Supermom galaxy birthing stars on cosmic scale discovered - Fox News

It's a galaxy that gives births to more stars in a day than ours does in a year. Astronomers used NASA's X-Ray telescope to spot this distant galaxy creating about 740 new stars a year. By comparison our Milky Way galaxy spawns just about one new star each year. This new galaxy is about 5.7 billion light years away. It is in the center of a recently discovered cluster of galaxies that give the brightest x-ray glow astronomers have seen. The study appears Wednesday in the journal Nature.AP Photo/NASA
Scientists have found a cosmic supermom. It's a galaxy that gives births to more stars in a day than ours does in a year.
Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-Ray telescope to spot this distant gigantic galaxy creating about 740 new stars a year. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy spawns just about one new star each year.
The galaxy is about 5.7 billion light years away in the center of a recently discovered cluster of galaxies that give off the brightest X-ray glow astronomers have seen. It is by far the biggest creation of stars that astronomers have seen for this kind of galaxy. Other types, such as colliding galaxies, can produce even more stars, astronomers said.
But this is the size, type and age of galaxy that shouldn't be producing stars at such a rapid pace, said the authors of a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
"It's very extreme," said Harvard University astronomer Ryan Foley, co-author of the study. "It pushes the boundaries of what we understand."
The unnamed galaxy - officially known by a string of letters and numbers - is about 3 trillion times the size of our sun, said study lead author Michael McDonald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
There's another strange thing about this galaxy. It's fairly mature, maybe 6 billion years old. Usually, this kind "don't do anything new... what we call red and dead," McDonald said in an interview. "It seems to have come back to life for some reason."
Because of that back-to-life situation, the team of 85 astronomers has nicknamed the galaxy cluster Phoenix, after the bird that rises from the ashes. The galaxy that is producing the stars at a rate of two per day is the biggest and most prominent of many galaxies there.
It's "helping us answer this basic question of how do galaxies form their stars," said Michigan State University astronomer Megan Donahue, who wasn't part of the study but praised it.
There's lots of very hot hydrogen gas between galaxies. When that gas cools to below zero, the gas can form stars, McDonald said. But only 10 percent of the gas in the universe becomes stars, Donahue said.
That's because the energy from black holes in the center of galaxies counteract the cooling. There's a constant "tussle between black holes and star formation," said Sir Martin Rees, a prominent astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England. He was not part of the study, but commented on it during a NASA teleconference Wednesday.
In this case, the black hole in the central galaxy seems to be unusually quiet compared to other supermassive black holes, Rees said. "So it's losing the tussle," he said.
But this massive burst of star birth is probably only temporary because there's only so much fuel and limits to how big a galaxy can get, Foley said.
"It could be just a very short-lived phase that every galaxy cluster has and we just got lucky here" to see it, Foley said.
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Young Scientist Award given to UVAS teacher

UNIVERSITY of Veterinary and Animal Science (UVAS) Lahore’s Assistant Professor Dr Amjad Riaz has been awarded “Young Scientist Award” during the International Congress on Animal Reproduction (ICAR) 2012 held recently at Vancouver, Canada. This award was on the competitive basis from the developing countries and comprised $ 1500. He presented his research on predicting the buffalo ovarian reserves by ultrasonography. This research can help to establish Embryo Transfer Technology in buffalo.

Dr Amjad was a team member of the delegation of four Pakistani veterinarians and animal scientists led by Professor Dr Nasim Ahmad, Dean Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, UVAS. More than 900 delegates from 62 different countries participated in the congress.

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Camouflage robot changes colour for disguise - BBC News

16 August 2012 Last updated at 20:51 GMT By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News The robot uses colour to either stand out from its surroundings or blend in, as Stephen Morin from Harvard University describes here (Video produced by the journal Science)A robot that can change colour to either blend in with or stand out from its surroundings has been created by scientists.
The machine, designed by researchers at Harvard University, was inspired by the camouflage skills of sea creatures such as octopuses, cuttlefish and squid.
Like these cephalopods, the robot has a soft, rubbery body and can move with flexibility.
The study is published in the journal Science.
Professor George Whitesides, an author of the paper, said: "Conventional robotics is a pretty highly developed area, and if you look at various robots you find that most are basically built on the body plan of a mammal.
"Our question is: Why do you have to do that? Why not think about organisms that are soft, that might have quite different structures and ways of moving and strategies for camouflage. And the obvious place to look is underwater."
In earlier research, the team created a bendy robot that could move with great flexibility
In 2011, the research team published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that outlined details of a "soft robot" that could crawl and bend under obstacles.
The machine was made from silicon-based polymers, and its movement was driven by air pumping through tiny cylinders in its four "legs".
Now the scientists have added another layer of complexity to these robots by giving them the ability to disguise themselves.
The camouflage-bots are covered in a network of tiny channels. As different dyes are pumped in, the robots can quickly change their appearance.
As well as changing colour, hot or cold fluids can be pumped into robots, enabling them to be thermally camouflaged, and fluorescent liquids allow them to glow in the dark.
Currently, the fluid is pulled in from a reservoir, but in the future it could be incorporated into the robot's body.
Search and rescue
The team thinks the devices could have a variety of different uses.
Continue reading the main story

The nice thing about these systems is that their properties are very different form conventional robots”

