General view of the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) at Sierra Negra in Puebla, Mexico. (AFP Photo)

Scientist hoping to see into the far-distant past of the universe threw the switch-on to a massive telescope atop Mexico's 5th-highest mountain that detects electromagnetic radiation known as millimeter waves emitted 13 billion years ago when stars first burst into existence, Englisgpeople.com reported.
The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) sits on a base that resembles a launching pad and has an antenna with a diameter of 164 feet (50 meters). The LMT dwarfs existing millimeter-wave telescopes and should be able to pick up signals from the faintest objects in outer space.
"This telescope ... will allow us to make fundamental discoveries about the formation and evolution of galaxies, about the formation and evolution of stars, and about the origin of the universe itself," Jose Guichard, director of the National Astrophysics Institute, said during the inauguration.
The $128 million telescope is a US-Mexico project built on the 15,026-foot (4,580-meter) summit of Sierra Negra, in air so thin that bottled oxygen is kept at hand in case workers faint.
While optical telescopes detect light rays and others look for radio, infrared or gamma waves, the LMT picks up electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths of 1 to 3 millimeters--shorter than radio waves but longer than infrared, visible light and gamma rays.
Sierra Negra, an extinct volcano to the east of the city of Puebla in central Mexico, was chosen because of its height and mild climate. While oblivious to light pollution, millimeter telescopes work best at altitudes where the level of water vapor in the air is low.

Mercury is called an "inferior planet" because its orbit is nearer to the Sun than the Earth's. (Reuters Photo)

If there ever was a planet that has gotten an unfair reputation for its inability to be readily observed it would have to be Mercury, known in some circles as the "elusive planet."
Often cited as the most difficult of the five brightest naked-eye planets to see, because it's the planet closest to the Sun, Mercury never strays too far from the Sun's vicinity in our sky, Space.com said.
Mercury is called an "inferior planet" because its orbit is nearer to the Sun than the Earth's. Therefore, it always appears from our vantagepoint to be in the same general direction as the Sun. Thus relatively few people have set eyes on it; there is even a rumor that the great Polish astronomer, Copernicus, never saw it. Yet it's not really hard to see. You simply must know when and where to look, and find a clear horizon.
And during these next two weeks we will be presented with an excellent opportunity to view Mercury in the early morning dawn sky.
In fact, if you've been an early riser this past week, it's quite possible you might have stumbled across Mercury on your own. Since Nov. 20, it has been rising at least 90 minutes before sunrise, which is also just about the same time that morning twilight is beginning. If you scan low along the east-southeast horizon about 45 minutes before sunrise, Mercury has been visible as a distinctly bright, yellowish-orange "star."
The best views of Mercury, however, are reserved for this weekend, as Mercury will be rising more than 100 minutes before the Sun. This is even before the break of dawn, so for a short while at least, Mercury will be visible against a completely dark sky.
Its greatest western elongation-or greatest angular distance from the Sun in the sky-will come on the morning of Nov. 25, with Mercury standing a full 20-degrees from the Sun.
Mercury, like Venus, appears to go through phases like the Moon. Soon after it moved into the morning sky, Mercury was just a skinny crescent. Currently, it's appears roughly half-illuminated and the amount of its surface illuminated by the Sun will continue to increase in the days to come. So although it will begin to turn back toward the Sun's vicinity after Nov. 25, it will brighten a bit more, which should help keep it in easy view over the next couple of weeks.
By month's end, Mercury will have increased in brightness to magnitude -0.6. On this astronomers scale, smaller numbers represent brighter objects and negative numbers are reserved for the brightest of all. Among the stars only Canopus and Sirius are brighter. And Mercury should still be relatively easy to find, low in the east-southeast sky about 45 minutes to an hour before sunrise.
In early December, Mercury will be joined by the planets Mars and Jupiter, resulting in an unusually tight gathering of the three planets on Dec. 10.

Silicon--the archetypal semiconductor--has at long last been shown to demonstrate superconductivity. By substituting 9% of the silicon atoms with boron atoms, physicists in France have found that the resistance of the material drops sharply when cooled below 0.35 K, Physicweb wrote.
Boron is widely added to silicon to make it a useful semiconductor, but rarely does it account for more than 0.002% of the total number of atoms. Because it has one fewer electron than silicon available for bonding with neighboring atoms, boron incorporated into silicon leaves a positively-charged "hole" at each site where boron's "missing" electron would be paired with one of silicon's. At room temperature these holes can move around, making boron-doped silicon a "p-type" semiconductor, but at low temperatures, the holes remain bound in orbitals to the boron nuclei. It has long been known that at boron concentrations of around 0.01% these low-temperature orbitals overlap, making metal-like conductivity possible. However, until now all attempts to make silicon superconducting have failed.
Busterret Etienne at the Centre National de la RecherchŽ Scientifique in Grenoble and colleagues have now tried doping to even higher concentrations in a bid to witness the effect. Because silicon is normally reluctant to allow impurities into its structure, they had to employ a vigorous method called "gas immersion laser doping" that repeatedly melts and cools a thin silicon film using a pulsed laser. During each molten stage, atoms from boron gas diffuse into the film and remain there while it solidifies, ultimately replacing up to 9% of the silicon atoms. The researchers found that below a temperature of 0.35 K, this highly-doped silicon becomes superconducting.

