Tatha's Blog: 2005

Saturday, December 24, 2005

A BIGGGG PHOBIA LIST

must see at:

http://www.phobialist.com/

Friday, December 23, 2005

South Korean Stem-Cell Researcher Resigns after faking research data

read at
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051223/ap_on_sc/skorea_stem_cell

By BO-MI LIM, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korean researcher Hwang
Woo-suk resigned from his university on Friday after
the school said he fabricated stem-cell research that
had raised hopes of new cures for hard-to-treat
diseases.
A university panel, releasing initial findings of a
probe, accused Hwang of damaging the scientific
community with his deception, while South Korea's
government rued the scandal surrounding the country's
star scientist and said it may pull its funding for
his research.

"I sincerely apologize to the people for creating a
shock and disappointment," Hwang told reporters as he
was leaving his office at Seoul National University,
considered the country's top institution of higher
learning.

"With an apologetic heart ... I step down as
professor," he said.

However, Hwang still maintained that he had produced
the technology to create patient-matched stem cells as
he claimed in a May article in the journal Science.

"I emphasize that patient-specific stem cells belong
to South Korea and you are going to see this," said
Hwang, a veterinarian.

Earlier Friday, a panel of Seoul National University
experts said Hwang had faked results of at least nine
of 11 stem cell lines he claimed to have created in
the May paper — the first confirmation of allegations
that have cast a shadow over all his purported
breakthroughs in cloning and stem-cell technology.

"This kind of error is a grave act that damages the
foundation of science," the panel said.

The South Korean government, which had strongly
supported Hwang and designated him the country's first
"top scientist," said Friday it was "miserable" over
the reported results of the investigation and will
start its own probe over ethics breaches.

Choi Seong-sik, vice minister of science and
technology, said it's impossible to recover money
already spent for Hwang, a total $39.9 million for
research and facilities since 1998. But his ministry,
which admitted errors in its handling of Hwang's
projects, will look at ending other funding and
withdraw the "top scientist" designation.

Still, the government said it would support other
similar research.

The university panel said Friday it found that "the
laboratory data for 11 stem cell lines that were
reported in the 2005 paper were all data made using
two stem cell lines in total."

To create fake DNA results purporting to show a match,
Hwang's team split cells from one patient into two
test tubes for the analysis — rather than actually
match cloned cells to a patient's original cells, the
university said.

"Based on these facts, the data in the 2005 Science
paper cannot be some error from a simple mistake, but
can only be seen as a deliberate fabrication to make
it look like 11 stem-cell lines using results from
just two," the panel said.

"There is no way but that Professor Hwang has been
involved," the university's dean of research affairs,
Roe Jung-hye told a news conference. Hwang "somewhat
admits to this," he added.

The panel said DNA tests expected to be completed
within a few days would confirm whether the remaining
two stem-cell lines it had found were actually
successfully cloned from a patient. The earlier claims
of patient-matched stem cells were seen by scientists
worldwide as a key step to creating tailored therapies
for hard-to-treat diseases, such as paralysis or
diabetes.

In light of the revelations, the panel said it would
now also investigate Hwang's other landmark papers —
which include another Science article in 2004 on the
world's first cloned human embryos, and an August 2005
paper in the journal Nature on the first-ever cloned
dog — an Afghan hound named Snuppy. The journals
already are reviewing all the work.

Professor Alan Trounson, a top stem-cell researcher at
Australia's Monash University, said the scandal showed
scientists were rigorously checking one another's
results. But he predicted the fallout would also stain
any other scientists linked to Hwang's work, also
saying that the South Korean's claim to have cloned a
dog was "very much in doubt now."

"I think a lot of the community were very impressed
with the cloning of a dog — and it was a delightful
dog — but I actually don't think it is a cloned dog
now," Trounson told The Associated Press in a
telephone interview.

Hwang has already asked Science to withdraw the May
paper, citing "fatal errors," claiming he had created
only some of the 11 stem-cell colonies at the time of
publication but completed the work later.

The university panel said Friday that it found no
records of two of the other stem-cell lines Hwang
claims to have created. Four others died from
contamination, and another three were in the nurturing
stage and hadn't yet become full stem-cell lines.

