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Environmental stresses could be shrinking polar bears

August 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, August 26 (ANI): A new research has indicated that environmental stresses could be causing physical changes in the bears, making them shrink over the last century.

According to a report by BBC News, the conclusion was arrived at by scientists after comparing bear skulls from the early 20th Century with those from the latter half of the century.

Their study describes changes in size and shape that could be linked an increase in pollution and the reduction in sea ice.

Physical “stress” caused by pollutants in the bears’ bodies, and the increased effort needed to find food, could limit the animals’ growth, according to the team.

The researchers used the skulls as indicators of body size. The skulls from the later period were between two and 9 percent smaller.

“Because the ice is melting, the bears have to use much more energy to hunt their prey,” explained Cino Pertoldi, professor of biology from Aarhus University and the Polish Academy of Science, and lead scientist in this study.

“Imagine you have two twins – one is well fed during its growth and one is starving. (The starving) one will be much smaller, because it will not have enough energy to allocate to growth,” he said.

The team, which included colleagues from Aarhus University’s Department of Arctic Environment, also found shape differences between the skulls from the different periods.

“This development was slightly more mysterious,” said Dr Pertoldi.

He explained that it was not possible to determine the cause, but that the changes could be linked to the environment – more specifically to pollutants that have built up in the Arctic, and in the polar bears’ bodies.

The aim of the study was to compare two groups of animals that lived during periods when sea ice extent and pollution levels were very different.

The pollutants that the scientists focused on were compounds containing carbon and halogens – fluorine, chlorine, bromine or iodine.

Some of these compounds have already been phased out, but many still have important uses in industry. These include solvents, pesticides, refrigerants, adhesives and coatings.

The changes, according to the team, could also be related to a reduction in the genetic diversity of the species.

Hunting over the last century, could have depleted the gene pool, leaving polar bears to suffer the effects of inbreeding, according to Dr Pertoldi

“We also know from previous studies that some chlorinated chemical pollutants have affected the fertility of the females,” he said. (ANI)

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The more you ‘media multi-task’, the worse you are at it

August 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Melbourne, August 25 (ANI): An American study suggests that media multi-taskers who like watching YouTube, following Twitter, writing e-mail, and talking on the phone are generally not very good at any of their tasks.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the study was led by researchers at Stanford University.

In their study report, the researchers have revealed that they were looking for the secret to good media multi-taskers, but instead found broad-based incompetence.

“We knew that multitasking was difficult from a cognitive perspective. We thought, ‘What’s this special ability that people have that allows them to multitask?’” ABC Science quoted lead author Professor Eyal Ophir as saying.

“Rather than finding things that they were doing better, we found things they were doing worse,” Ophir added.

During the study, the researchers questioned a group of Stanford students about their use of media to categorise them as either heavy or light media multi-taskers, and then conducted a series of tests that involved comparing two patterns of rectangles shown 900 milliseconds apart to determine if they were identical.

The team observed that, without distractions, both groups performed equally.

However, upon adding distractions, the researchers observed that the heavy media multi-taskers took longer to respond and made more mistakes.

The experts said that similar results emerged when they conducted a second test, involving switching from a number task to a letter-based task.

Based on their observations, the researchers came to the conclusion that high media multi-taskers had difficulty focusing, and were not able to ignore irrelevant information.

“Heavy media multi-taskers are more likely to respond to stimuli outside the realm of their task. They may be sacrificing performance on the primary task to let in other sources of information,” they wrote in the study paper.

The researchers believe the study is significant as multitasking is becoming more widespread, with some jobs requiring workers to keep an instant message window open.

Ophir, however, says that there is one bright side to such distraction – media multi-taskers will be first to notice anything new. (ANI)

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Vietnam to cooperate with NASA to develop space technology

May 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

HANOI, May 22 (Xinhua)–Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology said it will cooperate with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to build a space legal framework and its first space technology research and development center, the local newspaper Vietnam Nation reported Friday.

According to Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Van Lang, who led Vietnam’s first delegation to NASA in April, the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology and NASA will soon come to a cooperation agreement on space technology development and application when a NASA’s delegation is sent to Vietnam in November.

Under the expected agreement, NASA will offer the country consultancy related to the construction of the Space Law in line with international laws, and the space center in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Zone in Hanoi, said Lang.

