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Showing posts from September 20, 2009

Chandrayaan-1 finds water on moon - report

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           Chandrayaan-1, India's first lunar mission, has found evidence of large quantities of water on its surface, The Times newspaper reported on Thursday. Data from the spacecraft also suggests water is still being formed on the moon, the British newspaper said. "It's very satisfying," the newspaper quoted Mylswamy Annadurai, the mission's project director at the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore, as saying. The newspaper said the breakthrough would be announced by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Thursday. NASA's website says it will hold a media briefing at 1440 EDT on Sept. 24 to "reveal new scientific findings about the moon" from data collected during national and international space missions. The unmanned Indian craft was equipped with NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren; editing by Andrew Roche)

World Bank approves $4.3 billion in loans to India

The World Bank on Tuesday approved $4.3 billion in loans for India to help finance infrastructure building and to shore up the capital of some state banks as the economy recovers from the global financial crisis. "The logic of these four loans is that they should support India's economic recovery by enabling enterprises to get access to credit and ... enabling investment in infrastructure," Roberto Zagha, World Bank country director for India, told Reuters. The loans are part of the World Bank's $14 billion in crisis-related lending for Asia's third-largest economy over three years through 2012. Zagha said while the worst of the crisis was over, there was uncertainty about the pace of the recovery. He said economic growth in India of between 5.5 percent and 6.5 percent in 2009/10 was realistic, but cautioned that the country's economic prospects hinged on a broader global recovery. "If we don't see a (global) recovery, then India will not be abl...

Europe Richer Than America

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Parmy Olson, Forbes.com As market participants reflect on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, so emerges the sobering consequence of the market crash that followed: North America's wealth has now fallen the most out of any other region in the world, allowing Europe to step up to the plate as the world's richest continent. North America, defined as the United States and Canada, had $29.3 trillion in assets under management in 2008, while Europe had $32.7 trillion, according to a survey by the Boston Consulting Group. In Depth: Where The World's Richest Live In Pictures: Best And Worst REIT Mutual Funds In Depth: Europe's Most Idyllic Places To Live In Pictures: Health Care Spending, Europe Vs. America Regime Change In Japan Perturbs Investors North America had the steepest decline of all regions last year, with total wealth as measured by assets under management dropping by 21.8%. One reason is the region's heavy investment in shares: North...

Short- and long-term memories require same gene, but in different brain circuits

Washington, August 18 (ANI): Conducting experiments on fruit flies, a group of scientists have found that long-term and short-term memories are stored very differently because they depend upon the activity of a gene in different circuits of the brain. Assistant Professor Josh Dubnau, of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), has ofund that both short- and long-term memories require the same gene, known as rutabaga, of which humans also have a similar version. He and his colleagues say that a rapidly occurring, short-lived trace in a group of neurons that make up a structure called the "gamma" lobe produces a short-term memory, while a slower, long-lived trace in the "alpha-beta" lobe fixes a long-term memory. During the study, the researchers placed flies in a training tube attached to an electric grid, and administered shocks through the grid right after a certain odour was piped into the tube. They observed that the flies with normal rutabaga genes learnt to a...

How mood affects memory

Washington, Sept 22 (ANI): Deciding on whether to return to a restaurant often depends upon the mood you had on the earlier visit to the place, say researchers. The team from University of Maryland and Yale University has shown that mood has a significant impact on memory-based decisions. "Suppose that last week you went to a restaurant and consumed a well-prepared meal. Further imagine that you went into the restaurant either in a good or bad mood, perhaps because it was a rainy or sunny day," wrote authors Anastasiya Pocheptsova from University of Maryland and Nathan Novemsky from Yale University. "A week later, would you be more likely to praise the restaurant or return to it if your earlier experience happened on a sunny day?" they added. The researchers found that "incidental mood" is generally not incorporated into memory-based judgments made after the mood has passed. In other words, a person's memory of the restaurant's food won't...

World's Most Expensive Cars

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Hate the smell of exhaust or the skunk you just passed on the highway? If you buy the Maybach 62 Zeppelin, your nose will never have to suffer again. The car comes with a built-in, illuminated atomizer that gently diffuses the fragrance of your choice throughout the cabin. Granted, that peace of mind will cost you--to the tune of $506,500. But that's the low end when looking at the limits of what money can buy at the dealership. For a whopping $1.8 million you can get the Cinque Roadster, which features a stunning 678 horsepower V12 engine, carbon fiber racing seats, a titanium suspension and a 0-60 mph time of 3.3 seconds. In Depth: World's Most Expensive Cars In Depth: World's Most Expensive Cars In Pictures: Cars Of The Sports Stars In Depth: America's Best Auto Dealerships In Depth: 10 Clunkers To Avoid But those who still don't want to be outdone should consider the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport or the Koenigsegg CCXR, both of which cost more than ...