IT Masala

Hubble celebrates its 17th anniversary and gives the world a big present—a 29,566 x 14,321 pixel image (500 MB TIFF image) of the Carina Nebula*. For those who don't feel like downloading the entire TIFF image, there is a JPEG available for download from the same site; however, it is still nearly 250MB in size(pretty big).  If you click on the image shown here in this article, you will get a  download-friendly version of the spectacular image. 

This painterly picture brings the total number of images that Hubble has taken since 1990 to nearly 500,000.

(See a photo gallery of Hubble's top ten discoveries.)

To date, the telescope has made nearly 800,000 observations of more than 25,000 celestial objects and has traveled 2.4 billion miles (3.8 billion kilometers)—the equivalent of flying to Saturn and back.

* Note: The link to the image is NOT the full size image, but a page where you can download it or wallpapers of the image. The image Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Now watch this space below for some unique viewing experience !! 

Observe the love for open source:  (pretty amazing observation )

MathRockBrock writes on arstechnica article :

Anybody else notice the Firefox logo floating out there in Image 7, "The Carina Nebula from the ground"?

Note: First image unedited JPEG (except for the box). Second image cropped and resized only from the full-size NASA TIF. Third image from my desktop.

Today we celebrate Earth Day . It's Not Easy Buying Green.Eco-friendly electronics products are increasing in number, but consumers have to work to find them.

Dell's Plant a Tree For Me program lets you make a small donation to two environmental organizations while buying a notebook or desktop PC. Retailers like Radio Shack and Best Buy have electronics-recycling programs for disposing of unwanted cell phones, batteries, and other products. (The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has compiled a list of recycling programs.) But when it comes to buying a product that's less toxic to the environment, knowing what your options are isn't easy.

Count Down Your Carbon is a site where you analyze energy consumptions like Change Your Light Bulbs, Plant Trees ,Buy Energy Star Appliances,Conserve Energy,Use Hot Water Efficiently,Buy Clean Energy,Drive Less—Drive Smart,Eat Green,Reduce Waste—Support Recycling,Offet Your Emissions. So what more you could other than knowing the energy consumptions and saving..

Download : home energy audits school energy audits

Google also celebrating Earth Day 2007 ..showing off their Earth Day logo..

Let us all contribute in whatever way we can.. " Small contributions from you and me can make this World a better place "

[ Earth Day Flag ] [ Earth Day ] [ Get Involved ] [ Earth Day @wikipedia ] [ Earthday.gov ]

The Department of Defense project to test Internet routing in space (IRIS) will be managed by Intelsat General, and the payload will convert to commercial use once testing has been completed. The IRIS project is one of seven projects — out of hundreds of applicants — funded and announced in fiscal 2007 as a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) by the Department of Defense.

Intelsat is the first commercial satellite company to be awarded a JCTD Program. The IRIS JCTD is a three-year program that allows the DoD to collaborate with Intelsat General and its industry team to demonstrate and assess the utility of the IRIS capability.

Cisco, the global networking leader based in San Jose, CA, will provide commercial IP networking software for the on-board router. In addition, SEAKR Engineering Inc. of Denver, CO, will manufacture the space-hardened router and integrate it into the IRIS payload.

via [ playfuls ] 

Great News ….NASA scientists plan to announce a new open-source project this month called CosmosCode — it's aimed at recruiting volunteers to write code for live space missions.

Jessy Cowan-Sharp and Robert Schingler set up CosmosCode to help NASA develop open-source software for space exploration.

The program was launched quietly last year under NASA's CoLab entrepreneur outreach program, created by Robert Schingler, 28, and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, 25, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Members of the CosmosCode group have been meeting in Second Life and will open the program to the public in the coming weeks, organizers said.

"NASA is recognizing the value of free and open-source software in other sectors," said Cowan-Sharp, a contractor at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. "CosmosCode is going one step further by allowing NASA scientists to begin a software project in the public domain, leveraging the true value of open-source software by creating an active community of volunteers."

NASA has already released more than 20 open-source software titles, including World Wind, a 3-D virtual globe similar to Google Earth, and Vision Workbench, a framework for computer vision applications.

via [ wired ] 

There is more sweet news about chocolate. A cup of cocoa a day may help drive heart disease away, researchers say.

Overweight adults who drank a specially processed cocoa beverage significantly improved their blood vessel function in just two hours.

Improved blood function, in turn, mitigates the risk of cardiovascular disease, says researcher Valentine Yanchou Njike, MD, of the Yale Prevention Research Center in New Haven, Conn.

Cocoa Improves Blood Flow

Results showed that the ability of arteries to relax and expand to accommodate increased blood flow to the heart increased by about 39 percent by two hours after people drank the sugar-free cocoa. When they drank cocoa with sugar it improved by about 23 percent. In contrast, it dropped 12 percent when they consumed the nonfat milk drink.

