Environment, Health and Physics

Cure Pregnancy Problems Fast

2012-12-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

Having problem conceiving? Have you gone to the doctor but found no viable solution for what you’re going through? Are you tired of having to hear one disappointing news after another? This is an experience of many. In the U.S alone, 10% of married couples are trying to cope with infertility. Advancement in technology has allowed Western medicine to come up with sophisticated infertility treatments like In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) but they’re barely affordable even for the more well-off couples. Additionally, the chances of succeeding at conceiving using these infertility cures are low. These technologies are invasive. I am a firm believer in natural treatments; that they’re always the best solution. Pregnancy Miracle by Lisa Olson is one book that deals with infertility naturally so I highly recommend it.
Pregnancy Miracle’s goal is to treat infertility in the most natural way possible. Books of this kind usually involve steps that follow TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine. Pregnancy Miracle’s premise is that the body, when in an imbalanced state, would have a hard time priming up for conception. Increase your chances of conceiving significantly by bringing your body back to its balanced state. In fact, this infertility treatment has a high success rate than any other forms. I would recommend going for options like Pregnancy Miracle and The Personal Path to Pregnancy by Beth Kiley first before choosing to go for Western infertility treatments.
Even though Western fertility treatments are popular, you can’t discount the fact that they have disadvantages and that you should take it upon yourself to know them. Consider Cycloid, for instance. It’s arguably the most preferred fertility treatment for the following reasons: You orally take it so it’s simple to employ. Two, it’s the solution for the most common cause of infertility, ovulation. Three, it seems to be the safest out of all fertility treatments as its side effects are lesser than the rest. Four, it is relatively less expensive than IVF and other infertility solutios. But even as a safe pill, taking too much Cycloid can create irreversible damage to your uterus and your cervical mucus. It could give you a thin uterus wall and a cervical mucus that cannot accommodate sperms because it might be too hostile of an environment for them. So while fertility drugs may be the first recommendation of many doctors, it is simply far better to back out on them and go for TCM-based treatments instead. Safely get pregnant today by using the methods at Product Comparisons at ReviewMOZ.org.

What is Inside of E-Cigarette Cartridges?

2012-12-05T21:13:00.002-08:00

An e-cigarette or electronic cigarette is a specialized unit that’s purposely intended to be an alternative way of providing doses of nicotine to the smoker. By heating up the contents of the cartridge of the e-cigarette, transforming it directly into vapor, that’s after that taken in by the smoker. The electronic tobacco cigarette gadget consists of different parts that works collectively to imitate the way the conventional cigarette functions and is used by a smoker.
Very different from normal tobacco cigarettes available today, the e-cigarette doesn’t only use high tech parts, it’s supply of nicotine is very different to ordinary cigs. Rather than using the tar as well as the leaves from the tobacco plant to derive the nicotine, which is a highly addicting ingredient, the e-cigarette has cartridges used to keep the liquid nicotine that’s going to be vaporized and then converted to a mist.
There are a few types of e-cigarette cartridges that also have a built in atomizer or heating system gadget. A brand new permanent atomizer is expensive. Naturally, this kind of cartridge for the e-cigarette could have a moderately higher price tag compared to normal cartridges nevertheless, it may provide you with significant personal savings in the long term, as there won’t be a need to buy a brand new one. Operating as the mouthpiece for the entire gadget is the e-cigarette cartridge. This particular section of the e-cigarette cartridges also provides a tube like filter similar to a tobacco cigarette end. The e-cigarette cartridges use a sensor that is also run via the battery that detects when the user would like to breathe in a bit of vapor thereby initiating the atomizer to heat up the fluid nicotine within the holding chamber. The vapor that will come out via a different tube coming out of the unit is then able to be inhaled by the e-cigarette smoker.
In an effort to help make the entire e-cigarette smoking experience more like smoking cigarettes a conventional cigarette, some manufacturers build in LED lights on the end of the unit, near the mouthpiece, which lights up once the end user inhales smoke from the unit.

The liquid nicotine that is enclosed inside the e-cigarette cartridges is commonly created from vegetable glycerin or propylene glycol. These types of compounds are commonly seen in a few processed foods sold in the market today because it is permitted for use as a food preservative. The compounds are combined with a calculated measure of the nicotine, thereafter they’re placed in the cartridges of the e-cig. It is possible to make use of a nicotine free version of e-cig cartridge. This is especially very important to individuals wanting to stop smoking but who want to continue the sense of using cigarettes.

Bats adjust squeaks to focus sonar

2012-11-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

Human eyes, set as they are in front-facing sockets, give us a limited angle of view: we see what is directly in front of us, with only a few degrees of peripheral vision. But bats can broaden and narrow their 'visual field' by modulating the frequency of the squeaks they use to navigate and find prey, researchers in Denmark suggest today in Nature¹.

Bats find their way through the night by emitting sonar signals and using the echoes that return to them to create a map of their surroundings — a process called echolocation. Researchers have long known that small bats emit higher-frequency squeaks than larger bats, and most assumed that the difference arises because the smaller animals must catch smaller insects, from which low-frequency sound waves with long wavelengths do not reflect well.

That didn't sound right to Annemarie Surlykke, a neurobiologist who studies bat echolocation at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. “When you look at the actual frequencies, small bats would be able to detect even the smallest prey they take with a much lower frequency,” she says. “So there must be another reason.”

Surlykke and her colleagues decided to test the hypothesis by studying six related species of bat that varied in size. They captured the animals in the wild and set them loose in a flight room — a pitch-dark netted corridor 2.5 metres high, 4.8 metres wide and 7 metres long, rigged on all sides with microphones and infrared cameras. “It’s a pretty confined space, so this corresponds to flying close to vegetation,” says Surlykke.

Direct call

By measuring the time it took for a bat’s echolocation signals to hit different microphones, Surlykke’s team could pinpoint the exact location of the animals in flight. They could then analyse the intensity of each signal, as well as the size of each animal’s mouth, to reconstruct the width of the sound beam.

Under the specific conditions of the flight room, the researchers found, the animals adjusted the frequency of their signals and the openings of their mouths to come up with the same beam width for their echolocation calls — around 37°, no matter the animal's size. In past studies, two species tested in the field used different beam widths depending on whether they were scanning for prey from on high or about to dive in for the capture.

“That means that the small bats, we think now, are not forced to use the high frequency to detect their prey, but to keep the beam narrow,” says Surlykke. A lower-frequency vocalization would broaden the beam, making it hit more objects and increase the noise in the signal, which would make echolocation more difficult. So small species need to use high frequencies simply because their mouths are petite.

Out and about

Hans-Ulrich Schnitzler, who studies echolocation at the University of Tübingen in Germany, lauds the finding for bringing a previously unconsidered parameter to the discipline. “I really think it opens up a new field,” he says.

However, he thinks that the group’s conclusion is not yet definitive. “It now has to be documented for other species and for flying out in nature — in the open, in the forest, in different habitats,” says Schnitzler.

Surlykke notes that her group examined only bats that echolocate using their mouths. “One of the intriguing questions is how this works in nose-emitting bats,” she says.

The study raises the question of how bats perceive their environment, says Surlykke, and her group plans to look at this too.

“The fact that the beam is constant means the important thing is in the bat’s head — and not in the environment,” says James Simmons, a neurobiologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “Ultimately,” he says, “it’s a psychological problem.”

Source:Nature

MicroRNAs 103 and 107 regulate insulin sensitivity

2012-11-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

Defects in insulin signalling are among the most common and earliest defects that predispose an individual to the development of type 2 diabetes^1, 2, 3. MicroRNAs have been identified as a new class of regulatory molecules that influence many biological functions, including metabolism^4, 5. However, the direct regulation of insulin sensitivity by microRNAs in vivo has not been demonstrated. Here we show that the expression of microRNAs 103 and 107 (miR-103/107) is upregulated in obese mice. Silencing of miR-103/107 leads to improved glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity. In contrast, gain of miR-103/107 function in either liver or fat is sufficient to induce impaired glucose homeostasis. We identify caveolin-1, a critical regulator of the insulin receptor, as a direct target gene of miR-103/107. We demonstrate that caveolin-1 is upregulated upon miR-103/107 inactivation in adipocytes and that this is concomitant with stabilization of the insulin receptor, enhanced insulin signalling, decreased adipocyte size and enhanced insulin-stimulated glucose uptake. These findings demonstrate the central importance of miR-103/107 to insulin sensitivity and identify a new target for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Source:Nature

Hubble Eyes a Loose Spiral Galaxy

2012-11-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

The galaxy is viewed from an angle, allowing Hubble to reveal its spiral nature clearly. The faint, loose spiral arms can be distinguished as bluish features swirling around the galaxy's nucleus. This blue tinge emanates from the hot, young stars located in the spiral arms. The arms of a spiral galaxy have large amounts of gas and dust, and are often areas where new stars are constantly forming.

The galaxy's most characteristic feature is a bright elongated nucleus. The bulging central core usually contains the highest density of stars in the galaxy, where typically a large group of comparatively cool old stars are packed in this compact, spheroidal region.

One feature common to many spiral galaxies is the presence of a bar running across the center of the galaxy. These bars are thought to act as a mechanism that channels gas from the spiral arms to the center, enhancing the star formation.

