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World ’s first magnetic soap ‘produced’
London, January 25, 2012 (PTI): In a pioneering research, scientists claim to have produced the world’s
first magnetic soap that is composed of iron-rich salts dissolved in water.
A team at Bristol University says that its soap, which responds to a
magnetic field when placed in solution, would calm all concerns over the
use of surfactants in oil-spill clean-ups and revolutionise industrial
cleaning products. For long, researchers have been searching for a way to control soaps (or
surfactants as they are known in industry) once they are in solution to
increase the ability to dissolve oils in water and then remove them from a system.
The Bristol University team produced the magnetic soap by dissolving
iron in a range of inert surfactant materials composed of chloride and
bromide ions, very similar to those found in everyday mouthwash or fabric conditioner.
The addition of the iron creates metallic centres within the soap particles, say the scientists led by Julian
Eastoe. To test its properties, the team introduced a magnet to a test tube
containing their new soap lying beneath a less dense organic solution,
the ‘Angewandte Chemie’ journal reported. When the magnet was introduced the
iron- rich soap overcame both gravity and surface tension between the water and oil, to levitate through the
organic solvent and reach the source of magnetic energy, proving its
magnetic properties. Once the surfactant was developed and shown to be magnetic, the
scientists took it to Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the world’s flagship
centre for neutron science, to investigate the science behind its remarkable property.
When surfactants are added to water they are known to form tiny clumps.
At ILL, the scientists used a technique called “small angle neutron
scattering (SANS)” to confirm that it was this clumping of the iron-rich
surfactant that brought about its magnetic properties.
Prof Eastoe said: “As most magnets are metals, from a purely scientific
point of view these ionic liquid surfactants are highly unusual, making
them a particularly interesting discovery. “From a commercial point of view, though these exact liquids aren’t yet
ready to appear in any household product, by proving that magnetic soaps
can be developed, future work can reproduce the same phenomenon in more
commercially viable liquids for a range of applications from water treatment to industrial cleaning products.” |
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NASA uncovers moon’s darker side
Washington, January 14, 2012 (ANI): New maps produced by the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) aboard
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed features of the Moon’s
northern and southern poles in regions that lie in perpetual darkness.
LAMP, developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), uses a novel
method to peer into these so-called permanently shadowed regions (PSRs),
making visible the invisible.
The LAMP maps show that many PSRs are darker at far-ultraviolet
wavelengths and redder than nearby surface areas that receive sunlight.
MoonThey show many permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), are darker at
far-ultraviolet wavelengths (top) and redder than nearby surface areas
that receive sunlight (bottom). The darker PSR regions are consistent with having large surface
porosities, indicating “fluffy” soils, while the reddening is consistent
with the presence of water frost on the surface. “Our results suggest there could be as much as 1 to 2 percent water
frost in some permanently shadowed soils,” Randy Gladstone, the study
author, said. “This is unexpected because naturally occurring interplanetary
Lyman-alpha was thought to destroy any water frost before it could accumulate,” Gladstone said.
The LAMP team estimates that the loss of water frost is about 16 times
slower than previously believed. In addition, the accumulation of water
frost is also likely to be highly dependent on local conditions, such as
temperature, thermal cycling and even geologically recent “impact gardening” in which micrometeoroid impacts redistribute the location and
depth of volatile compounds. Finding water frost at these new locations adds to a rapidly improving
understanding of the Moon’s water and related species, as discovered by
three other space missions through near-infrared emissions observations
and found buried within the Cabeus crater by the LCROSS impactor roughly
two years ago. “An even more unexpected finding is that LAMP’s technique for measuring
the lunar Lyman-alpha albedo indicates higher surface porosities within
PSRs, and supports the long-postulated presence of tenuous
‘fairy-castle’ like arrangements of surface grains in the PSR soils,”
Kurt Retherford, the study co-author, said. The study has been published in the Journal of
Geophysical Research.
Spam capital arrests six in phishing probe
New Delhi, January 4, 2011: Police in Delhi say they have arrested six foreign
nationals suspected of defrauding hundreds of people using text message and email scams.
Scam victims were duped after being told they had won a lottery. Authorities seized 14 laptops, seven memory sticks and 23 mobile phones,
as well as fake documents and cash. The arrests come after security firm Kaspersky reported that India now
sent more spam than any other country in the world. Police said the six men, all Nigerian, would be remanded in custody
until 12 January.
The arrests signal attempts to crack down on a growing cyber crime
problem in the region. Mumbai-based internet security specialist Vijay Mukhi said poor
enforcement of laws meant spammers could act with impunity. "We have an Information
Technology Act that was introduced in 2000. But we don't have any convictions
under it and it's silent on spam," he said. The crackdown is being seen as a positive sign in India where the
officials have been accused of not keeping up with cybercriminals. Indian companies are now taking cyber-threats seriously as a
number of recent surveys have pointed out that there appeared to be a considerable
lack of preparedness to counter such threats. Indian corporations lost an estimated $27.8 million (£17.8m) in the
first half of 2011 due to phishing attacks, said RSA, the security division of data specialist EMC.
It is not just corporations but individuals too who are targeted as Indian internet users spend more and more time on
Facebook, Google and
Yahoo. The threats mainly relate to intellectual property theft, online banking or trading frauds and phishing attacks.
In December 2011, hackers broke into the official website of India's
ruling Congress Party and defaced the profile page of party president
Sonia Gandhi with a pornographic message. Though India has laws aimed at tackling
cybercrime, many internet users
feel it is not used effectively.
Even when arrests are made, very few people actually get convicted.
The police have recorded a little over 3,000 cases of cyber crime between 2007 and 2010, under various sections of the Information
Technology (IT) Act. Sourcce: BBC News
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