If this is the case so go on having some nice cup of Cocoa everyday ..Its surprising to see so many results out of eating cocoa.previously we have seen Chocolate May Protect Smokers' Hearts

Cool.. Happy Cocoaing ! 

Batteries powered by anything sugary - even flat lemonade - could run gadgets up to four times longer than conventional lithium ion batteries.

Fuel cell technology that is currently in development boasts the ability of extracting energy from virtually any sugar source to power portable electronics like cellular phones, laptops, and sensors. The new technology is expected to be biodegradable, environmentally friendly and more energy efficient than current options, providing a green alternative to current Lithium-ion batteries.

About the cell :

The cell operates at room temperature and uses enzymes to oxidize sugars, hence generating electricity. So far, researchers have run the batteries on glucose, flat soft drinks, sweetened drink mixes and tree sap.

Efficiency :

Despite only attaining a maximum of 20 percent efficiency in the conversion of sugar to electricity, researchers say the new batteries will operate three to four times longer on a single charge than current battery technology.

"This study shows that renewable fuels can be directly employed in batteries at room temperature to lead to more energy-efficient battery technology than metal-based approaches," said study leader Shelley Minteer, an electrochemist at Saint Louis University in the U.S.

Still a loong way to go..  

The technology has been licensed to a small company for commercialisation, and is expected to reach the market in three to five years.

via [ idg ] 

NIH Director Elias Zerhouni wants to pay you upto $1.5 million in direct costs over five years for your innovative mind !

What do you have to do? Submit an innovative idea that could have an exceptional impact on biomedical or behavioral science.

Who is eligible?

Applicant PD/PI’s must hold an independent research position at a domestic (U.S.) institution as of September 20, 2007 and must have received their most recent doctoral degree (e.g., Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., D.V.M., or equivalent) or completed their medical internship and residency in 1997 or later.

“We want proposals in a broad range of scientific areas relevant to the NIH mission and from a diverse pool of applicants,” Zerhouni said

Application : 

Those who have an urge to do something for Science and also win the prize , download and submit the application, they could apply @ NIH. Click to read more information on the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Deadline : Applications will be accepted from April 25 through May 22, 2007.

NIH Director Launches Program for Innovative New Investigators [NIH News]

Wanted: Power-systems engineer with experience in high-power (5–100-kW) motor-­controller design. Must be U.S. citizen and have valid ISO1443-compatible access-control RFID implant.

Sound farfetched? Today, yes. A decade from now, maybe not.!

With the proliferation of radio-frequency identification technology and the recent, but increasing, use of implantable RFID chips in humans, we may already be on a path that would make such an ad commonplace in a 2017 issue of IEEE Spectrum.

Benefits : 

An implantable RFID chip, which is durable and about the size of a grain of rice, can hold or link to information about the identity, physiological characteristics, health, nationality, and security clearances of the person it’s embedded in. The proximity of your hand could start your car or unlock your front door or let an emergency room physician know you are a diabetic even if you are unconscious. Once implanted, the chip and the information it contains are always with you—you’d never lose your keys again.

Darker Side : 

Namely the erosion of our privacy and our right to bodily integrity. After all, do you really want to be required to have a foreign object implanted in your arm just to get or keep a job? And once you have it, do you really want your employer to know whenever you leave the office? And do you want every RFID reader–equipped supermarket checkout counter to note your presence and your purchases?

via [ Spectrum ] 

If this becomes a reality i would love to be a Cyborg or something like that.! ….waiting for it eagerly..

What is E8 : E8 is a complex structure with 248 dimensions. It took 4 years of prep work by 18 mathematicians and computer scientists and 3 full days of computer time to solve a matrix with over 205 billion parts that contained 60 times more data than the Human Genome Project.

Math team solves the unsolvable E8. The researchers behind the work explain in a press announcement:

Lie groups come in families. The classical groups A1, A2, A3, … B1, B2, B3, … C1, C2, C3, … and D1, D2, D3, … rise like gentle rolling hills towards the horizon. Jutting out of this mathematical landscape are the jagged peaks of the exceptional groups G2, F4, E6, E7 and, towering above them all, E8. 

Professor of mathematics Peter Sarnak at Princeton University said of the team’s result: “This is exciting. Understanding and classifying the representations of Lie Groups has been critical to understanding phenomena in many different areas of mathematics and science including algebra, geometry, number theory, Physics and Chemistry. This project will be valuable for future mathematicians and scientists." [See: http://aimath.org/E8/.]

David Vogan, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, is one of the team of mathematicians that worked on E8. He described their work as: “…as complicated as symmetry can get.” [BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6466129.stm]

The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1994 by John Fry and Steve Sorenson. Its goals are to expand the scope of mathematical knowledge through research projects, sponsored conferences, and the development of an on-line mathematics library. The home Web page of AIM is http://www.aimath.org/.

A brief mathematical description of E8 appears at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_%28mathematics%29.

More information about E8 appears at the article “Mathematicians Map E8”: http://aimath.org/E8/