Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson are not engaged

Islamabad -- Recent violent activities and increasing terrorist attacks in Islamabad are fast turning the city into an insecure place to live in, says a leading Pakistani daily.

Doubt persists in the mind of the people here that whether the suicide attack at the District Courts is a fallout of the Lal Masjid operation or an isolated case to teach a lesson to Benazir Bhutto‘s party for lending support to the government.

In both the Lal Masjid operation and the District Court suicide-bombing cases, the law and order seems to have been compromised to a larger extent, The News reported.

Tuesday‘s blast has shattered the confidence of the common people who questioned the role of law-enforcing agencies.

The paper said if such incidents could take place at a venue where suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was to address lawyers, what would happen to other places in the otherwise most cordoned off capital city.

Senior officials admit that interception of suicide bombers is almost impossible, adding that such bombers enter the city without explosives or other material.

"We do have information that more than one suicide bombings could re-occur," Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah said.

"These motivated suicide bombers often get such explosive material and necessary equipment from a person already in the city, particularly when such explosives are indigenous and home made and can be fabricated in every nook and corner," said Shah.

He said the District Court bomber exploded the device by raising his hand when he got frustrated to enter the area, which had a walk-through gate with policemen keeping watching on every person.

The death of more than a dozen innocent people and injuries to scores of others is an incident of very serious nature and people are talking about the failure of Islamabad Police and those responsible for handling the security, he added. (ANI)

Islamabad, July 18 (ANI): Pakistan Army‘s Operation Silence against the inhabitants of the Lal Masjid has left many unanswered questions, according to a local daily.

Sindhi newspaper ‘Kawish‘ has written in a report that many lives ended with the completion of the "extreme action" against the rebels holed up in the mosque. The government gave an excuse of the presence of foreign fighters inside the Lal Masjid, but how the weapons made their way inside it? asked the daily.

"Had state institutions been efficient, there would have been no need for such an operation. At the same time, it was a result of ‘rigidness‘ of one group, and the strategic failure of the other," the paper added.

Journalists were not allowed to cover "Operation Silence", and were also barred from visiting hospitals where injured civilians and security personnel were brought.

This created doubts whether the government was hiding something, the daily wrote.

Kawish asked the government to make the state institutions efficient and make the public aware of the Lal Masjid operation to clarify the ambiguity that had spread after media was barred from its coverage. (ANI)

Washington, July 18 (ANI): The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a consensus view of all 16 US spy agencies, has warned that al Qaeda has regenerated its capability to strike the US.

According to NIE, the militant outfit has got a safe haven in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.

The NIE report said that there were only a handful of individuals in the US having ties with al Qaeda since 9/11 attacks, but "we judge that the terrorist organisation will intensify its efforts to put operatives here."

"Al Qaeda will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the homeland through greater co-operation with regional terrorist groups. Of note, we assess that the organisation will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)," the report said.

Al Qaeda‘s association with AQI helps it to energise the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for attacks on the US, the Daily Times quoted the report, as saying.

The report assess that al Qaeda is likely to target prominent political, economic, and infrastructure with the goal of producing mass casualties, significant economic aftershocks, and fear among the US population.

NIE said that the group is proficient with conventional small arms and improvised explosive devices, and is innovative in creating new capabilities and overcoming security obstacles.

The report warned that the US would continue to face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years, and added that the main threat comes from Islamic terrorist groups and cells. (ANI)

Washington, July 18 (ANI): Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) seem to have unravelled the mystery of oil droplets throbbing when mixed onto water.

In their study in the July 25 issue of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, MIT Professors Roman Stocker of civil and environmental engineering and John Bush of mathematics explain what happens when an oil drop containing a water-insoluble surfactant (or material that reduces the surface tension of a liquid, allowing easier spreading) is placed on a water surface.

During the course of their experiments, the scientists found that evaporation induced variations in surface tension causes the drop to expand, then contract and repeat the process every couple of hours until it runs out of gas, which in this case, is surfactant.

"We‘re dealing with three interfaces: between the oil drop, the water in the Petri dish, and the air above it. A detergent is a surfactant, which reduces the surface tension of a liquid. The detergent molecules we added to the oil drop prefer to stay at the interface of the oil and water, rather than inside the oil drop," said Prof. Stocker.

"The surfactant in the drop moves to the bottom surface of the oil drop, where it interacts with the water to decrease the surface tension where oil meets water. This change in tension increases the forces pulling on the outer edges of the drop, causing the drop to expand," he said.

