Sweden to get world’s first remote-controlled airport

ORNSKOLDSVIK (SWEDEN ) : On a clear day, Per Granquist cannot see forever. But from his perch inside the airport control tower here, he does have an unobstructed view of the future.

The big picture is provided from a 33-foot mast where a gray turret holds an array of digital video cameras, communications antennas, sensors and microphones — a setup that resembles a cross between a space-age dovecote and a prison guard tower. The system is meant to collect and integrate information of the sort that Mr. Granquist, 40, has been providing with his own eyes and ears as an air traffic controller for the last 17 years at this small airport in northern Sweden.

The information from this array, though, is being sent elsewhere — beamed by fiber-optic cable to a windowless room of another airport, 100 miles south, in the slightly larger town of Sundsvall.

The system is still in test mode, but the rest of the global commercial aviation industry is watching closely. Early next year, Mr. Granquist and a handful of his colleagues expect to move to Sundsvall. And from there, they will begin "virtually" guiding the half-dozen or so daily flights in and out of Ornskoldsvik.

Ornskoldsvik is about to become the world's first remotely controlled airport.

"At first it seemed a bit weird," Mr. Granquist said of his training on the new system.

In Sundsvall, instead of surveying the airport through plate-glass windows, he will sit before a semicircular wall of more than a dozen 55-inch liquid-crystal displays.

"But after two weeks," Mr. Granquist added, "it really feels no different from sitting here."

Carved from an Arctic pine forest along Sweden's fjord-studded eastern coast, Ornskoldsvik might seem an unlikely setting for a potential aviation revolution. But over the last several years, officials from dozens of countries have made their way down the airport's rutted gravel road and past the yellow moose-crossing signs to get a firsthand look at technology that many expect will eventually transform the way air traffic is managed worldwide.

It is a concept that experts say has uses not only for the world's out-of-the way places but could also enhance efficiency and safety at sprawling urban airports where increasing air traffic places ever greater demands on human controllers.

"I have little doubt that this is the next big thing for our industry," said Paul Jones, operations manager at NATS, which provides air navigation services at Heathrow and a dozen other British airports.

He is among those who have seen the Swedish setup firsthand.

"I do think one day it could replace traditional visual control towers almost completely," Mr. Jones said.

It is no accident that the idea for a remote-controlled airport emerged from Sweden, whose northern regions are thinly populated and poorly served by rail or other transportation alternatives. Much like Alaska and vast swaths of northern Canada, Scandinavia is dotted with dozens of small airports that provide vital connections to the outside world.

While many of the world's remote communities are so tiny as to rely on small private planes whose pilots coordinate their own takeoffs and landings by radio, towns like Ornskoldsvik — population 55,000 — are just big enough to justify minimal scheduled airline services and a control tower. Yet with just a handful of takeoffs and landings most days, air traffic controllers at such airports often spend more of their time monitoring the weather or filling out paperwork than actually guiding planes.

"It doesn't really make economic or even social sense to station a fully qualified air traffic controller in some of these places," said Erik Backman, director of operations at LFV, Sweden's state-owned air navigation service provider.

Full-time controllers in Sweden average about $77,000 a year in pay, he said, a cost that rises to more than $140,000, once social security and other employee charges are included. There are also expenses for maintaining a building for use by human controllers. For the 28 civilian and military airports that LFV serves — several of them, like Ornskoldsvik, lose money — air traffic control represents a large part of their operating costs.

That is why LFV began exploring the idea of pooling controllers at a single location, to guide flights remotely. In 2006, the agency invited the Swedish aeronautics and technology group Saab to develop a prototype that could be operated with minimal additional training by licensed controllers as well as meet international safety requirements. The system Saab developed was installed at both Ornskoldsvik and Sundsvall airports in 2012 and it was expected to receive certification from Swedish regulators by the end of this week.

