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Turkey benchmark bond yield rises after inflation

April 6, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

ISTANBUL, April 5 (Reuters) – The yield on Turkey’s Nov. 16, 2011 benchmark bond rose as high as 8.97 percent from 8.84 percent after March inflation data showed an increase in core inflation indicators and higher than expected producer price rises.

Turkey’s consumer prices rose 0.58 percent month-on-month in March, compared with a forecast rise of 0.60 percent, and the producer price index rose a higher than expected 1.94 percent.

A core inflation index rose to 5.41 percent in March from 4.05 percent in the same period last year, data showed.

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: core, forecast, inflation, period, producer

Scientists map melting history of Greenland’s ice sheet

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 17 (ANI): Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have mapped the history of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

Numerous drillings have been made through both Greenland’s ice sheet and small ice caps near the coast.

By analyzing every single annual layer in the kilometres long ice cores, researchers can get detailed information about the climate of the past.

But now, the Danish researcher Bo Vinther and colleagues from the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with researchers from Canada, France and Russia, have found an entirely new way of interpreting the information from the ice core drillings.

“Ice cores from different drillings show different climate histories. This could be because they were drilled at very different places on and near Greenland, but it could also be due to changes in the elevation of the ice sheet, because the elevation itself causes different temperatures,” explained Bo Vinther about the theory.

Today, the ice sheet is more than three kilometres thick at its highest point and thinning out towards the coast.

Four of the drillings analyzed are from the central ice sheet, while two of the drillings are from small ice caps outside of the ice sheet itself.

By comparing the Oxygen-18 content in all of the annual layers from the four drillings through the ice sheet with the Oxygen-18 content of the same annual layers in the small ice caps, Bo Vinther has calculated the elevation course through 11,700 years.

Just after the ice age the elevation of the ice sheet rose slightly because when the climate transitions from ice age to warm age, there is a rapid increase in precipitation.

But at the same time, the areas lying near the coast begin to decrease in size, because the ice is melting at the edge.

When the ice melts at the edge, it slowly causes the entire ice sheet to ‘collapse’ and become lower.

The calculations show that in the course of about 3,000 years, the elevation changed and became up to 600 meters lower in the coastal areas.

But in the middle, it was a slow process, where the elevation decreased around 150 meters in the course of around 6,000 years.

It then stabilized.

The new results show the evolution of elevation of the ice sheet throughout 11,700 years and they show that the ice sheet is very sensitive to the temperature.

The results can be used to make new calculations for models predicting future consequences of climate changes. (ANI)

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SunTec wins two strategic customers in Middle East

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Trivandrum/United Arab Emirates, Sept 16 (ANI/Business Wire India): SunTec, the leading provider of Relationship-based Pricing and Centralized Billing solutions, has announced two strategic wins in the Middle East region, one of which has helped the company to gain a foothold in Port Operations Billing – its fifth operating domain.

One of the largest banks in UAE has invested in SunTec’s Relationship-based and Centralized Billing solution, while a leading Port Operator of the region has signed up to SunTec to automate and centralize the pricing and billing operations for their vessels as well as cargo operations, helping them to offer a convergent bill to customers and effectively manage multiple contracts.

The solution will be implemented in multiple phases at the leading bank, and by the end of phase-I in December 2009 their ‘Customer Benefits Program’ will go live for retail banking.

The bank will thus be among the first few in UAE offering comprehensive customer benefits programs. SunTec’s solution being the pivot, the bank will be able to scale up their benefits programs to customer with ease.

Furthermore, in future, the bank will leverage SunTec’s solution for streamlining and automating their pricing and billing functions across enterprise.

The solution offers pertinent pricing innovations for the leading port operator also.

The complex multi-national operations of modern-day ports call for streamlined Relationship-based Pricing. New models like cost-based billing have become more relevant, as containerised trade is gaining prominence across the globe.

The situation demands differential pricing to be offered to customers based on the value they bring in.

“With these wins, SunTec has not only gained considerable footprint in the Middle East region, but also established its multi-industry compatibility,” said Nanda Kumar, CEO of SunTec.

“We conceptualized and created our core pricing and billing platform, horizontal in nature and flexible enough to address the pricing and billing requirements of any transaction-based vertical, all the while, helping our customers to imbibe best practices from multiple industries,” added Kumar. (ANI)

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Barrage of small meteorite impacts cause the moon to “hum”

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 9 (ANI): A new research has suggested that a steady barrage of small meteorite impacts cause the moon to “hum”.

