Will Google Help Breach The Great Firewall Of China?

Getting round the censors (Image: Ng Han Guan/AP/PA)

From New Scientist:

From a technical perspective, Google's exit from China in the early hours of 22 March was a low-key affair. Google simply disconnected its self-censored search engine in Beijing, and rerouted its traffic to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. Google says attacks on the email accounts of dissidents, which it believes came from the Chinese authorities, made it impossible for it to continue operating there.

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World's Largest Particle Collider May Unlock Secrets of Universe

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the CERN laboratory. (Credit: Courtesy of CERN)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 25, 2010) — The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, could generate astonishing new insights into the Big Bang, the building blocks of the universe, the mysterious properties of dark matter and perhaps even extra dimensions in the universe.

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Tiny Tyrannosaur Came From The Land Down Under

The fossil was uncovered in Dinosaur Cove, Australia. This map shows the location of Dinosaur Cove approximately 110 million years ago. Credit: Roger Benson, University of Cambridge.

From Live Science:

T-rex's relatives might have once roamed in the land Down Under, according to a new study. A pelvic bone uncovered in Australia marks the first evidence that tyrannosaurs could have inhabited the Southern Hemisphere.

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GoDaddy To Stop Registering Domains In China

From CNET:

At least one company is ready to follow Google's stance on doing business in China: GoDaddy.

During a congressional hearing later today to discuss Internet freedom and China, GoDaddy executives plan to announce that they will stop registering domain names in China in response to a new government policy that requires extensive information about registrants, according to The Washington Post. Starting last December, individuals and businesses that wished to register a .cn domain name were being asked to submit a photograph of themselves as well as a serial number identifying their business license in China.

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Cities Try Silly Antics To Grab Google's 'Golden Ticket'

From ABC News:

Forget decorum. City officials across the country are getting downright goofy for Google.

When the Mountain View Internet giant announced in February that it would choose at least one community in the U.S. to test an ultra high-speed broadband network, no one knew what kind of antics would ensue.

But over the past few weeks, hoping to lure Google and its experimental fiber optic network, everyone from mayors to ice cream makers have pulled out all the stops in what has become a heated nationwide competition.

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Heat-Toting Ocean Currents Chugging Along

From The New York Times:

Here’s a brief update on the great heat-toting oceanic currents that at one time were thought to be at risk from human-driven warming of the climate. There’s been no slowdown at all through much of the past decade and probably none since the early 1990s, according to new work using methods developed by Joshua Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

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Global Warming Making People More Aggressive?

A railroad worker in Australia takes a break from the heat. Photograph by William Albert Allard, National Geographic Stock

From National Geographic:

Global warming could make the world a more violent place, because higher temperatures increase human aggression and create volatile situations, a new study says.

The report combined government data about average yearly temperatures with statistics on the number of violent crimes committed between 1950 and 2008.

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TJX Hacker Gets 20 Years In Prison

From The threat Level:

BOSTON — Convicted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for leading a gang of cyberthieves who stole more than 90 million credit and debit card numbers from TJX and other retailers.

The sentence for the largest computer-crime case ever prosecuted is the lengthiest ever imposed in the United States for hacking or identity-theft. Gonzalez was also fined $25,000. Restitution, which will likely be in the tens of millions, was not decided Thursday.

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'Super-Supernova' Challenges Astronomers

The first images of supernova SN2007if - the faint host galaxy could not be made out at the time the supernova was discovered. Credit: NBNL

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: A star that exceeded its known upper mass limit before turning supernova could change the way scientists measure the expansion of the universe and study dark energy, scientists said.

The researchers, led by experts from Yale University, measured the mass of a supernova thought to belong to a unique subclass, type Ia, and found that it significantly exceeded the upper limit, known as the Chandrasekhar limit - which is 1.4 times the mass of our Sun.

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Revealed: Why Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold

Freezing depends on impurities (Vilhjalmur Ingi Vilhjalmsson/Getty)

From New Scientist:

HOT water sometimes freezes faster than cold water - but why? This peculiar phenomenon has baffled scientists for generations, but now there is evidence that the effect may depend on random impurities in the water.

