Archimedes was one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient times, perhaps of all time. Born in 287 BC in Syracuse, ancient Greece, he is reputed to have discovered the principles of density and buoyancy, also known as Archimedes' Principle. He is also credited with the possible invention of the odometer, and use of mirrors to focus sunlight to create fire.
Many of Archimedes' documents were lost during the Middle (Dark) Ages. A copy of one of his most important works, containing part of his Method of Mechanical Theorems was for example scraped down and reused as pages in a thirteenth century prayer book, producing a document known as a palimpsest. Now scientists are trying to decipher the original text by using high-intensity X-rays.

Section from the Archimedes Palimpsest (Courtesy: Stanford)The palimpsest was discovered in 1906. Some portions of this palimpsest were decipherable. For instance, in 2002, an examination of a portion of the manuscript showed that the Greeks understood the concept of infinity. However, most of the manuscript was thoroughly destroyed by the scraping. So researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, decided to use X-rays to peer through this modern ink. Iron pigment in the original ink fluoresced when hit by the X-rays, allowing researchers to see the text for the first time.
The first page has now been scanned, but researchers have not yet been able to decipher the writing. Each scan yields a picture of the writing on both sides of each page, along with the thirteenth-century text that also lurks beneath the forged drawings. Different images will have to be compared carefully to unpick the Archimedes text.
The document is of utmost importance. This information locked inside it is not available anywhere else, and might provide an window into the mind of one of the greatest brains of all time. Archimedes was working on a variety of engineering and mathematical problems and puzzles, and it is possible that he might have solved some persistent problems that waited till after Rennaissance to be discovered again. This manuscript might provide us clues to such problems which Archimedes might have solved, some 2000 years before the modern age:):).

Centennial Challenges is a NASA program of prize contests to stimulate innovation and competition in solar system exploration and ongoing NASA mission areas. The goal is to offer prize money to encourage private individuals, companies and researchers to think about challenging problems and come up with a state-of-the-art solution. NASA has now announced a new challenge, in association with the Florida Space Research Institute. The MoonROx (Moon Regolith Oxygen) challenge will award $250,000 to the first team that can extract breathable oxygen from simulated lunar soil before the prize expires on June 1, 2008:).

Lunar Base Art (Courtesy: NASA Science)The teams must design and construct hardware that can extract at least five kilograms of breathable oxygen from simulated lunar soil during an eight-hour period. The soil simulant, called JSC-1, is derived from volcanic ash. The extraction technologies required are currently beyond our reach, and the teams must reach their goal while operating under equipment and energy constraints.
To establish a lunar base, or to use the moon for future human explorations, using lunar resources efficiently is key. Once oxygen can be extracted from its soil, engineers can construct liveable bases, where (genetically engineered) plants could be grown, and humans can thus live and work for extended periods of time, without being dependent on the Earth for everything. Thus, moon can be a stepping stone to future explorations to Mars and beyond, which will undoubtedly be much harder, and more complex.

The permanent icecap on Mars' South Pole is offset from the pole itself. An interdisciplinary team of scientists thinks it has an answer to this long-standing mystery. Published in the journal Nature, this new understanding about Mars' climate and its polar regions may suggest clues to finding water in the planet's equatorial zone - where it would be easier to land a spacecraft - and opening the door to future exploration and the search for life.

Martian South Pole (Courtesy: NASA)The southern icecap is made up mostly of carbon dioxide ice - or dry ice - which is the main component of the Martian atmosphere. It is much smaller, about a 10th the size of that at the northern pole, and it is all on one side of the pole. The other side of the pole contains a much larger area known as 'the Cryptic Region,' which is made up of seasonal ice in the winter but has low albedo, or reflectivity. The question was: why is the ice deposition so peculiar?
The scientists were able to use images from the Mars Global Surveyor, temperature information, and climate models to develop a new theory. It looks like Mars has an asymmetrical climate at its south pole. According to the researcher Dr. Barnes, the planet has huge volcanoes and mountains that extend from well north of the equator to the southern hemisphere, and two gigantic basins in the south. The wind blowing over these topographic features sets up large-scale patterns that have a profound impact on the climate. This ultimately causes a skewed deposition of ice, and so we see a skewed distribution of the icecap:):).

All the matter and energy in our universe are composed of a set of (as yet known) fundamental particles. These particles fall into two major classes: Fermions and Bosons. Fermions (named after Italian scientist Enrico Fermi) follow Pauli's Exclusion Principle by which no two Fermion can occupy the same energy state. Electrons, Protons and Neutrons are all Fermions. Bosons (named after Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose) do not follow the Pauli Principle. Photons (particles of light, carrier of the electromagnetic force), and Gluons (carrier of the strong nuclear force, that binds protons and neutrons into atomic nuclei) are Bosons.

