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Kate Winslet, Michelle Obama among People’s 2009 Best-Dressed Women

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Sept 17 (ANI): British actress Kate Winslet has been named the best dresser on red carpet in People magazine’s 10 best-dressed women of 2009, while America’s first lady Michelle Obama has bagged the spot for “best accessible glamour.”

Winslet, 33, has been named as the woman with the finest dress on the red carpet, “with her unique brand of sexy sophistication, modern Hollywood glamour and those enviable curves,” reports China Daily.

Walk the Line star Reese Witherspoon has also made it to the list for wearing the “best short dresses,” and actress Vanessa Hudgens has been named as the “best hippie chic.”

People listed former American Idol judge Paula Abdul and actress Renee Zellweger among the fashion flops.

People’s choice of the Top 10 Best-Dressed Women of 2009 are:

Kate Winslet – Best Red Carpet

Vanessa Hudgens – Best Hippie Chic

Reese Witherspoon – Best Short Dresses

Cameron Diaz – Best Jeans

Michelle Obama – Best Accessible Glamour

Freida Pinto – Best Use of Color

Taylor Swift – Best Sparkle

Nicole Richie – Best Maternity

Beyonce – Best Street Chic

Kim Kardashian – Best Bikinis. (ANI)

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Scientists develop ‘electronic nose’ that can sniff out toxins by changing colors

September 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 14 (ANI): A team of scientists has developed a sensor that works as an ‘electronic nose’ in sniffing out some known poisonous gases and toxins, simply by changing colors.

Support for the development and application of this electronic nose comes from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Once fully developed, the sensor could be useful in detecting high exposures to toxic industrial chemicals that pose serious health risks in the workplace or through accidental exposure.

While physicists have radiation badges to protect them in the workplace, chemists and workers who handle chemicals do not have equivalent devices to monitor their exposure to potentially toxic chemicals.

The investigators hope to be able to market the wearable sensor within a few years.

“The project fits into the overall goal of a component of the GEI Exposure Biology Program that the NIEHS has the lead on, which is to develop technologies to monitor and better understand how environmental exposures affect disease risk,” said NIEHS Director Linda Birnbaum.

“This paper brings us one step closer to having a small wearable sensor that can detect multiple airborne toxins,” she added.

Kenneth S. Suslick, the M.T. Schmidt Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues have created what they refer to as an optoelectronic nose, an artificial nose for the detection of toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) that is simple, fast, inexpensive, and works by visualizing colors.

“We have a disposable 36-dye sensor array that changes colors when exposed to different chemicals. The pattern of the color change is a unique molecular fingerprint for any toxic gas and also tells us its concentration,” said Suslick.

“By comparing that pattern to a library of color fingerprints, we can identify and quantify the TICs in a matter of seconds,” he added.

The power of this sensor to identify so many volatile toxins stems from the increased range of interactions that are used to discriminate the response of the array.

To test the application of their color sensor array, the researchers chose 19 representative examples of toxic industrial chemicals.

Chemicals such as ammonia, chlorine, nitric acid and sulfur dioxide at concentrations known to be immediately dangerous to life or health were included.

The arrays were exposed to the chemicals for two minutes.

Most of the chemicals were identified from the array color change in a number of seconds and almost 90 percent of them were detected within two minutes. (ANI)

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New test to detect tainted milk

September 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 13 (ANI): Researchers have developed a simple test that would help detect tainted milk within few hours.

Amer AbuGhazaleh, from Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s College of Agricultural Sciences, and Salam Ibrahim, a food microbiologist from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, have shown that the combination of certain bacteria and a common purple dye can reveal the presence of toxins in milk in just a few hours.

“To date, detecting the presence of toxins or pesticides has only been possible by sending samples to a laboratory and waiting a few days for the results,” said AbuGhazaleh.

“An important step toward improving the safety of our dairy supply would be the development of an effective, simple and rapid test that would allow farmers or processors to detect the presence of foreign substances,” the expert added.

During the study, the scientists decided to focus on the bacteria that ferment lactose (milk’s sugars), producing lactic acid.

“For one thing, these bacteria already exist in milk, so if you add some, you’re not doing anything strange,” said AbuGhazaleh.

“Second, they produce a change over time (the lactic acid) that we could monitor. If we didn’t see the change, we would know something was wrong,” the expert said.

They began in 2008 with a few bacterial strains they already had and cyanide, also readily available. Experiments showed not only that the toxin could slow or stop lactic acid production but that this effect increased with the toxic load. Further, the effect appeared in less than four hours.