Fast-freezing of hot water is known as the Mpemba effect, after a Tanzanian schoolboy called Erasto Mpemba (see "How the Mpemba effect got its name"). Physicists have come up with several possible explanations, including faster evaporation reducing the volume of hot water, a layer of frost insulating the cooler water, and differing concentration of solutes. But the answer has been very hard to pin down because the effect is unreliable - cold water is just as likely to freeze faster.

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Blocking Gene Forces Cancer Cells To Age

Image: The finding may offer a new strategy for fighting cancer (Source: iStockphoto)

From ABC News (Australia):

Instead of killing off cancer cells with toxic drugs, scientists have discovered a molecular pathway that forces them to grow old and die.

Cancer cells spread and grow because they can divide indefinitely.

But a study in mice, published today in Nature, shows that blocking a cancer-causing gene called Skp2 forces cancer cells to go through an aging process known as senescence - the same process involved in ridding the body of cells damaged by sunlight.

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iPhone, Safari, IE 8, Firefox Hacked In CanSecWest Contest

Photo: Pedram Amini and Aaron Portnoy of TippingPoint look over Charlie Miller's shoulder as he conducts his Safari hack. (Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET)

From CNET:

VANCOUVER, B.C.--Researchers on Wednesday demonstrated that they could hack a non-jailbroken iPhone, Safari running on Snow Leopard and Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox on Windows 7 as part of the annual Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security show here.

Charlie Miller, principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, won $10,000 after hacking Safari on a MacBook Pro without having physical access to the machine. Miller won $5,000 last year by exploiting a hole in Safari, and in 2008 nabbed $10,000 hacking a MacBook Air, all on the same computer.

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Honeybees Dying: Scientists Wonder Why, And Worry About Food Supply

From ABC News:

A Third of Our Food Depends on Plants Pollinated by Bees; 'We're Really Cutting It Close'.

No matter where you live -- in a brick Philadelphia row house, the sprawling suburbs of Dallas or an apartment in Seattle -- you depend, more than most of us know, on lowly honeybees raised in California or Florida.

The bees have been dying in extraordinary numbers, and scientists are trying to figure out why.

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Ancient 'X-Woman' Discovered As Man's Early Ancestors Are Pictured Together For The First Time

From The Daily Mail:

A mysterious species of ancient human has been discovered in a cave in southern Siberia.

Nicknamed X-Woman, scientists say the human lived alongside our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago.

The discovery, which could rewrite mankind's family tree, was made after analysis of DNA from a fossilised finger bone.

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The X-Woman’s Fingerbone

From Discover Magazine:

In a cave in Siberia, scientists have found a 40,000-year old pinky bone that could belong to an entirely new species of hominid. Or it may be yet another example of how hard it is to figure where one species stops and another begins–even when one of those species is our own. Big news, perhaps, or ambiguous news.

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DARPA Bounces Smart Radar Off Buildings To Track Individual Urban Vehicles From The Sky

Tracking from Above It's difficult to use radar in urban environments because of all the structures that get in the way. But by bouncing highly sensitive radar off of buildings' facades, DARPA hopes to lock onto individual vehicles from UAVs and track them through urban streets even when buildings block line of sight. Zemlinki

From Popular Science:

Radar is great for tracking objects in the wide-open sky or even at sea, but when you try to take it to street level you run into some obstacles -- literally. Radar requires a good line of sight, and obstructions like buildings or terrain features can render radar useless. But now, using a handful of unmanned aircraft and technology that allows them to intelligently reflect radar off buildings, DARPA is developing a system that should be able to track individual vehicles even as they dart between skyscrapers and other structures.

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My Comment: You can run .... but you cannot hide.

Mind Over Matter? How Your Body Does Your Thinking

Let your body do the thinking (Image: Stephen Simpson/Image Bank)

From New Scientist:

"I THINK therefore I am," said Descartes. Perhaps he should have added: "I act, therefore I think."

Our ability to think has long been considered central to what makes us human. Now research suggests that our bodies and their relationship with the environment govern even our most abstract thoughts. This includes thinking up random numbers or deciding whether to recount positive or negative experiences.

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UV Radiation, Not Vitamin D, Might Limit Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms

From Science News:

Sunshine effects on MS might be more complicated than previously thought, mouse study suggests.

