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Shorter mums have unhealthier children in developing countries

April 21, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 21 (ANI): Shorter maternal height is associated with more deaths among children in developing countries, say researchers.

According to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), mothers shorter than 4 feet, 9 inches in low- to middle-income countries had about a 40 percent higher risk of their children dying within the first five years of life than mothers who were 5 feet, 3 inches or taller.

The risk was higher—almost 60 percent—in the first 30 days after birth.

The study appears in the April 21, 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Height is a useful and stable marker of cumulative health,” said S.V. Subramanian, senior author of the paper and associate professor in the department of society, human development, and health at HSPH. “It is an indicator of the nutritional environment a person was exposed to during childhood, which shapes both the mother”s attained height and subsequent health as well as her offspring”s chances of survival or ability to grow in infancy and childhood.”

Subramanian and his co-authors, Emre Özaltin, a doctoral candidate in the department of global health and population at HSPH and lead author of the study, and Kenneth Hill, professor of the practice of global health at HSPH, analyzed health surveys from 54 low- to middle-income countries that included more than 2.6 million children and more than 750,000 mothers.

The researchers also found that a 1-centimeter—less than 0.4 inch— increase in height reduced the risk of child mortality by 1.2 percent. The same increase in height reduced the risk of underweight and growth failure by more than 3 percent.

“Health needs to be viewed not only as a phenomenon that spans one”s life, but one that also has a multigenerational aspect,” said Özaltin. “We believe that interventions to reduce child mortality and growth failure have not recognized the intergenerational transmission of poor health,” added Subramanian. (ANI)

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Archaeologists discover gemstone carrying portrait of Alexander the Great

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 16 (ANI): An archaeological team, during excavations in Israel, has discovered a gemstone that has a portrait of Alexander the Great engraved on it.

The excavations at Tel Dor were carried out by an archaeological team, which was directed by Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of the University of Haifa and Dr. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“Despite its miniature dimensions – the stone is less than a centimeter high and its width is less than half a centimeter – the engraver was able to depict the bust of Alexander on the gem without omitting any of the ruler’s characteristics,” said Dr. Gilboa, Chair of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa.

“The emperor is portrayed as young and forceful, with a strong chin, straight nose and long curly hair held in place by a diadem,” he added.

The Tel Dor researchers have noted that it is surprising that a work of art such as this would be found in Israel, on the periphery of the Hellenistic world.

“It is generally assumed that the master artists – such as the one who engraved the image of Alexander on this particular gemstone – were mainly employed by the leading Hellenistic courts in the capital cities, such as those in Alexandria in Egypt and Seleucia in Syria,” according to the researchers.

“This new discovery is evidence that local elites in secondary centers, such as Tel Dor, appreciated superior objects of art and could afford ownership of such items,” they added.

The significance of the discovery at Dor is in the gemstone being uncovered in an orderly excavation, in a proper context of the Hellenistic period.

This tiny gem was unearthed by a volunteer during excavation of a public structure from the Hellenistic period in the south of Tel Dor, excavated by a team from the University of Washington at Seattle headed by Prof. Sarah Stroup.

Dr. Jessica Nitschke, professor of classical archaeology at Georgetown University in Washington DC, identified the engraved motif as a bust of Alexander the Great.

This has been confirmed by Prof. Andrew Stewart of the University of California at Berkeley, an expert on images of Alexander and author of a book on this topic.

Alexander was probably the first Greek to commission artists to depict his image – as part of a personality cult that was transformed into a propaganda tool. (ANI)

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Now, a ‘Mongoose’ bat that could revolutionise the way cricket is played

May 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 29 (ANI): Former Australian batsman Stuart Law has become the first player to use the new Mongoose blade in a cricket competition.

This latest evolution in cricket bat design has sparked fears that younger players will be turned off bowling.

The Mongoose bat, with a handle as long as the blade, is not even the craziest design the Marylebone Cricket Club – the game’s lawmakers – have been presented this past year as Twenty20 spawns a new wave of invention, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The MCC has already rejected dozens of submissions, including one bat with holes drilled into the blade for aerodynamic purposes, described by observers as a “Swiss cheese bat”. But they passed this one, used for the first time by former Australian batsman Stuart Law during a county Twenty20 match on Tuesday night.

The MCC found that it met all requirements under law six of regulations regarding the make-up of a bat, and they are not concerned about the possible ramifications for bowlers.

The Mongoose is tailor-made for the short format. Subtlety is not its strong suit. With a five-centimeter thick base that boasts a sweet spot twice the size of that on a traditional bat, even the pace bowler’s saving grace – a yorker – can be dispatched to the ropes.

“The Mongoose has the potential to revolutionise cricket,” said Law, who is contracted by the bat’s manufacturers to spruik its powers.