They then added purple dye to milk samples containing both toxins and bacteria and to samples containing only bacteria.

After eight hours, dye in the non-toxic milk turned yellow, indicating the presence of increased lactic acid, while dye in the toxin-laden milk retained its original purple.

“This kind of colour test could be performed by farmers themselves,” AbuGhazleh said.

“They could add the bacteria and the dye to a sample, leave it alone for a little while and then come back to see if there is any change in the color. If there isn’t, there are problems with the milk,” he added. (ANI)

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Israel accuses HRW of hitting a new low by hiring expert who collects Nazi memorabilia

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Jerusalem, Sep.10 (ANI): Human Rights Watch’s employment of a man who trades and collects Nazi memorabilia as its “senior military expert” is a “new low” for the organization that frequently criticizes Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s policy director Ron Dermer said Wednesday.

“I thought that nothing could top a human rights organization trying to raise money in Saudi Arabia, but I was apparently wrong,” said Dermer.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Dermer was referring to reports, both in the blogosphere and the press, that Marc Garlasco, HRW’s senior military expert, who has written numerous reports condemning Israel, is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.

Omri Ceren, on a blog called Mere Rhetoric, wrote that Garlasco was “obsessed with the color and pageantry of Nazism, has published a detailed 430-page book on Nazi war paraphernalia, and participates in forums for Nazi souvenir collectors.”

Dermer said the revelations made it “easier to understand how an organization that was initially called Helsinki Watch, and was dedicated to helping brave Soviet dissidents fight against tyranny, has turned into an organization that facilitates the assault of some of the worst regimes and terror groups against the very democratic countries that uphold human rights.

HRW issued a statement saying that Garlasco’s family experience on both sides of WWII – his grandfather was in the German army and his great-uncle was in the US air force – led him to collect military memorabilia from that period.

HRW emphatically denied that Garlasco was a Nazi sympathizer because he “collected German [as well as American] military memorabilia.”

HRW said the “accusation is demonstrably false and fits into a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch’s rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government.” (ANI)

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Laser cooling may be used to create “exotic” states of matter

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 9 (ANI): In a new study, scientists have determined that the technique of laser cooling could be used to create “exotic” states of matter.

According to a report in National Geographic News, in a new technique, Martin Weitz and Ulrich Vogl of the University of Bonn in Germany used a laser to bring the temperature of dense rubidium gas far below the normal point at which the gas becomes a solid.

Previous research had been able to use lasers to quickly “supercool” only very diluted gases.

But, “here’s a case where you shine a laser on something and it actually cools down, and not just a handful of atoms, but a macroscopic object,” said Trey Porto, a physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s laser-cooling group.

The process could be used to create fascinating new states of matter, according to the study authors.

“For example, if you can very quickly cool water much lower than zero Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), where it would normally turn to ice, exotic crystalline and glassy states of matter would be predicted,” Weitz said.

The new technique could also be used in cooling mechanisms to boost the efficiency of some stargazing equipment, he added.

“If you could cool thermal cameras that look at the stars, they may have less noise and be more sensitive,” he said.

Since a laser’s color is linked to its intensity, the new technique is based on using a red laser in which the frequency has been adjusted so that the beam affects the atoms only when they collide with each other.

Weitz and Vogl shone this laser beam into gaseous rubidium atoms in a high-pressure “atmosphere” of argon.

In the experiment, the rubidium gas fell from 662 degrees Fahrenheit (350 degrees Celsius) to almost 536 degrees Fahrenheit (280 degrees Celsius) within mere seconds.

Much more research needs to be done before the laser-cooling process can be used in real-world applications, study co-author Weitz cautioned.

But, NIST’s Porto said the work already represents a major departure from traditional cooling of diluted gases, which are currently used for studying quantum effects or preparing gas samples for atomic clocks.

“I think the really amazing thing is that you can even get cooling in this regime, because it’s a really dense gas and a very different mechanism,” Porto said.

“Traditional cooling powers are so tiny. To cool a physical object by a measurable degree with a laser is amazing,” he added. (ANI)

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High-performance, low-cost green LEDs to brighten up the future

September 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 6 (ANI): A scientist is aiming to develop a high-performance, low-cost green LED (Light-emitting diode).

According to Christian Wetzel, professor of physics and the Wellfleet Professor of Future Chips at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), “Going green means different things to different people. For companies, going green means making a profit by selling equipment and services that allow one’s customers to be more efficient and reduce costs.”

“I’m doing both of those, but I’m also trying to make an LED that literally shines green light,” he said.

First discovered in the 1920s, LEDs are semiconductors that convert electricity into light.

