Virus Linked To Prostate Tumours

From The BBC:

Scientists have produced compelling evidence that a virus known to cause cancer in animals is linked to prostate cancer in humans.

The researchers from the University of Utah and Columbia University medical schools found the virus in 27% of the 200 cancerous prostates they looked at.

They say it was associated with more aggressive tumours and found in only 6% of non-cancerous prostates.

The finding raises the prospect of one day producing a vaccine.

Previous research has linked XMRV (Xenotropic murine leukaemia virus) to prostate cancer but not in such an aggressive way.

Read more ....

Chinese Scientists 'Filmed UFO For 40 Minutes'

From The Telegraph:

The UFO world is alive with speculation that China is about to reveal details of startling and detailed footage of an unidentified flying object taken during the solar eclipse on July 22.

Scientists at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing are reported to have confirmed that they filmed a UFO during the eclipse for 40 minutes. They say that they will spend the next 12 months studying the footage before drawing any conclusions.

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More Rubbish From 60 Minutes Tonight. “The Age Of Megafires”

From Watts Up With That:

Right on cue, CBS news 60 minutes is expected link the recent California fires to “global warming”. Never mind that the fire was caused by arson, or that the area hadn’t burned in 40-60 years, leading up to a collection of dry dead underbrush which is part of the natural fire cycle. Never mind that La Nina made for a dry couple of years exacerbating the problem. Never mind that we get fires in California about this time every year. No, its the “Age of Megafires”:

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Windmills Are Killing Our Birds -- A Commentary

From Wall Street Journal:

One standard for oil companies, another for green energy sources.

On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.

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Green Machine

Fuel for thought: The car is powered by vegetables such as potatoes and carrots

Green Machine: The 135mph Racing Car Built Out Of Recyclables And Powered By Vegetables And Chocolate -- The Daily Mail

A racing car built from vegetables and powered by chocolate is to make its track debut next month, scientists have announced.

The £500,000 WorldFirst - described as the greenest car of its kind in the world - is expected to reach a top speed of 135mph when it hits the track at Brands Hatch.

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Saddle Up For The U.S. Army's Robotics Rodeo

Robot Gunslinger: Steady there, cowboy Mark Rutherford/CNET

From Popular Science:

The Army invites robotic handlers to show off their wares.

At the first Robotics Rodeo, hosted this week by the U.S. Army and the Fort Hood III Corps in Texas, war machines replaced bulls and horses. Soldiers and civilian contractors used the opportunity, starting on Wednesday, to inspect a lineup of robots that could potentially find a place on the battlefield.

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Hydrogen Storage Gets New Hope

Ammonia borane (AB) is a potential hydrogen releasing fuel. In this Los Alamos National Laboratory graphic, the AB would be used on-board the vehicle to run a fuel cell. Once hydrogen is released, the AB could then be regenerated and reused. In the scheme shown, the recycle of dehydrogenated fuel back into AB would take place off-board the vehicle. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2009) — A new method for “recycling” hydrogen-containing fuel materials could open the door to economically viable hydrogen-based vehicles.

In an article appearing in Angewandte Chemie, Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Alabama researchers working within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Chemical Hydrogen Storage Center of Excellence describe a significant advance in hydrogen storage science.

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Hard Labor: How 10 Animals Struggle to Survive

From Live Science:

Many Americans think of Labor Day as merely the end of summer and part of a welcome three-day weekend. Its origin, however, is in celebrating the labor movement and workers' rights. So enjoy the break (if you get one in this modern 24/7 world), but if you think you have it tough, consider the hard labor put in by these 10 creatures, all just to survive. The list is courtesy the National Wildlife Federation.

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Shuttle Crew In Home Stretch Of Station Resupply

Astronauts Nicole Stott and Danny Olivas retrieve experiments from the Columbus module during a spacewalk last Tuesday. (Credit: NASA)

From CNET:

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--Sailing into the home stretch of a busy space station resupply mission, the shuttle Discovery astronauts worked Sunday to wrap up equipment and supply transfers before taking a half day off to relax and enjoy the view.

Overnight, engineers successfully tested a new motor-driven bolt in the berthing mechanism holding the shuttle-delivered Leonardo cargo module in place on the Earth-facing port of the lab's Harmony module.

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Google To Remove European Titles From US E-Book Settlement

From The Wall Street Journal:

BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)--Online search giant Google Inc. (GOOG) Monday said it will remove all European books that are still commercially available from a $125 million U.S. settlement with publishers to scan orphaned and out-of-print books in the U.S. and sell them online.

