Dark matter might be made of super-heavy particles almost as big as human cells

Usually, when a new particle is discovered or its existence hypothesised, it's on such a tiny scale that it's hard for us to imagine. But that might not be the case with dark matter, because researchers have found evidence to suggest that these mysterious, invisible particles could be about one-third the size of a human cell, and dense enough to almost create a mini black hole.

Though they reportedly make up five-sixths of all of the matter in the Universe, no one truly knows what dark matter is, how it works, or even what it could look like. Despite its mysterious nature, scientists hypothesise that dark matter has to exist in some form to account for the amount of mass needed for the Universe to exist and act in the way it does.

Knowing this, researchers from the University of Southern Denmark decided to investigate the size of these hypothetical hidden particles. According to the team, dark matter could weigh more than 10 billion billion (10^9) times more than a proton.

If this is true, a single dark matter particle could weigh about 1 microgram, which is about one-third the mass of a human cell (a typical human cell weighs about 3.5 micrograms), and right under the threshold for a particle to become a black hole.

The researchers came up with this number by creating a new model for a super-heavy particle they call the PIDM particle (Planckian Interacting Dark Matter). These supermassive particles belong to a class of particles known as 'weakly interacting massive particles', or WIMPS.

Before now, researchers have suggested that WIMPs were about 100 times the mass of a proton, Charles Q. Choi reports for LiveScience, but while the existence of WIMPS has been hypothesied for years, evidence of them is, well, extremely lacking, like everything else about dark matter. This leaves open the possibility that dark matter particles could be made of something significantly different, says Choi.

If the team from Denmark is right about the size of dark matter particles, it means dark matter is too large for researchers to recreate with particle accelerators. Instead, evidence of dark matter might exist in the Universe’s cosmic microwave background radiation, which is basically the light left around from the Big Bang.
In short, when the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe grew rapidly, a time period researchers call 'inflation'. The next stage on the Universe’s development chart is called reheating, which, among many things, created particles. It's here, during reheating, that supermassive dark matter particles might have first formed.

"However, for this model to work, the heat during reheating would have

had to be significantly higher than what is typically assumed in Universal models," says Choi. "A hotter reheating would in turn leave a signature in the cosmic microwave background radiation that the next generation of cosmic microwave background experiments could detect."

Obviously, if we do eventually observe direct evidence of dark matter, it would solidify many hypotheses about how the Universe works and initially formed.

However, before that happens, we need better tools, which University of Southern Denmark cosmologist, McCullen Sandora, says we should have within the next decade.

Until then, we can only speculate how dark matter works and how it fits into longstanding hypotheses and models.

http://journals.aps.org/…/ab…/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.101302

http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.03278

http://www.sciencealert.com/dark-matter-might-actually-be-s…

All three are blind. Experience their sweet voice

மதுரையில் ஒரு மளிகைக்கடை நூறு ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்.

Watch the real story about Christopher Columbus (what your teachers never told you).

Tips for Writing Your Research Proposal

1. Know yourself: Know your area of expertise, what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses. Play to your strengths, not to your weaknesses. If you want to get into a new area of research, learn something about the area before you write a proposal. Research previous work. Be a scholar.
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2. Know the program from which you seek support: You are responsible for finding the appropriate program for support of your research.
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3. Read the program announcement: Programs and special activities have specific goals and specific requirements. If you don’t meet those goals and requirements, you have thrown out your chance of success. Read the announcement for what it says, not for what you want it to say. If your research does not fit easily within the scope of the topic areas outlined, your chance of success is nil.
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4. Formulate an appropriate research objective: A research proposal is a proposal to conduct research, not to conduct development or design or some other activity. Research is a methodical process of building upon previous knowledge to derive or discover new knowledge, that is, something that isn’t known before the research is conducted.
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5. Develop a viable research plan: A viable research plan is a plan to accomplish your research objective that has a non-zero probability of success. The focus of the plan must be to accomplish the research objective.
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6. State your research objective clearly in your proposal: A good research proposal includes a clear statement of the research objective. Early in the proposal is better than later in the proposal. The first sentence of the proposal is a good place. A good first sentence might be, “The research objective of this proposal is...” Do not use the word “develop” in the statement of your research objective.
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7. Frame your project around the work of others: Remember that research builds on the extant knowledge base, that is, upon the work of others. Be sure to frame your project appropriately, acknowledging the current limits of knowledge and making clear your contribution to the extension of these limits. Be sure that you include references to the extant work of others.
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8. Grammar and spelling count: Proposals are not graded on grammar. But if the grammar is not perfect, the result is ambiguities left to the reviewer to resolve. Ambiguities make the proposal difficult to read and often impossible to understand, and often result in low ratings. Be sure your grammar is perfect.
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9. Format and brevity are important: Do not feel that your proposal is rated based on its weight. Use 12-point fonts, use easily legible fonts, and use generous margins. Take pity on the reviewers. Make your proposal a pleasant reading experience that puts important concepts up front and makes them clear. Use figures appropriately to make and clarify points, but not as filler.
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10. Know the review process: Know how your proposal will be reviewed before you write it. Proposals that are reviewed by panels must be written to a broader audience than proposals that will be reviewed by mail. Mail review can seek out reviewers with very specific expertise in very narrow disciplines.
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11. Proof read your proposal before it is sent: Many proposals are sent out with idiotic mistakes, omissions, and errors of all sorts. Proposals have been submitted with the list of references omitted and with the references not referred to. Proposals have been submitted to the wrong program. Proposals have been submitted with misspellings in the title. These proposals were not successful. Stupid things like this kill a proposal. It is easy to catch them with a simple, but careful, proof reading. Don’t spend six or eight weeks writing a proposal just to kill it with stupid mistakes that are easily prevented.
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12. Submit your proposal on time: Duh? Why work for two months on a proposal just to have it disqualified for being late? Remember, fairness dictates that proposal submission rules must apply to everyone. It is not up to the discretion of the program officer to grant you dispensation on deadlines. Get your proposal in two or three days before the deadline.

