Nasa's eye on the 'violent cosmos'

Glast telescope

A US space agency (Nasa) mission is about to go one better than Superman. While the comic-book Kryptonian had to make do with X-ray vision, Nasa is set to launch a space telescope called Glast which will enable astronomers to view the Universe with "gamma-ray glasses".
Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light, vastly more energetic than the light we see with our eyes, or even X-rays .( A gamma ray burst is the biggest outpouring of energy in the known universe and the most devastating, shining with the intensity of a billion trillion suns. It marks a hypernova or death of a giant star)

The upper end of this energy range is almost unexplored in astronomy. So the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GAST)  will open up a high-energy frontier where important discoveries are almost guaranteed.

Gamma ray burst

Glast will study some of the most extreme and exotic phenomena in the Universe. These include massive explosions that release as much energy in a second as the Sun will release over its 10-billion-year lifetime and supermassive black holes that hurl matter vast distances across space at close to the speed of light.
According to Dr Steven Ritz, project scientist for the Glast mission, one of the most interesting things about the gamma-ray sky is that it is always changing.
"If you look up at the night sky, once a decade or so you might see a comet. You might notice that things are moving incredibly slowly. But it looks fairly placid and unchanging," Dr Ritz said.

"If you had gamma-ray glasses, it would look completely different. Once a day there's an explosion somewhere in the Universe where huge amounts of power are released - so-called gamma-ray bursts.
"Supermassive black hole systems are flaring brightly, changing their brightness very quickly. You would see objects pulsating - what we call pulsars."

Dr Dave Thompson, one of the deputy project scientists on Glast, said "Our Sun, except when it has a big solar flare, is pretty dim in gamma-rays - almost invisible. So we don't see objects like that.
Historically, Glast follows in the footsteps of another American satellite, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO). But Glast represents a major step up in capability, covering an incredible range of energy. "
Dr Thompson adds: "One of the big mysteries left over from the CGRO mission is that half the sources were unidentified - we don't know what they are. That's something we'll be out to solve."

Gamma-rays are far too energetic to capture in the conventional way. The main scientific instrument on Glast is a telescope without lenses or mirrors: the Large Area Telescope, or Lat. It uses technology adapted from ground-based particle accelerators.

It has 16 so-called tower modules assembled in a four-by-four array. Each tower contains layers of silicon detectors interleaved by thin sheets of tungsten foil. The gamma-rays are so energetic that when they hit the foil, they are converted into matter, namely an electron and its anti-matter partner the positron. The subsequent paths taken by these particles are tracked by the silicon detectors to reveal where in the sky the gamma-ray came from.
The electron and positron travel down to a calorimeter which measures their energies - and therefore the energy of the original gamma-ray.
 There are forces out there beyond our comprehension. How small we are, how fragile life is. Don't waste a moment.

Rape Rampant in the DR Congo

More than 1,100 women are raped every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a US medical report released Wednesday says. More than 400,000 women and girls were raped over a 12-month period, more than 26 times the number reported by the UN; making sexual violence against women 26 times more common than previously thought,  the study concluded Wednesday.

More than 400,000 women and girls between the ages of 15 to 49 were raped in the vast, war-ravaged country in central Africa during a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007, according to the study published in the American Journal of Public Health. That is 26 times more than the 15,000 women that the United Nations has reported were raped there during the same 12 months.

"Our results confirm that previous estimates of rape and sexual violence are severe underestimates of the true prevalence of sexual violence occurring in the DRC," said Amber Peterman, lead author of the study.
"Even these new, much higher figures still represent a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of sexual violence because of chronic underreporting due to fear of reprisal, stigma, shame, perceived impunity, and exclusion of younger and older age groups as well as men," she said.

The study, which gathered data from 2007, did not capture sexual violence among girls younger than 15 years or women older than 49 years and did not include sexual violence among boys and men.
"Although the burden of sexual violence among these groups is uncertain, a review of the records of 4,133 women attending Panzi Hospital in Sud Kivu showed that six percent were younger than 16 years and 10 percent were older than 65 years," said the study.

"In addition, Human Rights Watch reported that sexual violence in 2009 doubled in comparison with 2008. If this assessment is accurate, then the current prevalence of sexual violence is likely to be even higher than our estimates suggest." Commenting on the study, Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, said that "rape in the DRC has metastasized amid a climate of impunity, and has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time."

Bin Laden Sons Protest to US...bin Laden executed Without Trial

Omar Bin Laden

The sons of Osama Bin Laden have criticised the US authorities for carrying out his "arbitrary killing". A statement given to the New York Times newspaper said the family wanted to know why the al-Qaeda leader had not been captured alive.

