The hatching of a crocodile

All photos: ochevidec.net

Saturn’s day becomes shorter by five minutes

Canberra: An analysis of Saturn’s atmosphere has resulted in the definition of the planet’s ‘day’ becoming shorter by five minutes.

According to the analysis, the time it takes the ringed behemoth to complete a spin on its axis is 10 hours, 34 minutes and 13 seconds, more than five minutes shorter than previous estimates.

Unlike a rocky planet, Saturn has no visual landmarks.

Instead, it is covered in clouds of gas driven by layers of jetstreams, making it hard to measure the planet’s rotation.

As a result, astronomers have traditionally based their calculations on Saturn’s magnetic field.

But, this signal can fluctuate and does not accurately measure how fast the planet’s deep interior is rotating.

According to a report in ABC Science, Dr Andrew Prentice of Monash University in Melbourne said the problem with using Saturn’s magnetic field is that it changes over time.

“It does not give a proper measure of Saturn’s internal rotation since the magnetic field is slipping relative to the planet,” he said.

“As a result, the period seems to have lengthened by seven to eight minutes since the time of the Voyager 1 and 2 missions in the mid-1980s,” he added.

An international team led by scientists from Oxford University and the University of Louisville, Kentucky, used a different technique based on infrared images taken by the US spacecraft Cassini orbiting Saturn.

“We realised that we could combine information on what was visible on the surface of Saturn with Cassini’s infrared data about the planet’s deep interior and build a three-dimensional map of Saturn’s winds,” said Oxford professor Dr Peter Read.

“With this map, we were able to track how large waves and eddies develop in the atmosphere and from this come up with a new estimate for the underlying rotation of the planet,” he added.

Read said that the fact that a Saturn day has been shortened by five minutes is a bigger deal than one might think.

“It implies that some of our previous estimates of wind speeds may be out by more than 160 miles (250 kilometres) per hour,” he said.

“It also means that the weather patterns on Saturn are much more like those we observe on Jupiter, suggesting that, despite their differences, these two giant planets have more in common than previously thought,” he added.

ANI

Caribbean’s marine species survived extinction by having sex

Washington: Fossil records of organisms in the Caribbean Sea show that if a species could shift from clonal to sexual reproduction, it can survive extinction, which suggests that environmental change eventually drives evolutionary change.

Researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography report that hungry, sexual organisms replaced well-fed, clonal organisms in the Caribbean Sea as the Isthmus of Panama arose, separating the Caribbean from the Pacific.

The fossil record shows that if a species could shift from clonal to sexual reproduction it survived. Otherwise it was destined for extinction, millions of years later.

Closure of the Isthmus of Panama involved a protracted sequence of volcanic and tectonic events.

During the final phase, between about 4.5 and 3.5 million years ago, the Caribbean underwent a major change from a pea soup-like environment, fed by nutrient-rich waters surging up along South America, into a crystal-clear, nutrient-poor environment.

“As the Caribbean Sea was cut off from the Pacific Ocean, many new species appeared in the fossil record, and all reproduced sexually,” said Aaron O’Dea, who holds a Tupper Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Well-preserved fossils show that cupuladriid bryozoans, colonial animals similar to corals that walk around on the sea floor, reproduced either by cloning or by sex.

To clone a new colony requires immediately available energy, so when nutrients are scarce, it’s better not to fragment.

Nutrients to form eggs and sperm needed for sex can, on the other hand, accumulate slowly over time.

O’Dea, with Jeremy Jackson, emeritus staff scientist at the Smithsonian and director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, measured the relative amount of cloning and sex occurring in species over the last 10 million years in the Caribbean.

“The two forms are unmistakable,” explained O’Dea. “You can clearly see the first individual that founded a sexual colony, while a clonal colony preserves the fragment from the previous colony from which it cloned,” he added.

As predicted, clonal bryozoans rapidly disappeared from the record as the Caribbean was isolated.

Species that survived did so by becoming increasingly robust to reduce the chances of fragmentation while those that failed to evolve went extinct. They are still found in the nutrient-rich eastern Pacific.

ANI

How to use glue to make a lighter spacecraft

An aerospace pioneer has proposed that in order to develop a lighter spacecraft, engineers would need to glue the fuel tanks to the inside of the craft.