The nine-hectare center will be the site for the manufacturing, testing and control of satellites. Construction of the center is expected to start this year with an investment of 350 million U.S. dollars, which will come from Japan’s official development assistance, said the newspaper.

Under a national strategy on the research on and application of space technology by 2020, Vietnam aims to develop small satellites for aerial photography and research purposes in the next few years, and then bigger satellites mainly used for weather forecasting, research purposes, disaster surveillance, earthquake and tsunami warning and defense purposes, said Pham Anh Tuanvice, director of the academy’s Space Technology Institute.

Vietnam’s first 300-million U.S. dollar satellite, Vinasat 1, was produced by the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin and then launched by French company Arianespace in April 2008. It has 20 transponders and a life-span of 15 to 20 years.

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Next gen LEDs could shine bright white light for homes and offices

April 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, April 27 (ANI): The development of a new generation of white organic LEDs (Light-emitting diodes) could become the source of choice for homes, offices and even computer displays.

LEDs are preferable for many applications because they convert electrical energy into photons so efficiently.

While incandescent light bulbs convert only 5 per cent of the energy passing through them into light and compact fluorescent bulbs manage 20 per cent efficiency, LEDs routinely achieve 30 per cent or more.

The problem is that conventional LEDs produce light only at specific wavelengths, so manufacturers have had to employ two tricks to make white light.

One is to use several LEDs that each emit a primary colour. When combined, these colours look white to the human eye.

The other approach is to cover a blue LED in a phosphorescent chemical, or phosphor, that absorbs a portion of the emitted bluish light and re-emits it as amber.
gain, we see the combination as white.

Conventional LEDs produce light only at specific wavelengths. Making white light from them is costly.

These solutions are relatively costly, though.

Now, according to a report in New Scientist, a potentially cheaper option is emerging thanks to the development of organic dyes that emit blue and amber photons, and the ability to combine both in the light-emitting layer of an LED.

The result is an organic LED (WOLED) that produces white light directly.

WOLEDs have not made it out of the lab yet, however.

One problem is that high currents tend to break down the organic dyes they rely on and this dramatically reduces their lifetime compared with inorganic LEDs made of materials such as indium gallium arsenide.

One way around this would be to find a way to achieve an acceptable brightness with as low a current as possible.

Now, a group led by Dongge Ma at the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Science has come up with a simple way of doing this: stacking two white-light-emitting layers in a single device so that they operate in series.

“The stacked structure allows higher brightness at lower current,” said Paul Burrows, an electronics engineer at Reata Research, a science and technology consultancy in Kennewick, Washington. (ANI)

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Alcohol in pregnancy ‘makes kids develop taste for booze’

March 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Mar 10 (ANI): Mothers who drink alcohol during pregnancy could give their babies a taste for booze, suggests a study in rats.

The study may shed new light on why human studies have previously linked fetal alcohol exposure to increased alcohol abuse later in life, and to a lower age at which a person first starts drinking alcohol.

To reach the conclusion, Steven Youngentob at the State University of New York in Syracuse and John Glendinning at Columbia University in New York measured how avidly rats consumed ethanol, sweet water or bitter water.

From analyses, the research team found that young rats whose mothers had consumed alcohol during pregnancy preferred ethanol and consumed more of the bitter water than the offspring of mothers that didn’t consume alcohol. Rats that had been exposed to alcohol in the uterus also seemed to be more attracted to the smell of alcohol.

Prenatal exposure seems to reduce the perceived bitterness of alcohol, making it seem sweeter, according to Youngentob.

Both of these differences seemed to disappear once the rats reached adulthood – but only if they hadn’t tasted alcohol during their youth. If prenatally exposed rats did consume alcohol in their youth, these preferences seemed to become set for life.

“The take-home message is to keep kids away from alcohol for as long as possible – particularly if they have had prenatal exposure,” New Scientist quoted Youngentob, as saying.

The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. (ANI)

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Historian claims Stonehenge has Armenian links

February 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Feb 10 (ANI): A historian has suggested a link between the Stonehenge and an ancient circle of standing stones known as Carahunge in Armenia, which predates the historic site in England.

