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In a discovery that is nothing less than astonishing, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds.A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars, detected snow from clouds about 2.5 miles above the spacecraft’s landing site.

Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

“Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars,” said Jim Whiteway, of York University, Toronto, lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix. “We’ll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground,” he added.

Spacecraft soil tests experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth.

Phoenix experiments also yielded clues pointing to calcium carbonate, the main composition of chalk, and particles that could be clay.

Most carbonates and clays on Earth form only in the presence of liquid water.

“We are still collecting data and have lots of analysis ahead, but we are making good progress on the big questions we set out for ourselves,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Since landing on May 25, Phoenix already has confirmed that a hard subsurface layer at its far-northern site contains water-ice.

Determining whether that ice ever thaws would help answer whether the environment there has been favorable for life, a key aim of the mission.

The evidence for calcium carbonate in soil samples from trenches dug by the Phoenix robotic arm comes from two laboratory instruments called the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, and the wet chemistry laboratory of the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA.

“We have found carbonate,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the TEGA. “This points toward episodes of interaction with water in the past,” he added.

Both TEGA, and the microscopy part of MECA have turned up hints of a clay-like substance.

According to Michael Hecht, MECA lead scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, “We are seeing smooth-surfaced, platy particles with the atomic-force microscope, not inconsistent with the appearance of clay particles.”

Impressed with Mahendra Singh Dhoni`s captaincy skills, former Test player Chetan Chauhan said the flamboyant cricketer reminds him of the World Cup winning skipper Kapil Dev.

“The way Dhoni handles his responsibilities as a skipper on and off the ground reminds me of Kapil Dev. Like Kapil, Dhoni also leads the team from the front and is always ready to take tough decisions on the ground. That`s the secret behind his success,” Chauhan said while releasing a book written on Dhoni.

The book named as `Captain Cool: The MS Dhoni Story` has been authored by sports writer Gulu Ezekiel.

“He is very much involved with the game all the time, that`s the character which I really admire in him,” Chauhan said.

The former cricketer, who played 40 Test matches, said the Ranchi-lad is ready to lead the Test team but felt the selectors did the right thing to wait for the time being.

“He is already on the line for the job. But what`s the hurry? (Anil) Kumble is doing a fine job now, so let him continue. He (Dhoni) will also get the opportunity very soon,” he said.

resident of Delhi and Districts Cricket association (DDCA), promised to take every possible measure to ensure security during the third Test against Australia at the Feroz Shah Kotla ground.

“I don`t think Australia will hesitate to come to Delhi. We will take full security measures to organise the match successfully. We have the experience of holding much more sensitive matches like the Indo-Pak series in 2006 and this time also we will do it properly,” he said.

Hrithik Roshan sizzles with Latin actress Barbara Mori in ‘Kites’. The film by Anurag Basu is being touted as featuring the Bollywood superhero’s most sensuous role till date.’The two sizzle together. This is Hrithik’s most sensuous film to date. The accent here is not only on his dancing but on his ability to generate sensuality which has so far remained largely under wraps, the chemistry with Aishwarya Rai in ‘Dhoom 2′ notwithstanding. In ‘Kites’, Basu has shot another more sensuous side of Hrithik,’ said a source close to the film.

According to sources, the scenes between Hrithik and Barbara were so intimate and sensuous that Rakesh Roshan would gently be asked to leave the set.

The Roshans are not talking about the film’s sensuous theme and scenes, but Roshan Sr does inform that all is smooth sailing with ‘Kites’.

‘We are on schedule. After finishing shooting in New Mexico on Sep 12, we’ve shifted to Las Vegas. From here we’ll relocate for the last lap of the US shooting to Los Angeles on Oct 3. We’re returning to Mumbai on Oct 12,’ Rakesh Roshan told IANS.

However, there was change of guard in the crew. Cinematographer Bobby Singh opted out of ‘Kites’, but Hrithik claims there was no ill-will involved in the changeover.

‘It was an amicable split. Now Ayananka Bose is doing it,’ Hrithik told IANS.

Ayananka, who was a former assistant to the well-known cinematographer Ravi Chandran, had shot Yash Raj Films’ ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’.

The change, says Hrithik, has made no difference to the project.

‘We shifted earlier this week to Las Vegas as per plan. We’re now here in Vegas for a month. Then we shoot in Los Angeles for eight days. After that we’re done,’ said Hrithik.