End Quote Prof George Whitesides Harvard University Lead author Stephen Morin said the soft machines had similarities with organs or tissues and could have medical applications.
He explained: "The idea is that if you have a system that can simulate muscle motion very well and a system that can transport fluid, by combining those you can fabricate that device to fit a specific surgical problem.
"And in planning for surgery or training, you can use something like this in guilt-free way."
The team also said the machines could have a future in search and rescue.
Prof Whitesides said: "For that kind of application, having it be able to advertise itself, for example, in a way that stood out against the dark would be a good thing."
He said the fact that the robots were lightweight, flexible and also relatively inexpensive was advantageous.
He explained: "The nice thing about these systems is that their properties are very different from conventional robots. You get pretty complicated motions from pretty simple systems.
"For a mission like search and rescue, these kind of robots could in principle be throwaway. So if you took a $25,000 robot and sent it in and the building falls down, then that is a real issue. If you send one in which is $100 and the roof falls in, you really don't care."
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Mutant butterflies sparked by Japan's Fukushima disaster- Newsday

Photo credit: AP | In this undated photo, an adult pale grass blue butterfly collected near the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is shown with dented eyes and stunted wings at the university laboratory in Nishihara, Okinawa, southern Japan. Japanese researchers said they found mutations in butterflies caused by radiation from the power plant.
Radiation that leaked from the Fukushima nuclear plant following last year's tsunami caused mutations in some butterflies — including dented eyes and stunted wings — though humans seem relatively unaffected, researchers say.
The mutations are the first evidence that the radiation has caused genetic changes in living organisms. They are likely to add to concerns about potential health risks among humans though there is no evidence of it yet. Scientists say more study is needed to link human health with the Fukushima disaster.
The catastrophic meltdowns in three reactors of Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant after it was damaged by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, prompted a public backlash against nuclear power, and forced the government to reassess resource-scarce Japan's entire energy strategy.
But the most visible example of the radiation's effect was claimed by a group of Japanese researchers who found radical physical changes in successive generations of a type of butterfly, which they said was caused by radiation exposure. They also said that the threat to humans — a much larger and longer-lived species — remains unclear.
"Our findings suggest that the contaminants are causing ecological damage. I do not know its implication to humans," Joji Otaki of the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, a member of the research team, told The Associated Press in an email.
A separate study, released this week, found very low levels of radioactivity in people who were living near the Fukushima plant when it suffered the meltdowns.
The paper, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, measured cesium levels in 8,066 adults and 1,432 children and found average doses of less than 1 millisievert, which are considered safe. It was the first such study measuring internal exposures to cesium in a large number of people from the disaster.
The research shows contamination decreased over time, particularly among children, in part because more precautions were taken with their food, water and outdoor activity.
"No case of acute health problems has been reported so far; however, assessments of the long-term effect of radiation requires ongoing monitoring of exposure and the health conditions of the affected communities," the report said.
So far, the actual radiation doses inflicted just after the accident are not exactly known, though exposure is thought to be very small, said David J. Brenner, a radiation physicist at Columbia University, who was not part of the research.
"We do need improved estimates of the radiation dose that people in and near Fukushima prefecture actually received," he told the AP. "Right now our estimates are based on very, very rough calculations."
The research on the butterflies was published in Scientific Reports, an open-access online journal by the Nature publication group, which provides faster publication and peer review by at least one scientist.
It says pale grass blue butterflies, a common species in Japan, collected from several areas near the Fukushima plant showed signs of genetic mutations, such as dented eyes, malformed legs and antennae, and stunted wings.
Other experts said they viewed the research as significant.
"Scientists have long known that radiation can be hazardous to human and animal health. Studies of this sort at Fukushima and Chernobyl provide invaluable information concerning just how hazardous radioactive contaminants could be for human populations living in these areas in the future," Tim Mousseau of the University of South Carolina, told the AP by email.
"Butterflies as a group are important bio-indicators for the effects of environmental stressors like radioactive contaminants," said Mousseau, who also is not part of the Japanese research.
The results show the butterflies were deteriorating both physically and genetically, with the share of those showing abnormalities increasing from 12 percent in the first generation to 18 percent in the second and 34 percent in the third.
To study the genetic changes, the scientists raised the new generations of the butterflies in Okinawa, which has not been affected by the radiation releases, mating each abnormal butterfly with one unaffected by such changes.
The researchers also demonstrated the effects of internal exposure to radiation by feeding leaves from plants from the area near the Fukushima nuclear plant to the butterfly larvae.
"The possible risk of internal exposure from ingestion should be investigated more accurately in the near future," it said.
Although the damage is irreversible, the species could develop resistance to the radiation, Otaki said. "In that case, we will observe adaptive evolution," he said.
The research appears to be "a very thorough study," said Jim T. Smith of Britain's University of Portsmouth, also another outsider. The replication of the mutations under lab conditions further supports the report's findings, he said in a telephone interview.
However, he said he would be "very, very wary of trying to extrapolate those results to humans."
Even in the area near Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the absence of humans who left after the 1986 nuclear accident there has actually benefited local fauna in the long run, said Smith, who has conducted research on radiation's effects on aquatic insects.
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Sartaj Aziz receives award - The Nation

LAHORE – Sartaj Aziz, Vice Chancellor, Beaconhouse National University was awarded the M.S. Swaminathan Award for Environment Protection. This award was presented to him by Dr. K Rosaiah, Governor of the state of Tamil Nadu, in India recently, says a press release.
This award is given every year to the most deserving individual, body corporate or association serving the interest of the humanity in the broad sphere of Environment Protection. Some of the recipients of the ward in the past years include Dr. Joseph Hulse, Prof. Jeffrey D Sachs and Dr. Ismail Serageldin besides others.
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Curiosity Rover Team Lives on Mars Time, Compares Rover to Pokemon - Forbes

