In The Brain, Seven Is A Magic Number

From ABC News:

New Findings on Why You Have Trouble Remembering More Digits.

Having a tough time recalling a phone number someone spoke a few minutes ago or forgetting items from a mental grocery list is not a sign of mental decline; in fact, it's natural.

Countless psychological experiments have shown that, on average, the longest sequence a normal person can recall on the fly contains about seven items. This limit, which psychologists dubbed the "magical number seven" when they discovered it in the 1950s, is the typical capacity of what's called the brain's working memory.

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Will Gadget Revolutionize Our Reading Habits?

From San Francisco Chronicle:

Author Jeff Vande Zande was pleased when his latest book reached a digital milestone - it "went Kindle," formatted as an electronic book for Amazon.com's portable e-reader.

Although the college English professor from Michigan is hopeful about the new market his novel, "Landscape with Fragmented Figures," might reach, he isn't quite sold on electronic readers and still prefers the look, feel and "weathered page" smell of a printed book.

"Not all books are in Kindle edition, so for me, it was a big deal," Vande Zande said. However, he believes "the Kindle is not going to revolutionize books in the same way as the Internet and the iPod have revolutionized how we take in music."

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Dissection Begins On Famous Brain

From The New York Times:

SAN DIEGO — The man who could not remember has left scientists a gift that will provide insights for generations to come: his brain, now being dissected and digitally mapped in exquisite detail.

The man, Henry Molaison — known during his lifetime only as H.M., to protect his privacy — lost the ability to form new memories after a brain operation in 1953, and over the next half century he became the most studied patient in brain science.

He consented years ago to donate his brain for study, and last February Dr. Jacopo Annese, an assistant professor of radiology at the University of California, San Diego, traveled across the country and flew back with the brain seated next to him on Jet Blue.

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Top UN Climate Official Confident That New Pact Will Be Reached In Copenhagen

From UN News Centre:

On the eve of the historic United Nations climate change gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark, a top official with the world body today expressed confidence that the event will deliver a comprehensive and ambitious new deal.

The two-week talks are set to kick off tomorrow in the Danish capital, and by the end of the summit, Governments must adequately respond to the urgent challenge posed by climate change, said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

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Ottawa Businessman To Be Canada's Second Space Tourist

John Criswick, an Ottawa entrepreneur who has booked a US$200,000 flight on board Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, stands in front of the plane at its unveiling in July 2008. (HO, Virgin Galactic/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

From CTV News:

MONTREAL — An Ottawa entrepreneur plans to be in California on Monday for the official unveiling of a vehicle that will help him fulfil his childhood dream of being an astronaut.

John Criswick and 13 other Canadians are among 300 space tourists who have made reservations with Virgin Galactic for a trip that will take them on a flight 110 kilometres above the Earth.

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Tiger Woods Should Have Used SpoofCard

From Discovery News:

Oh man. What's going on Tiger Woods? It seems like his world is crashing down around him. Literally. I know he's all about his privacy. Won't talk to the media about personal stuff. But now this voice mail, which he allegedly left on Jamiee Grubbs' mobile phone, has been leaked all over the nation. It's just not looking good.

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School IT Director Loses Job Over Space Alien Hunt

Photo: Silhouette of Very Large Array (VLA), which has contributed in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In Arizona, a school IT director lost his job over a hunt for alien life. Newscom

From Christian Science Monitor:

District says the former employee's quest for ET will cost it $1.2 million.

The hunt for alien life led one Arizona man on a hunt for a new job.

Brad Niesluchowski used his role as information technology director of an Arizona school district to install SETI@home on computers at work. The free program, part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at the University of California at Berkeley, downloads and analyzes data from a radio telescope constantly scanning the cosmos for galactic neighbors.

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Astronauts To Taste 'Space Sushi'

From Space Travel:

US astronaut Timothy Creamer said on Thursday he was impatient to taste "space sushi" courtesy of his Japanese crewmate after they arrive on the International Space Station (ISS) later this month.

"We can't wait for when Soichi makes us sushi!" Creamer said, referring to Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, at a press conference at the Star City cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.

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Balancing Protein Intake, Not Cutting Calories, May Be Key to Long Life

Rows of jars containing Drosophila, also known as fruitflies, being bred in laboratory conditions. As Drosophila can be bred easily in mass and have a short lifespan, scientists frequently use them in research, particularly in the study of genes. (Credit: Wellcome Library, London)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 6, 2009) — Getting the correct balance of proteins in our diet may be more important for healthy ageing than reducing calories, new research funded by the Wellcome Trust and Research into Ageing suggests.

The research may help explain why 'dietary restriction' (also known as calorie restriction) -- reducing food intake whilst maintaining sufficient quantities of vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients -- appears to have health benefits. In many organisms, such as the fruit fly (drosophila), mice, rats and the Rhesus monkey, these benefits include living longer. Evidence suggests that dietary restriction can have health benefits for humans, too, though it is unclear whether it can increase longevity.

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New Device Gets A Better Grip On Gaming

The OrbiTouch keyboard, originally created to help people with carpal tunnel syndrome, is taking the gaming world by storm. Credit: Blue Orb

From Live Science:

It's hard enough to navigate an unexplored realm in an online role-playing game, but when your only means of control is the constant back and forth from keyboard to joystick, it can be hard to get into character.

Now, an approach originally designed to help people with carpal tunnel syndrome is emerging as a solution. The system lets users talk, travel and fight — all from the comfort of a single device.

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Will Fusion Fade ... Or Finally Flare Up?

May 31: A video from the National Ignition Facility explains what the super-laser experiment is designed to do. NIF / LLNL

From MSNBC:

The hot, medium and cool prospects for harnessing ultimate star power.

