Why Vultures Devoured Hiker's Body in Minutes - A flock of vultures devoured the body of a woman just minutes after she fell to her death while hiking in the Pyrenees Mountains in France. From Nony
Cooling May Jeopardize Climate Science And Green Energy Funding! - As David Whitehouse at the Global Warming Policy Foundation points out: If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change. Whitehouse notes that there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures since 1997. From Roddy
Printed Bionic Ear Enhances Human Hearing Beyond Normal Range : Health & Medicine : Science World Report - The ear looks a bit like a pink piece of ear-shaped Jell-O with a curling yellow wire sticking out of it. Yet it's a feat that shouldn't be ignored. The researchers created the new device in order to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue. In order to accomplish this, they used 3D printing to "print" cells and nanoparticles. They then used a cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with the cartilage, creating the bionic ear. From Nony
Watch 62 Years of Global Warming in 13 Seconds - From our friends at NASA comes this amazing 13-second animation that depicts how temperatures around the globe have warmed since 1950. Youll note an acceleration of the temperature trend in the late 1970s as greenhouse gas emissions from energy production increased worldwide and clean air laws reduced emissions of pollutants that had a cooling effect on the climate, and thus were masking some of the global warming signal.
The data come from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York (GISS), which monitors global surface temperatures. As NASA notes, All 10 of the warmest years in the GISS analysis have occurred since 1998, continuing a trend of temperatures well above the mid-20th century average." From Popper
How A Tool For Perfect Human Vision Grew From One Of NASA's Greatest Blunders | Popular Science - Since the day the Hubble Space Telescope blinked open and saw a blurry heavens, the world of telescope optics has revolved around double-checking every possible detail. To see clearly, a telescope’s mirrors must be flawless, bending and reflecting photons with absolutely perfect accuracy. While working on ways to fix Hubble’s poor vision, Dan Neal and his colleagues realized another optical system could benefit from perfectly designed corrective lenses: Our eyes. From Nony
Brain-Training Games Don't Actually Make You Smarter - A decade ago, a young Swedish researcher named Torkel Klingberg made a spectacular discovery. He gave a group of children computer games designed to boost their memory, and, after weeks of play, the kids showed improvements not only in memory but in overall intellectual ability. Spending hours memorizing strings of digits and patterns of circles on a four-by-four grid had made the children smarter. The finding countered decades of psychological research that suggested training in one area (e.g., recalling numbers) could not bring benefits in other, unrelated areas (e.g., reasoning). The Klingberg experiment also hinted that intelligence, which psychologists considered essentially fixed, might be more mutable: that it was less like eye color and more like a muscle. From Nony
Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation - Physicists have devised a new experiment to test if the universe is a computer.A philosophical thought experiment has long held that it is more likely than not that we're living inside a machine.The theory basically goes that any civilisation which could evolve to a 'post-human' stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. And that given the size of reality - billions of worlds, around billions of suns - it is fairly likely that if this is possible, it has already happened. From Nony
Is An Alien Message Embedded In Our Genetic Code? : Discovery News - Vladimir I. shCherbak of al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Kazakhstan, and Maxim A. Makukov of the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, hypothesize that an intelligent signal embedded in our genetic code would be a mathematical and semantic message that cannot be accounted for by Darwinian evolution. They call it “biological SETI.” What’s more, they argue that the scheme has much greater longevity and chance of detecting E.T. than a transient extraterrestrial radio transmission. From Nony
Gender Jabber: Do Women Talk More than Men?: Scientific American - About a year ago, Louann Brizendine, founder and director of the University of California, San Francisco's Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic, published The Female Brain. One of the most cited gems within its pages was a claim that women are chatterboxes, speaking an average of 20,000 words per day, nearly three times the mere 7,000 spoken by men. From Nony
Science: Women Prefer Larger Penises - "I like small penises," said no women interviewed for an actually scientific study released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS. Yes, PNAS is a funny sounding acronym, and, yes, PNAS has found that size does matter and that women prefer "showers" to "growers." From Popper
Deadly new bird flu vindicates mutant virus research, experts say - Vitals - Scientists in the Dutch city of Rotterdam know precisely what it takes for a bird flu to mutate into a potential human pandemic strain -- because they've created just such mutant viruses in the laboratory.So as they watch with some trepidation the emergence in China of a strain of bird flu previously unknown in humans, they also argue it vindicates their controversial decision to conduct these risky experiments despite fierce opposition. From Nony
Scientists Create Ultra-Thin Invisibility Cloak - The invisibility cloak has long been an idea present mostly in comic books and sci-fi novels — remember the Cloak of Invisibility from J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books or the scramble suit from Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly"?Well, every spy's dream is now one step closer to reality thanks to the work of researchers from the University of Texas, Austin, which have developed an ultra-thin material called a "metascreen". From Nony
I analyzed the chords of 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found. | Blog %u2013 Hooktheory - For many people, listening to music elicits such an emotional response that the idea of dredging it for statistics and structure can seem odd or even misguided. But knowing these patterns can give one a deeper more fundamental sense for how music works; for me this makes listening to music a lot more interesting. Of course, if you play an instrument or want to write songs, being aware of these things is obviously of great practical importance. From Nony
The Future of Nuclear Power Runs on the Waste of Our Nuclear Past - America alone produces about 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste annually and our best solution for disposing of it: bury it deep in the Earth. However, a pair of MIT scientists believe they've found not only a better way of eliminating nuclear waste but recycling the deadly detritus into enough clean electricity to power the entire world until 2083. Win, meet win. From Nony
Device keeps liver alive outside body in medical first | Reuters - A donated human liver has been kept alive, warm and functioning outside a human being on a newly-developed machine and then successfully transplanted into patients in a medical world first.A British team of doctors, engineers and surgeons announcing the achievement on Friday said it could be common practice in hospitals across the developed world within a few years, up to doubling the number of livers available for transplant. From Nony
Tiny quantum fridge can cool huge objects (Wired UK) - Nanotechnology researchers have built a microscopic fridge that can cool objects millions of times more massive than itself.The prototype solid-state device takes advantage of the way quantum physics operates in micro- and nanostructures to cool comparatively-vast objects to sub-cryogenic temperatures. From Nony
A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years - Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios. From Nony
NASA's Mission To Repurpose The Most Powerful Rocket Engines Ever Launched - The 1960s and early ‘70s was a golden era for space travel. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into outer space and orbit the Earth, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, and we explored our universe in ways we could never have imagined. What’s more, the technology that allowed us to take these giant leaps had a profound impact – not only on rocket science but also on the way we live our lives. From Nony
Going to Mars in 2018: Concept is so crazy (and simple) it just might work - Cosmic Log - Millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito and his partners have had to tell questioners repeatedly that they're not "crazy" or "nuts" to think they can launch a man and a woman to Mars and back by 2019 — but if the Inspiration Mars Foundation's "Mission for America" succeeds, it may well be because it's just crazy enough. From Nony
'God particle': Confirmation is 'achingly close' - Physicists in Italy said Wednesday they are achingly close to concluding that what they found last year was the Higgs boson, the elusive "God particle." They need to eliminate one last remote possibility that it's something else.
The long theorized subatomic particle would explain why matter has mass and has been called a missing cornerstone of physics.
With new analyses, scientists are closer to being certain they found the crucial Higgs boson. But they want to be 99.9 percent positive, said Pauline Gagnon, a physicist with the European Center for Nuclear Research. From Popper
Van Allen Probes Discover a New Radiation Belt - NASA Science - Earth's radiation belts were one of the first discoveries of the Space Age. A new finding published in today's issue of Science shows that we still have much to learn about them. NASA's twin Van Allen Probes, launched just last August, have revealed a previously unknown third radiation belt around Earth. From Nony
Biochemist creates CO2-eating light that runs on algae - Our atmosphere is filling up with CO2 and we seem to be the major cause of that. The generally accepted solution seems to be cutting back on emissions as quickly as possible, but implementing such cuts is problematic because everyone has to agree to do more, which essentially ends up costing a lot of time and money. From Nony
Alan Friedmans Astonishing HD Photographs of the Sun Shot from his Own Backyard | Colossal - My photographs comprise a solar diary, portraits of a moment in the life of our local star. Most are captured from my backyard in Buffalo, NY. Using a small telescope and narrow band filters I can capture details in high resolution and record movements in the solar atmosphere that change over hours and sometimes minutes. The raw material for my work is black and white and often blurry. As I prepare the pictures, color is applied and tonality is adjusted to better render the features. It is photojournalism of a sort. The portraits are real, not painted. Aesthetic decisions are made with respect for accuracy as well as for the power of the image. From Nony
17-year-old Rutvik Oza Solves Unsolved Problem in Maths - An Indian teen has recently proposed a solution to an unsolved problem in mathematics. The 17-year-old young achiever, Rutvik Oza, a student of The H. B. Kapadia New High School, from Ahmedabad, Gujarat has now put a full stop to another open problem in the field of maths by providing a closed formula for the problem called Reve's Puzzle (also popularly known as the 4-peg Tower of Hanoi Problem). From Nony
BBC News - The myth of the eight-hour sleep - We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep. From Nony
New York Biotopes on Vimeo - My bachelor graduation project „New York Biotopes“ deals with abstract plants and creatures, which change their forms because of insufficient living space and adapt themselves to the surroundings of the metropolis New York City. A type of metamorphosis, where the newly developed vegetation assimilates elements of the city and makes them useful for their own purposes. These creatures and plants, partly mechanical, partly organically in appearance, spread more and more over the city and fill it up with life. From Nony
Brain Cells for Sharing Found | Altruism | LiveScience - Why animals act unselfishly has been a longstanding mystery. Yet they routinely do: Monkeys will go without food rather than shock compatriots, and mice will also starve rather than hurt friends.
