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New evidence points towards water on Moon

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 19 (ANI): Two separate lunar missions have found evidence which indicates that the polar regions of the moon are chock full of water-altered minerals.

According to a report in Nature News, early results from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched on June 18, are offering a wide array of watery signals.

The Moon, in fact, has water in all sorts of places: not just locked up in minerals, but scattered throughout the broken-up surface, and, potentially, in blocks or sheets of ice at depth.

“We are on the verge of a renaissance in our thinking about the poles of the Moon, including how water ice gets there,” said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which on October 9, will slam into a polar crater with the intention of ploughing up a plume of water ice for many telescopic eyes to see.

The initial LRO results confirm what was long suspected as a way for ice to stay trapped on the Moon for billions of years.

A thermal mapping instrument showed that permanently shadowed regions within deep polar craters are as cold as 35o Kelvin (-238o Celsius).

Project scientist Richard Vondrak said that they are the coldest spots in the Solar System – even colder than the surface of Pluto.

Variations in the flux of neutrons suggests variability in water content among craters.

But, the surprise comes from a different instrument on LRO, which counts slow-moving neutrons as a way of measuring hydrogen abundance in the top metre or so of the surface.

This hydrogen is often interpreted as a proxy for water ice, although it could also be molecular hydrogen or hydrogen trapped in other molecules.

The LRO instrument has already found a significant excess of hydrogen at the poles.

But, with added resolution, it is seeing surprising variability within the polar regions. Some of the craters appear enriched in hydrogen. Others are not.

Stranger still, some areas outside the crater walls, which were thought to get too hot for water to linger, show an excess of hydrogen.

Vondrak said this shows that the water could have arrived more recently, or that it can persist if buried as impacts till the lunar soil.

If the LCROSS impact spews up ice, it will eliminate the last vestiges of doubt about water on the Moon.

It could also start a new hunt: to find a record of impact events, such as water-rich comet strikes, that put the ice there in the first place. (ANI)

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Terrorism a by-product of Pak’s past mistakes: Zardari

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Sep. 19 (ANI): President Asif Ali Zardari has revealed that extremism was a by-product of Pakistan’s past mistakes and was deliberately created during the 1980s.

He said the employment of a liberal policy encouraged religious fanaticism and achieved of certain strategic objectives of terror perpetrators.

“What we are witnessing today is the outcome of that policy of the 80′s and even earlier.The policy of using religious extremism as an instrument of war. We in Pakistan have paid a very heavy price for this policy,” The News quoted Zardari, as saying.

Addressing a gathering at London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), Zardari pointed out that militants and militancy were not created in a vacuum; they have been the product of a deliberate policy to fight the rival ideology.

The free world adopted a novel strategy that was based on the exploitation of religion to motivate Muslims around the world to wage jehad, he added.

Furthermore, Zardari pointed out that the strategy may have worked well but some serious mistakes were also made as the world abandoned Afghanistan in a hurry and no thought was given to its stability after the withdrawal of foreign forces.

“After the retreat of foreign forces, Afghanistan was abandoned and left at the mercy of the warlords and the jehadis…Pakistan has suffered more than others. For decades we had to host and continue to host millions of Afghan refugees,” he said. (ANI)

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Findings from India’s Chandrayaan to provide new understanding of lunar surface

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 18 (ANI): India’s Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) has gathered data for a total of 30 solar flares, giving the most accurate measurements to date of magnesium, aluminum, silicon, calcium, and iron in the lunar surface.

Although contact was lost with Chandrayaan-1 last month, the enhanced performance of the C1XS instrument, which exceeded its design specification, means that the science team will be able to determine the geochemistry of new areas of the lunar surface, adding some vital pieces to the jigsaw of the mineralogy of the lunar surface.

The miniature C1XS instrument investigated the lunar surface using an effect whereby X-ray illumination from the Sun causes rocks to fluoresce, emitting light at a different wavelength.

This re-emitted light contains spectral peaks that are characteristic of elements contained in the rock, revealing its composition.