Is nuclear fusion the ultimate energy source, or the ultimate pipe dream? Millions upon millions of dollars are being spent to find out which answer is the right one. For some technologies, the answer could come sooner than later. For others, it may be later rather than sooner.

The easiest way to access fusion power is to go outside on a sunny day: Nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers the sun, by crushing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms and converting the small blips of extra mass into energy. Hydrogen bombs, tested by the world's armies but never used on the battlefield, do the same thing.

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Tempers Flare In Climate Change Flap

From CBS:

One day after reports that Britain's Met office intends to reexamine 160 years' worth of temperature data, emotions over what's now being dubbed "Climategate" are getting more raw by the day.

During a live television faceoff hosted by the BBC, Marc Morano, a former communications director of the U.S. Senate Environment Committee and now an editor with the Web site Climate Depot squared off against Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. It didn't take long before the two got in each other's face and Watson became increasingly annoyed with Morano's loud interruptions. He finally lost it by the end when the anchor thanked the participants.

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Copying Birds May Save Aircraft Fuel

Photo: Corbis

From The Economist:

BOTH Boeing and Airbus have trumpeted the efficiency of their newest aircraft, the 787 and A350 respectively. Their clever designs and lightweight composites certainly make a difference. But a group of researchers at Stanford University, led by Ilan Kroo, has suggested that airlines could take a more naturalistic approach to cutting jet-fuel use, and it would not require them to buy new aircraft.

The answer, says Dr Kroo, lies with birds. Since 1914, and a seminal paper by a German researcher called Carl Wieselsberger, scientists have known that birds flying in formation—a V-shape, echelon or otherwise—expend less energy. The air flowing over a bird’s wings curls upwards behind the wingtips, a phenomenon known as upwash. Other birds flying in the upwash experience reduced drag, and spend less energy propelling themselves. Peter Lissaman, an aeronautics expert who was formerly at Caltech and the University of Southern California, has suggested that a formation of 25 birds might enjoy a range increase of 71%.

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Shopping Styles Of Men And Women All Down To Evolution, Claim Scientists

From The Telegraph:

The reason women love to spend hours browsing in shops while men prefer to be in and out of the high street in minutes is down to their hunter-gathering past, claim scientists.

Differing roles in prehistoric times have evolved into differing shopping styles, the researchers believe.

While women spent their days gathering food often with children, men were hunters who made specific plans about how to catch and kill their prey.

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An End To An Era

Astronaut Hangout to Close After 30 Years -- Space.com

A former Air Force barrack-turned-bar that counted astronauts among its regular patrons will close next month after more than three decades serving the NASA community in Houston.

"The Outpost is closing... and this time, it is for good," wrote owner Stephanie Foster in a note added Tuesday to the Webster, Texas tavern's Web site. "All-in-all, you must admit that it has been an interesting and fun run for this little bar."

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Tunable Terahertz Lasers Could Allow Airport Scanners To Chemically Analyze Substances

Lasers for Scanners Uh sir, you're not supposed to have that TriStar Pictures

From Popular Science:

A new way to tune the width of terahertz quantum cascade lasers heralds a breakthrough in airport scanning and much more.

If Superman saw in terahertz radiation, he could do more than just peer through clothes and the human body. The Man of Steel might also be able to identify the chemical difference between a benign powder or an explosive tucked away inside a vial within a suitcase -- assuming that he could somehow tune his vision.

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French Immigrants Founded First British Farms

From New Scientist:

THE British may owe the French more than they care to admit. Archaeological finds from Britain show that farming was introduced 6000 years ago by immigrants from France, and that the ancient Brits might have continued as hunter-gatherers had it not been for innovations introduced by the Gallic newcomers.

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LHC Gets First Results; Step Toward "God Particle"?

A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE, (pictured above) recorded the first results from a proton-proton collision inside the Large Hadron Collider, physicists announced in December 2009. The collision created the precise ratio of matter and antimatter particles predicted from theory, showing that the so-called "big bang" machine is working as expected. Picture by Maximilien Brice, copyright CERN

From National Geographic:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is quickly making up for lost time: The first scientific results from the recently restarted particle accelerator have been announced—about two weeks ahead of schedule.

During the first collisions of the LHC's twin beams of protons, a machine called A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE, collected the results from a proton-proton smashup.

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Greenhouse Gas Carbon Dioxide Ramps Up Aspen Growth

Stand of quaking aspen. (Credit: iStockphoto/Doug Sims)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2009) — The rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be fueling more than climate change. It could also be making some trees grow like crazy.

That is the finding of a new study of natural stands of quaking aspen, one of North America's most important and widespread deciduous trees. The study, by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota at Morris (UMM) and published December 4 in the journal Global Change Biology, shows that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the past 50 years have boosted aspen growth rates by an astonishing 50 percent.

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Rural America Surprisingly Prosperous, Study Finds

(Click Image to Enlarge)
Much of rural America is prosperous, says a study that used specific criteria to evaluate community success. To qualify as prosperous, U.S. counties had to have lower poverty levels, unemployment rates, high school drop outs and housing problems than the nation as a whole. Here, a map showing the prosperity of U.S. counties. Counties that do better than the nation on all four criteria are colored red. Those that do better on three criteria are red-orange, two criteria are orange, one criteria is yellow and none is white. Credit: Andrew Isserman, Edward Feser, Drake Warren, University of Illinois.

From Live Science:

For many people "rural" is synonymous with low incomes, limited economic opportunity, and poor schools. However, a recent study found that much of rural America is actually prosperous, particularly in the Midwest and Plains.

Researchers just had to look at things differently to see the prosperity.

The study — announced today and based on date from the year 2000 — analyzed unemployment rates, poverty rates, high school drop-out rates, and housing conditions to identify prospering communities. The result: One in five rural counties in the United States is prosperous, doing better than the nation as a whole on all these measures.

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