Ultraviolet radiation from sunshine seems to thwart multiple sclerosis, but perhaps not the way most researchers had assumed, a new study in mice suggests.

If validated in further research, the finding could add a twist to a hypothesis that has gained credence in recent decades. The report appears online March 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Are Hand Sanitizers Better Than Handwashing Against The Common Cold?

New research suggests that hand sanitizers containing ethanol are much more effective at removing rhinovirus from hands than washing with soap and water. (Credit: iStockphoto/Janine Lamontagne)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 24, 2010) — A new study suggests that hand sanitizers containing ethanol are much more effective at removing rhinovirus from hands than washing with soap and water. Sanitizers containing both ethanol and organic acids significantly reduced recovery of the virus from hands and rhinovirus infection up to 4 hours following application.

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Super Bug! World's Strongest Insect Revealed

Two males of dung beetle called Onthphagus taurus size up each other's horns.
Credit: Alex Wild.

From Live Science:

After months of grueling tests, a species of horned dung beetle takes the title for world's strongest insect.

The beetle, called Onthophagus taurus, was found to be able to pull a whopping 1,141 times its own body weight, which is the equivalent of a 150-pound (70 kilogram) person lifting six full double-decker buses. While the study researcher knows of a mite that can take on a hair more, that organism is an arachnid, not an insect.

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Search Engine Collects Historical Resources

From The BBC:

A search engine is being created to help historians find useful sources.

The Connected History project will link up currently separate databases of source materials.

Once complete, it will give academics or members of the public a single site that lets them search all the collections.

Once completed the search engine will index digitised books, newspapers, manuscripts, genealogical records, maps and images that date from 1500-1900.

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Inside A Global Cybercrime Ring

U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigators Sheryl Novick (L) and Martha Vera look at images (top half of monitors) as part of their investigation of the scareware company Innovative Marketing Ukraine (IMU) in the FTC internet lab in Washington March 22, 2010. Credit: REUTERS/Molly Riley

From Reuters:

(Reuters) - Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine's capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world's most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses.

According to court documents, former employees and investigators, a receptionist greeted visitors at the door of the company, known as Innovative Marketing Ukraine. Communications cables lay jumbled on the floor and a small coffee maker sat on the desk of one worker.

Read more ....

My Comment: A good chunk of my family (on my father's side) lives in the Ukraine. One of my cousin .... a software programmer, worked for a few months in such a company. Apparently the pay was great, and the people who he worked with were fun. I only learned about this later, because if I had learned about when he was working there, I would probably have gone down to his house and beat him over the head for being stupid enough to be affiliated with such criminals.

Because of my work in managing computer networks, I have had more than my share in tackling these vicious viruses. I have lost tons of information, and worse .... megaloads of my life in cleaning up the mess that such attacks always produced.

This Reuters article is a good one in outlining the problems and obstacles that need to be overcome to stop this type of cyber crime. This is a must read for all geeks, and for the individual user who has been a victim of this type of attack.

Climate Change Disaster Killed Off The 'Terrible Lizards' And Helped Dinosaurs To Rule The Earth

Changes: Dinosaurs came to rule the world as a direct result of a
mass extinction similar to the one that killed them off

From The Daily Mail:

Dinosaurs came to rule the world as a direct result of a mass extinction similar to the one that killed them off and allowed mammals to take over the planet, research has revealed.

History was repeating itself when a climate change disaster ended the 200million year reign of the 'terrible lizards', evidence suggests.

A massive asteroid impact is believed to have altered the world's climate and wiped out the dinosaurs, giving mammals the opportunity they had been waiting for to flourish.

Read more ....

Astronomers Discover 2 Shortcuts For Locating Earth-Like Planets

A young star with planets forming, illustrated here, may retain chemical clues about the worlds that surround it. ESO/L. Calçada

From Discover Magazine:

Astronomers Discover 2 Shortcuts for Locating Earth-Like Planets.

Since the discovery of planets outside our solar system in the 1990s, astronomers have tallied more than 400 extrasolar worlds, many unlike anything known before. Two recent studies show that the formation of planets may leave detectable chemical signatures in their host stars, a finding that could help scientists zero in on planetary systems even more quickly and speed the search for worlds similar to Earth.