Kangana Ranaut, who plays the female lead in ‘Kites’, has just joined the Roshans and her favourite director Anurag Basu in Vegas.

After working with Kangana in ‘Gangster - A Love Story’ and ‘Life… in a Metro’, Basu strongly recommended the actress to the Roshans who liked what they saw.

In a small clinical trial, a miniature heart pump that’s already in use in Europe helped U.S. youngsters waiting for heart transplants.

Even children at the top of the transplant waiting list can wait months before a suitable heart becomes available, and according to the current study, this small heart pump — called the Berlin Heart Excor — can help provide children a “bridge” to transplantation.

“We found the Berlin Heart was a very beneficial tool to have in our armamentarium,” said study author Dr. Sanjiv K. Gandhi, surgical director of the heart failure program at Saint Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri.

Results of the study were published in the current Cardiovascular Surgery Supplement of Circulation.

Currently, if a child awaiting transplant gets into serious trouble, surgeons will place them on the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. The problem with this device, however, is that children have to remain immobile, which furthers physical deterioration. And, the device carries significant risks of complications.

There are already devices approved and in use for adults called ventricular assist devices, and the small version of a biventricular assist device is available for use in Europe, though it’s not yet approved in the United States. Biventricular means the device does the work of both sides of the heart. And, the benefit of this device is that it allows children to be mobile. With special preparations, they can even leave the hospital with this device.

Gandhi said the primary reason the device hasn’t been approved yet in the United States is that the market is small, and clinical trials are just now under way.

Gandhi’s research included nine children between the ages of 12 days to 17 years, with an average age of 1.7 years. Most of the children weighed less than 80 pounds, according to the study.

All of the children had severe heart failure from complex birth defects of the heart or cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscle that can occur as a result of an infection.

Three of the children were already on ECMO, and six were already on mechanical ventilation. All of the children were placed on the Berlin Heart Excor between April 2005 and July 2007.

One infant died of kidney failure soon after being placed on the device. The remaining children all survived to heart transplantation and were on the heart pump for an average of 35 days.

Five patients had to have additional surgery, but there were no strokes, blood clots or bleeding complications in this group of children.

“These are fantastic outcomes, better than you see in many other centers,” said Dr. Peter Wearden, a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon and director of pediatric mechanical cardiopulmonary support at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh.

But, he cautioned, “This is not a complete panacea.” There are still risks, and he said that parents often focus on the potential benefits and don’t always hear that there can be complications.

Still, both Gandhi and Wearden felt this device is definitely an option for children awaiting transplant. “A significant number of children in this study would not have lived to transplant without this,” said Gandhi.

The makers of the Berlin Heart Excor provided limited funding for the study; the bulk of the study funding came from Saint Louis Children’s Hospital, said Gandhi.

The world knows of Radha as the consort of Krishna in childhood, playing on the banks of Jamuna at Gokul. But few are aware of her travails when her consort left her to become the charioteer of Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, and her longing to become the wife of the Lord remained unfulfilled.Smita Prakash in a Bharatanatyam dance performance on Saturday (Sep.27) narrated the story in an appealing manner at the Triveni Kala Sangam here. The programme ‘Radha’s dilemma’ presented the innermost joys and sorrows of Radha, the girl known for her undying love for Krishna.

Smita presented the emotions of Radha, often described as the problem child of Indian mythology. The opening number told the feelings of Radha, when she sang “Tum mere kaun ho Kanha”, demonstrating how she found herself all alone after Krishna departed to uphold justice at the battle of Kurukshetra. She asks herself, ” After all what does Krishna mean to me”. Deep inside her, Radha was trying to come to terms with her beloved Krishna’s departure.

Smita brought out vividly the emotions of Radha, when she comes to know that Krishna is telling Arjuna the values of truth and justice in the battlefield. Arjuna is listening to Krishna talking about Dharma (righteousness) and Adharma (non-righteousness) Shakti (power) and Yog (meditation).

Radha imagines herself as Arjuna, but she is in no turmoil like him and all that she hears is Krishna saying “Radha, Radha, Radha”.

It was a poignant scene when Smita enacted the feelings of Krishna wanting to return to Gokul after the battle. Villagers in Mathura know that their King is unhappy. He is not interested in the affairs of the State. The song “Raat bhar maadhav jagat bechain” ( a restless Krishna remains awake the whole night).

