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Obama identified with Hitler, Stalin

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sep.19 (ANI): Even as thousands of people packed the streets of Washington on Friday to protest against government spending, some of the agitators likened President Barack Obama to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

According to a CBS report, most of those would have called themselves “patriots” arguing that their government was betraying traditional principles.

Steve Butler, a physician from Indiana was handing out copies of the Constitution. “If you read the quotes of Thomas Jefferson, these guys were conservatives and they said that the control should be with the people and not with the big government.”

There were plenty of signs identifying Obama with Hitler, or Stalin, that questions his citizenship, that seems to celebrate the death of a famous liberal.

But perhaps what most united these protesters was a broader discontent: a sense that they are not being heard, that their interests, and the national interests, are in the hands of a few. (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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Indian origin scientist finds tropical storms endure over wet land, fizzle over dry

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 27 (ANI): A scientist of Indian origin from Purdue University, in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, has determined in a new research that tropical storms endure over wet land, and fizzle when conditions are dry.

More than 30 years of monsoon data from India showed that ground moisture where the storms make landfall is a major indicator of what the storm will do from there.

If the ground is wet, the storm is likely to sustain, while dry conditions should calm the storm.

“Once a storm comes overland, it was unclear whether it would stall, accelerate or fizzle out,” said Dev Niyogi, Indiana state climatologist and associate professor of agronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences.

“We found that whether a storm becomes more intense or causes heavy rains could depend on the land conditions – something we’d not considered. Thus far we’ve looked at these storms based mainly on ocean conditions or upper atmosphere,” he added.

Niyogi said tropical storms gain their strength from warm ocean water evaporation.

“The same phenomenon – the evaporation from the ocean that sustains the storms – could be the same phenomenon that sustains that storm over land with moisture in the soil,” he said.

“The storm will have more moisture and energy available over wet soil than dry,” he added.

Storm data fed into a model showed that higher levels of ground moisture would sustain Indian monsoon depressions.

The model’s prediction was proven when compared to ground conditions for 125 Indian monsoons over 33 years, where storms sustained when the ground was wet at landfall.

Knowing the sustainability of a storm could lead to better predictions on flooding and damage inland before a monsoon or a hurricane makes landfall.

“We think the physics is such that we could see similar results more broadly, such as in the United States,” Niyogi said.

Niyogi said the next step is to use the model and ground moisture data to test these theories for hurricanes in the United States. (ANI)

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Marriage, the secret to ‘beating cancer’

August 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Aug 24 (ANI): They may joke that marriage raises their blood pressure but married people have the best chance of surviving cancer, a new study has found.

What’s more, those going through the pain of separation have the poorest survival rates, the study claimed.
The research will be published in the November 1, 2009 issue of Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

According to the study’s authors, the results suggest that the stress associated with marital separation may compromise an individual’s immune system and lead to a greater susceptibility to cancer.

Research has shown that personal relationships have a significant role in physical health-specifically that good relationships are beneficial and poor relationships are deleterious.

Also, many studies of cancer prognosis have found that patients who are married live longer than those who are single. However, little information is available regarding differences in survival among the various types of people who are unmarried.

To look for trends in cancer survival among patients who are separated, divorced, widowed, and never married, researchers led by Gwen Sprehn, Ph.D., of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis analyzed data from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database, a population-based cancer registry in the United States.

The researchers assessed the 5 and 10 year survival rates of 3.79 million patients diagnosed with cancer between 1973 and 2004.

They found that married patients had the highest 5 and 10 year survival rates, at 63.3 percent and 57.5 percent respectively. At the other end of the spectrum, separation carried the poorest survival outcome. Specifically, the 5 and 10 year survival rates for separated patients were 45.4 percent and 36.8 percent respectively.

The 5 and 10 year survival rates of widowed patients were the next lowest, at 47.2 percent and 40.9 percent respectively; for divorced patients, the respective survival rates were 52.4 percent and 45.6 percent; and for never married patients, they were 57.3 percent and 51.7 percent.

