Sky Guns For iTunes Market With New Music Download Service

Sky to compete with Apple's iTunes with 'Sky Songs' downloading service

From The Guardian:

Sky is to join the digital music marketplace when it launches a subscription download service that it hopes will persuade millions more consumers to switch to buying albums digitally and threaten the dominance of Apple's iTunes.

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A Cure For Jet Lag? Scientists Identify Brain Cell Which Keeps Us Awake

Photo: The discovery of the brain cell which determines our sleep patterns could pave the way for the introduction of a pill to beat jetlag

From The Telegraph:

A pill that cures jet lag is a step closer today, after scientists discovered how signals from the brain control our biological clocks.

Tests on mice suggested the human body clock - controlled by a region of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei - does not constantly fire electrical pulses to regulate our sleeping patterns, as was previously thought.

Instead, it fires at dusk and remains inactive during the night, then stirring back to life at daybreak.

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Learning To Juggle Grows Brain Networks For Good

Good for the brain (Image: Alex Segre/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

Juggling boosts the connections between different parts of the brain by tweaking the architecture of the brain's "white matter" – a finding that could lead to new therapies for people with brain injuries.

White matter describes all areas of the brain that contain mostly axons – outgrowths of nerve cells that connect different cells. It might be expected that learning a new, complex task such as juggling should strengthen these connections, but previous work looking for changes in the brains of people who had learned how to juggle had only studied increases in grey matter, which contains the nerve cells' bodies.

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Training To Climb An Everest Of Digital Data

From CNET:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--It is a rare criticism of elite American university students that they do not think big enough. But that is exactly the complaint from some of the largest technology companies and the federal government.

At the heart of this criticism is data. Researchers and workers in fields as diverse as bio-technology, astronomy and computer science will soon find themselves overwhelmed with information. Better telescopes and genome sequencers are as much to blame for this data glut as are faster computers and bigger hard drives.

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Pallas Is 'Peter Pan' Space Rock

From The BBC:

The Hubble telescope has provided new insight on 2 Pallas, one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System.

The nearly 600km-wide rock is an example of an object that started out on the process of becoming a planet but never grew up into the real thing.

Researchers have published a 3D model of the grapefruit-shaped mini-world in Science magazine.

Hubble's data makes it possible to discern surface features, including what appears to be a big impact crater.

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YouTube: A Billion Views Served Daily

From San Francisco Chronicle:

Chad Hurley, chief executive and co-founder of YouTube, marked today's three-year anniversary of Google's acquisition with a blog post that proclaimed the popular video site is "serving well over a billion views a day" globally.

"This is great moment in our short history and we owe it all to you," he said.

YouTube says that about 70 percent of its traffic originates overseas, with the balance coming from within the United States.

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Feral Children: Are They Really Wild?

Photo: This grainy image is a mug shot of Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. the "Barefoot Burglar." Although Harris-Moore has been described as a "feral child," there have been other documented cases of truly "wild" children throughout history. AP Photo/Island County Sheriff's Office via the Everette Herald

From Discovery Magazine:

Living barefoot in the woods and hiding himself in the trees, 18-year-old fugitive Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. the "Barefoot Burglar," is making life miserable for the inhabitants of the islands north of Seattle, allegedly burglarizing homes, jacking boats, even stealing small airplanes and crash-landing them.

The teen has managed to elude police in Washington state for the past year and half.

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A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed?

Many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives (above, a computer-generated image of a young T. rex), have been misidentified as unique species, paleontologists said in October 2009. That means up to a third of all dinosaur species may have never existed, experts say. Photograph © NGC

From National Geographic:

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.

That's because young dinosaurs didn't look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.

Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

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Physicists Measure Elusive 'Persistent Current' That Flows Forever

Image: Harris made the first definitive measurement of an electric current that flows continuously in tiny, but ordinary, metal rings. (Credit: Jack Harris/Yale University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 12, 2009) — Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of “persistent current,” a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire even without an external power source.

The team used nanoscale cantilevers, an entirely novel approach, to indirectly measure the current through changes in the magnetic force it produces as it flows through the ring. “They’re essentially little floppy diving boards with the rings sitting on top,” said team leader Jack Harris, associate professor of physics and applied physics at Yale. The findings appear in the October 9 issue of Science.

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Clever New Device Sees Through Walls

Researchers had a person walk around a square of 28 radio transceivers mounted on plastic pipes. The person creates shadows in the radio waves, resulting in the blob-like image (right). Credit: Sarang Joshi and Joey Wilson, University of Utah.

From Live Science:

A new contraption that essentially sees through walls using radio receivers to track moving objects could one day help police and others nab intruders and rescue hostages or fire victims.

Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari of the University of Utah used so-called radio tomographic imaging (RTI), which can detect and track moving people or other objects in an area surrounded by inexpensive radio transceivers that send and receive signals, they announced today.

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Vegetarian Spider Is First Of Its Kind

It isn't entirely clear why B. kiplingi is able to evade acacia ants, whose goal is to protect the shrub from attacks. Credit: Christopher Meehan

From Cosmos:

NEW YORK: A jumping spider found in Central America is the first known species to subsist primarily on plants, according to American scientists.