“Without changing your technique, the bat allows you to hit the ball harder and further. Its power is phenomenal. It’s a weapon of mass destruction,” Law added.

A company spokesman said there was “every chance” the bat, with a starting price of 159 pounds, could make an appearance at the Twenty20 World Cup as negotiations were under way with other international players.

The ICC has no problems with that prospect because it complies with MCC law, although, looking at its design, some wonder how that could be.

“When Twenty20 came in, people said it would be the death of the spin bowler, and, over time, it has proved that spin bowlers are the most successful. I don’t think we need to be worried about fast-tracking laws to help bowlers. We’ll see how it [influences games] and then obviously consider if laws need to be tailored,” MCC spokesman Neil Priscott said. (ANI)

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Big belly raises heart failure risk

April 8, 2009 By admin 1 Comment

Washington, Apr 8 (ANI): Carrying an extra four inches of fat around the waist can increase a person’s risk of being hospitalised with heart failure, warn researchers.

A study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found that larger waist circumference is associated with increased risk of heart failure in middle-aged and older populations of men and women.

The findings, published online in the April 7 Rapid Access Report of the journal Circulation: Heart Failure, showed that increased waist size was a predictor of heart failure even when measurements of body mass index (BMI) fell within the normal range.

A life-threatening condition that develops when the heart can no longer pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs, heart failure (also known as congestive heart failure) is usually caused by existing cardiac conditions, including high blood pressure and coronary artery disease.

Heart failure is characterized by such symptoms as fatigue and weakness, difficulty walking, rapid or irregular heartbeat, and persistent cough or wheezing.

To reach the conclusion, researchers examined two Swedish population-based studies, the Swedish Mammography Cohort (made up of 36,873 women aged 48 to 83) and the Cohort of Swedish Men (43,487 men aged 45 to 79) who responded to questionnaires asking for information about their height, weight and waist circumference.

Over a seven-year period between January 1998 and December 2004 the researchers reported 382 first-time heart-failure events among the women (including 357 hospital admissions and 25 deaths) and 718 first-time heart-failure events among men (accounting for 679 hospital admissions and 39 deaths.)

Their analysis found that based on the answers provided by the study participants, 34 percent of the women were overweight and 11 percent were obese, while 46 percent of the men were overweight and 10 percent were obese.

“By any measure – BMI, waist circumference, waist to hip ratio or waist to height ratio -our findings showed that excess body weight was associated with higher rates of heart failure,” explains Emily Levitan, ScD, the study’s first author and a Research Fellow in the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at BIDMC.

Further breakdown of the numbers showed that among the women with a BMI of 25 (within the normal range), a 10-centimeter higher waist measurement was associated with a 15 percent higher heart failure rate; women with a BMI of 30 had an 18 percent increased heart failure rate. In men with a BMI of 25, a 10-centimeter higher waist circumference was associated with a 16 percent higher heart failure rate; the rate increased to 18 percent when men’s BMI increased to 30.

Furthermore, adds Levitan, among the men, each one-unit increase in BMI was associated with a four percent higher heart failure rate, no matter what the man’s waist size. In women, she adds, BMI was only associated with increased heart failure rates among the subjects with the largest waists. Finally, the authors found that the association between BMI and heart-failure events declined with age, suggesting that the younger the person, the greater the impact of weight to heart health.

“This study reinforces the importance of maintaining a healthy weight,” says Levitan. (ANI)

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Recovered Ganesha statue from 12th century one of its kind in Indonesia

April 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Jakarta, April 2 (ANI): Archaeologists, in Indonesia, have recovered a rare 12th-century stone statue of Lord Ganesha, which is the only one in the country in which the elephant-headed deity is depicted as riding atop a mouse.

According to a report in the Jakarta Post, a research team from the Mpu Purwa Historical Object Preservation Center in Malang, East Java, recovered the statue.

“The mouse is apparently included as an animal used by Ganesha as a vehicle, but this type of statue has never been found in Indonesia before. Ganesha is usually seen riding the Lembu Nandhini cow, the Jatayu bird, or the Padmasana lotus,” said Malang archeologist Suwardono.

Other singularities of this statue, recently handed over by a private collector, include Ganesha’s stiff facial expression and a badhong carving on the shoulders.

The decorations worn by the god, also called samboghakaya, are also more lavish.

“The badhong strand is part of the special trait of statues inherited from the Kediri empire, from the Raja Baneswara to Kertajaya kingdoms. The most special trait is the mouse as a vehicle on the pedestal of the statue,” Suwardono said.

Suwardono said he had cross-checked the statue with the National Archeology Research and Development Center in Jakarta, the Trowulan Center for Archeological Conservation and Heritage in Mojokerto, and the Archeological Center in Yogyakarta, the results of which confirmed the statue was a one-of-a-kind that had never been seen before.

