Morning smoking may up cancer risk: Study

WASHINGTON: Smoking a cigarette immediately after waking up in the morning may increase the risk of developing lung or oral cancer, a new study has warned.

"We found that smokers who consume cigarettes immediately after waking have higher levels of NNAL - a metabolite of the tobacco-specific carcinogen NNK - in their blood than smokers who refrain from smoking a half hour or more after waking, regardless of how many cigarettes they smoke per day," said Steven Branstetter, assistant professor of biobehavioural health in Pennsylvania State University.

According to Branstetter, other research has shown that NNK induces lung tumours in several rodent species. Levels of NNAL in the blood can therefore predict lung cancer risk in rodents as well as in humans.

In addition, NNAL levels are stable in smokers over time, and a single measurement can accurately reflect an individual's exposure.

Branstetter and his colleague Joshua Muscat, professor of public health sciences, examined data on 1,945 smoking adult participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey who had provided urine samples for analysis of NNAL.

These participants also had provided information about their smoking behaviour, including how soon they typically smoked after waking.

The researchers found that around 32 per cent of the participants they examined smoked their first cigarette of the day within 5 minutes of waking; 31 per cent smoked within 6 to 30 minutes of waking; 18 per cent smoked within 31 to 60 minutes of waking; and 19 per cent smoked more than one hour after waking.

In addition, the researchers found that the NNAL level in the participants' blood was correlated with the participants' age, the age they started smoking, their gender and whether or not another smoker lived in their home, among other factors.

"Most importantly, we found that NNAL level was highest among people who smoked the soonest upon waking, regardless of the frequency of smoking and other factors that predict NNAL concentrations," Branstetter said.

"We believe these people who smoke sooner after waking inhale more deeply and more thoroughly, which could explain the higher levels of NNAL in their blood, as well as their higher risk of developing oral or lung cancer.

"As a result, time to first cigarette might be an important factor in the identification of high-risk smokers and in the development of interventions targeted toward early-morning smokers," Branstetter said.

The study was published in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

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112-million-year old mammal jaw found in Japan

NEW YORK: Japanese scientists have discovered the jaw of a 112-million-year old tiny primitive mammal from the early Cretaceous period.

The small creature, named Sasayamamylos kawaii belongs to an ancient group known as Eutherian mammals, which gave rise to all placental mammals.

Paleontologist Brian Davis of Missouri Southern State University said the jaw sports pointy, sharp teeth and molars in a proportion similar to that found in modern mammals, 'LiveScience' reported.

"This little critter, Sasayamamylos, is the oldest Eutherian mammal to demonstrate what paleontologists consider the modern dental formula in placental mammals," Davis said.

The latest mammal fossil suggests that these primitive creatures were already evolving quickly, with diverse traits emerging, at this point in the Cretaceous Era, he added.

Paleontologists recently proposed that the mother to all placental mammals lived about 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs went extinct.

The first true mammal likely emerged at least 100 million years before that, the report said.

Fossil-hunters were searching through sediments in Hyogo, Japan in 2007 when they unearthed the skeletal fragments of an ancient mammalian jaw.

The creatures jaw contained four sharp, pointy teeth known as pre-molars and three molars with complex ridges. That same pattern in the number of each type of tooth is found in placental mammals to this day, whereas earlier mammals have more of the sharp, pointy teeth.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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Outcast black holes living on the edge of our Milky Way galaxy, study finds

LONDON: As many as 2,000 black holes kicked away from their homes are now living on the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, used new computer simulations to look at how our galaxy grew through mergers with smaller galaxies.

Scientists believe that every galaxy may have a black hole at its centre. As galaxies merge, their central black holes merge too, building a supermassive black hole millions of times the mass of our Sun.

However, collisions between black holes create gravitational waves, which can kick a newly merged black hole out of its host galaxy, New Scientist reported.

Valery Rashkov and Piero Madau of the University of California, ran simulations that show 70 to 2,000 of these outcasts may now linger in the halo of the Milky Way, depending on the properties of the objects that collided.

Some might have been stripped bare, while others may carry a few clusters of stars and dark matter, said Avi Loeb of Harvard University, who has proposed a similar idea.

Though faint, these star clusters should be observable with current or future telescopes.

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Canadian researchers develop energy storage system

MONTREAL: Canadian researchers have developed a ground-breaking method which may ultimately enable excess energy created by wind turbines and solar panels to be stored for later use.

Two researchers at the University of Calgary, report in the journal "Science" that they have invented a relatively inexpensive way of using rust to act as a catalyst for capturing energy through the electrolysis of water.

"This breakthrough offers a relatively cheaper method of storing and reusing electricity produced by wind turbines and solar panels," said Curtis Berlinguette, associate professor of chemistry at the university.

"Our work represents a critical step for realizing a large-scale, clean energy economy," he added.

Simon Trudel, assistant professor of chemistry, said the discovery, "opens up a whole new field of how to make catalytic materials. We now have a large new arena for discovery."

The two researchers have created a company to commercialize their electrocatalysts for use in electrolysers.

Electrolysers use catalysts to create a chemical reaction that converts electricity into energy by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can then be stored and reconverted to electricity for use whenever needed.

Catalysts are typically made from rare and expensive metals in a crystalline structure.

However, Berlinguette and Trudel deviated from this principle by using common metal compounds or oxides, such as rust, which achieved the same results as more expensive metals.

The researchers expect to have a commercial product in the market by 2014, with a prototype electrolyser designed to provide a family home's energy needs ready for testing by 2015.

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One drug for many types of cancers, human trials to begin

NEW DELHI: Researchers from Stanford University have found a drug that can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, Science magazine reports.

"We showed that even after the tumor has taken hold, the antibody can either cure the tumor or slow its growth and prevent metastasis," says Irving Weissman of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, talking to Science.

Although still a long way to go, the findings have shown a new approach to dealing with cancers and, for the first time, discovered a chemical that acts on a wide variety of cancers.

Here is how it works: cancer cells deceive the body's own protection services - the immune system - by displaying a 'flag' or a sign that basically says "do not attack me, I am a friend". Such markers are commonly used by other important cells in the body, like blood cells.

What Weissman and his Stanford colleagues did was to block this marker, called CD47, in cancerous cells by introducing an anti-body designed for just this purpose. Once the "do not attack" sign was hidden, the body's police converged on the cancer cells and destroyed it.

Weissman's earlier work was on leukemia (blood cancer) and lymphoma (cancer of some immune cells). But in the latest research, he shows that the same approach is successful for a wide variety of cancers.

"What we've shown is that CD47 isn't just important on leukemias and lymphomas," Weissman told Science. "It's on every single human primary tumor that we tested."

The research results have been published in the online journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 26.

The researchers first exposed tumor cells to macrophages, a type of immune cell, in lab dishes. The macrophages ignored the cancerous cells. But when the anti-CD47 was introduced, the macrophages engulfed and destroyed cancer cells.

Next, similar experiments were done by transplanting human cancer cells into mice feet, where tumors can be easily monitored. When treated, the tumors shrank and did not spread to the rest of the body.

One problem was that presence of the anti-CD47 blocked the "don't attack" flags not only from targeted cancer cells but also from healthy blood cells. This led the macrophages to start attacking them. However, the researchers found that the decrease in blood cells was short-lived and the animals turned up production of new blood cells to replace those they lost from the treatment.

Apart from human testing, the new drug will also need to function in the complex, living micro-environment in a human body, which will be much different from the transplanted tumors in mice.

Weissman's team has received a $20 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to move the findings from mouse studies to human safety tests, Science reported.

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Surgery to treat chronic diabetes?

HYDERABAD: Soon, chronic diabetes patients in the city might take to surgery to beat their fluctuating blood sugar levels. Speaking about this at a conference held on Friday, medical practitioners said that the procedure known as " Ileal interposition with sleeve gastrectomy" would not just help in effectively controlling type 2 diabetes but will also eliminate the need for medication to treat the ailment.

While the procedure, doctors said is not new; it has failed to pick up in the city. Dr Surendra Ugale of Kirloskar Hospital, Basheerbagh, who first performed this surgery in 2008 claimed to have reversed Type 2 diabetes in 225 patients (of the 250 he operated on) in India and Istanbul. "Very few patients had a recurrence of their diabetes at some point," he said, adding that the surgery costs Rs 4 lakh.

A case in point is Meena, a Type 2 diabetic, who was under severe stress till last year as medicines failed to control her blood sugar levels. An episode of hypoglycemia (occurs as a complication of treatment of diabetes mellitus with insulin or oral medications) that left her unconscious for an hour further added to her troubles. Though averse to surgery, the 52-year-old finally went under the knife last year. Ever since, Meena claims that, she has stopped taking the 7-8 pills she needed daily to keep her ailment under check.

Type 2 diabetes mostly occurs due to poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle, unlike type1 which occurs due to genetic predisposition.
Doctors however cautioned that the surgery is only for patients with progressive diabetes that impacts the heart, kidneys, eyes, nerves and pancreas. "It is not for patients who can manage their blood sugar levels by exercise, balanced diet and medications," they said.

The procedure involves removing the ghrelin producing area of the stomach. Ghrelin acts against insulin. Then, a section of one of the three parts of the small intestine, the ileum, is cut and placed closer to the stomach. The ileum produces the hormone GLP-1, which helps in insulin secretion. This means food from the stomach takes just 10 minutes to reach the ileum instead of an hour that it is used to take earlier. This reduces the dependence on insulin injections.

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Russian spaceship docks with orbiting station

MOSCOW: A Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts successfully docked with the International Space Station on Friday, bringing the size of the crew at the orbiting lab to six.

