Toy makers are trying to become more environmentally friendly. This will not only help our planet, but also help toy sales grow. This is because the public is aware of the benefits of “Green Products.”

The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.

If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe’s mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That’s why any news of a sighting is seized upon.
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment is one of several designed to look for the tell-tale signature of dark matter particles passing through. No one is sure what a dark matter particle will look like, though theory gives some pointers.
Most of the experiments have been designed to look for elusive massive particles called WIMPS that barely register as they pass through matter, because the only forces they experience are gravity and the weak nuclear force.
CDMS is located deep underground in the Soudan mine in Minnesota, to protect it from the hail of cosmic rays that would otherwise wash out any dark matter signal.
Earlier this year, the collaboration published a paper in Physical Review Letters (vol 102, p011301) based on two series of experiments between October 2006 and July 2007. They found nothing.
So researchers have been waiting eagerly for the next chapter of the story – maybe with more time, more experience running their detector and a sprinkling of luck, the team would spot a dark matter particle.
The gossip mill went into overdrive after a rumour leaked out that the CDMS collaboration has had a paper accepted by the journal Nature. Word is that the paper will appear in the 18 December issue.

Nature is an unusual place for particle physicists to publish their papers and this has prompted speculation that the news must be big.
A few physicists I know say that talks have hurriedly been scheduled for 18 December at SLAC National Laboratory, the University of California Santa Barbara and Fermilab – all prominent institutions within the CDMS collaboration.
We’ll have to wait and see if the rumours turn out to be true. Even if not, with NASA’s Fermi satellite looking for dark matter in space and the Large Hadron Collider up and running, 2010 could be the year we finally crack the dark matter mystery.

Via: New Scientist

Think black holes are strange? Understandable, considering these powerhouses of the universe (many times heavier than our sun) are collapsed stars with gravity so strong that even light cannot escape their grasp.

But maybe they’re not “strange” enough, some astrophysicists suggest. “Stellar” black holes, ones only a few times heavier than the sun, may actually be something even weirder called a quark star, or “strange” star.

A physics team led by Zoltan Kovacs of the University of Hong Kong sizes up the issue in the current Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Quark stars are only theoretical right now, but “the observational identification of quarks stars would represent a major scientific achievement,” Kovacs says.

If quark stars exist, it could prove a theory that normal matter – the stuff of people, planets and stars – isn’t stable and could help explain the existence of the “dark matter” that fills much of the universe.

First suggested in 1970, a strange star is a collapsed star that doesn’t quite crumple enough to turn into a full-fledged black hole and yet is too heavy to become a so-called neutron star (at least 1.4 times heavier than the sun.) Neutron stars do exist, as astronomer Jocelyn Bell showed with the discovery of a pulsar, a spinning neutron star that streams particles from its poles.

In a quark star, gravity would be so strong that it squeezes the subatomic particles called quarks right out of the protons and neutron building blocks of the original star’s atoms. That would leave behind a solid mass of quark stuff called strange matter, hence the name “strange star.”

Earlier in the decade, astronomers suggested that a neutron star called RX J1856, about 400 light-years away (one light-year is about 5.9 trillion miles) was about one-third too small and might be a quark star. But a 2004 Nuclear Physics B journal report showed the star’s intense magnetic field explained its size, so it really was a neutron star.

So, if size alone won’t reveal a quark star, what will? In the new study, Kovacs and his colleagues, Cheng Kwong-sang and Tiberiu Harko, analyze the disks of dust and gas circling supposed black holes. Whipped to high speeds by the intense gravity of a black hole, these disks are thought to heat to high temperatures and emit powerful radiation. For a quark star, the radiation would be about 10% less than predicted around a black hole, they find. And a quark star would give off a dim light (called bremsstrahlung emission), unlike a black hole, emitted by a thin layer of electrons on its surface.

