Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht

From Gadget Lab/Wired:

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has a rather curious new addition built in to his latest oversized yacht. The 557-foot boat Eclipse, the price tag of which has almost doubled since original plans were drawn to almost $1.2 billion, set sail this week with a slew of show-off features, from two helipads, two swimming pools and six-foot movie screens in all guest cabins, to a mini-submarine and missile-proof windows to combat piracy.

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Recession And Policies Cut Carbon

Photo: Climate protestors in New York are demanding further cuts.

From The BBC:

The global recession and a range of government policies are likely to bring the biggest annual fall in the world's carbon dioxide emissions in 40 years.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global CO2 emissions will fall by more than 2% during 2009.

Measures such as emissions trading have complemented the drop in emissions as economic activity has declined.

The news comes as leaders gather at the UN for a day of climate talks convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The anticipated fall in emissions is larger than that seen during the recession of the early 1980s.

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Google Releases Martian Invasion Doodle To Mark Birthday Of HG Wells

From the Telegraph:

Google has released a new doodle showing a scene from War of the Worlds, after confirming that its recent UFO logos were intended to mark the birthday of HG Wells.

The latest sketch shows the long-legged Martian fighting machines that feature in Wells's alien invasion novel trampling over the Surrey countryside.

Clicking on the image takes users through to search results for the English author, who is considered one of the fathers of science fiction.

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Scientists Make Paralyzed Rats Walk Again After Spinal-cord Injury

A combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run again, researchers have discovered. (Credit: iStockphoto/Dmitry Maslov)

From Science Daily:

UCLA researchers have discovered that a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run again while supporting their full weight on a treadmill.

Published Nov. 20 in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, the findings suggest that the regeneration of severed nerve fibers is not required for paraplegic rats to learn to walk again. The finding may hold implications for human rehabilitation after spinal cord injuries.

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When You Could Fling A Frisbee From Canada To Zimbabwe

Ancient basalt vein, Greenland Credit: Michael A. Hamilton

From Live Science:

Imagine flipping a Frisbee in Quebec, Canada, and seeing it land in Zimbabwe. That’s a distance of 8,000 miles now, but 2.6 billion years ago, with good wrist action, it would have been no feat at all (if only there had been Frisbees and, of course, people).

Present-day Quebec and Zimbabwe were adjacent way back then, say geologists who are using new techniques to map Earth’s early continents.

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Quantum Computers Are Coming – Just Don't Ask When

Will quantum computers do for the 21st century what digital computers did for the 20th? (Image: Everett Collection/Rex Features)

From The New Scientist:

WHATEVER happened to quantum computers? A few years ago, it seemed, it was just a case of a tweak here, a fiddle there, and some kind of number-crunching Godzilla would be unleashed upon us. Just as digital processors changed our lives in ways hard to imagine a few decades ago, the monstrous information processing power of individual atoms and electrons would mean that computing - and the world - would never be the same again.

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The Guide to Home Geothermal Energy

Drill and Fill: Installers thread pipe into a hole a few inches wide and over 100 feet deep. As wind and solar hog the alt-energy spotlight, this technology has remained underground.

From Popular Mechanics:

Efficient and economical, geothermal heats, cools and cuts fossil fuel use at home. Whether you're in sunny Florida, or snowy New Hampshire, a ground-fed climate system can free a consumer from fluctuating energy prices and save money on power bills immediately. Here's how it works.

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Fungus-Infected Violin Beats Stradivarius in Listening Test

Biotech-Enhanced Violins via Science Daily

From Popular Science:

Violins made by the Italian master craftsman Antonio Stradivarius are worth millions of dollars for their unparalleled sound. And that's great, for the handful of musicians who can afford these centuries-old instruments. This month, a new violin made from wood treated with a fungus actually trumped a Stradivarius in a blind listening test, offering hope for violinists who want high tonal quality at an affordable price.

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Earth Approaching Sunspot Records

Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence, sifts through graphs of data in explaining why he believes solar activity may have greater impacts on global temperatures than previously thought. COREY JONES/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

From CJ Online:

The average person may not associate coolness with the sun.

The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA's Web site.

Not cool at all.

But the sun's recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence.

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We Trust People More If They Resemble Us

There are people we trust instinctively and those we do not, says the research. More often than not, this decision is based on physical appearance. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

GUILDFORD, U.K.: A new study has found that subconsciously we are more likely to trust people with similar facial features to our own, but less likely to be physically attracted to them.

There are people we trust instinctively and those we do not, says the research. More often than not, this decision is based on physical appearance.

Using computer graphics, a team led by Lisa DeBruine from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, manipulated faces so they looked more or less similar to participants in their study. Effectively, the faces either resembled siblings or not, said DeBruine.

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Hunting Hidden Dimensions

From U.S. News And World Report:

Black holes, giant and tiny, may reveal new realms of space.