Chris Cassidy of the United States and Russians Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin travelled six hours in the capsule before linking up with the space station's Russian Rassvet research module over the Pacific Ocean, just off Peru.
"It's such a beautiful sight, hard to believe my eyes," the 59-year-old Vinogradov, who had been in space in 1997 and 2006, was heard saying on NASA TV.

The incoming crew will spend five months in space before returning to Earth. Their mission began with a late-night launch from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan. It was the first time a space crew has taken such a direct route to the orbiting lab. Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin are the first crew to reach the station after only four orbits instead of the standard 50-hour flight to reach the station.

The new manoeuvre was tested successfully by three Russian Progress cargo ships, unmanned versions of the Soyuz used to ferry supplies to the space station. Vinogradov said at a pre-launch news conference that the shorter flight path would reduce the crew's fatigue and allow the astronauts to be in top shape for the docking.

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Three astronauts blast off on express ride to International Space Station

BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN: A crew of two Russians and an American blasted off today on a Russian rocket for the International Space Station, in a trip scheduled to be the fastest ever manned journey to the facility.

The trio successfully launched from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with a journey time expected to be just six hours compared with the previous time of over two days, an AFP correspondent reported. Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin and American Chris Cassidy are expected to spend the next five months aboard the station after they dock later today.

The initial stages of the launch on the Soyuz-FG rocket were completed without a hitch, mission control in Moscow said, leaving the Soyuz-TMA capsule ready for its fast track ride to the ISS. The slash in travel time has been made possible because technological improvements mean the Soyuz will only need to orbit the Earth four times before docking with the ISS whereas previously some 30 orbits had to be made.

The manned "express" flight comes after Russia successfully sent three Progress supply capsules in August, October and February to the station via the short six hour route rather than two days. Vinogradov, a veteran of two previous space flights, said at the pre-launch news conference that the shortened flight time has several advantages for the crew.

Firstly, as the crew only start to experience the tough effects of weightlessness after 4-5 hours of flight they will be in better shape when they arrive at the station for the docking procedure. "During the initial time the crew feels completely normal and works normally," he said.

Also, the reduced time means that the Soyuz capsule will be able to deliver biological materials for experiments aboard the ISS in time before they spoil, something that would not have been possible with a two day trip. "With such a short time the crew could even take an ice cream -- it would not be able to melt," said Vinogradov.

After docking at 0231 GMT Friday, on board they will join incumbent crew Chris Hadfield of Canada, Tom Marshburn of NASA and Russia's Roman Romanenko. Hadfield has over the last months built up a huge following with colourful tweets from space and spectacular pictures of the Earth below. "A long & big day ahead as 3 friends launch in their Soyuz rocket from Baikonur to dock with us... Godspeed," he tweeted ahead of the trio's launch.

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Now, robotic 'jellyfish spy' to patrol oceans!

WASHINGTON: Researchers, led by an Indian origin scientist, have developed a life-like, autonomous robotic jellyfish - the size and weight of a grown man - for surveillance and monitoring of oceans.

The prototype robot, 5 foot 7 inches in length and weighing 170 pounds, nicknamed Cyro, is a larger model of a robotic jellyfish the same team - headed by Shashank Priya of Blacksburg and professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech - unveiled last year.

"A larger vehicle will allow for more payload, longer duration and longer range of operation," said Alex Villanueva of St-Jacques, New-Brunswick, Canada.

The goal is to place self-powering, autonomous machines in waters for the purposes of surveillance and monitoring the environment, in addition to other uses such as studying aquatic life, mapping ocean floors, and monitoring ocean currents.

Jellyfish are attractive candidates to mimic because of their ability to consume little energy owing to a lower metabolic rate than other marine species. They appear in wide variety of sizes, shapes and colours, allowing for several designs.

They also inhabit every major oceanic area of the world and are capable of withstanding a wide range of temperatures in both fresh and salt waters, researchers said.

Priya's team is building the jellyfish body models, integrating fluid mechanics and developing control systems.

"We hope to improve on this robot and reduce power consumption and improve swimming performance as well as better mimic the morphology of the natural jellyfish," Villanueva said.

Cyro is powered by a rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery, whereas the smaller models were tethered, Priya said.

The jellyfish must operate on their own for months or longer at a time as engineers likely won't be able to capture and repair the robots, or replace power sources.

"Cyro showed its ability to swim autonomously while maintaining a similar physical appearance and kinematics as the natural species," Priya said, adding the robot is able to collect, store, analyse, and communicate sensory data.

"This autonomous operation in shallow water conditions is already a big step towards demonstrating the use of these creatures," Priya said in a statement.

Its body consists of a rigid support structure with direct current electric motors which control the mechanical arms that are used in conjunction with an artificial mesoglea, or jelly-based pulp of the fish's body, creating hydrodynamic movement.

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Scientists claim to discover genes influencing cancers

MELBOURNE: A group of scientists in Australia claimed to have discovered the genes which can increase a person's risk of developing several cancers.

Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) has been working with an international study led by Cambridge University in England for the research project that examined the DNA make-up of more than 200,000 people, an ABC report said.

"Every single one of these new genes we've discovered -- in total across all the cancers there's more than 150 of them -- any one of those genes might lead us into completely new kinds of treatments for these cancers," QIMR spokeswoman Georgia Chenevix-Trench was quoted as saying.

"It'll take a lot more work of this type to actually understand how these genes operate and then how we might be able to interfere with them in some way," she said.

Chenevix-Trench, however, pointed out that translation of the research outcome into treatment may take a long time.

"The first thing you need to do to devise new treatments is to understand the mechanism underlying these diseases and this is really providing some very new insights into some of the genes that might be responsible," she said.

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Genes behind smoking addiction in teens: Study

WASHINGTON: Scientists have identified certain genetic risk factors that may accelerate a teen's progression to becoming a lifelong heavy smoker.

Scientists from the US, the UK and New Zealand examined earlier studies by other research teams to develop a genetic risk profile for heavy smoking. They also looked at their own long-term study of 1,000 New Zealanders from birth to age 38. Study participants who had the high-risk genetic profile were found to be more likely to convert to daily smoking as teenagers and then progress more rapidly to heavy smoking (a pack a day or more), the research found.

When assessed at age 38, the higher-risk individuals had smoked heavily for more years, had more often developed nicotine dependence and were more likely to have failed in attempts to quit smoking. "Genetic risk accelerated the development of smoking behaviour," said Daniel Belsky, from Duke University's Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development and the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy.

"Teens at a high genetic risk transitioned quickly from trying cigarettes to becoming regular, heavy smokers," Belsky said in a statement. A person's genetic risk profile did not predict whether he or she would try cigarettes. But for those who did try cigarettes, having a high-risk genetic profile predicted increased the likelihood of heavy smoking and nicotine dependence.

The Duke researchers developed a new "genetic risk score" for the study, by examining prior genome-wide associations (GWAS) of adult smokers. These studies scanned the entire genomes of tens of thousands of smokers to identify variants that were more common in the heaviest smokers. The variants they identified were located in and around genes that affect how the brain responds to nicotine and how nicotine is metabolised, but it is not yet known how the specific variants affect gene function.

Researchers turned to their New Zealand sample and found genetic risk was not related to whether a person tried smoking, which 70 per cent of the sample had. One reason for this was that so-called "chippers" - smokers who consume cigarettes only on weekends or smoke only one or two per day - had even lower genetic risk than nonsmokers.

Genetic risk was related to the development of smoking problems. Among teens who tried cigarettes, those with a high-risk genetic profile were 24 per cent more likely to become daily smokers by age 15 and 43 per cent more likely to become pack-a-day smokers by age 18.

As adults, those with high-risk genetic profiles were 27 per cent more likely to become nicotine dependent and 22 per cent more likely to fail in their attempts at quitting.

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IISc scientist’s paper explains the existence of super luminous supernova

BANGALORE: "New mass limit for white dwarfs: super-Chandrasekhar type Ia supernova as a new standard candle" by Bangalore-based IISc Scientist, Prof. Banibrata Mukhopadhyay and team, recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters, could explain some observations that many scientists pondered over the past decade or so. The research also furthers Nobel Prize winning work by S. Chandrasekhar, 80 years ago, and heralds a major paradigm shift in understanding white dwarfs.

White dwarfs are dead stars, whereas stars are huge gaseous balls having continuous nuclear burning and resulting in emission of light. When all helium and hydrogen of a star of mass about 5 times or less than mass of sun burn out, it leads to a white dwarf.

Chandrasekhar showed by calculations that mass of stable white dwarfs is maximum 1.4 times mass of sun, which is known as the Chandrasekhar limit. When a mass of white dwarf reaches the Chandrasekhar limit, its nuclear burning becomes highly dramatic, resulting in an explosion called supernova (type Ia). As all the exploding white dwarfs have same mass and hence energy, the supernova explosions have the same luminosity (a measurement of brightness). Hence, the supernovae which are observed fainted through the existing telescopes are understood to be at further distance than brighter supernovae. This can be used to calculate the size and subsequently the expansion rate of the Universe.

According to the new paper, white dwarfs can burst at 2.6 times the mass of sun, which is its new limit called "Mukhopadhyay-Das limit". "Chandrasekhar limit is a point of our research. We are first persons showcasing new generic mass limit of white dwarfs as 2.6 times solar mass. This result explains enigmatic, super-luminous supernovae observed in last few years," says Mukhopadhyay, who arrived to the conclusion based on his theoretical calculations along with students Upasana Das and Aritra Kundu.

