Mamas, Be Good to Your Sons

A close relationship with their mothers can help keep boys from acting out, according to a 2010 study. A warm, attached relationship with mom seems important in preventing behavior problems in sons, even more so than in girls, the research found. The findings, published in the journal Child Development, highlight the need for "secure attachment" between kids and their parents, a style in which kids can go to mom and dad as a comforting "secure base" before venturing into the wider world.
The mommy bond may also make for better romance later in life, as another study reported in 2010 showed that a close relationship with one's mother in early adolescence (by age 14) was associated with better-quality romantic relationships as young adults. "Parents' relationships with their children are extremely important and that's how we develop our ability to have successful relationships as adults, our parents are our models," study researcher Constance Gager, of Montclair State University in New Jersey, said at the time. "So if kids are not feeling close with their parents then they're probably not going to model the positive aspects of that relationship when they reach adulthood."

California Meteor Broke Speed Record For Atmospheric Entry

Posted: December 21, 2012

A meteor that flew through the California sky in April broke the speed record for atmospheric entry as it streaked through the sky as a massive fireball.
The incident took place on April 22 over northern California’s gold country, reports the Scientific American. Meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens took the opportunity to search for pieces of the meteorite to study.
The meteorite was picked up by Doppler radar stations, allowing researchers to pinpoint the spot where it landed. Jenniskens and other researchers were able to pick up 77 pieces of the meteorite, though they were only a fraction of the object’s original mass.
The Scientific American notes that the meteor astronomer and his colleagues believe that the meteor hit the atmosphere at about 28.6 kilometers per second — or about 64,000 miles per hour. At that speed, the meteor broke the record as the highest entry velocity ever recorded for a recovered meteorite.
Named the Sutter’s Hill meteorite for it’s recovery area, the researchers were able to discover that the massive meteor was a rare variety called a carbonaceous chondrite. The Latino Post notes that the fragments recovered by Jenniskens and his colleagues may hold clues to the early stages of the universe.
The space rock is believed to have formed about 4.5 billion years ago and was part of a Jupiter-family comet that broke off around 50,000 years ago, according to The Latino Post. The meteor’s landing in April released the energy equivalent of about four kilotons of TNT, or about one-fourth the impact of the atomic bomb released on Hiroshima. Ed Allen, a resident in the area who heard the meteor land, recalled:

“I was out on my hillside burning some branches and so forth, and I heard this sonic boom. It wasn’t just one boom. It was a series of booms, literally right over my head.”

The meteor that broke the speed record displays “considerable diversity” of mineraology, petrography, and isotope and organic chemistry, according to Jenniskens. The meteor astronomer’s study about the California meteor will appear in the journal Science on Friday.

Scientists decode why universe is dominated by matter

PTI : Washington, Thu Dec 27 2012, 13:28 hrs

Scientists have solved the puzzle of the universe being dominated by matter rather than its close relative anti-matter.
Physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison made a precise measurement of elusive, nearly massless particles, and obtained a crucial hint as to why the universe is dominated by matter.
The particles, called anti-neutrinos, were detected at the underground Daya Bay experiment, located near a nuclear reactor in China.
Anti-particles are almost identical twins of sub-atomic particles (electrons, protons and neutrons) that make up our world. When an electron encounters an anti-electron, for example, both are annihilated in a burst of energy.
Failure to see these bursts in the universe tells physicists that anti-matter is vanishingly rare, and that matter rules the roost in today's universe.
"At the beginning of time, in the Big Bang, a soup of particles and anti-particles was created, but somehow an imbalance came about," says Karsten Heeger, a professor of physics at UW-Madison.
"All the studies that have been done have not found enough difference between particles and anti-particles to explain the dominance of matter over anti-matter.
"But the neutrino, an extremely abundant but almost massless particle, may have the right properties, and may even be its own anti-particle, Heeger said in a statement.
"And that's why physicists have put their last hope on the neutrino to explain the absence of anti-matter in the universe," he said.
Reactors, Heeger says, are a fertile source of anti-neutrinos, and measuring how they change during their short flights from the reactor to the detector, gives a basis for calculating a quantity called the "mixing angle", the probability of transformation from one flavour into another.
The measurement of the Daya Bay experiment even before the last set of detectors was installed, showed a surprisingly large angle, Heeger said.
"People thought the angle might be really tiny, so we built an experiment that was 10 times as sensitive as we ended up needing.

