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

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The images represent a total exposure time of 24 hours.

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

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

Several features are immediately apparent in the new mosaic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Robots may soon be serving the elderly at home just like humans do

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 29 (ANI): Elderly people with limited mobility may soon come to be served by robots in a manner as if they are being served by other persons, thanks to a collaborative study by three University of Illinois at Chicago engineers and a Rush University nursing specialist.

“We want to help elderly people communicate with robots, to tell them what they need, and to perform physical activities,” said Milos Zefran, UIC associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The three-year study, supported by a grant of 989,000 dollars from the National Science Foundation, is aimed at developing software to allow the elderly to communicate with robots that can respond to a wide range of verbal language, non-verbal gestures, and touch.

“If we can help the elderly remain independent and continue living in their own homes, that will improve their health outlook while relieving the burden on family members and health care providers,” said Zefran, the lead researcher.

The researchers say that their communication interface software will have at its core a novel adaptive and reliable recognition methodology called Recognition by Indexing and Sequencing (RISq), which will allow the robot to comprehend speech altered by impairments and to learn and adapt to such speech.

To enable a robot to understand and correctly respond to various forms of human touch, the researchers will combine techniques from natural language processing and haptics, a scientific term to describe the computerized sense of touch.

They say that the robot will also know how to respond to the user safely when performing everyday chores, such as cooking or making a bed.

“We’ll start by observing interaction between human helpers and the elderly. We’ll identify what kind of language, physical interactions and non-verbal interactions are used. Then we’ll develop a mathematical framework to model this interaction so it can be treated by the robot as a single way of communicating,” Zefran said.

The researchers say that they will program and test a robot, in order to devise refinements, as the project progresses.

“The human-robot interface is really a long-standing, open problem that won’t be solved in three years. But we’ll have a working prototype by then, and we’ll know what additional research needs to be done,” Zefran said.

He believes that this research project may also find widespread use in delivery of institutionally based health care, where routine tasks now done by nurses could be handled by robots.

“If robots can alleviate some of the burden nurses face, they then could spend more time where they’re really needed — providing the human contact that a robot can’t replace,” he said.

Zefran has revealed that his work will include developing seminars or a new graduate or upper-level undergraduate course that considers the various factors that allow robots to perform more sophisticated tasks. (ANI)

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Top Canadian universities to tour India

August 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug.24 (ANI): Thirteen of Canada’s elite universities will be in India from August 23 to September 4 to hold information sessions on Canada as a destination for higher education.

The delegation is led by Ginette Sanfaçon of HEC Montréal (Business school affiliated with the Université de Montréal) and Michelle Beaton of Ryerson University in Toronto.

The tour is organized by the Canadian Higher Education Committee under the aegis of the Council of International Schools (CIS).

The Council’s fifth annual tour to India will begin in Mumbai and continue in Pune, Delhi and Bangalore.

According to a Canadian High Commission press release, the tour is of special interest to Standard XI and Standard XII students who exhibit strong academic standing, their school guidance counselors as well as to their parents. The schedule includes school visits, information fairs, and an indepth Canadian university admission workshop for guidance counselors.

“India is a key undergraduate student market for Canadian universities,” said Ginette Sanfaçon of HEC-Montréal and Tour Director. “Indian students are sought for their academic strength and their rich contribution to student life on Canadian university campuses. In turn, increasing numbers of Indian students are making Canada their first choice for study – as evidenced on this tour.

Indian students are drawn to our universities’ common attributes of international reputation for academic excellence, state of the art resources, and safe campuses in welcoming locations,” Sanfaçon said.

Each year, tour organizers strengthen existing relationships with secondary schools in cities they visit and also expand outreach to new regions. For example, guidance counselors from schools in Dehra Dun, Hyderabad, Chennai and Chandigarh as well as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are receiving invitations to attend the Tour’s counselor workshop in Delhi.

List of participating universities:

The University of British Columbia; Carleton University; Dalhousie University; HEC MONTRÉAL (Business School affiliated with Université de Montréal); Memorial University of Newfoundland; University of Manitoba; University of New Brunswick; Ryerson University; University of Saskatchewan; University of Toronto; Vancouver Island University; University of Waterloo; York University.