People ask him why he wants to return to Gokul, as the woman he intends to return may have picked up the threads of her life. She has wiped her tears and blocked the melody of his flute. But Krishna is too distraught to accept their advice. He goes near River Yamuna and looks at the gentle waters. He is reminded of the times he was there with Radha.

Krishna notices how the lotus was separated from the stem, the fish are not frolicking the water, and the butterflies and bees were not humming with activity. Like Him, they were waiting anxiously for the re-union of Radha and Krishna.

The story climaxes with the song “Na bajao Shyam Baasuri” (O Krishna! Do not play the flute). But nobody can resist the hypnotic magic of his flute. Everybody in Vrindavan hear the sounds of the flue. They come thronging to him…be it the deer, the peacocks, birs, sages or Gopis.

Radha too gets drawn to that music. But when she finds a crowd around him, she tells him that she would accept him on her own terms. (Women’s liberation, in Indian mythology!) Radha tells Krishna that if he wants to come to her, he will have to come alone to her, and even stop playing the flute so that she has him exclusively to herself and also promise to never leave for other work.

The conceptualization and choreography was done by Smita’s guru Smt.Jayalakshmi Easwar, a renowned exponent of Bharatanatyam who learnt the art from Rukmini Devi Arundale of Kalakshetra, Chennai.

The lyrics were adapted from various sources, chief among them being Dharamveer Bharati’s Kanupriya. y Sandeep Datta

Codeminion has announced the launch of Mac games in Game Club Cafe, its casual game portal.

The portal launches with more than 50 casual Mac games, all from a variety of different game developers and publishers. Titles include Bejeweled 2, Azada, Atlantis Sky Patrol, Airport Mania: First Flight, Puzzle Quest and more.

Codeminion itself is an independent developer of casual games like Ancient Quest of Saqqarah, Stoneloops of Jurassica and Magic Match. Those games are also available for purchase and download.

The games are available on a try-before-you-buy basis, and are all priced at $19.95 each.

The troubled British mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley will be nationalized and sold off in parts, with Spanish banking giant Santander SA taking over its retail deposits and branch network, British media reported Monday.

Treasury officials and financial regulators held talks over the weekend on the future of the mortgage lender. Bradford & Bingley spokesman Tony McGarahan said an announcement would be made before the stock market opened Monday but the company would not comment Sunday on the media reports.

Britain’s Press Association reported late Sunday that Spanish banking giant Santander would take over Bradford & Bingley’s retail deposits and branch network. The agency quoted an unidentified Santander spokesman, who did not offer details on the deal.

The British government is likely to take on the bank’s toxic loans and fold them into Northern Rock, a mortgage lender nationalized by the British government in February, the BBC and other media reported. The BBC said the Treasury will then try to sell the company’s 200 branches and savings business to other banks.

Bradford & Bingley specializes in so-called buy-to-let mortgages for rental properties, now considered one of the most volatile parts of Britain’s troubled housing market. Investors who took out loans to buy apartments and rent them out now find the value of their property has fallen and that rental income does not cover their mortgage payments.

Bradford & Bingley said last week it was cutting 370 jobs as a response to the worsening economy but that was not enough to save the institution.

The bank’s shares have plunged from around 300 pence at the start of the year to 20 pence (32 U.S. cents) Friday, amid fears that it is overexposed to Britain’s falling housing market.

The country’s biggest mortgage lender HBOS PLC has already fallen victim to the credit crunch, and was taken over by rival Lloyds TSB PLC in a $21.85-billion deal on Sept. 18.

The property Web site Rightmove reported last week that house prices in Britain fell for the fourth consecutive month in September, and another respected survey showed that home sales in Britain fell to a 30-year low in August.

Average house prices across the country fell 1 percent in September to 227,438 pounds ($419,357). New listings per real estate agent dropped to the lowest level for September that the index has ever recorded.

A new study of ancient volcanic rocks has determined that ancient lava flows can guide a better understanding of what generates and controls the Earth’s magnetic field, and what may drive it to occasionally reverse direction.The main magnetic field, generated by turbulent currents within the deep mass of molten iron of the Earth’s outer core, periodically flips its direction, such that a compass needle would point south rather than north.

Such polarity reversals have occurred hundreds of times at irregular intervals throughout the planet’s history - most recently about 780,000 years ago - but scientists are still trying to understand how and why.