Recent studies suggest that ESO 499-G37's nucleus sits within a small bar up to a few hundreds of light-years along, about a tenth the size of a typical galactic bar. Astronomers think that such small bars could be important in the formation of galactic bulges since they might provide a mechanism for bringing material from the outer regions down to the inner ones. However, the connection between bars and bulge formation is still not clear since bars are not a universal feature in spiral galaxies.

The galaxy ESO 499-G37 lies in the southern border of the constellation of Hydra, which is shared with Antlia.

ESO 499-G37 was first observed in the late seventies within the ESO/Uppsala Survey of the ESO (B) atlas. This was a joint project undertaken by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Uppsala Observatory, which used the ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope at La Silla Observatory, Chile, to map a large portion of the southern sky looking for stars, galaxies, clusters, and planetary nebulae.

This picture was created from visible and infrared exposures taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 3.4 arcminutes wide.

Source:sciencedaily

Single photon could detect quantum-scale black holes

2012-11-25T09:02:00.000-08:00

Space is not smooth: physicists think that on the quantum scale, it is composed of indivisible subunits, like the dots that make up a pointillist painting. This pixellated landscape is thought to seethe with black holes smaller than one trillionth of one trillionth of the diameter of a hydrogen atom, continuously popping in and out of existence.

That tumultuous vista was proposed decades ago by theorists struggling to marry quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity — the only one of nature’s four fundamental forces not to have been incorporated into the standard model of particle physics. If it is true, the idea could provide a deeper understanding of space-time and the birth of the Universe.

Scientists have attempted to use the Large Hadron Collider, gravitational wave detectors and observations of distant cosmic explosions to determine whether space is truly grainy, but results have so far been inconclusive. Now, Jacob Bekenstein, a theoretical physicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has proposed a simple tabletop experiment to find out, using readily available equipment¹.

As in previous experiments, Bekenstein’s set-up is designed to examine the problem on the scale of 1.6 × 10⁻³⁵ metres. This 'Planck length' is thought to mark the scale at which the macroscopic concept of distance ceases to have meaning and quantum fluctuations begin to cause space-time to resemble a foamy sea.

No instrument can directly measure a displacement as small as 10⁻³⁵ metres. Instead, Bekenstein proposes firing a single particle of light, or photon, through a transparent block, and indirectly measuring the minuscule distance that the block moves as a result of the photon’s momentum.

Light and mass

The wavelength of the photon and the mass and size of the block are carefully chosen so that the momentum is just large enough to move the block’s centre of mass by one Planck length. If space-time is not grainy on this scale, then each photon will pass through the block and be recorded by a detector on the other side. However, if space-time is grainy, the photon is significantly less likely to make it all the way through the block. “I argue that the consequence of that crossing — the translation of the block by a Planck length or so — is something nature would not like,” says Bekenstein.

If quantum fluctuations in length are important on the Planck scale, a sea of black holes, each with a Planck-scale radius, will readily form. Anything that falls into one of those black holes will be unable to escape until the hole disappears. So if the centre of mass of the moving block falls into one of the holes, the block's movement will be impeded (the photons are much larger than the Plank length, and so are not bothered by the miniature black holes).

Conservation of momentum in the experimental set-up requires that the photon cannot make it through the block if the block fails to move by a Planck length. So if fewer photons than expected are seen by the detector, it would indicate that the block's movement has been impeded by black holes, and that space-time exhibits quantum features at the Planck scale.

Bekenstein’s design is simple, so the experiment could easily be put into practice using established methods of generating and detecting single photons, says Igor Pikovski, a quantum physicist at the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology. Nevertheless, he adds, “distinguishing possible quantum gravitational effects from other effects will be very challenging”.

Earlier this year, Pikovski and his colleagues published² another scheme for probing the graininess of space-time in the laboratory, using optical pulses and and the principles of quantum theory to drive a system from an initial configuration to the desired final state. “The truth is that we do not know at what exact scale quantum gravity will play a significant role,” says Pikovski. “There is plenty of room for granularity at much larger lengths [than the Planck length] and we do not have a full theory that could tell us the answer.” Experiments such as Bekenstein’s or his own may provide some of the first evidence for an answer, he adds.

Source: http://www.nature.com/news/single-photon-could-detect-quantum-scale-black-holes-1.11871

How Earth's wandering poles return home

2012-11-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

A number of times over the past one billion years, the Earth's surface has "wandered" relative to its rotational axis – before returning to its original position. Now, a team of geophysicists from the US and Canada says it has developed a theory that explains this curious phenomenon of "oscillatory true polar wander". Understanding the mechanics behind polar wander is crucial, as a shift could tip the Earth over by as far as 50° over a period of 10–100 million years and this would cause profound global environmental and geological changes.

Wandering Earth?

True polar wander (TPW) can be defined as the relative movement between the mantle (and so the surface of the Earth) and the Earth's spin axis or its rotational axis. Incredibly, researchers believe that over the past one billion years, the Earth's surface has "tipped over" and then returned to its original location six times along the same axis – this is the process of "oscillatory true polar wander". Scientists have worked this out by studying magnetism in rocks – a discipline known as "paleomagnetism". If a rock cools in a magnetic field, it records the magnetic properties of the field and these can be decoded in the lab millions of years later. So, by measuring changes in the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field that are stored in ancient rocks, scientists can "see" the effects of the oscillatory TPW.

Extreme shifts

"Someone sitting on the Earth would have seen the pole shift up to 50° and then turn around and return close to its original location, all in tens of millions of years," explained geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica of the Earth and Planetary Science Department at Harvard University. "But an observer floating in space would actually see the rotational axis stay relatively vertical and the Earth's surface tip over and then back." Unsurprisingly, these rather extreme and dramatic shifts can be linked to global changes in all large-scale Earth systems such as the carbon cycle, climate and even evolution. "After all, if it happened today, a shift of 50° one way might put Boston [Massachusetts] near the north pole, while a shift in the opposite direction would bring Boston near the equator," said Mitrovica.

But this in itself is not news – earth scientists have known for a while that TPW does occur and they even know why. They believe that the initial shift of the pole – or the Earth tipping over – is caused by large-scale flows in the Earth's interior known as "mantle convection", involving thermal convection currents that carry heat from the Earth's core to the surface. This is the same process that drives continental drift and plate tectonics. So, mantle convection disturbs the rotational equilibrium of the Earth and the result is a shift in the relative orientation of the Earth's solid surface and its rotational axis.

There and back again

What has eluded researchers is a theory that clearly explains how and why the pole returns to its original location, or the "oscillatory true polar wander". In the new work, graduate student Jessica Creveling, also of the Earth and Planetary Science Department at Harvard, along with Mitrovica and colleagues, provides an explanation. The researchers, using computer simulations and modelling, said that a combination of two mechanisms brings the "wandering" pole back to its original location.

The first mechanism relates to the Earth's equatorial bulge. The Earth is not a perfect sphere – rather it is an oblate spheroid, as it is flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator. So there is a difference in the radius of the Earth as measured from the centre to the equator compared with the poles – it is approximately 20 km greater at the equator. This band of excess mass forms because the Earth is rotating, which causes the equator to bulge outwards. "But the Earth's bulge is generally a bit larger than it should be...which is true even today. And this extra bulge, or fatness, acts to stabilize the Earth's rotation," explained Mitrovica. He likened this to the heavy weight that is placed at the bottom of a plastic punching-bag toy, which acts to bring the bag back to being vertical if it is punched sideways. In a similar manner, if the Earth, with its bulging equator, tips over, it prefers to right itself again. "So, this girdle of excess mass actually has a very stabilizing effect, acting as a self-righting mechanism for the Earth's rotation," he said.

The second mechanism relates to the strength of the tectonic plates. If the Earth's surface tips over relative to the rotational axis, the 12 larger tectonic plates all get deformed to a small extent, like elastic bands. In a similar way to a stretched elastic band, the plates want to go back to their original size, and these stabilizing elastic stresses also play a role in the oscillatory return of the pole. A clue that this might be the case is the fact that past polar-oscillation events seem to have happened when the Earth's continents were gathered together into one "supercontinent", a process that has repeated a number of times in Earth's history. The last supercontinent, known as Pangea, was formed 200 million years ago.

Efficiency of combined effects

Mitrovica pointed out that while Creveling was running her simulation, neither single mechanism could cause the pole to return – it was only a combination of both effects that did it. "What also really surprised me was the efficiency of the effects to pull and push the poles during a period of about 10 million years," said Mitrovica. "This paper made a believer out of me and I was a sceptic." He explains that other researchers might remain sceptical about the theory and that only more evidence gathered based on paleomagnetic field studies will provide the necessary evidence. The team also hopes to better determine how common or rare these events are. "Every rock cooling at the time of a tilt will show the evidence of it and we need to find that," said Mitrovica.

The team is also keen to determine just how drastic the effects of a shift are. It is believed that a shift would cause a significant change in the climate of every place on Earth, as well as changes in the sea level and the carbon cycle. Mitrovica believes that the consequences of these large-scale events would have left their own mark on the Earth's systems and they too should be studied in the future.

The research was published in Nature.