Reddit scored what might be one of its best AMAs (Ask Me Anything’s) in history today when a group of scientists and engineers – even Bobak Ferdowski, AKA “Mohawk Guy” went on to spend some time answering questions for their rabid fans. It’s not often that a group of scientists and engineers get to use the phrase “rabid fans,” so this is a pretty good day for interviewers and interviewees alike.
Some interesting tidbits – every member of the Curiosity Team lives their life on Mars time – that means every day is just 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. There are apps that help them keep track. Also, when asked what the one thing everyone should know about the Rover was, the team responded: “Its got a friggin’ laser on its head, that can VAPORIZE rocks!”
After someone else posted a more detailed explanation of the laser, someone claiming to be an “optical PHD” said that it was, in fact, pretty darn strong. If the Rover were a Pokemon, it’d be Charizard (third generation, shoots fire).
The team bucks the scientist stereotype by favoring Apple – of those present in the room, 13 had Macs and two had PCs. And none have PHDs. Even traveling at the speed of light, there’s a 14 minute delay to get information and commands to the Rover. The team estimates it’s costing each American citizen $1 per year.
NASA has done an amazing job keeping the research that Curiosity is doing open and public – it’s a publicly-funded project after all, and the team has been working overtime to provide citizens a sense of ownership over the mission. In 1969, NASA gave the country and the world one of the most iconic moments in the history of television when it broadcast the moon landing. Today, Curiosity is doing something similar for social media.
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Stars Form Fast Thanks To Snoozing Black Hole - Staugnews

Nearly 6 billion light-years away, one of the most massive galaxy clusters ever seen is birthing stars at an incredible rate, with its central member producing more than 700 suns per year in its cold, cold heart.
“It should be producing less than one, and it’s producing 740,” says Michael McDonald of MIT, coauthor of a study describing the cluster in the Aug. 16 Nature

.
The cluster’s cold core and excessive fertility suggest the presence of a slacker black hole at the galaxy’s center.  Normally, radiation from a supermassive black hole — in this case, something around 10 billion times the mass of the sun — warms the surrounding environment, making it hard for gas to coalesce into stars. Whether the black hole in this cluster is simply overworked,  permanently off-duty or just taking a break is unclear, but scientists guess they’ve captured the cluster at an exceptionally frisky moment with respect to star formation.
“Stars are forming at a much higher rate than we’ve seen before in any of these galaxies,” says astrophysicist Martin Rees of the University of Cambridge in England.  “It’s a fascinating step toward putting this picture together of the tussle between the black holes and the star formation.”
But the rate of star formation in the cluster may be somewhat overestimated, says astronomer Andrew Fabian, also at Cambridge. “There’s no doubt that they’ve found a really exciting and fascinating object,” he says. “Just how extreme it is, we don’t know yet.”
Astronomers discovered the riot of starbirth using the South Pole Telescope, a radio antenna that searches for the shadows cast by clusters on the cosmic microwave background, the thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang. Called “Phoenix” by the team — its official name is SPT-CLJ2344-4243 — the cluster comprises roughly 1,000 galaxies, is more than 4 million light-years across, and contains more mass than 2,000 Milky Ways.
In other words, it’s big.
It’s bright, too: The galactic conglomerate is the most luminous cluster ever observed in the X-ray spectrum. At its center lies a galaxy 50 times larger than the Milky Way. “It’s kind of the boss galaxy,” McDonald says.
It’s here in the cluster’s epicenter that scientists are observing stars forming much faster than expected for a galaxy of this type. Calculating the stellar birth rate involves measuring the amount of X-rays emitted by molecular gas as it cools off and falls toward the central galaxy. Though the swirling gas starts off at temperatures exceeding 10 million degrees Celsius, stars can’t begin coalescing until it cools to temperatures nearer the ambient temperature of space — several hundred degrees below zero.
Fabian and his colleagues suggested decades ago that star formation proceeds through such “cooling flows,” but that process hadn’t been observed in this type of central galaxy until now.
McDonald and his colleagues calculated that approximately 740 stars are bursting out of this central galaxy each year. But the sprinter’s pace is unlikely to be a permanent feature of the cluster, because over a marathon distance it would produce a monster galaxy 1,000 times larger than anything ever observed.
It’s more likely that scientists have captured the cluster in a fit of fertility, though it’s unknown just how long that fit will last. “I think something around 100 million years is reasonable,” McDonald says. Determining exactly how much molecular gas — fuel for the fertile fire — is present will help resolve the timescale question. Scientists hope to make that measurement using the ALMA telescopes in northern Chile.
Source: Science News / Nadia Drake / photo Credit: UV: NASA, JPL-Caltech, M. McDonald; Optical: AURA, NOAO, CTIO, MIT, M. McDonald; Microwave: NSF/SPT
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NASA awards $1.1B in design contracts - USA TODAY

Three companies will share a combined $1.1 billion to complete designs of commercial spacecraft that could launch astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017.Boeing and SpaceX were given awards worth $460 million and $440 million, respectively, for a period running through May 2014. Sierra Nevada received $212.5 million.All three companies are developing systems that would launch from here.Boeing's CST-100 capsule and Sierra Nevada's winged Dream Chaser would launch atop United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket.SpaceX's Dragon, an unmanned version of which has already flown to the station, would launch on the company's Falcon 9 rocket.The announcement means at least one other company that made a strong push for an award, ATK, lost its bid.Once the base period is complete, NASA could extend the contracts to culminate in a orbital demonstration flight with a human crew.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.
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Bad Science - DAWN.com

