Recreating the world's first car

Vintage car enthusiasts from across the world are heading to Coimbatore to pick up replicas of the Benz Motorwagen

Vintage cars have always been a passion for Diljeet Titus. And like many other enthusiasts, he was always fascinated by the 1886 Benz Motorwagen, famously known as the first horseless carriage. "I have 70 vintage cars. But it was always my dream to own a Motorwagen,'' says Titus, owner of the Titus Museum for Transportation and Collectibles in Delhi. But Karl Benz stopped production less than a decade after the first car - considered the granddaddy of the automobile - rolled out of Manheim in Germany. Its water-cooled, rear-mounted engine produced less than one horsepower at 400 revolutions per minute, and had a top speed of 16km an hour. A lone Benz Motorwagen now stands at the Benz Museum at Stuttgart. And it's not for sale. In April this year, Titus' dream came true when he got the keys to a Benz Motorwagen, a 100% replica which was rolled out from the workshop of auto parts manufacturer UMS Technologies Ltd in Coimbatore. Known for its motorsports tracks and an emerging auto parts hub, the city now has vintage car enthusiasts flocking from all over the world to pick up replicas. UMS Technologies has sold 22 cars so far, 17 of them to car collectors abroad. (The manufacturers prefer to not disclose its price).

G D Gopal, chairman of the firm and owner of Gedee Car Museum, first saw the original car at a German museum in 2001. Soon after returning, he constituted a team of engineers and students to work on a replica. "This car is the building block of automobile engineering and design. An aspiring automobile or mechanical engineer should know how it was designed. That's why I wanted students to be a part of this project," says Gopal.

But the task of redesigning the world's first car was not easy. "We didn't have the liberty to alter the design or specifications,'' says N Ramaraj, assistant general manager of operations at the company. "The most complicated was the benzene-fuelled steam engine, which came as a single iron cast unit with a water jacket. We had to take an X-ray to find out the specifications of the engine interiors,'' he says. Tyres were another challenge as thickness had to be accurate to the last millimeter. Every nut and bolt was made according to the specifications of the original Motorwagen. Since the paints available in the market did not match what Karl Benz had used, the team made their own paint. "Most cars are painted after assembly. But for this car, every part was painted before being assembled,'' says Rajkumar V, who painted the car.



Inside the warehouse, a special assembly and design unit was installed over 6,000 sq ft. The unit has three major sections - design, painting and assembly. It takes the team about a month to make one car. Painting takes another 12-14 days. Gopal says the team started working on the project in September 2012, and the first replica took seven months to make. After carrying out a series of tests, an automobile expert was invited to review the car. The visitor was so impressed that he placed an order for a few cars. After about nearly 120 years since the production of the car stopped, its replica rolled out from the workshop.

"To me, this car is a recreation of history. To be able to see it is a privilege in itself, and the opportunity to drive the beauty is a lifetime feat," says Manvendra Singh Rana of Barwani, Indore. The vintage car collector flagged off a 500-km journey in a replica Motorwagen from Coimbatore recently.

Gopal and his team are presently working on making licensed replicas of the Henry Ford Quadricycle, made in 1896. "It is in the final stages of testing," says Gopal.

Earthworks found in Kazakhstan deepen ancient mystery

High in the skies over Kazakhstan, spaceage technology has revealed an ancient mystery on the ground. 

Satellite pictures of a remote and treeless northern steppe has revealed colossal earthworks — geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields, recognizable only from the air and the oldest estimated at 8,000 years old. 

The largest, near a Neolithic settlement, is a giant square of 101raised mounds, its opposite corners connected by a diagonal cross, covering more terrain than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Another is a kind of three-limbed swastika, its arms ending in zigzags bent counterclockwise. 

