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European company develops mobile robots that are autonomous and multi-tasking

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Madrid (Spain), September 19 (ANI): An European company has developed innovative robots which are mobile, multifunctional, collaborative, autonomous and polyvalent, suitable for a wide range of work from street cleaning and rubbish collection to accompanying elderly people.

According to a report carried out in www.basqueresearch.com, this new generation of robots have been developed by TECNALIA Technological Corporation, and are a part of the European DUSTBOT research project under the remit of the VI European Framework Programme and in which TECNALIA is participating.

These latest generation robots are suitable for the monitoring of large spaces (open and closed), as guides for persons in large shopping areas (indicating to them where a particular shop or product is within a shopping centre), for accompanying elderly people or those with certain disabilities (both at home and outside), thanks to their functions of orientation, navigation, communications with others or tele-assistance centres.

They can also be used as guides in teaching spaces (museums, visitor centres), and for transport, storage and transport and goods deliveries, besides the cleaning of both open and closed surfaces, which have either difficult or easy access.

DUSTBOT has collaborative, multifunctional and autonomous robots that are capable of operating in partially destructured environments/situations based on information provided by a map.

The robots can also facilitate working in large areas, stations, airports and other types of public buildings, without being any obstacle for the activity of these places, given its reduced size, and without being a danger for members of the public, thanks to the novel system for the detection and avoidance of obstacles.

The rail station of the Euskotren company in the Bilbao neighbourhood of Atxuri in Spain was chosen for the public presentation of these devices.

The demonstration of two robot models was undertaken: the DustCart and the DustClean.

The DustCart robot, measuring 1.45 metres high and 70 Kg in weight, has a humanoid form and is designed to interact with the user and for the collection of low demand waste.

The DustClean robot, in the form of a small vehicle and measuring 96 cm high and 250 Kg in weight, cleans streets of dirt and dust. Moreover, both control the quality of air in real time.

“These robots are the solution for cleaning areas of difficult access and for the collection of rubbish at the very front door of, above all, persons who have mobility problems when moving the rubbish to the communal waste containers,” said Inaki Inzunza, Director of the Business Unit at the Tecnalia Technological Corporation. (ANI)

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NASA’s Swift satellite makes best-ever ultraviolet portrait of Andromeda galaxy

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 17 (ANI): NASA’s Swift satellite has acquired the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet.

The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, is the largest and closest spiral galaxy to our own.

“Swift reveals about 20,000 ultraviolet sources in M31, especially hot, young stars and dense star clusters,” said Stefan Immler, a research scientist on the Swift team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Of particular importance is that we have covered the galaxy in three ultraviolet filters. That will let us study M31′s star-formation processes in much greater detail than previously possible,” he added.

M31, also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is more than 220,000 light-years across and lies 2.5 million light-years away.

On a clear, dark night, the galaxy is faintly visible as a misty patch to the naked eye.

Between May 25 and July 26, 2008, Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) acquired 330 images of M31 at wavelengths of 192.8, 224.6, and 260 nanometers.

The images represent a total exposure time of 24 hours.

The task of assembling the resulting 85 gigabytes of images fell to Erin Grand, an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland at College Park who worked with Immler as an intern this summer.

“After ten weeks of processing that immense amount of data, I’m extremely proud of this new view of M31,” she said.

Several features are immediately apparent in the new mosaic.

The first is the striking difference between the galaxy’s central bulge and its spiral arms.

“The bulge is smoother and redder because it’s full of older and cooler stars,” Immler explained. “Very few new stars form here because most of the materials needed to make them have been depleted,” he added.

Dense clusters of hot, young, blue stars sparkle beyond the central bulge.

M31′s disk and spiral arms contain most of the gas and dust needed to produce new generations of stars.

Star clusters are especially plentiful in an enormous ring about 150,000 light-years across.

“Swift is surveying nearby galaxies like M31 so astronomers can better understand star- formation conditions and relate them to conditions in the distant galaxies where we see gamma-ray bursts occurring,” said Neil Gehrels, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard. (ANI)

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9/11 memorial to have disturbing graphic images

September 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New York, Sep. 11 (ANI): The proposed 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero is going to have 400 oak trees on the outside and disturbing graphic images of people jumping and planes hitting the towers inside the museum.

