Leaked Barnes & Noble e-Reader Is A Powerful Multitouch Hybrid

Barnes & Noble e-Reader

From Popular Science:

Take a Kindle, and put a multitouch screen where the keyboard and navigation buttons go, and you've got the Barnes & Noble e-reader.

We're still a week away from Barnes & Noble's big e-reader announcement, but we've know they've had something cooking for a while now. And today, our pals at Gizmodo hit the mother load: leaked shots of a forthcoming dual-screen device that is three-quarters e-ink and one-quarter (wait for it) color multitouch.

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Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map

Deep drilling: At Range Resources’ site in Washington County, PA, a specially designed rig is used to drill more than a thousand meters down and gradually turn 90° to follow the gas-rich shale deposit. The rig will drill half a dozen wells at the site. Beside it is a pond holding debris and mud from a well. Credit: Roy Ritchie

From Technology Review:

Vast amounts of the clean-burning fossil fuel have been discovered in shale deposits, setting off a gas rush. But how it will affect our energy use is still uncertain.

The first sign that there's something unusual about the flat black rocks strewn across the shore of Lake Erie comes when Gary Lash smashes two of them together. They break easily and fall into shards that give off the faint odor of hydrocarbons, similar to the smell of kerosene. But for Lash, a geologist and professor at nearby SUNY Fredonia, smashing the rocks is a simple trick designed to catch the attention of a visitor. The black outcroppings that protrude from the nearby bluff onto the narrow beach are what really interest him.

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The Supercollider And A Theory About Fate

This was some of the worst damage to the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: CERN

From CNET:

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot, and frigid helium shut it down, the world's biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again.

Before year's end, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

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Time-Travelling Higgs Sabotages The LHC. No, Really

From New Scientist:

Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future? That's the suggestion of a couple of reasonably distinguished theoretical physicists, which has received a fresh airing in the New York Times today.

Actually, it's the Higgs boson that is doing the sabotage. Apparently, among the many singular properties of the Higgs that the LHC is meant to discover could be the ability to turn back time to stop its cover being blown.

Or as the New York Times puts it:

"the hypothesized Higgs boson... might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."

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Whatever Happened To Global Warming? How Freezing Temperatures Are Starting To Shatter Climate Change Theory

Sun or sea? The importance of the ocean's cooling and warming cycles are now under serious consideration as a key factor in global temperatures

From The Daily Mail:

In the freezing foothills of Montana, a distinctly bitter blast of revolution hangs in the air.

And while the residents of the icy city of Missoula can stave off the -10C chill with thermals and fires, there may be no easy remedy for the wintry snap's repercussions.

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Researchers Discover Mechanism That Helps Humans See In Bright And Low Light

Illustration of human eye cross section. (Credit: iStockphoto/Nurbek Sagynbaev)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 14, 2009) — Ever wonder how your eyes adjust during a blackout? When we go from light to near total darkness, cells in the retina must quickly adjust. Vision scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified an intricate process that allows the human eye to adapt to darkness very quickly. The same process also allows the eye to function in bright light.

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The Link Between Parkinson Disease And Farming

From Live Science:

Although genetics is very important in Parkinson disease (PD), many researchers believe that environmental exposures also increase a person's risk of developing the disease. There are studies that show that farmers and other agricultural workers have an increased risk of getting PD.

PD was first described in 1817 by Dr. James Parkinson, a British physician. It affects 1 in 100 people over the age of 60. It can also affect younger people. The average age of onset is 60. Research suggests that PD affects at least 500,000 people in the United States.

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Gallery: Let the X-Planes Begin

From Autopia:

Few aircraft are as storied as the experimental series known as the X-Planes. These flying laboratories date to the mid-1940s and took us ever higher, further and faster.

The first, the Bell X-1, was developed to explore transonic flight after fighter pilots began experiencing control problems as they approached the speed of sound in dives. Since then, a long list of X-Planes — and other test aircraft lacking the official ‘X’ moniker — have explored the unknown edge of aerodynamics and aviation. From the early days of supersonic flight and speed records to the possibilities of unmanned combat aircraft, X-Planes have, as their pilots say, pushed the edge of the envelope.

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Modern Man 'A Wimp', Says Anthropologist

Neanderthal man, as reconstructed by French scientists.

From The Independent:

Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 metres record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.

Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.

Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.

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Marine Plant Life Holds The Secret To Preventing Global Warming

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds, above, cover less than 1 per cent of the world's seabed, but lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor

From Times Online:

Life in the ocean has the potential to help to prevent global warming, according to a report published today.

Marine plant life sucks 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, but most of the plankton responsible never reaches the seabed to become a permanent carbon store.

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds are a different matter. Although together they cover less than 1 per cent of the world’s seabed, they lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor. They are estimated to store 1,650 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year — nearly half of global transport emissions — making them one of the most intense carbon sinks on Earth.

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Gene Linked To Better And Faster Decision Making

From The Telegraph:

Decision-makers are born not made, say scientists, as they discover people inherit a decisive gene.

The researchers found that people with a particular gene made quicker and more accurate decisions.

They were also better at learning tasks that require rapid and flexible decision-making compared to those with a different genetic make-up.