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Opportunity Mars Rover Gets Artificial Intelligence Upgrade, Decides For Itself What to Explore Next

Opportunity Target Selection Opportunity scans the Martian terrain for rocks meeting specific criteria – shape, size, coloration – set by scientists on the ground. When it finds what it's looking for, it sets a course for the point of interest. NASA/JPL-Caltech

From Popular Science:

NASA's Opportunity Rover, now in its seventh year of roaming the Martian surface, just got a little smarter. Like parents giving their growing child a little more autonomy, engineers updated Opportunity with artificial intelligence software this past winter that allows the rover to make its own decisions about where to stop and which rocks to analyze during its travels. Now the first images of Opportunity picking and choosing where to investigate have been released.

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10 Wonders Of The Solar System

(Image: NASA / JHU-APL / Southwest Research Institute)

From New Scientist:

Moons may bow to planets in terms of size, but in character they often outshine their stolid parents. The named moons of the solar system outnumber planets by more than 20 to 1, and they display a remarkable diversity. There are fully fledged worlds such as Titan, as complex as any planet. There are possible havens for life, such as the ice-crusted water world Europa. New mysteries surround even the smallest satellites, most recently the apparent flying saucers orbiting Saturn.

This year it will be four centuries since Galileo discovered Jupiter's four large satellites, at a stroke quintupling the number of moons then known to humanity.

Join Stephen Battersby for a tour of some of te most frigid, violent and downright strange worlds we have discovered since then.

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Weird 'Dark Flow' Seen Deeper Into The Universe Than Ever

From Space.com:

The puzzling migration of matter in deep space – dubbed "dark flow" – has been observed at farther distances than ever before, scientists have announced.

Distant galaxy clusters appear to be zooming through space at phenomenal speeds that surpass 1 million mph. The clusters were tracked to 2.5 billion light-years away – twice as far as earlier measurements.

This motion can't be explained by any known cosmic force, the researchers say. They suspect that whatever's tugging the matter may lie beyond our observable universe.

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Ancient DNA Suggests New Hominid Line

CAVE OF MYSTERIES: Mitochondrial DNA analysis of a finger bone found in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia suggests that a group of unknown hominids ventured out of Africa less than a million years ago. J. Krause

From Science News:

Genetic data unveil a shadowy, previously unknown Stone Age ancestor.

A new member of the human evolutionary family has been proposed for the first time based on an ancient genetic sequence, not fossil bones. Even more surprising, this novel and still mysterious hominid, if confirmed, would have lived near Stone Age Neandertals and Homo sapiens.

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How Do You Force Criminals To Change Their Behavior?

From Boston.com:

How do you force criminals to change their behavior?

Over the last 35 years, the US criminal justice system has been spectacularly bad at answering this question. America is the most punitive nation in the world, with 2.4 million of its citizens behind bars and another 5.1 million on probation or parole. Yet according to the latest national statistics, two-thirds of released prisoners commit another serious offense within three years. After a generation of draconian crime policy, America’s crime rates are still among the highest in the Western world. Instead of one costly problem, we now have two: crime and mass incarceration.

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New Method Could Revolutionize Dating of Ancient Treasures

The "Venus of Brassempouy," a tiny ivory figurine, is among artifacts that scientists could analyze with a new method for determining the age of an object without damaging it. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 23, 2010) — Scientists have developed a new method to determine the age of ancient mummies, old artwork, and other relics without causing damage to these treasures of global cultural heritage. Reporting at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), they said it could allow scientific analysis of hundreds of artifacts that until now were off limits because museums and private collectors did not want the objects damaged.

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Light Bends Matter, Surprising Scientists

After 72 hours of exposure to ambient light, strands of nanoparticles twisted and bunched together. Credit: Nicholas Kotov

From Live Science:

Light can twist matter, according to a new study that observed ribbons of nanoparticles twisting in response to light.

Scientists knew matter can cause light to bend – prisms and glasses prove this easily enough. But the reverse phenomenon was not shown to occur until recently.