Need a Lot of Sleep? An Antidote for Hypersomnia

2012-11-23T09:26:00.001-08:00

The results are scheduled for publication online November 21 by the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Some members of this patient population appear to have a distinct, disabling sleep disorder called "primary hypersomnia," which is separate from better-known conditions such as sleep apnea or narcolepsy. They regularly sleep more than 70 hours per week and have difficulties awakening. When awake, they still have reaction times comparable to someone who has been awake all night. Their sleepiness often interferes with work or school attendance, and conventional treatments such as stimulants bring little relief.

"These individuals report feeling as if they're walking around in a fog -- physically, but not mentally awake," says lead author David Rye, MD, PhD, professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine and director of research for Emory Healthcare's Program in Sleep. "When encountering excessive sleepiness in a patient, we typically think it's caused by an impairment in the brain's wake systems and treat it with stimulant medications. However, in these patients, the situation is more akin to attempting to drive a car with the parking brake engaged. Our thinking needs to shift from pushing the accelerator harder, to releasing the brake."

In a clinical study with seven patients who remained sleepy despite above-ordinary sleep amounts and treatment with stimulants, Emory researchers showed that treatment with the drug flumazenil can restore alertness, although flumazenil's effectiveness was not uniform for all seven. Alertness was gauged through the psychomotor vigilance test, a measurement of reaction time.

Flumazenil is usually used in cases of overdose of benzodiazepines, a widely used class of anesthetics and sedatives such as diazepam (Valium) and zolpidem (Ambien). Evidence in the paper suggests that the sleep-inducing substance in patients' cerebrospinal fluid is not a benzodiazepine drug, even though flumazenil counteracts it. Identifying the mysterious "somnogen," which appears to be produced by the body, could give scientists greater insight into how our brains regulate states of consciousness such as alertness and sleep.

"Primary hypersomnias are disabling and poorly understood. This study represents a breakthrough in determining a cause for these disorders and devising a rational approach to therapy," says Merrill Mitler, PhD, a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health." Further research is required to determine whether or not the results apply to the majority of patients."

The team of researchers involved in this effort includes Rye; Andrew Jenkins, PhD, Emory assistant professor of anesthesiology; and Kathy Parker, PhD, RN, FAAN, previously at Emory and now at University of Rochester Medical Center.

The paper describes how samples of patients' cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) contain a substance that enhances the effects of the brain chemical GABA (gamma-amino butyric acid). GABA is one of the main inhibitory chemicals of the nervous system -- alcohol, barbituates and benzodiazepines all enhance the effects of GABA. In the laboratory, the size of the effect on GABA receptor function is more than twice as large in the hyper-sleepy patients, on average, than in control samples.

"In some of the more severely affected patients, we estimated the magnitude of the GABA-enhancing effect as nearly equivalent to that expected for someone receiving sedation for outpatient colonoscopy," Rye says. "This is a level of impaired consciousness that many subjects had to combat on almost a daily basis in order to live their usual lives."

The ICSD-2 (International Classification of Sleep Disorders) terms this disorder "primary hypersomnia" and the proposed DSM-V describes it as "major hypersomnolence disorder." Its prevalence is unclear. The Emory team's findings could potentially provide a biological definition and a treatment for an under-recognized sleep disorder.

The patients in the group examined in the paper have received a variety of diagnoses, including idiopathic hypersomnia and narcolepsy without cataplexy. Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle tone, sometimes triggered by surprise or strong emotion, characteristic to narcolepsy. Other members of the group are simply considered "long sleepers" (more than 10 hours per day).

In addition, the identity of the GABA-enhancing substance is not yet known, although Rye and Jenkins are devising strategies to pin it down. Based on its size and sensitivity to certain enzymes, it could be a peptide, similar to but not the same as the hormones oxytocin or hypocretin. Jenkins and his colleagues have shown that the sleep-inducing substance can act on GABA receptors that are not sensitive to benzodiazepines.

"Previous studies with flumazenil indicate that it does not have a wake-promoting effect on most people, so its ability to normalize vigilance in this subpopulation of extremely sleepy patients appears genuinely novel," Rye says.

Source:ScienceDaily

Sleep Problems Cost Billions

2012-11-23T09:25:00.000-08:00

If you can't sleep at night, you're not alone. Around ten per cent of the population suffer from insomnia, where you have trouble falling asleep, wake up frequently at night, and still feel tired when the morning comes.

"When you feel tired and indisposed, your performance at work suffers," says Børge Sivertsen, professor at UiB's Department of Clinical Psychology and senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Sleep apnea is a more severe problem, affecting four to five per cent of the population. Sufferers can stop breathing for up to 40 seconds several times during the night, putting a huge strain on the heart. As a result, they have many micro-awakenings that stop them from reaching deep sleep.

Bad night, bad day

According to the sleep scientist, a recently-published study from the United States puts the annual losses from insomnia alone at 63.2 billion US dollars annually. Only a third of this was due to actual absence from work; two thirds was due to a loss in productivity while at work.

"An Australian study found that about two per cent of Australia's GDP is lost due to sick leave caused by insomnia and sleep apnea disorder. This shows how common these diseases are and how much they affect work," Sivertsen says.

Danger on the roads

In their own ways, each sleep disorder also has a strong impact on accident statistics. For example, lorry drivers have sedentary jobs, and this increases the risk of developing obesity and sleep apnea.

"The disease is a major cause of the many traffic accidents on American roads," Sivertsen says.

As for insomnia, drug use can cause problems. Sivertsen's studies show that sedatives can cause users to feel less rested during the daytime.

"Sleep medication may work in the short term, but after six weeks of use we noticed a decrease in deep sleep. Sleep may be uninterrupted, but you may not necessarily get quality sleep," he says.

Testing every treatment there is

Sleep disorder sufferers are often major health care users, which leads to an increase in social costs.

"When you feel bad, you will try every treatment there is. There is an overconsumption of alternative methods amongst insomnia sufferers. They often consume too much alcohol and visit their GPs, psychologists, physiotherapists, and chiropractors more often."

Sivertsen wants insomnia treatment to become more accessible, and to include cognitive behavioural therapy.

"Several recent studies show that the Internet can be used to offer good and cost-effective methods of treatment. This is particularly true in areas where sleep centres are few and far between," he suggests.

Source:

Star Trek Classroom: Next Generation of School Desks

2012-11-23T09:21:00.002-08:00

New results from a 3-year project working with over 400 pupils, mostly 8-10 year olds, show that collaborative learning increases both fluency and flexibility in maths. It also shows that using an interactive 'smart' desk can have benefits over doing mathematics on paper.

Using multi-touch desks in the new classroom, the children were able to work together in new ways to solve and answer questions and problems using inventive solutions. Seeing what your friends are doing, and being able to fully participate in group activities, offers new ways of working in class, the researchers say.

The 'Star Trek classroom' could also help learning and teaching in other subjects.

The findings published in the journalLearning and Instruction, show that children who use a collaborative maths activity in the SynergyNet classroom improve in both mathematical flexibility and fluency, while children working on traditional paper-based activities only improve in flexibility.

During the project, the team found that 45% of students who used NumberNet increased in the number of unique mathematical expressions they created after using NumberNet, compared to 16% of students in the traditional paper-based activity.

Lead researcher, Professor Liz Burd, School of Education, said: "Our aim was to encourage far higher levels of active student engagement, where knowledge is obtained by sharing, problem-solving and creating, rather than by passive listening. This classroom enables both active engagement and equal access.

"We found our tables encouraged students to collaborate more effectively. We were delighted to observe groups of students enhancing others' understanding of mathematical concepts. Such collaboration just did not happen when students used paper-based approaches."

The Durham University team designed software and desks that recognize multiple touches on the desktop using vision systems that see infrared light. The project called SynergyNet set out to integrate a fully collaborative system of desks, building it into the fabric and furniture of the classroom. The new desks with a 'multi-touch' surface are the central component, and these are networked and linked to a main smartboard.

In terms of current teaching, the new system means that the 'move-to-use' whiteboard is by-passed and the new desks can be both screen and keyboard. The desks act like multi-touch whiteboards and several students can use any one desk at once.

The technology allows all students to take part as opposed to one individual dominating.

Researcher, Emma Mercier, School of Education, said: "Cooperative learning works very well in the new classroom because the pupils interact and learn in a different way. The children really enjoy doing maths in this way and are always disappointed when you turn the desks off!

"We can achieve fluency in maths through practice, however, boosting a pupil's ability to find a range of solutions to arithmetic questions is harder to teach. This classroom can help teachers to use collaborative learning to improve their pupils' flexibility in maths."

The teacher plays a key role in the classroom and can send tasks to different tables to individuals and groups. The teacher can also send one group's answers on to the next group to work on and add to, or to the board for a class discussion.

A live feed of the desks goes directly to the teacher who can intervene quickly to help an individual while allowing the group work to continue.

Professor Steve Higgins said: "Technology like this has enormous potential for teaching as it can help the teacher to manage and to orchestrate the learning of individuals and groups of learners to ensure they are both challenged and supported so that they can learn effectively."

Such a classroom may be some way off being a regular feature of schools across the world due to the costs in setting it up, and the level of support needed to make it work, however, in just 3 years the project team have noted major improvements in the technology, and a reduction in costs.

