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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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Brain predicts what eyes in motion will see

August 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 26 (ANI): A New study ahs shown that the brain predicts what one is going to see before the eyes take in a new scene.

Published in the Journal of Vision, a research article on the study reveals that people participating in it were asked to shift their eyes to a clock with a fast-moving hand, and to report the time on the clock when their eyes landed on it.

The report says that the average reported time was 39 milliseconds before the actual time.

As a control task, the clock moved instead of the eyes, and the reported arrival times averaged 27 milliseconds after the actual time.

“We’ve revealed a moment in time when things are not perceived as they actually are. These findings serve as a reminder that every aspect of our experience is constructed by our brains,” said lead researcher Dr. Amelia Hunt, of the University of Aberdeen’s School of Psychology.

The study suggests that the prediction is a result of remapping, where neurons involved in visual perception become active or dormant to help the brain maintain a stable visual environment despite the constant shift of images on the retina.

The report says: “Remapping allows locations to be continuously represented across the eye movement by maintaining both current and expected locations simultaneously, facilitating the transition between the two.” Hunt added: “The finding implies that we experience the predicted consequence of an eye movement as though it is actually occurring, albeit just for a moment.”

Hunt said that the research might lead to more investigation of the brain’s ability to predict and its role in perception, as well as the link between brain activity and actual experience.

She said that the next step might be to examine under what circumstances predictive processes occur, what function they serve, and to what degree they influence the perception of events. (ANI)

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Astroyogi.com has launched India’s first fully translated Hindi astrology portal

August 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug 18 (ANI/Business Wire India): India’s largest astrology portal, astroyogi.com launched its fully translated Astro portal in Hindi today.

(http://hindi.astroyogi.com) This is India’s first fully translated Astrology portal in Hindi.

Astroyogi.com houses over 10,000 pages of unique content covering all areas of astrology and spirituality, including numerology, tarot, vaastu, fengshui and Chinese astrology.

With a registered userbase reaching a million and over 10 million page views a month.

“Only 10.33 per cent of the Indian population speaks and reads in English and therefore the Hindi Astroyogi portal is a strategic step forward in targeting the other 89 per cent of the Indian population,” said Meena Kapoor co-founder and CEO Astroyogi.com.

Language preference is a big market advantage in the online business. A large giant such as Google, too, provides their content in Indian Languages.

The Hindi version of the portal will showcase the entire suite of Astro services existing on the English version as well. Live phone advice, vedic astrology services, palmistry services, life prediction, career prediction, love horoscope, health forecasts, janam patrika, match making and lots more is now available to the new set of audiences.

The astrology market in India is pegged at 40,000 cr and a large part of the audience is online.

Astroyogi.com is a company dedicated to providing Astro services with a large pool of astrologers and several experts on its panel and this enables Astroyogi.com to bring to its customers the collective domain knowledge. (ANI)

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Brain scans can tell ‘honest’ person from ‘dishonest’ one even when both tell the truth

July 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 14 (ANI): Researching into the cognitive process involved with honesty, Harvard University psychologists have come to the conclusion that truthfulness depends more on absence of temptation than active resistance to temptation.

Assistant Professor Joshua Greene and graduate student Joe Paxton, the duo that led the study, have revealed that they used neuroimaging to look at the brain activity of people given the chance to gain money dishonestly by lying, and found that honest people showed no additional neural activity when telling the truth.

The researchers say that that observation implied that extra cognitive processes were not necessary to choose honesty.

However, the researchers also found that individuals who behaved dishonestly, even when telling the truth, showed additional activity in brain regions that involve control and attention.

“Being honest is not so much a matter of exercising willpower as it is being disposed to behave honestly in a more effortless kind of way. This may not be true for all situations, but it seems to be true for at least this situation,” says Greene.

The researchers say that they carried out the study to test two theories about the nature of honesty – the “Will” theory, in which honesty results from the active resistance of temptation, and the “Grace” theory in which honesty is a product of lack of temptation.

Writing about their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they have suggested that the “Grace” theory is true, because the honest participants did not show any additional neural activity when telling the truth.

To prompt participants to lie, the researchers created a cover story about the focus of their study. The research was presented as a study of paranormal ability to predict the future.

The researchers asked those participating in the study to predict the outcomes of a series of coin tosses.

The subjects were told that the research team believed predicting the future was more likely when given a monetary incentive, and when the prediction was not shared in advance of the outcome. That gave the participants the opportunity to lie and say that they had correctly predicted the coin toss to win the money.

