How Do Countries Determine Their Time Zones?

Matthias Kulka / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Russia wishes it were smaller. No, it isn't about to shed any territory, but President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that Russia reduce its number of time zones from 11 to four, arguing that the extreme time difference — in which western Russia wakes for breakfast just as eastern Russia climbs into bed — "divides" the country and "makes it harder to manage it effectively." Can Russia just change time zones like that? How are time zones determined anyway?

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Have No Fear – Breakthrough Offers Hope To Phobia Sufferers

12% of Britons fear spiders, whilst 13% fear heights. ALAMY

From The Independent:

Scientists manage to block scary thoughts selectively – without the use of mind-altering drugs

Fear has been eliminated from the human mind for the first time in a series of pioneering experiments that could open the way to treating a range of phobias and anxiety disorders with behavioural therapy rather than drugs.

Scientists have selectively blocked thoughts of fear by interfering with the way memories are "reconsolidated" by the brain. It could lead to new ways of treating the thousands of people whose lives are crippled by fear and anxiety relating to phobias and memories that go back many years.

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Giant iceberg heading for Australia

A satellite image released by the Australian Antarctic Division howing a giant iceberg (4th from right) which is drifting towards Western Australia Photo: EPA

From The Telegraph:

A giant iceberg double the size of Sydney Harbour is on a slow but steady collision course with Australia, scientists have said.

The mammoth chunk of ice, which measures 12 miles long and five miles wide, was spotted floating surprisingly close to the mainland by scientists at the Australian Antarctic Division (ADD).

Known as B17B, it is currently drifting 1,000 miles from Australia's west coast and is moving gradually north with the ocean current and prevailing wind.

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Miracle Light: Can Lasers Solve The Energy Crisis?

An artist's rendering of laser beams entering both ends of a capsule containing a pea-sized pellet of deuterium and tritium at the Energy Department's National Ignitition Facility in Livermore, Calif. National Ignition Facility/MCT

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Next year will mark the 50th birthday of the laser, one of the most productive and widely used mega-inventions of the last century. Scientists hope that 2010 also will see the launch of laser technology's greatest challenge: creating an inexhaustible supply of clean, carbon-free energy.

In the five decades since lasers were developed, they've found a host of applications — from the everyday to the exotic — in industry, science, medicine, entertainment and national security.

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WHO: Smoking Kills 5 Million Every Year

Corbis

From Time Magazine:

(LONDON) — Tobacco use kills at least 5 million people every year, a figure that could rise if countries don't take stronger measures to combat smoking, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

In a new report on tobacco use and control, the U.N. agency said nearly 95 percent of the global population is unprotected by laws banning smoking. WHO said secondhand smoking kills about 600,000 people every year.

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Americans Consume 34 Gigabytes Daily Per Person

Info Hogs Truly, we live in the Information Age University of California-San Diego

From Popular Science:

TMI? A new report calculates that Americans ingest an enormous info diet.

Let's face it, Americans are info hogs. We feast our eyes and ears on TV, computers, video game consoles, handheld consoles, smart phones, radio, movies, and music -- not to mention print media. Now a new report finds that the info diet adds up to about 34 gigabytes per day for each person, or the equivalent of 11.8 hours per day.

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A New Step Forward For Robots

Jerry Pratt (l.) with research associates push M2V2 to test its balance at the Institute for Human Cognition in Pensacola, Fla. (Carmen K. Sisson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Engineers decode human balance to build walking robots.

For the past 30 years, scientists and technicians have grappled with making robots walk on two legs. Humans do it effortlessly, but the simple act has a lot of hidden complexity. And until recently, computers were very bad at it.

Now, several teams across the country are refining the first generation of robots that are close to walking like people. That includes the ability to recover from stumbles, resist shoves, and navigate rough terrain.

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Nanoparticle Protects Oil In Foods From Oxidation, Spoilage

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 9, 2009) — Using a nanoparticle from corn, a Purdue University scientist has found a way to lengthen the shelf life of many food products and sustain their health benefits.

Yuan Yao, an assistant professor of food science, has successfully modified the phytoglycogen nanoparticle, a starchlike substance that makes up nearly 30 percent of the dry mass of some sweet corn. The modification allows the nanoparticle to attach to oils and emulsify them while also acting as a barrier to oxidation, which causes food to become rancid. His findings were published in the early online version of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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Mysterious Radiation May Strike Airline Passengers

There's a small chance that passengers aboard an airplane flying through a storm may be exposed to high levels of radiation, new research suggests. Credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Airline passengers flying through storms might have more to worry about than a little turbulence. A new study suggests that if jets pass near lightning discharges or related phenomena known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, passengers and crew members could be exposed to harmful levels of radiation, a dose equal to that of 400 chest X-rays.

