Once Mars also held water, more than Arctic Ocean

Scientists at NASA have measured signals from ancient water on Mars to estimate that 4.3 billion years ago, there was probably enough water to cover the entire Martian surface in a layer about 137 metres deep. More likely, this water accumulated in an ocean bigger than the size of Earth’s Arctic Ocean, covering almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere. This means at its deepest point it would have reaching down to more than 1.6 kilometres. And yep, that’s about as much water as you’d need to make an ideal environment for life.

“Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much water was lost to space,” lead researcher Geronimo Villanueva, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the US, said in a press release. “With this work, we can better understand the history of water on Mars.”

We know that water must have flowed across part of the Martian landscape at one point, because its sandy desert plains still carry the swirling marks it left behind. But just how much water hasn’t been an easy question to answer. 

To figure this out, Villanueva’s team worked with the world’s most powerful infrared telescopes, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the W.M. Keck Observatory and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, which allowed them to calculate the chemical signatures of two different forms of water in Mars’s atmosphere. One of these was just plain old H2O, but the other was HDO, or ‘heavy water’, which contains much more of the hydrogen isotope deuterium. While normal H2O is lost by Mars to outer space, the heavy water remains trapped in the Martian atmosphere. 

They calculated the ratio of both types of water across different seasons and areas on Mars. From this, they created an atmospheric map throughout a period of six years - or three years in Mars time - to recreate the microclimates and seasonal changes that would have occurred in Mars’s early years. 

“The compelling evidence for the primitive ocean adds to an emerging picture of Mars as a warm and wet world in its youth, which trickled with streams, winding river deltas, and long-standing lakes, soon after it formed 4.5 billion years ago,” Ian Sample writes for The Guardian. 

Publishing the results in Science, the researchers describe how they looked at the ratio of H2O and HDO in the planet’s north and south poles to find that they contained a significant amount of heavy water, which means these areas have lost a “tremendous" amount of H2O. How much? They’ve calculated that Mars must have lost a volume 6.5 times larger than the volume in its polar caps now, which means the ocean on early Mars must have held at least 20 million cubic kilometres.

“With Mars losing that much water, the planet was very likely wet for a longer period of time than was previously thought, suggesting it might have been habitable for longer,” one of the team, Michael Mumma, said in the press release.

It's discoveries like this that draw us, inch by inch, closer to a time when we might actually be able to recreate what life might have looked like on this once-temperate planet. And then eventually, what fate it met before the planet descended into the hostile, wind-swept desert it's now become. Scientists, we're counting on you!

Accordingly Mars would have been ideal for alien life.

No more waste water will be wasted now, technology to recycle waste water invented.

Do you remember that famous line from The Rime Of Ancient Mariner- "Water Water Everywhere nor a drop to drink"

To prevent mankind from facing such situation have you ever thought about converting waste water into fresh water? That too using less energy than waste water management.

A professor of Missouri University has devised a method to obtain fresh water after processing waste water, that too using less energy and minimal maintenance plus, this system can also be retrofitted with existing design of water treatment plant.

a professor of civil, architectural and environment engineering at Missouri S & T , Dr. Jianmin Wang, developed the system to save energy on the waste-water treatment process. "Nearly one percent of america's total energy produced is being consumed by waste water management"  Dr. Wang states

In most of  waste water facilities, the treatment plant uses energy to put air in the tanks. Microorganisms then feed on oxygen, at the level of 2 milligram oxygen per liter. This amount is adequate for microorganisms.

However, giving the microorganisms less than 2 milligrams per liter of oxygen extends their lives and increases their efficiency, all at a 30 percent less energy cost than the current method.

Beyond all this he has also developed a system called Alternating  Anaerobic-Oxic-(A30)Wang,  that removes pollutants from waste-water, along with nitrogen and phosphorus, without the use of chemicals. It also uses 10 percent less energy than current similar treatments. The accessibility of waste water can be increased By technologies like the A30.

Third system which Wang developed is an anaerobic digester, that turns waste water sludge into bio-gas.. It also operates itself, so requires less energy to work.

"Advances such as these demonstrated by Professor Wang represent the next wave of wastewater management," says Dr. Glen Daigger, past president of the International Water Association. "Given growing water and resource constraints on the planet, we must turn to sources such as used water - to both supplement our water supply and to do this with a reduced environment footprint."

Limpets teeth might be the world's strongest natural material

According to a new study Limpets teeth might be the strongest natural material of the world.It is found by the Researchers from the University of Portsmouth  that limpets -- small aquatic snail-like creatures with conical shells, possess teeth with a very strong biological structure.

With the use of atomic force microscopy they examined the small scale mechanical behavior of teeth. Atomic force microscopy is a method used to pull apart materials all the way down to the level of the atom.

The study as led by Professor Asa Barber from the University's School of Engineering. He said: "Nature is a wonderful source of inspiration for structures that have excellent mechanical properties. All the things we observe around us, such as trees, the shells of sea creatures and the limpet teeth studied in this work, have evolved to be effective at what they do.