The New York Post quoted Joseph Daniels, president of the 9/11 Memorial Foundation, as saying that construction of the museum is moving forward.

The museum and memorial sprawled over eight acres is set to open in 2012.

The last column pulled out from the World Trade Center rubble has been returned to bedrock and will serve as a focal point, along with the so-called Survivors’ Stairs used by people fleeing the towers, the report says.

The Memorial Foundation has compiled 500 hours of video archives with help of a private team of filmmakers who collected professional and amateur videos from the day and its aftermath.

CameraPlanet’s archive includes a five-minute video shot in the streets of lower Manhattan on the evening of the attacks, with office stairwells filled with reams of paper and half-open offices with family pictures still inside.

A dust-covered Brooks Brothers logo is in one frame under shattered windows.

What appears to be an airliner seat is strewn in the street. “God Bless America! Unity!” is scrawled in the dust of one window. (ANI)

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Ancient mystery of red hats on giant Easter Island statues solved

September 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 7 (ANI): A team of archaeologists has solved the ancient mystery of why the odd-looking statues on the Easter Island statues wear red hats.

Up to one thousand years ago, the islanders started putting giant red hats on the statues.

According to a report by BBC News, the research team, from the University of Manchester and University College London, believes that the hats were rolled down from an ancient volcano.

Dr Colin Richards and Dr Sue Hamilton are the first British archaeologists to work on the island since 1914. They pieced together a series of clues to discover how the statues got their red hats.

An axe, a road, and an ancient volcano led to their findings.

“We know the hats were rolled along the road made from a cement of compressed red scoria dust,” Dr Richards said.

Each hat, weighing several tonnes, was carved from volcanic rock. They were placed on the heads of the famous statues all around the coast of the island.

Precisely how and why the hats were attached is unknown.

An axe was found in pristine condition next to the hats. The scientists think it might be an ancient offering.

According to Dr Richards, “These hats run all the way down the side of the volcano into the valley. We can see they were carefully placed. The closer you get to the volcano, the greater the number.”

“It’s like a church; you can’t just walk straight to the altar,” he added.

“The Polynesians saw the landscape as a living thing, and after they carved the rock, the spirits entered the statues,” he said.

Dr Richards and Dr Hamilton will be working on the island over the next five years.

“We will look to date the earliest statues. Potentially this could rewrite Polynesian history, Dr Richards added. (ANI)

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Attempt to break Elvis impersonator world record bites the dust

September 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 1 (ANI): An attempt to have the most number of Elvis Presley impersonators bit the dust after only 29 people turned up.

Organisers of the event had their fingers crossed to beat a previous world record with 148 people dressed as ‘The King’ to sing ‘Viva Las Vegas’ at The Ship Inn at Par, Cornwall.

Pauline Giles, who ran the attempt, held the poor turnout on a combination of bad weather and the credit crunch responsible for the failed bid.

“It’s been raining all day which puts people off. Things are also a bit tight at the moment so all in all it was a slightly poor show,” the Telegraph quoted her as saying.

The existing record was set by 147 Australians eight years ago. (ANI)

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Man-made volcanoes may cool Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space

August 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, August 30 (ANI): The Royal Society in London seems to be convinced that man-made volcanoes can help stave off climate change, as it is backing research into simulated volcanic eruptions that will spray millions of tons of dust into the air to cool the Earth.

This week, the society will call for a global programme of studies into geo-engineering, which can help devise new ways to manipulate the planet’s climate to counteract global warming.

It believes that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere may help keep the planet cool.

Ken Caldeira, an earth scientist at Stanford University, California, and a member of a Royal Society working group on geo-engineering, said that dust sprayed into the stratosphere in volcanic eruptions could cool the Earth by reflecting light back into space.

“If I had a dollar for geo-engineering research I would put 90 cents of it into stratospheric aerosols and 10 cents into everything else,” Times Online quoted Caldeira as saying.

The intervention by the Royal Society comes amid tension ahead of the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December to agree global cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

The Royal Society’s decision to take geo-engineering seriously is a measure of the desperation felt by scientists about climate change.