Sadly enough know rather a lot of people who are missing these! From Nony
Star Trek's 'tractor' beam created in miniature by researchers - A team of scientists from Scotland and the Czech Republic has created a real-life "tractor" beam, as featured in the Star Trek movies, which for the first time allows a beam of light to attract objects. From cw
UN climate report shows 20 years of overestimated global warming - A preliminary draft of a report by the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was leaked to the public this month, and climate skeptics say it contains fresh evidence of 20 years of overstated global warming.
That doesn't matter to the True Believers. They already changed the name of their god from Global Warming to Climate Change. This way, anything that happens is proof they are right. From Roddy
Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images - A pioneering team from IBM in Zurich has published single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned.The same team took the first-ever single-molecule image in 2009 and more recently published images of a molecule shaped like the Olympic rings. From cw
China blazes trail for 'clean' nuclear power from thorium - The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee built such a reactor in the 1960s. It was shelved by the Nixon Administration. The Pentagon needed plutonium residue from uranium to build nuclear bombs. From Roddy
Quantum gas goes below absolute zero - It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time1. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery. From cw
Scientists say robot boy can be built within nine months - Robotics engineers say that they can build a humanoid robot “boy” that will help with everyday tasks within nine months. According to the Daily Mail, the childlike “Roboy” will have special artificial muscles and tendons, and is designed as a companion and helper for sick and elderly patients. From Nony
Scientists Discover Childrens Cells Living in Mothers Brains - The link between a mother and child is profound, and new research suggests a physical connection even deeper than anyone thought. The profound psychological and physical bonds shared by the mother and her child begin during gestation when the mother is everything for the developing fetus, supplying warmth and sustenance, while her heartbeat provides a soothing constant rhythm. From Popper
Scientists snap a picture of DNA's double helix - Though they've never actually seen it with their own eyes, scientists know that DNA's structure is composed of a spiraling corkscrew. They know this thanks to molecular theory and and an old-time technique called X-ray crystallography, where patterns of dots are converted into an overarching image using mathematics. But now, for the first time ever, scientists have actually snapped a real image of DNA using an electron microscope — spiraling corkscrew and all. From cw
Stellarium - Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go. From Nony
In Space, Flames Behave in Ways Nobody Thought Possible | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine - Recent tests aboard the International Space Station have shown that fire in space can be less predictable and potentially more lethal than it is on Earth. “There have been experiments,” says NASA aerospace engineer Dan Dietrich, “where we observed fires that we didn’t think could exist, but did.” From Nony
Animals Are Moral Creatures, Scientist Argues - Does Mr. Whiskers really love you or is he just angling for treats?
Until recently, scientists would have said your cat was snuggling up to you only as a means to get tasty treats. But many animals have a moral compass, and feel emotions such as love, grief, outrage and empathy, a new book argues. From Popper
30,000-year-old DNA preserved in poo a window into the past - Murdoch University DNA scientists have used 30,000-year-old faecal matter known as middens to ascertain which plants and animals existed at that time in the hot, arid Pilbara region of North Western Australia. To date, this is the oldest environmental sample from which DNA has been obtained in Australia. It had previously been considered unrealistic to extract DNA from hot, arid zone samples due to the extreme heat.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-11-year-old-dna-poo-window.html#jCp From Popper
Vegetative man tells doctors Im not in pain via MRI communication - More than 12 years after a car accident left him in a vegetative state, a Canadian man has begun communicating with doctors who are monitoring his brain activity through Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans. From Popper
Scientists Use Stem Cells To Create Eggs In Mice - Scientists in Japan report they have created eggs from stem cells in a mammal for the first time. And the researchers went on to breed healthy offspring from the eggs they created. While the experiments involved mice, the work is being met with excitement and questions about doing the same thing for humans someday. From Popper
Straight Up Difficult - "I grew up wanting to fly," says Graham Bowen-Davies. "I guess I just settled for being an engineer."He's standing on an indoor track in southern Maryland, watching a giant helicopter take flight. At the end of each of its four spindly arms — arms he helped design and build — a giant rotor churns the air. In the cockpit sits the engine: a 0.7-horsepower, 135-pound graduate student named Kyle Gluesenkamp.Gluesenkamp is pedaling like crazy to keep the rotors spinning and the craft aloft.Bowen-Davies and dozens of his fellow students from the University of Maryland are chasing one of aviation's last milestones: the Sikorsky Prize. The American Helicopter Society (AHS) has promised $250,000 to the team that can build a human-powered helicopter. All it has to do is hover for a minute, reach a height of 3 meters (about 10 feet), and stay in a 10-meter box. From Nony
Global warming stopped 16 years ago - This means that the pause in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996
Think the tree-huggers will stop their whining? Nah. They don't need facts to justify their hysteria.
From Roddy
Deep Sea Creatures | Longest Living Sea Creatures - You'd expect that certain sea animals have a longer lifespan than the ones on earth, including the humans, but the fact that a certain sea creature has discovered the secret of immortality is bound to take anyone by surprise. From Nony
Oh Yeah, Developmental Biology! - A blog about all things Developmental Biology. Please feel free to ask questions and I will attempt to answer them to the best of my ability. From Nony
New laser will be powerful enough to rip apart space itself - The European Commission has approved the construction of three gigantic new research lasers, with the option for a fourth that would, for an instant, be several hundred times more powerful than the entirety of the power generated by our civilization. The hope is that this will be enough energy to actually conjure virtual particles out of nothingness. From cw
Enslaved worker ants fight back through acts of sabotage - It would appear that ants that are kept as slaves by more powerful species aren't as helpless as they might appear. New research from Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany shows that enslaved ants conduct their own form of civil disobedience, by neglecting and killing the offspring of their oppressors. And by doing so, the ants may be preventing their comrades outside the nest from being enslaved themselves. From Nony
How the tabby cat got its stripes | MNN - Mother Nature Network - A new study finds the same gene that is responsible for the cheetah's color patterns causes a tabby's stripes. Mutations in this newly identified gene transform a tabby's typical striped pattern into a less familiar "blotched" look. In cheetahs, similar mutations smear spots into thick stripes. From Nony
If the Earth Stood Still - What Would Happen if the Earth Stopped Spinning? - The following is not a futuristic scenario. It is not science fiction. It is a demonstration of the capabilities of GIS to model the results of an extremely unlikely, yet intellectually fascinating query: What would happen if the earth stopped spinning? ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations and generate maps that visualize these result From Nony
NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive - "Perhaps a Star Trek experience within our lifetime is not such a remote possibility." These are the words of Dr. Harold "Sonny" White, the Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate. Dr. White and his colleagues don't just believe a real life warp drive is theoretically possible; they've already started the work to create one.Yes. A real warp drive, Scotty. From Nony
Acoustic levitation - YouTube - Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a way to use sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing different pharmaceuticals. While the connection between levitation and drug development may not be immediately apparent, a special relationship emerges at the molecular level.
From X Isle
Most of what you read was wrong: how press releases rewrote scientific history | Ars Technica - This week, the ENCODE project released the results of its latest attempt to catalog all the activities associated with the human genome. Although we've had the sequence of bases that comprise the genome for over a decade, there were still many questions about what a lot of those bases do when inside a cell. ENCODE is a large consortium of labs dedicated to helping sort that out by identifying everything they can about the genome: what proteins stick to it and where, which pieces interact, what bases pick up chemical modifications, and so on. What the studies can't generally do, however, is figure out the biological consequences of these activities, which will require additional work. From Nony
35 years later, Voyager 1 is heading for the stars - Thirty-five years after leaving Earth, Voyager 1 is reaching for the stars.Sooner or later, the workhorse spacecraft will bid adieu to the solar system and enter a new realm of space — the first time a manmade object will have escaped to the other side.Perhaps no one on Earth will relish the moment more than 76-year-old Ed Stone, who has toiled on the project from the start. From Nony
Have 3 photons broken theoretical physics? - Seven billion years ago, three cosmic travelers set out together on an epic journey to Earth. They just arrived, and the trio has a surprising tale to tell about the structure of the universe. Their story could overturn decades of work by theoretical physicists.
From Nony
Ancient text gives clue to mysterious radiation spike : Nature News & Comment - An eerie "red crucifix" seen in Britain's evening sky in ad 774 may be a previously unrecognized supernova explosion — and could explain a mysterious spike in carbon-14 levels in that year's growth rings in Japanese cedar trees. The link is suggested today in a Nature Correspondence by a US undergraduate student with a broad interdisciplinary background and a curious mind From Nony
Why are people overconfident so often? - Our studies found that overconfidence helped people attain social status. People who believed they were better than others, even when they weren’t, were given a higher place in the social ladder. And the motive to attain higher social status thus spurred overconfidence,” says Anderson, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication II at the Haas School. From Nony
Scientists decode brain waves to eavesdrop on what we hear - These scientists have succeeded in decoding electrical activity in the brains temporal lobe the seat of the auditory system as a person listens to normal conversation. Based on this correlation between sound and brain activity, they then were able to predict the words the person had heard solely from the temporal lobe activity. From Popper
Think Scent is Powerful for You? Just Remember That Ant - You think scent is powerful for humans - all those evocative, time-warping Proustian Rushes and such?