"Until now we thought that spider silk was the strongest biological material because of its super-strength and potential applications in everything from bullet-proof vests to computer electronics but now we have discovered that limpet teeth exhibit a strength that is potentially higher."

His research concluded that the teeth contains a hard mineral goethite, which is formed in limpet as it grows.

He said: "Limpets need high strength teeth to rasp over rock surfaces and remove algae for feeding when the tide is in. We discovered that the fibres of goethite are just the right size to make up a resilient composite structure.

"This discovery means that the fibrous structures found in limpet teeth could be mimicked and used in high-performance engineering applications such as Formula 1 racing cars, the hulls of boats and aircraft structures.

"Engineers are always interested in making these structures stronger to improve their performance or lighter so they use less material."

The research also discovered that strength of limpet is independent of it's size.

"Generally a big structure has lots of flaws and can break more easily than a smaller structure, which has fewer flaws and is stronger. The problem is that most structures have to be fairly big so they're weaker than we would like. Limpet teeth break this rule as their strength is the same no matter what the size."

The technique to break a sample 100 times thinner than human hair is know till now, as the size of the research objet was saamThe material Professor Barber tested was almost 100 times thinner than the diameter of a human hair so the techniques used to break such a sample have only just been developed.

He said: "The testing methods were important as we needed to break the limpet tooth. The whole tooth is slightly less than a millimetre long but is curved, so the strength is dependent on both the shape of the tooth and the material. We wanted to understand the material strength only so we had to cut out a smaller volume of material out of the curved tooth structure."

Finding out about effective designs in nature and then making structures based on these designs is known as 'bioinspiration'.

Professor Barber said: "Biology is a great source of inspiration when designing new structures but with so many biological structures to consider, it can take time to discover which may be useful."

The research was published today in the Royal Society journal Interface

A rewritable paper(upto 20 times!) ,which uses light as an ink.

How many times you use a paper? Just once. Next time we use it as a paper aeroplane. But now you won't. Scientists have discovered a paper which can be used upto 20 times. News didn't end here, you don't even need ink to write on it. Imagine how many tree would be saved every year.
There is a special dye embedded in the paper that makes it printable and rewritable. As movement of electrons occurs due to chemical reaction, the dye goes from dark to clear and then back. (Electrons are the subatomic particles that orbit in the outer regions of an atom.) The color change chemical undergo redox reaction. Redox is short for reduction and oxidation.

Due to oxidation of dye in new paper, it appears blue, red or green.(What color depends on which dye is in the paper.) When the dye on some parts is reduced, color on those areas disappears. It is due to the control of these two reaction which makes it possible to print,erase and reuse  it. This technology can also be used in conventional paper, glass given that it contains redox dyes and other chemical compund.

Self driven cart by Leonardo Da Vinci (Almost a Robot)

Have you ever thought when did man thought of becoming lazy and leaving the work for machines? Well its difficult to tell so.

But we know who made the first ever "almost robot" of history. The man was extraordinarily talented Leonardo da Vinci.

The drawings obtained from Vinci's notes didn't revealed the whole design. But researcher concluded that  it used a spring-driven mechanism similar to that used in clock. Inside drum-shaped casing there is 'mainspring' that can be wound by hand. Uncoiling spring drives the cart forward. The steering can be programmed through a series of blocks set among the gears, though the fact that the cart could only make right turns would have limited its usability.

Although Leonardo considered this as some kind of a toy, but it's clear that if it would have been made, its would have shown many results.

Ponder. Can you do that?

Artificial intelligence is coming out from science fiction: Robot with real brain

Scientists upload a worm's mind into a Lego robot

The brainwaves of a parasitic roundworm are now driving a Lego robot.

When you consider it, the mind is just a gathering of electrical signs. On the off chance that we can figure out how to inventory those then, in principle, you can transfer somebody's psyche onto a machine, permitting them to live perpetually as an advanced manifestation of awareness, much the same as in the Johnny Depp film Transcendence. 

Anyhow its not simply sci-fi. Granted, researchers aren't anyplace close near to attaining to such  deed with people (and regardless of the fact that they could, the morals would be really full), yet now an universal group of specialists have figured out how to do only that with the roundworm Encephalitis style. 

C. tastefulness is a little nematodes that have been widely considered by researchers - we know the majority of their qualities and their sensory system has been examined commonly.

"It is claimed that the robot behaved in ways that are similar to observed C. elegance. Stimulation of the nose stopped forward motion. Touching the anterior and posterior touch sensors made the robot move forward and back accordingly. Stimulating the food sensor made the robot move forward."

"We know we have the correct number of neurons, we have them connected together in roughly the same way that the animal has, and they're organized in the same way in that there are some neurons that give out information and other neurons that receive information."

"We feel we've gone a long way down the road, but we still know that there's a lot that's been left out and there are a lot of assumptions -- at the moment it represents one point in a line of iterative improvements.

"I'd say we're only 20 to 30% of the way towards where we need to get."

"Something with wheels that is rigid is an interesting application but it still falls short of reproducing the anatomy of the worm," Larson said.

But major question comes, is artificial intelligence comes through fiction, if yes then our future is really in danger or ultimate safe.