The researchers also recognise that task management in the class environment is an issue requiring thought and planning, but the overall potential of the new classroom for improved numeracy, learning, and on-going assessment is very good.

The project has worked with 12 different schools in the North East.

SynergyNet is one of eight technology enhanced learning research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of the £12M Teaching and Learning Research Programme into Technology Enhanced Learning.

The project is an inter-disciplinary collaboration at Durham University between the School of Education, the Department of Psychology and the Department of Computer Science.

Source: Sciencedaily

Algae can draw energy from other plants

2012-11-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

Astonishing research finding by biologists at Bielefeld University published in the online journal Nature Communications. Flowers need water and light to grow. Even children learn that plants use sunlight to gather energy from earth and water. Members of Professor Dr. Olaf Kruse's biological research team at Bielefeld University have made a groundbreaking discovery that one plant has another way of doing this. They have confirmed for the first time that a plant, the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, not only engages in photosynthesis, but also has an alternative source of energy: it can draw it from other plants. This finding could also have a major impact on the future of bioenergy. The research findings have been released on Tuesday 20 November in the online journal Nature Communications published by the renowned journal Nature. Until now, it was believed that only worms, bacteria, and fungi could digest vegetable cellulose and use it as a source of carbon for their growth and survival. Plants, in contrast, engage in the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide, water, and light. In a series of experiments, Professor Dr. Olaf Kruse and his team cultivated the microscopically small green alga species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a low carbon dioxide environment and observed that when faced with such a shortage, these single-cell plants can draw energy from neighbouring vegetable cellulose instead. The alga secretes enzymes (so-called cellulose enzymes) that 'digest' the cellulose, breaking it down into smaller sugar components. These are then transported into the cells and transformed into a source of energy: the alga can continue to grow. 'This is the first time that such a behaviour has been confirmed in a vegetable organism', says Professor Kruse. 'That algae can digest cellulose contradicts every previous textbook. To a certain extent, what we are seeing is plants eating plants'. Currently, the scientists are studying whether this mechanism can also be found in other types of alga. Preliminary findings indicate that this is the case. In the future, this 'new' property of algae could also be of interest for bioenergy production. Breaking down vegetable cellulose biologically is one of the most important tasks in this field. Although vast quantities of waste containing cellulose are available from, for example, field crops, it cannot be transformed into biofuels in this form. Cellulose enzymes first have to break down the material and process it. At present, the necessary cellulose enzymes are extracted from fungi that, in turn, require organic material in order to grow. If, in future, cellulose enzymes can be obtained from algae, there would be no more need for the organic material to feed the fungi. Then even when it is confirmed that algae can use alternative nutrients, water and light suffice for them to grow in normal conditions.

Source: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/index.html

Solving the Mystery of the Missing Neutrinos

2012-08-01T03:55:00.001-07:00

by John N. Bahcall*

The three years 2001 to 2003 were the golden years of solar neutrino research. In this period, scientists solved a mystery with which they had been struggling for four decades. The solution turned out to be important for both physics and for astronomy. In this article, I tell the story of those fabulous three years.¹
The first two sections summarize the solar neutrino mystery and present the solution that was found in the past three years. The next two sections describe what the solution means for physics and for astronomy. The following sections outline what is left to do in solar neutrino research and give my personal view of why it took more than thirty years to solve the mystery of the missing neutrinos. The last section provides a retrospective impression of the solution.

The Mystery

The Crime Scene

During the first half of the twentieth century, scientists became convinced that the Sun shines by converting, deep in its interior, hydrogen into helium. According to this theory, four hydrogen nuclei called protons (p) are changed in the solar interior into a helium nucleus (⁴He), two anti-electrons (e⁺, positively charged electrons), and two elusive and mysterious particles called neutrinos . This process of nuclear conversion, or nuclear fusion, is believed to be responsible for sunshine and therefore for all life on Earth. The conversion process, which involves many different nuclear reactions, can be written schematically as:

(1).

Two neutrinos are produced each time the fusion reaction (1) occurs. Since four protons are heavier than a helium nucleus, two positive electrons and two neutrinos, reaction (1) releases a lot of energy to the Sun that ultimately reaches the Earth as sunlight. The reaction occurs very frequently. Neutrinos escape easily from the Sun and their energy does not appear as solar heat or sunlight. Sometimes neutrinos are produced with relatively low energies and the Sun gets a lot of heat. Sometimes neutrinos are produced with higher energies and the Sun gets less energy.
The neutrinos in equation (1) and the illustration below are the focus of the mystery that we explore in this article.

Neutrinos have zero electric charge, interact very rarely with matter, and – according to the textbook version of the standard model of particle physics – are massless. About 100 billion neutrinos from the Sun pass through your thumbnail every second, but you do not feel them because they interact so rarely and so weakly with matter. Neutrinos are practically indestructible; almost nothing happens to them. For every hundred billion solar neutrinos that pass through the Earth, only about one interacts at all with the stuff of which the Earth is made. Because they interact so rarely, neutrinos can escape easily from the solar interior where they are created and bring direct information about the solar fusion reactions to us on Earth. There are three known types of neutrinos. Nuclear fusion in the Sun produces only neutrinos that are associated with electrons, the so-called electron neutrinos . The two other types of neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos , are produced, for example, in laboratory accelerators or in exploding stars, together with heavier versions of the electron, the particles muon and tau .

Neutrinos Are Missing

In 1964, following the pioneering work of Raymond Davis Jr., he and and I proposed an experiment to test whether converting hydrogen nuclei to helium nuclei in the Sun is indeed the source of sunlight, as indicated by equation (1).
I calculated with my colleagues the number of neutrinos of different energies that the Sun produces using a detailed computer model of the Sun and also calculated the number of radioactive argon atoms (³⁷Ar) these solar neutrinos would produce in a large tank of chlorine-based cleaning fluid (C₂Cl₄). Although the idea seemed quixotic to many experts, Ray was sure that he could extract the predicted number of a few atoms of ³⁷Ar per month out of a tank of cleaning fluid that is about the size of a large swimming pool.
The first results of Ray's experiment were announced in 1968. He detected only about one third as many radioactive argon atoms as were predicted. This discrepancy between the number of predicted neutrinos and the number Ray measured soon became known as "The Solar Neutrino Problem" or, in more popular contexts, "The Mystery of the Missing Neutrinos."

Raymond Davis Jr. (left) and John Bahcall in miner's clothing and protective hats. The photograph was taken in 1967 about a mile underground in the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota, USA. Davis is pictured showing Bahcall his newly constructed steel ank (6 meters in diameter, 15 meters long), which contained a large amount of cleaning fluid (40,000 liters) and was used to capture neutrinos from the Sun.
Photo: Courtesy of Raymond Davis, Jr. and John Bahcall

Possible Explanations

Three classes of explanation were suggested to solve the mystery. First, perhaps the theoretical calculations were wrong. This could happen in two ways. Either the predicted number of neutrinos was incorrect or the calculated production rate of argon atoms was not right. Second, perhaps Ray's experiment was wrong. Third, and this was the most daring and least discussed possibility, maybe physicists did not understand how neutrinos behave when they travel astronomical distances.
The theoretical calculations were refined and checked many times over the next two decades by me and by different researchers. The data used in the calculations were improved and the predictions became more precise. No significant error was found in the computer model of the Sun or in my calculation of the probability of Ray's tank capturing neutrinos. Similarly, Ray increased the sensitivity of his experiment. He also carried out a number of different tests of his technique in order to make sure that he was not overlooking some neutrinos. No significant error was found in the measurement. The discrepancy between theory and experiment persisted.
What about the third possible explanation, new physics? Already in 1969, Bruno Pontecorvo and Vladimir Gribov of the Soviet Union proposed the third explanation listed above, namely, that neutrinos behave differently than physicists had assumed. Very few physicists took the idea seriously at the time it was first proposed, but the evidence favoring this possibility increased with time.

Evidence Favors New Physics

In 1989, twenty-one years after the first experimental results were published, a Japanese-American experimental collaboration reported the results of an attempt to "solve" the solar neutrino problem. The new experimental group called Kamiokande (led by Masatoshi Koshiba and Yoji Totsuka) used a large detector of pure water to measure the rate at which electrons in the water scattered the highest-energy neutrinos emitted from the Sun. The water detector was very sensitive, but only to high-energy neutrinos that are produced by a rare nuclear reaction (involving the decay of the nucleus ⁸B) in the solar energy production cycle. The original Davis experiment with chlorine was primarily, but not exclusively, sensitive to the same high-energy neutrinos.
The Kamiokande experiment confirmed that the number of neutrino events that were observed was less than predicted by the theoretical model of the Sun and by the textbook description of neutrinos. But, the discrepancy in the water detector was somewhat less severe than observed in the chlorine detector of Ray Davis.
In the following decade, three new solar neutrino experiments deepened the mystery of the missing neutrinos. Experiments in Italy and Russia used massive detectors containing gallium to show that lower energy neutrinos were also apparently missing. These experiments were called GALLEX (led by Till Kirsten of Heidelberg, Germany) and SAGE (led by Vladimir Gavrin of Moscow, Russia). The fact that GALLEX and SAGE were sensitive to lower energy neutrinos was very important since I believed I could calculate more accurately the number of low energy neutrinos than the number of higher energy neutrinos. In addition, a much larger version of the Japanese water detector, called Super-Kamiokande (led by Totsuka and Yochiro Suzuki), made more precise measurements of the higher energy neutrinos and confirmed the original deficit of higher energy neutrinos found by the chlorine and Kamiokande experiments. So both high and low energy neutrinos were missing, although not in the same proportions.