The epigraphist and iconographer explained that the 40- by 22- by 22-centimeter statue, intended to be placed in temples, originated in northern India and gradually spread further southward.

The statue is usually placed at the back of a temple for worship.

It functions as a balance and a guardian for unsafe areas and is related to worship to ward off disaster.

The statue was obtained from a collector named Jayusman, a resident of Jl. Sambas in Malang. Jayusman said he had obtained the statue from a Chinese-Indonesian collector a long time ago.

Suwardono found the special traits after analyzing the statue for the past two weeks.

“These artifacts are priceless and sought after by collectors,” Suwardono said. (ANI)

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Solar power may be used to turn CO2 to methane

March 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 6 (ANI): A new study by Penn State University researchers has determined that dual catalysts may be the key to efficiently turning carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor into methane and other hydrocarbons using titania nanotubes and solar power.

Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal release large amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

Rather than contribute to global climate change, producers could convert CO2 to a wide variety of hydrocarbons, but this makes sense to do only when using solar energy.

“Recycling of carbon dioxide via conversion into a high energy-content fuel, suitable for use in the existing hydrocarbon-based energy infrastructure, is an attractive option, however the process is energy intense and useful only if a renewable energy source can be used for the purpose,” according to the researchers.

Craig A. Grimes, professor of electrical engineering at Penn State, and his team, used titanium dioxide nanotubes doped with nitrogen and coated with a thin layer of both copper and platinum to convert a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapor to methane.

Using outdoor, visible light, they reported a 20-times higher yield of methane than previously published attempts conducted in laboratory conditions using intense ultraviolet exposures.

“Converting carbon dioxide and water to methane using photocatalysis is an appealing idea, but historically, attempts have had very low conversion rates,” said Grimes.

“To get significant hydrocarbon reaction yields, requires an efficient photocatalyst that uses the maximum energy available in sunlight,” he added.

The team used natural sunlight to test their nanotubes in a chamber containing a mix of water vapor and CO2.

They exposed the co-catalyst sensitized nanotubes to sunlight for 2.5 to 3.5 hours when the sun produced between 102 and 75 milliwatts for each square centimeter exposed.

The researchers found that nanotubes annealed at 600 degrees Celsius and coated with copper yielded the highest amounts of hydrocarbons and that the same nanotubes coated with platinum actually yielded more hydrogen, while the copper coated nanotubes produced more carbon monoxide.

When the team used a nanotube array with about half the surface coated in copper and the other half in platinum, they enhanced the hydrocarbon production and eliminated carbon monoxide.

The yield for these dual catalyst nanotubes was 163 parts per million hydrocarbons an hour for each square centimeter.

The yield from titania nanotubes without either copper or platinum catalysts is only about 10 parts per million.

“If we uniformly coated the surface of the nanotube arrays with copper oxide, I think we could greatly improve the yield,” said Grimes. (ANI)

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Mysterious lunar flashes suggest Moon may not be dead after all

March 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 3 (ANI): Astronomers have suggested that the occasional bright flashes seen on small areas of the Moon, may indicate that some form of geological activity must still be going on the dead satellite.

Observers around the world have occasionally watched small areas of the moon brighten or “turn fuzzy.” Sometimes, they even turn reddish.

Because the bright patches are ephemeral, lasting only last a few minutes, these events have come to be known as transient lunar phenomena, or TLPs.

“About 1,500 of these have been reported,” astronomer Arlin Crotts told National Geographic magazine.

Astronomers already know they’re not meteorite impacts. Those produce brighter, briefer flashes as the meteorite hits the surface and vaporizes.

But, nobody yet knows what TLPs are-or even whether they truly exist. Many astronomers think they’re simply optical illusions or figments of observers’ tired eyes and overactive imaginations.

Crotts believes the time has come to put the riddle to rest once and for all.

Scientists have long believed the moon to be a dead world, but if TLPs are real, then some form of geological activity must still be going on.

According to Peter Schultz of Brown University, “If we were to go back to the moon, we might be able to go to these places and discover something absolutely new about its ancient history or its deep interior.”

For observing these so-called “flashes”, Crotts, Schultz and their team have set up two 10-inch (25-centimeter) robotic telescopes, one in New York City and one at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile.

In a project begun last year and is expected to continue at least into 2010, each telescope is photographing the moon every 20 seconds.

At each site, the images are fed into computers that can examine them for changes that might signal a TLP.

“We want to start catching these things in the act,” Crotts said.

Crotts’ main goal is to supplement the anecdotal reports dating back hundreds of years with real science.

“I’m trying to get an objectively undeniable data set that shows when and where these events take place,” he said.

