Astronomers Name Scottish Park One Of World's Best Stargazing Sites

The night sky as seen in Galloway Forest Park, which has
been awarded 'dark skies' status. Photograph: PR

From The Guardian:

Galloway Forest Park awarded 'dark skies' status and praised for accessibility to public.

A vast stretch of forest in south-west Scotland boasting unrivalled views of the millions of stars in the galaxy was today named as one of the best places in the world to stargaze.

Galloway Forest Park, a 300 square mile tract of conifer forests and hills, became one of the first places outside the US to be given status as a "dark skies park" by astronomers at the International Dark Skies Association.

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Climate Change Gives Ancient Trees Growth Spurt

Wiltshire's Ancient Trees. Photo from The BBC

From The New Scientist:

Rising temperatures are causing some of the oldest trees on Earth to grow faster, new research suggests. But scientists are divided over whether or not the change will benefit the climate, as it may simply cause the trees to die more quickly.

Previous research (pdf) suggested that Great Basin bristlecone pines located in the mountains of western US are growing more rapidly. But the reason for the growth spurt – and whether or not it is unusual – was unclear.

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Bacteria 'Glow Near Landmines'

From The Telegraph:

Bacteria that glow green in the presence of explosives could provide a cheap and safe way to find hidden landmines, according to British scientists.

The bugs can be mixed into a colourless solution that forms green patches when sprayed on to ground where mines are buried.

Researchers who created the bacteria at the University of Edinburgh believe the microbes could be dropped from the air on to danger areas.

Within a few hours, they would react to traces of explosives leaking from the devices buried underground.

Each year, between 15,000 and 20,000 people are killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance, according to the charity Handicap International.

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British Scientists Testing Ukrainian 'Super Flu' That Has Killed 189 People

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (L) visits flu victims
at a hospital in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk

From The Daily Mail:

British scientists are examining the strain of swine flu behind a deadly Ukrainian outbreak to see if the virus has mutated.

A total of 189 people have died and more than one million have been infected in the country.

Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after the World War One.

An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus.

He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

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China Joins Supercomputer Elite

From The BBC:

China has become one of a handful of nations to own one of the top five supercomputers in the world.

Its Tianhe-1 computer, housed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin was ranked fifth on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops).

It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops.

One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

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Fishing Quota Will Lead To Extinction Of Bluefin Tuna, Warn Conservationists

From Times Online:

Conservationists have accused the organisation charged with ensuring the survival of the bluefin tuna of pushing the fish to extinction.

Members of the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) voted to allow 13,500 tonnes of tuna to be caught next year, which scientists say will lead to the disappearance of the fish from the Mediterranean within two years.

The European Union was blamed for having blocked plans at the Brazil conference for a moratorium on catching the fish in the Mediterranean.

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Scientists Test First Universal Programmable Quantum Computer

Quantum Processor Beryllium ions to lasers: you spin me right round J. Burrus/NIST

From Popular Science:

Quantum computing uses spooky physics to run faster and more powerfully than traditional computers.

Physicists have been taking baby steps toward creating a full-fledged quantum computer faster and more powerful than any computer in existence, by making quantum processors capable of performing individual tasks. Now a group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed the world's first universal programmable quantum computer that can run any program that's possible under the rules of quantum mechanics.

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Improving Security With Face Recognition Technology

This photo shows how to determine discriminative anatomical point pairings using Adaboost for 3-D face recognition. (Credit: University of Miami)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 15, 2009) — A number of U.S. states now use facial recognition technology when issuing drivers licenses. Similar methods are also used to grant access to buildings and to verify the identities of international travelers. Historically, obtaining accurate results with this type of technology has been a time intensive activity. Now, a researcher from the University of Miami College of Engineering and his collaborators have developed ways to make the technology more efficient while improving accuracy.

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Just Thinking of a Loved One Can Reduce Physical Pain

From Live Science:

They say love hurts. But it can also make people feel better.

In an offbeat study, researchers applied "moderately painful heat stimuli" to the forearms of 25 women while each held the hand of her boyfriend, the hand of a male stranger, or squeezed a ball. The women reported less pain when holding their boyfriends' hands.

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Surprising Discovery Explains Formation Of New Memories

From U.S. News And World Report:

Short-term memory may depend in a surprising way on the ability of newly formed neurons to erase older connections. That's the conclusion of a report in the November 13th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, that provides some of the first evidence in mice and rats that new neurons sprouted in the hippocampus cause the decay of short-term fear memories in that brain region, without an overall memory loss.

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Time-Travelling Browsers Navigate The Web's Past

19 October 1996: Plane maker Boeing had what was,
for the time, a very image-intensive home page

From New Scientist:

Finding old versions of web pages could become far simpler thanks to a "time-travelling" web browsing technology being pioneered at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Bookmarking a page takes you to its current version – but earlier ones are harder to find (to see an award-winning 1990s incarnation of newscientist.com, see our gallery of web pages past, right). One option is to visit a resource like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. There, you key in the URL of the site you want and are confronted with a matrix of years and dates for old pages that have been cached. Or, if you want to check how a Wikipedia page has evolved, you can hit the "history" tab on a page of interest and scroll through in an attempt to find the version of the page on the day you're interested in.

