Author Archives: Arun Kumar N

About Arun Kumar N

Arun has been associated with India International Times since 2018 and he has been a key reporter in covering science and space related stories. He can be reached at arunKnn@indiainternationaltimes.com.

Weather Warning – 20 to 24 July, 2017 -Karnataka to Witness Heavy Rains

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India Meteorological Department has issued severe weather warning for 20th to 24thJuly, 2017 as below:

20JULY:♦

Heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places with extremely heavy falls very likely over Madhya Maharashtra and South Interior Karnataka.  Heavy   to very heavy  rain at a few places very likely over Konkan & Goa.

Heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places very likely over West Madhya Pradesh,  Gujarat State and Coastal Karnataka.

Heavy rain very likely at isolated places over Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh,Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh & Delhi,East Rajasthan, East Madhya  Pradesh, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh,Jharkhand, West Bengal & Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam & Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram &Tripura, North Interior  Karnataka, Tamilnadu & Pudducherry and Kerala.

21 JULY :♦

Heavy to very heavyrain at a few places with extremely heavy fallsat isolated places very likely over Gujarat State and Konkan & Goa.

Heavyto very heavyrain at isolated places very likely overEast Rajasthan, West Madhya Pradesh, Madhya Maharashtra,

Coastal Karnataka and South interior Karnatak.

Heavy rain very likely at isolated places over Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand,  Gangetic  West  Bengal, Andaman & Nicobar Islands,

Nagaland, Manipur,  Mizoram & Tripura and Kerala.

22 July  :♦

Heavyto very heavy rain at a few placeswith extremely heavy falls at isolated places very likely over Gujarat State.

Heavy   to very heavy rain  at isolated   places very likely over Konkan & Goa.

Heavy rain at a few places   with extremely heavy falls at isolated places  very likely  over East Rajasthan.

Heavy rain very likelyat isolated places over Uttarakhand, West Rajasthan, West Madhya Pradesh, MadhyaMaharashtra,

Coastal Karnataka and south Interior Karnataka

23 July :♦

Heavy to  very heavy rain at isolated places  very  likely  over  Rajasthan  and  Gujarat  region.

Heavy rain very likely at isolated places over Saurashtra & Kutch, Konkan & Goa,  Coastal Karnataka and south Interior Karnataka.

24 July :♦

Heavy  to very heavy rain at isolated  places very likely over Rajasthan.

Heavy rain very likelyat isolated places over Jharkhand, Gangetic West Bengal, Konkan & Goa, Coastal Karnataka and south Interior Karnataka.

 

 

42 Indian Satellites Orbiting in Outer Space: Minister

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At present, there are 42 Indian satellites operational in orbit, 15 of them for communication, 4 for meteorological observations, 14 for earth observations, 7 for navigation and 2 for space science purposes.

During FY 2016-17, the total revenue accrued from communication satellites through leasing of INSAT/ GSAT transponders is Rs. 746.68 crore.

With respect to earth observation satellites, the annual income from sale of remote sensing satellite data is Rs. 25.17 crores.

The data and value added services derived from earth observation, meteorological, communication & navigation satellites are used to support various applications like resource monitoring, weather forecasting, disaster management, location based services, including societal applications, informed Union Minister of State for Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, July 20, 2017.

In current calendar year of 2017, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched 104 satellites, in a single launch, onboard PSLV-C37 on February 15, 2017 and 31 satellites, in a single launch, on-board PSLV-C38 on June 23, 2017, he had informed the Lok Sabha earlier on July 19, 2017.

These satellites include – Two Indian Cartosat-2 series satellites, two Indian Nano-Satellites, one Nano satellite from Indian University and 130 foreign satellites from 19 countries viz. Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UAE, UK and USA.

 

Miniskirt Row: Saudi Women’s Desire to be Free Remains Elusive

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Saudi Arabian law was able to finally catch up with the miniskirt woman strolling on a village road with her midriff and legs exposed to a video grab that has gone viral. Though she was released later, the issue did not subside the outrage among women who cried wolf at targeting only women and not foreigners nor men.

Some Twitter users immediately pointed out double standards when Saudi men praised President Donald Trump’s wife Melania and daughter Ivanka who were part of the state visit last month but never worn veils.

The arrested woman, identified merely as Model Khulood, eschwed robes and a headscarf as per the Saudi law, which bars women from driving. However, most women took to their smartphones to defend the woman in miniskirt and questioned the male-oriented state laws.

“If she were a foreigner, they would sing about the beauty of her waist and the enchantment of her eyes. But because she is Saudi they are calling for her arrest,” tweeted one Fatima al-Issa while another pointed out how Saudi businessman Hasan al Jameel could kiss American pop icon Rihanna in a pool and the photograph was splashed in local media.

One Twitter user superimposed Ivanka Trump’s face on Model Khulood to show the difference in standards. “Everyone’s acting like a saint over just a skirt, while Hassan al-Jameel lay in Rihanna’s arms and no one said a thing. Everyone praises him for that while Saudi women are being insulted,” said one Shajan al-Qahtani.

But males are unmoved and defended the laws. “In France, the niqab (Burqa) is banned and women are fined if they wear it. In Saudi Arabia, wearing robes and modest clothing is part of the kingdom’s laws,” tweeted one activist. Here are some reactions on Twitter:

 

Team develops fast, cheap method to make supercapacitor electrodes

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UW team develops fast, cheap method to make supercapacitor electrodes for electric cars, high-powered lasers.

Supercapacitors are an aptly named type of device that can store and deliver energy faster than conventional batteries. They are in high demand for applications including electric cars, wireless telecommunications and high-powered lasers.