Shivalik Express: World’s second solar train

By Gaurav Bhatia, TNN | Dec 27, 2012, 05.53 AM IST

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Comet ISON

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download
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Introducing Comet ISON
Image Credit & Copyright: Ligustri Rolando Explanation: Could this dim spot brighten into one of the brightest comets ever? It's possible. Alternatively, the comet could break up when it gets closer to the Sun, or brighten much more modestly. Sky enthusiasts the world over are all abuzz , though, from the more optimistic speculations -- that the newly discovered C/2012 S1 (ISON) could develop a spectacular tail or briefly approach the brightness of the full Moon toward the end of 2013. Comet ISON currently is very faint but is just visible at magnitude 18 in the above image. The comet, discovered just over a week ago from Russia by Vitali Nevski (Belarus) and Artyom Novichonok (Russia), is currently falling toward the Sun from between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. In early 2013 October it will pass very near Mars and possibly be visible to rovers and orbiting spacecraft. Comet ISON appears on course to achieve sungrazer status as it passes within a solar diameter of Sun's surface in late 2013 November. Whatever survives will then pass nearest the Earth in late 2013 December. Astronomers around the world will be tracking this large dirty snowball closely to better understand its nature and how it might evolve during the next 15 months.

Why phablets are becoming popular with students

TNN Dec 25, 2012, 03.59AM IST

(If you've got it, flaunt…)

VISAKHAPATNAM: If you've got it, flaunt it, is the mantra Gen Y lives by. And the latest trend taking college students by storm is the phablet, a gadget which has the features of a smartphone and tablet.
An increasing number of students are now giving traditional desktops and laptops a miss to connect with the latest that technology has to offer. Endorsing the trend, Andhra University student Govind said, "Earlier I was using a smartphone and also had a tablet but later realised that a phablet was better as you can make calls and use it as a tablet as well. I switched over to one and it has made life easier!"

Shravan Kumar, a third year student of AU College of Engineering, who is soon planning to graduate to a phablet, says, "The processing speed is high, you can access the internet much faster and on the go. You can connect to social networking sites, make presentation, play games, watch movies, videos, listen to songs and all that at an affordable cost, " said Kumar.
The trend has sent cash registers ringing at electronics store in the city.
Nageshwara Rao, another electronics goods showroom owner, confirmed a similar spurt in sales. "Phablet sales have shot up by 35% over the past month or so. There is a demand for phablets across models and price ranges. About six months ago, it was more of smartphones that were in demand. Today, the phablets are giving them a run for their money." The price of phablets starting from Rs 6000 is also a major draw. "Ever since phablets hit the market, smart phone sales have dipped. Last month we sold about 100 smartphones and about 25 phablets as against around 150 smartphones per month earlier."

Boeing engineers use potatoes to improve in-flight Wi-Fi

AP | Dec 24, 2012, 01.34 PM IST

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Boeing engineers use potatoes to improve in-flight Wi-Fi

Engineers at Chicago-based Boeing used sacks of potatoes as stand-ins for passengers as they worked to eliminate weak spots in in-flight wireless signals.

CHICAGO; If the wireless internet connection during your holiday flight seems more reliable than it used to, you could have the humble potato to thank.

While major airlines offer in-flight Wi-Fi on many flights, the signal strength can be spotty. Airlines and aircraft makers have been striving to improve this with the growing use of wireless devices and the number of people who don't want to be disconnected, even 35,000 feet up.