The concessions come given the concerns of European authors and publishers, who don't want the search engine to scan books by European authors, which are still protected by copyrights, without asking their permission.

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Islamic Search Engine ImHalal Filters Out Potentially Sinful Material

The ImHalal search engine warns users of potentially illicit words and material on the internet.

From Times Online:

Muslims will be able to surf the internet without the fear of accidentally encountering sinful material after a Dutch company launched the world’s first Islamic search engine.

The ImHalal service works like any other search facility until potentially illicit words are entered, when it rates the search from one to three on its risk of generating “haram” or forbidden material.

Reza Sardeha, founder of AZS Media Group which runs the search engine, said: “The idea grew up when some friends of mine complained that when they searched on Google or Yahoo once in a while they bumped into sexually explicit content.”

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Is There a Climate-Change Tipping Point?

NASA / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Global warming — the very term sounds gentle, like a bath that grows pleasantly hotter under the tap. Many people might assume that's how climate change works too, the globe gradually increasing in temperature until we decide to stop it by cutting our carbon emissions. It's a comforting notion, one that gives us time to gauge the steady impact of warming before taking action.

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Breakthrough In Fight Against Diabetes

From The Telegraph:

A gene that controls the way the body responds to the hormone insulin has been identified, marking a breakthrough in the fight against diabetes.

Scientists believe a variation in the gene's DNA promotes insulin resistance, the primary cause of type 2 diabetes. The disease is the most common form of diabetes, affecting around two million people in the UK.

The discovery could lead to new drug treatments that target the genetic fault and prevent the body failing to respond to insulin.

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Short-Haired Bumblebee To Be Repopulated In UK

A queen short-haired bumblebee, one of a species which died out in the UK, but survived in New Zealand after being shipped there more than 100 years ago, is to be reintroduced in the UK. Photograph: Bumblebee Conservation Trust/Dave Goulson

From The Guardian:

Descendants of the lost UK bumblebee will be brought from New Zealand to Dungeness in what could be a landmark repopulation programme.

British conservationists have drawn up plans to repopulate the countryside with a species of bumblebee that was declared extinct here nearly a decade ago.

The short-haired bumblebee officially died out in the UK in 2000, but descendents of the doomed community live on in small pockets of New Zealand, where they were taken to pollinate red clover in the late 19th century.

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Lost In Space: Astronomy Photographers Capture Cosmic Masterpieces For Competition

The horsehead nebula in Orion by Martin Pugh from the UK

From The Daily Mail:

The dramatic rearing horsehead nebula and mysterious glowing Bow of Orion are just two of the unforgettable images that have been entered into the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2009 competition.

More than 500 entries from around the world - from dedicated amateurs as well as true beginners - have been sent in, including some taken with mobile phones.

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Nano Printing Goes Large

Photo: Nano press: This 10-by-30-centimeter plastic sheet (top) has been patterned with a series of nanoscale polymer lines using roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography (bottom). The film is iridescent because of the way its nanoscale features scatter light. Credit: ACS Nano

From Technology Review:

A rolling nanoimprint lithography stamp could be used to print components for displays and solar cells.

A printing technique that could stamp out features just tens of nanometers across at industrial scale is finally moving out of the lab. The new roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography system could be used to cheaply and efficiently churn out nano-patterned optical films to improve the performance of displays and solar cells.

Nanoimprint lithography uses mechanical force to press out a nanoscale pattern and can make much smaller features than optical lithography, which is reaching its physical limits. The technique was developed as a tool for miniaturizing integrated circuits, and a handful of companies, including Molecular Imprints of Austin, TX, are still developing it for this application.

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ISS's New Reactor Uses Sound Waves To Form Materials Attainable Only In Space

Space-DRUMS: The Space-DRUMS chamber makes use of 20 sound beams to produce materials free of container contamination. Semiconductors are especially an area of interest for the souped-up pressure cooker. NASA

From Popular Science:

This dodecahedron-shaped device currently on board the International Space Station may resemble a landmine, but in fact it serves quite an opposite purpose: within, scientist Jacques Guigne hopes to use sound waves to cleanly manipulate a brew of ingredients into custom materials that can only be made in the unique conditions of space.