Solar flares act like a flash bulb, giving added illumination and allowing C1XS to ‘see’ more elements.

During normal conditions, C1XS could detect magnesium, aluminum, and silicon and collected data on the levels of these elements, enabling detailed mapping of areas of the lunar surface during its operational period.

During the 30 solar flares, C1XS detected calcium and iron (and sometimes titanium, sodium, and potassium) in key areas in the southern hemisphere and on the far side of the Moon.

The spectral resolution of 50 km was much better than previous missions.

According to Professor Grande, “The C1XS team will be analyzing the data collected during the Chandrayaan-1 mission over the next few months, and the results will help us further our knowledge of the Moon and planetary formation.”

In addition, the design of the instrument has been proved very successful in that it withstood passage through the Earth’s radiation belts and went on to produce these wonderful high-resolution spectra. We were able to separate clear peaks for each of the target elements, allowing us not only to identify where they are present but give an accurate estimate for how much is there,” he said.

“The technology developed for C1XS opens up some exciting opportunities for future missions,” he added. (ANI)

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Lunar clock to be built by River Thames by 2012

September 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 3 (ANI): Scientists and artists are planning to build a 40m-wide lunar clock by the River Thames by the year 2012.

According to a report by BBC News, the aim is to create a new London landmark close to the proposed Olympic stadium as a monument to a more natural way of marking time.

The proposed site is at East India Dock, six miles along the river from Westminster Palace. It is currently a bedraggled nature reserve.

The designers of the clock hope that the instrument will become as iconic as Big Ben, which has been marking time for 150 years.

Laura Williams, an East London artist, explained that the clock would be powered by the tides from the Thames.

“There are three giant concentric rings made from recycled glass. Light shines through from the glass in time with the Moon’s cycles so the largest ring shows the lunar phase,” she said.

“Gradually, the light waxes on all the way around the ring and connects full circle when it’s full Moon,” she added.

“The second ring is like the big hand of the clock. It’s a marker of light that tracks the Moon around the globe so that’s the lunar day cycle,” said Williams.

“The third ring – the smallest – is the small hand that tracks the tide as it goes from high tide to low,” she said.

The clock has been called Aluna. It is a word from the Kogi indigenous people of Colombia.

“It means memory, possibility. It’s also being in tune with the planet’s rhythms and living in harmony with our planet,” said Williams.

According to Dr Usama Hasan, an astronomer, in this age of iPods and atomic clocks, there is a greater need than ever for an older way of measuring time.

“Aluna is a project which tries to connect us back to the cosmic cycle, with nature. I think that’s very important especially in the very technological age we live in,” said Hasan. (ANI)

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Galileo’s telescope was more commercial in nature than scientific

August 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 26 (ANI): Historians have said that Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei’s invention of the telescope was more commercial in nature than an attempt to contribute in scientific progress.

Galileo’s telescope is today remembered as a revolutionary stargazing tool that changed Earth’s standing in the heavens.

According to a report in the National Geographic News, historians have said that when Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei presented his version of the telescope to officials in the Italian city-state of Venice, he was simply seeking a career boost.

Galileo needed a pay raise, in part to support several illegitimate children, according to science historian Alan Chapman of the University of Oxford in the UK.

“He was a rather obscure professor on the make showing a novelty invented by somebody else to his bosses,” Chapman said.

A math professor at the University of Padua, Galileo based his optical instrument on spyglasses developed the previous year by Dutch spectacle makers.

The Venetian Senate was about to purchase one of the popular gadgets when Galileo stepped in with his own version.

Made of wood and leather, Galileo’s telescope had eight-times magnification, a convex main lens, and a concave eyepiece that-unlike other telescopes of the period-presented the image the right way up.

Venice’s interest in the telescope was commercial rather than scientific, according to science historian Alan Chapman of the University of Oxford in the UK.

“The maritime city’s wealth and power was based on overseas trade, and at the time its vessels were being attacked by the Turks,” Chapman said.

