible electronic paper uses very low power to change screen images, thereby making it ideal for displaying information or advertisements in public areas as a type of new electronic media that can be handled as easily as paper.
Electronic paper offers all of the same characteristics of paper such as being thin, flexible, and lightweight. It also boasts low power consumption in that it does not require electricity except during screen image changes, making electronic paper especially suited for advertisements or information bulletins in public places for which paper is currently used. Electronic paper is especially convenient for use on curved surfaces, such as columns. In addition, electronic paper can be conveniently used in conjunction with mobile devices as an easy-to-read and portable display device.
Thus, key features of this new technology include: a) No electricity for continuous display, b) thin, flexible and lightweight, and c) more vivid color than LCDs:).
The possibilities are endless. It can have huge impact on advertizing, publishing, handheld computers, medical research and so on and on:).

Nano Valve

2005-07-15T14:47:00.000-04:00

A valve is a mechanical device that regulates the flow of fluids by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. For example, our hearts have four valves, which help in regulating the blood flow in, out and throughout the heart.
The smaller the valve, greater is the control the user has in regulating the flow of the fluid. With this in mind, UCLA chemists have created the first nano-valve that can be opened and closed at will to trap and release molecules:).

The research is published in the in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to the lead researcher Thoi Nguyen from California NanoSystems Institute (CNI) in UCLA, the new valve can trap and release molecules on demand, unlike other valves which can only control flow of liquids.
This nano valve consists of moving parts - switchable Rotaxane molecules that resemble linear motors designed by CNI director Fraser Stoddart's team - attached to a tiny piece of glass (porous silica), which measures about 500 nanometers, and which Nguyen is currently reducing in size. Tiny pores in the glass are only a few nanometers in size. It's big enough to let molecules in and out, but small enough so that the switchable rotaxane molecules can block the hole:):).
The Rotaxane molecules can switch between two alternate structures. By controlling this switching, and putting the molecule at the mouth of a hole, the researchers were able to control the opening and closing of the hole. The research can pave the way to new techniques in drug delivery, molecular electronics, and industrial processes:).

Cold Fusion Confirmed?

2005-07-14T01:25:00.000-04:00

In nuclear physics, Fusion is a kind of nuclear reaction where two or more subatomic particles combine to create other subatomic particles. For example, a Deuterium (also called heavy Hydrogen, with one Proton and one Neutron) nucleus can combine with a Neutron to produce a Tritium (Heavier Hydrogen, with one proton and two neutrons) nucleus. Many such fusion reactions are exothermic, that is, a net amount of energy is released when the particles combine. The major bottleneck that prohibits us from using fusion as a energy source is that it usually requires extremely high speeds of collision (and thus high temperatures) to fuse the particles together.

Deuterium to Tritium Fusion (Courtesy: PowerFrontiers)One controversial approach that is claimed to have successfully initiated fusion reactions at low temperatures is by collapsing bubbles containing Deuterium, using sound waves. The collapsing bubble is supposed to generate high temperatures inside it, thereby initiating a fusion. Now latest research by scientists at Purdue University might have found solid evidence for it:):). The new findings (by Yiban Xu and Adam Butt) are published in the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design.
A glass test chamber about the size of two coffee mugs was filled with a liquid called Deuterated Acetone, which is a compound that contains Deuterium atoms. The researchers exposed the test chamber to neutrons and then bombarded the liquid with a specific frequency of ultrasound, which caused cavities to form into tiny bubbles. The bubbles then expanded to a much larger size before imploding, apparently with enough force to cause fusion reactions!!
The researchers found evidence of Tritium (a product of the fusion reaction). The experiment also yielded neutrons, whose energy was as expected for such fusion reactions:):). Interestingly, the same results were not seen when normal acetone (which has Hydrogen instead of Deuterium) was used, thus bolstering the findings.
If the findings are independently confirmed, this would be a watershed moment in the history of science. Not only would it make costly and behemoth constructions like the Tokamak reactor (to be built in France by a six-country alliance) superfluous, it could also result in new energy production technologies at a much earlier date:):). I am keeping my fingers crossed:D:D.

Planet With Three Suns!

2005-07-13T06:51:00.000-04:00

There is a near-consensus in the scientific community that large, Jupiter-like planets can only form in systems with only one star (like our Solar System). When there are two or more stars in a system (binary stars, for example), the planetary orbits can get very complicated. The debris material that coalesces to form planets do not form large planets during computer simulations of such systems.
However, scientists will soon be forced to reconsider their theories:). A new planet has been discovered orbiting around a star in a triple-star system in the constellation Cygnus. The planet is a so-called hot Jupiter but it is much closer to its parent star than predicted by current theories of planetary formation.

Through the Artist's Eye: Trinary Sunset (Courtesy: CaltechIn recent years, astronomers have discovered hundreds (as of last month, the count is 155) of planets. Most of these planets are in single-star systems and are large, as the current technology can only detect larger planets with relative ease. However, we know that 60% of the stars in the universe form binary or trinary systems! So the big open question is: are there planets in those systems? The answer seems to be yes:).
The new planet (size similar to Jupiter's) orbits the main star of a triple-star system called HD-188753 every 3.35 days. Two of the stars form a binary system that orbits around the third primary star at an average distance of 12.3 astronomical units, where one astronomical unit (AU) is the average distance between the Sun and the Earth. The planet orbits the primary star at a distance of just 0.05 AU!!
The puzzle: why is the planet so close to the star? Current planetary theories suggest that such a large planet should not be able to form so close to a star in a multi-star system. So a (perhaps major) reworking of the theories might be in order.

Hyperion

2005-07-12T18:52:00.000-04:00

Hyperion, a moon of the planet Saturn, is really very funny. It is the only moon in the Solar System that rotates chaotically:). Basically, it tumbles around in space. This is because the moon looks like a irregular pile of rubble, which suggests that it is a fragment of a larger body that was broken by a large impact in the distant past.
Cassini-Huygens is a joint NASA/ESA/ASI unmanned space mission intended to study Saturn and its moons. It is currently surveying this tumbling moon, Hyperion. The Cassini spacecraft has also captured a video of the moon, which can be seen here:).

Hyperion (Courtesy: Wikipedia)Preliminary estimates of its density show that Hyperion is only about 60 percent as dense as solid water ice, indicating that much of its interior (40 percent or more) must be empty space. This makes the moon more like an icy rubble pile than a solid body. The moon’s spongy-looking exterior is an interesting coincidence, as much of Hyperion's interior appears to consist of voids. Hyperion is close to the size limit where, like a child compacting a snowball, internal pressure due to the moon’s own gravity will begin to crush weak materials like ice, closing pore spaces and eventually creating a more nearly spherical shape.
So in Hyperion, we see the maximum size a pile of rubble can take, beyond which the rubble compactifies under its own mass, and slowly forms a sphere:D.

Info At Your Fingertips

2005-07-11T19:32:00.000-04:00

Most of us carry a number of credit/ATM cards, cash, and several other cards (driving license, bank card, library cards and so on). It makes our wallet bulky, and there is always the danger of losing the wallet! Now, thanks to researchers at Tokushima University (Yoshio Hayasaki and colleagues), secure optical data storage could soon literally be at our fingertips:):).
The researchers have discovered that data can be written into a human fingernail by irradiating it with femtosecond laser pulses. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months - the length of time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced.

Etching on a fingernail (Courtesy: PhysicsWeb)The approach is simple. The team uses a femtosecond (10^-15 seconds) laser system to write the data into the nail and a fluorescence microscope to read it out. During the writing, the fluorescence of the nail increases in the irradiated regions. The fluorescence microscope is able to read this difference in intensity, while reading the data from the nails:):).
Each "bit" of information has a diameter of 3.1 microns (10^-6 meters) and is written by a single femtosecond pulse. A motorised stage moves the nail to create a bit spacing of 5 microns across the nail and a depth of 20 microns between recording layers. Considering that the nail fragment used was about 2x2x0.4 cubic millimetres in size, a total of around 1560 KiloBytes could be stored. More data could be stored if the full human nail were used!
The team is now focussing on reading to and writing from a nail that is still attached to the finger. This means that the team also has to find ways to compensate for the movement of the finger. Once this issue is sorted out, we could have our credit card numbers, and other important data, right at our finger-tips:D:D.

Bulldozing History

2005-07-10T19:07:00.000-04:00

It might happen again. Back in 2001, the Talibans destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, as they thought the magnificent statues promoted idolatry:(:(. Now, some of Islam's historic sites in Mecca, possibly including a home of the Prophet Mohammad, are under threat from Saudi real estate developers and Wahhabi Muslims who view them as promoting idolatry:(.

Bamiyan Buddha, prior to destruction (Courtesy: Pratyeka)Sites such as this belong to the whole world. It really does not matter if you believe or not believe in that particular religion or ideology; the sites represent important events in world history. By some perverse logic, the Saudis have not allowed preservation of old buildings, especially those related to the prophet. They fear other Muslims will come to see these buildings as blessed and this could lead to polytheism and idolatry:)).
The Washington-based Saudi Institute, an independent news gathering group, says most Islamic landmarks have been destroyed since Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932. It cited a 1994 edict by the kingdom's senior council of religious scholars which ruled that preserving historical buildings might lead to polytheism.
The historic buildings might be destroyed to create a parking lot, and towers to house people who visit Saudi Arabia every year for the annual pilgrimage known as Hajj.
As long as such mindless morons (a.k.a. religious scholars) exist, there will be no peace in the world. Ironically, the biggest monuments to Islam are its mosques, and the Kaaba (black cube-like structure) in Mecca. I wonder if the Islamic purists would consider those monuments 'un-islamic' as well;).

Wiring The Brain

2005-07-09T11:31:00.000-04:00

The word Nanotechnology refers to inventions and discoveries in the realm of the nanometer scale, usually 0.1 to 100 nm. NanoTech is poised to revolutionize our world. Just as the latter part of the 20th Century saw breakthroughs in electronics and computers, the first half of this century should see huge steps in nano-sciences.
With that in mind, working with Platinum nanowires 100 times thinner than a human hair - and using blood vessels as conduits to guide the wires - a team of U.S. and Japanese researchers has demonstrated a technique that may one day allow doctors to monitor individual brain cells and perhaps provide new treatments for neurological diseases such as Parkinson's:):).

Nanowires in the brain (Courtesy: PhysOrg)In the research, published in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research, the scientists explain how such thin wires can be used to directly interface with the neurons in our brain. The nanowires are even thinner than the thinnest capillaries and blood vessels, which makes it possible to thread them through our vascular system. The logic is similar to using catheters to transport nutrients, but at a much smaller scale, and with much higher focus and impact.
The team (Neuroscientist Rudolfo Llinas and his colleagues) describes a proof-of-principle experiment in which they first guided platinum nanowires into the vascular system of tissue samples, and then successfully used the wires to detect the activity of individual neurons lying adjacent to the blood vessels:):).
The technique could revolutionize medicine as we know it. The nanowires could, in principle, direct nutrients and chemicals to the areas of the body that need it. It could be used to direct chemicals to tumors, or neurotransmitters to the regions of the brain that need it.
However, the biggest challenge is to thread the nanowire to the exact place required. There are thousands of such blood vessels in the brain, and to navigate through them to the exact spot is a daunting task indeed! But the researchers have a possible solution:). It is to replace the platinum nanowires with new conducting polymer nanowires. Not only do the polymers conduct electrical impulses, conductive, they change shape in response to electric fields, which would allow the researchers to steer the nanowires through the brain's circulatory system. Polymer nanowires have the added benefit of being 20 to 30 times smaller than the platinum ones used in the reported laboratory experiments. They also will be biodegradable, and therefore suitable for short-term brain implants:):).
Who knows... perhaps this same technology can one day be adapted to interface our brains with computers. We will all be cyborgs then:D.