He said, as the centre of the drop is deeper than the edges, so more surfactant settles there, reducing the surface tension correspondingly.

This causes the oil and surfactant near the outer edges of the drop to circulate, which creates a shear and generates very tiny waves rolling outward toward the edge. When these waves reach the edge, they cause small droplets to erupt and escape onto the water surface outside the drop.

However, covering the experiment stops the process as it prevents evaporation of the surfactant, the researchers found.

If the surfactant can‘t evaporate, the

oil drop remains stable. As the surfactant evaporates, the surface tension of the water increases again, and the system is reset. Forces pull at the outer edges of the lens, and the cyclical process begins again, they said. (ANI)

Islamabad, July 18 (ANI): All entrance and exit points of the Capital have been sealed, and a ban has been imposed on taking out processions and rallies here following Tuesday‘s blast that killed at least 16 people and left several others injured.

The ban, however, does not apply to Friday prayers and other religious gatherings.

The decision was taken in view of the threat to law and order, and to maintain sectarian harmony in Islamabad.

Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Malik Muhammad Iqbal said that everyone, including pedestrians and motorists, would be checked before entering or leaving the city.

The CCPO said the city was already on high alert ever since the Operation Silence, and he has briefed all town police officers (TPOs) and superintendents of police (SPs) about the city‘s security measures.

The Daily Times quoted him as saying, that a meeting reviewed security arrangements and officials were deputed around all important government and foreign buildings, congested public places, business and recreational areas. (ANI)

London, July 18 (ANI): A study of mice has shown that mature heart cells can not only replicate, but also improve the organs function, if there are given the right environment.

The researchers noted that a sponge-like patch, soaked in a compound called periostin, and placed over the injury can help heart cells to begin dividing and making copies of themselves again.

Periostin is a component of the material that surrounds cells and is derived from the skin around bone. Though the mature heart only has tiny amounts, it is abundant during foetal heart development, and increased amounts are also made after skeletal-muscle injury, bone fracture and blood vessel injury, stimulating mature, specialized cells to begin dividing again.

Dr. Bernhard Kuhn of the Department of Cardiology at Children‘s Hospital Boston led a study to theorise that placing periostin near the site of a myocardial infarction could help restore this growth-friendly environment, and get heart tissue to regenerate.

The researchers first stimulated mature, rod-shaped heart muscle cells (known as cardiomyocytes) with periostin in a Petri dish. About one per cent of the cells entered the mitotic cell cycle -- namely, they began dividing and replicating.

"We found a small subpopulation of cells that could, with proper stimulation, re-enter the cell cycle. "This finding supports the idea that differentiated cardiomyocytes can proliferate," Nature Medicine quoted Kuhn, who was awarded the Young Investigator‘s Award for this research by the American College of Cardiology in March, as saying.

Using a small patch fashioned from a sponge-like material called Gelfoam, the researchers then moved to experiments in rats with induced heart attacks. In half the rats, a patch that had been incubated with periostin was placed over the infarct site, while the rest received Gelfoam only.

Twelve weeks later, the treated patches were still releasing biologically-active periostin. The periostin-treated rats had improved cardiac pumping ability, as indicated by increased ejection fraction and improved ventricular remodeling on echocardiograms, and decreased left-ventricular wall stress on catheterization.

The periostin-treated rats also had less sca

rring of heart tissue, a reduction in infarct size, and a denser network of blood vessels feeding the area. In contrast, the rats receiving Gelfoam alone did not show any significant improvement.

The researchers believe that a sustained-delivery periostin patch may one day be helpful in treating adults with heart attack, and in encouraging cardiomyocyte proliferation in children with congenital heart disease.

"Many patients with severe congenital heart disease eventually hit a place where the heart isn‘t pumping adequately," Kuhn says. (ANI)

Washington, July 18 (ANI): Pop-rock diva Ashlee Simpson has said that rumours about her engagement to rocker Pete Wentz are untrue.

Her representative has issued a statement in this regard, and stated that the reports about the impending marriage of Wentz and Simpson are "absolutely not true."

A report posted on gossip website Popcrunch claims that Wentz proposed to Simpson for marriage on July 7, before Fall Out Boy‘s performance at Live Earth.

It also speculates that the engagement stems from news that Simpson is pregnant.

According to the website, the rumoured engagement has been kept a secret because Simpson fears the overexposure that plagued Nick Lachey and older sister Jessica‘s marriage.

However, it has now turned out that the rumours of the couple‘s secret engagement are baseless, reports Us Weekly magazine. (ANI)