The Super-Kamiokande Detector, University of Tokyo. The detector consists of an inner volume and an outer volume which contain 32,000 and 18,000 tons of pure water, respectively. The outer volume shields the inner volume in which neutrino interactions are studied. The inner volume is surrounded by 11,000 photomultiplier tubes that detect pale blue Cherenkov light emitted when electrons are struck by neutrinos.
Drawing: Courtesy of Kamioka Observatory, ICRR, University of Tokyo

Evidence obtained during this decade indicated that something must happen to the neutrinos on their way to detectors on Earth from the interior of the Sun. In 1990, Hans Bethe and I pointed out that new neutrino physics, beyond what was contained in the standard particle physics textbooks, was required to reconcile the results of the Davis chlorine experiment and the Japanese-American water experiment. Our conclusion was based upon an analysis of the relative sensitivity of the chlorine and the water experiments to neutrino number and neutrino energy. The newer solar neutrino experiments in Italy and in Russia increased the difficulty of explaining the neutrino data without invoking new physics.
New evidence also showed that the solar model predictions were reliable. In 1997, precise measurements were made of the sound speed throughout the solar interior using periodic fluctuations observed in ordinary light from the surface of the Sun. The measured sound speeds agreed to a precision of 0.1% with the sound speeds calculated for our theoretical model of the Sun. These measurements suggested to astronomers that the theoretical model of the Sun was so accurate that the model must also predict correctly the number of solar neutrinos.
The last decade of the twentieth century provided strong evidence that a better theory of fundamental physics was required to solve the mystery of the missing neutrinos. But, we still needed to find the smoking gun.

The Solution

On June 18, 2001 at 12:15 PM (eastern daylight time) a collaboration of Canadian, American, and British scientists made a dramatic announcement: they had solved the solar neutrino mystery. The international collaboration (led by Arthur McDonald of Ontario, Canada) reported the first solar neutrino results obtained with a detector of 1,000 tons of heavy water² (D₂O). The new detector, located in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario in Canada, was able to study in a different way the same higher-energy solar neutrinos that had been investigated previously in Japan with the Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande ordinary-water detectors. The Canadian detector is called SNO for Solar Neutrino Observatory.

Artist's drawing showing cutaway of the Sudbury Solar Neutrino Observatory, encased in its housing and submerged in a mine. The inner detector contains 1,000 tons of heavy water and is surrounded by a stainless steel structure carrying about 10,000 photomultiplier tubes. The outer, barrel-shaped cavity (22 meters in diameter and 34 meters in height) is filled with purified ordinary water to provide support and to shield against particles other than neutrinos.
Drawing: Copyright © Garth Tietien 1991

The Definitive Experiments

For their first measurements, the SNO collaboration used the heavy-water detector in a mode that is sensitive only to electron neutrinos. The SNO scientists observed approximately one-third as many electron neutrinos as the standard computer model of the Sun predicted were created in the solar interior. The Super-Kamiokande detector, which is primarily sensitive to electron neutrinos but has some sensitivity to other neutrino types, observed about half as many events as were expected.
If the standard model of particle physics was right, the fraction measured by SNO and the fraction measured by Super-Kamiokande should be the same. All the neutrinos should be electron neutrinos. The fractions were different. The standard textbook model of particle physics was wrong.
Combining the SNO and the Super-Kamiokande measurements, the SNO collaboration determined the total number of solar neutrinos of all types (electron, muon, and tau) as well as the number of just electron neutrinos. The total number of neutrinos of all types agrees with the number predicted by the computer model of the Sun. Electron neutrinos constitute about a third of the total number of neutrinos.
The smoking gun was discovered. The smoking gun is the difference between the total number of neutrinos and the number of only electron neutrinos. The missing neutrinos were actually present, but in the form of the more difficult to detect muon and tau neutrinos.

The epochal results announced in June 2001 were confirmed by subsequent experiments. The SNO collaboration made unique new measurements in which the total number of high energy neutrinos of all types was observed in the heavy water detector. These results from the SNO measurements alone show that most of the neutrinos produced in the interior of the Sun, all of which are electron neutrinos when they are produced, are changed into muon and tau neutrinos by the time they reach the Earth.

The measurement of the total number of neutrinos in the SNO detector provided the fingerprints on the smoking gun.

These revolutionary results were verified independently in an extraordinary tour-de-force by a Japanese-American experimental collaboration, Kamland, which studied, instead of solar neutrinos, anti-neutrinos emitted by nuclear power reactors in Japan and in neighboring countries. The collaboration (led by Atsuto Suzuki of Sendai, Japan) observed a deficit in the detected number of anti-neutrinos from the nuclear power reactors. A deficit had been predicted for the Kamland experiment based upon the solar model calculations, the solar neutrino measurements, and a theoretical model of neutrino behavior that explained why the previous calculations and measurements seemed to be in disagreement. The Kamland measurements significantly improved our knowledge of the parameters that characterize neutrinos.

Where Did the Missing Neutrinos Go?

The solution of the mystery of the missing solar neutrinos is that neutrinos are not, in fact, missing. The previously uncounted neutrinos are changed from electron neutrinos into muon and tau neutrinos that are more difficult to detect. The muon and tau neutrinos were not detected by the Davis experiment with chlorine; they were not detected by the gallium experiments in Russia and in Italy; and they were not detected by the first SNO measurement. This lack of sensitivity to muon and tau neutrinos is the reason that these experiments seemed to suggest that most of the expected solar neutrinos were missing. On the other hand, the Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande water experiments in Japan and the later SNO heavy water experiments had some sensitivity to muon and tau neutrinos in addition to their primary sensitivity to electron neutrinos. These water experiments revealed therefore larger fractions of the predicted solar neutrinos.

What Does All This Mean for Physics?

What Is Wrong with Neutrinos?

Solar neutrinos have a multiple personality disorder. They are created as electron neutrinos in the Sun, but on the way to the Earth they change their type. For neutrinos, the origin of the personality disorder is a quantum mechanical process, called "neutrino oscillations."
Pontecorvo and Gribov had the right idea in 1969. Lower energy solar neutrinos switch from electron neutrino to another type as they travel in the vacuum from the Sun to the Earth. The process can go back and forth between different types. The number of personality changes, or oscillations, depends upon the neutrino energy. At higher neutrino energies, the process of oscillation is enhanced by interactions with electrons in the Sun or in the Earth. Stas Mikheyev, Alexei Smirnov, and Lincoln Wolfenstein first proposed that interactions with electrons in the Sun could exacerbate the personality disorder of neutrinos, i.e., the presence of matter could cause the neutrinos to oscillate more vigorously between different types.

Bruno Pontecorvo in his office at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Physics, Dubna, Russia in 1983. Pontecorvo was discussing physics with his collaborator Samoil Bilenky. Later that afternoon, Pontecorvo celebrated his 70th birthday with a party.
Photo: Courtesy of Samoil Bilenky and John Bahcall

Even before the SNO measurement in 2001, phenomenological analyses of all the solar neutrino experimental data suggested with rather high confidence that some new physics was occurring. The preferred neutrino parameters from these pre-SNO analyses agreed with the parameters that were selected later with higher confidence by the SNO and Super-Kamiokande results. But, the smoking gun was missing.
The SNO and Super-Kamiokande results taken together were equivalent to finding a smoking gun, because they referred to the same high-energy solar neutrinos and because the experiments used techniques that were familiar to many physicists. Also, both experiments included many checks on their measurements.

What Is Wrong with the Standard Model of Particle Physics?

The standard model of particle physics assumes that neutrinos are massless. In order for neutrino oscillations to occur, some neutrinos must have masses. Therefore, the standard model of particle physics must be revised.
The simplest model that fits all the neutrino data implies that the mass of the electron neutrino is about 100 million times smaller than the mass of the electron. But, the available data are not yet sufficiently definitive to rule out all but one possible solution. When we finally have a unique solution, the values of the different neutrino masses may be clues that lead to understanding physics beyond the standard model of particle physics.
There are two equivalent descriptions of neutrinos, one that is expressed in terms of the masses of the neutrinos and one that is expressed in terms of the particles with which the neutrinos are associated (electron neutrinos with electrons, muon neutrinos with muon particles, or tau neutrinos with tau particles). The relations between the mass description and the associated-particle description involve certain constants, called "mixing angles," whose values are potentially important clues that may help lead to an improved theory of how elementary particles behave.
Solar neutrino research shows that neutrinos can change their personalities or types. The mathematical description of this malady determines quantities that we hope will be useful clues in the search for a more general theory of how fundamental particles behave.

What Does All This Mean for Astronomy?

