New Life!!

NASA has discovered a new life form, a bacteria called GFAJ-1 that is unlike anything currently living in planet Earth. It's capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This changes everything. 

NASA is saying that this is "life as we do not know it". The reason is that all life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.

That was true until today. In a surprising revelation, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today, working differently than the rest of the organisms in the planet. Instead of using phosphorus, the newly discovered microorganism—called GFAJ-1 and found in Mono Lake, California—uses the poisonous arsenic for its building blocks. Arsenic is an element poisonous to every other living creature in the planet except for a few specialized microscopic creatures.

I Too Had A Love Story

Ravinder Singh

138 Reviews

Srishti, 2009 - 213 pages

A CELEBRATED maxim says that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Ravinder Singh s I Too Had A Love Story proves the maxim true and beautifully depicts the beauty and power of true love through the writer s own heart touching love story. It is the narrative of the journey of meeting of two strangers through a matrimonial site to the point, where their relationship becomes the most precious gift of Almighty. Ravinder and Khushi have never seen each other, but love has made them one. The writer has successfully brought out the depth of their relationship through the lively and graphic delineation of their conversation, feelings and emotions. The readers can feel their warmth and closeness in the lively and picturesque account of how they longed to be with each other in the rain, the coaxing and cajoling after the tiffs and trying to feel each other in imagination

Reading this book is all the more enjoyable as the reader relates and identifies with the writer. Impatiently waiting for the next phone call, little surprises bringing them closer, late night conversations, tears and smiles, all these make it a read-till-finish book. The throbbing curiosity, the irrepressible apprehensions and the overpowering excitement and happiness to meet Khushi in person for the first time takes the story to a crescendo of feelings, emotion and action. Soft and light hearted humor strewn throughout adds an entertainment quotient to the story. The writer tickles a funny bone as he talks about his paranoia when revealing his affair to his parents. Tear will roll down when an accident leave Khushi battling with death and Ravinder shattered. It reminds that a beloved can save his love till where God intervenes. Along with the innate beauty of their love story, the expression of the subtle emotions in the most simple and lucid way makes it special.

The fact that the writer does not make any effort to impress the readers with lofty words and articulations point to the honesty of the writer s feelings. The writer has summed up the essence of his story in the most appealing terms. Not everyone in this world has the fate to cherish the fullest form of love. Some are born, just to experience the abbreviation of it. Those for whom love is the most beautiful feeling above human definitions and parameters the book will make for an ever cherished experience.

Most Advanced Microscope of World

Canadian center for Electron Microscopy has developed a new powerful microscope that is world's most powerful microscope till date. According to Gianluigi Botton, Director of Canadian center for Electron Microscopy, says that the power of this microscope can be thought as equivalent to "taking Hubble Telescope and aiming it at atomic level".




Titan 80-300 Cubed

This powerful microscope named Titan 80-300 Cubed was installed at the University early in the summer, and since then it has been put through its paces to achieve unprecedented resolution.
This microscope is so powerful that it can easily identify atoms, measure their chemical state and even probe the electrons that bind them together.

According to vice-president of Mc Master, Mr. Elbestawi this microscope will make McMaster a hub for a fast growing field.

Really Impressive Microscope

A group of international scientists who visited McMaster were really impressed by the amazing capabilities of this microscope. This microscope can help scientist to discover new things in biological and physical sciencesDean of Engineering David Wilkinson sees the microscope through another lens.




Titan's ability can probe structure of solid materials to the atomic level and this will have an amazing impact on development and commercialization of new technologies from biomedical devices to water quality monitoring and improved energy storage systems.




Cost of Microscope

This microscope has been build in Netherlands by FEI Company with a cost of about $15 million. This microscope can help to examine everyday products with its Nano details that can improve the efficiency of these products.

NEXI - Robot with facial expressions

A latest invention by MIT Media Lab is a new robot that is able to show various facial expressions such as 'slanting its eyebrows in anger', or 'raise them in surprise', and show a wide assortment of facial expressions while communicating with people.

This latest achievement in the field of Robotics is named NEXI as it is framed as the next generation robots which is aimed for a range of applications for personal robots and human-robot teamwork.

DESIGNING

The head and face of NEXI were designed by Xitome Design which is a innovative designing and development company that specializes in robotic design and development. The expressive robotics started with a neck mechanism sporting 4 degrees of freedom (DoF) at the base, plus pan-tilt-yaw of the head itself. The mechanism has been constructed to time the movements so they mimic human speed. The face of NEXI has been specially designed to use gaze, eyebrows, eyelids and an articulate mandible which helps in expressing a wide range of different emotions.

The chassis of NEXI is also advanced. It has been developed by the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics UMASS (University of Massachusetts), Amherst. This chassis is based on the uBot5 mobile manipulator. The mobile base can balance dynamically on two wheels. The arms of NEXI can pick up a weight of up to 10 pounds and the plastic covering of the chassis can detect any kind of human touch.

CYNTHIA BREAZEAL: HEAD OF THE PROJECT

This project was headed by Media Lab's Cynthia Breazeal, a well known robotics expert famous for earlier expressive robots such as Kismet. She is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT. She named her new product as an MDS (mobile, dextrous, social) robot.




FEATURES OF NEXI

Except a wide range of facial expressions, Nexi has many other features. It has self-balancing wheels like the Segway transporter, to ultimately ride on. Currently it uses an additional set of supportive wheels to operate as a statically stable platform in its early stage of development. It has hands which can be used to manipulate objects, eyes (video cameras), ears (an array of microphones), and a 3-D infrared camera and laser rangefinder which support real-time tracking of objects, people and voices as well as indoor navigation.