Monthly Archive for June, 2009

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Japan study : Pigeons have Eye for Paintings

Published on June 27, 2009 in Science. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

pigeons_01Pigeons may sometimes appear to randomly target city sculptures with their droppings, but according to a new Japanese study they also have the potential to become discerning art critics.

Researchers at Tokyo’s Keio University say they have found that the birds have “advanced perceptive abilities” and can distinguish between “good” and “bad” paintings, recognising beauty the way humans do.

The team — which previously published research saying that pigeons can tell a Monet from a Picasso — was seeking to find out whether the animals may also be able to prefer one to the other.

For their experiment, the scientists took paintings by elementary school children and selected those that were commonly deemed to be “good” and “bad” by teachers and a control group of other adults.

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Scientists found mysterious forms of Water

Published on June 25, 2009 in General Science and Science. 0 Comments Tags: , .

water_01Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, along with researchers in Italy, have found two types of liquid water that have long been suspected to exist below water’s normal freezing point.

Unlike most liquids, water becomes less rather than more dense when it freezes — and it is densest not when it is coldest (at 0 degrees Celsius, just before it freezes) but at 4 degrees C.

These are just two of water’s host of anomalous properties, some of which are crucial to its behaviour in the natural environment.

In 1992, Gene Stanley of Boston University, Massachusetts, and his co-workers carried out computer simulations of water, which suggested that hydrogen bonds in water might produce two different types of liquid if water was made very cold and squeezed to high pressures.

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Mystery Cave found in Jordan Valley

Published on June 23, 2009 in Archeology, Discovery and Science. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

cave_01An artificial underground cave, the largest in Israel, has been exposed in the Jordan Valley in the course of a survey carried out by the University of Haifa’s Department of Archaeology. Prof. Adam Zertal, who headed the excavating team, reckons that this cave was originally a large quarry during the Roman and Byzantine era and was one of its kind. Various engravings were uncovered in the cave, including cross markings, and it is assumed that this could have been an early monastery. “It is probably the site of “Galgala” from the historical Madaba Map,” Prof. Zertal says.

The enormous and striking cave covers an area of approximately 1 acre: it is some 100 meters long and about 40 meters wide. The cave is located 4 km north of Jericho. The cave, which is the largest excavated by man to be discovered in Israel, was exposed in the course of an archaeological survey that the University of Haifa has been carrying out since 1978.

As with other discoveries in the past, this exposure is shrouded in mystery. “When we arrived at the opening of the cave, two Bedouins approached and told us not to go in as the cave is bewitched and inhabited by wolves and hyenas,” Prof. Zertal relates. Upon entering, accompanied by his colleagues, he was surprised to find an impressive architectonic underground structure supported by 22 giant pillars. They discovered 31 cross markings on the pillars, an engraving resembling the zodiac symbol, Roman letters and an etching that looks like the Roman Legion’s pennant. The team also discovered recesses in the pillars, which would have been used for oil lamps, and holes to which animals that were hauling quarried stones out of the cave could have been tied.

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Scientists discover solar-like oscillations in massive star

Published on June 22, 2009 in Science and Space. 0 Comments Tags: , .

star_01Scientists claim to have discovered a massive star 10 times the mass of Sun but with similar oscillations which could open new possibilities of probing the interiors of celestial bodies and understanding the reasons behind the fluctuations inside the Sun.

Researchers at LESIA, a laboratory of the Paris observatory (France), and AGO, a laboratory of the Lihge University (Belgium) studied the massive star — V1449 Aql (HD180642) — for more than 150 days and observed that it displays solar-like pulsations which have, so far, never been detected in any heavenly body.

The study, conducted by CoRoT space mission, launched on December 27, 2006, has been developed and operated by CNES, a French government space agency, with contribution from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, ESA (RSSD and Science Programme), Germany and Spain.

“The unprecedented high-precision photometric data gathered for this star by the CoRoT mission allows us to report the first detection of solar-like oscillations in a massive star, V1449 Aql,” said Belkacem Kevin, Department of Astrophysics, AGO, in an email interview to PTI.

The Sun oscillates (fluctuations in its diameter) at a period of around five minutes and these motions represent the superposition of literally millions of independent modes, resonating below its surface at extremely precise periods.

“They afford enormous diagnostic potential for the (otherwise invisible) internal structure and dynamics of this conveniently close star,” Kevin said.

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