Parrot Knows Zero

2005-07-08T16:40:00.000-04:00

Zero is supposed to be an abstract concept. It was the last numeral to be created in most numerical systems, as it is not a counting number. The ancient peoples of the Indus Valley Civilization used fractions and negative numbers, but were unsure of the concept zero. Greeks had long philosophical discussions about the concept of zero! The first documented mention of zero is near 300 AD by Indian mathematicians.

Alex the Parrot (Courtesy: GEAE)Now it seems a bird has grasped the zero, even though it took us humans such a long time to get our arms around it:). Alex, a 28-year-old African gray parrot who lives in a lab at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, has a brain the size of a walnut. But when confronted with no items on a tray where usually there are some, he says 'none':):).
Today, zero might not seem to be such an abstract concept to us. But kids are unable to grasp the concept till they are about the age of three to four! The result, published in the current issue of the Journal of Comparative Psychology, adds to growing evidence that birds and other animals are smarter than we thought:):). Perhaps we should look at the word 'bird-brain' with some respect from now on:D.

Leap Second In 2005!

2005-07-07T06:06:00.000-04:00

We are all familiar with the concept of a leap year. Every four years, an extra day is added to the year to keep the calendar year in sync with the seasonal year. If there were no leap years, then our seasons would be out of sync with our months within a generation! Similarly, a leap second is sometimes added to a year, so that our day is in sync with the Earth's rotation. When such a second is added, the last minute of the last day of the year is a second longer (61 seconds):D. Since 1970s, a total of 32 leap seconds have been added (the last being in 1998), and this year, the 33rd one will be added:).

Check your clocks on New Year's Eve! (Courtesy: University of Oklahoma)Millions of years ago, the Earth had 10 hour long days! Due to tidal and wind forces, gravitational attraction of the moon and planets, and friction within the Earth's mantle and core, the Earth's rotation is slowing down. The extra second will be added to account for this slowdown. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Paris will sneak the extra time in on 31 December 2005.
The advent of atomic clocks in the 1950s allowed for extremely accurate measurement of periods of time. Starting at a particular point in 1958, an international array of these clocks has been counting out seconds, the length of which was defined at that point. This representation of time is the standard by which the public sets their watches. But people have been keeping an eye on changes in the length of seconds, as fractions of the Earth's daily rotation, using astronomical measurements.
Desktop computers will adjust to the added second by talking to other units on the Internet. Our clocks and watches perhaps need to be adjusted manually:):), so do not trust the advertizers when they say that your really accurate atomic clocks do not require any adjustments ;);).

Building A Neanderthal

2005-07-06T19:44:00.000-04:00

How cool will it be, if we could reconstruct an extinct animal from the fragments of its fossilized genome? Such a project is currently being unveiled at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, where U.S. and German scientists have launched a project to recreate the Neanderthal genome:).

Gibraltar Neanderthal Child (Courtesy: RDOS)The project involves isolating genetic fragments from fossils of the prehistoric beings to map their complete DNA. Neanderthal was a species of genus Homo (Homo Neanderthalensis) that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about 230,000 to 29,000 years ago. Adapted to cold, with short but robust builds and large nose, Neanderthals were finally wiped out when modern humans possibly moved in.
The genome project should be able to tell us how much genetically identical (and different) our closest cousins really were. The goal thus is not to recreate a Neanderthal (which might be unethical since they are so similar to us and might have been capable of conscious thought), but to help reveal the molecular evolution of human beings.
But the techniques developed during this work can certainly be adapted to recreate other extinct creatures. Jurassic Park, anyone:D:D?

40,000 Year Old Foot-Print

2005-07-05T07:37:00.000-04:00

When did the first human being land in the Americas? For a long time, conventional wisdom suggested that the first humans entered North America through a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska (over the current Bering Strait) about 12-15,000 years ago during the last Ice Age, when the sea levels dropped. But there are competing theories, which suggest that humans entered the Americas by boat across the Pacific, or by walking along the Greenland coast.

Left: Closeup, Right: Walk in the park! (Courtesy: Nature)Now a new evidence might push the date of this first arrival, further back in time. Researchers think they may have found footprints in southern Mexico that mark the oldest evidence for the presence of humans in the Americas. The impressions are preserved in volcanic ash outside the city of Puebla, and have been dated at 40,000 years ago!! This, if conclusively proved, would lend credence to the theory that humans crossed into the New World much earlier than previously thought.
Though they do look like footprints, researchers need to make sure that they are not some quirky creations of Mother Nature. But it does look like the area is peppered with more than 200 impressions that seem to be footprints from several people, including children, along with birds, cats, dogs and species with cloven feet:):). According to geoarchaeologist Silvia Gonzalez of Liverpool John Moores University, UK, these people might have been fleeing an eruption from the nearby Cerro Toluquilla volcano. It is the same volcanic ash that also helped preserve the prints for the last thousands of years, along with biological material such as shells which were used to date the ash strata:):).

Deep Impact!

2005-07-04T07:39:00.000-04:00

Update: Videos (68.6KB, 108KB, Courtesy: NASA-DeepImpact)
Deep Impact is a NASA space probe designed to study the composition of the interior of the nucleus of the comet named Tempel-1. Tempel-1 is a periodic comet discovered in 1867 by Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel, an astronomer working in Marseille, France. The probe was launched on January 12, 2005. After its initial analyses of the comet, the probe separated into two parts (Impactor and Flyby).

Bada Boom! (Courtesy: NASA)Now scientists have successfully crashed the Impactor into the comet:). The goal is to expose the interior of the comet, and thus gather data (using the Flyby) that should tell us a lot about the inner workings of the comet, and also shed light on the formation of our Solar System.
The Impactor is the size of a washing machine, whereas the comet is of the size of Manhattan (14 km long). The collision happened some 83 million miles from Earth:):).
The show is observed by all the major telescopes! It's not just Deep Impact that observed the mission. Every space and ground-based telescope large enough to do the job were watching: Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, Galex and SWAS space telescopes were all recording the event:). The Rosetta spacecraft, a European probe on its way to another comet (67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko), also observed and recorded the show:)).
Scientists expect a wealth of data from all these observations. Not only will this help us in our understanding of comets, but it should also tell us more about the origins of our Sun, planets, and ultimately, us:).

Reciting Pi

2005-07-03T11:51:00.000-04:00

The mathematical symbol Pi represents the universal constant 3.1415926535... which is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi is a transcendental number, that is, it cannot be obtained as the solution of any polynomial equation with rational coefficients. This also means that there are infinite digits in Pi, with no apparent pattern:). One of the most beautiful numbers in mathematics, Pi has always fascinated mathematicians and laypeople of all ages. Currently, Pi haw been calculated to 1.24 trillion decimal places with the aid of a supercomputer:D:D.
Now a Japanese mental health counsellor has broken the world record for reciting pi from memory. Akira Haraguchi, 59, managed to recite the number's first 83,431 decimal places, almost doubling the previous record held by another Japanese:)).

Pi (Courtesy: BBC)Mr Haraguchi, from Chiba, east of Tokyo, took several hours reciting the numbers, finishing in the early hours of Saturday. He hopes to be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records to replace his fellow countryman Hiroyuki Goto, who managed to recite 42,195 numbers as a 21-year-old student in 1995. Mr Haraguchi's effort took eight hours and 40 minutes, during which nothing passed his lips except water and several bite-size rice balls:):).

Supernova Dust Found

2005-07-02T21:22:00.000-04:00

Supernovae are exploding stars, which happen when heavy stars (weighing larger than 1.4 times the mass of our Sun) at the end of their life cycle shed their outer layers in a gigantic explosion. In many ways, it can be compared to a nuclear explosion, whose power is such that the atoms in the exploding gas fuse to form heavier-than-iron metals (Gold, Silver, Platinum, etc.) and other minerals as well. It is theorized that our own solar system might owe its existence to such an explosion, since we have such large amounts of heavy metals in our solar system:).

Mineral Olivine from Supernova! (Courtesy: Johnson Space Center)Now a team of scientists from NASA and University of Arizona have discovered minerals that were formed in such a supernova explosion!! The grains were among other extraterrestrial dust plucked by high-flying NASA research aircraft from Earth's upper atmosphere after they were delivered to Earth by a comet or primitive asteroid:D:D.
It is the first time anyone has ever discovered silicate grains, in this case Olivine (a Magnesium-Iron Silicate), from a supernova. They reveal important new information on how much material supernovae contributed to making our sun and planets, including radioactive material used in isotope age-dating techniques. The discovery also gives astrophysicists important new physical evidence they need to verify complex numerical models of supernovae explosions.
A new kind of ion microprobe called the NanoSIMS was used to measure Oxygen isotopes in the unusual grains obtained by a high-flying spacecraft. Olivine is very common in the solar system (and is found both on Earth and on Mars, and in comets and asteroids); but these grains of Olivine have oxygen isotope content seen only in theoretical models of supernova explosions. The grains are often formed when the gas cools after a supernova explosion of a star 15 times as massive as the Sun:):).
Thus, this finding provides further proof that our solar system was formed after a supernova explosion of a star 15 times as massive as Sun about 4.5 Billion Years ago... scientists will now try to find this supernova remnant (the core that is left behind after the explosion), which undoubtedly will be a Black Hole, or a White Dwarf, and perhaps thousands of light years away from us:):).

One Kilogram Bike!

2005-07-01T07:23:00.000-04:00

Everyone who has ever ridden a bike knows how heavy a bike can be, and this is a pain, especially when climbing up hills or mountains :(. Now the Swiss manufacturer BMC has designed a Carbon-NanoTube-based bike, which weighs less than a kilogram (about 2.2 pounds)!! In this year’s Tour de France, cyclists from the Phonak Team will use such bikes:).

BMC Pro Machine NanoTube-Bike (Courtesy: BMC)To create the frame, BMC used a composite technology developed by US sports equipment specialist Easton. The company's Enhanced Resin System embeds carbon fibre in a resin matrix that's reinforced with carbon nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes are an array of carbon atoms arranged in a pattern of hexagons and pentagons (similar to the pattern found on soccer balls). These structures can be manufactured in tubular shapes one billionth of a meter in diameter, hence the name nanotube. These tubes are the strongest man-made fibers, 100s of times stronger than steel, yet lighter:):).
Soon we might see more applications of nanotubes in other areas of transportation. I am looking forward to the day when there will be a car with Carbon-NanoTube chassis, running on fuel-cells, and fully computerized. Surely I can then turn on my favorite music, close my eyes, and enjoy the ride?:D:D... the car can do the driving:).