Canadian universities are engaged internationally as leaders in education through teaching, research and partnerships. Undergraduate education in Canada is a hybrid of US and UK styles offering breadth of program options, flexibility in choice and a degree that is ultimately recognized world-wide.

Indian students choose Canada because a strong education and a positive international experience is the foundation for their exciting and successful futures. The quality, affordability and renowned research opportunities are key factors in this decision. University campuses across Canada offer multicultural environments, beautiful spaces and friendly people. As a leader in business, political diplomacy, arts and culture and technology – Canada’s education system is at the core of its success and its graduates are players on the world stage. (ANI)

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International Medical Center to be developed at IIT Kharagpur

August 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 19 (ANI): Officials of the University of California, San Diego Health Sciences and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have signed a historic preliminary agreement to collaborate in the development of an International Medical Center (IMC) at IIT Kharagpur.

This agreement – marked by a signing ceremony in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India – is the beginning of a strong educational, research and clinical partnership between UC San Diego Health Sciences and IIT, Kharagpur.

IIT, Kharagpur is the first and largest of the IIT chain of higher education institutes in India that focuses on engineering and technology.

The goal is to jointly establish a state-of-the-art medical center at IIT Kharagpur, which will be the first of its kind between a US University and an Indian Institution.

“This exciting partnership is an extension of UC San Diego Health Sciences’ traditional core mission – to provide excellent and compassionate patient care, advance medical discoveries and educate future health care providers,” said Mounir Soliman, MD, MBA, executive director of UC San Diego Health Sciences International.

“The establishment of an academic medical center to include the best in clinical care, as well as undergraduate and post-graduate programs in medical education, will be a perfect partnership – bringing together the strengths of both institutions,” he added.

According to Professor Damodar Acharya, director of IIT, Kharagpur, “In addition to IIT’s strong education and research focus in engineering and the sciences, we also are keenly interested in medical science and technology, including biotechnology, imaging, drug development and other important areas of medical research.”

“The collaboration is believed to be among the first between an IIT and a public US university in the field of medical education and research,” he said.

“The aim is to initiate technology leveraged medical education and research to provide holistic health care for the entire life cycle at affordable cost to underprivileged, poor and tribal population of the region,” he added.

The agreement describes the two institution’s collaborative plan to build a 300-bed, state-of-the-art hospital on land provided by IIT, Kharagpur. (ANI)

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Why male and female lemurs are of same size

July 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 15 (ANI): Rice University biologist Amy Dunham has put forward a new theory for one of primatology’s long-standing mysteries-why are male and female lemurs the same size?

In most primate species, males have evolved to be much larger than females, but this has not been found to be true in case of lemurs.

Some theories have suggested that environment played a role or that lemur social development was altered due to the extinction of predatory birds.
“Scientifically, this is quite a big question that researchers have debated for over 20 years. I actually started doing research on lemurs as an undergraduate, working in Ranomafana (National Park in Madgascar), and the question about size monomorphism has bugged me since then,” said Dunham.
In the new study, Dunham has offered one of the first new theories on lemur monomorphism in more than a decade.
After conducting an exhaustive review of the observational work done on lemurs, Dunham concluded that male lemurs do guard their mates, just like other primates.

But unlike gorillas and other primates that fight for mating rights with females, male lemurs have evolved to passively guard their mates.
They do this by depositing a solid plug inside the female’s reproductive tract just as they finish mating. The plug is deposited as a liquid protein but quickly hardens and stays in place for a day or two.

Since many female lemurs are sexually responsive to males for only one day out of the entire year, the plug serves the purpose of preventing other males from mating with the female, while also freeing the male to mate with other females during the brief time they are available.
“If the female has a short receptivity period, as most lemurs do, then we hypothesize that this is likely to be an advantageous strategy,” said Dunham.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers examined 62 primate species and found that copulatory plugs were most likely to occur in species where female sexual receptivity was very brief and where males and females were the same size.

This was true both for lemur species and for a few other species, like South American squirrel monkeys.
The study has been published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. (ANI

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Modern woodstoves 95 percent more efficient than their predecessors

July 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 15 (ANI): In a case study, a scientist has found that modern woodstoves, with the advanced secondary combustion systems, are now 95 percent more efficient than their predecessors.