But to realize these applications, supercapacitors need better electrodes, which connect the supercapacitor to the devices that depend on their energy. These electrodes need to be both quicker and cheaper to make on a large scale and also able to charge and discharge their electrical load faster. A team of engineers at the University of Washington thinks they’ve come up with a process for manufacturing supercapacitor electrode materials that will meet these stringent industrial and usage demands.

The researchers, led by UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering Peter Pauzauskie, published a paper on July 17 in the journal Nature Microsystems and Nanoengineering describing their supercapacitor electrode and the fast, inexpensive way they made it. Their novel method starts with carbon-rich materials that have been dried into a low-density matrix called an aerogel. This aerogel on its own can act as a crude electrode, but Pauzauskie’s team more than doubled its capacitance, which is its ability to store electric charge.

These inexpensive starting materials, coupled with a streamlined synthesis process, minimize two common barriers to industrial application: cost and speed.

“In industrial applications, time is money,” said Pauzauskie. “We can make the starting materials for these electrodes in hours, rather than weeks. And that can significantly drive down the synthesis cost for making high-performance supercapacitor electrodes.”

Effective supercapacitor electrodes are synthesized from carbon-rich materials that also have a high surface area. The latter requirement is critical because of the unique way supercapacitors store electric charge. While a conventional battery stores electric charges via the chemical reactions occurring within it, a supercapacitor instead stores and separates positive and negative charges directly on its surface.

“Supercapacitors can act much faster than batteries because they are not limited by the speed of the reaction or byproducts that can form,” said co-lead author Matthew Lim, a UW doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. “Supercapacitors can charge and discharge very quickly, which is why they’re great at delivering these ‘pulses’ of power.”

“They have great applications in settings where a battery on its own is too slow,” said fellow lead author Matthew Crane, a doctoral student in the UW Department of Chemical Engineering. “In moments where a battery is too slow to meet energy demands, a supercapacitor with a high surface area electrode could ‘kick’ in quickly and make up for the energy deficit.”

To get the high surface area for an efficient electrode, the team used aerogels. These are wet, gel-like substances that have gone through a special treatment of drying and heating to replace their liquid components with air or another gas. These methods preserve the gel’s 3-D structure, giving it a high surface area and extremely low density. It’s like removing all the water out of Jell-O with no shrinking.

“One gram of aerogel contains about as much surface area as one football field,” said Pauzauskie.

Crane made aerogels from a gel-like polymer, a material with repeating structural units, created from formaldehyde and other carbon-based molecules. This ensured that their device, like today’s supercapacitor electrodes, would consist of carbon-rich materials.

Previously, Lim demonstrated that adding graphene — which is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick — to the gel imbued the resulting aerogel with supercapacitor properties. But, Lim and Crane needed to improve the aerogel’s performance, and make the synthesis process cheaper and easier.

In Lim’s previous experiments, adding graphene hadn’t improved the aerogel’s capacitance. So they instead loaded aerogels with thin sheets of either molybdenum disulfide or tungsten disulfide. Both chemicals are used widely today in industrial lubricants.

The researchers treated both materials with high-frequency sound waves to break them up into thin sheets and incorporated them into the carbon-rich gel matrix. They could synthesize a fully-loaded wet gel in less than two hours, while other methods would take many days.

After obtaining the dried, low-density aerogel, they combined it with adhesives and another carbon-rich material to create an industrial “dough,” which Lim could simply roll out to sheets just a few thousandths of an inch thick. They cut half-inch discs from the dough and assembled them into simple coin cell battery casings to test the material’s effectiveness as a supercapacitor electrode.

Not only were their electrodes fast, simple and easy to synthesize, but they also sported a capacitance at least 127 percent greater than the carbon-rich aerogel alone.

Lim and Crane expect that aerogels loaded with even thinner sheets of molybdenum disulfide or tungsten disulfide — theirs were about 10 to 100 atoms thick — would show an even better performance. But first, they wanted to show that loaded aerogels would be faster and cheaper to synthesize, a necessary step for industrial production. The fine-tuning comes next.

The team believes that these efforts can help advance science even outside the realm of supercapacitor electrodes. Their aerogel-suspended molybdenum disulfide might remain sufficiently stable to catalyze hydrogen production. And their method to trap materials quickly in aerogels could be applied to high capacitance batteries or catalysis.

The glass transition caught in the act

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We learn in school that matter comes in three states: solid, liquid and gas. A bored and clever student (we’ve all met one) then sometimes asks whether glass is a solid or a liquid.

The student has a point. Glasses are weird “solid liquids” that are cooled so fast their atoms or molecules jammed before organizing themselves in the regular patterns of a crystalline solid. So a glass has the mechanical properties of a solid but its atoms or molecules are disorganized, like those in a liquid.

One sign of the weirdness of glass is that the transition from liquid to a glass is much fuzzier than the transition from liquid to crystalline solid. In fact, the glass transition is arbitrarily defined as the point where the glass-forming material has a viscosity of 1013 poise. (The viscosity of water at room temperature is about 0.01 poise. A thick oil might have a viscosity of about 1.0 poise.) At this point, it is too thick to flow and so meets the practical definition of a solid.

Scientists hate definitions this vague, but they’ve been stuck with this one because nobody really understood the glass transition, which frequently makes it onto lists of the top-10 unsolved problems in physics.

For the most part, scientists have been able to measure only bulk properties of glass-forming liquids, such as viscosity and specific heat, and the interpretations they came up with depended in part on the measurements they took. The glass literature is notoriously full of contradictory findings and workshops about glass are the venue for lively debate.

But in the past fifteen years, new experimental setups that scatter X-rays or neutrons off the atoms in a droplet of liquid that is held without a container (which would provoke it to crystallize) have allowed scientists at long last to measure the atomic properties of the liquid. And that is the level at which they suspect the secrets of the glass transition are hidden.

