Solar Storms Ahead: Is Earth Prepared?

In this artist’s conception, a coronal mass ejection from the sun is mapped in 3-D by NASA’s pair of STEREO sun-observing satellites. (NASA)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Sunspot cycle beginning in 2012 may put satellites, power grids at risk.

When we look at the sun (carefully), it appears to be a uniform, unchanging star. But scientists and engineers have a much different perspective. To them, the sun is a dynamic, chaotic, and poorly understood caldron of thermonuclear forces, one that can spit out fierce bursts of radiation at any time.

And when Earth lies in the path of that blast, the flare can play havoc with power grids, disrupt radio communications, and disturb or disable satellites. Fifty years into the Space Age, Earth has avoided the worst the sun can deliver – so far.

Read more ....

New, Fast-Evolving Rabies Virus Found -- And Spreading

Foxes (such as this red fox photographed in 2008 in Wyoming) may be spreading rabies like humans spread the flu—through simple socialization—in northern Arizona, experts say. The rabies virus appears to have mutated surprisingly quickly and become virulent in foxes and skunks, experts said in April 2009. Photograph by Andy Carpenean/Laramie Boomerang via AP

From National Geographic:

Evolving faster than any other new rabies virus on record, a northern-Arizona rabies strain has mutated to become contagious among skunks and now foxes, experts believe.

The strain looks to be spreading fast, commanding attention from disease researchers across the United States.

It's not so unusual for rabid animals to attack people on hiking trails and in driveways, or even in a bar—as happened March 27, when an addled bobcat chased pool players around the billiards table at the Chaparral in Cottonwood.

Nor is it odd that rabid skunks and foxes are testing positive for a contagious rabies strain commonly associated with big brown bats.

Read more ....

Birth Control For Men In One Injection

Photo: Getty Images

From The Independent:

Chinese scientists succeed with testosterone jab trial on 1,000 volunteers.

Scientists believe they are one step closer to developing an effective male contraceptive jab after successfully carrying out the largest feasibility study to date.

Researchers at the National Research for Family Planning in Beijing injected 1,000 healthy, fertile male patients with a testosterone-based jab over a two-year period and found only 1 per cent went on to father a child. The men were all aged between 20 and 45 and had fathered at least one child in the two years before the testing began. They were also all involved with healthy female partners between the ages of 18 and 38 who had no reproductive problems of their own.

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Bill Gates Pours Thousands Into Unconventional Health Research

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has thrown a lifeline to scores of projects awarding 81 $100,000 (£65,000) grants Photo: BLOOMBERG NEWS

From The Telegraph:

They are projects that would normally struggle to find funding: creating an anti-viral tomato, a flu-resistant chicken and a magnet that can detect malaria.

But the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has thrown a lifeline to scores of projects like these, awarding 81 $100,000 (£65,000) grants in a bid to support innovative, unconventional global health research.

The five-year health research grants are designed to encourage scientists to pursue bold ideas that could lead to breakthroughs, focusing on ways to prevent and treat infectious diseases, such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.

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My Comment: Its his money .... he can do what he wants.

Botnets Took Control Of 12 Million New IPs This Year

From Wired News:

Botnet criminals have taken control of almost 12 million new IP addresses since January, according to a quarterly report (.pdf) from anti-virus firm, McAfee. The United States has the largest number of botnet-controlled machines, with 18 percent of them based here.

The number of zombie machines represents a 50-percent rise over last year.

Researchers attribute the explosion to botnet controllers trying to recoup spamming abilities after authorities took down a hosting facility last year that catered to international firms and syndicates involved in spamming and botnet control.

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NASA's Fermi Explores High-energy 'Space Invaders'

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on Fermi detects gamma-rays by tracking the electrons positrons they produce after striking layers of tungsten. This ability also makes the LAT an excellent tool for exploring high-energy cosmic rays. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

From Science Daily:

Since its launch last June, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a new class of pulsars, probed gamma-ray bursts and watched flaring jets in galaxies billions of light-years away. At the American Physical Society meeting in Denver, Colo., Fermi scientists revealed new details about high-energy particles implicated in a nearby cosmic mystery.