Now, a new study of ancient volcanic rocks, shows that a second magnetic field source may help determine how and whether the main field reverses direction.

This second field, which may originate in the shallow core just below the rocky mantle layer of the Earth, becomes important when the main north-south field weakens, as it does prior to reversing, according to Brad Singer, a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Singer teamed up with paleomagnetist Kenneth Hoffman, who has been researching field reversals for over 30 years, to analyze ancient lava flows from Tahiti and western Germany in order to study past patterns of the Earth’s magnetic field.

The magnetism of iron-rich minerals in molten lava orients along the prevailing field, then becomes locked into place as the lava cools and hardens.

“When the lava flows erupt and cool in the Earth’s magnetic field, they acquire a memory of the magnetic field at that time,” said Singer. “It’s very difficult to destroy that in a lava flow once it’s formed. You then have a recording of what the paleofield direction was like on Earth,” he added.

Hoffman and Singer are focusing on rocks that contain evidence of times that the main north-south field has weakened, which is one sign that the polarity may flip direction.

By carefully determining the ages of these lava flows, they have mapped out the shallow core field during multiple “reversal attempts” when the main field has weakened during the past million years.

During those periods of time, weakening of the main field reveals “virtual poles,” regions of strong magnetism within the shallow core field.

The scientists believe the shallow core field may play a role in determining whether the main field polarity flips while weakened or whether it recovers its strength without reversing.

According to Hoffman, “Mapping this field during transitional states may hold the key to understanding what happens in Earth’s core when the field weakens to a point where it can actually reverse.”

If you are young, have a hectic social life where you drink and party every night, and have applied for a job, chances are you will lose out to someone who is a teetotaler. Yes, you heard right.

A random survey of 375 CEOs in the medium and large-scale private sector industries by ASSOCHAM threw up some startling facts. Almost 55 per cent of the CEOs interviewed said they would choose teetotalers over people who drink.

Why teetotalers? Whether hiring at entry level or mid level, the choice of recruiters has undergone a seachange. In fact, of the 375 CEOs, 206 said that they would recruit only those young boys and girls who observe total abstinence from alcohol.

The common perception among the CEOs questioned is that teetotalers are more productive, efficient and competent. They stick to deadlines and are good at time management.

Harsh Saxena*, operations head of an event management company in Okhla, which implemented the total abstinence rule six months ago, says, “The results are fabulous. Both efficiency and time management have improved”.

Says Sunil Arora*, director of an advertising agency in south Delhi, “Given a choice, I’d any day have a battalion of young people, but they shouldn’t be the regular drunkard types.” All for the better Debunking the myth that “creative types need to be two pegs down to think up marvelous concepts”, Devan Khattar*, art director in a Noida-based ad agency says, “My team members are workaholics and not drinkaholics.

” Sajjan Jindal, chairperson for JSW Steel, says, “I’ve been following the new policy for some time - teetotalers are ambitious, highly productive and specific about their target.” While some of the companies surveyed have already made a change in recruitment policies, other HR departments are keen to make ‘no drinking’ a cast-iron rule.

And if an employee is found to be downing a peg too many? The decision to fire such employees will in all probability come much later, says Koteshwar Prasad Dobhal, director PR, ASSOCHAM. ASSOCHAM secretary general Dr DS Rawat says, “As far as entry-level recruitment is concerned, lifestyle habits are influencing decision-making.” And the teetotalers are winning.

Apple has started selling unlocked models of its popular iPhone 3G in Hong Kong which allow users the freedom to select the telecoms provider of their choice.

The eight gigabyte version was on sale Saturday at Apple’s online store for 5,400 Hong Kong dollars (about 700 US dollars), while the 16 gigabyte model was 6,200 dollars.

Apple said the phone can be activated with any wireless carrier.

The move is a shift from Apple’s previous strategy of tying the phone exclusively to a single mobile operator in each country or territory.

The iPhone 3G was previously only officially available in Hong Kong bundled with a two-year contract from tycoon Li Ka-shing’s Hutchison Telecom, on tariff plans ranging from 188 to 498 dollars a month.

The latest version offers a touch screen, high-speed Internet browsing with third generation networks, WiFi, e-mail, GPS and an integrated music and video player.

Apple sold a million iPhone 3G models in the first weekend after its July 11 launch in 21 countries and territories around the world.