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Economists Measure GDP Growth From Outer Space

Increased nighttime lighting indicates economic growth in Poland and Eastern Europe between 1992 (left, above) and 2002. Poland is in the top left quarter of each image. (Credit: NOAA and USAF Weather Agency)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 6, 2009) — Outer space offers a new perspective for measuring economic growth, according to new research by three Brown University economists. In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil suggest a new framework for estimating a country or region’s gross domestic product (GDP) by using satellite images of the area’s nighttime lights.

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Powerful Ideas: Cars Could Run on Watermelons

From Live Science:

Watermelon juice could become the newest renewable energy source for vehicles, scientists now suggest.

Each year, about 1 out of 5 watermelons are left behind in fields because they are misshapen or because of cosmetic blemishes. In the 2007 growing season, this amounted to roughly 360,000 metric tons of lost melons in the United States alone.

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Is The Near-Earth Space Frontier Closed?

The development of the ICBM, and the satellite systems linked to these missiles, created a synergistic relationship that effectively settled the near-Earth space frontier. (credit: US Air Force)

From Space Review:

How the ICBM opened, developed, and closed its own frontier.

If you challenged people in the civilian space community to identify a set of space systems that repaid their initial investment in proportion to their cost, most would be hard pressed to identify more than one or two nonmilitary systems. That set of applications would unlikely be a compelling enough reason to pour the resources that would be needed to open the space frontier from scratch.

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Plasmobot: The Slime Mould Robot

Single-celled slime moulds could be programmed as robots (Image: Visuals Unlimited / Corbis)

From New Scientist:

THOUGH not famed for their intellect, single-celled organisms have already demonstrated a surprising degree of intelligence. Now a team at the University of the West of England (UWE) has secured £228,000 in funding to turn these organisms into engineering robots.

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Finding A Scapegoat When Epidemics Strike

DEMONIZED Above, a detail from the Friese Chronicles showing the 1349 massacre of Erfurt Jews in Germany, who were blamed for the Black Death. Yeshiva University Museum

From The New York Times:

Whose fault was the Black Death?

In medieval Europe, Jews were blamed so often, and so viciously, that it is surprising it was not called the Jewish Death. During the pandemic’s peak in Europe, from 1348 to 1351, more than 200 Jewish communities were wiped out, their inhabitants accused of spreading contagion or poisoning wells.

The swine flu outbreak of 2009 has been nowhere near as virulent, and neither has the reaction. But, as in pandemics throughout history, someone got the blame — at first Mexico, with attacks on Mexicans in other countries and calls from American politicians to close the border.

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The Teen Brain: The More Mature,The More Reckless

Michael Blann / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Teenagers are a famously reckless species. They floor the gas and experiment with drugs and play with guns; according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, more than 16,000 young people die each year from unintentional injuries. The most common-sense explanation for teens' carelessness is that their brains just aren't developed enough to know better. But new research suggests that in the case of some teens, the culprit is just the opposite: the brain matures not too slowly but, perhaps, too quickly.

Read more ....

Tigers Are 'Brainier' Than Lions

Photo: Getty

From The Telegraph:

As the King of the Jungle, the lion may have the brawn, but it is the tiger that has the brains, claim scientists.

Researchers have discovered that the tiger has a far bigger brain than its big cat rival, even though it is often seen as lower down the food chain.

A team of zoologists at Oxford University compared the brain cavity in the skulls of both animals and found tigers are 16 per cent bigger than lions, leopards and jaguars.

In evolutionary terms, brain size has usually been linked to intelligence.

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Giant Statues Give Up Hat Mystery

The ancient statues have giant red hats

From BBC:

Archaeologists have solved an ancient mystery surrounding the famous Easter Island statues.

At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is the world's most remote place inhabited by people.

Up to one thousand years ago, the islanders started putting giant red hats on the statues.

The research team, from the University of Manchester and University College London, think the hats were rolled down from an ancient volcano.

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Lost World Of Fanged Frogs And Giant Rats Discovered In Papua New Guinea

The Bosavi Woolly Rat had no fear of humans when it was discovered.
Photograph: Jonny Keeling/BBC

From The Guardian:

A lost world populated by fanged frogs, grunting fish and tiny bear-like creatures has been discovered in a remote volcanic crater on the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea.

A team of scientists from Britain, America, Hawaii and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.

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After Years Of Search, Breakthrough Discoveries Of Alzheimer's Genes

Karen Kasmauski / Science Faction / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Fifteen years since the last discovery of its kind, scientists have finally identified a new set of genes that may contribute to Alzheimer's disease.

