Month: June 2014

WASHINGTON (TIP): Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized ‘diamond’ about 900 light-years away in space, which is possibly the coldest, faintest white dwarf star ever detected. This ancient stellar remnant is so cool that its carbon has crystallised, forming — in effect — an Earth-size diamond in space.

The object is likely the same age as the Milky Way, approximately 11 billion years old. “It’s a really remarkable object. These things should be out there, but because they are so dim they are very hard to find,” said David Kaplan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Kaplan and his colleagues found this stellar gem using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Green Bank Telescope and Very Long Baseline Array, as well as other observatories. White dwarfs are very dense end-states of stars like our Sun that have collapsed to form an object approximately the size of Earth. Composed mostly of carbon and oxygen, white dwarfs cool and fade over billions of years.

Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, the superdense remains of massive stars that have exploded as supernovas. As neutron stars spin, lighthouse-like beams of radio waves, streaming from the poles of its powerful magnetic field, sweep through space. When one of these beams sweeps across Earth, radio telescopes can capture the pulse of radio waves. The pulsar companion to this white dwarf, dubbed PSR J2222- 0137, was the first object in this system to be detected. It was found using the GBT by Jason Boyles, then a graduate student at West Virginia University in Morgantown

The search for an affordable drug to treat hypertension without side effects has led scientists to the Indian kitchen. Some spices and condiments commonly used in Indian soups, curries and rasam, when taken in a specific proportion with white lotus petals, can bring down blood pressure, say scientists after an animal study done in Chennai.

Researchers found that Siddha drug ‘venthamarai chooranam,’ a mixture of cardamom, ginger, cumin seeds, long pepper (thippili), dill (sada kuppi), licorice (adimadhuram) and white lotus petal could bring down blood pressure in rats during laboratory experiments.

Excited by the finding published recently in science journal Experimental Biology and Medicine, doctors at the Sri Ramachandra University are now gearing up for a larger animal study and clinical trials of the Siddha drug. Genetically predisposed to hypertension, one in four Indians in cities suffer from the disorder. The incidence is about 15% in rural population.

Cardiologist Dr S Thanikachalam, who led the research, said: “Every time I see a patient’s case sheet, I underline four causes – smoking, diabetes, hypertension and obesity.” People with hypertension are mostly treated with allopathic drugs, but dropouts are high because many find the drugs expensive and some suffer from side effects. “So, we decided to look at the ancient Indian medical literature for answers,” he said.

Scientists first tried the Siddha powder on rats and found it effective. “When we gave this chooranam for 63 days and the blood pressure dropped,” said C Saravana Babu, a toxicologist who was a part of the research. Pathological reports showed the drug had made healthy changes in the genes, tissues and blood vessels, he said. The herbal medicine will be put to further animal and human test, before it can be given to humans, Dr Thanikachalam said.

During the study the doctors divided the rats into three groups – for the first the abdomen was cut and closed, for the second and third the scientists partially blocked blood supply to one of the kidneys. Two months after the surgery, most rats became hypertensive and they developed problems in the blood vessels, kidneys and heart. Scientists used special equipment that could measure blood pressure in rats’ tails.

While the second group was fed with a placebo, the third was orally fed venthamarai chooranam at a dosage of 400g per kilogram bodyweight for 63 days. “We started noticing changes from the third day. At the end of two months, the blood pressure was almost normal,” said Saravana Babu. But what surprised scientists was not just the change in blood pressure, but other actions as normalization of the carotid arteries and kidney. Scientists feel that the presence of an enzyme called eNOS enhanced nitric oxide level and helped carotid arteries.

“The inflammation in kidney was reversed in almost all animals. Pathological reports showed the drug make healthy changes in the genes, tissues and blood vessels,” he said. The drug has exhibited its anti-hypertensive properties, but doctors want to expand the animal study to see if this works in chronic conditions. “In these animals, hypertension was acute, as it developed after a surgery. We will have to test them on animals with chronic conditions,” said Dr Thanikachalam. “If that succeeds, we will begin our clinical trials. We hope it would offer cure to millions of people with hypertension,” he said.

Over the last few years, drones have been finding jobs in industry. They are used for gathering news, checking crops on farms, as well as photographing houses for real estate agents, and — at least in the imaginations of Amazon executives — drones will one day deliver packages to consumers.

Now, among the first mainstream uses for drones will be airborne selfies. Recently, a number of new products and social media services have popped up, in an effort to help people take better pictures and videos of themselves with the aid of a drone. Last week, two drones made their debuts on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter , both designed to allow people to shoot drone selfies, or dronies.

The Hexo Plus is compatible with a GoPro high definition camera and is billed as an “intelligent drone that follows and films you autonomously”. A competitor, called the AirDog, treats a drone like a dog on a leash, tracking and following you wherever you go and snapping video and pictures of you as you do action sports. Based on sales, consumers seem eager to buy these kinds of products.

Hexo Plus had hoped to raise $50,000 on Kickstarter. In three days, it passed $700,000. Air-Dog quickly flew past its $200,000 target, too. The drone selfie movement even had its modern Gilded Age moment when the Marquee Dayclub , at the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas, announced a new type of bottle service where patrons in bikinis at an outdoor pool can have their drinks delivered via a drone.

Then it’s time to smile for the camera as your drink delivery vehicle snaps a picture. The price is a cool $20,000. But take it from me, the drone craze is not all $20,000 bottle service . When I tried to fly a drone recently , it was as difficult as the first time I drove a car. I have crashed drones into the San Francisco Bay, concrete sidewalks, trees and walls. Drones sometimes crash into other people, too. In April, a runner at the West Australian triathlon was hit on the head by a drone that was being used to photograph the event.

MELBOURNE (TIP): Australian researchers have used photons — single particles of light — to simulate quantum particles travelling through time. University of Queensland researchers used photons to simulate quantum particles travelling through time and study their behaviour, possibly revealing bizarre aspects of modern physics.

“The question of time travel features at the interface between two of our most successful yet incompatible physical theories — Einstein’s general relativity and quantum mechanics,” said lead author and PhD student Martin Ringbauer, from UQ’s School of Mathematics and Physics.

“Einstein’s theory describes the world at the very large scale of stars and galaxies, while quantum mechanics is an excellent description of the world at the very small scale of atoms and molecules,” he said. Einstein’s theory suggests the possibility of travelling backwards in time by following a space-time path that returns to the starting point in space, but at an earlier time — a closed timelike curve.

This possibility has puzzled physicists and philosophers alike since it was discovered by Kurt Godel in 1949, as it seems to cause paradoxes in the classical world, such as the grandparents paradox, where a time traveller could prevent their grandparents from meeting, thus preventing the time traveller’s birth. This would make it impossible for the time traveller to have set out in the first place.

UQ physics professor Tim Ralph said it was predicted in 1991 that time travel in the quantum world could avoid such paradoxes. “The properties of quantum particles are ‘fuzzy’ or uncertain to start with, so this gives them enough wiggle room to avoid inconsistent time travel situations,” he said.