US zoo auctioning paintings made by animals
Los Angeles: A zoo in the US is letting animals explore their creative side by auctioning paintings produced by snakes, elephants, lemurs and bats among many others. Thirty-two paintings produced by animals at the Oakland Zoo in California are up for auction.
Bids for the paintings started at around USD 200 on eBay. “While a paintbrush might be the most common instrument to create art, it is not the tool of choice for every animal,” Margaret Rousser, a zoological manager at the Oakland Zoo, said. “Some use paintbrushes and some like to finger-paint,” said Rousser. “We hold up the canvas and let them choose their colours and paint,” she said. In July and August, zookeepers assisted the animals during painting sessions, ‘USA Today’ reported. “A lot of the animals are very smart and love to learn new things,” Rousser said. The zoo started the auction last year with 12 paintings by nine different species and raised USD 10,000, according to Rousser.
Participating animals include a giraffe, an elephant, a lion, goats, a parrot and even a hissing cockroach among many others. The funds raised from the auction will go to support the zoo’s conservation programmes for animals in the wild. None of the animals were forced or coerced into participating, the zoo officials wrote on their website.
The painting sessions were conducted using only positive-reinforcement methods and the animals were freely allowed to refuse participation at any time during the painting sessions, they said. The auction started on September 10 and will run through September 20. (PTI)
Man sends 50 pounds note to congratulate Queen!
London:Congratulating Queen Elizabeth II on becoming Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, a man has sent her a 50-pound note so that she could treat herself to her “favourite cup of tea”.
The Queen was quick to respond to the unusual gift with a letter, saying she was “deeply moved” by the gesture. David Vaz had sent cash worth 50 pounds to congratulate the Queen on becoming Britain’s longest reigning monarch.
He wanted to express his gratitude to Britain’s longest reigning monarch by sending her a letter with a 50 pound note to “treat herself to her favourite cup of tea”. She did not accept the cash and instead replied, thanking him for the gift. “I wrote to congratulate her and to use the money to treat herself to a cup of tea or something…but I didn’t realise she couldn’t accept money from members of the public…it’s like a dream come true. It really made my day,” he was quoted as saying by the Mirror.
He has already received two letters from the Queen earlier. “Dear Mr Vaz, the Queen wishes me to thank you for your message in advance of the forthcoming splendid milestone in Her Majesty’s reign. Although unable to reply to you personally, the Queen was most touched by your gift of fifty pounds, the letter from the Queen,” the letter written by the Lady-in-Waiting said.
“However as Her Majesty cannot accept presents of a financial nature I am returning the note to you with this letter and I am to tell you that you kind gesture is greatly appreciated,” it said. (PTI)
‘Molecules’ made of light may be possible: study
Washington:Researchers have showed that by tweaking a few parameters of the binding process, photons could travel side by side as a sort of “molecule”, which could let scientists build objects out of photons in future. In 2013, collaborators from Harvard, Caltech and Masachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found a way to bind two photons together so that one would sit right atop the other, superimposed as they travel. Their experimental demonstration was considered a breakthrough, because no one had ever constructed anything by combining individual photons – inspiring some to imagine that real-life ‘Star Trek’ lightsabers were just around the corner. Now researchers from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Maryland, along with other collaborators, showed theoretically that by tweaking a few parameters of the binding process, photons could travel side by side, a specific distance from each other.
The main reason is that binding photons requires extreme conditions difficult to produce with a roomful of lab equipment, let alone fit into a sword’s handle. Still, there are plenty of other reasons to make molecular light – humbler than lightsabers, but useful nonetheless, researchers said.
For example, engineers need a way to precisely calibrate light sensors, and Gorshkov said the findings could make it far easier to create a “standard candle” that shines a precise number of photons at a detector.
Perhaps more significant to industry, binding and entangling photons could allow computers to use photons as information processors, a job that electronic switches in your computer do today.
Not only would this provide a new basis for creating computer technology, but it also could result in substantial energy savings.
Phone messages and other data that currently travel as light beams through fibre optic cables has to be converted into electrons for processing – an inefficient step that wastes a great deal of electricity.
If both the transport and the processing of the data could be done with photons directly, it could reduce these energy losses, researchers said. Gorshkov said it will be important to test the new theory in practice for these and other potential benefits. The study appears in the journal Physical Review Letters. (PTI)
Gigantic water ice slab found on Mars
Washington: Researchers 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 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 NASA’s 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. “It’s worth mentioning that terraced craters of this size are quite rare,” said Shane Byrne, associate professor at the University of Arizona’s 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,” said Byrne. Using MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera, the researchers created three-dimensional models of the area’s craters, which allowed them to measure the depth of their terraces.
The researchers then used MRO’s 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 surface’s buried layers and bounce back. 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. 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 planet’s mid-latitudes, analogous to earthly latitudes falling between the Canadian-US border and Kansas, is something new. (PTI)