Relatives who survived the 2 May raid in Pakistan should be freed, it said. Another statement appeared on a jihadist website saying the burial of Bin Laden at sea "demeans and humiliates his family". Osama Bin Laden was shot dead by US special forces during a raid on his home in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.
The statement printed by the New York Times was attributed to Bin Laden's fourth son, Omar Bin Laden, who has repeatedly distanced himself from his father's ideology.

The statement said that in absence of a body or photographic evidence, the family were not convinced he was dead. But if he was dead, it said, they were questioning "why an unarmed man was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world".

They argue Bin Laden's killing had broken international law and that figures such as former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic had been given the chance to stand trial.
"We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems and crime's adjudication as justice must be seen to be done."

The family said they were demanding a enquiry into why Bin Laden was "summarily executed without a court of law" and demanded the release of his three wives and several children, who are believed to be in Pakistani custody. The statement also said the US decision to bury Bin Laden's corpse at sea had deprived the family of performing religious rites.

A slightly different version of the report was published on a jihadist websites, said the SITE Intelligence Group. It said US President Barack Obama was "legally responsible" for clarifying "the fate of our father" and that the sea burial "demeans and humiliates his family and his supporters".

US President Barack Obama has urged Pakistan to investigate how the al-Qaeda leader could live in the garrison city of Abbottabad undetected and to find out if any officials knew of his whereabouts. Pakistan's PM Yousuf Raza Gilani has insisted that allegations of Pakistani complicity and incompetence are "absurd".

Oh really? The man lived in that house for what, six years,  in the centre of a town and no one knew of his existence?  None of the town officials or police or citizenry had a clue? Pakinstan has been consciously harboring that man and his cronies for years and they are now on the hotseat. They would do  better to own up and appologize than try to deceive the world one more time.

Giant Asteroid Heading Close to Earth - Get Out Your Telescope

A giant asteroid weighing 55 million tonnes and about the size of an aircraft carrier, will just miss the Earth later this year, Nasa experts have predicted.  The spherical Asteroid YU55 will pass close to earth in November 2011.  The rock, which is quarter of a mile across, will pass between our planet and the moon and will be visible with small telescopes.

Robin Scagell of the Society for Popular Astronomy said: “It’s rare we get the chance to see an asteroid up close.”  If it were to hit the earth, the asteroid, named YU55, would have an impact equivalent to 65,000 atom bombs and would leave a crater more than six miles wide and 2,000ft deep.

Passing by at a distance of just 201,000 miles, the asteroid will be the largest object ever to approach the earth so closely.  Nasa has officially labelled it a Potentially Hazardous Object, but have stressed there is no danger of impact while on its current course. YU55 orbits the sun every 14 years and last passed the earth in April 2010 at a distance of 1.5 million miles.

There are currently 874 near earth asteroids which are considered to be potentially dangerous. They are closely monitored and the list is being constantly added to as astronomers discover new objects in near space.  Scientists estimate that there is usually one large collision with earth every few hundred thousand years.
 "YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision for, at the very least, the next 100 years," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "During its closest approach, its gravitational effect on the Earth will be so minuscule as to be immeasurable.

It will be a pretty near miss but it is not expected to have any effects on earth's winds, tides or weather.  So grab your telescope and enjoy a  rare  experience . Astronomers  are looking forward to the encounter, which could help them learn more about big space rocks.

How Will the Universe End - Big Freeze - Escape to Parallel Universe

Escape to a Parallel Universe:   Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY

Our universe will likely end in a "big freeze," but we may be able to avoid this fate by slipping through a wormhole.

Rice, Straw and Coconut the New Alternatives to Wood

 RESYSTA: Made from rice

 KIREI: Made from sorghum straw

KIREI


ACCOYA: Made from pine

 Could one of the world's most ubiquitous staples hold the key to saving tropical hardwood trees?

You're building the house of your dreams. After years of grotty flats and poky "starter homes" that ended up being second and third homes too, that windfall from great-aunt Annie is going to be put to good use.
More than anything you want to have some beautiful timber features both inside and out - but without destroying a small corner of the Amazon basin to do it.

Would your next thought be rice? Possibly not. Resysta may look like wood, and be used like wood, but the main ingredient is rice husks. "The idea was to create a new environmentally friendly material that could replace a variety of natural building materials, like stone and in particular tropical hardwood, for all uses where water creates difficulties," says Bernd Duna, managing director of Resysta International GmbH.
"Demand for wood such as teak has boomed in recent decades, making it into a profitable export, yet the long growth cycle of hardwood trees and the difficulty of certifying origin has meant the de facto existence of a large unregulated 'grey market' that preys on mature forests."