In one such study, Ken Kelton, the Arthur Holly Compton Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and his research team (Chris Pueblo, Washington University and Minhua Sun, Harbin Normal University, China) compared a measure of the interaction of atoms for different glass-forming liquids. Their results, published online in Nature Materials, reconcile several measures of glass formation, a sign that they are on the right track.

“We have shown that the concept of fragile and strong liquids, which was invented to explain why viscosity changes in markedly different ways as a liquid cools, actually goes much deeper than just the viscosity,” Kelton said. “It is ultimately related to the repulsion between atoms, which limits their ability to move cooperatively. This is why the distinction between fragile and strong liquids also appears in structural properties, elastic properties and dynamics. They’re all just different manifestations of that atomic interaction.”

This is the first time the connection between viscosity and atomic interactions has been demonstrated experimentally, he said. Intriguingly, his studies and work by others suggest that the glass transition begins not at the conventional glass transition temperature but rather at a temperature approximately two times higher in metallic glasses (more than two times higher in the silicate glasses, such as window glass). It is at that point, Kelton said, the atoms first begin to move cooperatively.

Drilling down to the atomic level

Kelton’s latest discoveries follow earlier investigations of a characteristic of glass-forming liquids called fragility. To most people, all glasses are fragile, but to physicists some are “strong” and others are “fragile.”

The distinction was first introduced in 1995 by Austen Angell, a professor of chemistry at Arizona State University, who felt that a new term was needed to capture dramatic differences in the way a liquid’s viscosity increases as it approaches the glass transition.

The viscosities of some liquids change gradually and smoothly as they approach this transition. But as other liquids are cooled, their viscosity changes very little at first, but then take off like a rocket as the transition temperature approaches.

At the time, Angell could only measure viscosity, but he called the first type of liquid “strong” and the second type “fragile” because he suspected a structural difference underlay the differences that he saw,

“It’s easier to explain what he meant if you think of a glass becoming a liquid rather than the other way around,” Kelton said. “Suppose a glass is heated through the glass transition temperature. If it’s a ‘strong’ system, it ‘remembers’ the structure it had as a glass–which is more ordered than in a liquid–and that tells you that the structure does not change much through the transition. In contrast, a ‘fragile’ system quickly ‘forgets’ its glass structure, which tells you that its structure changes a lot through the transition.

“People argued that the change in viscosity had to be related to the structure — through several intermediate concepts, some of which are not well defined,” Kelton added. “What we did was hop over these intermediate steps to show directly that fragility was related to structure.”

In 2014, he with members of his group published in Nature Communications the results of experiments that showed that the fragility of a glass-forming liquid is reflected in something called the structure factor, a quantity measured by scattering X-rays off a droplet of liquid that contains information about the position of the atoms in the droplet.

“It was just as Angell had suspected,” Kelton said. “The rate of atomic ordering in the liquid near the transition temperature determines whether a liquid is ‘fragile’ or ‘strong.'”

Sharp little atomic elbows

But Kelton wasn’t satisfied. Other scientists were finding correlations between the fragility of a liquid and its elastic properties and dynamics, as well as its structure. “There has to be something in common,” he thought. “What’s the one thing that could underlie all of these things?” The answer, he believed, had to be the changing attraction and repulsion between atoms as they moved closer together, which is called the atomic interaction potential.

If two atoms are well separated, Kelton explained, there is little interaction between them and the interatomic potential is nearly zero. When they get closer together, they are attracted to one another for a variety of reasons. The potential energy goes down, becoming negative (or attractive). But then as they move closer still, the cores of the atoms start to interact, repelling one another. The energy shoots way up.

“It’s that repulsive part of the potential we were seeing in our experiments,” Kelton said.

What they found when they measured the repulsive potential of 10 different metallic alloys at the Advanced Photon Source, a beamline at Argonne National Laboratory, is that “strong” liquids have steeper repulsive potentials and the slope of their repulsive potential changes more rapidly that of “fragile” ones. “What this means,” Kelton said, “is that ‘strong’ liquids order more rapidly at high temperatures than ‘fragile’ ones. That is the microscopic underpinning of Angell’s fragility.

“What’s interesting,” Kelton continued, “is that we see atoms beginning to respond cooperatively — showing awareness of one another — at temperatures approximately double the glass transition temperature and close to the melting temperature.

“That’s where the glass transition really starts,” he said. “As the liquid cools more and more, atoms move cooperatively until rafts of cooperation extend from one side of the liquid to the other and the atoms jam. But that point, the conventional glass transition, is only the end point of a continuous process that begins at a much higher temperature.”

Kelton will soon attend a workshop in Poland where he expects lively discussion of his findings, which contradict those of some of his colleagues. But he is convinced that he has hold of the thread that will lead out of the labyrinth because different levels of understanding are beginning to line up. “It’s exciting that things are coming together so well,” he said.

Empowering robots for ethical behavior

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Scientists at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK have developed a concept called Empowerment to help robots to protect and serve humans, while keeping themselves safe.

Robots are becoming more common in our homes and workplaces and this looks set to continue. Many robots will have to interact with humans in unpredictable situations. For example, self-driving cars need to keep their occupants safe, while protecting the car from damage. Robots caring for the elderly will need to adapt to complex situations and respond to their owners’ needs.

Recently, thinkers such as Stephen Hawking have warned about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, and this has sparked public discussion. “Public opinion seems to swing between enthusiasm for progress and downplaying any risks, to outright fear,” says Daniel Polani, a scientist involved in the research, which was recently published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI.

However, the concept of “intelligent” machines running amok and turning on their human creators is not new. In 1942, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov proposed his three laws of robotics, which govern how robots should interact with humans. Put simply, these laws state that a robot should not harm a human, or allow a human to be harmed. The laws also aim to ensure that robots obey orders from humans, and protect their own existence, as long as this doesn’t cause harm to a human.