Well, we humans ain't got nothing on those eternally fascinating little creatures, ants. For ants, the power of scent is so strong it overrides the proof provided by other senses such as sight and touch. At least when it comes to death. From Popper
Pop music too loud and all sounds the same: official | Reuters - Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010. From Nony
ScholAR Traffic Light Reaction Demonstration - YouTube - A solution of glucose, sodium hydroxide, and indigo carmine, when shaken, will change from yellow to red to green. Left to sit, it will revert to red again, then yellow, and the process can be repeated.
The indigo carmine is green when oxidized, yellow when reduced, and red in the intermediate semiquinone state
From X Isle
Physicists Carve a Niche in Time - Six years ago, physicists hid an object behind an invisibility cloak for the first time. Now they're cloaking actual events. From cw
Academics: Muslim terrorists simply misunderstood - A taxpayer-funded study released this week declares that Muslim terrorists are generally misunderstood, don’t want to force their religion on the world and only kill people to protect themselves from victimization by enemies of Islam.A 14-page document, titled, “How Islamist Extremists Quote the Quran,” explains the study’s analysis of 2,000 instances of propaganda from al-Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups from 1998 to 2011:
Einstein's theory is proved - and it is bad news if you own a penthouse - The world's most accurate clock has neatly shown how right Albert Einstein was 100 years ago, when he proposed that time is a relative concept and the higher you live above sea level the faster you should age. From Nony
Earliest Americans Arrived in 3 Waves, Not 1, DNA Study Finds - NYTimes.com - North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada. From X Isle
Giant sunspot group 1520 turning toward Earth | Space | EarthSky - Last Friday (July 6, 2012), the sunspot group AR1515 released an X-flare whose effects should be arriving in Earth’s vicinity today and tomorrow (July 9 and 10). More about those effects below. Sunspot 1515 is now turning away from Earth, as the sun rotates on its axis, but another large active sunspot region is now turning our way. AR1520 emerged several days ago over the sun’s southeastern edge. It now spans more than 127,000 kiometers (10 Earth diameters). EarthSky Facebook friend VegaStar Carpentier caught this beautiful photo of AR1520 at sunset on July 7, in Paris. From X Isle
FlareAware, learn how solar-weather, solar-flares and CME (Coronal-Mass-Ejections) can affect your life - Solar storms have been on the rise in recent years and many have heard that this is due to the sun's reaching its solar max peak in solar activity, but did you know that solar storms can affect your life in a big way and there are things you can do to protect yourself? First and foremost though, you must learn a few important facts in order to understand the nature of solar storms and how they can affect your life. From X Isle
Terrifying Report Says Earth May Be Reaching A 'Tipping Point' | Jillian Rayfield | Politics News | Rolling Stone - According to a new report, climate change, population growth, and the destruction of natural ecosystems could push the Earth towards a "state shift" in the biosphere, a global "tipping point" that might result in mass extinction, among other things. "It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point," said Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the UC Berkeley, and the lead author of the review paper. "The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations."
From X Isle
47 year old television signals bouncing back to Earth - While searching deep space for extra-terrestrial signals, scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have stumbled across signals broadcast from Earth nearly half a century ago. From Nony
First pictures of child who suffered 80% burns recovering after revolutionary 'grown skin' grafts | Mail Online - These are the first pictures of the three-year-old South African girl who suffered burns to 80 per cent recovering after being given a new layer of 'cloned' skin.Isabella 'Pippie' Kruger defied medics after she was seriously injured on New Year's Eve when a container of fire lighting fluid exploded at her home in Johannesburg during a barbeque.She suffered 80 per cent burns to her body and doctors feared she may not have survived. From Nony
11 Qualities That Make You Cool (According to Science) - Want the popular crew to invite you to sit at their lunch table? (You know... at the office?) Here's the list of things to work on.It's always entertaining to see academia try to break down concepts like coolness into something quantitative. And that's exactly what a team of psychologists from New York, British Columbia and the Netherlands tried to do. They recently published a study where they tried to determine the exact factors that go into being perceived as cool. From Nony
The gateway drug is alcohol, not marijuana - A study published in 2010 in the medical journal Lancet ranked alcohol as the most harmful drug of all, above heroin, crack, meth, cocaine and tobacco. Even more striking: The Lancet study found that harms to others near the user were more than double those of the second most harmful drug, heroin. From Roddy
CERN Discovers A New Particle, Likely The Higgs Boson : The Two-Way : NPR - Two teams of scientists using the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, announced in Geneva this morning that they have detected a new subatomic particle that bears the hallmarks of the elusive and highly sought after Higgs boson. In layman's terms, the Higgs is referred to as the "God Particle" because the field it produces gives atoms its mass. Were it not for the Higgs, the world we know would be completely different — there would be no chemistry, no architecture, no us. It would be a massless mess of aimless particles running around at light speed. From X Isle
Is The Hunt For The 'God Particle' Finally Over? : NPR - Before we get to the fireworks on the Fourth of July, we might see some pyrotechnics from a giant physics experiment near Geneva, Switzerland.Scientists there are planning to gather that morning to hear the latest about the decades-long search for a subatomic particle that could help explain why objects in our universe actually weigh anything.The buzz is that they're closing in on the elusive Higgs particle. That would be a major milestone in the quest to understand the most basic nature of the universe. From X Isle
God particle found, say scientists - Scientists are expected to announce this week that the elusive Higgs boson 'God particle' has been found. Five leading theoretical physicists, including UK physicist Peter Higgs, have been invited to the event on Wednesday, sparking speculation that the particle has been discovered. From Nony
'Leap second' lengthens weekend | Science | guardian.co.uk - The world is about to get a well-earned long weekend but don't make big plans because it will only last an extra second. A so-called "leap second" will be added to the world's atomic clocks as they undergo a rare adjustment to keep them in step with the slowing rotation of the Earth. From X Isle
BBC Nature - Bone-eating 'zombie' worms drill with acid - Deep sea worms use acid to eat the bones of seabed skeletons, according to US scientists.The so-called "zombie worms" of the Osedax family are known to bore into bones and remove nutrients.Fresh analysis of the root-like tissues the worms use to attach to bones has identified acid-secreting enzymes. From X Isle
The Humans With Super Human Vision - An unknown number of women may perceive millions of colors invisible to the rest of us. One British scientist is trying to track them down and understand their extraordinary power of sight. From Nony
Scientists To Bring Dead Mammoth Back To Life - As crazy as it sounds but yes some ambitious scientists are trying to bring extinct Mammoths back to life. Scientists have successfully acquired the DNA from tissue sample of extinct Mammoth remains, preserved in Russia. Now they are thinking to create a new embryo which they will implant in elephants uterus.
From Popper
Endangered Languages Project - The Endangered Languages Project, is an online resource to record, access, and share samples of and research on endangered languages, as well as to share advice and best practices for those working to document or strengthen languages under threat. From Nony
Gestapo EPA Wants Fuel Used That Doesn't Exist - "As ludicrous as that sounds, it's fact," says Charles Drevna, who represents refiners. "If it weren't so frustrating and infuriating, it would be comical."
"None, not one drop of cellulosic ethanol has been produced commercially. It's a phantom fuel," says Pyle. "It doesn't exist in the market place." From Arizona
Awesome HD Slinky Slow-Mo - YouTube - If you hold a Slinky by one end and drop it, the bottom end doesn't actually move until the top end catches up with it. Why is that? Here's an explanation.
From X Isle
The Known Universe by AMNH - YouTube - The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
From X Isle
The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria - Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, the problem is we dont know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. From Roddy
How Easter Island's statues walked - Cosmic Log - Did Easter Island's famous statues rock, or roll? After doing a little rocking out themselves, researchers say they're sure the natives raised the monumental figures upright, and then rocked them back and forth to "walk" them to their positions. From Nony
Sorry Global Warming Alarmists, The Earth Is Cooling - Check out the 20th century temperature record, and you will find that its up and down pattern does not follow the industrial revolutions upward march of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the supposed central culprit for man caused global warming (and has been much, much higher in the past). It follows instead the up and down pattern of naturally caused climate cycles. From Roddy
Candle flames contain millions of tiny diamonds - Professor Wuzong Zhou, Professor of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews has discovered tiny diamond particles exist in candle flames.His research has made a scientific leap towards solving a mystery which has befuddled people for thousands of years.Since the first candle was invented in ancient China more than 2,000 years ago, many have longed to know what hidden secrets its flames contained.Dr Zhou’s investigation revealed around 1.5 million diamond nanoparticles are created every second in a candle flame as it burns. From X Isle
Computer Chronology: 50-Year Micro List, 1938-1988 - This is a simple and basic outline for a chronological list of computers constructed from 1938 (with the Konrad Zue "Z1" in Germany) through the Alliant series in 1988. From Nony
Science hopes to change events that have already occurred - Such are the perils of retrocausality, the idea that the present can affect the past, and the future can affect the present. Strange as it sounds, retrocausality is perfectly permissible within the known laws of nature. It has been debated for decades, mostly in the realm of philosophy and quantum physics. Trouble is, nobody has done the experiment to show it happens in the real world, so the door remains wide open for a demonstration.It might even happen soon. Researchers are on the verge of experiments that will finally hold retrocausality's feet to the fire by attempting to send a signal to the past. From cw
It's Official: Neutrinos Can't Beat Speed of Light | Wired Science | Wired.com - Physicists at the CERN laboratory have put the final nail in the coffin for the idea that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light. They also confirmed that the groundbreaking results from 2011 can be blamed on faulty equipment. From X Isle
The Stone Age of austerity was unequal as well - Being wealthy because your father was or poor because you come from a poor family is nothing new and dates back to Neolithic times, according to West researchers.