Microbes can play games with the mind

The bacteria in our guts may help decide who gets anxiety and depression

The 22 men took the same pill for four weeks. When interviewed, they said they felt less daily stress and their memories were sharper. The brain benefits were subtle, but the results, reported at last year’s annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, got attention. That’s because the pills were not a precise chemical formula synthesized by the pharmaceutical industry.

The capsules were brimming with bacteria.

In the ultimate PR turnaround, once-dreaded bacteria are being welcomed as health heroes. People gobble them up in probiotic yogurts, swallow pills packed with billions of bugs and recoil from hand sanitizers. Helping us nurture the microbial gardens in and on our bodies has become big business, judging by grocery store shelves.

These bacteria are possibly working at more than just keeping our bodies healthy: They may be changing our minds. Recent studies have begun turning up tantalizing hints about how the bacteria living in the gut can alter the way the brain works. These findings raise a question with profound implications for mental health: Can we soothe our brains by cultivating our bacteria?

By tinkering with the gut’s bacterial residents, scientists have changed the behavior of lab animals and small numbers of people. Microbial meddling has turned anxious mice bold and shy mice social. Rats inoculated with bacteria from depressed people develop signs of depression themselves. And small studies of people suggest that eating specific kinds of bacteria may change brain activity and ease anxiety. Because gut bacteria can make the very chemicals that brain cells use to communicate, the idea makes a certain amount of sense.

Though preliminary, such results suggest that the right bacteria in your gut could brighten mood and perhaps even combat pernicious mental disorders including anxiety and depression. The wrong microbes, however, might lead in a darker direction.

Open channels

Although the communication lines aren’t fully understood, bacteria in the gut and cells in the brain may stay in touch in several ways. Signals can move along the vagus nerve or be carried by chemical messengers, such as serotonin, and by molecules that travel via the immune system. 

Studying germ-free mice
Bacteria in the gut may help brains develop, based on studies from mice born and raised without bacteria. These mice are different from normal mice in several key brain areas.

Striatum: In mice without bacteria, the flux of the neural messengers dopamine and serotonin is altered in the striatum, a brain area involved in movement and emotional responses. New connections may form more readily in the striatum too. These changes may cause bacteria-free animals to move and explore abnormally.

Hippocampus: Involved in memory and navigation, the hippocampi of germ-free mice have reduced levels of molecules that sense serotonin and the growth factor BDNF. These mice display memory problems.

Amygdala: Germ-free mice have changes in the levels of serotonin, BDNF and other signaling molecules in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in emotions. These alterations might contribute to an increase in risk-taking behavior.

Hypothalamus: The brain’s stress responder, the hypothalamus, shows boosts in corticotropin-releasing factor and adrenocorticotropic hormone in germ-free mice. The changes might be related to the animals’ heightened stress responses.

SOURCE: S.M. COLLINS, M. SURETTE AND P. BERCIK/NAT. REV. MICROBIOL. 2012

Cecile G. Tamura

Gender Gap in Industries in pay

Some industries have less of a gender gap and some industries have more. Healthcare is the worst, Glassdoor found. The tech industry is No. 10 on the

list.

