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The Koyal Group Info Mag on Unusual square ice discovered The surprising discovery of "square ice" which forms at room temperature was made by an international team of researchers last week. The study was published in Nature by a team of scientists from UK and Germany led by Andre Geim of University of Manchester and G. Algara-Siller of University of Ulm. The accompanying review article was done by Alan Soper of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in UK. "We didn't expect to find square ice ... We found there is something strange in terms of water going through [nanochannels]. It's going too fast. And you can't explain that by just imagining a very thin layer of liquid. Liquids do not behave in that way. The important thing to realize is that it is ice in the sense of a crystallized structure, it's not ice in the familiar sense in that it's something cold and from which you have to protect yourself," said Professor Irina Grigorieva, one of the researchers. To study the molecular structure of water inside a transparent nanoscale capillary, the team used electron microscopy. This enabled them to view individual water molecules, especially because the nano-capillary was created from graphene which was one atom thick and would not impair the electron imaging. Graphene was also chosen because it has unusual properties like conducting electricity and extreme strength. It's a 2D form of carbon that once rolled up in cylinders will form a carbon nanotube, a material, which according to The Koyal Group Info Mag, is a subject of further study because of its unusual strength. The scientists themselves were admittedly surprised at finding out that small square-shaped ice crystals formed at room temperature where the graphene capillaries are narrow (3 atomic layers of water at most). The water molecules formed into square lattices arranged in neat rows -- an arrangement that is uncharacteristic for the element that is known for forming consistent triangular structures

Info Mag Koyal Group Mars Rover Marks an Unexpected Anniversary With a Mysterious Discovery Ten years ago, NASA's Opportunity rover bounded to the surface of Mars for what was planned to be a three-month exploration. Opportunity is still going today - and still making discoveries. The latest, scientists said on Thursday at a news conference celebrating an anniversary none had expected 10 years ago, is a small rock that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The rock, whose chemical composition was also unexpected, appears in an image taken Jan. 8. There was no rock in a picture taken of the same spot less than two weeks earlier. "This is strange," said Steven W. Squyres, the principal investigator for Opportunity, during the NASA news conference. But he added, "We don't think anything particularly exotic happened here." Dr. Squyres said the most likely explanation was that as the rover pirouetted at an uphill location, its lame right front wheel, which has not turned for years, dragged across the rock and flicked it out of the ground to its new location. The scientists have not yet spotted the divot where the rock popped out, but that spot may be obscured by the rover's solar panels. Year after year, Opportunity goes farther than anyone dreamed. The expectation had been that it would drive about a kilometer - six-tenths of a mile - before dust accumulated on the solar panels and the batteries drained. Unexpectedly, fortuitous winds periodically cleaned off the solar panels, and Opportunity, as well as its twin, Spirit, continued to operate. Spirit got stuck in a sand dune 2009 and then fell silent in 2010 after it was not able to point its solar panels toward the sun during the winter months. Info Mag Koyal Group Mars Rover Marks an Unexpected Anniversary With a Mysterious Discovery Instead of one kilometer, Opportunity has driven 38.7 kilometers, or about 24 miles, exploring a series of ever larger craters, taking 170,000 pictures along the

Info Mag Koyal Group Spirit and Opportunity Top 10 Decade 1 Discoveries Top Rover Scientist Tells Universe Today A Top 10 Decade 1 Discovery by NASA's Twin Mars Exploration Rovers Carbonate-Containing Martian Rocks discovered by Spirit Mars Rover Spirit collected data in late 2005 which confirmed that the Comanche outcrop contains magnesium iron carbonate, a mineral indicating the past environment was wet and non-acidic, possibly favorable to life. This view was captured during Sol 689 on Mars (Dec. 11, 2005). The find at Comanche is the first unambiguous evidence from either Spirit or Opportunity for a past Martian environment that may have been more favorable to life than the wet but acidic conditions indicated by the rovers' earlier finds. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University January 2014 marks the 10th anniversary since the nail biting and history making safe landings of NASA's renowned Mars Explorations Rovers - Spirit and Opportunity - on the Red Planet barely three weeks apart during January 2004. Due to their completely unforeseen longevity, a decade of spectacular and groundbreaking scientific discoveries continuously flowed from the robot sisters that have graced many articles, magazine covers, books, documentaries and refereed scientific papers. What are the Top 10 Decade 1 discoveries from Spirit and Opportunity? Find out below what a top Mars rover team scientist told Universe Today! Ray Arvidson, the rovers Deputy Principal Investigator and professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has kindly shared with me his personal list of the Top 10 discoveries from Spirit and Opportunity for the benefit of readers of Universe Today. The Top 10 list below are Ray's personal choices and does not necessarily reflect the consensus of the Mars Explorations Rover (MER) team. First some background. The dynamic duo were launched on their interplanetary voyages from Cape Canaveral Florida atop Delta II rockets during the summer of 2003. The now

Koyal Info Group Mag Discovery of Oxygen in Soils New discoveries show biological formation of oxygen in soils In the 1930s, the ability of green plants to form oxygen through oxidation of water -- photosynthesis -- was discovered. Since then, no other large-scale biological formation of oxygen has been found, until now. New research results show that down in the dark depths of the soil, a previously unknown biochemical process is under way, in which oxygen is formed and carbon dioxide is reduced to organic material. He made the assumption that the bewildering result could be explained if water, which is present everywhere, contributes to reducing carbon dioxide to organic material down in the dark depths of the soil. The fact that this process takes place without sunlight, as is the case with plants, was however something completely outside current knowledge and accepted views. Professor Fleischer, however, went further, with this as his working hypothesis. An international assessment of the scientific research, carried out at Halmstad University in 2013, called the results "potentially ground-breaking." Professor Fleischer conducted the five-year project in collaboration with Lovisa Bauhn and Arvid Ödegaard-Jensen of the Division of Nuclear Chemistry at Chalmers University, and Patrik Fors at Vattenfall. 

PUNE: From reporting important findings on parental care among Arthropods to establishing the antiquity of metazoans (multi cell organisms), the Department of Geology and Palaeontology at the city-based Agharkar Research Institute (ARI) has come a long way in emerging as a leader in the study of trace fossils in the country. The department, whose golden jubilee celebrations begin on Friday, has made landmark contributions in the study of fossils in the past 50 years. For future research, the department aims to focus on studying the secondary porosity of rocks for exploring hydrocarbon resources as well as in establishing modern analogues to their fossil counterparts. Rajani Panchang-Dhumal, a project scientist at the department, said, "The Geology and Palaeontology department at ARI hosts a large fossil repository with over 7,000 type specimens in its collection. This repository is consulted regularly, both by research scholars as well as scientists from India and abroad. This national facility is now undergoing modernization and will soon be available on the web." [Visit Koyal Info Group Mag - Blog] Why study fossils? After a living organism died, it became buried under the ground in the layers of sediment. Once these layers become rock, the remains are said to be fossilized. They tell us about the organisms that lived on Earth from the time of the oldest fossils, about 3.8 billion years ago, to the present. By studying fossils we can learn not only about the creatures and plants of the distant past, but how they grew, what they ate, how they interacted, and many aspects of their behavior. Read Full Article Here…