“Patients who are going through separation at the time of diagnosis may be a particularly vulnerable population for whom intervention could be prioritized,” says Sprehn.

“Identification of relationship-related stress at time of diagnosis could lead to early interventions which might favorably impact survival. Ideally, future research will study marital status in more detail over time and also address individual differences in genetic profile and biomarkers related to stress, immune, and cancer pathways in order to determine mechanisms which might underlie this possible critical period for cancer pathogenesis,” the expert added. (ANI)

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NASA successfully tests eco-friendly rocket propellant

August 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 22 (ANI): NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, or AFOSR, have successfully launched a small rocket using an environmentally-friendly, safe propellant comprised of aluminum powder and water ice, called ALICE.

“This collaboration has been an opportunity for graduate students to work on an environmentally-friendly propellant that can be used for flight on Earth and used in long distance space missions,” said NASA Chief Engineer Mike Ryschkewitsch at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“These sorts of university-led experimental projects encourage a new generation of aerospace engineers to think outside of the box and look at new ways for NASA to meet our exploration goals,” he added.

Using ALICE as fuel, a nine-foot rocket soared to a height of 1,300 feet over Purdue University’s Scholer farms in Indiana earlier this month.

ALICE is generating excitement among researchers because this energetic propellant has the potential to replace some liquid or solid propellants.

When it is optimized, it could have a higher performance than conventional propellants.

“By funding this collaborative research with NASA, Purdue University and the Pennsylvania State University, AFOSR continues to promote basic research breakthroughs for the future of the Air Force,” said Dr. Brendan Godfrey, director of AFOSR.

ALICE has the consistency of toothpaste when made. It can be fit into molds and then cooled to -30 degree Celsius 24 hours before flight.

The propellant has a high burn rate and achieved a maximum thrust of 650 pounds during this test.

“A sustained collaborative research effort on the fundamentals of the combustion of nanoscale aluminum and water over the last few years led to the success of this flight,” said Dr. Steven F. Son, a research team member from Purdue.

“ALICE can be improved with the addition of oxidizers and become a potential solid rocket propellant on Earth. Theoretically, ALICE can be manufactured in distant places like the moon or Mars, instead of being transported to distant locations at high cost,” he added. (ANI)

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Genome duplication responsible for more plant species than previously thought

August 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 13 (ANI): In a new research, a team of scientists has found that extra genomes appear, on average, to offer no benefit or disadvantage to plants, but still play a much more important role in the origin of new species than previously thought.

The research was done by scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions.

Plant biologists have long suspected polyploidy – the heritable acquisition of extra chromosome sets – was a gateway to speciation.

But, the consensus was that polyploidy is a minor force, a mere anomaly that accounts for 3 or 4 percent of the world’s flowers and ferns.

Now, the first direct, comprehensive survey of polyploid speciation in plant evolution severely challenges that notion.

“In the present paper, we make it clear that it is a common process,” said evolutionary biologist and lead author Troy Wood, who began the research during graduate training at IU Bloomington.

“Fifteen percent of flowering plant species and almost a third of fern species are directly derived from polyploidy,” he added.

The scientists’ exhaustive survey of published phylogenetic and genomic data also shows that plant lineages starting with a polyploid ancestor appear to be no more successful at spawning species than diploid plants, which have two sets of chromosomes.

“The fact that polyploidy seems to have no effect on diversification rates should reduce the number of enthusiastic commentaries about the ‘advantages of polyploidy’,” said IU Bloomington evolutionary biologist and paper coauthor Loren Rieseberg, who supervised the research.

“However, our diversification rate analyses only examined recent polyploids. A future area of research should be to ask whether more ancient polyploidy events have increased diversification rates,” he added. (ANI)

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Migratory birds not choosy about selecting their rest stops

August 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 13 (ANI): A new study Purdue University study researchers has found that migratory birds are not choosy about selecting their rest stops.

In the study, John Dunning, an associate professor of forestry and natural resources, Purdue University, found that migrating birds are just as likely to stop in small woodlots in the middle of an agricultural field for the night as stopping by a lush, protected forest, provided there is adequate protection and food.