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iPad Apps May Be Buggy At Launch, Worries Developer

From PC World:

For Instapaper Pro developer Marco Arment, the lure of being first out of the gate with his iPad app outweighs the risk of imperfection.

Arment's gone ahead with development of Instapaper for Apple's iPad, an app that presents newspaper and magazine articles in simple black-on-white text and lets you flag interesting stories for later reading. But he's doing it without seeing how his creation works on an actual iPad, which doesn't launch until April 3.

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UN Body To Look At Meat And Climate Link

Livestock's Long Shadow calculated meat-related emissions from field to abattoir

From The BBC:

UN specialists are to look again at the contribution of meat production to climate change, after claims that an earlier report exaggerated the link.

A 2006 report concluded meat production was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions - more than transport.

The report has been cited by people campaigning for a more vegetable-based diet, including Sir Paul McCartney.

But a new analysis, presented at a major US science meeting, says the transport comparison was flawed.

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PayPal, Apps Prove a Potent Combination

Image: Rentalic, which lets people rent stuff to each other with security deposits and blackout dates for when owners wants to use their items, claimed top honors in the PayPal X Developer Challenge.

From Epicenter:

PayPal has spent nearly a decade mainly as the payment-fulfillment arm of its parent company, eBay. But with the explosion of the mobile internet and the endless opportunities to leverage smartphones as personal piggy banks, the company is positioning itself — again — as the virtual wallet you can’t leave home without.

Last week it upgraded its own iPhone app to allow two people to exchange money with a fist bump. That initiative was a broadside at Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s Square, a startup that makes it possible to use your smartphone to swipe credit cards.

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Does Geothermal Power Cause Earthquakes?

Geothermal Hot Spots: Many hot spots sit in seismically active areas. Paul Wootton

From Popular Science:

A new energy method could trigger a risky side effect.

On December 8, 2006, Markus Häring caused some 30 earthquakes -- the largest registering 3.4 on the Richter scale -- in Basel, Switzerland. Häring is not a supervillain. He's a geologist, and he had nothing but good intentions when he injected high-pressure water into rocks three miles below the surface, attempting to generate electricity through a process called enhanced geothermal. But he produced earthquakes instead, and when seismic analysis confirmed that the quakes were centered near the drilling site, city officials charged him with $9 million worth of damage to buildings.

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Galaxy Compared To Footballer Peter Crouch

Distant galaxy SMM J2135-0102 went through a massive 'growth spurt' Photo: ESO/PA

From The Telegraph:

A newly-discovered galaxy which went through a massive "growth spurt" has been dubbed the astronomical equivalent of 6ft 7in footballer Peter Crouch by scientists.

Researchers found that the galaxy created stars up to 100 times faster than the Milky Way does today.

Scientists could look back to how the galaxy appeared 10 billion years ago – three billion years after the Big Bang – due to the length of time its light took to reach Earth.

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Money DOES Buy You Happiness... If your Friends Have Less Of It

Happy: But money counts for little unless you are richer than your friends

From The Daily Mail:

Money makes you happy - but only if you have lots more than your friends and neighbours.

Owning the house of your dreams, the car you always longed for and having millions in the bank doesn't stop that desire to keep up with the Joneses, researchers have found.

And if the Joneses have more than you do, you'll be miserable.

It seems envy at being lower in the social pecking order tarnishes the satisfaction of being well off.

Read more ....

Advances In Technology To Track Our Soldiers

Keep moving to fix a position (Image: Chad Hunt/Corbis)

Motion Sensors Could Track Troops When GPS Cuts Out -- New Scientist

KNOWING where troops are during combat operations can be a matter of life and death - but GPS technology used to track troops is fragile, the signal easily lost. Now a UK company is developing a lightweight, wearable tracker that can provide location cover when GPS is down.

The system uses novel software to decipher position data from the signals generated by cheap microchip-based motion sensors - like those used in the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPhone.

Read more ....

'Muscular' UK Space Agency Launched

From The BBC:

The new UK Space Agency (UKSA) will take over responsibility for government policy and the key budgets for space, according to ministers.

The agency, which comes into being on 1 April, will also represent Britain on space matters in all negotiations with international partners.

