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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 16, 2015 at 7:42am

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) published their official definition of what constitutes a planet in this memo: https://www.iau.org/static/resol... in 2006. In short, it said that:

1) a planet directly orbits the Sun. That excludes moons because although they indirectly orbit the Sun, they directly orbit a planet.

2) a planet is massive enough that gravity overcomes rigid body forces and results in a round, almost spherical shape. That excludes the asteroids.

3) a planet has used its mass to sweep up the trash in its neighborhood.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2015 at 7:27am

A new study showing that women have slightly lower resting metabolic rates than men, and thus have a higher temperature at which they are most comfortable is proving a gender bias in offices. The study’s authors contend that current methods for designing air conditioning systems do not take this metabolic difference into account. The study argues for changes in air conditioning design standards, but differences in resting metabolic rate have little to do with why women are cold in the office. It has far more to do with who sets the thermostat than with metabolism differences or system design.
Buildings are generally designed to meet standard guidelines for heating and cooling. The building’s ability to keep us cool is based on a series of complex equations that take into account humidity, air temperature, airflow, radiant temperature and the metabolism of the humans theoretically present.

But these complex equations are based on a single metabolic average, says Boris Kingma, a biophysicist at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands — the average metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man who weighs 70 kilograms, or about 154 pounds.
The women had an average resting metabolic rate of 48 watts per square meter, significantly lower than the average used to calculate heating and cooling needs in buildings. Women are also comfortable at higher temperatures — between 23° and 26° Celsius (or 74° and 79° Fahrenheit) — than those previously calculated. Kingma and coauthor Wouter van Marken Litchenbelt reported their findings August 3 in Nature Climate Change.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2015 at 6:59am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 14, 2015 at 6:34am

Good news for smokers who want to quit: nicotine addiction therapy.

with Nicotine-Chomping Bacteria

Researchers isolated a bacterial enzyme that could break down nicotine before smokers get the buzz that keeps them coming back for more.

A New Strategy for Smoking Cessation: Characterization of a Bacterial Enzyme for the Degradation of Nicotine

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.5b06605

The nicotine-degrading enzyme NicA2, a flavin-containing protein produced by Pseudomonas putida. When it was added the enzyme to mouse serum, doped with a cigarette's worth of nicotine, (the enzyme was stable at human body temperature) was able to cut the half-life of nicotine from a couple hours to less than 15 minutes—that is, it greatly accelerated nicotine’s disappearance.

But the enzyme isn't ready for use yet. It's bacterial—so "you're going to get an immune response, immune surveillance from it." And right now, the other important half-life, that of the enzyme in serum, is only 3 days. So it won’t stick around long enough to be an effective vaccine.

These problems still have to be solved.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 13, 2015 at 6:19am

Misrepresentation of findings of new CSIR study:
Read the story I posted below on 10th Aug., that says CNG is bad for us. Now read this story that says the findings are not presented properly...

( I have warned you then, mind you!)
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has condemned the recent attempt to misrepresent the findings of the new study that has been jointly carried out by the CSIR, IIP-Dehradun and University of Alberta.

The statements from CSIR have claimed, without presenting the full study and the facts in the public domain, that CNG buses emit more ultrafine particles than diesel buses and are a health hazard. When CSE obtained the draft findings from CSIR it was stunned to see a very different message from the study.

Their own findings have shown that the conventional CNG buses in India have already achieved emissions levels for all pollutants including ultrafine particle number very close or better than Euro VI emissions standards that are yet to be implemented. Diesel buses are far behind.

The ultrafine emissions from Indian CNG buses are higher only from the Canadian diesel bus with advanced particulate traps meeting one of the global best standards.

This motivated campaign against CNG buses in India, and defiance of what science is saying, will harm not only the CNG bus programme that has given enormous public health benefits but will also jeopardise the policy decision to leapfrog emissions standards roadmap to Euro VI by 2020 to cut dangerous diesel emissions, said CSE in a statement.

The government of India is dragging its feet in the face of strong opposition from the diesel industry. Diesel technology and fuels need the most drastic transformation in Indian transport sector today to protect public health, CSE added.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 13, 2015 at 6:00am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 12, 2015 at 8:22am

Power of pupils is in their shape
Vertical and horizontal pupils provide visual advantages for predators and prey respectively, researchers say
Visual fuzziness might actually help some animals catch prey. Out-of-focus areas created by vertically elongated pupils help predators triangulate the distance to objects, scientists proposed on August 7 in Science Advances. Prey animals may gain different visual advantages from pupil shapes that provide panoramic views.