Super-luminous supernovae, which were first discovered in 2006, are most energetic of these explosions and are more than twice as bright as and more powerful than "normal" supernovae that would have been explained based on the Chandrasekhar's work. "Chandrasekhar didn't take into account the effects of magnetic fields in his calculations which we did," says Mukhopadhyay, who's currently an associate professor with IISc's Physics Department.

"In order to correctly interpret the expansion of history of universe and then dark energy, one might need to carefully sample the observed data from the supernovae explosions, especially if the over-luminous supernovae (type Ia) are eventually found to be enormous in number. However, it is probably too early to comment whether our discovery has any direct implications on the current dark energy scenario which is based on the observation of ordinary supernovae," says Mukhopadhyay.

Currently, about few hundreds of supernovae have been observed and only 5-10 percent of them are super-luminous supernovae. "In future, with evolution of technology, if we see more over-luminous supernova, the universe expansion theory might need to be redone. As a result, dark energy scenario might need to be rethought," says Mukhopadhyay.

Meanwhile, major astrophysicists across the country have applauded the recent work. "The paper has given a very different perspective. The existence of super luminous supernova can now be explained," said Arikkala Raghuram Rao, an astronomer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Rao is hoping to launch a collaborative search for white dwarfs with extremely high magnetic fields.

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‘Sick’ curiosity is now fit and fine

MUMBAI: Curiosity is now fully operational following its recovery from a computer glitch, Nasa said on Tuesday. According to the space agency's latest announcement , the nearly one tonne rover has resumed full science investigations . The rover has been monitoring the weather since March 21 and delivered a new portion of powdered-rock sample for laboratory analysis on March 23, among other activities.

"We are back to full science operations ," Curiosity deputy project manager Jim Erickson of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, said. The powder delivered on Saturday came from the rover's first full drilling into a rock to collect a sample. The new portion went into the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument inside the rover , which began analyzing this material and had previously analyzed other portions from the same drilling.

The Rover Environmental Monitoring Station is recording weather variables. The Radiation Assessment Detector is checking the natural radiation environment at the rover's location inside Gale Crater. According to Nasa, one aspect of ramping-up activities after switching to the B-side computer has been to check the six engineering cameras that are hard-linked to that computer. The rover's science instruments, including five science cameras, can each be operated by either the Aside or B-side computer, whichever is active.

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Shorter shifts spell more errors for doctors

LONDON: New regulations in Europe limit doctors to working 48 hours a week. But a study from US' Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have found that reducing work hours for medical interns increases patient handoff risks tremendously.

The study found that limiting the number of hours worked continuously by medical trainees failed to increase the amount of sleep each intern got per week but dramatically increased the number of potentially dangerous handoffs of patients from one trainee to another.

Handoff is a medical term which refers to practice of doctors and nurses of passing patients to others once their shifts are over. The reductions in work hours also decreased training time. Prof Norman Williams, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said doctors will lose their professionalism if they develop a 'clock on and clock off attitude'.

In 2011, stricter national regulations reducing the continuous-duty hours of first-year resident physicians from 30 to 16 were put in place on the belief that limiting trainees' work hours would lead to more sleep and that less fatigue translating into fewer serious medical errors.

But Sanjay Desai, leader of the new research says data does not support this. "The consequences of these regulations are potentially serious," says Desai, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins. "Despite the best of intentions, the reduced hours are handcuffing training programs and benefits to patient safety while trainee well-being has not been systematically demonstrated."

According to Desai, the 16-hour limit was put in place without any evidence that it would improve patient safety and outcomes.

Desai compared three different work schedules in the months leading up to the 2011 change. For three months, groups of medical interns were assigned randomly to either a 2003-compliant model of being on call every fourth night, with a 30-hour duty limit, or to one of two 2011-compliant models.

Interns on the 16-hour limit schedule did sleep an average of three hours longer during the 48 hours in their on-call period than those working 30-hour shifts but there was no difference in the amount of sleep they got across a week.

"During each call period the interns had 14 extra hours out of the hospital, but they only used three of those hours for sleeping," Desai says. "We don't know if that's enough of a physiologically meaningful increase in sleep to improve patient safety."

The researchers found that the minimal number of patient handoffs between interns increased from three for those working 30 hours to as high as nine for those working 16-hour shifts.

More handoffs led to less continuity of care and more room for errors. The minimum number of interns caring for a patient during a three-day stay increased from three to five.

Desai says their study showed that educational opportunities suffer greatly from the 16-hour restrictions.

Before the limits, interns did all patient admissions and spent the next 24 hours following them. Now there are times when interns cannot admit patients and those who do cannot see them through initial assessment.

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UK allows doctors to date former patients

LONDON: Britain has finally allowed doctors to have a romantic relationship with their patient. In what will be a green light for doctors to date former patients for the first time, new guidelines issued on Tuesday by UK's General Medical Council says they can pursue such a romance depending on the duration of the professional relationship they have had earlier.

For example, a relationship with a former patient the doctor treated over a number of years is more likely to be inappropriate than a relationship with a patient with whom they have had a single consultation. Doctors have also been told that they must not use home visits to pursue a relationship with a member of a patient's family and also not end a professional relationship with a patient solely to pursue a personal relationship with them.

GMC said: "You must not use your professional relationship with a patient to pursue a relationship with someone close to them." GMC added "It is not possible to specify a length of time after which it would be acceptable to begin a relationship with a former patient. However, the more recently a professional relationship with a patient ended, the less likely it is that beginning a personal relationship with that patient would be appropriate."

The new guidelines which come into force from 22 April 2013 still ban a sexual relationship with current patients. It says pursuing a relationship with a former patient is more likely to be an abuse of your position if you are a psychiatrist or a paediatrician.

The guideline available with TOI says: "You must not use your professional position to pursue a sexual or improper emotional relationship with a patient or someone close to them. If a patient pursues a sexual or improper emotional relationship with you, you should treat them politely and considerately and try to re-establish a professional boundary."

It also says: "Trust is the foundation of a doctor-patient partnership. Patients should be able to trust that their doctor will behave professionally towards them during consultations and not see them as a potential sexual partner. You must not pursue a sexual or improper emotional relationship with a current patient. Personal relationships with former patients may also be inappropriate depending on factors such as the length of time since the professional relationship ended."

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Found: What causes Down’s syndrome

WASHINGTON: Extra chromosome inherited in Down's syndrome — chromosome 21— alters brain and body development, a study has found. Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham ) have new evidence that points to a protein called sorting nexin 27, or SNX27.

SNX27 production is inhibited by a molecule encoded on chromosome 21.

The study shows that SNX27 is reduced in human Down's syndrome brains. The extra copy of chromosome 21 means a person with Down's syndrome produces less SNX27 protein, which in turn disrupts brain function.

What's more, the researchers showed that restoring SNX27 in Down's syndrome mice improves cognitive function and behaviour.

"In the brain, SNX27 keeps certain receptors on the cell surface — receptors that are necessary for neurons to fire properly," Huaxi Xu, PhD, professor in Sanford-Burnham's Del E Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center and senior author of the study, said. "So, in Down's syndrome, we believe lack of SNX27 is at least partly to blame for developmental and cognitive defects," Xu said. The study is published in the journal Nature Medicine.

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American cows have Indian origins, scientists find

NEW DELHI: Some famous cow breeds of the Americas, including the iconic Texas Longhorn, have descended from Indian ancestors, a new genetic study reveals.

Indian cows traveled to East Africa, then mixed with local cattle populations up to the North African coast. From there they were picked up and continued to intermingle with Spanish cattle. In 1493, Christopher Columbus took these Indian variants to the Caribbean on his second voyage. Then they spread to Mexico and Texas. The study by scientists of the universities of Texas (Austin) and Missouri (Columbia) was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this week.

This bizarre journey of the Indian cow's genes is a reflection of human migration as cows have practically coexisted with human society. Cows were domesticated around 10,000 years ago in two regions - Turkey and India - from a wild species called aurochs which were up to two times larger than current bovines. These are respectively called the taurine and indicine types of cows. Aurochs were hunted to extinction by 1627.

It was generally assumed that North American cattle were descendants of European cattle brought by settlers. However, certain varieties of cattle like the Texas Longhorn showed distinctive characteristics like being immune to certain ticks (parasitic insects), and quite capable of withstanding tough drought like conditions. Obviously, there was more to their ancient past than met the eye.

To understand and unravel the origins of American cattle breeds, the scientists analyzed the genetic lineage of three cattle descended from the New World cows: Texas longhorn, Mexican Corriente and Romosinuano cattle from Colombia, and compared them with 55 other cattle breeds.

They found that changes in genetic sequences found in the three New World cows were very similar to the ones in Indian breeds. Collating historical records, the researchers have suggested that these imported cattle survived in wild herds in their new home for another 450 years. This period, covering about 80 to 200 generations would offer an opportunity for natural selection, that is, survival of the characteristics that are better suited to the new environment, at the cost of unsuited characteristics.

There have been later 'imports' of the Indian breeds in the Americas, the researchers admit. They were introduced to North America via Jamaica by the 1860s. In the mid-1900s, Indian cattle were imported into Brazil, and now there are "naturalized" Brazilian indicine (Nelore) and indicine/taurine hybrid (Canchim) breeds.

India has the largest cattle population in the world, numbering nearly 300 million heads, followed by Brazil, China and US.

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Moon and asteroids share 'bombardment' history: NASA

WASHINGTON: NASA scientists have discovered that a swarm of high-speed space objects that slammed into the Moon four billion years ago also bombarded the giant asteroid Vesta and many other asteroids.

Scientists from NASA's Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) discovered an unexpected link between Vesta and the Moon, and provides new means for studying the early bombardment history of terrestrial planets, according to the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"It's always intriguing when interdisciplinary research changes the way we understand the history of our solar system," said Yvonne Pendleton, NLSI director.