Charlatans, quacks and scammers in Pakistan are not a new phenomenon. Witch doctors, black magic practitioners, and herbal healers have long been a part of society, offering ways to cure a disease, get revenge on your mother-in-law or to improve sexual prowess.
These days, however, classical physics is being brutally murdered on television in Pakistan, in front of millions, even if only a few of them care about Science. The laws of conservation of energy, the laws of thermodynamics, basic human intelligence and rationality have been brought to the guillotine. The sentence was carried out by a team of ‘engineers’ from Khairpur, talk show hosts, their production teams and unscientifically leaning ‘renowned scientists’ brought as expert commentators.
‘Engineer’ Agha Waqar and his team have invented the magic pill which will solve all the world’s – but first Pakistan’s energy problems. Lo, and behold, the ‘water kit’! It has already got the nod of approval from a few ministers, a ‘report’ of some sort is due in two weeks on it and the heads of the Pakistan Council of Scientific; and Industrial Research and Pakistan Science Foundation are believers too.
The ‘Engineer’ behind the revolution has already told us that like any patriot, he has refused huge monetary ‘offers’ from various countries (names thrown in for greater effect at times), that he has come to the public without securing any patent because he wants to use it for public good, that he surely feels threatened by the global oil and gas lobby, that he can modify that ‘water kit’ for use on all things (yes, railway engines included) and that revolution is ready to be commercialised. No peer reviewed journals, no scientific method – it works.
Ludicrous Claims
The ‘Engineer’ claimed the following about his revolutionary ‘water kit’:
?    An ordinary car cover a distance of 40km on a single liter of water
?    An ordinary motorcycle cover a distance of 150km on a single liter of water
?    A 1kVA generator can be run for upto 2 hours using a single liter of water (thereby producing, at ordinary power factors, ~1.5kW-h of energy)
Various conflicting claims made in between on three TV shows ranged from:
?    The ‘water kit’ can be used on any kind of water
?    Distilled or bottled water should be used
?    Electrolysis is done using the car battery
?    Electrolysis is done using a separate battery that can be recharged by the car’s alternator
?    Electrolysis takes up anywhere between 1 per cent to very little of the battery’s peak amperage and does not drain the battery
?    Electrolysis takes half the power that an ordinary car stereo takes
?    Electrodes used are capacitors separated by a dielectric
?    The ‘bubbler’ controls flow of gases
?    The modified ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) burns ‘HHO’
?    The hydrogen produced from electrolysis can be stored and is produced at a rate good enough that constant production is not necessary and hence battery drain not an issue
?    The gas mixture used in the engine is called ‘HHO’ and is more efficient as a fuel than anything known to mankind
?    The combustion of hydrogen is twice as heat efficient as high octane gasoline and the car can reach a top speed twice that it would on gasoline
?    The car can reach it’s top speed on ‘water kit’ and is not held back like CNG
The cost of this revolution: Around Rs. 40,000 for a passenger car. He did not forget to mention that he had to take loans of around Rs 15 million to ‘develop’ the ‘water kit’.
As much as the ‘Engineer’ believed in his device, I believe most certainly that visible stupidity and the quackest of quack science do not necessitate rebuttals. If anyone were to suggest that he or she had found a radical cure to cancer or AIDS: the use of four strong punches on the affected portion with knuckles covered in rice paper, it would not require a scientific rebuttal. The Law of Conservation of Energy really cannot be challenged by a water filter with electrodes attached to a rubber tube. But since the ‘magar gaari toh chalti hai
’ argument was being made again and again on TV, it seems like this does require some form of rebuttal.
Here are some quick comments on some of the claims made:
?    Can you run an internal combustion engine on hydrogen? Yes, you can modify an existing one to do so.
?    Can you run a car on hydrogen? Yes, you can. Hydrogen powered cars are even commercially produced now. But they are mostly hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and not hydrogen ICE vehicles.
?    Can you run a car on hydrogen produced from electrolysis? Yes, you can. You can produce hydrogen from electrolysis and you can use it in an ICE to power a vehicle.
?    Is it efficient? Hell, no. Electrolysis is an extremely energy intensive process. Numerous efforts have been to radically improve the efficiency, but huge barriers remain.
As should be known to anyone with secondary school knowledge of chemistry, distilled water is not really conductive. Distilled water in fact has a conductivity of 1,000 to 10,000 times less than tap water. Also, electrodes are supposed to be good conductors, highly conductive metals. I have no idea where capacitors came from. Moreover, you will not find the term ‘HHO’ being used for a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gases, or the term ‘brown gas’ being used for it outside quack circles. It is used exclusively by the water-fuel, HHO mileage enhancer crowd. Just google the terms and you’ll see hundreds of ‘water kit’ likes and mileage enhancement attachments being sold by quacks all across the globe.
The central idea is to use electrolysis to produce Hydrogen to fuel the car, and hence the entire process is dependent on the efficiency of electrolysis. As should be known to anyone with middle school scientific knowledge, you cannot just break down water into components and get energy from combustion to reform them without any loss of energy. What was most amazing was that, the ‘Engineer’ was not just claiming 100 per cent efficiency, but reiterating that he was able to get ‘extra energy’ from the system (hidden in a secret vault by the water molecule and released only to those who believe in the power of the ‘water kit’?).
Energy from the magical pill
There are around 55.56 moles of water in one liter. A liter of water – 55.56 moles of H20 – would produce 55.56 moles of H2 and 55.56/2 moles of O2 during electrolysis. The energy released when water is reformed is 286 kJ/mol (aka the enthalpy of combustion) – assuming liquid water and not steam, which it would be in an engine, thereby reducing energy produced even further as 241 kJ/mol for that). For 55.56 moles, this means 15,890 kJ of energy is released.
When hydrogen (or ‘HHO’ as the ‘Engineer’ claimed) is spent in the engine – reforming H2O in the process, energy is released in the combustion process (covalent bonds are formed as atoms approach each other, lowering energy).
A car consuming 100 horsepower would require 100*745.7 Joules/second of energy. So a 100HP car would require 74570 Joules/second or 74.5 kJ/second of energy to power it. From our earlier figures, the energy from one liter of water could power a 100HP car for – given a 100 per cent efficiency electrolytic conversion and combustion – for a total of 213 seconds, or just about 3 minutes and 31 seconds. Not for 40km. I have ignored the altogether important requirements for minimum gas flow rate into the engine. These things simply cannot feed hungry engines with the amount of hydrogen required to run them. That is why hydrogen cars use liquid hydrogen filled from a filling station like gasoline, and not produce hydrogen from water inside a car. Also, water is an incompressible fluid (not perfectly, but very minimal compressibility). You can’t just store a large amount of it in a small tank.
