This has been happening all over the world. Be it the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river in China, Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river in India, or the Sivand Dam across Bolaghi gorge in Iran, such giant projects often have the effect of destroying/submerging historical sites of immeasurable value:(. Archaeologists often have to rush to save whatever little they can, before water washes away priceless artifacts (See one of my old posts on Iran's Sivand dam here). A similar situation has arisen in South Eastern Turkey, where a massive dam on the Tigris River threatens to submerge Hasankeyf, a site of great historic importance.

Piers of a 12th Century Bridge at Hasankeyf (Courtesy: RiverNet)An international campaign halted the project in 2002. But the project has been restarted, and it is part of the Greater Anatolia Project, a series of hydroelectric plants and dams, and is all the more controversial because of its location in the predominantly Kurdish south-east of Turkey.
Hasankeyf was an important crossroads between East and West, occupied by nine major civilisations from the Assyrians to the Ottomans. If the dam goes ahead the whole town will be submerged with the exception of the citadel, perched on top of the cliffs. Among the losses will be the Sultan Suleiman Mosque, the minaret of which is one of the most outstanding examples of early 15th-century Ayyubid architecture; the cylindrical tomb of Zeynel Bey, a rare example of Central Asian style architecture in Anatolia; and the tomb of the holy Imam Abdullah, grandson of Cafer-i Tayyar, uncle of the prophet Mohammed, a shrine visited by about 30,000 Shia pilgrims each year.
True, that human progress must go on. But there is often a lack of concern for historical ruins, as developing nations are going on the fast track to develop dams, and blow up mountains, all in the name of progress. As with the developed countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, this can only lead to a further loss to our common heritage:(:(.

We sense the world around us through our eyes, ears, nose, and skin. We might not always realize it, but the skin is the largest sensor of them all! We feel the environment through our skin, grasp objects, sense heat/cold/air, and interact with others. So it is only natural to design a similar structure for robots:). Goddard technologist Vladimir Lumelsky is developing a high-tech, sensor-embedded covering artificial skin for robots, which will allow them to sense the surroundings in a much more 'human' way.

Robot Skin (Courtesy: PhysOrg)The future lies with the robots who can interact with the environment like we humans do. For example, in space, robotic arms are increasingly being used to position satellites, and repair/upgrade the International Space Station. The system needs to know if any part of the arm has collided with any object, and an artificial sensor skin is the best solution.
The idea is to develop a "sensitive skin" that technicians could use to cover a robot. This skin will include more than 1,000 infrared sensors that would detect an object, and send the information to the robot's brain. The brain would digest the information, apply reasoning and react within milliseconds by directing the robot to move. Future skin prototypes likely will have a higher density of sensors on the skin, which will provide the robots with even greater dexterity.
There are a lot of challenges. First, the skin has to be durable, and be able to handle high levels of radiation. It has to be flexible and light-weight. It also has to be able to suffer losses, and still work. The technology is not there yet, but scientists are getting closer:):).

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been surveying the Saturnian system for some months now. The spacecraft has already sent delightful pictures of Saturn and its moons, discovered new moons, confirmed several conjectures about Saturn, and opened up new mysteries. Currently, the craft is taking pictures of the majestic rings of Saturn, and in a spectacular way, it has discovered a new moon hidden in a gap in the planet's outer A ring :). The moon, previously conjectured and named as S/2005 S1, was first seen in a series of time-lapse sequence of images earlier this month.

Lunar Waves (Courtesy: JPL)The gravitational forces of the moon causes tiny ripples in the neighboring rings, as can be seen in the above image. The moon clears a path through the Keeler gap, which is located about 250 kilometers inside the outer edge of the A ring. The moon is about 7 kilometers across and reflects about half the light falling on it.
The wave pattern will allow scientists to determine the mass and orbital information of the moon, and the material that the rings themselves are composed of. It will also allow scientists to see how the other moons are perhaps affecting the orbit of this moon. But studying all this, the scientists will also be able to learn how our solar system might have evolved out of an ancient nebula, some 4.6 Billion years ago. And of course, a new moon is always a cause for celebration :):).

One thing that separates the biological world from the non-biological is its ability to reproduce. All organisms reproduce in some fashion. Now scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York have created a robot that can replicate itself in minutes :). If perfected, the technique could lead to the creation of swarms of robots, with little or no input from the scientists. Once that happens, small errors in reproduction, and a drive similar to the survival of the fittest in biological evolution, might lead to better and smarter robots!