But, no seismometers sent to the moon to date have been sensitive enough to hear the “hum”.

According to a report in New Scientist, Philippe Lognonne at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and colleagues decided to work out how loud the ring is.

The team estimated the meteorite population in the solar neighbourhood, and calculated the likely seismic signals that would be created by a range of meteorite sizes and velocities as they strike the moon.

To determine how the vibrations from these impacts would be seen by seismometers, the team used data taken by Apollo seismometers four decades ago.

These measured the vibrations created by the landings of lunar modules and spent rocket stages.

Since the precise locations and timing of these landings were known, they could be used to gauge how long it would take vibrations caused by meteorite impacts to travel through the moon, and how much the signals might dim.

Their calculations revealed space rocks with masses ranging from a gram to a kilogram do indeed create a hum, but it is subtle.

Earth’s hum, created by pounding waves, is more than 1000 times louder.

“This shows that all planets may hum, those with and those without atmosphere,” said Lognonne.

“The moon-hum’s quietness means future lunar seismometers should be able to peek deep within the moon without the hum creating problematic background noise, he added.

Instead, seismometers can focus on measuring waves created by moonquakes, tremors created by a variety of sources, including the tidal tug of the Earth.

Because seismic waves are sensitive to the type, arrangement and density of rocks they pass through, studying the quakes can reveal more about the moon’s interior.

The network of seismometers left by the Apollo missions has been shut down since 1977, so Lognonne hopes more sensitive instruments will be sent to the moon soon.

These could reach deeper than the Apollo network to measure the size of the moon’s core.

“I think the study is a great idea,” said Clive Neal of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who was not associated with the research.

“Estimating the actual background noise is critical for designing the next generation of seismometers to go to the moon,” he added. (ANI)

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Nuke Sub, Aircraft Carrier in Kalam’s vision 2020 for Andamans

September 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Port Blair (Andaman and Nicobar Islands), Sep 4 (ANI): Former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on Friday unveiled a vision document for the strategic development of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by the year 2020.

Inaugurating a national seminar on ‘Security and Development of the Andaman and Nicobar islands’ here, Dr Kalam said that a 250 mw nuclear power station on one of the islands would form the core of the development programme.

Dr Kalam said the islands being a vital part of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) of the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) would have “enhanced significance” in the next decade.

He further said that the ANC should have bases for static aircraft carrier and a nuclear,

Dr Kalam also called upon the Armed Forces to evolve an effective security plan for underneath the sea, at sea level and in air.

“The security plan which you evolve should ensure that there is no unauthorised occupation of the vacant islands,”said Dr Kalam.

Meanwhile, Commander-in-Chief of the ANC, Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar, said that the location of these islands confers a geostrategic advantage.

“Its economic and forest potential dictates a sound security presence,” he added.

Top defence and security experts, including Deputy National Security Advisor Shekhar Dutt, former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India R Chidambaram, are attending the two-day seminar. (ANI)

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Engineers design buildings that can stand plumb after violent quakes

September 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 3 (ANI): A team of engineers from the Stanford University has designed a new earthquake-resistant structural system for buildings, which will not only help a multi-story building hold itself together during a violent quake, but also return it to standing up straight on its foundation afterward, true and plumb, with damage confined to a few easily replaceable parts.

Professor Greg Deierlein, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, used the world’s largest shake table to test a new structural design that lets buildings rock during earthquakes, then pull themselves into plumb when the shaking stops, confining damage to replaceable steel “fuses.”

During testing on a massive shake table, the system survived simulated earthquakes in excess of magnitude 7, bigger than either the 1994 Northridge earthquake or the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California.

“This new structural system has the potential to make buildings far more damage resistant and easier to repair, so people could reoccupy buildings a lot faster after a major earthquake than they can now,” said Greg Deierlein, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, who led the team that designed the new system.

The system dissipates energy through the movement of steel frames that are situated around the building’s core or along exterior walls.

The frames can be part of a building’s initial design or could be incorporated into an existing building undergoing seismic retrofitting.

They are economically feasible to build, as all the materials employed are commonly used in construction today and all the parts can be made using existing fabrication methods.

“What is unique about these frames is that, unlike conventional systems, they actually rock off their foundation under large earthquakes,” Deierlein said.

The rocking frames are steel braced-frames, the columns of which are free to rock up and down within steel “shoes” secured at their base.