Chancellor George Osbornes claim that were all in it together has attracted quite some mocking, but if any group of humans would have shared the pain equally one may have thought it was the cavemen.
But scientists from Bristol University are among a team which has discovered that the haves of Neolithic society were rich because they had inherited it from their parents, while those brought up in poverty remained have-nots. From Nony
PLoS ONE: The Roles of Featural and Configural Face Processing in Snap Judgments of Sexual Orientation - Research has shown that people are able to judge sexual orientation from faces with above-chance accuracy, but little is known about how these judgments are formed. Here, we investigated the importance of well-established face processing mechanisms in such judgments: featural processing (e.g., an eye) and configural processing (e.g., spatial distance between eyes). From Nony
Japanese MH-2 Shoulder Robot Wants To Be Your Friend, Literally - Nobody likes being alone, and Japanese researchers from Yamagata University are developing a robot to make sure you’ll never have to be alone again: the MH-2 wearable miniature humanoid lives on your shoulder and can be remotely inhabited by your friends from anywhere in the world. From Nony
NC Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal - There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.That is, the meter or so of sea level rise predicted for the NC Coastal Resources Commission by a state-appointed board of scientists is extremely inconvenient for counties along the coast. So the NC-20 types have decided that we can escape sea level rise – in North Carolina, anyhow – by making it against the law. From Nony
German teen Shouryya Ray solves 300-year-old mathematical riddle posed by Sir Isaac Newton | adelaidenow - A GERMAN 16-year-old has become the first person to solve a mathematical problem posed by Sir Isaac Newton more than 300 years ago.Shouryya Ray worked out how to calculate exactly the path of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance, The (London) Sunday Times reported.The Indian-born teen said he solved the problem that had stumped mathematicians for centuries while working on a school project. From Nony
Is Earth Alive? Scientists Seek Sulfur For An Answer - Researchers at the University of Maryland have discovered a way to identify and track sulfuric compounds in Earth’s marine environment, opening a path to either refute or support a decades-old hypothesis that our planet can be compared to a singular, self-regulating, living organism — a.k.a. the Gaia theory. From Nony
Hubble's Hidden Treasures 2012 | ESA/Hubble - Searching Hubble’s archive for hidden treasures is a lot of fun, and it’s pretty straightforward, even if you don’t have advanced knowledge. So we’re inviting you to come and help us find iconic Hubble images that have never before been shown to the public. From Nony
Through a glass, clearly - MIT News Office - One of the most instantly recognizable features of glass is the way it reflects light. But a new way of creating surface textures on glass, developed by researchers at MIT, virtually eliminates reflections, producing glass that is almost unrecognizable because of its absence of glare — and whose surface causes water droplets to bounce right off, like tiny rubber balls. From cw
Apollo and Gemini Computing Systems - Here you'll find a collection of all the AGC, AGS, LVDC, and Gemini spacecraft computer documentation and software that I've managed to find whilst working on Virtual AGC. Every document on this page is archived here at Virtual AGC, regardless of whether it originated here or not. In the early days I used to include only material I uncovered by my own efforts, but there have increasingly been contributions by readers, including some of the original AGC developers. And there's material here that has been duplicated from other Apollo-centric websites for your convenience; see the FAQ page for a list of the fine Apollo and Gemini websites I raided. Now, there is some value-added in this process, since I add searchable text to those PDFs which are image-only, as well as adding metadata and bookmark panes where they don't exist. My intention is to eventually provide one-stop-shopping for all of your Apollo and Gemini computing-system documentation needs. Note however, that I choose to duplicate only scanned or photographic images of the original documents. In other words, I provide something as close to the "real thing" as I can. On some sites, notably the Apollo Flight Journal and Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, great pains have been taken to produce HTML forms of the documents. I do not duplicate those improved reformulations here, because that's original work for which I think credit is due; so you will have to visit those sites to use those improved versions. From Nony
New particle discovered at CERN - In the course of proton collisions in the LHC at CERN, physicists Claude Amsler, Vincenzo Chiochia and Ernest Aguiló from the University of Zurich's Physics Institute managed to detect a baryon with one light and two heavy quarks. The particle Xi_b^* comprises one "up," one "strange" and one "bottom" quark (usb), is electrically neutral and has a spin of 3/2 (1.5). Its mass is comparable to that of a lithium atom. The new discovery means that two of the three baryons predicted in the usb composition by theory have now been observed. From cw
Asymmetric Patterns from Symmetric Forces - A spherically symmetric interaction force between particles can cause them to self-assemble into a surprisingly asymmetric (chiral) pattern in two dimensions, according to simulations. From Guest_2012
The Amazing Trajectories of Life-Bearing Meteorites from Earth - About 65 million years ago, the Earth was struck by an asteroid some 10 km in diameter with a mass of well over a trillion tons. We now know the immediate impact of this event—megatsunamis, global wildfires ignited by giant clouds of superheated ash, and, of course, the mass extinction of land-based life on Earth.But in recent years, astrobiologists have begun to study a less well known consequence: the ejection of billions of tons of life-bearing rocks and water into space. By some estimates, the impact could have ejected as much mass as the asteroid itself. The question that fascinates them is what happened to all this stuff. From cw
Carbon nanotubes: The weird world of 'remote Joule heating' - A team of University of Maryland scientists have discovered that when electric current is run through carbon nanotubes, objects nearby heat up while the nanotubes themselves stay cool, like a toaster that burns bread without getting hot. Understanding this completely unexpected new phenomenon could lead to new ways of building computer processors that can run at higher speeds without overheating. From cw
Pythagorean tiling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - In geometry, the Pythagorean tiling or two squares tessellation is a tessellation of the plane by squares of two different sizes, in which each square touches four squares of the other size on its four sides. A tiling of this type may be formed by squares of any two different sizes.[2] It also is commonly used as a pattern for floor tiles; in this context it is also known as a hopscotch pattern. From X Isle
Plastic-eating fungi found in Amazon may solve landfill problems - Just when you thought that plastic waste was never going to break down in the environment, along comes Mother Nature to solve the problem.The Amazon contains more species of flora and fauna than virtually anywhere else on earth. From X Isle
CERN - 8 TeV Collision Most Powerful in Human History - Just days after restarting from a winter shutdown, researchers at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), report that stable beams of protons were smashed at four observation positions, with a combined energy of 8 trillion electron volts (TeV), earning a new world record, blowing away the previous record of 7 TeV -- a record set by the LHC in 2010. From X Isle
The One-Ton Turkey: Further Adventures in Slow-Cooked Science | The Loom | Discover Magazine - Feathers are one of the marvels of animal evolution–a combination of extreme beauty and extreme usefulness–but for over a century their fossil record stopped with the 145-million-year-old Archaeopteryx. It was a mix of bird anatomy such as wings and older vestiges of a reptilian origins, such as teeth and a long, bony tail. But in the past 20 years, paleontologists have found a series of spectacular fossils of dinosaurs with traces of feathers or feather-like structures on their skin. And most of them have turned up in China. So it only made sense for me to head for Beijing–and in particular, to the Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. There, a young paleontologist named Xu Xing and his colleagues have built up the most impressive collection of feathered dinosaur fossils on Earth. From X Isle
Milky Way's Rotation --It's Effect on Our Local Space Time - In 2011, A University of Warwick physicist produced a galaxy sized solution which explains one of the outstanding puzzles of particle physics, while leaving the door open to the related conundrum of why different amounts of matter and antimatter seem to have survived the birth of our Universe.Physicists would like a neat universe where the laws of physics are so universal that every particle and its antiparticle behave in the same way. However in recent years experimental observations of particles known as Kaons and B Mesons have revealed significant differences in how their matter and anti matter versions decay. From cw
Naked mole rats: Can they help us cure cancer? - This time she infected cells from a naked mole rat with a virus designed to corrupt their nuclei with the cancer-causing genes SV40 TAg and Ras. Then she slipped those cells into a live mouse, under the skin behind its ear. If you do the same using infected material from a mouse or a rat, or even a cow or a human, the transplant quickly grows into a deadly tumor, invading nearby fat and muscle tissue. But when Buffenstein and her colleagues used cells from a naked mole-rat, nothing happened. From cw
RNA interference (RNAi) - RNA interference (RNAi) is an important process, used by many different organisms to regulate the activity of genes. This animation explains how RNAi works and introduces the two main players: small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs). We take you on an audio-visual journey, diving into a cell to show how genes are transcribed to make messenger RNA (mRNA) and how RNAi can silence specific mRNAs to stop them from making proteins. The animation is based on the latest research, to give you an up-to-date view. From Guest_2012
Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Invests $300 Million Into Mapping the Brain - Paul Allens commitment to tackling big questions in neuroscience grows larger still. The Microsoft co-founder has already contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to brain science, much of it to the establishment of the Allen Brain Institute, a nonprofit charged with building a massive database of information about the brain. Now, seemingly from a frustration with the slow pace of discovery elsewhere in the field, Allen has committed another $300 million over the next decade to expanding his institute to include its own lab for neuroscience investigation. From Guest_2012
Bonobo Chat: An app for talking with apes by Ken Schweller - The bonobos at Bonobo Hope Great Ape Trust Sanctuary in Des Moines IA use Lexigram symbols to communicate with people. I have already built large sliding touchscreen computer keyboards for them to use From Nony
Perpetual Ocean [1080p] - YouTube - This visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007. The visualization does not include a narration or annotations; the goal was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.