The case study on the benefits of woodstoves, was done by Dr. Paul Grogan, a plant and ecosystem ecologist and Canadian Research Chair (II) at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, with the help of final-year undergraduate and first year graduate students.

He determined that adding a woodstove to the home can help both consumers heating costs as well as the environment.

The environmental sustainability of woodstove use is dependent upon the consumption of wood from sustainably managed woodlots, as the carbon released is reused as the next generation of trees grows.

Annual gross CO2 emissions did in fact increase from 12,610 kg (i.e., 2.5 metric tons CO2/person per year) to 17,330 kg after the installation of the wood stove.

But, while this gross amount did increase, the net carbon released by the combustion is negligible, the only surplus coming from the harvest and transport.

Based on an average growing time of 130 years before harvest for local Ontario tree species, a woodlot or forest 3.5 hectares in size would provide an indefinite supply of wood heat for a household without a net increase in carbon emissions.

In the case study, adding a woodstove to the ground floor of a 3200-ft2 home reduced the mean annual gas cost by 60 percent; from 2260 dollars to 880 dollars.

The annual cost of the wood fuel for the woodstove amounted to 1330 dollars for 5 full cords (a cord is 8 feet long by 4 feet high by 4 feet wide – 128 ft3).

This was a yearly savings of 50 dollars at market fossil fuel prices of 2005-2007 without taking into account rising fossil fuel prices or the impending carbon tax.

Should these variables come into play, Dr. Grogan estimated that the domestic heating costs would be reduced by 25 percent.

This translates into a potential savings of 920 dollars in the first 3 years. (ANI)

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Indian students stand second in non-US division of NASA supersonic design contest

July 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 11 (ANI): Sahaj Panchal and Dhrumir Patel from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Technology, Gujarat, India, have stood second in the category of ‘non-US team’ in a contest to design a supersonic airliner, hosted by NASA.

The contest saw college students from the US, Japan and India, who researched technology and created concepts for a supersonic passenger jet.

The Fundamental Aeronautics Program in NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate sponsored the competition.

The participants were challenged to design a small supersonic airliner and submit a research paper limited to 25 pages.

Designs had to be efficient, environmentally friendly, low sonic boom commercial aircraft that could be ready for initial service by 2020.

A team of undergraduates from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a team of graduate students from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta tied for first place in the US division.

A University of Tokyo undergraduate team won top honors in the non-US category, with Panchal and Patel from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Technology, standing second for their design called ‘RASTOFUST’.

A group of NASA engineers reviewed the entries. The judges based their scores on how well students addressed all aspects of the problem they chose to discuss.

The judges used the following criteria: innovation and creativity; discussion of feasibility; a brief review of pertinent literature; and a baseline comparison with the relevant current technology, system or design.

“We use these competitions to generate excitement for aeronautics and the engineering behind aviation,” said Peter Coen, principal investigator of the Supersonics Project at Langley.

“I was pleased by the number and diversity of the entries we received. And I was impressed by the quality and innovative thinking demonstrated in the designs,” he added. (ANI)

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Award-winning device to revolutionise treatment of hand injuries

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 8 (ANI): Bioengineering students at Rice University have invented a device to measure intrinsic hand muscle strength, called PRIME, which could revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of hand injuries and neurological disorders, specifically carpal tunnel syndrome.

The OrthoIntrinsics team behind the patent-pending creation have won first place and 10,000 dollars at IShow, an innovation competition for graduate and undergraduate students.

Graduates Caterina Kaffes, Matthew Miller, Neel Shah and Shuai “Steve” Xu invented PRIME, or Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator, for their senior project.

“Twenty percent of all ER admissions are hand-related. Neuromuscular disorders like spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis-all these diseases affect the intrinsic hand muscles,” said Xu.

For starters, the team is focusing on carpal tunnel syndrome.

“U.S. surgeons will perform over 500,000 procedures for carpal tunnel this year. We spend $2 billion per year treating this disease but up to 20 percent of all surgeries need to be redone. Our invention can be used across the spectrum of care from diagnosis to outcome measurements,” said Xu.

