Ramar Sethu Not A Man Made Structure: EarthWeb

EarthWeb, a division of NASA that hosts astronaut photography of the Earth, has said that the 'Ramar Sethu' or Adams Bridge was not a man made structure and that their occurrence was not evidence of any human activity. This was in reply to an e-mail sent by the Sethusamudram Corporation on July 26, 2007 to clarify whether it was a man made structure or not.
"Our office supports only astronaut photography of the Earth. The chain of small islets connecting India and Sri Lanka are real geographical features that have been mapped for centuries. Chains of islands form a variety of natural geological processes and their occurrence is not evidence of any human activity," EarthWeb said.
An official of the Sethusamudram Corporation had mailed Earthweb on the satellite image of Adams Bridge.
"In India a burning question is going on whether this bridge is man made or not. Religious fundamentalists insist that the bridge was once constructed by human beings in order to invade Sri Lanka long ago. Some say it is not man made and the area is covered by shallow water and the sediments under the water appear like a narrow bridge. The third group say that the Bridge is nothing but a peak of a large mountain that has submerged," the Email said and asked for a clarification on the issue.
A copy of the Email was circulated to the media during a press conference addressed by N K Reghupathy, Chairman, Tuticorin Port Trust and Chairman and Managing Director, Sethusamudram Corporation Ltd in Chennai on July 28, 2007.

Indian Space Varsity Takes Wings In August

India’s first space university is all set to take wings in August seeking to groom tailor-made experts to fuel the country’s satellite and rocket programmes.
”August middle is our target”, said G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which is setting up the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) and expected to meet the high technology requirements of ISRO.
It would initially operate from the campus of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram, a lead centre of ISRO, which will create a full-fledged infrastructure for IIST on a picturesque site in Ponmudi near the Kerala state capital in about two years.
The Institute, which offers technically tuned courses in space science and technology, has already attracted some of India’s bright minds encouraging India’s space agency.
”The response is really good. Original plan was to take from the so called extended list of IIT JEE. But we could see large number of applicants from the main list of IIT itself”, Nair told in an interview.
ISRO sources said around 150 students were expected to be enrolled in aeronautical and avionics engineering and integrated MSc in space sciences in the first academic year.
Nair said ISRO came up with the idea of setting up of the institute as it was faced with a “very alarming situation” in terms of attracting the right talent for India’s space programmes.
”Most of the students who come out of IIT and IISc etc..they go to either Management, IT or abroad. So, they are not available to the Indian scientific community,” Nair said.
The IIST students “will be taught in propulsion, aero dynamics, navigation, guidance, sub-systems, avionics, control systems and so on”, he said. “So, that way, as soon as they come out of the Institute, they will be usable by us”.
ISRO has totally subsidised the education and the students passing out of the IIST are required to serve the space agency for five years. If not, they would have to pay the bond amount.

Chandigarh Becomes First Smoke-Free City Of India

Chandigarh has taken a lead over other cities in becoming the country’s first smoke-free city as provisions of the Central Tobacco Control Act were implemented in all parts of the Union Territory from July 15, 2007.
The Chandigarh Administration has said that smoking cigarette or bidi or any form of tobacco at any public place is an offence, and officials notified by the administration including police officers, food and drug inspectors have been empowered to book on the spot any person found smoking at a public place.
Not just smoking, but throwing cigarette butts in open would be considered a violation and anyone doing so is liable to be fined.
On the first day of implementing the Act, the Administration carried out a special challan drive and within the first five days itself, 741 people had been fined for smoking in public places.
Any non-smoker aggrieved by unwilling exposure to tobacco smoke can make a complaint to the Chandigarh Police, Department of Health or Chandigarh Tobacco Control Cell in writing at any of the E-Jan Sampark centres.

Robots Will Become Lazy!