While many spiders eat nectar and a single species has been observed eating pollen in addition to insects, Bagheera kiplingi dines almost exclusively on 'Beltian bodies', protein- and lipid-rich structures located on the tips of acacia shrub leaves.

Out of about 41,000 known species it is the sole spider to maintain a nearly vegetarian diet.

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Solar Power Outshining Colorado's Gas Industry

From Time Magazine:

(DURANGO, Colo.) — The sun had just crested the distant ridge of the Rocky Mountains, but already it was producing enough power for the electric meter on the side of the Smiley Building to spin backward.

For the Shaw brothers, who converted the downtown arts building and community center into a miniature solar power plant two years ago, each reverse rotation subtracts from their monthly electric bill. It also means the building at that moment is producing more electricity from the sun than it needs.

"Backward is good," said John Shaw, who now runs Shaw Solar and Energy Conservation, a local solar installation company.

Good for whom?

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From Twitter To MySpace, Social Networks Are Now Run By Women Over 35

From Times Online:

Social-networking sites, like much of the internet, were once a playground for young men. They were drowning in obscure jargon, long rants and, of course, pornography. But nowadays, it is a growing brigade of thirty- and fortysomethings who are behind their extraordinary growth.

Famous users such as Sarah Brown are among those non-teenage women who are increasingly turning to sites such as Facebook and Twitter. New figures show that female users now dominate social-networking sites, and those aged 35 and over are among the fastest-growing demographic for many social networks.

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Rogue Satellites To Be Cleared From Earth's Orbit By German Robots

From The Guardian:

German-built robots are to be sent into Earth's orbit to repair 'dead satellites' or push them into outer space.

Robots that rescue failing satellites and push "dead" ones into outer space should be ready in four years, it has emerged. Experts described the development by German scientists as a crucial step in preventing a disaster in the Earth's crowded orbit.

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Pictured: The Independence Day-Shaped Cloud Hovering In The Skies Over Moscow

Luminous: The pale halo-shaped cloud was hovering over Moscow on Wednesday

From The Daily Mail:

In what could have been a scene from the film Independence Day, a luminous ring-shaped cloud could be seen hovering over the city of Moscow last week.

The pale gold 'halo' could be seen above the Russian capital city's Western District on Wednesday, and was captured on film by stunned Muscovites.

Meteorologists rejected any theories of the supernatural however, calling it an optical effect.

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Building A Second Sun: Take $10 Billion, Add Coconuts

From New Scientist:

THE balmy south of France has always been a magnet for sun worshippers. So it is perhaps fitting that here, not far from the Côte d'Azur, an international team of researchers is building a machine to recreate the sun. It will take tens of thousands of tonnes of steel and concrete, plus a whole host of more unusual materials: beryllium, niobium, titanium and tungsten; frigid liquid nitrogen and helium. Oh, and a supply of burnt coconuts.

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Downed Facebook Accounts Still Haven't Returned

From CNET:

Something is really odd here.

As a reporter covering Facebook, I do get the occasional cranky complaints from members who, for one reason or another, are experiencing errors when they try to access their accounts. But it's never been anything like the past week, with a steady stream of e-mails continuing to come in from Facebook members who say they remain shut out of their accounts--despite assurance from Facebook that profiles have not been deleted and that the company is working on the problem.

"This is now seven days and counting," an e-mail sent on Saturday morning read. "It's beyond ridiculous and extremely frustrating."

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Tiny 'Nuclear Batteries' Unveiled

From The BBC:

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized "nuclear battery" that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes.

As radioactive substances decay, they release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical current.

Nuclear batteries have been in use for military and aerospace applications, but are typically far larger.

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Montreal Underground -- A Look Back In History

The Pointe-à-Callière Museum

From Archaeology Magazine:

This past August I traveled to Montreal for Archaeo (Archaeology) Month, which is celebrated throughout the province of Quebec. On my first day in Montreal, I met with Louise Pothier, project manager for the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. The museum, better known as Pointe-à-Callière and affectionately referred to as the PAC Musée, is located in Old Montreal on the very spot of the city's birthplace on May 17, 1642, and opened exactly 350 years later on May 17, 1992.

PAC Musée is situated on a point of land where the Little Saint Pierre River once ran into the St. Lawrence River. Chevalier Louis Hector de Callière, the third governor of Montreal, built a home on the site in 1688. The museum is situated atop remains of the first French settlement here, Fort Ville Marie (1642-1674), and its permanent exhibition is titled, "Where Montreal was Born."

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My Comment: This probably does not interest 99% of the readership for this blog .... but as a Montrealer who visited this museum today .... it is so cool.

New Technology Detects Chemical Weapons In Seconds

Preparation of a solution of sensor nanoparticles. (Credit: Image courtesy of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)

From Science Daily:

Scientists at Queen's University Belfast are developing new sensors to detect chemical agents and illegal drugs which will help in the fight against the threat of terrorist attacks.

The devices will use special gel pads to 'swipe' an individual or crime scene to gather a sample which is then analysed by a scanning instrument that can detect the presence of chemicals within seconds. This will allow better, faster decisions to be made in response to terrorist threats.

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