Mysterious, Rare Red Diamond On Display

The Kazanjian Red Diamond, one of only three red diamonds of more than five carats, is on display at the American Museum of Natural History. Credit: AMNH/D. Finnin.

From Live Science:

NEW YORK — Among colored diamonds, red is particularly rare, and mysterious, since no one knows for certain the origin of the color within the stone.

One of the three known red diamonds weighing more than 5 carats (1 gram), an emerald-cut stone about the size of a small fingertip rests against a gray background in an American Museum of Natural History display case. This stone, known as the Kazanjian Red Diamond, has a dark hue resembling that of a garnet or a ruby, and in its nearly century-long history, it has been mistaken for the latter.

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Quantum Leap Towards Computer Of The Future

An artist's impression of a phosphorus atom (a red sphere surrounded by a blue electron cloud) coupled to a silicon single-electron transistor (College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales: William Algar-Chuklin)

From ABC News (Australia):

An Australian-led team of scientists have taken a big step forward in the race to develop a quantum computer.

Quantum computing relies on harnessing the laws of quantum physics - laws that apply to particles smaller than an atom - to get a computer to carry out many calculations at the same time.

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Solar Or Wind Power? Why Not Both?

Solar wind doesn't act like wind on Earth, and the satellite wouldn't generate electricity like a windmill. iStockphoto

From Discovery News:

A massive satellite that harvests the power in solar wind could meet the energy needs of all humanity and then some.

Solar and wind power have long been two of the main contenders in the race to find the next big renewable energy resource. Rather than choosing between the two, scientists at Washington State University have instead combined them.

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Kindle For The Web

One-Fifth Of World's Plants At Risk Of Extinction

Photo: Plants such as artemisia sweet wormwood provide valuable drugs - in this case, for malaria

From The BBC:

One-fifth of the world's plants - the foundation of life on Earth - are at risk of extinction, a study concludes.

Researchers have sampled almost 4,000 species, and conclude that 22% should be classified as "threatened" - the same alarming rate as for mammals.

A further 33% of species were too poorly understood to be assessed.

The analysis comes from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Natural History Museum and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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The End of Time Is Nigh (In A Cosmic Sense, Anyhow)

The End of Time Ticking off the seconds until the end of time, some 3.7 billion years from now. Leo Reynolds via Flickr

From Popular Science:

The universe has only about 3.7 billion years in which to settle its affairs. At least, that’s the new assertion from a group of physicists who say that there is a 50 percent chance that time will end within that time frame. If the laws of physics as we understand them are in fact correct, then time must eventually end – and their math shows that both the sun and the Earth should still be around when that happens.

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Deceptive Robots Hint At Machine Self-Awareness

From New Scientist:

A robot that tricks its opponent in a game of hide and seek is a step towards machines that can intuit our thoughts, intentions and feelings

ROVIO the robotic car is creating a decoy. It trundles forward and knocks over a marker pen stood on its end. The pen is positioned along the path to a hiding place - but Rovio doesn't hide there. It sneaks away and conceals itself elsewhere.

When a second Rovio arrives, it sees the felled pen and assumes that its prey must have passed this way. It rolls onwards, but is soon disappointed.

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The End Of An Era In British Military Aviation

Last flight? The Cold War Vulcan bomber may not take to the skies again, unless its owners can raise £400,000 by the end of October

Last Vulcan Flies Into The Unknown: Iconic Cold War Plane Will Be Grounded Unless Owners Can Raise £400,000 -- The Daily Mail

Soaring into the sky with its engines booming, this may be the mighty Cold War Vulcan bomber making its last flight.

The former RAF bomber, the last airworthy plane of its type, is shown at an airshow at Coventry Airport in aid of the Help for Heroes military charity at the weekend.

But the plane - which was in active service from 1960 to 1984 and is one of the greatest achievements of British aerospace-engineering - will not be able to fly again unless its owners raise £400,000 by the end of October for costly maintenance to ensure it passes safety tests.

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Google's Boss Envisions a Utopian Future

Credit: Dave Getzschman/TechCrunch

From Technology Review:

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt played make believe and sketched out his vision of the future on stage at TechCrunch's Disrupt event in San Francisco today.

"It's a future where you don't forget anything...In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time...Your car will drive itself, it's a bug that cars were invented before computers...you're never lonely...you're never bored...you're never out of ideas."

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Why Are There No Hyenas In Europe?