The subjects’ honesty was assessed based on whether their number of correct responses was statistically feasible.

According to the researchers, the participants who reported improbably high levels of accuracy were classified as dishonest, and those reporting statistically feasible levels of accuracy were classified as honest.

With the aid of fMRI technique, Greene found that the honest individuals displayed little to no additional brain activity when reporting their prediction of the coin toss. However, the dishonest participants’ brains were most active in control-related brain regions when they chose not to lie.

Greene notes that there was an important distinction between the brain activity when the honest participants told the truth, and when the dishonest participants told the truth.

“When the honest people leave money on the table, you don’t see anything special or extra going on in their brains at all. Whereas, when the dishonest people leave money on the table, that’s when you saw the most robust control network activation,” says the researcher.

The researchers hope that their findings may pave the way for a technique to detect lies by looking at someone’s brain activity, but they also concede that a lot more work must be done before this becomes possible. (ANI)

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Toxic substance helps birds ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic field

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 10 (ANI): In a new research, scientists at the University of Illinois, US, have determined that a toxic molecule, ‘superoxide’, known to damage cells and cause disease may also play a pivotal role in bird migration, as it allows them to ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic field.

According to principal investigator Klaus Schulten, who holds the Swanlund Chair in Physics at Illinois, the discovery occurred as a result of a ‘mistake’ made by a collaborator.

His postdoctoral collaborator, Ilia Solov’yov, of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, did not know that superoxide was toxic, seeing it instead as an ideal reaction partner in a biochemical process involving the protein cryptochrome in a bird’s eye.

Cryptochrome is a blue-light photoreceptor found in plants and in the eyes of birds and other animals. Schulten was the first to propose (in 2000) that this protein was a key component of birds’ geomagnetic sense, a proposal that was later corroborated by experimental evidence.

He made this prediction after he and his colleagues discovered that magnetic fields can influence chemical reactions if the reactions occur quickly enough to be governed by pure quantum mechanics.

“Prior to our work, it was thought that this was impossible because magnetic fields interact so weakly with molecules,” he said.

Such chemical reactions involve electron transfers, “which result in freely tumbling spins of electrons. These spins behave like an axial compass,” Schulten said.

Changes in the electromagnetic field, such as those experienced by a bird changing direction in flight, appear to alter this biochemical compass in the eye, allowing the bird to see how its direction corresponds to north or south.

“Other researchers had found that cryptochrome, acting through its own molecular spins, recruits a reaction partner that operates at so-called zero spin. They suggested that molecular oxygen is that partner,” Schulten said.

“We propose that the reaction partner is not the benign oxygen molecule that we all breathe, but its close cousin, superoxide, a negatively charged oxygen molecule,” he added.

When Solov’yov showed that superoxide would work well as a reaction partner, Schulten was at first dismissive.

“But then I realized that the toxicity of superoxide was actually crucial to its role,” he said.

According to Schulten, the body has many mechanisms for reducing concentrations of superoxide to prevent its damaging effects.

But this gives an advantage, since the molecule must be present at low concentrations – but not too low – “to make the biochemical compass work effectively,” he said. (ANI)

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Cell phone towers can help predict the next big flood

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Tel Aviv, July 7 (ANI): Researchers from Tel Aviv University, Israel, have said that they can predict the intensity of the next big flood by using common cell phone towers across the United States.

Their model, which analyzes cell phone signals, adds a critical component to weather forecasting never before available.

“By monitoring the specific and fluctuating atmospheric moisture around cell phone towers throughout America, we can cheaply, effectively and reliably provide a more accurate ‘critical moisture distribution’ level for fine-tuning model predictions of big floods,” said Professor Pinhas Alpert, a geophysicist and head of Tel Aviv University’s Porter School for Environmental Education.

Cell phone towers emit radio waves that are diminished by moisture in the air, a factor that can be used to improve model warnings on flood levels.

In addition, the researchers measured the rainfall distributions and were able to accurately estimate the size of impending floods before they struck.

This was demonstrated in post-analysis of two case-studies of floods in the Judean Desert in Israel, where cell phone towers and flash floods are abundant.

Using real data measurements collected from the towers, the researchers demonstrated how microwave links in a cellular network correlated with surface station humidity measurements.

The data provided by cell phone towers is the missing link weather forecasters need to improve the accuracy of flood forecasting.