Brian Launder, a professor at Manchester University, who is also on the working group, recently said that without CO2 reductions or geo-engineering “civilisation as we know it will end within our grandchildren’s lifetime”.

“The only rational scheme is to reduce the sunlight reaching Earth and to reflect back more of it,” he said.

The society’s report is expected to draw partly on research by Tim Lenton, professor of earth sciences at the University of East Anglia, who has just completed the first big comparison of different forms of geo-engineering.

“We estimate that 1.5-5m tons of sulphate particles could be released (artificially) into the stratosphere each year on a recurring basis. This is quite a small amount, which makes it potentially economically viable, but it could reduce global temperature rise by up to 2C,” said Lenton. (ANI)

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Warped debris disks around stars a result of interstellar wind

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 29 (ANI): In a new research, a team of scientists has determined that the warped shapes of the dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars, may be due to interstellar wind.

The dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars occasionally take on some difficult-to-understand shapes.

Now, a team led by John Debes at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has found that a star’s motion through interstellar gas can account for many of them.

“The disks contain small comet- or asteroid-like bodies that may grow to form planets,” Debes said. “These small bodies often collide, which produces a lot of fine dust,” he added.

As the star moves through the galaxy, it encounters thin gas clouds that create a kind of interstellar wind.

“The small particles slam into the flow, slow down, and gradually bend from their original trajectories to follow it,” said Debes.

Far from being empty, the space between stars is filled with patchy clouds of low-density gas.

When a star encounters a relatively dense clump of this gas, the resulting flow produces a drag force on any orbiting dust particles.

The force only affects the smallest particles – those about one micrometer across, or about the size of particles in smoke.

“This fine dust is usually removed through collisions among the particles, radiation pressure from the star’s light and other forces,” explained Debes. “The drag from interstellar gas just takes them on a different journey than they otherwise would have had,” he said.

Working with Alycia Weinberger at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Goddard astrophysicist Marc Kuchner, Debes was using the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate the composition of dust around the star HD 32297, which lies 340 light-years away in the constellation Orion.

He noticed that the interior of the dusty disk – a region comparable in size to our own solar system – was warped in a way that matched a previously known warp at larger distances.

“Other research indicated there were interstellar gas clouds in the vicinity. The pieces came together to make me think that gas drag was a good explanation for what was going on,” Debes said.

“It looks like interstellar gas helps young planetary systems shed dust much as a summer breeze helps dandelions scatter seeds,” Kuchner said.

As dust particles respond to the interstellar wind, a debris disk can morph into peculiar shapes determined by the details of its collision with the gas cloud. (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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Human-generated aerosols from northern hemisphere may affect rainfall patterns in Australia

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 27 (ANI): Australian scientists, using a climate model, have suggested that human-generated aerosols from the northern hemisphere may have contributed to increased rainfall in north-western and central Australia, and decreased rainfall in parts of southern Australia.

According to lead researcher, Dr Leon Rotstayn, Principal Research Scientist at the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, a partnership between CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, “Perhaps surprisingly, inclusion of northern hemisphere aerosols may be important for accurate modelling of Australian climate change.”Aerosols come from many different sources.

Sulphur is released when we burn coal and oil. More dust, also an aerosol, circulates in the atmosphere when land is cleared, burned or overgrazed.

Some aerosols occur naturally like sea spray and volcanic emissions, but NASA estimates ten percent of the total aerosols in the atmosphere are caused by people.

Most of this ten percent is in the northern hemisphere.
European researchers, attending the international ‘Water in a changing climate’ science conference in Melbourne from August 24-28, will discuss a new forecasting service that will identify in unprecedented detail where these aerosols are coming from and where they are going.

The new service, part of Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative, will give global information on how pollutants move around the world across oceans and continents, and will refine estimates of their sources and sinks.

According to Dr Adrian Simmons from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which is coordinating the multi-institution initiative, “The service will give much more detailed forecast information on air quality over Europe and provide the basis for better health advice across Europe and beyond”.

