Sense Out Of Chaos Europa has lakes!

Beneath its glossy veneer, Europa's frozen crust might be carved into something resembling Swiss cheese, with enormous cavities of liquid water tucked into the rock-hard ice.

One of the buried lakes on Jupiter's watery moon, lurking a few kilometers below a region called Thera Macula, contains at least as much water as the U.S. Great Lakes, scientists report online November 16 in Nature.

These hidden Europan reservoirs would explain jumbled, chaotic surface features that have puzzled scientists for more than a decade. The existence of such cavities implies vigorous mixing of materials between Europa's frigid surface and the sloshing ocean hiding beneath a tantalizing prospect for scientists considering whether life could evolve on the jovian moon.

“It would be great if these lakes harbored life. But even if they didn't, they say that Europa is doing something interesting and active right now,” says planetary scientist and study coauthor Britney Schmidt of University of Texas at Austin.

Schmidt and her colleagues uncovered the lakes while considering how chaotic regions on Europa, such as Conamara Chaos, might form. The team compared archival images of these tangled terrains with similar landforms on Earth: fractured, collapsing Antarctic ice shelves and icy caps perched atop subglacial Icelandic volcanoes. Interacting water and ice craft these terrestrial jumbles, and similar processes can explain observations on Europa.

Did You Know? Who invented submarine?

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) made sketches of a submarine and William Bourne, a British mathematician, drew plans for a submarine in 1578. But it was only in 1620 that Cornelius van Drebbel, a Dutch inventor, managed to build a submarine. He wrapped a wooden rowboat tightly in waterproofed leather and had air tubes with floats to the surface to provide oxygen. Of course, there were no engines yet, so the oars went through the hull at leather gaskets. He took the first trip with 12 oarsmen in the Thames River staying submerged for 3 hours.

Missing link New 'smart' material

Scientists are reporting development and successful initial testing of the first practical "smart" material that may supply the missing link in efforts to use in medicine a form of light that can penetrate four inches into the human body. Their report on the new polymer or plastic-like material, which has potential for use in diagnosing diseases and engineer new human tissues in the lab, appears in ACS' journal Macromolecules.

Adah Almutairi and colleagues explain that near-infrared (NIR) light (which is just beyond what human can see) penetrates through the skin and almost four inches into the body, with great potential for diagnosing and treating diseases. Low-power NIR does not damage body tissues as it passes. Missing, however, are materials that respond effectively to low-power NIR. Plastics that disintegrate when hit with NIR, for instance, could be filled with anti-cancer medicine, injected into tumors, and release the medicine when hit with NIR. Current NIR-responsive smart materials require high-power NIR light, which could damage cells and tissues. That's why Almutairi's team began research on development of a new smart polymer that responds to low-power NIR light.

Hit with low-power NIR, their new material breaks apart into small pieces that seem to be nontoxic to surrounding tissue. The researchers envision, for instance, putting the polymer in an implantable "hydrogel," which is a water-containing flexible material used for tissue engineering and drug delivery. A hydrogel with the new polymer could release medications or imaging agents when hit with NIR. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a polymeric material capable of disassembly into small molecules in response to harmless levels of irradiation," say the researchers.

The authors acknowledge funding from the NIH Director's New Innovator Award and King Abdul Aziz City of Science and Technology.

Bigfoot Again Yeti 'nests' found?

Bigfoot researcher and biologist John Bindernagel claims his research group has found evidence that the Yeti (a Russian "cousin" of the American Bigfoot) not only exists, but builds nests and shelters by twisting tree branches together.

"We didn't feel like the trees we saw in Siberia had been done by a man or another mammal.... Twisted trees like this have also been observed in North America and they could fit with the theory that Bigfoot makes nests. The nests we have looked at are built around trees twisted together into an arch shape," Bindernagel told the British tabloid The Sun.

Bindernagel was part of a small group of scientists who visited western Siberia to examine evidence of the Yeti in October. That group made headlines around the world for issuing a statement that they had "indisputable proof" of the Yeti and were 95 percent sure it existed based on the evidence a few strands of hair they found.

Tree twisting, also called splintering, has been claimed as Bigfoot evidence for decades throughout the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. In some cases tool markings have been found on trees said to have been twisted by Bigfoot. This suggests that the creatures are even possibly more intelligent than previously suspected and may be able to somehow locate and use pliers, monkey wrenches, and other common hardware tools. [10 Mythical Beasts That Might Exist]

Unless the marks were made by human hoaxers.