"Fermi's Large Area Telescope is a state-of-the-art gamma-ray detector, but it's also a terrific tool for investigating the high-energy electrons in cosmic rays," said Alexander Moiseev, who presented the findings. Moiseev is an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

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Oldest Surface On Earth Discovered

This natural "desert pavement" in Israel's Negev Desert has been dated to about 1.8 million years old, the olest known vast expanse of surface area on the planet. Credit: Ari Matmon, Hebrew University

From Live Science:

Earth's surface is mostly fresh in geologic terms.

Weathering — wind and water, freezing and thawing — takes its toll, and longer-term changes caused by volcanic activity and sliding crustal plates, known as tectonic activity, fold today's ground into tomorrow's interior.

The constant makeover of the planet is typically fastest in the mountains, slower in the tectonically inactive deserts.

A new study of ancient "desert pavement" in Israel's Negev Desert finds a vast region that's been sitting there exposed, pretty much as-is, for about 1.8 million years, according to Ari Matmon and colleagues at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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The First European: Created From Fragments Of Fossil, The Face Of Our Forbears 35,000 Years Ago

The first modern European: Forensic artist Richard Neave reconstructed the face based on skull fragments from 35,000 years ago

From Daily Mail:

Dressed in a suit, this person would not look out of place in a busy street in a modern city.

The clay sculpture, however, portrays the face of the earliest known modern European - a man or woman who hunted deer and gathered fruit and herbs in ancient forests more than 35,000 years ago.

It was created by Richard Neave, one of Britain's leading forensic scientists, using fossilised fragments of skull and jawbone found in a cave seven years ago.

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Sun Oddly Quiet -- Hints At Next "Little Ice Age"?

In July 2000 the sun was at a peak in activity, as seen by the speckling of sunspots spied by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. But the sun was a blank disk in March 2009, when it was the quietest it has been since the 1950s. The current sunspot deficit has caused some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age of the early 1600s and late 1700s, a prolonged, localized cold spell linked to a decline in solar activity. Images courtesy SOHO, the EIT Consortium, and the MDI Team

From National Geographic:

A prolonged lull in solar activity has astrophysicists glued to their telescopes waiting to see what the sun will do next—and how Earth's climate might respond.

The sun is the least active it's been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years. The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850.

The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum.

Read more ....

Internet Struggles To Contain Carbon Footprint

Current Generation Google Servers (Photo from Perspectives)

From The Telegraph:

Internet companies are struggling to control their carbon footprint as the web consumes more energy and money.

With more than 1.5 billion people online around the round, scientists estimate the carbon footprint of the internet is growing by more than 10 per cent each year.

Many internet companies are struggling to manage the costs as energy bills soar, while their advertising revenues come under pressure from the recession.

It is thought one site facing problems is video website YouTube. Although now the world's third-biggest website, it requires a heavy subsidy from Google, its owner.

Recent analysis by Credit Suisse suggest it could lose as much as £317m this year.

Read more ....

Poison Bacteria Set Up Worst Extinction

In the three to four million years before the Permian-Triassic extinction, illustrated here, the seas were already oxygen-starved, according to a new study. The stagnant depths were a haven for bacteria that belched poison that crippled life on Earth, leaving it vulnerable to the volcanic knockout punch that would soon come. Lunar and Planetary Institute

From MSNBC:

New finding gets to heart of a long debate among extinction researchers.

In the ancient oceans, stagnant depths harbored poison-belching bacteria that crippled life on Earth, leaving it vulnerable to a knockout punch from volcanic eruptions, according to a new study.

Three to four million years before the Permian-Triassic extinction, also known as the Great Dying, the seas were already becoming oxygen-starved and sour, said the study in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Changqun Cao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing and a team of researchers studied rock samples drilled in central China from the late Permian and early Triassic periods. Rocks from the extinction itself date to 252.2 million years ago, and show several chemical signs of catastrophe.

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Unknown Internet 6: Where Are The Net's Dark Corners?

Photo: Some websites will leave your computer infected with viruses or worms, but the "black holes" are just as bad (Image: Image Source / Rex)

From New Scientist:

There are plenty of places online that you would do well to steer clear of. A brief visit to some unsavoury websites, for instance, could leave your computer infected with worms or viruses. Then there are the "black holes" to worry about.