Rabindranath Tagore with his children

Rabindranath Tagore with his children-(from left)daughter Mira, son Rathindranath, daughter-in-law Pratima, daughter Bela!

Awesome clicks

தெரு மூடி மடம்

இன்று இலங்கையில் எஞ்சியுள்ள ஒரேயொரு தெருமூடி மடம் பருத்தித்துறையில் காணப்படுகிறது. இந்த மடம் 1898-1901ம் ஆண்டு காலப்பகுதியில் வாழ்ந்த பிராமணரான வைத்தீஸ்வரக்குருக்களின் தகப்பனார் பஞ்சாட்சரக்குருக்கள் அவர்களால் அமைக்கப்பட்டது. தெருவின் இருபக்கமும் பொழிகல்லுத்திண்ணைகள் காணப்படுகின்றன, இத்தூண்களில் தெருமூடி மடம் கட்டுமானத்துடன் தொடர்பான இப்பிராமண குடும்பத்தினரின் பெயர்கள் பொறிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளன, மேற்புறம் தெருவை மூடி ஓரோடுகளால் வேயப்பட்ட கூரை காணப்பட்டது. தற்போது தட்டை ஓடுகள் போடப்பட்டுள்ளன.

அந்தக்காலத்தில் தெருவில் நடைசாரியாகவும்,மாட்டு வண்டிகளிலும் பயணம் செய்வோர் இளைப்பாறிச்செல்ல இந்த் மடம் உதவியாக இருந்தது. இந்த தெருமூடி மடத்தின் தெற்குப்பக்கச் சுவரில் வாசலிடப்பட்டு கதவும் இருக்கிறது. இவ்வாசல் தெற்குப்புறமாக இருந்த பிராமணரின் வீட்டுடன் தொடர்புடையதாக இருந்துள்ளது. இராக்காலத்தில் இம்மடத்து திண்ணையில் தங்கிச்செல்லும் வழிப்போக்கர்களுக்கு சாப்பாட்டு வசதிகளை செய்து கொடுக்க பிராமணர் இந்த வாசலைப்பயன்படுத்தினார். இந்த வீட்டில் பிராமணரால் சமஸ்கிருத வகுப்புகளும் நடத்தப்பட்டுள்ளன.

இந்த தெருமூடிமடத்தின் அருகில் இருக்கும் சிவன் கோவில் வீதிக்கிணறு, தண்ணீர்த்தொட்டி, ஆவுரோஞ்சிக்கல் என்பன மனிதர் குறிக்கவும், குடிக்கவும் தொட்டிகளில் வண்டில் மாடுகள் தண்ணீர் குடிக்கவும், ஆவுரோஞ்சிக்கல்லில் மாடுகள் உரசி நமைச்சலைப்போக்கவும் மிகவும் கருணையோடு அமைக்கப்பட்டிருந்தது

- பருத்தித்துறையூராம்
- பா.இரகுவரன்

The Crystal Palace.

The Crystal Palace Within refers to the Pineal Gland because part of its structure is Crystalline in nature. These small calcite crystals have piezoelectric properties that can respond to the higher realms of Light. By activating these crystalline potentials within your Pineal Gland you open a portal to your Higher Mind, which can bring to you, and humanity, an influx of creativity, insight and solutions to personal and collective problems.

Diagram above shows the inner brain with its Pineal and Pituitary Ports to the 4D/5D Crystal Palace of Light, and the dimensional transfer downwards produced an inversion of “Inwards/Outwards”. The true Creation is Within, where all the cosmological bodies and beings are- The central notion is to learn and master how to “Align” more from the Outside-In than from the Inside-Out, a Psionic and Synergic process called “Fractal Centering”.

Taoists call the center of the brain between the Pineal and the Pituitary “the Crystal Palace.” It’s said that when the Pineal Gland is activated it becomes illuminated like a ‘thousand suns’. The sense of white Light flowing within and without may be when the Pineal Gland is highly activated producing DMT-type chemistry during the height of the peak. Some believe that every human being’s Pineal Gland can be activated to Spiritual World frequencies and enables you to have the sense of all knowing, godlike euphoria and oneness all around you. In this belief, a Pineal Gland once tuned into to proper frequencies with help of meditation, yoga or various esoteric, occult methods, enables a person to travel into other dimensions, popularly known as Astral Projection or Remote Viewing.

http://biologyofkundalini.com/article.php…

http://tomkenyon.com/the-crystal-palace

The Golden One

The Golden One is the name given to a massive citrine quartz crystal unearthed in Zambia, equatorial Africa, remarkable because of its size, internal clarity, majestic golden color, and presence. (900 kilograms) photo: Lawrence Stoller

Two defining features of quantum mechanics never appear together

Two of the most important ideas that distinguish the quantum world from the classical one are nonlocality and contextuality.

