These images show a pair of galaxies that existed when the universe was only 700 million years old, or only 5% of its current age. (NASA Photo)

Astronomers have taken amazing pictures of two of the most distant galaxies ever seen. The ultradeep images, taken at infrared wavelengths, confirm for the first time that these celestial cherubs are real. The researchers are now able to weigh galaxies and determine their age at earlier times than ever before, providing important clues about the evolutionary origins of galaxies like our Milky Way, Carnegieinstitution.org wrote.
Carnegie Fellow Ivo LabbŽ, along with Rychard Bouwens and Garth Illingworth of the UCO/Lick Observatory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Marijn Franx of the Leiden Observatory, examined galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) using the sensitive Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) aboard NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The HUDF, scanned by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in late 2003, remains the deepest view ever taken at visible and near-infrared wavelengths.
This figure shows the relation between redshift and the age of the universe. Redshift occurs when light shifts to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels across the ever-expanding universe. More pronounced redshift means the light has been traveling longer, from farther away; therefore the degree of redshift allows astronomers to know how far back in time they are looking.
The two galaxies are seen when the universe was just a baby--700 million years after the Big Bang, or five percent of the universe’s current age. They belong to a precious small sample of similarly ancient galaxies, discovered two years ago by Bouwens, Illingworth, and Franx and analyzed in-depth in Nature last month. The relative deficit of such far-away luminous sources indicates that this early period is when galaxies were rapidly building up from a very small number of stars to the massive galaxies we see at later times.
Because there are so few of them, verifying the existence of the distant galaxies and measuring their properties is of paramount importance. The new mid-infrared observations from Spitzer proved essential for LabbŽ’s team, as the analyses were not possible from the Hubble data alone.
“Spitzer is an amazing little machine,“ LabbŽ said. “It is a remarkable achievement that a small 0.85-meter telescope can see sources 12.7 billion light years away.“ Though astronomers have observed faraway galaxies before, these are the most distant for which detailed physical characteristics have been calculated.
“I am certain that we would not have been able to confirm the existence of these galaxies, let alone calculate their stellar mass and age, without Spitzer,“ LabbŽ added.
The two galaxies were between 50 and 300 million years old--infants themselves, by galactic standards--and weighed about one hundred times less than our full-grown Milky Way.
The ages and masses suggest they were already in place much earlier, around 500-600 million years after the Big Bang.
They could be among the first galactic systems formed in the universe, shortly after the first stars, meaning that future surveys might reveal luminous galaxies at even earlier times than those measured by LabbŽ and his colleagues.

An apparent discrepancy in the Big Bang theory of the universe’s evolution has been reconciled by astrophysicists examining the movement of gases in stars.
According to Google, Professor John Lattanzio from Monash’s School of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Centre for Stellar and Planetary Astrophysics said the confusion surrounding the Big Bang revolved around the amount of the gas Helium 3 in the universe.
“The Big Bang theory predicts a certain amount of Helium 3 in the universe,“ Professor Lattanzio said. “The trouble is, low mass stars (about one to two times the size of our sun) also make Helium 3 as a side product of burning the hydrogen in their cores.
“It’s been thought that when the star becomes a giant it mixes the helium 3 to its surface and, near the end of its life, spews the helium 3 into space just before it becomes a planetary nebula.
“But there are inconsistencies with the amount of Helium 3 predicted to be in the universe and the amount that’s actually there; there’s much less than expected.“
Some scientists have theorized that the rapid rotation of low mass stars destroys the helium 3 they produce. But computer models that have included this rotation, while showing some destruction of helium 3, have not been able to reconcile the Big Bang theory.
Professor Lattanzio, in collaboration with Dr Peter Eggleton and Dr David Dearborn from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in the US, ran 3D computer models of a red giant’s life on some of the world’s fastest computers to investigate whether there was some sort of gaseous mixing occurring in stars that destroyed Helium 3.
Near the end of a star’s life there is a ’core flash’ and it was at around this time that the computer models revealed a small instability in the movement of the gases in the star. “When we looked at this in 3D we found this hydrodynamic instability caused mixing and destroyed the helium 3 so that none was released into space,“ Professor Lattanzio said.
“This apparent problem with the Big Bang has been solved--the helium 3 in the universe comes from the Big Bang and low mass stars, although they produce helium 3, do not release any into the universe because they destroy it.“

Over 12 months, the risk of colds decreased modestly in exercisers and increased modestly in stretchers. (Google Photo)