This visualization was produced using NASA/JPL's computational model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II or ECCO2.. ECCO2 is high resolution model of the global ocean and sea-ice. ECCO2 attempts to model the oceans and sea ice to increasingly accurate resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow-current systems which transport heat and carbon in the oceans.The ECCO2 model simulates ocean flows at all depths, but only surface flows are used in this visualization. The dark patterns under the ocean represent the undersea bathymetry. Topographic land exaggeration is 20x and bathymetric exaggeration is 40x.
From X Isle
Researchers solve Darwin's copycat evolution puzzle - It is a clever trick if you can pull it off - mimic another, more dangerous animal and so avoid being eaten.Many insects try it, but it has been a long standing puzzle why some of the worst mimics in Nature can still seem to escape becoming a meal. From Nony
Scientists Create First Self-Replicating Synthetic Life - Man-made DNA has booted up a cell for the first time.In a feat that is the culmination of two and a half years of tests and adjustments, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute inserted artificial genetic material — chemically printed, synthesized and assembled — into cells that were then able to grow naturally. From cw
Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance - Science assessments indicate that human activities are moving several of Earth's sub-systems outside the range of natural variability typical for the previous 500,000 years (1, 2). Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change (3). This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship. From X Isle
BBC News - Vibrating tattoo alerts patent filed by Nokia in US - Vibrating magnetic tattoos may one day be used to alert mobile phone users to phone calls and text messages if Nokia follows up a patent application.The Finnish company has described the idea in a filing to the US Patent and Trademark Office.It describes tattooing, stamping or spraying "ferromagnetic" material onto a user's skin and then pairing it with a mobile device. From Nony
Equinox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - UT date and time of equinox: March 20, 2012, 5:14
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day have approximately equal length.At an equinox, the Sun is at one of two opposite points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator (i.e. declination 0) and ecliptic intersect. These points of intersection are called equinoctial points: classically, the vernal point and the autumnal point. By extension, the term equinox may denote an equinoctial point.An equinox happens each year at two specific moments in time (rather than two whole days), when there is a location (the subsolar point) on the Earth's equator, where the center of the Sun can be observed to be vertically overhead, occurring around March 20 and September 22 each year.Although the word equinox is often understood to mean "equal [day and] night", this is not strictly true. For most locations on earth, there are two distinct identifiable days per year when the length of day and night are closest to being equal; those days are referred to as the "equiluxes" to distinguish them from the equinoxes. Equinoxes are points in time, but equiluxes are days. By convention, equiluxes are the days where sunrise and sunset are closest to being exactly 12 hours apart.[2] From X Isle
Backs To The Future: Aymara Language And Gesture Point To Mirror-Image View Of Time - Tell an old Aymara speaker to "face the past!" and you just might get a blank stare in return because he or she already does
New analysis of the language and gesture of South America's indigenous Aymara people indicates a reverse concept of time.Contrary to what had been thought a cognitive universal among humans – a spatial metaphor for chronology, based partly on our bodies' orientation and locomotion, that places the future ahead of oneself and the past behind – the Amerindian group locates this imaginary abstraction the other way around: with the past ahead and the future behind. From X Isle
Near-miss asteroid will return next year, even closer - When it whizzes past Earth in 2013, a newly discovered asteroid is going to miss our planet -- but not by much. The 50-meter space rock is expected to come closer than many satellites, highlighting the growing need to keep watch on hazards from above. From Nony
Wild Animal Sex - The Australian splendid fairy-wren has a peculiar way of passing on its genetic material. It starts off in a manner that might seem familiar to anyone who’s seen a 1950s family sitcom: Boy meets girl, boy partners with girl for life, boy and girl raise family together. But that’s where the similarities end. After the baby wrens grow up, they don’t pair up with other wrens right away; instead, they help their parents raise the next brood. Except that next brood is likely not the true genetic offspring of the “father” of this family. From Nony
World News - Honeybee die-offs linked to insecticide, study says - A newly published study draws a stronger link between mass die-offs of honeybees and an insecticide widely used on corn.The study sheds more light on the worrisome phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Bees play a critical role in the pollination of crops, and thus a threat to bee colonies can potentially affect entire ecosystems. From Nony
Who Invented the Wheel? | Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel - Wheels are the archetype of a primitive, caveman-level technology. But in fact, they're so ingenious that it took until 3500 B.C. for someone to invent them. By that time — it was the Bronze Age — humans were already casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and even designing complex musical instruments such as harps. From Nony
File:Gabon Geology Oklo.svg - Wikimedia Commons - Two billion years ago, in what is now Gabon in West Africa, groundwater seeped through sandstone to inundate a layer of uranium ore, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. When the deposit heated up, the water boiled away, slowing the reaction; when it cooled, the water returned and the cycle began again.
The result was a natural, self-sustaining nuclear reactor that generated 100 kilowatts of power for several hundred thousand years.
French physicist Francis Perrin discovered the phenomenon at Oklo in 1972. As far as we know, we only have evidence of natural reactors forming and operating at the one site in Gabon, said Jay Cullen of the University of Victoria, but that demonstrates that its possible, and our calculations suggest it was much more probable earlier in Earths history. From X Isle
New detector weighs in: neutrinos don't exceed light speed - We now have yet another indication that neutrinos cannot travel faster than the speed of light after all, provided by a neighbor of the OPERA detector that set off the fuss in the first place. OPERA's detector sits deep underground at Gran Sasso in Italy, where it receives neutrinos from a beam generated at CERN, 730km away on the French-Swiss border. Because the neutrino beam spreads out over the intervening distance, it's possible to run multiple detectors at the same site, all listening in on the same beam. The team running one of Gran Sasso's other detectors (called ICARUS) has now performed time-of-flight measurements on neutrinos and determined that they don't seem to be moving faster than light. From cw
Mass Effect Solves The Fermi Paradox? - Right now, all across the planet, millions of people are engaged in a struggle with enormous implications for the very nature of life itself. Making sophisticated tactical decisions and wrestling with chilling and complex moral puzzles, they are quite literally deciding the fate of our existence. From Popper
World News - 100 human corpses found in basement of German university - To the people who found the room, it looked like a scene from a horror film. Last month, staff at the University of Cologne in Germany discovered a basement room in the institute of anatomy filled with more than 100 human corpses and plastic buckets labeled, “noses,” “newborns” and “shark head,” the Guardian reported. It appeared they had been abandoned for a decade or longer. From Nony
Ancient Armored Fish Downs Flying Reptile | Fossilized Pterosaur & Ancient Predators | LiveScience - An ancient armored fish was fossilized in the act of attacking and drowning a pterosaur in a toxic Jurassic lake, revealing that the winged reptiles were victims of a wide variety of carnivores, scientists find.Pterosaurs dominated the skies during the Age of Dinosaurs. Still, flight did not always ensure them safety — researchers have recently discovered that Velociraptor dined on the flying reptiles.Now scientists have uncovered five examples of the long-tailed pterosaur Rhamphorhychus apparently within the jaws of the ancient armored predatory fish Aspidorhynchus. The fossils in question, unearthed in Bavaria in southern Germany, are about 120 million years old. From X Isle
Stone Age cartoons | ScienceNordic - More than 1,000 rock carvings abound on Kanozero Island in Northern Russia. One of them beats The Flintstones by several millennia. Usually, featured objects are displayed in museums. But sometimes there are relics that can't be put on exhibition - as is the case with the petroglyphs which are hidden deep in the Russian forests.
It was known that there were rock carvings on some islands in Lake Kanozero, and Jan Magne Gjerde, project manager at the Troms University Museum, Norway, went out there to document them as part of his doctoral work. When he and his colleagues finished, the number of known petroglyphs had increased from 200 to over 1,000. From X Isle
Higgs Boson May Be Indicated in New Data - The NY Times is reporting that a data bump "smells like the Higgs boson". The odor is emanating not from CERN in Europe but from Fermilab near Chicago, where their Tevatron still flings some pretty fast particles.
"Based on the current Tevatron data and results compiled through December 2011 by other experiments, this is the strongest hint of the existence of a Higgs boson," said the report, which will be presented on Wednesday by Wade Fisher of Michigan State University to a physics conference in La Thuile, Italy.