Described last year at a conference in Istanbul as unique and previously unstudied, the earthworks, in the Turgai region of northern Kazakhstan, number at least 260 — mounds, trenches and ramparts — arrayed in five basic shapes. Spotted on Google Earth in 2007 by a Kazakh economist and archaeology enthusiast, Dmitriy Dey, the so-called Steppe Geoglyphs remain deeply puzzling and largely unknown. 



"I've never seen anything like this," said Compton J. Tucker, a senior biospheric scientist for Nasa. This week, Nasa put space photography of the region on a task list for astronauts in the International Space Station. 

"I don't think they were meant to be seen from the air," Dey, 44, said, dismissing outlandish speculations involving aliens and Nazis. (Long before Hitler, the swastika was an ancient and near-universal design element.) He theorized that the figures built along straight lines on elevations were "horizontal observatories to track the movements of the rising sun." 

Persis B. Clarkson, an archaeologist said these figures and similar ones in Peru and Chile were changing views about early nomads. 

"The idea that foragers could amass the numbers of people necessary to undertake large-scale projects—like creating the Kazakhstan geoglyphs—has caused archaeologists to deeply rethink the nature and timing of sophisticated largescale human organization as one that predates settled and civilized societies,"Clarkson said.

‘Low-fat diet futile for weight loss’

Low-fat diets do not lead to greater weight loss in the long term compared to low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean diets of similar intensity, according to a new study. 

Researchers in US did a systematic review and meta-analysis of all randomised trials comparing the effectiveness of lowfat diets to other diets, including no diet, at improving long-term weight loss (at least 1 year) in non-pregnant adults. 



They took into account the intensity of the diets which ranged from just pamphlets or instructions at the beginning of the programme to intensive multi-component programmes including counselling sessions, meetings with dieticians, food diaries, and cooking lessons. 

Analysis of 53 studies involving 68,128 adults showed no difference in the average weight loss between reduced-fat diets and higher-fat diets.

66m yrs on, study reveals Tyrannosaurs rex was a cannibal

 A recently unearthed dinosaur bone has unveiled a 66-million-year-old family secret that tyrannosaurs, including the T. rex, were not shy about eating their own kind, scientists say. 

The tyrannosaur bone has peculiar teeth marks that strongly suggest it was gnawed by another tyrannosaur. "We were out in Wyoming digging up dinosaurs in the Lance Formation when we found the bone," said paleontologist Matthew McLain. The grooves were clearly those of an animal pulling the flesh off the bone in a direction perpendicular to the bone, in the same way humans eat a piece of fried chicken. But one groove stood out. 



It was located at the larger end of the bone and contained smaller parallel grooves caused by the diner's head turning, so that the serrated edges of its teeth dragged across the bone. 

Serrated teeth rule out crocodiles and point directly to a theropod dinosaur like T. rex. The fact that the only large theropods found in the Lance Formation are two tyrannosaurs—T. rex or Nanotyrannus lancensis—eliminates all interpretations but cannibalism, said McLain.

Indian Restaurant Bags UK Parliament's Curry Trophy

 An Indian restaurant in a small seaside town in south-east England has bagged a coveted trophy in an annual contest organised by British MPs to pick their favourite curry house in the UK.

'Flavors by Kumar' restaurant from Ramsgate in Thanet district of Kent won the Grand Final of the Tiffin Cup 2015 held in the House of Commons this week.

"The competition was extremely close this year and becoming one of the finalists of the Tiffin Cup is a tremendous achievement.

"Congratulations to Flavors by Kumar who produced a stunning dish to wow our judges to win. The Tiffin Cup has gone to Kent for the first time," said Keith Vaz, the Indian-origin MP who founded the cup with some of his colleagues in 2006.

"This is a great tribute not just to the nominated restaurants but the fantastic culinary diversity in constituencies across the UK. Well done to all of the restaurants. Curry is King in the UK," he said.



British MPs from across all parties are invited to put forward the best South Asian restaurant in their constituency and a select few of those are then short-listed by mystery guests who dine at these eateries anonymously.