“Our method provides reliable measurement of moisture fields near the flood zone for the first time,” said Professor Alpert. “This new tool can add to the bigger picture of understanding climate change patterns in general,” he added.

“Accurate predictions of flooding were difficult before because there haven’t been enough reliable measurements of moisture fields in remote locations,” Professor Alpert further added.

Using the signals collected from cell phone towers as they communicate with base stations and our handsets, weather forecasters will now have a crucial missing piece of information for flood prediction that they never had before.

It will permit forecasters and residents alike to more accurately gauge the danger they face from an impending flood. (ANI)

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Sex evolved as a defence against parasites, suggests article

July 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 7 (ANI): Sex may have evolved in part as a defence against parasites, suggests a research article.

Published in the journal American Naturalist, the article highlights the fact that when an asexual creature reproduces, it makes clones-exact genetic copies of itself.

It further point out that each clone has the same genes, and, consequently, the same genetic vulnerabilities to parasites.

The article states that if a parasite emerges that can exploit those vulnerabilities, it can wipe out the whole population.

Sexual offspring, on the other hand, are genetically unique, often with different parasite vulnerabilities. That is why, says the write-up, a parasite that can destroy some can’t necessarily destroy all.

In theory, that should help sexual populations maintain stability, while asexual populations face extinction at the hands of parasites.

These propositions are based on several pieces of research on Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a snail common in fresh water lakes in New Zealand which has both sexual and asexual versions.

Jukka Jokela of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Mark Dybdahl of the University of Washington and Curtis Lively of Indian University, Bloomington began observing several populations of these snails for ten years starting in 1994.

The researchers monitored the number of sexuals, the number asexuals, and the rates of parasite infection for both.

They found that clones that were plentiful at the beginning of the study became more susceptible to parasites over time.

As parasite infections increased, the once plentiful clones dwindled dramatically in number. Some clonal types disappeared entirely.

However, sexual snail populations remained much more stable over time. This, the authors say, is exactly the pattern predicted by the parasite hypothesis.

“The rise and fall of these female-only lineages was surprisingly fast and consistent with the prediction of the parasite hypothesis for sex. These results suggest that sexual reproduction provides an evolutionary advantage in parasite rich environments,” Jokela said. (ANI)

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Hepatitis B virus mutations may help predict liver cancer risk

July 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 3 (ANI): Scientists from Second Military Medical University in Shanghai have revealed that mutations in the DNA of hepatitis B virus (HBV) might help predict which patients are at increased risk of developing liver cancer,

HBV infection is a known cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer.

During the research, the team analysed 43 studies with a total of 11,582 HBV-infected participants, of whom 2,801 had HCC.

They found that certain mutations were associated with development of HCC, and more prevalent as chronic HBV infection progressed from the asymptomatic state to liver cirrhosis or HCC.

“Frequent examination of patients with chronic HBV infections for the presence of these mutations may be useful for identifying which patients require preventive antiviral treatment and for the prediction of HCC,” wrote the authors.

The study appears in Journal of the National Cancer Institute. (ANI)

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Complications in previous pregnancies may affect health of next baby

June 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 29 (ANI): Dutch researchers say that complications early in pregnancy or in previous pregnancies can help predict further risk in current or subsequent pregnancies.

Dr Robbert van Oppenraaij, a medical doctor and PhD student in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Erasmus MC University Medical Centre (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), believes that the new findings may help predict more easily which women might need greater care and supervision during pregnancy.

“There were several interesting findings,” said the researcher.

“To name two: firstly, we found that after any first trimester complication or event, the risk of preterm or very preterm delivery is increased in the subsequent or ongoing pregnancy.

“Secondly, we found that increased risks of adverse obstetric outcome are, in all cases, related to the severity or recurrence, or both, of the first trimester complication or event,” he added.

The researchers have found that a history of one or more miscarriages nearly doubles the risk in an ongoing pregnancy of preterm premature rupture of the membrane that surrounds the baby in the womb.

It also increases the risk of premature or very premature delivery (earlier than 37 or 34 weeks respectively).

If a previous pregnancy had to be terminated for any reason, that may increase the risk of premature rupture of the membrane, premature and very premature delivery in subsequent pregnancies.

“While it is true that most conditions are difficult to prevent, with improved monitoring in high risk pregnancies it is possible to reduce perinatal or postnatal foetal complications,” Dr van Oppenraaij added.