If your emails mysteriously disappear, or your favourite website is suddenly unobtainable, you might have run into one. Though nowhere near as destructive as their cosmological cousins, information black holes can create all kinds of problems for surfers. Essentially they are points on the network at which data packets simply disappear due to broken connections, say, or misconfigured routers - devices that maintain lists of addresses and which help direct internet traffic. A team including computer scientist Ethan Katz-Bassett at the University of Washington in Seattle has detected almost 1.5 million black holes since it began looking in 2007. The majority persist for over 2 hours, he says. Unfortunately it is tough to predict where they will appear next, so it's hard for the average surfer to avoid them.

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How To Grow New Organs

Image: "Microfabrication Of Three-Dimensional Engineered Scaffolds," By Jeffrey T. Borenstein, Eli J. Weinberg, Brian K. Orrick, Cathryn Sundback, Mohammad R. Kaazempur-Mofrad And Joseph P. Vacanti, In TISSUE ENGINEERING, Vol. 13, No. 8; 2007

From Scientific American:

Pioneers in building living tissue report important advances over the past decade.

Key Concepts

* Efforts to build living tissue replacements have progressed over the past decade, and some simple engineered tissues are already used in humans.
* Advances have come from a greater understanding of cell behavior and sophisticated new building materials.
* More tissue-engineered products are close to commercial readiness but must undergo the complex regulatory scrutiny given to living materials.

Read more ....

A Potential Breakthrough In Harnessing the Sun’s Energy

From environment360:

New solar thermal technology overcomes a major challenge facing solar power – how to store the sun’s heat for use at night or on a rainy day. As researchers tout its promise, solar thermal plants are under construction or planned from Spain to Australia to the American Southwest.

In the high desert of southern Spain, not far from Granada, the Mediterranean sun bounces off large arrays of precisely curved mirrors that cover an area as large as 70 soccer fields. These parabolic troughs follow the arc of the sun as it moves across the sky, concentrating the sun’s rays onto pipes filled with a synthetic oil that can be heated to 750 degrees Fahrenheit. That super-heated oil is used to boil water to power steam turbines, or to pump excess heat into vats of salts, turning them a molten, lava-like consistency.

Read more ....

The Space Giant Is Coming

From The BBC:

The most distant cosmic explosion ever recorded would have made a fascinating target for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), according to scientists now building the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The cataclysmic detonation reported this week is the most far-flung object in the Universe yet seen.

It was a class of celestial object known as a gamma-ray blast. At a distance of 13 billion light-years, the blast was so remote that today's telescopes were stretched to their limits in revealing much information about it.

Nasa's James Webb is designed with the purpose of imaging and studying this realm of the cosmos - and beyond - in extraordinary detail.

It is scheduled for launch in 2013.

Read more ....

The Missing Sunspots: Is This The Big Chill?

The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it's gone on far longer than anyone expected - and there is no sign of the Sun waking up. AFP

From The Independent:

Scientists are baffled by what they’re seeing on the Sun’s surface – nothing at all. And this lack of activity could have a major impact on global warming. David Whitehouse investigates

Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has been believed? Climatologists had dismissed the idea and some solar scientists have been reticent about it because of its connections with those who those who deny climate change. But now the speculation has grown louder because of what is happening to our Sun. No living scientist has seen it behave this way. There are no sunspots.

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Super-sensors To Discover What Happened In First Trillionth Of A Second After Big Bang

The cosmic microwave temperature fluctuations from the 5-year WMAP data seen over the full sky. The average temperature is 2.725 Kelvin (degrees above absolute zero; equivalent to -270 C or -455 F), and the colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations, as in a weather map. Red regions are warmer and blue regions are colder by about 0.0002 degrees. (Credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team)

From The Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 4, 2009) — What happened in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang?

Super-sensitive microwave detectors, built at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), may soon help scientists find out.

The new sensors, described May 2 at the American Physical Society (APS) meeting in Denver, were made for a potentially ground-breaking experiment* by a collaboration involving NIST, Princeton University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Chicago.

Read more ....

Why Are Humans Always So Sick?

Super-hygiene, sedentary lifestyles, and a lack of worms in our stomachs may all contribute to modern ills, scientists theorize. Image Credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

The swine flu outbreak this spring is just the latest in the mountain of ailments that seem to beset humanity, from the incurable common cold to each potentially deadly cancer diagnosed at the rate of every 30 seconds in the United States.

So is our species sicker than it has ever been? Or is our current lot far better than it used to be?