Profile of an alert spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta). (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — A team from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC) has analysed the impact of climate change on spotted hyena survival in Europe over 10,000 years ago. These changes played an important role, but the scientists say studies are still needed to look at the influence of human expansion and changes in herbivorous fauna on the definitive extinction of this species across the continent.

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Diet and Exercise Trump Diabetes Drugs

From Live Science:

A news search on the word "Avandia," the diabetes drug, will pull up thousands of results, nearly all pertaining to the Food and Drug Administration's decision last week to keep this dangerous drug on the market, albeit with restrictions.

Another search on "Avandia + diet," will produce only a few results. And herein lies the problem. Too many doctors rely solely on prescription drugs to treat their patients' diabetes; and too many FDA regulators leave the concept of diet completely out of the diabetes equation.

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Depressing Lottery Simulator Lets You Play 1000 Times a Second, Shows All The Millions You Didn't Win

Big Pile O' Cash, But Not For Me aresauburn on Flickr

From Popular Science:

Thanks to one man, I don’t need to play the lottery. I already know that if I play twice a week every week for the next 10 years, I will win a staggering total of $93 by 2020. Or, put differently, I will make back eight percent of the $1,040 I'll spend on the tickets.

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The Effects Of World War I And II Are Still With Us

Bomb Hotspots Of Northern Europe -- New Scientist

If you want to avoid being blown up by a bombs lost during World Wars I and II, be careful trawling the seabed for fish - particularly near the coast of the Netherlands and Belgium. That's the message from the most comprehensive survey yet of sunken wartime munitions in waters of the North-East Atlantic.

The survey highlights the southern North Sea as a hotspot for accidental finds of bombs (PDF). Of 1879 encounters reported throughout the North-East Atlantic since 2004, almost three quarters, 1320, were in that area.

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Revealed: Europe's Hybrid 'Helicraft' That Makers Hope Will Smash The Speed Barrier... And Steal U.S. Rival's Business

High-speed: The X3 is equipped with two turboshaft engines that power a five-blade main rotor system and two propellers installed on short-span fixed wings, creating an advanced transportation system offering the speed of a turboprop-powered aircraft and the full hover flight capabilities of a helicopter

From The Daily Mail:

A revolutionary winged helicopter that hopes to break the speed record has finally been unveiled after months of secrecy.

European group Eurocopter showed off the high-speed aircraft in a bid to counter U.S. rival Sikorsky's efforts to break the speed barrier by rewriting rotorcraft design rules.

The X3 hybrid helicraft - which combines forward-facing propellers astride two short aircraft wings with the familiar overhead rotor blades seen on any normal helicopter - is half-plane, half-helicopter in design.

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Why Tequila Is A Girl's Best Friend

Miss Sweetie Poo with Javier Morales (right) and Miguel Apatiga at the 2009 Ig Nobel prize ceremony. Photograph: Eric Workman

From The Guardian:

The discovery that he could make diamonds from Mexico's favourite tipple changed this physicist's life.

Ever since our research was first published, people who hear about it for the first time just can't help laughing. Well, the fact is that most sane people would not dream of trying to turn cheap tequila into diamonds. In fact, at most of the scientific conferences I have attended, the first response to the reading of any paper on the topic is laughter, and a lot of it. But then the audience quietens down. There is no doubt that this research makes people laugh … and then think.

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Mapping The Brain On A Massive Scale

Image: Charting the brain: Scientists will use both structural and functional brain imaging to create detailed maps of 1,200 human brains. In the top image, areas in yellow and red are structurally connected to the area indicated by the blue spot. In the bottom image, areas in yellow and red are those that are functionally connected to the blue spot. Credit: David Van Essen, Washington University

From Technology Review:

Scanning 1,200 brains could help researchers chart the organ's fine structure and better understand neurological disorders.

A massive new project to scan the brains of 1,200 volunteers could finally give scientists a picture of the neural architecture of the human brain and help them understand the causes of certain neurological and psychological diseases.

The National Institutes of Health announced $40 million in funding this month for the five-year effort, dubbed the Human Connectome Project. Scientists will use new imaging technologies, some still under development, to create both structural and functional maps of the human brain.

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UN Denies Naming 'Ambassador' To Aliens

Photo: Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman.

From Space Daily:

The United Nations Office
for Outer Space Affairs on Tuesday dismissed as "nonsense" a newspaper report which said it had appointed a new ambassador as a point of contact for extra-terrestrials.