To guard against a remote-control airport's being hijacked by hackers, the data transmitted between the camera tower and the remote control center is scrambled using dedicated hardware and encryption software, said Anders Carp, a Saab vice president in charge of traffic management systems. As an added layer of security, he said, Saab also uses an algorithm to verify that images have not been tampered with en route.

Mikael Henriksson has been at the fore of LFV's push into the future. An air traffic controller for 40 years, Mr. Henriksson, 59, has worked at dozens of civilian and military airports in Sweden and abroad, including a few harrowing stints in the war zones of Iraq. His job now is helping controllers like Mr. Granquist make the leap to remote tower technology, which unlike transitioning from being an airplane pilot to a drone operator, largely relies on an identical set of skills.

"Controllers are already spending most of their time looking at a screen instead of out a window," Mr. Henriksson said.

On a recent day at the remote control center in Sundsvall, Mr. Henriksson put the cameras in Ornskoldsvik through their paces. With the tap of a stylus on a sleek glass panel, the arc of display panels flickered to life, presenting a crisp 360-degree panorama of the Ornskoldsvik runway.

As passengers boarded a Stockholm-bound turboprop on the tarmac, a flock of blackbirds flitted over the projected airfield, then disappeared into the trees, which swayed in the gentle breeze. A truck rolling slowly past a hangar was automatically highlighted by a red rectangle that followed its movement across the screens. Mr. Henriksson clicked to activate one of two robotic zoom cameras, opening a new window that functioned as virtual binoculars.

When the plane took off, a few minutes later, the hum of its engines passed from right to left through the room's speakers, in perfect surround sound.

Mr. Carp, of Saab, explained that the system could be equipped with optional enhancements like infrared or night-vision lenses and 3-D-augmented reality overlays. Such features could come in particularly handy in places like Scandinavia, where frequent snowstorms and long winter nights are particularly challenging to air controllers. A built-in recording function allows airports to store and replay video and data for training purposes — or to aid investigators in the event of an accident.

Officials at larger airports are also intrigued by the possibility of using remote camera technology to complement traditional control towers — either to give human controllers a clearer view of parts of the airport that might be obstructed by other buildings, or to serve as a contingency in the event of extreme weather, a disaster or even a terrorist attack.

A few major international airports already have emergency backup centers where a team of controllers can direct a reduced number of flights remotely, relying on radar and radio communications. Heathrow, for example, set up such a site in 2009, in a building near the airport that Mr. Jones of NATS said had never been deployed but was capable of operating at 80 percent capacity in the event the airport's main control towers were disabled by a fire or a power failure.

"But it doesn't have windows," Mr. Jones said of the Heathrow site. Installing a remote-tower system with cameras and video screens, he said, would — virtually, at least - "put the windows back in" and enable the airport, Europe's busiest, to operate at close to full capacity in an emergency.

Back in Ornskoldsvik, Mr. Granquist most days now works his nine-hour shift in solitude, with only an occasional visit from Robert Gyllroth, the airport manager, who sometimes asks him to pitch in with other airport tasks, like manning the tiny duty-free shop.

Three years ago, when he first learned of the plan to operate Ornskoldsvik's tower remotely, Mr. Granquist was upset at the prospect of having to move his family to Sundsvall. But his reluctance has since turned to impatience — and excitement at the career possibilities that remote technology might open for him at other, larger airports.

"It will also be nice," Mr. Granquist said as he padded in stocking feet to adjust a window blind against the setting sun, "to have some colleagues."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Sundsvall,remote control,Per Granquist,Ornskoldsvik,Nats

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22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

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Why pop stars live fast and die young

The author has posted comments on this articlePTI | Oct 29, 2014, 05.57AM IST

<font size="2">The professor who conducted the study said that pop music 'scene' fails to provide boundaries and to model and expect acceptable behaviour. It does the reverse — it valorizes outrageous behaviour and the acting out of aggressive, sexual and destructive impulses that most of us dare only live out in fantasy. </font>

Page 1 of 4

MELBOURNE : It's long been said that pop stars live fast and die young, but a new Australian study has added scholarly credibility to the adage. Popular musicians in the US die up to 25 years earlier than the general population, with suicide rates among the performers between two and seven times greater, a "disturbing" new study has found.

