Asteroid named after Rescuer of Anne Frank's Diary

On Sunday, an asteroid between the planets Mars and Jupiter has been named after Miep Gies, the woman who saved the diary of Anne Frank. The asteroid, discovered in 1972, orbits between Mars and Jupiter and has an estimated diameter of seven kilometers. From now on it will be known as Miep Gies. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) said it wanted to draw attention to the steadfast courage of the now 100-year-old last surviving helper of the Frank family who hid in a building behind a house in Amsterdam during World War II.

Gies, now aged 100, took care of the Franks - the teenaged Anne, her parents and sister - and other Jews who hid from the Nazis in the Netherlands. Anne kept the diary from 1942-1944, while living in a building at 263 Prinsengracht. After they were discovered and deported, it was Gies who found and hid Anne's diary.

Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, shortly before her sixteenth birthday and the end of the war. After the war, Gies gave the only surviving family member, Otto Frank his daughter's diary. The world famous diary of Anne Frank, which is now in Anne Frank museum, attracts nearly a million visitors as year from all over the world.

In a diary entry dated July 11, 1943, Anne wrote: "Miep is just like a pack mule, she fetches and carries so much. Almost every day she manages to get hold of some vegetables for us and brings everything in shopping bags on her bicycle."

Ig Nobel for Gas Mask Bra

A bra that can save your life by turning into two gas masks during terrorist attack or disasters, is one of the many unusual scientific achievements that won  the 2009 Ig Nobel prize. Take a look at the picture.

Designed by Dr Elena Bodnar, a young Ukrainian medical student, the fashionable bra can be converted into a pair of emergency HEPA-filter gas mask in a matter of seconds. Dr Elena Bodnar won the Ig Nobel in public health for the bra. She demonstrated her invention and gave one to each of the Nobel laureates as a gift.

Ig Nobel awards are intended to celebrate the unusual, the imaginative and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. It is a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think"

Today's Babies will Live to 100 Years!

More than half of babies born in rich countries after year 2000 will live to 100 years, a paper published in the latest edition of medical journal Lancet suggests. According to the Danish experts, life expectancy in developed countries increased by more than 30 years since the 20th century and surprisingly the trend shows no sign of slowing down. So, if the trend continues, most babies born today in developed countries will live to see the 22nd century.

For the study, James Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute in Germany and colleagues in Denmark examined data published globally on numerous issues related to aging in 2004-2005. They found that human life expectancy is increasing steadily in most countries and there is no sign of slowing down. It is basically the improvements in health care, that are slowing down the process of aging and challenging the idea that there is a limit to human longevity.

While illnesses affecting the elderly like heart disease, cancer and diabetes are rising, advances in medical treatment are also making it possible for them to remain active for longer. But the obesity epidemic may complicate the matters. Though our kids could live to be 100, obesity could make them more susceptible to diseases and may even increase their risk of earlier deaths from cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.

Handwriting Can Help Detect Liars!

One can tell who is a liar and who is not by analyzing handwriting. How? Because, people who write lies press harder on the paper, have longer pen strokes and produce taller letters than those writing the truth. No, this is not my assumption, but the findings of a scientific study that was recently published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology. And the study concludes that yes, handwriting can be used to detect lies.

The unique study was conducted by a group of researchers at the University of Haifa, Israel. For the study, the researchers asked 34 volunteers to write two short paragraphs, one recalling a real memory, the other a fictitious event. For writing, a wireless electronic pen with a pressure-sensitive tip was provided to the volunteers.

After analyzing the writings, the researchers then found those who wrote lies (about the fictitious event) pressed harder on the paper, had longer pen strokes and produced taller letters than those telling the truth. It means our handwriting tells the state of our mind?

But why? Why handwriting changes when we lie? The researchers thinks that while writing lies the human brain works harder to invent facts, which in turn interfere with normal writing process. So, in the case of false writing, the average pressure, stroke length and height were significantly higher than in the true writing condition.

"A lie detector that analyzes handwriting has many advantages over the existing detectors, since it is less threatening for the person being examined, is much more objective and does not depend on human interpretation. The system also provides measures that the individual has difficulty controlling during performance. This is certainly a system that can improve - alongside the existing detectors - our ability to identify lies," the researchers concluded.