The three new genes, known as clusterin, complement receptor 1 (CR1) and PICALM, were uncovered by two separate research groups, one in Wales and one in France, who linked the genes to the most common form of the memory disorder, late-onset Alzheimer's — the type that affects patients in their 60s or later and accounts for about 90% of all Alzheimer's cases. The only other gene connected with the condition, apolipoprotein E (ApoE), was identified in 1993; since, researchers have tirelessly hunted for other key genes, knowing that 60% to 80% of the progressive, incurable disease is genetically based.

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Researchers Identify Critical Gene For Brain Development, Mental Retardation

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 6, 2009) — In laying down the neural circuitry of the developing brain, billions of neurons must first migrate to their correct destinations and then form complex synaptic connections with their new neighbors.

When the process goes awry, neurodevelopmental disorders such as mental retardation, dyslexia or autism may result. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have now discovered that establishing the neural wiring necessary to function normally depends on the ability of neurons to make finger-like projections of their membrane called filopodia.

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5 Future Robotic Expeditions and What They Could Reveal

Image: ESA/AOES Medialab

From Scientific American:

Some are already on their way and some are still in the works, but here is what we may see from unmanned exploration of space in the coming years.

Fifty years ago this month, the Soviet Union scored a coup in the space race with a probe called Luna 2. The spacecraft, which resembled a squat, souped-up version of its cousin Sputnik, was launched on September 12, 1959, and two days later reached the lunar surface. By impacting the moon, Luna 2 became the first man-made object to land on a celestial body other than Earth.

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Lasers Turn Light Into Sound

From Live Science:

A new laser technology has made it possible to turn light into sound.

Developed by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, the technology has the potential to expand and improve both Naval and commercial underwater acoustic applications, including undersea communications, navigation and acoustic imaging.

This process is made possible by the compression of laser pulses. Various colors of a laser travel at different speeds in water. These colors can be arranged so that the laser pulse compresses in time as it moves through water, which concentrates the light.

Read more ....

Glitch Sends NASA's Mars Orbiter Into Safe Mode

This image is an artist's concept of a view looking down
on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA.gov

From FOX News:

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be kept in its safe mode — suspending its science observations of the red planet for several weeks — while engineers try to investigate what is plaguing the spacecraft.

The 4-year-old orbiter has mysteriously rebooted its main computer three times this year, most recently on Aug. 26. It also inexplicably switched to a backup computer last month in a different malfunction.

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Ares May Look Dead But Keeps Kicking

From Orlando Sentinel:

Critics of NASA's Ares 1 rocket have all but declared the program dead. But Ares 1 contractors are fighting back with a campaign to convince the White House that their plan to replace the space shuttle should continue.

A blue-ribbon panel headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine will present President Barack Obama with options for the future of NASA's human space exploration plans as early as Tuesday. The Ares I rocket will be on the list — but not as a top choice.

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Cape Cod Bans Swimming After Scientists Spot, Tag Great White Sharks

Great white shark swimming in the waters near Cape Cod Mass. in Oct. 2004. Massachusetts officials are using high-tech tags to track the movements of two great white sharks near Cape Cod _ the first time the fearsome fish have ever been tagged in the Atlantic Ocean. The sharks were spotted Saturday Sept. 5, 2009 by scientists investigating sightings off Monomoy Island in Chatham. Sharks are common in Cape waters during summer, though great white sharks are relatively rare around New England. Collapse (Massachusets State Division of Marine Fisheries/AP Photo)

From ABC News:

Four Great White Sharks Spotted Off Massachusetts Coast.

The weather might feel right for a taking a dip, but for those on the coast of Chatham, Mass., now's not a good time for one last summer swim.

Recent sightings of four great white sharks have prompted a swimming ban for the rest of the Labor Day weekend at some of the area's oceanside beaches, including North Beach, Lighthouse Beach, South Beach and Hardings Beach and Nauset Beach.

Read more ....

Adding Trust to Wikipedia, And Beyond

Color me trustworthy: WikiTrust codes Wikipedia pages according to contributors' reputations and how the content has changed over time. Credit: University of California, Santa Cruz

From Technology Review:

Tracing information back to its source could help prove trustworthiness.

The official motto of the Internet could be "don't believe everything you read," but moves are afoot to help users know better what to be skeptical about and what to trust.

A tool called WikiTrust, which helps users evaluate information on Wikipedia by automatically assigning a reliability color-coding to text, came into the spotlight this week with news that it could be added as an option for general users of Wikipedia. Also, last week the Wikimedia Foundation announced that changes made to pages about living people will soon need to be vetted by an established editor. These moves reflect a broader drive to make online information more accountable. And this week the World Wide Web Consortium published a framework that could help any Web site make verifiable claims about authorship and reliability of content.