To demonstrate the enemy-spotting potential of his telescope, “Galileo took a number of senators up to one of the bell towers in Venice where you can see ships out in the lagoon,” he said.

In 1609, most Europeans accepted the Christian account of creation, which placed our planet at the center of the universe.

Galileo’s telescope overturned this idea by allowing the scientist to observe moon-like phases in the planet Venus, which could only be explained by a sun-centered solar system.

Galileo likewise discovered that Jupiter was orbited by its own moons.

“This established beyond a doubt that the Earth was not the only center of motion in the universe,” said Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society in London.

Galileo’s telescope and astronomical observations also showed the surface of the moon wasn’t smooth, as was believed, and he was the first person to reveal that the Milky Way was composed of stars. (ANI)

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Indian origin scientist’s supercomputer can perform 28.16 trillion calculations per second

August 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 22 (ANI): A scientist of Indian origin has created a new supercomputer, called Cystorm, which can carry out 28.16 trillion calculations per second.

Cystorm, a Sun Microsystems machine, was developed by Srinivas Aluru from the Iowa State University.

The 3,200 computer processor cores that power Cystorm makes it perform 28.16 trillion calculations per second, which is five times the peak of CyBlue, an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer that’s been on campus since early 2006 and uses 2,048 processors to do 5.7 trillion calculations per second.

According to Aluru, the Ross Martin Mehl and Marylyne Munas Mehl Professor of Computer Engineering and the leader of the Cystorm project, the new machine also scores high on a more realistic test of a supercomputer’s actual performance: 15.44 trillion calculations per second compared to CyBlue’s 4.7 trillion per second.

That measure makes Cystorm 3.3 times more powerful than CyBlue.

“Cystorm is going to be very good for data-intensive research projects,” Aluru said. “The capabilities of Cystorm will help Iowa State researchers do new, pioneering research in their fields,” he added.

The supercomputer is targeted for work in materials science, power systems and systems biology.

Aluru said that materials scientists will use the supercomputer to analyze data from the university’s Local Electrode Atom Probe microscope, an instrument that can gather data and produce images at the atomic scale of billionths of a meter.

Systems biologists will use the supercomputer to build gene networks that will help researchers understand how thousands of genes interact with each other.

Power systems researchers will use the supercomputer to study the security, reliability and efficiency of the energy infrastructure of the US.

Computer engineers will use the supercomputer to build a software infrastructure that helps users make decisions by identifying relevant information sources.

“These research efforts will lead to significant advances in the penetration of high performance computing technology,” said a summary of the Cystorm project. (ANI)

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New X-ray technique reveals buried image in N. C. Wyeth’s painting

August 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 20 (ANI): A new X-ray imaging technique has for the first time in a century revealed unprecedented details of a painting hidden beneath another painting by famed American illustrator Newell Convers Wyeth, who is regarded as the greatest American illustrator of the 20th century.

While making a presentation at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on Wednesday, Dr. Jennifer Mass said that the non-destructive look-beneath-the-surface method could reveal hidden images in hundreds of Old Master paintings, and other prized works of art.

In the study paper, the researcher noted that many great artists re-used canvases or covered paintings with other paintings, in order to save money on materials or to let the colours and shapes of a prior composition influence the next one.

Art historians believe that several of Wyeth’s most valued illustrations have been lost from view in that way, and one of them, depicting a dramatic fist fight, was published in a 1919 Everybody’s Magazine article titled ‘The Mildest Mannered Man’.

X-ray techniques previously used by other scientists suggested that Wyeth had covered the fight scene with another painting called ‘Family Portrait’, but they had not shown the the true image except in black and white reproductions.

The new instrument, called a confocal X-ray fluorescence microscope, was developed at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) national X-ray facility.

The instrument reveals minute details in hidden paintings without removing paint samples. It shoots X-ray beams into a painting and then collects fluorescent X-ray “signals” given off by the chemicals in the various paint layers.

Scientists can link each signal to specific paint pigments.

In addition to revealing the original image, the method is providing new information on Wyeth’s materials and methods.

