Three Years Late, 'The Grizzly' Military Transport Plane Finally Takes To The Skies

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We have lift-off: The A400 Airbus finally gets into the sky, and the design specifications that make it so special

From The Daily Mail:

Heading into the blue three years late, Airbus's troubled A400M 'flying truck' military transport plane lifts off for its maiden flight.

The plane took off from Seville, in Spain, yesterday, with the flags of nine countries emblazoned on its side - the seven Nato nations plus Malaysia, which has ordered several planes, and South Africa, which recently pulled out of its order.

Britain has ordered up to 20 of the planes but the project has been dogged by delays and cost-overuns.

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Suzaku Catches Retreat Of A Black Hole's Disk

Image: GX 339-4, illustrated here, is among the most dynamic binaries in the sky, with four major outbursts in the past seven years. In the system, an evolved star no more massive than the sun orbits a black hole estimated at 10 solar masses. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2009) — Studies of one of the galaxy's most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets.

Binary systems where a normal star is paired with a black hole often produce large swings in X-ray emission and blast jets of gas at speeds exceeding one-third that of light. What fuels this activity is gas pulled from the normal star, which spirals toward the black hole and piles up in a dense accretion disk.

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Titan: A Climate Out Of This World

Titan in Saturn’s system: Titan (top) emerges from behind its parent planet, Saturn. Another satellite, Tethys, is visible at the bottom left of the picture. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

From Live Science:

Our knowledge of Titan has improved considerably over the last five years. Before that, Saturn's largest satellite had only been hastily approached by a handful of space probes.

In 1980, the Voyager-1 spacecraft took advantage of a flyby to take a few mysterious, yet frustrating close-ups of Titan's opaque, rusty atmosphere. Despite its color, Titan actually seemed to look a lot like the early Earth.

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Legal Battles Rage Over E-Book Rights To Old Books

From CNET News:

William Styron may have been one of the leading literary lions of recent decades, but his books are not selling much these days. Now his family has a plan to lure digital-age readers with e-book versions of titles like "Sophie's Choice," "The Confessions of Nat Turner" and Styron's memoir of depression, "Darkness Visible."

But the question of exactly who owns the electronic rights to such older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry's last remaining areas of growth.

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Genetic 'Map' Of Asia's Diversity

The study indicates that all of Asia was populated through one migration event.

From The BBC:

An international scientific effort has revealed the genetics behind Asia's diversity.

The Human Genome Organisation's (HUGO) Pan-Asian SNP Consortium carried out a study of almost 2,000 people across the continent.

Their findings support the hypothesis that Asia was populated primarily through a single migration event from the south.

The researchers described their findings in the journal Science.

They found genetic similarities between populations throughout Asia and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern latitudes.

The team screened genetic samples from 73 Asian populations for more than 50,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

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Geminid Meteor Shower 2009: Where To Watch, What To Bring

From L.A. Times:

Sky-watchers, get ready for another late-night adventure. The Geminid meteor shower is to be at its peak tonight and into the wee hours of Monday morning. Though not as popular as the Perseids, these meteors generally put on a great show when they appear in our skies annually in December.

When you spot the Geminids, which emanate from the constellation Gemini (hence, their name), you will be observing debris from an extinct comet by the name of 3200 Phaethon. “It is, basically, the rocky skeleton of a comet that lost its ice after too many close encounters with the sun,” writes Tony Phillips in a NASA blog.

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Getting Power From Coal Without Digging It Up

Photo: Truly clean coal: Swan Hills Synfuels generates a clean-burning gas mixture from coal at its underground gasification plant northwest of Edmonton. The company plans to generate 300 megawatts of power with the gas, while storing the resulting carbon dioxide in Alberta’s oil fields. Credit: Swan Hills Synfuels

From Technology Review:

An Alberta project will transform coal deep beneath the ground into gas.

Converting coal in the ground directly into clean-burning gases could have huge environmental benefits--not the least of which would be the avoidance of destructive mining operations. The problem is, technology for underground coal gasification is still in its early stages.

Now the government of Alberta says it will give C$285 million ($271 million) to a coal gasification project by Calgary-based Swan Hills Synfuels that involves the deepest-ever operation to generate power from coal--without digging it up.

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Troops Strike Up A Tune To Repair The Damage Of Brain Injuries

Band Aid Music could provide relief to hundreds of brain-injured veterans.
Hanan Isachar/Superstock

From Popular Science:

The opening riff of “Takin’ Care of Business” thumps rhythmically from an iPod as a room full of middle-aged military veterans tap in time on drums. This is the sound of brain rehab.

Studies show that music can promote new neural connections, which Colorado State University neuroscientist Michael Thaut theorized could help overcome common symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as short-term memory loss and impaired decision-making skills. Thaut and his colleagues enrolled 31 veterans suffering from TBI in a “neurologic music therapy” study where each drummer matches rhythms and tempos set by a bandleader. Last summer, they published results that show that after several 30-minute sessions, the group performed better on standard decision-making tests.

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Three New Planets Found Orbiting Star Similar To Sun

From The Telegraph:

Three new planets have been found orbiting a nearby star that is almost identical to the Sun.

The planets, forming a mini-solar system, circle the star 61 Virginis which is just 27.8 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye.

They have masses ranging from 5.3 to 24.9 times that of the Earth.

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Trying To Stop An International "Arms Race" In Cyberspace

In Shift, U.S. Talks To Russia On Internet Security -- New York Times

The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace.

American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia’s overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race.

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My Comment: This is a major policy shift for the U.S. The key paragraph in this report is the following:

The mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia’s overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race.