None of these results, either singly or collectively, are strong enough for scientists to claim victory. But the recent run of reports has encouraged them to think that the elusive particle, which is the key to mass and diversity in the universe, is within sight, perhaps as soon as this summer. From X Isle
Tube-shaped solar cells could be woven into clothing - Titania semiconducting nanorods grown on the surface of carbon fibers look more like bristles on a tiny hairbrush than a solar cell, but the novel configuration could have several advantages over conventional flat solar cells. For instance, the flexible tube-shaped cells can capture light from all directions and even have the potential to be woven into clothing and paper for novel applications. But at the current stage of development, researchers are trying to find a simple, low-cost method for fabricating high-quality tube-shaped solar cells. From Guest_2012
Tiny fractal trees for solar power - Microscopic "fractal trees" grown from silver could be the basis of a new type of solar cell, say chemists at the University of California, Davis. From Guest_2012
Extraordinary 298-Million-Year-Old Forest Discovered Under Chinese Coal Mine - American and Chinese scientists are flabbergasted after discovering a giant 298-million-year-old forest buried intact under a coal mine near Wuda, in Inner Mongolia, China.They are calling it the Pompeii of the Permian period because, like the ancient Roman city, it was covered and preserved by volcanic ash.Like Pompeii, this swamp forest is so perfectly maintained that scientists know where every plant originally was. This has allowed them to map it and to create the images above. This extraordinary finding "is like Pompeii", according to University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn, who characterized it as "a time capsule." From X Isle
Ocean trench: Take a dive 11,000m down - Icy cold, pitch black and with crushing pressures - the deepest part of the ocean is one of the most hostile places on the planet. Only two explorers have made the epic journey there: 11km (seven miles) down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench. As a new wave of explorers is gearing up to repeat this remarkable dive, take a look at the mysterious world that they will be plunging into. From X Isle
Faster-than-light neutrino result reportedly a mistake caused by loose cable - But now, ScienceInsider is reporting that there was a good reason the measurements and reality weren't lining up: a loose fiber optic cable was causing one of the atomic clocks used to time the neutrinos' flight to produce spurious results. If the report is confirmed (right now, there's only one source), then it provides a simple explanation for the fascinating-yet-difficult-to-accept results. According to the new report, researchers are preparing to gather new data with the clocks properly hooked into computers, which should definitively indicate whether the loose connection was at fault. From cw
Is There a General Motivation Center in the Depths of the Brain? - The researchers suggest that the expectation of a reward is encoded in the ventral striatum, which can then drive either the motor or cognitive part of the striatum, depending on the task, in order to boost performance. "The ventral striatum may commute connections in accordance with the request, i.e. enhance the neuronal activity in the caudate nucleus for a cognitive operation and in the putamen for a physical action" explains Mathias Pessiglione. From Guest_2012
One and done: Single-atom transistor - The smallest transistor ever built - in fact, the smallest transistor that can be built - has been created using a single phosphorous atom by an international team of researchers at the University of New South Wales, Purdue University and the University of Melbourne.
From Guest_2012
Alan Turing's 1950s tiger stripe theory proved - Researchers from King's College London have provided the first experimental evidence confirming a great British mathematician's theory of how biological patterns such as tiger stripes or leopard spots are formed. From Nony
Alan Turing's 1950s tiger stripe theory proved - The findings provide evidence to support a theory first suggested in the 1950s by famous code-breaker and mathematician Alan Turing, whose centenary falls this year. He put forward the idea that regular repeating patterns in biological systems are generated by a pair of morphogens that work together as an 'activator' and 'inhibitor'. From cw
Islands on land could make towns tsunami-proof - Elevated land-based islands could protect people living in low-lying areas from tsunamis – and archipelagos of them could form entire towns From Nony
You might have thought it was all over after the 2005 decision by the US district court of Middle Pennsylvania (pdf), which ruled in the case of the Dover Area schools that teaching intelligent design is unconstitutional. You might have guessed that they wouldn't come back after the 1987 US supreme court decision in Edwards v Aguillard, which deemed the teaching of creationism in Louisiana schools unconstitutional. Or maybe you figured that the opponents of evolution had their Waterloo in the 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial in Tennessee.
They are back. There are six bills aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution before state legislatures this year: two each in New Hampshire and Missouri, one each in Indiana and Oklahoma. And it's only February. From Popper
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? A biologist’s science- fiction hunch is gaining credence and shaping the emerging science of mind- controlling parasites. From Nony
How (not) to communicate new scientific information: a memoir of the famous brindley lecture - In 1983, at the Urodynamics Society meeting in Las Vegas, Professor G.S. Brindley first announced to the world his experiments on self-injection with papaverine to induce a penile erection. This was the first time that an effective medical therapy for erectile dysfunction (ED) was described, and was a historic development in the management of ED. The way in which this information was first reported was completely unique and memorable, and provides an interesting context for the development of therapies for ED. I was present at this extraordinary lecture, and the details are worth sharing. Although this lecture was given more than 20 years ago, the details have remained fresh in my mind, for reasons which will become obvious. From Nony
What If All the Cats in the World Suddenly Died? | How Cats Impact the Ecosystem | LiveScience - Perhaps you're a cat lover. Perhaps you abhor the lazy critters. Either way, when you see a cat lounging on an armchair, napping all day but for the occasional stretch or window gaze, "useless" is by no means the last word that comes to mind. Cats, beloved or otherwise, don't radiate the message that they're indispensable, hard-working members of the household, or the world.But, in fact, they're just playing it cool (as usual). Experts say that if all the world's cats suddenly died, things would quickly go to hell in a handbasket. From Nony
Science behind the big freeze: is climate change bringing the Arctic to Europe? - The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week. From Nony
FYI: Do Animals Dream? - Yes. Many pet owners have seen their sleeping dog or cat twitch or paw the air, as if dreaming of bones to bury or mice to chase. Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the book The Intelligence of Dogs, says that canines go through the same sleep stages as we do, only faster. From Nony
Chemistry research may help free environment of toxins - Sci/Tech - DNA - A researcher is studying materials that use light or darkness to purify air filled with toxins that are harmful to human health and the environment.The research, conducted by Manindu Weerasinghe from Kansas State University, Sri Lanka, could one day lead to filters, humidifiers and other devices that can detoxify air in windowless rooms, manufacturing facilities and other indoor areas. From Nony
Researchers find cancer in ancient Egyptian mummy - A professor from American University in Cairo says discovery of prostate cancer in a 2,200-year-old mummy indicates the disease was caused by genetics, not environment. From Guest_2012
Rats Free Trapped Friends, Hint at Universal Empathy - With a few liberating swipes of their paws, a group of research rats freed trapped labmates and raised anew the possibility that empathy isn’t unique to humans and a few extra-smart animals, but is widespread in the animal world.Though more studies are needed on the rats’ motivations, it’s at least plausible they demonstrated “empathically motivated pro-social behavior.” People would generally call that helpfulness, or even kindness. From Nony
UQ Pitch Drop Experiment - As at 2012, some 82 years later the experiment is still running. Professor Parnell has long since departed this mortal coil but his experiment remains sitting proudly in the foyer display cabinet of the building which bears his name alongside the Ig Nobel Prize the experiment received in 2005 for being a prime example of the values “first make them laugh, then make them think” for which the award is bestowed annually. From Nony
Permafrost bacteria may slow down ageing - A hardy type of bacteria recently discovered in the permafrost of Siberia could help slow down the aging process, Russian scientists claimed on Tuesday. From cw
Claudia Mitchell Operates a Bionic Arm with her Brain at RIC (no sound) - Claudia Mitchell, 28, of Arkansas, demonstrates advanced, multi-degree control of the DEKA Research arm at The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Mitchell, who lost her arm in a motorcycle accident in 2004, underwent targeted muscle reinnervation in 2005. Video courtesy of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and DEKA Research. Learn more at www.ric.org/bionic.Category:Science From Nony
System squeezes 40% more petrochemicals from wood - Chemical engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, using a catalytic fast pyrolysis process that transforms renewable non-food biomass into petrochemicals, have developed a new catalyst that boosts the yield for five key “building blocks of the chemical industry” by 40 percent compared to previous methods. This sustainable production process, which holds the promise of being competitive and compatible with the current petroleum refinery infrastructure, has been tested and proven in a laboratory reactor, using wood as the feedstock, the research team says. From Nony
The aging brain - Aging is not a mild form of dementia, says cellular neurobiologist John Morrison, who specializes in aging. Until recently, many scientists thought brain cells died as we aged, shrinking our brains and shedding bits of information that were gone forever. Newer findings indicate that cells in disease-free brains stay put; its the connections between them that break. With this new perspective has come an explosion of research into how we can keep those connections, and our brain function, intact for longer. From Guest_2012
Natural-born painkiller found in human saliva - Saliva from humans has yielded a natural painkiller up to six times more powerful than morphine, researchers say.The substance, dubbed opiorphin, may spawn a new generation of natural painkillers that relieve pain as well as morphine but without the addictive and psychological side effects of the traditional drug. From cw
Dengue-resistance Spreads in Mosquitoes - Researchers engineer a bacterium that can arm the majority of an insect population with dengue resistance, and stop the viruss spread to humans. From Guest_2012
New Material Can Scrub Carbon Dioxide Right Out of the Air at Unprecedented Rates - Reporting their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the team (which includes a Nobel laureate in chemistry) describes a new solid material based on polyethylenimine that can be used to capture carbon dioxide at the source--be that an industrial smokestack or a car's exhaust pipe--under real-world conditions where the air contains moisture. From cw
New Material Can Scrub Carbon Dioxide Right Out of the Air at U - If cleaning carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was easy, we'd already be doing it. But carbon capture has proven to be a tough technology to feasibly roll out on a grand scale, and that means all the things we do that produce carbon dioxide emissions - which seems to be just about everything these days - are still roughly as bad for the planet as they were several years ago. That's a problem in a warming world, and one that a team of researchers may have just found a solution for via an inexpensive polymeric material. From Nony
The Institute for Creation Research - For over four decades, the Institute for Creation Research has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.