When switched on, swarms of electrons pass through the semiconductor material and fall from an area with surplus electrons into an area with a shortage of electrons.

As they fall, the electrons jump to a lower orbital and release small amounts of energy. This energy is realized as photons – the most basic unit of light.

Unlike conventional light bulbs, LEDs produce almost no heat.

The color of light produced by LEDs depends on the type of semiconductor material it contains.

“We have high-performance red LEDs, we have high-performance blue LEDs, and if we paired them with a high-performance green LED we would be able to produce every color visible to the human eye – including true white,” said Wetzel.

“Every computer monitor and television produces its picture by using red, blue, and green. That means developing a high-performance green LED would likely lead to a new generation of high-performance, energy-efficient display devices,” he added.

“The problem, however, is that green LEDs are much more difficult to create than I, or anyone else, imagined,” he explained.

Simple preliminary attempts to create green LEDs, by merely adding more indium (In) to the gallium nitride (GaN) materials that composed blue LEDs, were unsuccessful.

The resulting green LEDs just weren’t strong or bright enough to stand toe-to-toe with red or blue.

Wetzel and his research group have been working to tweak precisely how to add more indium, and how to grow the structure more carefully into a device, with the goal of boosting the strength and light output of green LEDs.

“They’re endeavoring, he said, to close the green gap,” said Wetzel.

Once they overcome the challenge of developing efficient green LEDs, Wetzel envisions LED technology will quickly evolve from its current applications in signs and small displays and grow into a universally adopted, globally used replacement for traditional light bulbs and compact fluorescence tubes. (ANI)

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Human-like ‘E-tongue’ created

September 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 2 (ANI): Scientists have created an “electronic tongue” that can digitally measure the taste of sweetness.

Under the leadership of Kenneth Suslick, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the revolutionary device, which makes use of a postage stamp-size piece of paper dotted with colored pigments, has been developed.

The study has appeared August 1 in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

“E-tongue” can identify with 100 percent accuracy the full sweep of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners, using easy-to-read color markers, reports National Geographic News.

Suslick’s team spent a decade developing colorimetric sensor arrays (PDF), where chemicals in each of the 16 to 36 micro dye spots reacted with sweet substances to produce color changes.

The colors tell not just which types of sweeteners are present, but also how much there is. (ANI)

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Sensory ‘sweet-tooth’ to make ‘E-tongue’ more human-like

August 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Aug 18 (ANI): Scientists in Illinois have given sweet-tooth a “sensory” makeover by developing a small, inexpensive, lab-on-a-chip sensor that quickly and accurately identifies sweetness – an advancement that provides a new approach to an effective “electronic tongue”.

The scientific breakthrough can identify with 100 percent accuracy the full sweep of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners, using easy-to-read color markers.

The sensory “sweet-tooth” shows special promise as a simple quality control test that food processors can use to ensure that soda pop, beer, and other beverages taste great, – with a consistent, predictable flavor.

The study has been described at the American Chemical Society’s 238th National Meeting.

The new sensor, which is about the size of a business card, can also identify sweeteners used in solid foods such as cakes, cookies, and chewing gum.

In the future, doctors and scientists could use modified versions of the sensor for a wide variety of other chemical-sensing applications ranging from monitoring blood glucose levels in people with diabetes to identifying toxic substances in the environment, the researchers say.

“We take things that smell or taste and convert their chemical properties into a visual image,” says study leader Kenneth Suslick, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“This is the first practical “electronic tongue” sensor that you can simply dip into a sample and identify the source of sweetness based on its color,” the researchers added.

The research team has spent a decade developing “colorimetric sensor arrays” that may fit the bill. The “lab-on-a-chip” consists of a tough, glass-like container with 16 to 36 tiny printed dye spots, each the diameter of a pencil lead. The chemicals in each spot react with sweet substances in a way that produces a color change. The colors vary with the type of sweetener present, and their intensity varies with the amount of sweetener.

The sensor identified 14 different natural and artificial sweeteners, including sucrose (table sugar), xylitol (used in sugarless chewing gum), sorbitol, aspartame, and saccharin with 100 percent accuracy in 80 different trials. (ANI)

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Laser technology creates new forms of metal and enhances aircraft performance

July 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 16 (ANI): A team of scientists is using laser light technology to create new forms of metal and enhance aircraft performance.

The laser light technology is being used by AFOSR (Air Force Office of Scientific Research) funded researchers at the University of Rochester to help the military create new forms of metal that may guide, attract and repel liquids and cool small electronic devices.