Although many of the "mysteriously" twisted tree limbs are conveniently near ground level, some are found at the top of trees. Bigfoot researchers claim these are stronger evidence of the Yeti's existence, because whereas any hoaxer could easily twist small, waist-level branches, only a Bigfoot-like animal would be able to climb up that high.

However, that raises the not-insignificant question of how a huge, heavy animal would get to the top of a tree without breaking it, or at least snapping a few branches on the way up. Bigfoot are often said to be between 8-and-12-feet tall and weigh several hundred pounds; surely if such a tall, heavy animal made its way up a tree most of the trees that have been found twisted are spindly in nature there would be much more obvious damage than a few woven branches at the very top.

'Magister Dixit' Translating Aristotle

Of the writings endorsed to Aristotle (384-322 BC), the polished essays and dialogues which he intended for publication have been almost completely lost, with the exception of a few fragments. The great body of Aristotle's thought that has come down to us is in the form of "treatise" on various subjects, such as logic, physics, ethics, psychology, biology, and politics. It seems that these treatise began as notes on (or summaries of) Aristotle's lectures at the Lyceum in Athens. He continued to edit and revise them throughout his life, as his views evolved, but never brought them to a state of completion for publication. Subsequently they were edited and organized into "books" by his students, and then the whole corpus was transmitted through a series of transcribers, translators, and commentators.

The story of how Aristotle came to be considered the prime authority on matters of reason is interesting. His writings certainly didn't have such a commanding status in his own time, nor at any later time in the ancient world. Even following the collapse of ancient civilization in around 500 AD, the only work of Aristotle known in the west was a Latin translation (by Boethius) of his treatise on logic. Not until the twelfth century did scholars in Western Europe begin to gain access to the full range of Aristotle's treatise, and even then they did not acquire the actual Greek texts. Aristotle's teachings had survived in various scholarly communities in the east, such as among the Syrians, and these works were acquired by the Arabs when they conquered Syria around 650 AD. Eventually the works of Aristotle, along with the commentaries of Arab scholars, spread throughout the Islamic world. Beginning with the re-conquest of Toledo in 1085 and Sicily in 1091, western scholars began to encounter these works and translate them into Latin. The structure of the Arab language is quite different from Greek and Latin (which are fairly similar to each other), so there was unavoidable paraphrasing in the passage from the original Greek to Arabic, and then again in the translation from Arabic to Latin. In effect, the first exposure to the full extent of Aristotle's writings came in the form of Latin paraphrases of Arab paraphrases of (and commentaries on) Syriac paraphrases of second-hand copies of the original Greek texts. Not surprisingly, the resulting Latin renderings were somewhat unreliable.

In 1204 the great Byzantine capital of Constantinople was captured by western armies during the 4th crusade, and western scholars gained access to Greek texts that were much closer to Aristotle's original writings. Around 1265, the Flemish Dominican William of Moerbeke (1215-1286) and other scholars translated these Greek texts into Latin and Thomas Aquinas undertook to integrate and reconcile the Aristotelian principles of reason and rational thought with Christian theology, resulting in his monumental Summa teologica. The view of Aristotle as the indisputable epitome of reason dates from this time, and held sway for about 250 years, until being superseded by the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution, each of which was, in some measure, a reaction against Aristotelian thought. As a result, today we often find Aristotle cited, especially in the sciences, as an example of erroneous thinking.

Nevertheless, the works of Aristotle are, if nothing else, a very interesting record of the attempts of one (obviously very intelligent) man to understand and systematize a wide range of knowledge on the basis of primitive principles and perceptions. For example, Books V and VI of Aristotle's Physics presents an interesting argument that space, time, and motion must all be continuous rather than discrete The argument relies on a number of definitions, most crucially on the definition of the word "between". This also gives a good illustration of the challenges that a scholar faces when trying to determine, first, exactly what Aristotle wrote, and second, exactly what he meant. Two of the most widely-available English translations of Aristotle's Physics are the Loeb Classic Library version by Wicksteed and Cornford (W&C), and another translation by Hardie and Gaye (H&G).

Earth's extreme extinction

It's well known that Earth's most severe mass extinction occurred about 250 million years ago. What's not well known is the specific time when the extinctions occurred. A team of researchers from North America and China have published a paper in Science which explicitly provides the date and rate of extinction.

