Pltuoids = Pluto like Planets

The name Plutoid was proposed by the members of the IAU Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN), accepted by the Board of Division III,as a name for transneptunian dwarf planets similar to Pluto. Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the Sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighbourhood around their orbit. The two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris. The IAU has been responsible for naming planetary bodies and their satellites since the early 1900s.

Image Credit:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pluto_system_2006.jpg

Nazi Dr.Death still alive

Heim,an Austrian doctor with Adolf Hitler’s dreaded police unit, the SS,has been on the run for 46 years since evading police in Germany in 1962 prior to a planned prosecution. He is nicknamed Dr Death for killing hundreds of inmates at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria with injections of petrol or poison direct to the heart. Heim removed organs from victims without anesthetic. He even kept the skull of one man he decapitated as a paperweight. He is likely hiding in southern Chile’s Patagonia region, says leading Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff. Hundreds of Nazis sought refuge in Latin America after World War II. Holocaust survivors remember Heim relishing seeing the fear of death in the eyes of his victims.

Shorter REM And Overweight

A research done by Xianchen Liu, MD, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, showed the association of short sleep time and overweight in children and adolescents. It’s mostly attributed to reduced REM sleep. When compared with normal-weight children, overweight children slept about 22 minutes less, shorter REM period, and lower REM activity, density and had lower sleep efficiency.

Firefox 3 Downloads beats expectation.

Mozilla has declared victory after its Firefox 3 downloads exceeding its initial goal of 5 million downloads. The servers logged over 8 million downloads during the 24-hour download day. At their busiest the servers were handling more than 9,000 downloads per minute. Until yesterday, Firefox had been downloaded more than 10 million times. Firefox is an open source web browser well known amongst tech savvy users. Functionality of this amazing browser can be extended by Firefox plugins. Firefox is proved to be faster and more secure than Internet Explorer.

Related Story: Firefox 3 release

Mandela hideaway now a museum

The farm is just half an hour’s drive from the centre of Johannesburg, a site used by the African National Congress from which to launch its armed struggle against the apartheid state. The farm has been restored and opened as a museum. Nelson Mandela came to live here in 1961 when he was on the run. Later the farm was raided by the police, and the ANC’s high command was arrested. Mandela spent the next 27 years in prison after the arrest, much of it on Robben Island. Mandela has received more than one hundred awards over four decades, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

CO2 emission can be reduced by 1 Billion Tonnes: HP

Some of the solutions described in HP’s white paper include “Low Carbon IT Solutions,” that identifies the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Smart cooling and its use in the design of data center facilities that reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions from commercial premises.
Innovation in telepresence and videoconferencing that enable improved virtual collaboration to reduce the environmental impacts of international travel. HP’s use of this technology is expected to save approximately 20,000 international trips and at least 32,000 tonnes per year of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
Flat panel displays and Laptops, increases workplace flexibility to reduce energy consumption from non-critical travel.

Sex Education For Deaf Pupils

The University of Manchester’s Audiology and Deafness team is conducting a study, to improve sex education taught to deaf pupils. The researchers hope their findings will be more accessible for deaf children and, at a later stage, they plan to devise a fun, non-threatening computer game to explore how much children know about issues related to growing up.

Teaching sex and relationship education to deaf children is very challenging, but it is important. Children with hearing disability are more vulnerable to abuse because they may not recognise inappropriate behaviour or their boundaries. Researcher are encouraging parents of both deaf and hearing children to take part in this research.

Best diet to live longer

After an extensive research in “Blue Zones” -where people tend to live longer-,Author Dan Buettner find some interesting facts about longevity. One of the secret is the best diet. People who eat nuts four to five times a week, 2 ounces at a time, tend to live two to three years longer than people who don’t eat nuts. Also these people didn’t take any supplements or pills or wine extracts. People live in Loma Linda zone, one of the Blue Zone in United States a small area about 60 miles outside of Los Angeles, eats plant-based diet and take a Sabbath Saturday they call the “sanctuary in time.”

Microsoft buys television ad Firm Navic

Navic developed a technology to deliver interactive ads on Television. Their ads are interactive overlays targeted by zip code to each cable subscriber. Microsoft Corp says it has purchased Navic Networks. Navic will join Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) Group, which is responsible for its digital media advertising platform. Google has already got into TV ads market through it AdWords program.

Oil Price “fake & imposed”: Ahmadinejad

Iran’s president Ahmadinejad said, that the oil market is plentifully supplied and the rally to record high prices is “fake and imposed”. Iranian president also took aim at high energy taxes in consumer nations. He blamed the decreasing US dollar value and reiterated that oil should be sold in a basket of currencies rather than dollars. Iran has been accused by western nations of building nuclear weapons. Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter.