Professor Dianna Kenny, from The University of Sydney, conducted a study of 12,665 performing pop musicians from all popular genres who died between 1950 and June this year. Out of the musicians studied, 11,478 were male.

The results of the study were "disturbing", according to Kenny.

Across the seven decades studied, popular musicians' lifespans were up to 25 years shorter than the comparable US population. Accidental death rates were between five and 10 times greater. Suicide rates were between two and seven times greater; and homicide rates were up to eight times greater than the US population. "This is clear evidence that all is not well in pop music land," Kenny said.

"The pop music 'scene' fails to provide boundaries and to model and expect acceptable behaviour. It actually does the reverse — it valorizes outrageous behaviour and the acting out of aggressive, sexual and destructive impulses that most of us dare only live out in fantasy," Kenny wrote in an article published by 'The Conversation'.

The music industry needs to consider these findings to discover ways of recognizing and assisting young musicians in distress, according to Kenny.

For the study, data on age, circumstances and manner of death were accessed from over 200 sources. The researcher also went to rapper death websites, Dead Punk Stars and similar sites for all popular music genres.

Article continues

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Sweden to get world’s first remote-controlled airport

ORNSKOLDSVIK (SWEDEN ) : On a clear day, Per Granquist cannot see forever. But from his perch inside the airport control tower here, he does have an unobstructed view of the future.

The big picture is provided from a 33-foot mast where a gray turret holds an array of digital video cameras, communications antennas, sensors and microphones — a setup that resembles a cross between a space-age dovecote and a prison guard tower. The system is meant to collect and integrate information of the sort that Mr. Granquist, 40, has been providing with his own eyes and ears as an air traffic controller for the last 17 years at this small airport in northern Sweden.

The information from this array, though, is being sent elsewhere — beamed by fiber-optic cable to a windowless room of another airport, 100 miles south, in the slightly larger town of Sundsvall.

The system is still in test mode, but the rest of the global commercial aviation industry is watching closely. Early next year, Mr. Granquist and a handful of his colleagues expect to move to Sundsvall. And from there, they will begin "virtually" guiding the half-dozen or so daily flights in and out of Ornskoldsvik.

Ornskoldsvik is about to become the world's first remotely controlled airport.

"At first it seemed a bit weird," Mr. Granquist said of his training on the new system.

In Sundsvall, instead of surveying the airport through plate-glass windows, he will sit before a semicircular wall of more than a dozen 55-inch liquid-crystal displays.

"But after two weeks," Mr. Granquist added, "it really feels no different from sitting here."

Carved from an Arctic pine forest along Sweden's fjord-studded eastern coast, Ornskoldsvik might seem an unlikely setting for a potential aviation revolution. But over the last several years, officials from dozens of countries have made their way down the airport's rutted gravel road and past the yellow moose-crossing signs to get a firsthand look at technology that many expect will eventually transform the way air traffic is managed worldwide.

It is a concept that experts say has uses not only for the world's out-of-the way places but could also enhance efficiency and safety at sprawling urban airports where increasing air traffic places ever greater demands on human controllers.

"I have little doubt that this is the next big thing for our industry," said Paul Jones, operations manager at NATS, which provides air navigation services at Heathrow and a dozen other British airports.

He is among those who have seen the Swedish setup firsthand.

"I do think one day it could replace traditional visual control towers almost completely," Mr. Jones said.

It is no accident that the idea for a remote-controlled airport emerged from Sweden, whose northern regions are thinly populated and poorly served by rail or other transportation alternatives. Much like Alaska and vast swaths of northern Canada, Scandinavia is dotted with dozens of small airports that provide vital connections to the outside world.

While many of the world's remote communities are so tiny as to rely on small private planes whose pilots coordinate their own takeoffs and landings by radio, towns like Ornskoldsvik — population 55,000 — are just big enough to justify minimal scheduled airline services and a control tower. Yet with just a handful of takeoffs and landings most days, air traffic controllers at such airports often spend more of their time monitoring the weather or filling out paperwork than actually guiding planes.