Dunning said the finding suggests that conservation efforts should extend to smaller forested lands to help stabilize declining migratory bird populations.

“There are strategies for conserving forest for migratory birds, but those strategies emphasize the largest patches of forest,” he said.

“We found that even very small woodlots were filled with migratory birds at times. It makes us believe we also need to conserve the little patches of forest, not just the big ones,” he added.

Dunning and graduate student Diane Packett observed woodlots at three distances from Indiana’s Wabash River and its tributaries – within half a kilometer, between one and five kilometers and at about 20 kilometers.

The woodlots were less than 20 acres and had row crops surrounding them on at least three sides.

There were 76 different species of migratory birds found in the woodlots, with no statistical differences in the number of species or overall population of birds based on distance from streams.

According to Packett, the birds, which travel thousands of miles between South and Central America and Canada twice each year, sometimes just need a place to stop along their journey.

As forests have been cleared for development, agriculture and other uses, those birds have to make do with whatever patches of forest they can find when they become tired or encounter bad weather.

“They don’t make the trip all in one jump. It can be thousands of miles they have to fly,” Packett said. “They need safe places to stop, eat and rest. If they don’t have that, they might not survive,” she added.

Dunning said the findings are especially timely since smaller forested areas may be in danger because of increased manufacturing of ethanol.

Dunning said he would like to use radio transmitters on birds that gather in small woodlots to see how long they stay in the areas and to pinpoint other important stopovers migratory birds use. (ANI)

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3-D mapping breakthrough helps docs remove fist-sized tumour from a woman’s brain

July 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 15 (ANI): Experts at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have successfully removed a fist-sized tumour from the brain of an Indiana woman, using a technology that involves the fusion of four different types of images into a 3-D map of a patient’s brain.

An eight-member team from the Brain Tumor Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute carried out the operation at University Hospital.

“This marks the culmination of one of the most important developments in brain tumor surgery in the last 100 years,” says Dr. John Tew, a neurosurgeon with the Mayfield Clinic, professor of neurosurgery and clinical director of the UC Neuroscience Institute.

For the surgery, Tew and his team fused and installed the multiple brain scans into a surgical guidance computer, whose function is similar to a global positioning system.

They say that the technology revealed the tumour’s relationship to all of the functional centres, electrical pathways and arteries and veins in the patient’s brain, which is why they were able to map out a safe pathway to the tumour.

“This fusion of images is exciting in that it allows us to maximize resection (removal) of the tumour while preserving function for the patient,” says Dr. James Leach, an associate professor of neuroradiology at UC who performed the processing and fusion of images.

Since early 2007, specialists have used the fusion of three types of imaging as a guide to stereotactic surgery-Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that creates detailed pictures of the body by detecting differences in magnetic signals between different types of tissues; functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that creates a series of images that capture blood oxygen levels in parts of the brain that are responsible for movement, perception and cognition; and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) that provides a map of critical white-matter tracts, which facilitate electrical connections between different parts of the brain.

Leach revealed that the latest work added the fusion of computed tomography angiography (CTA), which provides a map of blood vessels-arteries and veins.

“The 3T system allows us to image the functional areas of the brain using various language, motor and vision tasks with the patient in the MRI scanner. The addition of the DTI sequence allows the connections between these areas and other parts of the nervous system to be identified at the same time,” Leach says.

Tew said that the three-dimensional brain-mapping enabled his team to navigate a trajectory through the patient’s brain, and to remove 90 percent of the malignant tumour, an anaplastic astrocytoma, without harming the healthy brain tissue-including the deep nerve-fibre tracts-that surrounded it.

According to the researcher, the patient was talking normally right after surgery, and she was walking the halls and able to take a shower without assistance one day after surgery. he team sought to eradicate the remaining tumour by applying a course of 33 computer-guided, fractionated radiotherapy treatments as a first approach. (ANI)

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Fake Internet stories claim Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford to be dead

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New York, June 26 (ANI): While news websites are constantly running stories of Michael Jackson’s and Farrah Fawcett’s death, internet pranksters have posted fake stories of the deaths of two more celebrities on the same day-’Jurassic Park’ actor Jeff Goldblum and ‘Indiana Jones’ star Harrison Ford.