A moderate exercise program may reduce the incidence of colds. A study found that otherwise sedentary women who engaged in moderate exercise had fewer colds over a one year period than a control group, EureKalert reported.
Subjects in a group of 115 overweight and obese, sedentary, postmenopausal women were randomly assigned to either a moderate exercise program (45 minutes per day, five days per week and comprised of mostly brisk walking) or to a once-weekly 45 minute stretching session. Both the exercisers and the stretchers filled out questionnaires every 3 months on the number of episodes of allergies, upper respiratory tract infections (colds and flu) and other infections. Subjects were taught how to distinguish various forms of infections and were followed for one year.
Over 12 months, the risk of colds decreased modestly in exercisers and increased modestly in stretchers. In the final three months of the study, the risk of colds in stretchers was more than 3-fold higher than that of exercisers. More stretchers than exercisers had at least one cold during the 12-month study period (48.4% vs 30.2%), and among women reporting at least one cold, stretchers tended to report colds more frequently than exercisers.
Senior author Cornelia M. Ulrich, PhD, of the Hutchinson Center, writes, “Our trial is the first to report on the effects of a year-long, moderate-intensity exercise training program on the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections. Although we did not find an effect overall on upper respiratory tract infections, our study suggests that moderate-intensity training can reduce the risk of colds in postmenopausal, nonsmoking, overweight or obese women. This finding is of clinical relevance and adds a new facet to the growing literature on the health benefits of moderate exercise.“

Children as well as adults need to consume more fruits and vegetables. (Google Photo)

Drinking a glass of 100 percent fruit juice has long been thought of as a healthy habit for both adults and children. Recently, however, people have been confused about juice--how much to drink, how much to serve their children--partly because of the natural sweet taste of fruit juice, NaturalScience said.
According to Theresa Nicklas, professor of pediatrics at the Baylor College of Medicine, parents should be confident serving their children appropriate amounts of 100 percent fruit juice. Appropriate amounts, as defined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, are no more than 4-6 ounces per day for children 1- 6 years old and 8-12 ounces per day for children 7-18 years.
Dr. Nicklas’ latest study evaluated data from a national sample of preschool children and determined that consumption of 100 percent juice was not associated with body mass index (an indicator of overweight) among preschoolers.
The analysis done by Nicklas and her colleagues was based on the largest, ongoing government database on food consumption.
As a child nutrition researcher, Dr. Nicklas states that there are many factors associated with childhood obesity that are very poorly understood and more research is needed regarding diet and also lifestyle and activity levels.
Dr. Nicklas emphasizes that children as well as adults need to consume more fruits and vegetables. An analysis done by the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee found that 100 percent fruit juices provide substantial amounts of vitamin C, potassium and folate to the diet that would otherwise not be consumed. A one-half cup of juice is equivalent to one serving of fruit.

Astrophysicists may have solved the embarrassing problem of why there is so much less helium-3 in the universe than predicted by standard cosmology and star-evolution theories. Peter Eggleton of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US and colleagues at Monash University in Australia have calculated that when aging low-mass stars swell to become “red giants“, the large amount of helium-3 they have produced is pushed down into the stars’ hot interiors, where it is then burnt up. The result suggests that our understanding of the Big Bang is correct after all, Physicweb reported.
The helium-3 isotope--together with hydrogen and lithium--is one of the very few elements to have been synthesized in the Big Bang. Further quantities of helium-3 are also produced by low-mass stars (about one to two times as heavy as our Sun) when they burn up the hydrogen in their cores.
But once a low-mass star has spent all its hydrogen, it expands and cools to become a red giant, during which the outer layers of the star become turbulent. Scientists believe that any helium-3 inside the star becomes mixed up into these layers by convection. The helium is then carried away from these surface layers into space by winds.
The flaw with this model, however, is that it predicts that there should be a lot of helium-3 in the universe, whereas astronomers have only detected about a tenth of that value, which is just the amount that was produced in the Big Bang.
Eggleton and co-workers may now have solved this problem by modeling a red giant star in 3D. The simulations show that turbulence at the base of the star’s convection layer causes deep “hydrodynamic“ mixing that destroys the helium-3 so none of it can be released into space. The helium-3 is converted into another helium isotope, helium-4, and hydrogen.
“The apparent problem with the Big Bang has been solved,“ says team member John Lattanzio of Monash University. “The helium-3 in the universe comes from the Big Bang, and low mass stars--although they produce helium-3--do not release any into the universe because they destroy it.“

Screening adults at high risk of lung cancer using computerized tomography (CT) can detects tiny tumors, dramatically improving survival rates, according to an international study published in the United States, AFP said.
The computer-assisted imaging technique can spot tumors too small to be detected by X-rays which are curable by surgery, said the research appearing in October 25 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
“These are very exciting findings that show real promise for reducing this country’s top cause of cancer death,“ Robert Smith, the director of screening at the American Cancer Society, said in a statement.
The study was led by researcher Claudia Henschke, a professor of radiology at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
A total of 31,567 men and women, 40 years of age and older and lacking cancer symptoms, underwent baseline CT screenings between 1993 and 2005.
The participants were at risk of lung cancer because of a history of smoking, exposure to secondhand smoke, or occupational exposure to chemicals such as asbestos or uranium.
Seven to 18 months after the initial screening, 27,456 repeated screenings were made and detected lung cancer in 484 participants.
Of those, 412, or 85 percent, had an early stage of lung cancer, called stage 1 cancer. The researchers estimated a 10-year survival rate for them at 88 percent.
Of the stage 1 cancer group, 302 participants who underwent surgery to remove the cancerous tumor within one month after diagnosis had a 10-year survival rate of 92 percent.