Hwang's article this year had also been viewed as
significant for his efficiency in cloning the
stem-cell lines, claiming to use just 185 human eggs
to create custom-made embryonic stem cells for the 11
patients.

But Roe said the investigation had "found that there
have been a lot more eggs used than were reported" and
were investigating the exact number.

The main opposition Grand National Party called for a
parliamentary investigation of the government for
failing to find errors in Hwang's research sooner.
Party spokesman Lee Ke-jin accused the president's
office of being "greatly responsible for neglecting
the situation when it knew everything."

Prosecutors said they would decide whether to
investigate Hwang after the university finishes its
probe. The Seoul District Prosecutor's Office said
Hwang's fabrication is not subject to criminal
charges.

Hwang had last month resigned as head of the World
Stem Cell Hub — an international project founded in
October that had planned to open centers in Britain
and the United States — after admitting he used eggs
from female workers at his lab in violation of ethics
guidelines. Sung Sang-cheol, head of Seoul National
University Hospital where the hub is located, said
Friday the center would continue working but might be
reorganized or renamed.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

What is the longest word in the dictionary?

see another reference:

http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/l/longestword.html

Longest word in the dictionary (no repeated letter)

see at:
http://www.englishforums.com/English/9837/Print.htm

Friday, December 09, 2005

Another better design of homo sapiens - for GOD's consideration

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Convert numerals to roman format

http://www.novaroma.org/via_romana/numbers.html

good site to convert numbers to roman numerals

acknldg.rahul

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

A nice video on nanotech and cancer cure

nanotech in cancer cure...see the movie at NCI

http://nano.cancer.gov/resource_center/video_journey_wmv-high.asp

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Impact Factor of Journals

this is a good site where impact factors are given for all journals ,,,,but upto 2001...and the scientist is a scientometric analyst...you will get all rules and methods of how an impact factor is calculated...there are journals for impact factors also..this is also an scientific discipline..

http://alpha2.infim.ro/~ltpd/Jo_rankingb.htm

http://www.geocities.com/iipopescu/damned_impact_factors.html

in the above link you will get a scintillating story of how the prof's scientist wife (4 times nobel nominated, site http://www.geocities.com/iipopescu/DENISA_POPESCU.html) died in a hospital and the reasons for that...
the doctor who did the surgery had very low citations and that may be a reason for jealousy and he killed the wife,...
read the story more at
http://www.geocities.com/iipopescu/damned_impact_factors.html

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Richard Smalley-inventor of buckyball, dies of Cancer

Thursday, October 20, 2005

History of Sudoku

Just read on...

The History of Sudoku

By Conceptis Editorial

This article Uses material from the

Wikipedia article "Sudoku"

and is licensed under the

GNU Free Documentation License

, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Sudoku by Conceptis

The concept of Sudoku (Japanese: 数独, sūdoku) seems to begin with the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler who in 1783 invented Latin Squares - NxN grids which have all numbers from 1 to N appearing exactly once in each row and column. Because Euler used Greek letters, these grids were often called “Graeco-Latin Squares”. Sudoku puzzles as we know them were first published in the late 1970’s in Math Puzzles and Logic Problems magazine by Dell Magazines. The name given by Dell to these puzzles was Number Place, as they are still called by this company until today. Dell took Euler’s Latin Square concept and applied it to a 9x9 grid with the addition of nine 3x3 sub-grids, or boxes, each containing all numbers from 1 to 9.

So, the Sudoku concept was not invented in Japan as many people may believe, but the name Sudoku was. In 1984 Nikoli, Japan’s leading puzzle creating company, discovered Dell’s Number Place and decided to present them to their Japanese puzzle fans. The puzzles, which were first named Suuji Wa Dokushin Ni Kagiru, ("the numbers must be single" or "the numbers must occur only once") quickly became popular.

In 1986, after some important improvements were added, mainly by making symmetrical patterns and reducing the number of given clues, Sudoku became one of the best selling puzzles in Japan. Realizing that the only problem with the Sudoku puzzles was their long name, Kaji Maki, the president of Nikoli abbreviated it to Sudoku - (Su = number, digit; Doku = single, unmarried). Today there are more than 600,000 copies of Sudoku magazines published solely in Japan every month.

