Galaxy Has 'Billions Of Earths'

From The BBC:

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter; and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.

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Scientists Map the 10 Billion Neurons of Human Cerebral Cortex & Find A Central Switchboard

Image from The Daily Galaxy

From The Daily Galaxy:

The study of the human brain is one of the most fascinating, and incredibly meta, subjects in existence. The almost Escherian experiments of one brain studying another brain (which is thinking about being studied by the first) have up to now been held back by one thing: the brain's owner is kind of using it so you can't poke too hard. Now a new scanning technique has allowed scientists to probe deeper than ever into the secrets of the mind.

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Study Takes Step Toward Erasing Bad Memories

Image from The Daily Galaxy:

From Zimbio:

LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - A widely available blood pressure pill could one day help people erase bad memories, perhaps treating some anxiety disorders and phobias, according to a Dutch study published on Sunday.

The generic beta-blocker propranolol significantly weakened people's fearful memories of spiders among a group of healthy volunteers who took it, said Merel Kindt, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, who led the study.

"We could show that the fear response went away, which suggests the memory was weakened," Kindt said in a telephone interview.

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Tailplane Icing (Video)

NASA figured it all out 11 years ago. The link is HERE.

Do We Need A New Internet?

Image by Guy Hoffman

From The New York Times:

Two decades ago a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate student brought the Internet to its knees with a simple software program that skipped from computer to computer at blinding speed, thoroughly clogging the then-tiny network in the space of a few hours.

The program was intended to be a digital “Kilroy Was Here.” Just a bit of cybernetic fungus that would unobtrusively wander the net. However, a programming error turned it into a harbinger heralding the arrival of a darker cyberspace, more of a mirror for all of the chaos and conflict of the physical world than a utopian refuge from it.

Since then things have gotten much, much worse.

Bad enough that there is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.

What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.

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Mini Nuclear Plants In Alaska

The Toshiba 4S (Super-Safe, Small and Simple) nuclear power plant is designed to be delivered, installed, and carried away 30 years later. It may meet the needs of remote sites around the world. Adapted by Morgan Ryan and Stephanie Freese from image provided by Toshiba Corporation.

A Nuke on the Yukon?

Mini-nukes arrive at the regulatory gate. Will they get through?

Morgan Ryan

Galena, Alaska, could be the type specimen for remoteness. A tiny town of about 700 on a bend of the Yukon River, it has no roads in and depends on the river for food, fuel and supplies. The river is frozen eight to nine months of the year. Galena residents pay three times the national average per kilowatt hour for diesel-generated electricity. Alternative energy would have special appeal for Galena, but with an evening that stretches 20 hours in the winter, solar is out. With the help of Toshiba and its American holding, Westinghouse, Galena is thinking nuclear.

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Camouflaging Of Viral DNA Could Be Crucial Step In Progression Of Cancers

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2009) — An estimated 15% of cancer cases can be linked to a viral infection, however the biological changes that cause some asymptomatic carriers of a virus to develop full-blown tumors are not well understood. In a study published online in Genome Research, scientists have mapped a chemical modification of DNA in three oncogenic viruses (Epstein-Barr, human papilloma virus, and hepatitis B virus) and found that the viral genome undergoes critical changes during the progression of disease, with implications for the development of new methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Worldwide, most people are already infected with the Epstein-Barr virus, and millions are infected with the human papilloma virus and the hepatitis B virus. Many of these individuals will develop disease, and some will eventually develop a viral-related cancer such as lymphoma, liver cancer, or cervical cancer. Understanding how infections of viruses such as these can progress to cancer in some individuals is essential to the development of new methods to attack the virus and prevent malignancies.

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Scientists Warn Of First Ever Case Of Human Mad Cow Disease From Blood Plasma

From The Telegraph:

The first case of a person being infected with the human form of mad cow disease after receiving contaminated blood plasma has been identified by scientists.