Xu said that previous devices lacked the repeatability to be useful and did not adjust for small hands or unusual morphologies.

PRIME has three elements: a pegboard restraint, a force transducer enclosure and a PDA custom-programmed to capture measurements.

In a five-minute test, a doctor uses pegs to isolate a patient’s individual fingers.

“You wouldn’t think it works as well as it does, but once you are pegged in, you can’t move anything but the finger we want you to,” said Miller.

A loop is fitted around the finger, and when the patient moves it, and the researchers measure the amount of force generated.

“PRIME gets the peak forceThen the doctor can create a patient-specific file with all your information, time-stamped, and record every single measurement,” said Xu.

PRIME integrates with existing systems in a manner compliant with the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, he said.

According to Xu, it will help hospitals and rehabilitation clinics compare the effectiveness of surgical interventions and diagnose neuromuscular degenerative diseases. (ANI)

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How small ‘guys’ can get the ‘gals’ just as their bigger counterparts

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 25 (ANI): In the world of yellow dung flies, the small guys can also get the girl, but only if they are hanging out on apple pomace instead of cow dung, reveals a new study.

While the large, brawny males almost always have an upper hand in getting a mate, but this is the first time that alternative male reproductive strategies have been observed in this species.

Syracuse University (N.Y.) undergraduate students found that small male dung flies, which are traditionally unsuccessful at finding and keeping mates on dung pats, successfully mated with females feeding on composting apple pomace.

In fact, large males were generally absent from the pomace mounds.

“This is a new chapter in the story of yellow dung flies. No one has carefully studied this species off the dung. Small male dung flies can’t compete with their larger counterparts on the dung, so in this case, they developed a different tactic to successfully pass their genes to the next generation,” said Scott Pitnick, professor of biology in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences.

The students were tasked with designing a study around the size and mating success of yellow dung flies.

“After we made our initial field observations for the class assignment, we could tell from our professors’ reactions that our discovery was a piece of important information in the field. The course was designed to teach us how to be biologists; as such, we made a unique observation that ultimately resulted in a publication,” said Stephen Maheux ’09, a biology major who graduated in May.

The researchers believed that yellow dung flies mated almost exclusively on manure and females were drawn to the dung only when they are ready to mate.

However, Pitnick said that not much is known about the feeding habits of females when they are not at the dung pats.

On the other hand, males were thought to hang out almost exclusively around the manure, awaiting the arrival of the females.

Competition on the dung among males is fierce and can result in injury or death to smaller males as well as females caught up in the struggle.

However, on Toad Hollow Farms in Nedrow, N.Y., the students noticed large numbers of females feeding on apple pomace in a field adjacent to the cow pasture where they were observing flies on dung pats.

Surprisingly, the females were frequently mating on the pomace, and with males that were significantly smaller in size than those found in the cow pasture.

Furthermore, none of the sexually aggressive behaviours normally observed on the dung pats occurred on the pomace.

Apple pomace is the pressed pulp that remains after juicing.

The students’ initial observations suggested that the availability of the pomace seemed to provide male dung flies with alternative mating opportunities.

The study is published in the latest issue of Proceedings of The Royal Society. (ANI)

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Genetic pathway responsible for plant growth identified by scientists

May 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 21 (ANI): Researchers at Iowa State University, US, have discovered a previously unknown genetic pathway in plant cells that regulates plant growth.

Yanhai Yin, an assistant professor in genetics, development and cell biology, Iowa State University, examined signaling mechanisms of a plant hormone called brassinosteroids.

The hormone controls the growth of cells.

“The brassinosteroids (BRs) have a major impact on how large the plant grows,” said Yin.

“Previously, we knew that steroids promote growth,” said Yin. “In model plants like Arabidopsis (a relative of mustard) and crops such as corn and rice, if you have more steroids, you have more growth, and if you have less steroids, you have less growth and the plant is smaller,” he added.

Now, Yin knows that the HERK1 (named for Hercules – the Greek and Roman god who possessed superhuman strength) pathway, induced by BRs, is controlling much of that growth.