In contrast to the above, during all that time hardly anyone in Europe knew or paid any attention to the Sudoku puzzles.

Slowing the progression of Alzheimer

At the end of 2004 Wayne Gould, a retired Hong Kong judge as well as a puzzle fan and a computer programmer, visited London trying to convince the editors of The Times to publish Sudoku puzzles. Gould, that had written a computer program which generates Sudoku puzzles of different difficulty levels, demanded no money for the puzzles. The Times decided to give it a try and on November 12, 2004 launched their first Sudoku puzzle.

The publishing of Sudoku in the London Times was just the beginning of an enormous phenomenon which swiftly spread all over Britain and its affiliate countries of Australia and New Zealand. Three days later The Daily Mail began publishing Sudoku puzzles titled as "Codenumber". The Daily Telegraph of Sydney followed on 20 May 2005. By the end of May 2005 the puzzle was regularly published in many national newspapers in the UK, including The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun and The Daily Mirror.

But that was not it. In July 2005 Channel 4 included a daily Sudoku game in their Teletext service and Sky One launched the world's largest Sudoku puzzle – a 275 foot (84 meter) square puzzle, carved in the side of a hill in Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol. The BBC Radio 4's Today began reading numbers aloud in the first Sudoku radio version. Famous British celebrities as Big Brother's Jade Goody and Carol Vorderman, that her book How to do Sudoku is the best-selling book in the country, have testified to its benefits as a mental workout. Even the Teachers magazine which is backed by the government recommended Sudoku as brain exercise in classrooms and suggestions have been made that Sudoku solving is capable of slowing the progression of brain disorder conditions such as Alzheimer's.

Back to Manhattan

In April 2005 Sudoku completed a full circle and arrived back to Manhattan as a regular feature in the New York Post. On Monday, July 11, the Sudoku craze spread to other parts of the USA when both The Daily News and USA Today launched Sudoku puzzles on the same day. In both cases the Sudoku puzzles were instead of traditional crosswords and bridge columns.

Today there are Sudoku clubs, chat rooms, strategy books, videos, mobile phone games, card games, competitions and even a Sudoku game show. Sudoku has also sprung up in newspapers all over the world and is commonly described in the world media as "the Rubik's cube of the 21st century" and as the "fastest growing puzzle in the world".

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Scientists Conduct Wind Energy Projects

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Nano Gear-Made by a few 1000 atoms

Nano Gear-Made by a few 1000 atoms
Originally uploaded by tathabhatt.

Physicists have designed machine parts that could work at nanometer scales.

This planetary gear, made up of a few thousand atoms, would perform much

the same as some of its larger ancestors.

mighty mites

The future belongs to machines built at molecular scales—if we develop
tools to engineer them.
Read more at:

http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/features/mmites/mmites.html

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Discovery commander Eileen Collins

Learn more about Discovery commander Eileen Collins at

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/preparingtravel/eileen_collins_profile.html

The landing procedure for Discovery while returning to earth from ISS

Courtesy: NASA

Deorbit and Landing Preliminary Advisory Data (DOL PAD)

Automated DOL PAD For STS-XYZ - this data is for the STS-XYZ mission
Deorbit To KSC On Orbit N - deorbit will occur on the Nth orbit of this
mission
Generated MET 000/00:00:00 - the Mission Elapsed Time in
days/hours:minutes:seconds that this information was generated by computers
in Mission Control.

Deorbit TIG - Time of Ignition - the orbiter will fire its orbital
maneuvering system engines to slow itself down and begin its descent to
Earth. The time of the deorbit burn is shown in both MET
(days/hours:minutes:seconds) and Central time (Julian
Day/hour:minute:second). The location over the Earth at which this event
will occur is shown by Latitude (degrees:minutes) and Longitude
(degrees:minutes). The altitude (H - height) of the event is given in
nautical miles (NM) or thousands of feet (KFT). Note: To find statute
miles, multiply nautical miles by 1.15. Velocity is shown in thousands of
feet per second (KFPS). 1.47 feet per second equals 1 statute mile per
hour. Comments Section - DV (delta velocity) is the change in velocity the
burn will cause and DT (delta time) is the duration of the burn. XR is the
crossrange, the distance away from what would have been the shuttle's
normal orbital groundtrack that the shuttle will fly during its descent
through the atmosphere in order to reach the landing site.