Largest Telescope

2005-06-30T18:47:00.000-04:00

The world's largest telescope is currently being built in Steward Observatory, Arizona. The first (and the most critical) component of the telescope is to be casted soon; 8.4 meter diameter mirrors, which will more than quadruple the power of today's best observatories:):). The mirror will be created by pouring liquid glass onto a huge mold, the last of whose 1,681 ceramic fiber cores was recently added.

Installing the core (Courtesy: University of Arizona)
The mirror is for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), which when completed will have seven of such large mirrors! The mirrors will give GMT four-and-one-half times the collecting area of any current optical telescope and the resolving power of a 25.6-meter (84-foot) diameter telescope, or 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope:):).
Obviously, to build such a large, blemish-free mirror is a Herculean task. The Mirror Lab will start heating the furnace July 18, 2005. It takes six days for the glass to reach peak temperature at 2150 ºF (1178 ºC). At this temperature, the glass begins to flow like honey at room temperature. The thick liquid glass flows between the hexagonal cores in the mold to create a honeycomb structure. The oven's rotation rate determines the depth of the curve spun into the shape of the mirror, or the mirror's focal length. The whole process will take 11-12 weeks.
The GMT is slated for completion in 2016 at a site in northern Chile. With its powerful resolution and enormous collecting area, the GMT will be used to detect extrasolar planets, understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies, probing dark matter and dark energy, finding the link between black holes and galactic bulges, and so on and on:).

Mural Painting Near Bamiyan

2005-06-29T18:47:00.000-04:00

A Japanese research team has discovered part of a mural painting in the ruins of the colossal stone Buddha statues in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan, that were destroyed by the country's former Taliban rulers. The mural was found in a small cave carved into a cliff on the eastern side of the statues, according to team leader Kazuya Yamauchi, chief researcher of the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties of Tokyo. The painting, made on the dome-shaped roof of the cave measuring 2. 5 meters across, appears to be of the torso of a Buddha:).

The Mural (Courtesy: UNESCO)Patches of a vivid blue pattern made with lapis lazuli are all that remain of the painting, which is thought to have originally been of several Buddha images radiating outward from the center of the roof. The cave is likely to have fallen in on itself, and as a result the overall shape of the painting is obscured by rocks that have accumulated inside.
Dye characteristics date the mural to the sixth or seventh century, the golden age of Buddhist culture at Bamiyan:).

Tickle Tickle!

2005-06-28T07:02:00.000-04:00

Why cannot we tickle ourselves? It seems that the brain ignores unimportant sensations, such as your own arm touching your belly, so that it can focus on more important stimuli (especially for people like KL), like a cockroach sitting on your neck;). A recent study detailed in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology confirms the results obtained by earlier researchers studying this question.

Tickle Tickle! (Courtesy: Association For Pastoral Care)In the study, 30 people used a finger on their right hand to touch a finger on their left hand by tapping a device place directly over the left finger and could instantly relay the tap. The computer-controlled device could introduce delays of varying length before the left finger was tapped. Researchers used another button to introduce externally generated taps. Result: when the brain was expecting the tap, it noticed it less :).
It confirms the theory that the brain is constantly predicting what is going to happen, and what sensations it is about to receive. It behaves so, because the information that our senses get are always a little out-of-date, and the brain has to extrapolate to get the most probable information. For example, when a ball is thrown at us, we predict where the ball would be in the next second, and our hands get prepared to catch it in that position!
So next time I meet you people (you know who you are!), get ready for some really awesome tickling :D:D.

Fusion Reactor Site Finalized

2005-06-27T07:10:00.000-04:00

A huge milestone in modern science will be achieved if we could master controlled fusion reactions. This is the same reaction that powers the Sun, combining four Hydrogen atoms into one Helium atom, and releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. For example, a thimbleful of liquid Hydrogen fuel could produce as much energy as 20 tons of coal!! Moreover, with fossil fules (coal, petroleum) depleting at a high rate, and their mining becoming harder and more expensive, it makes sense to invest in fusion technologies.
With this in mind, a consortium of six (China, EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the USA) have finally decided to attempt to build a experimental fusion reactor called ITER in Cadarache in the south of France.

Tokamak Diagram (Courtesy: MIT)ITER stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It will use magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils to confine a plasma of Deuterium and Tritium in a donut-shaped chamber called a Tokamak (short for toroidalnya kamera ee magnetnaya katushka - torus-shaped magnetic chamber, first designed by Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm in 1951). The plasma will be heated to millions of degrees, and confined by the powerful magnets so that it does not escape. At such high temperatures, Deuterium and Tritium would overcome their mutual repulsion, and fuse to form Helium and release energy in the process.
ITER is designed to produce 500 MW of power and to demonstrate that it is feasible to generate power from fusion. Construction of ITER should start by the end of this year and should be complete by 2015. Cadarache is already home to Tore Supra, currently the world's largest superconducting tokamak, and some 500 fusion scientists, engineers and technicians, plus another 4000 staff working in other areas. The Cadarache lab, which is close to Marseille, is run by the CEA (French Atomic Energy Commission).
Hopefully, we will see practical applications of this endeavor in our lifetimes :).

Back From Death!!

2005-06-26T13:24:00.000-04:00

This news is Courtesy Gindy.
What if it were possible to live forever? Recent steps by scientists at Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research at University of Pittsburgh have perhaps made this a possibility. The scientists have created zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

Dead For Two Hours! (Courtesy: Safar Centre)The dogs were reanimated three hours after their clinical death. The technique involves draining the veins of blood, and replacing it with ice-cold salt solution. The body temperature drops to 7C, enough to induce a state of hypothermia. There is no heartbeat, or brain activity. But when the blood is replaced, the heart restarted with an electric shock and a dose of 100% oxygen is administered, the dogs are brought back to life!!
According to the center, plans to test it on humans should materialize within a year. Other than possible immortality applications, this technique could help save lives on the battlefield, or other critically injured patients. It might also help save patients waiting for organ transplants. Another application is in repairing critical blood vessels; currently, doctors must repair the vessels under a time pressure, as lack of blood would otherwise damage organs that are fed blood through the vessel under repair. During this induced hypothermia, there is no such limitation, as the organs are perfectly preserved:).
Immortality anyone?! ;);).

New Form Of Matter

2005-06-25T19:58:00.000-04:00

We are all familiar with the three most common forms of matter that we see around us everyday: solid, liquid, gas. However, matter behaves in strange ways when exposed to high temperatures and pressures. For example, at high temperatures (typically tens of thousands of degrees), the gaseous state transforms into a state called plasma, where the atoms are shorn of some or all electrons. This is state that the solar corona is composed of. Similarly, at extremely low temperatures (millionth of degrees above Absolute Zero), matter takes on states dictated by Quantum Mechanics, viz. supersolid and superfluid (also known as Bose-Einstein Condensate).

Rotating ball of gas, punctured with vortices (Courtesy: MIT)Now scientists from MIT have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity! The work, to be published in Nature, will solve lingering questions about superconductivity.
Superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon, seen (as of yet) only in certain materials at very close to Absolute Zero. In such a situation, the material loses all resistance to electric current! This is very exciting since if perfected, we can save huge amounts of energy, since most of the electrical transmission losses are due to resistance in the wires.
Similar to superconductivity, where electricity loses all resistance, a superfluid gas can flow without resistance (say through a pipe). When the pipe is rotated, an ordinary gas would rotate with it, thus creating vortices. But a superfluid can only rotate when it forms vortices similar to mini-tornadoes. This gives a rotating superfluid the appearance of Swiss cheese, where the holes are the cores of the mini-tornadoes, like the picture above. The gas was cooled down to 50 billionths of one degree abouve Absolute Zero!!
Interestingly, the gas can also serve as a model for studying properties of much denser forms of matter such as solid superconductors, neutron stars or the quark-gluon plasma that existed in the early universe :):).

Brown Dwarf Jet

2005-06-24T11:56:00.000-04:00

Brown Dwarfs are heavenly bodies, neither small enough to be planets, nor large enough to be stars. Typically 5-90 times the mass of Jupiter (∼ 0.01 of the mass of our Sun), Brown Dwarfs have a gaesous composition of Hydrogen and Helium (just like the Sun), but the fusion nuclear reactions (that power the Sun) have not happened due to the relatively low temperature and pressure at the core.
Now for the first time, astronomers have observed a jet of matter spewing from a Brown Dwarf. This suggests that they form in a similar manner as stars, and even large planets like Jupiter and Saturn might have once spewed such jets.

Brown Dwarf Jet Source (Courtesy: NewScientistSpace)There are different theories to Brown Dwarf birth. Some think they condense from gas and dust clouds like other stars but are simply limited by the size of the clouds. Others say they are tossed out of their birth clouds prematurely by gravitational tussles with other growing stars in the cloud. Recent observations of large, dusty discs around brown dwarfs have bolstered the former theory, as only small - if any - discs are thought to be able to survive a violent ejection in the latter scenario.
Researchers led by Emma Whelan of Ireland's Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) have observed a jet stretching 1.5 billion kms (Earth to Sun distance, in comparison is 150 million kms!) from a young Brown Dwarf in a stellar nursery called Rho Ophiuchi. Similar jets have been detected around young, massive stars and are thought to form from material in the disc that swirls around them. The stars grow when matter falls on them from the disc, but the stars' magnetic fields funnel about a tenth of that matter back through the jets.
Jets can say a lot of things about the Brown Dwarfs. From the length and intensity of the jets, astronomers can detect the composition, mass, and magnetic properties of the Dwarf. In addition, such data can be used to determine if our Jupiter and Saturn sported such jets in the past, and if Saturnian Rings have anything to do with the creation of such jets.

Micro-Tubules Unraveled

2005-06-23T11:55:00.000-04:00

Microtubules are elongated protein structures found in cells. Polymers of tubulin, microtubules are hollow cylinder-like structures, consisting of 13 long strands of the tubulin polymer along the axis. They are part of the exoskeleton of our cells, and also provide the support-structure for nerve cells, and perform essential functions during cell division.
For the first time, scientists have unraveled the processes that take place when tubulin polymers combine to form a microtubule. Eva Nogales and Hong-Wei Wang of the Life Sciences Division of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report their findings in the 16 June 2005, issue of the journal Nature.

Microtubule (Courtesy: Wikipedia)As the microtubules play a critical role during cell division, understanding the way it is created can pave the way to new anti-cancer drugs (Cancer is essentially cells multiplying without control, and thus an ability to control the microtubule growth can lead to a way to stop that). The research identifies the technique in which a GTP (Guanosine Triphosphate, a chemical composed of the nucleotide Guanine and a inorganic radical named triphosphate) combines with a single tubulin, which further enables other tubulins to latch onto it, and thus build the cylinder:):).
The new high-resolution models of tubulin transitional states will be used to understand how microtubules explore their cellular environment to find their goals — a process crucial to the accurate deployment of spindles during cell division, for example — and how drugs can be designed and targeted to put a monkey wrench into the growth of cancer cells:):).