The laws are well-intentioned, but they are open to misinterpretation, especially as robots don’t understand nuanced and ambiguous human language. In fact, Asimov’s stories are full of examples where robots misinterpreted the spirit of the laws, with tragic consequences.

One problem is that the concept of “harm” is complex, context-specific and is difficult to explain clearly to a robot. If a robot doesn’t understand “harm”, how can they avoid causing it? “We realized that we could use different perspectives to create ‘good’ robot behavior, broadly in keeping with Asimov’s laws,” says Christoph Salge, another scientist involved in the study.

The concept the team developed is called Empowerment. Rather than trying to make a machine understand complex ethical questions, it is based on robots always seeking to keep their options open. “Empowerment means being in a state where you have the greatest potential influence on the world you can perceive,” explains Salge. “So, for a simple robot, this might be getting safely back to its power station, and not getting stuck, which would limit its options for movement. For a more futuristic, human-like robot this would not just include movement, but could incorporate a variety of parameters, resulting in more human-like drives.”

The team mathematically coded the Empowerment concept, so that it can be adopted by a robot. While the researchers originally developed the Empowerment concept in 2005, in a recent key development, they expanded the concept so that the robot also seeks to maintain a human’s Empowerment. “We wanted the robot to see the world through the eyes of the human with which it interacts,” explains Polani. “Keeping the human safe consists of the robot acting to increase the human’s own Empowerment.”

“In a dangerous situation, the robot would try to keep the human alive and free from injury,” says Salge. “We don’t want to be oppressively protected by robots to minimize any chance of harm, we want to live in a world where robots maintain our Empowerment.”

This altruistic Empowerment concept could power robots that adhere to the spirit of Asimov’s three laws, from self-driving cars, to robot butlers. “Ultimately, I think that Empowerment might form an important part of the overall ethical behaviour of robots,” says Salge.

3-D models help scientists gauge flood impact

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Heavy rainfall can cause rivers and drainage systems to overflow or dams to break, leading to flood events that bring damage to property and road systems as well potential loss of human life.

One such event in 2008 cost $10 billion in damages for the entire state of Iowa. After the flood, the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) at the University of Iowa (UI) was established as the first center in the United States for advanced flood-related research and education.

Today, simplified 2-D flood models are the state of the art for predicting flood wave propagation, or how floods spread across land. A team at IFC, led by UI Professor George Constantinescu, is creating 3-D non-hydrostatic flood models that can more accurately simulate flood wave propagation and account for the interaction between the flood wave and large obstacles such as dams or floodplain walls. These 3-D models also can be used to assess and improve the predictive capabilities of the 2-D models that government agencies and consulting companies use for predicting how floods will spread and the associated risks and hazards.

Using one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers–Titan, the 27-petaflop Cray XK7 at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)–Constantinescu’s team performed one of the first highly resolved, 3-D, volume-of-fluid Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations of a dam break in a natural environment. The simulation allowed the team to map precise water levels for actual flood events over time. RANS is a widely used method for modeling turbulent flows.

“Flood events, like those generated by dam breaks, can be computationally very expensive to simulate,” Constantinescu said. “Previously, there wasn’t enough computer power to do these kinds of time-accurate simulations in large computational domains, but with the power of high-performance computing [HPC] and Titan, we are achieving more than was previously thought possible.”

The project was supported in 2015 and 2016 within the OLCF’s Director’s Discretionary user program. The OLCF, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, provides HPC resources for research and development projects to advance scientific discovery.

The team’s 3-D simulations showed that commonly used 2-D models may inaccurately predict some aspects of flooding, such as the time over which dangerous flood levels last at certain locations and the amount of surface area flooded. Simulation results also demonstrated that 2-D models may underestimate the speed at which floods spread and overestimate the time at which flood waves reach their highest point.

When the water sources that empty into a river rise simultaneously, they can trigger one or more successive flood waves. Accuracy of the 1-D, 2-D, or 3-D flood models that track how these waves move is crucial for predicting maximum flood depth, hazardous conditions, and other variables.

“We need to know what’s going to happen for situations in which a dam breaks,” Constantinescu said. “We need to know who’s going to be affected, how much time they will have to evacuate, and what else might happen to the environment as a result.”

Because 2-D models make simplified assumptions about some aspects of the flow, they can’t account for changes in the flow, such as when the flood wave moves around large obstacles, changes rapidly in direction, or fully immerses bridge decks. The team needed a leadership-class supercomputer to run the 3-D simulations and accurately capture these changes.

Titan Changes the Current

Using a fully non-hydrostatic 3-D RANS solver, the team performed the first simulations of the hypothetical failure of two Iowa dams: the Coralville Dam in Iowa City and the Saylorville Dam in Des Moines. Each used a computational grid of about 30-50 million cells and covered a physical area of about 20 miles by 5 miles.

The team used the state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics software STAR-CCM+. This software features a volume-of-fluid method to track the position of the water’s free surface–the areas where water meets the air. In a scalability study, the team determined the peak performance of the code for the dam break simulations. The researchers used 2,500 of Titan’s CPU processors for peak performance in each simulation.

The researchers also computed the same dam break test cases using a standard 2-D model commonly used by IFC. When they compared the 2-D results against those of the 3-D simulations, they found that the 2-D model underestimated how quickly the flood wave moved across land and overestimated the time at which the maximum flood occurred. This finding is important because government agencies and consulting companies use 2-D shallow flow models to predict dam breaks and floods, as well as to estimate flood hazards.