The same technique may ultimately reveal hidden images in paintings by other famed artists, the researchers say. (ANI)

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Musician reunites with £300K violin forgotten in NY cab through GPS!

August 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, August 19 (ANI): A musician has GPS technology to thank for a reunion with his 300,000-pound violin that he forgot in a New York cab.

Hahn-Bin left the 18th century instrument in a yellow taxi while heading back home from a concert.

The absent-minded 22-year-old later realised his loss after reaching his Chinatown apartment and called the city’s taxi authorities and the police.

“Losing an instrument is a greatest fear, even more than making a mistake on stage,” the Telegraph quoted Hahn-Bin as saying.

The taxi dispatcher located the cab with ease since all yellow taxis are fitted with GPS trackers.

Overnight records showed that the musician had been dropped off by Dalbir Singh, before the driver finished his shift and headed home to New Jersey, where the violin was safely waiting. (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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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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All BPL families proposed to be brought under Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana

July 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, July 6 (ANI): Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday said that the Government proposes to bring all BPL families under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY).

Announcing this while presenting the budget in Parliament today, Mukherjee said that Rs. 350 crore, marking a 40 per cent increase over the previous allocation is being provided in the 2009-10 BE for this.

“The RSBY was operationalised last year and the initial response was very good, with more than 46 lakh BPL families in eighteen States and UTs having been issued biometric smart cards,” he said.

This scheme empowers poor families by giving them freedom of choice for using health care services from an extensive list of hospitals including private hospitals,” he added.

The Minister further said that for the National Rural Health Mission, an increase of Rs.2057 crore over and above Rs.12,070 crore provided in the interim budget is proposed, as this is an essential instrument for achieving our goal of health for all. (ANI)

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New instrument can detect explosives up to range of 100 meters

July 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 4 (ANI): Scientists have developed a new explosives detector with incredible sensitivity and a range of up to 100 meters that could save lives and thwart the efforts of terrorists.

The detector, developed by a team of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is based on photo-induced acoustic spectroscopy (PIAS).

Using PIAS, the military and law enforcement agencies will have an instrument that is one-tenth the size of competing products.

At five pounds, it is one-fifth the weight and is about one-fifth the cost of the competition.

It works by illuminating the suspected explosive with an eye-safe laser and allowing the scattered light to be detected by a quartz crystal tuning fork.

After a series of subsequent steps, the instrument is able to identify a number of explosives without jeopardizing the safety of the operator.

Funding for research work into the development of the instrument was provided by the Department of Energy’s Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development and the Office of Naval Research. (ANI)

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Laser beam powered optical transistor may lead to ultrafast light-based computers

July 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 2 (ANI): Swiss researchers have made an optical transistor that uses one laser beam to control another, an instrument that could form the heart of a future generation of ultrafast light-based computers.

Conventional computers are based on transistors, which allow one electrode to control the current moving through the device and are combined to form logic gates and processors.

According to a report in New Scientist, the new component achieves the same thing, but for laser beams, not electric currents.

A green laser beam is used to control the power of an orange laser beam passing through the device.

This offers another possible route to light-based rather than electronic, computing.

Such “photonic” computing is desirable because components using optical fibres carrying light could be much faster than those using wires to carry electricity.

However, previous attempts to make optical transistors for such circuits only produced very weak effects.

The new device could change that.

To make their device, Vahid Sandoghdar and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, suspended tetradecane, a hydrocarbon dye, in an organic liquid.

They then froze the suspension to -272 degrees Celsius using liquid helium – creating a crystalline matrix in which individual dye molecules could be targeted with lasers.

When a finely tuned orange laser beam is trained on a dye molecule, it efficiently soaks up most of it up – leaving a much weaker “output” beam to continue beyond the dye.

But when the molecule is also targeted with a green laser beam, it starts to produce strong orange light of its own and so boosts the power of the orange output beam.

This effect is down to the hydrocarbon molecule absorbing the green light, only to lose the equivalent energy in the form of orange light.

“That light constructively interferes with the incoming orange beam and makes it brighter,” said Sandoghar’s colleague Jaesuk Hwang.