Dr. Chunlei Guo and his team of researchers for the project discovered a way to transform a shiny piece of metal into one that is pitch black, not by paint, but by using incredibly intense bursts of laser light.

The black metal created, absorbs all radiation that shines upon it.

“With the creation of the black metal, an entirely new class of material becomes available to us, which may open up a whole new horizon for various applications,” said Guo.

“To do this, we looked at the reverse process of light absorption or light radiation and transformed the incandescent lamp into a bulb that glows twice as brightly as a regular light source, while consuming the same amount of energy,” Guo added.

The key to creating this super-filament is an ultra-brief, ultra-intense beam of light called a femtosecond laser pulse.

The laser burst lasts only a few quadrillionths of a second.

That intense blast forces the surface of the metal to form nano-structures and micro-structures that dramatically alter how efficiently light can radiate from the filament.

In addition to increasing the brightness of a bulb, Guo’s process can be used to tune the color of the light as well.

In addition to this research, Guo and his team have been working on creating technology that may enable the Air Force to create an additional kind of metal.

They are able to do this by using the femtosecond laser once again to alter the surface of metal and create unique nano- and micro-scale structures on the metal.

The unique nano-structures which are created from the laser affect the way liquid molecules interact with metal molecules.

The liquid spreads out over the metal because the nano-structures attach themselves to the liquid’s molecules more readily than the liquid’s molecules bond to each other.

The end result is the formation of a new kind of metal that can cool the plane’s electronic brain and heat pumps and allow the craft to retain dominance over any enemy that is also in flight. (ANI)

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Omega Nebula’s ‘watercolors’ revealed in new image

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Munich, July 8 (ANI): A new image captured by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has reveled the Omega Nebula, a stellar nursery where infant stars illuminate and sculpt a vast pastel fantasy of dust and gas, in all its glory.

The Omega Nebula, sometimes called the Swan Nebula, is a dazzling stellar nursery located about 5500 light-years away towards the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer).

An active star-forming region of gas and dust about 15 light-years across, the nebula has recently spawned a cluster of massive, hot stars.

The intense light and strong winds from these hulking infants have carved remarkable filigree structures in the gas and dust.

When seen through a small telescope, the nebula has a shape that reminds some observers of the final letter of the Greek alphabet, omega, while others see a swan with its distinctive long, curved neck.

Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux discovered the nebula around 1745. The French comet hunter Charles Messier independently rediscovered it about twenty years later and included it as number 17 in his famous catalogue.

In a small telescope, the Omega Nebula appears as an enigmatic ghostly bar of light set against the star fields of the Milky Way.

In recent years, astronomers have discovered that the Omega Nebula is one of the youngest and most massive star-forming regions in the Milky Way.

Active star-birth started a few million years ago and continues through today.

The newly released image, obtained with the EMMI instrument attached to the ESO 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla, Chile, shows the central region of the Omega Nebula in exquisite detail.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has also imaged small parts of this nebula.

At the left of the image, a huge and strangely box-shaped cloud of dust covers the glowing gas.

The fascinating palette of subtle color shades across the image comes from the presence of different gases (mostly hydrogen, but also oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur) that are glowing under the fierce ultraviolet light radiated by the hot young stars. (ANI)

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Wooden ornaments of Jorhat

May 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Jorhat (Assam), May 28 (ANI): Fifty-year-old Jadab Mahanta in Assam’s Jorhat district is drawing attention from all over India for his skills in traditional arts, crafts and wooden ornaments.

Hailing from a small village in Assam, Mahanta carves fascinating wooden ornaments, masks and wooden craftwork at his home in Bor Alengi Village of Jorhat.

Mahanta creates facemasks for different characters of traditional dramas. By putting material like bamboo, wood, gray clay, cow dung and natural color paints to good use, he creates the wonderful masks.

Mahanta’s wooden ornaments are not just popular in India but abroad as well.

“My products are exported outside the country to Denmark, Thailand, USA. In India, it goes to Delhi, Kolkata and all over the country. I made different designs of lockets, pendants, chain, ring and bangles,” said Jadab Mahanta.

His skill and creativity in mask-making has earned him recognition by the Assam State Museum, Jorhat Museum and National Museum, New Delhi.

His work is quite popular in north eastern India and people from different districts of Assam come to him for placing their orders.

“I always help him (husband) in making mask and wooden ornaments. Though, it’s a time consuming work, lots of demands pour in from outside the state (specially wooden ornaments) and as well as from the state. For this (wooden ornaments) my husband is very popular in the region. Through this additional income, we look after the needs of our children’s studies,” said Reenu Mahanta, his wife.