Engineers at Chicago-based Boeing used sacks of potatoes as stand-ins for passengers as they worked to eliminate weak spots in in-flight wireless signals. They needed full planes to get accurate results during signal testing, but they couldn't ask people to sit motionless for days while data was gathered.

"That's where potatoes come into the picture," Boeing spokesman Adam Tischler said.

It turns out that potatoes - because of their water content and chemistry - absorb and reflect radio wave signals much the same way as the human body does, making them suitable substitutes for airline passengers.

"It's a testament to the ingenuity of these engineers. They didn't go in with potatoes as the plan," Tischler said.

Recapping the serendipitous path that led to better onboard wireless, Tischler said a member of the research team stumbled across an article in the Journal of Food Science describing research in which 15 vegetables and fruits were evaluated for their dielectric properties, or the way they transmit electric force without conduction.

Its conclusions led the Boeing researchers to wonder if potatoes might serve just as well as humans during their own signal testing. Despite some skepticism, they ended up buying 20,000 pounds of them.

Video and photos of the work, which started in 2006, show a decommissioned airplane loaded with row upon row of potato sacks that look like large, lumpy passengers. The sacks sit eerily still in the seats as the engineers collect data on the strength of wireless signals in various spots.

The Boeing engineers added some complicated statistical analysis and the result was a proprietary system for fine tuning internet signals so they would be strong and reliable wherever a laptop was used on a plane.

Boeing says the system also ensures Wi-Fi signals won't interfere with the plane's sensitive navigation and communications equipment.

"From a safety standpoint, you want to know what the peak signals are, what's the strongest signal one of our communications and navigation systems might see from a laptop or 150 laptops or 350 laptops," Boeing engineer Dennis Lewis explains in a video.

In a nod to the humor in using a tuber to solve a high-tech problem, researchers dubbed the project Synthetic Personnel Using Dialectic Substitution, or SPUDS.

The company says better Wi-Fi signals can be found already on three Boeing aircraft models flown by major airlines: 777, 747-8 and the 787 Dreamliner.

NASA plans to `lasso' asteroid and turn it into space station

ANI | Dec 24, 2012, 01.49 PM IST

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NASA plans to `lasso' asteroid and turn it into space station

LONDON: NASA scientists are planning to capture a 500 ton asteroid, relocate it and turn it into a space station for astronauts to refuel at on their way to Mars.

The 1.6bn-pound plan will be considered by the White House's Office of Science and technology in the coming weeks, as it prepares to set its space exploration agenda for the next decade, the Daily Mail reported.

According to a report prepared by NASA and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists, a, 'asteroid capture capsule' would be attached to an old Atlas V rocket and directed towards the asteroid between the earth and the moon.

Once close, the asteroid capsule would release a 50ft diameter bag that wrap around the spinning rock using drawstrings.

The craft would then turn on its thrusters, using an estimated 300kg of propellant, to stop the asteroid in its tracks and tow it into a gravitationally neutral spot.

From here space explorers would have a stationary base from which to launch trips deeper into space.

Though NASA declined to comment on the project, it is believed that technology would make it possible within 10-12 years.

The technology would also open up the possibility of mining other asteroids for their metals and minerals.

Some are full of iron which could be used for in the making of new space stations, others are made up of water which could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make fuel.

It is hoped that the project will increase our understanding of asteroids, and even shed new light on the origin of life on Earth.

LOOKS DANGEROUS

Breath test could detect bowel cancer

ANI | Dec 5, 2012, 06.40 PM IST

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Breath test could detect bowel cancer (Thinkstock photos/Getty Images)

A breath-test that they can accurately tell if a person has bowel cancer has been developed.

The test, which looks for exhaled chemicals linked to tumour activity, was able to identify a majority of patients with the disease, a team from a hospital in Bari, southern Italy, reported in the British Journal of Surgery.

The current screening test for bowel cancer looks for signs of blood in the faeces, but only a small proportion of those who test positive actually have colorectal cancer, which means unnecessary and invasive further testing for many people.

