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I TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

Pune Mirror, Pune, September 15, 2015. Pp.15

Gigantic water ice

slab found on Mars
Researchers say the massive terraced craters are a result of snowfall tens of millions of years ago
American Geophysical Union

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esearchers have discovered an enormous slab of water ice just beneath

the surface of Mars, measuring 130
feet thick and covering an area equivalent to that of the US states of California and Texas combined.
The ice may be the result of snowfall tens of
millions of years ago on Mars, scientists said.
Combining data gleaned from two powerful instruments aboard NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, researchers determined why a crazy-looking crater on Mars
surface is terraced not bowl-shaped, like
most craters of this size.
Its worth mentioning that terraced
craters of this size are quite rare, said Shane
Byrne, associate professor at University of Arizonas Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, or
LPL.
But in this area of Mars (Arcadia Planitia),
there are a lot of terraced craters. The craters
may have formed at different times, but they
all have terraces, which indicates something
weird is going on in the subsurface.
Using MROs High Resolution Imaging
Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera, the
researchers created three-dimensional models of the areas craters, which allowed them to
measure the depth of their terraces.
The researchers then used MROs Shallow
Radar, or SHARAD, instrument to beam radar
pulses to Mars, allowing them to measure the
time it took for the radar signals to penetrate
the surfaces buried layers and bounce back.

15

Origin of Saturns
ring, satellites revealed

apanese researchers have revealed that Saturns F ring and its shepherd satellites are a natural outcome of the final stage of formation of
Saturns satellite system.
According to the latest satellite formation theory, Saturn used to have ancient rings containing
many more particles than they do today, and satellites formed from spreading and accretion of these
particles.
During the final stage of satellite formation,
multiple small satellites tend to form near the outer edge of the ring.
In their simulations using in part computer systems at the National Astronomical Observatory of
Japan, professor Ohtsuki Keiji and student Hyodo
Ryuki from Kobe University revealed that the F
ring and its shepherd satellites formed as these
small satellites with a dense core collided and partially disintegrated.
In other words, the system of the F ring and its
shepherd satellites is a natural outcome of the formation process of Saturns ring-satellite system.
The F ring is very narrow with a width of only a
few hundred kilometres and has two shepherd satellites called Prometheus and Pandora, which orbit inside and outside the ring, respectively.
Although the Voyager and Cassini spacecraft
later made detailed observations of the F ring and
its shepherd satellites, their origin has not been
clarified till now.
This new finding is expected to help elucidate
the formation of satellite systems both within and
outside our solar system.
AGENCIES

A digital terrain model of the crater, beneath which researchers discovered a slab of ice 130 feet thick
Ali Bramson, a graduate student at LPL,
combined the two data sets to measure the
radar waves speed, a pivotal clue to the layers
composition.
In this craters case, the layers turned out
to be ice, and lots of it, researchers said.
Just beneath Mars dirt surface, or regolith,
they found an enormous slab of water ice, 130
feet thick and covering an area equivalent to
that of California and Texas combined.
While the presence of ice came as little
surprise to Bramson and Byrne, its age,
amount and location did.
Although scientists have known for some
time about Mars icy deposits at its poles and
have used them to look at its climatic history,
knowledge of icy layers at the planets mid-latitudes, analogous to earthly latitudes falling

between the Canadian-US border and Kansas,

is something new.
Knowing where the ice is and how thick it
is can tell you about Mars past climates,
Byrne said.
The fact that the ice is so thick and widespread leads us to think it came into place
during one of Mars past climates when it
snowed a bunch, ice accumulated, was buried,
and then preserved. There have been a lot of
climate changes between now and the tens of
millions of years ago when we suspect the ice
was put there, he futher stated.
But it shouldn't be stable today, and other
past climates of ice instability in this region
mean the ice shouldve sublimated away into
the dry Martian atmosphere by now. So, thats
what we need to investigate, Byrne added.

Lab-on-a-chip to cut
health tests costs
Disney develops LEDs that talk to each other U
Researchers modified off-the-shelf LED light bulbs so that they could send and receive visible light signals

isney researchers have demonstrated

that light bulbs can do more that just illuminate our rooms they could communicate with each other, with objects and with
the Internet, to create smart environments.
Stefan Mangold, who heads Disney Researchs wireless research group, said these advances could give Visible Light Communication (VLC) an important role in the growing
Internet of Things the idea that objects can
communicate with each other and share information to create smart environments.
Communication with light enables a true
Internet of Things as consumer devices that
are equipped with LEDs but not radio links
could be transformed into interactive communication nodes, Mangold said.
Were not just talking about sensors,
smartphones and appliances. This easily
could include toys that have LEDs, creating an
Internet of Toys in which toys can be accessed,
monitored and acted on remotely, Mangold
said.
The researchers used off-the-shelf commercial LED light bulbs that they then modified so that they could send and receive visible
light signals.
These modifications included a systemon-a-chip running the Linux operating sys-

Disney Research

The smart LED bulbs can connect to each other and with objects like toys that include LED lights
tem, a VLC controller module with the protocol software and an additional power supply
for the added electronics.
The researchers created software that
makes the signals transmitted through this
hardware compatible with Internet protocols. They were thus able to create networks
with a throughput of up to 1 kilobit per second.
These VLC-enabled bulbs could be used to

broadcast beacons making it possible to detect

the location of objects, linked into a network
to route signal traffic or could be used to
communicate with objects, researchers said.
The ubiquitous presence of LED-based
light bulbs that can be enhanced with VLC
functionality, and the availability of LEDequipped devices, unleashes a wide range of
opportunities and applications, Mangold
said.
AGENCIES

S engineers have developed a breakthrough device that can significantly reduce the cost of sophisticated lab tests for medical disorders and
diseases, such as HIV, Lyme disease and
syphilis.
The new device, developed by Rutgers University, uses miniaturised channels and valves to replace
benchtop assays.
Dubbed ELISA-on-a-chipa, a single device
analyses 32 samples at once and can measure widely
varying concentrations of as many as six proteins in
asample. There are tests that require large samples of
blood or other fluids and expensive chemicals that
lab technicians manually mix in trays of tubes or
plastic plates with cup-like depressions.
The main advantage is cost. These assays are
done in labs and clinics everywhere, said Mehdi
Ghodbane who earned his doctorate in biomedical
engineering at Rutgers.
The lab-on-chip device, which employs microfluidics technology, opens doors for new research
because of its capability to perform complex analyses using 90 per cent less sample fluid than needed in
conventional tests.
Until now, animal research on central nervous
system disorders, such as spinal cord injury and
Parkinsons disease, has been limited because researchers could not extract sufficient cerebrospinal
fluid to perform conventional assays.
The discovery could also lead to more comprehensive research on autoimmune joint diseases
such as rheumatoid arthritis through animal
studies.
As with spinal fluid, the amount of joint fluid, or
synovial fluid, researchers are able to collect from
lab animals is minuscule.
PMB