“I was an unemployed youth. I realized that learning these arts would give benefits in future, so I requested him to train me. He readily agreed. Through him, my life has changed into a productive youth and now I am permanently engaged in painting and making of mask in our Satra (Vaishnavite Temple). I am regularly saving some amount from my income for my future,” says Porag Jyoti.

Mahanta says that he has used his expertise to preserve Sanchipat, a sheet made of bark from Agar tree. It was used in Assam for writing purposes, before the advent of paper.

With ‘Look East’ policy bringing the South East Asian market closer to north east; craftsmen like Mahanta will be able to find bigger markets for their products.

He is today a source of inspiration for the youth in the state who want to create a niche for themselves in the world. By Vaschipem Kamodang (ANI)

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Thousands gather to hear, cheer Iran’s Michelle Obama

May 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Tehran (Iran), May 25 (ANI): There are some in Iran who are hoping that Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of presidential hopeful Mir Hossein Mousavi, will become Iran’s Michelle Obama.

Though dancing in public is not allowed in Iran, but thousands could hardly contain themselves at a recent presidential campaign rally in Tehran.

According to a CNN report, the deafening cheers were not for Mousavi, but for his wife.

The comparisons with Obama stem from the role Rahnavard is playing in her husband’s quest for the presidency.

Never in the history of Iranian presidential elections has a candidate put his wife in the forefront of his campaign.

Wherever Mousavi-a centrist candidate-goes, Rahnavard is usually nearby.

“We look at her and we say, ‘we want to be like her in the future, ‘ ” said Shakiba Shakerhosseie, one of 12,000 people who packed into Tehran’s indoor Azadi (Freedom) sports stadium to hear Rahnavard speak.

Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979 after the ruling monarchy was overthrown and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was forced into exile.

The revolution also ended the ceremonial role of first lady that the last queen, Farah, enjoyed.

At this rally, Rahnavard-a writer and art professor-spoke for her husband, who was campaigning elsewhere.

Wearing a floral headscarf and a traditional black chador-a full-length loose robe that women in Iran wear like a cloak-Rahnavard called for freedoms she says were lost during President Mahmoud Ahmadijenad’s term.

“I hope freedom of speech, freedom of the pen and freedom of thought will not be forgotten,” she said.he crowd, which was clad in Mousavi’s trademark color green, cheered wildly. It waved placards with his picture and swayed from side to side, chanting and beating drums.

The women sat on one side; the men on the other.

The overwhelming majority were young voters, many of whom said they attended because of Mousavi’s wife, a mother of three.

Iran’s population-estimated at more than 66 million-has a median age of 27.

Mousavi, a former prime minister, is considered a threat to Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner, in the June 12 elections. He is credited for successfully navigating the Iranian economy during a bloody eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Over the weekend, the Iranian government blocked access to the social networking site Facebook, where Mousavi has a page with more than 5,000 supporters, the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) said.

Those attempting to visit Facebook received a message in Farsi saying, “Access to this site is not possible.” (ANI)

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‘Super-recognizers’ who never forget a face do exist

May 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 20 (ANI): Harvard University researchers have bolstered the claim that “super-recognizers”-people with extraordinary face recognition ability who never forget someone they met in the past-do exist.

Richard Russell, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, has found in a study that skill in facial recognition may vary widely among humans.

Studies conducted in the past have shown that about 2 per cent of the population suffers from “face-blindness”, or prosopagnosia, a condition characterized by great difficulty in recognizing faces.

This is the first time that a study has shown that others excel in face recognition, indicating that the trait could be on a spectrum, with prosopagnosics on the low end and super-recognizers at the high end.

The researchers involved standardized face recognition tests in their study, and found the super-recognizers to score far higher than any of the normal control subjects.

“There has been a default assumption that there is either normal face recognition, or there is disordered face recognition. This suggests that’s not the case, that there is actually a very wide range of ability. It suggests a different model-a different way of thinking about face recognition ability, and possibly even other aspects of perception, in terms of a spectrum of abilities, rather than there being normal and disordered ability,” says Russell.

The researchers say that the super-recognizers reported being able to recognize other people far more often than they are recognized.

Russell says that it is for this reason that they often compensate by pretending not to recognize someone they met in passing, so as to avoid appearing to attribute undue importance to a fleeting encounter.

“Super-recognizers have these extreme stories of recognizing people. They recognize a person who was shopping in the same store with them two months ago, for example, even if they didn’t speak to the person. It doesn’t have to be a significant interaction; they really stand out in terms of their ability to remember the people who were actually less significant,” says Russell.