Using the green beam to switch the orange output beam from weak to strong is analogous to the way a transistor’s control electrode switches a current between “on” and “off” voltages, and hence the 0s and 1s of digital data.

Doing it with a single molecule means billions could be packed into future photonic chips. (ANI)

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Hand-held devices that can detect presence of aerosols in air above oceans

June 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 30 (ANI): A team of scientists is developing hand-held devices that can detect the presence of aerosols in air above oceans by measuring how light scatters as it strikes the particles.

The portable photometers have been developed by Alexander Smirnov, an AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, and his team.

Aerosols, the tiny atmospheric particles that can have an outsized impact on the climate, are just as likely to be found in the air above the oceans as they are over land.

Yet, aerosols are scarcely measured over the oceans.

Now, Smirnov, who is leading a new effort called the Maritime Aerosol Network (MAN), will send researchers with portable photometers on oceanographic research cruises.

The hand-held devices can detect the presence of aerosols in air by measuring how light scatters as it strikes the particles.

Taking the measurements is relatively easy.

Several times a day, a researcher stands on a ship’s deck when the sun is fully visible, points the instrument at the sun, and pushes a button. The photometer performs a series of scans within a few seconds.

Smirnov has arranged to have the have handheld photometers carried aboard more than 50 vessels, both commercial and research, from 12 countries since November 2006.

Initial results show that data from the portable photometers correspond well with permanent AERONET stations on select islands.

The initial efforts have produced a tantalizing observation.

“Aerosol concentrations over the oceans at the high latitudes are not as high as satellite measurements suggest they should be,” said Smirnov. “We need to figure out why we’re seeing this difference,” he added. (ANI)

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IAF mountaineers recover black box of crashed AN-32 plane

June 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, June 29 (ANI): A team of the Indian Air Force Adventure Cell has recovered the black box of the AN-32 aircraft that crashed on June 9.

The aircraft was heading towards the Indian Army’s advance base camp near Menchuka in Arunachal Pradesh when it crashed in the Tato Hills, killing 13 defence personnel.

The Indian Air Force used its mountaineering team comprising of Squadron Leader Namit Rawat, Warrant Officer Nizamuddin, Junior warrant officer Narendr Kumar and N R Choudhary to recover the cockpit voice recorder and the flight date box.

“It just proves that adventure is not only fun but can also be used in other productive fields, especially when life of IAF personnel and assets are involved that will help to find facts and help to reduce future accidents,” Squadron Leader Rawat said.

Rawat said the team reached the base camp, which was nearly 500meters above the debris site at a height of 7,900 feet, on June 16 and immediately started searching for the black box. The team was joined by two technical officers, a court of inquiry pilot member and an instrument fitter technician of the IAF.

The team located the tail section of the aircraft amongst the scattered debris hanging precariously over few trees and inverted in an awkward 75-degree angle. The CVR and FDR are normally housed in the tail section of the aircraft. These were retrieved successfully by the team after an hour-and-half operation, Rawat said.

According to a communiqui issued by the IAF, the team also looked for more panels that could help the accident investigation team.

The recorders have since been sent to Jorhat in Arunachal Pradesh for further information (ANI)

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Scientists create first acoustic metamaterial ‘superlens’

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 25 (ANI): A team of researchers at the University of Illinois (U. of I.) has created the world’s first acoustic “superlens,” an innovation that could have practical implications for high-resolution ultrasound imaging, non-destructive structural testing of buildings and bridges, and novel underwater stealth technology.

The team, led by Nicholas X. Fang, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois, successfully focused ultrasound waves through a flat metamaterial lens on a spot roughly half the width of a wavelength at 60.5 kHz using a network of fluid-filled Helmholtz resonators.

According to the results, the acoustic system is analogous to an inductor-capacitor circuit.

The transmission channels act as a series of inductors, and the Helmholtz resonators, which Fang describes as cavities that house resonating waves and oscillate at certain sonic frequencies almost as a musical instrument would, act as capacitors.