“By performing these 3-D simulations, we provided a huge data set that can be used to improve the accuracy of existing 2-D and 1-D flood models,” Constantinescu said. “We can also examine the effectiveness of deploying flood protection structures for different flooding scenarios.” The team ultimately showed that HPC can be used successfully to answer engineering questions related to the consequences of structural failure of dams and related hazards.

Constantinescu said that as computers become faster and more powerful, simulations of full flooding events over larger physical regions will be possible. Summit, the OLCF’s next-generation supercomputer that is scheduled to come online in 2018, will unearth new possibilities for Constantinescu’s research.

“Advances in numerical algorithms, automatic grid generation, and increased supercomputer power will eventually make the simulations of flood waves over large durations of time possible using Titan, and even more so with Summit,” Constantinescu said. “Eventually, things we previously had to do by hand, such as generating a high-quality computational grid, will just be part of the typical software package.”

New Technique Developed to Detect Epilepsy Brain Region for Surgery

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Researchers have identified a unique way to detect epileptic brain tissue that causes seizures.

The chemical biomarker can be detected noninvasively using a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy to help doctors to precisely identify small regions of abnormal brain tissue in early-stage epilepsy patients. This can help in surgery of epileptic brain regions for therapeutic removal without the need for additional surgery, said researchers.

Epilepsy affects about one percent of people worldwide and it is characterized by unpredictable seizures that occur when groups of neurons in the brain abnormally fire in unison. About 30 percent of epilepsy patients don’t respond to drugs and surgery is only the option to remove areas of the brain associated with epileptic activity.

“One of the biggest challenges in epilepsy is in diagnosis,” said Dr. Jeffrey Loeb, John S. Garvin Chair and head of neurology and rehabilitation in the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and corresponding author on the study.

Current non-invasive techniques can’t detect epileptic areas of the brain smaller than approximately eight to 10 square centimeters, so many early-stage epilepsy patients often go undiagnosed and untreated.

“With this new biomarker, we should be able to detect very small regions of epileptic activity — smaller than a single square centimeter — and we do it noninvasively,” Loeb said.

The biomarker may soon make the need for surgery to identify epileptic regions of the brain for later removal obsolete. To locate these areas, surgeons implant electrodes across the surface of the brain that need to stay in place for many days.

Dr. Jeffrey Loeb, John S. Garvin Chair and head of neurology and rehabilitation in the UIC College of Medicine. CREDIT Jenny Fontaine, UIC

Loeb and colleagues used a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy to identify the metabolomic signature of epileptic versus non-epileptic brain tissues removed from nine patients who underwent invasive electrical brain monitoring as part of their epilepsy surgery. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy can detect compounds associated with cellular metabolism. As part of this therapeutic surgery, both epileptic and nearby regions with less or no epileptic electrical activity were also removed.

Loeb and colleagues scanned both types of tissue with a powerful 11.7 Tesla magnetic resonance spectroscopy machine at Wayne State University in Detroit. They found that tissue with high levels of epileptic electrical activity was low in lactate and had higher levels of creatine, phosphocreatine and choline, suggestive of abnormal metabolism.

When they looked at these tissues in the lab, they saw that it had increased vascularization compared to tissue with low or no epileptic electrical activity. Genetic analysis of the same tissue regions revealed higher activation of genes associated with vascularization and altered metabolic states.

“Previous studies have used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to look at single metabolites in epileptic brain tissue, but ours is the first to use high strength magnets to look at multiple metabolites simultaneously,” Loeb said. “When combined with our genomic and histological data from these same samples, the biomarker profile was not only highly specific for epileptic brain tissues, but also revealed an abnormal metabolic and vascular state that could underlie the epileptic condition.”

The reason behind the abnormal metabolic profile in epileptic tissue remains unknown and needs to be studied further, said Loeb. “These are areas of the brain where large populations of neurons are firing often, and this uses up a lot of energy, so it’s not surprising that we see an altered metabolic profile with a massive expansion of blood vessels.”

The findings are reported in the journal Epilepsia.

Shri Rajnath Singh condoles Amarnath Yatra bus accident victims

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The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh has expressed deep condolences over the loss of lives in a bus accident carrying Amarnath Yatris in Jammu and Kashmir. “My heart goes out to the families of Amarnath Yatris who lost their loved ones in the bus accident. My prayers are with the injured,” he said.

Shri Rajnath Singh spoke to J&K Chief Minister Ms. Mehbooba Mufti regarding the unfortunate accident of the bus near Ramban. She apprised the Union Home Minister of the ongoing rescue operations. Shri Rajnath Singh also had a telephonic conversation with the J&K Governor Shri NN Vohra who has reached the accident site. He apprised the Union Home Minister of the situation.

The bus carrying 45 pilgrims from Jammu to Srinagar rolled down a mountain at Nachala, Under Police Station Ramsu at Banihal, Ramban. As confirmed by SSP Ramban, in this accident 16 pilgrims died and 29 got injured. 18 injured have been airlifted to Government Medical College & Hospital, Jammu by chopper, the remaining 11 with minor injuries left for Srinagar by road. Helpline numbers to enquire about Amarnath Yatris travelling in the bus that met with accident in Ramban, J&K. 16 killed, 29 injured as bus rolled down near Ramban.

PM upbeat on Ujjwala Yojana success

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The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has expressed happiness as number of beneficiaries of Ujjwala Yojana crossed 2.5 Crore.

“Ujjwala Yojana continues to expand its reach! Extremely delighted that today the number of beneficiaries crossed 2.5 crore.

I thank Rashtrapati Ji for the special gesture of handing over LPG connections to beneficiaries in Jangipur, West Bengal.

I congratulate Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and his entire team that has been working round the clock for the success of Ujjwala Yojana”, the Prime Minister said.