Bible's accuracy? WTF doesn't the bible say the world is flat? From Nony
Higgs result means elegant universe is back in vogue - AFTER a short spell on the rocks, a mathematically elegant view of the universe is back in vogue. Recent hints of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider help explain why we have not seen evidence for the beautiful theory of supersymmetry yet - and point to fresh ways to focus the search. From Guest_2012
Americans more susceptible to online scams than believed, study finds - People who normally ignore all the other scams involving purported free software or naked celebrity photos clicked that fake news link and even completed a captcha on a second site, which reposted the scam to their own Facebook stream. That probably says more about how fanatical people are about Apple products than anything else. But it did raise the question--what does it take to lure someone to click on something that seems fishy? From Nony
Monkeys feel the love on oxytocin - Duke University researchers evaluating the effectiveness of oxytocin - the "love" hormone - in treating autism and schizophrenia say that their experiments with monkeys indicate that oxytocin enhances social interaction and increases trust. From Guest_2012
Scientists Prove That All Religious Books Are Man-Made Nonsense - WASHINGTON DC - USA - Scientists at the Institute of Historical Research have finally released their findings after five years of dedicated research.The scientists headed by Doctor Julius Sanreso, welcomed the research findings and said that it would be in the interests of those who believe in such nonsense as organised religion or creationism to accept the fact that religious books were written by men as a control system. From Nony
FOR KIDS:Fins as early legs - You may not be familiar with the word tetrapod, but you know one when you see it. All tetrapods are vertebrates animals with backbones and most move on land. They also have four limbs or their ancestors did, as in the case of snakes and whales, for example. Reptiles, birds and amphibians all count as tetrapods, as do mammals. Youre a tetrapod. From Guest_2012
Predictions for 2012: Now or Never for the Standard Model of Physics - in the beginning of the beginning, the exploding hot universe was full of elementary particles, but the particles had no mass. The universe also contained force fields, and one of those fields, the Higgs, cooled and condensed into a quantum liquid. The liquid dragged on the other particles, giving them mass. The liquid rippled, and the ripples formed a new particle, called the Higgs.
It reads like a just-so story. But its the basis of the Standard Model of physics. And so far, physicists have found every particle the Standard Model has predicted but one: the Higgs itself. Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have been looking for the Higgs for more than a year, and by next winter they will either have found it or theyll know they wont. Its not obvious, says Andrei Gritsan, a Johns Hopkins University physicist working at the LHC, which scenario would be more interesting.
If they dont find it? Maybe its there but its signature is different. Or maybe the Standard Model has a fatal flaw. And if thats the case, nobody has even a just-so story to account for mass. Its very exciting, Bagger says. Its very scary. From Guest_2012
Mosquitoes Pick Out Human Meals With Help from Microbes - Mosquitoes like some people better than others, and differences in the microbes living on our skin may help explain the bloodsuckers' dining preferences. From Nony
Crowd dynamics: The wisdom of crowds | The Economist - IMAGINE that you are French. You are walking along a busy pavement in Paris and another pedestrian is approaching from the opposite direction. A collision will occur unless you each move out of the other’s way. Which way do you step? From Nony
How to Scientifically Explain Santa Claus to Your Children - The Santa questions start firing at you before your kids turn five. How does he speed around the world in a single night? How does he know what I want? Sure, you could deny Santa's existence, but be ready for some tears. From Nony
A Never Before Seen Optical Trick Creates Ultra-Secure Cash - Imagine a bill covered with microscopic holes that make it glow slightly in the light. It's tech borrowed from a butterfly, and it may soon be foiling counterfeiters around the world. From Nony
Antonio Damasio: The quest to understand consciousness - Every morning we wake up and regain consciousness -- that is a marvelous fact -- but what exactly is it that we regain? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio uses this simple question to give us a glimpse into how our brains create our sense of self. From Guest_9
1,100-year-old Mayan ruins found in North Georgia | The Raw Story - Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the mountains of North Georgia believed to be at least 1,100 years old. According to Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine. From Nony
Italian study claims Turin Shroud is authentic - ROME -- Italian scientists have conducted a series of advanced experiments which, they claim, show that the marks on the shroud – purportedly left by the imprint of Christ’s body – could not possibly have been faked with technology that was available in the medieval period.The research will be an early Christmas present for shroud believers, but is likely to be greeted with scepticism by those who doubt that the sepia-coloured, 14ft-long cloth dates from Christ’s crucifixion 2,000 years ago. From Nony
Through the Wormhole - All episodes from Through the Wormhole series gathered in one place. Hosted by Morgan Freeman, Through the Wormhole will explore the deepest mysteries of existence the questions that have puzzled mankind for eternity. What are we made of? What was there before the beginning? Are we really alone? Is there a creator? These questions have been pondered by the most exquisite minds of the human race. From Guest_9
Methane discovery stokes new global warming fears Shock as retreat of Arctic releases greenhouse gas - Sci - Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years. From Nony
Visualizing Light at Trillion FPS, Camera Culture, MIT Media Lab - We have built an imaging solution that allows us to visualize propagation of light. The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionth of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second. Direct recording of reflected or scattered light at such a frame rate with sufficient brightness is nearly impossible. We use an indirect 'stroboscopic' method that records millions of repeated measurements by careful scanning in time and viewpoints. Then we rearrange the data to create a 'movie' of a nano-second long event. From cw
17 yr old builds nanno particle that kills cancer stem cells - Zhangs achievement is impressive considering she is only 17 years old, but also due to the level of understanding required to create such a nanoparticle in the first place. She has spent over 1,000 hours since 2009 researching and developing the particle, and wants to go on to study chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, or physics. Her dream job is to be a research professor.
I wonder if she is a Creationist? From Roddy
Chinese 2,485 year tree ring study shows natural cycles control climate - A blockbuster Chinese study of Tibetan tree rings by Liu et al 2011 shows, with detail, that the modern era is a dog-standard normal climate when compared to the last 2,500 years. The temperature, the rate of change its all been seen before. Nothing about the current period is abnormal, indeed the current warming period in Tibet can be produced through calculation of cycles. From Roddy
Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Levels in Satellite Era - Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?
The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history. From Roddy
Harnessing desert sun to power Europe - It is a beguiling idea - harvest sunshine, and a little wind, from the empty deserts of North Africa and the Middle East, and use it to produce clean power for the region and for Europe.. From Guest_9
Scientists Confirm Existence of Earth-Like Planet Kepler-22b - Astronomers said Monday that NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered a far-off planet that orbits its Sun-like star at just the right distance to support life. Kepler-22b is about 2.4 times bigger than Earth and is located 600 light-years away from our planet. From Nony
The Physics of Sound Levitation - How Acoustic Levitation Works ... A basic acoustic levitator has two main parts -- a transducer, which is a vibrating surface that makes sound, and a reflector... From Guest_9
Dams for Water Supply Are Altering Earth's Orbit, Expert Says - The shift in the distribution of Earth's water caused by the reservoirs has tended to speed the planet's spin. Without lunar tidal drag, the reservoir effect would have reduced the length of a day by 0.2 millionths of a second a day for the last 40 years, Dr. Chao calculated. From cw
Raw Video: Flexible Robot Crawls in Tight Spaces - YouTube - Harvard scientists have built a new type of flexible robot that is limber enough to wiggle through tight spaces. The team borrowed from squids and other animals to create a robot that calls to mind the clay animation character Gumby From Nony
Arctic Sea Ice Loss Is Unprecedented in Past 1,450 Years - Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a rate thats unprecedented in more than a millennia, according to a study that suggests the cause may be human- influenced climate change.
Trends from the last several decades suggest there may soon be an ice-free Arctic in the summer, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. Ice shrinkage is occurring at a rate thats unmatched in duration and magnitude in 1,450 years, and greenhouse gases may be contributing to the warming, researchers said.