"Although the Moon is located far from Vesta, which is in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, they seem to share some of the same bombardment history," Pendleton said in a statement.

The findings support the theory that the repositioning of gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn from their original orbits to their current location destabilised portions of the asteroid belt and triggered a solar system-wide bombardment of asteroids billions of years ago, called the lunar cataclysm.

The research provides new constraints on the start and duration of the lunar cataclysm, and demonstrates that the cataclysm was an event that affected not only the inner solar system planets, but the asteroid belt as well.

The Moon rocks brought back by NASA Apollo astronauts have long been used to study the bombardment history of the Moon. Now the ages derived from meteorite samples have been used to study the collisional history of main belt asteroids.

In particular, howardite and eucrite meteorites, which are common species found on Earth, have been used to study asteroid Vesta, their parent body. With the aid of computer simulations, researchers determined that meteorites from Vesta recorded high-speed impacts which are now long gone.

Researchers have linked these two datasets and found that the same population of projectiles responsible for making craters and basins on the moon were also hitting Vesta at very high velocities, enough to leave behind a number of telltale, impact-related ages.

The team's interpretation of the howardites and eucrites was augmented by recent close-in observations of Vesta's surface by NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

"It appears that the asteroidal meteorites show signs of the asteroid belt losing a lot of mass four billion years ago, with the escaped mass beating up on both the surviving main belt asteroids and the Moon at high speeds" said lead author Simone Marchi.

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Night owls smarter than others: Study

LONDON: Early to bed and early to rise may neither make you wealthy nor wise, according to a new study. Research on teenagers by the University of Madrid found that night owls, who like to work at night, may be brighter than the much better-regarded early risers.

In scientific tests, evening types showed more of the kind of intelligence that has been linked to prestigious jobs and higher incomes . Larks or morning types, however, tend to get better school grades, possibly because lessons were at the wrong time of the day for night owls, The Independent reported on Sunday.

Researchers carried out tests comparing larks and night owls. The body clocks of some people make them evening types, night owls who stay up late and sleep in later in the morning. Others, the larks, are at their peak in the morning, going to bed and getting up early. Nearly 1,000 teenagers took part in the research which involved a battery of tests. These included measures of school performance and inductive intelligence.

Around one in four of the teenagers were classified as morning types, and 32% as night owls, with the remainder fitting neither profile . The results showed that evening types scored higher than morning types on inductive reasoning , which has been shown to be a good estimate of general intelligence and one of the strongest predictors of academic performance.

A further piece of good news for the owls is that inductive reasoning is linked to innovative thinking and more prestigious occupations, and tends to earn higher incomes.

Some of the famous night owls include US President Obama, Charles Darwin, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Keith Richards and Elvis Presley.

One theory to explain the extra brain power of night owls is that intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be nocturnal because in ancestral times any activities at night would have been novel and would, therefore, have been more likely to attract people with inquisitive minds.

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Song stuck in your head? Try solving puzzles

LONDON:Solving tricky anagrams can help you get rid of earworms — a piece of music that keeps repeating in your mind so that you hear it, even when it is not being played — scientists claim.

Solving some anagrams can force the intrusive music out of your working memory, allowing it to be replaced with other more amenable thoughts, scientists said. However, trying anything too difficult seemed to have little effect, the Telegraph reported.

"The key is to find something that will give the right level of challenge. If you are cognitively engaged, it limits the ability of intrusive songs to enter your head," said Dr Ira Hyman, a music psychologist at Western Washington University who conducted the research.

"Something we can do automatically like driving or walking means you are not using all of your cognitive resource, so there is plenty of space left for that internal jukebox to start playing," Hyman said.

"Likewise, if you are trying something too hard, then your brain will not be engaged successfully, so that the music can come back. You need to find that bit in the middle where there is not much space left in the brain. That will be different for each of us," she said.

Hyman and her colleagues conducted a series of tests on volunteers by playing them popular songs in an attempt to find out how tunes can become stuck in long-term memory.

The researchers tested whether solving puzzles such as anagrams would help to reduce the recurrence of earworms. Anagrams were found to be successful in tackling ear -worms and the team also discovered that solving those with five letters gave the best results.

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Hidden magma layer discovered in earth's mantle

WASHINGTON: Scientists have discovered an unexpected layer of liquified molten rock in Earth's mantle that may be responsible for the sliding motions of the planet's massive tectonic plates.

The magma layer was discovered at the Middle America trench off Nicaragua's shores.

The finding may carry far-reaching implications, from understanding basic geologic functions of the planet to new insights into volcanism and earthquakes, scientists said.

The research, reported in the journal Nature, was conducted by Samer Naif, Kerry Key, and Steven Constable of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), and Rob Evans of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

"This new image greatly enhances our understanding of the role that fluids, both seawater and deep subsurface melts, play in controlling tectonic and volcanic processes," said Bil Haq, programme director in National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which provided funding for the work.

Using advanced seafloor electromagnetic imaging technology pioneered at SIO, the scientists imaged a 25-kilometre-thick layer of partially melted mantle rock below the edge of the Cocos plate where it moves beneath Central America.

The new images of magma were captured during a 2010 expedition aboard the research vessel Melville.

After deploying a vast array of seafloor instruments that recorded natural electromagnetic signals to map features of the crust and mantle, the scientists realised they had found magma in a surprising place.

"This was completely unexpected. We went out looking to get an idea of how fluids are interacting with plate subduction, but we discovered a melt layer we weren't expecting to find," Key said.

For decades scientists have debated the forces that allow the planet's tectonic plates to slide across the Earth's mantle.

Studies have shown that dissolved water in mantle minerals results in a more ductile mantle that would facilitate tectonic plate motions, but for many years clear images and data required to confirm or deny this idea were lacking.

"Our data tell us that water can't accommodate the features we are seeing. The information from the new images confirms the idea that there needs to be some amount of melt in the upper mantle. That's what's creating this ductile behaviour for plates to slide," Naif said.

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Extremely drug-resistant TB rearing its head in India

NEW DELHI: When the chest pain and racking cough of tuberculosis patient Asha (31) refused to subside even after six months of treatment, the doctor got her sputum tested again - only to find that she had developed a worrying form of the disease known as Extensively Drug Resistant TB, which is nearly impossible to treat as of now.

India is already grappling with the disease burden of Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR) tuberculosis, which manifests when a patient fails to take all the TB medicines exactly as prescribed and misses out some doses. The TB bacterium, which remains in the patient, mutates and cannot be treated with the first and second line of treatment.

The bacterium has mutated even more as Extensively Drug Resistant TB (XDR-TB) that is resistant to normal drugs. Doctors are now trying combination drugs to treat it.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), India is home to 73,000 patients with MDR-TB. The figure for XDR-TB is not yet known.

"XDR-TB is a reality," Vivek Nangia, director (Pulmonology and Infectious Diseases) at Fortis Hospital in Vasant Kunj, told IANS.

"XDR-TB develops a couple of years after MDR-TB if it is not treated properly," he added.

According to Chand Wattal, chairman (Microbiology Department) of Sir Gangaram hospital, "unless XDR-TB is realised as a danger, the situation cannot be controlled".

The prevalence ratio of TB in India is about 1:32, according to the Tuberculosis Association of India.

India's Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS) strategy, which is implemented through the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), is aimed at achieving an at least 85 percent cure rate amongst new patients.

Rajiv Chawla, senior consultant (Respiratory Critical Care) at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, said that though the threat of XDR-TB is not absolute as of now, it can very soon assume dangerous proportions if preventive measures are not taken quickly.

Doctors also said that XDR-TB raises concerns of a future TB epidemic with restricted treatment options, jeopardizing the major gains made in TB control and progress on reducing TB deaths among people living with HIV/AIDS.

It is, therefore, vital that TB control is managed properly and new tools are developed to prevent, treat and diagnose the disease, they said.

The true scale of XDR-TB is not known as many countries lack the necessary equipment and capacity to accurately diagnose it. It is, however, estimated that there are around 40,000 cases per year globally.

As of June 2008, 49 countries have confirmed XDR-TB cases. By 2010, that number had risen to 58.

Like other forms of TB, XDR-TB is spread through the air. When a person with infectious TB coughs, sneezes, talks or spits, TB germs, known as bacilli, are propelled into the air. Inhaling even a small number of these leads to an infection.

According to Nangia: "The Indian TB treatment is not working as our population is larger...over population is adding to the problem."

Wattal said in India, "the population needs to be tracked. Family members and contacts of patients need to be tracked. In India there is no accountability, no surveillance. Patients need to be put on a data base," he said, adding, MDR-TB doesn't need long to turn into the extreme form.

One in three people in the world is infected with the TB bacteria. Only when the bacteria becomes active do people contract the disease. Bacteria becomes active as a result of anything that can reduce the person's immunity, such as HIV, advancing age or medical conditions.

Significantly, fewer people are dying of tuberculosis in Southeast Asia today compared to 1990, according to the World Health Organization. The death rate due to the disease has decreased by more than 40 percent in the past 13 years.

As access to TB care has expanded substantially, the number of people with TB, or the TB prevalence rate, has also declined by a fourth in the region compared with 1990.

All the 11 member-countries of the WHO in South Asia have adopted the WHO Stop TB Strategy. More than 88 percent known TB patients have been successfully treated.

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Three Indian scientists played a role in mapping universe

NEW DELHI: The most-detailed map of the universe created through the observations made by Planck space telescope has an Indian element to it.

Three Indian scientists-- Sanjit Mitra, Tarun Souradeep and their graduate student Aditya Rotti -- from the Inter- University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, were a part of the team.

