Chinese university offers dating course
Beijing: A university in China has defied traditional Chinese conservatism by offering students a course on dating, the media reported on Tuesday.
The Tianjin University course, with 32 class hours and two credits, is offered by a student community, “Queqiaohui”, which specialises in making friends and dating, the China Daily reported.
It teaches theory and practical skills, including social etiquette training and a dating salon.
“If the course attendees applied what they learned to real dating by finding a boyfriend or girlfriend and forming a good relationship, it is possible they can get full marks in the course,” said Cong Ying, director of Queqiaohui. (IANS)
Dragons carved on trees in China
Beijing: Over ten camphor trees have been carved with dragon patterns and gilded with golden paint on the road side in China’s Zhejiang province, the media reported on Tuesday.
Before the carving in Zhejiang, branches were cut off from the trees, but the trees will still grow new branches after the carving, China.org reported.
According to the owner, he owns all the trees and can do what he likes with them.
“Some people protested that carving on living trees is a cruel art,” the owner said.
It takes workers a hundred days to finish carving one tree and the mortality rate of the carved trees is quite high. (IANS)
New class of medium-sized black holes identified
Washington: Astronomers led by an Indian-origin scientist have found evidence for a new intermediate-mass black hole about 5,000 times the mass of the Sun, strengthening the case for the existence of a third major class of black holes. Nearly all black holes come in one of two sizes: stellar mass black holes that weigh up to a few dozen times the mass of our Sun or supermassive black holes ranging from a million to several billion times the Sun’s mass. Astronomers believe that medium-sized black holes between these two extremes exist, but evidence has been hard to come by, with roughly a half-dozen candidates described so far. A team led by astronomers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center found evidence for a new intermediate-mass black hole about 5,000 times the mass of the Sun.
The discovery adds one more candidate to the list of potential medium-sized black holes, while strengthening the case that these objects do exist. The result follows up on a similar finding by some of the same scientists, using the same technique, published in August 2014. While the previous study accurately measured a black hole weighing 400 times the mass of the Sun using data from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite, the current study used data from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite. The new intermediate-mass black hole candidate, known as NGC1313X-1, is classified as an ultraluminous X-ray source, and as such is among the brightest X-ray sources in the nearby universe. It has proven hard to explain exactly why ultraluminous X-ray sources are so bright, however. Some astronomers suspect that they are intermediate-mass black holes actively drawing in matter, producing massive amounts of friction and X-ray radiation in the process. Against this backdrop of haphazard X-ray fireworks created by NGC1313X-1, researchers identified two repeating flares, each flashing at an unusually steady frequency. One flashed about 27.6 times per minute and the other about 17.4 times per minute. Comparing these two rates yields a nearly perfect 3:2 ratio. Lead author Dheeraj Pasham, a postdoctoral associate at the Joint Space-Science Institute, a research partnership between UMD’s Departments of Astronomy and Physics and NASA Goddard, and his colleagues also found this 3:2 ratio in M82X-1, the black hole they identified in August 2014, although the overall frequency of flashing was much higher in M82X-1. Although astronomers are not yet sure what causes these steady flashes, the presence of a clockwork 3:2 ratio appears to be a common feature of stellar mass black holes and possibly intermediate-mass black holes as well. The flashes are most likely caused by activity close to the black hole, where extreme gravity keeps all surrounding matter on a very tight leash, Pasham said. The study is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. (PTI)
Vietnam free high-profile blogger, US call for more releases
Hanoi:Vietnam has freed a high-profile blogger who has travelled to the United States, which is pressing for more such dissidents to be released. “We welcome the decision by Vietnamese authorities to release Ta Phong Tan who decided to travel to the United States after her release from prison,” said Terry White, a US Embassy public affairs officer. “We remain deeply concerned for all persons imprisoned in Vietnam for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms and call on the government to release unconditionally all these prisoners and allow all Vietnamese to express their political views without fear of retribution,” he said. Tan, 47, a former policewoman, was arrested in 2011 for writing about human rights and corruption on her blog and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda in a trial that also convicted fellow blogger Nguyen Van Hai, better known as Dieu Cay. Over the past two years, several high-profile dissidents have been released and sent into exile in the United States, including Dieu Cay, who was released last October.
His case had been mentioned by President Barack Obama. Human Rights Watch welcomed Tan’s release, but said no one should have been jailed for peacefully expressing their views.
“This release continues Vietnam’s cynical practice of releasing high-profile dissidents from prison directly into forced exile, with immediate departure from the country being the price of their freedom,” Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
US officials have said that Vietnam needs to improve its human rights record if it wants to expand economic, trade and military ties with the United States.
Hanoi says that no one is imprisoned in Vietnam for expressing their views, and that only law breakers are punished. (AP)
Chinese sperm bank uses iPhone to attract donors
Beijing:A sperm bank in China’s Hubei province has announced an attractive deal where they would give away the latest Apple iPhone 6S to donors, the media reported.
According to the promotion, headlined “A new plan to buy an iPhone 6S”, a donor will be paid 5,000 yuan for 40 ml of semen, meaning he needs only another 288 yuan to get a phone.
Potential donors must be healthy and between 22 and 45 years old. They can receive a transportation subsidy of 100 yuan from their home to the sperm bank, the only certified facility in Hubei province, located at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan. The sperm bank raised the subsidy for donations from 4,000 to 5,000 yuan in 2011 to attract more people, according to a statement on its website.
On average, fewer than 100 people successfully donate annually, which falls far short of demand from couples, the bank said. Most donors in Hubei are college students who are better educated and within the required age range, the bank said. (IANS)