"The article in the Sunday Times is nonsense," UNOOSA said in a statement, referring to a report this weekend which said the UN was to appoint Malaysian astrophysicist, Mazlan Othman, to be the first contact for any aliens.

Othman heads UNOOSA, a little-known department of the UN based in Vienna with a staff of 27.

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First Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Discovered by Pan-STARRS Telescope

Photo: Two images of 2010 ST3 (circled in green) taken by PS1 about 15 minutes apart on the night of September 16 show the asteroid moving against the background field of stars and galaxies. Each image is about 100 arc seconds across. (Credit: PS1SC)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) PS1 telescope has discovered an asteroid that will come within 4 million miles of Earth in mid-October. The object is about 150 feet in diameter and was discovered in images acquired on September 16, when it was about 20 million miles away.

It is the first "potentially hazardous object" (PHO) to be discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey and has been given the designation "2010 ST3."

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Veterans With PTSD Suffer More Medical Illnesses

U.S. Army Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division cross a bridge to Al Zunbria, Iraq, Dec. 29, 2007, during operations to secure the area south of their area of operation. Credit: Spc. Angelica Golindano

From Live Science:

Military veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with troubled mental health may also suffer the burden of more medical illnesses, according to a sweeping study.

Female veterans in particular seem hard hit by the one-two combination of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and additional medical conditions, such as headaches and lower-back disorders.

Read more ....

Robot Teaches Itself To Fire A Bow And Arrow

From Gadget Lab:

In the latest episode of “stop teaching them so much,” scientists have created a humanoid robot that teaches itself how to accurately hit a target with a bow and arrow.

The cute, childlike robot, named iCub, was designed by researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology. Armed with a bow, an arrow, a cute (if politically incorrect) Native American headdress and a complicated computer algorithm, the robot learns from his missed shots iteratively, until he makes the bull’s-eye.

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Real-Life Iron Man Exoskeleton Gets a Slimmer, More Powerful Sequel

XOS-2 Raytheon-Sarcos

From Popular Science:

The XOS Exoskeleton, which was first shown off about two and a half years ago, was the first full-body suit that really evoked the sci-fi and comic fan's dream of donning a suit that grants superhuman strength. Late last week, Raytheon-Sarcos demonstrated the newest XOS suit--the sequel, you might say.

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Cairn Energy Strikes Oil In Greenland

Cairn Energy's Stena Forth Drillship. Cairn Energy

From Popular Mechanics:

Massive deposits could one day make Inuits the Saudis of the north.

They've found oil in Greenland. The success of a massive deep-water drilling rig operated by Cairn Energy, a Scottish company, could mean that the world's newest oil-and-gas rush is underway, this time in one of the globe's most remote, rugged and pristine locations. For Americans used to hearing about huge fossil fuel deposits in Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia and other locations that are politically unstable or intermittently antagonistic toward the West, this could come as welcome news. Greenland is a lightly inhabited arctic wilderness administered for now by the unthreatening Scandinavian country of Denmark. The territory is counting on oil and mineral development to fund a gradual move toward independence, and the discovery is being cheered in Nuuk, Greenland's capital.

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UN 'To Appoint Space Ambassador To Greet Alien Visitors'

From The Telegraph:

A space ambassador could be appointed by the United Nations to act as the first point of contact for aliens trying to communicate with Earth.

Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, is set to be tasked with co-ordinating humanity’s response if and when extraterrestrials make contact.

Aliens who landed on earth and asked: “Take me to your leader” would be directed to Mrs Othman.

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Spectacular View Of Thousands Of Devil Rays As They Mass Off The Californian Coast Scoops Top Photography Prize

Winner of the Underwater group and overall winner of the competition: 'Flight of the Rays' by Florian Schulz from Germany, which shows an unprecedented congregation of Munkiana Devil Rays in Baja California Sur, Mexico

From The Daily Mail:

Packed fin to gill as they swim in tight formation, this incredible picture of rays swimming through the ocean in a colossal school has scooped a top photography prize,

The thousands-strong group of Munkiana Devil Rays were spotted in Baja California Sur, Mexico, by German conservation photographer Florian Schulz.

The remarkable photo won the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2010 awards.