The future will see more human-robot interactions, and humans will expect robots to move more like them. Scientists at Stanford University, California, have said that robots must be made as lazy as possible, in their gestures, if we want them to be more interactive.
During the course of their study, Oussama Khatib and his team modelled out how humans naturally minimised the energy used by their muscles.
They then applied the same energy-minimising criteria to direct the way a computer model of a robot moved.
“In that way, we are able to produce motions with the robot that look very natural,” said Khatib.
"Humans are sort of lazy. That is why we sip coffee with our arm at a 30 to 45-degree angle to our bodies, not with our elbow higher up or tight against our torso,” New Scientist quoted him as saying.
In a related development, scientists at the University of Göttingen, Germany, have simulated in a walking robot, those very neuronal principles that help humans adapt their gait to the slope of an incline.
‘RunBot’, which holds the world record in speed walking for dynamic machines, uses reflexes driven by peripheral sensors to adjust its movement. Control circuits ensure that the joints are not overstretched or that the next step is initiated as soon as the foot touches the ground.
Only when the gait needs to be adapted, higher organizations, like the brain in the case of humans, and the infrared eye, in RunBot’s case, step in.
The infrared eye leads on to a simpler neural network, which by changing only a few parameters, allows RunBot to adjust its walk, which is then automatically tuned through the robot’s regular circuits.

Water Discovered On Extra-solar Planet

An international team of scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered water on an extra-solar planet for the first time, the science magazine Nature reported Thursday, 12 July, 2007.
The planet with water in its atmosphere is known as HD189733b, and orbits a star in the constellation of Vulpecula, 63 light years from Earth, according to the report.
Planet HD189733b, a gas giant about 15 percent bigger than Jupiter, is known as a "transiting planet" as it passes directly in front of its star, as viewed from the Earth.
Unlike Jupiter, which is over five times as far away from the Sun as the Earth is, HD189733b is over 30 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun - which is why it is so hot.
The researchers, led by Giovanna Tinetti, an ESA (European Space Agency) fellow from the Institute d'Astrophysique de Paris and University College London (UCL), found that HD189733b absorbs the starlight of its "sun", as it passes in front of it, in a way that can only be explained if it has water vapor in its atmosphere.
This is the first time that astronomers have demonstrated for certain that water is present in an extra-solar planet with the infrared analysis of the planet's transit across its parent star providing the breakthrough.
"Although HD189733b is far from being habitable, and is actually quite a hostile environment, our discovery shows how water might be common out there and how our method can be used in the future to study more life-friendly environments," Tinetti said.

Moles Could Be The Secret To Looking Young

A new study has found that moles on the skin help maintain youthful looks for a longer period. Scientists have claimed that people with lots of moles are years younger biologically than those with mark-free skin. These spots may preserve the youthful looks for longer and could lower the risk of a range of age-related diseases such as heart disease or osteoporosis.
And, in some way, they offset the link between moles and an increased risk of skin cancer.
"Dermatologists have always said that nature doesn`t give us something for no reason. If the only reason for moles was to increase the risk of melanoma, it wouldn`t be very clever,” lead researcher, Dr Veronique Bataille, a consultant dermatologist, said. Bataille’s team, from King`s College London, associated moles with ageing after studying the DNA of more than 900 sets of female twins. In particular, they focused on telomeres, the bundles of DNA that restrict the ends of chromosomes. Considered as biological clocks, telomeres get shorter as our cells partition over time.
Previous studies have shown that those with long telomeres are likely to be biologically younger than those of the same age but with shorter telomeres. The study, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, demonstrated that those with more than 100 moles tended to have longer telomeres than those with fewer than 25. The difference in length equated to six or seven years of ageing. The results showed that twins with longer telomeres seemed to keep their moles for longer and to have delayed ageing.
Dr Bataille added that although a person is ten times more likely to develop skin cancer if they have more than 100 moles, the overall possibility of the disease is still very low.