TDRS West AOS - The orbiter will be in range (Acquisition Of Signal) of one
of the NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS West). Comments
Section - EI Minus is the time in minutes:seconds until Entry Interface
occurs.

EI - Entry Interface - that point at which the orbiter begins to encounter
the first effects of the Earth's atmosphere, usually at an altitude of
roughly 400,000 feet. Comments Section - Range is how far away the orbiter
is from the landing site in nautical miles (NM).

MACH 2.5 TAEM - the orbiter has decelerated to a velocity of two and one
half times the speed of sound and has reached a phase of descent called
Terminal Area Energy Management (TAEM). TAEM is the second of three phases
that the shuttle's entry and landing process is divided into because of the
unique onboard software requirements for each phase. The first phase of
descent is labeled simply Entry and extends from five minutes before Entry
Interface to the start of TAEM. TAEM is a phase that takes the orbiter from
about 83,000 feet and two and half times the speed of sound to a point
where the shuttle is at an altitude of about 10,000 feet and aligned with
the runway centerline. Approach and Landing phase extends from 10,000 feet
to touchdown on the runway.

MACH 1 - the orbiter has decelerated to a velocity equal to the speed of
sound (approximately 740 miles per hour at sea level). The time that the
shuttle commander takes manual control of the spacecraft's approach and
landing usually coincides with the point that the shuttle has slowed to
Mach 1. Comments Section - how many minutes:seconds after reaching Mach 1
before the orbiter reaches the HAC I/C point.

HAC I/C - The point at which the orbiter intercepts the Heading Alignment
Cylinder, an imaginary cylinder created by the Microwave Scan Beam Landing
System (MSBLS) that is installed at primary shuttle landing sites. The HAC
is a tool to assist with guiding the shuttle's final approach to the
runway. Comments Section - the shuttle normally performs a turn following
the HAC as it aligns with the runway and rapidly descends. The turn angle
refers to how much of a turn will be performed by the shuttle around the
HAC as it aligns with the runway. The shuttle can turn as much as almost a
full circle (360 degrees) before aligning with the runway and descending to
touchdown, but the amount of turn required is usually between 200 to 300
degrees for most landings.

Landing - the scheduled landing time is given in both MET
(days/hours:minutes:seconds) and Central time (Julian
Day/hour:minute:second). Landing occurs just a little over an hour after
the deorbit burn.

Roll Schedule - as the orbiter descends through the atmosphere to a level
where air pressure has built sufficiently and slows to where heating has
subsided somewhat, it begins a series of four steep banks to slow down. The
shuttle, in essence, fishtails through the atmosphere as it descends to
dissipate its speed. The first couple of banks that the shuttle performs
can often be very steep, as much as 80 degrees, that result in the
shuttle's side facing toward the ground. The second, third and fourth banks
are referred to as "roll reversals," since they basically reverse the
shuttle's roll angle, i.e. from 80 degrees left to 70 degrees right. It is
important to understand that although the shuttle is performing these steep
banks, its angle of attack -- the angle of its nose toward the oncoming air
pressure -- is very high, at 40 degrees for much of the entry, to protect
the spacecraft from the intense heat that is generated. The angle gradually
decreases, i.e. the nose is slowly brought down, as the shuttle descends
and slows.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Smoke plume on river damodar

Smoke plume on river damodar
Originally uploaded by tathabhatt.

Pic shot from International Space Station

Courtesy: NASA Image Gallery (Earth Observatory, Astronaut Pic Repository)

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Great Feat by Robinson, the first man to repair a shuttle in space

He is a mechanical engineer too :)

Read the story from Yahoo

Astronaut May Face Another Shuttle Repair By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace
Writer
2 hours, 49 minutes ago, Aug 3, 2005, 11.55 IST

SPACE CENTER, Houston - With a gentle tug of his gloved right hand,
Discovery astronaut Stephen Robinson removed two worrisome pieces of filler
material from the shuttle's belly Wednesday in an unprecedented space
repair job that drew a big sigh of relief from NASA.