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Scientists Identify Gene That Can Help You Live To 100

From The Telegraph:

A gene that can help you live to 100 has been identified by scientists.

Researchers studying a group of people with an average age of 97 found they had all inherited a gene that appears to prevent cells ageing.

They found that the 86 people studied and their children had higher levels of an enzyme called telomerase which is known to protect the body's DNA from degrading.

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Last Ice Age Took Just SIX Months To Arrive

Photo: Climate catastrophe: Rapid climate change was the subject of the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow

From The Daily Mail:

It took just six months for a warm and sunny Europe to be engulfed in ice, according to new research.

Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade - but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.

In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The day After Tomorrow, the Northern Hemisphere was frozen by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, which allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.

Geological sciences professor William Patterson, who led the research, said: 'It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time. It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.'

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Starvation 'Wiped Out' Giant Deer

From The BBC:

The giant deer, also known as the giant Irish deer or Irish elk, is one of the largest deer species that ever lived.

Yet why this giant animal, which had massive antlers spanning 3.6m, suddenly went extinct some 10,600 years ago has remained a mystery.

Now a study of its teeth is producing tantalising answers, suggesting the deer couldn't cope with climate change.

As conditions became colder and drier in Ireland at the time, fewer plants grew, gradually starving the deer.

The discovery is published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

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Leonid Meteor Showers Tonight

The Leonid meteor shower streaks over Joshua Tree
during a spectacular display in 2001. (Newscom)

Leonid Meteor Shower Times: When You Should Look Skyward -- Christian Science Monitor

In 2009, the Leonid meteor shower will strike between 3:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. Eastern time.

The Leonid meteor shower is back in town Tuesday morning. Every November, Earth gets a spritz of meteor light in the night sky. While Asia will get the best show this year, early birds in North America can enjoy a few dozen Leonid meteors per hour.

Thinking of getting up early? Americans, set your clocks to 3:30 a.m. East Coast time. The shower will run from then until about 5:30 a.m. However, no matter where you live, you may luck out and catch a stray meteor anytime between 1 a.m. and dawn.

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Shuttle Atlantis Lifts Off for 11-Day Mission

From The New York Times:

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The shuttle Atlantis vaulted into orbit Monday and set off after the International Space Station, carrying 15 tons of spare parts and equipment as a hedge against failures after the shuttle fleet is retired next year.

“We’re looking for the long-term outfitting of station,” said the shuttle commander, Col. Charles O. Hobaugh of the Marines.

With Colonel Hobaugh and Capt. Barry E. Wilmore, a Navy pilot, at the controls, Atlantis’s twin solid-fuel boosters ignited with a blast of fire at 2:28 p.m., Eastern time, instantly pushing the winged spacecraft away from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

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More News On Today's Shuttle Launch

Shuttle Atlantis takes off on station delivery mission -- CNET
NASA launches shuttle Atlantis to space station -- Reuters
Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off on supply mission -- AP
Space Shuttle Atlantis Blasts off on Delivery Mission -- FOX News
Atlantis heads for ISS with spare parts: Last shuttle blast of year -- The Register

Weapons Manufacturer Unveils Black Box for Guns

Black Box Gun Tracking gun and user performance since 2009 FN Herstal

From Popular Science:

The gadget would record details of every shot fired to track both weapon and user performance.

Military and police higher-ups can now see just how many shots a particular weapon fired during the course of a battle or incident. The Register reports that a new black box device designed for rifles and submachine guns could report on ammo usage and weapon jamming, as well as who shot whom at what time.

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Why NCAR’s Meehl Paper On High/Low Temperature Records Is Bunk

This graphic shows the ratio of record daily highs to record daily lows observed at about 1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States from January 1950 through September 2009. Source NCAR

From Watts Up With That?

One wonders why the story of a new paper covered on WUWT: NCAR: Number of record highs beat record lows – if you believe the quality of data from the weather stations did not include the 1930’s and 1940’s and earlier, conspicuously missing from the NCAR graphic above.

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United States Using Less Water Than 35 Years Ago

Crop irrigation. The largest uses of fresh surface water were power generation and irrigation. (Credit: USDA - Natural Resources Conservation Service)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 16, 2009) — The United States is using less water than during the peak years of 1975 and 1980, according to water use estimates for 2005. Despite a 30 percent population increase during the past 25 years, overall water use has remained fairly stable according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Anne Castle announced the report, Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005, as part of her keynote speech on October 29 at the Atlantic Water Summit in the National Press Club.

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Texting A Pain In The Neck, Study Suggests

From Live Science:

Texting long messages can be a pain in the neck — literally.

The repetitive action of working your fingers across the number pad of your cell phone can cause some of the same chronic pain problems previously confined to those who'd spent a lifetime typing, a new study suggests.

The possible connection is particularly worrying given how much teens and young adults — and increasingly those in professional settings — are texting nowadays, said Judith Gold of Temple University in Philadelphia, who carried out one of the first studies on the potential connection.

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