Washington, January 16 : A Canadian study suggests that the amount of physical exercise people carry out is mainly influenced by their self-perceived ability and the extent of their desire to exercise.

Published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, the study involved 5167 people.

It showed that psychological concerns were the most important barriers to an active lifestyle.

Lead researcher Sai Yi Pan, from the Public Health Agency of Canada, revealed that the study examined data from a nationwide series of telephone interviews.

Washington, January 16 : A study led by an Indian-origin University of California-Los Angeles researcher suggests that light to moderate drinking among elderly people can reduce their likelihood of developing physical problems that would prevent them from performing common tasks like walking, dressing and grooming.

"If you start out in good health, alcohol consumption at light to moderate levels can be beneficial," said Dr. Arun Karlamangla, an associate professor of medicine in the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

"But if you don''t start out healthy, alcohol will not give you a benefit," added the lead author of the study reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

India’s largest technology, engineering, construction and manufacturing company Larsen & Toubro announced that it has signed up a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with US-based Westinghouse Electric Company (WEC), a group company of Toshiba Corporation.

The MoU has been signed in order to build 1,000 MW nuclear plants in India.

The MoU will successfully address the projected requirement in India for Pressurized Water Nuclear Reactors with Modular construction technology.

Washington, Jan. 16: President George W. Bush said Thursday that closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is "not as easy as it sounds," sending a warning to President-elect Barack Obama that he will have to find a way to prevent those released from coming back to attack the U. S.

"People will find that there''s quite a few that are very dangerous people and to put them in a position where they can eventually get out on the street and come back and harm one of our citizens would be a very dangerous policy," Bush told The Washington Times in an interview in the Oval Office.

Islamabad, Jan 16 : Pakistan has shared with the United States the list and other details of persons arrested in connection with the Mumbai terror attacks.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's adviser on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik said that so far the Pakistani authorities have arrested 124 people.

"We have got a list of the arrested people," Dawn quoted a US diplomat, as saying.

The exchange was done by the security agencies directly without involving the Foreign Office, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Office on Thursday said that a FIA led inquiry team has been constituted by the Interior Ministry to probe the matter.

Washington, January 16 : A new study has raised Penn State researchers' hopes for the development of a handheld device that will recognize and immediately report on a wide variety of environmental or medical compounds.

The researchers say that a method that incorporates a mixture of biologically tagged nanowires onto integrated circuit chips can help develop an ultra-portable device of this kind.

"Probably one of the most important things for connecting to the circuit is to place the wires accurately. We need to control spatial placement on the chip with less than a micron of accuracy," says Theresa S. Mayer, professor of electrical engineering and director of Penn State''s Nanofabrication Laboratory.