It turns out the answer to both questions might be yes. While humans as a whole do live longer than ever before, we now suffer certain illnesses to a degree never seen in the past — including skyrocketing rates of diabetes and obesity and, surprisingly, ailments such as hay fever.

Read more ....

Wind Farm's Radar System Stops Birds Getting The Chop

From The Guardian:

Texas claims world first in using Nasa technology to spare migrating species.

It could be considered an air traffic control system for birds who have flown perilously off course. A wind farm in southern Texas, situated on a flight path used by millions of birds each autumn and spring, is pioneering the use of radar technology to avoid deadly collisions between a 2,500lb rotating blade and bird.

US wind farms kill about 7,000 birds a year, according to a recent study. Other studies of individual wind farms suggest a higher toll on bats and birds, which crash into towers, blades, power lines and other installations. Estimates from a single wind farm in Altamont, California showed as many as 1,300 birds of prey killed each year – or about three a day.

Read more ....

Ocean Power Surges Forward

Photo: Courtesy of Ocean Power Technologies Inc

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Wave power and tidal power are still experimental, but may be little more than five years away from commercial development.

Three miles off the craggy, wave-crashing coastline near Humboldt Bay, Calif., deep ocean swells roll through a swath of ocean that is soon to be the site of the nation’s first major wave-power project.

Like other renewable energy technology, ocean power generated by waves, tidal currents, or steady offshore winds has been considered full of promise yet perennially years from reaching full-blown commercial development.

Read more ....

Ancient Tsunami 'Hit New York'

From The BBC:

A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River.

The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval.

Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC.

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American Epidemics, a Brief History

(Click the Above Image to Enlarge)

From The New York Times:

ALL epidemics are different in their own way, and the current swine flu outbreak — which by Friday had sickened 141 people in 19 states, and caused deaths and illness in Mexico and 13 other countries — is no exception. Yet, as you can see from the chart below, which provides details on a selected handful of epidemics in American history, all outbreaks share certain themes. While some of these events killed many thousands and others affected only a few, in each case public health officials felt a grave threat was imminent and did what they could using the science of the day.

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Meet The Ancestors: DNA Study Pinpoints Namibia As Home To The World's Most Ancient Race

The San people, hunter-gatherers in south-west Africa for thousands of years, are believed to be the oldest population of humans on Earth

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have long known that humans originated in Africa, but now a groundbreaking DNA study has revealed our 'Garden of Eden' is likely to be on the South African-Namibian border.

For it is the San people, hunter-gatherers in this area for thousands of years, who researchers now believe are the oldest human population on Earth.

They are descended from the earliest human ancestors from which all other groups of Africans stem and, in turn, to the people who left the continent to populate other corners of the planet.

Read more ....

Russia To Build Floating Arctic Nuclear Stations

Oil and gas in the Arctic are seen as ripe for exploitation by the Russian energy industry. Photograph: Hans Strand/ Hans Strand/Corbis

From The Guardian:

Environmentalists fear pollution risk as firms try to exploit ocean's untapped oil and gas reserves.

Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists.

A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.

Read more ....

Unknown Internet 5: Is There Only One Internet?

The internet is a disparate mix of interconnected computers, united by communication languages (Image: Image Source / Rex)

From New Scientist:

Probably - for now. The internet is a disparate mix of interconnected computers, many of them on large networks run by universities, businesses and so on. What unites this network of networks are the communication languages known as the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol, collectively TCP/IP.

There are also a few large networks that use different protocols and which remain largely isolated from the internet, including something called FidoNet, which links bulletin board systems via the global telephone network, as well as a handful of military networks. The main internet is the only one of any significant size, as far as we know.

Read more ....

The Island Where People Live Longer

The island of Icaria could be the newest of the world's so-called blue zones — places where residents have unusually long life spans. AARP

From NPR:

Making it to 90 years old is awe-inspiring in much of the world. But on a tiny Greek island in the North Aegean Sea, nonagenarians barely merit a second glance.

The island of Icaria could be the newest of the world's so-called blue zones — places where residents have unusually long life spans.

Dan Buettner has crossed the globe many times over the years in search of blue zones, and he recently teamed up with AARP and National Geographic to study Icaria.

Read more ....

