Happy Diwali to all of you

Scientists Believe Mountains on Pluto are Ice Volcanoes

Pluto Known as the smallest and coldest planet in our solar system.
Scientists have discovered what appear to be ice-spewing volcanoes on the surface of Pluto, raising questions about how the tiny, distant world has been so geologically active, according to research presented 09-Nov-2015.
The findings, released at an American Astronomical Society meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, paint a far more complicated picture of Pluto and its moons than scientists imagined.
"The Pluto system is baffling us," planetary scientist Alan Stern, with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told reporters during a webcast news conference.
Stern heads the team working on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which made an unprecedented pass by Pluto on July 14.
Among 50 reports that New Horizons scientists will present this week is a startling look at two mountains on the surface of Pluto, each measuring more than 100 miles (161 km) in diameter and several miles (km) in height. The tops of the mountains have depressions similar to volcanoes found on Mars and Earth.
"Nothing like this has ever been seen in the outer solar system," said New Horizons scientist Oliver White, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
Rather than spewing molten rock, volcanoes on Pluto would have released frozen water, and other ices such as nitrogen, ammonia or methane.
White admits the idea of volcanoes on Pluto, which is about 30 times farther away from the sun than Earth, sounds crazy, "but it's the least crazy thing we can [think] of" to explain the mountains.
"Whatever they are, they're definitely weird," White said.
New Horizons also found several deep fractures in Pluto's surface, the largest of which spans more than 200 miles (322 km)in length. The top of the fracture is about 2.5 miles (4 km)higher than the base - more than twice as high as walls of the Grand Canyon.
"The fact that there are so many large faults in this part of Pluto indicates that the crust has experienced a major extension at some point in its history," White said.
Scientists suspect the decay of naturally occurring radioactive elements in Pluto's core was the heat source for its transformation.

New Horizons is on track for a possible January 2019 pass by another frozen mini world in the Kuiper Belt region of the solar system, which is home to Pluto, its moons and thousands of other icy bodies.

Artificial Skin Could Give People with Prosthetics a Sense of Touch

Artificial skin created in a lab can "feel" similar to the way a fingertip senses pressure, and could one day let people feel sensation in their prosthetic limbs, researchers say.

The researchers were able to send the touching sensation as an electric pulse to the relevant "touch" brain cells in mice, the researchers noted in their new study.

The stretchy, flexible skin is made of a synthetic rubber that has been designed, to have  micron-scale pyramid like structures that make it especially sensitive to pressure, sort of like mini internal mattress springs. The scientists sprinkled the pressure-sensitive rubber with carbon nanotubes— microscopic cylinders of carbon that are highly conductive to electricity — so that, when the material was touched, a series of pulses is generated from the sensor.The series of pulses is then sent to brain cells in a way that resembles how touch receptors in human skin send sensations to the brain.

To test whether the skin could create electric pulses that brain cells could respond to, the scientists connected the synthetic skin to a circuit connected to a blue LED light. When the skin was touched, the sensor sent electric pulses to the LED which pulsed in response. The sensors translated that pressure pulse into an electric pulses. When the sensors in the skin sent the electrical pulse to the LED — akin to touch receptors in real-life skin sending touch-sensation signals to the brain — a blue light flashed. The higher the pressure, the faster the LED flashed.

Scientists added channelrhodopsin, a special protein that causes brain cells to react to blue light, to the mouse brain cells. The channelrhodopsin let the LED light act like receptor cells in the skin. When the light flashed it sent a signal to the brain cells that the artificial skin had been touched.

PARO Therapeutic Robot

PARO is an advanced interactive robot developed by AIST, a leading Japanese industrial automation pioneer. It allows the documented benefits of animal therapy to be administered to patients in environments such as hospitals and extended care facilities where live animals present treatment or logistical difficulties.

• PARO has been found to reduce patient stress and their caregivers
• PARO stimulates interaction between patients and caregivers
• PARO has been shown to have a Psychological effect on patients, improving thier relaxation and motivation
• PARO improves the socialiazation of patients with each other and with caregivers
• World's Most Therapeutic Robot certified by Guinness World Records

PARO can learn to behave in a way that the user prefers, and to respond to its new name. For example, if you stroke it every time you touch it, PARO will remember your previous action and try to repeat that action to be stroked. If you hit it, PARO remembers its previous action and tries not to do that action.

By interaction with people, PARO responds as if it is alive, moving its head and legs, making sounds, and showing your preferred behavior. PARO also imitates the voice of a real baby harp seal.

Electric Clothes

Physicists at Wake Forest University have developed a fabric that doubles as a spare outlet. When used to line your shirt — or even your pillowcase or office chair — it converts subtle differences in temperature across the span of the clothing (say, from your cuff to your armpit) into electricity. And because the different parts of your shirt can vary by about 10 degrees, you could power up your MP3 player just by sitting still. According to the fabric’s creator, David Carroll, a cellphone case lined with the material could boost the phone’s battery charge by 10 to 15 percentage over eight hours, using the heat absorbed from your pants pocket. 

Artificial intelligence finds messy galaxies

An astrophysics student at The Australian National University (ANU) has turned to artificial intelligence to help her to see into the hearts of galaxies

Astronomers can interpret the spectra of these messy galaxies to distinguish between light from stars forming, matter falling into black holes, and supersonic galactic winds, but it is a painstaking process.

Enormous numbers of galaxy spectra are being measured by robotic telescopes such as the ANU 2.3 metre and the Anglo-Australian Telescope and so Ms Hampton's automation of the analysis process with artificial neural networks is a welcome success after a number of approaches failed.

Artificial Neural Networks are a family of computer programs inspired by the brain that work as an interconnected set of individual processors, similar to neurons. Unlike traditional rule-based computer programs, they are adaptive and capable of learning.

Ms Hampton made her computer program to analyse galaxies using about 4,000 spectra that had been analysed previously by astrophysicists.

“Customer is always right”…..No Customers Can Be Wrong

"The customer is always right" this phrase was first used by Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1909. But according to the changed scenario of business and the customer as well…I believe businesses should abandon this phrase once and for all -- ironically, because it leads to worse customer service.

Here are some points which leads “The customer cannot be always right”

1: Your team members are more valuable

In conflicts between employees and unruly customers, team members are more valuable than any customer. If customer is being worst it’s your duty to take side of your people and never let them down.

2: Abrasive customers can get unfair advantage

Abusive people get better treatment and conditions than nice people. That always seemed wrong to me, and it makes much more sense to be nice to the nice customers to keep them coming back.

3: Some customers can be bad for business

"The more customers the better" is another phrase for business but it also seems wrong because it is not even a matter of a financial calculation, not a question of whether either company would make or lose money on that customer in the long run. It was a simple matter of respect and dignity and of treating their employee’s right

4: May lead worse customer service

CEO Hal Rosenbluth wrote an excellent book about their approach called Put The Customer Second - Put your people first.

Rosenbluth argues that employees who are happy at work give better customer service because:

·         They care more about other people, including customers

·         They become energatic

·         They are happy, meaning they are more fun to talk to and interact with

·         They are more motivated

On the other hand, when the company and management consistently side with customers instead of with employees, it sends a clear message that:

·         Employees are not valued

·         Treating employees fairly is not important

·         Employees have no right to respect from customers

·         Employees have to put up with everything from customers

When this attitude prevails, employees stop caring about service. At that point, genuinely good service is almost impossible.

So it is very clear that any business needs to put its people firs, and watch them put the customers first.