Rocket-driven spacecraft normally use strong, heavy-metal mountings to hold their fuel tanks in place within the fuselage.

Rutan, the aerospace pioneer whose firm Scaled Composites is designing civilian suborbital spacecraft for Virgin Galactic, is using an alternative technique to secure the fuel tanks in order to keep the weight of the space plane down.

He said that the use of heavy mountings could be avoided completely by careful design of the tank and fuselage.

His idea, described in a US patent granted last month, is to glue the fuel tanks to the inside of the craft.

Rutan’s tanks have a cylindrical composite-coated midsection that fits snugly inside the spacecraft and is bonded to the inner surface of the fuselage with a super strong industrial adhesive.

A secure fit is crucial as the tanks are connected to the combustion chamber where fuel is burned, and any movement could risk a dangerous leak.

It is thought that Rutan will use glued-in tanks in the successor to his SpaceShipOne rocket, which in 2004 won the USD million Ansari X prize for the first privately funded craft to reach 100 kilometers altitude on two flights.

ANI

Ants more rational than humans

Washington: Ants are more rational than humans when faced with "very challenging decisions", a study has suggested.

Humans and animals often make irrational choices when faced with very challenging decisions, said Stephen Pratt and Susan Edwards, the main researchers of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. This is not the case of humans being "stupider" than ants.

"This paradoxical outcome is based on apparent constraint: most individual ants know of only a single option, and the colony's collective choice self-organizes from interactions among many poorly-informed ants," said Pratt, an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

In the study of the process of nest selection in the ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus, researchers at Arizona State University and Princeton University found that in collective decision-making the lack of individual options translated into more accurate outcomes by minimising the chances for individuals to make mistakes.

A "wisdom of crowds" approach emerges, Pratt was quoted as saying in a release by the Arizona State University.

Bureau Report

India first country to successfully breed vultures in captivity

Kolkata: India has become the first country in the world to successfully breed critically endangered slender-billed vultures in captivity.

A chick born in February last year from one of the six pairs of the rare species hosted in the vulture conservation breeding centre at Rajabhatkhawa forest in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district is now healthy.

This is the first time that this species of vulture has been bred in captivity anywhere in the world, according to conservationists.

"We started off in 2005 with a mission to prevent vultures from getting extinct. And now, with this hatching we are encouraged to raise more slender-billed vultures, which have been identified as critically-endangered worldwide," the breeding centre's manager, Sachin Ranade, told reporters.

The conservation programme, run by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in collaboration with the forest department of West Bengal, began in December, 2005 when a slender-billed vulture was caught from Dholla in Tinsukia district of Assam.

So far, 23 sub-adults and juvenile slender-billed vultures have been caught and are being reared for conservation breeding programmes at Pinjore (Haryana) and Rajabhatkhawa.

According to estimates, less than 200 pairs of the species now survive in the wild in India. The bird is endemic to south and south-east Asia.

The Rajabhatkhawa centre houses a total of 80 vultures which were brought from different parts of the country, particularly from Assam. Besides the slender-billed variety, there are 19 long-billed and 49 white-backed vultures in captivity.

"We want to establish a founder population of 25 pairs each of the three endangered vulture species. By rearing them in captivity, their life is saved and once they start breeding, they would augment their population," Ranade said.

Vultures, crucial for the ecology for their role as scavengers, have been declining fast since the early 1990s. As their population decrease by around 40 per cent per year, these three critically endangered species are on the brink of extinction in India, Pakistan and Nepal, he said.

Diclofenac drug is toxic for vultures. As they consume carcasses of animals that were treated with the drug, they also get intoxicated, the official said explaining the reason behind their declining population.

Bureau Report

Virtual autopsy of Egyptian mummy

The Virtual Autopsy is the nondestructive technique used by contemporary researchers to analyze the artifacts and culture of ancient Egypt.



It tells the captivating story of the “virtual unwrapping” of an Egyptian mummy and the interdisciplinary project that allowed researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to investigate the person inside by way of an autopsy performed by computer.



The mummy, acquired by the university’s Spurlock Museum in 1989, was from the Fayum region of Egypt and is dated to about 100 a.d. Although other mummy projects have used destructive analytical techniques, the Spurlock mummy was never even unwrapped.