Resysta being used in a Hong Kong park The husks are powdered, mixed with salt and mineral oil and pressed into board. Mr Duna says the material looks like tropical hardwood, but has certain advantages.
"It cannot absorb water, which causes wood to swell, warp and splinter. Secondly, wood contains a compound called lignin which leads to greying - but as rice husks are mainly cellulose, they do not have this compound and so the material maintains its original appearance." The recyclable material has won awards for its sustainability credentials - using a widely available agricultural by-product to conserve hardwood stocks.  Resysta is more expensive than more traditional alternatives, and is designed for exterior use. The company will also recycle it at the end of its usefulness.

Jörg Sperling is a partner at clean-tech private equity firm WHEB Partners, which has invested heavily in the business."There's a lot of interest in sustainable building. You have large operators of hotels or shopping malls, supermarkets - they want to give their properties a green look. "Consumer awareness is driving this. People are looking for viable alternatives to wood where you have the green credentials, but still you have material that's easy to maintain."

Kirei board is made from sorghum straw Straw as a building material may have a bad reputation among pigs, but a California company has developed a technology to challenge that assumption. It is made from sorghum stalks, another renewable agricultural by-product that would otherwise be burnt or make its way to landfill.
This is a material designed for its aesthetic appeal - kirei is Japanese for beautiful - with customers globally including Starbucks, McDonald's, Hilton and Google.

"Green has to be beautiful," says company founder John Stein."If you're going to do green for green's sake you're going to have a very limited market - people who have health issues or people with a conscience.
"If you have beautiful materials that happen to be green, then really they're open to everybody. I regard it almost as a gateway  to other green activities."  Currently, the board is produced at the company's plant in Asia, but there are plans to expand production to other areas of the world.

A no-added-urea formaldehyde adhesive is used, with bio-based binding agents in the pipeline. "I think there's a large potential for new materials being developed every day using what were once considered to be agricultural waste products.  "We're reclaiming them, and turning them into valuable building materials."
In terms of cost, Mr Stein says it is comparable to mid-range hardwoods. The company also produces a wheat-based MDF alternative, hemp panels, coconut mosaic tile, and a range of bamboo products.

Deforestation of the rainforest areas where many hardwood species grow has been linked to climate change and has a devastating impact on bio-diversity and the water cycle. Across the developed world businesses are being forced to consider sustainability, as governments try to clamp down on the use of unsustainable tropical hardwoods.

Pine is a sustainable soft wood which grows more quickly than hardwoods. But it sustains damage and rot  over the years when used as a builing material. Softwoods such as pine are traditionally less stable, less durable and more prone to bleaching than their more stoic sisters.

Now they have a process which turns pine into a hard wood.The pine goes into the reactor for acetylation at Accsys Arnhem plant.  Chief executive of AIM-listed Accsys Technologies Paul Clegg explains how it works: "I don't know if you've ever played conkers, but in order to make your conker harder you would soak it in vinegar and stick it in the oven.  "In essence what you do there is acetylate the conker. You make it harder and you make it much more stable."

Radiata pine is loaded into one of two reactors at the company's plant in Arnhem in the Netherlands.  A vacuum is created and then flooded with a liquid called acetic anhydride - effectively industrial vinegar - which is sucked into the spaces in the wood. It is heated to start the reaction, and when it is complete the resins, residual acetic anhydride and acetic acid are wicked away from the wood, and the pine has become Accoya.

The result, says Mr Clegg, is a material that has the look and feel of hardwood, but that is stronger, more stable, durable and longer-lasting. An independent report carried out by research institute Scion found Accoya was more durable than the most durable hardwoods. Accoya is used around the world, from a velodrome in Tbilisi, to decking on the Shanghai Bund and Disney theme parks. The company hopes to license the technology to others, and is working on Tricoya, an acetylated MDF that can be left outdoors untreated, unlike regular MDF.

"We've gone beyond the tipping point," Mr Clegg says.  "Sustainability or responsible behaviour amongst consumers or corporations is becoming ingrained in society."
"The reason business should be specifying sustainable materials is not that it's just ethically the right thing to do, but for commercial longevity it's going to be the right thing to do as well," he says.

How the Mission Went Down....Top Secret Raid

Obama monitored top-secret raid:
As helicopters descended out of darkness on the most important counterterrorism mission in U.S. history, President Barack Obama watched from the White House. It was an operation so secret, only a select few U.S. officials knew what was about to happen. And after giving the go-ahead for the mission, the president kept a poker face over the weekend while consoling tornado victims in the South, delivering a college commencement address and cracking jokes at a black-tie dinner for Washington correspondents.

