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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

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…

The economy abounds with hopeful signs as the New Year arrives, enough that the Federal Reserve will begin to put its easy-money punch bowl on a higher shelf by trimming its bond purchases this month. But after five Years of crisis, recession and an aren't-we-there-yet recovery, we don't fully trust the signs. And that's why Mesirow Financial economist Diane Swonk sums up the outlook in a nutshell: "2014 could be the breakout Year,'' she says. "This is the Year when we're going to find out.''

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

Honoured researchers urge colleagues to fight anti-science Scientists need to fight against a growing anti-science sentiment worldwide by joining the debate, say two researchers acknowledged in today's Australia Day Honours. Professors Bruce McKellar and Sam Berkovic, both associated with the University of Melbourne, received the nation's highest honour when they were appointed Companions in the General Division of the Order of Australia. McKellar, a theoretical physicist, says the honour for his "eminent service to science, particularly the study of theoretical physics" came as a "surprise". However it highlights a remarkable journey from a NSW bush school playground to the hallways of Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider. "One of the things that is very nice about me getting this award is the fact I went to a bush school with 50 students and one teacher," he says. That one teacher at Budgeregong Public School near Forbes in NSW also happened to be his father. "In part it is to he that I owe my appreciation of mathematics and various forms of science," he says. Although officially retired, the 72-year-old will later this year become the first Australian and first southern hemisphere president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The prestigious position comes at a time when science - most notably climate and immunisation science - is under attack in western societies. "The basic denial is the denial that science has done anything for us," says McKellar. He cites the example of basic radio astronomy research to analyses radio signals from the universe that led to the development of mo

SR Transport og SR Group var en av de første transportørene som fulgte etter skipsbransjen og innførte et variabelt drivstofftillegg. Første gang dette ble forelagt våre kunder var i 2005. Vi har opp gjennom tidene foretatt endringer med ujevne mellomrom, hele tiden basert på at våre endringer skulle være basert på en endring i vår netto pumpepris på + / - 5%. Dette har så langt fungert veldig bra. For å imøtekomme ønske fra våre kunder vil vi fra 1. september 2011 samkjøre vårt dieseltillegg med SSB's kostnadsindeks. Dette slik at våre endringer skal kunne spores direkte til det som er offentlig utarbeidede tall. Vårt dieseltillegg justeres fra 14,9 % til 13,8 % med virkning fra 1. januar 2014. Tillegget samsvarer da med 120,9 i indeks (Kostnadsindeks for lastebiltransport - indeks nr 10 - Drivstoffelementet). BAF for båtfrakt holdes uendret på 30,0 % i januar. Ved gjennomføring av denne endringen vil våre justeringer ikke lenger være basert på +/- 5% - men på eksakte endringer. Det vil for begge parter - både våre kunder og oss bety et mer korrekt tillegg. Det til enhver tid gjeldende dieseltillegg og BAF finner du her.

One in 13 Kinder konnte sehen, dass ihr Leben verkürzt durch Rauchen, es sei denn, die Nation aggressivere Maßnahmen braucht, den Tabakkonsum zu beenden, sagte die US Surgeon General Freitag--, erstaunlicherweise sogar Wissenschaftler hinzugefügt noch mehr Krankheiten auf der langen Liste von Zigaretten Harms.

Google could soon be more than just a search engine for those with diabetes. Amid the hype surrounding creations like Google Glass, a new device designed to make hands-free communication easier, are technological advances that are spilling over into more areas of people's lives than just the way they communicate or search for information. Google is changing the way people live, as well as the quality of their lives. The company looks to expand that reach into digital health and that can make a real difference in the health epidemics, such as diabetes, that the country currently faces. With Google technology, people may soon be able to manage diabetes through the use of a specially created contact lens.