Given that one woman in the study was able to prove that she had identified another woman on the street who served as a waitress five years earlier in a different city, the researchers came to the conclusion that super-recognizers are able to recognize another person despite significant changes in appearance, such as aging or a different hair color.

The researchers say that studying differences in people’s ability to recognize faces may be important for assessing eyewitness testimony, or for interviewing for some jobs, such as security or those checking identification.

A research paper on the study has been published in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. (ANI)

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New technique standardizes brightness of cosmology’s best standard candles

May 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 19 (ANI): Scientists have found a new technique that establishes the intrinsic brightness of Type Ia supernovae, which are considered the best standard candles for measuring cosmic distances, more accurately than ever before.
The technique has been found by members of the international Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory), a collaboration between the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a consortium of French laboratories, and Yale University.

SNfactory member Stephen Bailey, formerly at Berkeley Lab and now at the Laboratory of Nuclear and High-Energy Physics (LPNHE) in Paris, France, searched the spectra of 58 Type Ia supernovae in the SNfactory’s dataset and found a key spectroscopic ratio.

Simply by measuring the ratio of the flux (visible power, or brightness) between two specific regions in the spectrum of a Type Ia supernova taken on a single night, that supernova’s distance can be determined to better than 6 percent uncertainty.

The new brightness-ratio correction appears to hold no matter what the supernova’s age or metallicity (mix of elements), its type of host galaxy, or how much it has been dimmed by intervening dust.

Using classic methods, which are based on a supernova’s color and the shape of its light curve – the time it takes to reach maximum brightness and then fade away – the distance to Type Ia supernovae can be measured with a typical uncertainty of 8 to 10 percent.

But, obtaining a light curve takes up to two months of high-precision observations.

The new method provides better correction with a single night’s full spectrum, which can be scheduled based on a much less precise light curve.

According to Bailey, the Snfactory’s library of high-quality spectra is what made his successful results possible.

“Every supernova image the SNfactory takes is a full spectrum,” he said. “Our dataset is by far the world’s largest collection of excellent Type Ia time series, totaling some 2,500 spectra,” he added.

According to Saul Permutter, a cofounder of the SNfactory and leader of the Supernova Cosmology Project, “Our longstanding goal has been to make use of all the information a supernova gives us about its physical condition as it brightens and fades away, and we get to see deeper and deeper into its atmosphere.”

“Finally, we’ve built a dataset with the size and quality to allow us to do this. These spectra open the possibility of many kinds of new measurements from the ground and in space,” he said. (ANI)

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Soon, pocket-sized ‘okay to kiss’ kit to alert you to foul odour in breath

May 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 19 (ANI): Kissing a partner may turn out to be disastrous if one’s breath is not sweet. But these concerns may soon be history, thanks to pocket-sized breath test that helps know whether malodorous bacteria are brewing in the mouth.

Tel Aviv researchers, who have come up with this ultimate solution, have revealed that a blue result suggests that a person needs a toothbrush.

However, add the researchers, one would be “okay to kiss” if it is clear.

The researchers thus far believed that only one population of bacteria (the Gram-negative ones) break down the proteins in the mouth and produce foul odor.

However, lead researchers Prof. Mel Rosenberg and Dr. Nir Sterer have found that the other population of bacteria (the Gram-positive ones) are bad breath’s bacterial partner.

They say that such bacteria seem to help the Gram-negative ones by producing enzymes that chop sugary bits off the proteins that make them more easily degraded.

According to them, the presence of this enzymatic activity in saliva serves as the basis for the new “OkayToKiss” test.

The patent-pending okay-to-kiss device, containing a color indicator and saliva collector, is the result of ongoing research in Prof. Rosenberg’s laboratory.

“All a user has to do is dab a little bit of saliva onto a small window of the OkayToKiss kit. OkayToKiss will turn blue if a person has enzymes in the mouth produced by the Gram-positive bacteria. The presence of these enzymes means that the mouth is busily producing bacteria that foster nasty breath,” says Prof. Rosenberg.

He says that besides its social uses, the test can be used as an indicator of a person’s oral hygiene, encouraging better health habits, such as flossing, brushing the teeth, or scheduling that long-delayed visit to the dentist.

He reckons that the kit may be ready in about a year for commercial distribution, probably in the size of a pack of chewing gum, to fit in a pocket or purse.

It is disposable and could be distributed alongside breath-controlling products, says the researcher.

A research article describing the kit has been published in the Journal of Breath Research. (ANI)

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Designers unveil summer 2009 collection in Bangalore

May 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Bangalore, May 15 (ANI): Various fashion designers showcased their summer 2009 collections in Bangalore, which included both Indian and western clothes.