Nano-Satellite

2005-06-22T05:47:00.000-04:00

In certain fields, small is always beautiful. One such field is that of artificial satellites. The smaller a satellite is, less fuel it spends to get up in orbit or to navigate. Also it is harder to detect, and can perform intricate moves much more easily that its larger cousins.
With this in mind, NASA's Johnson Space Center has built a volley-ball sized satellite, called Miniature Autonomous Extravehicular Robotic Camera (Mini AERCam). Weighing about 10 pounds, the craft will be used for remote viewing and inspection on future human spaceflight missions.

AERCam (Courtesy: ScienceDaily)The vehicle is designed with a central ring that houses the power and propulsion system. Batteries are lithium-ion with six hours of operational time. The propulsion system is designed for cold-gas xenon, which packs more densely than nitrogen, but is compatible with low-cost nitrogen in the current ground test configuration. Attitude and position control are achieved with the use of twelve thrusters, distributed across four thruster pods around the central ring. The batteries are rechargeable and a port is provided for refueling:).
Early development is funded by the Space Shuttle Program Office, which is considering using Mini AERCam to inspect the Shuttle's heat shield in space. The nanosatellite will not be used on the Return to Flight mission (STS-114), but holds long-term promise for future space operations.
The craft could be deployed and retrieved many times during a single space mission, with the use of a hangar-based docking system located on the exterior of the vehicle. Other features include custom avionics based on the PowerPC 740/750 microprocessor, "camera-on-a-chip" imagers with video compression, micro electromechanical system gyroscopes, precise relative GPS navigation, digital radio frequency communications, micro-patch antennas, digital instrumentation networking and compact mechanical packaging.
Hopefully, in-space inspection by such satellites will prevent tragedies such as the Columbia disaster.

Look, Or Listen?

2005-06-21T06:51:00.000-04:00

Did anyone else have the same experience? A new study suggests that the brain has problems listening and looking at the same time! The parts of the brain that handle visual input are less effective when the mind is also processing audio input, and vice versa. According to Steven Yantis, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist, directing attention to listening effectively 'turns down the volume' on input to the visual parts of the brain.

The Brain (Courtesy: ScienceBob)In the study, people aged 19 to 35 watched a rapidly changing display of letters and numbers while listening to three voices speak other letters and numbers. The scientists recorded brain activity. When the test subjects paid attention to the screen, activity decreased in the parts of their brain responsible for listening.
Surprisingly, when a subject was told to shift attention from vision to hearing, the brain's parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex produced a burst of activity. The scientists assume it was a signal to initiate the shift of attention. Experts had previously thought those parts of the brain were only involved in processing visual information.
This has interesting implications. For example, talking on the phone while driving might reduce your awareness of your surroundings. But again, we do not find watching movies to be problematic just because there is a lot of dialogue. So, the scientists perhaps need to flesh this out a little bit more:).

Cosmos One Fails

2005-06-20T17:55:00.000-04:00

Cosmos 1 is a privately-funded attempt to launch a Solar Sail into space. Dedicated to the enduring memory of Carl Sagan, the Solar Sail is to be launched from a submerged submarine in the Barents Sea (See my post on May 07, 2005 for more details on the solar sail).
Now in another few hours (at around 4:09PM New York Time), the rocket carrying the sail will be launched!! I am keeping my fingers crossed:).
Latest Update: The Russian space agency said the attempt to launch the solar sail space vehicle was not successful because the booster rocket's engine failed soon after it blasted into space. The booster failed 83 seconds after its launch from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, and the vehicle was lost :(.

Cosmos-1 (Courtesy: The Planetary Society)Update: Hooraay! The launch went on flawlessly, and the first private solar sail mission is on the way:):).
Cosmos 1, the world's first solar sail spacecraft, launched in the tip of a converted Russian intercontinental ballistic missile from the Barents Sea for the start of a mission that cost just $4 million.
Mission operations personnel monitoring the spacecraft from the Planetary Society's three-story bungalow in Pasadena got word from mission operations in Moscow of the rocket's take off just after 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT).
Cosmos 1 will orbit for several days to acclimatize its instruments to the vacuum of space before its twin sails are deployed via inflatable booms. Mission controls now plan to deploy the sails late on Saturday.
Each sail is made up of eight triangular blades whose combined structure looks like a disk. The reflective Mylar sails are about 5 microns thick, or about one-quarter the thickness of a plastic trash bag. After it deploys its sails, Cosmos 1 will be visible as it circles the Earth about once every 100 minutes:):).

No Time Travel?

2005-06-19T07:11:00.000-04:00

Time is a strange thing. There is no law in physics that prohibits time from going backwards, but as we all know, it has a tendency to go always forward:)). Why is it so? We can all envisage the problems that time travel would create: people could go back in time and kill their grandparents, and give past generations modern technology or prevent some historic event from happening!
Physicists Daniel Greenberger of the City University of New York and Karl Svozil of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria have come up with a provocative idea:), but it suggests that time travel might not be possible at all:(.

Worm Hole (Courtesy: ThinkQuest)Worm-Holes are hypothetical bridges (arising out of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity) that might join distant regions of the spacetime. Imagine a 2D surface, where two points are far apart. If it were possible to bend the surface, the two points would be much closer, and a hole could be constructed to stitch the two points together. A similar construct is perhaps possible in 3D space too. However, Kip Thorne showed that such a hole could be used for time travel: a person entering from one end of the hole might reach the other side before he/she entered the hole:D.
Then how are the time paradoxes resolved? According to the new proposal, such paradoxes may be ruled out by the weirdness inherent in laws of quantum physics. The constraint arises from a quantum object's ability to behave like a wave. Quantum objects split their existence into multiple component waves, each following a distinct path through space-time. Ultimately, an object is usually most likely to end up in places where its component waves recombine, or "interfere", constructively, with the peaks and troughs of the waves lined up, say. The object is unlikely to be in places where the components interfere destructively, and cancel each other out.
When Greenberger and Svozil analysed what happens when these component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein's equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place:)).
So, it seems that even if matter could travel back in time, it will not be able to keep its cohesion, and therefore no information can be sent back in time to influence the past!

Magical Silicon

2005-06-18T06:21:00.000-04:00

What makes the nuclei of our atoms stable? The atomic nucleus consists of a collection of protons and neutrons (collectively called Nucleons); for example, the typical oxygen nucleus has 8 protons, and 8 neutrons packed densely into a ball approximately of radius 2x10^-15 m (One billionth of a dust particle!). Since protons are (positively) charged particles, they repel each other. Neutrons act as fillers, and thus weaken this eletromagnetic force of repulsion, and allow the strong nuclear force (the force that binds the nucleons in a ball) to dominate, which makes the nucleus stable:).

A typical magical shell (Courtesy: SUNY Stony Brook)However, then the question becomes: how many neutrons is enough? Too less, and the nucleus will fall apart due to repulsive forces; too many, and the nucleus will be unstable as it tends to beta decay (process by which a neutron converts into a proton, and emits a electron). Therefore there is a optimal region, when the nucleus is most stable.
According to the nucleus shell model proposed in 1949, the nucleons inside the nucleus are arranged in shells. The nucleus is most stable when there are enough nucleons to fill a shell. This number is known as the magic number, are are represented by the sequence 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126 and so on. Any nucleus containing these many nucleons are the most stable:):).
Now, nuclear physicists have created an isotope of silicon that contains twice as many neutrons as protons. Measurements made with silicon-42 - which contains 14 protons and 28 neutrons - will shed new light on the concept of "magic numbers" in nuclei.
The fact that silicon-42 is stable, was a surprising find. Paul Cottle and colleagues at Florida State University, Michigan State University, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Surrey University in the UK produced the silicon-42 nuclei by crashing sulphur-44 nuclei into a beryllium target at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab (NSCL) at Michigan State University. The results show that the silicon-42 nucleus remains stable despite containing a large excess of neutrons. The data also suggest that the proton number 14 is semi-magic because it corresponds to a closed subshell, which means that the nucleus is also spherical :):).

Jumping Genes

2005-06-17T04:22:00.000-04:00

Each of our brains are unique. In addition to genetic factors, conditions inside the womb as well as random factors contribute a lot to the way our brains are, and the way we are. No two brains are alike; even the brains of identical twins are considerably different. An interesting find now suggests that there is a connection between the variety in the brain’s neurons and certain genes that can change their position in the genetic code. These so-called jumping genes (or Transposons) may gently scramble the blueprints for the brain. According to Fred Gage from the Salk Institute, this mobility adds an element of variety and flexibility to neurons in a real Darwinian sense of randomness and selection.

Jumping Genes (Courtesy: Saint Anselm College)Transposons have been known for a long time. These are genes that can move around to different positions within the genome of a single cell. This can cause mutations and change the amount of DNA in the genome. This can disrupt the functions of neighboring genes, and thus can directly change some trait in the species, which if beneficial, might aid in its evolution. Jumping genes are found in all living things. Approximately 20 percent of the genetic code in mammals is of the jumping variety! But only a small fraction of these are active – which means they are able to successfully reinsert themselves into a new spot in the code.
The fact that these certain jumping genes can directly affect the brain is what is interesting in Dr. Gage's research, to be published in the journal Nature. He found that a gene called long interspersed nuclear element-1, or L1 for short, jumped positions in cultured brain cells of rats. This is the first time such a jump has been seen in cells other than the sperm or the egg:).
Evolutionarily, this has significant implications. It might be that we owe our intelligence to some so-called jumping gene, and not to a gradual adaptation and improvement as the human species evolved:).

APOD Is Ten Years Old

2005-06-16T06:43:00.000-04:00

My favorite website is 10 years old today. Happy Birthday, APOD :). APOD, which stands for Astronomy Picture of the Day has brought me countless pictures from outer space, and has both dazzled and saddened me from time to time. I still remember the first time when I visited the APOD site (quite by accident, I think), in 1996. I was using a HP-Unix 90MHz computer then:)). How things change! The computing power has taken a 30 fold jump, and APOD still continues to dazzle and sadden me.

APOD Editors (Courtesy: APOD)Editors Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell are two professional astronomers who spend most of their time researching the universe. Robert Nemiroff is an associate professor at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, USA, while Jerry Bonnell is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Hope springs eternal. Hope I can continue writing this blog for as long as I can :).

Ripples In Neutrino Background!

2005-06-15T07:08:00.000-04:00

The neutrino is a chargeless, near massless particle which interacts very weakly with ordinary matter. It is created during nuclear fission/fusion reactions; in fact, during every second, billions of (solar) neutrinos pass through our body:). It would take about one light-year (~10¹³km) of lead to block half of them! Obviously, it is very hard to detect these elusive particles.

Neutrino Ripples: fluctuations of order of ±30μK (Courtesy: RAS)But detecting these particles is very important, as copious amounts of it is theorized to have been created at the Big Bang, according to which neutrinos permeate the Universe at a density of about 150 per cubic centimetre. Now scientists have for the first time found evidence of ripples in the Universe’s primordial sea of neutrinos, confirming the predictions of both Big Bang theory and the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
To be published in Physical Review Letters, Dr. Roberto Trotta, Lockyer Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society at Oxford’s Department of Physics, and Dr. Alessandro Melchiorri of La Sapienza University in Rome combined data produced by the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, to get the above neutrino fluctuation distribution.
As the results matched perfectly with the current understanding of both Big Bang and Particle Physics, the research shows that theories of the infinitely large (cosmology) and the infinitely small (particle physics) are in agreement!!
This, even by itself, is such a beautiful thing :):).