Iran-Origin Maths Wizard Maryam Dies at 40

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Iranian-origin Harvard-studied maths wizard Maryam Mirzakhani died aged 40 after a long battle with breast cancer that had spread to her bones. She was the first recipient of the prestigious Fields Medal at a very young age.

Mirzakhani won the Fields Medal in 2014 for her work on geometry and dynamical systems and was the first Iranian to win the prize. In an interview, she once said, “Doing mathematics for me is like being on a long hike with no trail and no end in sight.”

Born in Tehran in 1977, Maryam was twice awarded the International Mathematical Olympiad’s gold medal in her youth. She earned a doctoral degree from Harvard University in 2004 and became full professor of mathematics in 2008 at Stanford at a very young age of 31. She had extensively contributed to the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces.

She was survived by her husband Jan Vondrák, a Czech theoretical computer scientist and her colleague at Stanford University and a daughter named Anahita.

Stanford University in a statement said Mirzakhani was “ambitious, resolute and fearless in the face of problems others would not, or could not, tackle.”

Echoing similar view, Mirzakhani’s friend from NASA, Firouz Naderi, said, “A light was turned off today. It breaks my heart… gone far too soon.” in an Instagram posting.

Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said: “Maryam is gone far too soon, but her impact will live on for the thousands of women she inspired to pursue math and science.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif too expressed his condolences in an Instagram post. He said:”The news of young Iranian genius and math professor Maryam Mirzakhani’s passing has brought a deep pang of sorrow to me and all Iranians who are proud of their eminent and distinguished scientists.”

 

 

Fossil Site Shows Impact of Early Jurassic Period’s Low Oxygen Oceans

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Using a combination of fossils and chemical markers, scientists have tracked low ocean-oxygen in early Jurassic marine ecosystem that could have led to survival of only a few species.

The research, led by Rowan Martindale of the University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences, zeroes in on a recently discovered fossil site in Canada located at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch near Banff National Park in southwest Alberta. The site records fossils of organisms that lived about 183 million years ago during the Early Jurassic in a shallow sea that once covered the region.

 

The oxygen level of the surrounding environment during the Early Jurassic influences the type and amount of carbon preserved in rocks, making the geochemical record an important method for tracking an anoxic event.

“We have this beautiful geochemical record that gives us a backbone for the timing of the Oceanic Anoxic Event,” said Martindale. “So with that framework we can look at the benthic community, the organisms that are living on the bottom of the ocean, and ask ‘how did this community respond to the anoxic event?”

The fossils show that before the anoxic event, the Ya Ha Tinda marine community was diverse, and included fish, ichthyosaurs (extinct marine reptiles that looked like dolphins), sea lilies, lobsters, clams and oysters, ammonites, and coleoids (squid-like octopods). During the anoxic event the community collapsed, restructured, and the organisms living in it shrunk. The clams that were most abundant in the community before the anoxic event were completely wiped out and replaced by different species.

Crispin Little, a senior lecturer in paleontology at the University of Leeds who was not involved with the research, said that the similarity between the sites underscores the widespread nature of the anoxic event. “This confirms previous work suggesting that the T-OAE (anoxic event) was genuinely a global event,” Little said.

However, while other sites were recovering from the anoxic event, the environment at Ya Ha Tinda continued to face stress. Even for small, hardy bivalves, life was tough. “One of the interesting things about the recovery is that we actually see fewer individuals at a time when we’re supposed to be seeing community recovery,” Martindale said.

 

The paper was published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoeconology. The co-authors include Martin Aberhan, a curator at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany.

Hubble Spots Barred Spiral Galaxy Lynx

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Discovered by British astronomer William Herschel over 200 years ago, NGC 2500 lies about 30 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Lynx.

The NGC 2500 is a particular kind of spiral galaxy known as a barred spiral, its wispy arms swirling out from a bright, elongated core.

Barred spirals are actually more common than was once thought. Around two-thirds of all spiral galaxies — including the Milky Way — exhibit these straight bars cutting through their centers. These cosmic structures act as glowing nurseries for newborn stars, and funnel material towards the active core of a galaxy.

NGC 2500 is still actively forming new stars, although this process appears to be occurring very unevenly. The upper half of the galaxy — where the spiral arms are slightly better defined — hosts many more star-forming regions than the lower half, as indicated by the bright, dotted islands of light.

There is another similarity between NGC 2500 and our home galaxy. Together with Andromeda, Triangulum, and many smaller natural satellites, the Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies, a gathering of over 50 galaxies all loosely held together by gravity.

NGC 2500 forms a similar group with some of its nearby neighbors, including NGC 2541, NGC 2552, NGC 2537, and the bright, Andromeda-like spiral NGC 2481, known collectively as the NGC 2841 group.

 

Using Einstein’s Theory, Brightest Galaxy 10000 Million Light Years Away Discovered

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Using Albert Einstein’s gravitational lensing theory, scientists have discovered a galaxy at about 10,000 million light years away but thousand times brighter than the nearest Milky Way.

Anastasio Diaz-Sanches from Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) in Spain used gravitational lensing phenomenon found by Einstein to magnify the apparent image of the original object.

“Thanks to the gravitational lens” explained Sánchez, “produced by a cluster of galaxies between ourselves and the source, which acts as if it was a telescope, the galaxy appears 11 times bigger and brighter than it really is.” It appears as several images on an arc centred on the densest part of the cluster, known as ‘Einstein Ring’.

To measure it they used the Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in Garafía, La Palma. The advantage of this type of amplification is that it does not distort the spectral properties of the light, enabling the study of very distant objects as if they were much nearer.

The galaxy is forming stars at a rate of 1,000 solar masses per year, compared to the Milky Way which is forming stars at a rate of some twice a solar mass per year. Susana Iglesias-Groth, co-author of the research said, “This type of objects harbour the most powerful star forming regions known in the universe. The next step will be to study their molecular content”.