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New Earthquake-Resistant Design Pulls Buildings Upright After Violent Quakes

Photo: Keeping Buildings Upright During Quakes: A new structural system dissipates energy to replaceable fuses and pulls buildings back upright after violent earthquakes. Xiang Ma, Stanford University

From Popular Science:

How exactly does one build an earthquake-proof building? If you answered "make sure the structure rocks completely off its foundation," you're actually in good company. A research team led by Stanford and the University of Illinois successfully tested a structural system that holds a building together through a magnitude-seven earthquake, and even pulls it back upright on its foundation when the quaking stops. The key: embracing the shaking, by limiting the damage to a few flexible, replaceable areas within the building's frame.

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Do High-fat Diets Make Us Stupid And Lazy? Physical And Memory Abilities Of Rats Affected After 9 Days

A new study shows that rats, when switched to a high-fat diet from their standard low-fat feed, show a surprisingly quick reduction in their physical performance. (Credit: iStockphoto/Leigh Schindler)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2009) — Rats fed a high-fat diet show a stark reduction in their physical endurance and a decline in their cognitive ability after just nine days, a study by Oxford University researchers has shown.

The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the FASEB Journal, may have implications not only for those eating lots of high-fat foods, but also athletes looking for the optimal diet for training and patients with metabolic disorders.

Read more ....

What Really Happens When Your Blood Boils?

From Live Science:

Probably. Blood pressure tends to spike when you are excited by an emotion such as anger or fear. But high blood pressure — known as "hypertension" — is very sneaky. It's called the "silent killer," because it usually has no symptoms.

Doctors say you have high blood pressure if you have a reading of 140/90 or higher. A blood pressure reading of 120/80 or lower is considered normal. "Prehypertension" is blood pressure between 120 and 139 for the top number, or between 80 and 89 for the bottom number.

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Britain’s Oldest Working Computer Roars to Life

From Gadget Lab/Wired:

The oldest original working computer in the U.K., which has been in storage for nearly 30 years, is getting restored to its former glory.

The Harwell computer, also known as WITCH, is getting a second lease on life at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The machine is the oldest surviving computer whose programs, as well as data, are stored electronically, according to the museum.

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Fairy Tales Have Ancient Origin

Photo: Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Popular fairy tales and folk stories are more ancient than was previously thought, according research by biologists.

They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

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Hospitals Open The Door To Sci-Fi's Medical Robots

From The Independent:

Exhibition reveals huge advances that are turning futuristic fantasies into surgical reality.

From the tiny submarine injected into the human body in the film Fantastic Voyage in 1966, to the hologram Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager in 1995, medical robots have long fuelled the imaginations of science fiction writers.

Now many of those fantasies are coming true and on Tuesday the Royal College of Surgeons will exhibit some of the advances that in just five years could see tiny robots going to work inside patients.

Read more ....

Universal Translator For Web Browsers

From New Scientist:

EVER wondered what the Arabic or Chinese press are saying about the issues of the day? Finding out just got a lot easier, at least for those using the Firefox web browser.

A new plug-in identifies the language used on a web page and automatically provides a translation, leaving the layout of the page unchanged.

Read more ....

Researchers Seek Funds To Study Cell Phone Safety

From CNET:

Are cell phones safe? For years, studies have provided conflicting conclusions. Today, there is still no clear answer. But experts agree on one thing: more research is needed to find out the answer.

In an effort to raise awareness among consumers and to urge government leaders to allocate more funding for research, an international group of researchers is gathering in Washington, D.C. later this month to present study findings and to lobby government officials.

Read more ....

As Google Books Battle Draws On, Amazon Makes Its Case

Exterior view of Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., is seen in this Oct. 19, 2006 file photo. Online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. is warning a federal judge that Internet search leader Google Inc. will be able to gouge consumers and stifle competition if it wins court approval to add millions more titles to its already vast digital library. (Paul Sakuma/AP/File)

From Christian Science Monitor:

The harsh critique of Google’s 10-month-old settlement with U.S. authors and publishers emerged this week in a 41-page brief that Amazon filed.

Online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. is warning a federal judge that Internet search leader Google Inc. will be able to gouge consumers and stifle competition if it wins court approval to add millions more titles to its already vast digital library.

Read more ....

Astronauts Make Final Spacewalk

From The BBC:

Astronauts from the US space shuttle Discovery have made their third and final spacewalk, installing equipment on the International Space Station.