Satellite Images Used To Create Better Camouflage

Images gathered from cameras on drones and satellites are used to make a mesh that serves as camouflage for military vehicles. The product, Photo-Veil is from Military Wraps.

From Live Science:

The art of concealing troops and their vehicles has come a long way from the first "camouflage" division formed in France in 1915. The French army called in artists to help prepare colors and designs; the Americans later used the same idea, calling on artists like Grant Wood, the painter of the "American Gothic."

Today, Photo-Veil from Military Wraps is a mesh material that uses images gathered from cameras on drones and satellites to camouflage military vehicles. The lightweight, customizable, foldable, portable and waterproof mesh material is also able to mask thermal and infrared output, making it ideal for blinds and ghillie suits. (At least until your invisibility cloak is ready.)

Read more ....

World's Fastest Camera Relies On Entirely New Type Of Imaging

Image: Researchers have developed a novel, continuously running camera that captures images roughly a thousand times faster than any existing conventional camera. (Credit: Image courtesy of UCLA / Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 3, 2009) — Ultrafast, light-sensitive video cameras are needed for observing high-speed events such as shockwaves, communication between living cells, neural activity, laser surgery and elements of blood analysis. To catch such elusive moments, a camera must be able to capture millions or billions of images continuously with a very high frame rate. Conventional cameras are simply not up to the task.

Now, researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a novel, continuously running camera that captures images roughly a thousand times faster than any existing conventional camera.

Read more ....

An Invention That Could Change The Internet For Ever

From The Independent:

Revolutionary new web software could put giants such as Google in the shade when it comes out later this month. Andrew Johnson reports

The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.

The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.

Read more ....

'Alien Skull' Spotted On Mars

An oddly shaped space boulder appears to show eye sockets and a nose leading to speculation it might be a Martian skull Photo: BARCROFT/NASA

From The Telegraph:

UFO spotters are claiming they have spotted an alien skull on Mars after NASA beamed back satellite images from the planet.

At first glance it looks like a rocky desert - but this image of the Mars landscape has got space-gazers talking.

An oddly shaped space boulder appears to show eye sockets and a nose leading to speculation it might be a Martian skull.
Read more ....

My Comment: Strange .... but I am very skeptical that it is an "alien skull".

'The Future Is Going To Be Very Exciting'

Ray Kurzweil

From The Guardian:

The head of Google's new university, Ray Kurzweil believes the advance of technology will solve the energy crisis, upgrade the human genome and even lead to everlasting life - no wonder he is so optimistic

Ray Kurzweil has a surrealist's eye for disorientation. The lobby of his offices outside Boston have the quality of a Dadaist art gallery: nothing is quite what it seems. Immediately inside the door is an old metal box that turns out to be a dictation machine built by Thomas Edison. An old man is sitting next to it, with a badge on his lapel that reads: "I'm an inventor". He is George, the receptionist tells me, and he is made of wax. A cabinet along the hall is covered entirely in boxes of vitamin pills, hundreds of them, from acai berry, red yeast rice and milk thistle to a very large jar marked "Anti-ageing multi-pack".

Read more ....

5 Ways To Protect Yourself (And Others) From Swine Flu

Photo: GOOD OLD SOAP AND WATER: Experts say frequent hand washing is one of the best ways to defend against swine flu. ISTOCKPHOTO/ALANDJ

From Scientific American:

Swine flu has yet to escalate into a global pandemic, but here's what to do if it does.

Experts say that the steps you should take to shield yourself from swine flu are not much different than those you might take to ward off seasonal flu.

1. Don't touch your face
Above all, keep your hands away from your eyes, mouth and nose, all of which serve as pathways for the virus to enter your respiratory tract, says Allison Aiello, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.

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Pictured: The Baby Mammoth Who Went Back To The Deep Freeze To Stop Her Thawing Out

Urgent action: Scientists carried the 3ft mammoth out of the lab and back to the snow. Thanks to this, she remains the best preserved specimen of her kind

From The Daily Mail:

For 40,000 years, she had been perfectly preserved in the icy earth.

But as scientists examined this baby mammoth hoping to unlock her ancient secrets, there was a rather urgent complication.

She began to thaw. They then came up with a somewhat unscientific solution - they carried her out of the lab and into the snow.

Thanks to their swift action, the 3ft mammoth, discovered by reindeer herders in the Russian Arctic, remains the best preserved specimen of her kind.