There are many other internal and external factors such as light, nutrition and hydration that effect plant growth, but the HERK1, along with some unknown signals, have a great effect.

Yin and his team of Hongqing Guo, assistant scientist; Lei Li, Huaxun Ye, and Xiaofei Yu, all graduate students; and Alexandria Algreen, undergraduate student; have shown that by over-expressing HERK1, they were able to increase a plant’s size by 10 to 15 percent.

By under-expressing HERK1, the plants were about 50 percent smaller.

Now, Yin and his group are trying to find what regulates HERK1 and how HERK1 controls growth.

Understanding what make plants get bigger could be a critical component when producing grain and bio-mass for biofuels.

“With that knowledge, maybe we have one more tool to manipulate corn and rice if we want more grain, or if we want more mass for bio-energy crops,” said Yin. (ANI)

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Chinese mind-body training technique improves attention, reduces stress

May 20, 2009 By admin 1 Comment

Washington, May 20 (ANI): Just five days of practicing a newly emerging mind-body technique may produce effective changes in attention and stress reduction, say Chinese researchers.

Now undergraduates at the University of Oregon are being taught the practice-called integrative body-mind training (IBMT)-which was adapted from traditional Chinese medicine in the 1990s in China, where it is practiced by thousands of people.

In a 2007 study, the researchers had reported that doing IBMT prior to a mental math test led to low levels of the stress hormone cortisol among Chinese students, along with lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue than students in a relaxation control group.

“The previous paper indicated that IBMT subjects showed a reduced response to stressWhy after five days did it work so fast?” said UO professor Yi-Yuan Tang.

He says that the new findings point to how IBMT alters blood flow and electrical activity in the brain, breathing quality and even skin conductance, allowing for “a state of ah, much like in the morning opening your eyes, looking outside the grass and sunshine, you feel relaxed, calm and refresh without any stress, this is the meditation state.”

Using several technologies, the researchers conducted two experiments involving 86 undergraduate students at Dalian University of Technology and analyzed the data collected.

“We were able to show that the training improved the connection between a central nervous system structure, the anterior cingulate, and the parasympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system to help put a person into a more bodily state. The results seem to show integration-a connectivity of brain and body,” said UO psychologist Michael Posner.

In each experiment, participants who had not previously practiced relaxation or meditation received either IBMT or general relaxation instruction for 20 minutes a day for five days.

After conducting single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), the researchers found that both groups experienced some benefit from the training-those in IBMT showed dramatic differences based on brain-imaging and physiological testing.

Physiological tests also revealed that IBMT subjects had lower heart rates and skin conductance responses, increased belly breathing amplitude, and decreased chest respiration rates as compared with the relaxation group.

Finally, the researchers noted that IBMT subjects had more high-frequency heart-rate variability than their relaxation counterparts, indicating “successful inhibition of sympathetic tone and activation of parasympathetic tone (in the autonomic nervous system).”

IBMT avoids struggles to control thought, and instead relies on a state of restful alertness, allowing for a high degree of body-mind awareness while receiving instructions from a coach.

The study has been published online ahead of regular publication in PNAS. (ANI)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: activation, activity, amplitude, anger, ANI, anterior, anxiety, attention, Autonomic Nervous System, awareness, belly, benefit, blood, body, brain, brain and body, central nervous system, chest, China, chinese medicine, Chinese Mind, chinese researchers, cingulate, coach, conductance, connection, connectivity, control, cortisol, Dalian, day, degree, depression, emission, experiment, Experiment Participants, fatigue, flow, General Relaxation, grass, group, heart, hormone, IBMT, inhibition, instruction, levels of anxiety, math, Math Test, May, medicine, meditation, Meditation State, mental math, Michael Posner, morning, Nervous System Structure, Online, oregon, paper, part, person, photon, Photon Emission, Physiological, PNAS, professor, Psychologist, publication, quality, reduction, refresh, relaxation, respiration, response, skin, skin conductance, SPECT, state, stress, Stress Hormone Cortisol, stress reduction, stressWhy, structure, study, sunshine, system, tang, technique, Technology, test, testing, tomography, tone, Traditional Chinese Medicine, training, undergraduate, University, variability, Washington, yi, Yi-Yuan, Yuan Tang

Natural petroleum seeps release equivalent of 8 – 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills

May 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 14 (ANI): A new study has shown that the amount of oil residue in seafloor sediments that result from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara, California, is the equivalent of approximately 8-80 Exxon Valdez oil spills.

Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), did the study.

It shows the oil content of sediments is highest closest to the seeps and tails off with distance, creating an oil fallout shadow.

It estimates the amount of oil in the sediments down current from the seeps to be the equivalent of approximately 8-80 Exxon Valdez oil spills.

“Farwell developed and mapped out our plan for collecting sediment samples from the ocean floor,” said WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy, referring to lead author Chris Farwell, at the time an undergraduate working with UCSB’s Dave Valentine.

“After conducting the analysis of the samples, we were able to make some spectacular findings,” he added.

There is an oil spill everyday at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara, California, where 20-25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years.

Based on their previous research, Valentine and Reddy surmised that the oil was sinking “because this oil is heavy to begin with.”

“It’s a good bet that it ends up in the sediments because it’s not ending up on land. It’s not dissolving in ocean water, so it’s almost certain that it is ending up in the sediments,” said Valentine.

To conduct their sampling, the team used the research vessel Atlantis, the 274-foot ship that serves as the support vessel for the Alvin submersible.

The research team sampled 16 locations in a 90 km2 (35 square mile) grid starting 4 km west of the active seeps.

Sample stations were arranged in five longitudinal transects with three water depths (40, 60, and 80 m) for each transect, with one additional comparison sample obtained from within the seep field.

“The instrument reveals distinct biomarkers or chemical fossils – like bones for an archeologist – present in the oil. These fossils were a perfect match for the oil from the reservoir, the oil collected leaking into the ocean bottom, oil on the sea surface, and oil back in the sediment,” said Reddy.

“We could say with confidence that the oil we found in the sediments was genetically connected to the oil reservoir and not from an accidental spill or runoff from land,” he added. (ANI)

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Liam Neeson finally becomes a graduate after 40 years

May 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 8 (ANI): Almost 40 years after enrolling in Queen’s University, Belfast, Oscar-nominated actor Liam Neeson has finally received his doctorate from the university.

The ‘Schindler’s List’ actor, born in Ballymena, was still an undergraduate at Queen’s in 1971 as a Physics and Computer Science student, when he left to work in ‘Guinness’.

And Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Gregson finally awarded the 56-year-old actor an honorary doctorate in New York.

The actor said that he would “finally” be able to tell his mother that he had graduated.

On the occasion, the professor even spilled out some details from the actor’s original university application form from 1970.

Gregson awarded the actor with a Doctorate of the University for his Outstanding Contribution and Service to the Arts.

Neeson said that Northern Ireland would “always be home”.

“I have often found that no matter where I meet people in the world, there is a path that leads back to Queen’s,” the BBC quoted him as saying.

He added: “Queen’s University flies the flag for the arts in Northern Ireland and beyond. It is to be commended on its commitment to the arts sector and in nurturing new talent through its broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses.”

Liam Neeson has starred in more than 50 television and film productions and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List.

In March, his wife of 15 years, Natasha Richardson, died of head injuries after a fall at a ski resort in Quebec. (ANI)

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Now, an ‘elegant’ robotic hand that can gently grasp a raw egg

May 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 6 (ANI): Undergraduate students at Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory have made a robotic hand that can gently grasp a raw egg as successfully as the machine holds a heavy can of food.

They say that the machine called Robotic Air-Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments (RAPHaEL) is flexible enough for sign language.

The machine has been connected to a compressed air tank. An operator controls the air pressure to manipulate the fingers.

While low air pressure lightens the grip, higher air pressure makes it firmer.

The students have revealed what makes RAPHaEL unique is their decision not to control each finger joint individually, but instead use one motion activator to move all of a finger’s joints.

“It’s a very interesting and novel (method) of actuating fingers in a very simple, elegant, and low-cost way,” National Geographic News quoted faculty adviser and lab director Dennis Hong as saying.