Though the research is in it's early stage, the usability of a handwriting-based verification system is very promising. I hope that someday there will be some kind of devices that can quickly scan handwriting to detect lies.

1 in 10 US Youth Addicted to Video Games

A new study conducted by the Iowa State University and the National Institute on Media and Family found that 1 in 10 American children are addicted to video games.

For a lot of kids, playing video games is just something that they really enjoy doing, but for one out of 10 kids, it is a serious problem. They are so addicted that they neglects daily chores or homework to play games.

The study, led by Dr Douglas Gentile, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, was published in the journal Psychological Science and used data from a Harris Poll of nearly 1,200 children ages 8 to 18 from across the US. The study found that 88 per cent of US kids played video games at least occasionally, and on average children play about 13 hours of video games a week.

The researchers classified gamers as "pathological" if they exhibited at least six of 11 symptoms of addiction. The pathological gamers in the study played video games 24 hours per week, about twice as much as non-pathological gamers. They also were more likely to have video game systems in their bedrooms, reported having more trouble paying attention in school, received poorer grades in school, had more health problems, were more likely to feel "addicted," and even stole to support their habit.

The study also found that addicted gamers were twice as likely to have been diagnosed with attention problems such as Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

North America's Smallest Meat-eating Dinosaur

Canadian researchers have discovered the North America's smallest known meat-eating dinosaur. Termed as 'Hesperonychus', the tiny dinosaur was just half the size of a domestic cat and probably hunted and ate insects, mammals, amphibians and maybe even baby dinosaurs.

Reporting their findings on March 16 issue of journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences", Nick Longrich from University of Calgary and Philip Currie from University of Alberta said that Hesperonychus, which means "western claw," a new genus of carnivorous dinosaur prowled southeastern Alberta in Western Canada during the late cretaceous period.

Weighing nearly two kilograms and standing about 50 centimeters tall, Hesperonychus elizabethae ran about on two legs and had razor-like claws and an enlarged sickle-shaped claw on its second toe. So, it looks much like a miniature version of the famous Velociraptor, a hunter with a fierce reputation and a killer claw

Fossilized remains of Hesperonychus, were collected in 1982 from several locations including Dinosaur Provincial Park. But paleontologists had assumed that those remains were of juvenile animals. The fossils remained unstudied for 25 years until Nick Longrich came across them in 2007. One of those fossilized remains was a well-preserved pelvis, which helped in determining that it was actually an adult dinosaur.

Source: http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/march2009/Hesperonychus

Reconstruction of Mammoth's Genome

A US-Russian team of scientists claims that they have reconstructed about two-thirds of the genome of the woolly mammoth using DNA extracted from balls of hair. Now, they hopes that it could provide better insights into the extinction of the mammoth and could also lead to resurrection of long-dead species.

"One can imagine a new field of ‘museomics’ using the collected samples that are now stored in natural-history museums," said Stephan Schuster, a biologist at Pennsylvania State University who led the 21-person research team with a colleague, Webb Miller.

The researchers, used two samples of woolly mammoth hair. One sample was collected from a 20,000-year-old mammoth from Siberia, while the other was from a specimen from an animal that died 65,000 years ago. Then they sequenced 4.17 billion bases and determined that 3.3 billion belonged to the mammoths. The rest were from viruses, bacteria, fungi and other microbes. The researchers identified the mammoth DNA by comparing the sequences with the genome of the modern African elephant. The results of the study was published in the latest edition of journal Nature.

Mammoths disappeared about 10,000 years ago when they were hunted to extinction by prehistoric humans. Well, it is too early to say whether the study will help scientist to resurrect mammoth or not. But it is true that for the first time scientists have reconstructed the genome of an extinct species and it could open many doors for researchers. The study also helped scientists in understanding the evolution pattern of elephants.

World's First Bird

Palaeontologists have discovered the World's first bird. Take a look at the image above. Known as Kuehneosaurus, this lizard-like flying reptile inhabited the warm late Triassic period from 235 to 200 million years ago. Kuehneosaurus was first discovered in the UK inside an ancient cave system near Bristol.

