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July 23 (Reuters) – The world’s top aluminium producer Russia’s UC RUSAL (0486.HK) (RUAL.PA) said on Friday it had restarted operations at its Windalco Ewarton alumina plant in Jamaica mothballed in 2009 due to the economic crisis.
RUSAL said in a statement it plans to refine by the end of the year around 321,000 tonnes of alumina, an intermediate product for aluminium smelting, at the refinery, which has an annual capacity of 650,000 tonnes. (Reporting by Aleksandras Budrys)
Islamabad, June 29 (ANI): A Pakistani father has been detained after allegedly marrying off his eight-year-old daughter in exchange for a second bride.
Abdul Rasool, 50, who has three daughters, allegedly wanted to tie the knot with Haseena, 19, who was already married.
He wedded off little Zahida, the eldest amongst her sisters, with Haseena’s younger brother Dilshad, 17, in exchange for his marriage to the mum-of-two, according to his wife Perveen.
The ceremony was reportedly held on June 25 and the youngster’s rukhsati was planned for July 1.
Qari Naqeeb Ali Shah, who performed the nikah, said that he did not know the girl’s actual age.
“I did not see the girl while performing the nikkh. Before the nikah, the witnesses told me that the girl’s age is 16,” the Daily Times quoted him as saying.
He added: “They had covered the girl with her ‘dupatta’. I did have a doubt when I saw her hands when she was placing her thumb impression on the nikkah nama but her father assured me that she was old enough.”
Zahida, who revealed she had no idea about the wedding, said: “I was told to say ‘yes’ three times and asked to give my thumb impression.”
Cops took charge after Perveen informed Union Council (UC) 3 Naib Nazim Aurangzaib about the incident.
While Rasool and Dilshad were taken into custody, police were also on the look out for witnesses who were present at the nikah.
Meanwhile, Rasool has denied the claim, alleging he was given a drink laced with some medicine.
He said: “I was not present during the nikah ceremony and I have no recollection of it.”
The arrested men were due to be produced in front of the magistrate. (ANI)
San Francisco, Mar. 29 (ANI): Michelle Obama has elected to speak at the commencement function of University of California, Merced, which is the smallest and newest campus of the state education system that boasts of biggies like University of California, Los Angeles.
Obama will deliver the May 16 address to the 400 graduates of the university. Her decision comes after weeks of wooing through online campaigning.
Students said the efforts of wooing included enlisting the help of Professor Charles J. Ogletree of Harvard, a Merced native who is a friend of the Obamas, as well as sending hundreds of handwritten letters and Valentine Day cards.
“We laid on the charm,” said Yaasha Sabbaghian, a biology student.
Michelle Obama’s spokeswoman said the First Lady was “very touched” by the university campaign, particularly a “Dear Michelle” Facebook campaign.
Following Obama’s decision, the site on Friday carried an ecstatic message “!!! We did it !!!”
University officials are expecting Obama’s speech benefit the institution, whose hundred-acre campus was built on a former cattle ranch, and earlier had faced problems in attracting students.
This year, however, enrollment grew to about 2,700 students.
Sabbaghian hoped that Michelle Obama would give an inspirational message to students in Merced, a Central Valley city that has suffered from mass foreclosures and high unemployment. He said it would be okay if the First Lady wishes to bring the President along.
“A lot of people said, ‘Why don’t you try to get the president?’ and our first answer was we want him to fix the economy. But we’d love him to come and introduce her,” Sabbaghian said. ” (ANI)
Washington, Feb 16 (ANI): Highlighting the connection between brain and loneliness, a group of researchers have now shown that loneliness can affect a person’s behaviour and how his or her brain operates.
The study at the University of Chicago (UC) is the first to use fMRI scans to study the connections between perceived social isolation and activity in the brain.
And by combining fMRI scans with data relevant to social behaviour, UC scientists are pioneering a new approach to psychology, which could be an emerging field for examining brain mechanisms.
In the study, the researchers found that the ventral striatum-a region of the brain associated with rewards-is much more activated in non-lonely people than in the lonely when they view pictures of people in pleasant settings.
On the other hand, the temporoparietal junction-a region associated with taking the perspective of another person-is much less activated among the lonely than in the non-lonely when viewing pictures of people in unpleasant settings.
“Given their feelings of social isolation, lonely individuals may be left to find relative comfort in nonsocial rewards,” said John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Professor in Psychology at the University.
The ventral striatum, which is critical to learning, is a key portion of the brain and is activated through primary rewards such as food, and secondary rewards such as money. Social rewards and feelings of love also may activate the region.
The researchers have shown that loneliness undermines health, and can be as detrimental as smoking.