"This is the first paper to provide rates of such massive extinction," says Dr. Charles Henderson, professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary and co-author of the paper: Calibrating the end-Permian mass extinction. "Our information narrows down the possibilities of what triggered the massive extinction and any potential kill mechanism must coincide with this time."

About 95 percent of marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life became extinct during what is known as the end-Permian, a time when continents were all one land mass called Pangea. The environment ranged from desert to lush forest. Four-limbed vertebrates were becoming diverse and among them were primitive amphibians, reptiles and a group that would, one day, include mammals.

Through the analysis of various types of dating techniques on well-preserved sedimentary sections from South China to Tibet, researchers determined that the mass extinction peaked about 252.28 million years ago and lasted less than 200,000 years, with most of the extinction lasting about 20,000 years.

"These dates are important as it will allow us to understand the physical and biological changes that took place," says Henderson. "We do not discuss modern climate change, but obviously global warming is a biodiversity concern today. The geologic record tells us that 'change' happens all the time, and from this great extinction life did recover."

There is ongoing debate over whether the death of both marine and terrestrial life coincided, as well as over kill mechanisms, which may include rapid global warming, hypercapnia (a condition where there is too much CO2 in the blood stream), continental aridity and massive wildfires. The conclusion of this study says extinctions of most marine and terrestrial life took place at the same time. And the trigger, as suggested by these researchers and others, was the massive release of CO2 from volcanic flows known as the Siberian traps, now found in northern Russia.

Henderson's conodont research was integrated with other data to establish the study's findings. Conodonts are extinct, soft-bodied eel-like creatures with numerous tiny teeth that provide critical information on hydrocarbon deposits to global extinctions.

Mirror world Story of antimatter

One of the mystifying aspects of the Universe is Antimatter. It is understood that matter is made of electrons, protons and neutrons whereas antimatter is identical to matter, except that it is composed of antielectrons, antiprotons and antineutrons.

When antimatter comes into contact with normal matter, they collide to produce an explosion emitting pure radiation. And this results in a complete annihilation of matter into energy. Every particle in the Universe has the common characteristics of mass and charge. However, with antimatter, the mass of the particle remains constant, while its electric charge is opposite. A normal matter such as a hydrogen atom contains 1 electron and 1 proton. The anti-particle, the anti-hydrogen atom, will have 1 positron (the antiparticle of an electron, which has the same mass as an electron but opposite electric charge) and 1 antiproton. This is why, after collision, the entire mass of both particles transforms into pure energy, a phenomenon that scientists believe, may usher an era of travelling at the speed of light. Similarly, the antiparticle of proton is antiproton which has the same mass as a proton, but with opposite charge, while the antiparticle of the neutron is an antineutron.

The modern quest of antimatter began back in 1928 by physicist Paul Dirac. It is now well known hat, for every atomic and subatomic particle, there is an antiparticle. How did antimatter come into being? Just like everything else, right after the Big Bang. Scientists believe that, immediately after creation of the universe, there were almost the same amount of antimatter as there was matter. But the cosmic process compelled them to annihilate each other out and eventually ushering today's matter-dominated Universe. At CERN's Large Hadron Collider, many believe that there are antiparticles still out there in the Universe. Scientists think that antimatters are created whenever high-energy particle collisions take place in the universe. Studies have found that when cosmic rays impact Earth's atmosphere, small quantities of antiparticles are produced in particle jets and these antiparticles are destroyed as soon as they come in contact with nearby matter. It is also believed that antimatter may still exist in large amounts in distant galaxies because of the inflation associated with the early expansion of the universe.

On a Roll Tiniest car on test

Scientists have created the tiniest electric car ever although it won't be coming to your local dealership anytime soon. With four molecular wheels and a carbon-based frame, the mini-roadster is a step toward devices that mimic the machinery of molecular life.

The researchers started with little motorized “wheels,” molecules inspired by the motors that some bacteria use to propel themselves, and attached them to a frame. A carbon double bond serves as an axle between two wheels; when the entire unit is zapped with electricity, the double bond becomes a single bond. This contorts the axle, rotating the wheels and propelling the car forward, researchers report in the Nov. 10 Nature. In test drives on a copper surface the car went as far as 20 nanometers, says organic chemist Ben Feringa about 10 car lengths.