Palaeobiologist Koen Stein from Institute of Palaeontology, Bonn, Germany, with Colin Palmer, Pamela Gill and Michael Benton from Bristol University's Department of Earth Sciences carried out the research on aerodynamic capability of kuehneosaurus. They performed some important aerodynamic tests and simulations with lifesize models of the creatures. And they found that kuehneosaurus was aerodynamically very stable. Jumping from a tree, this flying reptile could easily have crossed 9m before landing on the ground.

The pioneering findings of Koen Stein and his team were published this week by the Paleontological Association.

Photo from Mars by Phoenix probe

First images of Mars, sent by NASA's Phoenix space probe after successful landing on the planet. Phoenix landed at the north pole of Mars on 25 May.

Bootprint on Moon

This photograph shows a human bootprint on moon. It was the bootprint of Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, one of the crew members of Apollo 11 mission. The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of the Apollo program and the third human voyage to the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.

Airborne Observatory SOFIA

NASA is developing a world-class airborne observatory, that will complement the Hubble, Spitzer, Herschel and James Webb space telescopes and major Earth-based telescopes. This cool airborne observatory is named as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA features a German-built 100-inch (2.5 meter) diameter far-infrared telescope weighing 20 tons mounted in the rear fuselage of a highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. It is one of the premier space science programs of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.


SOFIA is a joint program by NASA and DLR Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center). Major aircraft modifications and installation of the telescope has been carried out at L-3 Communications Integrated Systems facility at Waco, Texas. Completion of systems installation, integration and flight test operations are being conducted at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., from 2007 through 2010. SOFIA's science operations are being planned jointly by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) under leadership of the SOFIA Science project at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field near San Jose, Calif.


SOFIA will continue the legacy of prominent planetary scientist Dr. Gerard Kuiper, who began airborne astronomy in 1966 with a 12-inch telescope aimed out a window of a converted Convair 990 jetliner. His work led to the development of NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a modified C-141 aircraft incorporating a 36-inch reflecting telescope that flew from 1974 to 1995. During its 21-year lifetime, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory focused on solar system, galactic and extra-galactic astronomy, and discovered the rings of Uranus, a ring of dust around the center of the Milky Way, luminous infrared galaxies, complex organic molecules in space and water in comets.

Once it begins operations in about 2010, SOFIA'S 2.5-meter (100 inch) diameter reflecting telescope will provide astronomers with access to the visible, infrared and sub-millimeter spectrum, with optimized performance in the mid-infrared to sub-millimeter range. During its 20-year expected lifetime it will be capable of "Great Observatory"–class astronomical science.


SOFIA will provide three times better image quality and vastly increased observational sensitivity than the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. From a base at NASA Dryden, SOFIA mission operations will be conducted over virtually the entire globe. Missions will be flown at altitudes of 39,000 to 45,000 feet, above 99 percent of the water vapor in the lower atmosphere that restrict the capabilities of ground-based observatories over most of the infrared and sub-millimeter spectral range.

Life on Mars and Salt Deposits

New clues about Life on Mars! NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has found evidence of salt deposits on the planet. These deposits point to places where water once was abundant and where evidence might exist of possible Martian life from the Red Planet's past.

Image: The bright blue color marks a deposit of chloride (salt) minerals in the southern highlands of Mars.

A team led by Mikki Osterloo of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, found approximately 200 places on southern Mars that show spectral characteristics consistent with chloride minerals. Chloride is part of many types of salt, such as sodium chloride or table salt. The sites range from about a square kilometer (0.4 square mile) to 25 times that size.

Scientists used Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System, a camera designed and operated by Arizona State University, Tempe, to take images in a range of visible light and infrared wavelengths. Thermal infrared wavelengths are useful for identifying different mineral and rock types on the Martian surface.

"They could come from groundwater reaching the surface in low spots. The water would evaporate and leave mineral deposits, which build up over years. The sites are disconnected, so they are unlikely to be the remnants of a global ocean." - Osterloo said.

Scientists think the salt deposits formed approximately 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago. Several lines of evidence suggest Mars then had intermittent periods with substantially wetter and warmer conditions than today's dry, frigid climate.

So, evidence of these salt deposits has once again given some clues about presence of life on Mars. And scientists are happy with the results from a relatively low cost orbiter mission, which is now entering it's seventh year. They hopes that Mars Odyssey orbiter will continue to send more interesting results from planet Mars. NASA