For the study, they tested 23 female undergraduates to determine their level of loneliness. However, in an fMRI scanner, the subjects were shown unpleasant pictures and human conflict as well as pleasant things such as money and happy people.
The lonely subjects were least likely to have strong activity in their ventral striata when shown pictures of people enjoying themselves.
Although loneliness may be influence brain activity, the study indicated that activity in the ventral striatum might prompt feelings of loneliness,
“The study raises the intriguing possibility that loneliness may result from reduced reward-related activity in the ventral striatum in response to social rewards,” said Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at the University.
Apart from differing responses in the ventral striatum, the subjects also recorded differing responses in parts of the brain that indicated loneliness played a role in how their brain operates.
The researchers discussed the new field of brain mechanism in a paper in the current issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, “What Are the Brain Mechanisms on Which Psychological Processes are Based?”
They presented the study at a symposium, “Social Emotion and the Brain,” at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (ANI)
Washington, Jan 16 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have solved the longstanding astronomy mystery of how massive stars form without blowing away the clouds of gas and dust that feed their growth.
The research, by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, has shown how a massive star can grow despite outward-flowing radiation pressure that exceeds the gravitational force pulling material inward.
Using 3-D radiation hydrodynamics simulations, the group, which includes Livermore’s Richard Klein, who also is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, and his LLNL postdoc Andrew Cunningham, unexpectedly discovered that these massive stars also tend to occur in binary or multiple star systems.
“Originally, we were just exploring the physics of massive star formation,” Klein said. “As we were looking at the physics, we found that gravitational instabilities cause companion stars to form around massive stars,” he added.
Massive stars produce so much light that the radiation pressure they exert on the gas and dust around them is stronger than their gravitational attraction, a circumstance that has long been expected to prevent them from growing by accretion.
“We didn’t set out to solve that question, so it was a nice side benefit of the study,” said Mark Krumholz, lead author and an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the UC Santa Cruz said.
“The main finding is that radiation pressure does not limit the growth of massive stars,” he added.
The team spent years developing complex computer codes for simulating the processes of star formation.
Combined with advances in computer technology, their latest code (called ORION) enabled them to run a detailed 3-D simulation of the collapse of an enormous interstellar gas cloud to form a massive star.
“Logically, we thought the massive amounts of radiation pressure would stop the star in its tracks from growing any larger,” Klein said.
“But instead, gravitational instabilities channeled gas onto the star system through disks and filaments, sort of like fingers, that self-shield against the radiation, while allowing the radiation to escape through optically thin bubbles,” he added. (ANI)
Washington, Jan 9 (ANI): A team of international researchers has shed new light on Kawasaki disease, an inflammatory disorder that is said to have been suffered by Hollywood actor John Travolta”s son Jett, who died last weekend.
Jett, who began suffering from seizures at the age of two and was reportedly diagnosed with Kawasaki disease as a toddler, had been found unconscious in a bathroom in the family”s holiday home in the Bahamas.
He had later been taken to Rand Memorial Hospital, Freeport, where he was pronounced dead on January 2.
In the new study, researchers have claimed to identify new genes, which appear to make some children more susceptible to the disease, a serious illness of young children that often leads to coronary artery disease.
This is the first genetic study of an infectious disease to look at the whole of the genome, rather than just selected genes.
Researchers from UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics joined an international research team, including colleagues from The University of Western Australia, the Genome Institute of Singapore, Emma Children”s Hospital, The Netherlands, and Imperial College London, UK.
The research team studied naturally occurring genetic variation in almost 900 cases of Kawasaki disease from these countries.
“KD tends to run in families, suggesting that there are genetic components to disease risk,” said Jane C. Burns, M.D., professor and Chief, Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology, UC San Diego Department of Pediatrics.
“We have been trying to understand the step by step development of this disease (pathogenesis) and the chain of events leading to it, using a biological approach but with limited success. This robust, systematic genome wide study is simply letting the genetics tell us what are the key genes in KD pathogenesis. Without this research these newly discovered genes of interest might have continued to remain hidden,” Burns added.
The researchers found that genes involved in cardiovascular function and inflammation may be particularly important and some seem to function together.
According to them, these findings will lead to new diagnostics and better treatment and may be informative about adult cardiovascular disease as well.
However, the findings do not yet prove that the new genes are functionally involved. Other genetic variants may be important, especially in different ethnic groups.
The researchers are planning detailed studies of the function of these genes and larger collaborative studies including East Asian populations, who are at particular risk of Kawasaki disease, with 1 in 150 Japanese children affected.
The study is published in PLoS Genetics. (ANI)
Washington, Jan 6 (ANI): Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have identified a new tumour suppressor that may help in the development of more targeted drug therapies to fight lung cancer.