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Why The Stuxnet Worm Is Like Nothing Seen Before

Sneaking past security (Image: 2010 IIPA/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Stuxnet is the first worm of its type capable of attacking critical infrastructure like power stations and electricity grids: those in the know have been expecting it for years.

On 26 September, Iran's state news agency reported that computers at its Bushehr nuclear power plant had been infected by Stuxnet.

New Scientist explains the significance of the worm.

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Unmanned Airplanes Coming To A Terminal Near You

Unmanned airplanes could carry cargo loads across unpopulated areas or the ocean. iStockphoto

From Discovery News:

Would you be willing to take off in a plane without a pilot?

Unmanned airplanes have almost become another branch of the military, dropping bombs, spying on terrorist camps and even threatening enemy aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now government and aviation experts are planning to make room for more robot aircraft over domestic skies: working as airborne traffic cops, patrolling the border and maybe even shuttling cargo between cities.

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A Herculean Effort To Deliver Broadband By Satellite

Image: The payload for Hylas was developed through Esa's Artes telecoms research programme

From The BBC:

The date was September 1999 and banker David Williams was sitting on a beach in Santa Monica:

"I'd just spent a soul-destroying day at a satellite manufacturer, trying to push forward a project and getting bogged down in just the most ridiculous bureaucracy. And I was thinking there had to be an easier way of doing the satellite business. It's not that complicated - you get some money, you pay someone to build a satellite, you launch it, you flog the capacity. How hard can that be? I was venting my frustration to my wife and she said: 'if you think you're so bloody clever, go and do it yourself!'"

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Gigantic Mirror For X-Radiation In Outer Space

Study of the planned X-ray telescope IXO. (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — It is to become the largest X-ray telescope ever: The International X-Ray Observatory (IXO), which has been planned in a cooperation between NASA, ESA and Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA, will be launched into space in 2021 and provide the world with brand new information about black holes and, thus, about the origin of the universe.

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Genetic Science Oozes Out of Amateurs' Garages

Looking for the nucleic acid precipitate after extracting DNA from green tea, during a DIYBio workshop at UCLA on Feb. 27, 2010. Credit: Kenneth Wei Photography

From Live Science:

Melanie Swan did not panic upon learning she had inherited a genetic mutation that seemed to put her at a higher risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease. Instead she and another "garage biologist" ran a pilot study from their own homes and came up with a countermeasure.

They represent the vanguard of the do-it-yourself biology movement — DIYBio, which aims to spread the power of genetic understanding beyond research institutions and corporate labs.

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Geology In A War Zone

Searching Haroon, an artisanal miner, looks for emeralds deep inside the Hindu Kush. Matthieu Aikins

The Treasure of the Safit Chir -- Popular Science

For over two centuries we have struggled to understand the scope of Afghanistan's mineral wealth. Now geologists, if they can determine what lies beneath the nation's ground, might also help bring stability to the surface.

Early one morning in June, just a week after the New York Times reported claims by U.S. officials that Afghanistan was perched atop enough copper, gold, iron, lithium, and assorted rare minerals and gemstones “to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself,” I made my way with a local guide to the illegal mines of the Safit Chir, an emerald-rich line of ridges 100 miles northeast of Kabul. After a three-hour climb up trails navigable only on foot or by donkey, we greeted several miners, and one of them led us past the dark maws of the tunnels to the edge of a ridge, the better to see the places where his nation’s wealth might be hidden.

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My Comment: Afghanistan can have trillions of dollars in gold, diamonds, minerals and resources of incredible wealth .... but as long as the war goes on, that wealth will forever be locked underground and never touched.

RIM's Blackberry PlayBook Could Be The First Real iPad Competitor

BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM

From Popular Mechanics:

Extra evidence that the future of tablet computing is going to be very active—today RIM dropped some details on its upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook seven-inch tablet, with a new BlackBerry Tablet OS.

It's smaller than Apple's existing 9.7-inch iPad screen, but it promises to be more powerful and feature-rich, with a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of embedded RAM, dual front and rear HD cameras, HDMI video output, tethering to BlackBerry phones and support for Adobe Flash 10.1 as well as Adobe's Air publishing platform.

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Large Hadron Collider Signal 'May Show Big Bang Conditions'

The "high multiplicity collision" signal picked up by the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Photo: CERN

From The Telegraph:

A never-before-seen signal in a collision at the Large Hadron Collider has raised hopes that the giant particle accelerator is on the verge of serious breakthroughs.