To control the rocking and return the frame to vertical when the shaking stops, steel tendons run down the center of the frame from top to bottom.

These tendons are made of high-strength steel cable strands twisted together and designed to remain elastic during shaking.

When shaking is over, they rebound to their normal length, pulling the building back into proper alignment.

At the bottom of the frame sit steel “fuses” designed keep the rest of the building from sustaining damage.

“The idea of this structural system is that we concentrate the damage in replaceable fuses,” Deierlein said.

The fuses are built to flex and dissipate the shaking energy induced by the earthquake, thereby confining the damage. (ANI)

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Robots may soon be serving the elderly at home just like humans do

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 29 (ANI): Elderly people with limited mobility may soon come to be served by robots in a manner as if they are being served by other persons, thanks to a collaborative study by three University of Illinois at Chicago engineers and a Rush University nursing specialist.

“We want to help elderly people communicate with robots, to tell them what they need, and to perform physical activities,” said Milos Zefran, UIC associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The three-year study, supported by a grant of 989,000 dollars from the National Science Foundation, is aimed at developing software to allow the elderly to communicate with robots that can respond to a wide range of verbal language, non-verbal gestures, and touch.

“If we can help the elderly remain independent and continue living in their own homes, that will improve their health outlook while relieving the burden on family members and health care providers,” said Zefran, the lead researcher.

The researchers say that their communication interface software will have at its core a novel adaptive and reliable recognition methodology called Recognition by Indexing and Sequencing (RISq), which will allow the robot to comprehend speech altered by impairments and to learn and adapt to such speech.

To enable a robot to understand and correctly respond to various forms of human touch, the researchers will combine techniques from natural language processing and haptics, a scientific term to describe the computerized sense of touch.

They say that the robot will also know how to respond to the user safely when performing everyday chores, such as cooking or making a bed.

“We’ll start by observing interaction between human helpers and the elderly. We’ll identify what kind of language, physical interactions and non-verbal interactions are used. Then we’ll develop a mathematical framework to model this interaction so it can be treated by the robot as a single way of communicating,” Zefran said.

The researchers say that they will program and test a robot, in order to devise refinements, as the project progresses.

“The human-robot interface is really a long-standing, open problem that won’t be solved in three years. But we’ll have a working prototype by then, and we’ll know what additional research needs to be done,” Zefran said.

He believes that this research project may also find widespread use in delivery of institutionally based health care, where routine tasks now done by nurses could be handled by robots.

“If robots can alleviate some of the burden nurses face, they then could spend more time where they’re really needed — providing the human contact that a robot can’t replace,” he said.

Zefran has revealed that his work will include developing seminars or a new graduate or upper-level undergraduate course that considers the various factors that allow robots to perform more sophisticated tasks. (ANI)

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Image of different regions of Trifid Nebula captured by European Southern Observatory

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Munich, August 27 (ANI): A new image by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has captured the different regions of the Trifid Nebula, which is a rare combination of three nebula types, as seen in visible light.

This massive star factory is so named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, revealing the fury of freshly formed stars and presaging more star birth.

Smoldering several thousand light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), the Trifid Nebula presents a compelling portrait of the early stages of a star’s life, from gestation to first light.

The heat and “winds” of newly ignited, volatile stars stir the Trifid’s gas and dust-filled cauldron.

In time, the dark tendrils of matter strewn throughout the area will themselves collapse and form new stars.

The French astronomer Charles Messier first observed the Trifid Nebula in June 1764, recording the hazy, glowing object as entry number 20 in his renowned catalogue.

Observations made about 60 years later by John Herschel of the dust lanes that appear to divide the cosmic cloud into three lobes inspired the English astronomer to coin the name “Trifid”.

Made with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile, the new image prominently displays the different regions of the Trifid Nebula as seen in visible light.

In the bluish patch to the upper left of the image, called a reflection nebula, gas scatters the light from nearby, Trifid-born stars.

The largest of these stars shines most brightly in the hot, blue portion of the visible spectrum.

This, along with the fact that dust grains and molecules scatter blue light more efficiently than red light, imbues this portion of the Trifid Nebula with an azure hue.

Below, in the round, pink-reddish area typical of an emission nebula, the gas at the Trifid’s core is heated by hundreds of scorching young stars until it emits the red signature light of hydrogen, the major component of the gas, just as hot neon gas glows red-orange in illuminated signs all over the world.

The gases and dust that crisscross the Trifid Nebula make up the third kind of nebula in this cosmic cloud, known as dark nebulae, courtesy of their light-obscuring effects.