The participants were- Ramesh Dembla, designer duo Anu Nagappa and Susan Fernandes from Astara and Michelle Salins.

Dembla’s collection was displayed in two sequences. First called ‘angel’s fantasy’ with dresses and gowns in white, and the second called ‘ethnic saris’ featuring saris in various colors and embellishments.

“Tonight I showed a collection of mine called ‘Angel’s Fantasy’ that was all gowns in white with very minimalist embellishments but very beautiful cuts and (they are) very nice clothes to wear. he second sequence is called ‘ethnic saris’, which we did for he finale,” he said

The showstopper for Dembla’s show was Bollywood actress Aarti Chabaria, who sashayed down the ramp in a pristine white sari.

“Actually I did get a glimpse (of the show). I think the colors were beautiful, very vibrant and very well put together and very-very classic,” she said.

Nagappa and Fernandes presented a vintage collection in white, with silhouettes from the 60s, but with a very contemporary edge. Lace detailing on pure cotton, khaki, silk, chiffons and georgettes in whites had also been used.

Meanwhile, Salins collection was titled ‘The Butterfly’. As the name suggests, the designs were playful, energetic, cheerful, vibrant, bright and sensuous.

The collection featured hot pants, bubble dresses and skirts in pure silk, satin and brocades teamed with interesting accessories.

To suit the Indian summers, designers smartly put a wide variety of color and fabrics into use. (ANI)

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Predators tend to ignore peculiar prey

May 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 13 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have determined that predators looking out for prey that looks like the majority, are bound to ignore those animals which are unique and pecuilar.

The research, done by Benjamin Fitzpatrick, from the University of Tennessee, US, along with Kim Shook and Reuben Izally, took salamanders into account.

They studied the effects of the prevalence of a dorsal stripe among a group of model salamanders on the foraging behavior of a flock of Blue Jays.

According to Fitzpatrick, “Maintenance of variation is a classic paradox in evolution because both selection and drift tend to remove variation from populations. If one form has an advantage, such as being harder to spot, it should replace all others.”

“Likewise, random drift alone will eventually result in loss of all but one form when there are no fitness differences. There must therefore be some advantage that allows unusual traits to persist,” he said.

The researchers placed a selection of food-bearing model salamanders into a field for six days, with striped models outnumbering the unstriped by nine to one, or vice versa.

On test days, the numbers were evened out.

In each case, Blue Jays were more likely to attack the models that had been most prevalent over the previous six-day period.

“We believe that the different color forms represent different ways of blending in on the forest floor. Looking for something cryptic takes both concentration and practice. Predators concentrating on finding striped salamanders might not notice unstriped ones,” said Fitzpatrick.

“Thus, the maintenance of color variation in terrestrial salamanders might be explained by the oldest and most obvious hypothesis – rare form advantage arises because predators tend to overlook rare prey,” he added. (ANI)

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Prenatal cocaine exposure affects cognitive development in middle childhood

May 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 2 (ANI): Cocaine exposure before birth could compromise neurocognitive development among kids during middle childhood, according to researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM).

The researchers revealed that heavier intrauterine cocaine exposure (IUCE) is linked with mild compromise on selective areas of neurocognitive development during middle childhood.
For the study, researchers examined if the level of IUCE or the interaction between IUCE and contextual variables was related during middle childhood to executive functioning as was measured by two neuropsychological assessments.

The Stroop Color-Word Test measures verbal inhibitory control while the Rey Osterrieth Organizational score evaluates skills such as planning, organization and perception.

The scientists classified subjects as unexposed, lighter, or heavier IUCE by positive maternal reports and/or biological assay.

Then, researchers who did not know the children’s history or group status examined 143 children at 9 and 11 years of age (74 with IUCE and 69 demographically similar children without IUCE).

When controlled for contextual variables including intrauterine exposures to other licit and illicit substances, level of IUCE was not found to be significantly associated with either assessment scores.

However, the heavier cocaine-exposed group of children had significantly lower Stroop scores compared to the combined lighter/unexposed group.

“These research findings were present even in the absence of major cognitive differences in the same cohort as previously measured by standardized instruments in late infancy and early childhood,” said lead author Ruth Rose-Jacobs, Sc.D., assistant professor and research scientist at BUSM.

He added: “The emergence of these subtle IUCE effects suggests the possibility of neurocognitive “sleeper effects” of IUCE, which may become more apparent with the greater functional and cognitive demands of late middle childhood and preadolescence.”