RAPHaEL’s creators believe that the lightweight mechanism, which won first place in the 2008-09 Compressed Air and Gas Institute’s Innovation Awards Contest, may one day lend a hand to sign language programs as well as prosthetics design and other areas of scientific research. (ANI)

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General public’s ability to spot wanted fugitives is 7 percent: Study

April 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 26 (ANI): The general public’s ability to correctly identify wanted fugitives is as low as 7 percent, according to a new study.

Researchers from University of Arkansas conducted a series of field experiments designed to test prospective person memory. When people look at a photo of a wanted person or a missing child in order to spot that individual in the future, they are engaged in prospective person memory.

During the study, the researchers recruited undergraduate students in introductory psychology classes to identify a wanted person.

In each scenario, students were shown photos, told the individuals depicted would appear at some point in their daily lives and offered a share in a 100-dollar reward for spotting the “fugitive.”

The researchers found that for all scenarios, the identification rate was low.

In another experimental, students studied the photo of a wanted person during one class session.

The next time the class met, 48 hours later, the individual they had seen in the photo stepped into the classroom carrying a stack of papers and drew attention to himself both before and after handing the stack to the instructor.

The team found that the identification rate varied between zero and 7 percent.

“The studies described above suggest that the ability of the general public to correctly identify wanted fugitives in realistic real world conditions is quite limited,” said the researchers.

“In no study that we have conducted has the identification rate exceeded 7 percent,” they added.

In their ongoing research, Lampinen and colleagues are exploring how to get people to take the time needed to form implementation intentions when presented with a photo of a missing or wanted person.

For example, an implementation intention could involve resolving to contact authorities upon seeing a certain face.

“The potential combination of implementation intentions with imaging and pictorial encoding of faces holds great promise for the study of person prospective memory,” the researchers wrote. (ANI)

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End terror, Guwahati’s voters urge politicians

April 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Guwahati, April 8 (IANS) They have lived under the shadow of bomb blasts for a long time. Voters in Assam’s principal city of Guwahati, also known as the ‘gateway to northeast India’, are crying for an end to the terror trail as elections approach.

Blasts have almost become a way of life for Guwahatians, with the latest attacks – here and in four other parts of the state – having taken place as recently as Monday, claiming at least 10 lives and injuring nearly 60.

Right from columns in vernacular newspapers and journals to television debates to coffee table discussions, Guwahati residents have chosen to talk repeatedly on the issue, so that political parties are pressed to do something to end three decades of insurgency in Assam.

‘We want an end to the bloodbath. Why does the common man on the streets of Guwahati not feel safe? We have to think twice before venturing out, to avoid becoming a victim of bomb blasts,’ said popular poet and columnist Samir Tanti.

‘We want the political parties to take the issue seriously. Mere rhetoric is not enough. Moreover, not a single party, neither the Congress nor the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), has spoken anything about its stand on the issue in the coming elections,’ Tanti told IANS.

Youngsters, mostly college-goers, are aghast that major political parties – Congress, the ruling party in the state, and the AGP, which has ruled the state twice from 1985 to 1989 and from 1996 to 2001 have no clear cut agenda in place to tackle terror.

‘It is beyond our understanding as why the political parties are silent on the issue of terror in the state. Only when a bomb blast happen, the leaders of both the parties engage themselves in a dirty game of mud slinging, instead of working on a formula to end terrorism,’ said Pranab Kakoty, an undergraduate student.

Pranab’s friend, Jyoti Bora, a student of mechanical engineering in Assam Engineering College, said progress would come once terrorism comes to an end in the city.

‘We’re lagging behind in economic development in comparison with rest of the country. Terrorism is the cause of all the ills in the state. The political parties need to ensure that the city and the state at large will be peaceful and prosperous,’ said 20-year-old Bora.

Assam goes to polls in two phases on April 16 and 23 for its 14 Lok Sabha seats.

Septuagenarian social activist and scholar Anima Guha, a resident of the city for the past four decades, agreed with the views of the younger lot.

‘The young and old alike are all tired of regular incidents of terror strikes in Assam. We need peace. Only peace will lead us to progress and prosperity. It hurts to see Assam bleeding everyday – for the last 30 years. If politicians want to call themselves our leaders, they have to end terrorism,’ said Guha.