But he may have to go out again to fix yet another trouble spot.

Robinson was barely back inside the shuttle and out of his spacesuit when
Mission Control informed the crew there was a chance that a fourth
spacewalk may be needed Friday to deal with a torn thermal blanket below a
cockpit window.

The concern is that a roughly 1-foot section of the blanket could rip away
during re-entry, whip backward and slam into the shuttle, perhaps causing
grave damage. Engineers expect to know by Thursday afternoon whether the
danger is real and whether any blanket trimming is required.

There was no immediate response from the exhausted but exhilarated
astronaut.

He and his six fellow astronauts awoke late Wednesday for some time off to
enjoy their trip to orbit. They also planned to honor those who died in the
Columbia tragedy during a tribute from space.

It took Robinson just seconds earlier Wednesday to pull out each short
dangling strip of ceramic-fiber cloth, which engineers had feared might
cause the shuttle to overheat during its descent through the atmosphere and
lead to another Columbia-type disaster.

Robinson never had to pull out his forceps or his makeshift hacksaw, which
he took along just in case the material was stuck between the thermal tiles
and he needed to employ more force.

It was a delicate operation: Robinson had to be careful not to bump into
the shuttle's fragile thermal tiles and make things worse.

Standing on the end of the international space station's 58-foot robot arm,
he tugged out the first piece as the two linked spacecraft passed over
Massachusetts. By the time he had pulled out the next fabric strip 10
minutes later, he had crossed the Atlantic and was zooming over the French
coast.

"That was the ride of the century!" Robinson exclaimed.

"Steve, we trained for four years. You're going to spend the next four
years signing autographs," said his spacewalking partner, Soichi Noguchi.

Robinson, a 49-year-old mechanical engineer and musician who took his
childhood space-cadet lunchbox into orbit with him, became the first person
to venture beneath an orbiting shuttle and the first person to repair a
shuttle's fragile thermal skin in space.

His crewmates inside the shuttle kept an eye on him via the robot-arm
camera. His spacewalking partner watched from 75 feet away, though he lost
sight of him at one point.

But Robinson described what he was seeing and doing the entire time, so his
colleagues would know he was safe.

"I'm pulling. It's coming out very easily," Robinson called. "The offending
gap filler has been removed."

The second piece slid out even more easily, with just a gentle tug of
Robinson's right thumb and index finger.

"I was absolutely relieved and I think you could probably hear the sigh of
relief throughout the building" after the first piece came out, flight
director Paul Hill said. "And when he pulled the second one out, it was a
huge relief and it definitely felt like the rest is downhill from here."

The mood aboard Discovery also improved dramatically. Space station flight
director Mark Ferring said he could hear "a palpable change in the tone" of
the astronauts' voices.

The spacewalk ended after six hours. Robinson and Noguchi also installed a
massive toolbox filled with spare parts on the space station.

NASA had spent four days analyzing the potential threat of the so-called
thermal tile gap fillers and what to do about them.

Officials insisted it was absolutely safe to simply remove the fillers.
Their primary purpose in those two spots was to prevent the silica glass
fiber thermal tiles from rubbing against each other and chipping during
liftoff.

With the gap filler problem behind them, teams of engineers and
thermodynamic experts turned their attention to the torn, crumpled blanket
beneath the commander's side window. Blanket samples were rushed from Cape
Canaveral, Fla., to California for wind tunnel testing.

The blanket is covered with a quiltlike fabric and stuffed like a pillow,
and serves as insulation. The insulation would blow harmlessly away if the
blanket came apart; the concern is where the top layer of fabric might go
and how much damage it might do at high descending speeds, despite its less
than 1-ounce weight, said deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.

"Worst case, we could do some structural damage and that's obviously not
something that we want to incur," Hale said Wednesday night.