However, the rumours of Goldblum and Ford’s untimely deaths actually turned out to be false, and were found to be well-known Internet pranks that once made similar claims of Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise.

“Reports that Jeff Goldblum has passed away are completely untrue. He is fine and in Los Angeles,” the New York Daily News quoted the actor’s publicist as saying in a statement Thursday night.

Snopes.com has reported that these stories are automatically generated with fake scenarios via prank websites, where users simply plug in any name – which in this case were Goldblum and Ford.

The fake stories suggested that Goldblum fell to his death while filming a movie in New Zealand.

On the other hand, Internet goons falsely claimed that Ford disappeared while on a boat in the French Riviera. (ANI)

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NIH dishing out $423,500 to know why men don’t like to use condoms

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 20 (ANI): The National Institutes of Health is doling out a whopping 423,500 dollars to fund a study, aimed at finding out why men don’t like to wear condoms during sex.

However, the funding hasn’t gone down too well with government watchdogs, which say that the study is a nearly-half-a-million-dollar waste of taxpayer money.

The study by researchers at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute will probe why “young, heterosexual adult men” have problems using condoms, and will include “skill-based intervention” to teach grown men how to use protection.

The first phase of the two-year study called ‘Barriers to Correct Condom Use’ will be a simple Q and A, but doctors say the second phase will plumb uncharted territory.

“The second phase involves a laboratory study, and focuses on penile erection and sensitivity during condom application. The project aims to understand the relationship between condom application and loss of erections and decreased sensation, including the role of condom skills and performance anxiety, and to find new ways to improve condom use among those who experience such problems,” Fox News quoted Drs. Erick Janssen and Stephanie Sanders, both of the Kinsey Institute, as saying.

But government watchdogs are rolling their eyes at what they say is a clear waste of taxpayer money.

“This government is so out of whack with what the priorities are that this actually makes sense that we’d be wasting money on a condom study rather than the real problems facing the country,” said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, which tracks wasteful spending in the federal budget.

However, the study’s directors have said that their project performs a vital public health service, and could help develop prevention and intervention programs to stop the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

“Our study addresses important public health concerns in the U.S. and is the first study to test claims about arousal and sensation loss in a controlled scientific environment, while exploring factors that may be addressed in prevention and intervention programs,” said Janssen.

Janssen said that the study would be conducted among 500 men aged 18-24.

However, only 120 subjects will be involved during the laboratory phase, when scientists will conduct neurological exams and “test an instructional method on the correct and consistent use of condoms.”

Janssen said that the funding for the study is “commensurate with the scope of a research project of this size.” (ANI)

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A woman’s partner status influences her interest in the opposite sex

May 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 29 (ANI): A woman’s interest in the opposite sex does get influenced by her partner status, according to a study.

Indiana University neuroscientist Heather Rupp asked 59 men and 56 women rated 510 photos of opposite-sex faces for realism, masculinity/femininity, attractiveness, or affect.

The participants were instructed to give their “gut” reaction and to rate the pictures as quickly as possible.

The men and women ranged in age from 17 to 26, were heterosexual, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and were not using hormonal contraception.

Twenty-one of the women reported that they had a current sexual partner, compared to 25 of the men.

Rupp observed that women both with and without sexual partners showed little difference in their subjective ratings of photos of men when considering such measures as masculinity and attractiveness.

However, the researchers revealed, the women who did not have sexual partners spent more time evaluating photos of men, demonstrating a greater interest in the photos.

Rupp further revealed that the study did not find any difference between men who had sexual partners and those who did not.

“That there were no detectable effects of sexual partner status on women’s subjective ratings of male faces, but there were on response times, which emphasizes the subtlety of this effect and introduces the possibility that sexual partner status impacts women’s cognitive processing of novel male faces but not necessarily their conscious subjective appraisal,” the authors wrote in a research article.