The total number of neutrinos observed in the SNO and Super-Kamiokande experiments agrees with the number calculated using the standard computer model of the Sun. This shows that we understand how the Sun shines, the original question that initiated the field of solar neutrino research. The solution of the mystery of the missing neutrinos is an important triumph for astronomy. The standard solar model predictions are vindicated; the standard model of particle physics must be revised. Four decades ago, when the first solar neutrino experiment was proposed, no one would have guessed that this turn of events would be the outcome.
In order to predict correctly the number of neutrinos produced by nuclear reactions in the Sun, many complicated phenomena must be understood in detail. For example, one must understand a smorgasbord of nuclear reactions at energies where measurements are difficult. One must understand the transport of energy at very high temperatures and densities. One must understand the state of the solar matter in conditions that cannot be studied directly on Earth. The temperature at the center of the Sun is about 50,000 times higher than the temperature on Earth on a sunny day and the density in the center of the Sun is about a hundred times the density of water. One must measure the abundances of the heavy elements on the surface of the Sun and then understand how these abundances change as one goes deeper into the Sun. All of these and many more details must be understood and calculated accurately.
The predicted number of high-energy solar neutrinos can be shown by a quantum mechanical calculation to depend sensitively on the central temperature of the Sun. A 1% error in the temperature corresponds to about a 30% error in the predicted number of neutrinos; a 3% error in the temperature results in a factor of two error in the neutrinos. The physical reason for this great sensitivity is that the energy of the charged particles that must collide to produce the high-energy neutrinos is small compared to their mutual electrical repulsion. Only a small fraction of the nuclear collisions in the Sun succeed in overcoming this repulsion and causing fusion; this fraction is very sensitive to the temperature. Despite this great sensitivity to temperature, the theoretical model of the Sun is sufficiently accurate to predict correctly the number of neutrinos.
The research efforts of thousands of researchers in institutions distributed throughout the world have been necessary to achieve the required precision. As a result of this community effort over the past four decades, we now have confidence in our understanding of how stars shine. We can use this knowledge to interpret observations of distant galaxies that also contain stars. We can use the theory of how stars shine and evolve to learn more about the evolution of the universe.

What Is Left To Do?

The chlorine and gallium detectors do not measure the energy of neutrino events. Only the water detectors (Kamiokande, Super-Kamiokande, and SNO) provide specific information about the energies of the solar neutrinos that are observed. However, the water detectors are sensitive only to higher energy neutrinos (with energies > 5 million electron volts).
The standard computer model of the Sun predicts that most solar neutrinos have energies that are below the detection thresholds for the water detectors. If the standard solar model is correct, water detectors are sensitive to only about 0.01% of the neutrinos the Sun emits. The remaining 99.99% must be observed in the future with new detectors that are sensitive to relatively low energies.
The Sun is the only star close enough to the Earth for us to observe the neutrinos produced by nuclear fusion reactions. It is important to observe the abundant low-energy solar neutrinos in order to test more precisely the theory of stellar evolution. We believe we can calculate the expected number of low energy neutrinos more accurately than we can calculate the number of high-energy neutrinos. Therefore, an accurate measurement of the number of low energy neutrinos will be a critical test of the degree of accuracy of our solar theory. There may still be surprises.
At lower energies (< 2 million electron volts), we believe that the theory of Pontecorvo and Gribov describes well the conversion in vacuum of electron neutrinos into neutrinos of other types. At higher energies, we think that interactions with electrons, as suggested by Mikheyev, Smirnov, and Wolfenstein, are required in order to understand the enhanced conversion of electron neutrinos into other types of neutrinos. We need new experiments at low energies to test for, and understand quantitatively, the change in the conversion mechanism from the process operating at high energies to the process that is most important at low energies.
Solar neutrino experiments at low energies can also provide refined measurements of the parameters that describe neutrino oscillations.
We can use neutrinos to measure the total radiant luminosity of the Sun. The present estimate of the total luminosity uses only the particles of light, called photons. If the only source of radiant energy is nuclear fusion reactions as described by the equation shown in the beginning of the article, then the two measurements (with light and with neutrinos) will agree. We expect agreement based upon our current understanding of how the sun shines. But, if there is another source of energy—some process that we do not yet know about—then the measurements with neutrinos and with light may differ significantly. That would be a revolutionary discovery.

Why Did It Take So Long?

The mystery of the missing solar neutrinos was first recognized in 1968. The number of neutrino events observed by Ray Davis in his detector was much less than the predicted value. But, it was not until 2001 that most physicists were convinced that the origin of the solar neutrino mystery was an inadequacy in the standard model of particle physics rather than a failure of the standard theoretical model of how the Sun shines.

Why did it take so long for most physicists to be convinced that the particle theory was wrong and not the astrophysics?
Let's first hear in their own words what some of the most prominent physicists have said about the missing neutrinos. In 1967, two years before his epochal paper with Gribov on solar neutrino oscillations was published, Bruno Pontecorvo wrote:
"Unfortunately, the weight of the various thermonuclear reactions in the sun, and the central temperature of the sun are insufficiently well known in order to allow a useful comparison of expected and observed solar neutrinos..."
In other words, the uncertainties in the solar model are so large that they prevent a useful interpretation of solar neutrino measurements. Bruno Pontecorvo's view was echoed more than two decades later when in 1990 Howard Georgi and Michael Luke wrote as the opening sentences in a paper on possible particle physics effects in solar neutrino experiments:
"Most likely, the solar neutrino problem has nothing to do with particle physics. It is a great triumph that astrophysicists are able to predict the number of ⁸B neutrinos to within a factor of 2 or 3..."
C.N. Yang stated on October 11, 2002, a few days after the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physics to Ray Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba for the first cosmic detection of neutrinos, that:
"I did not believe in neutrino oscillations even after Davis' painstaking work and Bahcall's careful analysis. The oscillations were, I believed, uncalled for."
Sidney Drell wrote in a personal letter of explanation to me in January 2003 that "… the success of the Standard Model (of particle physics) was too dear to give up."
The standard model of particle physics is a beautiful theory that has been tested and found to make correct predictions for thousands of laboratory experiments. The standard solar model, on the other hand, involves complicated physics in unfamiliar conditions and had not previously been tested to high precision. Moreover, the predictions of the standard solar model depend sensitively on details of the model, such as the central temperature. No wonder it took scientists a long time to blame the standard model of particle physics rather than the standard model of the Sun.

An Astonishing Community Achievement

I am astonished when I look back on what has been accomplished in the field of solar neutrino research over the past four decades. Working together, an international community of thousands of physicists, chemists, astronomers, and engineers has shown that counting radioactive atoms in a swimming pool full of cleaning fluid in a deep mine on Earth can tell us important things about the center of the Sun and about the properties of exotic fundamental particles called neutrinos. If I had not lived through the solar neutrino saga, I would not have believed it was possible.