The UKSA's name, logo and remit were announced at a conference in London.

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Mysterious Stone Spheres In Costa Rica Investigated

John Hoopes, University of Kansas associate professor of anthropology and director of the Global Indigenous Nations Studies Program, recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica where he and colleagues evaluated ancient stone spheres for UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization that might grant the spheres World Heritage Status. (Credit: Courtesy of John Hoopes)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 23, 2010) — The ancient stone spheres of Costa Rica were made world-famous by the opening sequence of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," when a mockup of one of the mysterious relics nearly crushed Indiana Jones.

So perhaps John Hoopes is the closest thing at the University of Kansas to the movie action hero.

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History's Most Destructive Volcanoes

The June 12, 1991 eruption column from Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, as seen from Clark Air Base. credit: Richard P. Hoblitt/USGS

From Live Science:

The eruption of a volcano on the island nation of Iceland on Saturday is a result of the tectonic processes that have continuously shaped and re-shaped the Earth's surface for billions of years. These processes are responsible for some of the biggest, deadliest eruptions in history.

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China Seeks Calm Amid The Google Storm

From Times Online:

Google’s hopes of retaining a foothold in China remained intact yesterday after the Chinese Government played down its row with the company over censorship.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Google’s closure of its search engine on mainland China should not damage wider Sino-US relations. Google’s other web services in China, such as Gmail, maps and a popular music search feature, remained unblocked.

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How The Tablet Will Change The World

The iPad is the first embodiment of an entirely new category, one that Apple CEO Steve Jobs hopes will write the obituary for the computing paradigm that Apple itself helped develop. Photo: Dan Winters; tablet: Stan Musilek

From Wired:

Everyone who jammed into the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on January 27, 2010, knew what they were there for: Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ introduction of a thin, always-on tablet device that would let people browse the Web, read books, send email, watch movies, and play games. It was also no surprise that the 1.5-pound iPad resembled an iPhone, right down to the single black button nestled below the bright 10-inch screen. But about an hour into the presentation, Apple showed something unexpected — something that not many people even noticed.

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How Science Is Countering Biological And Chemical Threats

Bio-terror A versatile material that neutralizes a range of biological and chemical agents could save time and lives in the event of a terrorist attack or accident.

New Versatile Polymer Counters Both Chemical and Biological Threats -- Popular Science

Because terrorists rarely announce the technical details of their nefarious intentions beforehand, the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction is not only great, it's multifaceted. So a team from the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine has synthesized a polyurethane fiber mesh that is as variable as the terrorist threat. By mimicking biological tissues like the skin that respond to shifting environments, the a multifunctional polymer can decontaminate a range of both biological agents and chemical toxins.

Read more ....

Loneliness Increases Your Blood Pressure

From The Telegraph:

Loneliness can increase blood pressure if you are over 50, according to a new university study.

Lack of connection with others not only makes us unhappy but it is also bad for the wellbeing of your body, research finds.

The psychologists found that there is a direct relation between loneliness and larger increases in blood pressure four years later—a link that is independent of age and other factors such as smoking and obesity.

Read more ....

Arctic Winds And Not Global Warming 'Responsible For Much Of Record Loss Of Sea Ice'

Study: Strong winds and not global warming are to blame for much of the record-breaking loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean in recent years.

From The Daily Mail:

Strong winds and not global warming are to blame for much of the record-breaking loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean in recent years, new research reveals.

Ice blown out of the Arctic area by winds can explain the one-third drop of sea ice since 1979, scientists believe.

The study helps to explain the huge loss of ice in the region during the summers of 2007 and 2008, after which some commentators suggested the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free during the summertime within a decade.

Read more ....

US Space Companies Present Soyuz-Busting Price Plans

From New Scientist:

Matching Russian rides to the International Space Station after the space shuttle retires will be difficult without "extraordinary" US government help, a senior NASA insider said on Thursday. But the private space firm SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, says it is ready to step into the breach by undercutting the current $50 million-per-astronaut round-trip ticket for travelling to the ISS aboard the Russian Soyuz craft.