The service has clear implications for environmental policy and legislation. (ANI)

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Carpet underlay may cause cancer

August 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Melbourne, Aug 25 (ANI): Your carpet might be putting you at a greater risk of developing cancer, warns a Respiratory physician

Bill Musk has revealed that hessian bags used to transport deadly asbestos products were later reused as carpet underlay.

Anyone exposed to the underlay risk developing mesothelioma, an incurable cancer.

“So carpet underfelt from these bags is definitely potentially dangerous,” News.com.au quoted Musk as having told ABC’s 7.30 Report.

The program interviewed several people who believed some mesothelioma victims had been exposed to asbestos fibres from carpet.

A spokesman for Western Australia’s Health Department has urged home renovators to take care with their carpet.

“The main thing is to not disturb it and try and get some advice as to whether there is any dust in their house,” he said.

The spokesman also said that people should hire professionals to tear up carpet underlay, and thoroughly clean the house afterwards.

The program said the bags were used in carpet underlay until the 1970s, and while it was not known how many homes were affected, it could be in the tens of thousands. (ANI)

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Birds love soaking in the sun as much as humans do

August 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Aug 19 (ANI): Its not just humans who enjoy soaking up in the sun on the beach, for birds are fond of sunbathing too, according to the bird charity RSPB.

The charity revealed that they receive almost 100 calls during hot spells from people who are concerned with watching birds lying with their feathers and wings exposed to the sun.

However, they have said that such state of rest is not problematic, as the animals simply sunbath in this position.

Studies from the University of New Mexico have suggested that birds sun themselves to soothe their skin after heavy rain, which can cause them to suddenly lose their feathers.

The researchers believe that the sun helps straighten the birds’ feathers, and helps the preen oil to spread through.

“People become concerned about these birds, because they seem to have a glazed expression in their eyes, because they are not focusing on anything, because they are entranced by the sun,” the Telegraph quoted Gemma Rogers from the RSPB as saying.

She added: “They don’t let themselves overheat at all. The feathers would protect them as well, so I don’t think they need the factor 30.”

However, the biggest concern, according to her, is that the predators will attack while the birds enjoy a peaceful moment in the sun.

“They are on the ground, they have their heads up, their legs wide open, but usually they fly away once a predator approaches. Their hearing is very acute as well, so even if they aren’t focusing they will hear something coming,” she said.

While blackbirds are the most commonly spotted sunbathers, pigeons and sparrows also enjoy the sun.

Rogers said that sparrows apparently enjoy going to the beach as much as humans.

“Sparrows often find a hot sandy area as well to have a sand or dust bath. That looks really strange. They bed themselves down and get in there and cover their feathers,” she said. (ANI)

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NASA scientists make first discovery of life’s building block in comet

August 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 18 (ANI): NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft.

“Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet,” said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Our discovery supports the theory that some of life’s ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts,” he added.

“The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare,” said Dr. Carl Pilcher, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which co-funded the research.

Stardust passed through dense gas and dust surrounding the icy nucleus of Wild 2 on January 2, 2004.

As the spacecraft flew through this material, a special collection grid filled with aerogel – a novel sponge-like material that’s more than 99 percent empty space – gently captured samples of the comet’s gas and dust.

The grid was stowed in a capsule, which detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth on January 15, 2006.

Since then, scientists around the world have been busy analyzing the samples to learn the secrets of comet formation and our solar system’s history.

“We actually analyzed aluminum foil from the sides of tiny chambers that hold the aerogel in the collection grid,” said Elsila.

“As gas molecules passed through the aerogel, some stuck to the foil. We spent two years testing and developing our equipment to make it accurate and sensitive enough to analyze such incredibly tiny samples,” he added.

Earlier, preliminary analysis in the Goddard labs detected glycine in both the foil and a sample of the aerogel.

However, since glycine is used by terrestrial life, at first the team was unable to rule out contamination from sources on Earth.

The new research used isotopic analysis of the foil to rule out that possibility.

“We discovered that the Stardust-returned glycine has an extraterrestrial carbon isotope signature, indicating that it originated on the comet,” said Elsila.