Fang said acoustic imaging is somewhat analogous to optical imaging in that bending sound is similar to bending light.

But, compared with optical and X-ray imaging, creating an image from sound is “a lot safer, which is why we use sonography on pregnant women,” said Shu Zhang, a U. of I. graduate student who along with Leilei Yin, a microscopist at the Beckman Institute, are co-authors of the research paper.

Acoustic imaging can be used for tumor detection.

“In the body, tumors are often surrounded by hard tissues with high contrast, so you can’t see them clearly, and acoustic imaging may provide more details than optical imaging methods,” said Fang.Fang said that the application of acoustic imaging technology goes beyond medicine.

Eventually, the technology could lead to “a completely new suite of data that previously wasn’t available to us using just natural materials,” he said.

In the field of non-destructive testing, the structural soundness of a building or a bridge could be checked for hairline cracks with acoustic imaging, as could other deeply embedded flaws invisible to the eye or unable to be detected by optical imaging.

“Acoustic imaging is a different means of detecting and probing things, beyond optical imaging,” Fang said.

Fang said acoustic imaging could also lead to better underwater stealth technology, possibly even an “acoustic cloak” that would act as camouflage for submarines.

“Right now, the goal is to bring this ‘lab science’ out of the lab and create a practical device or system that will allow us to use acoustic imaging in a variety of situations,” he said. (ANI)

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Phil Spector wants TV, iPod, computer in jail

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, June 25 (ANI): Convicted record producer Phil Spector wants a TV, an iPod and a computer while he serves his prison term of 19 years to life for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

The shamed music mogul was assigned to a “sensitive needs facility” at a California jail after he was pronounced guilty of fatally shooting Clarkson in 2003.

The 69-year-old’s wife Rachelle said the jailbird had requested several electronic items and gadgets from behind the bars.

“He wants a TV and an iPod or something like that for listening to music. And he would like to be able to receive email,” The Daily Express quoted her as saying.

She added: “He has not requested an instrument, and I doubt if he will.” (ANI)

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New instrument may detect groundwater deep inside Mars

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 25 (ANI): A team of Boulder (US) scientists and engineers has tested a new instrument prototype that might be used to detect groundwater deep inside Mars.

Known as the Mars Time Domain Electromagnetic Sounder (MTDEM), the instrument uses induction to generate electrical currents in the ground, whose secondary magnetic fields are in turn detected at the planetary surface.

In this way, the electrical conductivity of the subsurface can be reconstructed.

“Groundwater that has been out of atmospheric circulation for eons will be very salty,” said the project’s principal investigator Dr. Robert Grimm, a director in the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute. “It is a near-ideal exploration target for inductive systems,” he added.

The inductive principle of the MTDEM is distinct from the wavelike, surface-penetrating radars MARSIS and SHARAD presently orbiting Mars.

“The radars have been very useful in imaging through ice and through very dry, low-density rock, but they have not lived up to expectations to look through solid rock and find water,” said Grimm.

The time-domain inductive method uses a large, flat-lying loop of wire on the ground to generate and receive electromagnetic signals.

In order to do this robotically, the team developed a launch system that shoots two projectiles, each paying out spooled wire as they fly.

Data taken during the test launches allowed Warden and Grimm to scale the system for a flight mission. The MTDEM prototype deployed to a distance of more than 70 meters.

For Mars, a system deploying a 200-meter loop would be less than 6 kilograms mass and could detect groundwater at depths up to 5 kilometers (3 miles). Most of the instrument’s mass would be in the loop and deployment system.

According to Barry Berdanier, the Ball electrical engineer who built the MTDEM electronics, the flight electronics would comprise just a few hundred grams.

“Electromagnetic induction methods are widely used in groundwater exploration,” said James Pfieffer of Zapata Incorporated, a geophysical firm that provided field support.

“Subsurface, liquid water on Mars could be a habitable zone for microbes. We know that huge volumes of discharged groundwater have shaped Mars’ ancient surface,” said Grimm. (ANI)

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