Within these dark lanes, the remnants of previous star birth episodes continue to coalesce under gravity’s inexorable attraction.

The rising density, pressure and temperature inside these gaseous blobs will eventually trigger nuclear fusion, and yet more stars will form. (ANI)

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Nighttime alertness probed

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Aug 27 (ANI): A new study, conducted by researchers in the U.S., has shown that the circadian system is not the only pathway involved in determining alertness at night – red light, which does not stimulate the circadian system, is just as effective at increasing nighttime alertness as blue light, which does.

Mariana Figueiro from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, and colleagues examined the effects of the different lighting conditions.

“It is now well accepted that the circadian system is maximally sensitive to short-wavelength (blue) light and is quite insensitive to long-wavelength (red) light. We’ve shown that a moderate level of red light impacts alertness, an effect that must occur via a pathway other than the circadian system,” she said.

Circadian rhythms are roughly 24-hour cycles in various biological processes, such as core body temperature, melatonin synthesis and sleep-wake behavior, that repeat approximately every 24 hours and are synchronized most strongly by the light-dark cycle in the environment.

Bright light is known to increase alertness at night, but it has never been completely clear whether this light-induced alertness can arise from neural pathways other than those involved in the circadian system.

“There is previous compelling evidence that light-induced stimulation of the circadian system increases alertness at night, but our results suggest that this effect is mediated not only by the circadian system, but also through other mechanisms,” Figueiro added.

The research has been described in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience. (ANI)

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Top Canadian universities to tour India

August 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug.24 (ANI): Thirteen of Canada’s elite universities will be in India from August 23 to September 4 to hold information sessions on Canada as a destination for higher education.

The delegation is led by Ginette Sanfaçon of HEC Montréal (Business school affiliated with the Université de Montréal) and Michelle Beaton of Ryerson University in Toronto.

The tour is organized by the Canadian Higher Education Committee under the aegis of the Council of International Schools (CIS).

The Council’s fifth annual tour to India will begin in Mumbai and continue in Pune, Delhi and Bangalore.

According to a Canadian High Commission press release, the tour is of special interest to Standard XI and Standard XII students who exhibit strong academic standing, their school guidance counselors as well as to their parents. The schedule includes school visits, information fairs, and an indepth Canadian university admission workshop for guidance counselors.

“India is a key undergraduate student market for Canadian universities,” said Ginette Sanfaçon of HEC-Montréal and Tour Director. “Indian students are sought for their academic strength and their rich contribution to student life on Canadian university campuses. In turn, increasing numbers of Indian students are making Canada their first choice for study – as evidenced on this tour.

Indian students are drawn to our universities’ common attributes of international reputation for academic excellence, state of the art resources, and safe campuses in welcoming locations,” Sanfaçon said.

Each year, tour organizers strengthen existing relationships with secondary schools in cities they visit and also expand outreach to new regions. For example, guidance counselors from schools in Dehra Dun, Hyderabad, Chennai and Chandigarh as well as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are receiving invitations to attend the Tour’s counselor workshop in Delhi.

List of participating universities:

The University of British Columbia; Carleton University; Dalhousie University; HEC MONTRÉAL (Business School affiliated with Université de Montréal); Memorial University of Newfoundland; University of Manitoba; University of New Brunswick; Ryerson University; University of Saskatchewan; University of Toronto; Vancouver Island University; University of Waterloo; York University.

Canadian universities are engaged internationally as leaders in education through teaching, research and partnerships. Undergraduate education in Canada is a hybrid of US and UK styles offering breadth of program options, flexibility in choice and a degree that is ultimately recognized world-wide.

Indian students choose Canada because a strong education and a positive international experience is the foundation for their exciting and successful futures. The quality, affordability and renowned research opportunities are key factors in this decision. University campuses across Canada offer multicultural environments, beautiful spaces and friendly people. As a leader in business, political diplomacy, arts and culture and technology – Canada’s education system is at the core of its success and its graduates are players on the world stage. (ANI)

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RSS irked by Jaswant’s mention of India being a country of many nationalities

August 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug.21 (ANI): It is learnt that the Sangh leadership has revisited Jaswant Singh’s controversial book — Jinnah – India, Partition, Independenc-and has raised severe objections to many of its contents other than the eulogizing of Jinnah and the denigration of India’s first Home Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel.

“The RSS is badly irked by mention of India being a country of many nationalities,” sources said.