India To Host 58th International Astronautical Congress, Sunita Williams May Join

The International Astronautical Congress (IAC), one of the world’s largest and authoritative forum of the Global Space Community, will be held in Hyderabad from September 24-28.
The Congress is hosted by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Astronautical Society of India (ASI), in conjunction with powerful global organisation like IAF, IAA and IISL, National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) Director K Radhakrishnan said on Thursday, 12 July 2007.
About 2500 space professionals, journalists and students engaged in space activities all over the world will participate in the week-long Congress, 200 organisations will be exhibiting from across the globe and the event expects over 10,000 business visitors. Radhakrishnan said that they are awaiting confirmation from Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams who has only recently returned from the mission in space. He added that they are expecting that Williams will accept to attend the plenary session on the last day of the congress.
The theme of this Congress is “Touching Humanity: Space For Improving Quality of Life,” he said.

Indians becoming more Net Savvy

A recent survey concluded by Juxtconsult, an independent consultancy this week says that nine per cent, or nearly one in 10 urban Indians, now use the Net.
Overall, Internet users in urban India have grown by a healthy 28 per cent over the past year. The survey studied growth between April 2006 and 2007 in the country.
There are 30.32 million Internet users now, says the survey that sampled 10,000 households in 31 cities of varying population sizes. The offline survey was followed in May by an online survey of 14,200 responses on usage behaviour and Website preferences.
Results of the survey says a significant finding is that all sorts of activities and businesses have grown on the Net, though travel has emerged as undisputed leader. Emailing, dating and matrimonial connections are among other key drivers of Internet growth.
Of the total 30.32 million urban Internet users, 25.17 million, or 83 per cent, are the ‘regular’ users who log on at least once a month and the remaining 5.15 million are ‘occasional’ users who use the Internet with a lesser frequency than that. Some 20 million Internet users do so on a daily basis.
Juxtconsult says Internet usage is seeing “slow but steady” growth but notices that online buying, especially in travel products, is showing “tremendous growth”. However, software and content in local languages and wider, speedier, affordable connectivity are crucial to drive future growth, it adds.

Oldest DNA shows earth much warmer

A team of international researchers used oldest DNA to show that Greenland was much warmer at some point during the last Ice Age than most people have believed.
The DNA samples were collected by the scientists from the bottom of a two kilometer thick ice sheet and from the trees, plants and insects of a boreal forest estimated to be between 450,000 and 900,000 years-old.
Previously, the youngest evidence of a boreal forest in Greenland was from 2.4 million years ago.
The DNA samples suggest the temperature of the southern Greenland boreal forests 450,000 to 900,000 years ago was probably between 10 degrees Celsius in summer and -17 degrees Celsius in winter.
Also, the reduced glacier cover in that region means the global ocean was probably between 1 and 2 meters higher during that time compared to current levels.
“These findings allow us to make a more accurate environmental reconstruction of the time period from which these samples were taken, and what we’ve learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought,” said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta and a co-author of the paper.
Sharp said the silty ice found underneath the huge Greenland glacier created a perfect, natural “freezer” to preserve the prehistoric DNA. Scientists have, in the past, found older organic matter, but they have not found any uncontaminated DNA that is as old or older than the Greenland samples.
Sharp and his PhD student Joel Barker contributed to the research by providing DNA samples from the silty ice of much younger glaciers (3,000 years old) on Ellesmere Island in Arctic Canada. The Canadian DNA samples offered a control sample for the researchers around the world who worked to estimate the age of the Greenland DNA samples.
Sharp, who has been a supporter of the idea that the current global warming trend is human induced, believes the new research offers evidence that climate warming on the current scale is possible through natural conditions. However, he cautions that this research does not prove the current global warming trend is not human induced. He says that our current warming could be the result of both natural processes and human influences, and we may be heading for even bigger temperature increases than we previously thought.
The results of the research were published in the latest issue of the Science Journal.