A series of high-energy proton-proton collisions observed at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector led to 100 or more charged particles being produced. These so-called "high multiplicity" collisions were unusual in that the resulting particles are "correlated" - associated with each other at the moment of their creation. One interpretation of the results is that the protons are being forced together at such high energies that the quarks that form them are released, becoming a free-flowing fluid of quarks and gluons like that which existed immediately after the big bang.

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Revealed: Wind Farm Power Twice As Costly As Gas Or Coal

Full of hot air: The EU has targeted 10,000 new wind farms, but a study has revealed that it costs nearly twice as much to produce wind power as it does from traditional gas or coal power stations

From The Daily Mail:

The true cost of Britain’s massive expansion of wind farms has been revealed.

It costs nearly twice as much to generate electricity from an offshore wind farm as it does from a conventional power station, a scientific report has concluded.

And while the price of wind power is expected to fall in the coming decade, the researchers admit there is a slight chance it could rise even further.

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Are We About To Fight Wars Over Strategic Metals?

Is This The Start Of The Element Wars? -- New Scientist

Warnings have already surfaced about water wars. Now the prospect of "element wars" is raising its ugly head.

Chinese customs officials are blocking shipments to Japan of rare earth elements (REEs) and companies have been informally told not to export them, says The New York Times.

The move puts more pressure on relations already tested by the capture of a Chinese fishing boat captain in disputed waters earlier this month. The captain was finally released on friday, says the Financial Times, but the ban on exports appears to remain in place.

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My Comment: Japan certainly buckled down very quickly when China started to use its monopoly position on rare earths against Japan. It may not have been the main reason why Japan acquiesced to Chinese demands, but I am sure that they thought about it .... they and everyone else in the world.

Did Volcanoes Wipe Out Neanderthals?

Advances in stone toolmaking and other cultural innovations achieved by modern humans shortly after 40,000 years ago supported survival in harsh, postvolcanic habitats. iStockphoto

From Discovery News:

Neanderthals may have gone out with a bang.

Neandertals didn't get dumped on prehistory's ash heap -- it got dumped on them. At least three volcanic eruptions about 40,000 years ago devastated Neandertals' western Asian and European homelands, spurring a rapid demise of these humanlike hominids, says a team led by archaeologist Liubov Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Read more ....

Who Launched A Cyber Attack Against Iran?

Graph shows concentration of Stuxnet-infected computers in Iran as of August.
Photograph: Symantec

Web Virus Aimed At Nuclear Work, Says Tehran -- Financial Times

An internet virus that has damaged computer systems in Iran was designed by foreign governments to undermine the country’s nuclear ambitions, according to Tehran.

As western governments continued to analyse the origins and impact of the Stuxnet malware, which has affected at least 30,000 IP addresses in Iran, an official stressed the sophisticated nature of the virus.

Read more ....

More News On The Stuxnet Malware Attack Against Iran

Worm affects Iran nuclear plant -- BBC
Stuxnet worm rampaging through Iran: IT official -- AFP
Stuxnet Compromise at Iranian Nuclear Plant May Be By Design -- PC World
Report: Stuxnet Worm Attacks Iran, Who is Behind It? -- PC Magazine
Iran admits Stuxnet worm infected PCs at nuclear reactor -- Computer World
Pentagon Silent on Iranian Nuke Virus -- FOX News
Stuxnet worm mystery: What's the cyber weapon after? -- Christian Science Monitor
Could Iran Retaliate for Apparent Cyber Attack? -- FOX News/Reuters
Implications of Iran cyber attack affect all -- Globe And Mail/Reuters

Painless Laser Device Could Spot Early Signs Of Disease

Photo: Fibre-optic probes could use lasers to distinguish between cancerous, pre-cancerous and healthy cells

From The BBC:

Portable devices with painless laser beams could soon replace X-rays as a non-invasive way to diagnose disease.

Researchers say that the technique could become widely available in about five years.

The method, called Raman spectroscopy, could help spot the early signs of breast cancer, tooth decay and osteoporosis.

Scientists believe that the technology would make the diagnosis of illnesses faster, cheaper and more accurate.

Read more ....

When Exercise Just Isn't Enough

Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

BIRMINGHAM: Lack of exercise is not the cause of the obesity epidemic, said biologist John Speakman, who has found that we do not exercise less nowadays.

Speakman, from the University of Aberdeen, has collected data showing that too much food, not too little exercise has caused us to pile on the pounds.