The RSS believes that such talk is in itself contradictory to the BJP’s famous slogan of “One Country, One Constitution”, which the party has often used in the context of removing the special status allocated to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The RSS also believes that Jaswant’s argument of India being a country of many nationalities is similar to the ideology of the Left parties.

The RSS has also trashed Singh’s contention that Sardar Patel banned the Sangh, and therefore, he had done no harm to the core ideology of the BJP by writing against the iron man.

RSS sources told ANI that the RSS has deep respect for Patel despite the fact that he banned the outfit.

They further elaborated that Patel had banned the RSS on the orders of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru after Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by Nathu Ram Godse.

Prior to implementing the order, Patel had written a letter to Nehru appreciating the social service rendered by the RSS when the partition of the subcontinet was at its peak. Patel also wrote to Veer Savarkar about the good work done by the Swayamsevaks.

In fact, Patel gave a clean chit to RSS within a month of Gandhi’s assassination, and is said to have told Nehru that the RSS was not involved in the killing.

The RSS was banned on February 4, 1948 four days after the killing of Mahatma Gandhi. The ban was only lifted in July 1949. The right wing outfit was later banned during the emergency (1975) and after the demolition of the Babri Mosque (December 1992).

Earlier in the day, Advani also toed the RSS line in saying that Patel had banned the RSS under pressure from Nehru.

Advani also said that Patel’s task of unifying more 700 odd princely states was a “super human effort and a spectacular achievement.” By Naveen Kapoor (ANI)

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Rajnath stays mum on Jaswant, says Advani will continue to lead BJP

August 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Shimla, Aug 21 (ANI ) : Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) President Rajnath Singh, on Friday refused to take any questions from the media on the issue of expulsion of former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh from the party and said L.K Advani will continue to lead the party “forever.”

” Advaniji will lead the party for longer time.”

Addressing the media at the end of the three-day Chintan Baithak here, Singh said “Don’t bring up the old issues again, and I told whatever I can on day one.”

Singh said the members attending the Chintan Baithak had decided to be tough on the ideological and individual discipline of party leaders and workers.

He urged party leaders and workers to adopt a model life style in their public as well as personal life.

Singh also said the BJP has decided to stick to its core ideology of cultural nationalism as said in the ideological draft of “Integral Humanism.”

Integral Humanism is a draft of five speeches made by Jan Sangh President Din Dayal Upadhyaya. The BJP adopted Integral Humanism as its philosophy in place of Gandhian Socialism at Party’s National Executive of 1984 held at Kolkata.

The analysis of party’s performance on all the fronts made at the Chintan Baithak would be discussed at a general secretaries meeting soon.

He also said that the party would constitute a committee to draft the “road ahead” map for the party, which would be placed before party’s National Executive in September – October.

” I will call a meeting of senior leaders and all general secretaries to discuss the analysation made here, and a committee will be formed to prepare a road map draft for the party, which will be placed before the national executive,” Singh said.

Singh also rebuffed allegations of any leakage of the draft of the party’s performance.

“Both Bal Apte and Ram Lal were assigned to analyse the party performance based on the reports given by various state units, and accordingly they put their views before the meeting. And they brought all the points in their diary and no draft was prepared, “Singh explained.

Considering RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat’s suggestion to give preference to youngsters, Singh said : ” The meeting considered the sarsnghchalkji’s statement and decided to give preference for youngsters from Mandal level to the Central level.”

Rajnath read out the points of the resolutions adopted by the meet, which states, (1) The BJP will be committed to the ideology of cultural nationalism and Integral Humanism, (2)Stress on expansion of party’s geological and social base, (3) Preference to women, youths, farmers in party leadership (4) Strengthening NDA, (5) No compromise on discipline (6) Role model administration by the party’s governments at the state level, (7)Constructive and aggressive opposition at the centre and (8) Leading model life by leaders and workers of the party.

Singh said no one is responsible for party’s debacle, ” No one is responsible for election debacle. If at all any one is responsible, its Rajnath Singh, I owe my responsibility being party chief.” (ANI)

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Most scientifically accurate and advanced planetarium show on display in US

August 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 21 (ANI): High-performance computing systems, visualization resources, and software tools provided by the National Science Foundation TeraGrid helped make the Hayden Planetarium’s new space show the most scientifically accurate and advanced planetarium show ever produced.

The Hayden Planetarium is a public planetarium located on Central Park West, New York City, next to and organizationally part of the American Museum of Natural History.