According to Dr. Daniel Glavin of NASA Goddard, “Based on the foil and aerogel results it is highly probable that the entire comet-exposed side of the Stardust sample collection grid is coated with glycine that formed in space.” (ANI)

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‘Spiderbots’ inside Mount St Helens may detect impending volcanic eruption

August 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 15 (ANI): NASA scientists have placed about a dozen monitoring ‘spiderbots’ inside the volcanic crater in Mount St Helens in the US, which are high-tech devices that can detect an impending eruption.

Mount St. Helens is one of the most active volcanoes in the US. Its most devastating eruption in 1980, and the most recent seen here in 2004.

According to a report in National Geographic News, about a dozen so-called Spiders were placed on Mount St. Helens in July.

The pods, designed to go where no human can, were lowered by helicopter inside and around the volcano center.

“We can detect the differences between snow falling off of a branch, an animal running by, wind, a thunderstorm and the very subtle signatures of magma moving at depth, perhaps even kilometers beneath the surface of the earth,” said Steve Chien, Principal Scientist, Autonomous Systems, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory .

The pods form a virtual wireless network and communicate with each other and a NASA satellite called Earth Observing-1, or EO-1.

Each pod contains a seismometer, a GPS receiver, an infrared sounder to sense explosions, and a lightning detector.

According to Chien, “They have the ability to recognize different kinds of events such as seismic events, earthquakes, that are basically indications that something is happening at the volcano.”

“In the context of volcano monitoring, we want to have the best educated guess to make decisions that will save life and properties,” said Sharon Kedar, Geophysicist, NASA /Jet Propulsion Laboratoy.

NASA would like to someday use this same technology on the surface of Mars to study atmospheric events like dust storms, which are mini-tornadoes, as well as seismic activity. (ANI)

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Visually impaired bamboo artist enables others for self-reliance

July 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Gangtok, July 15 (ANI): A visually impaired bamboo artisan in Sikkim imparts training to many other disadvantaged people like him and help them gain self-reliance in life.

The 37-year-old Chandra Singh Gurung is one of the visually challenged workers offering training to enthusiastic artists under Directorate of handloom and industry in Cane and Bamboo crafts.

Gurung is a master bamboo and cane artist. He has been working in the bamboo and cane unit of the Directorate of Handicrafts and Handlooms for over a decade and has set an example of self-reliance.

The principal handicrafts of the region include basketwork, cane furniture, bamboo flower, mats and woodcarvings. The items which are made include stools, flowers, pen stands, picture frames, baskets, dust bins, beer mugs, hair clips and butterfly wall decoration.

Having learnt the art of Moda making (cane or bamboo stools) at the Kalimpong Salvation Army Institution, the Braille matriculate Gurung joined the Directorate as an artisan in 1986.

He tells that Government has opened many schemes for the people like him where they could learn the art as per their talent.

“Indian Government has opened many schemes for the people like us. I’m doing this cane and bamboo work in Sikkim. Others can go in for light engineering while still others can take up physiotherapy as per their talent,” said Gurung.

Every ‘moda’ Gurung makes sells at anything between 9.24 dollars to 10.27 dollars a piece.

Gurung is today not just a worker but a trainer as well and has trained jail inmates at the state prison in Rongyek, near Gangtok.

Namrata Thapa, directorate of Handicraft and Handloom Industry, Sikkim said that in this institute the students could earn while they learnt.

“This is the institute where we are providing employment opportunities to the physically handicapped people as far as possible not only the employment opportunities but we are giving them training in different crafts also as per their aptitude in their fields that they are interested to pursue,” said Thapa. By Tashi Pradhan(ANI)

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Herschel’s first insight into space reveals spectacular results

July 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Paris, July 11 (ANI): The Herschel Space Observatory has carried out the first test observations with all its instruments, revealing spectacular results, finding water and carbon and revealing dozens of distant galaxies.

These observations show that Herschel’s instruments are working beyond expectations. They promise a mission of rich discoveries for waiting astronomers.

On June 24, Herschel’s Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) was trained on two galaxies for its first look at the Universe.

The galaxies showed up prominently, providing astronomers with their best images yet at these wavelengths, and revealing other, more distant galaxies in the background of the images.