The shortlisted restaurants are then invited to take part in the final "cook-off" in London and the winner is awarded the Tiffin Cup and labelled the best South Asian restaurant in the UK.

The aim of the competition is to celebrate the quality and diversity of South Asian food in Britain and raise money for the charity World Vision.

Besides the Tiffin Cup grand winner, chosen from a list of restaurants that have been nominated by local MPs, eight regional winners also bagged awards this year.

El Nino covers arid Atacama desert in flowers

Here's a softer side to the disruptive weather phenomenon known as El Nino: an enormous blanket of colorful flowers has carpeted Chile's Atacama desert, the most arid in the world.

The cyclical warming of the central Pacific may be causing droughts and floods in various parts of the world, but in the vast desert of northern Chile it has also caused a vibrant explosion of thousands of species of flowers with an intensity not seen in decades.

Yellows, reds, purples and whites have covered the normally stark landscapes of the Atacama, where temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) this time of year.

From violet-and-white Chilean bell flowers, or "countryside sighs" (Nolana paradoxa), to red "lion claws" (Bomarea ovallei), to yellow Rhodophiala rhodolirion, they have filled the normally pale desert valleys with rivers of color.

"This year has been particularly special, because the amount of rainfall has made this perhaps the most spectacular of the past 40 or 50 years," said Raul Cespedes, a desert specialist at the University of Atacama.

- Sleeping beauty -

El Nino, which wreaks havoc on world weather patterns every two to seven years, has hit particularly hard this year, causing unusually heavy rainfall in the world's driest desert.

That has caused dormant flower bulbs and rhizomes -- underground stems that grow horizontally -- to germinate.

"When you think of the desert, you think of total dryness, but there's a latent ecosystem here just waiting for certain conditions to arise," said Cespedes.

The desert flowers are perhaps nature's consolation for what has been a devastating year for Atacama.

They first bloomed in March, after heavy rains that caught the region by surprise and caused massive floods that killed more than 30 people.

They are now blooming for the second time this year, at the outset of the southern hemisphere summer.

- Tourist drawcard -

"This is a very unusual phenomenon. Because of the floods in March there was an exceptional winter bloom, which had never before been recorded... and then there was another bloom in spring," said Daniel Diaz, director of the National Tourism Service for Atacama region.

"Two flowerings a year is very unusual in the most arid desert in the world, and that's something we've been able to enjoy this spring, along with people from all over the world. There's a lot of interest in seeing it," he told AFP.

The region has seen a 40 percent increase in tourists since the flowers began blooming.

"It is so unusual, yet so real," said British tourist Edward Zannahand, who made a special stop in Atacama on what he described as a road trip around the world.

Sania, Martina clinch WTA Finals doubles title

Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis lifted their ninth title together this year, beating the Spanish pair of Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro to clinch the WTA Finals women’s doubles trophy on Sunday.

Sania and Martina, the top seeds, prevailed 6-0 6-3 over their eight-seeded rivals in a lopsided summit clash which lasted little over an hour.

The Indo-Swiss pairing dropped serve only once through the match and broke their opponents five times to wrap up a comprehensive victory.

Sania and Martina are now unbeaten in 22 matches, stretching back six tournaments. In fact, since their last defeat — to Chan Hao-Ching and Chan Yung-Jan in Cincinnati — they have dropped just two sets.

Muguruza and Suarez Navarro — late replacements in the draw after Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova’s withdrawal — were completely outplayed in the match.

In the second game, Sania unleashed a ferocious forehand to break Muguruza.

The second set was more competitive, but Sania and Martina did not let go of their supremacy and wrapped up after little over an hour on court.

“I feel like it was a perfect day,” Hingis said. “Sania just played out of her mind — she was everywhere today, getting everything back and playing incredible tennis.”

This triumph is especially huge for Martina as the trophy was her 50th WTA doubles title, a milestone only 15 players have reached.