No evidence of Water in Mars

The tests conducted so far by Phoenix on Martian soil, didn’t show any indications of water. During the past couple of days tests had been carried out on soil sample from Mars surface. Phoenix lander had collected samples from two digging sites named Dodo and BabyBear. The mysterious, unidentified white material exposed in the trench is still visible. Over the coming days, scientists will instruct Phoenix to heat the sample to 1000°C (1800°F). This will vaporize minerals that might be chemically bound to H2O, CO2 or SO2 and then use instrumentation to measure the vented gases. The twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have already found indications of water on previous missions.

IBM Prepares Students for Jobs of the Future.

“T-shaped” skill, which is what businesses are looking in their new hires. Deep business skills and technical understanding is what meant by this “T-shaped” skills. IBM is teaming up with Michigan Technological University to help students develop these skills. IBM has donated WebSphere software for this initiative with the agreement that any assets created through these programs will be made available to other universities around the world at no charge. Over the past five years, IBM has been working with more than 150 universities around the world to grow the adoption of Services Science, Management and Engineering (SSME).

Iranians Take Science to deny Holocaust

An article published by an Iranian satellite channel Press TV on its Web site says, the massacre of Jewish people during the Holocaust was “scientifically impossible”. Iranian government setup the Press TV, an English-language 24-hour news channel. Nicholas Kollerstrom, who wrote this article, had his fellowship terminated by University College London last month after he said there were never any gas chambers at Auschwitz. According to Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official about 6 million Jewish people were killed by Nazis, 50% of them in gas chambers.

Other Species Can Learn Foreign Language

There are nine species of honeybees found worldwide and they do different type of dances as their “language” to tell each other the location of a tasty flower or nesting site.

The study leader Shaowu Zhang of The Australian National University mentioned that the duration of the waggle dances differs from species to species.

The research team mixed two species of honeybees, Asian and European together in a hive, and trained one species to fly to a feeder. The untrained species were able to identify the dances of by the trained cousins and interpret where the feeder was.

This study proved that these honeybees can learn to translate each others’ languages very effectively.

Depressed US teens,over 2 million.

A survey conducted among youths aged 12 to 17 about mood and depression revealed that more than 2 million US teenagers have suffered a serious bout of depression in the past year. 8.5 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 described having had a major depressive episode in the previous year. Nearly half of the teenagers who had major depression said it severely impaired their ability to function in at least one of the areas on the disability scale. Depression, or a depressed mood, refer to a state of melancholia, unhappiness or sadness, or to a relatively minor downturn in mood that may last only a few hours or days.

Women think of shopping,men think about sex

According to a survey by cosmopolitan.co.uk, 75% of young women think about shopping nearly as often as men think about sex. Young men are said to think about sex every 52 seconds, on the other hand thoughts of shopping pop into young women’s heads every 60 seconds. The survey conducted among 778 women aged 19 to 45. Half of those surveyed said they preferred shopping to spending time with their partner.

Marriage Of Brain Science And The Internet

Researchers at Keio University have developed the world’s first demonstration experiment to help a disabled person to to chat and stroll through the virtual world by using brainwave. This technology will help motion-impaired people to communicate with others. This technology is a “marriage of brain science and the Internet”, and it opens an opportunity to meet with people and have chat in the virtual world.

The tech. uses electrodes attached to the scalp, and a computer detects brainwaves from the cortex when the subject slightly moves fingers, and it moves the avatar accordingly.

New Planet “Super-Earths” Discovered

There are new planets called “super-Earths” have been identified by Astronomers, and announced at an astronomy conference in Nantes, France. These rocky planets are between two and 10 times the mass of Earth. The High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher called Harps instrument was used to detect these 3 new planets. They circle a star that is smaller than our Sun, and it is located 42 light-years away.

Image credit : http://apod.nasa.gov

Toyota Yaris : Green Car of the year

Environmental Transport Association (ETA), which is currently running the 2008 Green Transport Week in the UK, has named the Yaris the 2008 Green Car of the Year. Power, emissions, fuel efficiency and the amount of noise are looked at to choose the Green car from 1,300 vehicles. Dodge SRT-10 sports car came in dead last. Yaris is getting 34 mpg in the city and 40 mpg on the highway. On another story, sales of another Toyota hybrid model Prius recently topped 1 million.

Hydrogen Fuel Stations.

Honda FCX Clarity is a zero emission sedan, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the noxious fumes believed to induce global warming. Limited number of cars will be leased to Southern Californians, which costs $600/month on a three year lease. Many automobile manufacturers have already begun developing hydrogen powered cars, BMW Hydrogen 7,Daimler AG — F-Cell,Focus FCV and GM HydroGen3 are some of them. But the main issue is the lack of hydrogen fuel stations. National Hydrogen Association developed a hydrogen fueling station database, this database contains only US and Canadian stations. Fuelcells.org has compiled a list of Hydrogen fuel stations which can be found here.