“Journey to the Stars,” which debuted this summer at the American Museum of Natural History, is being hailed as the most beautiful planetarium show to date.

Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, the 25-minute presentation takes viewers on a journey through the universe.

The space show projects cutting-edge visualizations of the universe onto the 87-foot, seven-million-pixel dome of the museum’s Hayden Sphere at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City.

Piecing together a new narrative of life’s origins, the space show explains how dark matter’s gravity gathered the primordial gas in the universe to form the first stars, and how these massive stars exploded, seeding the galaxy with new stars and the chemical elements that made life possible.

The centerpiece of the show, and the most difficult sequence to depict scientifically, is a flight into the center of the Sun.

The visuals of the Sun were produced using supercomputing resources provided by the NSF TeraGrid, a national cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.

According to Ro Kinzler, the show’s producer, “We wanted to treat the Sun in a terrific and powerful way to [not just] reveal the surface, but to take our audience into the Sun, through the convective layer and into the core.”

“The results are beautiful. No one has seen the Sun in this way, and the software from NCAR and computational resources from TACC made it possible,” he said.

The visual sequences are based on the research of Juri Toomre, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and run on TACC’s Ranger supercomputer.

“It’s not enough to know what comes out of the surface,” Toomre said.

“We would like to understand how the magnetic engine of a star works, how it churns away and how it builds orderly fields. This is one of the top 10 questions in physics,” Toomre added.

“A very dramatic moment in the show is when we actually peel away the surface of the Sun, revealing the dynamic convective motion below,” Kinzler said. “We take the audience through the convective region and into the Sun’s core,” he added. (ANI)

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Jaswant Singh rules out walking away from politics

August 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug 20 (ANI): Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh on Thursday ruled out walking away from active politics, saying he will continue to remain in public life.

He also said that he would continue with his literary and creative pursuits while being in politics.

Interacting with media persons after his arrival from Shimla, Singh said he will make the letter written to key members of the party on the reasons of party’s debacle in the 2009 elections public on Saturday (August 22).

In a meeting held immediately after the debacle of the party in the elections to the Lok Sabha in May, Singh is said to have written a note titled Inaam (Award) and Parinaam (Result).

Singh said he has never associated himself with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), nor violated any ideological stand of the party.

“I have not violated the ideology of the party, I don’t know which core ideology of the party they are speaking about. I don’t want to explain any conduct,” he said.

Singh also criticised the BJP’s comparison of vote and vichar (thinking).

Commenting on the banning of the his controversial book “Jinnah, India- Independence, Partition” by the Gujarat State Government, Singh asked “Where I made derogatory remarks about Sardar Patel in that book? Whether they read the book before banning ?.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson of the Gujarat Government announced that the state is banning the publication of the book because of derogatory remarks made about India’s first Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

“Banning the book means shutting the door for thought” Singh said.

“If any individual or organisation stops reading, writing, debating, thinking, and reflecting then it is heading towards darkness,” Singh added.(ANI)

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International Medical Center to be developed at IIT Kharagpur

August 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 19 (ANI): Officials of the University of California, San Diego Health Sciences and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have signed a historic preliminary agreement to collaborate in the development of an International Medical Center (IMC) at IIT Kharagpur.

This agreement – marked by a signing ceremony in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India – is the beginning of a strong educational, research and clinical partnership between UC San Diego Health Sciences and IIT, Kharagpur.

IIT, Kharagpur is the first and largest of the IIT chain of higher education institutes in India that focuses on engineering and technology.

The goal is to jointly establish a state-of-the-art medical center at IIT Kharagpur, which will be the first of its kind between a US University and an Indian Institution.

“This exciting partnership is an extension of UC San Diego Health Sciences’ traditional core mission – to provide excellent and compassionate patient care, advance medical discoveries and educate future health care providers,” said Mounir Soliman, MD, MBA, executive director of UC San Diego Health Sciences International.

“The establishment of an academic medical center to include the best in clinical care, as well as undergraduate and post-graduate programs in medical education, will be a perfect partnership – bringing together the strengths of both institutions,” he added.

According to Professor Damodar Acharya, director of IIT, Kharagpur, “In addition to IIT’s strong education and research focus in engineering and the sciences, we also are keenly interested in medical science and technology, including biotechnology, imaging, drug development and other important areas of medical research.”

“The collaboration is believed to be among the first between an IIT and a public US university in the field of medical education and research,” he said.