Discovered in 2007, she is thought to have died in a mudslide at a month old.

The mud effectively ‘pickled’ the baby, who has been named Lyuba, preserving her in a nearly pristine state.

Read more ....

Inside The Baby Mind

(iStock photo)

From Boston.com:

It's unfocused, random, and extremely good at what it does. How we can learn from a baby's brain.

WHAT IS IT like to be a baby? For centuries, this question would have seemed absurd: behind that adorable facade was a mostly empty head. A baby, after all, is missing most of the capabilities that define the human mind, such as language and the ability to reason. Rene Descartes argued that the young child was entirely bound by sensation, hopelessly trapped in the confusing rush of the here and now. A newborn, in this sense, is just a lump of need, a bundle of reflexes that can only eat and cry. To think like a baby is to not think at all.

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Mechanisms Of Self-Control Pinpointed In Brain

This 3-D projection of a transparent brain shows the regions of activation: the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is in red, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is in green. Activity in the vmPFC reflects the value assigned to foods during decision-making. When self-control is exercised, DLPFC activity increases and appears to interact with the activity in the vmPFC to increase the influence of health considerations. (Credit: Caltech/Todd Hare)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 1, 2009) — When you're on a diet, deciding to skip your favorite calorie-laden foods and eat something healthier takes a whole lot of self-control--an ability that seems to come easier to some of us than others. Now, scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have uncovered differences in the brains of people who are able to exercise self-control versus those who find it almost impossible.

The key? While everyone uses the same single area of the brain to make these sorts of value-laden decisions, a second brain region modulates the activity of the first region in people with good self-control, allowing them to weigh more abstract factors--healthiness, for example--in addition to basic desires such as taste to make a better overall choice.

Read more ....

Origin Of Life: What Are The Odds?

A mineral chimney and microbe mats on the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico in one of the newfound scenes that scientists described as otherworldly. Mineral chimneys are associated with sea vents that release oil and gas. The microbe mats are lying on sediments next to the mineral chimney.Credit: Ian MacDonald, Texas A&M University

From Live Science:

And it really bothers us. "Many people, perhaps most, hate the idea that life might depend on chance processes," writes biologist Dave Deamer on his blog.

Scientists have hypothesized that it started around hot vents on the seafloor, or that things heated up between the mica sheets, or that it came in a comet (which doesn't really solve the origin problem). But nobody knows.

Those who promote intelligent design — an attack on the theory of evolution thought by many scientists to be a thinly veiled effort to get religious ideas into science classrooms — suggest the the astronomical odds of it point to a designer being involved, rather than pure chance.

Read more ....

Still 10-15 Years to Commercialize 10+ Megawatt Superconducting Wind Turbines

From The Next Big Picture:

AMSC (American Superconductor and Texas-based TECO-Westinghouse Motor Co have been working an estimated $6.8 million project to design components for a 10-MW HTS generator. Another HTS device manufacturer, Germany’s Zenergy Power Group, is working with Converteam Ltd in the UK to commercialize an 8-MW HTS wind-turbine generator. Because of the practical limitations to erecting large turbines, a generator’s size and weight do matter, says Larry Masur, a Zenergy vice president. Several groups expect to have generator prototypes ready for testing within two years but commercialization will take 10-15 years to get competitive costs. Kite generated wind and other alternatives to turbines seem like the better approach.

Read more ....

Unknown Internet 3: How Big Is The Net?

(Click on Image to Enlarge)
The exploding internet 2008

From New Scientist:

"The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time," said the 18th-century scientist John Playfair, recalling the moment he learned of the Earth's long history. If Playfair could peer into the depths of the internet he might get that giddy feeling again. In 2005, Google estimated the internet contained some 5 million terabytes of data - that's more than 1 gigabyte for each of Earth's 4.5 billion trips around the sun.

There are simpler ways to appreciate the internet's sheer scale. Recent estimates suggest that well over 1 billion people rely on computers to access the internet (see graphics of internet traffic in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008). Yet there are also a billion or so other people who use cellphones to visit cyberspace, making them as much a part of the online community as someone surfing from a PC.

Read more ....