I would at this moment like to state that even now I am not confident that car was still solely running on hydrogen produced from electrolysis. The math just does not add up. Surely the 0.75 liter bottle of war loaded into the ‘water kit’ could not have powered the car for the drives it took on TV. Or maybe there was residual hydrogen in the ‘tube’ that was lying in the back seat of the car.
After wasting energy on breaking down water into Hydrogen and Oxygen you could possibly – in real world and not the make-belief world of ‘water kit’ – power your car from a liter of water for maybe about half a minute. I would take even that figure with a huge pinch of salt. And remember, the battery will have to be recharged for the energy spent in electrolysis.
To break down liquid water into it’s components using electrolysis requires 237.2 kJ/mol in the form of electricity and 48.6 kJ/mol in the form of added heat. For a liter of water, this would require 131,79 kJ from electric power plus added heat (again, 100 per cent efficiency). This means 3.66 kW-h of electricity (cost of electricity from the grid in Pakistan is ~ Rs 9/kW-h these days for comparison). A 12V, 50A-h battery can only manage 600W-h or 0.6kW-h, not 3.66kW-h in anyway.
A hint of caution: Use of pure Oxygen in an ICE is itself dangerous, as Oxygen being highly reactive can fire up low ignition temperature lubricants and other materials deposited in the pathway. Enriched oxygen can increase efficiency by a small factor on itself in ICEs and ICEs for hydrogen use an air mixture.
‘Engineer’ Waqar’s “trade secret” as he said on TV was being able to produce an amount of Hydrogen necessary to run an engine from water which nobody had done before as they had not done their calculations (paraphrasing translation of his words on Dunya TV
’s ‘Kyun’). With ‘extra energy’.
Towards the second appearance on Hamid Mir’s show, a head-shaking and visibly angry (at the public promotion of scientific illiteracy) Dr. Ata explained to the show’s host and guests that hydrogen is commercially produced mostly from natural gas (through the process of hydrocarbon steam reforming) and only a very small percentage is produced from the electrolysis of water (this method is 3 to 10 times more expensive than steam reforming). Upon hearing this, the ‘Engineer’ first laid upon Dr. Ata a revelation that the chemical formula of water is H2O (Nobel Prize in Chemistry!), and before he could give us more gems, the host interrupted because this was a ‘technical behis
’ (technical argument). If a scientific argument wasn’t the whole point of the show, then you’d wonder what it was?
Unscientific Scientists
The saddest part of the saga is not that the production teams from television channels were fooled or holier than thou talk show hosts were fooled or that even a few politicians were fooled but that the Chairman of the country’s biggest scientific research organisation sat there and had brought a few Google search results not to say that the idea is ludicrous and basic Physics shouldn’t be made fun of on television like this but to say that the idea was not but new and it has already been done (the water powered car scam is decades old with numerous fraudsters sent behind bars for financial fraud in various countries).
But it wasn’t just the PCSIR Chairman. The ‘water kit’ was earlier presented to the country’s apex scientific research funding organisation – Pakistan Science Foundation – and somehow it got a seal of approval from them. It is to get ‘support’ from the public kitty as well. As per ‘Engineer’ Waqar (on Dunya TV
), he apparently gave a presentation to the PAEC  (Why?). The PAEC has had Jinn energy experts before. A presentation was given at the Pakistan Engineering Council as well, where apparently no objections were raised on the cruelty shown towards basic Physics.
Then there was the Mohsin-e-Pakistan
, who vociferously supported the idea on television, suggested it was practical, even when the ‘Engineer’ was busy telling us that the laws of thermodynamics can be altered and that experimentation precedes theory always. The Mohsin-e-Pakistan was asked for his opinion because he’s a ‘renowned scientist’. Not that he’s more renown for proliferation of centrifuges, he’s actually a metallurgist and not a nuclear physicist like he’s usually mentioned in the media.
All this while, poor Dr Ata-ur-Rehman (himself of HAARP conspiracy fame though) could be seen helplessly trying to talk sense into the host but his efforts were in vain. The host believed – most vehemently – that he was giving necessary coverage to a magic pill required to solve all problems.
On another show, Samar Mubarikmand (of one terawatts from Thar Coal fame – notwithstanding money already spent on UCG without much results) was supportive of the idea and seemed enthusiastic about it, just suggesting that there are safety concerns, but not feasibility ones. The Chairman of the PSF addressed a press conference with the ‘Engineer’ who wants to sue Dr. Ata for defamation. Even the military sent two officials to meet Agha Waqar (‘Water Kit’ powered Al-Khalid?). There aren’t enough tears in the world that can be shed on such a state of science, and the respect for it. Meanwhile, Hamid Mir, Arshad Sharif and Talat Hussain had become free energy suppression conspiracy theory activists and perpetual motion machine believers.
Radical ‘Water Kit’ Science
The only logical conclusion of the ‘water fuel’ saga can be that nuclear fusion takes place inside the engine, thereby producing the missing energy required to run a car from an on-board water tank using electrolysis. With that, ‘Engineer’ Waqar & Co. would have proven cold fusion as well.
When I was a kid, the national daily Nawa-e-Waqt
ran a story in it’s Sunday magazine that an ‘inventor’ from Faisalabad had designed a car that ran on  – not water, not air – but kashish-e-saqqal. Yes, a car that ran on gravity! To this day, I wonder if the said car just rolled downhill.
As Abdus Salam’s tombstone is edited by a District Magistrate’s orders and his existence removed from collective memory, we can celebrate ‘Engineer’ Waqar Ahmed who has done something more important than contributing immensely to the standard model of particle physics: destroyed the laws of thermodynamics and the law of conservation of energy.
The good thing is science doesn’t need protection from Pakistani scammers, junk inventors  and rabid media. It is evidence based. It involves rigorous testing. It is replicable. It does not work on ‘chalti to hai
’ arguments and hyperventilating appeals made from talk show hosts.
As the world discusses the economics of a hydrogen economy, how to store and transport it safely, and how to use it effectively, Pakistan is busy with the ‘water kit’. Meanwhile in India, a string theorist just landed the newly inaugurated Yuri Milner Fundamental Physics Prize. The prize money? $3 million. Ashoke Sen can buy a couple million ‘water kits’ from that. But surely, he’s wiser than that.
The writer would like to be known as a professional skeptic.
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
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Russia tests faster space docking route - The News International