Florida Clears Artificial Reefs Of Tyres

When people began dumping used tyres in the ocean 40 years ago to create artificial reefs, they gave little thought to the potential environmental cost, or to how difficult it would be to pick them up.
Now, local authorities have started clearing some 700,000 tyres dumped off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, up the coast from Miami, US. A team of 40 divers from the U.S. Army, Navy and Coast Guard spent three weeks in June 2007, pulling up 10,373 sand-filled and slime-coated tyres from the ocean floor.
The military divers soon realised that they could strap together 50 to 70 tyres with wire cables and lift them to the surface with inflatable air bags, where a crane hauled the bundle from the water.
Millions of tyres, usually bundled with nylon straps or steel cables, were cast into the sea off Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and off the U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, California and Florida. The idea was to provide habitat for fish while disposing of trash from the land; but in the rugged and corrosive environment of the ocean, nylon straps wore out and snapped, cables rusted, and tyres broke free.
The tyres dumped off Fort Lauderdale posed a particular threat. When they broke free they migrated shoreward and ran into a living reef tract, climbing up its slope and killing everything in their path.
“If we can keep the project going we think they can get all the tires and then the reef can recover,” said Ken Banks of Broward County’s Environmental Protection Department. “But the reef recovery will probably take decades.”
The cleared tyres were trucked to a disposal plant in Georgia, where they were chipped into fuel for a waste recycling plant.

Australia To Build Cross-Continent Climate Corridor

Australia will create a wildlife corridor spanning the continent to allow animals and plants to flee the effects of global warming, scientists said on Monday.
The 2,800-kilometer (1,740 mile) climate “spine” will link the country’s entire east coast, from the snow-capped Australian alps in the south to the tropical north. This distance is almost equal from London to Romania.
The corridor, under discussion since the 1990s as the argument in support of climate change strengthened, will link national parks, state forests and government land, and help preserve scores of endangered species.
The creation of the corridor was agreed by state and federal governments this year amid international warnings that the country — already the world’s driest inhabited continent — is suffering from an accelerated Greenhouse effect. Climate scientists have predicted temperatures rising by up to 6.7 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080 in the country’s vast outback interior. A 10-year drought is expected to slash one percent from the A$940 billion (US$803 billion) economy. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology last year said climate change was occurring so fast in Australia that cooler southern towns were moving to the warmer north at the rate of 100 kilometres each year.

Indian Scientist Wins Award For Research On Glass Atom-Jellyfish Link

Mr Himanshu Jain, who first compared the fluctuations of atoms and of jellyfish, has received the world’s top prize for glass science research.
The scientist compared the movements of atoms in glass to the wiggling of jellyfish in water.
Mr Jain, director at the International Materials Institute for New Functionalities in Glass at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, in neighbouring Pennsylvania, received the Otto Schott Research Award on July 2, at the International Congress on Glass in Strasbourg, France.
The biennial award, which carries a cash prize of 25,000 euros, is the most valuable prize for glass research. Mr Jain, a professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh, is sharing the award with Walter Kob of the University of Montpellier in France.
Mr Jain is being cited for ‘’outstanding work towards advancing fundamental understanding of the movements of atoms inside glass.’’ The Indian-American is a professor of materials science and engineering and director of the International Materials Institute for New Functionalities in Glass at Lehigh University.

Yawning Helps Brain Keeping Cool

Latest research shows that yawning helps in keeping the brain cool, contradicting the popular belief that yawning promotes sleep and is a sign of tiredness.
Yawning involves opening the mouth involuntarily while taking a long, deep breath of air. It is commonly believed that people yawn as a result of drowsiness or weariness because they need oxygen.
However, researchers at the University of Albany in New York said their experiments on 44 students showed that drawing in air helps cool the brain and helps it work more effectively.
Their experiments showed that raising or lowering oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the blood did not produce that reaction.
Study participants were shown videos of people laughing, being neutral and yawning, and researchers counted how many times the volunteers responded to their own ‘contagious yawns,’ reported the online edition of BBC News.
The researchers found that those who breathed through the nose rather than the mouth were less likely to yawn when watching a video of other people yawning. This was because vessels in the nasal cavity sent cool blood to the brain. The same effect was found among those who held a cool pack to their forehead, whereas those who held a warm or room-temperature pack yawned while watching the video.
‘Since yawning occurs when brain temperature rises, sending cool blood to the brain serves to maintain optimal levels of mental efficiency,’ the authors wrote in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.