Minute samples of loose material were taken for dating and for textile and wood analysis without affecting the integrity or display quality of the artifact.


Faculty and staff members from area hospitals and University of Illinois departments including classics, anthropology, chemistry, textile sciences, and entomology were recruited by the Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials for the project.



The interdisciplinary team implemented a research plan that relied on medical imaging techniques including X rays and CT scans. They also utilized for the first time in the history of mummy research a Cray II supercomputer -- at the university’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications -- to render three-dimensional images of the mummy’s skull and body.

Photos: Spiegel.de

Massive New Zealand quake moves country west

Wellington: Southern New Zealand has moved slightly closer to the east coast of neighbouring Australia as a result of a massive earthquake last week off the country's South Island, a scientist said Wednesday.

The magnitude 7.8 quake, centered in the ocean near Resolution Island in the country's Fiordland region, twisted South Island out of shape and moved its southern tip 12 inches (30 centimeters) closer to Australia, seismologist Ken Gledhill said.

Gledhill, director of government-owned GNS Science's "GeoNet" national earthquake monitoring project, said the island's geographic shift showed the immensity of the forces involved.

"Basically, it's taken us closer to Australia," he told National Radio. "The country is deforming all the time because of being on the plate boundary, but this has done it in a few seconds, rather than waiting hundreds of years."

Last Wednesday's quake was the largest in the world this year and New Zealand's biggest in 80 years. No major damage has been found in the sparsely populated Fiordland region of South Island's west coast.

"New Zealand has been very fortunate. This earthquake anywhere else would have caused huge damage," Gledhill said. He said the quake's impact will provide "invaluable information" on the underlying structure of the country.

Martin Reyners, principal scientist for GNS Science, said earlier that a shallow temblor of such magnitude would typically cause widespread damage and loss of life. Last week's quake, however, occurred in "soft rocks" between two tectonic plates, muffling its power, he said.

Reyners said the rocks had lurched rather than snapped, causing a low-frequency rolling rather than the high-frequency waves that are known to damage buildings.

Bureau Report

Tires made from trees could cost less, perform better

Washington: If a new research is anything to go by, automobile owners around the world may some day soon be driving on tires that are partly made out of trees, which could cost less, perform better and save on fuel and energy.

In the research, wood science researchers at Oregon State University (OSU), US, made some surprising findings about the potential of microcrystalline cellulose – a product that can be made easily from almost any type of plant fibers – to partially replace silica as a reinforcing filler in the manufacture of rubber tires.

A new study suggests that this approach might decrease the energy required to produce the tire, reduce costs, and better resist heat buildup.

Early tests indicate that such products would have comparable traction on cold or wet pavement, be just as strong, and provide even higher fuel efficiency than traditional tires in hot weather.

“We were surprised at how favorable the results were for the use of this material,” said Kaichang Li, an associate professor of wood science and engineering in the OSU College of Forestry, who conducted this research with graduate student Wen Bai.

“This could lead to a new generation of automotive tire technology, one of the first fundamental changes to come around in a long time,” Li said.

Cellulose fiber has been used for some time as reinforcement in some types of rubber and automotive products, such as belts, hoses and insulation – but never in tires, where the preferred fillers are carbon black and silica.

Carbon black, however, is made from increasingly expensive oil, and the processing of silica is energy-intensive.

Both products are very dense and reduce the fuel efficiency of automobiles.

In the search for new types of reinforcing fillers that are inexpensive, easily available, light and renewable, OSU experts turned to microcrystalline cellulose – a micrometer-sized type of crystalline cellulose with an extremely well-organized structure.

It is produced in a low-cost process of acid hydrolysis using nature''s most abundant and sustainable natural polymer – cellulose – that comprises about 40-50 percent of wood.

In this study, OSU researchers replaced up to about 12 percent of the silica used in conventional tire manufacture.

This decreased the amount of energy needed to compound the rubber composite, improved the heat resistance of the product, and retained tensile strength.

At high temperatures such as in summer, the partial replacement of silica decreased the rolling resistance of the product, which would improve fuel efficiency of rubber tires made with the new approach.