Previously, physicists have theoretically shown that both of these phenomena cannot simultaneously exist in a quantum system, as they are both just different manifestations of a more fundamental concept, the assumption of realism. Now in a new paper, physicists have for the first time experimentally confirmed that these two defining features of quantum mechanics never appear together.

The physicists, Xiang Zhan, et al., have published a paper on the nonlocality-contextuality tradeoff in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

In the everyday world that we observe, an object can only be affected by nearby objects (locality), and when we make a measurement, the outcome does not depend on other independent measurements being made at the same time (noncontextuality).

In contrast, the quantum world is nonlocal, as demonstrated by quantum entanglement where two objects can influence each other even when separated by large distances. And in the quantum world, measurements are contextual, so quantum systems do not have predetermined values but instead their values depend on how measurements are made.

To show that a quantum system is nonlocal or contextual, physicists have defined inequalities that assume a system is the opposite (local or noncontextual). Then they perform experiments that attempt to violate these inequalities to show that the system is not local or noncontextual. So far, these two types of inequalities have never been tested simultaneously.

In the new study, the researchers have attempted to violate both inequalities at the same time, but have found that only one inequality can be violated at once. Their experiment uses entangled photons to generate photonic qutrit-qubit systems (a qubit is a superposition of two states, whereas a qutrit is a superposition of three states). By performing various measurements on these photons, the researchers could violate the inequalities separately, but not at the same time.

"The greatest significance of our work is that we provide experimental evidence of the assumption that quantum entanglement and contextuality are intertwined quantum resources," Peng Xue, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China and one of the lead authors of the paper, told Phys.org.

As the physicists explain, the reason for the nonlocality-contextuality tradeoff arises from the fact that both properties have the same root: the assumption of realism, which is the assumption that the physical world exists independent of our observations, and that the act of observation does not change it.

Since nonlocality and contextuality can be thought of as two different manifestations of the basic assumption of realism, then one of them can be transformed into the other, but both cannot exist at the same time because they are essentially the same thing.

"We think the contextuality-nonlocality monogamy suggests the existence of a quantum resource of which entanglement is just a particular form," Xue said.

"The resource required to violate the noncontextuality inequality and that required to violate the locality inequality are fungible through entanglement. That is, to violate the locality inequality costs entanglement as a resource, while to violate the noncontextuality inequality costs contextuality as a resource. In a quantum system, only one of the two inequalities can be violated because nothing is left to violate the other one."

The researchers hope that the new experiment will open the doors to further exploring the mutual resource in the future, as well as lead to potential applications.

"We plan to study contextuality as a resource for experimental quantum information processing, such as for quantum computation," Xue said.

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-features-quantum-mechanics.html

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search…

http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03334

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_contextuality

The Big Short

Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Michael Lewis, The Big Short is a 2015 biographical comedy-drama co-written and directed by Adam McKay and starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.

An exploration of the the 2008 financial crisis through the eyes of various eccentric insiders who saw what was coming before anyone else did. Michael Burry (Bale) is a hedge fund manager who is the first to realise that the housing market is extremely unstable as its based on subprime loans. Jared Vennett (Gosling) is a trader who gets wind of Burry's insights and realises he's onto something. Joined by hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Carell) and his team in betting against the housing market. Meanwhile newcomers Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) also start getting into credit default swap after they find a paper by Vennett and convince Geller's former neighbour and retired banker Ben Rickert (Pitt) to help them out to get the necessary credentials to be able to do so.

An amazing change of pace for director Adam Mckay, who also co-wrote the screenplay and for his Will Ferrell comedies, The Big Short is a highly successful mixture of comedy and docu-drama. Brandishing a distinct style featuring some great editing and 4th wall breaking narration by Gosling as well as fantastic performances from all involved (with especially Bale, Carrell and Gosling standing out), The Big Short is an insightful as well as highly entertaining expose of the 2008 collapse of the housing market and economic crisis in its wake. Additionally the film also benefits from its screenplay which not only manages to clearly explain all the financial lingo but also gives the actors some great written characters to work with. The Big Short was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning one for Best Adapted Screenplay, one Golden Globe for Best Screenplay and two BAFTA Awards, once again winning one for Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won 12 more awards in this category from various critics associations. A remarkable different type of comedy from director McKay, The Big Short is a must-see film for anyone interested into the origins of the 2008 financial crisis or fans of fresh docu-dramas.

