Washington, Mar 14: Hollywood actor Tom Hanks was so desperate to team up with his son Colin on the big screen that he actually forced his way into his son''s new movie.

The Oscar winner actor revealed that he was so impressed with the script for ''The Great Buck Howard'' that he decided he wanted to play his son’s dad whether he liked it or not, reports China Daily

Washington, March 14: A group of scientists have discovered a new way to sensitively detect explosives based on the physical properties of their vapors.

"Certain classes of explosives have unique thermal characteristics that help to identify explosive vapors in presence of other vapors," said Thomas Thundat, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee, who conducted the research with his colleagues at ORNL and the Technical University of Denmark.

Washington, March 14: Scientists have created a metamaterial that could lead to the development of a cloaking device that makes a person invisible, among other applications.

Developed by Naomi Halas and graduate student Nikolay Mirin from Rice University, US, the material collects light from any direction and emits it in a single direction, using very tiny, cup-shaped particles called nanocups.

In a research paper in the journal Nano Letters, Halas and Mirin have explained how they isolated nanocups to create light-bending nanoparticles.

Washington, March 14: The Wildlife Conservation Society’s India Program (WCS – India) has released a unique training video on You Tube that showcases the latest scientific methods for estimating the numbers of wild tigers and their prey.

Wildlife filmmaker Shekar Dattatri, in collaboration with Wildlife Conservation Society tiger scientist Dr. K. Ullas Karanth, has produced the 5-part instructional video, titled “Monitoring Tigers and Their Prey – The Right Way.”

The video is based on the acclaimed manual Monitoring Tigers and their Prey edited by Karanth and Dr. James D. Nichols, and is aimed at wildlife researchers, park managers, conservation volunteers, and students.

London, Mar 14 : The International Crisis Group has said that great caution should be exercised in any talks with the Taliban operating in Afghanistan, as the insurgents have used the previous peace deals which broke down within months to strengthen themselves.

President Barack Obama has floated the idea of talking to moderate Taliban elements as part of a new strategy for the war against the militants.

In its report, the Brussels-based ICG warned that previous truce deals with militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan "enhanced the power and activities of violent insurgents, while doing nothing to build sustainable institutions."

Washington, March 14 : Psychologists and neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania say that unexpected outcomes play a significant role in human learning.

Describing their study in the journal Science, the researchers revealed that they used a computer-based card game and microelectrodes to observe neuronal activity of the brain.

They said that their study suggested that neurons in the human substantia nigra (SN) play a central role in reward-based learning, modulating learning based on the discrepancy between the expected and the realized outcome.