On March 21, the most-refined picture of the early cosmos after the Big Bang, measured by the European Space Agency's Planck mission, was released at European Space Agency headquarters in Paris.

The map suggests that the universe is slightly older than thought. According to the map, subtle fluctuations in temperature were imprinted on the deep sky when the cosmos was about 370,000-years-old.

Planck also provided the most-precise measurements to date of tiny variations in the universe's oldest light, called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), created more than 13 billion years ago when the universe was young---only a few hundred thousand-years-old, Sanjit Mitra told .

These measurements allow exquisite estimates of the age, composition, geometry and fate of the universe.

Next release of such results, which will include the full dataset and further refinement in the analyses, is expected in 2014, he added.

"Based on a decade-long research programme at IUCAA, the Indian team made significant contribution in alleviating effects from the complex instrumental response, as well as, in the search for subtle violations of the cosmological principle that is a key fundamental assumption in standard cosmology," Mitra said.

The correction for complicated oddities of the instrument response has been critical for accurate estimation of key cosmological results from Planck data.

Planck is a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA) and designed to observe the "anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background at a high sensitivity and angular resolution.

Planck was built in the Cannes Mandelieu Space Center by Thales Alenia Space and created as the third Medium-Sized Mission (M3) of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000 Scientific Programme.

The project, initially called COBRAS/SAMBA, is named in honour of the German physicist Max Planck (1858?1947), who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

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Comet, not asteroid, wiped out dinosaurs, scientists claim

NEW YORK: A speeding comet, rather than an asteroid, slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and sparked the extinction of the dinosaurs, scientists claim.

Many scientists believe the 180 km Chicxulub crater in Mexico was made by the impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs and about 70 per cent of all species on Earth.

The crater was probably blasted out by a faster, smaller object than previously thought, according to the new study presented at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

Evidence of the space rock's impact comes from a worldwide layer of sediments containing high levels of the element iridium, dubbed the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, which could not have occurred on Earth naturally.

The new study suggests the often-cited iridium values are incorrect. Scientists compared these values with levels of osmium, another element delivered by the impact.

Their calculations suggest the space rock generated less debris than previously thought, implying the space rock was a smaller object, 'LiveScience' reported.

The researchers concluded in order for the smaller rock to have created the giant Chicxulub crater, it had to have been going exceedingly fast.

Their results indicate the impact is more compatible with a long-period comet, which can take hundreds, thousands or sometimes millions of years to orbit the Sun once.

It is possible that a rapidly moving asteroid could have caused the Chicxulub impact crater, but the fastest-moving objects that have been observed are mostly comets, researchers said.

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India, US mull cooperation in moon, Mars missions

WASHINGTON: India and the US have agreed to expand their cooperation in civil space activities ranging from weather and monsoon forecasting to cooperative space exploration work, including future missions to the moon and Mars.

The agreement between the two countries' space agencies, Indian Space Research Organisation and National Aeronautical and Space Administration (Nasa) was announced Friday after a meeting of the US-India Civil Space Joint Working Group (CSJWG).

"Building on Nasa's collaboration in India's highly successful Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission in 2008, Nasa and ISRO agreed to explore further cooperative space exploration work, including future missions to the moon and Mars," a joint statement issued after the meeting said.

"To this end the CSJWG agreed to continue discussions in planetary science and Heliophysics to identify areas of potential cooperation," it said.

Continued progress is also being made in promoting compatibility and interoperability between the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), the statement said.

Further work in this area will take place bilaterally and in multilateral bodies such as the International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems, it said.

The two sides exchanged information on a range of space and other policy issues and noted ongoing efforts to open up new opportunities for collaboration.

Both sides confirmed the significant programmatic interest in, and scientific merit of, moving forward with the proposed Nasa-ISRO cooperation in the L & S-Band SAR mission, or remote sensing techniques, the statement said.

At the opening of the meeting Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden highlighted the impressive growth of US-India cooperation on a range of cutting edge projects from deep space exploration to the use of Earth observing satellites to promote sustainable development.

CSJWG is a vital pillar in the US-India partnership, Indian Ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao said suggesting that both sides should continue to search for new areas of cooperation noting that "there is no final frontier in this relationship".

This dialogue architecture should pave way for enhanced space applications for societal benefits, she said.

Endorsing expanded work in a number of areas, the working group noted that existing cooperation, in the use of US and Indian earth observation satellite data, has produced information yielding a broad range of societal benefits.

These include improved weather and monsoon forecasting, disaster management and response, improved agricultural and natural resource use and better understanding of climate change.

Through expanded cooperation between their technical agencies that operate earth observing satellites, the two sides agreed on a number of measures that will improve the use of this data to promote sustainable development.

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Flash reports consistent with meteor shower: Nasa

WASHINGTON: Social media sites are buzzing with reports of a flash of light that streaked across the sky along the US East Coast.

Bill Cooke of Nasa's meteoroid environmental office said on Friday that the flash appeared to be "a single meteor event.'' He says it "looks to be a fireball that moved roughly toward the southeast, going on visual reports.''

He says the meteor was widely seen, with more than 350 reports on the website of the American Meteor Society alone.

Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, agrees that the sightings had all the hallmarks of a "fireball.''

Pitts said this one got more attention because it happened on a Friday evening and because Twitter has provided a way for people to share information on sightings.

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Flash reports consistent with single meteor: Nasa

WASHINGTON: Reports of a flash of light that streaked across the sky over the U.S. East Coast appeared to be a "single meteor event," the U.S. space agency said. Residents from New York City to Washington and beyond lit up social media with surprise.

"Judging from the brightness, we're dealing with something as bright as the full moon," Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office said Friday. "We basically have (had) a boulder enter the atmosphere over the northeast."

Cooke said the meteor was widely seen, with more than 350 reports on the website of the American Meteor Society alone.

Robert Lunsford of the society told USA Today "it basically looked like a super bright shooting star."

The sky flash was spotted as far south as Florida and as far north as New England, the newspaper reported.

Matt Moore, a news editor with The Associated Press, said he was standing in line for a concert in Philadelphia around dusk when he saw "a brilliant flash moving across the sky at a very brisk pace... and utterly silent."

"It was clearly high up in the atmosphere," he said. "But from the way it appeared, it looked like a plane preparing to land at the airport."

Moore said the flash was visible to him for about two to three seconds, and then it was gone. He described it as having a "spherical shape and yellowish and you could tell it was burning, with the trail that it left behind."

Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, agreed that the sightings had all the hallmarks of a "fireball."

Pitts said this one got more attention because it happened on a Friday evening - and because Twitter has provided a way for people to share information on sightings.

He said what people likely saw was one meteor - or "space rock" - that may have been the size of a volleyball and fell fairly far down into the Earth's atmosphere. He likened it to a stone skipping across the water - getting "a nice long burn out of it."

Pitts said experts "can't be 100 percent certain of what it was, unless it actually fell to the ground and we could actually track the trajectory."

But he said the descriptions by so many people are "absolutely consistent" with those of a meteor.

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Chewing gums ups junk food craving

NEWYORK: Chewing gum may lead people to eat chips, cookies and candy instead of fruits and vegetables because menthol — the chemical which gives gum its mintyfresh flavour — makes fruits and vegetables taste bitter, according to a new study.

Some researchers have proposed that chewing gum could help people eat less and lead to weight loss, but the study, published in the journal Eating Behaviours, suggests that the chemical menthol in some types of gum makes fruits and vegetables taste funny. The chemical change is the same reason why "when you brush your teeth and then drink orange juice, it tastes bad," said study coauthor Christine Swoboda, a doctoral candidate in nutrition at Ohio State University.

Only a few studies have looked at whether chewing gum aids weight loss, and these have found conflicting results, Swoboda told Livescience.

It could be that the menthol in mint, which interacts with nutrients in fruits and veggies to create a bitter flavour, was turning people off to the healthy foods, she said.

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Voyager 1 still in our solar system: Nasa

WASHINGTON: Voyager 1 spacecraft has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space, Nasa scientists have clarified, amid reports that the spacecraft has exited our solar system.

"The Voyager team is aware of reports that Nasa's Voyager 1 has left the solar system," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.

"It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space," Stone said in a statement.

"In December 2012, the Voyager science team reported that Voyager 1 is within a new region called 'the magnetic highway' where energetic particles changed dramatically.

"A change in the direction of the magnetic field is the last critical indicator of reaching interstellar space and that change of direction has not yet been observed," Stone said.

The news of Voyager 1 exiting our solar system spread like wildfire in the scientific community after American Geophysical Union (AGU) issued a press release saying that a new study suggests that Voyager 1 has left our solar system.

After Nasa's released its official statement, AGU has issued a revised press release changing the headline to indicate that Voyager 1 had entered a new region of space rather than exited the solar system.

On August 25, 2012, Nasa's Voyager 1 spacecraft measured drastic changes in radiation levels.

"Within just a few days, the heliospheric intensity of trapped radiation decreased, and the cosmic ray intensity went up as you would expect if it exited the heliosphere," said study author Bill Webber, professor emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University in the AGU statement.

"It appears that [Voyager 1] has exited the main solar modulation region, revealing [hydrogen] and [helium] spectra characteristic of those to be expected in the local interstellar medium," the authors wrote.

Webber noted that scientists are continuing to debate whether Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space or entered a separate, undefined region beyond the solar system.

"It's outside the normal heliosphere, I would say that. We're in a new region. And everything we're measuring is different and exciting," Webber said.

Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched by Nasa on September 5, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and interstellar medium.

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Satellite maps oldest light in the Universe

PARIS: A new, detailed map of the most ancient light in the cosmos has revealed our universe to be about 80 million years older than thought, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Thursday.