The blanket was apparently ripped by debris during the July 26 liftoff, the
first shuttle flight since Columbia disintegrated on re-entry 2 1/2 years
ago. It is a type of blanket problem never seen before, Hale said.

"I think in the old days, we would not have worried about this nearly so
much," Hale said, referring to NASA's pre-Columbia days. He said he
believes the likelihood of a repair is low, but noted: "We're just pounding
this flat. We're not going to leave any stone unturned at this stage, to
make sure the crew's safe during entry."

Discovery and its crew of seven are scheduled to return to Earth on Monday.

___

On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/main/index.html

Monday, July 04, 2005

Mission Accomplished: Probe Hits Comet

The deepimpact.....read how the NASA's impactor hit the comet Tempel 1 to
reveal what it is made of.....a true independence day treat for USA

go to
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050704/ap_on_sc/comet_buster
and also
http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

WSD Ranking No. 1

TATA Steel got top rank amongst world's 23 big steel makers like Mittal
steel, Arcelor,
POSCO etc. as per World Steel Dynamics (WSD) ranking in June 2005
news at:

http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/jun/22tisco.htm

Monday, June 20, 2005

How is the GDP of a country calculated?

A common equation for GDP calculation is:
GDP = Consumption + Investment + Exports - Imports. Economists
have preferred to split the general consumption term into two
parts: private consumption and public sector spending. Therefore,
the standard GDP formula is expressed as
GDP = Private Consumption + Government + Investment + Net Exports
(or simply GDP = C + I + G + NX) where C is private consumption
or consumer expenditure, I is business investments, G is
government expenditure, NX is gross exports - gross imports.
For calculation of GDP, net interest expenses in financial
sector are added to GDP.

tatha
source: times of india

Friday, June 17, 2005

My comments on ET

my comments on nanotech in ET at (see tathabhatt)
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinions/1142134.cms#top0

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

What's nanotechnology? Your ticket to big bucks

read at:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1142134.cms

Friday, June 10, 2005

My comments at Financial Express

a quick link to the comment on the booming steel industry in India:
http://www.financialexpress.com/messages.php?content_id=93216#2983

this may be a removable link so u may not see it after some days..

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

A vanishing species called scientists: CNR Rao

thought provoking .....read the interview at :
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1134174.cms

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Volkswagen prepared to go through toughest crash test

Institute for highway safety, USA has the most stringent crash tests..only
a couple of cars could pass their tests...
now its turn for volkswagen...
read more at yahoo..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050606/ts_latimes/carsafetygroupismakingabigimpact

Monday, June 06, 2005

The world without engineers

The world without engineers
Originally uploaded by tathabhatt.

See what would pay us to fly.....

Thursday, May 12, 2005

U.S. scientists create self-replicating robot

This is a stunning news man!
The Drexlerian thought of nano-technology by which
robots create robot (biologically it is possible for
cells to create cells) is no longer a sci-fi stuff.

Go thru the following news story in Yahoo, dated 12
May, 2005.

The main research paper came in the latest issue of
Nature (I can't wait to see this in our library!!).

You juss go thru and i am comin from the
library,....here I go..

Self-replicating robots are no longer the stuff of
science fiction.
LONDON (Reuters)

Scientists at the Cornell University in Ithaca, New
York have created small robots that can build copies
of themselves.

Each robot consists of several 10-cm (4 inch) cubes
which have identical machinery, electromagnets to
attach and detach to each other and a computer program
for replication. The robots can bend and pick up and
stack the cubes.

"Although the machines we have created are still
simple compared with biological self-reproduction,
they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is
possible and not unique to biology," Hod Lipson said
in a report in the science journal Nature on
Wednesday.

He and his team believe the design principle could be
used to make long term, self-repairing robots that
could mend themselves and be used in hazardous
situations and on space flights.

The experimental robots, which don't do anything else
except make copies of themselves, are powered through
contacts on the surface of the table and transfer data
through their faces. They self-replicate by using
additional modules placed in special "feeding
locations."

The machines duplicate themselves by bending over and
putting their top cube on the table. Then they bend
again, pick up another cube, put it on top of the
first and repeat the entire process. As the new robot
begins to take shape it helps to build itself.