Darwin in the Dock: C.S. Lewis's Limited Acceptance of Common Descent Common descent is the claim that all organisms currently living have descended from one or a few original ancestors through a process Darwin called "descent with modification." According to this idea, not only humans and apes share an ancestor, but so do humans, clams, and fungi. Common descent is a hallowed dogma among today's evolution proponents, held with quasi-religious fervor. C.S. Lewis clearly believed that Christians can accept evolution as common descent without doing violence to their faith. This is what Lewis was getting at when he wrote to evolution critic Bernard Acworth, "I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if evolution is true."18 In Lewis's view, whether God used common descent to create the first human beings was irrelevant to the truth of Christianity. As he wrote to one correspondent late in his life, "I don't mind whether God made man out of earth or whether 'earth' merely means 'previous millennia of ancestral organisms.' If the fossils make it probable that man's physical ancestors 'evolved,' no matter."19 In The Problem of Pain (1940), Lewis even offers a possible evolutionary account of the development of human beings, although he makes clear he is offering speculation, not history: "[I]f it is legitimate to guess," he writes, "I offer the following picture -- a 'myth' in the Socratic sense," which he defines as "a not unlikely tale," or "an account of what may have been the historical fact" (emphasis in the original). Lewis then suggests that "[f]or long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself... The creature may have existed for ages... before it became man."20 Elsewhere, Lewis seemed smitten by the idea of embryonic recapitulation, the discredited evolutionary idea that human beings replay the history of their evolution from lower animals in their womb. And in a letter to his f

The United States is poised for its strongest year of economic growth since the recession began. Signposts for the economy are generally pointing up. A recovery that seemed tentative and halting a year ago now appears to be durable and more deeply entrenched. Sound familiar? It should. Those are all phrases from an article that ran in The Washington Post on Dec. 31, 2010, projecting how the economy would fare in 2011. I know because I wrote it. If your memory is shaky, here's what actually happened in 2011. There was a disruptive earthquake in Japan, an oil price spike caused by the Arab Spring, and a euro-zone crisis that was so severe as to endanger the entire global financial system, and a confidence-shattering debt ceiling showdown in the United States, and austerity by state and local governments that sapped growth. The U.S. economy kept growing, but at the same kind of sluggish, uneven rate it had in 2010 and, for that matter, 2012 and 2013.

During the year that is just starting the U.S. economy will face major challenges. The pressures built in health care, monetary, and immigration policies are likely to lead to decisions that can have a major impact on economic growth. There are always chances for additional positive and negative shocks. A faster move to freer trade with Europe would be a positive shock. A liberalization of North American energy markets, including the approval of the Keystone pipeline and continued progress in Mexico is another. Negative shocks can come not only from the economic arena, but also for national or international security threats, such as acts of terror or wars affecting the U.S. or its major allies. Think Tanks are playing an important role in most of these battles.

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. 

We live in an age shaped by scientific research. Medical practice, for example, changes a bit each year because of new discoveries in the laboratory or in drug trials. We have come to expect progress in a variety of technical fields, and science often lives up to our hopes for it. But science can also falter. One of the challenges for non-scientists - whom I call "normal people" - must address is how to interpret new scientific studies. Which ones contain valuable information that should influence our activities or government policies? Which can be put on the back burner of our minds, awaiting further evidence? Scientists are human. Scientists are people. We do our best, but that doesn't make us perfect. Scientists have several reasons to try to promote the work that's been done, quite apart from whatever merit it may have. Scientists want to have successful careers and that means promoting results obtained in the lab or field. For some scientists, professional status really matters, and for most scientists today, further funding is an issue always kept in mind. Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a native of the rural Northwest, was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. This column is a service of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. Read This Article