Besides, researchers stated that further longitudinal assessment would help to clarify whether the IUCE group differences observed in this study are due to immaturity, delays in development, or potentially persistent deficits.

The study appears in the latest issue of Neurotoxicology and Teratology. (ANI)

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Starbursts in dwarf galaxies last 100 times longer than astronomers thought

May 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 1 (ANI): An analysis of archival images of small, or dwarf, galaxies taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggests that starbursts, intense regions of star formation, sweep across the whole galaxy and last 100 times longer than astronomers thought.

The longer duration may affect how dwarf galaxies change over time, and therefore may shed light on galaxy evolution.

“Our analysis shows that starburst activity in a dwarf galaxy happens on a global scale,” explained Kristen McQuinn of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and leader of the study.

“There are pockets of intense star formation that propagate throughout the galaxy, like a string of firecrackers going off,” she added.

According to McQuinn, the duration of all the starburst events in a single dwarf galaxy would total 200 million to 400 million years.

These longer timescales are vastly more than the 5 million to 10 million years proposed by astronomers who have studied star formation in dwarf galaxies.

“They were only looking at individual clusters and not the whole galaxy, so they assumed starbursts in galaxies lasted for a short time,” McQuinn said.

Dwarf galaxies are considered by many astronomers to be the building blocks of the large galaxies seen today, so the length of starbursts is important for understanding how galaxies evolve.

“Astronomers are really interested to find out the steps of galaxy evolution,” McQuinn said.

“Exploring these smaller galaxies is important because, according to popular theory, large galaxies are created from the merger of smaller, dwarf galaxies. So understanding these smaller pieces is an important part of filling in that scenario,” she added.

McQuinn’s team analyzed archival Advanced Camera for Surveys data of three dwarf galaxies: NGC 4163, NGC 4068, and IC 4662.

Their distances range from 8 million to 14 million light-years away. The trio is part of a survey of starbursts in 18 nearby dwarf galaxies.

Hubble’s superb resolution allowed McQuinn’s team to pick out individual stars in the galaxies and measure their brightness and color.

Two of the galaxies, NGC 4068 and IC 4662, show active, brilliant starburst regions in the Hubble images.

The most recent starburst in the third galaxy, NGC 4163, occurred 200 million years ago and has faded from view.

The team looked at regions of high and low densities of stars, piecing together a picture of the starbursts.

The galaxies were making a few stars, when something, perhaps an encounter with another galaxy, pushed them into high star-making mode.

According to McQuinn, instead of forming eight stars every thousand years, the galaxies started making 40 stars every thousand years, which is a lot for a small galaxy. (ANI)

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Asteroids age quickly because of a ‘sun tan’

April 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Munich, April 23 (ANI): A new study has revealed that asteroid surfaces age and redden much faster than previously thought – in less than a million years, all thanks to solar winds.

“Asteroids seem to get a ‘sun tan’ very quickly,” said lead author Pierre Vernazza. “But not, as for people, from an overdose of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, but from the effects of its powerful wind,” he added.

It has long been known that asteroid surfaces alter in appearance with time.

The observed asteroids are much redder than the interior of meteorites found on Earth, but the actual processes of this “space weathering” and the timescales involved were controversial.

Thanks to observations of different families of asteroids using ESO’s New Technology Telescope at La Silla and the Very Large Telescope at Paranal, as well as telescopes in Spain and Hawaii, Vernazza’s team have now solved the puzzle.

When two asteroids collide, they create a family of fragments with “fresh” surfaces.

The astronomers found that these newly exposed surfaces are quickly altered and change color in less than a million years – a very short time compared to the age of the Solar System.

“The charged, fast moving particles in the solar wind damage the asteroid’s surface at an amazing rate,” said Vernazza.

Unlike human skin, which is damaged and aged by repeated overexposure to sunlight, it is, perhaps rather surprisingly, the first moments of exposure (on the timescale considered) – the first million years – that causes most of the aging in asteroids.

By studying different families of asteroids, the team has also shown that an asteroid’s surface composition is an important factor in how red its surface can become.

After the first million years, the surface “tans” much more slowly. At that stage, the color depends more on composition than on age.

Moreover, the observations reveal that collisions cannot be the main mechanism behind the high proportion of “fresh” surfaces seen among near-Earth asteroids.

Instead, these “fresh-looking” surfaces may be the results of planetary encounters, where the tug of a planet has “shaken” the asteroid, exposing unaltered material.

Thanks to these results, astronomers will now be able to understand better how the surface of an asteroid, which often is the only thing we can observe, reflects its history. (ANI)

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