MOSCOW: An unmanned Russian cargo ship docked with the International Space Station (ISS) in a record time, officials said on Thursday, taking just under six hours from launch to complete the journey.

In the past, the journey has taken two days. While the test flight was with an unmanned cargo spacecraft, if the new docking technique proves reliable it will dramatically cut the amount of time cosmonauts spend aboard the Soyuz spacecraft on their way to the space station.
The Progress M-16M, loaded with more than 2,600 kilogrammes of fuel, oxygen and other supplies linked up with the ISS at 05:18 am Moscow time (0118 GMT).
A Soyuz-U rocket carrying the cargo vessel had blasted into space from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 23:35 pm Wednesday (1935 GMT). “The docking between the cargo ship and the ISS was performed according to a four-orbit scheme for the first time in history,” said the Russian Mission Control Centre.
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How To Build a Better Sand Castle - National Geographic

How does one make a sand castle that is strong enough for those extra crenellations? By using the correct mix of sand and water. Researchers at the Amsterdam University found that a mixture of sand and one percent water is the ideal for making sand castles. Daniel Bonn, a physicist, believes with this mixture one can build castle up to twenty feet high.
“Here we investigated the stability of wet sand columns to account for the maximum height of sandcastles. We find that the columns become unstable to elastic buckling under their own weight. This allows to account for the maximum height of the sand column; it is found to increase as the 2/3 power of the base radius of the column.
”
In other words, it’s about one teaspoon of water per pound of sand.
For all the latest science news, check out the National Geographic’s twice-weekly news rundown, EarthCurrent.
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Drone that could find the city of gold - The Nation

A NEW drone system that could map archeological sites in minutes is ready for its first field tests in a remote region of Peru.
The Aurora Flight Sciences unmanned aerial vehicle, developed at Vanderbilt University, will be used to create 3D maps of the former Inca settlement of Mawchu Llacta.
The project, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Vanderbilt archaeologist Steven Wernke and engineering professor Julie Adams, is hoped to slash the time it takes to survey archaeological sites.
They call it SUAVe - for Semi-autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. It was partially financed by an Interdisciplinary Discovery Grant from Vanderbilt.
‘It can take two or three years to map one site in two dimensions,’ Mr Wernke said. ‘The SUAVe (pronounced SWAH-vey) system should transform how we map large sites that take several seasons to document using traditional methods.
‘It will provide much higher resolution imagery than even the best satellite imagery, and it will produce a detailed three-dimensional model.’
The SUAVe system is compact and is designed to be easy to use. ‘You will unpack it, specify the area that you need it to cover and then launch it,’ Mr Wernke added.
‘When it completes capturing the images, it lands and the images are downloaded, matched into a large mosaic, and transformed into a map.’
The algorithms developed for the project allow the SUAVe system to specify the flight pattern to compensate for factors such as the wind speed, the angle of the sun and photographic details like image overlap and image resolution, Prof Adams said.
‘The only way for this system to be cost-effective is for it to be easy enough to operate that you don’t need an engineer on every site,’ she added. ‘It has to be useable without on-site technical help.’
Tests are scheduled from mid-July to mid-August at the abandoned colonial era town of Mawchu Llacta in Peru, and plans call to return next year after any issues that arise are addressed in the lab.
Built in the 1570s at a former Inca settlement and mysteriously abandoned in the 19th century, the village of Mawchu is a 45-minute hike for the team from the nearby village of Tuti. Mawchu Llacta is composed of standing architecture arranged in regular blocks covering about 25 football fields square.
‘Archaeology is a spatial discipline,’ Mr Wernke said. ‘We depend on accurate documentation of not just what artifacts were used in a given time period, but how they were used in their cultural context.
‘In this sense, SUAVe can provide a fundamental toolset of wide significance in archaeological research.’
Mr Wernke hopes that the new technology will allow many archaeological sites to be catalogued very quickly, since many are being wiped away by development and time.
‘The SUAVe system should be a way to create a digital archival registry of archaeological sites before it’s too late,’ he said. ‘It will likely create the far more positive problem of having so much data that it will take some time go through it all properly.’
SUAVe could also have other applications, including the tracking of the progress of global warming and as a tool for first responders at disaster sites.
‘The device would be an excellent tool for evaluating the site of a major crisis such as Sept. 11 to decide how to deploy lifesaving resources more effectively,’ Prof Adams said.                  –MO
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Turkmenistan to plant huge forest in Aral Sea region - Tengrinews