Bibliography

J.N. Abdurashitov et al., "Measurement of the solar neutrino capture rate by the Russian-American gallium solar neutrino experiment during one half of the 22-year cycle of solar activity," J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 95, 181-193 (2002); W. Hampel et al. "GALLEX solar neutrino observations: results for GALLEX IV," Phys. Lett. B 44, 127-133 (1999). These two papers present the crucial observations obtained with gallium solar neutrino experiments.
Q.R. Ahmad, et al., "Measurement of the rate of interactions produced by ⁸B solar neutrinos at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory," Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 071301 (2001). For most physicists, this paper changed the way they think about solar neutrinos.
J.N. Bahcall, "Solar Neutrinos I. Theoretical," Phys. Rev. Lett. 12, 300-302 (1964). This paper presented the theoretical aspects of the proposal to study solar neutrinos with a chlorine detector.
J.N. Bahcall and H.A. Bethe, "A solution of the solar neutrino problem," Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 2233-2235 (1990). We showed in this article that new particle physics was required if the chlorine and Kamiokande solar neutrino experiments were both correct. The argument was strengthened by the subsequent results of the gallium and Super-Kamiokande experiments.
J.N. Bahcall, M.H. Pinsonneault, S. Basu, and J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, "Are standard solar models reliable?," Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 171-174 (1997). The abstract of this paper concludes that: "standard solar models predict the properties of the sun more accurately than are required for applications involving solar neutrinos." This conclusion was based upon the agreement to better than 0.1% of the measured sound speeds of the Sun with the values predicted by the standard solar model. This inference that new physics was required was based upon astronomical evidence and was verified four and half years later by the beautiful SNO solar neutrino measurements.
J.N. Bahcall, M.H. Pinsonneault, and S. Basu, "Solar models: current epoch and time dependences, neutrinos, and helioseismological properties," Astrophysical J. 555, 990-1012 (2001). The agreement between the neutrino predictions in this paper and the subsequent measurements by the SNO and Super-Kamiokande experiments is good, well within the quoted theoretical and experimental uncertainties. This paper is part of a series, begun in 1962, to calculate increasingly more accurate models of the interior of the Sun and to refine the neutrino predictions of the solar model.
H.A. Bethe, "Energy production in stars," Phys. Rev. 55, 434-456 (1939). If you are a physicist and only have time to read one paper in the subject, this is the paper to read.
B.T. Cleveland et al., "Measurement of the solar electron neutrino flux with the Homestake chlorine detector," Astrophys. J. 496, 505-526 (1998). This monumental paper summarizes the measurements of the solar neutrino flux with the Davis et al. chlorine detector.
R. Davis Jr., "Solar Neutrinos. II. Experimental,'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 12, 303-305 (1964). This paper presented the experimental aspects of the proposal to measure solar neutrinos with a chlorine detector.
S. Drell, personal letter to John Bahcall, January 29, 2003. In this letter, Drell explained his reasons, and those of many theoretical physicists, for not accepting solar neutrino oscillations until the first results of the SNO experiment were published. He said that the standard model of physics was too beautiful and too successful to abandon.
K. Eguchi et al., "First results from Kamland: evidence for reactor anti-neutrino disappearance," Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 021802 (2003). You have to read this paper to believe it can be done. The paper presents the definitive confirmation via a terrestrial experiment that solar neutrinos change their type.
Y. Fukuda et al., "Solar neutrino data covering solar cycle 22," Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1683-1686 (1996); S. Fukuda et al., "Solar ⁸B and hep neutrino measurements from 1258 days of Super-Kamiokande data," Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5651 (2001). These articles summarize the solar neutrino results of the extraordinary Japanese-American water experiments.
H. Georgi and M. Luke, "Neutrino moments, masses, and custodial SU(2) symmetry," Nucl. Phys. B 347, 1-11 (1990). These authors expressed the prevailing view among physicists at the time they wrote their paper, namely, that the solar neutrino mystery was not due to new particle physics.
V.N. Gribov and B.M. Pontecorvo, "Neutrino astronomy and lepton charge," Phys. Lett. B 28, 493-496 (1969). Just one year after the problem was recognized, this visionary paper proposed the basic idea underlying the correct solution of the solar neutrino problem. More than three decades were needed in order to prove that indeed new particle physics was required to explain what happened to the uncounted neutrinos.
S.P. Mikheyev and A.Y. Smirnov, "Resonance enhancement of oscillations in matter and solar neutrino spectroscopy," Soviet Journal Nuclear Physics 42, 913-917 (1985). Mikheyev and Smirnov showed that the ideas of Wolfenstein (1978) and Gribov and Pontecorvo (1969) on neutrino oscillations provided a natural and beautiful explanation of the missing solar neutrinos. Their paper supplied the final particle physics element required to solve the solar neutrino problem. Moreover, the ideas of Mikheyev, Smirnov, and Wolfenstein on the influence of matter on neutrino oscillations are important in arenas much removed from solar physics, including the early universe, the explosion of stars, and laboratory experiments on Earth.
B.M. Pontecorvo, "Neutrino experiments and the problem of conservation of leptonic charge," Zh. Exp. Teor. Fiz. 53, 1717-1725 (1967). This is the prophetic paper in which Pontecorvo first discussed the possibility of solar neutrino oscillations. He also dismissed the possibility of using solar neutrinos to test for neutrino oscillations, because – he believed – that the theoretical expectations were not reliable to the required accuracy.
A.Y. Smirnov, "The MSW effect and solar neutrinos," Proceedings of the X International Workshop on Neutrino Telescopes, Venice, March 11-14, 2003, edited by Milla Baldo Ceolin, pp. 23-43. This paper is a clear and beautiful summary of the history and basic physics of matter effects in solar neutrino phenomena.
L. Wolfenstein, Phys. Rev. D 17, 2369-2374 (1978). This extraordinary paper spawned an academic industry and underlies much of the subsequent theoretical work on neutrino oscillations. Wolfenstein presented an elegant and physical derivation of the mechanism by which matter (electrons) could modify the vacuum neutrino oscillations proposed by Gribov and Pontecorvo.
C.N. Yang, "Necessary subtlety and unnecessary subtlety," in 'Neutrinos and Implications for Physics Beyond the Standard Model,' edited by R. Shrock, World Scientific (2003) p. 5. Yang makes an illuminating distinction between necessary and unnecessary subtleties. He explains that he did not believe in neutrino oscillations until the experimental evidence became overwhelming. He regarded oscillations as an intellectual luxury that was not required by what was previously known of particle physics.

* John N. Bahcall was Richard Black Professor of Natural Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ. John Bahcall received his BA in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1961. He was on the faculty of California Institute of Technology and was a Professor of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Dr. Bahcall's areas of expertise included models of the Galaxy, dark matter, atomic and nuclear physics applied to astronomical systems, stellar evolution, and quasar emission and absorption lines. In collaboration with Raymond Davis Jr., he proposed in 1964 that neutrinos from the sun could be detected via a practical chlorine detector. In the subsequent three decades, he has refined theoretical predictions and interpretations of solar neutrino detectors.

In 1999, Prof. Bahcall was awarded the lifetime achievement award of the American Astronomical Society, the Russell Prize, for his work on Galaxy models, quasar absorption spectra, and solar neutrinos. He was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science and the American Physical Society's Hans Bethe Prize in 1998; the 1994 Heineman Prize by the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics for his work on solar neutrinos; the 1992 NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal for his observations with the Hubble Space Telescope; and the 1970 Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society for his research on quasars and on solar neutrinos.

Prof. Bahcall was president of the American Astronomical Society from 1990-1992 and chair of the National Academy Decade Survey Committee for Astronomy and Astrophysics in the 1990s which successfully set priorities for research projects.

1. This article is self-contained and can be read independently, but it is a sequel to the article "How the Sun Shines" by J.N. Bahcall that was presented on the Nobelprize.org Web site, in June 2000. In the three years following the publication of the original article, a flood of confirmatory experimental data has been obtained. These new data provide by themselves a fascinating story that is presented here.

2. Heavy water is chemically similar to ordinary water. However, the hydrogen in heavy water has a nucleus consisting of a proton and a neutron and is called deuterium. For ordinary water, the hydrogen has a nucleus that contains only a proton (and no neutron).

Emotion Detectives Uncover New Ways to Fight-Off Youth Anxiety and Depression

2012-08-01T03:53:00.001-07:00

Emotion Detectives Treatment Program is an adaptation of two treatment protocols developed for adults and adolescents, the Unified Protocols. The program implements age-appropriate techniques that deliver education about emotions and how to manage them, strategies for evaluating situations, problem-solving skills, behavior activation (a technique to reduce depression), and parent training.

In the study, 22 children ages 7 to 12 with a principal diagnosis of anxiety disorder and secondary issues of depression participated in a 15-session weekly group therapy of EDTP. Among participants who completed the protocol (18 out of 22), 14 no longer met criteria for anxiety disorder at post-treatment. Additionally, among participants who were assigned a depressive disorder before treatment (5 out of 22), only one participant continued to meet such criteria at post-treatment.

Unlike results from previous studies, the presence of depressive symptoms did not predict poorer treatment response. The results also show a high percentage of attendance. The findings imply that EDTP may offer a better treatment option for children experiencing anxiety and depression.

"Previous research has shown that depressive symptoms tend to weaken treatment response for anxiety disorders. We were hopeful that a broader, more generalized approach would better address this common co-occurrence," says Bilek, doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at UM and co-author of the study. "We were not surprised to find that the EDTP had equivalent outcomes for individuals with and without elevated depressive symptoms, but we were certainly pleased to find that this protocol may address this important issue."

The study, titled "The Development of a Transdiagnostic, Cognitive Behavioral Group Intervention for Childhood Anxiety Disorders and Co-Occurring Depression Symptoms," is published online ahead of print in the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Practice. The next step is for the team to conduct a randomized controlled trial comparing the EDTP to another group treatment protocol for anxiety disorder.

Pollution Can Make Citizens, Both Rich and Poor, Go Green

2012-08-01T03:51:00.001-07:00

The paper, "How Perceived Exposure to Environmental Harm Influences Environmental Behavior in Urban China," flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that the poor cannot afford to protect the environment.
"We feel it's a major contribution to provide empirical evidence that environmental harm is one of the most important predictors of environmental behavior," said Xiaodong Chen, who conducted the study while working on his doctorate at CSIS.

"Environmental harm could be more important than economic status in predicting environmental behavior. If people are affected by degraded environmental conditions, then even people with low economic status still may sacrifice some economic benefit in order to protect the environment."

Indeed, the growing environmental consciousness in China has been accompanied by increased involvement by the public in environmental protection. For instance, the paper notes that in 2005 there were some 1,000 protests per week related to environmental pollution in China, a number projected to increase rapidly.
Scientists have studied environmental attitudes for years, but the paper notes that it's behavior that ultimately counts. There is a growing body of literature on environmental attitudes and behavior in China, yet little is known about how people perceive and respond to personal exposure to environmental harm.
Chen and co-authors Liu; Nils Peterson of North Carolina State University and a CSIS alumnus; Vanessa Hull, doctoral candidate in CSIS; Chuntian Lu, MSU sociology doctoral student; and Dayong Hong of Renmin University in China used China's General Social Survey of 2003, which was the first nationwide survey to address this issue.
Some 5,000 urban respondents were asked specifically about their environmental behavior -- if they sorted their garbage to separate recyclables, re-used plastic bags, talked about environmental issues with family or friends, participated in environmental education programs, volunteered in environmental organizations or took part in environmental litigation.

The people taking the survey were allowed to define environmental harm for themselves.
The authors found that actions that resulted in direct results such as environmental litigation were the ones that people most likely turned to after being exposed to environmental harm. Other actions, such as trash recycling programs, may produce indirect results. However, people's views about the environment are most likely to inspire them to participate in environmental behaviors if those behaviors are ones that they can control, such as re-using plastic bags and talking about environmental issues.
"Basically, it means that if people are affected by environmental harm, they feel they should do something positive, and something they themselves can control," Chen said.
The findings, Chen said, can help instruct policy to transform recognition of environmental harm into environmental action.