For example, in pregnancies with increased risk of preterm or very preterm delivery or intrauterine growth restriction, extra ultrasonic measurement of the cervical length and foetal growth can provide a better prediction of pregnancies at risk and better therapeutic care can be given, such as bed rest, corticosteroids and monitoring of the baby’s heart beat.

“Events and complications in early pregnancy are amongst the most common complications in women during their pregnancy and can be extremely distressing for them,” van Oppenraaij added.

The findings were presented at 25th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam. (ANI)

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Journalist who predicted Jacko’s death says greed killed him

June 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Melbourne, June 29 (ANI): It was greed that killed the King of Pop Michael Jackson, says a journalist, who predicted last December that the singer was in such poor health that he had six months to live.

According to the London Daily Mail, Ian Halperin spent five years inside the Jackson camp and saw the mental and physical deterioration suffered by the star.

When the reporter made his shocking prediction, Jackson’s people dismissed it as “a complete fabrication”.

However, six months and one day later, Halperin’s prediction turned out to be true.ccording to him, the workload of preparing for 50-concert schedule took their toll on the 50-year-old’s weak body.

“It was greed that killed Michael Jackson,” the Courier Mail quoted Halperin as saying.

“It was clear that he was in no condition to do a single concert, let alone 50.

“He could no longer sing, for a start. On some days he could barely talk. He could no longer dance.

“Disaster was looming in London and, in the opinion of his closest confidantes, he was feeling suicidal,” Halperin added. (ANI)

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Lankan astrologer arrested after predicting President’s exit

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Colombo, June 27 (ANI): A popular Sri Lankan astrologer has been arrested after predicting that President Mahinda Rajapaksa, would be ousted from office and replaced by his own Prime Minister by September.

Opposition supporters decried the arrest of Chandrasiri Bandara as evidence of a growing crackdown on political dissent that has accompanied the army’s defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels last month.ccording to police, Bandara told an opposition meeting last week that the Prime Minister would take over as President on September 9, and the leader of the opposition would become Prime Minister.

According to The Telegraph, it was not clear what Bandara – who has a weekly television show and writes a political column for a pro-opposition newspaper – thought would happen to Rajapaksa after his removal.

Bandara was arrested on Wednesday night so that the source of his prediction could be investigated, according to Ranjith Gunasekera, a police spokesman.

Chathura Vidyarathna, deputy editor of Irudina, which publishes Bandara’s column, said: “He has not returned so far.”

The opposition United National Party condemned the arrest, saying that the Government was expanding a campaign to suppress the media.

Rajapaksa’s popularity has soared, with some supporters hailing him as a modern-day king, since the army defeated the Tamil Tigers last month, bringing an end to a 26-year civil war.

Politicians in his ruling party have gone so far as to propose giving him a second six-year term without holding an election – or perhaps changing the constitution to make him President for life.

However, astrologers are extremely influential in Sri Lanka, where many people consult them before holding weddings and other special events, and politicians often use their predictions to boost their image.(ANI)

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Central and State Agriculture Secretaries to discuss delay in monsoon

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, June 25 (ANI): Union Agriculture Secretary T Nanda Kumar will meet Agriculture Secretaries of states on Thursday to discuss the situation arising due to delayed monsoon.

Agriculture Secretaries of states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh will meet to consider measures to deal with the situation.n Wednesday, Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Prithiviraj Chavan has said that the Southwest Monsoon is likely to remain below normal level vis-à-vis the original prediction and conventional rainfall.

The second and revised forecast has predicted near-normal rainfall with 96 per cent rain of the long-term average, which the government officials say, may vary and even belie the hopes.

According to the Meteorological Department, there is a high probability of El Nino weather pattern this year.

El Nino, a weather condition marked by warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean waters, can impede the progress of monsoon or even lead to a drought.

The June-September monsoon rains are very vital for the nation’s economy, as two-thirds of the country’s population depends on rain-fed agriculture in the absence of extensive modern irrigation facilities.

The news about below normal monsoon rains has upset the policy makers, who were upbeat about the bright prospects of the farm sector. (ANI)

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‘Superoxide’ may help birds “see” Earth’s magnetic field

June 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 23 (ANI): In a new research, scientists at the University of Illinois, US, have determined that a toxic molecule, ‘superoxide’, known to damage cells and cause disease may also play a pivotal role in bird migration, as it allows them to “see” Earth’s magnetic field.

According to principal investigator Klaus Schulten, who holds the Swanlund Chair in Physics at Illinois, the discovery occurred as a result of a “mistake” made by a collaborator.