The non-existing Climate Change strikes again! From Nony
Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result - The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result.If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics. From cw
Study finds nudity gives the brain a tune-up - Researchers say viewing a nude body tunes the brain. In a new study, scientists found it takes less than 0.2 seconds for the brain to process pictures of nude or scantily clad human bodies. Visual perception of nudity happens quickly and efficiently. From Nony
UC Irvine Release: World's lightest metal developed :: UC Irvine TODAY - A team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology have developed the world’s lightest material – with a density of 0.9 mg/cc – about one hundred times lighter than Styrofoam™. Their findings appear in the Nov. 18 issue of Science. From Nony
Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result - The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result.If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics. From cw
Kranakis, Krizanc, and their urinal problem - A man walks into a mens room No, its not the beginning of a joke, its the beginning of a scholarly paper presented in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2010, Volume 6099/2010, 284-295. From Nony
BPS Research Digest: How walking through a doorway increases forgetting - Like information in a book, unfolding events are stored in human memory in successive chapters or episodes. One consequence is that information in the current episode is easier to recall than information in a previous episode. An obvious question then is how the mind divides experience up into these discrete episodes? A new study led by Gabriel Radvansky shows that the simple act of walking through a doorway creates a new memory episode, thereby making it more difficult to recall information pertaining to an experience in the room that's just been left behind. From Nony
Aerosols' additional affect on climate revealed - Aerosol particles in the atmosphere affect the Earth's climate in more ways than we thought, according to new research on their impact on our ecosystems.Scientists have previously known that tiny particles suspended in the air, known as aerosols, can affect climate directly by absorbing or reflecting radiation. They can also influence the climate indirectly by seeding clouds that affect the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth. From Nony
Study: Older Siblings Have Higher IQs - Being the oldest child in the family has its perks: later bedtimes, no hand-me-downs, and, according to a new study, a higher IQ. From Nony
All men watch porn, scientists find - Scientists at the University of Montreal launched a search for men who had never looked at pornography - but couldn't find any. From Nony
Highly efficient oxygen catalyst found - A team of researchers at MIT has found one of the most effective catalysts ever discovered for splitting oxygen atoms from water molecules — a key reaction for advanced energy-storage systems, including electrolyzers, to produce hydrogen fuel and rechargeable batteries. This new catalyst liberates oxygen at more than 10 times the rate of the best previously known catalyst of its type. From cw
Revealed - the capitalist network that runs the world- - AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. From Nony
BBC News - Global warming 'confirmed' by independent study - The Earth's surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a US scientific group set up in the wake of the "Climategate" affair has concluded.The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa. From Nony
Malaria scientist celebrates success after 24 years - For Joe Cohen, a GlaxoSmithKline research scientist who has spent 24 years trying to create the world's first malaria vaccine, Tuesday, October 18, 2011 goes down as a fabulous day. From cw
The Ultimate Clock Keeping precise time on the universes scale - Time is an ancient and contrary mystery. Augustine of Hippo, writing his Confessions in a North African monastery, asked Who can even in thought comprehend it, so as to utter a word about it? But what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? .... From Guest_9
Speedy neutrino mystery likely solved, relativity safe after all - Those weird faster-than-light neutrinos that CERN thought they saw last month may have just gotten slowed down to a speed that'll keep them from completely destroying physics as we know it. In an ironic twist, the very theory that these neutrinos would have disproved may explain exactly what happened. From cw
Hunt for physics' holy grail - For almost 20 years, Bill Murray has been hunting for the elusive subatomic particle that is thought to give mass to the basic building blocks of nature. From Guest_9
It's All About Carbon - Episode 1 - Episode 2: Carbon's Special Knack for Bonding : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11027169&ps=rs
Episode 3: Break a Carbon Bond and Presto! Civilization : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11366031&ps=rs
Episode 4: When Carbon Falls in Love, the World Heats Up : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11662978&ps=rs
Episode 5: What We Can Do About Global Warming : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12099564&ps=rs
From Guest_9
The Illusion of Owning a Third Arm - Could it be possible that, in the not-so-distant future, we will be able to reshape the human body so as to have extra limbs? A third arm helping us out with the weekly shopping in the local grocery store, or an extra artificial limb assisting a paralysed person? Here we report a perceptual illusion in which a rubber right hand, placed beside the real hand in full view of the participant, is perceived as a supernumerary limb belonging to the participant's own body. This effect was supported by questionnaire data in conjunction with physiological evidence obtained from skin conductance responses when physically threatening either the rubber hand or the real one. In four well-controlled experiments, we demonstrate the minimal required conditions for the elicitation of this “supernumerary hand illusion”. In the fifth, and final experiment, we show that the illusion reported here is qualitatively different from the traditional rubber hand illusion as it is characterised by less disownership of the real hand and a stronger feeling of having two right hands. These results suggest that the artificial hand ‘borrows’ some of the multisensory processes that represent the real hand, leading to duplication of touch and ownership of two right arms. This work represents a major advance because it challenges the traditional view of the gross morphology of the human body as a fundamental constraint on what we can come to experience as our physical self, by showing that the body representation can easily be updated to incorporate an additional limb. From Nony
Scientists Create Human Sperm from Stem Cells - Researchers at Newcastle University in England report they have coaxed the first human sperm cells from embryonic stem cells, in a remarkable demonstration of how quickly the field of stem-cell science is moving. From cw
ScienceDirect - Journal of Research in Personality : Racial differences in narcissistic tendencies - Black individuals have been found to report the highest levels of self-esteem of any racial group in the United States. The purpose of the present research was to examine whether Black individuals also report higher levels of narcissism than White individuals. Study 1 (N = 367) found that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals even when controlling for gender, self-esteem level, and socially desirable response tendencies. Study 2 (N = 967) and Study 3 (N = 315) found similar results such that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals on the narcissism measures that captured less pathological facets of this construct. Study 3 also included indicators of psychological adjustment and found that the pathological aspects of narcissism were more strongly associated with maladjustment for Black individuals than for White individuals. The implications of these results for understanding the Black self-esteem advantage are discussed. From Nony
Scientists Reconstruct Brains' Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment - UC Berkeley scientists have developed a system to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips. Eventually, this process will allow you to record and reconstruct your own dreams on a computer screen. From Nony
Air Command Water Rockets Flight Log - Day 90 - Acceleron V 810' - We arrived at the launch site around 8am as usual and started setting up. It was overcast and there was a bit of a breeze going, but at least it was blowing in the right direction. Although not ideal the conditions were within acceptable limits. We need to pay particular attention to wind conditions because this rocket is big and can catch the wind easily. Without a launch rail things could get interesting in a strong cross breeze. It took about an hour to set up the rocket for the first launch. It's always good to have a checklist for this procedure, as there are things that need to be done in specific order. From Nony
Communicating with the Unconscious - David Corcoran of The Times discusses a new study by The New England Journal of Medicine that suggests it is possible to communicate thoughts while in a vegetative state. From Guest_9
The Animators of Life - Building on decades of research and mountains of data, scientists and animators are now recreating in vivid and sometimes jaw-dropping detail the complex inner machinery of living cells. From Guest_9
Roll over Einstein: Pillar of physics challenged - A pillar of physics - that nothing can go faster than the speed of light - appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity - the famous E (equals) mc2 equation - just doesn't happen. From cw
Suicide by Roller Coaster - Want to enjoy the ride of your life along with the last ride of your life? That's what Julijonas Urbonas envisions with his Euthanasia Coaster.
Hey Azboy, how about getting me some tickets? From Nony
Weird particles can travel faster than light, test suggests - One of the pillars of physics and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity -- that nothing can go faster than the speed of light -- was rocked Thursday. European researchers said they clocked an oddball type of subatomic particle called a neutrino going faster than the 186,282 miles per second long been considered the cosmic speed limit. From Nony
Were Twin Towers felled by chemical blast? - A NEW theory claims to give the real reason the Twin Towers fell after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001.A leading scientist claims that the blasts were caused by a violent chemical reaction between molten aluminium from the aircraft and water from the sprinkler systems in the World Trade Centre."If my theory is correct, tonnes of aluminium ran down through the towers, where the smelt came into contact with a few hundred litres of water," said Christian Simensen, a scientist at SINTEF, an independent technology research institute based in Norway. From Nony
Bioethicist bets against Bachmann's vaccine claims - A bioethics professor has offered to pay $10,000 of his own money if Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R.-Minn, can prove that anyone developed mental retardation as a result of receiving the HPV vaccine From Nony
The World Today - NASA takes small step to next giant leap - The United States space agency has revealed plans to build a deep space rocket that will take astronauts past the space station, past the moon and on to Mars. NASA estimates it will cost $10 billion before its ready to launch in 2017.But while the announcement is generating enormous enthusiasm within the space agency, NASA watchers are questioning whether the US government will stick with the program.
10 Billion, that's what? One week of war in Iraq? Peanuts I say. From Nony
The Coffee Ring Effect - Intriguing Microscopic Video - This never-before-seen footage from a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Physics and Astronomy shows microscopic particles moving in a drop as it dries. From Guest_9
Neuroscientists Find Famous Optical Illusion Surprisingly Potent - Jump off a moving treadmill and everything around you seems to be in motion for a moment. This age-old illusion is called the Motion Aftereffect by today's scientists. Why does it happen, though? Is it because we are consciously aware that the background is moving in one direction, causing our brains to shift their frame of reference so that we can ignore this motion? Or is it an automatic, subconscious response? From Guest_9
Human BodMaps - BodyMaps is an interactive visual search tool that allows users to explore the human body in 3-D. With easy-to-use navigation, users can search multiple layers of the human anatomy, view systems and organs down to their smallest parts, and understand in detail how the human body works. From Guest_9
NASA - NASA Spacecraft Images Offer Sharper Views of Apollo Landing Sites - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites. Images show the twists and turns of the paths made when the astronauts explored the lunar surface.
People are afraid of creative ideas - The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don't even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm. From Nony
Ancient woolly rhinoceros fossil found in Tibet - latimes.com - Searching across the Tibetan plateau, paleontologists have discovered a species of woolly rhinoceros that may be an ancestor of the great ice age beasts that roamed the plains of North America, Europe and Asia. From cw
Artificial light-harvesting method achieves 100% energy transfer efficiency - In an attempt to mimic the photosynthetic systems found in plants and some bacteria, scientists have taken a step toward developing an artificial light-harvesting system (LHS) that meets one of the crucial requirements for such systems: an approximately 100% energy transfer efficiency. Although high energy transfer efficiency is just one component of the development of a useful artificial LHS, the achievement could lead to clean solar-fuel technology that turns sunlight into chemical fuel. From cw
Sun Causes Climate Change Shock - The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers wont be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun not human activities as the dominant controller of climate on Earth. From Roddy
Just why do people get more attractive when you're drunk? - It's a fairly well-known idea that people start looking better and better the more one drinks alcohol. But is there actually a scientific reasoning behind this? It might all have to do with a little something called bilateral symmetry. From Nony
Cooper the chimp goes scuba diving - Cooper and his buddy Renato, the scientist studying him for being the only chimp in the world to go under water, and now scuba dive! From Nony