The location of the raid was a fortified compound in the affluent Pakistani town of Abbottabad, about 150 kilometres north of Islamabad. The target: Osama bin Laden. Intelligence officials discovered the compound in August while monitoring an al-Qaeda courier, a Kuwaiti-born man named Sheikh Abu Ahmed.
Ahmed was a shadowy figure for U.S. intelligence, someone it took many years to identify. For a long time, intelligence officials knew him only by his nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. The first indications about his significance came shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks from CIA detainees who told interrogators the courier was so trusted by bin Laden that he might be living with the al-Qaeda leader.
Ahmed, his brother and an unidentified woman were killed along with bin Laden in the attack on the compound.

Nestled in an affluent neighbourhood, the compound was surrounded by walls as high as 5½ metres, topped with barbed wire. Two security gates guarded the only way in. A third-floor terrace was shielded by a 2.1-metre privacy wall. No phone lines or internet cables ran to the property. The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection.Intelligence officials believed the million-dollar compound was built five years ago to protect a major terrorist figure. The question was, who?

The CIA asked itself again and again who might be living behind those walls. Each time, officials concluded it was almost certainly bin Laden. By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough that Obama wanted to "pursue an aggressive course of action," a senior administration official said. Over the next 2½ months, Obama led five meetings of the National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in the compound and, if so, how to get him, the official said.

Normally, the U.S. shares its counterterrorism intelligence widely with trusted allies in Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. And normally, the U.S. does not carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration with Pakistani intelligence. But this mission and the need for secrecy were too important. No allies were made aware of the plan, the White House confirmed Monday.

It was a mission that required surgical accuracy, even more precision than could be delivered by the government's sophisticated Predator drones. To execute it, Obama tapped a small contingent of U.S. forces under the command of CIA director Leon Panetta, whose analysts monitored the compound from afar.
Panetta was directly in charge of the team, a U.S. official said, and his conference room was transformed into a command centre. Details of exactly how the raid unfolded remain murky, but a few things are known.

On Friday morning, Obama approved the mission before leaving Washington to inspect tornado damage in Alabama. A small contingent of the navy's elite SEAL Team Six, a top military counterterrorism unit, was approved to carry out the mission.

On Sunday, Obama cut short a round of golf to return to the White House for a meeting where he and top aides reviewed final preparations. The raid began within hours of that final meeting. It involved four U.S. Black Hawk helicopters, about two dozen troops and took about 40 minutes from start to finish.

"The minutes passed like days," John Brennan, the U.S. government's counterterrorism chief, said at a news conference Monday, adding that Obama monitored the raid from the White House Situation Room and expressed relief that no American lives had been lost. White House officials said two dozen SEALs in night-vision goggles dropped into the high-walled compound in Pakistan by sliding down ropes from helicopters.

One of the helicopters broke down and was later destroyed so it wouldn't fall into enemy hands. Among many others, the tailed al-Qaeda courier and bin Laden's son are also believed to have been killed during the mission. The compound itself belonged to the courier, the White House said.

An official familiar with the operation says bin Laden was hit by a barrage of carefully aimed  fire. Three other people were also killed: two of bin Laden's couriers and an unidentified woman. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because aspects of the operation remain classified.

Senior U.S. officials said bin Laden's body was transferred to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson where traditional Islamic procedures for handling the remains were followed, including washing the corpse, placing it in a white sheet and committing the body to the waters of the North Arabian Sea.

 When Panetta and his team received word that bin Laden was dead, cheers and applause broke out across the conference room. Later that evening, Obama delivered a public address to the world, announcing bin Laden's death. White House officials later revealed DNA testing had confirmed his identity.

President Obama has decided not to release the death photo of Osama bin Laden since it's too graphic saying in a CBS interview that "it is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool. You know, that's not who we are. You know, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. You know, the fact of the matter is this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received. And I think-- Americans and people around the world are glad that he's gone. But we don't need to spike the football. And I think that given the graphic nature of thesephotos, it would create some national security risk. And I've discussed this with Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton and my intelligence teams and they all agree."

This means that the world will not be able to see Osama bin Laden's death photos. However, Reuters was able to take hold of 3 gruesome death pictures of the 3 men who were killed in the operation which reportedly include bin Laden's son, Khalid. Courtesy of MailOnline and Reuters, here are the said photos which were made pixelated since they are too graphic. Also arial view of the compound.

Believed to be bin Laden`s son Khalid bin Laden

Believed to be the courier and owner of the house

Brother to the courier