A HUM, NOT A BANG
PARIS
The explosion that gave birth to the Universe sounded not so much like a Big Bang than a Deep Hum, the New Scientist reports in its October issue.
A computer model of the likely audio frequencies generated by the explosive start to the cosmos has been created by physicist John Cramer of the University of Washington in Seattle. "The sound is rather like a large jet plane flying 100 feet above your house in the middle of the night," he said.
The Big Bang unleashed gigantic waves of energy and blazing hot matter. Some of the energy was in the audio part of the spectrum, and these giant sound waves squeezed and compressed matter, heating compressed regions and cooling the rarefied ones. Even though the event occurred 13.7 billion years ago, the sound waves have left an imprint in tiny temperature variations that can be measurable in different parts of the sky.
Cramer based his model on temperature data send by a NASA satellite, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe launched in 2001. His calculation is based on the frequencies that rampaged through the Universe during its first 760,000 years, when it was a cosmic stripling measuring just 18 million light years across. The frequencies would have been too low to be heard by the human ear, so Cramer has scaled them up 100,000 billion-billion times to give an approximation.
The long hum becomes progressively deeper in tone because the sound waves become longer, and thus lower in frequency, as they range across the fast-expanding Universe.
AFP
SAVING THE RABBIT
BRUSSELS
New drug tests pioneered by European Union scientists will save up to 200,000 rabbits a year from the laboratory. The scientists used human blood cells instead of rabbits to test for the pyrogens, and their new methods are already in use in 200 laboratories worldwide, the European Commission said. "Thanks to these alternative methods rabbits will no longer be needed to test the presence of pyrogens in parenteral drugs."
AFP
TWIN OPPOSITE
HELSINKI
A survey among 4,000 Finnish twins and their 22,000 classmates has revealed that opposite-sex twins are more socially adept and emotionally developed than other children.
"The results show that it's good for a child to be a twin, particularly if the twins are of the opposite sex," study co-author Prof. Lea Pulkkinen of the University of Jyvaeskylae said.
The study, published in Twin Research, asked pupils in classes with twins to mark on a list of classmates which of them are always friendly to others or become easily irritated and so on. "We did not find differences between twins and nontwins, except from the cases where the twins are of opposite sex, who scored higher in positive characteristics," Pulkkinen said. "These twins tend to shape and modify each others' behavior, so the girls become more active, and boys more socially skilful."
Previously many believed it was a disadvantage to be a twin, as they are smaller at birth and often lag behind their peers in language and general development, she said. "But we found no proof of this whatsoever," Pulkkinen concluded.
AFP
DR. RICARDO QUINTOS: 2003 TOYM for Medicine
The search for The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) for 2003 came up with two from the medical profession.
Pediatrician Luis Gatmaitan extends his care for children by creating literature that fuses his medical knowledge with his gift of writing. He was awarded TOYM in literature.
TOYM in medicine went to vascular surgeon Ricardo Quintos. He has been developing strategies in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. His work in natural bypass looks into isolating growth factors that when injected into blood vessels, will induce them to grow around occluded ones.
The awarding ceremony was held at Malacanang Palace last December 2.
HEALTH COUNT
US$1 B Money spent in the African continent to fight HIV/AIDS in 2002.1
30 million Number of Africans who have AIDS or HIV.1
50,000 Number of people in sub-Saharan Africa with access to HIV/AIDS drugs at the end of 2002.1
20 Percent of population infected with HIV/AIDS in at least half a dozen countries in South Africa. 1
139 Number of Malawians who die of AIDS everyday2
250 Number of Malawians infected by HIV daily2
30 years Average life expectancy in Malawi2
50 Percentage of Malawi work force who could be dead of AIDS by 2005 if current trends continue3
US$18 B Estimated economic cost of the SARS epidemic in Asian developing countries4
1Agence France-Presse (AFP) report based on World Health Organization estimates
2AFP report based on Malawi National Statistics Office estimates
3World Bank projection reported by AFP
4Asian Development Bank estimate reported by AFP
|