LETTER: Scientific findings on climate are real, not optional The letter by James Policelli ("America is heading down dangerous path," Jan. 22) is proof that the far right lunatic fringe disavows science. On the next page of that day's paper was a statement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2013 was the fourth warmest year on record. Policelli would likely claim that NOAA is a puppet of the Obama administration and has broadcast false information to further a socialist agenda. (What!) Let's look at some indisputable facts. A comparison of NASA space shots of polar ice caps clearly indicates they are shrinking. Ocean levels have been measured to be rising. (Where do you think the melting polar ice caps go?) As a scientist, I have never been amused by junk science or those who espouse it. As one who helped develop some of the spectroscopic fingerprints used to monitor ozone-destroying man-made molecules in the upper atmosphere, I find the climate change denials of the far right lunatic fringe to be extremely offensive and exceptionally dangerous. This Content: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/01/letter_scientific_findings_on.html Koyal Info Group Mag: http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/science.html http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/blog/ Koyal Info Group Mag - Twitter: https://twitter.com/koyalgroup

A decadal survey for human scientific exploration of space: a focus on discovery The role of science in the nation's human spaceflight program has been controversial since the inception of the Apollo program. That controversy continues to this day. It is the root cause of NASA's failure to achieve national consensus on defining the first deep space mission objective for human spaceflight, and is an aspect that has most limited the nation's progress on planning for human exploration of deep space. Despite nearly 50 years of advocacy that the focus of NASA's human spaceflight program should be to enable scientific discovery, this program remains adrift as a result of a national space policy that fails to head this long-standing advice. For more info: http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/ http://koyalgroup1.tumblr.com/ https://foursquare.com/p/the-koyal-group-info-mag/62282215 http://www.pinterest.com/margakoyal1/the-koyal-group-info-mag/

In March of this year, a team of Georgetown University scientists published research showing that, for the first time ever, a blood test has the potential to predict Alzheimer's disease before patients start showing symptoms. AACC is pleased to announce that a late-breaking session at the 2014 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in Chicago will expand upon this groundbreaking research and discuss why it could be the key to curing this devastating illness. According to the World Health Organization, the number of Alzheimer's patients worldwide is expected to skyrocket from the 35.6 million individuals who lived with it in 2010 to 115.4 million by 2050. Currently, however, all efforts to cure or effectively treat the disease have failed. Experts believe one explanation for this lack of success could be that the window of opportunity for treating Alzheimer's has already closed by the time its symptoms manifest.Continue reading More discoveries you might want to know about

Molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins, the Amgen, Inc., Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recalled personal trials as a female scientist and challenged graduates to overcome invisible barriers in an inspiring Baccalaureate Address to the Class of 2014 at Marsh Chapel Sunday morning. She mentioned some of the great breakthroughs of the last 50 years: the internet, the Higgs particle, and notably, the "discovery of unconscious biases and the extent to which stereotypes about gender, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and age deprive people of equal opportunity in the workplace and equal justice in society." Hopkins was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Science at BU's 141st Commencement. She spoke before a packed audience at Marsh Chapel and was enthusiastically applauded for her remarks. President Robert A. Brown, University Provost Jean Morrison, Marsh Chapel Dean Robert Hill, and Emma Rehard (CAS'14) also addressed the graduates and their families. Scott Allen Jarrett (CFA'99,'08), director of music at Marsh Chapel, led the Marsh Chapel Choir in "Clarissima" and "For the Beauty of the Earth." Early in her career, Hopkins worked in the lab of James Watson, the codiscoverer of the structure of DNA. She earned a PhD at Harvard and became a faculty member at MIT, working at the Center for Cancer Research. There, she focused her research on RNA tumor viruses, then considered to be a likely cause for many cancers in humans. Hopkins also studied developmental genetics in zebra fish, and helped to design the first successful method for making insertional mutagenesis work in a vertebrate model.

With the help of highly sensitive particle detectors, some of the world's most powerful lasers, and good-old-fashioned quantum mechanics, physicists from around the world made important discoveries this year. From detecting elusive particles forged in the core of our sun to teleporting quantum data farther than ever before, these physicists' scientific research has helped us better understand the universe in which we live as well as pave the way for a future of quantum computers, nuclear fusion, and more.