Guwahati had a brush with terror last week too, in which one person was killed and 16 were injured in a powerful explosion. The blast occurred minutes before External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukerjee was to address an election rally, close to the blast site.

Assam experienced one of its worst terror strikes when around 81 lives were lost and over 300 injured in 12 coordinated explosions in Guwahati and the western districts of Barpeta, Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon Oct 30, 2008.

Assam has long been a cauldron of violence triggered by insurgency and ethnic clashes, since the state’s first rebel group, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was formed in 1979. An estimated 25,000 people have been killed and hundreds more maimed for life since then.

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Black students half as likely to be accepted by Cambridge as White applicants

February 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Feb 14 (ANI): Figures published by the Cambridge University shows that Black students are half as likely to be accepted to Cambridge as White applicants.

The success rate in 2008 for the 202 black students who declared their ethnicity was 14 per cent. The success rate for White applicants was 31 per cent, and the overall success rate for applicants was 27 per cent.

Geoff Parks, the Director of Undergraduate Admissions, said that Cambridge is displaying a “serious commitment to try and get to the point when people stop talking about it.”

He conceded that concerns over the make-up of students at the University would not be fully resolved for many years. “I’m not sure it will happen in my lifetime,” he said, “but we could hope it would.”

Equality campaigners and senior academics claimed the statistics enhanced Cambridge’s image as an elitist institution for white, middle class students.

A record 448 minority students who declared their ethnicity gained a place this year – up from 428 in 2008, The Telegraph reported.

Soban Khawaja, chairman of Cambridge University Students’ Union Black Students’ Campaign, blamed low aspirations within some Black communities, rather than the university, for the small number of ethnic applicants.

Statistics show that some colleges are more popular with black applicants than others. Emmanuel College has 16 black students this year, while Newnham and Selwyn only have one. (ANI)

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Now, shock absorbers that harness road bumps to generate electricity for vehicles

February 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, February 13 (ANI): Undergraduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to generate electricity by harnessing energy from small bumps in the road.

The researchers say that a shock absorber invented by them can make this possible, while smoothing the ride more effectively than conventional shocks.

The new system also has a fail-safe feature-if the electronics fail for any reason, the system simply acts like a regular shock absorber.

Having already courted the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers, the students are hoping to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles.

Shakeel Avadhany and his colleagues claim that they can improve overall vehicle fuel efficiency by up to 10 percent by using the regenerative shock absorbers.

Not only would improved fuel efficiency be a big plus for the army by requiring less stockpiling and transportation of fuel into the war zone, but the better ride produced by the actively controlled shock absorbers make for safer handling, the students say.

“If it’s a smoother ride, you can go over the terrain faster,” says Zack Anderson, a senior team member.

They have even obtained a vehicle for testing purposes from the company that produces Humvees for the army, and is currently working on development of the next-generation version of the all-purpose vehicle.

Anderson has revealed that they undertook this project because “we wanted to figure out where energy is being wasted in a vehicle.”

Considering that some hybrid cars already do a good job of recovering the energy from braking, the researchers looked elsewhere, and quickly homed in on the suspension.

They began by renting a variety of different car models, outfitting the suspension with sensors to determine the energy potential, and driving around with a laptop computer recording the sensor data.

Anderson says that the team observed that “a significant amount of energy” was being wasted in conventional suspension systems, “especially for heavy vehicles.”

Upon realising the possibilities, he says, the team set about building a prototype system to harness the wasted power.

According to the research team, their prototype shock absorbers use a hydraulic system that forces fluid through a turbine attached to a generator.

An active electronic system, which optimises the damping, controls the system to provide a smoother ride than conventional shocks, while generating electricity to recharge the batteries or operate electrical equipment.

The students’ tests have thus far shown that in a 6-shock heavy truck, each shock absorber can generate up to an average of 1 kW on a standard road.

They say that this is enough power to completely displace the large alternator load in heavy trucks and military vehicles, and in some cases even run accessory devices like hybrid trailer refrigeration units.

They are currently carrying out tests with their converted Humvee to optimise the system’s efficiency.

An article on this project has appeared in MIT Tech Talk. (ANI)

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