Longest solar eclipse

Millions of people across Asia will observe the longest solar eclipse that will take place on 22nd of July, most parts of India and China, the whole city of Shanghai and southern Japanese islands are pushed into darkness on Wednesday for about five minutes.

Stargazers in huge number and scientists around the world are traveling long distances to view the once-in-a-lifetime happening.

Astronomers expect the eclipse will release signs about the sun, while an astrologer in Myanmar predicts it could guide in confusion. A few in India are giving an opinion to pregnant relatives to stay indoors to follow a centuries-old tradition of keeping away from the sun's invisible rays.

For astronomers, it will be a possibility for a prolonged observation of the sun's corona, a white ring 1 million kilometers from the sun's surface. The earlier total eclipse, in August 2008, was two minutes and 27 seconds. This one will last 6 minutes and 39 seconds at its maximum point.

NASA to Offer Education Funding

NASA has announced a competitive funding opportunity for informal education that could result in the award of grants or cooperative agreements to several of the nation's science centers, museums and planetariums. Approximately $6 million is available for new awards.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which leads the Museum Alliance, will conduct an external peer review process for the proposals. Final award selection rests with the Office of Education at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Proposals for the Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums are expected to use NASA resources to enhance informal education programs related to space exploration, aeronautics, space science, Earth science or microgravity. Full proposals are due Sept. 10, 2009.

Google Chrome Operating System

Google Inc is get readying to launch an operating system for personal computers next year.Called the Google Chrome Operating System, the new software will be targeted at netbook computers and be fast and lightweight, allow users to access the Web in a few seconds, Google said in a statement on Tuesday.

Netbooks running the new operating system - based on open-source Linux code - will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010, Google saidGoogle also said Google Chrome OS was a latest project, does nothing with Android mobile operating software found in smart phones.

"All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, said in the Google blog.

Google also gave information about how it works -Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Source:googleblog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Latest Nanotechnology news –“dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid”

University of Chicago researchers recently showed that dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid, forming water-like droplets when poured from a given source. The finding could be important to a wide range of industries that use "fluidized" dry particles for oil refining, plastics manufacturing and pharmaceutical production.

Researchers previously thought dry particles lacked sufficient surface tension to form droplets like ordinary liquids. But, in a first-time accomplishment, physicists from the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Chicago, led by Professor Heinrich M. Jaeger, used high-speed photography to measure minute levels of surface tension and detect droplet formation in flows of dry granular materials.

The science journal Nature reports the finding in its June 25 issue. The materials research center at the University of Chicago is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Until recently, studies of so-called "free falling granular streams" tracked shape changes in flows of dry materials, but were unable to observe the full evolution of the forming droplets or the clustering mechanisms involved.

"Previous studies of granular streams were able to detect clustering by performing experiments in vacuum and were able to establish that the clustering was not caused by the drag from the ambient air," said Jaeger. "However, the cause of the clustering remained a mystery."

Source: National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114907&org=NSF&from=news