Scientists discover giant rat in Indonesia's Papua

Scientists have discovered two mammals believed to be new to science during an expedition to Indonesia's remote eastern province of Papua, Conservation International has said.

Scientists from the group and the Indonesian Institute of Science visited the Foja Mountains in June, following a first trip in late 2005 that saw them discover dozens of new plants and animals.

The area won international fame after a December 2005 survey turned up dozens of new species and gave urgency to conservation efforts in a region where logging and forest-clearing for agriculture are a serious concern.

"It's comforting to know that there is a place on earth so isolated that it remains the absolute realm of wild nature," said Conservation International vice president Bruce Beehler, who led the expedition.

"We were pleased to see that this little piece of Eden remains as pristine and enchanting as it was when we first visited."

During the recent expedition, the team documented two mammals, a Cercartetus pygmy possum, one of the world's smallest marsupials, and a Mallomys giant rat, that appear to be new to science.

The rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat and visited the scientists' camp several times, apparently lacking any fear of humans.

The researchers also recorded the mating displays of several rare and little-known birds for the first time, the statement said.

The Fojas are part of the Mamberamo Basin, the largest tropical forest in the Asia-Pacific without roads, which the Indonesian government has declared a wildlife sanctuary.

The scientists plan a third expedition in late 2008 or 2009 to survey the summit forests of the highest peak, and the little-studied lower elevations, where they expect to find additional unknown species of frogs, mammals, butterflies and plants.

Activists have already warned that the forests in the area are under threat form large-scale depredation.

Indonesia, which is losing its forests at the world's fastest rate,is struggling to safe its rain-forest from deforestation.

Scientists find why size matters in nature

Researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have shed light on the beauty of nature by explaining the mechanism behind the uniformity of leaf and flower size in individual plants.

Investigating how plants arrive at these aesthetic proportions, the team discovered that cells at the margins of leaves and petals play a key role in setting their size.

"The remarkable uniformity of leaves and flowers helps us to tell different species apart, such as daisies and marguerites, which look very similar otherwise. We are now uncovering how the genetic blueprint of a species tightly controls the size of leaves and flowers", said lead author Dr. Michael Lenhard.

The cells at the margins appear to ooze a mobile growth signal that keeps the cells throughout the leaf dividing. The more of this signal is produced, the larger the leaves and flowers get, the team found.

Surprisingly, the authors said, this signal seems to be different from the classical and well-studied plant hormones that are known to influence growth and development.

"As the signal only seems to come in from the margins, we suggest it gets diluted as the leaf or petal grows. Once the concentration falls below a certain threshold, the cells in the leaf or petal stop dividing. Dr. Lenhard said.

"This would be a simple way of measuring the size of a growing organ. It's a bit like adding more and more tonic to a gin and tonic until you can no longer taste the gin," he added.

He further said that noticeably, animals seem to use the same principle of dilution for measuring size, for example of the wings in a fly, although the molecules used are very different.

Efforts are in progress to use this finding to boost leaf growth in biofuel crops for the production of sustainable energy and to increase the yield of fruits and seeds.

The study was published in Developmental Cell. (ANI)

Indian origin scientist creates oil resistant material

Washington, December 7 : A team of engineers led by an Indian origin scientist at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology has devised a simple process to manufacture materials that have a high tendency to repel oil and can be applied as a flexible surface coating.

The process, state the researchers, may find its use in aviation, space travel and hazardous waste cleanup.

The study was led by Anish Tuteja, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering.

This material may be used to help in protecting parts of airplanes or rockets that are susceptible to damage from being soaked in fuel, such as rubber gaskets and o-rings.

"These are vulnerable points in many aerospace applications. It would be nice if you could spill gasoline on a fabric or a gasket or other surface and find that instead of spreading, it just rolled off," said Robert Cohen, the St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering.