The survey was administered jointly by the Survey Research Center of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Department of Sociology at Renmin University of China.

Family planning for happy and successful life

2011-01-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

Family planning for happy and successful life
Who Expert committee defined Family planning as “a way of thinking and living that is adopted voluntary upon the basis of knowledge ,attitude and responsible decision by individuals and couples.”
The main objectives of
Family planning is to avoid unwanted births.
The family planning brings about wanted births.
Family planning regulates the intervals between pregnancies.
Family planning controls the time at which birth occurs in relation to the ages of the parents.
Family planning determines the number of children in the family.
The eligible couples refers to a currently married couple where in the wife is in the reproductive age, which is generally assumed to lie between the ages of 15 and45.
Target couples are the couples who have had 2-3 living children, it also includes families with one child or even newly married couples with a view to develop acceptance of the idea of family planning from the earliest possible.
Contraceptive Failure Rate
It is defined as pregnancy rates per 100 women during first year of use of contraceptives.
They are broadly grouped as
-Spacing: For family planning knowledge of spacing is most important.
-Terminal
Family planning in Nepal
Family planning services are provide free of cost by the Government of Nepal, Contraceptive Retail Sales (CRS) company is responsible for its distribution. Depo-Provera is the most popular contraceptive method in Nepal.

Environmental Physics

2011-01-19T00:12:00.001-08:00

Environmental Physics

What is exatctly the definition of Environmental Physics?. There are so many definition of it .
In the increasingly and modern technology,applied physcs plays a vital role to understanding
the effect of new and the existing technologies on environment.There is the direct impact on
society also.
Mathematical modeling,ionosphere-magnetosphere interactions and simultations of electromagnetic
phenomena.Mathematical modeling isthe main physical processes of these studies and electrodynamics
simulations of the solar wind.It also analysis the energy usage and emissions in urban
transpartation.The applied physics colaborated withlDepartment of Natural resourses and the
environment ,Atmospheric ,Oceanic , Space science and Geology.
Also the Environmental Physics concerns with all species of life survive and reproduction.It also
involves in mathematical analysis that describe the physical processes of the environment and many
bilogical processes.Environmental Physics gives the ideas about thecomplex response of animals and
plants on environmental change.
Now a days the Environment change has made both politician and public aware of its effect like as
global weather,global warming etc.mostly the biologists atmospheric scientists and weather forecast
and modeller.
These global warming and water cycles and weather change plays vital role in Agricultural fields.
So we all public, politician should be aware of it.

Applied physics

2011-01-19T00:11:00.001-08:00

Applied physics

Applied physics is a general term for physics which is the applied field of Physics.
It is the practical field .There are different types of theory in physics.
The study of these theories is the pure science but applied physics is the practical
based study as similar to applied mathematics. It usually differs from engineering in
that engineering is to design on something but applied physics is to develop new thing
that is physics research. Its main aim to develop new technology and helps to solve engineering.
Applied physics is the implementation of pure physics or implementation of basics theory of physics.
It is the growing field in physics. It is totally practically based course.
There is great scope of Applied physics in many field. Such as in Engineering, Research fields.

Agrophysics

2011-01-19T00:10:00.001-08:00

Agrophysics
Agrophysics is a branch of science which deals with Physics and Agronomy.
Agrophysics is the study of the agroecosystem and the biological objects
and it is described by the methods of physical sciences.

Agrophysics is closely related to biophysics but it is not related with biological terms. It is different from biophysics. Biophysics is the study of biology and physics.
It is the research oriented field. It involves the knowledge of Nutritional science
and Agricultural technology, Biotechnology, Genetics etc.
It is different from agricultural engineering. There are many institutes where Agrophysics can study. Anyone can study this course but you must be patient and hardworking.

Insurance To Remove HealtH Accidents And Risk

2010-12-21T16:09:00.001-08:00

Insurance To Remove HealtH Accidents And Risk

Insurance is a risk management desk of all things.HEALTH INSURANCE is one of the most important among the different types of insurance.Such as Life Insurance, Health Insurance, Marine Insurance, Vehicle Insurance, Farmer Insurance, Land Insurance, Property Insurance, Child insurance Insurance, Motorbike Insurance, Aernoplane Insurance, Health Care Insurance, Home Insurance, Insurance, Mobile Insurance, Shop Insurance, Restaurant Insurance, Clothing Insurance etc. There are so many insurance. But Health insurance is most important.In nepali language insurance is said as "BEMA." Someone says that "HEALH IS WEALTH".Health is most precious thing than anything in the world.When we do health insurance ,insurance company is responsible to take the the risk of it.Insurance company compenset all that we need.Now a days Health Insurance is very great and plays vital role to make health healthy and better life.

Prevention of Allergies

2010-03-25T13:26:00.001-07:00

There is a plethora of allergy medications which
supposedly provide relief for the watery eyes,
itchy/runny nose and sneezing. Over the counter
antihistamines and decongestants are the best
kinds of over-the-counter drugs to take.
Using steam therapy to clear out nasal passages
is also a great way to obtain relief. Since many
believe that symptoms of asthma are attributed to
a spring/summer cold, the best thing to do to
determine whether you are allergic to pollen is to
receive a skin test or a blood test. There are
different ways of prevention for different ways of
allergies.

Mental Health is great problems among youngster

2010-03-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

About 500 million people are believed to suffer from stress-related, neurotic, and somatoform (psychological problems which presents themselves as physical complaints) disorders. Mental health is not mere absence of mental illness. Mentally healthy person has three main characteristics:
-He feels comfortable about himself.
-He neither underestimates nor overestimates his ability.
-He is able to meet the demands of life.

Causes of mental illness are organic conditions and social pathological causes. In Newari language some people say "DIKKA JULA" that means headache.Newari has many festivals.They have many problems of money to perform such activities.then they say 'PAISA MARU DIKKA JULA'.There must be a combination of genetic and environmental factors. It includes worries , anxieties, emotional stress, tension, frustration, unhappy marriages ,broken homes, poverty , industrialization, changing family structure ,rejection ,neglect., insecurity ,economic and like.
Due to such types of mental illness people are engaged in drug addiction and do many social crimes.
is

Adolescence

2010-03-06T21:23:00.001-08:00

What is the exactly the meaning of adolescence? The adolescence is nothing but the age group between 10 to 19 is period of adolescence among different phases of development of man.
We mostly fall in adolescence group from childhood. There they are considered as adolescence. The WHO (World Health Organization defines adolescence as the age between 10 to 19 years.
There are different changes during adolescence time .They are as follows
Physical changes
Physical changes are the overall growth and development occurring in the size and function of different organs and systems in the body .such changes occur in adolescence time rapidly.
External changes are different in adolescence boys and girls. Internal systems are also changing rapidly such as bones, muscles, glands, digestive system, blood circulatory system and reproductive system.
Mental changes
During adolescence a number of changes also occur in the mental set up. Some mental changes are as follows:
Creativity analytic power and mental maturity grows during adolescence.
Adolescents begin to understand their responsibilities towards self, family, and society in general.
Emotional changes
There are a number of changes also in the emotional set up of adolescents.
These include stronger feelings and expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, likes and love and hatred.
Adolescence is a period of development of newer emotions which are not so prominent in children.
Social changes
During adolescence, both males and females begin to socialize more.
Their group interactions and activities also increase.
Friendship plays an important role in the lives of adolescents.

Bug bites

2010-03-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

It’s important to wear proper attire when walk through
tall grass land. You must pay attention to strange
symptoms you may experience while at play outside.
Bug bites are common during the time of the year.
Prevention:
You must wash your hands thoroughly and frequently
during the day. Many illnesses are born of common bacteria.
Such types of bacteria are easily found in grass.
So it’s always a good idea that prevention is better
than care.

Allergies

2010-03-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

There are different ways that people may have allergy.
Some people may have allergy when sees mass of people.
Now a days, with spring comes a host of sinus and nasal
issues, mainly due to the release of pollen from weeds,
trees, and grass. Adverse reactions to pollen are generally
called hay fever, or rose fever. Because of the abundance
of pollen in the air during springtime, it is extremely
difficult escape breathing in those itchy molecules.
Some people who are exposed to large amounts of pollen
can develop asthma. Environment becomes dusty and may
cause allergy.

Adolescence time is very risky

2010-03-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

During this time teenagers boys and girls cannot able to take right decision in their life. But they have to think their problems many times or consult with elders. This is time that we make our future.
Problems during time of Adolescence
Several physical, mental, sociaal,and emotional problems appear during adolescence. These problems occur mainly because of the changing physical and mental state of the individuals and that of the society in general. Some common problems during adolescence are as follows:
Increased mental tensions so in this time teenagers do many mistakes in their life.
1.Peer and parental pressure.
2.Unadjusted family and social situations.
3.Malnutrition.
4.Tendency to hide things.
5.Drop out from school.
6.Sexual perversion.
7.Early marriage and teenage pregnancy.
8.Deviation to antisocial activities.
9.Beginning to smoke/drug abuse and alcohol intake.