Kharazmi Scientific FestivalÕs winners and officials pose for a photograph on Feb. 5.

The Kharazmi Scientific Festival began work about 11 months ago by issuing a call for research papers by Iranian and foreign researchers in different scientific fields.
The festival wrapped up its work on Tuesday by awarding the selected researchers, wire services reported.
A total of 968 projects resulting from years of research by domestic and foreign scientists was received by the festival’s secretariat. This included 192 foreign projects from 54 countries.
Mehdi Fakhraei, deputy head of the National Foundation for the Elite, said the foundation aims to initiate a scientific movement in the society.
Fakhraei noted that increasing support for university students at bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate levels is among programs pursued by the foundation.
Hossein Salar-Ameli, secretary of the festival, said a high number of foreign researchers have taken part in this year’s festival.

At nearly 700 feet in length, the "Manned Cloud" concept airship would hold 40 passengers and 15 crew members traveling at a cruise speed of 80 mph.

A luxury airship that has been likened to a flying whale is being described as the ecofriendly hotel of the future.
The French designers of the 690ft (210m) Manned Cloud say that it will enable passengers to visit exotic locations without the need for hotels. The airship will carry 40 passengers and be equipped with a restaurant, library, gym, bar room and terraces with panoramic views, Timesonline.co.uk reported.
The Massaud Studio is working with the French office of aeronautical research, Onera, to develop the airship, and hopes that it will be in operation by 2020. According to Jean-Marie Massaud, the head of Massaud, it will resemble “a whale that glides through the air“.
The Manned Cloud, which will be 170ft high, can travel 3,100 miles (5,000km) at its cruising height of 18,000ft before needing to refuel. It will have a cruising speed of 81mph (146km/h) and a top speed of 105mph.
“The idea is that passengers can see fantastic places like Thailand and the Caribbean without the need to build ugly hotels everywhere,“ Aurelie Ullrich, a spokeswoman, said. “Travellers can see these places from the sky--but the hotel will also be able to land at locations along the way.“

French engineering giant Alstom is due to unveil a new high-speed train. The AGV (Automotrice Grande Vitesse) train will travel at up to 360km/h (224mph), powered by engines placed under each carriage, the company says, BBC said.
Alstom compares the AGV--successor to the TGV--to the world’s largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380 plane, in terms of importance and innovation.
The unveiling at Alstom’s research center in La Rochelle will be attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
With an engine under each carriage, the AGV--which translates as “high-speed, self-propelled carriage“--is unlike the TGV, which has engines only at the back and front.
The TGV’s maximum speed currently is 320km/h.
The AGV’s new engines are more energy-efficient and the innovative multiple-unit design allows more passenger space, Alstom says.
It also reduces maintenance costs, the company says.
The new train achieved a new world rail speed record for a train on conventional rails last April, reaching 574.8km/h (356mph).
The Italian operator NTV has already bought 25 of the trains, and will operate them on the Italian high-speed network at a speed of 300km/h in 2011.

Grapefruit's bitter taste is caused by the presence of the flavonoid naringin, which is metabolized into naringenin.

A compound that naturally occurs in grapefruit and other citrus fruits may be able to block the secretion of hepatitis C virus (HCV) from infected cells, a process required to maintain chronic infection.
According to ScienceDaily, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Engineering in Medicine (MGH-CEM) report that HCV is bound to very low-density lipoprotein (vLDL, a so-called ’bad’ cholesterol) when it is secreted from liver cells and that the viral secretion required to pass infection to other cells may be blocked by the common flavonoid naringenin.
If the results of this study extend to human patients, a combination of naringenin and antiviral medication might allow patient to clear the virus from their livers.
“By finding that HCV is secreted from infected cells by latching onto vLDL, we have identified a key pathway in the viral lifecycle,“ says Yaakov Nahmias, PhD, of the MGH-CEM, the paper’s lead author.
“These results suggest that lipid-lowering drugs, as well as supplements, such as naringenin, may be combined with traditional antiviral therapies to reduce or even eliminate HCV from infected patients.“
HCV is the leading cause of chronic viral liver disease in the United States and infects about 3 percent of the world population. Current antiviral medications are effective in only half of infected patients, 70 percent of whom develop chronic infection that can lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer.
Since the virus does not integrate its genetic material into the DNA of infected cells the way HIV does, totally clearing the virus could be possible if new cells were not being infected by secreted virus.
“Identifying the route by which HCV is released from cells introduces a new therapeutic target,“ says Martin Yarmush, MD, PhD, director of the MGH-CEM and the paper’s senior author.
“That pathway’s dependence on cholesterol metabolism could allow us to interfere with viral propagation to other cells and tissues, using tools already developed for atherosclerosis treatment.“
Yarmush is the Helen Andrus Benedict Professor of Surgery and Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School (HMS).
Grapefruit’s bitter taste is caused by the presence of the flavonoid naringin, which is metabolized into naringenin, an antioxidant previously reported to help lower cholesterol levels.
Considerable research has suggested that HCV infects liver cells by, in essence, “hitching a ride“ onto the natural lipoprotein-cholesterol metabolic pathway. Since earlier evidence has shown that naringenin can reduce secretion of vLDL from liver cells, the researchers examined whether the compound might also lower HCV secretion from infected cells. Their experiments confirmed that naringenin does reduce the secretion of HCV from infected cell lines and showed that the compound inhibits the mechanism for secreting a specific lipoprotein that binds HCV.

Stressful event early in a pregnancy can boost the risk by more than half of a woman’s child having schizophrenia, the most common form of mental illness.
One person in every hundred suffers from the illness at some point in their life. It causes a profound disintegration of mental life, voices to be heard and a paranoia that makes sufferers believe outside agencies control their thoughts and actions, Telegraph.co.uk wrote.
Now it has been found that children of women who undergo an extremely stressful event--such as the death of a close relative--during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy appear more likely to develop schizophrenia, according to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
“The common conception that a mother’s psychological state can influence her unborn baby is to some extent substantiated,“ says Dr Kahryn Abel, Director, Center for Women’s Mental Health Research, and her colleagues at the University of Manchester.
Working with Ali Khashan, the team used data from 1.38 million Danish births occurring between 1973 and 1995.
Women were linked to close family members using a national registry, and the same registry was used to determine if any of these relatives died or received a diagnosis of cancer, heart attack or stroke during each mother’s pregnancy.
Their children were followed from the 10th birthday through June 30, 2005 or until they died, moved out of the country, or developed schizophrenia.
During the study period, mothers of 21,987 children were exposed to the death of a relative during pregnancy, 14,206 were exposed to a relatives’ serious illness during pregnancy and 7,331 of the offspring developed schizophrenia.
The risk of schizophrenia and related disorders was approximately 67 percent greater among the offspring of women who were exposed to the death of a relative during the first trimester.
However, death of a relative up to six months before or any other time during pregnancy was not related to risk for schizophrenia in the child, nor was exposure to serious illness in a relative.
The association between a family death and risk of schizophrenia appeared to be significant only for individuals without a family history (parents, grandparents or siblings) of mental illness.
There are a number of possible mechanisms, say the team. One candidate is the chemicals released by the mother’s brain in response to stress may have an effect on the fetus’ developing brain.
These effects may be strongest in early pregnancy, when protective barriers between the mother and fetus are not fully constructed.