The breath-test technology relies on the idea that the biology of tumours can lead to the production of specific "volatile organic compounds", combinations of chemicals unlikely in a healthy person.

These can be found in small amounts in the breath of the patient, and early studies found dogs could be trained to identify them - although the latest study relies an electronic device to analyse breath gases.

The researchers compared the breath of 37 patients known to have bowel cancer with that of 41 "controls" who were thought to be healthy.

The initial test identified the cancer patients with 85 percent accuracy, and although, when combined with a follow-up test, the overall result fell to 76 percent, the researchers were upbeat about its potential.

"The present findings further support the value of breath-testing as a screening tool," the BBC quoted the researchers as saying.

It might be possible that the technique could help identify patients whose cancer was returning after treatment, they stated.

Dr Donato Altomare and colleagues noted that bigger studies with a greater number of patients are needed to confirm it.

However, another scientist said it was unlikely a fully functioning and reliable breath-test would be available soon for the general public.

Dr Claire Turner, a lecturer in analytical chemistry at the Open University, said "These technologies show a great deal of promise, and hopefully we will see larger studies in the future. However, we are unlikely to see this kind of breath testing available widely in the short term."

Two bowel cancer genes discovered

PTI | Dec 24, 2012, 01.28 PM IST

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READ MORE University of Oxford|Oxford|Cancer|Tumor|bowel cancer

Researchers from the University of Oxford and the Institute of Cancer Research, London, scanned the genes of 20 people from families with a strong history of bowel cancer.

LONDON: Researchers have discovered two genes that increase the risk of bowel cancer, which explain why some families are incredibly vulnerable to the disease.

The genes are passed from parent to child and greatly increase the risk of a tumour forming.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and the Institute of Cancer Research, London, scanned the genes of 20 people from families with a strong history of bowel cancer.

They found everyone who had a faulty POLE or POLD1 gene developed bowel cancer or had a precancerous growth in the bowel.

The two genes are so-called 'dominant' genes, where only one faulty copy needs to be inherited for someone to be at a high risk of developing bowel cancer.

Researchers looked for the faults in almost 4,000 people with bowel cancer and 6,700 without the disease. Neither of the faults were found in people without bowel cancer, while 12 people with the POLE gene were found in the bowel cancer group and one person had a POLD1 gene fault.

The POLD1 fault was also found to increase the risk of getting womb cancer and possibly brain tumours with seven people in the study being diagnosed with womb cancer and one developing two brain tumours.

"There are some families where large numbers of relatives develop bowel cancer but who don't have any of the known gene faults that raise the risk of developing the disease," said lead researcher Ian Tomlinson from the University of Oxford.

"These two faults are rare, but if you inherit them your chance of bowel cancer is high. By testing people with a strong family history of the disease for these faults, we can identify those who are at high risk and try to prevent the disease by using colonoscopy and other methods," Tomlinson said in a statement.

POLE and POLD1 are involved in scanning and repairing damage to DNA, removing incorrect sequences from the DNA chain. Without these genes, affected individuals build up damage in their DNA which can cause bowel cancer.

"Uncovering gene faults like these two is extremely important, as inherited susceptibility plays a role in the development of about a third of all cases of colorectal cancer," study co-leader Professor Richard Houlston said.

"This is one of the most important discoveries in bowel cancer genetics in years. It should allow us to manage families affected by inherited bowel cancer much more effectively, and it offers new clues for the prevention or treatment of all forms of the disease," he said.

The study was published in Nature Genetics.

Soon, lamps powered by gravity

ANI | Dec 22, 2012, 03.35 PM IST

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A British company hopes to bring electric light to 1.5 billion people who live off the grid with an incredible electric light that is powered by gravity.

LONDON: A British company hopes to bring electric light to 1.5 billion people who live off the grid with an incredible electric light that is powered by gravity.

The GravityLight uses a sack of sand to gradually pull a piece of rope through a dynamo mechanism which generates electricity to power an LED light.

Its makers claim that a three-second pull on the rope to raise the sack will keep the LED bulb running for up to 30 minutes.