ANI

World's largest telescope to be built in Hawaii

Honolulu: Hawaii was chosen Tuesday as the site for the world's biggest telescope, a device so powerful that it will allow scientists to see some 13 billion light years away and get a glimpse into the early years of the universe.

The telescope's mirror — stretching almost 100 feet in diameter, or nearly the length of a Boeing 737's wingspan — will be so large that it should be able to gather light that will have spent 13 billion years traveling to earth. This means astronomers looking into the telescope will be able to see images of the first stars and galaxies forming — some 400 million years after the Big Bang.

"It will sort of give us the history of the universe," Thirty Meter Telescope Observatory Corp. spokesman Charles Blue said.

The telescope, expected to be completed by 2018, will be located atop a dormant volcano that is popular with astronomers because its summit sits well above the clouds at 13,796 feet, offering a clear view of the sky above for 300 days a year.

Hawaii's isolated position in the middle of the Pacific Ocean also means the area is relatively free of air pollution. Few cities on the Big Island mean there aren't a lot of man-made lights around to disrupt observations.

The other finalist candidate site for the Thirty Meter Telescope was Chile's Cerro Armazones mountain.

Richard Ellis, astronomy professor the California Institute of Technology and a Thirty Meter Telescope board member, told reporters in a conference call that Mauna Kea is at a higher elevation, its air is drier and its average temperature fluctuates less during the course of the day — all helpful factors for those using the new telescope.

The telescope will be built by the University of California, the California Institute of Technology and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy.

The current world's largest telescopes also are located atop Mauna Kea, but the size of their diameters are about three times smaller than the Thirty Meter Telescope. Current telescopes also don't routinely offer views of hundreds of planets orbiting around other stars and stars that are near the sun like the new telescope will.

But it may not hold the world's largest title for long.

A partnership of European countries plans to build the European Extremely Large Telescope, which would have an 138-foot mirror. The group is considering sites in Argentina, Chile, Morocco and Spain. It plans to decide on a location next year and be able to host its first observation in 2018.

Another group of universities plans to finish the Giant Magellan Telescope, also around 2018, with an 80-foot mirror in Las Campanas, Chile.

Rolf Kudritzki, the director of Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, said Hawaii's northern hemisphere location will help the Thirty Meter Telescope complement other large telescopes planned for Chile in the southern hemisphere.

"I think all of the astronomers in the world can be happy because in principle now the two largest telescopes will be able to cover the whole sky. And for research that's an important decision," he said.

It will also be a special boon to Hawaii astronomers, who will be allotted a share of the TMT's observation time. Kudritzki said his colleagues held an impromptu celebratory party Tuesday.

But the decision invited protests from some Native Hawaiian and environmental groups.

Native Hawaiian tradition holds that high altitudes are sacred and are a gateway to heaven. In the past, only high chiefs and priests were allowed at Mauna Kea's summit. The mountain is home to one confirmed burial site and perhaps four more, and environmentalists oppose the telescope on the grounds it would hurt some endangered species.

"This the kind of legacy they want to leave? They just keep building on our mountain," said Kealoha Pisciotta, president of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, a group with family and religious ties to the mountain

Bureau Report

A device that translates a dog's barks into words

Your dog will soon start talking to you, all thanks to Japanese inventors who have come up with a device that can detect a dog's emotion from its bark and translate it into human words.

The talking gadget called Bowlingual Voice is developed by Japanese toymaker Takara Tomy.

It detects six emotions in total- including sadness, joy and frustration – with a recorded repertoire of spoken phrases such as "play with me".

The revolutionary gadget comprises of a microphone placed around the dog's neck and a hand-held unit-operating device for pet owners to carry.

When the dog barks, the microphone records the sound and transmits the data to the owner's hand-held device, which then "translates" it into what the dog is apparently suggesting.

A speech synthesizer audibly makes the owner aware of the dog's intentions, which also appears on the screen of the wireless hand-held unit.

An answering machine function can also record the dog's expressions of desire when owners are absent.

The technologically modified version of a basic model introduced seven years ago will be available for 129 pounds in Japan from next month.

The original Bowlingual translated emotions onto a screen without sound.

ANI

Intelligence begins in the womb

Sydney: Intelligence really begins in the womb which shows up as improved numerical ability and literacy skills in early primary school, according to a new study.

