Subsurface Gas Deposit Could Deflate Theory Of How Earth's Atmosphere Formed

LIFE LINE: Earth's atmosphere, as seen from space, allowed life to thrive on the planet, but how it originated and evolved remains an open question. NASA

From Scientific American:

Krypton trapped in Earth's mantle appears not to have been captured from the sun, as some models would predict.

A precision analysis of gases from Earth's mantle collected at a geologic formation in the U.S. Southwest points to a source for the gas that more closely resembles carbonaceous meteorites than it does the sun. If confirmed by further research, the new study would challenge a theoretical model for atmosphere formation in which Earth began with two reservoirs of solar gas captured during the planet's formation and youth—one surrounding the planet, the other buried beneath the surface.

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Massive Camera Sharpens Our View Of The Universe : Big Pic Gallery

The Beast -- A portrait of VISTA, a system developed by a consortium of 18 universities in the United Kingdom led by Queen Mary, University of London. This is the biggest survey telescope of its kind, revolutionizing ESO's capability of observing the southern skies, combining outstanding photographic capabilities with a huge light-collecting mirror. Image credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky

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Intense Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Sunday

The annual Geminid meteor shower lights up the sky over the 1600-year old fire temple of Niasar in Iran in a December 14, 2008 photograph. Photograph by Oshin Zakarian, TWAN

From National Geographic:

Late Sunday night is the peak of the year's most prolific annual cosmic fireworks show—the Geminid meteor shower (Geminids picture).

The meteor shower has been growing in intensity in recent decades and should be an even better holiday treat than usual this year, since it's falling in a nearly moonless week.

Coming fast on the heels of its more famous cousin the Leonid meteor shower—which peaked less than a month ago—the Geminid show should feature as many as 140 shooting stars per hour between Sunday evening and Monday morning.

The Geminids are slow meteors that create beautiful long arcs across the sky—many lasting a second or two.

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SCARE" Software Predicts Insurgent Weapons Cache Locations Based On IED Attacks

Cutting Down IED Attacks IED attacks such as these can provide basic intel for SCARE to predict weapons cache locations U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

The program generates hypotheses from available intel to finger IED weapons caches within a half a mile of actual locations.

Improvised explosives used by insurgents represent the top killer for warfighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now soldiers have a new tool for hunting down IED weapons caches. A new software package, called SCARE, can whip up a best hypothesis for possible locations, based on locations of past improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and, somewhat surprisingly, the Shiite vs. Sunni makeup of neighborhoods.

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Map Of Every Nuclear Explosions Since 1945

Our Century of Fallout: Every Nuclear Detonation, Mapped -- Gizmodo

Everyone's got a notion of how the last century went, in terms of nuclear explosions. There was Hiroshima, then Nagasaki. There were some nuclear tests out in the desert, and the ocean. But would you believe there've been over 2000?

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CSN Editor: A full sized version is here.

Sea Level Is Rising Along US Atlantic Coast, Say Environmental Scientists

New Jersey coast. New research shows that sea-level rise along the Atlantic Coast of the United States was 2 millimeters faster in the 20th century than at any time in the past 4,000 years. (Credit: iStockphoto/Daniel Nydick)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 11, 2009) — An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise along the Atlantic Coast of the United States was 2 millimeters faster in the 20th century than at any time in the past 4,000 years.

Sea-level rise prior to the 20th century is attributed to coastal subsidence. Put simply, land is being lost to subsidence as the earth continues to rise in response to the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period. Using sediment cores from the U.S. Atlantic coast, researchers found significant spatial variations in land movement, with the mid-Atlantic coastlines of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland subsiding twice as much as areas to the north and south. Coastal subsidence enhances sea-level rise, which leads to shoreline erosion and loss of wetlands and threatens coastal populations.

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New Device Makes Guns More Accurate

Timothy Kraft using opti-sight. Credit: University of Alabama, Birmingham

From Live Science:

A new technology may make it easier for gun owners to improve their marksmanship.

Opti-sight, a new pistol-aiming device, was developed to reduce the time law enforcement, professional and amateur shooters need for target practice to get better results at the firing range.

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Europe vs. Google: The Next Chapter

A scanner passes over a book as part of Google Inc.'s project to create digital versions of all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world. Carlos Osorio / AP

From Time Magazine:

Google may be valued at more than $185 billion and boast millions of users, but that doesn't mean the Internet giant is any match for the diminutive French President Nicolas Sarkozy. On Dec. 8, Sarkozy warned Google he would not allow France to be "stripped" of its literary heritage, an apparent reference to Google's enormous book-digitizing project. "We won't let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is," Sarkozy said during a round-table discussion in eastern France. "We are not going to be stripped of what generations and generations have produced in the French language, just because we weren't capable of funding our own digitization project."

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Geminid Meteor Shower Set To Light Up The Sky With Spectacular Display

Photo: The hidden fires of the Flame Nebula: meteor showers will be spectacular this weekend

From Times Online:

Wrap up warm and look at the night sky this weekend for the most spectacular meteor shower of the year — although you will need to brave some cold temperatures hovering around freezing.

The Geminid meteor shower appears every year about this time and is our best shooting star display, with more than 100 meteors appearing each hour. This year’s spectacle is especially good because it is close to a new moon so there is no moonlight to interfere with the view.

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NASA Comet Hunter Set For Monday Launch

From Information Week:

Weekend liftoff of WISE space telescope scrubbed due to faulty steering engine.

NASA delayed until Monday the launch of a space telescope designed to create a highly detailed map of the heavens and spot comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to life on Earth.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, was slated to lift off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base atop a Delta II rocket Friday, but a balky booster steering engine forced the delay.