The light, named GravityLight, works by suspending a bag filled with a heavy substance like rocks, dirt or sand from the light.

London-based design and innovation initiative deciwatt.org designed the GravityLight as a sustainable lighting solution for the 1.5billion people in the world who have no reliable access to electricity.

Most of these people rely on biomass fuels like kerosene for lighting once the Sun goes down, but such fuels can be hazardous to health - as well as posing a fire risk.

Deciwatt.org, a division within design company Therefore, which came up with the casing for the Psion range of handheld computers, say the trend for rapid advances in technology has made their product possible.

Their website cites Koomey's law, a lesser-known parallel to Moore's law, which describes how the number of computations possible per joule of energy has doubled roughly every year and a half since the Fifties.

The flip side of this is that relatively simple devices progressively need less energy to run, making possible a whole range of relatively simple gadgets that can be powered by unconventional means.

The GravityLight was co-invented by Martin Riddiford, who designed the Psion hardware, and Jim Reeves, both directors at London-based Therefore.

"We've done a number of projects, including the Psion products - where the requirements were incredibly efficient in terms of power usage," the Daily Mail quoted Riddiford as telling The Register.

"The digital age has made products much power hungry but now there's a reversal of that - everyone's chasing lower power again," he added.

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New surgery blasts kidneys with radio waves to cure high BP

PTI | Dec 18, 2012, 05.04 PM IST

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New surgery blasts kidneys with radio waves to cure high BP

The team behind the 30-minute procedure believes it will mean an end to the use of pills to normalise blood pressure.

LONDON: Scientists have developed a new type of surgery using radio waves which they claim can destroy overactive nerves around the kidneys in just 30 minutes and help millions of people with high blood pressure.

The procedure involves burning away nerve tissue around the kidney arteries and was found to aid patients whose condition could not be maintained using medication, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

The team behind the 30-minute procedure believes it will mean an end to the use of pills to normalise blood pressure.

The Australian scientists believe the results of their study could revolutionise treatment of high blood pressure, a belief which was echoed by experts in the UK.

"This is very exciting. It could cure a large proportion of sufferers, bringing their blood pressure well into normal range," Professor Gareth Beevers of Blood Pressure UK told The Daily Express.

The procedure may even make the use of drugs to control the condition obsolete.

"Studies will soon determine whether this procedure can cure mild hypertension, producing permanent drug-free normalisation of blood pressure," study leader Professor Murray Esler, from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, said.

"Based on blood pressure declines achieved, reduction in heart attack and stroke rates of more than 40 per cent is anticipated," Esler said.

The minimally invasive procedure is known as catheter-based renal denervation.

It uses a probe passed through the femoral artery which fires short bursts of intense radio waves to destroy nerves around the kidneys which may be overactive in patients with hypertension.

"Participants' kidneys were not damaged or functionally impaired," Esler said, adding that the study saw no negative effects on patients' long-term health from the procedure.

The patients in the study all had blood pressure readings of 160 or higher, and had taken three or more types of medication to normalise their blood pressure.

The findings, reported in the journal Circulation, showed that six months after treatment systolic blood pressure was reduced by at least 10 millimetres of mercury in 83 per cent of one group of patients.

The systolic reading measures blood pressure with each beat of the heart.

Almost 79 per cent of the same group were able to maintain such reductions for a year.

Scientists decode how life emerged from Earth's abiotics

Business Standard

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A new synthesis by researchers offers a coherent picture of how metabolism, and thus all life, emerged on Earth. Describing how living organisms emerged from Earth's abiotic chemistry has remained a conundrum for scientists.