Assembling robots (Courtesy: National Geographic)The robot was constructed from cube-shaped robotic units (modules) that functioned independently. Each cube contains a microprocessor, a motor, and electromagnets. The magnets selectively weaken and strengthen connections between other cubes, thereby determining where the structure breaks and joins. The growing cube assemblies are supplied with extra cubes at two "feeding" locations. A three-module robot can replicate itself in just over a minute. A four-module robot could assemble an exact replica of itself in just two and a half minutes. The research is published in the May 12 edition of the journal Nature.
Each cube is programmed with certain building instructions, such as contact and release events. Starting with a single robot, it can seek out other such cubes and construct a replica of itself. This process can go on forever, as long as there are cubes left! However, given enough cubes, the robots might be able to reconfigure the cubes into new forms, and hence technically new robot-forms. Different cubes can also have different functionalities, for example, some could be equipped with digging tools, others with lifting tools, and so on. This will be interesting, say, for lunar missions, where depending upon the task at hand, the robots can reconfigure themselves!
The Cornell robot is just a proof-of-concept. More research is of course required. And hopefully, we wont have a breed of super-robots desperate to eliminate us humans from this planet :D:D.

Ok, I dont know if it really smells bad or not :D. But scientists in UK have found a 2,000 year old shoe, and it is the oldest ever discovered there. The shoe is made of leather, although the experts don't know yet which type of animal skin was used to make it. It seems reasonably well-preserved, with stitch and lace holes still visible in the leather. The shoe is being studied by conservationists in Salisbury, southwest England, and is expected to be displayed at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter.

Not my shoe! (Courtesy: BBC)It was found when the owners of Whiteball Quarry began working in the area, where a Bronze Age iron-smelting site had been discovered in 1989. Nearby, researchers from Exeter Archaeology found two water troughs, along with two timber-lined wells, preserved by waterlogging and probably dating from the early part of the Iron Age (700 BC to AD 43).
The shoe is nearly 12 inches long, suggesting its owner was male. I am planning to promptly go out after I finish this post, and bury two of my shoes in two different locations. Who knows, may be I (or at least my shoes!) will be famous in a couple of millennia or so :D:D.

Black Holes are objects with such immense gravitational fields that nothing can escape from its attraction, including light. Black Holes range in size from as low as few solar masses (e.g. V4641 Sgr), to billions of solar masses (e.g. at the center of our Milky Way galaxy). Now for the first time, the birth of a Black Hole has been captured. According to Neil Gehrels of NASA, the Swift orbiting observatory detected the Gamma Ray Burst of the collision between two dense Neutron Stars (stars composed entirely of neutrons), which combined to create a Black Hole.

Swift Observatory (Courtesy: MSSL)Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) are the most enigmatic events in the universe. These bursts release stupendous amounts of energy (equivalent to our Sun's total energy output over its life-time) in a fraction of a second. So powerful are these blasts, that if one were to occur within 6000 light years, life on Earth might be threatened!
The GRB created by the collision was seen across the whole universe. The satellite recorded the x-rays from the collision, but the visible light was too faint to be detected by the satellite. But ground-based telescopes were able to see the aftermath of the collision. The collision matched what theorists had predicted would happen when two neutron stars collide, helping solve a 30 year old mystery.

Amygdala is a almond-shaped structure in the human (and animal) brain, whose primary function is to regulate emotions. For example, the amygdala becomes active when we are experiencing pleasure, fear, hate, and so on. In humans, it is also the seat of biases (racial, cultural), as the amygdala conditions our brain to distrust anything that is out of the ordinary. This conditioning made sense in ancient days, when humans used to live in small tribal communities with homogenous cultural and racial structures. Now scientists from UCLA have found that negative feelings about black people may be subconsciously learned by both white and black Americans! The research is among the first to test the brain physiology of racial biases in both black and white subjects.

Amygdala (Courtesy: University of Virginia)It seems that both whites and blacks demonstrate an increased activity in their amygdala, when presented with images of black faces. Our amygdala also fires up when we see unknown faces, so both whites and blacks were first shown the pictures in another context. So next time when they see the pictures, they should recognize them, but this did not stop the amygdala from firing up when confronted with black faces! This suggests that both whites and blacks feel threatened (typical amygdala behavior) by black faces. According to the researchers, this suggests pervasive cultural cues, to associate black people with fear.
However, the study is not conclusive. A lot of other factors (past experiences, social and cultural differences, etc.) do color the responses. More study needs to be done with larger populations, and with perhaps isolated populations of Africans in Africa to set up a benchmark against which such comparisons can be made. Another interesting avenue would be to test if the response is towards the color of the skin only; for example, by using say black and white cats (instead of humans) to test the corresponding amygdala behavior (if any).
Scientists have only just started looking at the physiological changes that are brought about in the brain due to social and cultural conditionings. More interesting studies are definitely in the pipeline :).