The study shows that healthy foetal growth not only helps improve a child's performance, but may contribute towards closing the achievement gap for children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

Director of Perth's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and study co-author Fiona Stanley said the findings reinforce the need for better integration of health and education policy and services.

"This is an example of the need for joined up thinking; that the pathways into improved education include maternal and child health," Stanley said.

"We know that drugs like alcohol and tobacco restrict a baby's growth in the womb so we really need to be supporting mothers and giving them the information they need to have healthier pregnancies."

The study was based on results from more than 55,000 children.

"This is the first time that we've been able to match birth and educational information and identify some of the broad factors that are linked to educational success," she said.

Stanley added that the findings should not alarm mothers who had difficult pregnancies.

These findings were published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health and the American Journal of Epidemiology.

IANS

Dead tiger in Sunderbans had swallowed king cobra

New Delhi: The 14-year-old tiger that was found dead two days ago in Sunderbans of West Bengal had swallowed two snakes, including a venomous king cobra, before it succumbed to liver infection, a senior state forest official has said.

"It was a startling revelation for us when we found the pieces of the snakes inside the tiger's stomach. One of them was a king cobra while the another was a commonly found reptile species," Atanu Kumar Raha, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) of West Bengal, told reporters.

It is probably for the first time that a tiger having consumed poisonous reptiles like cobra has come to the knowledge of wildlife officials, Raha said.

He said hostile ecological and riverine conditions make the Sunderban predators more hardy and agile when compared to their counterparts in other reserves. "As the predator was aged, it might be possible that it could not hunt carnivorous animals."

The official ruled out that the big cat's death was due to snake venom or poaching as there was no injury mark neither any gunshot on its body.

"It had died due to some bacterial infection in its liver that might have deteriorated after consuming the reptiles. Cobra hoods were found to be intact while there were pieces of body part of snakes in the big cat's viscera."

Besides Raha, other Sunderban Tiger Reserve officials and World Wildlife Fund (WWF)'s Anurag Banda who was appointed as nominee by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) were present during the post-mortem of the animal.

As per NTCA guidelines, the post-mortem has to be conducted in the presence of its nominee.

Bureau Report

Apollo 11 moon rocks still crucial 40 years later

Washington: A lunar geochemist at Washington University in St Louis (WUSTL) has determined that there are still many answers to be gleaned from the moon rocks collected by the Apollo 11 astronauts on their historic moonwalk 40 years ago.

Randy L Korotev, a research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts and Sciences, WUSTL, has studied lunar samples and their chemical compositions since he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin and “was in the right place at the right time” in 1969 to be a part of a team to study some of the first lunar samples.

“We know even more now and can ask smarter questions as we research these samples,” said Korotev. “There are still some answers, we believe, in the Apollo 11 mission,” he added.

“We went to the moon and collected samples before we knew much about the moon. We didn’t totally understand the big concept of what the moon was like until early 2000 as a result of missions that orbited the moon collecting mineralogical and compositional data,” said Korotev.

“It’s only been fairly recently that we decided that we should look closer at these Apollo 11 samples,” he added.

The Apollo 11 samples — and samples from almost every Apollo mission until the last one in December 1972 — have been securely housed on the 4th floor of the physics department’s Compton Laboratory and used by numerous WUSTL researchers, including many members of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.

In the Earth and Planetary Sciences Building, next door to Compton Hall, Korotev, who received his Apollo 11 samples from NASA much later — not until 2005 — still has much work to do with his samples, which have been chemically analyzed and are sealed in tubes and securely stored away for now.

“You can look at the moon and know that the moon has been hit a lot by very large meteorites. We know this occurred some 3.9 billion years ago,” said Korotev.

“We don’t know, however, the history of large meteorites hitting the Earth — we can’t see those impacts because they would have been erased by Earth’s active geology,” he added.

“We want to see if meteorite bombardment on the moon coincided with what was happening on Earth, and, in turn, with life starting on Earth,” said Korotev.

ANI

Lizard turns into snake to navigate desert sand

Washington: Sandfish, small lizards with smooth scales, virtually turn into snakes to navigate desert sand.

Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) researchers found that the animals place their limbs against their sides and create a wave motion with their bodies to propel themselves through sand.

"When startled above the surface, the animals dive into the sand within a half second," said Daniel Goldman, assistant professor in GIT School of Physics, who led the study.

"Once below the surface, they no longer use their limbs for propulsion -- instead, they move forward by propagating a travelling wave down their bodies like a snake," Goldman added.

GIT researchers used high-speed x-ray imaging to visualise sandfish -- formally called Scincus scincus -- burrowing into and through sand. The team used that information to develop a model of the lizard's locomotion.

The sandfish used in this study inhabits the Sahara desert in Africa and is approximately four inches long. It uses its long, wedge-shaped snout and countersunk lower jaw to rapidly bury into and swim within sand, said a GIT release.

The sandfish's body has flattened sides and is covered with smooth shiny scales, its legs are short and sturdy with long and flattened fringed toes and its tail tapers to a fine point.

The study was published in the Friday issue of Science.

Bureau Report

Molecule that eats CO2 may help fight global warming

Washington: The accidental discovery of a bowl-shaped molecule that pulls carbon dioxide out of the air paves the way for exciting new possibilities to deal with global warming.

These possibilities include genetically engineering microbes to manufacture those carbon dioxide "catchers", said J.A. Tossell, a Maryland University scientist who led the study.

He noted that another scientist discovered the molecule while doing research unrelated to global climate change.

Carbon dioxide was collecting in the molecule, and the scientist realised that it was coming from air in the lab. Tossell recognised that these qualities might make it useful as an industrial absorbent for removing carbon dioxide.

Tossell's new computer modelling studies found that the molecule might be well-suited for removing carbon dioxide directly from air, in addition to its previously described potential use as an absorbent for carbon dioxide from electric power plants and other smoke stacks.

"It is also conceivable that living organisms may be developed which are capable of replacing structurally ion receptors within their cell membranes," the report noted.

These findings are slated for publication in the Aug 3 issue of Inorganic Chemistry.

Bureau Report

Six men endure Mars flight simulation experiment

Russian engineers broke a red wax seal and six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars.

Sergei Ryazansky, the captain of the six-man crew, told reporters at a Moscow research institute near the Kremlin on Tuesday that the most difficult thing was knowing that instead of making the 172-million mile (276-million kilometer) journey they were locked in a windowless module of metal canisters the size of railway cars.

The men, chosen from 6,000 applicants, were paid euro15,000 ($20,987) each to be sealed up in the mock space capsule since March 31_ cut off almost entirely from the outside world.

They had no television or Internet and their only link to the outside world was communications with the experiment's controllers — who also monitored them via TV cameras — and an internal e-mail system. Communications with the outside world had 20-minute delays to imitate a real space flight.

Each crew member had his personal cabin. The interiors had hatches similar to a submarine's and were paneled in faux wood according to Soviet style of the 1970s, when the structure was originally built for space-related experiments.

The module's entrance was locked with a padlock and red sealing wax and twine — the kind that Soviet government bureaucrats have used for years to close up their offices at the end of the work day.

Common facilities included a gym and a small garden, and the modules were equipped with the new European and Russian exercise and training equipment for biomedical research. The crew also specially prepared meals and used toilets closely resembling those on the space station.

Some veteran space explorers belittled the value of the experiment, but its backers at the Russian and European space agencies insist it will only move humans closer to a real mission.

"What we're doing is important for future missions exploring the solar system," said Simonetta Di Pipo, director of the human space flight program at the European Space Agency.

"The most difficult part was that the flight was not for real," Ryazansky, wearing a blue, NASA-style jumpsuit with a large patch reading "MARS 500," told reporters hours after he and the crew emerged from the modules.

Crew member Alexey Baranov complained that the worst thing was not being with his relatives: "The separation from my loved ones and nature was depressing."

Russian TV showed images of the men — four Russians, a German and a Frenchman — during their stay, conducting experiments, lifting weights or lounging in leather reclining chairs, surrounded by throw pillows and Oriental rugs.

The men said most of them gained weight during their stay, exercising much of the time, and running experiments for medical researchers.

Psychologist Olga Shevchenko said they avoided conflicts thanks to a busy schedule and intense physical training. However, she said they all complained being deprived of sights of the natural world and separation from their families.