"The four-module robot was able to construct a replica
in 2.5 minutes by lifting and assembling cubes from
the feeding locations," said Lipson.

Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html

Hey c ...how CAT Scans are being used...

I was doin a bit of research (rather search) on the possible use of CAT Scan (computed axial tomography/compter aided tomography, i don know why there are always two versions of everythin!!!) in my research area. This was specially meant for looking inside something in greater detail. I am thinkin of using it to see through a packed bed of granular material and examine and quantify the void distributions there in. hehe...gettin a bit geeky....okay ..okay... go thru the news first..
c how this CAT scan or CT scan are being used for varied purposes!!
______________________________________________________________________________________
News from Netscape, May 11, 2005
______________________________________________________________________________________
Scans Show What King Tut Looked Like

By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - The first facial reconstructions of King Tutankhamun based on CT scans of his mummy have produced images strikingly similar to the boy pharaoh's ancient portraits, with one model showing a baby-faced young man with chubby cheeks and his family's characteristic overbite.

That model, a photo of which was released Tuesday, bears a strong resemblance to the gold mask of King Tut found in his tomb in 1922 by the British excavation led by Howard Carter.

The beardless youth depicted in the model, created by a French team, has soft features, a sloping nose and a weak chin - and the overbite, which archaeologists have long believed was a trait shared by other kings in Tut's 18th dynasty. His eyes are highlighted by thick eyeliner.

Three teams of forensic artists and scientists - from France, the United States and Egypt - each built a model of the boy pharaoh's face based on some 1,700 high-resolution photos from CT scans of his mummy to reveal what he looked like the day he died nearly 3,300 years ago.

``The shape of the face and skull are remarkably similar to a famous image of Tutankhamun as a child where he was shown as the sun god at dawn rising from a lotus blossom,'' said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The CT scans - the first done on an Egyptian mummy - have suggested King Tut was a healthy, yet slightly built 19-year-old, standing 5 feet, 6 inches tall at the time of his death.

The three teams created their reconstructions separately - the Americans and French working from a plastic skull, the Egyptians working directly from the CT scans, which could distinguish different densities of soft tissue and bone.

The French and Egyptians knew they were recreating King Tut, but the Americans were not even told where the skull was from and correctly identified it as a Caucasoid North African, the council said in a statement.

``The results of the three teams were identical or very similar in the basic shape of the face, the size, shape and setting of the eyes, and the proportion of the skull,'' Hawass said.

The French and American models, seen in photos released by the council, are similar - with the Americans' plaster model sharing the more realistic, French silicone version's receding chin and prominent upper lip. The Egyptian reconstruction has a more prominent nose and a stronger jaw and chin.

The scans were carried out on Jan. 5 in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, where Tut's leathery mummy was briefly removed from its tomb and placed into a portable CT scanner.

The tests provided an unprecedented look at Egypt's most famous mummy - but they did not resolve the mystery of the death of King Tut, who came to power at age 9.

They were able to dismiss a long held theory that Tut, who died around 1323 B.C., was murdered by a blow to his skull or killed in an accident that crushed his chest. It raised a new possibility for the cause of death: Some experts on the scanning team said it appeared Tut broke his left thigh severely - puncturing his skin - just days before his death, and the break could have caused an infection.

The life of Tutankhamun - believed to have been the 12th ruler of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty - has fascinated people since his tomb was discovered in 1922, revealing a trove of fabulous treasures in gold and precious stones that showed the wealth and craftsmanship of the pharaonic court.

A U.S. museum tour a quarter-century ago of Tut's treasures drew more than 8 million people. A smaller number of treasures - minus Tut's famous gold mask - will again go on display in the United States starting June 16 in Los Angeles, after touring Germany and Switzerland.

The decision to allow the exhibit was a reversal of an Egyptian policy set in the 1980s that confined most of the objects to Egypt, after several pieces were damaged on international tour.

Hawass is leading a five-year project to scan all of Egypt 's known mummies - including royal mummies now exhibited at the Cairo Museum. Eventually, each mummy will be displayed alongside CT images and a facial reconstruction.

``For the first time, we will make these dead mummies come alive,'' Hawass said.

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