The 50-million pixel, all-sky image of radiation left over from the Big Bang was compiled from data gathered by ESA's Planck satellite, launched four years ago.

"This is a giant leap in our understanding of the origins of the Universe," the agency's director general Jean-Jacques Dordain told a press conference unveiling the data in Paris.

"This image is the closest one yet of the Big Bang. You are looking 13.8 billion years ago."

The data boosted our knowledge of the creation and subsequent expansion of the Universe by twentyfold, added Dordain.

The oval-shaped map dotted with pixels in blue and brown representing temperature fluctuations, adds an edge of precision to many existing cosmological theories -- but may shed doubt on others.

It depicts Cosmic Microwave Background -- relic radiation released about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, as the early Universe started cooling down.

The data shows the Universe to be expanding at a slower rate than previously thought, which required adjusting its age to 13.82 billion years.

It also revealed that "normal matter" which makes up human beings, planets, stars and galaxies, comprised 4.9 percent of the Universe -- up from 4.5 percent previously measured.

Dark matter, a mysterious substance thus far only perceived through its gravitational pull, makes up a fifth more than thought -- 26.8 percent in total.

And dark energy, an unexplained force thought responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe, accounts for the rest -- 68.3 percent, down from 72.8 percent.

"We've discovered a fundamental truth about the universe,"said George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge.

"One of our achievements is that there's less stuff that we don't understand, by a tiny amount," -- referring to dark energy and dark matter.

"But we still have a major problem in cosmology, because we don't understand the major constituents of the Universe."

The Planck data threw up a few questions which the cosmologist said may require "new physics" to explain.

Among them, it seems to challenge several theories on "inflation" -- a brief period directly after the Big Bang in which the Universe was thought to have expanded at a faster rate than the speed of light.

Direcly after the Big Bang, scientists say the Universe was a "hot, dense soup" of protons, electrons and photons at about 2,700 degrees Celsius (4,892 degrees Fahrenheit).

As cooling started, the protons and electrons fused to form hydrogen, and photons or light particles were set free.

As the Universe expanded, these light waves stretched out into shorter microwave wavelengths, reaching a temperature today of just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero -- minus 273.15 C (minus 459.67 F).

"The conclusion is that our universe is odd," said Efstathiou, who likened the Planck map to a "dirty rugby ball".

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Large asteroid heading to Earth? Pray, Nasa says

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla: Nasa chief Charles Bolden has advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City: Pray.

That's about all the United States - or anyone for that matter - could do at this point about unknown asteroids and meteors that may be on a collision course with Earth, Bolden told lawmakers at a U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on Tuesday.

An asteroid estimated to be have been about 55 feet (17 meters) in diameter exploded on Feb. 15 over Chelyabinsk, Russia, generating shock waves that shattered windows and damaged buildings. More than 1,500 people were injured.

Later that day, a larger, unrelated asteroid discovered last year passed about 17,200 miles (27,681 km) from Earth, closer than the network of television and weather satellites that ring the planet.

The events "serve as evidence that we live in an active solar system with potentially hazardous objects passing through our neighborhood with surprising frequency," said Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat.

"We were fortunate that the events of last month were simply an interesting coincidence rather than a catastrophe," said Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, who called the hearing to learn what is being done and how much money is needed to better protect the planet.

Nasa has found and is tracking about 95 percent of the largest objects flying near Earth, those that are .62 miles (1 km) or larger in diameter.

"An asteroid of that size, a kilometer or bigger, could plausibly end civilization," White House science advisor John Holdren told legislators at the same hearing.

But only about 10 percent of an estimated 10,000 potential "city-killer" asteroids, those with a diameter of about 165 feet (50 meters) have been found, Holdren added.

On average, objects of that size are estimated to hit Earth about once every 1,000 years.

"From the information we have, we don't know of an asteroid that will threaten the population of the United States," Bolden said. "But if it's coming in three weeks, pray."

In addition to stepping up its monitoring efforts and building international partnerships, Nasa is looking at developing technologies to divert an object that may be on a collision course with Earth.

"The odds of a near-Earth object strike causing massive casualties and destruction of infrastructure are very small, but the potential consequences of such an event are so large it makes sense to takes the risk seriously," Holdren said.

About 66 million years ago, an object 6 miles (10 km) in diameter is believed to have smashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, leading to the demise of the dinosaurs, as well as most plant and animal life on Earth.

The asteroid that exploded over Russia last month was the largest object to hit Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event when an asteroid or comet exploded over Siberia, leveling 80 million trees over more than 830 square miles (2,150 sq km).

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High doses of statins can cause kidney damage

LONDON: High doses of statins, a drug prescribed to lower cholesterol, could dramatically increase the risk of kidney damage, a new study has warned.

Researchers from University of British Columbia and the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal studied more than two million statin users.

They found that patients taking higher strength pills were more at risk of suffering acute kidney injury.

They were at a 34 per cent greater danger of being hospitalised with kidney problems within 120 days of starting treatment with high-dose statins than low-dose pills, the Daily Express reported.

"In some cases, patients may be exposed to unnecessary risk of kidney damage for small gains in cardiovascular health. Although the absolute risk of kidney damage with these drugs is low, our findings put into question the common approach of using higher doses to push cholesterol levels lower and lower," author of the Canadian report, Professor Colin Dormuth, said.

About one in 500 patients were hospitalised for acute kidney injury within a period of up to two years - the length of the study - after starting a lower strength statin, according to study published in British Medical Journal.

"We are not saying don't take statins. If you are giving patients a high dose statin, let's make sure there is a good reason. A high dose might be beneficial for those who have had a heart attack or have high cholesterol, and then they are life-saving," said Dr Pierre Ernst, professor of medicine at the McGill University Centre for Clinical Epidemiology in Montreal, who was involved in the research.

"But for the 40-year-old woman who exercises, doesn't have high blood pressure and only slightly raised cholesterol, there is no need to put her on a high dose," Ernst said.

Statins considered to be high potency were rosuvastatin at doses of 10mg or higher, atorvastatin at doses of 20mg or higher, and simvastatin at doses of 40mg or more.

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High doses of statins can cause kidney damage

LONDON: High doses of statins, a drug prescribed to lower cholesterol, could dramatically increase the risk of kidney damage, a new study has warned.

Researchers from University of British Columbia and the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal studied more than two million statin users.

They found that patients taking higher strength pills were more at risk of suffering acute kidney injury.

They were at a 34 per cent greater danger of being hospitalised with kidney problems within 120 days of starting treatment with high-dose statins than low-dose pills, the Daily Express reported.

"In some cases, patients may be exposed to unnecessary risk of kidney damage for small gains in cardiovascular health. Although the absolute risk of kidney damage with these drugs is low, our findings put into question the common approach of using higher doses to push cholesterol levels lower and lower," author of the Canadian report, Professor Colin Dormuth, said.

About one in 500 patients were hospitalised for acute kidney injury within a period of up to two years - the length of the study - after starting a lower strength statin, according to study published in British Medical Journal.

"We are not saying don't take statins. If you are giving patients a high dose statin, let's make sure there is a good reason. A high dose might be beneficial for those who have had a heart attack or have high cholesterol, and then they are life-saving," said Dr Pierre Ernst, professor of medicine at the McGill University Centre for Clinical Epidemiology in Montreal, who was involved in the research.

"But for the 40-year-old woman who exercises, doesn't have high blood pressure and only slightly raised cholesterol, there is no need to put her on a high dose," Ernst said.

Statins considered to be high potency were rosuvastatin at doses of 10mg or higher, atorvastatin at doses of 20mg or higher, and simvastatin at doses of 40mg or more.

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Soon, a car that runs on cold air

NEW YORK: A UK-based inventor claims to have developed the ultimate green vehicle — a car that runs only on cold air — and it can reach speeds of up to 48 km per hour.

Peter Dearman has modified his run-down jalopy — a 25-year-old Vauxhall Nova — to run on nothing but air.

The vehicle by 61-year-old from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire can drive for about five km and reach speeds of up to 48 km per hour, New York Daily News reported.

"It will not produce any emissions because it's only air we're using. We're not burning anything. We're just using heat from the atmosphere and liquid air," the man told ABC News.

Dearman's propulsion system is inspired by a steam engine, except he uses very cold liquid air. He said he chose liquid air as a fuel source because it's light and cheap. At around -190Celsius, air turns into a liquid that can be stored in insulated, vacuum-sealed containers.

Dearman uses a beer keg as a makeshift container for the liquid air. When the liquid air courses through the engine, it heats up from its cryogenic temperature and boils via a heat exchange fluid (in this case, anti-freeze).

The liquid air expands as it changes back to gas form. In a confined space, this phase change creates enough air pressure to power a piston.

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Second computer glitch shuts down Nasa Mars rover

CAPE CANAVERAL: The Mars rover Curiosity has had a second computer glitch, extending an unplanned work break for the NASA robot that discovered the first life-friendly chemistry beyond Earth, scientists said on Monday.

Engineers had hoped to resume Curiosity science operations on Monday following a problem with the rover's main computer two weeks ago.

But a second computer problem surfaced on Sunday night as the rover was attempting to radio data files back to Earth, said lead scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology.

"This is not something that is rare or even uncommon," Grotzinger said at a webcast news conference during the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston.

The problem, however, is expected to keep Curiosity's next batch of science results on hold for a few more days, Grotzinger told Reuters.

Before the glitch, the rover had radioed back to Earth its first analysis of rock samples drilled from the inside of slab of bedrock in the rover's Gale Crater landing site.