Designing a contraption that will do your bidding in the nanoworld is not so easy, says Feringa, of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. With regular-sized cars, forces such as gravity dictate interactions with the road. But a vehicle that's nanometers long about the width of a DNA molecule must contend with different forces.

“The interactions with the surface are very important,” Feringa says. “The key is to not make it stick to the surface, because it will never move, but also it cannot fly away.”

Another difficulty of working at the nanoscale is when molecules are close together they interact, and not necessarily in the way that you want, says Paul Weiss, director of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

“The biggest thing here is these four motors operating together,” says Weiss, who wrote a commentary accompanying the Naturearticle. “It's really terrific work.”

Nature is adept at making such minimachines. There are proteins that transport cargo inside cells, others that help muscles move and pumps that provide energy. Building similar molecules that cooperate and carry out tasks could lead to all sorts of machines and uses, Weiss says.

There are still kinks to iron out before these little cars can be mass-produced efficiently. The molecular machines are made in a solution that's then poured on the copper surface, and only cars that land right-side-up are drivable. But such production issues should be relatively easy to overcome, says Weiss.

“We're really learning the forces and the lay of the land at the nanoscale,” he says.

The researchers would like to see whether they can propel the machines with light rather than electricity, says Feringa, and also plan to add cargo to see whether the vehicles can carry a load.

War trial starts to roll, finally

The prosecution has begun reading out the allegations against Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee who is being tried by International Crimes Tribunal on charges of committing crimes against humanity during Bangladesh liberation war in 1971.

Chief Prosecutor Ghulam Arieff Tipoo and senior prosecutor Syed Rezaur Rahman yesterday read out 61 pages of the 88-page statement before the three-judge tribunal adjourned the proceedings. The hearing will resume this morning when the prosecution will complete its opening statement.

Sayedee is the first to stand trial from among the seven Jamaat and BNP leaders facing charges of crimes against humanity such as genocide, murder, rape, arson and torture during the war.

Six of the suspects are in jail, including Jamaat chief Motiur Rahman Nizami and BNP leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury. Another BNP leader Abdul Aleem is out on bail for his illness.

Sayedee, Nayeb-e-Ameer of Jamaat, was charged with 20 counts of crimes by the tribunal on October 3. The charges include genocide, killing, rape, arson, abduction and torture of civilians during the war.

Sayedee, who has denied the charges, was present in the court during yesterday's proceedings.

Jamaat-e-Islami collaborated with the Pakistani occupation forces which killed 30 lakh people and raped 2 lakh women during the nine-month war.

The prosecution told the tribunal that Sayedee committed the crimes in collaboration with Pakistani soldiers at different parts of his home district of Pirojpur.

The offences allegedly committed by the accused are covered by the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act, the prosecutors said.

In another development the tribunal, headed by its Chairman Justice Nizamul Huq, directed the prosecution to produce witnesses against Sayedee on December 7.

The tribunal will give its ruling on November 23 on Sayedee's petition.

In his November 16 petition Sayedee said Justice Huq was involved in a People's Enquiry Commission, which investigated alleged war crimes against Sayedee and several others a few years ago. The Jamaat leader sought explanation if Justice Huq can legally preside over the tribunal and try him.

Abdur Razzaq, chief counsel for Sayedee, BNP leader Moudud Ahmed and Supreme Court Bar Association President Khandaker Mahbub Hossain placed statements before the tribunal, urging Justice Nizamul Huq to quit the tribunal for the sake of justice and image of judiciary.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam rejected the defendant's claim and told the court that Sayedee has no right to question the judge as he himself is an accused in this case.

Sayedee's petition is tantamount to contempt of court, he said.

Facebook warns of wave of spam

A recent wave of spam flooding Facebook users' pages with graphic pictures depicting sex and violence has mostly been stopped, but the social networking site said Wednesday that people need to remain vigilant to keep their accounts from being hijacked.

Facebook in Germany said the latest attack tricked users into pasting and executing malicious JavaScript in their browser URL bar, exploiting a browser vulnerability that caused them to unknowingly share the content, according to a statement to news agency dapd.

"Our team responded quickly and we have eliminated most of the spam caused by this attack," the statement said. "We are now working to improve our systems to better defend against similar attacks in the future."

According to Facebook, no user data or accounts were compromised during the attack.