The problem is that I do not see how it is possible to regulate and blunt the development of software that may (or may not) contravene any future agreements .... let alone establishing a monitoring agency that will have the resources to verify compliance for any future agreement.

Climate Change Emails Row Deepens As Russians Admit They DID Come From Their Siberian Server

Agenda: An Iceberg projection highlighting the Copenhagen UN summit shows the high level of political interest in climate change - and why scientists may be desperate to prove it is a man-made problem we can solve

From The Daily Mail:

The claim was both simple and terrifying: that temperatures on planet Earth are now ‘likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years’.

As its authors from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) must have expected, it made headlines around the world.

Yet some of the scientists who helped to draft it, The Mail on Sunday can reveal, harboured uncomfortable doubts.

In the words of one, David Rind from the US space agency Nasa, it ‘looks like there were years around 1000AD that could have been just as warm’.

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Do Truth Serums Work?

The Straight Dope:

Truth serums are based on a phenomenon known since ancient times, when Pliny the Elder coined the phrase in vino veritas: "in wine, truth." He meant anything that lowers your inhibitions is likely to cause you to say things you'd normally keep secret. Unfortunately for cops and CIA interrogators, what you spill isn't necessarily the truth.

Although people have been plying one another with liquor for centuries, the earliest confession induced using something stronger was reported in a 1903 criminal case involving a New York cop. He admitted under ether that he'd faked insanity when accused of killing his wife.

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Bacteria Engineered To Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Liquid Fuel

Genetically engineered strains of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus in a Petri dish. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Los Angeles)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2009) — Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels.

In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds great potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis.

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Wild Dingos Remember Human Gestures

A female dingo, Queensland, Australia. Research shows that although dingos are no longer domesticated, they still retain the ability to read human gestures. Credit: Bradley Smith

From Live Science:

Dingoes were semidomesticated village dogs once, in Southeast Asia. Then, about 4,000 years ago, they got loose in Australia, where their behavior reverted to that of their ancestor, the wolf. They howl, live in packs, and fear humans.

But even after so long on the lam they’ve retained at least one mark of domestication: an ability to read human gestures.

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Leasing The Sun

Workers for Solar City help to install solar panels on a Westminster, Calif., home. The company leases solar panels to homeowners in California and Arizona. Newscom/File

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Discount deals and tax incentives help homeowners go solar.

If faced with a $700-a-month electric bill, one might be inclined to cast one’s eyes heavenward. So it wasn’t surprising that Lisa Max took a good hard look at rooftop solar panels as a possible solution to her soaring energy costs. But the estimates “shocked” the San Rafael, Calif., homeowner.

It’s a typical scenario faced by US homeowners who are eyeing solar energy as a way to help the environment and save themselves some cash at the same time. When they crunch the numbers, the financial clouds descend.

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How To Fix Facebook's New Privacy Settings

How Facebook said good morning today.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

From CNET:

When logging in to Facebook Thursday, I, like millions of other people, got the directive to update my privacy settings to fit in to the new, "simplified," scheme.

But at their core, the Facebook privacy settings have not been simplified. Beyond the set-up page, Facebook's privacy controls are now more complex and more powerful. The new set-up page seems more designed to pry this privacy from you than give you access to the new, and excellent, controls that Facebook has put in place.

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Aid Agencies 'Must Use New Tools'

Photo: Ushahidi is a free and open-source information-sharing platform

From The BBC:

The "crowd-sourced" data that comes from victims of natural disasters and conflicts is now a crucial part in disaster management, says a new report.

The UN Foundation/Vodafone Foundation Partnership report outlines examples of new technologies that mitigate conflicts and save lives worldwide.

A report author said it reveals that aid agencies "fail to take advantage" of new tools available.

It says a number of challenges remain to maximise the tools' potential.

The partnership is a $30m, 5-year plan that joins the humanitarian arms of each group, with a focus on the technological aspects of aid.

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Drought Turns Governments To Cloud Seeding

Image: (CBS/iStockphoto)

From CBS News:

U.S. Behind Tide of Countries Increasingly Dealing with Water Shortages by Trying to Force Rain Fall.

(AP) On a mountaintop clearing in the Sierra Nevada stands a tall metal platform holding a crude furnace and a box of silver iodide solution that some scientists believe could help offer relief from searing droughts.

This is a cloud-seeding machine designed to increase rainfall by spraying a chemical vapor into the clouds. Under the right conditions, it can help water droplets grow heavy, coalesce and fall to the ground.

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NASA To Get Budget Boost For Exploration, Says Analyst

From New Scientist:

NASA is sure to get an injection of cash to rescue its faltering human space exploration programme, says a well-connected space policy analyst.

In October, a report by a White House panel headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine said NASA would be unable to support meaningful human space exploration without at least $3 billion more per year.

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Piercing The Plasma: Ideas To Beat The Communications Blackout Of Reentry

HOT STUFF COMING THROUGH: Computer modeling by Krishnendu Sinha of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay shows the heat flow a space capsule might generate during reentry. Hottest regions exceed 6,000 degrees Celsius (white, purple and red), coolest regions a few hundred (blue). Krishnendu Sinha Itt Bombay

From Scientific American:

Anticipating novel spacecraft and Mach 10 missiles, the U.S. Air Force considers new ways around an old problem.

The frustrating communications blackout that can occur when a spacecraft reenters the atmosphere caused some tense moments in the earlier years of the space age—perhaps most memorably during the crippled Apollo 13 mission. But the phenomenon could also affect communications with new aircraft and weapons systems being contemplated now by the U.S. Air Force, which hopes to find ways to pierce the blackout.

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