The rover touched down on Aug. 6 to learn if the planet most like Earth has or ever had the chemical ingredients to support microbial life. The early results, announced last week, were a definitive yes.

Scientists also announced additional evidence on Monday that Curiosity is located in an area once flush with water, a key ingredient for life.

Infrared images and an instrument that fires neutrons into the ground to probe for hydrogen detected minerals that form in water near the mudstone that Curiosity drilled and chemically analyzed.

The rover's camera and its Russian-made neutron probe found more evidence for water in the so-called Yellowknife Bay area, where the rover is presently located, than at sites studied earlier in the mission.

"I see the difference between Yellowknife and the area which is just before Yellowknife ... showing the different distribution of water. This is a significant variation," Maxim Litvak of the Space Research Institute in Moscow told reporters.

The rover is seven months into a planned two-year, $2.5 billion mission at Gale Crater, a giant impact basin located near the Martian equator. Scientists eventually want to explore a 3-mile (5-km) mountain of what appears to be layered sediments rising from the crater floor.

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NASA spots leaping lunar dust

WASHINGTON: Electrically charged lunar dust near shadowed craters can get lofted above the surface and jump over the shadowed region, bouncing back and forth between sunlit areas on opposite sides, according to new calculations by NASA scientists.

"The motion of an individual dust particle is like a pendulum or a swing. We predict dust can swarm like bees around a hive over partially shaded regions on the Moon and other airless objects in the solar system, such as asteroids. We found that this is a new class of dust motion," said lead researcher Michael Collier at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt.

"It does not escape to space or bounce long distances as predicted by others, but instead stays locally trapped, executing oscillations over a shaded region of 1 to 10 metres (yards) in size. These other trajectories are possible, but we now show a third new motion that is possible," Collier said.

This effect should be especially prominent during dusk and dawn, according to the team, as regions become partially illuminated while features like mountains and crater rims cast long shadows.

"The dust is an indicator of unusual surface electric fields. In these shaded regions, the surface is negatively charged compared to the sunlit regions. This creates a locally complex, larger electric field with separate positively and negatively charged regions, called a dipole field, over the shaded region," said William Farrell of NASA Goddard, and co-author of the study published in journal Advances in Space Research.

"The dust performed its swinging motion under the influence of this dipole. Such a surface process occurring on the moon at the line where night transitions to day, called the terminator, might also occur at small bodies like asteroids. It might be a fundamental process occurring at airless rocky bodies," Farrell said.

"There is evidence that dust actually moves this way over the lunar surface," Collier added.

"A twilight was observed over the landed platforms during dusk and dawn. This was surprising at first because the Moon does not have a dense enough atmosphere to scatter light when the Sun is below the horizon. It was long considered to be light scattered from lifted dust," he said.

"This model suggests the dust is really leaping or swarming overtop a large number of shaded regions that would exist along the lunar dusk/dawn line, called the lunar terminator," he said.

"It's a natural fit. Charged lunar dust transport is also believed responsible for the Apollo 17 Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites (LEAM) experiment's observation of highly charged dust near the terminator," added Collier.

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Horse meat can be best bet in cholesterol fight

LONDON: Regular consumption of horse meat can lower cholesterol and boost blood iron levels, a new study has claimed, amid a row around the globe over contamination of meat products.

Researchers from the University of Milan found horse meat was very high in iron, with one 150g portion providing up to a half of the daily recommended intake, and very low in saturated fats, associated with high cholesterol.

Horse has some of the health-boosting qualities that have been associated with fish, and it has up to 40% fewer calories and more protein than other meats, scientists said. In the study, men aged 20 to 50 ate two 175g portions of horse meat a week for three months. A second group ate other meat, but avoided horse.

Blood samples were taken from all the men for testing at the start of the trial and after 45 and 90 days. Results showed horsemeat consumption significantly reduced levels of total and bad cholesterol . The former dropped by 6%, and bad cholesterol by 9%.

"Horsemeat is an important source of omega 3 and iron and, compared to other meats, is very low in saturated fatty acids but rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) like fish and other seafood," said the researchers.

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Microbes flourish in deepest spot in world's oceans: Study

OSLO: Microbes are thriving in surprising numbers at the deepest spot in the oceans, the 11,000-metre (36,000 ft) Mariana Trench in the Pacific, despite crushing pressures in sunless waters, scientists said.

Dead plants and fish were falling as food for microscopic bugs even to the little-known hadal depths, parts of the seabed deeper than 6,000 metres and named after Hades, the god of the underworld in Greek mythology, they said.

The presence of life in the trench also shows how the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, vital for the growth of tiny marine plants at the ocean surface, can eventually get buried in the depths in a natural process that slows climate change.

A Danish-led team of scientists, using a robot to take samples, found double the amount of bacteria and other microbes munching away on debris at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific than at a nearby site 6,000 metres deep.

"It's surprising there was so much bacterial activity," said Ronnie Glud, of the University of Southern Denmark and lead author of the study in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Normally life gets scarcer the deeper you go. But when you go very deep, more things start happening again," he told Reuters of the report that also involved research institutes in Scotland, Greenland, Germany and Japan.

The finding backed up a theory that dead plants and fish falling onto the steep sides of the Mariana Trench often slide to the bottom to form a "hot spot" for microbes. Earthquakes also trigger mudslides that carry debris down.

GRAND CANYON

The Mariana Trench is five times longer than the Grand Canyon and could easily swallow the world's highest mountain Mount Everest, which stands 8,848 metres tall.

Life has been detected at the bottom before, but its extent is little known. The scientists' video cameras also spotted a few shrimp-like crustaceans at the bottom of the trench.

"It's most likely that more carbon is deposited" in the hadal depths than previously believed, Glud said.

"We have a small exotic piece of the puzzle which has never been studied before," Glud said of the way that the oceans recycle or bury carbon.

Only about 2 percent of the world's oceans are deeper than 6,000 metres.

Until now, scientists had suspected that life in most of the ocean depths, where waters are just above freezing, was severely limited by a lack of food.

Only about one or two percent of living material in the upper waters is expected to sink even to the average ocean floor depth of 3,700 metres, the study said. Most food gets scavenged and carried up towards the surface before it falls so deep.

And water pressure at the bottom of the trench is about 16,000 lbs per square inch (1,125 kg per sq cm), about the same as being stepped on by an elephant wearing high-heeled shoes.

The scientists were also studying the genetic makeup of the microbes, living in temperatures just above freezing.

The ability to survive crushing depths may mean they have enzymes that could be used by industries that use high pressures, ranging from fermentation to oil and gas.

The bottom of the Mariana Trench was first reached by scientists in a submarine in 1960. Film director James Cameron also descended in 2012 and reported few signs of life.

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Universal vaccine against influenza possible

WASHINGTON: Scientists have shown that a combination of immune cells and antibodies could pave the way for a universal vaccine against influenza, says a study.

Seasonal epidemics of influenza result in nearly 36,000 deaths annually in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Current vaccines against the influenza virus elicit an antibody response specific for proteins on the outside of the virus, specifically the hemagglutinin (HA) protein.

Yearly vaccines are made by growing the flu virus in eggs. The viral envelope proteins, including HA are cleaved off and used as the vaccine, but vary from year to year, depending on what flu strains are prevalent.

However, high mutation rates in envelope HA proteins result in the emergence of new viral types each year, which elude neutralization by pre-existing antibodies in the body.

On the other hand, other immune cell types are capable of mediating protection through recognition of other, more conserved parts of HAs or highly conserved internal proteins in the influenza virus, reports Science Daily.

E. John Wherry, PhD, associate professor of Microbiology and director of the Institute for Immunology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues, report in PLOS Pathogens that influenza virus-specific CD8+ T cells or virus-specific non-neutralizing antibodies are each relatively ineffective at conferring protective immunity alone.

But, when combined, the virus-specific CD8 T cells and non-neutralising antibodies cooperatively elicit robust protective immunity.

This synergistic improvement in protective immunity is dependent, at least in part, on other immune cells -- lung macrophages and phagocytes.

An implication of this work is that immune responses targeting parts of the virus that are not highly variable can be combined for effective protection.

"The two-pronged approach is synergistic, so by enlisting two suboptimal vaccine approaches, we achieved a better effect than each alone in an experimental model," says Wherry.

"Now, we are rethinking past approaches and looking for ways to combine T-cell vaccines and antibody vaccines to make a more effective combined vaccine."

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The stories that bind us

The last few years have seen stunning breakthroughs in knowledge about how to make families work more effectively. I've tried to uncover that information, meeting families, scholars and experts. After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.

I first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990 s, Dr Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual in American families. Around that time, Dr Duke's wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities, noticed something about her students.

"The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges ," she said.

Her husband was intrigued, and along with a colleague, Robyn Fivush, set out to test her hypothesis . They developed a measure called the "Do You Know?" scale that asked children to answer 20 questions. Examples included : Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met?

Dr Duke and Dr Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001. They then compared the children's results to psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. The more children knew about their family's history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned.

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The naked man does not dance

On a recent Saturday, Amy Albright was celebrating her bachelorette party on West 14th Street. A table was filled with miniature cupcakes and glasses of pink Champagne. Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walkin' played on the stereo. A shirtless waiter took coats. The guests, mostly in their 30s, sat down, waiting for the main attraction: a nude male model. But not a stripper. A subject, to draw.

"Is this a new thing?" asked Albright , who is 33 and worked at Christie's until recently. There was much nervous laughter all around; each guest was wearing an apron and sitting in front of an easel. "Just as long as I don't have to get naked, too," Albright said.

"Girls want to do something a little cheeky," said Samara Hodgson , an owner with Fleur Childs of the Artful Bachelorette, the year-old company that organised the event (and also does bachelor parties, birthdays and assorted get-togethers centring on live nude figure drawing, averaging one party weekly).

