Limbo Skating by 5 Year Old

On Sunday, a five-year-old skater from Puducherry, India has successfully glided under cars moving at snail's pace, in a bid to set a Guinness Record. P Obeadh, the five-year-old boy repeated the limbo skating performance 105 times in less than 45 minutes in a Pondicherry beach.

Amidst cheers from friends and amazed onlookers, P Obeadh, with his legs wide apart and chin nearly touching the ground, glided through the eight-inch gap under the cars. He skated under five cars, repeating it 20 times (for each car) and reached the target.

Obeadh, the eldest son of Packianathan and Jayabharathi, started learning skating at the age of three. But after learning martial arts from Staline, who is the Puducherry Taekwondo Sports Association founder-general secretary, the boy wanted to take set records. Obeadh is studying in Standard I at Amalorpavam Higher Secondary School.

Prior to this feat, Obeadh underwent a rigorous training of skating under a rope placed 6.5 inches above the ground. After this, he practised limbo skating under moving vehicles for the last one month, putting in a minimum of four hours of practice every day.

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Space Shuttle Discovery reaches Launch Pad

On Saturday, US Space Shuttle Discovery reached the Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The launch of Discovery is targeted for May 31.The STS-124 mission will carry the heaviest payload to the International Space Station (ISS) and it will include three spacewalks.The shuttle also will also deliver a new crew member, Greg Chamitoff, and will replace Garrett Reisman, after a three-month mission.

Discovery’s upcoming STS-124 mission is the second of three flights that will carry components to ISS, in order to complete the construction of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory. During mission STS-124, shuttle crew members will install Kibo’s large Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, and its remote manipulator system, or RMS. The RMS consists of two robotic arms that support operations outside of Kibo. This module will be the station’s largest laboratory and will be the second component of Japan's laboratory complex to fly to the station. The first, the Japanese Experiment Logistics Module, was launched in March on shuttle mission STS-123.

The Kibo pressurized module weighs in at 32,000 pounds. It is so large that the shuttle’s Orbiter Boom Sensor System was left at the station during the last mission. A third and final shuttle mission to complete the space complex will launch an exterior platform for the Kibo laboratory complex that will allow experiments to be exposed to space.

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World's Largest Portrait

A Chinese company is printing a huge photograph for the celebration of Mother's Day, which is believed to be the world's biggest portrait. The size of this portrait is 9,000 sq meters and it features a mum's smiling face. The portrait is so big that, it is impossible to print in one piece of paper. So it is now being printed on rolls of paper which will be put together to make up the giant portrait.

The Chongqing Changhong Printing Company, a Chongqing city-based firm is working round the clock for the last 20 days to finish the picture in time for the May 11 Mother's Day celebration in China.

Mr Li, Director of the Printing Company has already filed a bid to get into Chinese record books. He said: "We wanted to find the perfect mother's smile in this city."

According to Ananova, the project will cost more than £70,000 and it took three months to find the right woman to pose for the photograph. This huge portrait will consume 4.4 tonnes of inkjet paper.

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Send Your Name to the Moon

Now, your name can go to the moon! The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is inviting everyone to send join the ambitious "Send Your Name to the Moon" project. The deadline to submit your name is June 27, 2008.

How it is possible? As a part of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, your name will be included with all the other submitted names in a large database and placed on a microchip that will be integrated onto the spacecraft.

The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft is expected to be launched before the end of 2008. It is the first mission of the Lunar Precursor Robotic Program (LPRP), a series of unmanned missions to Moon that NASA is planning. These missions will help in future human missions of Moon that will begin in 2010.

Send Your Name to Moon HERE

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AT&T starts Mobile TV service

Now, you can watch your favourite television programs right on your mobile phone! AT&T has announced that it will be launching its MediaFLO USA mobile TV service in 58 US markets. This interesting service will allow users to access television programs live through their mobile phones. The service will now be available in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and other important cities of US.

The new service will have over 150 simulcast or time-shifted traditional programming from CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, NBC News 2Go, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and other original content specifically for AT&T's mobile users.

Plans will start at $13 USD a month for 4 channels. Unlimited mobile TV will cost $15 a month, and unlimited mobile TV, mobile video, and mobile Web browsing will cost $30 a month.

AT&T is very excited about this launch and believes that their AT&T Mobile TV have exceeded the expectations of US customers.