Proto-oncogenes are genes that play a role in normal cell growth (turnover of cells and tissue) but, when genetically modified, can cause the out-of-control cell division that leads to cancer.
Previous research had established that Ras, a proto-oncogene, is abnormally expressed in up to 25 percent of human lung cancers; but, researchers did not understand the specific cellular events by which abnormal Ras expression leads to transformation.
The research team, led by Jorge Moscat, sought to define the interim steps that occur in Ras-induced tumour development to better understand the underlying biological mechanisms leading to cancer.
“These interim steps are critical because they help us determine how best to intervene and stop cancer growth along the way. Right now, cancer therapy is delivered with a sledgehammer and it needs to be more like a scalpel so we avoid unnecessary harm to the body,” said Moscat, co-author of the study and chair of UC’s cancer and cell biology department.
Using a genetically modified mouse model, the researchers found that animals that didn’t express a certain gene (protein kinase C (PKC)-zeta) developed more Ras-induced lung cancer, suggesting a new role for the gene as a tumour suppressor.
“PKC-zeta would normally slow down Ras transformation and put the brakes on tumour development, but when PKC-zeta is missing or inactive as a result of genetic alterations, tumour growth actually accelerates,” said Moscat.
“Until now, we did not know the specific chain of events that led to Ras-induced lung cancer. Our study fills in important missing information that will enhance our overall understanding of how lung cancer tumours grow and spread,” Moscat added.
The study appears in the January 2009 issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology. (ANI)
Washington, Jan 5 (ANI): Scientists have determined that biofuel development is shifting from soil to sea, specifically to marine algae.
Referred to as “green bullet”, marine algae is considered as science and society”s best hope for a clean bioenergy source that will help loosen broad dependence on fossil fuel, counteract climate warming, and power the vehicles of the future.
According to Greg Mitchell from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, marine algae are the most efficient organisms on Earth for absorbing light energy and converting it into a natural biomass oil product, the biofuel equivalent of crude oil.
“Algae yields five to 10 times more bioenergy molecules per area, per time, than any terrestrial plant,” he said. “Nothing else comes close,” he added.
From a sustainability perspective, algae hold the upper hand against other biofuel candidates, such as corn and soybeans.
Algae can be grown on barren desert land using salt water, averting competition with agricultural cropland and the need for large amounts of precious fresh water for irrigation.
Since they require carbon dioxide for growth, algae are inherently carbon neutral, and they can suck up CO2 directly from industrial pollution sources. Furthermore, algae can feed off the nutrients in discarded wastewater.
Adding yet another layer to their allure, the rich protein left over from algae harvests can be converted to animal feed.
Because algae reproduce quickly (they can double their numbers in a single day), it”s believed they can more efficiently produce many more gallons of oil per acre than any other source.
“There is still a lot of work to do, but algal-derived biofuels have the potential to become a major source of transportation fuel,” said Bernard Raemy, executive vice president of Carbon Capture Corporation.
According to Raemy, a string of challenges lies ahead, but with appropriate investment, he believes a new algal biofuel industry, based on collaborations with public and private sectors, could be built within 10 years.
“Given their advantages, I believe marine algae are not only the most promising option for bioenergy fuel, but the only option that can scale up massively at the global level,” said Mitchell.
“Most scientists who understand these processes are concluding that algae has the best chance. There is no silver bullet when it comes to energy, but there is a green bullet, or rather a green missile,” he added. (ANI)
A new and innovative technique has been developed by the security researchers, with which they can copy house keys just by using its picture as reference.
This technique has been developed by computer scientists at UC San Diego, and it needs no physical access to keys and only a fairly low resolution picture for the software to work. The scientist say that this technique has been developed by team with the aim to reveal to everyone that keys are not as secure as they are thought to be.
A camera phone picture was taken of a residential key in one of the demo by the computer scientists, in order to obtain information, needed to create identical copies with the help of image-recognition software. In another exercise, with the use of a 5in telephoto lens, a picture of key was taken from 200 feet away.
Software named Sneakey, was developed by the San Diego team, which has the ability of examining photos from nearly any angle to measure the depth of each cut, also called the bitting code. This information along with the brand and key type knowledge is more than sufficient to create a duplicate key.
Stefan Savage, a computer science professor from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering reported, “We built our key duplication software system to show people that their keys are not inherently secret. Perhaps this was once a reasonable assumption, but advances in digital imaging and optics have made it easy to duplicate someone’s keys from a distance without them even noticing.”
At the ACM’s Conference on Communications and Computer Security 2008 in Alexandria, Virginia on Thursday (30 October), Professor Savage presented the student-led research.
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