Washington, March 18 : A new research has found that families of animals grouped together by a similar body plan, with the greatest diversity of species, were also those with the largest range of body sizes.

The research was carried out by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) researchers in the US, as part of an analysis of body sizes across all orders of animal life.

Researchers Craig McClain and Alison Boyer created a giant database on body sizes across all orders of animal life and found that phyla - families of animals grouped together by a similar body plan - with the greatest diversity of species were also those with the largest range of body sizes.

Washington, March 18 : A team of scientists has made a new type of glass from opaque titanium and zirconium, which is harder, tougher and weighs less than stainless steel.

According to a report in Discovery News, the glass has been developed by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, US.

The scientists who developed and tested the opaque glass hope it could one day replace steel and aluminum in a wide variety of products, from golf clubs to airplanes.

"The problem with most (types of) glass is that they have very bad fatigue resistance," meaning they break easily, said Maximilien Launey, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Washington, March 18 : Scientists have found five specimens of 95 million year old fossils of Cretaceous octopuses, which reveals a much earlier origin for the modern octopus.

The five specimens have been found by palaeontologists in Cretaceous rocks in Lebanon, which have astonishingly preserved the octopuses' eight arms with traces of muscles and those characteristic rows of suckers.

The chances of an octopus corpse surviving long enough to be fossilized are so small that prior to this discovery only a single fossil species was known, and from fewer specimens than octopuses have legs.

Even traces of the ink and internal gills are present in some specimens.

Washington, Mar 18 : An upsurge of intense attraction and enduring physical effects, similar to what one feels in love at first sight, is how fans begin to develop a true passion for opera, according to a researcher.

To shed light on what it takes to develop a true passion for opera, Claudio Benzecry from the University of Connecticut in the USA observed and interviewed middle class opera fans who stand on the upper floors of the Colon Opera House in Buenos Aires.

He studied how the fans learnt to feel, believe, and behave in opera, which parts of the experience they highlighted and how they invested themselves once the initial moment of discovery subsided.

Hanoi  - Large supermarkets in Vietnam have stopped selling Johnson & Johnson products on news that the company's baby shampoo sold in the US contained chemicals that could cause cancer, the supermarkets said Wednesday.

A US consumer group, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, reported this week that it had found formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane in several varieties of Johnson's baby shampoo. The chemicals are considered probable carcinogens, and are banned from cosmetics in some countries, but not in the US.

"We got the order to stop selling most Johnson & Johnson's products, except for makeup powder, in our supermarket chain on Tuesday," said Nguyen Tuyet Thu, a sales manager at Coopmart, one of Vietnam's largest domestic chains.