Aral sea. Photo courtesy of acidcow.com Turkmenistan is allocating tens of millions of dollars to plant trees in a region neighbouring the stricken Aral Sea, AFP reports citing state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan.
"A project has been developed to target environmental problems in the Aral Sea zone, which entails planting greenery over 20,000 hectares on the eastern bank of the Sarygamysh lake," the newspaper said.
The Sarygamysh lake in northern Turkmenistan lies several hundred kilometres to the south of the Aral Sea, a body of water that was almost totally wiped out after rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigating cotton in Soviet times.
Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has already approved the project, saying "tens of millions of dollars have been allocated" to improving the environment in the Dashoguz province, the newspaper said.
The dramatically disappearing sea on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan has been replaced by salty desert in one of the world's biggest environmental disasters which affects millions of people in the region.
The isolated Central Asian state of Turkmenistan will prevent desertification and fight strong winds from the Aral Sea" by planting a "large forest zone" of deciduous trees and shrubs, the newspaper said.
Views: 486    Comments: 1 Print Turkmenistan is allocating tens of millions of dollars to plant trees in a region neighbouring the stricken Aral Sea, AFP reports citing state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan.
"A project has been developed to target environmental problems in the Aral Sea zone, which entails planting greenery over 20,000 hectares on the eastern bank of the Sarygamysh lake," the newspaper said.
The Sarygamysh lake in northern Turkmenistan lies several hundred kilometres to the south of the Aral Sea, a body of water that was almost totally wiped out after rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigating cotton in Soviet times.
Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has already approved the project, saying "tens of millions of dollars have been allocated" to improving the environment in the Dashoguz province, the newspaper said.
The dramatically disappearing sea on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan has been replaced by salty desert in one of the world's biggest environmental disasters which affects millions of people in the region.
The isolated Central Asian state of Turkmenistan will prevent desertification and fight strong winds from the Aral Sea" by planting a "large forest zone" of deciduous trees and shrubs, the newspaper said.
http://en.tengrinews.kz/environment/Turkmenistan-to-plant-huge-forest-in-Aral-Sea-region--11884/

Turkmenistan to plant huge forest in Aral Sea region

Turkmenistan is allocating tens of millions of dollars to plant trees in a region neighbouring the stricken Aral Sea, AFP reports citing state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan.

"A project has been developed to target environmental problems in the Aral Sea zone, which entails planting greenery over 20,000 hectares on the eastern bank of the Sarygamysh lake," the newspaper said.

The Sarygamysh lake in northern Turkmenistan lies several hundred kilometres to the south of the Aral Sea, a body of water that was almost totally wiped out after rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigating cotton in Soviet times.

Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has already approved the project, saying "tens of millions of dollars have been allocated" to improving the environment in the Dashoguz province, the newspaper said.

The dramatically disappearing sea on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan has been replaced by salty desert in one of the world's biggest environmental disasters which affects millions of people in the region.

The isolated Central Asian state of Turkmenistan will prevent desertification and fight strong winds from the Aral Sea" by planting a "large forest zone" of deciduous trees and shrubs, the newspaper said.

http://en.tengrinews.kz/environment/Turkmenistan-to-plant-huge-forest-in-Aral-Sea-region--11884/

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Mars mission confidence - Oman Daily Observer

By Kerry Sheridan — NASA says all is well ahead of its nail-biting mission to Mars, with its most advanced robotic rover poised to hunt for clues about past life and water on Earth’s nearest planetary neighbour. On a two-year journey to seek out signs of environments that once sustained life, the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory and the largest and most sophisticated rover ever built, Curiosity, is set for 1:31 am on August 6 (0531 GMT).