They also noted that influence of partner status in women could reflect that women, on average, are relatively committed in their romantic relationships, “which possibly suppresses their attention to and appraisal of alternative partners.”

Rupp, assistant scientist at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, added: “These findings may reflect sex differences in reproductive strategies that may act early in the cognitive processing of potential partners and contribute to sex differences in sexual attraction and behaviour.”

The study has been published in the journal Human Nature. (ANI)

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Roemer nominated as US envoy to India

May 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, May 28 (ANI): President Barack Obama has announced his intent to nominate Timothy J. Roemer as the new U.S. Ambassador to India.

Announcing nominations to several key administration posts on May 27, the President said “I am grateful that these distinguished Americans have agreed to help represent the United States and strengthen our partnerships abroad at this critical time for our nation and the world. I am confident they will advance American diplomacy as we work to meet the challenges of the 21st century. I look forward to working with them in the years and months ahead.”

A statement issued by the US Embassy in New Delhi said Roemer is President of the Center for National Policy (CNP) in Washington, D.C.

Before joining the CNP, he represented the 3rd District of Indiana for six terms as a U.S. Congressman, from 1991 to 2003.

Congressman Roemer served as a member of the 9/11 Commission, as well as the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism. He currently serves on the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Presidential Task Force on Combating the Ideology of Radical Extremism, and the National Parks Second Century Commission.

As a distinguished scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Congressman Roemer works with Members of Congress and staff to improve public policy outcomes by teaching on the legislative branch and policy analysis.

Congressman Roemer holds a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego and a M.A. and PhD. from the University of Notre Dame.(ANI)

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Timothy Roemer to be new US Ambassador to India

May 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 28 (ANI): President Barack Obama has nominated distinguished scholar and former Democratic congressman Timothy Roemer of Indiana to be America’s new Ambassador to India.

Roemer served on the blue-ribbon commission investigating the Sepetmber 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States and on a key committee to prevent nuclear proliferation.

He endorsed Obama during his primary campaign and was a strong advocate of Obama’s foreign policy approach.

The White House also announced a raft of top diplomats in capitals from Tokyo to Paris. The group fills many of the highest profile jobs in the Foreign Service and will be crucial representatives of Mr Obama and his State Department with US allies.

Obama appointed Louis Susman, a retired vice chairman of Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking as British envoy.

The White House also announced it plans to nominate Miguel H. Diaz, an associate professor of theology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, for the top job at the Vatican, The Telegraph reported.

To other capitals, Obama planned to nominate Charles Rivkin, an outside homeland security adviser, to France.

He named John Roos, Internet and biotechnology lawyer, as the United States’ top diplomat to Japan.

Obama also named Patricia Butenis, a career diplomat who has previously been posted in Baghdad, Pakistan and New Delhi, as ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. (ANI)

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China’s plants absorb a third of its carbon emissions

April 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, April 23 (ANI): In a new study, an international team of scientists has found that the plants in China absorb a third of its carbon emissions.

According to a report in Nature News, similar work has been done for the United States, but this study provides the first comprehensive analysis of China’s terrestrial carbon uptake, which is critical for calculating the country’s net emissions.

Led by Shilong Piao, an ecologist at Peking University in Beijing, the team estimated carbon uptake during the 1980s and 1990s using three different methods: ecosystem modelling, plant and soil inventories, and an analysis of atmospheric CO2 trends.

The authors estimate a net carbon sink of between 0.19 and 0.26 billion tonnes of carbon per year, which translates to 28 to 37 percent of China’s emissions during the period in question.

“Everyone has been scrambling around to come up with an estimate for China, because we don’t have a lot of information,” said Kevin Gurney, a climate researcher at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

“They really have been methodologically thorough. They have tackled it from three different angles, and the nice thing is that all three of those converge on the same estimate,” he added.

“This is an impressive paper,” said Gregg Marland, a climate researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

He credits the researchers with analyzing the question in three ways and getting a fair amount of agreement in their results.