In many ways, black holes are science's answer to science fiction. As strange as anything from a novelist's imagination, black holes warp the fabric of spacetime and imprison light and matter in a gravitational death grip. Their bizarre properties make black holes ideal candidates for fictional villainy. But now black holes are up for a different role: heroes helping physicists assess the real-world existence of another science fiction favorite—hidden extra dimensions of space.

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How Cooking Helped Us To Evolve

From Times Online:

The success of the human species is all down to our mastery of fire and cooking, a scientist claims. And hot food not sex was the basis for our relationships.

It is the ultimate domestic cliché: a woman, pinafored and dutiful, tending a stove all day in preparation for her husband’s homecoming. As soon as he walks in, the ritual can begin: family members take their seats around the table (he sits at the head, of course) and dinner is served. Our couple are reliving a scene that has played out billions of times in our history because gender roles — husband at work all day, woman as homebody — have been forged not by relatively recent social conventions but by our distant evolutionary past.

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WHO: H1N1 Vaccine Production To Fall Short

From Time Magazine:

(GENEVA) — Global production of swine flu vaccines will be "substantially less" than the previous maximum forecast of 94 million doses a week, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The number of doses produced in a year will therefore fall short of the 4.9 billion doses the global health body previously hoped could be available for the pandemic, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters in Geneva.

Production will be lower because some manufacturers are still turning out vaccines for seasonal flu — an illness that can be serious in sick and elderly people, Hartl said.

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Magnetism Observed In Gas For The First Time

Graduate student Gyu-boong Jo optimizes the laser beam position on the mirror of the optical setup that produced an ultracold gas of lithium atoms. (Credit: Photo by Patrick Gillooly)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — For the first time, MIT scientists have observed ferromagnetic behavior in an atomic gas, addressing a decades-old question of whether it is possible for a gas to show properties similar to a magnet made of iron or nickel.

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Urinating On Your Tomato Plants Could Give You Fruit Four Times Larger

Photo: Human urine mixed with wood ash was the ultimate eco-friendly fertiliser, according to researchers

From The Daily Mail:

Gardeners keen to boost their crop of tomatoes may be surprised to learn they can turn to an unusual and free source of fertiliser.

Allotment growers can enrich the soil and therefore their plants using their own wee, according to a new study.

Scientists discovered the unusual addition made crops up to four times larger.

A team of Finnish researchers found that sprinkling tomatoes with human urine mixed with wood ash was the ultimate eco-friendly fertiliser.

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Advanced Solar Panels Coming to Market

Photo: Cheaper solar: Nanosolar’s thin-film panels.
Credit: Nanosolar

From Technology Review:

Nanosolar's new factory could help lower the price of solar power, if the market cooperates.

A promising type of solar-power technology has moved a step closer to mass production. Nanosolar, based in San Jose, CA, has opened an automated facility for manufacturing its solar panels, which are made by printing a semiconductor material called CIGS on aluminum foil. The manufacturing facility is located in Germany, where government incentives have created a large market for solar panels. Nanosolar has the potential to make 640 megawatts' worth of solar panels there every year.

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Oil Rig Of The Future: A Solar Panel That Produces Oil

OIL FROM THE SUN Researchers propose creating a biological solar panel, which will contain diatoms instead of photovoltaic cells. Diatoms, microalgae that are found in all aquatic and moist environments, first appeared more than 180 million years ago. © KATIV, COURTESY OF ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

From Scientific American:

Researchers propose a novel approach to producing biofuel using diatoms.

BANGALORE, India—In the ongoing hunt for alternative fuel sources that are also cost-effective, researchers are looking into making biofuel from genetically engineered diatoms, a type of single-celled algae with shells made of glasslike silica.

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Jupiter Auroras Fed By Largest Moon's Magnetic "Bubble"

From The National Geographic:

A mini-magnetosphere around the largest moon in the solar system leaves a mighty footprint on Jupiter's atmosphere—helping to drive the "hyperauroras" that dance across the planet's poles.

That's one finding in new research that offers unprecedented details on interactions between Jupiter and two of its moons, the giant Ganymede and the volcanically active Io.

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Why Are We The Naked Ape?

No one is sure why Homo sapiens is the only primate to have lost its body hair
(Image: Laurent Gillieron / EPA / Corbis)

From New Scientist:

RIGHT from the start of modern evolutionary science, why humans are hairless has been controversial. "No one supposes," wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man, "that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man: his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection."

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Diamonds Are A Laser's Best Friend

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2009) — Tomorrow's lasers may come with a bit of bling, thanks to a new technology that uses man-made diamonds to enhance the power and capabilities of lasers. Researchers in Australia have now demonstrated the first laser built with diamonds that has comparable efficiency to lasers built with other materials.

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