“The aim is to initiate technology leveraged medical education and research to provide holistic health care for the entire life cycle at affordable cost to underprivileged, poor and tribal population of the region,” he added.

The agreement describes the two institution’s collaborative plan to build a 300-bed, state-of-the-art hospital on land provided by IIT, Kharagpur. (ANI)

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Advani says will serve his full term as Leader of Opposition

August 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug.13 (ANI): Leader of Opposition L.K.Advani has said that he will complete his full five-year term, and has dismissed media reports of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) asking him to work towards nominating a successor.

“I still stand by what I had said at the press conference [at the end of the session last week]. If I accept something reluctantly then I cannot contribute my best to it,” Advani was quoted as saying by a news agency and the rediff.com web site on Wednesday when asked whether RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had suggested that Advani chose his successor in the near future.

It maybe recalled that Advani had told an August 8 press conference that it was out of his own volition that he had accepted the post of Leader of Opposition.

The RSS has also said that both Advani and Bhagwat are capable of taking decisions on their own, and that the parent body of the BJP has nothing to do with it.

The BJP has said that there is no need for it to comment on the succession issue.

Advani said he had told party leaders soon after this year’s general elections that he would not take any post, but added that agreed to continue as Leader of Opposition at the insistence of the core group.

He told rediff that he was surprised by a report in a section of media that Bhawat was reportedly upset about his decision to continue as Leader of Opposition.

He said that during his one-to-one interaction over lunch with Bhagwat on Monday, the succession issue did not come up. Rather, he (Advani) told Bhagwat about the BJP’s fine performance during the parliament session.

The BJP leadership issue could dominate the Sangh Parivar’s Chintan Baithak (brainstorming session) that is to take place in Simla from next week. (ANI)

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Comets, not asteroids, scarred Moon’s face about 4 billion years ago

July 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 28 (ANI): A new study of ancient rocks in Greenland has suggested that icy comets – not rocky asteroids – launched a dramatic assault on the Earth and moon around 3.85 billion years ago, thus causing the lunar surface to become scarred.

“We can see craters on the moon’s surface with the naked eye, but nobody actually knew what caused them – was it rocks, was it iron, was it ice?” Uffe Grae Jorgensen, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, told New Scientist.

“It’s exciting to find signs that it was actually ice,” he said.

Evidence suggests that the Earth and moon had both formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

But, almost all the craters on the moon date to a later period, the “Late Heavy Bombardment” 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago, when around 100 million billion tonnes of rock or ice crashed onto the lunar surface.

To find out whether asteroids or comets were the main culprits for the bombardment, Jorgensen decided to measure levels of the element iridium in ancient terrestrial rocks.

Iridium is rare on the Earth’s surface because almost all of it bound to iron and sank into the Earth’s core soon after the planet had formed. But iridium is relatively common in comets and meteorites.

His team calculated the amount of iridium that asteroids would leave on the Earth and moon compared to comets.

Because comets have more volatile elements and higher impact speeds due to their more elongated orbits around the sun, they would create giant plumes on impact, allowing more iridium to escape into space than during asteroid impacts.

The team predicted that asteroid bombardment would leave iridium levels of 18,000 and 10,000 parts per trillion in rocks on the Earth and moon respectively, while the same figures for comet bombardment would be about 130 and 10.

Ancient moon rocks returned by NASA’s Apollo missions have already confirmed that the lunar iridium levels are 10 parts per trillion or less.

To find out the terrestrial value, Jorgensen’s team sampled some of the world’s oldest rocks from Greenland, aged 3.8 billion years, and asked a Japanese laboratory to assess their iridium levels more accurately than ever before.

They contained iridium levels of 150 parts per trillion, which strongly suggests comets, rather than asteroids, caused the violent bombardment. (ANI)

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Ice-free summers in ancient Arctic may help predict future trends

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 10 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have obtained evidence for ice-free summers with intermittent winter sea ice in the Arctic Ocean during the Late Cretaceous period, which should help predict how the Arctic is likely to respond to future global warming.

The Late Cretaceous, the period between 100 and 65 million years ago leading up to the extinction of the dinosaurs, is crucial in this regard because levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) were high, driving greenhouse conditions.

In this regards, Dr Andrew Davies and Professor Alan Kemp of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, along with Dr Jennifer Pike of Cardiff University have presented the first seasonally resolved Cretaceous sedimentary record from the Alpha Ridge of the Arctic Ocean.