“In spite of that, there is still a considerable amount of uncertainty, and that uncertainty cascades through the system,” he said.

Although studies such as this can give broad estimates of carbon uptake, Marland said that the only way to pin down some of these numbers might be via satellites, like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory that plunged into the sea earlier this year.

“It’s going to be a long while before we have the kind of satellite data that we want,” he added. (ANI)

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Dalai Lama’s nephew walks more than 1,400 km in US for Tibet

April 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON: A nephew of the Dalai Lama, has walked more than 1,400 km, criss crossing several American States from Indiana to New York to raise
awareness about the Tibet’s issue and pay tribute to all those who have fought for their country’s independence.

The “Walk for Tibet” by Jigme Norbu, began from the Indianapolis City in Indiana on March 10, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan’s uprising, concluded with a rally led by him before Chinese Consulate in New York City.

Norbu is son of late Takster Rinpoche, who fought for complete independence of Tibet until he breathed his last on September 5 last year.

Every day he walked about 40 km; even as towards the end of his long march his body almost gave up with large blisters having formed on his feet and missing nails.

“My pain is nothing compared to what my brothers and sisters have suffered in Tibet, under Chinese oppression that has now lasted for over six decades,” Norbu was quoted as saying to Phayul, a Tibetan website.

Dalai Lama’s nephew said when he walked, he thought of Tibetans, how they were suffering and what they have been through.

“Our supporters were Americans, people who live in communities that gave me water, food, housing, money,” Norbu said.

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Tim Roemer likely to be US Ambassador to India

April 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Tim Roemer, the former Democrat Congressman from Indiana and an ex-member of 9/11 Commission, will be the next US Ambassador to India, a prestigious US foreign policy magazine has said on its web post.

Roemer is currently the president of Centre for National Policy (CNP), a Washington-based think tank.

Besides heading the CNP, Roemer serves on the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, according to his bio-data posted on the CNP website. The Commission is a bipartisan one created by Congress in 2007 as an outgrowth of the reforms put forth by the 9/11 Commission to examine how the US can best address this threat to its national security.

In addition, he serves on the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Presidential Task Force on Combating the Ideology of Radical Extremism, and the National Parks Second Century Commission.

Roemer, 52, who represented Indiana’s Third District from 1991 to 2003, was among the one who had endorsed Obama in his early electoral campaign phase. It is said that his support was a prime reason for Obama’s victory in Indiana.

Roemer’s name was earlier in circulation for the post of CIA Director, which ultimately went to Leon Panetta.

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Crust of neutron stars 10 billion times stronger than steel

April 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, April 15 (ANI): New simulations indicate that the crust of neutron stars is 10 billion times stronger than steel.

According to a report in New Scientist, this finding makes the surface of these ultra-dense stars tough enough to support long-lived bulges that could produce gravitational waves detectable by experiments on Earth.

Neutron stars are the cores left behind when relatively massive stars explode in supernovae. They are incredibly dense, packing about as much mass as the sun into a sphere just 20 kilometers or so across, and some rotate hundreds of times per second.

Because of their extreme gravity and rotational speed, neutron stars could potentially make large ripples in the fabric of space – but only if their surfaces contain bumps or other imperfections that would make them asymmetrical.

A number of mechanisms have been proposed to create these bumps. In theory, these bulges could be stable on the outer surface of the star.

Neutron stars are thought to be made up of a soup of neutrons covered with a solid crust. The crust is composed of crystals of neutron-rich atoms.

“But one of the big unknowns for all that work is the strength of the crust. Can you really support a mountain, or will the crust just collapse under the weight?” said Charles Horowitz of Indiana University in Bloomington.

Since laboratory experiments cannot replicate the extreme conditions on the surface of a neutron star, astronomers have largely assumed that the crust’s strength would be similar to that of the strongest substances on Earth.

But in new computer simulations, Horowitz and Kai Kadau of the Los Alamos National Laboratory show the crust of a neutron star is much stronger.

Materials like rock and steel break because their crystals have gaps and other defects that link up to create cracks. But, the enormous pressures in neutron stars squeeze out many of the imperfections.