The pictures show galaxies M66 and M74 at a wavelength of 250 microns, longer than any previous infrared space observatory, but still the shortest SPIRE wavelength.

SPIRE is designed to look at star formation in our own Galaxy and in nearby galaxies. It will also search for star-forming galaxies in the very distant Universe.

Because these galaxies are so far away, their light has taken a very long time to reach us; so by detecting them, we are looking into the past and learning how and when galaxies like our own were formed.

Herschel’s primary mirror is 3.5 m in diameter, nearly four times larger than any previous infrared space telescope.

These images prove that Herschel enables a giant leap forward in scientists’ ability to study celestial objects at far infrared wavelengths.

Scientists used Herschel’s Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI) on June 22 to look for warm molecular gas heated by newborn massive stars in the DR21 star-forming region in Cygnus.

HIFI provided excellent data in two different observing modes, returning information on the composition of the region with unprecedented accuracy and resolution.

It works by ‘zooming in’ on specific wavelengths, revealing different spectral ‘lines’ that represent the fingerprints of atoms and molecules and even the physical conditions of the object observed.

This makes it a powerful tool to study the role of gas and dust in the formation of stars and planets and the evolution of galaxies.

Using HIFI, scientists observed ionized carbon, carbon monoxide, and water in DR21.

These different molecular lines contribute to a more complete understanding of what is happening deep in space.

The high quality of these first observations promises great new insights into the process of star formation.

Following these images, Herschel is now in the performance verification phase, where the instruments will be further tested and calibrated. (ANI)

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Dust mites indulge in 24hr sex marathons

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Sydney, July 10 (ANI): Sydney mattresses are home to thousands of dust mites, who indulge in sex marathons lasting as long as 24 hours, says an expert.

Dr. Matt Colloff, a CSIRO Entomology scientist who has spent 25 years studying mites, has described their bizarre sexual behaviour in his 600-page, 150 dollars book, ‘Dust Mites’, which was launched on July 9.

“You can’t see them and you can’t feel them. But almost every house has them. A lot of Sydney mattresses would have over a million,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Colloff as saying.

Thanks to its warm, moist climate, “Sydney is one of the world’s top 10 dust mite capitals,” he added.

These less than half a millimetre long organisms inhabit beds, carpets, upholstered furniture, clothes, and curtains as they thrive on skin scales that have fallen from their human housemates.

“Their sexual behaviour is absolutely bizarre. They mate back-to-back. The male has a penis shaped liked an old-fashioned coffee-pot spout and locks onto the female with a pair of suckers,” said Colloff.

As the dust mite’s penis is so narrow, compared with its sperm, “the sperm has to travel in single file,’ thus making mating slower than other organisms.

“They remain in that position for 24 hours. She continues on with everyday life and the little male hangs on,” said Colloff.

The mites are often found in beds because the heat of human bodies between the sheets triggers sweating, creating the humidity and warmth the mites crave.

They spend their days “eating and copulating and defecating,” said Colloff. (ANI)

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Earliest stars in Universe may have been twins

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 10 (ANI): Astrophysicists, using extremely detailed computer simulations, have determined that the earliest stars in the universe formed not only as individuals, but sometimes also as twins.

The robust simulations of the early universe were created by astrophysicists Matthew Turk and Tom Abel of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, and Brian O’Shea of Michigan State University.

“We used to think that these stars formed by themselves, but now we see from our computer simulations that sometimes they have siblings,” said Turk.

“These stars provide the seeds of next generation star formation, so by understanding them we can better understand how other stars and galaxies formed,” he added.

To make this discovery, the researchers created an extremely detailed computer simulation of early star formation.

Into this virtual universe, they sprinkled primordial gas and dark matter as it existed soon after the Big Bang, data they obtained from observations of the cosmic microwave background.

This mostly uniform radiation – a faint glow of radio waves spread across the entire sky – contains subtle variations that reflect the beginning of all structure in the universe.

The simulations focused on the first Population III stars: massive, hot stars thought to have formed a mere several hundred million years after the Big Bang.

As the researchers watched their simulated universe evolve, waves of gas and dark matter swirled through the hot, dense universe.