The complete article can be read at USAToday.com

Via: ArtInDesign Blog

Delays in producing the vaccine mean 28 million to 30 million doses, at most, will be divided around the country by the end of the month, not the 40 million-plus states had been expecting. The new count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention means anxiously awaited flu-shot clinics in some parts of the U.S. may have to be postponed.

It also delays efforts to blunt increasing infections. Overall, what CDC calls the 2009 H1N1 flu is causing widespread disease in 41 states, and about 6 percent of all doctor visits are for flu-like illness — levels not normally seen until much later in the fall.

Federal health officials said Friday 11 more children have died in the past week because of the virus.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about half of the child deaths since September have been among teenagers. And overall for the country, deaths from pneumonia and flu-like illnesses have passed what CDC considers an epidemic level.

“These are very sobering statistics,” says the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat.
This new strain is different from regular winter flu because it strikes the young far more than the old, and child deaths are drawing particular attention. Eighty-six children have died of swine flu in the U.S. since it burst on the scene last spring — 43 of those deaths reported in September and early October alone, said Schuchat.

The complete article can be found here.

During the week of September 27-October 3, 2009, influenza activity continued to increase in the United States. Flu activity is now widespread in 37 states. Nationwide, visits to doctors for influenza-like-illness increased over last week and are higher than expected for this time of year. In addition, flu-related hospitalizations and deaths are increasing as well, and are higher than expected.

Decade of Discovery Includes prehistoric gecko, flying frog and world’s smallest deer

Press Release: Aug 10, 2009
Via: WWF

Over 350 new species including the world’s smallest deer, a “flying frog” and a 100 million-year old gecko have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, a biological treasure trove now threatened by climate change.

Washington, DC – Over 350 new species including the world’s smallest deer, a “flying frog” and a 100 million-year old gecko have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, a biological treasure trove now threatened by climate change.

A decade of research carried out by scientists in remote mountain areas endangered by rising global temperatures brought exciting discoveries such as a bright green frog that uses its red and long webbed feet to glide in the air.

One of the most significant findings was not exactly “new” in the classic sense. A 100-million year-old gecko, the oldest fossil gecko species known to science, was discovered in an amber mine in the Hukawng Valley in the northern Myanmar.

The WWF report The Eastern Himalayas – Where Worlds Collide details discoveries made by scientists from various organizations between 1998 and 2008 in a region reaching across Bhutan and north-east India to the far north of Myanmar as well as Nepal and southern parts of Tibet Autonomus Region (China).

“The good news of this explosion in species discoveries is tempered by the increasing threats to the Himalayas’ cultural and biological diversity,” said Jon Miceler, Director of WWF’s Eastern Himalayas Program. “This rugged and remarkable landscape is already seeing direct, measurable impacts from climate change and risks being lost forever.”

In December world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to reach an agreement on a new climate deal, which will replace the existing Kyoto Protocol.

The Eastern Himalayas- Where Worlds Collide describes more than 350 new species discovered – including 244 plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, 2 birds, 2 mammals and at least 60 new invertebrates.

The report mentions the miniature muntjac, also called the “leaf deer,” which is the world’s oldest and smallest deer species. Scientists initially believed the small creature found in the world’s largest mountain range was a juvenile of another species but DNA tests confirmed the light brown animal with innocent dark eyes was a distinct and new species.

The Eastern Himalayas harbor a staggering 10,000 plant species, 300 mammal species, 977 bird species, 176 reptiles, 105 amphibians and 269 types of freshwater fish. The region also has the highest density of Bengal tigers in the world and is the last bastion of the charismatic greater one-horned rhino.

WWF is working to conserve the habitat of endangered species such as snow leopards, Bengal tigers, Asian elephants, red pandas, takin, golden langurs, Gangetic dolphins and one-horned rhinos.

Historically, the rugged and largely inaccessible landscape of the Eastern Himalayas has made biological surveys in the region extremely difficult. As a result, wildlife has remained poorly surveyed and there are large areas that are still biologically unexplored.

Today further species continue to be unearthed and many more species of amphibians, reptiles and fish are currently in the process of being officially named by scientists.