“The mission is going extremely well,” said Pete Theisinger, director of the Engineering and Science Directorate at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Everything is really on track... so we are really good to go three days out.” If all continues to go well, the unmanned rover will touch down in Gale Crater, one of the lowest points on Mars, where scientists believe the waters of ancient rivers flowing downhill once pooled.
The crater also contains a mountain that rises higher than any in the 48 continental US states, and should provide loads of information about the past through its sedimentary layers. “When we do (land), we will have started an era of a whole new dimension of space exploration on the surface of another planet, and this is the dimension of deep time,” said John Grotzinger, project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory.
Describing Mars as a “planet that is kind of like our cousin,” Grotzinger said he was hopeful that many questions would be answered on the mission, including how the once wet planet became so dry.
The mountain, Mount Sharp, is near Mars’ equator and may hold as much as a billion years of history in its layers, dating back some three to four billion years ago “when the planet may have been more like Earth,” he told reporters. “We’ve got some cool geology to do ahead of us.”
A complicated rocket-powered sky crane manoeuvre to lower the 900-kilo vehicle onto the surface will be tested in real conditions for the first time.
Doug McCuistion, director of Nasa’s Mars Exploration Programme, said the team would do its best to “stick the landing.” “This is a pretty amazing feat getting ready to happen,” he said.
Approaching Mars’ atmosphere at a speed of about 21,120 km per hour, or 5,900 metres per second, the spacecraft must separate, a supersonic parachute must deploy, then a rocket-powered sky crane must activate to power the vehicle closer to the surface before lowering it with nylon tethers.
“It looks a little bit crazy,” Adam Steltzner, chief engineer at JPL, said as he described the final moments before touchdown, which Nasa has detailed in a video called “Seven Minutes of Terror.”
“I promise you, it is the least crazy of the methods you could use to land a rover the size of Curiosity on Mars,” Steltzner told reporters, adding that using airbags or trying a platform landing were ruled out. “We have become quite fond of it and we are fairly confident that Sunday night will be a good night for us.”
One key concern is the single parachute on board, he added. Most human jumpers would carry a backup, but carrying two 150-kg parachutes was not possible for this mission.
It may be 15-20 minutes after the landing itself until Nasa knows exactly what happened to its rover, which is twice the size of its vehicles Spirit and Opportunity. They launched in 2004 and landed with the help of airbags.
Scientists are also monitoring the weather on Mars and will give an update today. Generally, this is a cold time of year on the Red Planet, with lots of water-ice clouds, but the potential for dust storms remains a concern.
The mobile toolkit on the rover is expected to begin its work within weeks of the landing, but one instrument for detecting radiation has already been collecting data for 221 days that could inform a future human exploration mission to Mars.
“Our observations already are being used in planning for human missions,” said Don Hassler of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, principal investigator for Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD).
There were five radiation spikes from solar flares in that period, since the $2.5 billion project launched in late November 2011, an amount that Nasa said would make a “significant contribution to a Nasa astronaut’s career-limit radiation dose.”

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India to launch three satellites next month - Firstpost

Chennai, Aug 3 (IANS) India will launch three satellites next month and two more by the end of this year, said a senior official here.
“We will be launching Spot-6, a French satellite and a small Japanese satellite on board PSLV-C21 (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket, next month,” P.S.Veeraraghavan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), told IANS.
The third is a communication satellite – GSAT-10 – on-board Ariane rocket from Kourou in French Guiana.
The Thiruvananthapuram-based VSCC is part of India’s space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Veeraraghavan said the French satellite is expected to be in India soon while the Japanese satellite is already at ISRO’s launch centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, around 80 km from here.
ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix Corporation Limited (Antrix) has entered into a commercial Launch Services Agreement with Astrium SAS, a company under EADS, France, for launching SPOT-6, an advanced remote sensing satellite.
What is interesting is that the 800-kg SPOT-6 built by Astrium SAS will be the heaviest third party payload that ISRO will be carrying after the 350-kg Italian satellite Agile it put into orbit in 2007.
As the total luggage will be around 815 kg, ISRO will be using its Core Alone variant of PSLV (rocket without its six strap on motors).
The mission will take ISRO’s total tally of ferrying foreign satellites to 29.
The Indian space agency in order to augment its communication transponder capacity-(automatic receivers and transmitters for communication and broadcast of signals) will be sending up GSAT-10.
The 3.4 tonne satellite will carry 12 Ku Band, 12 C Band and 12 Extended C Band transponders and GAGAN (global positioning satellite-GPS and GEO augmented navigation) payload.
According to Veeraraghavan, the space agency would launch SARAL satellite – an Indo-French initiative – using PSLV-C20 rocket sometime in October-November this year.
Agreeing that ISRO normally do not launch any rockets during that period, Veeraraghavan said if the weather is conducive the rocket could be sent up.
He said ISRO is also planning to launch GSAT-14 a small communication satellite by this December or January next year using its heavier rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).
The two ton GSAT-14 considered as the replacement for India’s the education satellite Edusat is configured with six Ku and six Extended C Band transponders.
In addition, the spacecraft also carries Ka band beacons, which are planned to be used to carry out studies related to rain and atmospheric effects on Ka band satellite communication links in Indian region.
ISRO will be flying the GSLV rocket this time with its own cryogenic engine. This will be the second GSLV rocket to fly with indigenous cryogenic engine. The first GSLV rocket that flew with indigenous cryogenic engine in 2010 was a failure.
Interestingly, ISRO will be flying a GSLV rocket after a gap of two years. In December 2010, another GSLV rocket with Russian made cryogenic engine was destroyed mid-air within a minute after lift off.
Veeraraghavan said ISRO will be testing its GSLV Mark III model next March but without the cryogenic engine.
“The mission is called X Mission. The rocket will have only the first two stages/engines powered by solid and liquid fuels. The subsystems for the cryogenic engine are being tested. The cryogenic engine is much bigger than the one that will power other GSLV,” Veeraraghavan said.
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