The scientists analyzed the remains of diatoms – tiny free-floating plant-like organisms – preserved in late Cretaceous marine sediments.

In modern oceans, diatoms play a dominant role in the ‘biological carbon pump’ by which CO2 is drawn down from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and a proportion of it exported to the deep ocean.

Unfortunately, the role of diatoms in the Cretaceous oceans has until now been unclear, in part because they are often poorly preserved in sediments.

But, the researchers struck lucky.

“With remarkable serendipity, successive US and Canadian expeditions that occupied floating ice islands above the Alpha Ridge of the Arctic Ocean, recovered cores containing shallow buried upper Cretaceous diatom ooze with superbly preserved diatoms,” explained the researchers.

This has allowed them to conduct a detailed study of the diatom fossils using sophisticated electron microscopy techniques.

In the modern ocean, scientists use floating sediment traps to collect and study settling material.

These electron microscope techniques that have been pioneered by Professor Kemp’s group at Southampton have unlocked a ‘palaeo-sediment trap’ to reveal information about Late Cretaceous environmental conditions.

They find that the most informative sediment core samples display a regular alternation of microscopically thin layers composed of two distinctly different diatom assemblages, reflecting seasonal changes.

Their analysis clearly demonstrates that seasonal blooming of diatoms was not related to the upwelling of nutrients, as has been previously suggested.

Rather, production occurred within a stratified water column, indicative of ice-free summers.

According to the researchers, “This Cretaceous production, dominated by diatoms adapted to stratified conditions of the polar summer may also be a pointer to future trends in the modern ocean.”

“With increasing CO2 levels and global warming giving rise to increased ocean stratification, this style of (marine biological) production may become of increasing importance,” they added. (ANI)

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Astronomers see high-speed galaxy collision in action

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 10 (ANI): Astronomers at the Chandra X-ray Observatory have spotted a galaxy collision in action, with one galaxy passing through the core of other galaxies at almost 2 million miles per hour.

The image obtained is of Stephan’s Quintet, a compact group of galaxies discovered about 130 years ago and located about 280 million light years from Earth.

Four of the galaxies in the group are visible in the optical image from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

A labeled version identifies these galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318a, NGC 7318b and NGC 7319) as well as a prominent foreground galaxy (NGC 7320) that is not a member of the group.

The galaxy NGC 7318b is passing through the core of galaxies at almost 2 million miles per hour, and is thought to be causing the ridge of X-ray emission by generating a shock wave that heats the gas.

Additional heating by supernova explosions and stellar winds has also probably taken place in Stephan’s Quintet.

A larger halo of X-ray emission, detected by ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton could be evidence of shock heating by previous collisions between galaxies in this group.

Some of the X-ray emissions are likely caused by binary systems containing massive stars that are losing material to neutron stars or black holes.

Stephan’s Quintet provides a rare opportunity to observe a galaxy group in the process of evolving from an X-ray faint system dominated by spiral galaxies to a more developed system dominated by elliptical galaxies and bright X-ray emission.

According to scientists, being able to witness the dramatic effect of collisions in causing this evolution is important for increasing the understanding of the origins of the hot, X-ray bright halos of gas in groups of galaxies.

Stephan’s Quintet shows an additional sign of complex interactions in the past, notably the long tails visible in the optical image.

These features were probably caused by one or more passages through the galaxy group by NGC 7317. (ANI)

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Blankets can help prevent brain damage

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 8 (ANI): Blankets not only help stave off the shivers, they can also offer protection against brain damage, say researchers.

Patients with brain injuries or dangerously high fevers are often cooled to reduce their core body temperature to prevent further damage and aid healing.

But cooling induces shivering, which counteracts to keep the patient’s temperature low, thereby causing physical stress.

It is currently treated with sedatives and other drugs.

However, Andreas Kramer, a member of Faculty of 1000 Medicine and leading expert in the field of critical care medicine, said that simply warming the skin with blanker could decrease shivering in many patients, without the need for drugs.

Physicians at Columbia University and the New York Presbyterian Hospital found that the intensity of shivering and physiological stress increased when warming blankets were removed from therapeutically cooled patients.

And shivering subsided when the blankets were replaced.

Kramer said that though warming the skin did not reduce shivering in all patients, “its simplicity, low cost, widespread availability, lack of adverse effects, and the potential to avoid sedation … make it an attractive treatment option.” (ANI)

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Comets, not asteroids, scarred Moon’s face about 4 billion years ago

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