THE NEWS POINTER

Accelerator Driven Subcritical Reactor ADSR or Energy Amplifier Clean Nuclear Power

News Pointer — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:42:13 +0000

In an ADSR, the thorium-containing reactor core would be coupled to a particle accelerator. This would fire up a beam of protons before slamming them into a block of lead inside the reactor core. The bombardment induces the lead to release neutrons, in a process called spallation. Those neutrons are then smashed into the thorium atoms, turning them into atoms of uranium-233, which is fissile – and so the reaction begins… [more]

Source : Guardian

GJ 667C 22 Light years away earth-like planet

News Pointer — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:00:40 +0000

The planet is rocky, like ours, and orbits its sun within the ‘habitable zone’, where temperatures are just right for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface. The temperature on the surface could be close to Earth’s… [more]

Source : Daily Mail

Reading Mind Deconding Brain Waves of Speech

News Pointer — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:57:10 +0000

Scientists have succeeded in decoding electrical activity in the brain’s temporal lobe – the seat of the auditory system – as a person listens to normal conversation. Based on this correlation between sound and brain activity… [more]

Source : University Of California Berkeley

Irisin hormone exercise in a pill

News Pointer — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:01:02 +0000

Researchers have discovered a natural hormone that acts like exercise on muscle tissue—burning calories, improving insulin processing, and perhaps boosting strength, scientists hope it could eventually be used as a treatment for obesity, diabetes… [more]

Source : Technology Review

Dihydromyricetin or DHM ancient Chinese remedy make immune to alcohol

News Pointer — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:04:38 +0000

The chemical is extracted from an ancient Asian remedy – a seed first used as a hangover cure in the year 659. When given DHM, the rats could ‘handle’ their drink better. They took longer to get drunk, and seemed to sober up in about 15 minutes. Perhaps most importantly for medical professionals, the chemical seems to stop rats wanting to drink… [more]

Source : Daily Mail

World’s oldest 99 year old divorcees

News Pointer — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:22:55 +0000

Italian couple are to become the world’s oldest divorcees, after the 99-year-old husband found that his 96-year-old wife had an affair in the 1940s. The Italian man, identified by lawyers in the case only as Antonio C, was rifling through an old chest of drawers when he made the discovery a few days before Christmas… [more]

Source : Telegraph

The Chinese Internet Water Army People Paid To Post On Websites

News Pointer — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:46:38 +0000

In China, paid posters are known as the Internet Water Army because they are ready and willing to ‘flood’ the internet for whoever is willing to pay. The flood can consist of comments, gossip and information (or disinformation) and there seems to be plenty of demand for this army’s services… [more]

Source : Technology Review

PGC-1 gene the secret to slowing human aging and fighting disease

News Pointer — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 06:03:58 +0000

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and their collaborators found that tweaking a gene known as PGC-1, which is also found in human DNA, in the intestinal stem cells of fruit flies delayed the aging of their intestine and extended their lifespan by as much as 50 percent… [more]

Source : Salk Institute

Lumineyes Dr Gregg Homer with laser treatment procedure to turn brown eyes blue

News Pointer — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:24:01 +0000

The treatment uses a laser to remove melanin, the brown pigment, from the upper layer of the iris, leaving the blue colour free to replace it within two to three weeks of the procedure. Dr Homer, a former entertainment lawyer, said the cosmetic operation would cost about £3,000 and could be available in countries outside America… [more] & [more]

Source : Telegraph & Daily Mail

Vesta The Asteroid That Has Mountain Taller Than Mt. Everest

News Pointer — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 01:12:11 +0000

A NASA spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Vesta is revealing new details about the huge space rock’s surface, including a massive mountain that rises taller than Mt. Everest on Earth.Vesta’s giant southern mountain is nearly as tall as Olympus Mons, the largest mountain (and volcano) in the solar system, which soars about 15 miles (24 kilometers) above the surface. On Earth, the largest terrestrial volcano is Mauna Loa in Hawaii… [more] & [more]

Source : Space.com & Scientific American

Emotion detector new camera system as lie detector

News Pointer — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:26:42 +0000

A sophisticated new camera system can detect lies just by watching our faces as we talk, It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases, said lead researcher Professor Hassan Ugail… [more]

Source : BBC

Human derived gelatin made from human DNA

News Pointer — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:53:15 +0000

Successful experiments had been carried out in which human genes were inserted into a strain of yeast to “grow” large amounts of genetically engineered human gelatin, human-derived gelatin “could become a substitute for some of the 300,000 tons of animal-based gelatin produced annually for desserts, marshmallows, candy and innumerable other products… [more]

Source : Telegraph

North Icelandic Jet Current A Significant Influence To Climate Change

News Pointer — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:05:01 +0000

An international team of researchers has confirmed the presence of a deep-reaching ocean circulation system off Iceland that could significantly influence the ocean’s response to climate change in previously unforeseen ways… [more]

Source : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Candle flame contains millions of tiny diamonds

News Pointer — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:39:23 +0000

The flickering flame of a candle has generated comparisons with the twinkling sparkle of diamonds for centuries, but new research has discovered the likeness owes more to science than the dreams of poets… [more] & [more] & [more]

Source : University of St Andrews & Telegraph & Daily Mail

Cognitive computers chips mimics the human brain

News Pointer — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:27:23 +0000

The machines built with these chips “cognitive computers” are able to learn through experience, find patterns, generate ideas and understand the outcomes, In building this new generation of chip, IBM combined principles of nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing… [more] & [more]

Source : Computing.co.uk & BBC

Suicide Gene Therapy Virus That Targets HIV

News Pointer — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:11:11 +0000

In what represents an important step toward curing HIV, a USC scientist has created a virus that hunts down HIV-infected cells. Pin Wang’s lentiviral vector latches onto HIV-infected cells, flagging them with what is called “suicide gene therapy” – allowing drugs to later target and destroy them… [more]

Source : University of Southern California

Germline cells artificial sperm created from stem cells

News Pointer — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 05:01:11 +0000

Fertility researchers created sperm-producing germ cells in a lab and transferred them into infertile mice, which after the treatment were able to produce healthy offspring. Scientists took stem cells from the embryos of laboratory mice and converted them into mature sperm cells, then used them to fertilise eggs and produced the healthy, fertile offspring… [more] & [more]

Source : Telegraph & Independent

Crop breeding to lower atmospheric CO2 levels

News Pointer — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:38:36 +0000

Breeding crops with roots a metre deeper in the ground could lower atmospheric CO₂ levels dramatically, with significant environmental benefits… [more]

Source : University of Manchester

Warming Arctic releasing toxic chemicals trapped in the ice and cold water

News Pointer — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 04:47:34 +0000

Unknown amount of trapped persistent organics pollutants poses threat to marine life and humans as temperatures rise. The chemicals seeping out as temperatures rise include the pesticides DDT, lindane and chlordane as well as the industrial chemicals PCBs and the fungicide hexachlorobenzene (HCB). All of these are know as persistent organics pollutants (Pops), and are banned under the 2004 Stockholm convention… [more]

Soure : Guardian

APM 08279+5255 The Largest and Most Distant Reservoir of Water Discovered

News Pointer — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 01:00:32 +0000

Two teams of astronomers, each led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. Looking from a distance of 30 billion trillion miles away into a quasar—one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos—the researchers have found a mass of water vapor that’s at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world’s oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun… [more]

Source : California Institute of Technology