'Microbe led to mass extinction 251m years ago'

PTI | Dec 17, 2012, 05.02 AM IST

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READ MORE Daniel Rothman|Siberia|MIT|London

LONDON: A humble microbe, instead of a devastating meteorite or a catastrophic volcanic eruption, wiped off over 90% of the species on Earth 251-million-years ago, scientists believe. According to prevailing theory, the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period was triggered by volcanic eruptions over a vast area of what is now Siberia, which led to a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
However, according to Daniel Rothman of MIT, the scenario just doesn't fit the facts.
From his analysis of an end-Permian sediment sample from China, Rothman says carbon levels surged much too quickly for geological processes to be at work. Microbes can generate carbon compounds that fast.
As his group analysed the genome of Methanosarcina - a methanogen responsible for most of biogenic methane - they found that it gained this ability 231m years ago. Methanosarcina needs large amounts of nickel to produce methane quickly. The team discovered that nickel levels spiked 251m years ago in the sediment samples. This suggests Methanosarcina did trigger the extinction

Close call signals Earth needs an asteroid shield

Dec 17, 2012, 05.08 AM IST

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Master computer controls universe?

PTI | Dec 17, 2012, 05.07 AM IST

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READ MORE Martin Savage|University of Washington|Professor

Physicists mull theory that humans may be mere pawns in a PC program

MELBOURNE: Scientists are conducting experiments to discover whether the universe exists within a Matrixstyle computer simulation created by super computers of the future.

The experiments being conducted by University of Washington could prove that we are merely pawns in some kind of larger computer game. However, it is unclear who created these super computers that may hypothetically power our existence.

"Imagine the situation where we get a big enough computer to simulate our universe, and we start such a simulation on our computers," said professor Martin Savage, a physicists working on the project. "If that simulation runs long enough, and have same laws as our universe, then something like our universe will emerge within that simulations, and the situation will repeat itself within each simulation," he said.

The current understanding of string theory indicates that there are 10,500 universes with different laws that determine the behaviour of particles within them, he said.

"So it is certainly true, that with enough computer resources, theorists would like to explore these universes ," he added.

Explaining how the experiment works, physicists claim that finite computer resources mean that space time is not continuous but set on a grid with a finite volume, designed to create maximum energy subatomic particles. The direction these particles flow in will depend on how they are ordered on the grid. They will be looking at the distribution of the highest energy cosmic rays in order to detect patterns that could suggest that universe is the creation of some futuristic computer technology.

And if it does turns out that we are mere players in some sort of computer programme, they suggested that there may be a way to mess with the program, and play with the minds of our creators. "One could imagine trying to figure out how to manipulate the code, communicate with the code and questions that appear weird to consider today," he said.

'Divine particle' makes researchers curious

By Swati Shinde Gole, TNN | Dec 16, 2012, 01.13 AM IST

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PUNE: Spiritual expert Anjali Gadgil generated immense curiosity among a gathering of 150-odd researchers and scientists on Friday as she talked about the discovery of a new crop of particles, termed 'divine particles'. Gadgil presented her paper at the 17th national conference of the Indian Aerobiological Society, underway in the city.

Gadgil, who analysed the nature of the newly-discovered particles from the laboratories of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, said the particles are 'inorganic matter' containing carbon and oxygen, and do not resemble any existing particles. The particles are claimed to be golden in colour and were first discovered in July this year.

While presenting her study, Gadgil reported that the particles were first noticed on the hands of hypnotherapist Jayant Athavale. When he rubbed his hand, around 15 to 20 golden particles fell down.

Gadgil, who undertook this research with assistance from Durgesh Samant, collected a sample of these particles and sent it to several reputed scientific institutes. "We received the sample test report recently from BARC as well as IIT, Bombay. The report states that the particles have no resemblance to soil or the surrounding environment," Gadgil said.

S K Jha, head of the environmental assessment division, BARC, who tested the samples of the particles at BARC, said, "The particles contain only carbon and oxygen and the formulae of these particles do not match any particles that exist. They are purely inorganic matter." BARC used the energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence test on the particles to determine their nature. Jha is an expert in conducting tests under this technique. His report further stated: "These particles do not have other metallic elements as are seen in environmental air particulate."

Gadgil and her colleagues clarified that they are not trying to explore the existence of the particles.