The man was one of thousands of haemophiliacs who received blood plasma transfusions in the years before strict controls were brought in to eliminate the spread of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

Until now, scientists had maintained that the 4,000 people who may have received plasma from infected donors were at very low risk of developing the fatal brain disease. Warnings were issued to them as a "highly precautionary measure".

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New Artificial DNA Points to Alien Life

From Live Science:

CHICAGO — A strange, new genetic code a lot like that found in all terrestrial life is sitting in a beaker full of oily water in a laboratory in Florida, a scientist said today, calling it the first example of an artificial chemical system that is capable of Darwinian evolution.

The system is made of the four molecules that are the basic building blocks of our DNA along with eight synthetic modifications of them, said biochemist Steven A. Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville.

The main difference between the synthetic molecules and those that make up conventional DNA is that Benner's molecules cannot make copies of themselves, although that is just "a couple of years" away, he said.

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Wildlife Salute Valentines Day Of Their Own

Grizzly family. (Credit: Image courtesy of National Wildlife Federation)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2009) — While they might not be giving roses and writing love poems, wildlife have some pretty fascinating – and sometimes downright bizarre – courtship and mating rituals of their own. You won’t find singles bars or online dating sites for grizzly bears but our furry and feathered friends have some pretty interesting habits.

Here are some intriguing examples provided by the National Wildlife Federation:

* Female moths release a chemical called a pheromone into the air that male moths find irresistible. The males detect the females’ intoxicating perfume with their fuzzy, sensitive antennae. A single female moth can lure dozens of males. The bolas spider has figured out a way to mimic the pheromones of certain moths, thus luring unsuspecting male moths to an untimely death in her clutches. Talk about deadly perfume!

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Obama's BlackBerry Brings Personal Safety Risks

President Obama and his BlackBerry at the White House in late January.
(Credit: UPI Photo/Ron Sachs/Pool)

From CNET News:

When the mainstream media first announced Barack Obama's "victory" in keeping his BlackBerry, the focus was on the security of the device, and keeping the U.S. president's e-mail communications private from spies and hackers.

The news coverage and analysis by armchair security experts thus far has failed to focus on the real threat: attacks against President Obama's location privacy, and the potential physical security risks that come with someone knowing the president's real-time physical location.

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The Sweet Truth: Chocolate Can Be Healthy

From Live Science:

A bar of chocolate for your Valentine isn’t just a sweet treat, it can also be a boon to the body.

The ways in which the compounds in chocolate interact with our bodies' systems, from the stomach to the heart, have been an active area of research in recent years. Several studies have found that in small amounts, dark chocolate in particular can help prevent the blood from clumping up, keep the heart healthy and even provide some anti-cancer benefits.

Scientists caution that chocolate is far from being a cure-all, of course. But what could be better than knowing such an indulgence might be good for you?

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Scientists Discover Material Harder Than Diamond

Photo: A diamond ring. Scientists have calculated that wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite (hexagonal diamond) both have greater indentation strengths than diamond. Source: English Wikipedia.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Currently, diamond is regarded to be the hardest known material in the world. But by considering large compressive pressures under indenters, scientists have calculated that a material called wurtzite boron nitride (w-BN) has a greater indentation strength than diamond. The scientists also calculated that another material, lonsdaleite (also called hexagonal diamond, since it’s made of carbon and is similar to diamond), is even stronger than w-BN and 58 percent stronger than diamond, setting a new record.

This analysis marks the first case where a material exceeds diamond in strength under the same loading conditions, explain the study’s authors, who are from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The study is published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

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Astronomers Unveiling Life's Cosmic Origins

The Cosmic Chemistry Cycle. (Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2009) — Processes that laid the foundation for life on Earth -- star and planet formation and the production of complex organic molecules in interstellar space -- are yielding their secrets to astronomers armed with powerful new research tools, and even better tools soon will be available.

Astronomers described three important developments at a symposium on the "Cosmic Cradle of Life" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, IL.

