NASA unveils ‘dark side’ of the Moon
Washington:NASA has released an incredibly detailed video of what the Moon looks on the side that is never visible from the Earth.
As the Earth spins around and around, it only ever faces one side of our orbiting Moon. Just like the near side, the far side goes through a complete cycle of phases. But the terrain of the far side is quite different, NASA said. It lacks the large dark spots, called maria, that make up the familiar ‘Man in the Moon’ on the near side.
Instead, craters of all sizes crowd together over the entire far side. The far side is also home to one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin. “The far side was first seen in a handful of grainy images returned by the Soviet Luna 3 probe, which swung around the Moon in October, 1959,” NASA said in a statement. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched fifty years later, and since then it has returned hundreds of terabytes of data, allowing LRO scientists to create extremely detailed and accurate maps of the far side. (PTI)
Japan high school girls on mobiles 7 hours a day: survey
Tokyo: High school girls in Japan spend an average of seven hours a day on their mobile phones, a new survey has found, with nearly 10 per cent of them putting in at least 15 hours.
Boys of the same age average just over four hours mobile phone use a day, the survey by information security firm Digital Arts, published yesterday, said.
Teenagers tend to use their phones for social media, such as Line, a Japanese messaging and networking app, as well as smartphone games, making movies and other sharing apps like Instagram.
The poll comes amid growing concern over youngsters getting addicted to their portable technology, with Chinese research showing heavy phone use provokes the same kind of neurological changes as alcohol or cocaine dependency.
A total 96 per cent of Japanese high schoolers have a mobile phone, against 60 per cent of junior high school students, Digital Arts said. Almost four in every ten children in the upper years of elementary school – from the age of 10 – use a mobile. The survey, which was carried out online, quizzed 618 children from schools across Japan. (AFP)
Large logos in clothing may backfire
New York: Clothing with large logos may do more harm than good to a brand as researchers have found that people who are sensitive to how others perceive them do not look to stand out due to their clothing and apparel choices.
“While they may choose higher prestige brands that they believe will improve their image among their peers, such as Coach or Gucci, they would rather choose a less prestigious brand if it means the logos are smaller and less obtrusive,” said Eunjin Kim from the University of Missouri in the US.
“Even though promo-ting a positive image is important for these people, we found that it is even more important that they do not stand out in the crowd,” Kim added.
For her study, Kim evaluated participants’ sensitivity to the opinions of others by using the attention to social comparison information (ATSCI) scale, which measures how much participants care about social approval.
Kim found that high ATSCI individuals avoided potentially attention-garnering brand choices such as those involving distinctive brands or conspicuous brand logos.
“Our findings indicate that in making their brand choices, many consumers are willing to sacrifice distinctiveness and individuality in order to reduce the possibility of disapproval by others,” Kim pointed out.
The study was published in the journal Marketing Letters.(PTI)
French families of girls switched at birth win nearly 2m euros
Grasse :Two French families whose babies were switched at birth more than 20 years ago won nearly two million euros in compensation on Tuesday.
The court in the southern town of Grasse ordered the clinic at the centre of the mix-up in the French Riviera city of Cannes to pay 1.88 million euros (USD 2.13 million) – six times less than the families had called for.
The story began on July 4, 1994, when Sophie Serrano – now in her late 30s – gave birth to little Manon at a clinic in Cannes.
The baby suffered from jaundice and doctors put her in an incubator equipped with lights to treat the problem along with another affected newborn girl.
An auxiliary nurse unwittingly switched them, and although both mothers immediately expressed doubt about the babies, pointing to their different hair lengths, they were sent home anyway.
Ten years later, troubled by the fact his daughter bore no resemblance to him with her darker skin, Manon’s father did a paternity test that revealed he was not her biological parent.
Sophie Serrano then discovered she was not Manon’s mother either, prompting a probe to try and find the other family who had been handed their biological daughter.
The investigation revealed that at the time of the births in 1994, three newborns suffered from jaundice – the two girls and a boy – and the clinic only had two incubators with the special lights. The girls were therefore put together in one incubator.
The two sets of parents met their biological daughters for the first time when they were both 10 years old, but did not ask that they be switched back.
The two families have distanced themselves from each other since the meeting 10 years ago. (AFP)