Fundamental Particles (Courtesy: Scott Menary)Interestingly, all the matter particles are Fermions, and the force/energy particles are Bosons! The fundamental particles combine in different ways to give rise to the beautiful world we see all around us:).
The matter particles are further classified into Leptons (which includes the electrons, positrons and neutrinos), and Quarks (of which there are six varieties: up, down, strange charmed, top and bottom) which make up protons and neutrons. The force particles are photon (electromagnetic force), gluon (strong nuclear force), W and Z boson (weak nuclear force, responsible for radioactivity).
Now why all this talk about particle physics?! Because scientists are slowly unravelling the secrets of this ultra-small world, and recently physicists may have discovered the first hybrid meson at the KEK laboratory in Japan. Mesons are normally made up of a quark and an anti-quark. But this hybrid meson contains a gluon as well:). The meson was first predicted 25 years ago, and its detection suggests that scientists are on the right track with their theories.
The new meson was observed in electron-positron collisions by the international Belle collaboration at KEK and quickly decays into two well-known particles called the Omega and J/psi. The properties of the decay have led the Belle team to believe that it is not a standard quark-antiquark particle but may be a hybrid meson containing a charm quark, a charm antiquark and a gluon.
The new meson is the latest in a list of recent surprising discoveries in particle physics. These include several particles called pentaquarks (which may or may not exist) that contain five quarks, a particle called the X(3872) that appears to be made of four quarks, and another meson called the Ds(2317) that does not behave as predicted.
We still have a lot to learn:):):).

LG Electronics has unveiled the world's first terrestrial digital multimedia broadcast receiving mobile (DMB) television-enabled notebook computers. This technology will allow users to watch High-Definition mobile digital broadcasts via laptop PCs anywhere, anytime. The notebook uses Intel Centrino processors. The model features a 14-inch wide LCD screen with a WXGA resolution of 1280x768 and a contrast ratio of 15:9, perfect for watching DVD titles and films.

Mobile TV-enabled Notebook (Courtesy: AME Info)The notebook PC features functions like watching and recording terrestrial broadcasts, channel registration, broadcasting-reception sense indication, picture capture and channel scanning. The notebook also does an intelligent update where it automatically upgrades software to improve user convenience.
There are, currently, three versions of the DMB enabled notebook PC with different form factors. The premium notebook PC (model: LW40-P1LK) features a Pentium M 1.6GHz CPU, 512MB Double Data Rate 2 (DDR2) memory, and large capacity hard disk drive at 80GB. This model also utilises the high performance graphic chip (ATI Mobility Radeon X600) to enhance entertainment functions such as 3D games and videos.
This opens up a world of possibilities. The technology is fast moving towards an integration of the television world, the computing world, and the mobile phone world. Soon we will need only one device that will offer us all of them, and would be cheap, portable, energy-efficient, and light-weight:):):).

I have previously talked about nanotubes (tube like structures, e.g. composed of carbon atoms, of the order of 10^-8 meters in size) in several of my previous posts (NanoTube Fuel Cell, One Minute Recharge, Fuel From Water). Nanotechnology offers a lots of benefits, including minute robots, faster computers, and stronger materials. However, scientists must understand the nanotube behavior under all circumstances (temperature, pressure) to be able to fully harness its potential benefits.

Poking a nanotube (Courtesy: PhysOrg)In a recent study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, IBM Watson Research Center and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, found that while nanotubes are extremely stiff when pulled from the ends, they give when poked in the middle. The softness is dependent on the radius of the tube. The findings (published in the journal Physical Review Letters) are extremely important for the development of nano-electronics and nano-materials.
Using an atomic force microscope (AFM) and testing it with a tip of 35 nanometers in radius, researchers lightly prodded the nanotubes to measure the elasticity. Understanding just how much these nanotubes of various sizes and layers can bend is an important step in the development of nanoelectronics and the nanowires that carry electrical current through them. Recently, a team of scientists at the University of California, Irvine, demonstrated that transistors made of single-walled nanotubes can operate at much faster speeds than traditional transistors. Knowing just how far these tubes can bend may lead to even more efficient nanowires.
Such fundamental research on the behavior of nanotubes is necessary, as only by knowing the full range of its behavior can scientists finally hope to use the technology in future materials, computers, and almost everything else.

Our Milky Way galaxy is a typical spiral galaxy, about 100,000 light years across, and with about 10¹¹ stars. However, it is also quite interesting in that it has a bunch of satellite galaxies around it, arranged in the same plane as the galaxy! Cosmological theory predicts that these galaxies should occupy a large, nearly spherical halo, but the pancake-like structure has baffled scientists for a long time. Now, finally, the puzzle has perhaps been solved.

Milky Way (Courtesy: CNN)All galaxies have satellite galaxies, which inhabit pockets of dark matter. Dark matter does not interact with light and the only way that we can infer its existence is by detecting the gravitational influence it exerts on normal matter, such as stars. Soon after the Big Bang, cold dark matter formed the universe’s first large-scale structures, which then collapsed under their own weight to form vast halos. Normal matter was attracted to these halos, and galaxies were formed. But, this should lead to a central large galaxy, surrounded by smaller galaxies arranged in a sphere. But Milky Way's satellites are arranged in a flat circle!
Scientists from University of Durham simulated the evolution of parts of the universe, randomly selected from a large cosmological volume, using a sophisticated supercomputer model. They carried out six simulations, and found that galaxies must end up in such a pancake-like distribution:). With this research, an important puzzle has been solved, and a coherent picture of how galaxies like the Milky Way emerged from the Big Bang is now beginning to fall into place.
More research and simulations will try to understand the formations of even larger galaxies, and perhaps evolution of galactic clusters as well.