NZ Glacier Findings Upset Climate Theory

Image: Fox Glacier is one of the world's climate change indicators. Photo / Supplied

From NZHerald:

Research by three New Zealand scientists may have solved the mystery of why glaciers behave differently in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Geologist David Barrell of GNS Science, Victoria University geomorphologist Andrew Mackintosh and glaciologist Trevor Chinn of the Alpine and Polar Processes Consultancy have helped provide definitive dating for changes in glacier behaviour.

They were part of a team of nine scientists, led by Joerg Schaefer of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, who used an isotope-dating technique to get very precise ages for glacial deposits near Mt Cook.

Read more ....

Magic And The Brain: Teller Reveals The Neuroscience Of Illusion

From Wired News:

One of the first tricks in Penn and Teller's Las Vegas show begins when Teller—the short, quiet one—strolls onstage with a lit cigarette, inhales, drops it to the floor, and stamps it out. Then he takes another cigarette from his suit pocket and lights it.

No magic there, right? But then Teller pivots so the audience can see him from the other side. He goes through the same set of motions, except this time everything is different: Much of what just transpired, the audience now perceives, was a charade, a carefully orchestrated stack of lies. He doesn't stamp out the first cigarette—he palms it, then puts it in his ear. There is no second cigarette; it's a pencil stub. The smoke from the first butt is real, but the lighter used on the pencil is actually a flashlight. Yet the illusion is executed so perfectly that every step looks real, even when you're shown that it is not.

Read more ....

'Worst-Case' Scenario For Flu Estimated

This map shows the projected number of H1N1 "swine flu" cases in the United States at the county level, 28 days from now. Credit: Christian Thiemann, Rafael Brune, and Alejandro Morales Gallardo/Northwestern University

For Live Science:

There will be about 1,700 U.S. cases of the new H1N1 flu, aka "swine flu," in the next four weeks under a worst-case scenario, according to a research team's new simulations.

And a second team working independently, about 200 miles away, on exactly the same question came up with a similar forecast.

As of Thursday, there were 109 lab-confirmed U.S. cases of the new influenza, according to the World Health Organization, which earlier this week raised the risk level of the influenza to one stage below pandemic because the virus is being transmitted within at least two countries in one region of the world. A full pandemic — the virus is also being transmitted within a third country in a different region — is considered imminent.

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Ancient Egypt Brought To Life With Virtual Model Of Historic Temple Complex

Digital recreation shows what Karnak probably looked like in ancient times. (Credit: UCLA/ETC)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2009) — For the past two years, a team of UCLA Egyptologists, digital modelers, web designers, staff and students has been building a three-dimensional virtual-reality model of the ancient Egyptian religious site known as Karnak, one of the largest temple complexes ever constructed.

The result is Digital Karnak, a high-tech model that runs in real time and allows users to navigate 2,000 years of history at the popular ancient Egyptian tourist site near modern-day Luxor, where generations of pharaohs constructed temples, chapels, obelisks, sphinxes, shrines and other sacred structures beginning in the 20th century B.C.

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Pushing Plastic Solar Cells

Image: Powerful polymers: This illustration shows the different layers that make up a new plastic solar cell with nearly perfect internal efficiency. From bottom to top, the layers are glass, a transparent electrode, two polymer layers, a titanium oxide layer that redistributes light, and an aluminum electrode. Credit: Nature Photonics

From Technology Review:

Researchers make cells with near-perfect internal efficiency.

Plastic solar cells are lightweight, flexible, and, most important, cheap to make. But so far, these devices have been too inefficient to compete with silicon solar cells for most applications. Now researchers from a few institutions claim to have made polymer solar cells with record-breaking efficiencies. These cells still aren't good enough to compete with silicon, but polymer efficiencies have been increasing at a rate of about 1 percent a year. If they can keep this up, say researchers, plastic solar cells will be competing with silicon within a few years.

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China's Secret Tea Revealed As Fat-Busting Wonder Cuppa By Scientists

From The Scotsman:

A DAILY cup of special tea may combat the obesity epidemic, scientists will say today.
An extract of white tea prevents new fat cells from forming and helps to burn off mature ones, according to research.

The herbal brew increases the metabolism and boosts slimming by having a very high concentration of antioxidants compared to the more popular green variety.

Nutritionist Marc Winnefeld said: "In the industrialised countries, the rising incidence of obesity-associated disorders including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes constitutes a growing problem.