According to a report in the Salisbury Journal, the historian in question is Vardan Levoni Tadevosyan, an Armenian/Spanish historian of the occult who visited Salisbury to raise the profile of Carahunge, dubbed the Armenian Stonehenge.

“It’s a very important monument, not just for Armenia, but for the whole world,” he said.

Carahunge, meaning ‘speaking stones’, is located 200 km from the Armenian capital Yerevan, near a town called Sisian.

There are over 200 stones on the seven-hectare site and many of the stones have smooth angled holes in them, directed at different points in the sky, leading scientists to believe it is the world’s oldest observatory, dating back 7500 years.

Tadevosyan is very passionate about wanting people to know more about Carahunge and has his own theories on its links with Stonehenge.

His research of the last four years is based on the work done by Professor Paris Herouni, a member of the Armenian National Academy of Science and president of the Radiophysics Research Institute in Yerevan.

Professor Herouni started investigating Carahunge more than 20 years ago and wrote a book, Armenians and Old Armenia, on his findings.

He sent the book to Prof G.S. Hawkins, who had investigated Stonehenge, and he agreed with Herouni’s findings.

According to Tadevosyan, in neolithic times, the Armenians were much more advanced than most other cultures.

A carving found on rocks near Lake Sevan showed they knew the world was round, they could accurately measure latitude, and they were already skilled in astronomy, archaeology and engineering.

He believes the earliest population of Britain, who came from Armenia, brought the ideas of Carahunge to Europe with them and played some part in the creation of Stonehenge and other European sites.

Tadevosyan plans to put together a leaflet about Carahunge that can be available to the public at the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum and curator Adrian Green said he would be happy to display leaflets about the ancient site. (ANI)

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Gut bacteria composition may explain why some people become fat

January 20, 2009 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 20 (ANI): Bacteria in the gut which are crucial to the body’s ability to turn food into energy could explain why some people become obese and others don’t, according to a new study.

The study suggests that the composition of microbes within the gut may hold a key to one cause of obesity-and the prospect of future treatment. esearchers at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute in collaboration with colleagues at the Mayo Clinic, Arizona, and the University of Arizona, recruited 9 middle-aged volunteers in three groups-normal weight, morbidly obese and following gastric bypass surgery-to participate in the study.

The research team’s central hypothesis is that differing microbial populations in the gut allow the body to harvest more energy, making people more susceptible to developing obesity.

These small differences can, over time, profoundly affect an individual’s weight.

Supporting this view is the study’s confirmation that the microbial composition among obese patients appears significantly altered compared with both normal weight individuals and those who have undergone gastric bypass surgery.

However, the researchers stress that the study is preliminary, but were encouraged by the findings from their small sample.

Future investigation is needed to establish the differences in composition of gut microbiota across different age groups and under varying weight-loss regimens involving diet and exercise.

The study has been published in the January 19 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. (ANI)

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‘Magic’ pill that can curb smoking damage closer to reality

January 13, 2009 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

London, Jan 13 (ANI): A pill which can alleviate some of the negative health effects of cigarettes is on the anvil.

Boston University School of Medicine researchers have found 28 molecules, which are produced in abnormal amounts in cells lining the airways of smokers.

If the levels of these molecules could be restored to that of non-smokers it might allow chronic smokers who have been unable to quit to improve their health prospects, reports New Scientist.

It might also enable people to smoke without significant damage to their health.

To reach the conclusion, lead researcher Avrum Spira and his colleagues took samples of cells from the airways of 10 smokers and 10 non-smokers and identified 28 microRNAs – molecules that control the expression of whole networks of related genes – that were perturbed in the smokers.

“These microRNAs serve to regulate the gene expression changes occurring in people who smoke and who get smoking related diseases, including cancer,” says Spira.

One of these microRNAs, called mir-218, appears to control a group of genes that usually protect lung and airway cells from the oxidative damage caused by smoke.

“We think the level of activity [of mir-218] is crucial in how a smoker defends his or herself against injury and potential development of lung disease,” the expert added.

Other microRNAs identified help to regulate the proliferation and growth of airway cells.

Giving supplements of mir-218 to smokers, or developing a drug that restores levels of disrupted microRNAs to normal could mitigate some of the damaging effects of smoke.

“We might be able to alter the host’s response to tobacco smoke so that it is a protective one,” says Spira.