Scientist are trying our desired fiction into real but this time goal is to transfer living into computer simulation.

World advanced fighter aircraft: Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II

F-35 Lightning II is the only international fifth generation multirole fighter plane in the world. The extreme agility and stealth features along with integrated sensor package and modern weaponry provide the F-35 with a tactical edge over all other fighter aircraft.
The single-seat fighter is armed with a range of weapon systems, such as Sidewinder and Storm Shadow, as well as Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs).

Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor of the F-35, while its major partners include Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Pratt & Whitney.
The F-35 completed its maiden flight in December 2006. The three F-35 variants, including the conventional take-off and landing (CTOL), short take-off / vertical landing (STOVL) and carrier variant (CV), will replace the A-10 and F-16 of the US Air Force, the F/A-18 of the US Navy, the F/A-18 and AV-8B Harrier of the US Marine Corps and various fighters of other allied nations.

The Brave New World of Windows 10

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Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a slew of new features and capabilities coming in Windows 10: the convergence of the desktop and mobile; the advent of the killer universal app; more power and features for personal digital assistant Cortana, which will be on mobile as well as desktops and laptops; improvements to maps; a new browser, code-named "Project Spartan"; a strong emphasis on gaming; and holographic computing.

Windows 10 will be offered as a free upgrade to owners of devices running Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 for one year after it's released, said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft's Operating Systems Group.

A new build of Windows 10 will be released to Windows Insiders next week, and "after the Seahawks win the Super Bowl, we will be releasing our first build of Windows 10 on phones," Myerson announced. Super Bowl 2015 will be held Feb. 1.
"What is most notable is that we were shown five Microsoft platforms today, and they're all moving towards this single universal app direction, and that's a positive for developers, even though the process of tailoring it for those platforms is still a bit unknown," said Wes Miller, senior analyst at Directions on Microsoft.
"I imagine we'll see more at Build," he told TechNewsWorld.

It's a Holo New World

Perhaps the most dazzling announcement pertained to holographic computing.
Windows 10 "will be our best enterprise platform ever, simplifying management and deployment for IT and working seamlessly with existing enterprise applications," Myerson said.
Security will be beefed up: The hardware component "will protect against techniques used in the latest series of attacks," he pledged.
The universal app approach lets developers target devices ranging from maker boards to Xbox One to PCs to laptops to tablets to smartphones with one platform and one app store, Myerson pointed out. "We're making it as seamless as possible for developers to reach a large customer base."
Further, Windows 10 will be offered as a service, he disclosed, so "the question 'what version are you running?' will cease to make sense." That will make things even easier for devs.
Microsoft also is integrating IP messaging systems, particularly Skype, into its messaging app.
Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint will be incorporated into Windows 10 for mobile devices, and will work exactly as they do on PCs.

"What I'm hearing is pretty compelling in terms of the convergence of tablet and phone," IDC Program Director Al Hilwa told TechNewsWorld. "The availability of Office in a much more workable form on phablets and phones can be a game changer for how we travel and use smartphones for authoring content."

An Xbox app will be on every Windows 10 PC and mobile device. PC, smartphone and tablet users will be able to play games live with Xbox One users.
Windows 10 will include Direct X 12, which will increase performance by up to 50 percent over Direct X 11, Myerson said. It also will have half the power consumption of Direct X 11. Hundreds of studios, including Epic and Unity, support Direct X 12.
"Our worldview ... is not about mobility of any single device, but about the mobility of experiences across devices," declared Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "We want to make Windows 10 the most loved release of Windows."
Nadella underscored Microsoft's drive into mobile, saying it "will be doing some fantastic work, from flagship phones to affordable phones."
Microsoft "is definitely hoping that Windows 10 changes the game for them," Directions on Microsoft's Miller said.

Early Reactions

Nadella's stance on mobility "is about changing the battle to the quality of the experience, which Microsoft should be able to address better than anyone else," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
As for the emphasis on gaming, Microsoft is "making this a corporate initiative," he told TechNewsWorld.
"Sony struggled with just the Xbox division," Enderle pointed out, "Now they'll be facing the entire consumer side of Microsoft and will have to significantly up their game." 

Now freehand diagrams can be made perfectly

If you ask someone if they could draw a perfect circle freehand the answer is likely to be ‘no’. Well now you can surprise them with this simple technique that with minimal practice, will allow you to draw a pretty perfect circle.

DaveHax has a video on his Youtube channel showing you just how simple it is. The idea is to use a part of your hand or fingers as a pivot point, then keeping the pen stationary you simply rotate the paper with your free hand. Using different areas of your hand as the pivot point allows you to draw different sized circles, perfect for jotting down notes and such in lectures and meetings.

Three nearly Earth-size planets found orbiting nearby star: One in 'Goldilocks' zone

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the 'Goldilocks' zone -- where surface temperatures could be moderate enough for liquid water and perhaps life to exist. The star ranks among the top 10 nearest stars known to have transiting planets. The star's close enough for astronomers to study the planets' atmospheres to determine if they could possibly be conducive to life.