Crotts has compared the areas where TLPs have been most frequently sighted to regions where Apollo space missions observed evidence of a short-lived radioactive gas, radon-222, escaping from the Moon’s interior – a clear sign that some type of geological activity was going on.

According to Crotts, the Apollo instruments spotted several such outbursts, all in areas where TLPs are frequently reported.

“The chances of this happening at random are extremely small,” he said. (ANI)

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‘Leonardo da Vinci had long blond hair and piercing blue eyes’

February 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 21 (ANI): Going by the details of a portrait that has come to light in southern Italy Leonardo da Vinci had long blond hair and piercing blue eyes.

The slightly damaged oil painting on wood shows the Renaissance master in a three-quarter profile and wearing a hat.

The painting was discovered by a medieval historian in the private collection of an aristocratic family from Acerenza, a hill town near Potenza in Basilicata.

“The link with Acerenza is not so unusual. We know that Leonardo visited this remote region. We know that a powerful Florentine family, the Segnis, lived in Acerenza around the 16th century. Leonardo had a close friendship with this family, and even gave them one of his drawings as a gift,” medieval historian Nicola Barbatelli told Discovery News.

It is being believed that the 60- by 44-centimeter portrait was made by an expert hand, since it doesn’t show any sign of preparatory drawing.

“Moreover, the back of the painting has revealed an inscription written in the typical Leonardo’s reverse handwriting which reads ‘Pinxit mea,’ basically hinting to a self-portrait,” Barbatelli said.

Experts are now investigating whether the painting really dates to Leonardo’s time.(ANI)

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Cracks in Earth may contribute to global warming

February 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 20 (ANI): A new study has found that the cracks in Earth’s surface exhale large quantities of gas, perhaps enough to contribute to global warming.

According to a report in Discovery News, Noam Weisbrod of Ben Gurion University of the Negev and a team of researchers monitored a crack about 2 meters long (6.5 feet) and 1 meter (3.3 feet) deep for two years in the Negev Desert in Israel.

Each night, they watched as warm air in the crack drew water vapor out of the surrounding rock, and lifted it into the cold evening air.

If air in the crack is just 7 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature, it is buoyant enough to rise out of any crack in the ground bigger than 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) across, bringing with it any gases that leak out of the surrounding soil or rock.

But, the team was surprised to find that the crack they studied gave off water vapor up to 200 times faster than areas without fractures.

“Sometimes we go for walks at night, and you put your face over the mouth of a cave and you can feel a warm wind coming out,” Weisbrod said. “Usually, it’s a nice hot wind in the cold air,” he added.

Like carbon dioxide, water vapor is a greenhouse gas that plays a crucial role in the way Earth’s atmosphere traps heat from the sun.

Though the team only measured water vapor, Weisbrod said that it’s likely that cracks also regularly emit elevated amounts of CO2 and nitrogen oxides.

This doesn’t only happen in extremely dry areas, he added.

The Negev is arid, but roughly equivalent in dryness to the area around Los Angeles, California, the American southwest, and many regions around the world.

Fractures are common in soils and rocks in wet regions as well, according to Dan Yakir of the Weizman Institute of Science.

Taken as a whole, emissions from fractures in the uppermost meter of the planet’s crust may make a significant contribution to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“This has the potential to be important globally,” Yakir said.

“The biosphere soaks up 30 percent of the carbon, and soil respiration is a very large part of that. If cracks remove CO2 from soils much faster than usual, it’s important,” he added. (ANI)

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King Tut’s statue found in northern Iraq

February 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Baghdad, Feb 13 (ANI): A Kurdish archaeological expedition has found a small statue of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen in northern Iraq.

Hassan Ahmed, the director of the local antiquities authority, told the Kurdish news agency Akanews that archaeologists had found a 12-centimeter statue of the ancient Egyptian king in the valley of Dahuk, 470 kilometers north of Baghdad, near a site that locals have long called Pharaoh’s Castle.

He said that archaeologists from the Dahuk Antiquities Authority believe the statue dates from the mid-14th Century BC.

According to Ahmed, the statue of Tutankhamen showed ‘the face of the ancient civilization of Kurdistan and cast light on the ancient relations between pharaonic Egypt and the state of Mitanni.’

The kingdom of Mittani occupied roughly the same territory spanning Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran in the 14th Century BC that many Kurds now hope will one day form an independent Kurdistan.

“Historical information indicates familial and political ties between Mittani and Egypt,” Ahmed said.

“The discovery of this statue shows us that the name of Pharaoh’s Castle, was not invented out of vacuum, but rather arose out of historical fact,” Ahmed told Akanews.

“This calls for strengthening archaeological research ties between the territory of Kurdistan and the Arab Republic of Egypt,” he added. (ANI)

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