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Mars Orbiter Back Up And Running Again Following Computer Glitch

This artist's concept of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from 2006 features the spacecraft's main bus facing down, toward the red planet. The large silver circular feature above the spacecraft bus is the high-gain antenna, the spacecraft's main means of communicating with both Earth and other spacecraft. NASA/JPL

From Christian Science Monitor:

Mars orbiter spontaneously rebooted itself and stopped gathering information last week. However, last Saturday, the Mars orbiter began collecting data again and appears to be back on track, high above the Red Planet.

A powerful NASA spacecraft around Mars has bounced back yet again Saturday, resuming its study of the Red Planet three days after a recurring computer glitch temporarily waylaid its mission.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter started gathering science data again on Sept. 18, NASA officials announced. On Sept. 15, the orbiter put itself into precautionary "safe mode" — a sort of spacecraft hibernation — after spontaneously rebooting for unknown reasons.

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Mankind's First Genocide?

An archaeologist uncovers a skeleton from the Uruk colony's remains. Was this person killed by his/her own people? Photo courtesy Professor Clemens Reichel

New Discoveries Hint At 5,500 Year Old Fratricide At Hamoukar, Syria -- The Independent

Five years ago, archaeologists found the “earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world.” Using slings and clay bullets a – likely Uruk – army took over the city of Hamoukar, burning it down in the process. Now, new discoveries at a nearby settlement shed more light on the 3500 BC battle – and raise more questions. If the invading army was from Uruk, did they kill their own people? If so, why?

Hamoukar is a city that flourished in northern Syria since at least 4000 BC. They traded in obsidian and in later times copper working became increasingly important to the city’s economy. Thousands of clay sealings – once used to lock doors or containers and impressed with stamp seals – were found at the ancient site. They tell of a bureaucratic system that was almost as complex as our own.

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NASA Budget Likely to Remain In Limbo Until After Election Day, Lawmakers Say

To the Launch Pad Space Shuttle Discovery crawled toward Launch Pad A this week, preparing for its final flight in November. via Flickr/ forthebirds (CC licensed)

From Popular Science:

Apparently, space doesn’t sell in an election year. Lawmakers are saying Congress is unlikely to make any spending decisions about NASA until after November 2, according to several reports.

Congress has been debating the space agency’s future in fits and starts since the beginning of the year, when President Obama first proposed shifting its priorities. Lawmakers balked at his plans and offered their own budget suggestions, which have been bandied about through the summer. Still, competing House and Senate bills remain in play, and they’re unlikely to get resolved in the next two weeks, when Congress goes on fall break to concentrate on the midterm elections.

Read more ....

Scientists Develop New 'Photonic' Chip That Could Make Quantum Computers A Reality

Image: Quantum computers will be able to conduct far more complex calculations than current computers

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have developed a computer chip that could pave the way for a new generation of powerful 'quantum' computers.

The photonic chip, built by scientists from Bristol’s Centre for Quantum Photonics, uses light rather than electricity to pass information.

The breakthrough could lead to 'quantum' computers capable of performing complex calculations and simulations that are impossible for today's computers.

Read more ....

Aurora Saturnalis: Halos At The Poles Of The Ringed Planet

From New Scientist:

Saturn was already the solar system's undisputed lord of the rings. Now newly processed images from the Cassini spacecraft are revealing previously unseen halos of infrared auroral light above the planet's poles.

Auroras on Saturn form like those on Earth, when charged particles in the solar wind stream down the planet's magnetic field towards its poles, where they excite gas in the upper atmosphere to glow. Some auroras on the ringed planet are also triggered when some of its moons, which are electrically conducting, move through the charged gas surrounding Saturn.

Read more ....

Malaria Passed From Gorillas To Humans

The parasite passes from one human to another via a female Anopheles mosquito which hands it on when the insect takes a blood meal. Hemera

From Discovery News:

The parasite that causes the most lethal strain of malaria among humans crossed the species barrier from gorillas, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Plasmodium falciparum is the deadliest of the five known strains of malaria parasites, causing several hundred million cases each year, of which around a million are fatal.

Read more ....

LHC Finds 'Interesting Effects'

From The BBC:

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider say they are getting some fascinating early results as they get set to probe new areas of physics.

The giant machine on the Franco-Swiss border is studying the fundamental nature of matter by smashing together proton particles at near light-speed.