Both Hodgson, 29, and Childs, 30, are from Australia, where lifedrawing "hen parties," as they are called, are popular and considered a tasteful alternative to raucous Chippendales-type affairs. "It's common to bring your mum or aunt or grandma," Childs said. "It's something to talk about and bond with for the day. You'll learn a bit and definitely laugh a lot."

Their sessions are two hours and cost $85 a guest, which includes Champagne, snacks, a teacher, a waiter, a model and a group photo shoot. Rules prohibit guests from touching the model and photographing him while he's naked.

Jess Cohen, 28, hired the Artful Bachelorette for her best friend's bachelorette party. The guests, who were flying in to New York from around the globe, ranged in age from 26 to 75. She made the choice after dismissing options at both sides of the spectrum of decorum, like strip clubs and afternoon tea. "This was the perfect balance of fun, sexiness and creativity," said Cohen, a producer of film and video based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Cara Eisenpress, a food writer in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is another satisfied customer. "I was very resistant to a stripper, and I don't love to be the centre of attention. I had done a bunch of drawing in high school and college. It was nice to be part of the audience, sitting there with paper and charcoal. It was down to earth with some raciness."

Back at Albright's party, it was time to take out pencils. "Without further ado, this is the lovely Kurt," said Childs, introducing the model, Kurt McVey, 28, a former lacrosse player with styled hair and chiselled features. Albright was asked to remove McVey's towel and she did as she was told, though she looked terrified.

Childs, who has a fine arts degree from the University of New South Wales, called out instructions : "Stick figures are fine at first. No crossing anything out. No erasers. The more you drink, the better you draw." She guided the group through six 60-second poses, among them facing front, facing the wall, one leg on a stool and archer pose. A final word of advice: "Don't forget to draw the male member! It's very important."

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Teenage depression linked to cardiac risk factors

WASHINGTON: A new study suggests that depression suffered during teens may predispose people to higher cardiac risk factors as adults.

People who were depressed as teenagers are far more likely than their peers to be obese, smoke cigarettes and lead sedentary lives, even if they no longer suffer from depression, say researchers.

The study conducted by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pittsburgh suggests that depression, even in children, can increase the risk of heart problems later in life, reports Science Daily.

"Part of the reason this is so worrisome is that a number of recent studies have shown that when adolescents have these cardiac risk factors, they're much more likely to develop heart disease as adults and even to have a shorter lifespan," says lead author Robert M. Carney, professor of psychiatry at the Washington University.

"Active smokers as adolescents are twice as likely to die by the age of 55 than non-smokers, and we see similar risks with obesity, so finding this link between childhood depression and these risk factors suggests that we need to very closely monitor young people who have been depressed."

Researchers have known for years that adults with depression are likely to have heart attacks and other cardiac problems. But it hasn't been clear when risk factors for heart disease such as smoking, obesity and sedentary lifestyle join forces with depression to increase the risk for heart problems.

"We know that depression in adults is associated with heart disease and a higher risk of dying from a heart attack or having serious complications," Carney says.

"What we didn't know is at what stage of life we would begin to see evidence of this association between depression and these cardiac risk factors."

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Olive oil helps you feel full

BERLIN, Olive oil leads to satiety, shows a study that points out the mechanism behind it.

Reduced-fat food products are gaining popularity. More and more people are choosing "light" products in an attempt to lose weight, or at least in the hope that they would not gain pounds.

But whether these products are effective or not is a matter of dispute: while it is true that they contain fewer calories, people tend to overcompensate by eating more if they do not feel full.

Now a study has shown how "natural" oils and fats regulate the sensation of feeling full after eating, with olive oil leading the way.

So what makes this oil so effective?

Work groups at Germany's Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) under professor Peter Schieberle and at the University of Vienna under professor Veronika Somoza studied four different edible fats and oils -- lard, butterfat, rapeseed oil and olive oil.

Over a period of three months, the study participants ate 500 gm of low-fat yoghurt enriched with one of the four fats or oils every day -- as a supplement to their normal diet, reports Science Daily.

"Olive oil had the biggest satiety effect," said Schieberle.

"The olive oil group showed a higher concentration of the satiety hormone serotonin in their blood. Subjectively speaking, these participants also reported that they found the olive oil yoghurt very filling," he added.

During the study period, no member of this group recorded an increase in their body fat percentage or their weight.

"Our findings show that aroma is capable of regulating satiety," Schieberle said. "We hope that this work will pave the way for the development of more effective reduced-fat food products that are nonetheless satiating," he said.

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3 astronauts return to earth after 144-day mission to International Space Station

MOSCOW: A Soyuz space capsule carrying an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed on Saturday morning on the foggy steppes of Kazakhstan, safely returning the three men to earth after a 144-day mission to the International Space Station.

Nasa's Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin had been scheduled to return on Friday, but the landing was postponed by a day because of bad weather.

Live footage on Nasa TV showed all three men smiling as they were helped out of the capsule and into reclining chairs to begin their acclimatization to Earth's gravity after nearly five months in space.

A Nasa TV commentator said only two of 12 search and rescue helicopters were allowed to land at the touchdown site because of heavy clouds and fog. So instead of being placed in an inflatable medical tent for checks, the astronauts were taken fairly quickly to one of the helicopters. The temperature at the time was well below freezing.

The crew was then flown to Kostanai, the staging site in Kazakhstan, where they posed for more photographs. Ford put on a traditional felt Kazakh hat and draped a matching coat over his flight suit, while holding up a matryoshka nesting doll of himself - all souvenirs of the mission that began and ended in the Central Asian country.

The three men blasted off on Oct. 23 from the Baikonur cosmodrome, which Russia leases from Kazakhstan.

Vladimir Popovkin, the head of the Russian space agency, described the crew as "giving off good vibes, that they are a united and friendly team," the Interfax news agency reported.

Space officials said Ford would be flown to Houston, Texas, while the Russians would return to the space training facility outside Moscow.

Their return voyage to earth began with the Russian-made capsule undocking from the space station at 5:43am local time (1143gmt Friday) and beginning its slow drift away. The craft made a "flawless entry" back into the earth's atmosphere, descended through heavy cloud cover and landed perfectly in an upright position at around 9:10am (0310gmt), the Nasa commentator said.

Three other astronauts - from Russia, the US and Canada - remain at the space station. The next three-man crew - two Russians and an American - is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome on March 29.

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Cern physicists say they have found 'God particle'

(The European Organization…)

GENEVA: Physicists said on Thursday they are now confident they have discovered a crucial subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson, a major discovery that will go a long ways toward helping them explain why the universe is the way it is.

They made the statement following study of the data gathered last year from the world's largest atom-smasher, which lies beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that what they found last year was, indeed, a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle."

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ALMA arrives with discovery of monster starburst galaxies at the edge of time

Subodh Varma, TNN Mar 14, 2013, 05.22PM IST

(ALMA, an international…)

NEW DELHI: ALMA has arrived with a bang! Scientists at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an observatory located in one of the coldest, driest places on earth, have found a monster starburst galaxy with the brightness of 40 trillion Suns. It is located at an unimaginable distance - light seen by ALMA started from the galaxy some 12.7 billion years ago when the Universe was just a billion years old. Scientists found that it was giving birth to new stars at a mind boggling rate of 1000 every year. Our galaxy, the Milky Way gives birth to one star every year.

Actually ALMA found a whole zoo of galaxies, some 18 of them, all of them from the early turbulent period of the Universe when it was one to three billion years old. Usually, star formation from gigantic swirling clouds of dust does not take place at such a furious pace as in these ancient galaxies.

The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today. The international team of researchers first discovered these distant starburst galaxies with the National Science Foundation's 10-meter South Pole Telescope. Though dim in visible light, they were glowing brightly in millimeter wavelength light, a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that the new ALMA telescope was designed to explore.

Using only 16 of ALMA's eventual full complement of 66 antennas, the researchers were able to precisely determine the distance to 18 of these galaxies, revealing that they were among the most distant starburst galaxies ever detected. These results were surprising because very few similar galaxies had previously been discovered at similar distances, and it wasn't clear how galaxies that early in the history of the Universe could produce stars at such a prodigious rate.

The results, published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature and in the Astrophysical Journal, will help astronomers better understand when and how the earliest massive galaxies formed. The most intense bursts of star birth are thought to have occurred in the early Universe in massive, bright galaxies. These starburst galaxies converted vast reservoirs of gas and dust into new stars at a furious pace - many thousands of times faster than stately spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way.

"The more distant the galaxy, the further back in time one is looking, so by measuring their distances we can piece together a timeline of how vigorously the Universe was making new stars at different stages of its 13.7 billion-year history," said Joaquin Vieira of Caltech who led the team and is lead author of the Nature paper, as reported in a statement by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the US.

Intriguingly, emission from water molecules was detected in one of these record-breakers, making it the most distant detection of water in the Universe published to date.

"ALMA's sensitivity and wide wavelength range mean we could make our measurements in just a few minutes per galaxy - about one hundred times faster than before," said Axel Weiss of the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany, who led the work to measure the distances to the galaxies, the NRAO statement said. "Previously, a measurement like this would be a laborious process of combining data from both visible-light and radio telescopes."

ALMA was able to measure all this because of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant galaxy is distorted and magnified by the gravitational force of a nearer foreground galaxy. Analysis of this gravitational distortion reveals that some of the distant star-forming galaxies are as bright as 40 trillion Suns, and that gravitational lensing has magnified this light by up to 22 times.

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, located in the Atacama desert where there is minimal interference from light and dust. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).

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