Cats, foxes and many other predators that ambush prey have vertical pupils. Through these narrow slits, vertical objects appear sharp over great distances, the scientists report. Horizontal shapes are clear over a more limited distance, quickly going out of focus as an object moves farther away. This rapidly blurring vision should make it easy to detect even subtle changes in distance, the researchers say. That makes blur a good estimate of distance, says study author Martin Banks, a vision scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. A stalking predator might rely upon an object’s fuzziness to judge its location.

The benefits of this mix of visual cues make good sense.
Many herbivores, like horses and deer, have horizontal, rectangular pupils, rather than vertical slits. The authors don’t think these pupils help with depth perception. But rectangular pupils probably have their own advantages, the authors report, including better panoramic vision and shielding of potentially blinding overhead light. These benefits could help grazing prey spot – and flee from – an approaching slit-eyed hunter.

These visual benefits could explain why predators and prey evolved their pupil shapes.
But vision scientist Ronald Kröger of Lund University in Sweden warns against assuming that an animal’s habits caused the evolution of a certain pupil shape. Counterexamples exist of predators without slit pupils and herbivores with them, he says. Additionally, many predators and prey animals, including most birds – which were excluded from the study’s analysis – have circular pupils.

But evolution is complex, and the new hypotheses about the advantages of pupil shape only address one aspect of the evolution of vision, Banks says. “There are multiple forces that push the eye to evolve in multiple ways.”

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 12, 2015 at 6:48am

MIT physicists have created a superfluid gas, the so-called Bose-Einstein condensate, for the first time in an extremely high magnetic field. The magnetic field is a synthetic magnetic field, generated using laser beams, and is 100 times stronger than that of the world’s strongest magnets. Within this magnetic field, the researchers could keep a gas superfluid for a tenth of a second — just long enough for the team to observe it. The researchers report their results this week in the journal Nature Physics.
A superfluid is a phase of matter that only certain liquids or gases can assume, if they are cooled to extremely low temperatures. At temperatures approaching absolute zero, atoms cease their individual, energetic trajectories, and start to move collectively as one wave.

Superfluids are thought to flow endlessly, without losing energy, similar to electrons in a superconductor. Observing the behavior of superfluids therefore may help scientists improve the quality of superconducting magnets and sensors, and develop energy-efficient methods for transporting electricity.

But superfluids are temperamental, and can disappear in a flash if atoms cannot be kept cold or confined. The MIT team combined several techniques in generating ultracold temperatures, to create and maintain a superfluid gas long enough to observe it at ultrahigh synthetic magnetic fields.
Observation of Bose–Einstein condensation in a strong synthetic magnetic field
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3421.html

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 11, 2015 at 7:30am

Light in the universe is fading according to scientists

An international team of astronomers studying 200,000 galaxies has measured the energy generated within a large portion of space more precisely than ever before, discovering that it's only half what it was 2 billion years ago and fading - the Universe is slowly dying. Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia used seven of the world's most powerful telescopes to observe galaxies at 21 different wavelengths from the far ultraviolet to the far infrared.

Initial observations were conducted using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales and supporting observations were made by two orbiting space telescopes operated by NASA and another belonging to the European Space Agency.

All energy in the Universe was created in the Big Bang with some portion locked up as mass. Stars shine by converting this mass into energy as described by Einstein's famous equation E=MC2.

"While most of the energy sloshing around was created in the aftermath of the Big Bang, additional energy is constantly being released by stars as they fuse elements like hydrogen and helium together".

"This newly released energy is either absorbed by dust as it travels through the host galaxy, or escapes into intergalactic space and travels until it hits something such as another star, planet, or very occasionally a telescope mirror." The Universe is fated to decline from here on in, like an old age that lasts forever.

Source: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 10, 2015 at 6:21am

There could be a genetic reason for why you either love or hate some smells
When it comes to food, there are few items so divisive as coriander - or cilantro, as it's called in North and Central America. Some people love its fresh flavour, while others swear it tastes like soap. And it turns out a genetic variant that affects how we process aromas might at least partially explain the difference in opinion.

Back in 2012, genetic testing company 23andMe surveyed the DNA of nearly 30,000 people of European background, who'd answered a survey about whether they loved or hated coriander. Out of the 11,851 participants who declared that they liked coriander and the 14,604 who insisted it tasted like soap, they found two genetic variants that were associated with the preferences, and the strongest variant was located within a cluster of known olfactory-receptor genes.
A genetic variant near olfactory receptor genes influences cilantro
preference
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.2096v1.pdf

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