"It doesn't really make economic or even social sense to station a fully qualified air traffic controller in some of these places," said Erik Backman, director of operations at LFV, Sweden's state-owned air navigation service provider.

Full-time controllers in Sweden average about $77,000 a year in pay, he said, a cost that rises to more than $140,000, once social security and other employee charges are included. There are also expenses for maintaining a building for use by human controllers. For the 28 civilian and military airports that LFV serves — several of them, like Ornskoldsvik, lose money — air traffic control represents a large part of their operating costs.

That is why LFV began exploring the idea of pooling controllers at a single location, to guide flights remotely. In 2006, the agency invited the Swedish aeronautics and technology group Saab to develop a prototype that could be operated with minimal additional training by licensed controllers as well as meet international safety requirements. The system Saab developed was installed at both Ornskoldsvik and Sundsvall airports in 2012 and it was expected to receive certification from Swedish regulators by the end of this week.

To guard against a remote-control airport's being hijacked by hackers, the data transmitted between the camera tower and the remote control center is scrambled using dedicated hardware and encryption software, said Anders Carp, a Saab vice president in charge of traffic management systems. As an added layer of security, he said, Saab also uses an algorithm to verify that images have not been tampered with en route.

Mikael Henriksson has been at the fore of LFV's push into the future. An air traffic controller for 40 years, Mr. Henriksson, 59, has worked at dozens of civilian and military airports in Sweden and abroad, including a few harrowing stints in the war zones of Iraq. His job now is helping controllers like Mr. Granquist make the leap to remote tower technology, which unlike transitioning from being an airplane pilot to a drone operator, largely relies on an identical set of skills.

"Controllers are already spending most of their time looking at a screen instead of out a window," Mr. Henriksson said.

On a recent day at the remote control center in Sundsvall, Mr. Henriksson put the cameras in Ornskoldsvik through their paces. With the tap of a stylus on a sleek glass panel, the arc of display panels flickered to life, presenting a crisp 360-degree panorama of the Ornskoldsvik runway.

As passengers boarded a Stockholm-bound turboprop on the tarmac, a flock of blackbirds flitted over the projected airfield, then disappeared into the trees, which swayed in the gentle breeze. A truck rolling slowly past a hangar was automatically highlighted by a red rectangle that followed its movement across the screens. Mr. Henriksson clicked to activate one of two robotic zoom cameras, opening a new window that functioned as virtual binoculars.

When the plane took off, a few minutes later, the hum of its engines passed from right to left through the room's speakers, in perfect surround sound.

Mr. Carp, of Saab, explained that the system could be equipped with optional enhancements like infrared or night-vision lenses and 3-D-augmented reality overlays. Such features could come in particularly handy in places like Scandinavia, where frequent snowstorms and long winter nights are particularly challenging to air controllers. A built-in recording function allows airports to store and replay video and data for training purposes — or to aid investigators in the event of an accident.

Officials at larger airports are also intrigued by the possibility of using remote camera technology to complement traditional control towers — either to give human controllers a clearer view of parts of the airport that might be obstructed by other buildings, or to serve as a contingency in the event of extreme weather, a disaster or even a terrorist attack.

A few major international airports already have emergency backup centers where a team of controllers can direct a reduced number of flights remotely, relying on radar and radio communications. Heathrow, for example, set up such a site in 2009, in a building near the airport that Mr. Jones of NATS said had never been deployed but was capable of operating at 80 percent capacity in the event the airport's main control towers were disabled by a fire or a power failure.

"But it doesn't have windows," Mr. Jones said of the Heathrow site. Installing a remote-tower system with cameras and video screens, he said, would — virtually, at least - "put the windows back in" and enable the airport, Europe's busiest, to operate at close to full capacity in an emergency.

