The December 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake triggered a tsunami, that ravaged that nearby countries in a most tragic way:(:(. At least 240,000 people were killed, and countless went missing forever. In fact, the whole Earth rang like a bell, and even the rotation of the Earth was affected, albeit in a minute way. Recently, researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) analyzed recordings of the underwater sound produced by the magnitude 9.3 earthquake. Their unique approach enabled them to track the rupture as it moved along the Sumatra-Andaman Fault, raising the possibility that scientists could one day use the method to track underwater earthquakes in near real time and opening new avenues in seismologic research.

Frequency spectrogram of the earthquake sound (Courtesy: LDEO)The researchers found that the first phase encompassed the first three minutes of the eight-minute earthquake, during which the rupture proceeded north at about 1.7 miles per second (2.8 km/sec) from the epicenter. During the second phase, the rupture slowed to 1.3 miles per second (2.1 km/sec) and continued north for another five minutes until it reached a plate boundary where the fault changed from subduction (where one plate is sucked under another) to strike-slip (where the two plates rub against each other). This suggests that had the subduction zone continued, this longest-ever-recorded earthquake might have been even longer!!
The analysis that Maya Tolstoy and her co-author DelWayne Bohnenstiehl used also shows promise for helping officials quickly determine where relief activities are needed. In the case of the Indonesian earthquake, early seismic data indicated that only the southernmost third of the fault was involved. Later analysis revealed that about 750 miles actually ruptured, a finding that was supported by their study:).
A recording of the earthquake can be heard here.

The next version of the Windows Operating System (codenamed LongHorn) has finally got a new name: Windows Vista. A Beta version will be available on August 3, according to Microsoft.

Windows Vista (Courtesy: Microsoft)The new Operating System should a) launch applications 15% faster than Windows XP does, b) boot PCs 50 % faster than they boot currently and will allow PCs to resume from standby in two seconds, c) allow users to patch systems with 50% fewer reboots required, d) reduce the number of system images required by 50%, and e) enable companies to migrate users 75% faster than they can with existing versions of Windows.
On the security front, it will deliver more than a dozen new security enhancements. New security features include everything from Network Access Protection quarantining and browser lock-down, to protected user accounts and anti-malware protection.
But I am quite sure new viruses and bugs will continue to plague this version of Windows as well, as similar promises were made before the launch of Windows XP too ;).

French and Indonesian archaeologists and cavers have discovered evidence of Stone Age human settlements in caves on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. Human and animal bones, ceramics, and charcoal found in the caves suggest that humans cooked and ate there some 10,000 years ago. Several of hitherto unknown paintings dating from the same period have also been discovered:):).

Boats and Dancing, Niah Great Cave, Sarawak (Courtesy: Sarawak Museum)A National Geographic team set out to survey six of the most ornately decorated caves located in limestone formations spread through some 60 miles (100 kilometers) of dense jungle in the Marang mountains on the Mangkalihat peninsula of east Borneo. Three more caves were discovered during the expedition.
Inside the rock shelters, the researchers excavated stone tools and artifacts made of ceramic, animal bones, and freshwater shells. In some places, they found human bones. Animal bones found with charcoal lead researchers to surmise that humans cooked and ate the animals as food.

Things zoom around pretty fast in the sub-atomic world. This is especially with one of the lightest particles, the electron:). All chemical reactions depend on the speed with which an electron makes a transition from one atom to another, and therefore timing such a transition is of extraordinary importance if one were to understand the processes in play behind a chemical reaction. Such research could help develop new catalysts, and also provide a boost to the relatively new field of spintronics.

Electron Cloud (Courtesy: University of Guelph)
Wilfried Wurth, a physicist from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and his team used short X-Ray pulses to watch an electron moving away from a Sulphur atom stuck to a Ruthenium metal surface. The electron took just 320 quintillionths of a second (320x10^-18 seconds) for the jump:D!
Quantum Mechanics makes it very tricky to observe such transitions. Electrons are not really point particles, but are smeared over a region of space. These regions can be viewed as clouds, and the goal therefore is to track these clouds.
The team used X-Rays to boost the energy of an electron close to the core of a Sulphur atom. This pushed the electron towards the Ruthenium surface, leaving the remaining electrons in the Sulphur atom to shuffle around. By watching how the X-Ray pulses were absorbed, the researchers tracked how long it took for the electron's cloud of probability to shift entirely from the Sulphur to the Ruthenium:):).

It seems that the pulmonary (of the lungs) systems of birds and dinosaurs may have been more similar than scientists previously thought:). According to new research from Ohio University and Harvard University, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, the ancient beasts boasted a much bigger, more complex system of air sacs similar to that in today's birds. The finding is one of several studies in recent years to paint a new, more avian-like portrait of meat-eaters such as T. rex: The creatures may have had feathers, incubated their eggs, grown quickly and perhaps even breathed like birds:).

Bird and Dinosaur bones are similar (Courtesy: Ohio University)According to one of the authors (Leon Claessens), the pulmonary system of meat-eating dinosaurs such as T. rex in fact shares many structural similarities with that of modern birds, which, from an engineering point of view, may possess the most efficient respiratory system of any living vertebrate inhabiting the land or sky.
The authors visited museums in New York, Berkeley, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Berlin and London to examine the bones of ancient beasts, and also studied a 67 million year old dinosaur, Majungatholus Atopus. They compared the dinosaur skeletons with those of modern birds to draw comparisons of how the soft tissues in the dinosaurs may have been structured.
The scientists are part of a reinvigorated movement of researchers who are examining dinosaur bones and comparing them with modern animals to learn more about the anatomy of these extinct beasts.

The wonders of space are a plenty. We have only just begun to scratch the surface:). The unmanned missions of NASA are leading the way in our understanding of the planets and moons in our Solar System, and foremost today in this pack is the Cassini spacecraft.
Cassini recently passed within a mere 170 kilometers (110 miles) of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The daring flyby was the closest encounter ever by any spacecraft with any body in the outer solar system (excepting, of course, Huygens' landing on Titan).

Boulders on Enceladus (Courtesy: Planetary)Cassini's viewpoint on Enceladus for this flyby -- its third chance to view the icy moon up close -- yielded the first-ever views of Enceladus' south polar regions. These regions are intriguing because earlier, more distant views showed a striking terrain.
Among the images is a unique one captured near closest approach, at a range of only a few hundred kilometers. At this range, the sharp-edged ridges of Enceladus' terrain break up into distinct tumbled boulders, a completely new view of the surface of Enceladus. It will undoubtedly take scientists some time to unravel the puzzle of what this morphology means for the geology of the little icy moon:):).

Sharp has developed a new LCD, which can simultaneously display different information and image content in right and left views in a single unit by directionally controlling the viewing angle of the LCD. This feature makes it possible to provide information and content tailored to specific users depending on the angle at which they view the screen.

Two-Faced LCD! (Courtesy: PhysOrg)Volume production of the LCD will begin in July 2005, marking the introduction of the world’s first practical application of this technology. A new LCD television technology will allow two different programs to air at the same time depending where one sits.
Using a number of proprietary technologies, such as a parallax barrier superimposed on an ordinary TFT LCD, the LCD sends the light from the backlight into right and left directions, making it possible to show different information and visual content on the same screen at the same time depending on the viewing angle. Controlling the viewing angle in this way allows the information or visual content to be tailored to multiple users viewing the same screen.