It was challenge for scientists to create a strongly oil-repelling, or "oleophobic" material and the natural variants of such a material are unknown.Oils and other hydrocarbons have the tendency of to spread out over surfaces due to their very low surface tension (a measure of the attraction between molecules of the same substance) unlike water that has a very high surface tension and tends to form droplets.

For example, beads of water appear on a freshly waxed car (however, over a period of time, oil and grease contaminate the surface and the repellency fades).

Researchers overcame the surface-tension problem by designing a material composed of specially prepared microfibers that essentially cushion droplets of liquid, allowing them to sit, intact, just above the material's surface.

When oil droplets land on the material, resembling a thin fabric or tissue paper, they rest atop the fibers and pockets of air trapped between the fibers.

The contact angle between the droplet and the fibers is large, preventing the liquid from reaching the bottom of the surface and wetting it.

These microfibers are a blend of a specially synthesized molecule called fluoroPOSS, which has an extremely low surface energy, and a common polymer.

These can be readily deposited onto many types of surfaces, including metal, glass, plastic and even biological surfaces such as plant leaves, using a process called electrospinning.

Scientists have also developed some dimensionless design parameters that may help in predicting the stability of oleophobicity or oil-resistance between a particular liquid and a surface.

The design equations are based on structural considerations, especially the re-entrant nature (or concavity) of the surface roughness, and on three other factors: the liquid's surface tension, the spacing of the fibers, and the contact angle between the liquid and a flat surface.

After making use of these relationships, the researchers would be able to design fiber mats that are optimized to repel different hydrocarbons.

They have already created a non-woven fabric that can separate water and octane (jet fuel), which they believe could be useful for hazardous waste cleanup.

The Air Force, which funded the research and developed the fluoroPOSS molecules, is interested in using the new material to protect components of airplanes and rockets from jet fuel.

Fin whales can swallow 'ocean soup' enough to fill a school bus

Scientists have discovered that while lunging towards krill and fish with an open mouth, a single fin whale can engulf up to 2,900 cubit feet of the ocean "soup", which is almost equal to a large school bus.

The whale, which can measure up to 88 feet in length, is left with about 25 pounds of krill after filtering out the water through special plates at the top of its mouth.

This is the first time that verifiable scientific testing procedures, instead of educated guesswork, have been used to calculate how much water and food whales can fit into their mouths.

The findings attain significance, as it is not easy to gather data on the massive mammals.

"Remember that you can't get whales to run on a treadmill in a laboratory," Discovery News quoted Nicholas Pyenson, a palaeontologist and University of California at Berkeley Department of Integrative Biology researcher, as saying.

"It'd also be impossible to hold a whale in place for research, not to mention the fact that their activity occurs under water and their size makes it next to impossible for a cameraman to hold a camera in the right position for any usable length of time," he added.

Published in Marine Ecology Progress Series journal, the study involved footage from Discovery's recent "Blue Planet" series, which showed a Bryde's whale lunge-feeding on a school of fish.

"The footage is extraordinary and is arguably the best for any rorqual (fast-moving lunge feeders). It serves as a vital source of information regarding the change in (mouth) gape angle over time," Pyenson said.

He and his two colleagues Jeremy Goldbogen and Robert Shadwick captured the footage into a computer program, and combined the data with information gathered in recent years from tiny recording devices stuck momentarily with plungers to the backs of whales.

Precise measurements of whale skeletons was also taken from museum specimens.

The analysis of the information thus combined suggests that fin whales fed in a series of lunges, each lasting six to 10 seconds. It also shows that a single dive incorporates up to seven lunges.

The researchers say that given the nutrition in 25 pounds of krill, a whale could meet its daily energy requirements in about four hours of hunting.

The study has also shown that the force of each whale lunge creates an enormous amount of drag that "essentially stops the whale dead in the water," forcing it to accelerate from a resting position, which requires a lot of energy.

Steven Vogel, a professor emeritus of biology at Duke University, said that the whale mouth "acts like a gigantic parachute on steroids when it's open," causing it to lose momentum from its lunge.

"The mouthful of water and krill is so large that it also changes the body shape of the whale, turning an otherwise streamlined swimmer into a slower mass," he added.