In one development, a team of astrochemists released a major new resource for seeking complex interstellar molecules that are the precursors to life. The chemical data released by Anthony Remijan of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and his university colleagues is part of the Prebiotic Interstellar Molecule Survey, or PRIMOS, a project studying a star-forming region near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.

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The Romantic Evolution of True Love

From Live Science:

True love is all about finding that one certain someone, and anthropologists have led us to believe that the quest for the perfect mate is evolutionarily based. Humans are, the researchers contend, a naturally pair-boded species.

The standard scenario goes like this: Human babies are born about three months too soon because upright walking changed the female pelvis and babies have to get out before their heads grow too big. As a result, human babies are born neurologically unfinished; they can’t sit up or grasp or do much of anything. By necessity, adult humans are designed to respond to the cries and babbles of infants; we rush to feed them and pick them up. The burden of this kind of child care is so intense, they say, that it takes two parents to bring up even one baby.

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Valentine’s Gifts For Your Science Geek

From Smithsonian Magazine:

Valentine’s Day quickly approaches, and you may be wondering what to buy for your own geeky Valentine (or what to request for yourself). You can start off by sending a Scientist Valentine. Darwin might be the best choice, since his 200th birthday is only two days before V-Day.

Let’s move on to the classic gifts of chocolate and candy. There’s a chocolate-colored tee with the molecule theobromine, the chemical that makes chocolate so fun. The molecule can also be found in the form of earrings or a necklace.

You can show your love with a gummy heart, an anatomical one, that is. But consider carefully—the cannibalism aspect might scare someone off.

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Goodbye Mr Nice Guy

From Scienceagogo:

Just in time for Valentine's Day, researchers have turned up some new answers to the age-old question of what we want in our partners. It turns out that "chastity" is unimportant and men are more interested in an educated woman who is a good financial prospect; and women are more interested in a man who wants a family and less picky about whether he's a "nice guy."

Sociologists Christine Whelan and Christie Boxer, from the University of Iowa (UI), arrived at their findings by analyzing a 2008 survey of more than 1,100 undergraduates from four different universities and comparing the results to past mate-preference research.

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The Most Tragic Love Stories in History

A painting of Antony and Cleopatra by Lawrence Alma-Tadema in 1885

From Live Science:

Nothing celebrates Valentine's Day quite like a good love story. And by good, we mean tragic, of course.

Though Shakespeare's plays are littered with doomed lovers — unrequited passion and death makes for good reading, apparently — couples equally as star-crossed can be found in the world's history books.

These five tragic historical tales from the ancient to more recent past are as sad as anything that has ever been conjured up in fiction:

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Cooking Helped Humans Evolve ... With Side Effects

From Wired Science:

CHICAGO — Raw-food devotees take note: Your diet is not in any way natural. Humans are as adapted to cooking our food as cows are to eating grass, or ticks are to sucking blood.

"Cooking is a human universal," said Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting here Friday. While cooking kills parasites and other pathogens, Wrangham believes this health benefit is not its primary contribution.

"The fundamental importance of cooking is that it provides increased sources of energy," he said.

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New Refrigeration System Based On Magnetics More Economical And Quieter Than Current Technology

A magnetocaloric material heats up when magnetized (b); if cooled and then demagnetized (c), its temperature drops dramatically (d). NIST scientists may have found a way to use magnetocalorics in your fridge. (Credit: Talbott, NIST)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2009) — Your refrigerator’s humming, electricity-guzzling cooling system could soon be a lot smaller, quieter and more economical thanks to an exotic metal alloy discovered by an international collaboration working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Center for Neutron Research (NCNR).

The alloy may prove to be a long-sought material that will permit magnetic cooling instead of the gas-compression systems used for home refrigeration and air conditioning. The magnetic cooling technique, though used for decades in science and industry, has yet to find application in the home because of technical and environmental hurdles—but the NIST collaboration may have overcome them.

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