As the universe cooled, gravity began to draw the matter together into clumps. In areas rich with matter, stars began to form.

In one out of the researchers’ five simulations, a single cloud of dust and dark matter formed into “twin” stars: one with a mass equivalent to about 10 suns, and one with a mass equivalent to about 6.3 suns.

Both of them were still growing at the end of the calculation and will likely grow to many times that mass.

“We ran five of these calculations starting from the beginning of the universe, and to our surprise one of them was special,” said Abel.

“This opens a whole new realm of research possibilities. These stars could evolve into two black holes, which could have created gravitational waves we could detect with an instrument like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory,” he added.

“This will help us fine-tune our models for how structure in the universe formed and evolved. Understanding the very early stars helps us understand what we see today,” Turk said. (ANI)

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2000-year-old statue of Greek athlete sheds light on metal corrosion

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 9 (ANI): The restoration of a 2,000-year-old bronze sculpture of the famed ancient Greek athlete Apoxyomenos may help modern scientists understand how to prevent metal corrosion, discover the safest ways to permanently store nuclear waste, and understand other perplexing problems.

That’s the conclusion of a new study on the so-called “biomineralization” of Apoxyomenos.

Best known as “The Scraper,” the statue depicts an athlete scraping sweat and dust from his body with a small curved instrument.

Scientist Davorin Medakovic and his team point out that Apoxyomenos was discovered in 1998 on floor of the Adriatic Sea.

While the discovery was a bonanza for archaeologists and art historians, it also proved to be an unexpected boon to scientists trying to understand biomineralization.

Biomineralization is the process in which animals and plants use minerals from their surroundings and form shells and bone.

Apoxyomenos was encrusted with such deposits.

“As studies of long-term biofouled manmade structures are limited, the finding of an ancient sculpture immersed for two millennia in the sea provided a unique opportunity to probe the long-term impact of a specific artificial substrate on biomineralizng organisms and the effects of biocorrosion,” according to the researchers.y evaluating the mineral layers and fossilized organisms on the statue, the researchers were able to evaluate how underwater fouling organisms and communities interacted with the statue as well as how certain mineral deposits on the bronze sculpture slowed its deterioration. (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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Astronomers unveil largest map of cold cosmic dust

July 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Berlin, July 2 (ANI): Astronomers have unveiled the largest map of cold cosmic dust, which are peppered in the inner regions of the Milky Way galaxy, and are the potential birthplaces of new stars.

Made using observations from the APEX telescope in Chile, this will prove an invaluable map for observations made with the forthcoming ALMA telescope, as well as the recently launched ESA Herschel space telescope.

This new guide for astronomers, known as the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) shows the Milky Way in submillimeter-wavelength light.

Images of the cosmos at these wavelengths are vital for studying the birthplaces of new stars and the structure of the crowded galactic core.

“ATLASGAL gives us a new look at the Milky Way. Not only will it help us investigate how massive stars form, but it will also give us an overview of the larger-scale structure of our galaxy,” said Frederic Schuller from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, leader of the ATLASGAL team.

The area of the new submillimeter map is approximately 95 square degrees, covering a very long and narrow strip along the galactic plane two degrees wide (four times the width of the full Moon) and over 40 degrees long.

The Universe is relatively unexplored at submillimeter wavelengths, as extremely dry atmospheric conditions and advanced detector technology are required for such observations.

The interstellar medium – the material between the stars – is composed of gas and grains of cosmic dust, rather like fine sand or soot.

However, the gas is mostly hydrogen and relatively difficult to detect, so astronomers often search for these dense regions by looking for the faint heat glow of the cosmic dust grains.

Submillimeter light allows astronomers to see these dust clouds shining, even though they obscure our view of the Universe at visible light wavelengths.

Accordingly, the ATLASGAL map includes the denser central regions of our galaxy, in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius – home to a supermassive black hole that are otherwise hidden behind a dark shroud of dust clouds.

The newly released map reveals thousands of dense dust clumps, many never seen before, which mark the future birthplaces of massive stars.

The clumps are typically a couple of light-years in size, and have masses of between ten and a few thousand times the mass of our Sun. (ANI)

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