Pluto Mission On Schedule

2005-06-14T18:59:00.000-04:00

Of the nine planets circling our Sun, Pluto is the most mysterious. Travelling on the outskirts of the Solar System in an highly eccentric orbit (At times it is closer than Neptune, e.g. from January 1979 thru February 11 1999:))), it takes about 248 years to travel around the Sun! It is the only planet not yet visited by a spacecraft. But hopefully, that is about to change, as the first spacecraft designed to study Pluto, took the first steps on a long journey today when it was shipped from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory - where it was designed and built - to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, for its next round of pre-launch tests.

Artist's Concept of the New Horizons (Courtesy: PhysOrg)Tentatively named New Horizons, the spacecraft is scheduled for a launch in 2006, and it should reach Pluto and its moon Charon by 2015. s part of an extended mission, the spacecraft could also head farther into the Kuiper Belt to examine one or two of the ancient, icy mini-worlds in the vast region at least a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit:D:D.
Over the next three months at Goddard the mission team will check New Horizons’ balance and alignment in a series of spin tests; put it before wall-sized speakers that simulate the noise-induced vibrations of launch; and seal it in a four-story thermal-vacuum chamber that duplicates the extreme hot, cold and airless conditions of space. This fall, New Horizons will be transported to Kennedy Space Center for final launch preparations.
Hey Pluto! Here we come:D:D:D.

Digital Security Threatened

2005-06-13T18:49:00.000-04:00

In this digital age, security of online documents and web connections is paramount. Digital signatures are used to authenticate website connections, emails and legal documents in some countries. They work because they are unique to the file or software that is signed, as they are created from the contents of the signed file. Therefore, if someone tries to cut a digital signature from one document and stick it to another, the signature fails because it no longer matches the document. However, recently exposed cracks in the digital signature algorithm make it possible for someone to extract a signature from one file, and use it with another! This means that attackers could potentially forge legal documents, load certified software with bogus code, or turn a digitally-signed letter of recommendation into one that authorises access to private information.

How Digital Signature Works (Courtesy: Microsoft)The signature is generated using a public algorithm, called the Hash function. These algorithms convert a digital file into a fixed-length string of bits (made up of “0”s and “1”s) called a hash, which is considered unique. The hash is then bound up with the digital signatory’s key to generate their signature. The signature is verified by a trusted third party that removes the key and compares the remaining number with a hash of the document.
Cracks first appeared last year, when Xiaoyun Wang and colleagues at the Shandong University of Technology in China generated two documents that had the same MD5 signature. In February 2005 Wang demonstrated the same thing - called a collision - but with the US Government’s gold-standard algorithm SHA-1, which was considered more secure than MD-5!!
Stefan Lucks of the University of Mannheim and Magnus Daum of the Ruhr-University, Bochum, both in Germany, combined Wang’s work with a clever trick in order to produce two meaningful documents with the same hash function. They used a capability in a file-type known as postscript, which is similar to the PDF format. Postscript allowed them to bind up two documents in the same file, but to reveal only one document and hide the other, and vice versa, without changing the hash of the whole file:)).
According to Dan Kaminsky, an independent security consultant based in Seattle, Washington, It’s not the end of the world yet, but we need to stop using MD-5 and SHA-1 before it is!

Food From Mars

2005-06-12T19:17:00.000-04:00

Granted, the first human spaceflight to Mars is still far, far away. But when we are there, we got to eat! And obviously, we cannot carry all the food that we would need, so why not derive (at least some of) the ingredients from Mars :D:D?
French chefs are helping the European Space Agency develop recipes that could be used to make food grown in space tasty as well as nutritious. The menus were based on nine main ingredients that could be grown in future space-based greenhouses. The dishes could be made with 40% of these ingredients, and the remaining 60% could come from Earth-based ingredients.

Spirulina Gnocchis :)) (Courtesy: ESA)The recipes created were 'Martian bread and green tomato jam', 'Spirulina gnocchis' and 'Potato and tomato mille-feuilles'. The challenge for the chefs was to offer astronauts well-flavoured food, made with only a few ingredients that could be grown on Mars. According to Christophe Lasseur, ESA's biological life-support coordinator, the nine basic ingredients might be grown on other planets are: rice, onions, tomatoes, soya, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, wheat and spirulina – all common ingredients except the last. Spirulina is a blue-green algae, a very rich source of nutrition with lots of protein (65% by weight), calcium, carbohydrates, lipids and various vitamins that cover essential nutritional needs for energy in extreme environments.
Now if only I had a jug of Romulan Ale to go with it :D:D:D.

Digital Bacteria

2005-06-11T19:14:00.000-04:00

The fundamental carrier of life on Earth is a Cell. Cells are the structural and functional unit of all living organisms. The organisms range from single celled bacteria, to trillions of cells in large animals such as whales (humans consist of about 50 trillion cells, give or take a few billion ;)). Therefore, any new technique that enables us to understand how individual cells behave, or how they interact with their neighbors or the surroundings, has a lot of practical applications.
Now scientists at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have constructed a computer simulation that allows them to study the relationship between biochemical fluctuations within a single cell and the cell's behavior as it interacts with other cells and its environment.

Simulation (Courtesy: University of Chicago)The simulation is called AgentCell. It is a model based on agents, which are semi-autonomous program modules that interact with other agents. For example, in a bacterial study, there will be hundreds of bacteria modeled, with each having it own chemotaxis network (phenomenon in which cells direct their movements according to certain chemicals in their environment), motors and flagella. If the cell behavior could be accurately modeled at the chemical level, then the aggregate network can be used to simulate large collections of cells, including bacterial swamps, diseases, and even population growths. Not surprisingly, this technique has possible applications in cancer research, drug development and combating bioterrorism.
A major goal in single-cell biology today is to document the connection between internal biochemical fluctuations and cellular behavior. AgentCell should be able to help in this research. It has already simulated some actual bacterial behavior: for example, In the bacteria E. Coli, one type of protein controlled the sensitivity of its chemotaxis system, which helps the bacteria find food. In the simulation, when the level of that protein was changed, it would change the sensitivity of the cell. The actual real-life cell behaved exactly in the same way:):).
The end goal of this research is focussed on solving problems involving bio-terrorism and disease spread. But another interesting by-product could be understanding how macro-processes (such as life) evolve from micro-processes (such as chemistry and fluid/energy transport systems):):).

Fruit Fly Eyes

2005-06-10T21:23:00.000-04:00

Genes control the growth and development of our body. From the conception till death, the genes encode and regulate protein development, and also make sure that a eye grows in the eye socket and not a nose:)). There is considerable interest in the medical community about how the genes manage to make sure that the body develops as it does, since technically, all the cells in our body carry the same genetic material. It is the way the genes switch on and off that gives our body the final shape and form.

Fruit Fly compound eye, and its micrograph image (Courtesy: Wash. University)One interesting find is how physics influences the growth of organs. For example, the laws of physics combine with the mutual attraction of two proteins to create the honeycomb pattern of fruit fly eyes, say molecular biologists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. This same combination of forces forms the delicate filtering structures of the mammalian kidney.
The findings are reported in the June issue of Developmental Cell, and provides a new understanding of how individual cells find their niche during organ developments. This means that the fruit fly eye can serve as a model for similar complex organs in higher animals.
Just as molecules of oil floating in water will gather together to exclude water molecules, cells with "sticky" molecules on their surface will gather together in clumps to exclude "non-sticky" cells during organ development. This property of cell adhesion has been previously proposed as a key to moving different cell types into the right positions as developing organs change from an immature, disorganized state to a mature, functional state.
Interestingly, the proteins that govern the growth of fruit fly eyes, are similar to those that contribute in the growth of mammalian kidneys! According to Professor Ross Cagan, The evolution of these similar proteins in two very distantly related groups of organisms and for these similar purposes suggests that the two systems, the developing kidney and the developing fly eye, used these proteins to solve the same problem—the problem of how to build intricate, fine-structured, tissues from a loose collection of cells:):).

Ancient Hominid Find

2005-06-09T21:47:00.000-04:00

Hominids are the members of the biological family Hominidae (the great apes), which includes the extant species of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, as well as many extinct species. Very close members of the human subfamily, which would include Australopithecus (4.2 million years ago), Homo Habilis (2 - 1.5 million years ago), Home Erectus (1.2 - 0.5 million years ago) etc., are classified as Homininae.
Among these, the Homo Erectus lived in Asia and Europe, had a brain 74% as large as ours, and were on average 1.79m (5 feet, 10 inches) tall. Recent discoveries by a team of archaeologists indicate that the coast of the Caspian Sea in Mazandaran Province, Iran was home to the earliest such hominid habitation in that region:):).

Hominid skull (Courtesy: Wikipedia)Archaeologist Ali Mahforuzi said on Wednesday that 400,000-year-old stone tools discovered in the valleys of Shuresh near the Rostam Kola, Huto, and Kamarband caves are the oldest ever found in the area. Previous studies had indicated a human presence from about 50,000 years ago.
The studies were conducted by a joint team of archaeologists from the Mazandaran Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department and archaeologists from the Mazandaran National Museum. The stone tools that were discovered were firmly dated to about 400,000 years old by Professor Marcel Otte of the University of Liege in Belgium.
More studies are currently being planned and conducted to find more about these ancient people:).

Molecular Transistor

2005-06-08T19:53:00.000-04:00

The electronic revolution started with the invention of the Vacuum Tubes in the late 1800s. Soon, the inventions of Tesla, Marconi, Hertz and others, ushered in a revolution. Long distance communication through radio waves became a reality, and we were launched into the modern age. The pace of progress has only accelerated ever since, and with the invention of the (solid-state) transistor (semi-conductor based device which replaced the tube-based valves) by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain around 1950, we step into the world of micro-electronics:):). Since then, the ubiquitous transistor has shrunk to a few microns inside a modern microprocessor chip.

Single Molecule Transistor (Courtesy: National Research Council, Canada)However, to keep pace with our insatiable requirements for faster and smaller processors, the size of the transistor must be reduced further. It seems that scientists from University of Liverpool may have finally achieved the ultimate goal: creation of a molecular transistor:):).
Dr. Werner Hofer, from the University's Surface Science Research Centre, is one of an international team of scientists who have created a prototype that demonstrates a single charged atom on a silicon surface can regulate the conductivity of a nearby molecule. Computers and other technology based on this concept would require much less energy to power, would produce much less heat, and run much faster.
The team tested the transistor potential of a molecule by using the electrostatic field emanating from a single atom to regulate the conductivity of a molecule, allowing an electric current to flow through the molecule.
Modern transistors are a few microns (1/1000th of a millimeter) in size. In contrast, the molecular transistor are a 1000 fold smaller (1/1000th of a micron), and if it is possible to integrate millions of such transistors on a chip, it should usher in a nano-electronic revolution. From Desktop, to Laptop, to Palmtop, we might have ThumbTop and PinheadTop computers in this century:D:D.

Z Machine

2005-06-07T20:02:00.000-04:00

In physics, acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity (or speed). For example, if we drop a ball from our hand, it has an acceleration of about 9.81m/s² (also known as 1-g), which means it will have a speed of 9.81 m/s after the first second, 2x9.81=19.62 m/s after two seconds, and so on. We humans can endure accelerations of upto 5-10g.