Its CMS detector is reported to have seen "new and interesting effects".

These effects concern the particular paths taken by the debris particles as they move away from the impacts.

Read more ....

Groundwater Depletion Rate Accelerating Worldwide

Global map of groundwater depletion, measured in cubic meters of water per year. (Credit: Image courtesy of American Geophysical Union)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2010) — In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment of groundwater use.

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Hard-Hitting Sports Hold Dangers For Teen Athletes

More teen football players are going to the emergency room for concussions. Credit: M. Pappas.

From Live Science:

West Orange, Texas, high school football player Reggie Garrett had just thrown his second touchdown pass of the game Friday night when he jogged to the sidelines, gave a coach a low-five and collapsed.

Just over an hour later, doctors at Memorial Hermann Baptist Orange Hospital declared the 17-year-old senior dead.

Read more ....

How To Do (Almost) Everything With A Kindle 3

Photo of third-generation Kindle. Courtesy Amazon.com

From Gadget Lab:

Amazon’s Kindle can do a lot more than just buy and read Amazon-sold e-books. This is often a surprise. I usually wind up in conversations where someone says “I’d like to try a Kindle, but it can’t _______.” Usually, it can.

I was actually surprised when I bought my Kindle not just by how much it could do, but by how well it did it. The Kindle suffers from two things: 1) it’s never going to do everything that a full-fledged computer or even a color touchscreen tablet can do; and 2) the Kindle 3 has improved on a whole slew of features that were either poorly implemented in or entirely absent from earlier iterations of the Kindle.

Read more ....

Neandertals Blasted Out Of Existence, Archaeologists Propose

TRINKETS OF SURVIVAL Human-made items, such as these pendants fashioned from animals' teeth, appeared in a Russian cave shortly after volcanic eruptions around 40,000 years ago wiped out Neandertal populations in the area, researchers say.Golovanova et al.

From Science News:

Modern humans may have thrived thanks to geographic luck, not wits.

Neandertals didn’t get dumped on prehistory’s ash heap — it got dumped on them. At least three volcanic eruptions about 40,000 years ago devastated Neandertals’ western Asian and European homelands, spurring a rapid demise of these humanlike hominids, says a team led by archaeologist Liubov Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Read more ....

Air Force's Space-Based Surveillance Satellite Launches Tomorrow, To Scan For Space Junk

Space Debris NASA

From Popular Science:

A massive collection of spacecraft parts, dead satellites, and spent rocket stages circle high above the Earth in a sort of “floating landfill.” According to recent estimates, about 4 million pounds of space junk currently orbit the Earth, including some 20,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 centimeters.

Read more ....

BlackBerry Maker 'To Unveil 'BlackPad' Tablet To Take On iPad Next Week'

The Blackpad has not been officially released yet but some technology bloggers say these pictures are what it is likely to look like

From The Daily Mail:

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) is set to unveil its version of a tablet computer to take on the iPad next week, it was claimed today.

The BlackPad, as it has been nicknamed, will be launched before the end of the year and will have a seven-inch touch screen and at least one built-in camera, a source told the Wall Street Journal.

And it is claimed that RIM will unveil the device at a developers' conference in San Francisco next week.

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Robots On TV: Rescue Bot Knows, Um, What You Mean

From New Scientist:

A robot that can understand plain English and manage a complicated to-do list could soon be the hero of search and rescue missions.

Most robots that can recognise speech only respond to pre-determined instructions. For example, some powered wheelchairs respond to spoken directions, but only when certain words are spoken clearly. In the real world, that's not how humans communicate. Our speech is peppered with "disfluencies" – the "umms", "ahs" and stutters of everyday language. If we want to successfully speak to robots in real-life situations – such as search and rescue missions, where noise and stress might get in the way of clarity – robots need to understand these complications.

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Mars Methane Mystery: What's Making The Gas?

This image shows concentrations of Methane discovered on Mars. Click to enlarge this image. NASA

From Discovery News:

Methane in Mars' atmosphere lasts less than a year meaning something -- either geologic or biological -- keeps belching it out.

A six-year study of methane in Mars' atmosphere shows the planet is far from dead, though whether it is merely geologically active or host to microbial life is unknown.

An Italy-based team of researchers combed through billions of measurements taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor to compile seasonal maps of the gas, a simple chemical compound that appears in minute quantities in Mars' carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.

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