Jakarta  - Indonesian officials on Friday told the families of three Muslim militants on death row for the 2002 Bali bombings to be prepared for the executions.

Imam Samudra, Amrozi, known also as the "smiling assassin" and his brother Mukhlas, alias Ali Ghufron, will each face a firing squad over their roles in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign visitors.

Indonesia does not announce the specific date or time of executions, but the attorney general's office has said the three condemned militants would be executed in early November.

New Delhi - India will be sending a battalion of Gurkha soldiers to replace some of its troops on the United Nations peacekeeping mission in strife-torn Congo, a Defence Ministry spokesman said Friday.

India, with 4,500 troops, is one of the largest contributors to the 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, usually referred to by its French acronym MONUC.

The Gurkha battalion would be sent to Congo by the end of November, army spokesman Virendra Singh said.

Washington, November 7 : Duke University bioengineers say that gold nanostars may revolutionise medical diagnoses, and testing for environmental contaminants.

The researchers have revealed that their proposition is based on a comparison between all the shapes of nanoparticles studied to date, including rods, cones, cubes, and spheres.

They say that any such revolution would depend upon how light reflects off the particles, and nanostars can dramatically enhance the reflected light.

According to them, this increases their potential usefulness as a tracer, label, or contrast agent.

Washington, Nov 7 : Scientists have found evidence that Beta-alanine (BA), a dietary supplement widely used by athletes and body builders, can boost fitness levels in older adults.

BA is an amino acid that, together with histidine, forms the dipeptide carnosine.

Carnosine is found in muscle tissue and makes an important contribution to the maintenance of intracellular pH, which is vital for normal muscle function during intense exercise. An increased intake of BA significantly raises muscle carnosine levels.

The study, led by Jeffrey Stout, PhD from the University of Oklahoma, USA, also suggested that BA supplementation improves muscle endurance in the elderly.

Washington, Nov 7 : For the first time ever, MIT engineers have attached tiny "backpacks" in cells, allowing them to deliver chemotherapy agents, diagnose tumours or become building blocks for tissue engineering.

According to Michael Rubner, director of MIT''s Center for Materials Science and Engineering and senior author of a paper on the work, this is the first time anyone has attached such a synthetic patch to a cell.

The polymer patch system consists of three layers, each with a different function, stacked onto a surface. The bottom layer tethers the polymer to the surface, the middle layer contains the payload, and the top layer serves as a "hook" that catches and binds cells.

Washington, Nov 7 : A new study has determined that while Earth experienced numerous changes in climate over the past 65 million years, recent decades have experienced the most significant climate change since the beginning of human civilized societies about 5,000 years ago.

The study was led by oceanographer Charles Greene, from Cornell University in the US.