The research findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The fact that the galaxy is so bright, its light is gravitationally amplifed, and has multiple images allows us to look into its internal properties, which would otherwise not be possible with such distant galaxies.

“In the future we will be able to make more detailed studies of its star formation using interferometers such ast the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA/IRAM),in France, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), in Chile,” said IAC researcher Helmut Dannerbauer, who is another contributor to the paper.

Diet rich in tomatoes cuts skin cancer in half in mice

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Daily tomato consumption appeared to cut the development of skin cancer tumors by half in a mouse study at The Ohio State University.

The new study of how nutritional interventions can alter the risk for skin cancers appeared online in the journal Scientific Reports.

It found that male mice fed a diet of 10 percent tomato powder daily for 35 weeks, then exposed to ultraviolet light, experienced, on average, a 50 percent decrease in skin cancer tumors compared to mice that ate no dehydrated tomato.

The theory behind the relationship between tomatoes and cancer is that dietary carotenoids, the pigmenting compounds that give tomatoes their color, may protect skin against UV light damage, said Jessica Cooperstone, co-author of the study and a research scientist in the Department of Food Science and Technology in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at Ohio State.

There were no significant differences in tumor number for the female mice in the study. Previous research has shown that male mice develop tumors earlier after UV exposure and that their tumors are more numerous, larger and more aggressive.

“This study showed us that we do need to consider sex when exploring different preventive strategies,” said the study’s senior author, Tatiana Oberyszyn, a professor of pathology and member of Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“What works in men may not always work equally well in women and vice versa.”

Previous human clinical trials suggest that eating tomato paste over time can dampen sunburns, perhaps thanks to carotenoids from the plants that are deposited in the skin of humans after eating, and may be able to protect against UV light damage, Cooperstone said.

“Lycopene, the primary carotenoid in tomatoes, has been shown to be the most effective antioxidant of these pigments,” she said.

“However, when comparing lycopene administered from a whole food (tomato) or a synthesized supplement, tomatoes appear more effective in preventing redness after UV exposure, suggesting other compounds in tomatoes may also be at play.”

In the new study, the Ohio State researchers found that only male mice fed dehydrated red tomatoes had reductions in tumor growth. Those fed diets with tangerine tomatoes, which have been shown to be higher in bioavailable lycopene in previous research, had fewer tumors than the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Cooperstone is currently researching tomato compounds other than lycopene that may impart health benefits.

Non-melanoma skin cancers are the most common of all cancers, with more new cases — 5.4 million in 2012 — each year than breast, prostate, lung and colon cancers combined, according to the American Cancer Society.

Despite a low mortality rate, these cancers are costly, disfiguring, and their rates are increasing, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Alternative methods for systemic protection, possibly through nutritional interventions to modulate risk for skin-related diseases, could provide a significant benefit,” Cooperstone said.

“Foods are not drugs, but they can possibly, over the lifetime of consumption, alter the development of certain diseases,” she said.

 

 

Aadhaar an effective instrument in removing Corruption and enabling Citizen Empowerment

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On 11th July, 2017 CSC SPV organised a workshop on “Aadhaar Services through CSC – A Unique Initiative” to showcase the impact and progress made by the Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) in delivering Aadhaar services among the poor and marginalized communities in India, through the Common Services Centres (CSCs).

Union Minister for Electronics & IT and Law Justice, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad inaugurated the event held at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. He appreciated the efforts of the enterprising VLEs in providing key services at the grassroots level.

The Hon’ Minister said, “I have great expectation from CSC VLEs. Our VLEs are change makers of India. CSCs have given employment to 10 lakh people in India. I am confident that in near future, one crore people will work in CSCs.”

Recounting the strength of VLEs in mobilizing citizens under Government campaigns, the Hon’ Minister said: “I am happy to note that the VLEs have trained 2 crore people in the Cashless India movement.” “Recently, Union Textile Minister Smt. Smriti Irani sought the support of VLEs in the expansion of handloom. All the departments of the government want to involve VLEs for their services,” he said.

He added, “Aadhaar is an effective instrument in removing corruption. We have saved Rs. 50,000 Crore by removing corruption.” He expressed the hope that the VLEs would rise to the occasion and help the government in making India corruption-free.

The Hon’ Minister was addressing around 600 VLEs from States of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh. The workshop, organised at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, also brought together senior officials from Ministry of Electronics & IT, UIDAI, Department of Fertilizers and Department of Food & Civil Supplies.

Sh. Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY, said, “CSC movement has attained a new identity under with the support from the Government and specifically from the Hon Minister. I am happy to note that CSCs have played a significant role in Aadhaar journey.” He added that AEPS is also an empowering tool that CSC VLEs are doing efficiently in India and enabling the disbursement of entitlement and pension to various citizens living in far flung areas of the country.

Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI said, “In the country, 116 Cr people have been enrolled for Aadhaar and CSC has played a big role in it. In the last 5-6 months, Aadhaar has been linked with various government services to ensure transparency and effectiveness in system. The purpose is empowerment of citizens. We need the help of VLEs to keep the momentum on Aadhaar and create awareness among the communities about its safety and usefulness in simplifying their life.”

While welcoming the participants to the workshop, Shri Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, CSC SPV said, “Aadhaar is the basis of CSC. This is our first principle. Aadhaar is a revolution that will transform the life of a common man. Our 28,000 PECs have enrolled 22 Cr Aadhaar in the country. Our VLEs are providing Aadhaar services at the doorsteps of the citizens. Through Aadhaar, our VLEs have created rural enterprises in the country.”