While officials at the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems praised the experiment as a success and promised to conduct a 500-day simulation experiment later this year, some veterans of the Soviet or Russian space programs doubted its value.

"This is nothing but a test for a long isolation of average people," a two-time cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev wrote in an opinion column published in the Sovietskaya Rossiya newspaper daily last month. "Such an experiment has only vague relation to understanding the possibility of interplanetary flight."

The experiment was the second for the institute, whose previous effort in 1999 ended in scandal when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian captain and said that two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls.

Russian officials at the time downplayed the incidents, attributing it to cultural gaps and stress.

Soviet engineers also tried a similar yearlong experiment, but that was interrupted because of unending conflicts between crew members.

Bureau Report

Minerals on Mars influence the measuring of its temp

In a new study, scientists from the CSIC-INTA Astrobiology Centre in Madrid have confirmed that the type of mineralogical composition on the surface of Mars influences the measuring of its temperature.

The study will be used to interpret the data from the soil temperature sensor of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) vehicle, whose launch is envisaged for 2011.

“We have confirmed, by means of infrared spectroscopy tests, that the chemical-mineralogical associations on the surface of Mars influence the measuring of the temperature of the Martian soil,” explained Maria Paz Martin, a researcher at the Astrobiology Centre, and the main author of the study.

The infrared spectrometers register how the different mixtures of minerals reflect this type of radiation and this information is used to calculate the environmental temperature.

The work lies within the framework of a project related to the soil temperature sensor of the REMS weather station (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station).

This instrument, whose design is coordinated by the CAB, forms part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) vehicle and mission, which NASA intended to launch this year but has now put off until 2011.

“This research shows that, in order to carry out the thermal measurements on the surface of Mars, we must bear in mind certain specific mineralogical mixtures”, Martin indicated.

The results confirm that there exist significant increases and falls of up to 100 percent in the percentages of the reflectance values (the capacity of reflection of a surface) in mixtures such as those of basalt with hematite in comparison with those of basalt with magnetite.

To carry out the study, the scientists have selected and prepared samples of terrestrial minerals which are known to exist on Mars, such as oxides, oxi-hydroxides, sulphates, chlorides, opal and others which come from clay.

These compounds were obtained from reference materials from the United States Geological Survey, as well as from different areas of the Earth similar to those of the red planet, like El Jaroso (Almería), the Tinto River (Huelva) and Atacama Desert (Chile).

The researchers pulverised the material until they achieved fewer than 45 microns, the average size of the dust of the Martian soil.

They then mixed the minerals in different proportions with basalt, the most important volcanic rock on Mars, and measured how the infrared reflectance varied at the same wavelength levels as those at which the REMS temperature sensor will operate.

“The experiments confirm that any chemical-mineralogical analytical development on Mars requires the prior satisfactory quality of the methodological tests and routines on Earth,” said Martin.

ANI

Crocodile lays eggs without mating

Kendrapara, India: The country's only captive white crocodile, which had become famous for shunning mating habits, has laid eggs and that too without mating.

Living in isolation and detached from males, the 33-year-old Gori laid about 30 eggs in the captivity of a pen in the crocodile research farm of Bhitarkanika Wildlife Sanctuary here.

The eggs however lacked fertility contents and potency for procreation, officials said, adding that besides Gori another captive female crocodile also laid 'infertile' eggs last week.

"Laying of eggs by isolated reptiles is a rare occurrence. The eggs have been preserved for research work," the officials said.

Gori, acclaimed as the country's lone captive white crocodile, is famous for its typical behavioural instinct.

In isolation since its birth in the sanctuary in 1975, the animal had avoided mating despite several attempts by forest officials. It had even attacked a male crocodile that had been released into the pen for mating.

The enigmatic Gori has been keeping bad health since the past few years.

Bureau Report

Beer Under the Microscope

Beck's

Broken Hill Lager Beer

Bundaberg Ginger Beer

Carlsberg

Castlemaine XXXX Export Lager

Corona

Elephant Red

Foster's Lager

Guinness

La Fin Du Monde

Molson Light

Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale

Staropramen

Victoria Bitter Ale