Sleep suppresses brain rebalancing

Why humans and other animals sleep is one of the remaining deep mysteries of physiology. One prominent theory in neuroscience is that sleep is when the brain replays memories "offline" to better encode them ("memory consolidation").

A prominent and competing theory is that sleep is important for re-balancing activity in brain networks that have been perturbed during learning while awake. Such "rebalancing" of brain activity involves homeostatic plasticity mechanisms that were first discovered at Brandeis University, and have been thoroughly studied by a number of Brandeis labs including the lab of Brandeis professor of biology Gina Turrigiano.

Now, a study from the lab just published in the journal Cell shows that these homeostatic mechanisms are indeed gated by sleep and wake, but in the opposite direction from that theorized previously: homeostatic brain rebalancing occurs exclusively when animals are awake, and is suppressed by sleep.

These findings raise the intriguing possibility that different forms of brain plasticity - for example those involved in memory consolidation and those involved in homeostatic rebalancing - must be temporally segregated from each other to prevent interference.

The requirement that neurons carefully maintain an average firing rate, much like the thermostat in a house senses and maintains temperature, has long been suggested by computational work. Without homeostatic ("thermostat-like") control of firing rates, 

நமக்கு இடப்புறம் (இடகலை) மூச்சோட்டம் செல்லும்போது செய்யப்பட வேண்டிய காரியங்கள்:-

1. தாகம் தீர்க்க நீர் அருந்துதல். 2. பொருள் வாங்குதல். 
3. ஜலம் (சிறுநீர்) கழிப்பதற்கு. 4. சொத்துகள் வாங்குவதற்கும், பதிவு செய்வதற்கும். 
5. வீடுகட்ட, கடகால் தோண்டுவதற்கு. 
6. புதுமனை புகுதல். 
7. சிகை அலங்கரிக்க.
8. ஆடை, ஆபரணம் வாங்குவதற்கு.
9. விவசாய நாற்று நடுவதற்கு. 10. தாலுக்கு பொன் வாங்குவதற்கு.
11. தாலி கட்டுவதற்கு.
12. கிணறு வெட்டுவதற்கு.
13. புதிய படிப்பு படிக்க.
14. அரசியல் அமைச்சர்களை பார்க்க.
மேற்கண்ட காரியங்களை நமது மூச்சோட்டம் சந்திரகலையில் இருக்கும்போது செய்ய, அவை சுபமாக முடியும், என்று ஞான சர நூல் கூறுகிறது. சந்திர கலை பெண் தன்மையுடையது. நமக்கு இருபுற நாசியிலும் (சுழுமுனை) மூச்சோட்டம் சில நேரங்களில் மட்டுமே செல்லும். அந்நேரத்தில் நாம் இறைநினைப்புடன் தியானம் செய்ய சமாதி நிலை கிட்டும்

God, Soul and World - What Is Hinduism? Pilot

Muslim prostitute speaks about prostitution in Lahore, Pakistan

The Sun newspaper did an undercover investigation into it, and met up with a Muslim call girl called Fairuza. She told them that for £350 they can marry her for one hour, where she reads religious texts to confirm the marriage, taking the money as a ‘dowry’ – essentially a gift from the groom to the bride. £300 is for her services, and £50 is for the temporary marriage.

Once the punters time is up, she divorces the pair. If the guy wants another visit, he has to wait 3 months before he can marry her again.

Fairuza is apparently one of many Muslim girls making this service available through online escort sites, and she talked about one of her punters:

I did it with one Saudi who converted to Shia Islam only so he could do mut’ah (essentially a temporary marriage).

He was in London for two months. I was his wife for the two months. I lived with him and I wasn’t allowed to be with any other man. He paid very good money.

He is coming back next year and we’ll do it again.

Rich sexual past between modern humans and Neandertals revealed

"Only a bit of the DNA coiled inside the cells of Europeans and Asians comes from Neandertals, but those snippets have sparked a flurry of research. In the past few years, researchers have traced them to one or two ancient encounters with our extinct cousins. Now, a report published online in Science this week details a far richer sexual past for modern humans and their archaic cousins, one that played out at multiple times and places over the past 60,000 years."

மாணவர்கள் கண்டிப்பாக இந்த வீடியோ பாருங்க ..