Indian-born scientist makes steel go green

Sydney, November 10: Millions of tonnes of waste plastic will be recycled into steel. The breakthrough Australian 'green' steel technology, which cuts coke and coal demand and reduces emission, has been invented by a Mumbai-born University of New South Wales (UNSW) materials scientist, Veena Sahajwalla.

Sahajwalla, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur, told IANS: 'Plastic is simply another form of carbon. In making steel there's essentially no difference between the polyethylene plastic in shopping bags and a natural resource like coal.'

Polyethylene plastic contains carbon, an essential raw material in electric arc furnace (EAF) steel making, which recycles steel from scrap metal and accounts for 40 percent of the world's steel production. Annual steel production is around 1.1 billion tonnes globally.

The technology currently substitutes about 30 percent of coke and coal in EAF steel making with polyethylene waste plastic, which would otherwise have ended up in landfill.

Commercial production of this world first 'green' steel is underway at the Sydney furnaces of OneSteel, following a global licensing agreement between the Australian steel maker and UNSW's commercialisation arm, NewSouth Innovations (Nsi).

OneSteel's commercial manager (rod and bar), Adrian Howard, told IANS: 'Patents for this technology have been filed in major steel-making countries including India, China and the US.'

Howard said: 'Trials to date have proven the technology will deliver benefits such as reduced energy consumption and reduced material requirements while increasing steel making capacity.'

In EAF steel making, scrap is melted at around 16000 degrees Celsius and converted into high quality steel using high-power arcs. As the scrap melts, a layer of gaseous slag foam forms on top of molten steel.

The new process speeds this slag-foaming process, reducing power-on time and total power use. Total savings include lower power bills and a commensurate drop in green house gas emissions from coal-fired power stations, net savings on coke and coal usage and a longer electrode life span.

'The new business deal is gratifying because what would otherwise become waste is recycled to become a raw material for EAF steel making,' added Sahajwalla.

Equally significant is the reduction in the power required to run the furnaces using the new waste plastic injection technology. The process promises significant environmental benefits in one of the world's most essential, but energy and resource intensive industries.

Sahajwalla said: 'Getting industry to take up 'good science' is a key driver. I am passionate about creating concepts and solutions which might sound radical, but could provide a foundation for developing novel pathways into the future.'

Both industry and the environment will be big winners if the world's 300 EAF steel makers embrace the technology.

Australians recycle just 13 percent of the 1.2 million tonnes of plastic they use annually. Sahajwalla told IANS: 'Growing up in India, we used and recycled just about everything. Our dinner table conversations always centred on science.'

She recalls IIT Kanpur as being one of the most technically challenging places. 'The four years prepared me to face the world and provided a new perspective into engineering and life in general,' she said.

'By converting waste into a value-added resource we are promoting sustainability of materials industries. There are so many materials that should be recycled and if we can't, we ought to develop products that can be re-used at the end of their life cycles,' she added.

Today, she leads the research on Sustainable Materials Processing at UNSW in Sydney. Along with her research team, she works with many companies across the globe, including Mittal Steel, Nippon Steel (Japan), Ruukki Steel (Finland), Techint (Italy) and US Steel (US), that support her research focusing on sustainability of materials processing.

A recipient of many international and national awards, most recently she won the 2006 Environmental Technology Award from the Association of Iron and Steel Technology in the US and the 2005 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research.

Comet Draws Scientific, Amateur Interest

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.

Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.

The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.

``This is truly a celestial surprise,'' Lewis said. ``Absolutely amazing.''

Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.

A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.

``This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994,'' Lewis said.

Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomb-like structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas.

``What comets do when they are near the sun is very unpredictable,'' Lewis said. ``We expect to see a coma cloud and a tail, but this is more like an explosion, and we are seeing the bubble of gas and dust as it expands away from the center of the blast.''

Experts aren't sure how long the comet's show will last, but estimate it could be weeks - if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet's details into view, they said.