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2010: The Year Of The Tablet Computer?

From PC World:

In China, 2010 will be the year of the Tiger. In the tech world, 2010 will be the year of the Tablet -- or so it seems. A bevy of tech companies have teased, talked, and have not denied rumors that they are working on a fabled tablet computer. Here is a look back at 2009 tablet buzz with a look forward to 2010 -- the year of the Tablet.

Asustek is rumored to be working on an Eee Pad, according to Digitimes. Rumors of a Dell tablet won't go away. Earlier this year, rumors of a Microsoft two-panel tablet appeared after Gizmodo got its hands on one of Redmond's concept videos. And starting Friday, the JooJoo Web tablet is supposed to go on sale for $499 at thejoojoo.com. And of course there is the ever-present Apple rumor that "soon" it will introduce a tablet.

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Final NASA Spending Bill Includes Protections For Moon Program

From Space.com:

WASHINGTON — House and Senate negotiators reached agreement this week on a 2010 omnibus spending bill that includes $18.7 billion for NASA — a $942 million increase over the agency's 2009 budget — and includes a provision that would prevent the agency from scaling back or canceling its current human spaceflight activities in the absence of formal legislative approval from congressional appropriators.

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The H1N1 Pandemic: Is A Second Wave Possible?

A woman wears a mask in Beijing on Dec. 2, 2009. Peter Parks / AFP / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Since early November, cases of H1N1 have continued to decline nationwide, and scientists keeping track of the numbers say that as pandemics go, 2009 H1N1 may turn out to be a mild one — at least for the time being.

The question now on health officials' minds is: Will there be a second wave of cases in the new year? The answer depends on whom you ask. "We took an informal poll of about a dozen of some of the world's leading experts in influenza," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters recently. "About half of them said, Yes, we think it's likely that we'll have another surge in cases. About half said, No, we think it's not likely. And one said, Flip a coin."

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Earth's Atmosphere Came From Outer Space

Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

The Earth's atmosphere and oceans which gave rise to life came from outer space probably on the back of meteorites or comets, scientists now believe.

Previously it was thought that the gases and minerals were locked deep within the Earth's crust and only released in huge volcanic eruptions.

But now researchers have proved that they must have come from outer space billions of years after the Earth was first formed.

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Large Hadron Collider Creates World-Record Energy Collisions As It Gears Up For Big Bang Test

This image provided by CERN shows particle tracks as protons collided in CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter

From The Daily Mail:

The world's largest atom smasher has smashed particles together at the highest energy achieved in a laboratory, a spokeswoman has confirmed.

The Large Hadron Collider recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons on Tuesday evening, as it underwent test runs in preparation for full-scale operations next year.

More than 10 billion protons per bunch collided at a total energy of 2.36 trillion electron volts (TeV) per collision.

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First Evidence Of Brain Rewiring in Children: Reading Remediation Positively Alters Brain Tissue

A still from a movie from Cassini, made possible only as Saturn's north pole emerged from winter darkness, showing new details of a jet stream that follows a hexagon-shaped path and has long puzzled scientists.

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 10, 2009) — After waiting years for the sun to illuminate Saturn's north pole again, cameras aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft have captured the most detailed images yet of the intriguing hexagon shape crowning the planet.

The new images of the hexagon, whose shape is the path of a jet stream flowing around the north pole, reveal concentric circles, curlicues, walls and streamers not seen in previous images. Images and the three-frame animation are available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org.

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Using Airplane Know-How To Harness Wave Energy

This fleshed-out reconstruction of a newly identified theropod dinosaur, called Tawa hallae, shows the dog-sized beast had claws for snagging meaty prey. Credit: Jorge Gonzalez.

From Live Science:

Long, long ago, some of the first dinosaurs walked the Earth. But scientists have not known with any confidence where those initial dino prints were made. Much more recently, hikers stumbled across a few bits of bone at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, leading to the discovery of a game-changing dinosaur that reveals where it all began.

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Rare Words 'Author's Fingerprint'

From The BBC:

Analyses of classic authors' works provide a way to "linguistically fingerprint" them, researchers say.

The relationship between the number of words an author uses only once and the length of a work forms an identifier for them, they argue.

Analyses of works by Herman Melville, Thomas Hardy, and DH Lawrence showed these "unique word" charts are specific to each author.

The work is published in the New Journal of Physics.

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From Minnie To Mickey (And All They Did Was Turn Off A Gene)

The cells of the female ovary were transformed into cells normally found in male testes by turning off a gene during the development of the mouse embryo. Alamy

From The Independent:

Simple technique changes sex of a mouse – and reveals the gender war that rages in all of us.

The battle of the sexes is a never-ending war waged within ourselves as male and female elements of our own bodies continually fight each other for supremacy. This is the astonishing implication of a pioneering study showing that it is possible to flick a genetic switch that turns female ovary cells into male testicular tissue.

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Super Soldier Updates

From the Next Big Future:

DARPA has a program that is spending about $3 billion to create super soldiers. Here is an update of technology that is ready or is becoming deployable or usable for the purpose of creating super soldiers. Much of it is not from DARPA.

Exoskeletons
1. The Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC™) exoskeleton runs on Li-ion batteries, driving lightweight hydraulic legs with titanium structure. A wearer can hang a 200lb backpack from the back frame and heavy chest armour and kit from shoulder extensions.

According to Lockheed reps the HULC isn't ready for prime time yet, being still "in ruggedisation". However the company would envisage giving it to actual soldiers so as to get their input from the summer of 2010.

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My Comment: An excellent summary from the "Next Big Future".