Enumerating the various initiatives undertaking by VLEs in providing Aadhaar services, Dr Tyagi added, “We have done 80 lakh child enrollments in the country. In schools, Aanganwadi centres, Pulse Polio booths, we have started a new tradition of child enrolment. We have initiated innovative ways of Aadhaar generation, for example, Aadhaar mela, Aadhaar-on-wheels, etc. Our VLEs have made Aadhaar for the differently abled persons that ensured pensions for them.”

On the occasion, a special publication highlighting some of the unique initiatives undertaken by CSCs through Aadhaar was also launched by the Hon’ Minister. The Hon’ Minister also inaugurated an online appointment system for Aadhaar service whereby citizens can book an appointment and visit the Aadhaar centre on the particular day.

The event was also attended by Dr. Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary-Meity, Sh. Sanjeev Mittal, Joint Secretary-Meity, Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI, Sh. Narendra Bhooshan, Dy. Director General, UIDAI, Sh. Ashok Kumar, Assnt. Director General, UIDAI, among others.

President of India receives first copy of book ‘President’s Lady’

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The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee received the first copy of the book “President’s Lady” (Pranaber Preyosi) on his wife Late Smt. Suvra Mukherjee today (July 13, 2017) from Vice President of India, Mohd. Hamid Ansari who formally released it at a function held at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Speaking on the occasion, the President said that he was grateful to Ms. Sangeeta Ghosh, author of the book and all those who have brought out the publication. He said that Late Smt. Suvra Mukherjee was essentially a private person with a strong interest in music (particularly Tagore music) and paintings.

He said that she was not into politics but came to know a large number of political personalities. However, she confined herself to music, painting and writing. She tried to take Tagore music to a non-Bengali audience. He wished those who brought out the book the very best for their future endeavours.

Walking Like Ants Reduces Risk for Spiders: Study

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Humans aren’t the only actors on the planet. To avoid being eaten, some jumping spiders pretend to be ants, according to Cornell University research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Ants are aggressive at defending themselves: They are well-armed with bites, stings and formic acid. Ant-mimicking jumping spiders – Myrmarachne formicaria – in contrast, can’t do much more than run on their eight legs when attacked. Not surprisingly, insect predators tend to prefer spiders over ants, so appearing to be an ant confers significant protection.

Protective mimicry is a remarkable example of adaptive evolution: Moths can be colored like butterflies and grasshoppers may look like tiger beetles. While most mimicry studies focus on traits like color and shape, the researchers used multiple high-speed cameras and behavioral experiments to pinpoint how the spider’s movements mimic ants.

Ant-mimicking spiders walk using all eight legs but pause frequently to raise their forelegs to mimic ant antennae. When walking, they take winding trajectories of about five to 10 body lengths, which made them look like ants following pheromone trails. While the researchers could see what the spiders were doing thanks to high-speed cameras, many potential predators have slower visual systems, so that to them the mimics appear to be moving just like an ant would.

The researchers note that the findings “highlight the importance of dynamic behaviors and observer perception in mimicry.”

Indonesia Team Goes Gaga with Bahubali Title Song, Video Viral Now

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An Indonesian band has taken interest to play the famous “Bahubali: The Conclusion” title song in Telugu and the lyrics spelt out perfectly revealing how popular the film is in Southeast Asian region.


While other details are not available, the video uploaded on July 11, 2017 has already crossed 785,517 and going viral to cross one million soon.

Bahubali 2 by SS Rajamouli has stunned the viewers worldwide with its robust techniques and music by Keeravani. Prabhas has played the lead role of Bahubali and had not acted in any other film for five years at a stretch during the shooting for Bahubali.

Indian songs are not new in Southeast Asia which has substantial number of Tamil-origin people but for a Telugu song to be sung in a band accurately signifies the changing perception of music and dance of India. Tamil film Muthu similarly made headlines when it was released in Japan and the Tamil number Kolavari was a big hit in the region.

Tamil hero Rajinikanth films have made huge inroads into the Southeast Asian countries including Singalore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

India Missile in Pipeline to Target Whole of China: Report

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India is gearing up its nuclear arsenal aimed at targeting entire China, while it is already capable of deterring Pakistan, said a research article published in July-August issue of ‘After Midnight’.

Written by top American nuclear experts — Hans M Kristensen and Robert S Norris — in the article titled, “Indian nuclear forces 2017“, the report said India is modernising its atomic arsenal seeking parity with China and not Pakistan, its traditional arch rival in the region of South Asia.

The writers claimed that India is now developing a missile which can carry nuclear heads to any remote area in China from its bases in South India. So far, India has developed an estimated 600 kilograms of plutonium, sufficient to produce 200 warhead though it has developed 120 to 130 nuclear warheads, they said.

India’s nuclear strategy is fast shifting to China, which they called “Decoupling” strategy aimed at both the northern neighbours. “While India has traditionally been focused on deterring Pakistan, its nuclear modernisation indicates that it is putting increased emphasis on its future strategic relationship with China. That adjustment will result in significantly new capabilities being deployed over the next decade that may influence how India views nuclear weapons’ role against Pakistan,” they said.

The report has also estimated that India has seven nuclear-capable systems in total, four land-based nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, the short-range Prithvi-2 and Agni-1, the medium-range Agni-2, and the intermediate-range Agni-3. At least two other longer-range Agni missiles are under development known as the Agni-4 and Agni-5, it said.

There is speculation to arm the Agni-5 with multiple warheads – even multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) in the near future, said the report. The report attributed this development to recent changes in China and Pakistan policies. China resorted to equip some of its ICBMs with MIRVs, while Pakistan announced in January 2017 that it had test-launched a new Ababeel ICBM with MIRVs. Soon, India may come under pressure to opt for MIRV technology, argued the authors.