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Kellogg's Will Use Laser To Burn Logo On To Individual Corn Flakes To Stamp Out Fakes

A proportion of Kellogg's flakes will be branded with the trademark using a laser

From The Daily Mail:

According to the advertising slogan, if you see Kellogg's on the box then you know it's Kellogg's in the box.

But now the company has become so concerned about similarly packaged supermarket cereals, it has developed a laser to burn its logo on to individual Corn Flakes.

The concentrated beam of light creates a toasted appearance without changing the taste.

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Dolphins, Sharks And Birds Team Up For One Of Nature's Most Spectacular Annual Feeding Frenzies

Feeding frenzy: Up to 1,000 common dolphins arrive from the open ocean to drive sardines shoals towards the surface during the sardine run

From The Daily Mail:

It’s been billed as the greatest natural predatory show on earth and from these stunning images it is easy to why.

An underwater photographer was there to capture the action as dolphins, sharks, whales and birds teamed up for one of nature's most spectacular annual feeding frenzies – the sardine run.

New York born Jason Heller took the amazing pictures when he travelled to the wild coast of South Africa this July.

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Jupiter Moon’s Ocean Is Rich In Oxygen

The strange striations on Europa's surface are thought to have been caused by tidal stresses from Jupiter as the ice cracks and warmer layers come to the surface. The same process may be responsible for transporting oxygen below the surface. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: The globe-spanning ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa contains about twice the liquid water of all Earth’s oceans combined, says a new study, which finds it’s packed with oxygen which could support life.

Research completed by Richard Greenberg a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, suggests that there could be as much as 100 times the amount of oxygen previously estimated. The findings were presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.

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Finger Points To New Da Vinci Art

From BBC:

A new Leonardo da Vinci portrait may have been discovered after a fingerprint found on it seemed similar to another discovered on his work.

A Paris laboratory found the fingerprint is "highly comparable" to one on a da Vinci work in the Vatican.

Antiques Trade Gazette reported that the work, previously catalogued as "German, early 19th Century", could be worth tens of millions of dollars.

The work previously changed hands for around $19,000 (£12,039).

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Bizarre Galaxy Is Result Of Pair Of Spiral Galaxies Smashing Together

Not surprisingly, interacting galaxies have a dramatic effect on each other. Studies have revealed that as galaxies approach one another massive amounts of gas are pulled from each galaxy towards the centre of the other, until ultimately, the two merge into one massive galaxy. NGC 2623 is in the late stages of the merging process, with the centres of the original galaxy pair now merged into one nucleus, but stretching out from the centre are two tidal tails of young stars, a strong indicator that a merger has taken place. During such a collision, the dramatic exchange of mass and gases initiates star formation, seen here in both the tails. (Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Evans (Stony Brook University, New York & National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, USA))

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 14, 2009) — A recent NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures what appears to be one very bright and bizarre galaxy, but is actually the result of a pair of spiral galaxies that resemble our own Milky Way smashing together at breakneck speeds. The product of this dramatic collision, called NGC 2623, or Arp 243, is about 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Cancer (the Crab).

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Flying Reptile May Have Snatched Dinosaurs In Midair

The newly discovered remains of the flying reptile, now called Darwinopterus modularis, suggest the animals may have been an aerial predator, hunting small feathered dinosaurs (such as the one depicted here) and tiny gliding mammals some 160 million years ago. Credit: Mark Witton, University of Portsmouth.

From Live Science:

A crow-sized reptile sporting a lengthy tail likely soared through the skies some 160 million years ago, snatching feathered dinosaurs and tiny flying mammals from the air, suggest fossils of a newly identified pterosaur.

While paleontologists can't go back in time to watch the in-flight meal capture, the reptile's fossils, discovered recently in China's Liaoning Province, left behind compelling clues, the researchers say this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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The Real Impact of America's Oil Crisis -- An Interview

Image: The book Power Trip, by Amanda Little

From Time Magazine:

Esoteric climate-science warnings about America's oil dependence can make even the most well-meaning of eyes glaze over. Amanda Little, author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells — Our Ride to the Renewable Future, took a different approach. She traveled from an offshore oil rig to the halls of the Pentagon, from NASCAR racetracks to the office of a pricey plastic surgeon in order to tell a more human side of the energy story. TIME talked to Little about how fossil fuels saturate our lives and why taking personal responsibility is the key to pulling out of this mess.

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Backslash: Web Creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee Apologises For HisStrokes

From Times Online:

A light has been shone on one of the great mysteries of the internet. What is the point of the two forward slashes that sit directly infront of the “www” in every internet website address?

The answer, according to the British scientist who created the world wide web, is that there isn’t one.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote the code that transformed a private computer network into the web two decades ago, has finally come clean about the about the infuriating // that internet surfers have cursed so frequently.

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Plumes Of Fire And Gas Erupting From The Sun Have Been Captured By Nasa Spacecraft

From The Telegraph:

Great balls of gas erupting from the Sun have been captured in rare footage by two Nasa spacecraft.

Filmed over two days, the images show huge plumes of gas bursting from the Sun's surface and held aloft by its magnetic field.

These gas bursts - known as solar prominences - are several times larger than the Earth and travel at enormous speed.

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