Back in Ornskoldsvik, Mr. Granquist most days now works his nine-hour shift in solitude, with only an occasional visit from Robert Gyllroth, the airport manager, who sometimes asks him to pitch in with other airport tasks, like manning the tiny duty-free shop.

Three years ago, when he first learned of the plan to operate Ornskoldsvik's tower remotely, Mr. Granquist was upset at the prospect of having to move his family to Sundsvall. But his reluctance has since turned to impatience — and excitement at the career possibilities that remote technology might open for him at other, larger airports.

"It will also be nice," Mr. Granquist said as he padded in stocking feet to adjust a window blind against the setting sun, "to have some colleagues."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Sundsvall,remote control,Per Granquist,Ornskoldsvik,Nats

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22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

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22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Why pop stars live fast and die young

MELBOURNE : It's long been said that pop stars live fast and die young, but a new Australian study has added scholarly credibility to the adage. Popular musicians in the US die up to 25 years earlier than the general population, with suicide rates among the performers between two and seven times greater, a "disturbing" new study has found.

Professor Dianna Kenny, from The University of Sydney, conducted a study of 12,665 performing pop musicians from all popular genres who died between 1950 and June this year. Out of the musicians studied, 11,478 were male.

The results of the study were "disturbing", according to Kenny.

Across the seven decades studied, popular musicians' lifespans were up to 25 years shorter than the comparable US population. Accidental death rates were between five and 10 times greater. Suicide rates were between two and seven times greater; and homicide rates were up to eight times greater than the US population. "This is clear evidence that all is not well in pop music land," Kenny said.

"The pop music 'scene' fails to provide boundaries and to model and expect acceptable behaviour. It actually does the reverse — it valorizes outrageous behaviour and the acting out of aggressive, sexual and destructive impulses that most of us dare only live out in fantasy," Kenny wrote in an article published by 'The Conversation'.

The music industry needs to consider these findings to discover ways of recognizing and assisting young musicians in distress, according to Kenny.

For the study, data on age, circumstances and manner of death were accessed from over 200 sources. The researcher also went to rapper death websites, Dead Punk Stars and similar sites for all popular music genres.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=University of Sydney,Professor Dianna Kenny,Melbourne,Dead Punk Stars

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Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

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22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

Stay updated on the go with The Times of India's mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

Stay updated on the go with The Times of India's mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

Stay updated on the go with The Times of India's mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

Stay updated on the go with The Times of India's mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

Stay updated on the go with The Times of India's mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

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22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

The author has posted comments on this articleIANS | Oct 18, 2014, 11.05PM IST

Birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north.

Page 1 of 4

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

Article continues

Stay updated on the go with The Times of India's mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Key role for Indian scientist in Nasa project

MUMBAI: As comet Siding Spring arrives on the Red Planet on Sunday, Isro's Mars Orbiter, along with four other such spacecraft, will be at "some risk" from the comet's particles.

Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.

The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.

Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second.

"All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.

In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."

According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".

Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.

"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.

According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.

"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Warming climate restructuring bird population

WASHINGTON: Driven by a warming climate, birds typically found in more southerly regions are gradually pushing north, restructuring the communities of birds that spend their winter in northern latitudes, research has found.

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America's backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, the findings showed.

The readily familiar species include cardinals, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens.

"Fifty years ago, cardinals were rare in the north-eastern United States. Carolina wrens even more so," explained study co-author Benjamin Zuckerberg from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

These birds and other warm-adapted species have greatly expanded their wintering range in a warmer world, a change that may have untold consequences for North American ecosystems, the authors noted.

The researchers measured the changes over time, resulting in the abundance of 38 bird species at feeders in eastern North America.

They specifically looked at the influence of changes in winter minimum temperature over a 22-year period on the flocks of birds that gather at backyard feeding stations.

"We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonise new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America," the authors wrote.

Climate models predict even warmer temperatures occurring over the next 100 years, with seasonal climate effects being the most pronounced in northern regions of the world.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Washington,North America,chipping sparrows,Carolina wrens,ardinals

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Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More