However, Nasa officials said one job had to be left undone after cables failed to connect.

Nasa flight director Heather Rarick said repairs to the connector would be attempted on a future mission, possibly Atlantis's flight in November.

The shuttle is due to leave on Tuesday and land back in Florida on Thursday.

Read more ....

Europe's First Farmers Were Immigrants: Replaced Their Stone Age Hunter-Gatherer Forerunners

DNA-analysis in the laboratories of Mainz University. (Credit: Image copyright Joachim Burger)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2009) — Analysis of ancient DNA from skeletons suggests that Europe's first farmers were not the descendants of the people who settled the area after the retreat of the ice sheets. Instead, the early farmers probably migrated into major areas of central and eastern Europe about 7,500 years ago, bringing domesticated plants and animals with them, says Barbara Bramanti from Mainz University in Germany and colleagues.

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Engineering Students Build Underwater 'Bot

Three Long Beach City College ROV Team members transport their vehicle from the pool. On the left is Ricardo Casaine, in the middle is Nathan Grefe, and on the right is Baxter Hutchinson. Credit: Steve Van Meter/VideoRay

From Live Science:

Remotely-operated vehicles, or ROVs, are underwater robots that can go where the environment is too deep or difficult for human divers. I learned how to design and build ROVs as a student in the electrical department at Long Beach City College (LBCC), where every year, students enrolled in the department's robotics class form a team that competes in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center's International Student ROV Competition.

The MATE competition is a pool-based competition that uses props to simulate realistic underwater workplaces. The MATE Center is one of eleven Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Centers established with funding from the National Science Foundation's ATE Program.

Read more ....

Robotics Rodeo Aims To Save Lives

A technician explains the controls of a remotely operated Bobcat machine to a Soldier. After some instruction, Soldiers were given hands-on experience with the equipment and offered their feedback

From Army.mil:

FORT HOOD, Texas (Sept. 2, 2009) -- A Robotics Rodeo began Tuesday with exhibitors from all over America descending on Fort Hood to show off the latest advancements in robotics technology.

"If we're not fielding, we're failing; it's all about saving Soldiers' lives," said Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, III Corps commanding general. "It's not about technology demonstrations, not about how much money you can garner from the U.S. government, it's all about saving Soldiers lives."

Read more ....

My Comment: This "Robotics Rodeo" may be small now .... but I would bet that 10 years from now it will be a completely different event .... and many times larger.

Australia's Warm Winter A Record

From The BBC:

Australia has experienced its warmest August on record amid soaring winter temperatures.

Climatologists have blamed both the effects of climate change and natural variability.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology says that August was a "most extraordinary month" with mean temperatures 2.47C above the long-term average.

Read more ....

Human Brain Could Be Replicated In 10 Years, Researcher Predicts

Activity in the brain's neocortex is tightly controlled by inhibitory neurons shown here which prevent epilepsy. (Credit: Blue Brain Project; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2009) — A model that replicates the functions of the human brain is feasible in 10 years according to neuroscientist Professor Henry Markram of the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland. "I absolutely believe it is technically and biologically possible. The only uncertainty is financial. It is an extremely expensive project and not all is yet secured."

Read more ....

My Comment: If you duplicate a brain .... will it think?

Wolves Beat Dogs on Logic Test

Wolves and dogs diverged from a common ancestor at least 15,000 years ago.
Credit: stock.xpert

From Live Science:

Wolves do better on some tests of logic than dogs, a new study found, revealing differences between the animals that scientists suspect result from dogs' domestication.

In experiments, dogs followed human cues to perform certain tasks despite evidence they could see suggesting a different strategy would be smarter, while wolves made the more logical choice based on their observations.

Read more ....

Arctic Ice Proves To Be Slippery Stuff -- Commentary

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

From The Telegraph:

The extent of the sea-ice is now half a million square kilometres more than it was this time last year, says Christopher Booker.

BBC viewers were treated last week to the bizarre spectacle of Mr Ban
Ki-moon standing on an Arctic ice-floe making a series of statements so laughable that it was hard to believe such a man can be Secretary-General of the UN. Thanks to global warming, he claimed, "100 billion tons" of polar ice are melting each year, so that within 30 years the Arctic could be "ice-free". This was supported by a WWF claim that the ice is melting so fast that, by 2100, sea-levels could rise by 1.2 metres (four feet), which would lead to "floods affecting a quarter of the world".

Read more ....