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Discovery On HIV Testing Could Save A Million Lives

From The Independent:

Scientists have made a major advance in understanding the treatment of HIV which could see life-saving drugs extended to more than one million extra people at no additional cost. Researchers have discovered that routine laboratory testing of blood for signs of side-effects – long regarded as essential for HIV treatment – is unnecessary and a waste of time and money.

By abandoning routine laboratory testing, which is costly and requires sophisticated equipment only available in hospitals, the money saved could be used to buy and distribute extra anti-retroviral drugs.

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Googlefest Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: 3 New Ways Google Will Take Over Your Life

From Discover Magazine:

Google is hitting the ‘nets hard this week. The Mountain View, Ca. behemoth has unleashed a fresh batch of fancy tricks for their avid followers, further extending the Googleplex’s empire beyond search and into other facets of life. Not only did Google open Wave to 1 million people and launch its Chrome browser for Mac users, but they’re dropping other potential game changers as well.

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Rumours That First Dark Matter Particle Found

From New Scientist:

The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.

If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe's mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That's why any news of a sighting is seized upon.

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Nuclear Fusion Is The Future

James Hansen Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

The Copenhagen Summit: Could a new nuclear fusion process allow us to escape the whole carbon trap?

'It's time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here." With that warning to the US Congress in June 1988, the Nasa climatologist James Hansen focused the minds of politicians on a danger that, until then, many of them had treated with scepticism.

A few days later came the first international conference to discuss man's impact on the Earth's climate, in Toronto, to which I had been packed off by The Daily Telegraph's then editor. I watched as scientists tried to persuade government representatives, legal experts, economists and industrialists that the time had come to take the threat seriously.

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Paper Battery Could Power Gadgets Of The Future

The light-weight battery is created by painting nanotube ink onto paper

From the Daily Mail:

Ordinary paper could one day be used as ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries, according to scientists from Stanford University.

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of silver and carbon nanomaterials makes an efficient storage device that is 10 times as powerful as lithium-ion batteries used to power laptops.

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Mysterious Light Display Leaves Norwegians And Astronomers Puzzled

From Popular Science:

A Russian missile test or a meteor remain the top guesses for a strange spiraling light phenomenon.

A bizarre spiraling light show over Norway has raised speculations ranging from a Russian rocket test to an odd meteoric display. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute remains unsure of the phenomenon's origins, but astronomers have said that it does not appear connected to the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights.

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‘Testosterone’s Aggressive Impact Is A Myth. It Makes You Friendlier’

From Times Online:

It is popularly known as the selfish hormone, which courses through male veins to promote egotistical and antisocial behaviour. Yet research has suggested that testosterone’s bad reputation is largely undeserved.

Far from always increasing aggression and greed, the male hormone can actually encourage decency and fair play, scientists have discovered.

The common belief that it makes people quarrelsome, however, can cause it to have that effect. When people think they have been given supplements of the hormone they tend to act more aggressively, even though it does nothing biological to promote such behaviour.

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'Small Wind' Market To Double By 2013, Study Says

Cascade Engineering has the rights to sell this Swift turbine, which is already installed in dozens of locations in the U.K., some attached to roofs on homes. Like other wind turbines, the Swift has blades that turn and power a generator. But rather than the typical three blades, the Swift has five and a ring that goes around them. That "outer diffuser" ring cuts the noise level to 35 decibels and reduces vibration, according to the company. Photo by Cascade Engineering. Caption by Martin LaMonica

From Green Tech/CNET News:

Individuals and commercial businesses around the world are increasingly drawn to small wind turbines to supplement energy consumption, according to a report released Wednesday by Pike Research.

The niche industry of small wind turbines, which saw $165 million in revenue in 2008 and $203 million in 2009, will grow to $412 million by 2013, according to Pike's "Small Wind Power" report.

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The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

Darwin Airport - by Dominic Perrin via Panoramio

From Watts Up With That?:

People keep saying “Yes, the Climategate scientists behaved badly. But that doesn’t mean the data is bad. That doesn’t mean the earth is not warming.”

Let me start with the second objection first. The earth has generally been warming since the Little Ice Age, around 1650. There is general agreement that the earth has warmed since then. See e.g. Akasofu . Climategate doesn’t affect that.

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Life On Mars Theory Boosted By New Methane Study

This image shows concentrations of Methane discovered on Mars. (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 8, 2009) — Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

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Colossal Flood Created The Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar photographed by NASA. Part of Spain can be seen above and Africa, below, in the photo.

From Live Science:

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin.

Geologists have long known that the Mediterranean became isolated from the world's oceans around 5.6 million years ago, evaporating almost completely in the hundreds of thousands of years that followed.

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