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Billion Dollar Home of Mukesh Ambani

World's first Billion Dollar home is under construction, in India. The 27-storey skyscraper being built in Mumbai by Mukesh Ambani, could be the world's largest and costliest home with a price- tag nearing two billion dollar. Forbes magazine reported it in a report titled, "Inside The World's First Billion-Dollar Home." A Billion Dollar home! Can you believe this?

After completion of construction work in January, Antilla, the Ambani residence will be 550 feet high with 4,00,000 square feet of interior space. The design of this skyscraper is based on Vaastu. Atop six stories of parking lots, Antilla's living quarters begin at a lobby with nine elevators, as well as several storage rooms and lounges. Down dual stairways with silver-covered railings is a large ballroom with 80 per cent of its ceiling covered in crystal chandeliers.


Mukesh Ambani is the head of the Reliance Industries, an oil and petrochemicals giant. With a net worth of 43 billion dollars, Mukesh Ambani is the richest person in India and fifth richest person in the World.

"The only remotely comparable high-rise property currently on the market is the 70 million dollar triplex penthouse at the Pierre Hotel in New York, designed to resemble a French chateau, and climbing 525 feet in the air," Forbes said in its report.

The report said that Ambanis plan to use the residence occasionally for corporate entertainment also and they want its interiors to have a "distinctly Indian" look and feel.

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Alzheimer's disease risk differs with Gender

A new study of Alzheimer's disease revealed that the risks are different in men and women. Depression and stroke are the important risk factors of dementia. But this study suggests that gender also has something to do with it!

French researchers analyzed data from almost 7,000 people over the age of 65 in three French cities. None of them had dementia, but about 40 percent revealed mild cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study.

Mild cognitive impairment (also known as incipient dementia, or isolated memory impairment) is a diagnosis given to individuals who have cognitive impairments beyond that expected for their age and education, but that do not interfere significantly with their daily activities. It is considered to be the boundary or transitional stage between normal aging and dementia.

A variation in the ApoE gene, a known risk factor for dementia, was also more common among those whose mild cognitive impairment progressed. The results of this study suggests that the risk factors also differed between the sexes.

Men with mild cognitive impairment were more likely to be overweight, diabetic, and to have had a stroke. Men who had had a stroke were almost three times as likely to progress. Women with mild cognitive impairment were more likely to be in poorer general health, disabled, suffering from insomnia and to have a poor support network.

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Hubble Mission Delayed

On Thursday, NASA said that the date of the shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope will be pushed back four to five weeks. Hubble telescope revolutionized the modern astronomy after it's launch in 1990. Now, it needs some repairing.

"Right now Hubble's mission is scheduled for August 28; we really cannot make that date with the external tank processing," shuttle program manager John Shannon explained at a press conference on Thursday.

Hubble is orbiting at 600 kilometers and the shuttle's mission to Hubble is highly unusual. In case of a major problem with the Hubble mission the shuttle and its crew of seven cannot head to dock at the International Space Station (ISS). So a second shuttle needs to be at the ready, to be launched in case of emergency. To do that two external tanks have to be prepared at the same time, which makes production a bigger challenge and takes longer time.

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A fake cheque of £180 billion

Can you dare to cash a fake cheque of £180 billion? A Texan man has actually dared to do so! Charles Ray Fuller, 21, went to the Chase Bank in Fort Worth with the £180 billion cheque and tried to cash it. But employees at the bank became suspicious after looking at the amount and called the account holder to verify it. Then the real thing came out and police arrested the guy.

The account holder said that the suspect, Charles Ray Fuller, 21, was her daughter's boyfriend and did not have permission to take the cheque or cash it. So, police arrested Fuller on suspicion of fraud, along with unlawfully carrying a weapon and possession of marijuana.

Interestingly, Fuller claimed before police that he was starting his own record label and had been given the money by his girlfriend's mother to help him start it. Man, are you kidding?

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Quicker way to make Antibodies

Researchers from Emory University School of Medicine and Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation have developed a new, faster way to create human monoclonal antibodies against infectious disease by tapping the immune system at the peak of its powers. They generated the antibodies against influenza virus.

To make human antibodies against influenza, the researchers isolated antibody-secreting cells (plasma cells) from volunteers' blood a week after vaccination and cloned the antibody genes from these antibody-secreting cells.

"This method could find broad application towards almost any infectious disease," says Rafi Ahmed, PhD, director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar.

For example, doctors could quickly generate human antibodies against a pandemic flu strain as a stop-gap therapy or to protect people from infection.

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