That produces extraordinarily clean crystals that are harder to break.

A cube of neutron star crust can be deformed by 20 times more than a cube of stainless steel before breaking.

But the atoms in neutron star crusts are pulled together much more tightly than in steel, so it takes 10 billion times as much pressure to push it to the breaking point, Horowitz told New Scientist.

The stronger crust means a neutron star can support a larger bulge than thought. A “mountain” could rise some 10 centimeters above the surface, stretching over several kilometers.

That would produce gravitational waves with 100 times the energy as those previously calculated. (ANI)

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High pesticide levels in spring, summer up birth defect risk in US

April 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 31 (ANI): A new study in the U.S. has found a link between an increased number of birth defects in children of women who got pregnant in spring or summer and elevated levels of pesticides in surface water across the country.

Studying all 30.1 million births, which occurred in the U.S. between 1996 and 2002, the researchers found that women whose last menstrual period occurred in April, May, June or July were at increased risk for delivering infants with birth defects.

They also found that this period of increased risk correlated with elevated levels of nitrates, atrazine and other pesticides in surface water across the country.

While many of these chemicals, including the herbicide atrazine which is banned in European countries but permitted in the U.S., are suspected to be harmful to the developing embryo, this is the first study to link their increased seasonal concentration in surface water with the peak in birth defects in infants conceived in the same months.

The correlation between the month of last menstrual period and higher rates of birth defects was statistically significant for half of the 22 categories of birth defects reported in a Centers for Disease Control database from 1996 to 2002 including spina bifida, cleft lip, clubfoot and Down’s syndrome.

“Elevated concentrations of pesticides and other agrochemicals in surface water during April through July coincided with significantly higher risk of birth defects in live births conceived by women whose last menstrual period began in the same months,” said Paul Winchester, M.D., Indiana University School of Medicine professor of clinical pediatrics, the first author of the study.

“While our study didn’t prove a cause and effect link, the fact that birth defects and pesticides in surface water peak during the same four months makes us suspect that the two are related,” he added.

The study has been published in the April 2009 issue of the medical journal Acta Pædiatrica. (ANI)

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James Bond named Hollywood’s Top Hero

March 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 28 (ANI): James Bond has been crowned the title of Hollywood’s top hero in a new magazine poll.

The superspy pipped Indiana Jones, Superman and Harry Potter to land the honour.

Bond, who has been played on screen by Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, came in at number one in the Entertainment Weekly Top 20 Heroes Poll, reports Contactmusic.

Harrison Ford’s adventurer, Indiana Jones, came second.

Also making the top 10: Alien heroine Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, Robin Hood, Spider-Man and Die Hard’s John MCClane.

Ford is the only star to land two characters in the top 10 – his Star Wars hero Han Solo also features. (ANI)

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Hatha yoga ‘reduces fear of falling in elderly’

March 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 10 (ANI): Researchers from Indiana University have found that Hatha yoga can help reduce fear of falling among older adults.

According to the study, just a few minutes of pranayama twice weekly can help reduce fear of falling, increase lower body flexibility and lower older adults’ leisure constraints.

Fear of falling compels older adults to limit their social and physical activity, which can in turn diminish their health and quality of life.

In the study led by Marieke Van Puymbroeck, assistant professor in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Studies in IU’s School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, the researchers recruited 14 men and women with an average age of 78. Five participants had fallen previously.

The participants took a class in hatha yoga, which is a gentle form of yoga that easily can be adapted for individual needs and can be performed from a seated position. The twice weekly classes each lasted 60 minutes.

After the 12 weeks, the participants reported a 6 percent reduction in their fear of falling, a 34 percent increase in lower body flexibility, and a statistically significant reduction in leisure constraints.

Van Puymbroeck said participants reported “tremendous benefits,” with emerging themes that included the ability to generalize principals of posture to other situations, increased range of motion, increased flexibility and improved balance.

The study was presented at International Association of Yoga Therapists’ Symposium for Yoga Therapy and Research in Los Angeles. (ANI)

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