The heart is the earliest organ in the body to develop, and the one most susceptible to congenital defects. (Google Photo)

Scientists have discovered what they believe could be cardiac master cells, capable of developing into different tissues in the heart.
Groups of US scientists, working independently, have discovered two separate candidates, BBC said.
One has the capacity to produce all three major tissues in the heart, the other two of the three.
The breakthrough raises hopes for new treatments for heart disease.
The findings challenge the notion that the heart's different cell types are so diverse they must have come from separate sources.
In one study, a team from Massachusetts General Hospital identified a type of progenitor cell in mice, and showed that it could go on to form cardiac muscle, smooth muscle or endothelial cells.
The second type of cardiac progenitor cell, identified by a team from the Children's Hospital Boston, was shown to be capable of forming cardiac and smooth muscle.
Dr Stuart Orkin, from the Children's Hospital team, said: "Previously, it had been thought that each cell type in the heart had a different origin. Now, it's pretty clear that some have common origins.
"Instead of multiple different cell types migrating and coming together to form the heart, the heart comes from stem cells that give rise to multiple cell types in the same local environment--a simpler way of building the organ.
"And because these cells can make multiple cell types, they could be more useful in repairing the heart than any single kind of cell."
The researchers do not know the precise relationship between the two types of master cells that have been identified.
One appears to generate structures on the left-hand side of the heart, and the other on the right-hand side.
However, they are hopeful that they could be harnessed to carry out repairs to damaged hearts.
At present, scientists are trying to perfect the use of embryonic stem cells for this purpose, but this carries the risk of cancer resulting from uncontrolled growth of the cells.
Dr Kenneth Chien, leader of the Massachusetts General Hospital team, said: "If we can get around that threat by cloning master cardiovascular stem cells, that would be a major advance."
The heart is the earliest organ in the body to develop, and the one most susceptible to congenital defects.
Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said until recently it was thought that the heart had no means of regenerating itself if it became damaged.
"But these studies, coupled with other recent discoveries, suggest that there may be certain cells within the heart which have the capacity to become new heart and blood vessel cells.
"Such findings are very promising, but preliminary studies in people have suggested that there are very few such cells in the hearts of relatively elderly people with advanced heart disease, who most need a repair mechanism.
"Nevertheless, by studying how these cells change into mature, functioning heart cells we will ultimately understand the molecular mechanisms required to form new heart cells.
"These are early steps in the long road to discovering how to repair a damaged heart."

Researchers in Canada have developed a new solid material that can store and release hydrogen near room temperature without involving a transition metal. The discovery could lead to the development of low-cost and lightweight materials for the onboard storage of hydrogen fuel in cars, PopularScience wrote.
Hydrogen is often touted as an environmentally-friendly fuel for road vehicles of the future. When consumed in a fuel-cell powered electric car, it produces nothing more than pure water as a by-product. However, many technological challenges remain before it can be used commercially. In particular, hydrogen has a low energy density compared to conventional fuels and therefore it must be stored as a liquid or an extremely high-pressure gas to ensure that reasonable distances can be traveled before refueling.
These storage methods are both expensive and cumbersome and some researchers believe that it would be better to store hydrogen within solid materials that can absorb large quantities of the gas. In such materials a chemical reaction splits the hydrogen molecule into two hydrogen atoms at the surface of the material. The atoms then migrate into the bulk of the material and form a metal-hydride compound. The hydrogen can be released by heating the material.
Current materials that can easily absorb and discharge hydrogen near room temperature contain transition metals and the storage process must be catalyzed by expensive precious metals such as platinum. This makes them too heavy and too expensive for commercial use.
But now Douglas Stephan and colleagues at the University of Windsor have developed the first non-metallic material that can absorb and store hydrogen at room temperature, releasing the gas when heated above 100C. The material contains pairs of boron and phosphorous atoms, which are separated by a ring of carbon atoms. This structure has a net neutral charge but the boron and phosphorous atoms carry a positive and negative charge respectively. The researchers believe that this property allows the two atoms to work together to split the gaseous hydrogen molecules into two hydrogen atoms, which are then covalently bound within the material. According to Stephan, this mechanism is known as Òheterolytic cleavageÓ and has only been observed in transition-metal complexes.

Scientists say they've discovered how a gene mutation linked to an inherited form of Parkinson's disease damages the brain, HealthDay reported.
The LRRK2 gene produces malfunctioning proteins that stunt the normal growth and branching of dopamine-producing neurons, which eventually causes them to die, concludes the Columbia University study. The finding could lead to animal models that could be used to study this form of Parkinson's in an effort to develop new treatments for the disease.
The New York City team created mutant LRRK2 proteins and introduced them into laboratory-cultured neurons, resulting in reduced growth and branching of the neurons. This growth and branching is essential in order for the cells to establish and maintain connections with one another within the brain's circuitry.
Similar effects were seen when mutant LRRK2 proteins were introduced into the brains of adult and embryonic rats, the researchers say.