Z Machine (Courtesy: LiveScience)Scientists at the Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico have accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph (34 km per second) in less than a second, which is equivalent to 10¹⁰g!! In contrast, the Earth travels at a speed of 30 km per second around the Sun. This is 50 times faster than the fastest bullet, and 10 times faster than the International Space Station:):).
The ultra-tiny aluminum plates are just 850 microns (1 micron = 1/1000th of a millimeter) thick. Z’s hurled plates strike a target after traveling only five millimeters, or less than a quarter-inch. The impact generates a shock wave - in some cases, reaching 15 million times atmospheric pressure - that passes through the target material. The waves are so powerful that they turn solids into liquids, liquids into gases, and gases into plasmas in the same way that heat melts ice to water or boils water into steam.
One purpose of these very rapid flights is to help understand the extreme conditions found within the interiors of giant planets in our solar system. By creating states of matter extremely difficult to achieve on Earth, the flyer plates provide hard data to astrophysicists speculating on the structure and even the formation of planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
Later this year and next, more experiments are planned, that will push towards higher and higher velocities:):).

Dolphins Use Tools

2005-06-06T17:54:00.000-04:00

Other than humans, many other animals have been observed to use tools in the wild. Chimpanzees use straws to dig out termites, and have been observed to break hard-to-crack nuts using a stone. Eagles have been known to throw turtles from great heights to crack open their shells. These animals even teach their young how to use the tools, thus hinting at a generation to generation transfer of knowledge hitherto believed to be employed only by humans. Now scientists in Australia have observed a community of dolphins to use sponges to protect their sensitive snout, and suspect that they teach the technique to their young too:):).

Poor Spongebob :D (Courtesy: NewScientist)Lacking hands, dolphins are limited in what they can do with a tool, but some bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, have devised a way to break marine sponges off the seafloor and wear them over their snouts when foraging. Most sponges are flat, but tool-using dolphins select conical ones that will not fall off their snouts. The majority of dolphin spongers are females.
A comparison of their nuclear DNA showed that the spongers were closely related, suggesting that spongers are descendants of a recent Sponging Eve. From the usage pattern among the different dolphins, the researchers conclude that the behaviour is culturally transmitted, presumably by mothers teaching the skills to their sons and daughters, although they have not actually observed this feat in action.
As we look more into the animal world, we find intelligent creatures employing creative ideas to make their lives a little better than usual. Our ancestors started the same way, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Who is to say the dolphins wont inherit the Earth, millions of years hence?

Building A Brain

2005-06-05T14:22:00.000-04:00

Our brain is the most complex piece of machinery on the planet. Now scientists at IBM and Brain and Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytecnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland have launched an effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level.
Termed the Blue Brain Project, the project will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM’s Blue Gene design. The hope is that the virtual brain will help shed light on some aspects of human cognition, such as perception, memory and perhaps even consciousness.

The Brain (Courtesy: University of Wisconsin, Madison)Over the next two years scientists from both organizations will work together using the huge computational capacity of IBM’s eServer Blue Gene supercomputer to create a detailed model of the circuitry in the neocortex – the largest and most complex part of the human brain. By expanding the project to model other areas of the brain, scientists hope to eventually build an accurate, computer-based model of the entire brain.
The system that will be installed at EPFL will occupy the floor space of about four refrigerators, and will have a peak processing speed of at least 22.8 trillion floating-point operations per second (22.8 teraflops), making it one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
The first phase of the project will be to make a software replica of a column of the neocortex. The neocortex constitutes about 85% of the human brain’s total mass and is thought to be responsible for the cognitive functions of language, learning, memory and complex thought. An accurate replica of the neocortical column is the essential first step to simulating the whole brain and also will provide the link between genetic, molecular and cognitive levels of brain function. The second and subsequent phases will be to expand the simulation to include circuitry from other brain regions and eventually the whole brain.
Hopefully, in our lifetime, we will solve the ultimate mystery... What makes us human?:):)

Birds and Dinosaurs

2005-06-04T07:46:00.000-04:00

There has been considerable debate surrounding the origins of birds. Many believe that birds are descendants of dinosaurs, who were nearly wiped out about 65 million years ago (See my old post on periodic mass extinctions). But now scientists might have finally solved the puzzle once and for all:). A type of bone that female birds use as a calcium reserve for making eggshell has been found inside the fossilised thigh bone of a 68 million years old Tyrannosaurus Rex. The bone, called medullary bone, is densely rich in minerals and blood vessels, and is unique to ovulating female birds, who need the calcium to make the egg shells.

T. Rex tissue and bone (Courtesy: Pangea Institute)The calcium reserves are critical for female birds because they have strong but lightly-structured bones. Without medullary bone deposited in their marrow cavities, the calcium used for egg shells would come from their bones, giving them avian osteoporosis. Forming the shells depletes medullary bone, which in living birds remains depleted during brooding and until their next ovulation. The formation of the bone is triggered by an increase in estrogen levels.
The same distinctive structure of medullary bone were found in the T. Rex tissues. The T. Rex medullary bone is virtually identical in structure, orientation and even color, to that found in living emus and ostriches - large animals which are close to the evolutionary roots of modern birds. Living crocodiles do not have medullary bone, perhaps putting them farther in the evolutionary tree from dinosaurs than the birds:D:D.

Green Diesel

2005-06-03T23:32:00.000-04:00

Most of our energy requirements today are met by fossil fuels. These fuels were created in the interior of the Earth, when rotting ancient animal and plant remains got pressurized by the crust. As we use more and more of these fuels, it becomes harder and harder to mine/drill and transport and refine them for use. Some better way has to be found to meet our growing energy needs, and bio-fuel is one of them.

Fuel Cycle (Courtesy: PhysOrg)University of Wisconsin researchers have discovered a new way to make a diesel-like liquid fuel from carbohydrates commonly found in plants:). Published in the journal Science, Steenbock Professor James Dumesic and colleagues detail a four-phase catalytic reactor in which corn and other biomass-derived carbohydrates can be converted to sulfur-free liquid alkanes resulting in an ideal additive for diesel transportation fuel.
The process is very efficient, as the fuel contains 90% of the energy found in the carbohydrate and hydrogen feed. This process has twice the potential to create Ethanol (Ethyl Alcohol) than corn. Corn produces 1.1 units of energy for every unit of energy consumed. This process creates 2.2 units of energy for every unit of energy consumed in energy production:):).
The process works with a range of carbohydrates. As About 75% of the dry weight plants and trees is carbohydrates, a wider range of plants can be used to make bio-fuel.

Earth From Mars

2005-06-02T06:10:00.000-04:00

Oppurtunity and Spirit are two semi-autonomous rovers that are currently surveying the Martian landscape. Built by NASA, Opportunity is the second of the two rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission. She landed successfully on Mars on January 24, 2004.
In addition to enormously valuable scientific work, both the rovers have also wowed us with lovely pictures (Spirit here, Oppurtunity here) from the red planet:). The latest image from Oppurtunity is a particularly poignant one, as the rover looks up in the sky, and finds its home planet, the planet it will never again be able to visit.

Hello Earth! (Courtesy: Mars Exploration Rover Mission)On its 449th martian day, or sol (April 29, 2005), NASA's Mars rover Opportunity woke up approximately an hour after sunset and took this picture of the fading twilight as the stars began to come out. Set against the fading red glow of the sky, the pale dot near the center of the picture is not a star, but a planet - Earth:):).
Earth appears elongated because it moved slightly during the 15-second exposures. The faintly blue light from the Earth combines with the reddish sky glow to give the pale white appearance.
I wonder when it will be us humans who will be able to take such pictures of Earth, from the surface of Mars.

How Animals Google

2005-06-01T21:01:00.000-04:00

In mathematics, Power Law is a relationship between two variables (say x and y) which follow a power pattern, e.g. y = ax^k, where a is a constant. According to physicists Olivier Bénichou and colleagues at the University of Paris and the Curie Institute, animals use power laws to minimize the time they spend searching for hidden objects:):). The study corroborates previous observations made by biologists, and could be used to speed up human searching.

Two-state search strategy (Courtesy: PhysicsWeb)Animals exhibit two different kinds of behavior while searching. In the first phase they move quickly on a single trajectory from one location to another. Then in the second phase they search the new location by moving around more slowly and randomly -- akin to molecules undergoing diffusion. They carry on this two-phase process until they find the object. Pet owners routinely see this type of behaviour in their dog, for example, when it looks for an object in the garden.
In order to minimize the search period, it seems that the time spent in the first phase is equal to the time spent in the second raised to a certain power, similar to the power law! This particular search technique might also be employed by us humans, for example, searching for a lost object or perhaps even a victim in an avalanche:):).

Self Wiring Supercomputer

2005-05-31T22:51:00.000-04:00

Our brains are amazing machines. Whenever we form a new memory, or learn a new trick, our brain forms new connections (synapses) between its cells. The synapses act as the storage (loosely speaking) of both the data (the memory) and the code (the technique behind the trick). Next time when we do the trick, this hard-wired information helps us perform much much better than the last time!
The way computers are currently made has a big drawback: once the microprocessors are made, the instructions inside are fixed. Software can be written to implement any code, but the software approach is almost always slower than a hardware-implemented code.

FPGA: The blocks can be switched on/off during reprogramming (Courtesy: Caltech)However, an experimental supercomputer made from hardware that can reconfigure itself to tackle different software problems is being built by researchers in Scotland :):). The system is being built by the EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre), and uses Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips instead of conventional microprocessors. A FPGA is a device that can be reprogrammed after it is manufactured, rather than having its programming fixed during the manufacturing. Therefore, it has some definite advantages over conventional microprocessors; the programming can be changed depending upon how the FPGA will be used.
The new computer incorporates 64 FPGA processing units and will run at 1 teraflop - one trillion mathematical operations per second. This is fairly modest by modern supercomputing standards, as the fastest machines can operate at hundreds of teraflops. This seems modest, But the Edinburgh system will be up to 100 times more energy efficient than a conventional supercomputer of equivalent computing power. The 64-node FPGA machine will also need only as much space as four conventional PCs, while a normal 1 teraflop supercomputer would fill a room:).
If this is successful, researchers will try to transfer several existing supercomputer programs onto the new hardware. If they work, then the supercomputer structure can be further scaled up for higher speeds.

Triple Andromeda

2005-05-30T07:26:00.000-04:00

The Andromeda galaxy is the most familiar of all the spiral galaxies in our sky. Wider and possibly brighter than our own Milky Way, Andromeda is about 2.4 to 2.9 million light years (one light year: the distance light travels in a year) away from the Solar System. It was previously thought that the Andromeda galaxy is 70,000 to 80,000 light years across, but now astronomers using the Keck II telescope in Hawaii have discovered that the galaxy is actually about 220,000 light years across. In comparison, our Milky Way is only about 100,000 light years across!