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Hackers Weigh In: 8 Big Things To Do With A Mini Server

MINI SERVER: Marvell Technology's SheevaPlug is a two-inch by four-inch (five- by 10-centimeter) box that plugs into any wall outlet and is almost indistinguishable from an oversize power supply. © MARVELL TECHNOLOGY

From Scientific American:

We weren't sure what to do with a SheevaPlug, a cheap and powerful home server stuffed into a package the size of a power brick, so we asked a bunch of uber-geeks--Here's what they said.

Tiny computers are everywhere—our cell phones, handheld gaming devices and set-top boxes, to name a few—so it should be no surprise that Marvell Technology in Santa Clara, Calif., one of the companies that makes the chips that go into such devices, managed to cram an entire home server into the SheevaPlug, a two-inch by four-inch (five- by 10-centimeter) box that plugs into any wall outlet and is almost indistinguishable from an oversize power supply.

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This Just In: Mercury More Exciting Than Mars

From Wired Science:

Mercury was once seen as a cold, dead little world, spinning around the sun unchanged for the past 4 billion years.

No longer: Observations from the Messenger spacecraft say it’s anything but.

NASA’s orbiter is sending back evidence of massive volcanism, strange impact craters and magnetic tornadoes that funnel plasma directly from the sun to the planet’s surface.

“It’s definitely not this picture of an ancient world where everything that happened to it happened billions of years ago and nothing happened since then,” said Tom Watters of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. “We’re seeing a very dynamic planet that has a lot going on today.”

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British Explorers Discover The Light At The End Of The Tunnel... In The World's Largest Cave

Possibly the world's largest cave passage, Hang Son Doong was discovered in the heart of the Vietnamese jungle by a British caving team. At 150m long and 200m high, it is seven times as high as York Cathedral

From The Daily Mail:

A British caving team believe they have discovered the world's largest cave passage in the heart of the Vietnamese jungle.

The rocky passage is 150metres long and measures a towering 200metres in height - seven times as high as the vaulted ceiling of York Cathedral.

Called Hang Son Doong (Mountain River Cave) it is believed to be almost twice the size of the current record holder.

'It is a truly amazing sized cave and one of the most significant discoveries by a British caving team,' said Adam Spillane, a member of the 13-man expedition team.

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Africans Have World's Greatest Genetic Variation

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth, according to a new study that helps narrow the location where humans first evolved, probably near the South Africa-Namibia border.

The largest study of African genetics ever undertaken also found that nearly three-fourths of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to West Africa. The new analysis published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science.

"Given the fact that modern humans arose in Africa, they have had time to accumulate dramatic changes" in their genes, explained lead researcher Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania.

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NASA May Abandon Plans For Moon Base

Image: Instead of building a permanent lunar base, NASA may send astronauts on short 'sorties' or excursions (Illustration: NASA)

From New Scientist:

NASA will probably not build an outpost on the moonMovie Camera as originally planned, the agency's acting administrator, Chris Scolese, told lawmakers on Wednesday. His comments also hinted that the agency is open to putting more emphasis on human missions to destinations like Mars or a near-Earth asteroid.

NASA has been working towards returning astronauts to the moon by 2020 and building a permanent base there. But some space analysts and advocacy groups like the Planetary Society have urged the agency to cancel plans for a permanent moon base, carry out shorter moon missions instead, and focus on getting astronauts to Mars.

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Experts Warn Internet Is Running Out of Bandwidth

From FOX News:

Internet users face regular "brownouts" that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to research to be published later this year.

Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 percent a year, will start to exceed supply as early as 2010 because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry Web sites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC's iPlayer.

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How To Wake Up Slumbering Minds

From The Wall Street Journal:

Will the discoveries of neuroscientists help us to think, learn and remember?

We are in the midst of an explosion of knowledge about how the human mind and brain work -- how memory comes in many different types, each stored in a different part of the brain; how our minds constantly process information outside our conscious awareness; how differences in brain function help to define differences in our personalities. A lot of this new knowledge raises provocative questions, not least about human nature.

But as disgruntled students have been saying for ages: How are we ever going to use this stuff? Chemistry can boast of miracle drugs, and genetics has done wonders for our food supply and for medical diagnosis. What about psychology and neuroscience? Shouldn't research on learning and memory and thinking help us to learn, remember and think better?

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