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Do Animals Commit Suicide? A Scientific Debate

From Time Magazine:

Forty years ago, Richard O'Barry watched Kathy, a dolphin in the 1960s television show Flipper, kill herself. Or so he says. She looked him in the eye, sank to the bottom of a steel tank and stopped breathing. The moment transformed the dolphin trainer into an animal-rights activist for life, and his role in The Cove, the Oscar-winning documentary about the dolphin-meat business in a small town in Japan, has transformed him into a celebrity.

"The suicide was what turned me around," says O'Barry. "The [animal entertainment] industry doesn't want people to think dolphins are capable of suicide, but these are self-aware creatures with a brain larger than a human brain. If life becomes so unbearable, they just don't take the next breath. It's suicide."

Read more ....

Large Hadron Collider To Start Hunt For 'God Particle'

Engineers have been installing a new protection system for the LHC's magnets

From The BBC:

The organisation that operates the Large Hadron Collider has set a date for the start of its science programme.

On Tuesday 30 March, engineers at Cern will make their first attempt to collide beams at an energy of 3.5 trillion electronvolts (TeV) per beam.

The LHC reached this beam energy last week, breaking its own particle beam energy record.

Read more ....

Norton Ranks Riskiest Cities For Cybercrime

(Credit: Symantec)

From CNET News:

You may want to start keeping a closer eye on where you click if you live in Seattle.

Among 50 U.S. cities studied for their vulnerability to cybercrime, Seattle came out on top as the riskiest place, followed by Boston, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, according to the report "Norton's Top 10 Riskiest Online Cities," released Monday.

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How Dinosaurs Rose To Prominence

Central Atlantic Magmatic Province Massive lava flow (top brown layer) sits atop end-Triassic (white) and Triassic (red) layers at a site in Five Islands Provincial Park, Nova Scotia. (Credit: Jessica. H. Whiteside/Brown University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 23, 2010) — A shade more than 200 million years ago, the Earth looked far different than it does today. Most land on the planet was consolidated into one continent called Pangea. There was no Atlantic Ocean, and the rulers of the animal world were crurotarsans -- creatures closely related to modern crocodiles.

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Portion Sizes in 'Last Supper' Paintings Grew Over Time

From Live Science:

Nutrition experts have analyzed the food depicted in some of the best-known paintings of the biblical Last Supper and found that the portion and plate sizes depicted in them increased substantially from older paintings to those painted more recently.

The findings suggest the trend of bigger plates and portions that has been noticed recently and linked to obesity may have been in the works for much longer, the researchers suggest.

Read more ....

Queen Chooses Which Sperm Die

Researchers retrieve sperm from the abdomen of an ant. Credit: Boris Baer/UWA

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: The queen of a social insect colony has one sexual encounter during her life, which involves many males, then controls which sperm will die off, researchers said.

A social insect queen only experiences a single day of sexual activity in her lifetime yet she must obtain all the sperm necessary to create an entire colony within that time frame. This means that social insect females store a large amount of sperm in their storage organ.

"A honeybee queen mates with many more males than she has to, thereby collecting much more sperm than she actually needs," said Boris Bear, from the University of Western Australia in Crawley.

Read more ....

Swiss Team Breaks Record for Around-the-World Flight, Despite Encountering Volcanic Eruption

The Sabreliner 65 and Her Swiss Crew Emmanuel Joffet - Sipa Press

From Popular Science:

First time the record has been set with refueling stops.

Piloting a plane older than two of the three crew on board, a Swiss team shattered Steve Fossett's around-the-world flight record by almost ten hours over the weekend, the first time the record has been set in this weight class with refueling stops. But the pilots didn't just have to negotiate the usual headwinds and bad weather -- their flight was nearly derailed by a volcanic eruption in Iceland that forced them to make an extra refueling stop and add an unexpected 12th leg to their journey.

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In The Middle Of A Chain Reaction (Hot Video)

From The Daily Mail:

A domino-effect music video for a cult U.S. band has proved an internet sensation after attracting eight million online views and counting.

The ingenious four-minute promo, for Los Angeles-based OK Go's song This Too Shall Pass, is currently the hottest thing on the web.

It begins with band member Tom Nordwind - wearing a red paint-splattered jump suit - rolling a child's red lorry into a row of dominoes.

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