Andromeda Galaxy (Courtesy: NASA)Astronomers used the telescope to make new observations of the motions of stars in the most distant outskirts of the spiral galaxy. They found the movement of this sparse smattering of far-flung stars is actually synchronised with the rest of the galaxy's stars, rotating in an orderly way around its galactic centre. The stars surrounding Andromeda's spiral arms had been seen before, but astronomers had assumed they were captured fragments of other galaxies that would retain their own, essentially random, stellar motions.
The findings are hard to reconcile with current theories and computer models of galaxy formation, according to Rodrigo Ibata of the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, France, and another member of the research team. According to them, you just don't get giant rotating discs from the accretion of small galaxy fragments.
So back to rewriting the theories :):).

Solid State Lighting

2005-05-29T20:21:00.001-04:00

The invention of the electric light-bulb was a watershed event in human history. Since then, we have been using electric sources of light in our homes, offices, roads, and cars. However, electric lights are often bulky, produce a lot of heat, and do not last long. Over the last 40 years or so, tremendous progress has been made in solid-state devices, which include semiconductor-based microprocessor chips, sensors and Light-Emitting-Diodes (LEDs).
Scientists have long been working on boosting the light output of the LEDs, so that they can work as replacements for the more traditional incandescent light-bulbs. Finally, their work is slowly beginning to bear fruit :):).

Let there be (Solid-State) Light! (Courtesy: PhysOrg)In an article published in the journal Science, the researchers E. Fred Schubert and Jong Kyu Kim of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute describe research currently under way to transform lighting into smart lighting, with benefits expected in such diverse fields as medicine, transportation, communications, imaging, and agriculture.
The applications include the ability to control basic light properties — including spectral power distribution, polarization, and color temperature — will allow smart light sources to adjust to specific environments and requirements and to undertake entirely new functions that are not possible with incandescent or fluorescent lighting.
There will be a lot of power savings: solid-state sources potentially could cut in half the 22 percent of electricity now consumed by lighting. Traffic lights using LEDs, for example, use only one-tenth the power of signals using incandescent lamps.
Other applications include automatic modification of light frequency, modulation and intensity to match the human circadian rhythm, light-based communication between cars on the road so as to minimize chances of collisions, better optical transmission lines, and improved resolution in microscopes.

Domesticating Corn

2005-05-28T12:43:00.000-04:00

Ever since humans have started planting seeds and harvesting crops, they have unconsciously been selecting some traits of the plants over other traits. This selection process involved nothing more than rejecting the crops that were not suitable for consumption, or had low yield, and using those which were good/easy to eat, and easy to harvest. Over thousands of years, this process has helped domesticate a number of plants, which cannot survive in the wild today and are totally dependent on our abilities as harvesters for their survival.

Corn: Past and Present (Courtesy: PhysOrg)One prime example is the corn (or maize) plant. Corn has been one of the primary crops since antiquity. The North American corn is a direct descendant of a grass called Teosinte, which is found in Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Researchers have now identified corn genes that were preferentially selected by Native Americans during the course of the plant's domestication.
The corn was domesticated about 6,000 years ago. Out of its 59,000 genes, about 1,200 were preferentially selected during this domestication process. The domesticated corn lost the ability to survive in the wild, produced larger and softer yields, and survived much longer:).
The study was published by University of California, Irvine's Brandon Gaut and his colleagues in the journal Science. Gaut and his coworkers used relatively new genomic techniques to determine the DNA sequence of 700 gene bits in the two plants (modern corn, and ancstral Teosinte) and used population genetics, the study of genetic variation, to compare them.
According to the scientists, the will provide important insights to modern corn breeders in their quest to establish hardier, higher-yielding corn plants. The scientific approach will also be useful in the study of other domesticated organisms, plants and animals alike, and will help us understand the natural processes by which plants and animals were once domesticated by our ancestors:).

Controlling Electron Spin

2005-05-27T08:05:00.000-04:00

Atoms are the fundamental building blocks in chemistry. An atom is composed of a positively charged core called the nucleus (consisting of protons and neutrons), surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged particle(s) called the electrons. The electrons are the prime movers in electricity (where the negatively charged particles travel from the negative to the positive electrode, thus transferring energy), and in electronics (where the flow of electrons or other electrically charged particles is controlled in devices such as semiconductors).

Electron Spin (Courtesy: Prentice-Hall)The electric charge is a fundamental property of particles such as protons or electrons, and is the driver of Electromagnetism. All of our electrical and electronic devices operate on the electrical charge. However, a new concept based on the spin of an electron, is all set to revolutionize the industry.
The spin is a fundamental property associated with sub-atomic particles. Essentially, it is a fixed angular momentum (similar to rotation in our everyday world, but there is no equivalent in sub-atomic physics) intrinsic to the particle. An electron can have a spin of ±h/4∏ (where h is the Planck's constant, and ∏ = 3.1415...). Since an electron can have only two (up or down) spin values, the spin can be used as the basis of a binary system, where say, '0' = up spin, and '1' = down spin.
However, unlike the electric charge, it is very hard to control or manipulate the spin of an electron. This has hampered the development of any device based on the spin of the electron, until now. Physicists in Europe, California and at Ohio University now have found a way to manipulate the spin of an electron with a jolt of voltage from a battery, according to research findings published in the recent issue of the journal Physical Review Letters:):).
In this study, scientists applied voltage to the electron in a quantum dot, which is a tiny, nanometer-sized semiconductor. The burst of power changed the direction of the electron's spin - which can move either up or down. The time taken for such manipulation is about 1 to 20 nanoseconds (corresponding to a frequency of 1GHz), but scientists are confident that this time can be decreased further.
When such a fast switching between up and down spin is possible, it should give rise to new devices based on the spins of single electrons. For example, one could have memories where each bit is stored in the spin of a trapped electron, whereas in today's memories, the bit is represented by the collective charge of millions of electrons:D. These spintronic devices would be 1000 fold smaller than their electronic counterparts, consume less energy, and lead to quantum and optical computers.

TeraByte DVD!

2005-05-26T00:49:00.000-04:00

The capacity of a removable storage disk has increased rapidly the last two decades. The old 5¼ floppy disks store 360 KB (1.2 MB if high density) of data. The later 3½ floppies store about 1.44 MB. The optical media such as CDs have a maximum capacity of 650 MB (74 minutes audio) to 800 MB (90 minutes audio). Most modern DVDs have a capacity of 4.7 GB. In 2003, Philips announced a dual-layer DVD with a capacity of 8.5 GB. And earlier this month, TDK announced a new 100 GB Blu-ray Disk Prototype.

Soon to be obsolete (Courtesy: Bit-Tech)To top it all, now Toshiba has patented (US No. 6879556) a disk that could store 40 to 100 times more information that a conventional DVD, using more nanometre-scale sloped ridges to diffract light:). The technology, dubbed Articulated Optical Digital Versatile Disk (AO-DVD) could theoretically hold 800 GB :D:D.
Conventional DVDs store information in the form of ridges and depressions, each several hundred nanometres wide. These correspond to bits of binary data - '1's or '0's. The data is read from a disk by bouncing laser light off its surface and measuring the angle at which it reflects.
However, in Iomega's AO-DVD, sub-wavelength surface bumps would slope at slightly different angles - this could be used to encode up to 100 times more information!! Iomega claims the technique could improve data transfer rates by a factor of 30 as well.
Several other groups are also working on increasing the size of an optical disk. For example, a similar technology is being developed at Imperial College London, UK, which uses the polarity of reflected light, instead of its diffraction, to detect sub-wavelength slope features.
It remains to be seen which technique would finally offer the superior advantages to come out at the top. And by the way, a 1.5 TeraByte optical disk is in the pipeline, possibly to enter the market by the year 2010 :):).

Order From Chaos

2005-05-25T17:50:00.000-04:00

The Solar System today is a very stable place. Every planet has a well-defined, nearly circular orbit (except Pluto, which possibly is a planetoid anyway), maintaining a respectful distance from the neighboring planets. But according to a new computer simulation, it was not always like this.
The new simulation uses Chaos Theory to solve certain nagging problems about the formation of the Solar System. The research traces three seemingly unrelated phenomena - the giant planets' (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) orbits, craters on the Moon, and the behaviour of certain asteroids - to the motions of these giants nearly four billion years ago.

Solar System Salad:).. How many can you identify? (Courtesy: NASA)The work answers the following important questions.

How did the intense bombardment of the Earth and the Moon start (3.9 billion years ago), that filled the Moon with large lava basins, and delayed the beginning of life on Earth?
Why did Jupiter and Saturn leave their circular orbits and take on the more oval paths seen today, and how did their orbits became so tilted compared to other planets?
Why does Jupiter share its orbit with thousands of asteroids that precede and follow it around the sun?

According to the researchers, who are publishing their work in three papers in Nature, the four gas giants originally formed in 10 million years within the current orbit of Uranus. Surrounding them in a ring were several thousand rocky objects called planetesimals, left over from the formation of the planets. Due to gravity, after 700 million years, Saturn had migrated outward and Jupiter inward to the extent that they reached a resonance point. This means they began to march in lockstep with each other, with Jupiter completing two orbits around the Sun for every one of Saturn's. The resonance allowed the pair to greatly disturb the orbits of the other planets :).
In the model, Jupiter and Saturn hurl Uranus and Neptune outwards like bowling balls into a sea of planetesimals, which scatter like pins. Asteroids are hurled inwards towards the smaller planets including the Earth, causing the so-called Late-Heavy-Bombardment (LHB) that rains meteorites on Earth and Moon. Samples of lunar rocks collected by astronauts had dated the impacts at about 650 million years after the formation of the Solar System. Some planetesimals bounce off Saturn's gravity, and get trapped in Jupiter's gravity well, and these (so-called) Trojans are still preceding and following Jupiter in its orbit :D.
This research is elegant, in that it ties together three seemingly disparate phenomena. More studies are needed, but it does seem that three problems have been solved in one master stroke :):).

Deciphering Tree Of Life

2005-05-24T20:18:00.000-04:00

Evolution is the ever-present change in traits of living creatures over generations, as they adapt to changing environments. According to this theory, as species adapt, different populations adapt to different local environments, and this leads to the gradual emergence of different species. This process is known as speciation. Walking back in time, almost all modern species therefore should be able to derive their ancestry from a single primordial ancestor. Traditionally, this job is done by paleontologists, who study history of life on Earth based on fossil record, and by taxonomists, who maintain and upgrade this hierarchy of extant and extinct species. This hierarchy is also known as the Tree Of Life.

Tree Of Life (Courtesy: TreeOfLife)However, a more modern approach is to find the similarities between the genetic codes of several modern species, and then try to estimate their position on the tree. Since the genetic code runs into millions of base-pairs (the basic unit of DNA), this pattern matching is not trivial. Add in the possibility that there might be random mutations, duplicates, or inverted sequences, and the matching problem becomes a nightmare, which requires extensive computing power:(.
To that end, a new supercomputing cluster designed for the phylogenetic research community has been installed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. The cluster has 128 Opteron processors each with 4 GB memory, and is supported with a grant from the National Science Foundation in support of the CyberInfrastructure for Phylogenetic Research project, a collaboration of biologists, computer scientists, statisticians and mathematicians at 19 institutions whose goal is to understand the evolutionary relationships between all living organisms.
According to the project leader Mark Miller, the goal is to reconstruct the tree of life for 100,000 species or more. In addition to finding the exact nature of the relationships between the species of the world, the project would also develop new algorithms and database approaches, that will have benefits to research related to data mining, protein decoding, and drug manufacturing:).

Au Revoir, Dear Voyager

2005-05-23T15:39:00.000-04:00

The Voyager-1 is an unmanned probe launched on September 5, 1977, and is currently the most distant man-made object in the Solar System. It is currently about 90 AU (about 13.5 billion kms) away, and signal from it takes about 13 hours to reach Earth (in comparison, light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes to reach us). Scientists have long speculated about the eventual exit of the Voyager-1 from the Solar System, which would happen when the probe enters into the heliosheath, which is a vast, turbulent expanse where the Sun's influence ends and particles blown off its surface crash into the thin gas that drifts between the stars.

Voyager Graphic (Courtesy: JPL)Now at last, it is happening: scientists at NASA have confirmed that the probe is currently in the heliosheath, and is fast on its way to interstellar space:):).
Scientists do not really know where the actual edge to interstellar space is. According to the current models, the solar wind (matter and radiation constantly blowing away from the Sun) should get weaker and weaker as we move away from the Sun, and at some distance would collide with the sparse gases found between stars. The region where this collision would occur, is known as the termination shock. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from a speed that ranges from 1.1-2.4 million km/h and becomes denser and hotter. One of the final tasks of the Voyager probes is to locate the edge of this termination shock (called the heliopause), beyond which is the interstellar space.
The most persuasive evidence that Voyager-1 has crossed the termination shock is its measurement of a sudden increase in the strength of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind, combined with an inferred decrease in its speed. This happens when the solar wind slows down, and thus the density of charged particles from the Sun increase (imagine a slower traffic: the vehicles are bumper to bumper), with a corresponding increase in the magnetic field. This field strength increased by 1.7 times in November 2003, and again by 2.5 times in December 2004 (and is holding steady ever since). This indicates that the solar wind has perhaps reached a minimum speed, and we are soon to reach this elusive boundary of the Sun's dominion:):).

Improved Optical Clock

2005-05-22T16:39:00.000-04:00

The current definition of 1 second depends upon the accuracy of the Cesium¹³³ atomic clock. An atomic clock uses the atomic resonance frequency (depends on the time it takes for an electron to jump from excited state to ground state in the outer layers of the atom) as its counter. Since this frequency is a function of the fundamental properties of the atom, it is extremely accurate (small fluctuations can and do exist, due to quantum fluctuations). The Cesium clock is accurate upto 1 part in 10¹⁵, and currently defines the second. However, this atomic clock is hard to stabilize, and this has imposed an inherent upper limit to the accuracy.

Vacuum Chamber to cool atoms using a laser (Courtesy: PhysicsWeb)
Now researchers in Japan have demonstrated a way to trap neutral atoms that could herald a new era in timekeeping. The team believes that an optical clock based on Strontium atoms trapped in an optical lattice could lead to clocks that are accurate to one part in 10¹⁸, and thus a 1000 fold better than the Cesium clocks:):).
The Japanese team first trapped a cloud of 10,000 Strontium atoms at a temperature of just 2 microkelvin in a one-dimensional optical lattice (a very narrow wire). A blue laser cools down the atoms to that temperature. When a light is shined upon the atoms, the atoms get trapped in the crests and troughs of the light wave! So by measuring the number of atoms in a fixed length of wire, the scientists can find the frequency of the light used, and thus set a new standard for the measurement of time:):).

Deciphering Archimedes

2005-05-21T00:30:00.000-04:00

Archimedes was one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient times, perhaps of all time. Born in 287 BC in Syracuse, ancient Greece, he is reputed to have discovered the principles of density and buoyancy, also known as Archimedes' Principle. He is also credited with the possible invention of the odometer, and use of mirrors to focus sunlight to create fire.
Many of Archimedes' documents were lost during the Middle (Dark) Ages. A copy of one of his most important works, containing part of his Method of Mechanical Theorems was for example scraped down and reused as pages in a thirteenth century prayer book, producing a document known as a palimpsest. Now scientists are trying to decipher the original text by using high-intensity X-rays.

Section from the Archimedes Palimpsest (Courtesy: Stanford)The palimpsest was discovered in 1906. Some portions of this palimpsest were decipherable. For instance, in 2002, an examination of a portion of the manuscript showed that the Greeks understood the concept of infinity. However, most of the manuscript was thoroughly destroyed by the scraping. So researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, decided to use X-rays to peer through this modern ink. Iron pigment in the original ink fluoresced when hit by the X-rays, allowing researchers to see the text for the first time.
The first page has now been scanned, but researchers have not yet been able to decipher the writing. Each scan yields a picture of the writing on both sides of each page, along with the thirteenth-century text that also lurks beneath the forged drawings. Different images will have to be compared carefully to unpick the Archimedes text.
The document is of utmost importance. This information locked inside it is not available anywhere else, and might provide an window into the mind of one of the greatest brains of all time. Archimedes was working on a variety of engineering and mathematical problems and puzzles, and it is possible that he might have solved some persistent problems that waited till after Rennaissance to be discovered again. This manuscript might provide us clues to such problems which Archimedes might have solved, some 2000 years before the modern age:):).

MoonRox

2005-05-20T09:39:00.000-04:00

Centennial Challenges is a NASA program of prize contests to stimulate innovation and competition in solar system exploration and ongoing NASA mission areas. The goal is to offer prize money to encourage private individuals, companies and researchers to think about challenging problems and come up with a state-of-the-art solution. NASA has now announced a new challenge, in association with the Florida Space Research Institute. The MoonROx (Moon Regolith Oxygen) challenge will award $250,000 to the first team that can extract breathable oxygen from simulated lunar soil before the prize expires on June 1, 2008:).

Lunar Base Art (Courtesy: NASA Science)The teams must design and construct hardware that can extract at least five kilograms of breathable oxygen from simulated lunar soil during an eight-hour period. The soil simulant, called JSC-1, is derived from volcanic ash. The extraction technologies required are currently beyond our reach, and the teams must reach their goal while operating under equipment and energy constraints.
To establish a lunar base, or to use the moon for future human explorations, using lunar resources efficiently is key. Once oxygen can be extracted from its soil, engineers can construct liveable bases, where (genetically engineered) plants could be grown, and humans can thus live and work for extended periods of time, without being dependent on the Earth for everything. Thus, moon can be a stepping stone to future explorations to Mars and beyond, which will undoubtedly be much harder, and more complex.

Mars Icecap Mystery Solved

2005-05-19T09:36:00.000-04:00

The permanent icecap on Mars' South Pole is offset from the pole itself. An interdisciplinary team of scientists thinks it has an answer to this long-standing mystery. Published in the journal Nature, this new understanding about Mars' climate and its polar regions may suggest clues to finding water in the planet's equatorial zone - where it would be easier to land a spacecraft - and opening the door to future exploration and the search for life.

Martian South Pole (Courtesy: NASA)The southern icecap is made up mostly of carbon dioxide ice - or dry ice - which is the main component of the Martian atmosphere. It is much smaller, about a 10th the size of that at the northern pole, and it is all on one side of the pole. The other side of the pole contains a much larger area known as 'the Cryptic Region,' which is made up of seasonal ice in the winter but has low albedo, or reflectivity. The question was: why is the ice deposition so peculiar?
The scientists were able to use images from the Mars Global Surveyor, temperature information, and climate models to develop a new theory. It looks like Mars has an asymmetrical climate at its south pole. According to the researcher Dr. Barnes, the planet has huge volcanoes and mountains that extend from well north of the equator to the southern hemisphere, and two gigantic basins in the south. The wind blowing over these topographic features sets up large-scale patterns that have a profound impact on the climate. This ultimately causes a skewed deposition of ice, and so we see a skewed distribution of the icecap:):).

New Meson

2005-05-18T16:23:00.000-04:00

All the matter and energy in our universe are composed of a set of (as yet known) fundamental particles. These particles fall into two major classes: Fermions and Bosons. Fermions (named after Italian scientist Enrico Fermi) follow Pauli's Exclusion Principle by which no two Fermion can occupy the same energy state. Electrons, Protons and Neutrons are all Fermions. Bosons (named after Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose) do not follow the Pauli Principle. Photons (particles of light, carrier of the electromagnetic force), and Gluons (carrier of the strong nuclear force, that binds protons and neutrons into atomic nuclei) are Bosons.

Fundamental Particles (Courtesy: Scott Menary)Interestingly, all the matter particles are Fermions, and the force/energy particles are Bosons! The fundamental particles combine in different ways to give rise to the beautiful world we see all around us:).
The matter particles are further classified into Leptons (which includes the electrons, positrons and neutrinos), and Quarks (of which there are six varieties: up, down, strange charmed, top and bottom) which make up protons and neutrons. The force particles are photon (electromagnetic force), gluon (strong nuclear force), W and Z boson (weak nuclear force, responsible for radioactivity).
Now why all this talk about particle physics?! Because scientists are slowly unravelling the secrets of this ultra-small world, and recently physicists may have discovered the first hybrid meson at the KEK laboratory in Japan. Mesons are normally made up of a quark and an anti-quark. But this hybrid meson contains a gluon as well:). The meson was first predicted 25 years ago, and its detection suggests that scientists are on the right track with their theories.
The new meson was observed in electron-positron collisions by the international Belle collaboration at KEK and quickly decays into two well-known particles called the Omega and J/psi. The properties of the decay have led the Belle team to believe that it is not a standard quark-antiquark particle but may be a hybrid meson containing a charm quark, a charm antiquark and a gluon.
The new meson is the latest in a list of recent surprising discoveries in particle physics. These include several particles called pentaquarks (which may or may not exist) that contain five quarks, a particle called the X(3872) that appears to be made of four quarks, and another meson called the Ds(2317) that does not behave as predicted.
We still have a lot to learn:):):).

DMB Notebook PC

2005-05-17T18:41:00.000-04:00

LG Electronics has unveiled the world's first terrestrial digital multimedia broadcast receiving mobile (DMB) television-enabled notebook computers. This technology will allow users to watch High-Definition mobile digital broadcasts via laptop PCs anywhere, anytime. The notebook uses Intel Centrino processors. The model features a 14-inch wide LCD screen with a WXGA resolution of 1280x768 and a contrast ratio of 15:9, perfect for watching DVD titles and films.

Mobile TV-enabled Notebook (Courtesy: AME Info)The notebook PC features functions like watching and recording terrestrial broadcasts, channel registration, broadcasting-reception sense indication, picture capture and channel scanning. The notebook also does an intelligent update where it automatically upgrades software to improve user convenience.
There are, currently, three versions of the DMB enabled notebook PC with different form factors. The premium notebook PC (model: LW40-P1LK) features a Pentium M 1.6GHz CPU, 512MB Double Data Rate 2 (DDR2) memory, and large capacity hard disk drive at 80GB. This model also utilises the high performance graphic chip (ATI Mobility Radeon X600) to enhance entertainment functions such as 3D games and videos.
This opens up a world of possibilities. The technology is fast moving towards an integration of the television world, the computing world, and the mobile phone world. Soon we will need only one device that will offer us all of them, and would be cheap, portable, energy-efficient, and light-weight:):):).